The Manual
sheet 2:
Barking At The Balloons
A personal look at Philosophy and some speculations as to how and why we do it.
On the crisp clear air of a late summers dawn, Don Nicoly Korstoma, standing on his hind legs, erect and tall, announced his philosophy to the world in harsh yelps and barks. His wispy coat, swept back by a gentle breeze, shimmered in the iridescent light of a climbing sun. I watched him as he cocked his head from one side to the other, in the manner of perplexed curiosity his gaze transfixed on the sky just above the horizon. For an hour or so this went on, and suddenly, perhaps fed up by the new phenomena, he retired to his comfy spot out side his kennel, head down between crossed front paws, but eyes still following the multicoloured orbs as they tracked across the morning sky. To anthropomorphosis this event, I considered that my Russian wolf hound was, in his aristocratic way, philosophising; speculating on the unfathomable, his sudden retirement announcing the arrival of an imaginary design that explained for him the phenomena of the hot air balloons that invaded his morning view.
I enjoyed my anthropomorphic interpretation of Don’ antics. Not only because the notion of a philosophizing dog fitted his character but also, I felt that it represented a faithful paradigm that helps to illustrate a meaning for philosophy, “speculating on the unfathomable”. It is difficult to give a simple definition of Philosophy that on the one hand dose justice to philosophy’s divers disciplines of to day and yet still capture quite so succinctly what I believe is the historical the spirit of philosophy. - Speculating on the unfathomable.
When all knowledge was still in its infancy, like Don Nicoly the early philosophers could have done little more than speculate on the mysteries of life that tantalized their insatiable curiosity but man initial ignorance, unlike Don Nicoly’s was short lived and what was speculation became Knowledge.
Such speculating, or philosophising makes a starting point for thoughts on a given subject, a benchmark for others to foil against as it were. So in many ways philosophy can be seen as the vanguard to man’s knowledge. The plethora of scientific disciplines that we have today, owe their existence to the initiating speculative guesswork of yesterdays philosophers.
To wax lyrical for a moment- in a daydream I imagined a personified Philosophus as the tragic hero of a classical play, cursed by the Gods to be forever jilted, never to celebrate his marriage to one of the Knowlegia sisters. For when ever he is about to be wed to his betrothed she changes her mind and marries one of the Siencius brothers instead. Philosophy is the “speculation” and not the knowledge it’s self- that belongs to a science.
From my assertion that all knowledge has been initiated by the speculation of philosophy one might assume that philosophy, as the mother of all knowledge, could claim the pursuit of facts as one of its aspiration but I would suggest that philosophy reflects a more human countenance!
How?
There are limitation to any analogy, as the saying goes “..they serve to illustrate not to prove” The parallels of a speculating Don Nicoly with that of human philosophy, like any analogy however apposite soon part company. However I would like to carry on using the term “speculating” instead of philosophising, as it is a more familiar term that I feel we can analyse more easily. In doing so I am not saying that one is synonymous with the other but rather that philosophising can employ speculating as a function. Further more in our endeavours to understand how and why man philosophises, is to cogent to look at the reality of the parallel I made between animals and man – that is to say why animals don’t or cant philosophise or speculate.
So what is speculation anyway? There is for me a connotation of a “speculative deal” a la the stock market, implying risk; however I do not feel that this connotation is germane in this context. I suppose the over riding aspects of speculation in this context are the ideas of guessing and hypothesizing. Of course guessing and hypothesizing are in effect the opposite ends to the same length of string, most hypotheses will have an element of imaginative guesswork and conversely most guesswork will contain a degree of rational. One can justly conclude therefore that any philosophical speculation, initiated by a stimulus of balloons or other wise, will contain relative proportions of imaginative guesswork to deduced hypothesis.
This understanding about how we speculate only contributes a little to our overall understanding of how we Philosophises. After all, all I have done is to supplant two more words where I only had one before unless there is subtle difference of ability between speculating on the one hand and imaginative guesswork and deduced hypothesis on the other.
