• Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    Heh.

    This is a rangy response to @Bartricks's apparently misunderstood thread about evolution.

    It's not over there, because it's not much about that, but it's what prompted me. Take it for what you will.

    *

    The fact-value distinction creates an apparently insuperable obstacle for philosophers, but not for ordinary people. Why?

    It's not that ordinary people are unaware of the distinction. "That's just, like, your opinion, man." Plus it's drummed into them in English and critical thinking classes. Plus most people seem to figure it out on their own at some point. But the context for that is always the same: someone mistaking their value judgment for a statement of fact. We call people out on this. We teach them the nuance of recognizing when their claims on based on their values rather than the facts.

    So we say, and most people seem to believe. When there's disagreement, it's usually not a failure to recognize the distinction but to accept that it applies to the case at hand; that is, people disagree about whether a given claim is factual or evaluative, not about whether there is a difference.

    (All this talk of values, Nietzsche was here before.)

    All that's preface.

    To finish the preface: the philosopher believes that the ordinary person is either unfamiliar with the distinction or fails to apply it properly, and that if they did they too would be in the pickle philosophers are, unable to bridge the gap. Most people just don't notice, or don't understand what a big deal this is, that's the mantra of philosophy. (The other example that leaps to mind also comes from Hume: how do you know the sun will rise tomorrow?)

    Is that right? I agree that philosophy is noticing things many overlook, of course, but you have to be careful.

    People seem to walk across rooms; Zeno has an argument that shows there's something odd about that, looked at in a certain way. There are options now:
    (1) The everyday, anti-intellectual response, which is not wrong, but not why we're here: don't look at it in that perverse way.
    (2) If I can't find a solution, in the terms in which I've stated the problem, then I have shown that people do not in fact walk across rooms, but only seem to, that it is an illusion. I will recognize that this result is paradoxical, but if it's what my reasoning spits out, I'm stuck with it. Something north, perhaps well north, of half of philosophical enquiries that begin "How is it possible that …" conclude that in fact it's not. We ask questions that are impossible to answer and conclude that the phenomenon we sought to understand, perhaps even explain, is illusory.

    This is a better response:
    The terms in which the question is raised are the problem. They don't properly represent the situation and make the perfectly ordinary seem impossible. The problem statement itself is a mistake. (This is not so far from (1) above as philosophers think.)

    The problem with this answer is that we want to valorize our curiosity. That's where we started: it's good to see how odd the world happens to be, to make it new.

    And so an even better answer is something like this:
    I'm right to see there's a problem here, and I'm right to believe that this problem is regularly overcome; therefore, there is something more I'm not seeing, which is the everyday solution. How do people manage to walk across rooms anyway?

    Which need not be to say that the problem apparently being overcome is real. It may very well turn out that the terms in which the problem was posed are mistaken. Either of these results are good:
    1. The ant does face a genuine obstacle to doing such and such, and here's how he manages …
    2. It turns out this is not actually a problem at all for ants and here's why …

    Both of those answers represent greater understanding than we had before, and that's what we wanted. The problem statement provides a way in, even if it turns out the problem we thought was there is illusory. What's more, if it is illusory, we want to know why -- that is, what is it about this phenomenon that allows us, perhaps encourages us (or even requires us, as with optical illusions), to see it wrongly?

    All of this sounds more like science than philosophy. The difference might be this: science has established methods of inquiry, and established means for creating new methods and evaluating them. Philosophy?

    Of course, there's Reason, broadly construed, but look at its use here: reasoning establishes the apparent problem but cannot solve it. Without reason we wouldn't even be here -- lacking the spur of a problem to solve -- but it's only the very first step, or at most the first phrase of the melody. How do we go on, as science does?

    You can construe those first notes somewhat like the start of an integer sequence, and imagine, formally, ways to go on. The more advanced the formalism the better -- we'll solve it all with probabilistic game theory or something, or with a newly axiomatized logic. Maybe it's all category theory. Like Frankenstein, we need only create the right monster to solve our problem.

