It strikes me that a good philosopher would make a very good software tester. Maybe this article could be adapted as "with-the use of heuristics anybody can think like a tester".
It should not be surprising then that many software engineers are interested in philosophy. :) The personality type of many programmers and philosophers is INTP, which tends to be geared towards these sorts of things.
There's something delightfully twenty-first century about a project to replace Western Philosophy with a dozen or so definitions, shortcut heuristics and simplistic approximations.
Nick Beckstead once told me informally that new philosophical ideas can usually be classified as one of these: arguments (in the sense of formal logic, with premises and conclusions), examples (e.g., intuition pumps), and distinctions (e.g., normative vs. positive statements).
Whenever I read or hear a philosophy professor teaching about fallacies, I always look at their examples.
And whenever their examples all spring from a consistent worldview (e.g. they all debunk liberal ideas or conservative ideas or religious ideas or anti-religious ideas), it raises my eyebrows, because it makes me suspect that they're more interested in defending their worldview than they are in teaching logic.
But when someone presents example arguments that are inconsistent with one another, perhaps debunking an anti-religious argument first, then debunking a religious argument, then I know that they're primarily concerned with teaching, rather than indoctrinating.
I won't say which camp I think Prof. Hájek falls into with this Aeon piece, but let's just consider this suspicion of consistent-worldview examples another tool in the philosopher's toolkit of critical thinking.
Why not say which camp you think the author falls into? You're practically doing so by raising the issue specifically in relation to this piece, and you could have stuck with "here's another tool...". What's the virtue of being coy?
I mean the great thing about fallacies is their content isn't important. It's their structure that makes them flawed in leading to the truth. The examples, as a result, are something you can safely ignore, whether or not they're ones you agree with.
For what it's worth, learning to notice the underlying structure of an argument is probably a far more important philosophical skill than noticing that your interlocutor doesn't share your political viewpoints.
We humans tend to train ourselves to subject opposing arguments to rigorous analysis while letting arguments we like off the hook. Learning about fallacies using examples we like is particularly likely to encourage this habit.
>I won't say which camp I think Prof. Hájek falls into with this Aeon piece
The way you put it in this comment, it may feel to some that you are suggesting the author is trying to indoctrinate. I highly recommend people to read the article itself to find that out. It's doing no such thing in my opinion and makes sure to not sound like having an agenda. The author may simply choose some examples that happen to increase reader's interest and hence make them finish the article and understand the concept better.
He ends with this which is not how you indoctrinate someone:
"Where does this leave us? Well, we did not manage to prove the existence of God, nor prove his non-existence. (I hope you are not too disappointed!) But that’s par for the course in philosophy – it rarely proves anything conclusively. Instead, I hope I have given you some sense of what philosophical reasoning is like, and how that reasoning can be stimulated and enhanced by the use of various heuristics. Along the way, we saw some instances of what followed from what (or not), exposed some sophisms, spotted some fallacies, and policed some of our reasoning."
The fact is that our brains have been so incessantly bombarded with propaganda from different places that we start noticing it even when none exists. In other words, Apophenia.
>> The fact is that our brains have been so incessantly bombarded with propaganda from different places that we start noticing it even when none exists. In other words, Apophenia.
An interesting point. I would say that everyone does have something they want you to believe - even if it's just pure skepticism - That's the point of teaching, after all (or you just find it fun to talk). We are trying to share what we believe is true, even if that belief is that we can't definitively say anything is true. I used to think such a stance as equality for both ends was being open-minded, but to some people (especially those with a firm opinion, be it wrong or right), I came across as promoting what they considered horribly wrong. They think that alot of (um, all of their) ideas are provable, definitive truth, so arguing against that point is - at least to them - "indoctrination" of a different kind.
>It seems we should grant [that "Our world is not the best of all possible worlds"], since we can easily imagine our world being better – more happy people, less suffering.
Only if you define "better" in those terms. I'm sure that Romeo and Juliet would have preferred a world in which they remained alive as lovers -- but would that be a better story?
The counterargument to "this is not the best of all possible worlds" from the perspectives of the people experiencing it (the world) would be to show that every single person experiencing suffering believes it to be "best." That there is no better outcome than that they suffer.
