Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

For just as the engineer studies the structure of material things, so the philosopher studies the structure of thought.

To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.

To sum up: our ideas and concepts can be compared with the lenses through which we see the world. In philosophy the lens is itself the topic of study. Success will be a matter not of how much you know at the end, but of what you can do when the going gets tough: when the seas of argument rise, and confusion breaks out. Success will mean taking seriously the implications of ideas.

How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all.

Reflection enables us to step back, to see our perspective on a situation as perhaps distorted or blind, at the very least to see if there is argument for preferring our ways, or whether it is just subjective.

Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.

These are problems of the self, and its mortality, its knowledge, and the nature of the world it inhabits; problems of reality and illusion.

Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. This is the famous ‘Cogito, ergo sum’: ‘I think, therefore I am.’

Thinking? At last I have discovered it—thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist—that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be, that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist.... I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks.

The senses sometimes deceive us. We cannot distinguish occasions when they do from ones when they do not. So for all we know, any particular sense experience maybe deceiving us.

Skepticism

The harmony between our minds and the world is due to the fact that the world is responsible for our minds.

The Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath (1882–1945) used this lovely metaphor for our body of knowledge: We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom.

Any part can be replaced, provided there is enough of the rest on which to stand. But the whole structure cannot be challenged en bloc, and if we try to do so, we find ourselves on Descartes’s lonely rock. This approach is usually called ‘coherentism’. Its motto is that while every argument needs premises, there is nothing that is the premise of every argument.

It is good, then, to remember four options in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). There is rational foundationalism, as attempted by Descartes. There is natural foundationalism, as attempted in Hume. There is coherentism. And brooding over all of them, there is scepticism, or the view that there is no knowledge.

signpost, for instance, can point towards a village. But that seems to be a matter of the way it is taken. A signpost doesn’t in and of itself represent the way to the village. We have to learn how to take it. We could imagine a culture in which the same physical object, which is to us a signpost, had a quite different function: a display board, or a totem, or a piece of abstract art.

The past controls the present and future. You can’t control the past. Also, you can’t control the way the past controls the present and future. So, you can’t control the present and future.

People who accept this argument are called hard determinists, or incompatibilists, since they think that freedom and determinism are incompatible.

Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see the sun set; I can go to the theater; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife.’

Schopenhauer denies that our own self-understanding, our self-consciousness, displays our real freedom. We can interpret him as criticizing this argument: I am not conscious of the causal background needed for me to do Y. I know I sometimes do Y. So, I am conscious that there is no causal background needed for me to do Y.