Thought and Philosophy

Where does it come from?

January 27

Not every time that we talk about consciousness are we talking about experience. Sometimes ‘consciousness’ refers to awakeness. When you’re asleep at night, or blacked out from too much to drink, you’re not conscious in this sense of the term. Alternatively, sometimes ‘consciousness’ refers to awareness. It’s this kind of consciousness that you lack when you’ve zoned out while driving. You’re awake, but not you’re not fully aware of your surroundings. It’s also this kind of consciousness that activists target when they engage in the process of consciousness raising.

~ Amy Kind, from How to think about consciousness

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I no longer get stuck wondering where did my consciousness come from when I was born. Nope. I’m now stuck on: Where does it go every night when I fall asleep. …and where does it come from each morning that I awake?

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Reality?

January 26

Ever since Plato started telling stories about people trapped in caves, philosophers have pondered the relationship between the mind and reality. How can we be sure that the world we think we know is the real world? After all, we’ve all been mistaken before – a person in a store window might turn out to be a mannequin, or two lines that appear to be curved might actually be parallel – so how can we be certain we know reality as it truly is?

~ D J Hobbs, from How to think like a phenomenologist

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I’m not sure I want to think like a phenomenologist…

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It’s complex

January 23

So you think your choices have reasons behind them and, if these reasons are good ones, then you think that others, in principle, could see this, too. You recognise in yourself, and think that others should recognise in you, a choice aimed at something worth seeking, and a choice by someone who can make that call. This means that what you are after is ‘good’ not just in a sense confined to you, but visible to everyone. Once the goodness of your choice is visible to everyone, it is a kind of absolute goodness – a goodness that anyone could recognise.

~ Christine Korsgaard, from Philosophers and other animals

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Really complex. The road to hell is marked by unconsidered decisions.

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Be more philosophical

January 5

If you want to make a positive difference in the world—or simply maintain your sanity—you need to step back. You need to learn how to be more philosophical—which means being more discerning about what you let into your mind and learning how to see the big picture, calmly and with perspective.

~ Ryan Holiday, from This Habit Is Making You Miserable

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Just in case you had a negative reaction to the word philosophical: I distinctly recall when I thought “being philosophical” meant telling others how to do things, or at least pontificating about how I do things better. I distinctly recall learning that the word comes from “the love of truth”—and how that struck me deeply. I distinctly recall that the more I learned about philosophy in general, the more I wanted to learn about my philosophy—first discovering that I didn’t have a definitely chosen one, and then beginning to choose.

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Two perspectives

January 22, 2024

Everything is fun, until one’s expectations are crushed. I thought I was getting the convenience of online shopping for things that were previously literally unavailable; Instead, the local stores closed and I’ve lost the convenience of local purchasing. I thought I was getting expanded communication via email; Instead, I’ve been overrun by people taking advantage of the ease of access. In 1989 I was excited by what we could all do with the Internet. So excited, that in 1994 I quit a funded research position and dropped out of graduate school.

Today’s internet is largely shaped by a dialog between two ideas. One position considers personal data as a form of property, the opposing position considers personal data as an extension of the self. The latter grants inalienable rights because a person’s dignity – traditionally manifested in our bodies or certain rights of expression and privacy – cannot be negotiated, bought, or sold.

~ David Schmudde from, A Different Internet

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There’s nothing wrong with the Internet. There’s nothing wrong with people. There’s nothing wrong with government. The problem is in everyone’s failure to think things through. “Can” and “should” are very different animals. Until a plurality of people think things through—until a plurality of people stop delivering themselves into the power of ideas they do not know they have accepted—there will be nothing new under the sun.

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Happy. Generous. Contributing.

November 19, 2023

For years now I’ve been fascinated by groups of three.

These perspectives are not just useful literary devices. They are core practical perspectives that we adopt toward the world and our place in it. As we pursue our projects and pleasures, interact with others, and share public institutions and meanings, we are constantly shifting back and forth among these three practical perspectives, each bringing different elements of a situation to salience and highlighting different features of the world and our place in it as good or bad.

[…]

Am I happy? Am I generous? Am I contributing to the world? The moral struggle we face is finding a way to honestly and accurately answer ‘Yes’ to all three of these questions at once, over the course of a life that presents us with many obstacles to doing so.

~ Irene McMullin from, The right right thing to do

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Just yesterday, in a conversation for a podcast, I was responding to a guest who asked my opinion… I don’t think I’ve ever expressed what I said so clearly, when I suggested balancing the first-person and second-person points of view. And here I am one day later staring at something I originally read months ago, crafting a blog post… and *POW* this quite philosophical essay is talking about balancing the three perspectives of the first-, second-, and third-person. But, sorry, now I’ve buried the lead.

Am I happy? Am I generous? Am I contributing to the world? This group of 3 questions is clearly yet another guiding principle straight from the How to Be a Human manual. (Which I feel compelled to point out I’m certain exists despite my never having received a copy upon arrival in this human form.)

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A flourishing life

November 3, 2023

Eudaimonia has come up before here on the ‘ol blog.

Simply put, I dislike having to use words from other languages. As soon as I queue up such a word for speaking, I imagine some leathery cowboy bitching about highfalutin words. (Which I, also immediately, find to be sublime hypocrisy on the part of my imagined critic.)

For the ancient Greeks, eudaimonia was considered the highest human good. While the word doesn’t easily translate into English, it roughly corresponds to a happy, flourishing life — to a life well-lived.