    Or you hear those notes as only the start of a melody leaving the rest to be improvised, or you take it as a cue to dance. (And you might even claim that composition is just ossified improvisation.) Insofar as there are rules to this, they are rules you, and perhaps your collaborators, make up as you go along, intuitively. (And, again, you have the option of claiming this is all we ever do.)

    Both are tempting, but lose sight of the context of the problem. When we began, we had something real in view, the actual phenomenon of people walking across rooms, say. Now, we have shut that away behind a door marked, "We have gotten all we need from this; the rest is up to us."

    And we know that's wrong. The right thing to do is to dig into the phenomenon itself, to observe more not less, to use our problem as a flashlight, likely the first of many, to illuminate the phenomenon. Insofar as formalisms or intuitive improvisations help craft better illuminating devices or help us use them better, we can profitably invest in them, but keeping our eye on the ball -- the original phenomenon, and our original experience of thinking we understand it and then recognizing that we don't.
  • Cuthbert
    1.1k
    The fact-value distinction creates an apparently insuperable obstacle for philosophers, but not for ordinary people. Why?

    It's not that ordinary people are unaware of the distinction. "That's just, like, your opinion, man." Plus it's drummed into them in English and critical thinking classes. Plus most people seem to figure it out on their own at some point. But the context for that is always the same: someone mistaking their value judgment for a statement of fact. We call people out on this. We teach them the nuance of recognizing when their claims on based on their values rather than the facts.
    Srap Tasmaner

    Thank you for this very thoughtful and sensible post. I would say that there is not a clear distinction between what 'ordinary people' and 'philosophers' think and there are traps that any of us (bearing the label or not) can fall into.

    Take the question: who is US President? Maybe ten years ago this would have been a schoolroom exercise in speech act theory. An appropriate announcement at the end of an agreed process constitutes the fact of some person's being the holder of the office. The fact itself would not have been in question - the 'original phenomenon' could be referred to, while we discuss the nature of the fact. Lately, this is no longer possible. Perhaps the real president is the one who speaks for the common people, the one who stands up against the sneering intellectuals and federal state power merchants who deny him his rightful position. So it's all about values. Or is it? No, it's about facts. "Oh, but they are your facts and this is my truth." The expression "my truth" itself elides fact and value in a way that you say 'most people figure [ ] out'. Well, perhaps they do, but then they can get stuck on just the same problems as 'philosophers'.

    Another curious question that seems to be exercising the minds of people who would not call themselves 'philosophers' - what is a woman? I think when commentators cannot agree on that question or on whether it's a matter of fact, opinion, value or a matter of the conferring or self-conferring of an honorary label, then we are seeing philosophy alive and working outside the philosophy schoolroom. So 'ordinary people' can find themselves bewildered and 'philosophers' may be equally so and for much the same reasons. The 'insuperable obstacle' keep cropping up outside philosophy as well as inside.

    This raises the question- so what's the point of philosophy, if it can't help with these apparently philosophical problems? Well, my post is long enough.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Take the question: who is US President?Cuthbert

    Joe Biden is President. Nothing controversial.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    [...valorize our] curiosity.Srap Tasmaner

    ...killed the cat! :scream:

    Socrates...the (alleged) father of Western philosophy, curious chap, was executed by hemlock. Philosophers need to watch their step.

    [O lover of Sophia] be vewy, vewy careful. — Porky the pig

    Good OP title but nowhere in it do I see the promised formula. Is that our homework OP?
  • universeness
    6.3k
    What is the philosophical definition of an 'ordinary' person? Anyone who does not call themselves a philosopher? Are some philosophers more ordinary than others?
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    The fact-value distinction creates an apparently insuperable obstacle for philosophers, but not for ordinary people.Srap Tasmaner

    Of note is the fact that it was first articulated by David Hume, the godfather of positivism and one of the leading lights of the Scottish enlightenment. So I would respond by situating the issue in the context of the history of ideas.

