The Irrelevance of Philosophy

Philosophy is irrelevant.

However, why is that a bad thing?

When we learn other subjects and other skills, we learn how to navigate the world. But it is not some reality-in-itself which we learn to work with; that would be far too much for a human to comprehend. We work within a construction, within a social model. We learn how to get a job; not just any job, but the jobs available in a given society, with given aims, run in given ways, for the purpose of making socially-established currency in order to achieve certain other aims, most of which are prescribed by the culture. We learn science and engineering, but not by merely observing the world. We have a framework which works and produces results, and we learn how to utilize that framework to make more experiments and technology.

Relevance has to do with making our way around these frameworks, with learning how to live in the world as it is. But the "world as it is" is a present phenomenon, without determining the "world as it could be". One could say that we should be content with the way things are and live with our feet planted on the earth in the real world. But we live in political systems and use technology that have resulted from people saying "Why can't things be different?"

Philosophy is irrelevant, because it calls into question our schemata of relevance. It is the process of questioning, "But why should we take it that way?" "What other ways could we do this?" "What fundamental principles can we re-examine?" It was common sense that a democracy could never work, and that people should adjust to the given power structures; then the American Revolution happened. Within time, the idea that government ultimately relies on the people became the new common sense. Or take Albert Einstein: he simply asked himself what time really was and what we actually meant when we say that two events were simultaneous. A simple questioning of principles which "everyone knew," an imagined train ride, and there was his theory of relativity.

This opening up of a place for questioning, of re-examining the gap between the "world as it is" and the "world as it could be", is the task of philosophy. And it isn't relevant to going along with the way "things really are." But for the sake of the future and everything we could accomplish, one cannot say that such thought is unimportant.

Reason and Creativity

We often split up the intellect and creation, as if these were two different sets of skills. We talk of "left-brained" and "right-brained" people. Which is utter nonsense - reason and creativity are two sides of the same coin, and either without the other is nothing.

Let's take mathematics. Now, most people think of having to memorize theorems and solve mysterious equations, and equate that with math. That is generally poor math education, and at best math calisthenics which don't capture the real heart of the subject. Euclid had his five postulates because he was trying to figure out what he could do with something that makes straight lines and something that makes circles. Math is about looking at these starting points, and then either enjoying the intellectual exploration of what unforeseen results might come out of such a humble beginning, or questioning why we should start with at that particular spot. What if we change this one postulate? Turns out there are other geometries available to us once we change the rules. What if we love origami and want to see what we can do with paper folds? Then we can start working on a new set of rules to fit that pattern. Or maybe we just fall for the beauty of some set of infinitely interlocking patterns and forms. In any case, even in this most rigid and logical of subjects, creativity and a sense of exploration are essential.

On the other hand, art needs structure. The point of crafting an artwork is that it be worked out in all its detail - whether that's making sure that characters and plots are consistent and true to the story, placing every note and chord so that they make a song sing, letting every move in a dance flow with the music and the energy between the partners, or chipping away every point on a sculpture that doesn't fit the image. There is a lot of room to decide what exactly makes a given artwork harmonious and unified; in some cases, this might be by discordance and chaos, but this for the sake of the greater work and not because of laziness. And that is not to say that there is no room for improvisation; improv is like adding in another mathematical postulate or scientific hypothesis and seeing what develops. Just as the scientist or philosopher is working out the details of an idea or a worldview and aligning pieces so that they are unified and consistent, the artist is putting that idea into matter in such a way that it holds together.

An artist that ignores reason is a sloppy artist, unable to embody anything in a quality work. But an intellectual that is a mere machine entirely misses the spirit behind the discovery of relativity, of DNA's double helix, or Goedel's incompleteness theorems. Both the discipline of reason, seeking to bring unity and boundaries to an idea, and the exploration of creativity, striving to discover both new depths within and new breadths without the idea, are necessary.

Does Teleology Make Sense?

In order to not drive away too many people from my Peace Corps blog, I'll write a couple more technical posts here. I was just reading this article: http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/steven-poole-teleology/. In sum: The author is reviewing the book Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel, in which Nagel argues that it makes sense to talk about a "teleological cause" in the universe. Put another way, the universe acts towards a goal, in a way that might be said to be purposeful. Such a view has been popular in the history of thought, starting with Aristotle and continuing largely through religious thinkers who have held that the "goal" of the universe is something in the mind of God or even is God.

