Life and the World

I have just discovered, whilst browsing around looking for useful philosophy websites to use in reading and research, that www.philosophy.com is trying to sell me cosmetics. I find this deeply disturbing and wrong in many many ways.

Those of you who have been at the wrong end of one my advertising rants will know that the thing I hate (dislike/have strong feelings about/am helplessly frustrated about?) most in advertising are cosmetic adverts (very closely followed by those for children's toys - have these people even heard of gender stereotyping?). If I hear one more advert exhorting me to 'let surgery wait!' (but not too long, because the world must be protected from the sight of women growing old gracefully; men can do whatever they like as long as they are rich) or tell me (in small print) how they managed to con 50 women into 'self-assessing' their own fine lines (not WRINKLES, you will note, but fine lines (between sanity and taking this cr*p seriously presumably)) and were gratifyingly happy to hear that these desparate creatures found (surprise!) that the wonder cream on offer reduced the 'appearance' of fine lines (they are not allowed to say that wrinkles were actually reduced according to advertising rules because no wrinkle cream can actually do that, but boy to they sail close to the wind) - which of course qualifies as 'clinically proven' - well, then, I shall have to go the effort of composing an outraged sentence even longer than this one. I won't like it, but I will do it. They can't say I didn't warn them.

So to find that the Anti-Christ of consumerism has somehow snaffled what should be the home of philosophy is irksome, to say the least. Trouble is, there's no money in philosophy, so no one's going to be rich enough to reclaim the domain name and thus the battle is lost before it is even started. Grrrrrr.

Is there anything about me that is distinguishable from anyone else in the entire world? Let's have a look at the basic curriculum vitae:

1. Well educated;
2. Relatively successful professional for my age;
3. Married;
4. Book lover;
5. Film buff (in a 'I would really like to take this more seriously' kind of way, rather than a 'I watch a lot of films' kind of way);
6. Sporadically politically active - politically to the left, but quite reasonable with it and willing to give houseroom and discussion to various alternative views;
7. Enjoyer of discourse on the social and political issues of the day;
8. Vegetarian (of the don't-really-know-how-to-do-anything-else-but-don't-need-to variety, growing out of hotheaded, teenage 'meat is murder' views from ten years ago);
9. Relatively environmentally responsible - walk lots, use public transport, don't own a car, recycle, turn off lights and appliances - all things that make a difference only if everyone else does them too;
10. Minor supporter (in a financial sense) of a couple of worthy causes;
11. Musical (can play a couple of instruments badly);
12. Tall (but not freakishly);
13. Short haired and short sighted;
14. Can't be bothered with make up, but brush up well if a posh frock is required;
15. Occasionally 'wacky' in my clothing choices;
16. Have an idea for a novel that have never developed;
17. Would love to dye my hair pink and do at least something of note before I die.

I've probably described about half of middle class Europe in that little list, not to mention the countless American well-meaning bourgeoisie.

So my question today is; is there anything at all that makes me unique? Which leads, not altogether neatly, to the question 'is there any point to it all'?

I have, in recent times, taken to labelling myself an 'optimistic nihilist'; meaning, roughly, that I don't really think there is a meaning to anything but don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.

We are a blink of a split second of a moment of a whisper of time in the great cosmic scheme of things, so the idea (again on the great cosmic scheme of things) that we matter or that anything we do matters is, quite frankly, laughable. However, this frees one enormously; if there is no cosmic point, you can make up your very own. This of course could be a licence to commit horrors, but since I am not (I don't think) a horrible person this tends to lead to minor good works and a general aim of 'doing the right thing' without reference to a fearsome higher power judging you. I am my own conscience and with an inherited tendency towards feeling guilty about anything and everything (which I blame (in a non-pejorative sense) on my father having been brought up Catholic) this can be a wonderful thing.

Semi-regularly however it leads me down a path of mild despair and self-immolation. If there is no point, then what's the point of anything? And if I am trying to nevertheless to make a good mark for my own self-driven motives, how is that I have thus far failed to do so? My life thus far (see list above) seems sometimes to have been an exercise in futility and undistinguished mediocrity. And so I did not find myself in a good place yesterday morning when leaning against a barrier at the end of the tube platform wondering if there was any good reason not to throw myself in front of the train.

