how to be a philosopher: or how to be almost certain that almost nothing is certain

How to Be a Philosopher

By the Same Author:

How to Be an Existentialist

Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed

Sartre and Fiction

The Sartre Dictionary

Also available from Continuum:

The Good, the True and the Beautiful, Michael Boylan

How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time, Iain King

How to Win Every Argument, Madsen Pirie

Sex and Philosophy, Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook

How to Be a Philosopheror How to Be Almost Certain that Almost Nothing is Certain

Gary Cox

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane11 York Road Suite 704London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038

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© Gary Cox 2010

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For Mike

Contents

Introduction 1

1 What is Philosophy? 11 Philosophy and defining 12 Defining ‘philosophy’ 13 Philosophy and cold, hard logic 18 Philosophy and free speech 24 The father of western philosophy 27 Metaphysics and more Plato 30 Epistemology and more Plato 33 The philosophy of doing the right thing 35 Summary 47

2 How to be a Philosopher – Phase One: Doubting Everything 49

Philosophizing properly 50 Hallucination and optical illusion 53 Appearance and reality 56 Solipsism – is there anything out there? 62 The father of modern philosophy 68 Descartes and the method of doubt 73 Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am’ and God 79 Descartes’ collapse into solipsism 81 Dispelling these clouds 87

3 How to be a Philosopher – Phase Two: The Tree Question 89

Family Guy in the forest 89

viii Contents

Ask a stupid question 91 Common sense realism 92 The Vienna Circle and no nonsense logical positivism 94 David Hume and no nonsense logical positivism 97 The verification principle 99 Sound is consciousness of sound 101 Kant and transcendental idealism 103 Sartre on differentiated and undifferentiated being 107 Inconclusive conclusions 109

4 How to Make a Living from Philosophy 112

Bibliography 123Visual, Musical and Internet Media References 126Further Reading 127Index 129

2 How to be a Philosopher – Phase One: Doubting Everything

As I said in the Introduction, anyone who has ever thought philosoph-

ically, which is just about everyone, is already a philosopher. I ran into

a friend the other day in town while buying socks in M&S. I don’t know

how we got onto the subject so quickly amongst all that 100% cotton

but she told me she knew three people with cancer who were not very

old. She said it made her think about life and death and what it is all

about. We discussed the importance of making the most of life while

you still can and how some people fail to do so. If this wasn’t a philo-

sophical conversation I don’t know what is. Admittedly, we each had

our own shopping to do, places to go and people to see, so the con-

versation didn’t last long enough to penetrate the thoughts of the

great philosophers on the subject of making the most of life while you

still can, but it was at least an informal philosophical conversation that

could have gone further and deeper, become more structured and for-

mal, had there been more time and fewer distractions.

Philosophy pops up everywhere and the vast majority of people are

philosophers pretty often. The strangeness of life, the inevitability of

suffering and death, the peculiar fact that most people seem to remain

quite cheerful and positive despite what they endure on a daily basis,

are all grounds for philosophical reflection. ‘It makes you think, doesn’t

it,’ people muse, having just watched a TV documentary about the

50 How to Be a Philosopher

vastness of outer space or having just sent grandma on her final jour-

ney at the local crematorium.

So, we are all philosophers broadly speaking, in a vague, dreamy

sort of a way. On one level, that creates a problem for me in writing

this book as it seems to defeat my object. As I said way back, the big

irony for me is that I’m writing this book to tell people how to become

something they almost certainly are already! But then again, I don’t

want to show you how to philosophize in a vague, almost dreamy sort

of a way. That can’t be taught anyway. No. I want to show you how to

philosophize in a lucid and alert way. In a more structured, rational,

productive and formal way than perhaps you have up to now. Dare I

say it, I want to help you to philosophize properly; to philosophize with

a degree of coherence and direction rather than just muse nebulously

about how mysterious life is and how insignificant we all are in the

grand scheme of things.

Philosophizing properly

As with most things, to become a proper philosopher you need to

learn to walk before you can run. Rather than shoot the breeze in a

directionless, rambling way about the very biggest, broadest philo-

sophical problems, you actually need to begin by considering smaller,

more specific, more immediate philosophical problems concerning

what is, or appears to be, directly in front of your eyes. You need to

begin by questioning and doubting what is supposed to be glaringly

obvious and beyond dispute about the everyday world around you.

Eventually, your knowledge of these smaller, more specific, more

immediate philosophical problems, not to mention the thinking tech-

niques you will acquire simply by thinking about them, will give you the

confidence and informed philosophical vision to have a serious stab at

the bigger questions, or at least to see what the bigger questions are

really asking.

Phase One: Doubting Everything 51

For example, rather than get nowhere trying to dream up a defin-

itive answer to the very vague philosophical question, ‘What is the

meaning of life?’, you will be able to think constructively about what

this question actually means; what, if anything, it is actually asking and

the strengths and weaknesses of the various answers that can and

have been given to it. Perhaps none of this will satisfy you as an answer

to the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’, but then unlike religion,

philosophy doesn’t claim to have all or even any of the answers. It sim-

ply tries to understand certain questions and problems accurately and

to offer a few possible answers. It limits itself to doing this because if

there is one thing philosophers have learnt down through the millennia

of philosophizing it is that if you try to go further than logic and reason

will allow you to go, you immediately start making assumptions and

jumping to conclusions. In short, you start guessing, which is fantasiz-

ing not philosophizing.