>the perspectives of the people experiencing it (the world)
Well, a lot of things rest on that equivocation. Personally I consider the world to be more than just the sum of the experiences of individuals. To me, it is more like a story in which everyone plays a part.
I mean, also, it's just silly to emptily claim that you could imagine a better world. The trick is to imagine it in all its detail. I mean, what if pain is simply a concomitant of consciousness. Would a better world be devoid of consciousness?
The trick is not to see the stupidity in the formulation (the stupidity is obvious), but to see the less obvious intelligence in the formulation. It's extremely rational, almost apodictically true.
To reiterate: imagining a better world does not mean "emptily declaring it to be so." Like, if I said that in my better world triangles were no longer slavishly limited to having 3 sides, a reasonable person would think I was missing something about what imagination can and can't do.
If pain can conceptually be whatever you want it to be, and there's no matter of logical necessity, then why don't you just imagine pain as something different in this world--in which case, this world is back in the running for "best of all possible worlds"? Why do you need a new world for pain to be other than a negative force?
You are putting the constraints of this world on any possible world, and we have no reason to expect these things to be necessary truths.
On the triangle. It differs from pain because the sensation of pain is real, while the triangle is a concept we use to simplify the actual world we interact with. There are no two dimensional objects that I am aware of, and changing it to a pyramid still runs into the problem of needing continuous mass in that shape. A four sided triangle may be impossible, but at the same time a three sided triangle seems impossible and we accept it.
The world that I'm imagining where it is this world except pain is something different is a new world.
Ahem. I feel that you're talking around my points entirely.
There are two possibilities:
1) all things are only accidentally so in our world (including triangles, according to you). In which case, we will never have enough information to say if the sum of accidents is "better" or "worse" than the sum of accidents in any other world. The only "proof" of such a world would be experiencing it, in which case it wouldn't be an "other world," it would be our world.
2) some things are "necessarily so," in our world, in which case they would be necessarily so in all worlds we can possibly "image-ine," (that is, conceptualize).
Thus with respect to pain,
the "bad-ness" of pain either follows from its definition, or it doesn't. If it follows from its definition, then there is no possible world in which pain will be "good." If it does not follow from its definition, then pain need not be bad in this world either.
edit: this is why I said Leibniz's theodicy is "nearly apodictic": his argument is essentially deductive, flowing from the very nature of reason and experience. Now, whether or not this constitutes an acceptable theodicy is a different question entirely. My point is that anybody can see the unacceptability of the argument; it takes a philosopher to see the cleverness of the argument.
No, you can define "better" in pretty much any way and still be able to imagine possible worlds that are better than the one we live in. In fact, pretty much the only way you can define "better" that does not admit better possible worlds is to define this world as the best possible one. But that's a vacuous definition.
BTW, you do know that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters, yes? They cannot prefer anything because they didn't actually exist.
I am aware of that, yes. I was making an analogy. The point of the analogy is that, even though Romeo and Juliet would likely not have considered their world "the best of all possible worlds," we (the readers) do consider their world to be much better than they do (albeit not "the best").
In other words, the reason Romeo and Juliet do not consider their world to be "the best" is because they are only experiencing their localized part of the story, not the story as a whole. Likewise, even though individual humans suffer, that does not preclude the possibility that this is still the best possible story for us to be collectively experiencing.
How can you judge whether someone's suffering is unnecessary? Only the author of the story knows that, because only the author knows how the story ends and how the individual arcs tie together.
Is it unnecessary? Can you invent a tale of "star-crossed lovers" in a world that is "best" for the characters? I think their suffering is essential to the narrative. If so, perhaps their world is indeed "best" toward serving that purpose, at least for the audience.
> [W]e (the readers) do consider their world to be much better than they do (albeit not "the best").
What??? I think you've completely missed the point of tragic fiction. R&Js world totally sucks (or it would totally suck if it were real). That's the whole point. We tell the story of R&J so that we can learn its lessons without actually putting real people through that wringer. The point of tragic fiction is to say: the world would suck if it were like this, so let's try not to make it like this.
> Likewise, even though individual humans suffer, that does not preclude the possibility that this is still the best possible story for us to be collectively experiencing.
