Friday, December 14, 2007
Philosophy
I did not get a classical education. What I got instead was a thin gruel that called itself “humanities-based”, which ended up being mostly multicultural garbage with a few modern artsy novels to round it out. I am now starting the process of homeschooling my kids, and they will be getting a classical education. Given that, I figured I’d better educate myself before I try to educate them.
I’ve been on a modern philosophy kick lately, getting an overview of philosophical thought in the last 500 years, as opposed to an in-depth look at any one philosopher. I’ve come to two conclusions about modern philosophy.
First of all, philosophers led the struggle to free the intellect from the teachings of the church. Slow steps were taken away from dogma and toward empirical thought. Scientists determined the facts on the ground, and sometimes faced persecution for their efforts. Philosophers struggled with why science and religion should be separated, why centuries of religious teaching were flawed and needed to give way to the scientific method. We take this for granted today, but the transition was neither quick nor easy.
Second of all, philosophers tend to confuse any issue they touch, frequently leading astray anyone that takes them seriously.
Take, for example, any of the following questions:
Does reality exist?
Does free will exist?
Does true cause and effect exist?
Does morality exist?
Big, heavy, philosophical issues, where serious and well-meaning people have come down on either side. However, it has bothered me ever since I started looking at this that all of these issues have a very simple answers, stemming from our experience. Given that experience, it is hard to take someone seriously when they say “your senses are lying to you, reality doesn’t actually exist.”
I figure most people are familiar with the fable of the pink dragon, but I’m going to relate it anyway.
Suppose I tell you that I have a pink dragon in my garage. You say you want to go see it. We go out to my garage.
You don’t see anything. I say it’s invisible.
You feel around for it. I say it’s flying above your head.
You get a light and try to get it to cast a shadow. I say it’s so fast that it always gets out of the way.
I assert the existence of an object, you devise various tests to prove that the object exists, none of those tests succeed, and yet I continue to assert the existence of the object. The end result is that if I can’t interact with the object in any way, even simply to prove it’s existence, my experience is identical whether I accept it’s existence or not.
Similarly, how does one respond to someone that asserts that reality we perceive is an illusion? If they can in no way prove that the “real” reality is in any way perceivable, and I know very well this “fake” reality is in my face every morning, why should I even give a second’s thought to the idea that my senses might be lying to me?
And yet, people do.
How about free will?
Let’s try a proof by contradiction. Assume the opposite of what you want to prove, and see if it leads to a logical contradiction.
Assume for a moment that we do not have free will, and that the world is completely deterministic. That is, if I had a computer powerful enough, I could input my current brain state and the current state of everything that could influence me, evolve that system forward in time, and predict what I am going to choose to have for lunch a year from today.
There is the contradiction - my experience is that I can change my mind on a whim and that nothing can predict or control my actions. How then can I take seriously any supposition that I do not have free will?
It seems to me that much of philosophy has been built out of postulates and logic that have little to do with experience. Even if you accept the possibility that these postulates are true, they tend to lead to conclusions that reduce to a pink dragon scenario - unprovable, untestable, and contrary to everyday experience.
This world is real, my experience is real, my conscience is real, my self is real. Any philosophical system that tells me otherwise is bunk, on the face of it. I am having a hard time justifying the in-depth study of any such system for any reason other fitting it into the continuum that is the evolution of Western thought.
Comments
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Sometimes I think there is a benefit from just knowing that.
For example, I’ve read Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, and Nietzsche.
I can discount all three because of it. If I didn’t read any of it then I couldn’t disregard it.
That DOES serve a purpose. Now it would be nice if Sylvia Plath (for example) had offed herself BEFORE writing the putrid and self-absorbed The Bell Jar, but we weren’t so fortunate. So you gotta read it (if just skim it) so you can use it. You will then know that anyone who thinks it is great literature and it “changed their life” is someone you should approach with extreme caution. Better yet, RUN LIKE HELL.
There’s a second benefit… you can avoid repeating their mistakes or having to come up with their stuff all over again. BTDT, think strict Freudians have mother issues.
Philosophical reading can be (to me) a lot like reading science fiction. Most of it was written thousands of years ago and the modern stuff is just regurgitations on the old, with some sort of modern twist to appeal to the new and modern (and you know how I feel about the new and modern). A lot of it (unfortunately) is like soap products with NEW FORMULA on the label. Right. Pull my finger.