In discussions of whether there are really teleological causes in the world, it seems to me that we end up talking about different sorts of teleology. So let's get a couple of these sorts straight, and see where that leads us. I will describe teleological causes as those that explain behaviour as leading to some telos (pl. teloi), or end. I use the Greek because I would rather not be hindered by anthropomorphic talk of "intents" or "purposes" or "desires."

Picture a ball rolling down a hill (for those looking for an example and not merely an analogy, replace this with talk of lipid molecules heading toward cis- or trans- states, or in a more complicated fashion the gravitational pull of matter on matter). One could talk about the efficient cause that set it rolling in the first place: Someone pushed it, a breeze started the motion, it was dropped from an airplane onto the slope, whatever your imagination wants. The ball will head down to the bottom of the hill. This would be its telos. It is the end goal, the low-energy state, the point to which it will arrive, barring other external forces.

Saying that there is such a telos seems rather uncontroversial. So one view of teleological causality is that it might be trivially true, but unhelpful.

Another view might be that it explains the natural world in a useful way. We can talk of the ball on the hill with all of its movers, of the material of the ball, of the shape of the ball and the hill, etc. In doing so, we might be able to say with certainty that the ball will end up in one telos. But let's say that we add someone halfway down the hill, who is going to kick the ball. This will change the ball's course of action, but it still makes sense to say that it would have ended at the bottom of the hill on its original path. Even without an outside agent, we could look at the ball's path and ignore what set it in motion, only looking at where it is heading. In other words, we could look at the teleological cause independently of the efficient causes.

Such a view of teleology doesn't necessarily add any new information to the world. There is no fact that it adds that could not have been said using efficient causes, the material of the ball and the hill, and the shapes of everything involved. But it lets us talk about such facts in a different way. It is like using rectangular and polar coordinates. Either system lets you talk about everything the other system describes, in theory, but I would not want to plan out the polar equations for a straight line.

So teleology could be a different and useful way of explaining the world which nonetheless posits no new facts or forces. On a final reading, teloi could actually act as a sort of "backwards-causation," adding a necessary explanatory element to the world which cannot be captured in any other way.

We'll have to drop the ball example for this one, since to imagine inanimate objects having such teleology would be to create a straw man. Let's think about living beings. On the present view, even if one has all the information about a human being, her precise physical and mental make-up, all of the influences in her life, etc., one cannot fully explain her actions. She acts for goals, and these absolutely cannot be reduced to other explanations. Furthermore, there is some telos (or collection of teloi) which is the goal of a human life, the good life, for which human beings strive.

Now, in order for such teloi to be irreducible to other causes, we cannot find this goal anywhere. There is absolutely no empirical investigation which would be sufficient. Looking through neurons and brain chemicals, of psychological studies of the conditions under which human beings report flourishing, and so on, would be insufficient.

I'm not sure why I should hold that. I seek to live a good life precisely by looking at how people live, the conditions under which they flourish, and so on. I find as much empirical data as possible to aid my quest. The good life would then seem to be a alternate way of talking about human make-up and structure.

Perhaps, though, teleology adds in this piece of information: "Beings should act in such a way that fulfills their potential/nature/whatever." Or something else that adds values to a merely-fact laden universe. If this were true, then we would have some reason to hold to a teleology that is irreducible to other causes. But one could also hold that values are merely part of living in the midst of things, of existing in a particular spot already shaped by the world and having causes already acting on one. A big picture of the world such as philosophers and scientists often hold might have a fact-value dichotomy, but we do not live in the big picture. As already being acted upon ("thrown", to use Heidegger's terminology), we already have our projects and our values, just as much as the ball is already rolling down the hill. In that case, then, an explanation of whatever causes make us up would be sufficient, combined with the additional fact that we are living out those causes and not dissecting them in a philosophical lab. A discussion of human flourishing would start by looking at what projects human beings actually want.

