Philosophers sometimes get ridiculed for their examples and thought-experiments - just implausible, its said, implausible or downright silly. There couldn't be any connection to reality, right?
Truth truly is stranger than fiction. Case in point: during my ethics course Monday, we were covering Rawls. In chapter 7 of A Theory of Justice, Rawls distinguishes between the unjust, the bad, and the evil. He cites the example of a person who pursues excessive wealth, pointing out the difference between the unjust man, the bad man, and the evil man (TJ 439). An unjust man commits an act that is unfair to other folks, though the motive would be considered legitimate if kept within limits - say, acquiring money for security. He would be bad if the action was unjust but pursued for its own sake; he enjoyed the mastery of money, for example. Again, that motive would be regarded as legitimate if restrained. He would be evil if he deliberately set out to fleece people because it was unjust to do so; if he enjoyed the unjust act, he'd be evil.
Some of the students asked for another example to clarify the point. "Sure," I said, "consider the case of a person pursuing excessive sex - interpret that any place you wish, it doesn't matter." They considered this to be silly. How could you be regarded as unjust, bad or evil for pursuing excessive sex? Simple: when the libido of one partner outstrips that of the other, and they simply act on it, it is unjust. Depending on the motive, the action could be judged bad or evil. If it were excessively violent, the same principle applies.
By chance a friend of mine posted a news item on Facebook about a British couple that was banned from having sex on account of the excessive noise. The woman appealed the case, and lost. In Rawls's language, their lovemaking was unjust in the sense that they were disturbing the peace. Had it been a party, or a football game, the end result would be the same: too loud.
Unjust indeed. I am so vindicated.
You see, my example was pretty tame as philosophical examples go. There is the brain in a vat, which is a variation on the theme of Descartes's evil genius and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Such problems pose the question of epistemology - how do you know what's real? - and metaphysics - what is the really real? There's the whole zombie philosophy thing, which has to do with identifying consciousness.
And then you have the medieval philosophers. They came up with some doozies, but we ridicule them because we misunderstand them. For instance, "Did Christ carry a purse or not?" This was an economic question: the Mendicant Order of monks complained about the discrepancy between the poverty of Jesus, their ideal, and the growing wealth of the Church. They had serious intent behind them. Questions about angels - such as whether they were created in beatitude or not - have a great deal to say about rational creatures such as ourselves.
The take-home lesson: don't knock something until you understand what it's really about.
(By the way, the "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is of disputed origin, but it seems only to have become well known because of its use in ridiculing the medievals. Not surprisingly, the only folks citing this question use it lampoon the medievals - without once considering whether there might actually be a real reason for posing such apparently silly questions.)
Now this brings out at least three things:
- Generally speaking, we don't get to exercise our imagination enough. We could all use the exercise.
- When an otherwise sane-looking person poses an otherwise ludicrous question in a philosophical debate, there's probably (or, should I say hopefully) good reasons behind their doing so.
- When considering theoretical questions, ludicrous questions can prove to be remarkably concise ways of taking the inquiry to its extreme - and that's where we really learn something.
The problem this brings out is: how do you know when it's a real philosophical problem, as opposed to a BS question? There seems to be a palpable difference between questions such as
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?
and
What if your tail chased you?
Badly needed comic relief intermezzo
Well, if you're talking with the guy who poses the puzzler, and the reason isn't apparent, ask. If you're reading a text and find said conundrum, look for the rationale in the text itself. Usually it's right there. And if it isn't? Time to hit the library. Do some research, find out everything you can about said person and their circumstances; if they did not write about this themselves, chances are somebody else did. And if that turns up dry? I mean, really turns up with nothing to show for it dry? Then it's time you did some digging into the world of the author. There may well be notions they assume the reader will have; that's not unusual, since folks usually and mainly write for an audience of their own time.
Once you get an explanation, consider the ideas being challenged. Philosophers love to enjoy doubting the most ordinary-looking things. It may be BS, but then again, it may present a genuine problem. How to tell the difference? My reflex answer is basically, you learn by experience. That is, if it kicks up a living doubt in you, you'll be concerned and set out to find an answer. Sometimes the problem can be settled quickly - say, with some detail that was forgotten when the question originally came up. Or it may niggle at you for days, or even months. The greater the irritation of doubt, the more significant the problem relative to our current state of mind.
If a problem seems genuine, a good way of double-checking this is to talk it over with someone. It's happened that I mulled over some difficulty for days, and then it vanished when I brought it up with a friend. Putting the question out in public threw it into a different light, and I discovered that I had simply ignored some basic fact or other; once that was obvious, the doubt went up in smoke *poof*. Then again, a genuine problem will rarely fail to get somebody's attention. Maybe not always immediately, but when it finds an audience that will take it seriously, the problem will show itself to be a window on some avenue of thought that hasn't been covered yet.
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