What is classified as Philosophy today isn’t what it used to be. Most of it today would be better classified as self-help-mumbo-jumbo-for-the-perpetually-self-absorbed-narcissist-who-uses-hearts-to-dot-their-I’s (or something shorter, like pathetic loser, for convenience). Their constant requirement to figure out why the world was designed around them and their significant place in it, is for folks who:
1. Believe the that world was designed around them (see Run Like Hell advice above).
2. Have never done anything significant or risky, besides trying the latest mo-co-espensivo at Starbucks.It is to philosophy what critical thinking is in the modern classroom: Pabulum for the masses requiring no heavy lifting. In my words, mental masturbation.
One of my pet peeves is the thing about “I do this because...[fill in whine].” People will say that when they want to blame someone or something which explains why they’re a loser. The who/thing is generally their parents (mother), a teacher, or some other trivial thing that happened in their life. My response? GET OVER IT… and… if you are STILL doing it, even after figuring out why, then that is no longer THE reason. It is simply an excuse for your sorry ass.
I have great empathy for folks who suffered real trauma in their lives… such as being falsely imprisoned, tortured by criminals, forced to listen to John Tesh, raped, or put into a concentration camp. But I have little sympathy for folks who are still upset because they weren’t picked for the baseball team, didn’t date the cheerleader in high school, or their father didn’t hug them enough or their mother hugged them too much.
Those are the folks for whom much of modern philosophy is written… or are based on Charlatan philosophers like Rousseau who really needed to get kicked in the nads and pointed at and laughed at a lot.
Mrs. du Toit | 12/14/2007 03:30 PM CDT -
Don’t get me wrong, I have every intention of digging in deeper simply because I agree that there is a good amount of value in understanding the junk that is there. My problem is that I made the mistake of trying to take them seriously. I figured, people study this stuff, there has to be something to it, right? Well, maybe not. I started to get sucked into the postulates and the logic, without stopping to do the proof by contradiction. This logical edifice is nice and all, but if I end up seriously arguing that reality doesn’t exist, I missed a turn somewhere.
What irritates me most is when I’m trying to have a perfectly good argument with someone and another person pops in with “yeah, but what if reality doesn’t exist, then your whole argument is irrelevant.” Um, sure. Go away now.
American Farmer | 12/14/2007 03:40 PM CDT -
Rent Educating Rita. Julie Walters was too old for the film, but since she’d originated the role, it was graciously given to her… but if you can imagine a younger person in the part…
Mrs. du Toit | 12/14/2007 03:58 PM CDT -
Does reality exist?
Does free will exist?
Does true cause and effect exist?
Does morality exist?
When I was 18 and in school, I had time to worry and ponder over weighty ideas like that, now I have a wife, two kids and a company to run, I don’t have time to change my mind!
Dbltap | 12/14/2007 05:44 PM CDT -
I’m assuming this:
Sometimes I think there is a benefit from just knowing that.
For example, I’ve read Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, and Nietzsche.
I can discount all three because of it.
refers to this:
This world is real, my experience is real, my conscience is real, my self is real. Any philosophical system that tells me otherwise is bunk, on the face of it.
I understand you don’t like Rand, or agree with her, but the basis of objectivism(randism) is that the world is real, experience is real, self is real, and actions have consequences. Everything else randian comes from that foundation.
From there, Randites get nuts, but throwing out objectivism because you believe in an objective reality seems....disconnected.
princewally | 12/16/2007 01:22 PM CDT -
And I’m not trying to get into an Ayn Rand pissing contest.
I know full well you aren’t a fan.
princewally | 12/16/2007 01:24 PM CDT -
An acquaintance recently went of on an expostulation of how attractive existentialism was for him. I felt suspicious to start because as he exalted over it, his speech became peppered with “like” and “um” and “you know.”
I did a bit of reading, and it was pointless dreck.
I like philosophy that starts with fairly concrete questions:
“How do you decide whether an action is moral or not?”
“What motivates that behavoir?”
“Are there any cookies left?”
Maybe I lean to some mixture of sociology, psychology, and philosophy.
I wonder, sometimes, if a great deal of philosophy didn’t come from someone’s trying to rationalize or excuse his problems because he found solving them too inconvenient.
Weetabix | 12/18/2007 11:59 AM CDT