"Best" by what quality metric? By what would make the best screenplay? That's a pretty horrific way of looking at the world. The best stories are often driven by the worst experiences. All fiction, both tragedy and comedy, is driven by conflict. Again, that's the whole point: humans invented story-telling so that we could engage in shared contemplation of possible worlds that we did not want to bring into reality in addition to those we do. Just because something makes a good story doesn't mean you would actually want it to happen.
> The point of tragic fiction is to say: the world would suck if it were like this, so let's try not to make it like this.
I think that is a narrow interpretation. Many tragic plays are catalyzed by sheer misfortune rather than anything we could draw a practical lesson from. Stories don't have to be educational to be deeply moving.
I don't know what metric to use for "best," but I think "makes a good story" is preferable to "minimizes human suffering." You may find that horrific, but it's only horrific if you view suffering as meaningless and unnecessary. On the contrary, suffering is the engine of the world! Every achievement was motivated by a feeling of lack, and every happiness we enjoy is derived from our equal capacity for suffering.
If you accept that, then the question is: "why, then, do we observe events of suffering that do not serve any discernible purpose?" That is, if this really is "the best of all worlds," then how can it contain meaningless suffering?
That's a much better question. If you're in my camp, and you do believe that this is the best world, then the only option is to argue that there is no meaningless suffering. You can only declare something meaningless if you know its complete and total effect on the future. Since we don't know the future, we can't know for sure whether anything is truly meaningless. Now, we can't know the opposite either -- we can't know for sure if all suffering will eventually turn out to have been meaningful. That's where you either lean on your faith (if you have it), or take the agnostic position and declare the whole thing moot.
> Many tragic plays are catalyzed by sheer misfortune rather than anything we could draw a practical lesson from.
Like for example?
> If you're in my camp, and you do believe that this is the best world, then the only option is to argue that there is no meaningless suffering.
Have you read the news lately? Are you really going to tell me that the world we live in is better than a hypothetical one where Bashar Al Assad did not attack civilians with chemical weapons yesterday?
BTW, I agree that not all suffering is meaningless and unnecessary, that suffering can motivate achievement. It does not follow that all suffering is meaningful and necessary.
In fact, rejecting the idea that we live in the best possible world is necessary if suffering is to motivate achievement, because if you believe that we already live in the best possible world then there can be no point in doing anything to try to change it.
Titanic (1997) is a pretty well-known example. There isn't much of a lesson to draw from that movie that would have averted the disaster. It simply uses the disaster as a plot element to tell a story about love.
>rejecting the idea that we live in the best possible world is necessary if suffering is to motivate achievement
This is a very important point. I think the key is to accept that our nature is to be motivated by suffering, and not try to transcend that. I suppose this is what Camus was talking about when he described Sisyphus as being happy. Essentially, you can't use the belief that the world is perfect as a justification for anything, because nothing you do (or refrain from doing) can alter the perfection of the world. And that means you can't look at civilians dying and just shrug your shoulders because hey, it's all perfect, right? It's not something that can be used to justify inaction. It doesn't offer any moral guidance at all. It's just a different way of thinking about the world.
> Titanic ... simply uses the disaster as a plot element to tell a story about love.
It does a lot more than that. It has quite a lot to say about the social class system of the early 20th century.
> I think the key is to accept that our nature is to be motivated by suffering, and not try to transcend that.
Why not? Our nature is to be angry and jealous and violent some times too. Transcending those qualities is generally considered progress (it's called "growing up") so why not strive to transcend our need to be motivated by suffering?
> I suppose this is what Camus was talking about when he described Sisyphus as being happy.
>why not strive to transcend our need to be motivated by suffering?
If you can do so in a way that does not lead to stagnation, I am willing to hear you out. The only people I'm aware of who have transcended suffering are Buddhist monks, and... well, they are exactly models of trans-human progress. They mostly just sit quietly and keep to themselves.
The buddhists have the wrong idea. Their attitude is that suffering is inevitable and so we should just accept it. (They go on to say that when you accept suffering it stops being suffering. Yeah, right. Tell that to the kids in Syria who were gassed by Assad a few days ago.)
