That is not philosophy! On the battle about what is real

Once I gave a presentation to some 300 natural scientists and policy makers in a large hall at the Royal Society in London, who were gathered to discuss climate change and the need for ‘radical change’. I am no scientist, and at the time was still in the middle of getting my PhD in contemporary philosophy. My topic for those fifteen minutes: what is radical change anyway, and how come all the policy presented at this conference isn’t radical. I talked about Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault, about how to be radical means to at least change the fundamental truths of your own world.

The audience got a bit rowdy. Towards the end of the question time, someone asked me, “So are you basically saying there is no physical world?” The organisers allowed me to answer that, but we were already out of time, so if I could do that in just one sentence please. I hesitated, because this was the kind of question that showed the deep rift between people like me and hardcore scientists who are, well, on the other side of things. So I said “Yes, basically that is what I’m saying.”

Then the room exploded. “How dare she! Who invited her!” “Get that French philosopher off the stage?!” I would like to disclose, that I am not a French philosopher, but was deeply flattered by being named as such. But then one person got up and started saying:

“That is NOT philosophy! I want to save philosophy!”

Afterwards, many people came over and congratulated me on my talk. It seemed about half the people in the audience really liked it, including the main organisers, and for some reason also most of the young people. But it had got me thinking, ever since, about how it is possible that emotions run so high, when it comes to the definition of philosophy. Or, more precisely, when it comes to the question: What is real?

What is real, anyway?

It seems a simple enough question. What is real? But there are a myriad ways of approaching this question, and as many opinions on how important that question is. Which is not a problem, unless you consider your way of things the best and only way. Which is unfortunately often the case.

Philosophy to me is the exercise to at least try to take in a different position, to get to know a point of view before having an opinion about it. This is not at all easy, and mostly we are not trained to do this. Not even philosophers – who are asked to critique and have an opinion about everything, and this attitude towards everything is one of the fundamental problems I have, with mostly academic philosophy.
So, what is real? And what is this battle about?

According to people like Alan Sokal, Thomas Nagel and Richard Dawkins, there is at least one thing we can be certain about… that some type of philosophical talk is gibberish. And even more, that it is dangerous. Why? They consider ‘French philosophers’, which they refer to a postmodern continental philosophy, to be muddying the waters. To be spouting nonsense. What they look for in philosophy, and in science, is clarity, something that conveys clear meaning. What this presupposes, is that there is something like ‘reality’, something objectively true, that we just need to learn about. And successful theories would bring more clarity and understanding, which can be used in the real world. Much of science agrees with this point of view. (See also an older article in which I try to argue that this is also why philosophy is not, or should not be considered to be, a science.)

Continental philosophy doesn’t dismiss the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality, but does question how real this actually is. Looking at history, they notice that at any given time and place, there is a clear understanding about what is real, and what is considered not even worthy to be thought about. There are some instances in the history of thought, in which things changed around quite drastically. What is considered the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me god, is not consistent over time.

Examples please!

Of course, there are always disagreements over what is truth, what is real. But that is not the difference that is meant here. An example. When you consider communism and capitalism, you can see these are two very different ways of approaching the question of justice. What is value, what is the right way to distribute wealth? These two views have really opposed ideas about all of that. And also about how to find out what is right, what is the right way to live, to organise society. What art is. They have a complete view of life, that is incommensurate with the other point of view.

So, would it be right to say they have their own world? Believers in objective reality would say no. But that way of thinking doesn’t explain why people in these different perspectives do experience things differently. So yes, in a way, communists and capitalists have their own world-view. And they will judge and order the world according to this view. But do they also have their own reality? I would say no, they each live in the same reality. Or, as Foucault would say, they share an epistemic reality. (Of course, in my understanding of Foucault.)

But what does that even mean?

Well, going back to the example, both capitalists and communists have basic ideas they do agree about (but don’t tell any of them that!). About the existence of money. About the position of a human being and their ability to influence the world around them. It’s as if you ask a question and the one answers ‘YES!’ and the other answers ‘NO!’. Yes, they are different, but they still approach reality from the same question. They still accept that there are only so many responses to that question that can be considered being answers.

What? Why are not all answers possible to a question. Well, you’d be amazed how much you are trained and oriented to consider only some things, and dismiss others. Take for instance the ‘Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’ text that pops up in one of Jorge Luis Borges essays. To illustrate the arbitrariness of any attempt to categorize reality, this dictionary entry listing all the classes of ‘animals’ is brought up, supposedly taken from an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. There are 14 categories of animals, according to the ‘Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’:

• Those that belong to the emperor
• Embalmed ones
• Those that are trained
• Suckling pigs
• Mermaids
• Fabulous ones
• Stray dogs
• Those that are included in this classification
• Those that tremble as if they were mad
• Innumerable ones
• Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
• Et cetera
• Those that have just broken the flower vase
• Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

(Source: Wikipedia)

What we can learn from this, is that we don’t all agree about what animals are, or what can be considered an animal, and what is not an animal. But we still have a lot of things in common that we do agree about. The frame within which we consider the question ‘what is an animal’ is the same. That frame is a certain common ground, an epistemic reality that we share. And this epistemic reality is true for all people in a specific time and place. This epistemic reality, does change over time, but does not explain the differences between individuals. the whole point of this epistemic reality, this foundation we share, is that we can have discussions about what is real and what is not. Without this epistemic foundation, we would not even know where to begin to question these things.

On reality and questions

Wherever you are, whatever time you live in, you will perceive the world around you in a specific way. You cannot question everything all the time, and thankfully so. Because it would be impossible to get through a single day, without having some idea of reality without questioning it. So, in that sense, reality exists, absolutely. Why then did I answer that man shouting at me, that basically there is no such thing as reality? Because even though a concept of reality is useful and very important to have, at other times it is very important to question the impact of your specific understanding of reality. For instance when you want to make policy that affects our human influence on climate change.

So, I don’t agree at all with people like Richard Dawkins who say this type of thinking leads to relativism. It could lead to that, sure, if you start questioning everything all the time. But that is not what continental philosophers advocate. They do say that when you want to think about truth, about what it means to be human, it is good to shake the foundations of your thoughts, question your epistemic understanding of things, and see what opens up when you leave your own specific world.

But what those in the scientist camp (which is not the same as saying everybody in @steemSTEM!) don’t seem to realise, is that those questions don’t make science impossible, or that they don’t refute scientific knowledge at all. For me, it actually shows why science is so amazing. And it explains also why radical change is so difficult to attain, and why it is so important at the same time. Why we shouldn’t want radical change all the time, but why it has brought some of the most profound new understandings there are. It makes me understand why Bohr and others found the discoveries made by Einstein not only improbable, but why they couldn’t accept them, without having to change their whole perspective of things. I think this is also what Kuhn tried to write about, when talking about paradigm shifts, although I think thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze and Blanchot take that type of thing a step further and make it applicable to life itself.

Image courtesy of @surfknasen

So, okay, what is philosophy?

Defining philosophy is maybe the favourite pastime of philosophers. It’s also a question that can be answered on many different levels. But considering all said here so far, philosophy is to be understood as a method, an attitude towards life, reality, truth. An attitude that is open, speculative and once another point of view is embodied, can also become critical towards it. Yet its strength is not critique, but the opening of worlds, of minds.

With special thanks to the people from @thewritersblock for their feedback, and for raising good questions that made me realise how important these issues are. Please keep those questions coming, it is what inspires and makes one aware of how little one really knows. And how much perspectives there are to be learned from.