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 Philosopher or How to Be Almost Certain that Almost Nothing is Certain Gary Cox Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Gary Cox 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-4478-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group For Mike This page intentionally left blank 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 123 Visual, Musical and Internet Media References 126 Further Reading 127 Index 129 Introduction Why have you started reading this book? Philosophers should avoid guessing, but my guess is that you already know a few things about philosophy and you want to know more. Or, at the very least, you have come across the word ‘philosophy’ before and you want to know what it means. Perhaps you already know a fair bit about philosophy – hav- ing studied it at college or university or in prison – but believe that knowing about philosophy and being a philosopher are very different things. Philosophers, if I am one, should really avoid assuming anything, but on this occasion, instead of assuming that you, the reader, know something about philosophy, which you probably do, I’m going to force myself to assume that you know absolutely nothing about philo- sophy. You have lived on this earth for however long, you are intelli- gent enough and have become educated enough to be able to read this book. More to the point, you want to read this book; a remarkable thing in itself in an age when ignorance is the new intelligence. None- theless, the meaning and significance of philosophy totally passed you by like the proverbial ship in the night. You have heard of psychology and sociology, even physiology, psychiatry and philately, but philo- sophy just got overlooked somehow, like a city you’ve never visited though you are well travelled, like a visitor who called at your door dur- ing the 5 short minutes you were in the shower.