Christopher asked:

Wittgenstein asked about what is it that all games have in common. Could the answer be that they all are competitive? Or that they all are fun? What makes us call games games is that they all make us feel the same way, they all serve the same purpose(s), relieving boredom, entertainment, to improve certain skills, etc…

Answer by Shaun Williamson

You have completely misunderstood this as people always do when they try to understand one of Wittgenstein’s remarks in isolation. Wittgenstein did not ask this question hoping that one day you would answer it and your answer is incorrect.

It is not true that all games make us feel the same way, or that all games exist to relieve boredom or that they all serve the same purpose or that they all improve certain skills. So your answer like all the other answers is based on an incorrect assumption i.e. that all games must have one thing or a set of things in common.

Wittgenstein said ‘Look, don’t think’. You need to look at the wide variety of games before you leap to conclusions.

Suppose all games relieve boredom, well reading a book or watching TV can also relieve boredom, entertain or improve certain skills. Now according to your answer this would mean that reading a book is a game, it isn’t. Also not all games are fun and not all games are competitive.

Shaun Williamson developed the Ask a Philosopher cgi script question.pl. He did his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Wittgenstein’s remarks on defining a game in Philosophical Investigations have given rise to an impression that he believed that there is nothing determinate about the meaning of the concept ‘game’. This is true in one sense, in that any attempt to give a rigid definition of a ‘game’ in terms of necessary and sufficient is bound to fail.

This isn’t because anything can be a ‘game’, or because we can use word ‘game’ in any way we like. The quote I would emphasize occurs many pages after Wittgenstein’s main discussion, around Para 66, of the question of defining a game:

So I am inclined to distinguish between the essential and the inessential in a game too. The game, one would like to say, has not only rules but also a point. (Philosophical Investigations Para 564)

The ‘language game’ in using any concept – e.g. the concept of game – has a point. The concept of a ‘game’ must have a point, in some sense, otherwise what would be the point of talking so much about ‘language games’ as Wittgenstein does? The point of a concept can only be characterized in general terms. However, the fact that there is such a thing as ‘game theory’ in mathematics should at least hint at the possibility of the richness of the concept of a game.

Grasping the point of talk of a ‘game’, we are able to identify new things or activities as games which we would never have imagined if we had tried to delimit all the possible games by means of a verbal formula, or describe what all games ‘all have in common’.

‘Game’ is a concept with vague boundaries. Most of our concepts are like this. The concept of a ‘heap’ is a classic example. However, one can be misled by the obvious vagueness of ‘heap’ (as in the Paradox of a Heap) into thinking that there isn’t anything precise to say about heaps, or any point in calling something a heap. I will leave you with this example:

My father was a Mining Engineer. I remember him telling me that one of the topics in mining engineering is the behaviour of heaps and formulae for describing their shape. For example, the angle that the apex of a heap of a particular material will form, e.g. a heap of fine sand, or a heap of smooth pebbles, or rough rocks. A heap is different from a pile, not in a vague but in a precise way, in terms of the way the constituents hold together. A heap of books is different from a pile of books. Which still allows for indeterminate cases in between (as, e.g. books partly piled and partly heaped).

There is nothing vague about the point of talking of a ‘heap’ or a ‘pile’ — or indeed a ‘game’.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

Christopher asked:

I’ve noticed from reading older posts that everyone who asks about what makes someone a philosopher, the answer is always go to school and get a degree, or study it yourself, intensely. I think those are both good points, but doesn’t there have to be a certain degree of creativity involved in being a philosopher? Just because you know what everybody else thinks about X doesn’t mean you know the ‘right’ answer, or that you can take that knowledge and apply it, manipulate it, perfect it, refute it, etc.

My view of philosophy is that it is a subjective way of establishing your own personal beliefs through which you can ‘know thyself.’ Maybe it is more beneficial to think about the questions you personally have and try to answer them yourself, rather than know everyone else’s answer and try to refute/agree with it. I’ll admit it is helpful to know what has already been said, quite often repeated, so that you can know why X is viewed as invalid or wrong or bad, but that only goes so far as establishing yourself as a philosopher. No one is remembered for knowing everything everybody else said, philosophers are remembered for their creative approach to solving a problem, for their ‘armchair theorizing.’ Right?

Answer by Shaun Williamson

No! Wrong! If you go to a web site called ‘Ask a Doctor’, you would probably expect that the questions would be answered by people who were qualified doctors. This does not mean that these doctors are great doctors or even good doctors but at least they have done the training course. They are not just amateurs.