I have suggested that animals can’t speculate in the sense that a philosophising man can, but can they employ imaginative guesswork or deductive reasoning. Well I suppose that depends on how we define those terms. Can animals imagine or deduce? If in essence imagining is a form of remembering and a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect can describe deduction, then certainly many animals would appear to posses theses abilities, take for instance the Lammergeyer who drops bones from a great height to get at the marrow, or the laboratory rats and squirrels that display such ingenuity when solving the problems they have been set. Admittedly these abilities can be said to be learnt patterns of behaviour without true understanding of the processes involved but not withstanding this accusation I feel that some animals can exhibit albeit in a limited way both the abilities of imagining and deduction, so why cant they speculate.
I can’t remember why but one day several summers ago I was considering if it was possible to think with out using words. Indeed when I tried to do it I found it virtually impossible, true this was partly because I am so used to using words that they kept on coming into my mind. I also became aware that much of my thinking process was made up of having a kind conversation with myself. From the banality of recognizing a beautiful sunset, To the complexities of writing a poem about a beautiful sunset, I could here myself saying the words and although not audible the reply, was a sense of affirmation as if the statement was being heard and agreed to by an other part of me, It was as if the creative processes needed to talk or at least communicate with an “affirming possible an analytical adjudicator”. (I can just enjoy a beautiful sun set at an emotional level without have to analyse it.)
Animals can’t speculate, because they can’t talk to themselves? I don’t think there is anything new in suggesting that it is the use of a sophisticated form of language in order to communicate that sets man apart from other animals. But it is not the communicating with one another that has made the impact on our ability to speculate but rather the effect of being able to communicate with ourselves. Language has allowed us to “package” things and concepts into words, to form abstract concept that by their complexity can only really be “held in the mind” when one can attribute a label to it. It is not only the ability of having abstract thought- to conceive of intangible concepts like love or hate that has lead to our ability to speculate but also to think in abstraction- that is to say to be able to conceive of tangible objects like a door or a simple machine like a leaver when dose not have one in front of one.
It is difficult to asses the degree to which any animal is capable of abstract thought with or without language but where as my rats and lammergeyers etc may be able to imagine and deduce when face to face with a problem they cannot I believe do so “off line” as it were- a roosting lammergeyer speculating on the merits of a particular stratagem.
So man, by virtue of his ability to think in words can speculate and animals due to their inability can’t.
Whilst by no means being an definitive thesis on the subject, I think that I have given a plausible reasoning as to the mechanics of how man might be able to philosophise. Before I go on to look at the implications of this ability and why we do it, I would like to consider a little aside that if true would suggest that our thinking capability is an unintentional by product.
Although many of the changes that take place within evolutionary biology start as mutations only those changes that have merit –(help an organisms to survive), will be maintained –survival of the fittest and all that. As the learning of language is an unlikely mutation one would presume that such a skill would not have been embark on over several generations unless the benefits of doing so had had an evolutionary benefits along the way. It is therefore reasonable to deduce that we learnt language to communicate with each other not in order to communicate with ourselves, and yet I would suggest that it was talking to ourselves that made us smart. It must be therefore be with some irony that the greater profundity, that of man to communicate with himself, must have come about as a by-product of having evolved a language in order communicate with each other.
The implications
It is probably fair to say that the effecting of any skill or ability needs time, time to explore the full extent of the possibilities that a new skill allows. So it would have been, I imagine, when man was exploring language and the subsequent ability to think in words. So, as to what happened when and where, must be virtually impossible for ancient historians to say with any accuracy. But some where along the line things did happen.
“….to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they new that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
Bible (King James) Genesis 3: 6, 7, 8.
(Not being a theologian I can say definitively what knowledge one was likely to gain by the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, referred to in this biblical quote, but I feel that the following paragraph fits the bill.)
When man acquired the ability of abstract thought, it was inevitable that he would bump into a scrap of knowledge; an awareness, that above all others would define a moment of momentous proportions. A scrap of knowledge that would put man through an intangible metamorphosis, allowing him to transcend the gulf from innocent ignorance to culpable knowledge:
“I know I am”.
