Questioning

Linguistics

Creativity

All good philosophy is borne out of discussion.  Whether it be dialogues between Plato’s characters, discourses between teachers and their students, conversations between contemporaries with their own subjective experiences, or dialectics between ourselves and philosophers of the past; the dialogue of philosophy is not a static discussion, it is a timeless conversation that evolves and builds upon itself.  In this way, we can ascribe agency to the primary participants as if they transcend individuality and tap into the essential functions of philosophical investigation.  In the following thought experiment, the three anima of philosophy are categorized as Questioning, Linguistics, and Creativity.  These anima have always been around to guide philosophy, to bring balance to our thinking, and to inject our ideas with those essential aspects that intrinsically draw humanity towards the wonder of philosophical thought. 

Philosophical concepts can originate from any of the three anima, or from any combination thereof.

Questioning asks the big questions of life, and destabilizes the bases of our existing conceptual systems and underlying assumptions.  The logic of an argument is formed through the order of its questioning.

Linguistics demands specificity in our conceptualizations.  At the same time, linguistics points out the limits of our language, and in clarifying how we communicate, attempts to move our thinking beyond words.

Creativity brings new concepts and new ideas into existence with the goal of shaping a better future.  Philosophy is a creative discipline, and constructivity is essential for good philosophy.

Together, the anima of philosophy are both a destructive and a generative force that sublates functions within words and at the same time attempts to transcend the confines of discourse.  

Only in discussion can we expose blind spots, test ideas, and set aside thoughts that bear no fruit.  The anima of philosophy have been in conversation for millennia; let us hear what they have to say.  

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Questioning: how can one design a thought to be renovatable?  Just as a building with good bones can be adapted and reused across time, how can we create thoughts with good bones that are easy to build on top of and within?

Linguistics: when you say “good bones”, do you mean a logical structure?

Questioning: yes, and also some kernel of truth, goodness, or human essence that draws people back to the idea and makes them want to keep it alive.

Linguistics: interesting.  I might say that the words used to express a thought must be simple, and the sentence structure clear.  In order to transcend time, our language must be specific but also accessible.

Questioning: that is good advice. It does not solve the entire question, however, just one piece of it.  A thought that is poor or outdated will not be grasped onto by future generations simply because it has been articulated well.  What is it within a thought that creates a good structure?

Creativity: [drifting into the conversation] good philosophy is disruptive.  If a thought tells you what you already know, it is not useful.  Good philosophy must change the opinions of humankind.  At the same time, however, it must not be too brash, for humans have sensitive souls.  Good philosophy must be wonderful to think through and enjoyable to engage with.

Questioning: this is interesting.  How in this way can we create a thought whose essence can last through time, but can also be renovated as needed?

Creativity: the essence of the thought may need to be timelessly in opposition to our instinctive beliefs.  That is to say, the thought must be perennially useful and at the same time expose and focus upon a blind spot inherent to humanity.

Questioning: this makes sense to me.  What are some timeless blind spots deserving of philosophical inquiry?

Creativity: your question is a big one, and deserves a long answer.  

Questioning: please, let us break it into manageable parts.

Creativity: first, we are often blinded by our own contexts: historical, cultural, societal, and individual.

Questioning: agreed.  It is hard to step beyond our own perspectives.

Creativity: next, we are susceptible to misinformation and often accept easy answers instead of engaging in true critical thinking.

Questioning: I agree with this as well.

Creativity: further, in our contemporary world we tend to overemphasize rationality, and we neglect the role that our bodies, our emotions, and our environments play in our existence within the world.  

Questioning: I like this as well, and I do not see our increasingly scientific world moving away from this trajectory any time soon.

Linguistics: if I may add, another blind spot is our belief that philosophy could ever touch the truth.  Language is not reality, and we are often blind to the fact that words are only rough representations of things.  Philosophy is spoken in words that abstract and flatten.