So, in a moment I’m going to ask you to start philosophizing prop-

erly in a structured, rational, productive, formal way by considering a

smallish, specific and immediate philosophical problem concerning the

world you are in, or that you believe you are in, right now. I’m going to

ask you to question and doubt what is supposed to be glaringly obvi-

ous and beyond dispute. I’m going to ask you to be a philosophical

sceptic.

According to the dictionary, a sceptic is ‘a person who habitually

doubts the authenticity of accepted beliefs’. Scepticism is right at the

heart of every philosophical project and all philosophers are sceptics to

some extent. Philosophers are not prepared to accept anything at face

value, so they sceptically ask questions and raise doubts about beliefs

that other people take entirely for granted. Most philosophers, you

may be pleased to hear, do not indulge in all this negativity just for the

sake of it. Most are actually searching for a positive outcome. They are,

as I mentioned earlier, academic sceptics, philosophers who try, as an

academic exercise, to doubt everything with the ultimate aim of find-

ing something that can’t be doubted; something absolutely certain


and indubitable. It is relatively easy for you to play this game too. Any-

one can be an academic sceptic; they just have to be prepared to think

outside the box.

Obviously, I don’t know where you are reading this book. You might

be at your kitchen table, standing on a train, lying in a park or sitting on

a boulder halfway up a mountain. What I’m a little more certain about

is that wherever you are you are surrounded by objects, or, at least, that

it seems to you that you are surrounded by objects. This book is one of

them. You can see, hear, touch, smell or taste the many objects around

you. Of course, you may not have all your senses intact. You may be

blind or deaf or both, but I trust you have enough of your senses intact

to be aware you are surrounded by objects, otherwise you would not

be able to read this book in print or Braille or have it read to you.

The point I’m making is that your senses constantly inform you in no

uncertain terms that what philosophers call the external world is out

there, surrounding you, right now. It insists on being there and doing

its own thing regardless of what you do. You can ignore parts of it, but

only by focusing on other parts and you can’t make it vanish alto-

gether. Even your own body is a part of it. A special kind of object for

sure, but an object or collection of objects nonetheless. In short, noth-

ing seems more sure, certain, irrefutable, indubitable and unquestion-

able than that the external world is out there. Only a madman would

try to deny it. A madman or a philosopher – a philosopher being a kind

of madman in the opinion of the mob.

So, without wishing you to feel you are losing your mind, or to think

that I’m losing mine, that is precisely what I want you to do now. I want

you to try to deny it. I want you to try and think of any and every rea-

son you can, however crazy it sounds, for doubting the existence of the

external world. To make your philosophical task easier, take a particular

object and focus on that. This book, a cup, a rock, a blade of grass, the

building opposite – it doesn’t matter. Rather boringly, I’m at home in

my study as usual so I will take this rather nice black gel pen and doubt

its existence in every way I can.


I get my philosophy students to do this exercise, to play the doubt-

ing game. We all sit around doubting in every way possible the exist-

ence of the plastic water bottle I always have with me. I used to get

them to doubt the existence of a heavy brass candlestick, with a candle

burning in it and everything, but then I wondered why I was bothering

to take a heavy, cumbersome brass candlestick to college when any

object will do just as well. Lighting the candle was also against the col-

lege health and safety policy.

Sometimes to do philosophy properly you need to get right away

from books and just think. You need to forget about everything else and

get intimate with your own grey matter. As Nietzsche writes, ‘To become

a thinker. – How can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at

least a third of the day without passions, people and books?’ (The Wan-

derer and his Shadow, 324, p. 390). What Nietzsche neglects to mention

here, although he knew it well, is that it is often useful while thinking to

make a few notes. ‘Writing is thinking’ my old professor used to say. So,

I’ll stop banging on and quoting Nietzsche and you put this book down

and I’ll meet you at the start of the next paragraph in 20 minutes or so

when you have listed as many reasons as you can think of for doubting

the existence of whatever object it is you have chosen to doubt . . . .

Now, how was that for you? Did it hurt to do some philosophy

rather than just read about it or was it a pleasure to get your neurons

buzzing?

Over the years, my beloved philosophy students have come up with

all sorts of weird and wonderful reasons for doubting the existence of

the water bottle, the candlestick or whatever. Here are some of them.

How do their reasons compare with yours?

Hallucination and optical illusion

One of the reasons my philosophy students most commonly give for

doubting the existence of what appears to be there before them is


hallucination. An hallucination is the false perception of an object

when no object is present. The term ‘hallucination’ refers to the experi-

ence of hallucinating rather than to what is hallucinated. A person

doesn’t see hallucinations because the whole point of hallucination is

that there is nothing there. A person has hallucinations, or to be more

precise, he hallucinates. A person hallucinates because his mind is dis-

ordered in some way. What he fancies he sees (or hears) is a subjective

projection into the world. It is not the world playing tricks on him, but

his own mind playing tricks on him. It is possible to hallucinate any-

thing. A water bottle or a candlestick or far more weird and wonderful

objects. If the stories we hear are to be believed, people tend to hal-

lucinate scary things like spiders and scorpions, or bizarre things like

leprechauns. It seems that the mental disorder that causes people to

hallucinate dredges images up from the darkest depths of their

subconscious.

