How a Philosopher’s Mind Works, or, The Usefulness of Philosophy

For a long time I have conceived philosophy as the examination of assumptions that most people never question or are even aware of, especially the fundamental ones, such as that we have a mind or soul separate from our body or that we have free will or even that we exist at all. What philosophers then do is consider the reasons to believe or deny the assumption, and also whether the assumption might be reinterpreted. It is my considered view after a career in philosophy that none of these issues is ever decided once for all. Nevertheless I find value in the enterprise from the very turning of assumptions into questions, that is, issues about which people may reasonably disagree. This has the benign effect of supporting a greater mutual tolerance and respect among people who disagree even fundamentally.

            A further benefit of – and way to characterize – philosophy is that it generates hypotheses. For by turning an assumption into a question, it in effect creates the hypothesis that the assumption is false, and hence turns the original assumption into an hypothesis as well. Neither can be taken for granted but each requires testing, with evidence and argument to be adduced. And that is the business of philosophy (along with allied resources, such as science).

 So for example, if one is made aware that one has always presumed that one is a free agent capable of choosing to perform or not perform some action, such as telling a lie, and that this assumption of freedom to choose could be questioned, the thought thereby arises that perhaps one is not a free agent. This never-thought-of-before possibility then becomes a hypothesis, as does the original assumption; and so both hypotheses call for examination. For example, in support of the negative hypothesis one could argue that any choice must ultimately arise from the brain, and the brain is a physical object and so its functioning is ultimately governed by the laws of physics, and hence there is no room left over for you to choose to do something other than what the brain causes you to do. Alternatively, one could reinterpret the notion of free will and then argue that, even accepting the physicalist proposal, one could still be said to choose to do something so long as the choice followed from one’s own beliefs and desires, no matter that those beliefs and desires were themselves determined by physical laws.

The debate over free will has gone on for centuries, and most likely will continue as long as people do. So even though one might suppose that the implications of a yay or a nay on the subject could have profound practical implications, such as whether to hold people responsible for their criminal acts, it simply will never be decided definitively, IMHO. On the other hand, some might consider the entire issue so abstruse that it really doesn’t matter one way or the other.

However, I do see a very practical use for philosophy, or philosophizing, or at least the philosophical frame of mind, in everyday affairs, in its sensitizing us to the presence of ambiguities in our efforts to communicate. Obviously communication is essential to vast swaths of human activity, from the mundane to the momentous; and so getting it right can be of great and pervasive importance. And here again it is the questioning of unexamined or even previously unnoticed assumptions that is key.

This whole line of thought and the impetus to write this essay arose from the following trivial event in my life. Last night a friend and I were texting when she (I need not explain with what aptness) sent me emoji of fireworks. I replied with an emoji of a smiley face with, instead of a smile, a big “O” for a mouth wide open with amazement, as if someone were watching a grand fireworks display.

Now the way of messaging is that you see the message you have sent to the other person. And what I saw when I sent my smiley face was an animated emoji with the mouth opening to the “O.” This took me my surprise, and I inferred that it must be a novelty introduced by the latest automatic upgrade. Cute.

But then my philosopher’s mind chipped it. One might normally assume that if I, the sender, saw the animation, so would the message recipient. But as soon as I recognized that assumption, I realized that in fact it was only a hypothesis. And the evidence for it was really ambiguous; for all I knew was that I, the sender, saw an animation. But how did I know if that meant my friend did? In fact, I realized, I didn’t know.

This mundane question has its exact analog in the (I am tempted to say “literally earthshaking” or “punningly revolutionary”) realization that the evidence of the Sun moving across the sky is ambiguous between the Sun’s revolving around the Earth or the Earth’s rotating on an axis. People had unthinkingly assumed the former. But once that became a question or a hypothesis, so did its denial. This then called for further testing by gathering further evidence and reasoning therefrom. And we know the result: The assumption was false!

Just so, I needed to gather further evidence to test the contradictory hypotheses about the emoji. And when I say “needed,” I mean not only to decide a trivial question for its own sake, but rather one which could have a subtle influence on my relationship with my friend (and others with whom I texted in future). For I noticed that in the animation, the smiley face began with a kind of frown, which then opened into the “O.” I then reasoned that if my friend’s messaging app had not yet been upgraded, or were a different app entirely (since she has an iPhone and I have an android), maybe she had received a non-animated emoji of a frown instead of – as I had originally intended – an “O.” So there I would have been, thinking I had communicated an approbative “Wow” in response to her fireworks display, when in fact she would have received a rather puzzling and possibly even disconcerting frown response instead.

So I asked her. And it turned out that the emoji she received was not animated … but it did show an “O.” So although my starting assumption (that she had received an animated emoji) had been shown to be false, my original intention (that she receive a “Wow” emoji) had been satisfied. Happy ending. But you can see how it all might have gone wrong did I not have a philosopher’s mind. And this also makes me wonder if the emoji designers of my app upgrade were themselves thinking like philosophers by making sure that the emoji received by non-animated apps would adhere to the original non-animated emoji icon; for otherwise they might have inadvertently introduced a systematic miscommunication into messaging between different systems. And finally – this being the main point of this essay – how much more is at stake in programming guided missiles and designing social programs and you name it; so you’d better have a philosopher on the team!