No, this is not a variation on a Dacartian theme but simply a concluding summation of the “moment” when man directed his abstract thinking on himself and in doing became aware of his own existence. It perhaps it could read: “I see myself (as a part of existence.)” As if he had acquired a mirror of abstraction- to be able to stand out side himself as if he were a third person look in at himself.
I should perhaps make clear that in talking about “man” as in mankind, I am aware that it is individuals that partake of this awareness of ourselves and it is therefore not a collective activity nor when I say “moment” do I mean that these events happened over night as it were but was undoubtedly a protracted affair.
To day our children are brought up in societies where, although not specifically taught that they are, or should be, aware of them selves, they are immersed in the effects of a society that is collectively aware, an example of this might be a religion or laws etc. (More on this later.) But interestingly enough I believe we all still go thought our own “coming to terms process” where the considerations may not be on the fact of our awareness of our selves but on the implications of that awareness, to posse the questions; who am I and what is the meaning of life,- my life? (More on this later.)
Why
Mans awareness of himself is an event of which the enormity cannot be over stated. A poor analogy might be that of someone waking up to find one is suffering from amnesia- not knowing who one is or where one was. To become conscious of ones own existence, as in “I know that I am”, dose not tells you who or what one is. So like any amnesiac one would begin to searches for ones identity. One would try to look for answers to the questions of who one is in order to make sense of ones existence and ones surroundings. To “get ones head round” to use the vernacular the fearful realities engendered by this new intellectual awareness; for instance of becoming aware of ones own impotence at being part of an existence in which one had no hand in ordaining, and most certainly the reality of ones own mortality. (More on this later)
Incidentally this is a good motive for man to philosophise, to search for ones own identity, and must contribute greatly to the reason why we philosophises and indeed gives us more of a picture as to what Philosophy is- a searching. Although it may employ speculation it dose not take with it the connotation of “idle speculation” a passive curiosity but rather the compulsion of a search. What I described earlier as the “insatiable curiosity” in regard to mans apparent appetite for knowledge could be explained in his desire to have answers to his search for his own identity.
So where and when could one conclude that man initiated a conscious search for his Identity. Don’t think I would be out of place in saying that if one had to give a starting point to western cultural knowledge the Greek Empire would probably hold sway; with the philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and the mathematicians Pythagoras and Archimedes to name but four. One could perhaps claim that this was a period that saw the search for knowledge in a way that had not been done before, not least because much of it was documented allowing us the legacy of their genius but also by the depth and breadth of their exploration. I think it would be fair to say that their exploration did include questions as to the identity of man and his purpose as well as many other studies. Indeed much was made by the early western philosophers as to the nature of knowledge itself and so developed a new branch of philosophy called Epistemology. By my under standing it attempts to quantify what knowledge is. One would imagine that in the first place knowledge would have been self-evident, if one knew something that would be knowledge. However with the advent of man discovering some of the basic mechanics of the universe and in particular mathematics he discovered he could derive knowledge from with in his own mind without reference to the real world. And so the controversy begins, with the empiricists claiming that only knowledge gained by observation is true knowledge, while the rationalists claim that a purer level of knowledge can be derived a priori, through the mind. Well this is roughly how it started but ever since each successive generation of philosophers have added their own mix on this amalgam of ideas. (I have no intentions of diving into the verbal morass of semantic convulsions that have been expounded over the last two thousand years)
One of the problems in coming to a debate that has been running for a wee while, Is that one tends to firstly, assume one knows and understands the basis of the arguments inception and secondly that one tacitly accepts the outcome of premises that have already been argued. This building process of successive generations being able to be constructed on the arguments of previous generations is of course very important, for arguments to evolve beyond that of an individual. However these assumptions can be a mistake in that many an argument is of a time and circumstance and that subsequent attitudinal movements leave the debate, if not moribund at least to send a new protagonist barking up a fallen tree.