Of course, there are many, many reasons not to and, as witness by these words, I didn't and am not likely to any time soon. Worry not, gentle readers; I am not suicidal, nor anywhere close. I do worry sometimes though about my tendency to get very twitchy and consider walking off into the sunset to somewhere, anywhere, else. I read, for example, the Missing Persons section in The Big Issue and wonder if that could ever be me. I find myself drawn to the idea of insanity, although that would only be fun if I knew I was insane, by which definition, I wouldn't be.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to another reason to be studying philosophy. Like every human being I muse and ponder on the universe and my place in it, but without adequate tools to go about finding it. So in amongst all the long words and unfamiliar concepts, I hope to find the means to start to answer my self-doubt and stop worrying about tube trains.

This is very much a holding entry. For various reasons (i.e. working too hard at the day job) I haven't done much reading in the last couple of days. I have been thinking about various things - the continuation of the 'Highest faculty of man' discussion (with focus on some sciency stuff about genetics and evolution as a demonstration that we are not nearly as special as we think we are are furthermore are not, even though we like to think we are, the culmination and ultimate expression of survival of the fittest), god and his/her/its existence, issues which seem to have been missed by philosophers (e.g. parenthood) - but none so much that anything concrete is forming.

But on the plus side, I did speak to my terribly nice tutor who assumed that I must surely have lots of questions for him (I didn't) which made me feel a bit lame. On the other hand, he did vouchsafe to me the information that I didn't have to do Descartes as the third unit if I didn't want to; the syllabus includes Sartes as an option (and one or two other things) and my particular course only uses Descartes because the course writer apparently thinks it is more simple. Since, as my tutor had sussed, I am in this for myself rather than a need to pass an exam, the 'simplicity' of a topic is not my main concern, so my options are now a little more open. Rather as if he was offering me something from under the counter, my tutor mumblingly said something about being able to help me with that if I decided, when the time came, to go for Sartre instead of the course defined material, which was very gratifying. He was indeed a terribly nice man.

On the curious side, my 'mentor' (aka husband) started reading my damn text book last night, when I haven't even had a chance to open it properly (but wait til I get to Sunday; there'll be no stopping me). So whilst I was sitting there reading my Empire magazine, allowing my tired brain to heave a metaphorical sigh of relief, he kept trying to interrupt me with explanations of bits of the book that he was getting very excited about. 'I'd forgotten this bit!' would come the cry, followed by a particularly 'husband' explanation of the bit he had just rediscovered that, I must admit, mostly went right in one ear and out the other. I am starting to wonder whether having as a 'mentor' someone who knows quite a lot more about the subject than me or rather, 10+ years ago knew quite a lot more about the subject than me, is such a good choice...

I may be in danger here of running before I can walk, but I am finding it interesting to think around this issue and see what impressions I get. I can compare my thoughts with the 'official' conclusions later, if only to see how wrong I am, but at the moment I am considering this as a useful mental exercise and an enjoyable one at that, which is the point of this whole thing for me.

So - Reason. I think my musings on Monday may have started bleeding into the concept of rationality as the defining feature of humanity, in the 'cogito ergo sum' sense of the word. It is undoubtedly the case that they are very much reliant on each other - the 'cogito' (as my course material calls it) is a direct descendent of ancient Greek thought and, really, the ultimate expression of Western rationalism that started in ancient Greece. So even if the concept of Reason as the highest faculty of man is not directly analogous with the cogito, they are most certainly interlinked.

And unfortunately out of this comes the inevitable discussion of linguistics. I have always disliked some of the focus on linguistics in philosophy because it sometimes seems that the linguistics of an issue starts to be interpreted as the issue itself rather than as the means to it (see Wittgenstein). But inevitably they do come in; a point well made by one of the people making a comment a couple of days ago.

In the context of Reason as claimed by some to be unique to man and special and high and all the rest of it, one has to take into account the meaning of the word 'Reason'. From a certain point of view, various animals can reason, from rats pressing levers (http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/skinner.html) to crows making hooks. I have not looked into this is any great detail, but certainly the ability to draw lessons from an experience and to apply that experience to other scenarios, which is an ability that plenty of animals have (often expressed as equivalent to human children at certain ages) could be defined as the ability to reason.

