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May 27, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:15
1671 Why Study Philosophy?

A theory of mind...

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Yo, fellow perpetrators of truth, reason, and reality.
It's Def. I hope you're doing most excellently.
I wanted to talk about some philosophical concepts that I think are...
I don't know, maybe I'm coming at them a little late in the game at Podcast Four Billion, but I think very worth having a go through.
I mean, fundamental question, philosophy...
Why is it beneficial?
Why is it good? And this is a great challenge for ethicists throughout history.
Why is it good? And our inability to answer this question as philosophers has caused a lot of really tragic nonsense to go floating through the world of philosophy and ideas as a whole, right?
So why be good?
Why be good? And this question of why be good is answered by things as nonsensical as to get into heaven.
Well, clearly that makes no sense at all.
There is no heaven. And so it just turns like wherever you have a lie, you end up with manipulation.
The manipulation has to cover up the lie.
And so when you don't have a good answer for something, you have to say either I don't have a good answer, I don't know, Or you have to start manipulating and creating all sorts of unpalatable nonsense.
And this, of course, is the story of ethics.
People can't really answer the question, why?
Be good. And so they have to create all of this nonsense around being a good citizen or being obedient to God or whatever in order to, well, fundamentally, of course, to try and impress the necessity for virtue on children.
They grow up pretty skeptical about why they should be good.
Now, I will say this, though, that as a dad...
Oh, how many times am I going to answer this over the next...
50 years, well, sadly, I'm afraid, more than a few.
So we might as well get used to it, because that's how it's going to be.
But as a dad, I will say that I have...
I mean, Isabella doesn't really understand the concept of goodness.
At the moment, but she is, like all children, a UPV monster, a UPV machine.
And it is really interesting and encouraging the degree to which she is amenable to restrictions.
I mean, she seems very comfortable with restrictions upon behavior.
So I let her wander all throughout stores, right?
So we were at Best Buy today.
Because I was curious to get my hot little hands on an iPad.
So we went to Best Buy, and she's allowed to wander all throughout the store, but of course she's not allowed to go back behind the cash registers, because you're not supposed to, right?
And I, of course, can't explain that to her.
I say, it's not ours, which is a phrase that she doesn't really understand, other than it means don't touch.
And she's fine with that.
She just sort of shrugs and moves on to something else.
And I think that's been kind of interesting to me to see that process occur within her.
That I think because...
She feels so free, a sort of restriction on her liberty is not something that troubles her.
And that's something that's really interesting to me.
Whereas, of course, my theory would be that if I were to be highly restrictive, don't touch this, don't go there, and so on, that she would kind of buck that, so to speak.
Or she'd say, buck you. But there would be a lot of resistance to that, because then the norm would be restrictiveness.
And so she would be constantly looking for ways to get around that restrictiveness, because it would be frustrating.
And so the way I can sort of...
You can sort of think of it like this, at least this is how I think it occurs for her mentally, is imagine if you have to cross a field and...
There's one tree in the middle of the field.
Well, you might have to adjust your path a little bit to cross the field.
Well, there's one tree. But who really cares, right?
It's not a big deal.
You're not going to sit there and go, oh my god, this tree is so in the way.
It's driving me mad, right?
You wouldn't experience that.
You'd be like, oh, I guess I need to adjust my steps once or twice.
And looky-la, I'm around the tree.
So though, when you have...
A plethora of choice and only one restriction, or few restrictions relative to your plethora of choice, and the restrictions don't bother you.
Whereas if you needed to cross a field, and you were desperate to cross the field, and all children are desperate to achieve whatever they're trying to do in the moment.
When you're trying to cross a field, and there is a big wall all the way across, Except for one little bit in the middle.
Maybe it's at one end or the other, maybe it's halfway up the wall and it's hard to get to and so on.
Then that's going to be frustrating and annoying.
Because your choice is then reduced, in a sense, to one thing.
Climb that one awkward area, dislodge the loose stone, find that serious and secret door, and lo and behold, you're across.
So... When you have a lot of choices, restrictions don't really matter.
