I ask, because Bryan Magee, in his expansive but readable (if a little focussed on Schopenhauer) Confessions Of A Philosopher argues the point quite forcefully that people who don’t have genuine philosophical problems shouldn’t really concern themselves with philosophy.
In his view, a person with genuine philosophical problems (I’ll call them GPP from now!) should encounter real anguish in his or her life about the questions we deal with here, such as whether there’s a god, whether we can trust our perceptions or whether perceptions are engineered by a third party, and so on. They should lie awake at night sometimes in inner turmoil and yet be unable to escape the problems. Eventually they learn to live with it and insomnia fades away, but the problems still remain and trouble them. Essentially, to a person with GPP the question “What is god?” isn’t just an opportunity to wax lyrical about funked up ideas you might have had in the bath, but something to devote a part of your life to try and understand, pursue, and evolve the existing ideas.
Like trying to understand the history of the universe, the big problem is that the different questions can’t be isolated - you have to look at them all at the same time and try and pull multiple answers out of a hat, so you can’t just be a follower of determinism without dealing with ethics, because morality is forever bound up with cause and effect. And so on.
I used to have very GPP when I was a teenager, and found it both troubling and stimulating. I now enjoy philosophy but have shifted more into a productive political realm, i.e. my “doing” years, and may return to the thinking in later life. But I wonder if Magee is right - maybe I shouldn’t bother; if I have the ability to choose whether to be troubled or not by philosophical questions, they aren’t really genuine philosophical problems, and I should avail myself of them to bury the next mind down the track.
philosophical problems?
what started my passion for philosophy was my nausea which i know i will never be rid of.
always fuelling my interest in philo would be the questioning of values, reality, knowing and existence…(always been inherent in me since my childhood days) which i found out to be the fundamentals of philosophy.
yet i dunno why i bother. philosophy is but questions upon questions. it would solve nothing and never lift this nausea. but at least it gets me on and i enjoy it. i sit around and read, come in here without posting much (and your board too kajun) and scroll around to consider what people think.
but yet, it has never struck me that noone would encounter GPP… unless they dont think about anything at all? other than trifles? (then waht are trifles anyway) surely everyone encounters some sort of anguish or conflict at some point in time. just more so for some… thus the sitting around pondering what others would laugh at.
besides not all philosophy revolves around personal matters. stuff like the structure of language (yawn) have little to do with personal matters. or do they? perhaps not to me, thus my lack of interest for that area.
why are YOU? into this then? what is your GPP that started your interest in this?
I get GPP all the time and I’m in my mid-teens. I have had sleepless nights due to deliberating various metaphysical, ontological and metaethical issues. Philosophy can be a frightening subject at times.
On the other hand, philosophy can be very comforting. It can be intellectually stimulating and more of a challenge than a problem. Philosophy is not, however, for everyone as we all know. There is kind of a shock value or massive state of confusion when you first enter philisophical borders and this turns many people off. Those who are willing and intellectually capable to push a little further find the confusion really is an ongoing challenge to be pursued and not necessarily a problem to be solved.
As a marathon runner, I view philosophy and running within the same context: it is for the challenge and not out of necessity. Is it really necessary for anyone to run 26 miles and/or try to figure out the mysteries that have evaded mankind for centures? No, but it sure can be a lot of fun for those of us who are crazy enough to do it.
I don’t think you can really say you’ve “lived†without having some GPP! To me the idea of having spent an entire lifetime without asking some of the more basic GPP questions seem unimaginable, if not impossible. Maybe sensible people after they find out that there is no answer just give up, while others with GPP get caught in an infinite loop unable to move past the obviousness of the answer, but like all too many on this board I’m still stuck in the loop.
I think that’s one of the paradoxes of Philosophy. We spend all this time trying to make ourselves wiser, yet in the end all Philosophy does is confirm our ignorance, belittling everything we have spent the time in trying to acquire is seen in the end as having little practical application in “real life†what ever that is, as to us Philosophers that’s just one term like so many others like God, Existence, ad infinitum, which is loaded and has no satisfactory answer. As far as I’m concerned the only real pragmatic philosophy is to be found in politics and the laws, as these have real and useful purposes, which benefit from the thinkers of philosophy.
Some sheep stand in a field, looking around and seeing no fences believe there’s nothing to limit them, while others explore and find where the fences converge and meet. A world once unlimited by ignorance becomes limited by our own curiosity.
For me the nausea comes from thinking about how I exist, and can experience my own existence. The idea that someday this will end, I just can’t fathom. To think that there’s all this time before I came into being that has happened but I don’t have knowledge of, and that there’ll be time in the future where once again I won’t experience it, seems as impossible as the fact I’m currently here experiencing it at all. At times it makes me want to sit in a small-darkened corner of my room, rocking back’n’forth-mumbling nonsense to myself. But to me the ultimate in all this morbidness is that some how there might be an answer in death, which at first seems paradoxical, but not illogical.
When is this period where the insomnia fades away? I’m very anxious to attend that stage of life!
This is a very interesting point as it leaves me wondering how one can be genuinely satisfied without at least exploring their domain, if not going as far as trying to find out how to break outside it’s boundaries? Why doesn’t everyone experience GPP? For instance, there has been many a person to respond with a “who cares?” to many of my genuine philosophical problems. It just boggles my mind b/c I cannot comprehend the ability to ignore such seemingly life dependent issues. How can you say “who cares?” when someone asks “what’s the purpose of life?”!
