Monthly Archives: March 2011

What is philosophy good for?

Back a few decades ago (more than I care to admit) when I was a neophyte philosophy graduate program at the University of California, Irvine, the graduate faculty put in my candidacy for a Ford Foundation Grant to fund one year of my graduate work. I took a flight to San Francisco to be interviewed by a committee charged with scrutinizing applicants for the grant. The grant was one for minority graduate students; so the committee was composed of people dealing with minority advocacy programs both inside and outside of academia. I thought I was handling their questions well until a woman (probably a social worker) asked me, Why would anyone study philosophy? “What good is philosophy in the struggle for civil rights and social justice?” she asked. Unfortunately I was not prepared for that question. I simply assumed that philosophy was a subject worthwhile pursuing; and that I did not have to defend it as a subject worth studying. Nor had I given much thought to the role of philosophy in the context of political and social problems in American society at that time (1970 decade).

Reaching for some kind of response, I mumbled something about philosophy teaching the student how to think critically; and critical thinking, after all, was valuable in all fields and activities. I was not surprised that the questioner was not at all impressed. Even I was embarrassed by my stock answer. Needless to say, I was reaching. At that point of the interview I figured I had blown my chances of getting the Ford grant. I figured I would be returning to my work as a teaching assistant to support my continuing graduate studies. And this is how things turned out.
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Later I would entertain the question: What is philosophy good for? In trying to come up with answers to that question, I had to try to state what philosophy is, which is not an easy task. But I jotted down a few ideas as to how we might describe or define this ‘thing’ we call philosophy.
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Of course, the easy answer is simply to refer to philosophy as an academic discipline taught at most colleges and universities. But the question as to the value of the subject would ask why colleges and universities bother to include philosophy as a discipline in their curricula. Surely it is not simply that traditionally a liberal arts program at a university includes a department of philosophy. That answer won’t do. Even if we accept the frequently stated claim that studies in philosophy are great preparation for students who are going into other professions such as law, economics, business, politics, social theory, education, and diplomacy, the question still remains, why would anyone pursue a major and graduate degree in philosophy? What social value, if any value, is realized by specialization in the field of philosophy?
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Most people who major and go into graduate studies in philosophy do so as preparatory to becoming members of some teaching faculty in philosophy. So the social value of such studies comes down to the value of perpetuating the teaching and study of philosophy. Does any significant social value result from the study and teaching of philosophy?

So the question bounces back to us: why perpetuate this social institution called “philosophy”? What good does it bring about? At this point one would try to say what the activity of philosophy might be, in order to decide whether or not there is any social value there.
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If we think about it we will realize that people who do philosophical work, whether in academia or outside, whether teaching, writing and publishing, or just personal study, reflection and discussion, such people do a variety of different things. Despite the many attempts to define philosophy, there is no essential qualities that define philosophy, other than very general tendencies. Whether we look at the vertical development (history) of philosophical work or at the horizontal (current trends) aspect, philosophical people do very different things and have very different ideas about ‘philosophy.’ There is the more technical, logical, and linguistic philosophy practiced in England and other English-speaking countries. There are the philosophers of science who see philosophy as primarily the work of analyzing and exposing the results of the natural sciences. (For example, what are the implications for our view of physical reality from the latest theories in particle physics?) In the twentieth century we saw Pragmatism, Existentialism and Postmodernism as other trends that attracted much following. There are those who see philosophy as a version of literary expression. Historically, philosophy has been closely identified with theology and with religious thought. And this very limited statement of the variety of philosophical thinking applies only to Western culture. When we attempt to state the forms of philosophy practiced in other parts of the world, our variety expands even more. Borrowing an idea from Wittgenstein, we can say that philosophy consists of a wide family of loosely related activities, with no essential core that defines them. In a sense, one way of trying to ‘define’ philosophy is to point various types of ‘philosophers’ and philosophies and survey some of the great variety of work that falls under that category.
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When anyone gives you his/her idea of philosophy, you must always remember that this is only that person’s perspective. Nobody can state the essential definition of philosophy that will accurately characterize all philosophical perspectives and work. (“Love of wisdom” and “search for truth” just won’t take us too far.) Any statement of the nature of philosophy is only a perspective. When I give my perspective, there will be many others who engage in philosophy who will strongly object. But this does not imply that such a statement is without value. It can still be helpful in our attempt to gain some understanding of the subject.
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One perspective: Philosophy is the attempt to make sense of things, to sort out ideas, beliefs, concepts, and theories about our reality. It is the attempt to clarify our thinking and reach some understanding of our world. This will involve criticism and evaluation of our beliefs, theories, doctrines, and values. But it will also involve the attempt to assemble a picture of our reality; to tell an apt story.

As such, philosophy will have some similarities (but significant differences) to
• Literary criticism
• The natural sciences,
• Work in logic and mathematics,
• Psychological counseling (both as counselor and patient),
• History and the social sciences,
• The work of a courtroom lawyer,
• Police investigative work,
• Computer science and Engineering,
• Expression of the novelist and the poet,
• The work of theologians and mystics, and
• Satire and political analysis/commentary.