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of

the American Dream, a novel by Hunter S. Thompson, the central char-

acter, Duke, hallucinates his dead grandmother crawling up his leg

with a knife in her teeth – bizarre and scary! ‘Hallucinations are bad

enough,’ says Duke. ‘But after a while you learn to cope with things

like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in

her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing’ (Fear and

Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 47). Duke is high on an unfeasibly strong

cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD and mescaline, and it is

drug-fuelled hallucinations that we most commonly hear about thanks

to the excesses of rock stars and radical writers.

In Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD), for example, The Beatles

sing about a girl with kaleidoscope eyes and taxis made of newspaper

appearing on the shore that wait to take you away. Bizarrely, band

member and writer of the song, John Lennon, always insisted on deny-

ing that it is about drugs, but to anyone who has done fewer drugs

than Lennon did it is obvious that it is about drugs, as band member

and co-writer of the song, Paul McCartney, confirmed in 1994.


For his part, the French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre,

had himself injected with mescaline under experimental conditions in

1935. He wanted to have a genuine hallucinatory experience so he

could analyse it in a book he was writing on the imagination. As he

tells us in that book, The Imaginary, he managed to hallucinate three

small parallel clouds that appeared to float before him in the hospital

room where he was sitting (The Imaginary, p. 156). All rather mundane

compared to kaleidoscope eyes, psychedelic newspaper taxis or night-

marish dagger-biting old ladies, but it was sufficient material, or should

I say non-material, for him to analyse. He got the results he wanted

even if the rest of the experience was a thoroughly bad trip that

haunted him for years.

So, it is possible, however unlikely, that any object that appears to

be before you now, isn’t really there. It is possible that that pencil or

that cup or that King Kong key ring or that taxi do not exist, that they

are merely projections of a mind deranged by drugs, alcohol, fever,

mental disorder, hypnosis or all of them together!

We can sometimes be led to think things are there when they are

not, not by hallucinations but by various tricks of the light and so on. If

I see a mirage of a lake in the distance, for example, this is not an hal-

lucination. I’m not being tricked by my mind into thinking something is

there that isn’t, but by certain external, objective conditions of light

and heat. As most people know from their travels or from watching all

those desert movies and documentaries, the apparent lake is just heat

haze; hot and dusty air shimmering away to the horizon.

It is possible that anything I believe to be real and present is just an

optical illusion produced by a trick of the light, a magician’s smoke and

mirrors or some kind of holographic projection. It is unlikely, perhaps, that

the phone on my desk is really just an optical illusion. After all, it looks so

solid, so sure of itself, and I seem to recall having used it earlier. But it is

nonetheless possible and certainly not beyond the bounds of philosoph-

ical doubt that it is an optical illusion. It is possible to doubt its existence

on these seemingly crazy grounds, at least for philosophical purposes.


All this talk of hallucinating and optical illusions tends to focus on

this or that particular thing not being real. I asked you to focus on

doubting the reality of this or that particular thing, rather than every-

thing, in order to make the exercise a little more straightforward. But

what if everything that appears to be around you now is not really

there at all?

Appearance and reality

What if you are in fact a bodiless brain in a vat of special nutrients sit-

ting on a shelf in a basement laboratory on a planet in a far away gal-

axy? Actually, I don’t know why it has to be a far away galaxy, you

could be a brain in a vat in a local laboratory just a mile away from

where you think you are now. The special nutrients keep the brain that

you are alive and a group of mad scientists working on some dastardly

government project pump your apparent awareness of the world into

you through a series of electrodes plugged in all over your outer

cortex.

It’s a very complex business making you perceive that you are sitting

in a library reading this book, or lounging by a flower bed in the park

on a hot summer day, when you are really just a pickled organ, so the

scientists have a super-computer to take care of all the input. It’s cer-

tainly an excellent programme that puts PS3 and X-Box to shame. In

fact, they are only a tiny part of its programme. It not only takes care

of what you believe you are seeing, but also what you believe you are

hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. It manages to convince you

that you have a body that is capable of intricate movements; a body

that feels hot and cold, hunger and thirst, pleasure and pain. The vir-

tual reality it generates is every bit as good as the real thing, better for

all you know, except that it isn’t the real thing. Perhaps you have never

experienced the real thing, except very briefly when you were too

young to remember, before the brain that you are now was extracted


from the body that you had, from the skull that you had, like a walnut

from its shell.

If we were on a different philosophical tack we could raise a lot of

ethical questions about the terrible way in which you’ve been treated

and your basic human rights disrespected, but our philosophical course

is strictly epistemological at the moment.

The brain in a vat scenario is rather old hat these days; as is using

the phrase ‘old hat’ to describe something old-fashioned or worn out.

Younger philosophy students – that’s anyone below the age of 40 –

tend to cite The Matrix scenario instead of the brain in a vat scenario

when playing the doubting game. The Matrix scenario is similar to the

brain in a vat scenario, but rather than a brain in a vat experiencing a

computer generated virtual or simulated reality, it involves legions of

whole human bodies in vats experiencing a computer generated virtual

or simulated reality. In case you don’t know, perhaps because you live

on the dark side of the moon or have a deep aversion to science

fiction – people who like philosophy tend to like science fiction – The

Matrix is a first rate science fiction-action movie released in 1999,

written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu

Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss.

The movie and its sequels have obtained cult status among sci-fi

freaks, cyberpunks, hackers, goths, stoners and philosophy teachers.