To debate something is obviously a human occupation and although one may say an argument is about one thing and that indeed everything pertaining to the argument itself may be very straightforward and of that thing, it may not exactly reflect the true nature or desires behind the face value of the debate. For instance when the early sophists and philosophers were debating the essence of knowledge it might be reasonable to assume, bearing in mind the situation between the rhetoric of the sophists and the considerations of those that called themselves philosophers, that the unwritten aspect of the debate was a desire for each of the protagonists to have a more valid grasp of the truth hence a debate as to the that which is true knowledge. Further more I cannot believe that Descartes was not writing his philosophy mindful of the Scholastic heritage that he brought to an end, not that this in anyway invalidates what he said just that his motivations may not be explicit to what and why he is writing. It is of course impossible to say what influence this human aspect to the debate may have caused, I am just minded of Bishop Hair-duke telling me that the way to read the old testimony is to see it as set of answers to a whole lot of questions, the trick is to know what the questions are. I think that the only conclusion I am drawing from all this is that the debate in regard to knowledge is not of face value and has as a result lost ist direction some where in history.
OK, so what is my turn on knowledge? Let me first say that it should be remembered that the concept “Knowledge”, is a man made abstract label to identify information gleaned in whatever way from the world around us that subsequently resides within our minds.
The thing that I call a chair just is, but the particulars of that that is, reside in my mind as the knowledge I call a chair.
To that extent all things just are even if that thing happens to be a mechanism or an understanding, they are of themselves and therefore should not be seen as types knowledge. This might sound like a bit of futile semantics but for me it stops my thinking of the things in the world around me in terms of types knowledge.
I find any augment that wants to separate things that are into categories of knowledge as spurious, knowledge is, as I said earlier, is a man made abstract label to identify information gleaned in whatever way from the world around us that subsequently resides within our minds. One cannot apply attributes to things that are beyond that which they are, to say that one type of knowledge is “better” or more valid than another is both specious and obvious, specious because as I have already said one cannot apply attributes to things that are beyond that which they are, and obvious in that the method of obtaining that which may become knowledge may indeed vary and that that variance may produce differing degrees of reliability with respect to the fidelity of the thing that is, being that which our knowledge say it is but this fidelunreliability dose not change the essence of the of that which is nor the nature of what knowledge is, however it is derived. That which dose become knowledge dose so because we decide it should and presumably part of the nature of those things that become knowledge is the certainty or not with which we can say a thing is or is not the thing that we say it is. After all there have been those things that we have called knowledge that have turn out to be wrong knowledge for which presumably we are not blaming the knowledge.
Man undoubtedly possesses the intellectual capacity to understand some of the mechanical (mechanical as in the mechanics of) aspects of how the universe works and that consequently can, using the understanding of one situation as a pattern make deductions that can apply to different situations. But then that is not that surprising, although some things may appear to be chaotic, on the hole existence displays a high degree of order and consequentiality. But at the end of the day whether it is Pythagoras’s theorem or my calling a chair a chair it is one in the same Knowledge; information about out there residing in here.
It was the third day of the week in late summer and Spring Onion had taken to walking down by the creek after school, it was quiet and restful down there, he could relax and gather his thoughts on the hard work he did on the that day. Well that was only part of the reason, the first time he came down discovered an odd thing as he walked round the far bank beautiful fish lay out on the grass bank.At first he thought it must have jumped outand then puzzeled about it for a while but seeing as it was stil wet and fresh he took it home to eat. Well as I said that was the first time at the beginning of the summer and sure enough every time since there has been a fresh fish neatly laid out on the bank. Subsiquently he had spent hours pondering the possible reasons for the phanoma
Bearing in mind that I was only looking at knowledge because I am asserting that mans desire for knowledge is part of his desire for an identity that came about by him becoming aware of his own existence due to the ability to think abstractly about himself. I further claimed or suggested that that facts or the truth with in philosophy might not be sole aim but I some what enigmatical suggested that philosophy might have a more “human continence” which I feel I have alluded to in suggesting that many a debate has an alternate agenda.