But what about the universe at large? Some have claimed that there is a telos to the whole universe, and this would be God. But such a proposition is far from clear, and one could even ask if it makes sense. The telos of a lion is to be as much of a lion as possible. What that means will be filled out by the empirics of lion-ness, but it generally seems to entail eating antelope. Antelope, by contrast, have a telos that generally involve not being eaten by lions. (And of course, this could be re-written as "lions are the sort of creatures that chase and eat prey animals, while antelope are the sort of creatures that run away from predators, in much the same way that molecules seek low-energy states, yada yada, qualifications, etc.") So in the predator-prey relationship, there does not seem to be a single telos which fits both aspects of the situation. Why should we suppose that there is a unified telos for all beings? (Other then, perhaps, the heat-death of the universe.)

Perhaps we could think of the Universe as a single organism. I'm not terribly opposed to the notion, but I'm also not sure how much further it gets us. If the Universe has a telos as an organism, then we still have to explain in what fashion this would be something separate from other facts about the Universe. If the telos is something external, from outside the Universe, then we need an example of what this might be and why we should believe it. Or perhaps someone will say that the universe is actually a bunch of discombobulated parts, and the fact that it functions together harmoniously is precisely the evidence of such an external telos. To this response, I need significantly more clarification on what "harmonious" means. Does it simply mean that the parts all exist together? Why is that so miraculous? Does it entail that the parts exist for the good of each other? But on what level? The antelope eaten by the lion begs to differ. Does it entail that the parts exist for the greatest maximal good? But what does that mean, as if good could be simply summed up (pace Bentham), or as if we actually had any evidence that this were the case? And why is the introduction of an external telos a better explanation than that the multifaceted aspects of the universe have existed with each other the entire time, evolving together with each other, with every part affected by every other? For example, in a given ecosystem, the different species evolve together, with each ones environment and fitness functions formed by all the others, so it is no wonder that they evolve in ways that form a unified ecosystem. (One might ask where the universe came from, but that is a completely different question and does not appear to have any direct relevance to the question of teleology.)

So, in sum, teleology appears to be a legitimate way of talking about the world, even on a naturalist view. However, this does not mean that there are additional teleological causes running around the world or the necessity of any Mind making this whole shebang hang together.

Theory and Practice

I feel like I probably have at least one other blog post with the same title. Perhaps several. It's a pressing concern of mine: what's the relation between thinking about the world, and actually doing something in it?

I've been reading about diplomacy as of late, the history and reality of international cooperation. I'm thinking about possibly going into the foreign services at some point. But I've realized that in order to do that, I need to develop some very different mental habits from what I did in philosophy.

One key difference seems to come down to this: in practice, one needs to listen to all sides. In thinking about the world, though, sometimes there are sides that are just spouting bullshit. There always in fact exist multiple sides to a topic, but not all sides are equal. Just because conspiracy theorists exist does not mean that we should take their views seriously.

If everyone formed opinions purely rationally, then of course we should listen to everyone's opinion in formulating our own. But human beings do not always (or perhaps often) operate rationally (actually, I will revise that in a later post, but we'll work with that hypothesis for now). We (and I do mean "we") form opinions based on what makes us feel emotionally comfortable, on fear, on the basis that we have enough knowledge to form judgments for ourselves.

An opinion based on fear is not in itself a valid side in a rational discussion. One might have valid reasons for the position, but as soon as emotions get high, I have reason to suspect that the emotions were determinative in reaching the view. And I could be wrong; there always could be some truth to a person's position, just as it could be the case that we never landed on the moon, but there also comes a point where we admit that some people just spout nonsense.

