[Wittrs] When To Ignore Philosophy
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 21:47:19 -0700 (PDT)
It's always quite curious to hear people make the claim that one couldn't
reject certain kinds of philosophy without first reading through it. If you
think about it, in daily life, one could never read EVERYTHING about the things
one believes. In fact, part of what skillful thinking is, is learning what NOT
to read so as to not waste valuable time. In fact, one could say it this way:
reading is only for things that have ALREADY shown their worth in some way.
How many people decide to read a journal article based upon its abstract? Or
see a movie based upon its trailer? Or see an encyclopedic summary before
deciding whether to read source material or to dig further? Or, how many people
are taught lectures about something (in college) as a filter for deciding
whether the thing is worth deeper investigation? Or, those who investigate
after seeing a happenstance -- i.e., people brewing over something. How many
times do you discriminate among newspaper stories by looking at the headline?
Here's the point. People who take the position that they must read all
philosophy before they are an expert on philosophy are really only the
JOURNALISTS of philosophy, yet they cannot see this. What they are there to do
is say things like: "X said this in such-and-such." "Y said this one time."
"Here's what this other one said." They are like lexicographers or librarians.
In some sense, they are masters of a kind of trivia and of a kind of dinner
conversation.
If philosophy was the exercise of throwing a ball around -- the ball being "the
thought" -- the journalists would simply be the ones who report on other
people's ball throwing.
But imagine that you, yourself, are a ball thrower. Imagine your talent is to
play, not watch others play. And so, you throw ball with X. And you throw with
Y. But what you find is that X is poor at catch. Throwing doesn't go well with
him or her. And so, you choose to throw with certain kinds of catchers and shun
others, the way that any who play a game seriously would do.
This is what philosophy is for some. It is knowing the ball skills of the other
players. And when you have learnt certain kinds of ball skills from the master,
there is no reason to go back and throw the ball with certain kinds of players.
One wants to say: the Wittgensteinians have no need to play catch with certain
of the "analytic thinkers," for the very reason of the way they go about
playing. This is already known to you. You don't need to read "the news."
The point: the philosophers that are not worthy of reading are NOT playing a
different game; it's just that they aren't as good at it. It would be like one
who offered to remove snow with a spoon rather than a shovel. Although it is
true that, in some very rare instances, the spoon might be a better instrument
-- or, perhaps, a player might be better with the spoon than another is a
shovel. But the simple fact is that these are RARE. And you would hear about
them and decide to throw the ball with these exceptional cases, should they
emerge.
But with the rest, and in all normal situations, there simply is NO REASON to
peruse the games offered by certain kinds of analytic thinkers, for the same
reason that a skilled tennis player would want to shun an inferior player
(absent, say, social reasons).
Regards and thanks.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs ;
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