We found ourselves facing many questions, so let’s simplify. “Really? Simplify?” you say. I guess we’ll see.
What’s the biggest question you can think of? For me it’s, “What’s it all about?” There’s lots of ways to go about answering that question and the one I intend to provide is philosophy’s way. Whoa, don’t run away.
The nice thing about philosophy is that anyone can do it, anywhere, any time. If you’ve ever wondered on your back at night looking up at the stars or bent down during the day closely inspecting a flower or in your favourite armchair with eyes closed, then you are on the way to doing philosophy.
I mentioned that there is one big question. That can be subdivided into three main ones:
- What is?
- How do we know?
- What ought we do?
Each of these divides into two sub-questions and they into further sub-questions and so forth. The first subdivision is as follows:
- What is?
- What exists?
- What is the nature of what exists?
- How do we know?
- What is the mechanism whereby we know?
- With what certainty can we know?
- What ought we do?
- What should I do?
- What should we do?
Everybody has a handy answer for each of these, yet not everyone has the same answer.
- You might answer by saying that everything is made of atoms, that we know this for certain because science has proved it, and that we ought to live by the Golden Rule.
- Someone else may say we don’t know what everything is made of because we can’t know anything for certain and that we should simply try to live life as long and as happily as we can.
- Someone else may say that God exists and created everything from nothing, that we know this because God told us so, and that we ought to live by the rules God gave us.
- And someone else might say that these are stupid questions and it only creates problems when we try to think of these things.
But what if it matters if we try to answer the big questions? What if it makes a big difference in our life, in the lives of those we love and in the lives of everyone on the planet? Should we just shrug our shoulders or should we wonder a bit?
If you’re not shrugging, let’s wonder together. Let’s start by looking one at a time at the preceding sets of answers. First up, Atoms and Gold. That will be followed by Doubt and Happiness, then God and Rules, and finally Socrates and the Pig. Stay tuned.
