Socrates would hate self-help

At the birth of Western philosophy lies Socrates who preached that, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ As philosophy has continued to develop from traditions largely put forth by this man—fallibilism, philosophy as a critical dialogue, and a need to understand and question the concepts we take for granted—it has in an important sense moved away from the examined life. This is very unfortunate.

So concerned with fundamental truths about the world and about human nature (and as it should be) philosophy has evolved almost a distaste for the personal. Even ethical and political theories only touch upon what could be considered guidance. They dampen their feet at the pool but don’t dive in.

There will on trend be more talk of what an individual owes society, than what you owe your friend, or your family member, or your lover, or your colleague. Philosophy is more interested in what counts as knowledge, then how one makes discoveries. Whether happiness is a value is of more interest than if there are good or bad ways to be happy and if so what they are.

These questions are less fundamental, but they are still very general and very important question about humans and about reality, and so they are undoubtedly philosophical.

I suppose the assumption for many of these more personal matters is that they belong more to the realm of psychology. Discovery is psychology. Happiness is psychology. Healthy relationships are psychology. Particularly self-help gets given a lot of these questions. But it would be a mistake to think that Socrates examined life lives on in psychology and self-help.

The problem with putting these questions in this domain is that we don’t get deep enough answers.  Self-help is very subjective. The individual isn’t so much searching for truth as identifying their current goals and reorganising a few mistaken methods to arrive at those goal. Socrates would disapprove.

Socrates would want to question our goals and learn about why some of them were in error. Socrates would want to question if we should even have goals. Socrates would want to scan through and examine as close to every thought and assumption motivating every single piece of the puzzle on the table. (at least the spirit of Socrates would, whether the man himself was capable of doing this is a difficult question given we can't even guarantee he ever existed). 

Self help is just too lazy for this end. Self-help mirrors the guru style of Eastern philosophy. Western philosophy can do better. And so I pledge: let us bring the examined life into the world of high standard truth seeking of western philosophy.  

  

The Induction Myth

Induction has been held in high regard as the spirit of scientific enquiry. Science is in the business of going from the known to the unknown, and indeed, these are the kind of inferences that are what we mean by induction. 

We have, for instance, general relativity, a theory that gravitation is a geometric property of spacetime. This is ‘unknowable’, but as an explanation fits with ‘known’ data most strongly, such as the observed light deflection during the Eddington Eclipse. Similarly, biological variation (known) supports evolution (unknown). Hubble-type expansion (known) supports the big bang (unknown). And so on and so on. 

On the other hand, however, we have the rather concerning news that induction is unreliable!

Russell famously asked us to imagine a chicken that noticed every day the farmer came and fed him like clockwork. The chicken therefore assumed the farmer must be a benevolent man, and predicted he would continue to bring food every day. According to an inductive line of thinking, the chicken had ‘extrapolated’ observations into a theory, and each feeding time added further justification. Until one day, the farmer came and wrung the chicken’s neck. 

How can it be that induction cannot be justified as being reliable, and yet it reliably gets such great results for us in science? 

This apparent dichotomy is the essence of the 'problem of induction', however, it is based on an equivocation.

Notice that the kind of induction that Russell (and incidentally other critics of induction) are referring to, is what can be known as 'more of the same' type inferences. e.g. if the sun has always risen, it will continue to rise. It's this expectation that reality is uniform that is in error.

When I referred earlier to certain prized theories in science that go from the known to the unknown, however, they were not more of the same type inferences. They were a different kind of 'going from the known to the unknown', one where the unknown is the best explanation for the known (this is called inference to the best explanation). In fact, look to any prized scientific theory and I suggest you will on trend find this kind of inference.

They are called narrow induction (more of the same type inferences) and broad induction (inference to the best explanation).

Through our distinction then we can dissolve the dichotomy. Narrow induction bears inconsistent and unreliable results, but it is not needed by science. We can throw it out and it appears we can do fine with broad induction alone.

Now, I may here appear to abandon an expectation of uniformity too quickly. What about laws of nature such as 'all copper conducts electricity' surely here narrow induction has it's place? But no. The scientific explanation for why copper conducts electricity is that we have a theory that copper contains electrons, which is evident in its physical characteristics. This too is broad induction.

I purpose that the importance of narrow induction is nothing but a myth, kept alive by nothing more than an equivocation  Let's be done with it and give the credit where it's due.

Kant on the good of monogamous marriage

Kant thought that the only way for two people to have sexual relationships without the risk of reducing themselves to objects was if they were in a monogamous marriage.

The risk of becoming an object lies in the use of sex to satisfy an appetite. Basically, you are using a person as a means and not an end in itself. But in a monogamous marriage, Kant supposed, the way in which two people surrender themselves to one another is equal, and thus no one is asked to surrender more and so no one is victimised.

This strikes me as curious. Surely the greatest respect you can give a person in regards to treating them as an end, and not merely a means to your own purposes, is to honour their autonomy. And yet a monogamous marriage requires great sacrifices of ones autonomy! It is now someone else's business how you conduct your life. You're personal relationships are constrained by the whims of your spouse. You are in a very literal sense 'sharing your life with someone'.