I'm not talking about accepting suffering, I'm talking about eliminating it, or at least striving to eliminate it even if complete eliminate is not actually possible (c.f. Sisyphus) or desirable. It might be that the optimal level of suffering is not zero, or that the optimal level is lower than the lowest attainable level. But it is clear that both of those are significantly lower than what have now. I don't think any reasonable person can look at what is going on in Syria or South Sudan or Bangladesh and not believe that we can do better without violating the laws of physics.
Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus is happy because he realizes the absurdity of his condition and finds a contented acceptance in recognizing this truth--thus, robbing the absurdity of his suffering of power to actually lead to misery. Camus does not suggest Sisyphus--or the absurd man, for that matter--is motivated by suffering and the thought of transcending it. We are doomed to suffer through the absurdity of reality because of our need for finding meaning in a world that contains none, our desire for reason in an unreasonable world. Life, this world, and our attempts to make it mean something are all meaningless except for that meaning with which we imbue them. We are the source of the meaning we seek, yet we absurdly look elsewhere for meaning to be found, realized, given to us by that which lies outside us. By recognizing this, we are able to push on and neutralize suffering and absurdity. This is not, however, through some motivation to conquer it. Allowing ourselves to be motivated by suffering toward some vainglorious goal of transcending it only fools us into remaining trapped within and overpowered by the absurdity of our condition. It is inescapable by means of any action to contradict it. We aren't to strive to negate it or overpower it, for then we arrive at conclusions of thought and action that contradict the absurdity of suffering, which means contradicting reality itself.
Simply recognize life and its suffering are absurd. Then cease being consumed by it. However, for Camus at least, this does not mean accept the absurd itself--we should always confront it, always revolt against it. But again, not by way of fooling ourselves into thinking we can conquer it. It is recognizing this that gives one reason to imagine Sisyphus is happy.
Sisyphus is a bit like Gandalf facing the Balrog, already sure of what is to come. You shall not pass!, he says to the absurdity of his suffering. Then he makes the long walk to the bottom of the mountain and sets his hands against the stone anew.
Your analysis is much better than my gross simplification. What I meant is that in both situations, the solution is acceptance, not escapism (masquerading as transcendence).
I agree with Camus' conclusion that we must create our own meaning, but that also seems to be at odds with our psychology: it's much easier to believe in external sources of meaning. (Perhaps there's an evolutionary bias here, because an external source of meaning can unify a group, whereas an internal source only empowers the individual.) You can reconcile these with a neat trick found in Eastern religion: identifying the subject with the object. Pantheism, Advaita vedanta, Taoism, and Zen all have this at their core. If you erase the distinction between yourself and the higher power/monad/Absolute/Tao, then you erase the distinction between deriving meaning internally and deriving meaning externally. So far, this is the best approach I've found for staving off nihilism once you've rejected traditional Abrahamic religion.
Also, who is to say that any world we can imagine is possible? I mean, from a strict realist perspective, only one world is "possible" - this one. This also exposes hidden meaning in the word "world".
This is perfectly targeted to today's readership and, simultaneously, not at all about the core of philosophy.
These tips are generally about logic. Logic is necessary but not sufficient to derive truth from the world. Philosophy is the search for knowledge, which is much broader and deeper than logic.
Meaning, purpose, ethics, knowledge, and truth (to name a few) can't be picked apart or pieced together with proofs and syllogisms.
I'd say philosophy is the search for ideas and models of thought, not whether they're true (knowledge) but only whether they're plausible and consistent. Philosophers also search for "toolkits" -- methods and relations (logic) that enable manipulation of "thought atoms" in ways that minimize loss of signal or introduce contradiction.
Knowledge is the purview of science, since scientists have to judge each of their models against only one possible universe. Philosophers are not so constrained, thus their notion of truth is relative. Like Derrida's, for example.
Oh no, this is a very dangerous mis-interpretation of philosophy.
The word itself can be literally translated to "love of knowledge": "philos" (love, from the same root as "phile", as in "francophile" or "anglophile") + "sophos" (wisdom or knowledge.)
Science is one subsection of philosophy, but certainly does not have a monopoly on knowledge. We "know" quantum mechanics (because it works for small things) and we "know" general relativity (because it works for big things) and yet they cannot coexist as we understand them today.
On the other hand, how do we know that human life has value? Certainly not through science. There is no axiom or mathematical proof that says, "a human life has value." And yet it is pretty absurd to think of progress or knowledge independent of human value. What's the value of science if not its positive effect on humanity?
