Advice to a newbie

Richard asked:

I’m just starting with philosophy non professionally so this site is an amazing help!

Sometimes I have a philosophical idea or question and I would like to research it and write it down. The point is I haven’t a clue how and where to start. You start with a question, ok, but how about the next step? Is there some sort of plan or standard to follow? For example ‘always start with logic’ or something? Maybe this question itself is to vague. Please let nne know if it is.

Anyway thanks a lot for this super website!

Answer by Gideon Smith-Jones

Mmmm… fresh meat!

Well, I could tell you a thing or two, Richard. Recommend some book that you’ll find way too difficult, and then imagine you… squirming, despising yourself for your pathetic stupidity. Not what we do here on Ask a Philosopher? Well…

Ever see the 1955 movie, Kiss Me Deadly?

Listen to me, as if I were Cerberus barking with all his heads at the gates of hell… don’t… don’t open the box! 

Every single one of us has been there. The really clever ones don’t go in for philosophy because they tend to hate open-ended problems and questions. They get impatient. They want to solve the problem and move on. Are you like that? Hope not.

(Sorry, I forgot Bertrand Russell. No doubting he was clever. He suffered from a rare condition: he ran out of problems to solve.)

Find a book, or, better, find a philosopher. It could even be Russell. It’s worth taking the time to search. Someone you can admire, even wish to emulate (in your dreams). Put your heart and soul into it, be willing to endure the pain and disappointment of multiple false starts.

No-one just starts with a question. Actually, that’s not true, the Internet is crowded with people who think that all you need to do is think about some philosophical question for a day and then post your opinion on a forum.

But if you have a question that really gnaws at you, then look for an author who has written a book on that topic that you like the look of. Difficult enough to set you a challenge but not too difficult to put you off philosophy for life. Your judgement is not necessarily reliable on this. But at least it’s your call. And that’s really important. Because your judgement is you rmost valuable asset.

Logic is more often than not a great excuse for bad judgement. ‘This follows from that… so it must be right.’ Or, worse, ‘My theory is free from any inconsistency except with the facts. So the ‘facts’ must be wrong.’

Believe me, I’ve heard almost exactly that from a professional philosopher.

Really glad you like our site. You could spend months — or weeks, anyway — just reading over twenty years worth of materials we have here. You could start with our home page https://philosophypathways.com and follow the links. Ask a Philosopher has been going nineteen years so there’s a pretty large backlog you could explore.

Amazingly, we still get questions that we’ve never been asked before. Maybe you can think up one…