What the Hell is Philosophy?

The Meaning of Philosophy Part 1 - Philosophy, What Is It Good For? (Absolutely Somethin')

As I mentioned in a recent post, I think it's time for me to put together an introductory philosophy series. I hope to make the series engaging and entertaining. This first post will cover what philosophy actually is. I didn't even begin to know the answer to this question until I was in college, and even then found the answer somewhat lacking.

Alright, quit stalling. What the hell is philosophy?

Ok. I'll get straight to the point. To me, philosophy is nothing more or less than the active pursuit of happiness through the study of truth and falsehood, and the subsequent application of that study to your life.

Yeah, but isn't that just psychology?

That's a good question, but philosophy is different from psychology in practice. Psychology is the study, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illnesses. Psychological study and treatment is certainly massively helpful in removing certain barriers to happiness, but doesn't provide a fully formed set of instructions on how to live life morally. Psychology is great at finding and fixing problems, but philosophy is necessary to determine what sort of actions are morally good, and what sort are morally wrong. In each discipline, it is essential that the participants first identify the source of a problem, determine the methodology for explaining and fixing that problem, and then execute that methodology in their real lives.

In that way, philosophy really is quite a lot like a science, and can benefit greatly from the application of the scientific method. But we'll get to that in a later installment.

I thought philosophy was something that existed in books and was done by old dudes with white beards.

That's the view of philosophy I got from college. The bulk of undergraduate philosophy is taught as a course of study in the history of thought. There's lots of reading. Lots. And lots of paper-writing that basically amounts to book reports with logical analysis. You get the sense that throughout history philosophy has been one long line of ideas written on paper, passed to the next generation for examination, and then re-interpreted for clarity and the cultural needs of the time. This effectively amounts to studying cultural anthropology. You find out what the great thinkers of the past and present thought and think, and there is very little (outside the notable exception of Socrates a short 2,400 years ago) about the great doers of the past and present, and what they did and do.

My intention is not to discount all the thinking and writing, but simply to point out how an undergraduate degree in philosophy did fairly little for me in the way of teaching methods for applying the philosophy I was learning to my life. We would learn Kant, read criticisms against and support for his ideas, and then move on to the next philosophical movement. Sometimes it would be connected or directly influenced by the previous movement or philosopher, so we would get this idea of philosophy as an interconnected web of written ideas, cast across the span of recorded human history.

Ethics is by far the most visible part of philosophy. It's the application of a culmination of study in all other areas of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, logic). When your entire philosophical system of understanding ahead of ethics is rational and logically follows, is based on reality as it actually exists, and contains a methodology for determining truth from falsehood, your system of ethics ought to be an accurate instruction manual for right-living. They taught us this in school, but then dodged the conclusion altogether, by simply teaching it in basically the same manner as all other aspects of philosophy. Ethics, then, was also relegated to the web of interconnected ideas; historically interesting, and fuel for debate in the classroom, but by no means something to attempt to any great degree within your own life. The communistic ideas of utilitarianism were given as much time and credit as the invisible world of Plato's forms and as much time as Aristotle's insistence on the study of sound logic and empirical reality, and so on.

Each part of philosophy, then, was treated as an almost purely intellectual pursuit. Even ethics, the supposed vibrant and vital methodology for right living, was largely left out to dry to a crusty brittleness, like a graying lung on a clothesline. This might all sound like the ravings of a disgruntled bachelor of arts, but the point I'm trying to get across is that philosophy can be (is) much more alive than I was initially led to believe. The reason that the misconception of philosophy as "a series of ideas and their critiques, written by old men with big white beards" can persist is because philosophers do little to dissolve the misconception. An extraordinarily small percentage of people who study philosophy actually alter their lives in any major way to fit their ideas. Of those who do, an equally small percentage alter their lives to the degree required by their philosophy. For an example of this, imagine walking up to a socialist (who doesn't believe in individual property ownership) and asking them for the contents of their wallet. Imagine asking a group of socialists this question, then imagine how few wallets you'd get out of the group.

But why don't most philosophers actually practice what they preach and live by the consequences of their ideas?

