Chapter One

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Chapter One

• The Fine Art of Wondering

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Ray Bradbury writes

• To grow into youngness is a blow. To age into
  sickness is an insult. To die is, if we are not
  careful, to turn from Gods breast, feeling
  slighted and unloved. The sparrow asks to be seen
  as it falls. Philosophy must try, as best it can,
  to turn the sparrows to flights of angels, which,
  Shakespeare wrote, sing us to our rest.

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The World Riddle

• Can the human mind understand the world?
• Can it discern the truth about human existence?
• Does life have meaning? (What do we mean by
  meaning?)
• What is it that we are really after?

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Just in Case

• Is there anything wrong with an Indian physicist,
  who is also a member of the Brahmin caste,
  offering a lucid presentation of celestial
  mechanics regarding a solar eclipse to his
  classand returning home and offering a gift to
  the Black Goddess just in case?

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The Human Condition

• What is the meaning of existence?
• Panshins Rite of Passage
• Freud and Jung launch depth probes into the
  inner world
• Saint-Exuperys Little Prince
• Eros and Thanatos (the death wish)
• Schweitzer/Watts on hope

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The Search for Meaning

• Existential vacuum
• The aggressive individual odyssey
• Schweitzers positive ethical principle
• Abraham Maslow on tape
• Mans Search for Meaning
• He who has a why to live can bear with almost
  any how.

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Why Questions

• It would be comforting to know that life has
  transcendent meaning it would feel good to know
  that nothing happens without a purpose. But our
  need for meaning lead us to find easy and absurd
  answers to such why-questions.
• AD 410, November 1755, April 1970

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The World-Riddle

• Life feeds upon itself
• The Naked Ape
• Calypso
• Kierkegaard
• Campbell
• Strauss

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Marcus AureliusPhilosopher-King

• The problem was finding a way to live in the
  world and not be destroyed by it. The answer,
  Marcus reasons, lies in making a deep and
  permanent distinction between what you can take
  charge of and what you cant, a distinction, that
  is, between the inner world which we can exercise
  a modicum of control, and the real world out
  there over which we have little control.

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Reflections

• What if you decide that life is without meaning
  what would this mean to you personally? Do you
  think your life would be less worth living? (Why,
  incidentally, are you attempting to answer this
  question?)

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The Spirit of Inquiry

• Whether to think and try to understand, or just
  believethat is the question.
• Each of us is burdened with the task of deciding
  what answers are right for us.
• This includes inquiry into who and what we humans
  are, what life is all about, and how it should be
  lived.

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The Love of Wisdom

• Philein to love
• Sophia wisdom
• A philosopher is (or should be) a lover of
  wisdom
• To be wise is to possess the understanding and
  skill to make mature judgments about the use of
  knowledge in the content of daily life

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The Greek Miracle

• The first philosophers were not satisfied with
  the explanation to every question, The gods
  willed it
• The Milesian philosophers sought a different kind
  of explanation When they asked about the cause
  of events, they made the assumption that the
  answer might be found in nature or within
  matter itself

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Freedom to Wonder To Ask Questions

• Philosophy and freedom of inquiry were born
  together. Neither has ever existed without the
  other. If we possess freedom, we inquire. But if
  our freedom to inquire is too limited, then
  freedom, which is rightly a condition, becomes
  itself the goal of our striving.

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A Western Dilemma

• I have said some things, Socrates once
  remarked, of which I am not altogether
  confident. But that we shall be better and braver
  and less helpless if we think that we ought to
  inquire, than we should have been if we indulged
  in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and
  no use in seeking to know what we do not know
  that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight,
  in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.

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Belief, Doubt, Critical Thinking, Faith

• Belief blind belief, the unthinking
  acceptance of an idea or system of ideas
• Faith authentic faith is always based on doubt
• Doubt a philosopher engages in doubt as a
  normal modus operandi
• Critical thinking taking a good look at the
  ideas that we are thinking and then making a
  commitment to live by the best ideas we can come
  up with

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SocratesThe Wisest Man Alive

• The unexamined life human life is not worth
  living
• Know thyself
• His supreme concern was the breakdown of human
  relations ethics. He believed that all
  unethical behavior is committed as a result of
  ignorance
• Moral knowledge leads to moral action

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Reflections

• Summarize in your own way the nature of the
  Western dilemma regarding human knowledge. Is
  it either/or for you personally, or have you
  discovered a pathway between the two traditions?