Philosophy teachers love the movie because it helps them to explain

various complex philosophical themes to students by providing an

accessible, exciting but nonetheless thoughtful illustration of those

themes. They also love the movie because showing the whole director’s

cut DVD makes for a couple of very easy Friday afternoon lessons.

The movie reveals a world in which humans created artificial intelli-

gence, sentient machines. The sentient machines, being on the whole

smarter, more organized and less given to fatigue, have taken over the

planet. Industry has scorched the sky, blocked out the sun, preventing

the use of solar power as an energy source. Having no morals, the

sentient machines have decided to use humans as a mere means. They


grow them on vast farms for the electro-chemical energy their bodies

produce. Each human body, or battery, is stored in a vat or pod of

nutrient and is connected to an energy grid by tubes and wires. The

nutrient is a soup made from the liquefied dead – all very efficient and

self-sufficient. No other battery looks like it or lasts like it but the one

drawback in this master plan is that the humans can’t simply be kept in

comas. Their minds have to be stimulated or their bodies perish.

To solve this problem, the sentient machines have created the

matrix, a vast, computer generated, simulated reality that resembles in

every detail the late twentieth century, the height of human civilization

before the machines took over. Every human brain is plugged directly

into the matrix via a deep single pin socket in the back of the head.

Ouch! At first the matrix presented a perfect world but that didn’t

work. The humans failed to be fooled by complete happiness and fulfil-

ment. They didn’t know how to handle it or what to do with it and

their minds kept waking up to the horror of their bodily situation. So

the sentient machines created a challenging matrix, a simulated world

defined by familiar, everyday human misery and suffering, and that

worked much better.

A few human beings have avoided or escaped the machines and

they free others from the vats who they think can most help their rebel

cause. It’s a hell of a shock for people to discover that it’s closer to the

year 2199 than 1999 and that the late-twentieth-century world of

buildings, cars, juicy steaks and nightclubs isn’t real; that it’s just a

matrix operated by merciless sentient machines who have been farm-

ing you and your kind for energy. Not surprisingly, some people never

get over the shock, they want to forget everything and be plugged

straight back into the matrix without delay. They are like the people in

Plato’s simile of the cave we considered earlier. The light of reality and

truth overwhelms and terrifies them and they want nothing more than

to crawl back into unreality and blissful ignorance.

The very philosophically minded comedian, Woody Allen, once

wrote, ‘Cloquet hated reality but realised it was still the only place to


get a good steak’ (Side Effects, p. 13). Well, in the world according to

The Matrix, the matrix is the only place to get a good steak, all be it a

simulated cyber-steak served with microchips. But then, as at least one

character points out, a real steak and a perfectly simulated steak taste

exactly the same. And if they don’t, and you’ve never had real steak,

then how can you make the comparison anyway? There are, of course,

no steaks outside the matrix, or potato chips, or any other decent grub,

just a grey, tasteless protein gruel. In fact, in ‘the desert of the real’

outside the matrix, on a sun starved planet dominated by mean

machines, there isn’t much of anything pleasant except the vivacious

Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). As Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) says to

Neo (Keanu Reeves) as he offers him a choice between the red pill that

will reveal the reality of his situation and the blue pill that will give him

unquestioning faith in the make-believe world of the matrix, ‘Remem-

ber, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.’ How very much like the

study of philosophy is taking that red pill.

The Matrix raises so many more philosophical questions than just

those concerning the existence and nature of the external world, ques-

tions concerning human evolution, artificial intelligence, self-belief,

truth, freedom, morality, hope, despair and fate, that it leads me to

digress. I first saw this excellent movie at the end of a party where a

certain amount of consciousness raising had already taken place, but I

think it would have blown my mind anyway. If you haven’t already seen

it, definitely check it out. You might even want to read one or more of

the many books that have been written on The Matrix and philosophy,

such as Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The

Matrix by David Gerrold or The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the

Desert of the Real by William Irwin. These are just a couple of the titles

available in what appears to be a small industry. When you’ve read

them all, perhaps you could write one yourself. Always room for one

more.

Yet another scenario my philosophy students are fond of citing when

playing the doubting game is the Red Dwarf: Back to Reality scenario.


Again, if you live on the dark side of the moon or avoid anything vaguely

sci-fi like the plague, then you may not have heard of the Red Dwarf

sci-fi situation comedy written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. It fea-

tures four space drifters, Lister the last human, Rimmer a hologramatic

human, Cat a humanoid cat and Kryten a service mechanoid. These

dysfunctional but remarkably resourceful misfits are lost in space aboard

the 6 miles long, 5 miles tall and 4 miles wide mining spaceship, Red

Dwarf. For those among you who are not astronomers, a red dwarf is a

relatively small, relatively cool, low mass star.

The hugely popular eight series of Red Dwarf ran on the BBC

between 1988 and 1999 and are now continually repeated on minor

digital channels late at night. They are well worth watching if you don’t

mind your flow of comedy and profundity being constantly interrupted

by commercials. Probably better to get the DVDs. Every philosophy

teacher looking for those easy Friday afternoon lessons has the com-

plete collectors’ box set.