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If philosophy, as a discipline, has anything to offer (in the 20th, 21st century), it may be in terms of examination and sustained critiques of some of the following:

• human existence (nature of .., meaning of…, value of ….)
• the mind (nature of thought, consciousness, ….).
(Have the cognitive sciences taken over here?)
• religion (theism, mysticism, supernaturalism, biblical study and criticism)
• nature and function of the natural sciences
• nature of mathematics
• scope of human knowledge (Epistemology, Psychology)
• concepts of truth and reality
• logic, linguistic clarity, metaphor and the uses of language
• implications of evolutionary sciences
(biology, anthropology, psychology).
• theories in contemporary physics and cosmology
• evolutionary biology, anthropology, & psychology
• moral values and behavior (Can war be justified?)
• culture, politics, history, economics, governmental. policies

And of course, there are the studies of the great figures in philosophy and the history of philosophy. Such concentration can teach us much about how others have dealt with difficult questions that life and history present.
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So, besides possibly being a great intellectual adventure, what is all this (‘philosophy’) good for? Maybe the answer is that it is not worth much, if you’re the type of person anxious to act in resolving our many social and political problems, or if you’re the type who wants to go about earning a fortune and acquiring power. (For such types philosophy is likely a waste of time.) But if you’re the type of person who is not satisfied with society’s standard answers to difficult question and if you’re the type of person who has advanced from childhood (where parents prop you up in your walking and the experts do your thinking,) and you desire to walk on your own and think on your own, then maybe study, reflection, and interaction in philosophy is the thing for you. Maybe philosophy is good for something after all.
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Final Note: This satisfies me, but I doubt that the Ford Foundation Committee would have been moved. Most likely – even after hearing such a spiel as I’ve outlined, they would not have awarded me the grant!

Does recognition of the burden of war require support of war policy?

A recent news story in the Washington Post relates the angry claim by a grieving father of a dead serviceman that Americans are largely indifferent to the sacrifice that military families make in our current wars.

Lt. Gen. John Kelly, who lost son to war, says U.S. largely unaware of sacrifice

Before he addressed the crowd that had assembled in the St. Louis Hyatt Regency ballroom last November, Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly had one request. “Please don’t mention my son,” he asked the Marine Corps officer introducing him
Four days earlier, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly , 29, had stepped on a land mine while leading a platoon of Marines in southern Afghanistan. He was killed instantly.
Without once referring to his son’s death, the general delivered a passionate and at times angry speech about the military’s sacrifices and its troops’ growing sense of isolation from society.
“Their struggle is your struggle,” he told the ballroom crowd of former Marines and local business people. “If anyone thinks you can somehow thank them for their service, and not support the cause for which they fight – our country – these people are lying to themselves. . . . More important, they are slighting our warriors and mocking their commitment to this nation.”
Kelly is the most senior U.S. military officer to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan. He was giving voice to a growing concern among soldiers and Marines: The American public is largely unaware of the price its military pays to fight the United States’ distant conflicts. Less than 1 percent of the population serves in uniform at a time when the country is engaged in one of the longest periods of sustained combat in its history.
By Greg Jaffe –Washington Post Staff Writer, March 2, 2011

There are several loosely related issues in this story. First, undoubtedly the U.S. population at large is largely unaware of the real human cost of our military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of us do not risk life and limb in those parts of the world; nor do we have close family members who serve. But military families do, and sacrifice plenty for our government’s war policy. They are the ones who carry the real burden of these wars. And to be sure, most Americans do not give much attention to the cost in human lives for the Iraqi and Afghanistan civilian victims of our military intervention and the fighting in those countries. Americans are more interested in the cost of gasoline, the economic recession, the adventures and misadventures of celebrities, and the results of the latest Super Bowl game, than they are in human suffering, sacrifice, and death in such places as Iraq and Afghanistan.

But not all Americans fall into this category: that of not caring about the latest, questionable military policy of our government. Some of us do care and are deeply disturbed by the unfair burden that some people have to bear, when our government leaders and politicians decide war is good policy.

Who among us does not feel some sympathy for the Lt. General Kelly and the loss of his son in Afghanistan? Who among us does not appreciate the service and sacrifice of those military persons who serve and risk their lives in our recent wars: Iraq and Afghanistan? But with due respect to his grievous loss, General Kelly is nonetheless wrong when he declares that one cannot appreciate the service and sacrifice of our military personnel without supporting the cause for which they fight. Who can seriously believe that anti-war people have no compassion for the suffering and sacrifice of those who do the actual fighting? I fall into this category of opposition to the policy but yet appreciate the sacrifice of those who are compelled to serve in combat, and I’ll bet many of you fall into this category also. I don’t feel that I am lying either to myself or to others.

It is a gross oversimplification to say that appreciation for those carrying out their duty as military personnel requires that one support the government policy that sent them there; and it is another gross oversimplification to hold that those who serve in such places as Iraq or Afghanistan support the government’s policy that put them there. Both statements are false. There are many counter-examples: those how condemn the war policy but appreciate the work and sacrifice of the soldiers who are directly affected by that policy. And there are plenty of counter-examples of officers and enlisted men/women who, while serving effectively in a war zone, question and even reject their government’s policy.

A favored ploy of the promoters of war policy is to find some excuse for military intervention in some foreign land; and then they argue that Congress and the American people must support the military policy because doing otherwise is failure to support our fighting men and women who are sacrificing so much on behalf of the war effort. But this is just one tactic by which the promoters of war keep the rest of us from questioning or scrutinizing the policies and thinking behind the military intervention.

What, after all, is the cause for which our military fights in Afghanistan? What was the cause for which so many sacrificed so much in Iraq? In the case of Iraq, any knowledgeable person is aware that the “causes” for which the GW Bush administration committed an invasion of Iraq were either false causes or exaggerated (Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction; false claims about a connection between Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda). In the case of Afghanistan, the apparent cause for which the U.S. fights has something to do with the continuing war on terrorism and the need to deny Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda any refuge in that country; a joint cause is the fight to deny the Taliban control of the country. None of these connect clearly with a defense of American or actions necessary to our national security. In short, we can reject or have serious doubts about the “cause” for which our people are sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan while sympathizing with families like that of Lt. General Kelly and feeling sadness over the loss of lives like that of his son, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly, the lives of many other young servicemen and the tragedy that is brought on the people of those countries.