One tree in the way across a field, when you have a lot of restrictions, then you hunt for exceptions to them.
And so I think that's really...
I've really noticed that in parenting, and this is somewhat associated with what we're talking about here, so I think that it's worthwhile keeping in.
Now, the question, sort of, why be good, is easy to answer in other areas.
So, when we say, why would you want to eat well?
Well, you want to eat well so that you don't become diabetic, so that you don't become overweight, so that you don't develop heart problems or whatever, and so that's why you should eat well.
Why should you exercise? Although exercise is not something that many people would do were it not good for you.
Why do you exercise? Well, you exercise to increase your resting metabolism, to exercise your heart, to burn off calories, although that's not really a very good way.
It's a very bad way to lose weight, is to exercise.
It doesn't work. But it's a good part of weight maintenance.
And so those aspects are pretty well understood.
People say, I don't want to exercise.
I don't want to be a pirate.
Hey, I haven't used that one in a while.
People say, well, I don't want to exercise.
But they don't say exercise is not good for you.
People say, I don't want to diet, or diets are hard to follow.
But they don't say what you eat is unimportant.
And the reason for that is that the science is so conclusive around this sort of stuff.
I shouldn't say that, of course.
Wait ten minutes and what is considered to be bad for you will suddenly become good for you, like eggs and chocolate and red wine.
But, for the most part...
It's well understood that, you know, you see somebody who's overweight, well, more calories in than calories out.
That's the general way of doing it. And exercise is considered to be beneficial.
The science is very conclusive on that, which is not to say every single detail of the question around exercise or questions around exercise are sorted out, but as a whole, it's pretty solid.
And so, the question then becomes, why isn't virtue?
In the same category as eating well and exercise.
Well, I would say it's because the brain is a much harder organ to measure than the heart or the lungs or blood pressure or whatever, kidney function even.
And so we can't tell the effects of philosophy on the brain.
You can ask someone, are you happy?
And you will get a response, and we would assume that happiness has something to do with virtue, but not much, at least not in the short run.
So the problem with self-reporting, right?
So, I mean, this has always bothered me about those cheesy, always-50s-looking Christian families, right?
Is that they all say, well, we're very happy.
You know, go and sing at church.
And happiness, right?
That pumped-up, fixed-grin, glassy-staring happiness of the Christian is a piece of advertising, or propaganda, I guess you could say.
And that's always bothered me.
So anybody who wants to sell you a philosophical system, or a system of belief, let's say, a system of virtue...
Is going to tell you that happiness is the result.
And what they'll then do is they'll say, Well, look at all these people.
They're happy. They're following my program, and they're very happy.
But the problem is that happiness is self-reported.
Happiness, as yet, is not measurable, scientifically.
So it's sort of like this.
Somebody's trying to sell you a diet plan, and...
They say you can talk to these people who are behind this screen, and those people are going to say, oh yeah, I used to be overweight, and now I'm a healthy weight.
I'm lean. I have a six-pack.
I'm cut.
I'm ripped. I'm tight, baby. Now, you're never allowed to look at them.
They just tell you that they've lost weight, in the same way that people following any particular ethical program will tell you that they're happier, but you can't measure it.
You can't ever look and see.
And that's because the brain is very hard to measure.
And, I mean, certainly steps are going in that way, but it's very hard to measure.
Similarly, somebody says, oh yeah, after I started doing this exercise regime, I can now run the Boston Marathon in 12 seconds.
It's the equivalent of having a jet ski installed in my ass.
Well, you can't ever verify this.
There's no proof. You can't ever look at the person to see how ridiculously ripped their leg muscles are.
Hi, Wilt. Anyway, that is the problem.
That happiness is the goal of a value system, but happiness is self-reported and therefore is subjected to lies.
Now, when happiness becomes something that is more objectively measurable, then I think that this stuff will start to clear up.
But I think that's...
What do I know? But I think it's a fair ways away.
Because also, human beings...
Can experience happiness for a wide variety of truly terrible reasons, right?
So, some organized crime figure who's, you know, caught by the police and his primary witness suffers an unspeakable accident.