Truth, in the philosophical sense, makes no sense unless it relates back to reality in this universe. Relativist truth is, in my opinion, a necessary thought experiment but breaks down in the real world; therefore it is not true in the true sense of the word. "Cogito ergo sum" is not relativist in any sense—there is no other side to thought requiring existence.
Although since the toolkit is about fallacies, it is worth noting that assuming the origin of a term has anything to do with its present meaning is an example of the "genetic fallacy".
The literal meaning of philosophy isn't really what is meant today. It's similar to the situation of the mathematician G.H. Hardy who complained that the word "intellectual" no longer meant all people involved in intellectual pursuits (including mathematicians and scientists), but a particular type of thinker -- namely one interested in politics or the arts.
Back in the days of yore, when philosophy = science (ca 1000 BCE to 1500 CE), scholastically the discipline of theology was their equal (actually their master), and constrained to function within a single possible world -- that of the orthodox religious belief system of the day (as reinforced by the king's church and horsemen).
Before the Enlightenment, philosophers were allowed a tiny amount of latitude to look outside the accepted world of the theologists, so long as they firmly denied such worlds to be 'possible'. But after the Enlightenment, those bolder philosophers evolved into scientists as their imaginations broke the theologists' shackles, insisting that truth was not a matter of belief, but of objective demonstrated consistency with rigorous logic AND theory AND guided by experiment. Now possible worlds were invaluable to scholarship, both philosophically and scientifically, as models were imagined to fit the available evidence and converted into testable form within this physical world. But alternative worlds were not off limits, as Einstein's general relativity demonstrated so vividly.
Yet even after the Enlightenment, many philosophers and most (all?) theologists did not follow the scientist philosophers into their brave new worlds, preferring to remain within the comfortable confines of the world chosen by their intellectual and spiritual forefathers.
My point? Truth became relative for these three groups, dependent on which possible world(s) they chose to inhabit. And my second point: the worlds inhabited by philosophers and scientists today are most certainly different, substantiating the validity of different truths.
51 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadhttp://philrsss.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/Philosophical...
Nick Beckstead once told me informally that new philosophical ideas can usually be classified as one of these: arguments (in the sense of formal logic, with premises and conclusions), examples (e.g., intuition pumps), and distinctions (e.g., normative vs. positive statements).
Hájek, not Hayek. Not trying to be pedantic, only reassuring people that The Austrians are not threadcrapping.
And whenever their examples all spring from a consistent worldview (e.g. they all debunk liberal ideas or conservative ideas or religious ideas or anti-religious ideas), it raises my eyebrows, because it makes me suspect that they're more interested in defending their worldview than they are in teaching logic.
But when someone presents example arguments that are inconsistent with one another, perhaps debunking an anti-religious argument first, then debunking a religious argument, then I know that they're primarily concerned with teaching, rather than indoctrinating.
I won't say which camp I think Prof. Hájek falls into with this Aeon piece, but let's just consider this suspicion of consistent-worldview examples another tool in the philosopher's toolkit of critical thinking.
For what it's worth, learning to notice the underlying structure of an argument is probably a far more important philosophical skill than noticing that your interlocutor doesn't share your political viewpoints.
The way you put it in this comment, it may feel to some that you are suggesting the author is trying to indoctrinate. I highly recommend people to read the article itself to find that out. It's doing no such thing in my opinion and makes sure to not sound like having an agenda. The author may simply choose some examples that happen to increase reader's interest and hence make them finish the article and understand the concept better.
He ends with this which is not how you indoctrinate someone:
"Where does this leave us? Well, we did not manage to prove the existence of God, nor prove his non-existence. (I hope you are not too disappointed!) But that’s par for the course in philosophy – it rarely proves anything conclusively. Instead, I hope I have given you some sense of what philosophical reasoning is like, and how that reasoning can be stimulated and enhanced by the use of various heuristics. Along the way, we saw some instances of what followed from what (or not), exposed some sophisms, spotted some fallacies, and policed some of our reasoning."
The fact is that our brains have been so incessantly bombarded with propaganda from different places that we start noticing it even when none exists. In other words, Apophenia.