Having said all that I want to say epistemologically I should return to man searching for his identity; I really only brought up the topic and debate of epistemology to contrast this apparent search for an authentic knowledge with that of the next subject that I wish to look at; beliefs
The problem is that there is no obvious “knowledge like answers” to man’s question of his identity. So one has to conclude that some knowledge is findable and some is not. What then do we do with our search for our identity?
As a father I know that my children use their imagination to make up stories for all sorts of situations, some are stories that I can best describe as those of empowerment where they attribute to themselves great abilities and perhaps in so doing work out their fears of inferiority or impotence, Although it may be the villainous character of the latest TV cartoon that personify my son’s fears in essence we may well deal similarly with our fears of ignorance by attributing a position for ourselves in existence based on the flimsiest of evidence. It is a bit like ignorance being a pitch black room devoid of light by describing the room, even if it is from the most insubstantial evidence we give the room light and in doing make it less fearful. So I am suggesting that we use our imagination to make things up; well that not that remarkable other than that on the one hand, with knowledge we appear to have an obsession with finding “true knowledge” and here we are in the next breath as it were making knowledge up! I think the why must relate to the depth of the computation that we feel towards having an identity but the how is a bit more interesting.
Long before our Greek forbears were giving us their knowledge, beliefs dominated man s life as indeed they did during the time of the Greeks and for some still are to day. But if the searching for knowledge of our Greek forbears marks the point where rational intellectual answers were sort, then beliefs I propose are the instinctual intellectual answers.
What do I mean by this? Clearly man is an animal and as an animal is subject to the instinctual desires and motivations of any animal. Consequently any development such as that of an intellect would be encompassed within our primal instincts. It must then follow that our instinctual nature, principally that of surviving will manifest is self through our intellect. In other words our intellect would be employed towards our survival stratagems hence perhaps our technological world of today.
Further more if we look specifically at the interaction of our primary instinctual programming, that of “surviving in order to procreate” and assimilate that into intellectual context what do we end up with?
Well to explain of what I think is happening is this for me very difficult by virtue of its complexity. Let me start by making some rather obvious premises. I am saying that man has become aware of his own existence, the use of the word aware would suggest conscious thought of that awareness of his own existence, but let us suppose for a moment that that thought was intellectually interpreted but was conceived from an instinctual notion. One might conceivably be aware of some thing at an instinctual level with out being truly conscious of the awareness. In actual fact we do this quite a lot of the time where our action although clearly are employing an intellectual complexity, we are not fully aware of the true reasoning behind the action they are be drive instinctually. Clearly then we can be driven, that is motivated by instincts of survival with out being truly conscious of the fact.
This for me is Ego; the conscious or unconscious intellectualisation of oneself being the object of one instinctual desire to survive or put more simply the intellectualisation of our instincts.
Let us consider for a moment what we have, we have an instinct that is motivating us to survive, we have an intellect that is capable of drawing conclusions about the consequentiality of our existence and we have the nagging fears of mortality and impotence all of which we might not be truly conscious of. Remember our pitch-dark room? Is it not conceivable that our instincts would use our intellect in some way help this situation, in a similar vain to that of my children as they make up there stories unaware of the true motivation as to why they are doing it. I am suggesting that originally our beliefs are the instinctual answer to the philosophical conundrums that man found himself in when he became aware albeit unconsciously of his own existence. If such a hypothesis is to be credible then one should find that our belief are dealing with those topics I mentioned death impotence and survival. Well I can think of no belief structure that dose not deal implicitly with many have an added degree of sophistication. Take for instance man, viewing a world that by its design would suggest not only consequential order but from his own domestic creativity a degree of personified responsibility that he can see in his own prodigy. It therefore cannot be a large jump to attribute the same qualities to an imaginary creator responsible for parts or the whole of the rest of existence.
So if not pursuit of philosophical truth, what was the motive for man, in needing to make sense of his world?
I know of no early civilization that does not have some form of construct on the subject. The importance of these constructs cannot be underestimated man needed to believe that he understood the design and mechanisms of life and by getting in with the creators, the ones responsible might allow him some control over the vagaries of an unpredictable world.