Some book propeller accidentally goes through his head.
Well... You measure that mafia guy's happiness, and he's going to feel very happy, because his time in prison is going to be much less likely to be convicted.
So he's going to, whew, relief, right?
A man who beats his wife, or a wife who beats her husband, when the victim says, I'm going to the cops, and he talks him out of it, then that person is going to feel relief.
Like, whew, they're not going to call the cops.
I feel happy, I'm flooded with endorphins.
So happiness can also be escaping the consequences of bad actions.
And in that moment, I don't know whether it would be distinguishable from genuine happiness.
I think it probably would be, but I don't know for sure, of course.
I don't think anybody does. But happiness can also occur to people for very terrible reasons.
A con man who successfully ripped someone off probably feels quite a bit of predatory joy in that moment.
Sucker, right?
A man who's in the grip of a compulsive sexual addiction, when he beds the twelfth waitress of the evening, oh, that's my joke, tiger, tiger, burning bright in the waitress of the night, is going to feel exaltation.
And, yeah, okay, so followed by depression, maybe the day or a day or two afterwards, or maybe even shorter, but in that moment of measurement, I mean, you'd need to almost get an accurate happiness measurement attached to someone for a year or two or more to get an overall sense of happiness.
A drug addict, of course, last example, I'm late with the point, as usual, but a drug addict is searching desperately for his Vicodin, and he finds...
Said Vicodin. After looking for an hour, well, during that hour, he's feeling terrible.
The moment he puts his hot little hands on that pill packet, he becomes ecstatic.
Ooh, relief! Right?
So, happiness can occur for entirely dishonorable, disreputable, and disgusting reasons.
So... I think we need to be careful about the question, right?
The self-reporting, the subjectivity, the difference between short- and long-term happiness, and the capacity to process a relief from the just consequences of our actions as happiness.
Well, that is human beings' experience and process happiness in that way.
But I don't think any of us would call that genuine happiness, right?
Relief that I'm not going to jail when I have done evil.
Well, that is not really happiness.
Just getting away with something. So, the problem is that Nutrition and exercise and other things, and even plastic surgery.
It has an effect that's actually measurable on the body.
However weird and plastic it may turn you into, it does have an effect that's measurable.
But philosophy and happiness, we don't have that.
So it's a significant problem.
So when you say, you should be virtuous because it will make you happy, well, everyone can make up and lie and con you about the happiness that their philosophical or ethical constructs will provide.
Good news. Jesus loves you.
And this is a huge problem, which brings us back to, well, why be happy?
Sorry, why be virtuous? If you were virtuous for happiness, for the sake of happiness, then we run into all of the problems discussed above, and we end up in a big sea of murk.
And the thought has just struck me that if you have a religious system or an ethical system that appeals to masochists, Then he will make them happy by making them unhappy, right?
So when you think of these, you know, completely terrifying medieval saints and the wretched, appalling, and brutal things that they did to their bodies in the name of virtue and Jesus, you know, cutting into their flesh and melting horrible things on their bodies and so on, well, they would be, in a sense, very happy to be following that ethical system because they crave the endorphins of self-mutilation.
So, this is a significant problem.
Happiness cannot be. The moment you say, my virtuous system brings you happiness, you're opening yourself up to a world of subjectivity and con-artistry and self-reporting and manipulation and so on.
Similarly, when you say, well, you just do it because it's right, well, you leave the definition of what is right open to exploitation and corruption.
And that becomes a big problem, because then people say, it's right to serve your country and sign up for the military, or accede to your draft request, or whatever, and all these things become terribly tragic.
So, that brings us back to the original problem, which is why, why be good?
Well, the other issue...
Sorry, just one more before we get to that...
The other issue around virtue is the well-known phenomenon that those who are virtuous are attacked by the corrupt, by those who their virtue threatens.
I'm an owl! And so, to act with rational scientific integrity in a time or a culture of religious fundamentalism will result in you getting attacked, which is definitely not going to bring you great joy.