    One of the many authors I've discovered only recently, but who might be well-known to others here, is Alexander Koyré, philosopher and historian of ideas, and an influence on later philosophers of science including Thomas Kuhn.

    One of his books was adapted from a lecture series, and was a study of the momentous changes in worldview that characterised the scientific revolution and the advent of modernity. He says:

    This scientific and philosophical revolution - it is indeed impossible to separate the philosophical from the purely scientific aspects of this process: they are interdependent and closely linked together - can be described roughly as bringing forth the destruction of the Cosmos, that is, the dissappearance from philosophically and scientifically valid concepts, the conception of the world as a finite, closed and hierarchically ordered whole (a whole in which the hierarchy of value determined the hierarchy and structure of being, rising from the dark, heavy and imperfect earth to the higher and higher perfection of the stars and heavenly spheres), and its replacement by an indefinite and even infinite universe which is bound toether by the identity of its fundamental components and laws, and in which all those components are placed on the same level of being. This, in turn, implies the discarding by scientific thought of all considerations based upon value-concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, and finally the utter devalorisation of being, the divorce of the world of value from the world of facts. — Alexander Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe

    In effect, what occured was the abandonment of any idea of there being Capital T Truth, which is, of course, too contaminated by association with religious ideas to withstand the acid of Enlightenment materialism. What was lost, in fact, was the sense of there being a scale of values, the idea that there could be anything better or worse outside individual opinion or social consensus. The reason that is an insuperable obstacle is because to challenge the consensus view that the Universe is, in fact, devoid of intrinsic meaning, is to be stereotyped as religious, which more or less disqualifies one from participation in secular culture.

    (See Does Reason Know what it is Missing?, Stanley Fish, for a discussion of Habermas' analysis of this issue.)
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    See Does Reason Know what it is Missing?, Stanley Fish, for a discussion of Habermas' analysis of this issue.)Wayfarer

    Interesting you mention Stanley Fish, who is also famous for his observation (and essays) positing that Philosophy Doesn't Matter - the notion that philosophy makes no difference to anyone going about their business and making decisions in life away from academe or conferences (or presumably internet fora).

    https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/does-philosophy-matter/
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I've only ever cited that particular OP, I haven't read anything else by him. I'll read those other ones now you've mentioned them.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    The fact-value distinction creates an apparently insuperable obstacle for philosophers, but not for ordinary people. Why?Srap Tasmaner

    What do you mean by the fact value distinction? I think most philosophers - now and throughout history - would not draw it.

    Here's another distinction - the fact concrete distinction.

    There are facts. And there is concrete.

    Facts are facts, not concrete. And concrete is concrete and not a fact. However, some facts are about concrete.

    Now, the same is true of facts and values. There are facts, and facts are facts and not other things. And there are values and values are values not other things. But some facts are about values. (There are facts about what I value, for instance, and there are facts about moral values too).

    The same applies to the 'is/ought' distinction. The 'is' denotes a fact. It 'is' the case that I am sat in a chair. 'Oughts' are directives (normative oughts are, anyway). But there can be facts about those, just as there can be facts about concrete even though concrete is not a fact.

    It is fact that you ought to x, for instance.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    An excellent OP.
    Both of those answers represent greater understanding than we had before, and that's what we wanted. The problem statement provides a way in, even if it turns out the problem we thought was there is illusory. What's more, if it is illusory, we want to know why -- that is, what is it about this phenomenon that allows us, perhaps encourages us (or even requires us, as with optical illusions), to see it wrongly?Srap Tasmaner

    This is very close to Mary Midgley's idea of philosophy as plumbing. We don't need it until things start to leak or smell.

    Midgley's metaphor helps in reply to asking what the difference between ordinary people and philosophers might be. A philosopher has smelt something or noticed the leak, and is trying to deal with it. They se that there is a problem where others might not.

    It needs to be said that doing philosophy is extraordinarily hard. Almost anyone can notice the smell, but fixing the leak requires some unusual skills and background.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Philosophers: Ordinary folk think too less.
    Ordinary folk: Philosophers think too much.

