What philosophy is
Statedplainly is a philosophy blog. In all the posts that follow, I (and others) will discuss issues pertaining to a philosophically interesting topics, like climate ethics, artificial intelligence, or social justice and pop culture; however, the topic of each article will be dealt with philosophically.
What does that mean? In my time as a grad student in philosophy, or just chatting with people about my interest in it, I’ve come across a number of different preconceived notions of what philosophy is, or what a philosopher is, or what it means to think philosophically. Most commonly, people seem to think that philosophy is either (a) the act of thinking about deep issues: the soul, the meaning of life, why the system is broken, etc.; or (b) they think that philosophy is learning about what a specific set of well-known figures thought about those deep topics.
It’s true that philosophers have historically thought a lot about issues that could fairly be called deep. But that’s not what really distinguishes philosophy, I think. Philosophy, as an academic field or as a human activity, is best characterized by a few key features. So you get what I’m trying to do in this blog, I’ll explain a few of those features—though this is by no means an exhaustive list.
(I)
The first is openness of thought. This is what distinguishes philosophy from religion (—though maybe not theology, which is kind of a strange combination of the two). When asking life’s most pressing questions, like the reason for one’s existence or the permanence of the soul, religions rely on revelation or tradition to provide answers. These answers are usually not up for debate; one simply has to accept that the reason given by the tradition just is the answer. In philosophy, all bets are off. There should not be any dogma. Questions are asked openly and investigations must take into account every bit of evidence relevant and available. In this respect, philosophy has much more in common with the traditionally-conceived-of scientific method: A philosopher should never cling to their theory in defense against an onslaught of clearly falsifying evidence or reasons.
(II)
The second feature is rigor of thought. While the idle ponderings of a summer’s evening, facilitated by wine and weed, might treat of some philosophical issues, what distinguishes this kind of thought from properly-called philosophy is rigor. Rigor is, basically, thoroughness and carefulness in working through thoughts. While pondering about the universe might bring you to fanciful feelings of oneness or the essential goodness of people, a rigorous closer look at these sentiments might yield some serious flaws with the train of thought that brought you there. The moment you stop and say, “Wait, hang on though—that doesn’t quite make sense,” is the start of philosophy.
Once that step’s been taken, the next one is to apply the tools of logic to your thought processes. Logic doesn’t mean chauvinistically rejecting emotional concerns, or something like that—which is what people often mean by the word “logic.” Logic is actually a field of study in math and philosophy, and it structures the way that academic philosophy procedes. (For more on logic and argumentation, read my explainer.)
(III)
The last feature is that philosophy generally deals with issues that are not more easily settled through experimentation or empirical observation, and are not specifically mathematical—in the parlance of philosophy, the a priori. (Math is also technically a priori, but that’s its own field these days.) While there is an open and rigorous way to think about what causes bodily illness, or what the relationship is between a circle’s diameter and its circumference, these issues are not strictly philosophical (though in past centuries they would have been considered that way); they are biological and geometric, respectively. For those topics you’d be better off sticking to the data or the math; philosophers, instead, focus on the meta. They care about the governing concepts themselves rather than the particular instances of those concepts.
Questions about moral rightness and wrongness, about the nature of knowledge, the epistemic status of science, the relations of properties to objects, in virtue of what language is able to represent the world, how our mental experience is related to our physical forms, or the nature of explanation itself, might all be the topic of a purely philosophical inquiry. Of course, the lines are not always clean. Sometimes some of the best philosophy incorporates empirical or mathematical work. But in general, philosophy is a toolkit best suited to situations where data alone will not provide a better answer. (And those situations do exist!)
Why you should care
So why read philosophical treatments of issues? This kind of analysis is helpful for a number of reasons. Perhaps the first is that philosophy helps to clarify your thoughts. A good philosopher will listen carefully to a view or an argument, pause, think, and then ask, “well, what exactly do you mean?” This isn’t a trivial or pedantic question (well, admittedly, it often is pedantic but that’s just an unfortunate accident of the people in the philosophy profession), it’s something that is frequently overlooked when people form their opinions. Once in conversation with a friend of mine, we found ourselves discussing corporate responsibility to communities. She insisted that the central problem among apathetic corporate actors was that they were not being basically good people. I pressed her on this and asked what she meant by “a good person.” Of course, that set us off on an entirely new course. That’s doing philosophy, and that’s part of its importance: better understanding what it is that you believe, and better understanding what those beliefs entail.
Another reason is that philosophical issues are just interesting. I mean, most of us do care quite a bit about moral problems, or about the nature of our minds, or the interface of science and society, or even about little puzzles in logic. Moreover, these are exciting times we live in, with many interesting moral and theoretical developments emerging everywhere from politics to science. These topics are fun to talk about, and philosophy gives you the best toolkit to think through the issues clearly, carefully, and rigorously. I hope that reading this blog will be both illuminating and thoroughly enjoyable.
Lastly, permit me a bit of blatant proselytizing. Most people are pretty bad at thinking about things philosophically—at least at first. Most of us are very strongly wedded to our views, especially moral ones, and do not like having them openly challenged, even in a friendly way. This is pretty dangerous. It can lead to all sorts of tribalism, polarization, epistemic bubbles, and many other ills for which we have catchy buzzwords. Philosophy is a great cure for that problem. By engaging with issues philosophically, you’ll start to think things through more candidly, sympathetically, and without clinging to an answer you already believe to be right.
What I hope to accomplish in this blog is to clarify the issues that I talk about so that the merits of varying views are laid plain. And I hope to help foster this kind of thought in others; maybe by reading this, you’ll start thinking a little more carefully about your beliefs and those of others too (including mine!).