But this is clearly not what Aristotle meant when he said that 'Reason is the highest faculty of Man', from which I infer that for him 'Reason' means conscious, self-aware rational thought or something along those lines. Which leads in the cogito, which arguably goes even further and makes conscious thought the very defining quality of existence.

This is, as I understand it, part of Idealism - the proposition that everything exists as ideas in one's head. Whether this leads to the 'is the whole world just me and my imagination' question I can't say; but I can say, pretty categorically, 'no, it's not'. In the same way as I can state, in response to the query 'am I a man dreaming that I am a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?', that you are man my dear, now sit down to breakfast and have a cup of coffee/tea/caffeinated beverage of choice.

I think, according to the definitions of these terms in my course notes, that this makes me a Materialist (not something I ever thought I would indentify myself with), meaning that I believe that physical things are physical things ex of observation (although this potentially gets into difficulty down on a quantum level, should you wish to bring science into this, and don't even get me started on quatum physics and wave/particle duality). Where I appear to differ from the dictionary definition of Materialist is that whilst I assert that physical things exist in a physical world, I do however concede that they are nevertheless perceived by us through our mental processes, biological or otherwise. So yes, I do wonder whether the green that I see is the same green as the green that you see.

This has rather lead me off the track of the cogito, which I find to be both terribly irritating and terribly attractive at the same time. It is snappy and pithy and sounds ever so profound. But it falls into difficulties with, for example, small children, who may or may not experience self-awareness as we understand it but certainly do not think in the way the cogito assumes. Such things happen gradually without an on and off switch, which leads to the rather ridiculous question; when do children start to exist? When they use their first word (but what if it formed in their heads first)? When they recognise themselves in a mirror (but again, that is timing; maybe they could have done earlier but the mirror wasn't around)?

It also, in common with the 'highest faculty of man' proposition, takes into account only a part of what people do in their heads. I was arguing on Monday that rational thought is only part of the human experience and that thought and emotion are falsely separated. There is no language for this; even when discussing the idea of the two concepts actually being the same I have to use the phrase 'two concepts', unless I start making up names for it/them, like 'themotion' or something equally silly. The fact is that we, at least in the English language, do not have the language for what I am trying to describe, so in that sense linguistics guides and defines (and arguably limits) my philosophical considerations. Curses.

Is Reason the highest faculty of man? Aristotle certainly thought so, or at least A C Grayling (modern commentator-type) thinks that he thought so, and since Western philosophy is (I am slowly finding) almost ridiculously reverential to the Ancient Greek philosophers, apparently this means that Western philosophy thinks so too.

It is certainly a faculty, but the highest? Who decides? Who judges? I have not read to relevant text, so I may be going out on a limb here, but the only logical progression of this view that I can think of is: (a) animals cannot reason; (b) we can; (c) reason is unique to humans; (d) we are better than animals (according to some); (e) reason is therefore the highest faculty of man. Now personally, I have problems with (d) as a concept, but I suppose you could leave that out. It does seem representative though of the idea that we are better than animals so anything we can do that they can't must be special, therefore better, therefore best.

However, I do not see how (a), (b) and (c), even if you believed them, could necessarily add up to (d). Certainly, the ability to reason is unique to conscious thought, which is, as far as we know, unique to humanity. Unique, special, useful. Yep, with you there Aristotle old man. But the highest? Where does that leap of logic come from? If it were framed as a belief (and maybe it is) then I could understand, if not agree, but even then I do not understand the foundation for this belief.

The danger, as far as I see it, with this belief/view/opinion that Reason is the highest faculty is that it therefore downgrades other forms of human experience. By implication, emotion is a lower faculty. Does this lead to the view then that if reason says one thing and emotion another, then reason must be followed? Or does it even lead to the view that any emotion in and of itself is substandard and must be backed up by Reason?