Creativity: I agree, and this brings me to another point.  Philosophy must also be made practical.  It is so easy to point philosophy back upon itself, and while it is useful from time to time, philosophy must be practical and applied to things in order to be good.

Questioning: these are all good points.  Are there any other blind spots that you notice in human thinking?

Creativity: death is a blind spot for all of humanity.  Many people live their lives as if they do not comprehend that one day they will die. 

Questioning: this is good; go on.

Creativity: people also struggle with maintaining individuality amidst the crowd.

Questioning: another good blind spot.

Creativity: and paradoxically, at the same time people rely on others to a greater extent than they may recognize.

Questioning: any further thoughts?

Creativity: no, this should be adequate to get a sense of what we’re dealing with.

Questioning: good. We have listed many potential blind spots in our thinking; can we distill these down into categories to simplify our understanding?

Linguistics: there are at least two ways to categorize these concepts.  We can look at them from the perspective of the object within our blind spot, and we can look at them from the perspective of the mental function that has caused the blind spot to exist.

Questioning: this is interesting.  Both categories appear valuable to consider.

Linguistics: in the first way, we might start by collapsing rationality, bodies, emotions, and death into corporality.  Then, we may collapse context, individuality, and community into place.  Lastly, we can combine complacency, critical thinking, misinformation, language, and impracticality into mental.  We arrive at body, mind, and place.

Questioning: this feels balanced.  And what about the categories formed by the mental functions that cause blind spots?

Linguistics: in the second way, some of our blind spots are caused by things we know but choose to reject.  Others are caused by things we do not take the time to know, and thus are lazy in regard to.  Lastly are blind spots which are reinforced by societal norms and which exist unquestioned as a result.

Questioning: so uncomfortability, laziness, and social pressure are all major causes of blind spots?

Linguistics: that is what I think.

Creativity: these causes of blind spots are all issues with our mindset.  For fun, lets reframe them.  Laziness is dangerous; it can bring about half-formed ideas.  Mental uncomfortability should be embraced; it can lead to growth.  Social pressure is powerful; it contains both ingrained wisdom and unchallenged idiocy.

Questioning: and how should we bring these ideas back around to our original question: how can one design a thought to be renovatable?

Creativity: as an example of this process, I propose that we create a renovatable thought based upon what we have investigated thus far.

Questioning: please go on.

Creativity: we are minds in bodies in place.  We must be mindful not to ignore any of these components, and we must be mindful to find balance in our thinking by embracing uncomfortability, overcoming laziness, and questioning the pressures of our context.

Linguistics: you say that we must be mindful, but this signifies a bias of mind over body or place.

Questioning: what would you suggest that we say instead? 

Linguistics: perhaps we say: we must be aware equally of all components that make up our situated condition.  

Creativity: this sounds so serious and bland; it is not catchy or wonderful to engage with.

Linguistics: perhaps we need a metaphor to create a more engaging idea.

Creativity: that is a good thought, let’s try this.  We are minds in bodies in place.  An unfortunate reality of being human is that we only have eyes on the front of our heads, and only tongues locked within our mouths.  Our seeing of the world and our tasting of the earth are constrained.  While our minds believe that they sit upon a throne from which they perceive all, our perception is greatly limited and our understanding composed of many blind spots.  Like nesting dolls, our thinking minds are encased within layer upon layer, insulated from reality by the thick media that protects us.  Language and culture are the skin on top of our skin; our retinas and nerves the culture on top our senses.  Just as we are composed of increasingly divisible elements below atoms, so are we made up of nearly infinite layers above and beyond the boundaries of ourselves, all of which affect who we are and what we think.  Everything is both interconnected and distorted.  There is no such thing as truth, and we do not have the ability to see everything. To understand this is a great wonder, for there will always be something new to learn, and while humans are not all-seeing, we do have in us the joy of discovery and the wonder of learning new things.  At times the new can be disorienting and uncomfortable, but it is also rewarding and valuable.  We have the ability to revise and affect our situation, to question the ways that we think and act, and to affect the ways of others in positive directions, if only we use our language and our actions to exemplify better ways of seeing and better ways of being.  Awareness of our situated condition and of our ability to bring goodness into a largely indifferent world is reason enough to exist rather than not.  To question, to speak, and to create: these are virtues in and of themselves.  We are minds in bodies in place, and while our eyes only ever face forward, we can use our minds to turn our heads.