I am sure that early man was convinced that his constructs were true, indeed there very value, a “placate” to his fears made it a necessity, but of course it did not make the constructs true.
I believe that this face to philosophy shows a very human countenance in contrasts to the intellectual rigors of say logic. Making sense of life in order to placate our fears may well be an alternative motive for philosophy and can be called a hidden agenda. I suspect we would be kidding ourselves if we did not recognize that the purity of our philosophising to day might well be being corrupted by the desires of what we want to be true. Such corruption, I feel has been present in the debate of a man being or not being a free agent. I believe the philosopher, like Liberty, should be blindfolded to weigh each argument without passion or favour, and thus to be free thinkers, free from the fears of what might be the consequence of our thoughts.
By this I mean that it can be seen more as the antidote to man’s insatiable curiosity, any answer to a mystery being better than none. Consequently many a theorem may be born more from imagination than observation, reflecting the desires or fears of what man would like to be true. Not that truth is necessarily being sacrificed to what we might desire, only that the gaps in the mosaic of understanding get filled with something and that something is the coloured by our wishes.
As indeed, many would say is a fair description of what philosophy is about. But of course “making sense” of a situation does not necessarily mean looking for the truth about it. Much of man early philosophical and religious beliefs were elaborate constructs; an attempt to make sense of existence, as they perceived it at that time, with the limited knowledge they had. The result was like the tramps suit – it fitted where it touched.
I personally would like to think that the purpose of philosophy is to come to, as an objective understanding of reality as one can; a “truthful” theorem rather than a plausible construction, that "ties the ends down," as it were, but empirically when man has been confronted with not knowing, he will make something up it- would appear that like politicians, philosophers can not say” I don’t know”.
I am not implying that philosophy does not make sense of things, but that the overriding principle has not always been to make sense of things honestly. You might argue that I am being unfair to our forebears; in saying that they were dishonest in their making sense and I would concede that I'm perhaps mistaking “plausible imaginative gap filling” which after all is as a belief concept as provable or improvable as an other, with dishonesty. Nevertheless it would still be true to say that faced with ignorance, not knowing early man still found it necessary to construct plausible explanation, to his situation.
I think I may have failed to find a specific reason for our obsession of always needing to have an answer to our curiosity, but then I think the modern idiom is “looking for closeyure”, perhaps, as far as creating Gods is
A Personal Quest
(We all have a Philosophy)
Not everyone is a Plato or a Socrates and yet all of us are philosophers. I suspect that everyone, at some time in their lives, has considers the meaning or purpose of life. I certainly remember in my teenage years having deep discussions of wonderment at; the miracle of life, the existence of God, a belief in ghosts and aliens, the vastness of the universe, what happens when one goes through a black hole, time travel and some times just the silence of experiencing a mystical moment, a dawns rise, or the sadness at the loss of a loved one. Hours of speculating on the hereafter, creating homogenous mixtures of traditional and home spun religious philosophy, probably determined by our individual predilections rather than an objective critique, a sort of philosophical pick and mix. All of which were as valid or as invalid as each other, as none were provable or improvable.
Such experiences were, by my definition of philosophy, “Speculating on the unfathomable”, Philosophizing of the purest kind. What ever was happening in those discussions was not just ideal speculation, or for that matter the development of any great philosophical theorem, but I believe that a necessary function was being played out within these discussions, relating to the perception of ones position, not only in society but in how one fits into the whole of creation. Whether, as a direct result of the a for mentioned philosophical discussions or not, I believe that at some point we all acquire a belief, based on an philosophical interpretation of ones reality and experiences. For some, this may be well considered and thought out, others may be brainwashed into the excepted philosophical norms of our family or society. To a greater or lesser extent we become less philosophical as life goes on, in the sense that things become “set”. We either conform to what is expected or lose the skills to maintain a philosophical attitude; a degree of honest self-awareness, an open, questioning mind, and perhaps lose a sense of wonder, as experiences are no longer new.