Because we're scared. In a society full of falsehoods and pandering for social approval, it's incredibly uncomfortable to even study truth and falsehood, let alone talk about the difference, let alone live by the consequences. It's far more comfortable for most people to outwardly demean philosophy by calling it opinion. If everything is one person's opinion versus the opinions of everyone else, then nobody is ever hurt by the idea that they might be living based on utter falsehoods. That it would hurt to know you're living illogically or based on false premises should be very instructive. It's clearly an important part of human nature to conform to truth and reality. But it's an even stronger part of human nature to conform to the group. This is an important holdover of human nature from when food was short and shelter was temporary and there were no practical means of mutually beneficial trade. In western society, this hasn't been the case for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It's more comfortable for the atheist and the theist to "agree to disagree." It's in social vogue to bad-mouth politicians as weasely, power-grubbing maniacs, but to consider their existence as leaders of nations as "necessary." It's expected that an overbearing mother-in-law is "just that way," and shouldn't be confronted or ostracized on the basis that "it's just how she is."

Philosophy is what should happen in the awkward pauses in conversations. Most people haven't studied philosophy in any great detail, and aren't well-equipped to tackle situations like this. But those who do study philosophy too rarely stick to reason when awkward pauses in conversation occur. Perhaps if more philosophers did philosophy rather than just study it, then others would catch on to the effectiveness of always speaking and acting on the truth. Even when it makes us uncomfortable. Especially when it makes us uncomfortable.

Who are you to tell me what philosophy is anyway? Hasn't it been around for like a bazillion years?

To be sure, we all stand on the shoulders of giants to some extent. I'm most certainly not claiming to have come up with these ideas on my own in my study, with the lights dim, and reams of crumpled paper littered about the floor near the wastebasket. I just think that these specific ideas are among the most important ideas to humanity. With the recent proliferation of communications technology, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least duplicate (if not add to) a message I thought to be capable of minimizing human misery to a fraction of a fraction of what exists today.

The ideas I put forward in this series will be based on rational empiricism--the idea that reality can be derived from the senses, and that we should use logic on the information provided by the senses to determine all we need to know about the world and how to live ethically in it. The ideas follow back in time to Socrates and Aristotle, through John Locke, through Ayn Rand, and right up to my main source of the synthesis of their ideas, contemporary philosopher Stefan Molyneux. I owe my knowledge on these topics to these thinkers, and feel that the foundational philosophical work they've done is sufficient to provide the world with a truly rational and moral human race, minus one variable: People actually living by the philosophy they study. This is a project Molyneux has gone to great lengths to work toward in just a few years with his Freedomain Radio podcast.

Every so-called "complete" system of philosophical thought is just one step away from being completely validated. After "Does it conform to reality?" and "Does it contain a methodology for determining truth from falsehood?" and "Do the premises about reality and truth lead to conclusions about moral living?" comes "Can people actually live it?" And then, "Do they?" With the philosophy I'm going to discuss in subsequent installments of this series, I can answer in the affirmative on all of these questions, the last two of which are rarely approached by most philosophers (likely for the same reasons of social discomfort discussed above).

Living according to rational philosophy based on the evidence of the senses and the logic of the scientific method is extraordinarily liberating. But, as I've said concerning social conformity, extraordinarily difficult and stressful at first. I can't say I'm a picture perfect example of moral virtue and the "philosophy-come-to-life" I've described above, but I've most certainly seen and understood the importance of it, and am working toward the life I'll endeavor to describe in this series.

If this is all just too confusing an ordeal for you, I encourage you to read on! (and leave comments about what's confusing) Subsequent editions in this series will more fully explain my definitions and methodology. For now, thanks for reading!

Hakuna Matata: Problem-Free Philosophy?

Have you seen Disney's animated feature The Lion King? It's a pretty good story, and you should take a look if you've never had the chance. Maybe you could watch it with a kid if you feel strange about watching it alone...but you'll need to be prepared to explain a few things about the philosophical meaning to more inquisitive children afterward.

In The Lion King, several cartoon animals face the types of problems that come up each and every day on the African Savannah. Death, food shortage, lion pride politics, romance, annoying bird assistants, the conflicts are nearly endless. With so much going on in the story, the writers developed a vibrant underlying philosophical ecosystem as active as the one present in the variety of animals in the film. In this post I only have time for a cursory view of the highlighted philosophy from the movie, the philosophy of Hakuna Matata. (Though I may re-visit this film in the future. I'm finding it chock full of philosophical interestingness!)