Apart from being hilariously funny with some superb one liners,

Red Dwarf cleverly explores a wide range of philosophical themes. It is

certainly as wide ranging in its philosophizing as The Matrix, which it

may well have influenced. It is interesting, perhaps, that the last Red

Dwarf series ended in 1999, the year The Matrix was released. If you

are interested in getting hold of Back to Reality, or like me you are just

an anorak who likes to have all the facts, it is the sixth and final episode

of Red Dwarf, Series 5.

For most of the episode, Back to Reality has the same ‘rude awak-

ening’ theme as The Matrix, with the four central characters emerging

simultaneously from a total immersion computer simulation into a

stark and hostile reality. Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten are shocked to

discover that their tolerably pleasant, adventurous life as the outlandish

crew of the spaceship Red Dwarf was a mere illusion. The world they

find themselves in is a bleak and brutal totalitarian state. The game is

over, the space travelling existence that defined them has gone, and

without it they no longer know who they are.


Each character falls into despair and loses the will to live as he dis-

covers he is the kind of person he despises. Rimmer, once so fussy and

self-important, finds he is a scruffy, alcoholic dropout who can no

longer blame his parents for his failings. Lister, who prided himself on

being a good man of moral courage, finds he is a murdering section

chief of the totalitarian state. Kryten soon breaks the primary directive

of his mechanoid existence by killing a man while Cat loses his cool, his

looks and his dress sense.

They are about to commit suicide when the computer aboard Red

Dwarf finally manages to snap them out of their collective nightmare

and welcomes them back to reality. It turns out they have imagined

emerging from a computer game into a bleak totalitarian state. It was

all an hallucination brought on by the hallucinogenic, despair inducing

ink venom of a giant despair squid.

This classic episode of Red Dwarf questions our certainty about

what is real. It has us believing that what we thought was real was only

a simulation or dream, only to reveal later on that the waking up was

actually a falling asleep. The Red Dwarf crew is understandably relieved

to discover that they are, after all, the Red Dwarf crew, but how do

they know for sure? Perhaps they are not the Red Dwarf crew. Perhaps

four individuals are in an artificial reality suite somewhere else being

led to believe they have just recovered from an hallucination that led

them to believe they were no longer the Red Dwarf crew.

Many philosophers argue that there is no way of knowing for sure

that the world you think you’re in right now isn’t a dream. And if it

suddenly seems you’re waking up from the dream you can’t in fact

know for sure you’re not falling asleep. Maybe you’re dreaming all of it

while floating in a reality you’ve never experienced. Confused? I’m

beginning to confuse myself here, as well as give myself a bewildering

sense of unreality, but the general point is that you can’t ever know for

absolute certain what is real. The very term ‘reality’ becomes so slip-

pery that it is impossible to keep a firm hold on it or know what it really

refers to.


The Buddhists put it all rather poetically when they say it is quite

possible that at this very moment you may be a butterfly dreaming

you are a human being. But if you suddenly wake up to find yourself

fluttering around the cabbages on a summer morning trying to avoid

being eaten by birds, how do you know you are not really a human

being that has suddenly started dreaming it is a butterfly? Perhaps

you noted the possibility that you are a butterfly dreaming it is a

human, or something very similar, for the doubting exercise. Don’t

forget the doubting exercise. You are still doing it as you sit reading

this book, or as you flutter around the cabbages imagining you are

reading this book.

Solipsism – is there anything out there?

So far the focus has been on particular things that appear to be out

there not being out there, and on the world that appears to be out

there being very different from the world that is really out there. In

other words, all the doubts considered so far assume that there is an

external world of some sort, that there is something out there, some

reality or other outside your mind, even if, like the brain in the vat or

the vast majority of humans in The Matrix who never get freed from

the pods, you are completely out of touch with that hidden reality and

always will be. But perhaps there is no reality out there. Perhaps there

is nothing at all outside your own mind! I don’t mean an infinite void

of space, I mean absolutely nothing at all whatsoever, naught, nil, zilch,

zip, sweet FA. (It’s hard to imagine nothing, perhaps because there is

nothing to imagine.) Perhaps you are not even a brain in a vat or a

cerebellum in a bucket. Perhaps you are just a non-physical, disembod-

ied mind dreaming that the world exists.

This, of course, amounts to saying that your mind is the only thing,

the only entity, that there is, the entire universe. It amounts to saying

that the so-called external world, absolutely all of it, including what

Index

a priori 35–7, 81, 86, 104–5absurdity 7–8, 17, 19–23, 38academic publishers 119aesthetics 100A-level Philosophy 117–18Allen, Woody 58ambiguous image 34ancient Greeks 7, 13, 16, 19, 28,

42–3, 71, 74, 115animal rights 13, 38, 45animals 13, 38, 109Anselm 80, 83anti-nihilism 8AP-level Philosophy 117appearances 28, 31–2, 50,

53–6, 62, 65, 67, 75, 81, 86–8, 92–3, 106, 108

Aquinas, Thomas 36, 83–4argument 2–4, 17–20, 23, 26–7,

29, 38, 46, 64, 67, 77–81, 83–6, 96–7, 101, 110, 118

Aristotle 4, 6, 13, 19, 36, 42, 44, 71–2

Armstrong, Lance 5–6artificial intelligence 57, 59astrology 71astronomy 28, 60, 71, 82atheism 9

attitude 16–17, 66–7, 93authority 24, 71–3Ayer, A. J. 35, 37, 96

Bachelor of Arts 117Baggini, Julian 119, 121banana 109banking 113Barker, Liz 113Beatles, The 54being 15, 30, 47, 107–8, 111being, borrowed 108being, differentiated 107–8being, undifferentiated 107–9being-for-itself 108being-in-itself 107–8belief 7, 9, 21, 33–5, 51, 55–6,