Unless, of course, you're a masochist, in which case you'll probably be religious to begin with.
You think, that's the circle.
The circle of death.
And so the fact that that integrity and virtue creates a lot of social opposition and aggression, well, that doesn't exactly add...
To the happiness pile of selling philosophy and virtue.
And of course some people will say that virtue is that which brings you happiness, and happiness is making others comfortable, being an enabler, being a conformist, smoothing over conflicts, all of the cowardly appeasement that goes on in the world.
But that's virtue.
Why can't we all just get along?
So, anyway, I think we've delimited those problems well enough.
Comment delimited, I think. So, how does our approach solve this problem?
Well, I do believe it does.
I really do believe that it does solve this problem or this challenge.
Now, I think if we look at the mind as a material thing, then I think it's important to look at it, and this is metaphorically, of course, but to look at it as a kind of muscle.
And when you think of your bicep and your tricep, right, front and back of the arm, we recognize that they have opposing functions, right?
One is to lift the hand up, and the other is to push the hand back down, pull the hand back down.
And we recognize that there are times when these would be appropriate.
You're pushing something away, you use your tricep pulling something towards you or lifting something up, you use your bicep.
But we can't, I think, rationally recognize a time or a place where the best use of these muscles is to have them both contract at the same time.
That would produce paralysis, pain, and a war against the intended use of the muscle, right?
So if your opposing muscles are both working...
Over time, at the same time, you were in a bad situation.
I remember my brother had this once when he was not a big one for stretching.
I know the efficacy of stretching is somewhat debated, and I don't stretch anymore before doing cardio because I never really liked it.
I found that it doesn't really do me any good.
But he did have a big problem, and both his...
His front thigh muscle, his quad, and his back thigh tendons both contracted at the same time.
So he couldn't, like he had a cramp in both, and a contraction in both at the same time.
And it was pretty unpleasant because he couldn't stretch either one, right?
You get a cramp, you're supposed to stretch it.
But if you're both cramping, both your muscles are cramping, you can't stretch either one out.
It was really, really unpleasant. And so we know there may be times, I mean, sorry, there will be times, which is why we have these two muscles.
There will be times when... We want to contract the bicep, and there are times we want to contract the bicep, but there's no time at which we really, really want to or will find it helpful in any way.
We don't want to contract them both at the same time.
And I think that is a good way of looking at the brain.
So, we have conformity.
We have conformity, and conformity is not an innate vice.
For instance, I, in general, will conform to English as a method of communication.
I will conform to that, and I don't consider that a bad thing, although, of course, many people would argue that Esperanto makes a whole lot more sense.
But if I podcast in Esperanto, I'd be talking to 12 elderly socialists from the 1940s.
And so I conform.
I don't sort of make up my own language.
I conform to standard British usage.
I do not try not to use words while in my mind I have the opposite meaning.
So when I say God, I don't mean a shoehorn and vice versa.
So I am a pretty slavish conformist when it comes to my use of English.
And that to me is sane and good and healthy.
There will be times where I try to change words, but I'm very explicit about that, right?
So if I want you to look at the first syllable of culture, then I will make that very explicit and put my arguments as to why I think it's a reasonable thing to do.
So I am a conformist when it comes to that.
there may be a more efficient format for the delivery of podcasts rather than, say, MP3.
I could put them in WMA, which I actually quite like as a standard.
Oh, all that Microsoft haters can now send me an email.
But I really liked it as a standard.
I thought at 64K bits, it produced better sound quality than MP3s.
And therefore, never thinking I was going to be an Apple guy, I put all my music in WMA, which does not help so much that I have an iPod now.
But nonetheless, that's what it is.
So I could put it out in WMA, which then would bar me from being listened to by people who only had an iPod.
Or I guess anything which didn't play that.
Maybe I could invent my own system.
Anyway, I think you get the idea.
So, I'm a conformist.
When it comes to driving on the road, I am a conformist as to which side of the road I'm going to drive on.
If I go to England, I'll switch.
And I am...
So I'm a conformist in very, very many ways, and that's exercising one muscle.
