Topics Philosophy

Question My impression about philosophers, at least from reading this site, is that they all seem cheery. Is this not the case? Questions come in and the respondents seem positively to delight in the cleverness of their responses. Fine distinctions are drawn, the question is rephrased and then rephrased again - and all of this seems to be done with the utmost optimism. It is as if the philosophers, in receiving a question, have been given a play-thing, like silly putty, that they can mold indefinitely, or like a kaleidoscope through which they can view the thing from different angles and with different colors. Often the questions seem to me of the utmost seriousness, but a serious response doesn't seem fashionable. Is it unprofessional? It is a fact that we die; what's more, this fact - one which has an enormous, even decisive impact - on how most of us conduct our lives - is entirely irrational. We cannot deduce any necessity for it from the axioms of mathematics, say. This fact disturbs us in our sleep and waking hours - it urges us to complete certain actions, ask for certain people's forgiveness before time expires. Yet while our lives are guided by this thorough irrationality, we employ reason as our mechanism for doing philosophy. Philosophy, which asks the big questions about the meaning of life, etc., uses as its main tool a mechanism that is the opposite of what is most important to us. Would you agree with this characterization?

Accepted:
August 17, 2009

Comments

"Often the questions seem to me of the utmost seriousness, but a serious response doesn't seem fashionable." The implication seems to be that serious answers aren't much in evidence here. Which is an extraordinary thing to say. For there is a really remarkable amount of good, patient, serious, philosophy here in the answers from my co-panellists. To be sure, their answers are often enviably zippy, witty, done with a light touch, with memorable examples. But seriousness in philosophy isn't at all the same as solemnity.

As to the question: facts aren't the sort of thing that are rational or irrational. It's beliefs, belief-forming policies, methods of argument, desires shaped by our beliefs, the actions they lead to, and the like (and the people who have beliefs, belief-forming policies, etc.) which are rational or irrational. But the facts are the facts, and that's that.

Some facts are really difficult to get our heads around intellectually (like the facts of quantum mechanics). Some facts, while more mundane, are still very difficult to explain. Other facts might be easier to explain, but difficult to cope with emotionally (like the fact that the person you are in love with doesn't love you back). And when we are puzzled and/or can't cope emotionally, we may respond to some of the facts in irrational ways. But that doesn't make the facts themselves "irrational". What could that mean? At most, that it is difficult for us to think rationally about them, or to explain why the facts are as they are.

But if it is difficult to think rationally about something, that is no reason for giving up on the effort. Indeed, it is all the more important to try to think rationally (and philosophy makes its contribution). For irrationally formed beliefs are not likely to lead to actions which get any of us what we want -- including a decent life, lived well in the knowledge of our all-too-explicable mortality.