    We never hit the sweet spot betwixt deficiency & excess now do we? We're always swinging, pendulum-like, back and forth between extremes. The aurea mediocritas isn't easy to either attain or maintain.
  • 180 Proof
    13.9k
    Mary Midgley's idea of philosophy as plumbing. We don't need it until things start to leak or smell.Banno
    :smirk:
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    This is very close to Mary Midgley's idea of philosophy as plumbing. We don't need it until things start to leak or smell.Banno

    That's awfully close to Dewey's conception, as I understand it. Problems. Problems that are live for us, that engage us, problems that maybe we think need to be solved, or think maybe we could solve.

    I'm not sure I want to be quite that single-minded. I like peculiar questions, and I've asked a few on this forum. (Why do we want to avoid being wrong? Why don't we understand nature completely, why do we have to work at it?)

    There are also questioning sorts of interests that are hard even to formulate as simple questions. For instance, language seems to work, but what it even works at is not clear, what it even does is confusing. And there are ways of conceiving of language that suggest it cannot possibly work at whatever it's doing, which we still don't know. I don't think I'm ever going to shake my fascination with that little knot.

    So here the plumbing is, to all appearances, working fine, at something. But it's easy as pie to show how little we understand it. Why is it so easy? That's a new problem. I mean, it takes some pretty heavy physics to show that various things about the world are actually pretty odd -- but with language, it takes no more than a few questions to pull you up short, and those questions occur even to a six year old.

    The germ for this thread is something I've tried to address before, the ongoing problem of causes and reasons. It looks to me now like one of those "antinomy of pure reason" sorts of things. But I also think we are foolish to dive right in making arguments as if we know perfectly well what it means for one event to cause another, or for a person to have a reason for what they believe or what they do. I don't think we do, and I don't think arguments that take such things as given get us anywhere.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Philosophers: Ordinary folk think too less.
    Ordinary folk: Philosophers think too much.

    We never hit the sweet spot betwixt deficiency & excess now do we? We're always swinging, pendulum-like, back and forth between extremes. The aurea mediocritas isn't easy to either attain or maintain.
    Agent Smith
    Speak for yourself. :smirk:

    Philosophers: folk that use language like its a game or art
    Ordinary folk: folk that use language to communicate
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    To finish the preface: the philosopher believes that the ordinary person is either unfamiliar with the distinction or fails to apply it properly, and that if they did they too would be in the pickle philosophers are, unable to bridge the gap. Most people just don't notice, or don't understand what a big deal this is, that's the mantra of philosophy. (The other example that leaps to mind also comes from Hume: how do you know the sun will rise tomorrow?)Srap Tasmaner
    Sure, there are some uses of language that appear to be habit more than a clear understanding of what it actually means to say such things, but I've seen philosophers fall prey to the habit just as much as ordinary people. Assumptions make up the the foundation from where we build our understanding of the world. Philosophers are the ones that don't seem to realize that as they attempt to re-ask the same questions we asked and solved in the 4th grade. That isn't to say that there aren't some higher level assumptions that we take for granted that can't be questioned - like does God exist - but then ordinary people can be just as concerned about whether god exists (like when they are suffering at the hand of an unfair world) as a philosopher can.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Philosophers are the ones that don't seem to realize that as they attempt to re-ask the same questions we asked and solved in the 4th grade.Harry Hindu

    What are those questions?
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Speak for yourself. :smirk:

    Philosophers: folk that use language like its a game or art
    Ordinary folk: folk that use language to communicate
    Harry Hindu

    :grin: This is why scientists have a dim view of philosophy - despite its claims to be a fact-finding mission, it's largely an exchange of opinions. Anekantavada (many-sidedness or no one-sidedness).
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    Philosophers are the ones that don't seem to realize that as they attempt to re-ask the same questions we asked and solved in the 4th grade. That isn't to say that there aren't some higher level assumptions that we take for granted that can't be questioned - like does God exist - but then ordinary people can be just as concerned about whether god exists (like when they are suffering at the hand of an unfair world) as a philosopher can.Harry Hindu

