Arguing With My Students

by Daryl Culp

I enjoy teaching philosophy in a Socratic style, inviting my students to respond to my ideas. Their journal entries and essays indicate that they are thinking deeply about these issues. Throughout history, men and women have searched for truth, argued with each other about what is good, and examined their lives for meaning. The history of philosophy is a record of arguments about the questions that re-occur in every age. I wrote the following entries in response to my students’ journals. I quote them sometimes (and give credit to their thoughts) so you can see the ideas to which I respond). I include the journal questions in italics.

Philosophy teaches us to think clearly about our life. All aspects of life are open to critical thought: our society, our relations with other people, the nature of the world. How do we know what is real? Reflecting upon the way we think can help us understand ourselves and each other better. Arguing with each other helps us clarify our own views and understand the different sorts of justification that count in philosophical arguments.

What is philosophy?

Daryl Culp (January 2002)

Philosophy has long been defined as the "love of wisdom." That's the literal meaning of the term. Why, then, do philosophy courses spend so much time teaching students how to think? How do you teach students to love wisdom?

How can we acquire wisdom, or even more difficult, teach it? What is wisdom? It is the ability to make good choices, to guide others in the right path. Wisdom seems to be the culmination of philosophy, not the beginning.

Socrates said that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. What am I curious about? What questions do I ponder when I wake up in the middle of the night? Do the answers come through logic? Or through dreams and visions?

Much of philosophy is argument. Each of us has opinions about the great metaphysical questions. Who am I? We all answer that differently, because we are unique human beings. And yet, philosophy is the most general of disciplines. It is the attempt to reach a unified, or universal, answer to those questions. What is a human being?

Can we answer these questions in the abstract? Part of the fun of philosophy is the eternal conversation. Everyone adds something new to the definition of what it means to be human. Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun; Whitehead said that the history of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato. But time keeps rolling along, and even if it is a wheel, it seems to be going somewhere.

Philosophy is often seen as a difficult subject. It is hard thinking: logical and analytical. Yet it is just as often creative and imaginative (and that is perhaps more difficult). Learning to think critically is hard because it lies beyond our ordinary patterns. It means holding up accepted ideas and examining them from different perspectives.

Philosophy requires clarity, and logic is a primary tool in this task. We start with clear definitions, because we want to say what we mean as precisely as possible. From there, the implications of our thoughts are examined closely, so as to make sure we arrive at correct conclusions.

Analysis breaks our thoughts down into parts, so that we can examine them bit by bit. Synthesis then puts them back together. Some will argue that a unity of thought is impossible, and that our ideas are fragments whirling through a vast pool of emptiness, never touching reality. Even if this were true, it seems unavoidable to try to make connections between our disparate experiences.

Philosophy is a search for truth. Even the postmoderns seek for a correct definition of the human dilemma. Truth is elusive, however, especially on the most general questions of being. Many different opinions exist, and there seems to be no way to judge the truth about some questions, at least in this life.

Perhaps this is because truth is a relation between our human existence and its context (the universe, God, etc.). Our thoughts are about something: our ideas relate us to a context outside of ourselves. Truth is a quality of that relationship: our thoughts are either true or false insofar as they maintain that relationship. (I am assuming that something other than me exists: a questionable assumption, but one that I dare to make. If it is wrong, then I am only speaking to myself anyway).

What is the special spark within us that makes us human? How are human beings different than animals?

Daryl Culp (September 2001)

The human being is a strange and wonderful creature, to be sure. We are strangers to ourselves, in many ways. We understand ourselves better than anyone else, but often we do things that seem to come from some unbidden source. Some call it fate; some call it destiny. Others talk of God's plan; still others label it coincidence.

Although at times it looks like our lives are running like a computer program, there come unsuspected 'bugs' to snafu the smooth progress from idea to reality.

What is unique to human beings? The line between us and animals is indeed thin, especially because this line is drawn within our very being. We are animals, and always will be. And yet, there lives within our hearts a desire to be more. I also believe we have the ability to transcend our desires and needs.

It is difficult to prove that the soul exists. There is a scientific explanation for everything, and if there isn't now, there probably will be some day. The naturalist viewpoint assumes that the human being is completely biological, not spiritual. So it is useless trying to prove that a 'soul-of-the-gaps' exists, something that science cannot explain about us (such as intuition, perhaps). At any rate, such a characteristic would still be a mystery.

The soul, it seems to me, is very ordinary. It is the light in one's eyes, the fire in the belly, the simple desire to go on living day to day. Call it a force, call it energy, it makes up the essence of each human being. It may survive death; it may not. What matters is what we do with our life here today. The soul is shaped by each decision, each act. My soul is the meaning of my life, and that meaning is given to me, only to be moulded by my will, if I so desire.