"Hakuna matata," literally translated from the original Swahili, means "there are no worries here." In The Lion King, the main propagators of this philosophy are Timon (a meerkat masterfully voiced by Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa (a warthog voiced by Ernie Sabella). These two are an unlikely but lovable pair of jokesters who foist this philosophy on young king Simba after he ostracizes himself from lion society. The main thrust of the hakuna matata philosophy can be derived from the song these two sing by the same name (scored by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice).

Hakuna matata
What a wonderful phrase.
Hakuna matata
Ain't no passin' craze!
It means no worries
For the rest of your days.
It's our problem-free philosophy,
Hakuna matata.

It's really quite a catchy tune and is stuck in my head at the moment. Hopefully this link helps get it stuck in your head too. Timon and Pumbaa explain in the song that Pumbaa, much like Simba, is an outcast from his society (though in Pumbaa's case it's due to extreme flatulence). His primary coping mechanism is to not worry about it. In fact, this is really the only tenet of the hakuna matata philosophy that anyone need remember. "No worries," applies to everything from being completely rejected by family, friends, and society to munching on disgusting grubs for nutrition. It seems like a pleasant enough guiding principle for life at the outset, but when applied to reality, it yields some terrifying results.

First of all, it gets Simba, a lion and carnivore of the first order, to eat bugs from under a log. Then he grows up and turns into a hedonistic jerk by the time his boyhood girlfriend Nala finds him. To top it all off, he initially has no interest in saving his pride from the wrath of his evil uncle Scar, and would rather just lie around all day with Timon and Pumbaa like a bunch of gonge-toking hippies. Don't worry about it, hakuna matata. Nothing but dirty bugs to eat? Hakuna matata. Evil uncle took over as king and is driving lion society into the crapper? Hakuna matata. Hyenas gnawing your legs off from under you? Hakuna matata. No freaking worries. This is principle?

Any philosophy that puts a grass skirt and lay on a meerkat and an apple in the mouth of a warthog (in clear reference to roasted pig at a Hawaiian luau) while they mug to the camera certainly has a problem or two!

So what? So there's some questionable philosophy in a cartoon movie for kids. So. What? Well, every piece of art (written art in particular), from an episode of Rosanne to Shakespeare's Hamlet has a point it's trying to get across to the audience. In the case of a Disney feature of The Lion King's importance, the audience contains an incredibly large number of children. Even though Simba ultimately mostly rejects hakuna matata in favor of a life in politics, it is presented throughout the movie as a valid, happy, and successful way of life. It seems to be presented as more important than (though not exclusive to) the equally dangerous "Circle of Life" philosophy. As I said, there's a lot to get into in a full examination of the movie, and I may do more in the future. This movie was heavily imprinted on me (all of this is written basically from memory) and I was even probably a little "too old" for it when it first came out. The sort of long-term damage that fables of all kinds can do to impressionable and curious kids is very real. Though this blog post is partly tongue-in-cheek, the relevance of that fact is as strong in The Lion King as it is in something like the story of the three pigs and the big bad wolf. These are moral instructions for kids, and if we want to live in a more moral world, we'd do well to make sure we're not feeding junk philosophy to the hungry brains of children.

So, hakuna matata: is it problem-free philosophy, as advertised? Far from it. Hedonistic procrastination is ultimately an extraordinarily lonely way of life, because it doesn't take into account the cooperative nature of productive interaction. So how should we live? I guess I owe it to my readers to actually lay out my philosophical position before I go much further. I think I've found a great starting point, but it's something that should exist separate from a post on The Lion King though, so I'll begin a multi-part series on my philosophy soon.