Eudaimonia wasn’t a destination — a nirvana that, once reached, initiated a state of bliss. Happiness wasn’t something you felt, but that you did; it was a dynamic, ongoing activity.

What that activity centered on was the pursuit of arete, or virtue.

~ Brett & Kate McKay from, Aristotle’s 11 Excellences for Living a Flourishing Life | The Art of Manliness

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Anyway, there’s simply no way to say it succinctly in English. I’ve always wondered if the language (some word or phrase) is missing because we Westerners don’t think about eudaimonia— Or if we don’t think about eudaimonia because we don’t have the language for it. I want a single English word for all of that above because I think about it all the time.

Also, are you now wondering—more generally—if your primary language (the one you speak, read, write, and hear in your thoughts) affects the way you think or the types of thoughts you are capable of having?

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Test in the kitchen

October 5, 2023

Sausages sautéed with potatoes and onions! It’s also highly advisable to have a philosopher or two on hand. A few pages of Plato while working on a baked ham. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus over a bowl of spaghetti with littleneck clams. We think best when we bring opposites together, when we realize that all these realities, one inside the other, are somehow connected. That’s how the wonder and amazement that are so necessary to both poetry and philosophy come about. A “truth” detached and purified of pleasures of ordinary life is not worth a damn in my view. Every grand theory and noble sentiment ought to be first tested in the kitchen—and then in bed, of course.

~ Charles Simic

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Ancients’ philosophy

September 1, 2023

Clear communication is a sign of understanding. Understanding the idea to be communicated is necessary, but not sufficient, for clear communication. I think in language (I point this out because I wonder if some people don’t think in language) and that leads me to word-smithing. I’m often searching for just the right word or phrase, and then delighted with myself if I find it. Having such labels for larger ideas is a check-point for myself, internally, that I actually have understanding.

Gregory Hays, one of Marcus Aurelius’s best translators, writes in his introduction to Meditations, “If he had to be identified with a particular school, [Stoicism] is surely the one he would have chosen. Yet I suspect that if asked what it was that he studied, his answer would not have been ‘Stoicism’ but simply ‘philosophy.’”

He then notes that in the ancient world, “philosophy” was not perceived the way it is today. It played a much different role. “It was not merely a subject to write or argue about,” Hays writes, “but one that was expected to provide a ‘design for living’—a set of rules to live one’s life by.”

~ Ryan Holiday from, 19 Rules For A Better Life (From Marcus Aurelius) – RyanHoliday.net

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Just because I have a label for something—Stoicism in this case—doesn’t mean I label myself as that. The obvious reason is that my label has a lot of other context attached (in my mind) and chances are little to none that any of that context is present for another person. Labels are useful as shorthand, but only if we have the shared understanding.

Life is short. There are ends—things I have done which others can observe. There are the means I’ve chosen to those ends. And then there’s justification. I don’t have the time (nor the inclination) to explain everything—and frankly no one wants to hear that much from me (or from anyone.) I just find it interesting when I discover something I do (or say or think) for which I’ve not really thought through the labels… thought through the justification.

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All is constant change

August 30, 2023

It seems obvious that finding a right someone for a healthy relationship is all of subtle, difficult and random; it involves some amount of activity and passivity. Things are made more difficult by my not knowing who I am, and who would be “good” for me.

The best thing for your nervous system is another person. Unfortunately, the worst thing for your nervous system is also another person. An unhealthy relationship can screw up your body budget and, with it, your health and your life. So what makes for a healthy or unhealthy relationship, and how do you maintain one?

~ Lisa Feldman Barrett from, Does Buddhist detachment allow for a healthier togetherness? | Aeon Essays

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In the beginning of a relationship, everything is immediate. There’s a seemingly endless stream of, “what shall we do tomorrow?” and “do this because I like it, and stop that because I dislike it.” In surprisingly little time it becomes clear that the two (or more!) people in a relationship are changing. If I’ve found the perfect someone for the me today, who will they be in a decade? …who will I be then? 20, 30, 40 years later? It’s all the complexity of two people, where both people are continuously changing. It strikes me this is much more like surfing than trying to reach the pinnacle of a mountain.

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Fragmentation

July 26, 2023

What if I don’t know how to take something apart? One option is to apply excessive force and break the thing open. That works, but obviously sacrifices the thing; this is particularly useless if I wanted to take something apart because I need to fix it, or understand it. Generally, the smash method always works, but is almost never useful.

Yet thought also goes wrong somehow, and produces destruction. This arises from a certain way of thinking, i.e., fragmentation. This is to break things up into bits, as if they were independent. It’s not merely making divisions, but it is breaking things up which are not really spearate. It’s like taking a watch and smashing it into fragments, rather than taking it apart and finding its parts. The parts are parts of a whole, but the fragments are just arbitrarily broken off from each other. Things which really fit, and belong together, are treated as if they do not. That’s one of the features of thought that’s going wrong.

~ David Bohm from, On Dialogue p56

I’m perpetually on a journey of self-awareness. I’m quite often applying my mind to understand things. This idea from Bohm about fragmentation, and in particular fragmentation being bad because it misses out on the relationships and inherent properties of the natural parts (in the sense of disassembled-watch parts versus smashed-watch bits). This idea of fragmentation is a warning against my running with the first way I manage to understand something; just because I’ve found one way to understand (smash) something into understandable pieces, doesn’t mean that’s the best way.

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Prescription

June 28, 2023

One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents that imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.

~ Paolo Freire

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