An interesting point. I would say that everyone does have something they want you to believe - even if it's just pure skepticism - That's the point of teaching, after all (or you just find it fun to talk). We are trying to share what we believe is true, even if that belief is that we can't definitively say anything is true. I used to think such a stance as equality for both ends was being open-minded, but to some people (especially those with a firm opinion, be it wrong or right), I came across as promoting what they considered horribly wrong. They think that alot of (um, all of their) ideas are provable, definitive truth, so arguing against that point is - at least to them - "indoctrination" of a different kind.
Funny how that all works out, no?
Only if you define "better" in those terms. I'm sure that Romeo and Juliet would have preferred a world in which they remained alive as lovers -- but would that be a better story?
This seems unlikely to be true.
Well, a lot of things rest on that equivocation. Personally I consider the world to be more than just the sum of the experiences of individuals. To me, it is more like a story in which everyone plays a part.
The trick is not to see the stupidity in the formulation (the stupidity is obvious), but to see the less obvious intelligence in the formulation. It's extremely rational, almost apodictically true.
If I'm imagining a new world, pain is whatever I want it to be. That it seems to be a necessary part of consciousness in this world isn't important.
If pain can conceptually be whatever you want it to be, and there's no matter of logical necessity, then why don't you just imagine pain as something different in this world--in which case, this world is back in the running for "best of all possible worlds"? Why do you need a new world for pain to be other than a negative force?
On the triangle. It differs from pain because the sensation of pain is real, while the triangle is a concept we use to simplify the actual world we interact with. There are no two dimensional objects that I am aware of, and changing it to a pyramid still runs into the problem of needing continuous mass in that shape. A four sided triangle may be impossible, but at the same time a three sided triangle seems impossible and we accept it.
The world that I'm imagining where it is this world except pain is something different is a new world.
There are two possibilities:
1) all things are only accidentally so in our world (including triangles, according to you). In which case, we will never have enough information to say if the sum of accidents is "better" or "worse" than the sum of accidents in any other world. The only "proof" of such a world would be experiencing it, in which case it wouldn't be an "other world," it would be our world.
2) some things are "necessarily so," in our world, in which case they would be necessarily so in all worlds we can possibly "image-ine," (that is, conceptualize).
Thus with respect to pain, the "bad-ness" of pain either follows from its definition, or it doesn't. If it follows from its definition, then there is no possible world in which pain will be "good." If it does not follow from its definition, then pain need not be bad in this world either.
edit: this is why I said Leibniz's theodicy is "nearly apodictic": his argument is essentially deductive, flowing from the very nature of reason and experience. Now, whether or not this constitutes an acceptable theodicy is a different question entirely. My point is that anybody can see the unacceptability of the argument; it takes a philosopher to see the cleverness of the argument.
No, you can define "better" in pretty much any way and still be able to imagine possible worlds that are better than the one we live in. In fact, pretty much the only way you can define "better" that does not admit better possible worlds is to define this world as the best possible one. But that's a vacuous definition.
BTW, you do know that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters, yes? They cannot prefer anything because they didn't actually exist.
In other words, the reason Romeo and Juliet do not consider their world to be "the best" is because they are only experiencing their localized part of the story, not the story as a whole. Likewise, even though individual humans suffer, that does not preclude the possibility that this is still the best possible story for us to be collectively experiencing.
What??? I think you've completely missed the point of tragic fiction. R&Js world totally sucks (or it would totally suck if it were real). That's the whole point. We tell the story of R&J so that we can learn its lessons without actually putting real people through that wringer. The point of tragic fiction is to say: the world would suck if it were like this, so let's try not to make it like this.
> Likewise, even though individual humans suffer, that does not preclude the possibility that this is still the best possible story for us to be collectively experiencing.
"Best" by what quality metric? By what would make the best screenplay? That's a pretty horrific way of looking at the world. The best stories are often driven by the worst experiences. All fiction, both tragedy and comedy, is driven by conflict. Again, that's the whole point: humans invented story-telling so that we could engage in shared contemplation of possible worlds that we did not want to bring into reality in addition to those we do. Just because something makes a good story doesn't mean you would actually want it to happen.
I think that is a narrow interpretation. Many tragic plays are catalyzed by sheer misfortune rather than anything we could draw a practical lesson from. Stories don't have to be educational to be deeply moving.
