Philosophers’ Corner

Free markets are, on balance, wonderful things, I think. When they’re truly open and free and not monopolized by a few big players, or overly regulated by excessively intrusive governments, markets are amazingly efficient ways of providing people with the things they want and need. They’re the chief engines of economic progress, and are singularly conducive to human happiness. But my enthusiasm for free markets is not unlimited.

There are different ways the word ‘history’ might be defined, so we had better start out by defining our terms. For example, you could define history as the sum total of past events. But that’s not how historians or even philosophers of history would define it. The problem with that definition is that it encompasses every single event that has so far happened in the Universe – from the big bang to the emergence of humankind and everything in between. We do sometimes talk about history in this broad and inclusive sense, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.

While licking a pot, six-year-old Tim asks: “Papa, how can we be sure that everything…

Human thought is an amazing thing. It has given us science, literature, morality, and last — but certainly not least — philosophy. Thought even has the power to create new realities. And I’m not primarily thinking of literature and the arts or even of technology. I’m thinking of the entire social world. Every size social reality from clubs to nations and every thing in between is a creation of the human mind, of human thought in particular. They all exist because we simply think them into existence.

Isn’t it a bit odd that philosophers disagree? Consider Ken and I. We’re both a reasonably well-educated, fairly intelligent, pretty perceptive, not overly neurotic philosophers. Why shouldn’t we agree about everything? We need to distinguish between apparent and real disagreements. Suppose Ken says lima beans taste good, and I say that he’s wrong, lima beans taste bad. It seems there is no real disagreement here, just differing tastes. We only have real disagreement when two people hold opinions that cannot both be true.

This week’s topic is Reading, Narrative, and the Self. I suppose everybody has a pretty good idea of what each of those things, taken individually, means. Reading is something that most people do. A good narrative — or story, to use a less fancy term — is something most people enjoy. And a self is something everybody has. But I think I need to explain what reading, narrative, and the self have to do with each other.

If you think about it, reality comes in many levels, each level involving different kinds of things, having different kinds of properties. Perhaps most people would think of things like dirt at the bottom level, then us at the next level, and the sky at the highest level. But philosophers have a different, more abstract concept of levels of reality.

During the Renaissance, things like Alchemy, Astrology, White Magic, Hermeticism, Cabala, Numerology were intensely studied by some of the best minds in Europe. Literature from that period is often rife with references to the occult. The works of Shakespeare are a prime example.