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About the Rush to Contemporary Philosophical Positions
by Sven Nilsen, 2022
In this blog post I argue that people ought not to hurry toward making philosphical positions their own, due to the extremely high probability of being wrong. Instead, the power to choose a philosophical position should itself be treated as enough to introduce a disturbance to the experiment that is being studied, which is the philosopher examining the philosopher’s life. I argue for a view where a philosophical position is studied as in a “what if” scenario. This view itself, is also a “what if”, et cetera.
Contemporary Philosophy is occupied with questions like “what is the essence of existence?”.
Despite the development of accurate physical theories, it has not yet been solved how to think about existence properly. Physical theories depend on the notion of an observer just to describe the mathematics properly, while the notion of an observer remains undefined.
The problem is that the object which is being studied, is also the object doing the studying. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that when the object changes how it studies, it also changes what is being studied.
From this principle, that the philosopher is examining the philosopher’s life, the “experiment” gets disturbed by the philosopher’s methods, to various degrees, depending on how powerful the methods are.
One thing that is known about existence, is that by simply being, this operation determines the rest of existence and how a person thinks, experiences the world, et cetera.
Therefore, to choose one’s own being should be considered a powerful mechanism.
It is possible that merely choosing a philosophical position might disturb the philosopher’s life to a such extent that being in itself changes. The philosopher only has one data point and whatever the philosopher chooses to do, becomes part of the data being studied, with limited capability to compare the consequences to alternative outcomes.
However, if the philosopher treats some philosophical position as a “what if” scenario, then it becomes possible to assume something and see which consequences follow, without making this scenario a permanent outcome.
For example, there is no reason to believe, after thousands of years of philosophy, that any random person entering philosophy today, from an expected probability distribution, will solve the puzzle of existence during a single lifetime of study.
On the other hand, it is much easier to observe that the problem of choosing a philosophical position, itself is reflected in the problem of figuring out the puzzle of existence.
What if this ability to choose a philosophical position, itself has great power over how existence proceeds?
This might not be true e.g. at scale of atoms, but it might hold in the context where philosophers talk about being wrong about philosophical positions.
It would mean that, a person entering philosophy today, would need to consider what possible outcomes are beneficial, and not just treat a philosophical position as some form of objectivity.
On the other hand, this way of thinking of philosophical positions using “what if” scenarios, might itself have power in the precise way it tries to avoid disturbance, by causing disturbance to scenarios where people treat philosophical positions as their own.
Therefore, this view should itself be treated as a “what if” scenario.
Comparing philosophical positions to assumptions in logic
It is easy to see that in logic, making assumptions is one of the most powerful operations.
To choose one’s own being, might be compared to making an assumption.
Similarly, when a person picks a philosophical position, this operation itself is similar to making an assumption.
Now, imagine a scenario where Alice believes A and Bob believes !A.
No matter which proposition A stands for, it provable that Alice and Bob disagrees about the truth value of A.
If one imagines onself as both Alice and Bob, taking two different paths, there exist a possible world in which I, as Alice, thinks about a possible world where I, as Bob, has another view.
Therefore, combining the two possible worlds in which I am reasoning about two versions of myself, I hold contradictory beliefs.
Yet, there exists no possible world where I can confirm that I do indeed have contradictory beliefs. This requires combining two possible worlds which is not a physical possible operation.
It is not necessarily true that choosing a philosophical position makes the truth value of the philosophical position necessarily true or not.
Instead, it is possible that in all possible worlds where I choose some philosophical position, this philosophical position is necessarily true, while there might exist some possible world where I do not choose that philosophical position and the philosophical position is possibly false.
The problem here, is that the truth value of some philosophical position might be sufficiently satisfied simply by choosing the philosophical position. However, prior to this choice, the truth value of the philosophical position might not be sufficiently satisfied.