    Interesting argument. I didn't ask or answer any such questions in 4th grade. I think most of us live unexamined lives, derive value systems unsystematically through experience and socialisation, holding onto views that are an amalgam of fallacies, prejudices and models of reality which can't be justified. I think the point is ignorance is bliss, truth seeking doesn't ususally make any real difference to survivability or prosperity and people have no idea how much of what they think is deficient.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    Philosophers: their porridge is too hot.
    Most people(certainly not ordinary, no such thing as an ordinary person imo): porridge gets cold very quickly as most are easily distracted.
    Scientists: Porridge is just right Goldilocks! (do we have baby bears to thank for this or the hopes of all our children ?) (The hopes of children! A station where all antinatalists terminate)
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    I'm sorry, that didn't compute!
  • universeness
    6.3k
    I'm sorry, that didn't compute!Agent Smith

    Dan Dennett states that philosophers help because they work so hard at trying to identify the correct questions to ask and pursue. He further states that all science starts as philosophical musings and that the history of philosophy clearly shows all the failed questions. It is the responsibility of modern philosophers not to repeat the mistakes of classical philosophers. All very complicated stuff. So perhaps this porridge is too hot for most people. Most people do ponder the big why and how questions of human experience as they live it but they are easily distracted by day-to-day living. Paying their bills and socialising with others. Sports/tv/relationships/job(if not in science or philosophy) etc etc easily distract from philosophy and science. So perhaps their porridge often gets too cold too quickly.
    Many scientists can balance their lives pretty well between living the human experience and progressing towards new knowledge.
    They contribute the most in my opinion, (although there is also the massive impact of the political world) towards the hopes that I see in children. Hope that the generation responsible for bringing them into the human experience will provide them with more options and a better life than that experienced by them. The antinatalists would say to the children that it would be best for them if they never had been born and they would call their parents immoral for having them. This is why I suggested that the glorious hope for the future that I continually witnessed in the thousands of children I taught over my career dissolves antinatalism into the puddle of putrification that it is. I would also emphasize to you again that sensible population control has very little or perhaps even nothing to do with antinatalism. All I was trying to do was connect together some of the recent exchanges between us, nothing more exciting than that.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Interesting argument. I didn't ask or answer any such questions in 4th grade. I think most of us live unexamined lives, derive value systems unsystematically through experience and socialisation, holding onto views that are an amalgam of fallacies, prejudices and models of reality which can't be justified. I think the point is ignorance is bliss, truth seeking doesn't ususally make any real difference to survivability or prosperity and people have no idea how much of what they think is deficient.Tom Storm
    Everyone examines their lives at some point - usually in the late teens - early twenties. They question their existence and their purpose. The real question is how much of an examination does your life need before you can get on with just living it? Philosophy seems to have shown that you can never know anything, or that you have to start with some assumptions. So it would be pointless to keep asking questions for which you will never get an answer.

    Philosophers are the ones that don't seem to realize that as they attempt to re-ask the same questions we asked and solved in the 4th grade.
    — Harry Hindu

    What are those questions?
    Jackson

    What are propositions? What is a language? What is science? What are numbers? etc.
  • Josh Alfred
    226
    I think you have a grasp of what it takes to make the distinction between philosopher and laymen. To paraphrase, "To look at the original and see the extra-ordinary/unoriginal."

    My recent dealings with Aritifically Intelligent Image Generators, kind of concur with what this inquiry gets at. They can abstract or generate images based on their total data-set. We are kind of like that ourselves, plus we have to knit together phenomena/images/symbols to come up with some new abstraction. Making the original unoriginal, perhaps. For more on this I would look to "Paradigm Shifts, Kuhn." I haven't read his book on the matter, too dry for me, but I get the point.

    On another point, I think asking and forming questions about certain subjects, fosters both philosophical and creative thought. You can ask questions about any subject, and than rigorously go about finding answers, it is imperative to operate such devices. I have yet to come across anything on scientifically based questioning, but I am sure one could find some data out there.