63–7, 73–5, 87, 98belief condition 34beliefs 15, 17–18, 20, 22, 24, 28,

32, 51, 80Bentham, Jeremy 41Berkeley, George 65–6, 110–11Blackburn, Simon 46–7Blyton, Enid 6boo-hurray theory 38book burning 30–1brain in a vat 56–7, 62

130 Index

Brearley, Mike 114British National Party 27British Philosophical

Association 113Buddha 42–3

car alarm 73careers 112–13Carnap, Rudolf 94categorical imperative 39

see also universal lawcausation 105–6cave, simile of 10, 32, 58certainty 13, 15, 23, 28, 33, 35,

51–2, 61, 63, 69, 71–2, 74, 77–82, 86–7, 97–8

chat shows 45children 8, 42, 118–19Christians 78, 119church 71, 78circularity 31civil liberties 27cogito ergo sum 79 see also

I think therefore I am collections of ideas 64–6,

110–11colour 76–7, 109–10Columbo, Lieutenant 23common sense 28, 37, 70, 92–3,

101, 110complexity 2, 10, 35, 56–7, 66computer simulation 56–8, 60–1concepts 32, 105, 110conceptual schemas 106conclusions 7–8, 11, 18–19, 36,

51, 68, 94, 102, 109confusion 7, 10, 12, 18, 20, 22,

61, 75, 96, 104consciousness 7, 59, 90–1,

101–3, 107–10

consequentialism 36–7, 40–1 see also utilitarianism

consistency see inconsistencycontent 20, 105contradiction 18, 20–3, 28, 77,

84, 98–9controversy 25, 27, 34, 45, 89Copernican 78Copi, Irving M. 120cricket 2, 114cycling 5–6

de Beauvoir, Simone 4, 36, 68, 120

de Botton, Alain 119death 7, 46, 49debate 11, 17, 26, 34, 44–5, 90,

118decay 31, 74deduction 18, 34, 80definition 12–15, 30, 33, 47,

84democracy 23democratic rights 27deontologists 36–7, 39Descartes, René 3–4, 15, 63, 66,

68–84, 86–7, 104Descartes’ demon see evil

demondespair 7–8, 59, 61, 112detectives 20, 23dictionary 12, 14–15, 47, 51, 65,

99, 102dictionary of philosophy 47Dimbleby, Jonathan 114disagreement 25, 30, 33, 37–8,

43–5, 104dismissive response 91–2dogmatic slumber 104doubting game 53, 57, 59, 68, 72

Index 131

dreaming 61–3, 76–7, 86drugs 42, 45–6, 54–5, 61, 74

education 11, 25, 27–8, 32, 78, 116–18

emotivism 38empirical 21–2, 34–5, 37, 69, 81,

99–101, 105empiricism 37, 104empiricist 30, 37, 82, 88, 97,

104, 109employment 46, 113–14, 116ends 40, 42, 116entailment 18epistemology 29, 33, 35–6, 47,

57 see also knowledge, theory of

Erkenntnis 96esse est percipi 66 see also to be

is to be perceivedethics 29, 36–9, 41–2, 44–7, 57,

100, 118, 122ethics, applied see ethics,

practicalethics, deontological 39, 41, 46ethics, duty based see ethics,

deontologicalethics, Kantian see ethics,

deontologicalethics, medical 46ethics, normative 39, 44, 46ethics, practical 39, 45–6ethics committees 122etymology 15eudaimonia 42evidence 34, 37, 86, 98–101,

109evil demon 77–9 evil genius see evil demonexile 7, 95

existence 30–1, 42–4, 52–3, 55, 59, 63–7, 71–2, 76–88, 97, 105, 107, 109–11

existence is not a predicate 85existentialism 8, 30, 55, 107,

120, 122experience 16, 19, 21, 30, 35,

54–5, 83, 88, 94, 97–8, 104–6, 110

extension (in space) 78, 109external world 52, 59, 62, 64–5,

67, 78, 80–1, 86–8

faith 10, 32, 59Family Guy 89–90Fascists 25, 27father of modern philosophy 68,

71father of western philosophy 27,

29Feigl, Herbert 94finitude 80, 83flourishing 42form (logical) 20, 99form (Platonic) 31–2Forms, Theory of 31foundationalism 71, 74, 79, 81, 87free speech 17–18, 23–4, 31freedom 8–9, 17–18, 24, 31, 40,

59funding 115–16

generosity 43geometry 69, 97Gerrold, David 59Gervais, Rickey 114God 8–9, 22, 30, 32, 36, 63,

65–6, 77–81, 83–6, 97, 110–11

God is dead 8–9

132 Index

gods 8, 23, 43golden mean 42–3Good, the 32goodness (moral) 3, 36–9, 41,

44, 46, 61Grant, Rob 60Gray, Thomas 93Grayling, A. C. 119guessing 51

hallucination 34, 53–6, 61, 74 see also drugs

hallucinogenics see drugshappiness 16, 36, 41–4, 58Hegel, Friedrich 4Heidegger, Martin 6hemlock 7heresy 77history 3, 11, 27, 35, 69–71, 79,