Questioning: this is good, and an apt metaphor for our ability to direct our consciousness.  Do you believe that there is a way to know when one should move on from a thought, versus when they should continue to dive deeper?

Creativity: yes.  When a thought can result in practical action, and is an action which we determine to have a good outcome, then we can move forward with it.  If a thought does not bear a good practical action, then the thought must remain in incubation.

Linguistics: this is interesting.  You are not saying that the thought should be abandoned, but rather that it should be set aside and let to grow, if it is able.

Questioning: are there any thoughts that should be destroyed?

Linguistics: one can never destroy a thought; for a thought never exists in a physical sense in the first place.

Creativity: perhaps a thought cannot be destroyed, but it can be neutered through refutation with logic that proves it is invalid or unuseful.  Then the thought will dissolve within the mind.

Questioning: does the dissolution of a thought cause our head to turn?

Creativity: perhaps, if the thought has some hold upon us.

Questioning: This is good thinking. I feel that we are near the end of this topic as we are now discussing when we should move on from a thought. Do you agree? How should we conclude?

Creativity: I agree, and I question whether every thought needs a conclusion.

Linguistics: I agree as well, and I will add that a conversation does not always result in a clean conclusion; a good philosophical thought has many loose ends and unresolved ideas.

Creativity: this is good.  A thought that ends with a definitive conclusion does not lend itself to renovation and reinterpretation.  Philosophy is not the conclusion of a thought, but its birth, and also the process of thinking itself.

Questioning: so you believe that good philosophy should end without a clean conclusion?

Creativity: yes, sometimes.

Linguistics: but not always.

Questioning: in that case, I’ll leave us with a question.  What does it mean to foster a mindset of dialectic with oneself?  What does it mean to be open to the renovation of one’s own mind?

Linguistics: when we talk about what something means, we often refer to what one intends to convey through language.  In this sense, what we are saying is that we must be open to the renovation of language, and to the restructuring of our symbolic reality.

Questioning: this is a tough pill to swallow.  Without stable meaning, how do we prevent ourselves from becoming unmoored?

Creativity: I propose a virtue ethics, but not one based on goodness, for we cannot define the good, but rather a virtue ethics based upon our inherent blind spots.  In this way, we will always have nodes that are centered around that which we cannot see, while everything else remains fluid and flexible.

Linguistics: this is interesting.  It is a system of seeing centered around the areas that we cannot see, and it is a system of meaning fixed upon the notion that meaning should be free to unfix itself.

Creativity: correct.  We do not renovate a space based upon what is, we renovate it for a future that is as yet unknown.  Similarly, we don’t renovate our minds for present ways, we reorganize our thinking to plan for a future that may require different mental approaches.

Questioning: this is interesting.  So in addition to a virtue ethics based upon blind spots, we must also set our thinking up for future possibilities. Does this sound right?

Linguistics: yes, and I will note that future possibilities are another thing that we cannot see, but yet we find benefit in orbiting around.

Creativity: and I will add that a renovatable philosophy may rely upon building an understanding of what we cannot see and that which recurrently deludes us, and then honoring those things above all else.  The structure of a good thought rests upon acknowledgement of a universal delusion.

Linguistics: then let us rest this thought upon the delusion of dialogue.  We may believe that we have been philosophizing here, but really we’ve only found a series of dead ends.  We have tricked ourselves into thinking we’ve uncovered constructive concepts when all we’ve done is clear away dead growth.

Questioning: and isn’t clearing away the first step of any renovation?

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