An Example Needs to be Made
One of the questions I am generally asked, especially once people know that I'm studying in Oxford, is "what are you studying?" I've come to dread that question. If I reply that I'm studying philosophy and history, about half the time the immediate response is something along the line of "well, what do you plan on doing with that?" The best response, I've found, is to shrug it off, and say something along the lines of "get used to being poor." But if I gave in to my emotions more, if I told the truth more, what I would honestly have to say is: "be a philosopher, one that has strong ties to history." It wouldn't go over well. No one is a philosopher. Even back in the days when people were philosophers, that wasn't their profession. They were either independently wealthy, teachers, or part of a religious order. The first being already somewhat out, I've not quite decided yet between the other two. But such would be only something to make sure that I stayed fed and clothed. What I would be is a philosopher.It still sounds presumptuous. It sounds like I would sit around all day thinking about things and coming up with abstract and useless descriptions of how the world works, without managing to do anything actually useful. To a large part that might be true, as a caricature of a philosopher. Most of our lot have been known to be fairly eccentric. Immanuel Kant, for example, would take walks around his hometown of Koningsburg with such regularity that the local housewives were known to set their clocks by him. And everyone knows about Aquinas and his job with the firebrand and the woman for hire his brothers had sent up to him. They're not exactly the sort of people you might first think of consulting when you want help with your everyday life. That's fair enough, actually. Everyday life is not the sort of thing philosophers are generally good at. But then neither are a lot of people, so that's not too much of a problem.
One of the real problems most people have with philosophers is an assumed sense of snobbery. Philosophers are seen as thinking of themselves as smarter than everyone else. Again, there are examples to back this up. Hegel believed he was being very clever when he said that 19th century Prussia was the heyday of civilization, that it was, in fact, the end of history. There are accusations of dogmatism; the British have a joke wherein a British physicist is explaining to a French philosopher about how the latest scientific equipment was proving such and such, and that so much progress was being made about the state of the world. The Frenchman replies, "well, that's wonderful, but how's the theory?" Philosophers are seen as not particularly caring about the state of most people, and of sitting in an ivory tower while they go about counting the number of angels on the head of a pin. How they paid for the ivory, I have no idea.
I can't really defend the historical philosophers against these attacks. What I can do is outline my own idea for what history should be and hope that it is an improvement: something that comes out of empirical knowledge, rather than trying to force the phenomena into rigid theories; and paying more attention to the outside world rather than what is traditionally considered "high culture." Studying in Oxford doesn't seem like the first way to encounter this 'outside world,' but I like to think I'm doing my part by slumming around Paris on the cheap with more such adventures on the way.
What I can defend against is the idea that philosophy is useless to the workings of the world. There are very clear instances when philosophy could be very useful. Philosophy is, after all, a certain method for putting forth, exploring, and analyzing arguments. Any time there is an argument (even in the vernacular sense) where one side is trying to persuade the other, philosophy would be useful. For the most part, though, this seems to be ignored. Let me give a good example where philosophy can help. Chris has recently posted on his blog about the neo-atheists - thanks for giving me this idea, by the way. While it might be, and often is, fun for me to check out and analyze their arguments, I'm not going to go that far right now. What I'm going to analyze is a selection of some comments made at a site which has links to a rather important debate between three major neo-atheists and three people defending religion on the question, "are we better off without religion?"
Many of the comments, of course, dealt with the believability of the debaters.
"[Theologian 1]'s answers were very straight-forward, but his answer assumes that hte (sic) listener is able to think logically and has some background knowledge about teh general area. [Neo-Atheist 1] answers were full of handwaving -- oh scientists are working on it. Trust us."
And,
"it was left to the stammering [Theologian 2] to predictably add a hackneyed, Daily Mail-style cod philosophy to justify religion. He wound up tying himself in knots .....On the other hand [Neo-Atheist 2] was his usual persuasive self, forensic, emotive and potent as ever. [Neo-Atheist 1] was devastating in taking [Theologian 3] apart..."
the result of this being a mere commentary on the debate. Nothing is decided this way; it is genetic fallacy to say "A had a better argument than B, therefore A is true." Supposing that people wanted to actually find an answer to such a question (and I don't think that they do, more on which later) what you would have to do is first find some common ground to define the playing field by, something that is hard to do on such an open ended question. But the people commenting make it worse:
"Those who choose to believe in one or more of the diverse gods that human mythology offers, have thus stepped outside the possibility of discourse"
Also,
"What a ridiculous claim! Do you honestly think you can disprove the Bible? Every argument... has been countered. And if you really read the Bible, and understand it, it will save your life."
Both of these examples, in different ways, puts forth their own opinion by completely denying the possibility of the other position. Since the other position in fact exists, and has some fairly intelligent proponents with good reasons for believing such things, I would say that such arguments are weak at best and vacuous at worst.
In general, and in a very oversimplified way, the problem with this debate is over the ambiguous nature of the word "faith." Used negatively by one side, it means the impossible picture of a man with a beard in the sky, which seems just as possible as a flying spaghetti monster. Used by the other side, it means a justification for knowledge which is beyond empirical data, which can also be applied to the presuppositions of the neo-atheists. Finding one singular definition is of course, impossible. What you could try to do, though, is to explain, far before the question "are we better off without religion?" comes up, exactly what one means by religion, what one means by knowledge, what one means by supernatural, and what one means by faith. Only then could such a debate occur. Otherwise, it is simply glorified opinion stating, with neither side actually considering the other's arguments.
Of course, most people don't actually care about other people's arguments. Most people are generally satisfied that they are in the right, and that anyone who disagrees with them is simply ignorant. For the most part this tendency is kept under the table. This is why we don't talk about religion, politics, or recent events at a fancy dinner. Today, the situation is somewhat worse. Most people, when confronted with an argument (even poorly conceived) against their position can revert to the line: "well, we should agree to disagree." This is where the philosopher is needed, and desperately. Knowledge, truth does not mean anything any more if people can't tell when something is proved and when something isn't. At this point, it's not so much the job of the philosopher to explain why the argument is right or wrong, it's simply to try to let people realize that arguments matter. Why do you believe what you believe? What's your justification for it? What are the holes in its conception? What are the advantages of thinking in a slightly different way?
One person commented, "The problem of the BELIEVER is: s/he believes they know the truth (and, therefore, can never come to the truth)." This, of course, is something I believe to be slightly more universal, and it is in solving that problem that the philosopher can be of help to the world.
posted by Emmett @ 15:31
4 Comments:
"Of course, most people don't actually care about other people's arguments. Most people are generally satisfied that they are in the right, and that anyone who disagrees with them is simply ignorant"
That, combined with the fact that cosmic truth's veracity does not depend on man's ability to articulate and defend it, is a large part of why I've given up on discourse and argument in general, and a portion of why I've just about given up on logic as a standard.
You're far more optimistic than I, Emmett; you still believe something can be done about it, and I commend you for that. I'm content to be a cynical little part of the problem.
Whoa...do you wanna do my philosophy homework for me? :P
That would so defeat the purpose.
Sorta.
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