96, 118hocus-pocus 71Hodges, Wilfred 21Hume, David 4, 30–1, 36, 38,

82, 88, 96–9, 104Hume’s fork 99

I think therefore I am 79, 82, 86idealism 31, 65–6, 103–4, 106,

108, 110idealism, Berkeleyan 65–6idealism, transcendental 103–4,

106, 108if 19–20ignorance 1, 5, 10, 22, 27–8, 32,

58illogical 18, 86imagination 55, 62–3, 66, 76, 93imperfection 83imply 18–19, 80, 82–3, 85–6,

107

impossibility 20–2, 35–6, 39–40, 61, 63–4, 66, 77, 83, 85, 87, 94

impressions 63, 82, 88, 104–5inconsistency 7, 17, 20–2infinity 62, 65, 80, 82–4intelligence 1, 3, 8, 19, 26, 44,

64 see also artificial intelligence

Irwin, William 59ivory tower 113

jaundice 75Johnson, Samuel 14, 65journalism 6, 122justification 34justified true belief 33

Kant, Immanuel 4, 36, 39–41, 46, 85–6, 103–8, 110, 115

Keats, John 9–10Kierkegaard, Søren 4, 36kingdom of ends 40 know thyself 43knowledge 2, 6, 9, 15, 21, 28–9,

31–7, 47, 50, 71, 74, 77, 79, 81, 88, 94, 96–8, 104, 113, 121

knowledge, theory of 29, 33, 35, 47 see also epistemology

Knox, Ronald 66, 110Königsberg 104Kraft, Victor 94

Ladd Franklin, Christina 64, 67language 14, 37, 44, 86, 96,

100, 119, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 104

Index 133

Lennon, John 54liberal 7, 25–7, 78Locke, John 97, 104, 109logic 11, 17–22, 35, 51, 76–8,

86, 97, 99–101, 120logical positivism 94–7, 99–101love of wisdom 15LSD see drugslying 20–1, 39–40

MacFarlane, Seth 89 Mackie, J. L. 46man 13, 18–19Mansfield, Michael 114Master of Arts 117material world 31, 65, 110mathematics 11–12, 32, 34,

69–70, 77–8, 80, 83, 97, 100

Matrix, The 57–60, 62, 68matters of fact 97–9, 101McCartney, Paul 54meaning 1, 8, 16, 32, 37, 44, 47,

51, 100–1 meaning of life 51Meaning of Life, The 16meaninglessness 3, 8, 36–7, 96,

99, 101, 104medieval 80, 83, 85Meldrew, Victor 34mescaline see drugsmeta-ethics 39, 44metaphysical 30–1, 36, 82, 88,

97, 101, 104metaphysics 29–31, 44, 47, 97,

99–100, 104method of doubt 71–4, 86middle way 42–3Mill, James 41Mill, John Stuart 24–6, 41, 46, 121

mind-independent 106mirage 55money 6, 37, 42–3, 73, 100,

115, 119Monk, Ray 95Monty Python 16moral objectivism 37, 39, 44moral philosophy see ethicsmoral subjectivism 37–9, 44moral values 35–6, 39–40, 44mystery 10, 71mystical 95

NASA 31, 100natural attitude 93nature 42, 88, 90, 109Naylor, Doug 60necessity 18–19, 84–5, 102, 107negation 83, 108Neo-Nazis 25–7Nesbitt, Rab C. 5Netherlands 7, 78Nietzsche, Friedrich 8–9, 36, 53nihilism 7–8, 112non-philosophers 113nonsense 23, 25, 32, 34, 91, 96,

99–101non-sensible intuition 107nothing 7, 30, 54, 62–3, 79,

104, 107–8nothingness 107–8noumena 106–7number 83, 105, 109

objectivity 17, 27, 37–9, 44–5, 55, 65–6

O’Brien, Dan 35Ontological Argument 80, 83–6,

97ontology 29–30, 47

134 Index

open-minded 27, 70opinion 7, 17, 24–6, 28, 38, 45,

52, 67, 72–4optical illusion 34, 53, 55–6, 75other minds 67, 87other people 22–3, 35, 43, 51,

63–4, 66–7, 103Oxbridge 4

pain 9, 16, 41, 56, 65, 82Paris 68, 78, 120particular 18–19, 31, 52, 56, 62,

82perception 54, 76, 82, 86, 88,

109percepts 105perfection 30–1, 33, 58–9, 80–5PhD 115–17, 121phenomena 106–10philosopher kings 32philosophers 1–2, 4–9, 11,

13–14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 27, 29–38, 45–7, 49–52, 61, 63, 67–70, 73–4, 78, 82–4, 87, 91, 93–6, 103, 106–7, 113, 115, 119–21

philosophical 15–16, 27, 89, 120philosophical conversation 28, 49philosophical problems 48,

50–1, 103 philosophizing 2–3, 5–6, 11, 36,

38, 42, 48, 50–1, 60, 71–2, 91–2, 95, 121–2

philosophy 1–7, 9–33, 35–7, 39, 41, 43, 45–9, 51, 53, 57, 59–60, 63–4, 66–73, 78–9, 81, 83, 85–8, 91–2, 94–6, 99–100, 103–4, 106, 108, 112–122

philosophy book market 119philosophy books 31, 119

philosophy courses 3, 22, 92, 118philosophy departments 116philosophy evening classes 121philosophy graduates 112–14philosophy millionaire 120–1philosophy of language 14, 96philosophy of religion 83, 85 see

also God and Ontological Argument

philosophy professors 4, 20, 53, 117, 121

philosophy qualifications 6, 112, 114, 116, 118

philosophy round 121philosophy students 3, 12–13,

17, 22, 25–7, 39, 53, 57, 59, 64, 67–8, 72, 91–2, 94, 114, 117–18, 121

philosophy teacher 3, 57, 60, 64physics 71Pirsig, Robert M. 103Plato 4, 19, 28–34, 36, 58, 71,