Betta Fish Nation, or; I Am SO Fucking Smart

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin

My brain came up with an analogy between modern western civilization and fish one night a while back when I was half asleep. It seemed sleek, pithy, and clever at the time, so I updated my Twitter account's status with it: "Giving up liberty for safety is for the beta fish. They are pretty, but stupid, and eat poop with their food. I am not a beta fish." A 140 character limit certainly forces an economy of words, but you get the idea. It struck me as classically clever--the sort of thing I could use to quote myself without remorse. The combination of a libertarian quote by Ben Franklin and a reference to a popular pet fish seemed deliciously referential, like an episode of Family Guy. I decided I would write an article comparing Betta fish to my idea of the average American neo-con statist; the sort of person who is happy to trade out their (and everyone else's) essential liberties for "protections" like the Patriot Act. I figured I knew this person like the back of my hand, and that a cursory look over the Wikipedia entry for “beta fish” would lend me all the more fodder for comparison. In essence, I was SO fucking smart, and I wanted to show the world by dominating the illogical and dangerous position of my opponents.

Boy, was that narcissistic corner of my brain in for a surprise. I had way more than just spelling wrong with my understanding of the Betta fish.

Before I even hit Wikipedia, I had the whole article planned out in my head. Explain the psychology of the Betta fish. Fear of large open spaces is why they're often confined to fist-sized fishbowls. They don't need lots of scenery, and even prefer to have a big ol' plant around to hide behind, even in their tiny, tiny living space. Their ridiculous amounts of colorful plumage seem utterly wasted in an environment so constricted. Then I was going to explain how that's strikingly similar to the American statist. They seem to want to live in a more and more enclosed environment, even to the point of near suffocation. The quality of life these people enjoy is directly related to something completely outside government control, so they have their own sort of out-of-place plumage—something that comes from another place than this lockdown and is seemingly unnecessary, like a prisoner in a flashy sequined jacket. I would have gone on in that vein, concluded with something like, “I'm smart. These other people are stupid. The end.”

All of this went through my brain as I searched out the Wikipedia entry for "beta fish." I planned on using quotes about the fish's propensity for small, enclosed spaces to drive the point home. Oh, the delicious analogous points I was about to connect! But as I read the details, I found something quite interesting: The Beta Fish is actually called betta, which is a genus of fish for which about 65 species are classified. Beta is a common misspelling in North America. Betta splendens is commonly known as a Siamese Fighting Fish, and is the one sold in the United States under the name Beta, or Betta. This was interesting but extraneous information which I intended to use in my essay to convince people of the premise, "I am SO fucking smart;" trust-building through an explosive diarrhea of facts.

I pressed on, confident in my ability to use this new information to my advantage. Then I found some more shocking fish information! The Betta fish actually doesn't desire small spaces for safety. That's a myth. They're simply displayed that way in stores because the males, full of piss and vinegar, would fight to the death if left in the same tank. Huh. Weird.

This was going to entirely change the course of my essay. But I pressed on, undeterred! I was going to show people how good I was at analogies and facts and information and all that shit. I worked for months writing and re-tooling the essay. At one point it was about the government treating its citizens as uneducated fish purchasers treat the Betta upon purchase. They keep them in dangerously small tanks "for their own good," and wonder why they die in a week. Another version was about how people actually yearn to live free and clean, like the Betta wants a 3 gallon tank and plenty of space to himself. It all got very confusing, and no version of the essay felt satisfying to me.

It was time to evaluate my goals in writing the essay and accomplish them or scrap it all to the "ideas" folder on the computer. It took months, but I finally realized that my goal in writing this piece was not so much to further the conversation about human freedom as it was to further the conversation about how smart I am.

"That Jason," I wanted people to say, "he is SO fucking smart."

This is similar to the narcissism I always sense when reading Nietzsche. Pithy aphorisms that seem true enough to convince lots of people through their sheer charm alone. Nietzsche was brilliant, to be sure, but he was far from happy and had no concept of moral virtue as anything but manipulation. I was searching for a downhill bike-path to perceived brilliance. No good. People just thinking you're smart doesn't make your life actually happy and virtuous any more than putting George Bush into a democratically elected position of power makes him actually fit to lead anything more complex than a Cub Scout troop.

My way to happiness and virtue lies down the hallway marked "honesty." Honesty-to-self and -truth is the only path to virtue, and virtue is a necessary condition of true happiness. Help make sure I keep moving in that direction, kind readers, with your comments!

