Wednesday, January 10th at 6pm
at Lavonne's lovely home in Kalispell
Here are some prep materials to get us considering this topic from some overlapping vantage points:
From Mitch:
This seems like a hard topic to find materials on and to prep for as our discussions may come down to personal experience and opinion. I like those kind of discussions. I read the topic as ‘what is the point or purpose of asking ourselves philosophical questions?'. Maybe it is meant to be broader and encompass humanity philosophizing as a whole? Either way, I was a little stumped when it came to researching and gathering material.
Two questions I kept coming back to were ‘what, exactly, is a philosophical question (is it different for different individuals)?’, and, ‘is getting an answer important, or is the process of critical thinking itself the greatest value?’.
I saw a cartoon somewhere, that I can’t locate, that showed some scientists discussing a group of philosophers across the room saying something like, ’all they do is talk about thinking about thinking’. I’ve included another one that implies a schism between science and philosophy. Knowledge vs. wisdom? Stephen Hawking declared that ‘philosophy is dead’ (at least in terms of being able to make knowledge claims). I don’t want us to rabbit hole on that debate for banter, but am bringing it up in regards to ‘answers’ as the plays into ‘what is the purpose or point’.
In looking around the internet I kept coming to a 2009 paper by Bourget and Chalmers who conducted an extensive survey of thousands of professional philosophers in the English speaking world, and their views on philosophical questions. In short, it seems that, even among the best philosophical minds, there is little agreement on any answers. The survey was redone in 2020 and provides a nice list of professional philosopher questions (though I’m hoping we will banter on more informal dorm room philosophy) with the results on the ‘answers’ (beliefs?) that were given. It’s worth a quick skim of the survey results at the link, below, and, if you want to dive deeper into the research and papers, you can skim through a lot more info on the lefthand menu.
I know that what professional philosopher's' consensus is, somewhat, off topic, but a big part of what I’d like to banter about is if philosophy can provide answers or is it, often, a case of the journey being more important than the destination?
From Sabine:
The comics produced by the Existential Comics illustrators are pretty great, such as the "Why did you want to do philosophy at all?" one above and the Nietzsche one above. Also, this one:
This made me consider that answering our banter topic will be rooted in really thinking about a number of foundational or contemporary philosophers & the specific questions or conditions they are grappling with. So, I think we should all do a little bit more poking around into 2, 3, 5 philosophers each. What is the point or purpose of asking the philosophical questions that Marx did? has a whole different feel than What is the point or purpose of asking the philosophical questions that Fiona Woollard is? (Fyi, she's one of my fav. contemporary philosophers that I've listened in on in person & read, not that you need to know her or read her.)
Looking into that for ourselves will be good, but so will considering What is the point or purpose of me or my favorite family members or my best friends asking philosophical questions when we're together? As in, what does us asking these questions and going on about them with each other (instead of all the other things we could be talking about or focusing on) do for us?
And my third angle on this topic loops back to these comics again - this shit is just funny & minds like this are fun & funny (think back to when we read The Symposium - Greek definitions and stories of "Love/Eros") to read, observe, engage with, and self-cultivate. With the time I've got, unless I'm on a mountain top or in an art museum (and well, actually in those locations too) I don't honestly see the point of doing much of anything else with my weird human mind but asking philosophical questions & trying to get other people around me to talk about them too (thus this banter group!). And when I come across people who try to have a normal conversation with me, I'm at a loss & seem kind of socially inept. 😂