I don't know what metric to use for "best," but I think "makes a good story" is preferable to "minimizes human suffering." You may find that horrific, but it's only horrific if you view suffering as meaningless and unnecessary. On the contrary, suffering is the engine of the world! Every achievement was motivated by a feeling of lack, and every happiness we enjoy is derived from our equal capacity for suffering.
If you accept that, then the question is: "why, then, do we observe events of suffering that do not serve any discernible purpose?" That is, if this really is "the best of all worlds," then how can it contain meaningless suffering?
That's a much better question. If you're in my camp, and you do believe that this is the best world, then the only option is to argue that there is no meaningless suffering. You can only declare something meaningless if you know its complete and total effect on the future. Since we don't know the future, we can't know for sure whether anything is truly meaningless. Now, we can't know the opposite either -- we can't know for sure if all suffering will eventually turn out to have been meaningful. That's where you either lean on your faith (if you have it), or take the agnostic position and declare the whole thing moot.
Like for example?
> If you're in my camp, and you do believe that this is the best world, then the only option is to argue that there is no meaningless suffering.
Have you read the news lately? Are you really going to tell me that the world we live in is better than a hypothetical one where Bashar Al Assad did not attack civilians with chemical weapons yesterday?
BTW, I agree that not all suffering is meaningless and unnecessary, that suffering can motivate achievement. It does not follow that all suffering is meaningful and necessary.
In fact, rejecting the idea that we live in the best possible world is necessary if suffering is to motivate achievement, because if you believe that we already live in the best possible world then there can be no point in doing anything to try to change it.
>rejecting the idea that we live in the best possible world is necessary if suffering is to motivate achievement
This is a very important point. I think the key is to accept that our nature is to be motivated by suffering, and not try to transcend that. I suppose this is what Camus was talking about when he described Sisyphus as being happy. Essentially, you can't use the belief that the world is perfect as a justification for anything, because nothing you do (or refrain from doing) can alter the perfection of the world. And that means you can't look at civilians dying and just shrug your shoulders because hey, it's all perfect, right? It's not something that can be used to justify inaction. It doesn't offer any moral guidance at all. It's just a different way of thinking about the world.
It does a lot more than that. It has quite a lot to say about the social class system of the early 20th century.
> I think the key is to accept that our nature is to be motivated by suffering, and not try to transcend that.
Why not? Our nature is to be angry and jealous and violent some times too. Transcending those qualities is generally considered progress (it's called "growing up") so why not strive to transcend our need to be motivated by suffering?
> I suppose this is what Camus was talking about when he described Sisyphus as being happy.
Camus was an idiot.
If you can do so in a way that does not lead to stagnation, I am willing to hear you out. The only people I'm aware of who have transcended suffering are Buddhist monks, and... well, they are exactly models of trans-human progress. They mostly just sit quietly and keep to themselves.
I'm not talking about accepting suffering, I'm talking about eliminating it, or at least striving to eliminate it even if complete eliminate is not actually possible (c.f. Sisyphus) or desirable. It might be that the optimal level of suffering is not zero, or that the optimal level is lower than the lowest attainable level. But it is clear that both of those are significantly lower than what have now. I don't think any reasonable person can look at what is going on in Syria or South Sudan or Bangladesh and not believe that we can do better without violating the laws of physics.
Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus is happy because he realizes the absurdity of his condition and finds a contented acceptance in recognizing this truth--thus, robbing the absurdity of his suffering of power to actually lead to misery. Camus does not suggest Sisyphus--or the absurd man, for that matter--is motivated by suffering and the thought of transcending it. We are doomed to suffer through the absurdity of reality because of our need for finding meaning in a world that contains none, our desire for reason in an unreasonable world. Life, this world, and our attempts to make it mean something are all meaningless except for that meaning with which we imbue them. We are the source of the meaning we seek, yet we absurdly look elsewhere for meaning to be found, realized, given to us by that which lies outside us. By recognizing this, we are able to push on and neutralize suffering and absurdity. This is not, however, through some motivation to conquer it. Allowing ourselves to be motivated by suffering toward some vainglorious goal of transcending it only fools us into remaining trapped within and overpowered by the absurdity of our condition. It is inescapable by means of any action to contradict it. We aren't to strive to negate it or overpower it, for then we arrive at conclusions of thought and action that contradict the absurdity of suffering, which means contradicting reality itself.
