A page of links to some of my writings
A page of links to some other philosophy sites
I am a philosophy student. And as one of my lecturers once said, "[p]hilosophy offers the best, perhaps the only, systematic instruction available in Cutting to the Chase, presenting complex reasoning in digestible morsels and distinguishing the issues that really bug people from the window-dressing and the vested interests." At least that is philosophy at its best, and what all of us, as philosophers, aim towards.
I first discovered academic philosophy in 1996. At the time, as a know-it-all third year university science student with interests in mathematics, computer science, and physics, I expected philosophy to be a wishy-washy doddle, which could do with the hard common sense of a science student. I was very quickly surprised out of my dogmatic slumber, and some seven years later I am still grappling with intractable problems and discovering how little I really know about, well, most things (though now I sometimes come across as a know-it-all philosophy student!).
Academic philosophy should not be confused with philosophy understood in the general and wider senses of the word. It is not an anything-goes attitude, of putting forward "personal" vision statements or general attitudes to life. It is not a form of New Age Religion, nor mysticism, nor a cult. It is an academic discipline, complete with the sorts of scholarship and rigour that one should expect from academia. There are also fairly reliable ways of ranking philosophical excellence, such as the Philosophical Gourmet Report. As such, the literal meaning of "philosophy" as the love, study, or pursuit of wisdom is mostly uninformative. In addition, academic philosophy has little in common with the everyday notion of the attitude of "being philosophical" about something, in the sense of being accepting, passive, etc.
If I might generalise, the content of academic philosophical study appears to have two main aspects - philosophical problem solving, and analysing the history of philosophical ideas with the aim of figuring out what certain individuals really thought and whether they were correct to think as they did.
The first aspect tends to start out by saying "here is a problem and how can we resolve it?". These are the sorts of problems that typically get put into the too-hard basket by other fields, such as problems that cannot by their nature be answered using empirical research and problems to do with the often unquestioned assumptions underlying various systems of thought. They are typically fundamental questions to do with human activities. Occasionally, as new scientific disciplines have developed, questions that were though to be philosophical have been found to be better answered by other fields (for example, some branches of psychology). Some examples of philosophical questions (among many hundreds) include "what is consciousness?", "do electrons really exist or are they merely useful explanatory devices?", "what is art?", "does God exist?", "how much can we know?", "what is a good argument?", and "is abortion ever morally permissible?". Branches of philosophy include metaphysics (the study of the fundamental nature of reality), epistemology (the study of knowledge), ethics (the study of morality), social/political philosophy (the study of the good society), aesthetics (the study of beauty and art), and logic (the study of what it is for an argument to be a good argument). There are also numerous "philosophy ofs" (for example philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of law, philosophy of maths, and philosophy of biology), which critically examine the assumptions, methodologies and principles of other disciplines. To answer these philosophical questions, philosophers attempt to (where possible) list all possible answers, tease out all the hidden assumptions of these positions, and explicitly give the strongest arguments for the various positions on offer. After throwing out the positions that are internally inconsistent or have fatal counter-examples, the aim is then to find the position with the strongest arguments, weakest counter-arguments, greatest explanatory power, greatest predictive power, most simple with respect to entities posited, and/or greatest consistency with empirical data and common sense intuitions. This aspect of philosophy often generates lots of "-isms", as people distinguish between various possible positions. Names of important figures are only useful inasmuch as they demarcate distinct positions or arguments.
The second aspect tends to start out by saying "this person here wrote this book - what was s/he talking about and should we believe her/him?". As to which historical writings get studied - that is up to the whims and interests of the individual person doing the studying (anything from Ancient Greek and Roman writers, to Medieval Islam and Christendom, to Indian, Chinese, or Japanese thinkers, to more modern Europeans and Anglo-Americans). With this second aspect we are forced to deal with historical contingencies and interpretative issues, and often to make sense of this we have to come to grips with the complexities of specific cultural traditions and their background assumptions. Many of the important historical philosophical figures have (rightly or wrongly) all-encompassing views on many things, or have well-known key ideas that potentially generate such views. It is through this aspect that we arrive at an understanding of philosophy as a "way of seeing", which is more in accord with the everyday usage of the word "philosophy".