This is another interesting point. Why is the unknown so scary? Why are we so afraid of not existing?
— It is good to be among one’s own kind…
— I just read in a book by Gasset that problems are a wonderful thing, he says that he looks forward to objections. I agree, without the yearning there is no learning. I fail to understand these sheep that have never mapped out their domain, still it would not be good for everyone to be a philosopher!
Maybe it is just my ignorance, which I have gladly accepted, but to me there is only one GPP. And that is the age old question posed by Socrates. “Know Thyself.”
Those two words become a direct insult to my character. Know Thyself. And as I venture forth trying to know myself, I realize all this other stuff that I don’t know.
I don’t know how I see. Yeah I know how my eyes invert reflections and my optic nerves transmit them into my brain. But then how does my brain show me what I’m seeing? Many of nights I’ve sat up wondering about revolution and capitalism. Metaphysics and theology. Many of those nights I was high, but my mind ventured forth.
If you don’t know yourself, then what is the point of life besides procreation? If all you do is work, eat, and go to the toilet, and your mind doesn’t wonder about the limit of the universe, or the speed of light, or the sound of one hand clapping, then what is the point?
And about the sheep that don’t stray, it’s like the men in the cave. They see shadows all day, if they were to turn around and notice that those shadows were the result of a big fire behind men holding pots, their eyes wouldn’t handle it. They don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss. The human race was happier thinking they were at the center of the universe than they will ever be if we find out about aliens.
— I look forward to aliens. It could be the end of dogma, racism, and a whole host of ailments.
— Not knowing is not the sin, it’s the not wanting to know that gets me. Sure, like Plato’s cave that smooth alluded to, the wo/men would be blinded by the fire once they struggled to turn around, but eventually their eyes would adjust. For the vast majority, though, the shadows on the wall are just too intoxicating.
— Well said! Reminds me of the ancient Arabic apothegm
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not,
is a fool. Shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not,
is simple. Teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows,
is asleep. wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows
is wise. Follow him.
Quote:
Pax wrote:
Some sheep stand in a field, looking around and seeing no fences believe there’s nothing to limit them, while others explore and find where the fences converge and meet. A world once unlimited by ignorance becomes limited by our own curiosity.
This is a very interesting point as it leaves me wondering how one can be genuinely satisfied without at least exploring their domain, if not going as far as trying to find out how to break outside it’s boundaries? Why doesn’t everyone experience GPP? For instance, there has been many a person to respond with a “who cares?” to many of my genuine philosophical problems. It just boggles my mind b/c I cannot comprehend the ability to ignore such seemingly life dependent issues. How can you say “who cares?” when someone asks “what’s the purpose of life?”!
ignorance is bliss!
This really is bothering me now, as many of my friends find my interest and need to follow philosophy stupid. The “who cares” statement i just cant get my head around, and because of my interest they find me ignorant of there interests. Centurys of people asking the same questions to the same answers to what avail? Existence, way im living and eternity without life, i just cant contemplate. Perhaps in death a different existence exists, something spirtual, something eternal or ever changing; atheism though is a nightmare i put up with, as life, is hard.
One thing i can no longer contemplate - is not been interested in philosophy, which i cant help thinking: what if philosophy is some self torture, that we shouldnt really do?
— I have always inwardly smiled upon espying the bumper sticker that reads, “Not all who wander are lost”. It describes Herman Hesse, a truckload of philosophers, and (incidentally) myself.
I really like that quote… However I have yet to meet one who knows and knows that he knows, that I knowingly agree that he knows for sure… According to this advice however, all should shunned, taught, awoken, and followed…
I find the GPP exciting and exhilarating. If learn that we are nothing more than primordial glue, that will be fine with me. It was the search that defined myself…
…
The man who is wise is the one that is knowledgable of their own ignorance, for there is no man ( or woman for that matter ) that is satisfied with their knowledge. The smarter you are, the more stupid you should realize you are.
I think it is a curse that we have. And it makes me remember the moral that I inferred of the creation story. That God told Adam and Even NOT to eat off the tree of knowledge. They did and then they realized how naked they had been the whole time. That is what we do. We dine of this forbidden fruit, and we contemplate on how to rebuild the tower of Babel.
I think that my GPP started when I was too young. It ruined most of my social life because I couldn’t help pondering about almost anything possible, even when I was around people. I think that now I got through some of my GPP, but I’m still recovering, and new thoughts still come to my mind almst daily. Sometimes I wish my GPP never started because the life I remeber before it seemes to be much better. I also think GPP can start due to various sircumstances in our lives, as it probably did in mine (nothing that I would like to explain in detail).
I think that before my GPP started I was much more ceratain about my religion and about god. Most religions block the progress of mankind, by disallowing them to think for themselves, and forcing them upon the idea that whoever betrayes fate is doomed.
As people get smarter, they are more aware of their boundries, and the GPP can come when someone doesn’t understand exactly how the boundries work. There are also many boundries which a person forces upon himself (like religion) that stop him from knowing and understanding his boundries.
I know many who don’t seem to have much GPP, because they are very certain about their beliefs when it comes to arguments (or maybe their simply get caught in them even if they don’t believe in their side of the argument), in whcih I usually don’t participate because I haven’t made up my mind completely.
When someone isn’t aware of his boundries, he doesn’t need to worry about them, because they don’t exist from his point of view (no mind, no worries )
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