    There are some common methodolgies used in philosophy, such as what you refered to as "axiomatic".What is true of Geometry (Eucilidan Axioms) should also spill over to the philosophies, as it does.
  • Josh Alfred
    226
    Ah, I found that the "science of asking questions," is termed heursitics. There is plenty of information about these online.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Merci for keeping track of what passed between us; I would've loved to reciprocate in the same way, but alas, my life is too chaotic to permit me this honor. That's precisely your point, oui monsieur?

    True, all philosophy, what's being sold as, feels like a giant gedanken experiment, too idealized and thus, to that extent impractical. Nonetheless, philosohy isn't completely useless as by providing us with vignettes of perfection, it calls to our attention what we could do to make our world better; this despite Nietzsche's amor fati.

    As for antinatalism, I've decided that it isn't my place to tell what others who're fully capable of making their own decisions should/shouldn't do. I have a particular fondness for the idea for the simple reason that it, at the very least, sheds light on the problem of suffering. Suffering ain't a joke is the message I want antinatalists to get across to people. We need to take action ASAP. If not, natalists will eventually lose the battle - Algos can make life choose death and that's a shocker any way you slice this cake! It's as if a philosopher decided to become a sophist. That's how paradoxical it is.

    Au revoir.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    What are propositions? What is a language? What is science? What are numbers? etc.Harry Hindu

    4th graders solved the problem of the nature of language? Is this your position?!
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    Everyone examines their lives at some point - usually in the late teens - early twenties. They question their existence and their purpose. The real question is how much of an examination does your life need before you can get on with just living it?Harry Hindu

    And the answer come back: "Just enough."

    That looks like fear to me. If we're not careful, we'll all turn into Chidi Anagonye. Henry Miller called it "Hamlet", the excessive questioning and analyzing that gets in the way of living, that can cripple you as it cripples Chidi.

    If I have a point, it begins with the opposite assumption: people do manage to walk across rooms, even though I have an analysis that suggests this is impossible or illusory, and in figuring out where my analysis fails -- as it evidently does -- I can come to understand more about how people do that than I did before. I don't wonder whether it's possible, and my puzzlement about how it's possible doesn't prevent me from walking across a room anymore than it does anyone else.

    So why does the specter of Chidi/Hamlet in that ivory tower hang over philosophy?

    You ask, "How much of an examination does your life need?" There are a couple ways to go here. (Analytical habits die hard.) Maybe a little reflection is good, but too much is Chidi. Chidi is just immoderate in his reflection. But (second way, now), at what point do we call this philosophy? Not that it matters, but there's a hint here that maybe philosophy could be defined as: excessive and unnecessary reflection. Maybe in some cases, just unnecessary, but in some unnecessary and positively harmful, disruptive, crippling, Chidi.
    For instance
    (This can also veer into @JerseyFlight's complaint that we sit around here arguing about indexicals and shit, when there are blind children that need our help.)


    Anecdotal interlude. W. H. Auden named two sorts of poets: "Prospero" poets have something to say; "Ariel" poets like playing with language. The response to a bad Ariel poem is, "This needn't have been written"; the response to a bad Prospero poem is, "This shouldn't have been written."

    Is poetry necessary? Painting? Music? Is philosophy? Once they're about in the world, the answer becomes "yes" to many people, who find their lives thus enriched. But for all that, it's still perfectly clear that there's little "survival value" in such undertakings. I'm perfectly happy to say that art and philosophy are unnecessary in exactly this sense. They are a bonus, above and beyond survival. And I'll say more: it seems to me that human beings need not, individually or in aggregate, engage in any one such enterprise, taken by itself -- not everyone needs to paint or play music or engage in philosophical reflection -- but it also seems to me that human beings, both individually and in aggregate, do have an actual need to do something unnecessary. The evidence for this view seems, strangely perhaps, overwhelming, because my god look at all the stuff people get up to, and have gotten up to down through the generations. First chance we got, we began doing all sorts of things we didn't have to just to survive and we've been doing more and more of that extra stuff ever since. No one needs to know how the universe began and gave rise to fundamental forces and matter and all that, but damned if we aren't bending heaven and earth to find out. Good for us. And so it is with philosophy, says I.

