PHILOSOPHY OR PATHOLOGY: I’ve been wondering, after reading the first few pages of Brian Magee’s “Confessions of a Philosopher” to what extent philosophical problems are the inevitable product of reflection, or whether, instead, they are the product of a particular social/cultural climate (or even the product of taking a philosophy class). Magee seems to have been gripped by an early age by any number of classic problems of philosophy, while being entirely innocent of any formal philosophical training. He’s mesmerized, for example, by the question of whether the world has a beginning, or instead eternally stretches backward and forward in time (which is one of Kant’s “antinomies of pure reason”). And he actually passes out in chapel one time, after being impressed by the fact that he might not know anything outside of his own ideas.

I found this very troubling reading (in fact, I stopped reading the book). I, for one, have never been really taken by these problems, except in the context of a philosophy class – where even then, they appear as interesting puzzles, but lacking the sort of existential weight Magee apparently gave them. The really interesting philosophical problems are, to me, the moral ones, and I sometimes wonder whether Magee-type metaphysical worries really represent displaced anxieties about moral or social problems. A worry about whether one is in touch with the real world may be a symptom of a concern whether one’s friends are really true friends, or instead say bad things about you behind your back. You want to know if they are “really” your friends or merely “appear” to be your friends. But where’s the interest in whether one knows the “real” world or merely “how the world appears”? The same difficulties about coping with others remains, and these seem to be the difficulties worth worrying about. I find compelling metaphysical worries about how minds relate to minds, but not how minds relate to the world.

- posted by Chad @ Wednesday, July 30, 2003