An Unfortunate Philosophical History (Now With Happy Ending)

When I was a senior in college, I had to write a final paper. The idea was that we'd choose a topic of study that had likely been covered before and then find an interesting or new interpretation of that idea. With the discipline of philosophy, this is a lot like trying to write a fresh and exciting episode of Friends about Ross and Rachel's complicated relationship. There's not much left for territory unless you expand into completely new ideas or study one idea in depth. I decided to study an idea in depth: The idea that being living proof was the best possible argument for your ethical system. It wasn't a complicated or ultra-specific idea, like some of the other students had chosen, but it was problematic to my adviser, all the same.

ME: I'd like to explore the idea that a system of ethics is invalid if it cannot be lived, and that actually living according to the logical consequences of your ethics is the best proof for its validity.

PROF: OK. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Can you explain in more detail?

ME: Sure. It seems to me that if you preach a system of beliefs with logical contradictions, it'll be impossible to live out its logical consequences, since reality conforms to logic. It seems to me that any non-obvious contradictions in the argument, or any mistakes in the facts of the premises will come to the surface of any ethics as soon as you try to actually live by it. It also seems to me that any philosopher who does not or cannot live by (or point to someone else who lives by) his or her own moral ideas has little or no business telling others what to do. [Note: It seems to me that I had to use the phrase "it seems to me" a lot throughout college. This makes sense as long as you realize that college as it exists today is partially designed to convince you that you can't really know anything for sure...and that you should somehow be sure of your uncertainty.] Like Wittgenstein tried to live by his philosophy and failed miserably and gave up philosophy for a while to teach kindergarten. It's because there was a fundamental flaw (it seems to me, lots of flaws) in his thinking.

PROF: These are interesting ideas... [Then, after a few minutes of tapping a pen on the desk and stroking the philosopher beard...] I'm not sure you'll find much source material for reference. I don't really remember coming across those ideas anywhere.

ME: [Blank stare] You're kidding, right? It's just...well this is the whole purpose of philosophy, right?

PROF: Well, I guess some people might call that the purpose of philosophy. But, nope. Not kidding. Weird, huh? It's an interesting idea, but you don't really have enough room in such a short paper to present an idea so fresh. It's more something that you'd do in a graduate thesis, or even doctoral.

ME: I understand about the length, but I thought there'd be all sorts of writing on this stuff. Like I said, isn't this the whole purpose of ethics? To understand the logic of right living and then actually live it?

PROF: Maybe there's something for you in here...[takes a book off the shelf by some obscure philosopher] this would be a good counterpoint to Being and Time by Heidegger, which has some sections on the concept of genuinity, and might hit on the ideas you're talking about.

It didn't come close to what I was talking about, but by the time I got partway through my research, I had to commit to using Heidegger and all sorts of other obscure sources to argue a point I didn't even really want to make. It's a thirty page disaster, and is on file in my college library for posterity. It's proof that even when you pay thousands of dollars, education by others is always limited by their self-interest. If philosophy were actually simple, accessible, and understandable, then philosophy professors would have precious little time to explore irrational and non-functioning philosophies of the past. Plato, anyone? There are entire courses of study in college philosophy where at the end they say, "But everything we've taught you so far is bullshit and here's why." I wish someone had just passed out the bullshit detector on day one.

My paper was basically incomprehensible, and was ripped apart by my professors on presentation day. At first I couldn't believe they gave it a passing grade, but then realized that they were the same people who set me on the path to this complete nonsense. I considered myself an academic failure, and my idea as one that was either totally wrong or outside its time.

After college I studied up on rationality, and eventually found the novel The God of Athiests, by Stefan Molyneux. In this novel, there is a character who is a graduate student proposing a big new philosophical idea. His advisers respond in a similar way to mine. It's a lovely read otherwise, but contains an amazing breakdown of how and why postmodernist thought has disintegrated any hope of actually receiving a decent higher education in most modern universities. I learned more from this book for the price of a couple of DVDs than I did from thousands of dollars worth of credentialed and certified professional education.

It's amazing, the money you can save just by deriving your philosophy from first principles, using logic and the scientific method to test your ideas. It's lovely, the life you can live if you're tenacious about adjusting your actions to match that same philosophy...I'm only a fraction of the way there, but infinitely better off for it. It's astounding how few people attempt or accomplish this in life, and how infectious their disease can be.