    So what about that fear of the ivory tower? What is that? Why does it haunt philosophy? I think you can see it at work whenever someone claims, as they will around here, "Everyone has a metaphysics, just mostly unexamined," that sort of thing. People want to insist on the importance, on the relevance, of philosophy -- and claiming that everyone is actually doing philosophy all the time, though they may not realize it, is one way to do that. The great fear is that we'll all be taken for Ariels, just playing with words, or Prosperos, declaiming our ridiculous and embarrassing theories as if anyone wanted to hear them, as if they could possibly matter to anyone. (For the record, Auden thought only those who begin as Ariels have any chance of becoming great poets.)

    My suggestion in the OP was that what we should really worry about is a methodological ivory tower, where we shut ourselves off from the phenomena we realize we don't understand and attempt to turn philosophy into either a branch of mathematics (which has its own ivory-tower, head-in-the-clouds PR issues) or a branch of literature, a sort of hyper-intellectualized belles lettres. I want us to remember that what we do as philosophers springs originally from a certain unusual sort of curiosity about the lives we are actually living, an unnecessary curiosity, to be sure, but valuable for that very reason, I say, rather than in spite of it.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    I'm perfectly happy to say that art and philosophy are unnecessary in exactly this sense.Srap Tasmaner

    If you want to go this far, then human life is not necessary. The universe can exist without us.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    The universe can exist without us.Jackson

    And did, practically forever.

    Should that bother us?
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    And did, practically forever.

    Should that bother us?
    Srap Tasmaner

    It should bother people who believe the universe wanted to have humans in it and that is the sole purpose of the universe.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    @apokrisis has a charming just-so story about this, which I'm sure he'd be willing to tell: what I call "unnecessary", he'll call "hastening the heat-death of the universe" -- that's why if there weren't people, the universe would need to invent them, and why people need to do (for the universe) things they don't need to do (for themselves).

    Should I object that my use of "necessary" was pretty clearly circumscribed in what I wrote? It's just about the oldest move in philosophy, to climb up a rung or two toward greater abstraction -- "maybe we are ourselves unnecessary ..." What are we doing now? Are we trying to understand what it means for something to be "necessary", or, as we might say, "necessary in general"?

    As it happens, the idea of "necessity" sits right in the middle of the issue that prompted this little thread: causes are supposed to be "necessarily" linked to their effects, somehow. But reasons are part of a constellation of concepts that seem to presume some sort of "freedom", since you are not forced into a particular course of action by your reasons. (But then it gets even squirrelier, because reason has its own version of necessity -- if x + 2 = 5, then x must be equal to 3. And we see this further as some sort of obligation on us, that we "must" so conclude, or that we "should" so conclude, and those feel oddly equivalent in this case.)

    Questions of "necessity" play an outsize role in our cultural history, in a way that many people find particularly valuable. "Must it be so?" is a powerful question. Must we keep Black people as slaves? Must some have so much more than others? Must we kill one another in war?

    We forget how pious, even traditional, Socrates was and remember that he asked a lot of questions it turned out no one could answer. When that looks like social activism, we applaud; when it looks like playing with words, we boo. But underneath is the same questioning impulse.

    Someone (I forget who) described the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy as a neat little man, wearing a bowler hat, carrying an umbrella, and standing at a slight angle to the universe. Philosophy should aspire to stand at such an angle, and then to look.

    "Are we necessary?" is an excellent question, and that's so even if it turns out to be unanswerable, even if it turns out not quite to make sense. My real concern was to counter the assumption that it, and all such questions, are to be settled simply by argument, by arraying the case for "yes" against the case for "no", rather than spending a little time in the moment of questioning, and then seeing where the question itself might take us.
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