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Critical Analysis

• How does the world work?
• What is our place in it?

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The Philosophic Mind

• How does one go about dispelling the feeling of
  ignorance and moving toward the truth of things?
• The first step is to ask questions
• Philosophic mind question-asking mind

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Critical Skills

• Fact-claim verification
• Concept clarification
• Inference validation

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Fact-Claim Verification

• Fact-claim any idea submitted for consideration
  as an item of knowledge
• Example Its raining outside

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Concept Clarification

• No evaluation is intelligible unless the
  criterion used to make the judgment is made
  explicit and clearly understood
• Any action or event can logically be evaluated as
  good or bad, right or wrong
• The ethically informed person is aware that
  different and distinct criteria exist and are
  used in daily life

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Inference Validation

• Logic the science of valid inference, used to
  clarify the relationships of ideas. It includes
  both inductive and deductive reasoning
• The problem of evil

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Brief Skirmishes/Examples of Critical Thinking

• Enquiring minds want to know
• Call us now!
• Mommy, Ginny told me
• It was a fever of the gods,
• I hate broccoli. It tastes awful!
• Time had a beginning at the big bang.
• The swastika is the hated symbol of Nazi
  horror.
• Who discovered America

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A Special Kind of Listening

• A philosopher listens not only to what you say
  but even to the more implicit thought processes
  that got you there

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PlatoThe First Educator

• Platos life is marked by two extreme
  achievements the establishment of the Academy
  and the immortalizing of Socrates in writing
• Plato wanted to education young men and women to
  seek the truth, with the hope that they will be
  qualified to assume positions of leadership in
  the world where they could put that truth to work

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Reflections

• If you had been Job and had lost everything that
  was precious to you, what would you say to your
  friends who have come to comfort you? What
  would you say to God? (Do you know what Job
  actually said, according to the Book of Job?)

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Synoptic Synthesis

• The world is truly like a great Picture Puzzle,
  and the goal of synoptic philosophy is to see the
  picture on the Puzzle the whole picture and
  to see it as accurately and clearly as humanly
  possible at a given point in space and time

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And He Wants to Understand It

• Synoptic philosophy is the love of the wisdom
  that comes from achieving a coherent picture of
  everything seen together a vision of the whole
  of life
• Example A cat named Tyger

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Life on a Picture-Puzzle

• Synoptic philosophy encourages each of us to
  wander over the puzzle, visiting neighboring
  parts and trying to see how the pieces of the
  puzzle all fit together

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The Annihilation of Boundaries

• The synoptist never tries to know everything.
  He makes no attempt to memorize the reams of hard
  data that have accumulated in the specialized
  fields
• The task of the synoptist is to keep himself
  informed on the latest conclusions, general
  principles, hypothesis, models, and theories

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How to do Synoptic Philosophy

• Place yourself in the center of the synoptic
  wheel
• Proceed with philosophic analysis
• What fields contain information related to the
  problem?
• Criss-cross from field to field, interconnecting
  lines of illumination

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The Synoptic Venture Risks Reward

• Risk the more one specializes the more he tends
  to neglect a general knowledge of life necessary
  to remain human
• Risk loss of the ability to communicate
• Reward learning to think bigger
• Reward produces greater awareness in our
  perception of daily life
• Reward coherent worldview

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Epilog I can float over the Orchard

• Asimov writes, I have never been sorry for my
  stubborn advance toward generalization. To be
  sure, I cant wander in detail through all the
  orchard, any more than anyone else can, no matter
  how stupidly determined I may be to do so. Life
  is far too short and the mind is far too limited.
  But I can float over the orchard as in a balloon.

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Aristotle The First Scientific Worldview

• Eudaimonia happiness
• The journey to Athens
• The royal summons
• The Lyceum
• Inventor of formal logic
• Laying the foundations for the science of
  physics, astronomy, ethics, etc

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Reflections

• Rephrase in your own (meaningful) way the
  essential goals of synoptic philosophy and make
  your own assessment of the rewards of the
  synoptic venture. Would your thinking and feeling
  change if you could achieve the rewards mentioned
  in this chapter? Are you willing to accept the
  risks?