Is it ideal to use MP3s relative to any other possible standard?
Well, no. But it is ideal to use that relative to general use, acceptability, compatibility with other players, and so on.
Is it necessarily the most efficient thing to drive on one side of the road rather than the other?
In the moment, if there were no roads whatsoever, well, no, I'd just drive all over the place.
Sorry, if there were no other drivers ever on the road, I'd just drive all over the place.
But I will conform to that.
One last example. Sorry to label the point, as always.
Oh, bad habit. Can't drop it.
Do I think that having traffic lights is the most ideal way to deal with traffic flow?
Well, no. I don't think so at all.
Just because it's a stated solution, I assume it's nonsense.
However, I'm still going to conform to it because I don't want to end my life in a fiery crash or...
A month's worth of donations in a car repair.
So that is areas in which I conform, and I don't have a particular problem with it, though I may not necessarily agree with what I'm conforming to.
I do conform to it.
And there are other things which are more controversial that I conform to, such as paying my taxes and so on.
So I don't agree, but I conform.
And that, to me, is fine.
It's not ideal, but the world is not ideal.
If the world was ideal, I wouldn't have a job, or I'd have a different job.
So, there is a muscle called conformity, and then there's a muscle called independent thinking, integrity, and so on.
I find that it is sometimes good to exercise conformity, and sometimes it is good to exercise independence.
And we can go into the philosophy of why at some other time, but I think we all understand and accept that if we're honest with ourselves, nobody lives a life of pure conformity, and nobody lives a life of pure integrity, independence, and original thinking.
So, I think that we have these two muscles, independence and conformity, and we work them at different times.
But I think that we can all accept that under no circumstances should we both be conforming and being independent at the same time.
I don't just mean in terms of coming up with original thoughts while using English, but you can't do both at the same time.
You can't do a thing and its opposite simultaneously.
You can't go north and south at the same time unless you've been bisected like Eric's a half a bee.
So... We have muscles for one thing, we have muscles for another, but we don't want both of those muscles to be fully engaged at the same time.
I don't even know what it would mean to say, I want to both conform with the rules of the roads and do the opposite of conforming with the rules of the road at the same time.
Couldn't really happen, right?
I think we can all understand and appreciate that, right?
And I think that's one of the values of philosophy.
That is one of the values of philosophy, that it will tell us that these things should not be done in...
Like, we should not hold a thought and its opposite is our highest value in the same moment, right?
I think we can all appreciate and understand that.
And that kind of integrity, if you look at the brain as a system of muscles, which in some ways I think it really is, if you look at the brain as a system of muscles...
Then philosophy will say that you should not work opposite muscles at the same time.
So you should not say, I am virtuous because I am an American.
Right? Because that is to say that virtue is the result of geographical accident.
And that, of course, is completely not UPB, right?
A, because it's not earned, and B, because it can't be universalized, right?
Because you can't say America is the key component, right?
If you remember from UPB, I do a section on why somebody says that eating fish on Fridays is wrong.
Is that UPB? It says no, because there's no particular difference between Friday and Thursday.
You have to come up with objective differences to make things up.
I mean, you can, but you're wrong, right?
So... If you say, I'm better because I'm an American, you can't say that's to do with America.
What you can say is, being born to your local geography makes you better.
But that's, of course, completely not UPB, because that applies equally to Mexico and Norway and Trinidad and Tobago, you know, wherever you care to name.
And therefore, if it's reproducible about the world, it can't be specific to a geographical location.
So you can't be better because you're American.
And so philosophy will say that saying I'm better because I'm American is flexing your tricep and your bicep at the same time.
And that's not good for your brain, right?
That's not good for your brain.
Because we know, whether we like it or not, we know when we're spouting bullshit.
I mean, unless we're completely insane, in which case we're just in politics.
But we know when we're spouting contradictory nonsense.
And so this is why people who make such silly claims are so often belligerent and touchy and, you know, that there's that threat of aggression in the background because, right, so when you say things that are indefensible logically and, of course, things like, I mean, virtue as a result of geography, or I'm better because I'm a Christian, when the reality is that you simply were born to Christian parents in a Christian culture, right?