I have no patience for climate change or evolution deniers. They fundamentally misunderstand basic terms and theories (like, for example, the word "theory"). Environmental scientists and biologists (you know, the people who actually know what they are talking about) are pretty settled on the basics. We can have a little (very little) debate over whether climate change is anthropogenic, and a lot of debate over what possibly could come of it (climate change doesn't mean that everything would change tremendously; it just means that it is a significant enough possibility to take seriously). But the fact that 1 out of 10,000 environmental scientists dissents, or that some physicist with no understanding of the specific subject matter (or, worse yet, your local doctor) doesn't form the same conclusions, is pretty much irrelevant. And the second an evolution-denier trots out the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the discussion is finished. I don't care how much education they have; they fail basic physics. (Not to mention the inanity of "missing link" objections, or the idea that the fossil record is even the primary evidence for evolution.) If a climate-change denier insists that climate-change is some new myth on top of global warming, or if they point to a cold day as evidence for their view or to a pleasant warm spells and 14th century English vineyards as evidence that global warming would in fact be good, they have removed themselves from having a valid opinion to contribute. They are misguided on so basic a level that they are not engaging the topic. They can be taught (a practical effort), but their opinion matters as little as a math student who claims that a theorem is wrong because it is “too abstract.” (To appease some members of my audience: claiming that a single warm day or season proves global warming, or being an atheist who claims that denying the Christian God is the same as denying Thor, is to be similarly clueless.)

So, as a philosopher or a scientist, the job is to judge. Not all opinions are rational or informed, and those that aren't can be culled. In trying to figure out the truth about politics, even, this can be the case (Scott Walker is a douchebag. The fact that there is "another side to the issue" doesn't mean that that side has a clue. And trickle-down economics just does not work.) But practically, standing around and telling people that they are clueless is in itself pretty clueless, if one's goal is to make things different. It's not enough to think true thoughts about the world. Things need to be done, and that requires compromise. Climate change is real; great, but you still have to work with the deniers who say that there is some vast left-wing conspiracy. You need to actually get things passed in legislature. You need to provide education that is approachable to them, not that pushes them away (this blog post, for example, is not a good example of such – but that wasn't my intent). Do you think racial profiling exists? Great, so do I – but for God's sake, don't present an oversimplified case which cuts out the actual details of why a shooting was considered to be self-defense. Doing so will only convince the deniers that you as a bleeding-heart liberal can only support your view by distorting evidence.

So that is the challenge: I have been trained to judge matters, to look into only the sides that have significant reasons. Doing this often puts me at odds with culture, which doles out such asinities as “everyone has an opinion,” as if the freshman knows as much as the seasoned economist. Democracy means that everyone has worth as a human being and that the government should be for the people. Understanding still has to be earned. But because I think that certain things are true about the world, I want to change the world for the better. Part of the problem as to why there are so many climate change deniers is that the scientists don't actually take the time to work better with media sources, to give the public an understanding of the issues involved. They abdicate the position of go-between because it's frustrating. There need to be more people bridging the gap between theory and practice, as difficult and as taxing to patience and to principles as that might appear to be.

Closing the School of Athens

Philosophy, as its own department in the university, should be shut down.

Now, let me clarify that. It is not that I think that philosophy is worthless. In fact, quite the contrary. Philosophy is too important to be left as a discipline that only philosophers study. Scientists need some basic study of the philosophy of science. Political leaders need to know something about political philosophy. Quantum physics already is speculative metaphysics half the time. Everyone could use some ethics. If philosophers were forced to join other departments, they would actually contribute to discussions.

At the same time, philosophers need to spend some time in empirical studies. One cannot do philosophy of mind without some knowledge of contemporary cognitive science. One cannot do social and political philosophy without a rigorous scientific background in contemporary sociology. I am not saying that one must agree with the reigning scientific paradigms, but rather that one must understand what they are saying even if only for the purpose of critique. And any philosophers who cannot deal with the rigor of science are doing creative writing, not philosophy.

Finally, history of philosophy could join, logically enough, the history department. This not out of a sense of irrelevance. I have learned more from in-depth study of ancient and medieval thinkers than from almost any other intellectual endeavor. History has a pride of place in the humanities, to my mind, as the best window we have into human existence as it is played out.

Without a separate philosophy department, other people will have to listen to philosophy, philosophers will have to listen to other people, and we can finally get rid of these inane journals where everyone writes merely to have written. We would be closer in spirit to the philosophers of past ages, who considered an empirical understanding of the world around them to be integral to philosophizing. Aristotle was the quintessential biologist. Kant pretty much invented geology. Descartes was influential in physics. Avicenna and Maimonides were pioneering physicians who have provided techniques that are still used today. Many Chinese philosophers were statesmen concerned with proper running of their country. If philosophy is to be more than logic chopping and self-absorbed poetizing, it must no longer consider itself an entity unto itself.