Is the soul a separate entity that inhabits the body? Descartes thought so, but this dualism of the human self has bothered many people throughout the history of philosophy. It seems to make the body meaningless, or even an evil place that we long to escape. Is Descartes right to separate the soul from the body?

Daryl Culp (September 1999)

Descartes makes a crucial distinction between the mind and body, suggesting that the mind uses the body. Is this a fair analogy? Are not the mind and body one thing, a person? How can one thing inside a person use another thing inside a person? Yet we often think of using our hands and feet to do something.

It is fair to say that our head is different than our hands, and that our mind is different than the muscles with which we accomplish particular tasks. Yet I think that Descartes is wrong to infer that a man (a person) is therefore different than his body. I am a combination of thoughts, feelings, desires, and needs, and it is my body that experiences these sensations and ideas. In my view, a person, by definition, is everything that goes together to make up that human being, including memories of experience and hope of future experience.

Descartes anticipates my argument and rejects it. He asks whether the union of the soul and body can rule over the whole person, and answers no. This would be true if the soul were absolutely distinct from the body, that is, if the soul inhabited the body like a ghost in a machine. But here I disagree with Descartes’ definition of the soul. He suggests that the soul controls the body like the operator of a machine pulling levers and pushing buttons. But the mind is more closely linked to the body. Bodily events influence the mind, such as drunkenness or sleep. Our minds are not in complete control, but rather, our minds and bodies work together in a complex interacting relation.

Perhaps Descartes would say: "you should try to make your mind control your body; that would be the perfect life." I disagree that the soul needs to be purified and thus must escape the body. This does not mean that I think our existence stops when we die. Although our minds stop working when life ends, I find it hard to believe that this is the end of my personal being. Granted, I cannot know anything about what happens beyond death. We can only speculate about what happens to us then.

Is there a special part of human beings that makes us unique? Is our spirit so much a part of our personality, our physical life, that it disappears when we die?

Daryl Culp (January 2001)

The distinction between the soul and the body, proposed by Plato (or Socrates), has been a constant source of trouble for Western philosophers. In the modern period, this question has usually been addressed as the problem of the difference between the mind and the brain. There are several different solutions to this problem, as well as criticisms of each position.

Descartes proposes that the mind is completely different than the brain. In other words, mental ideas have an existence separate from the electrical impulses that happen inside our heads. This picture of mental events floating around, separate from the brain, is usually called dualism (because two different types of things are identified: ideas and brain-states).

Dualism explains the fact that we are conscious. It would support the existence of the soul after death. However, there are some problems with this view. First, how do mental ideas affect the body? How can an idea, which is not physical, cause any changes in our existence? Don't all physical effects have a physical cause? Even if mental events can cause physical activities, it does not seem that we can investigate these causes, because we cannot bring the invisible mental events into public scrutiny (Warburton 129).

A second position is called physicalism. According to this theory, only the brain exists. Mental ideas are only the physiological events that happen inside our brain. Thinking is simply the act of having electrical impulses through our brain cells. This theory is obviously much simpler than the previous, and it can explain many of our actions. However, can it explain our feeling of self-awareness? Don't ideas have a special quality? For example: the sensation of pain is a stimulation of nerves, but it is also a feeling.

Another solution to this problem is called functionalism. The mind is seen as a function of the brain (i.e. mental events are connected to brainwaves), but ideas can be examined independently of their origin in the brain. In other words, ideas do not have a separate existence, but they need to be explained on their own terms, not just as interactions of electrical impulses. This theory avoids defining exactly what ideas are, and whether they have a different sort of existence. It simply tries to explain ideas in terms of other ideas, instead of reducing ideas to biological behaviours.

This kind of theory has problems explaining the way we understand anything. A computer could do this kind of symbol manipulation, this comparing of ideas with one another. Where is the spark of brilliance that constitutes truly intelligent thought? Where is the creativity of people? Are ideas like freedom just a set of ideas linked together? It seems that human beings have some sort of impulse in their heads. Mental ideas can affect how we behave. The question remains, however, what exactly those mental states are.

I think that ideas are connected to physiological events in our brains, but that ideas have a special quality. Because we can reflect on our ideas, and especially because we can put them into language, they become objects of a sort. Words are not objects that have physical existence, but are signs of ideas that have a reality independent of individual minds. For example, ideas can be recorded in books, which can disappear for centuries. It is true that the ideas in books are useless without someone to read them. But those ideas can change the people who read them, and can change the world. Ideas are like energy: they are invisible patterns of meaning that have their centre in human brains, but extend beyond our skulls.

Is human thought simply a biological process, and if so, could it be replicated by a computer? In the modern period, the question about the uniqueness of the human person has often been asked as a question about the mind.. These questions raise the problem of self-awareness. Even if this is a function of the brain, does it give a special status to ideas?