I mean, that's all nonsense, right?
So people, philosophy will say, well, that's bad because that's claiming virtue for another accident of birth, right?
I mean, certainly if you'd been born in 8th century Swaziland, you would not be a Christian.
And so when you, and this, of course, is what vice fundamentally is, is making a UPB-compliant statement simultaneous with its exception.
Geographical proximity is good.
Being born in geographical proximity is good, but only for America.
So it's a universal, because it's good, it's virtuous, but only for America, or Belgium, or whatever.
So, that is something that philosophy will, all too sadly, will take away from you, right?
Saying family is automatically virtuous is the same thing, right?
You understand? It's just, it's a mini-patriotism, right?
To say that family is automatically virtuous is a mini-form of patriotism, because it's saying that being born in geographical proximity, not to a country, but to two people, or one, that that is virtuous.
Everybody's born in proximity, so it can't be virtuous for any individual to be born in proximity.
And virtue is not created through biology, right?
If merely being born in proximity is virtue, proximity to people, then that's a pretty universal statement, right?
Tadpoles are all born in proximity to each other.
It doesn't make each tadpole virtuous, right?
Anyway, we'll sort of talk about that another time.
I don't get dragged too much into UPV complexities, but...
I do think that it's really, really important to understand that the answer, at least that I have found to be most compelling and true, the answer to the question, why be good, is so that you don't do a simultaneous brain cramp in two opposing directions, and so that you're clear when you're saying things that are false through both universalization and specialization, when you're saying things that are just not true or self-contradictory, that you need to be aware of that, right?
When you are switching definitions and all this sort of stuff, right?
So there's a guy on the board who was talking about, you know, it's the usual agnostic nonsense, which is, we don't know everything that exists, right?
It's like, well, sure, we don't know everything that exists.
But we do know that non-existence is the opposite of existence.
We know that, right?
And so, you know, people in this position will say, well, we don't know everything.
And of course, an atheist will say, of course we don't know everything.
But we do know that there's a difference between something and nothing, right?
And if God is defined as the absence of all evidence, saying that God exists in another dimension is simply saying that non-existence is equal to existence, potentially.
But that is a brain cramp, right?
That is using your tricep and your bicep simultaneously, which is going to cause a horrible cramp.
Unfortunately, in this case, usually in the people listening to the debate, right?
So then he wrote back and he said, well, but, you know, there are galaxies out there that we've never discovered and so on.
It's like, well, sure, but galaxies aren't self-contradictory concepts.
And you're saying galaxies exist out there because there will be evidence, right?
But the space between galaxies is not a galaxy.
The space between a planet and its sun is not a planet and a sun simultaneously.
And a hedgehog, right?
So I think that's really important.
Anybody who can find their way through a door is fairly aware of the difference between existence and non-existence.
And this confusion is only brought in to avoid Emotional pain, of course, having to be lied to about existence and exploited for the sake of emotional and financial and political gain.
And so, of course, people throw up a lot of fog around that stuff because it is so painful to deal with.
So, to me, that's always been the goody-goody gumdrop stuff around virtue, which is that philosophy lets me know when I'm making statements that are contradictory.
And it's not, of course, easy, but if I have a goal called the truth, which I think just about everybody has, even if they're just using it in a manipulative sense, the word, quote, truth, God exists as truth or whatever, because I want money and obedience, but everybody has that goal called the truth.
And what philosophy does is it tells me What I need to do to get a hold of the truth by defining the truth, reason and evidence, by defining the steps necessary to achieve truth, which is rational argument in conformity with the evidence, then that really helps me.
So if your goal is not to diet, your goal is to lose weight, and nutrition will tell you what you need to do to lose weight, and philosophy will tell you what you need to do to stop flexing both your brain muscles in opposition, creating the brain cramp It's called depression, ennui, anger, chronic anger, and so on.
Lovelessness, self-hatred, self-attachment.
And for that, I will be forever grateful.
And that, to me, is enough of a reason to continue the pursuit.
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