As I mentioned in my first paragraph, academic philosophy also helps develop certain skills in its participants. A large part of philosophy is about learning to distinguish good argumentation from bad argumentation. In fact, if there is anything that links all the various branches of philosophy, it is the emphasis on critical thinking and reasoning. Philosophy is, more than anything else, a method of inquiry, not a body of doctrines. For one engaged in philosophy, it is a virtue to avoid emotional or rhetorical exaggeration, mere prejudices, and logical fallacies, and to be able to spot them in others. Philosophy also requires one to think and present ideas clearly, systematically, thoroughly, rigorously, critically, and concisely, with neither ambiguity nor vagueness. Philosophy is both about written and verbal expression, so these skills need to apply to both reading/writing and listening/speaking. It is often relatively easy to pick those who are philosophically trained - they are the ones who exhaustively list issues point by point (in a sometimes painstaking way), and try to make it clear that we ought to distinguish between x and y. Philosophers tend to be particularly good at picking out the substantive differences between positions, and picking up logical fallacies in arguments (both of which those trained in other disciplines sometimes miss). They also tend to write more directly than those trained in other academic disciplines - why beat around the bush with "in the opinion of the author ..." when one could write "I think ..."? The aim is for clarity (after all, the content is difficult enough without further obfuscation from legalese, academic jargon, verbosity, and non-natural expressions), and, if it helps clarity, philosophers won't shy away from contractions, the personal pronoun, or starting sentences with "and", "but", "so", and so on (to the annoyance of language puritans). Non-philosophers often find philosophers overly anal in their apparent obsession with detail and completeness (and these behaviours sometimes annoyingly extend into everyday personal matters). Philosophers often find non-philosophers scattered and confused, and easily drawn into trivial side-issues.
Some people have considered that an important aspect of philosophy is asking questions, or, more precisely, asking appropriate questions. Whereas in everyday life one often stops questioning after some level of answer has been given, philosophers tend to push further and keep questioning. Some have said that this attitude of questioning shows a similarity between philosophers and children. Philosophers are those who have never really grown up (in some respects - hopefully not all respects), and children intuitively act philosophically. While there are countless philosophical questions, used in countless situations, I have noticed a tendency for philosophers to use three broad types of question (in addition to questions to do with logical consistency): (1) what does that really mean?; (2) what are the assumptions or presuppositions behind that?; and (3) what are the consequences of that?
Philosophy has affinities with many other academic disciplines. Many philosophers explicitly align themselves closest with the sciences and mathematics. There is seen to be a common goal of aiming to describe reality, a common attitude of systematic, dispassionate, objectivity while doing this, and a common method of postulating theories and critically searching for evidence for or against them. In both cases numerous individuals make small contributions to solving collectively identified problems. Sometimes philosophers also have a background in one or another of the sciences, as well as in philosophy. However, whereas the sciences typically (but not always) proceed by generating empirical data to find evidences, philosophy typically works by using analytical and logical inferences informed by data gathered from other disciplines. Many philosophers today readily accept and use data generated by the sciences, though some philosophers are critical of this and argue that the sciences contain implicit and unwarranted assumptions that bias or invalidate the results. (Stronger criticisms are often directed at certain scientists who engage in philosophy. Unfortunately there is a tendency these days for scientists, nearing the end of their careers, to write philosophical works. Most end up only embarrassing themselves, since they naively and unwittingly make basic blunders that have been soundly critiqued for generations, or think they have said something new, when it has already been analysed to death. Many scientists seem especially philosophically uninformed, and are under the mistaken impression that philosophy is what gets done by failed or retired scientists. Consequently, philosophers are particularly wary of scientists who step beyond their expertise to become "public intellectuals".)
Given that philosophers rarely engage in empirical research, philosophy is also often also linked with the arts, humanities, law, and (sometimes) theology. In some universities it is lumped together with certain of these other disciplines into a School. One similarity with law is that both disciplines place great importance on clarity and precision, with respect to language. Another is that they both value argumentative and dialectical skills. And there is overlap in content with repect to moral, legal and political philosophy - punishment, rights, responsibilities, contractual agreements, and so on. One similarity with theology is that both disciplines aim for the truth, though philosophy starts out with a sparser set of presuppositions than does theology. And again, there is overlap in content - the existence of God, the beginnings of the universe, purpose, the basis of morality, etc. But as with the sciences, philosophy is not uncritical of these other disciplines. And again, some of the criticisms have to do with the unquestioned assumptions behind the disciplines, or certain dominant parts of the disciplines. But sometimes the criticisms are with respect to the "philosophising" that goes on in these disciplines. One commentator calls such efforts "sophomoric nonsense", and lists such disciplines as "English, Law, Political Science, and sometimes History". We might plausibly add Sociology, Anthropology, Management Studies, Education, Theology, and Women's Studies to that list. There appears to be a disproportionately high number of individuals within these disciplines whose logical reasoning (and scholarly background) is faulty, and yet who seem to want to engage in amateur philosophy. ... So much for generalisations and disciplinary biases - it is always preferable to stick to analyses of specific situations and particular individuals' views (while I've intentionally avoided names and specifics, I could do it, but won't do it here).
My philosophical interests have been varied. The main "problem solving" areas that I have been working on are in the Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mind, and Metaphysics. I am particularly interested in such topics as concepts of God (and whether God might plausibly exist according to any such concept), the nature of minds and consciousness, what it takes for some entity (such as a person) to be the same thing over time, and whether free will exists. More recently, I have moved into Ethics, especially in the context of business and professionals. As to the "historical" aspect, I am particularly interested in Classical Chinese Philosophy (Confucius to the beginning of the first dynasty) and European Continental Philosophy (Kant to modern day in Germany and France).