Are we free or determined? Our actions sometimes seem to be determined by factors from our past as well as our internal make-up. Is our free will just an illusion? We do make choices, but are all of these forced upon us by prior causes? Is freedom necessary for moral action? Is freedom simply having choices or does it have something to do with self-consciousness?

Daryl Culp (February 2001)

Is our free will an illusion? If we look at our lives, many of the things that we do are caused by factors in our past, or by some internal aspect of our character. Perhaps every choice that we make is determined by previous causes. I propose, however, that determinism is an illusion caused by an incorrect definition of cause.

It is true that every event has a cause. In this respect, our every action is caused by something. There is a chain of causes leading up to every decision that we make, and if we could only know all of those causes, it seems that we could predict every choice that we make. The illusion of determinism, it seems to me, comes from our ability to look at the chain of causes in our lives. When we look back in time, we can see all of the causes that have made us who we are. We were born in a particular family and society, given a set of genes from our parents, educated with a set of moral and cultural norms. It seems like we are destined to this fate.

However, it is a mistake to view these causes as necessary, that is, as unavoidable. We could have been born somewhere else, with other genes, given other norms. Furthermore, in some cases, we decide to act in opposition to our genetic predispositions and social norms. This choice, it seems to me, indicates that although there are many factors that shape our lives, these causes do not force us to act in certain ways. The illusion of determinism arises from our habit of looking backwards along the chain of causes, instead of looking forwards, and noticing the impossibility of predicting which effect will follow from a combination of various causes.

There are certainly some events that are necessary effects of identifiable causes. If you jump out of a window, falling down to the ground will be an inevitable result of this choice. However, the necessity of this effect is dependent upon a natural law that describes how the world works all the time for every person. If we want to counter this effect, we must find another natural law that works universally (for example, aerodynamic principles that govern the construction of airplanes or rockets).

This network of causes, however, shows us that the future is in some sense open. Our choices do make a difference. When we discover natural laws, it gives us the ability to operate within the natural laws, setting one against another. In this sense, the choice to fly is a real choice, not determined by natural laws. Human beings have the ability to discover the factors operating in the world, and to choose to use those factors to engage in new and creative activities.

If this is true on the physical level, it is even more true on the psychological and sociological levels. In fact, on these levels, I would argue that human beings are essentially unpredictable according to natural laws. No psychologist will ever discover natural laws that can completely predict human behaviour, because by nature we make choices that are creative. Since human beings are aware of the choices that they make, they are able to choose to balance the factors that go into their lives, and even think up new options that go against the factors that seem to be determining their destiny.

Is the truth relative? Do different people have different truths? Or do we all struggle towards the same ideal, the same understanding? Why do people disagree about philosophical questions?

Daryl Culp, response to Ksenija Kafanova (Fall 2000)

You start out with the relativist paradox: "there is nothing absolute" (it is a paradox because you presumably mean that your own statement is not absolute, although you state it rather absolutely). Well, I don't think that this means that what you say is nonsense. Perhaps you are simply saying, "in my experience, nothing is absolute." However, if no truth is absolute, does this necessarily mean that all truth is subjective? In other words, do you think that all truths are equal? Or are there some truths that are better than others? And if that is the case, is there some sort of absolute (or at least universal) measuring stick by which we determine which truths are better?

I do agree with you that truth is expressed in "different forms and shapes." Does this mean, though, that there is one truth that simply comes out in human languages in different ways? If this is the case, is it not our responsibility to work together to come closer to an expression of that one truth that we can all agree on? This seems to happen in scientific research. Although science is expressed in many languages, the common ideas are true in any culture. This fact is more true for physics than for psychology. When interpretation is involved, truth becomes more difficult to express in a uniform way.

When you say that "the truth is one, but it is different for everyone," are you contradicting yourself? Or do you define "one" and "different" in a way so that these are not opposites? I don't know. You would have to define your terms more carefully in order for me to evaluate this statement.

I agree that we can often go in circles on these questions and never arrive at a final answer. But I think that going in circles can sometimes help us to realize what sort of a world we live in and what sort of people we are. In my view, we don't simply arrive where we started out, but rather we go in a spiral, ascending towards an ultimate truth (although we will never achieve it completely, at least in our present human state).

Daryl Culp, response to Catherine Ivanova (September 2000)

I like the way that you start by proposing your definition of truth (both subjective and objective), and then making various arguments in support of your position. Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with you, I notice that you are proceeding according to a good philosophical method.

I agree that our views and opinions are shaped by our cultural background. This means that we do have different points of view. I also agree that "this fact doesn't make the truth different for everyone."

However, I don't quite follow you when you say that the truth will be expressed differently by everyone, and that when we try to fit the truth into language that's when we lose it. This is a very intriguing idea, but I wonder if you have it backwards. Does truth exist before language?

Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between reality and truth. I think that reality exists independently from human beings, and that truth is the relation between human beings and reality. The truth is out there, as they say in the X-files.

You have a mystical point of view. Religious mystics throughout the ages (not just Christians) have felt that truth cannot be expressed in words. You say that we should "experience or feel the truth."

I think that truth exists in language because truth is a human concept. Don't we experience the truth within language? Isn't experience already within language? (How can we experience an apple except through our linguistic framework of "red objects that are round and have a pleasant taste; sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter"). Does this truth about an apple, expressed in words, lose the truth of the apple?

Daryl Culp, response to Jelena Skorodumova (Fall 2000)

You have done an excellent job of analyzing several definitions of truth, and coming up with your own. You state the problem clearly: there are examples of truth that are "shared by all people" and yet there are other examples of truth that people view "through his/her own spectacles." You are correct that this makes the truth of ultimate questions so difficult to find, or even define. People do not agree on the true answer, and so you are right to conclude that the answers that are given "cannot, therefore, be called truth."

But you keep pushing the questions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that "truth is not always seen because people may not notice it because small truths stand in their way." Perhaps you mean that we are satisfied with the things that we know for sure, and don't care about the truth about the big questions. Maybe we are uncomfortable with the doubt that accompanies the big questions, and prefer to stick with ordinary, humble truths.

I like your definition that "truth is a principle slightly beyond what a human's mind can grasp." This would mean that we are all searching for truth, and yet one person can never find all of it. This might make some people feel uncomfortable, because they want absolute certainty. But I prefer to feel that we are all in the same boat together, sailing across a mysterious ocean towards the invisible island of truth. We can see the direction by the stars; we might even have some good maps; but we're all on the way together.

Daryl Culp, response to Gitana Dirþininkienë (November 1999)

Your concerns about the role of logic in philosophy are legitimate. Emotion, intuition and other aspects of human personality are tremendously important for philosophy, and they have been ignored by too many philosophers.

When I say that people give reasons for their actions, I don't mean that these reasons need to be logical. They might be emotional reasons, or intuitive. I am saying that people should give good reasons. To me, this is what philosophy is about: justifying your ideas or arguments. You don't have to use logic to prove that you are right, or that there is only one way to think or act. But because we are the kind of beings that can reflect on our own ideas or actions means that we always can question our actions or ideas, and thus we need to think about the reasons behind those ideas or actions. I recognize that many people act or think without reasons. Maybe they are good people. Maybe it is better just to act without thinking. But in my view, we should reflect on the reasons why we do the things we do.

I am aware of your perception that non-logical people get pushed to the side in philosophy. This is why I suggested that different sorts of logic might apply to different areas. I even think that different sorts of logic apply in different areas. You are right to detect some ambivalence in my thinking about this, because I also think that logic, when applied, should give uniform answers. But the rules of logic in argument are very general, and as much depends on our definitions about life and human being as on method.

For example, I think you are saying that human beings think not only logically but emotionally. I agree. I think that emotions are the basis of many of our ideas and actions. But I think that we can make some sense of how emotions work and which emotions are better than others and what implications follow from certain emotions. In other words, I think there is a sort of logic to emotions (there was a book published recently called Emotional Intelligence). Actually, there are many logical structures to emotions. That is, people disagree about what are good emotional reasons for acting or thinking in a certain way. This is well illustrated in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. The three brothers illustrate three ways of being emotional (and they are very emotional), but they each have different foundations or reasons for their actions. Which one makes sense?

Daryl Culp, response to Linas Judeikis (Fall 1999)

Your main point, that language "has to be understood in terms of an indefinite and fragmentary conversation," is an interesting one, and should be explored more completely. I don't see why it follows from this point that a logical and systematic use of language is impossible. You assert that each utterance of language is new, but it seems to me that there is some continuity of meaning, through the process of memory and the stabilization of language in its written form. It is true that we read each written sentence a new time each time we read it, but surely there is some definite meaning there.

Your idea of the fragmentation of language is also very interesting. If it is true that "our uses of language are as multiple and fragmented as our conversations," then our society would indeed be unstable and anarchic. I do not think this is what Wittgenstein meant, because he did identify certain groups of legitimate and definite meaning (such as praying, giving orders, etc.). It is true that many post-modern philosophers take this interpretation of Wittgenstein, or push this idea themselves (Derrida is the prime example). The philosophies of deconstruction do argue that language is fragmented and has no centre, or in the extreme, no stable meanings. I do not see how they can claim that language has no definite meanings, because it seems to me that some definitions are required in order to communicate. Wittgenstein argues this point at length in the Philosophical Investigations, when he argues that there is no private language. In other words, the public nature of language (as a stable system of definitions) must be assumed in order for communication to happen at all.