104, 115, 121pleasure 16, 41–3, 53, 56, 82Pluto probe 100poetry 9–10, 41, 93, 95pointlessness 5, 8political correctness 27political incorrectness 18, 89political indoctrination 25political power 33politicians 33, 116politics 11, 23–8, 89, 98pop philosophers 119–21popular press 27postgraduate 96, 116, 121Postgraduate Certificate of

Education 117post-Kantian 103, 107practical response 91prayer 9

Index 135

predicate 85premises 18–19primary qualities 109–10problem of other minds 67professional philosophers 114,

116–17, 121–2proof 34, 78, 80, 84–8propositions 22, 37, 84–5,

97–101 see also statements

propositions, analytic 97–9propositions, synthetic 98–100psychology 1, 11, 75

qualifications 6, 112, 114, 116–18

questioning 23–4, 50, 77, 92

rational animal 13, 19rationalism 37, 104rationalist 34–5, 37, 69, 74,

81–2, 104realism, common sense 92–3,

110realism, direct 93, 108realism, naïve 93reality 28–32, 56–62, 69, 76,

86–7, 91, 93, 106, 108, 112

reason 10–11, 13, 17–18, 31–2, 34–9, 51, 72, 86–8, 113

reasoning 17, 28, 37–8, 71, 88, 97, 100, 104

Red Dwarf 60–1, 68relations of ideas 97–9religion 8, 25, 30, 38, 51, 72,

78, 83Religious Studies 118–19representation 106research 6, 113–14, 116–17, 121rocket science 2, 31, 100

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 36Russell, Bertrand 64, 85–7, 115,

119

Sartre, Jean-Paul 8, 36, 55, 67–8, 107–8, 115, 120

scepticism 35, 37, 51–2, 63, 67, 71–2, 74–5, 77, 87

Schlick, Moritz 95–6school teaching 118–19Schopenhauer, Arthur 8, 112science 2, 11, 19, 22, 36 ,71, 78,

86–7, 96, 100science fiction 57secondary qualities 109–10self 63, 82self-knowledge 43senses 30, 34–5, 52, 69, 74–6,

78, 81, 88, 93, 97–8, 104sensory data 104–5sentient machines 57–8sentiment 9, 15, 21shilling shockers 119smart arse 7, 21smell 52, 56, 74–5, 93, 109–10Socrates 7, 18–19, 22–3, 28–9,

36, 71Socratic Method 22–3, 93solidity 109solipsism 62–7, 80–1, 86–7, 110sound 90, 92–4, 101–3, 107–10space 50, 60, 62, 82, 105, 107,

110Spock, Mr 18Star Trek 18statements 12–13, 21–2, 37, 97,

100 see also propositionssteak 59stiff upper lip 16stoicism 16Stoics 16

136 Index

subconscious 54subjectivity 17, 37–9, 44, 54, 66subsistence 111superficial conversation 122supreme being see GodSwift, Jonathan 13syllogism 18–19synthesis 104–5, 107

tabula rasa 97taste 52, 59, 74–5, 109–10tautology 99, 101teenagers 45, 90, 117teleology 42 tennis 2, 4theism 9theologian 65–6, 84theological 70–1thinking 6, 17–18, 24–5, 27, 50,

53, 55, 66, 77, 79, 81, 88, 98, 100

Thompson, Hunter S. 54thought 16–17, 24, 31, 35, 44,

73, 97time 105, 107, 110to be is to be perceived 66, 110Trademark Argument 80transferable skills 6, 113tree question 89, 91–4, 100–1,

103, 111truism see tautologytruth 9, 15, 17, 20, 23–4, 26–9,

32, 34, 38, 58–9, 70, 72, 77, 80, 97–100

truth condition 34two aspects view 106, 108two worlds view 106

uncertainty 73–4, 77, 79–80unconscious 102

universal law 40 see also categorical imperative

university 1, 4, 34, 112, 116–17, 120–1

unphilosophical 94unverifiable 99–101utilitarianism 36–7, 39–42, 46

see also consequentialismutilitarians 36–7, 40–1utility 40

Velecky, Lubor 83verifiable in principle 99–100verification 99–101verification principle 99–101vibration 102–3, 110Vienna 94–6Vienna Circle 94–6, 100virtual reality 56, 87 see also

computer simulationvirtue theory 39, 42viva voce 117

Wachowski brothers 57well-meaning 25–7Whitehead, Alfred North 29Wikipedia 66Williams, Bernard 70–1Willsdon, Dominic 114wisdom 7, 15, 25, 43, 88witch burning 71, 73Wittgenstein, Ludwig 14, 36, 67,

95, 115women 70words 12, 14World War II 95writing philosophy 53, 69,

119–20

X Factor 107

how to be a philosopher: or how to be almost certain that almost nothing is certain

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