Simply recognize life and its suffering are absurd. Then cease being consumed by it. However, for Camus at least, this does not mean accept the absurd itself--we should always confront it, always revolt against it. But again, not by way of fooling ourselves into thinking we can conquer it. It is recognizing this that gives one reason to imagine Sisyphus is happy.
Sisyphus is a bit like Gandalf facing the Balrog, already sure of what is to come. You shall not pass!, he says to the absurdity of his suffering. Then he makes the long walk to the bottom of the mountain and sets his hands against the stone anew.
I agree with Camus' conclusion that we must create our own meaning, but that also seems to be at odds with our psychology: it's much easier to believe in external sources of meaning. (Perhaps there's an evolutionary bias here, because an external source of meaning can unify a group, whereas an internal source only empowers the individual.) You can reconcile these with a neat trick found in Eastern religion: identifying the subject with the object. Pantheism, Advaita vedanta, Taoism, and Zen all have this at their core. If you erase the distinction between yourself and the higher power/monad/Absolute/Tao, then you erase the distinction between deriving meaning internally and deriving meaning externally. So far, this is the best approach I've found for staving off nihilism once you've rejected traditional Abrahamic religion.
Short, with a lot of punch: Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Sets.
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Devices-Proofs-Probabil...
A much more detailed and introductory book: The philosopher's toolkit : a compendium of philosophical concepts and methods.
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophers-Toolkit-Compendium-Philo...
These tips are generally about logic. Logic is necessary but not sufficient to derive truth from the world. Philosophy is the search for knowledge, which is much broader and deeper than logic.
Meaning, purpose, ethics, knowledge, and truth (to name a few) can't be picked apart or pieced together with proofs and syllogisms.
Knowledge is the purview of science, since scientists have to judge each of their models against only one possible universe. Philosophers are not so constrained, thus their notion of truth is relative. Like Derrida's, for example.
The word itself can be literally translated to "love of knowledge": "philos" (love, from the same root as "phile", as in "francophile" or "anglophile") + "sophos" (wisdom or knowledge.)
Science is one subsection of philosophy, but certainly does not have a monopoly on knowledge. We "know" quantum mechanics (because it works for small things) and we "know" general relativity (because it works for big things) and yet they cannot coexist as we understand them today.
On the other hand, how do we know that human life has value? Certainly not through science. There is no axiom or mathematical proof that says, "a human life has value." And yet it is pretty absurd to think of progress or knowledge independent of human value. What's the value of science if not its positive effect on humanity?
Truth, in the philosophical sense, makes no sense unless it relates back to reality in this universe. Relativist truth is, in my opinion, a necessary thought experiment but breaks down in the real world; therefore it is not true in the true sense of the word. "Cogito ergo sum" is not relativist in any sense—there is no other side to thought requiring existence.
The literal meaning of philosophy isn't really what is meant today. It's similar to the situation of the mathematician G.H. Hardy who complained that the word "intellectual" no longer meant all people involved in intellectual pursuits (including mathematicians and scientists), but a particular type of thinker -- namely one interested in politics or the arts.
Before the Enlightenment, philosophers were allowed a tiny amount of latitude to look outside the accepted world of the theologists, so long as they firmly denied such worlds to be 'possible'. But after the Enlightenment, those bolder philosophers evolved into scientists as their imaginations broke the theologists' shackles, insisting that truth was not a matter of belief, but of objective demonstrated consistency with rigorous logic AND theory AND guided by experiment. Now possible worlds were invaluable to scholarship, both philosophically and scientifically, as models were imagined to fit the available evidence and converted into testable form within this physical world. But alternative worlds were not off limits, as Einstein's general relativity demonstrated so vividly.
Yet even after the Enlightenment, many philosophers and most (all?) theologists did not follow the scientist philosophers into their brave new worlds, preferring to remain within the comfortable confines of the world chosen by their intellectual and spiritual forefathers.
My point? Truth became relative for these three groups, dependent on which possible world(s) they chose to inhabit. And my second point: the worlds inhabited by philosophers and scientists today are most certainly different, substantiating the validity of different truths.