The trouble with Reason, is that Reason can reason anything. Anyone with some experience in logical argument can lead it anywhere they like and not be faulted logically. This should not be surprising; even though instinct says that surely logic is a set path that leads in one direction, if this were the case then we would never have arguments, never have different political views, never need to bother philosophising. This leads me to the conclusion that Reason can be as subjective as belief.

My view is that Reason and Emotion (since we are capitalising) inform, and can change, each other. Rather like to chicken and the egg, one is not before, after, higher, lower than the other. No, further than that - that they are inextricably linked and it is false to separate them. I don't know for sure, but the labelling of capital-R Reason implies to me that it would be classified as being in the realm of Mind in the Mind vs Matter/dualism debate, in which my view is that both are separate but together (in the manner of the Holy Trinity, to draw an analogy) - i.e. that there is no Mind/Matter split - ditto Reason and Emotion. To draw a hard line between the two is false and unnecessarily limiting.

Oxford English Dictionary: philosophy - noun - the study of the fundamental natre of knowledge, reality and existence.

From which we get the impression that we are dealing with pretty high falutin' stuff here. But philosophy should be, and is, more than merely an abstract intellectual exercise.

On the face of it, the idea of philosophy being down and dirty in the weeds of reality seems rather jarring:

Q: Is there a God? A: Can't say.
Q: What is the Meaning of Life? A: God knows (see above).
Q: Why should we do the washing up?

Doesn't quite fit.

Nevertheless, if philosophy is going to be something other than distracted men with too much time on their hands thinking round and round in self-referential circles, it has to be about life as well as Life.

So I am a little apprehensive about the named philosopher being studied on my course being Descartes, who by all accounts never made it to the kitchen, let alone rolled up his sleeves and got out the Fairy liquid.

This is a philosophy and philosphical blog.

For those that need to know, I am embarking on studying towards an AS Level in Philosophy and my little brain is jumping for joy. After a few years as a 'professional', my grey matter feels as if it is starting to atrophe through lack of use. The study towards being a 'professional' was briefly diverting, but now that I have settled in... same old, same old. The Brain is Bored. My conversation seems to be consist more and more of the state of the Underground, and the soft furnishings in my flat and less and less 'what's it all about then...'.

I have erudite, intelligent and interesting friends, but the balance of my discussions with them sometimes seems to be tipping towards pension and travel arrangements. Partly this is because I know them, and their views, well - so maybe it takes a new thing happening in the world to bring out new conversation. It is a kind of laziness on my part; a taking for granted, a comfortableness with the certain and well known, a resting on my life-laurels.

I also take responsibility for my being less likely to leap into confrontation, by which I mean that I don't now rush into debates that I anticipate might be heated. An explanation could be (not sure about this one) that my aforementioned 'profession' is demanding, pretty long hours and not infrequently stressful. Debate takes mental effort and sometimes I don't have any mental effort left after a long day. This is a vicious circle of boredom - I work, I come home mentally tired but not mentally stimulated, I want to relax, I get bored, I go to work without any mental-energy jumpstart.

This is of course a description of the worst - I love my friends and my other half and we can all talk and talk till the hind legs have fallen off all the furniture (no donkeys in London) - life and the world have been covered many times over. The world has been put to rights so many times that I don't know why everything hasn't been sorted out by now. Tsk.

Really this is about me and my wanting to push myself onwards. I want to start the circle in a virtuous direction. It is not so much about the qualification (though that would be nice) but about the learning. And it is totally under my own control (eek). The course is via correspondence, with no one to pressure me but me (and my other half who, though he doesn't know it, is my course 'mentor'), and so for the first time in my life I will be learning merely for sake of learning. And, with any luck, coming up with thoughts of my very own.

I do not want to just be a sponge, and the early signs are good. Last weekend I made about 10 sides of notes for six sides of 'Introduction' in the course material and vehemently disagreed with the writer of said Introduction on several occasions. I have already found myself curiously frustrated by the writer's obsession with the Ancient Greeks and I suspect that that might prove to be a continuing theme. Although I should bear in mind that my scepticism about the hero-worship on display should not close my mind to the insights they have to offer. Apart from anything else, I want to know why ancient world philospohers seemed so happy to commit suicide when ordered to do so.

So, the experiment beginneth. Let the fun commence!