Drawn To Think In Pink or blue?
(Experiences color our thinking)
Although I can justify calling these conversations philosophical, much of what colors18 our thinking happens at a far more basic level18. I believe that although a grape of a particular type, will in general produce a wine, of a particular stile, the specific character of that wine will depend on a multiplicity of influences, such as the soil, the temperature, the rainfall, and frosts etc. In the same way, individual people are shaped and molded18 by their surroundings and experiences. Experiences are stored as memories in the filing cabinet of our minds. These chronicles are written, not just as happenings or events but also as feelings and emotions, that go towards building our perception of life and our existence with in it. We in turn, interpret new experiences as good or bad, according to our perception of life, created by past experiences. There is a paradoxical symbiosis; in that we interpret our experience through the bias produced by previous experiences; the gayety or misery of childhood the hopes and fears of adolescence, the achievement or failure in adult hood, all go to make up the individual we are now. We experience things and those experiences color how we view, not only new, but also remembered experience.
As we grow older, our perceptions become more set, they develop into attitudes for our adult life. So we see life through attitudes, set by our past experiences. The question is, is my reality of who I am or my perception of life true. What is truth? The fact is that one see life tainted by idiosyncrasies of our environment. From an evolutionary point of view this process must allow for great adaptation18; as if ones early years prepares one with the best set of attitudes for the environment one will be in, in adulthood. A child brought up in a tough18 ghetto will be more likely to survive in that environment, than one brought up in say a middle class environment and visa versa.
The degree to which ones interpretation of life equates with reality, will depend on the fidelity or truthfulness18 we have been fed about ourselves in childhood. Unfortunately when experiences are contemplated, with attitudes set to distort, then ones perspective on life can be lost to depression.
Our attitudes are formed by all our experiences in life but more specifically by the way in which we are nurtured in our formative years.
In Search Of The Three Estates
(What sets our attitudes)
We develop attitudes about ourselves from the attitudes that people have towards us. Experiential education is the way in which one is taught the reality of any abstract value. We can learn the explanation of love, hate, but we can not I believe be taught them other than by experiencing them. If true the responsibility of parents in the first 10 years of a child's life is paramount, not least in giving a child a sense of its own worth but also equipping it with a "hi-fi" set of attitudes with which to view the world, perceiving reality without either looking through rose colored spectacles, a blacker than true view of life, or any other distortion. The attitude that we hold about our selves will inevitably influence the attitude we hold to wards others and indeed to the abstract notions of truth justice and our attitude to the concept of life in general. To love oneself may not be a popular or well understood concept, but is certainly pivotal to, not only to our own well being but goes to make our attitude towards others and to life in general more positive, and collectively are what I call the three estates; Self, Others, Life. SOL.
Thinkers I suggest are not made from success but from just enough failure to cause them to look for answers. Perhaps by the nature of things the philosophers flirt with crisis, not so immersed in them to the extent of the exclusion of ration thought but close enough to be drawn by the questions they ask.
Some young people, in their youth, do things like to pull old radios or such like to bits, to see how they work, for me, there has always been an irresistible magnetism, to question like, “why are things the way they are, and what is the purpose or meaning of this or that”, questions, that for me demanded to be made sense of. Like the straightening of a crooked picture on a wall, or an itch that must be scratch.
So why am I a Philosopher? As a response to the external stimulus of what I see happening around me that make the questions “why are things the way they are” ;. (which I will elaborate on later.) But of course on the other hand, I cannot get away from egotistical; that I am doing this for me, (not that being motivated by ego in its self negates that truth of what I may say.) some sort of self analysis, to arrive at an exceptable understanding of my predicament in life? I sometimes feel it is too presumptuous to say that I am writing a philosophy, but then a little bit of self doubt is not entirely a bad thing, part of a philosopher's questioning nature, is to question oneself, providing some thing remains standing after one is done. Some years ago, with tongue firmly in cheek, I scribbled the following doodle, in answer to a question I posed myself "why do I want to write"?