In the same way people who ask questions on this web site expect that their questions will be answered by people who have academic qualifications in philosophy. They do not expect that their questions will be answered by self appointed deep thinkers who can’t even be bothered to read the books but still think they are philosophers.

In general the word ‘philosophy’ can just mean the most fundamental set of ideas about something. So we can talk about the philosophy of train spotting or the philosophy of fly fishing. Of course everyone has their own philosophy of life but this isn’t how we use the word philosophy here. For us philosophy is the rational inquiry into the nature of truth, logic and the scope of human knowledge that started in ancient Greece. This rational philosophy has always been an academic subject. Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras all founded academies. People who are looking for a short cut i.e they want to become a philosopher without doing the hard work are unlikely to have the mental capacity for the really deep abstract thought that philosophy requires.

Now of course studying philosophy doesn’t guarantee that you will be a creative philosopher but not studying philosophy guarantees that you will only ever be a superficial uninteresting philosopher.

Shaun Williamson developed the Ask a Philosopher cgi script question.pl. He did his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Let me recommend that you read some of the older posts again, because your question has been asked before and, speaking for myself, I distinctly remember writing words to the effect that ‘getting a degree’ and that sort of thing is an institutional issue that has only the most peripheral relevance to philosophy. It is important to a society where the majority holds the view that the public education system is responsible for manufacturing ‘experts’, and that in consequence only suitably trained experts should be consulted on issues belonging to their area of expertise. That’s fine, indeed indispensable, for plumbers and shipbuilders, meteorologists and graphic designers. But you might take note that ‘going fishing’ or ‘climbing Mt Everest’ is not an academic subject, so you consult someone who knows how to do it, without asking for their paper credentials, and then you’re on your own.

Philosophy has simply been integrated by society into its official teaching disciplines. The idea goes back a long way, to the middle ages, when monks had to study in order to learn how to think, if they wished to rise in the ranks. What they thought about is not the crucial issue here; simply that theology is a hard nut for anyone without appropriately attuned mental equipment; and because of the social responsibility that came with rising in the ranks, it was necessary to ensure that all monks had the same form of indoctrination. The early universities followed suit; and to some extent (despite the liberalisation of the curriculum) they still do.

The essence of it, you see, is that philosophy is a school for thinking; and the doctrines of philosophers serve very well for this purpose. Where things might come adrift, is when those doctrines are no longer taught and studied for their merit in sharpening the student’s intellect, but as crutches to excuse student from learning how to think. I have observed that students are very inventive when it comes to fudging exams, but extremely uninventive when it comes to doing real thinking. But that’s the risk of institutionalising philosophy. Exactly the same arguments apply in any case to all examinable subjects of study.

You are right in bringing up ‘creativity’. We talk about it endlessly, but evidently this is another issue where ‘experts’ are out of their depth. Creativity can’t be taught. Yet we slaves of institutionalisation and the media talk it up big, as if it was everyone’s birthright – as if, for example, doing a colourful ad on TV were ‘creative work’. Most of this fiddle faddle is nothing more than a misplaced subjectivism.

Your question is loaded with this impression. If you understand philosophy (in your words) as a ‘subjective way of establishing your own personal beliefs’, then you’re talking of beliefs, not of philosophy. Beliefs do not usually arise from thinking, applying reason, engaging in dialectical curiosity. Beliefs are easily acquired, easily changed and in most cases an altogether unreflective, unexamined residue of common fears and desires, or at most a ready response to the quotidian facts of life. Hence philosophy – creative philosophy – tends on the whole to be at war with beliefs, because sooner or later all beliefs are exposed to stand in conflict with reality. This is one reason why philosophy does not have ‘results’ like science. It must constantly be on the alert, for social situations change, necessitating a change in the approach of philosophers to its fundamental tenets and issues. E.g. although the issues animating Aristotle and Aquinas are superficially the same, in fact their thinking on those same issues is a million miles apart.

Philosophy is not ‘armchair theorising’ either. That’s a convenient way of holding philosophy in contempt. Most theoretical physicists are ‘armchair theorisers’, and they would certainly resent being called by that name! But to get back to the basic point: Philosophy is a school for thinking. We study the ‘great’ philosophers not primarily for what they contributed to knowledge, but for the example they gave us on how to think deeply, how to pick the subject you must think about, and how to impose meaning on a cosmos that is totally indifferent to our puny form of existence.

Most importantly, philosophy comprises the foundation of a liberal society. The freedom of speech and thought that we enjoy is the fruit of philosophy – a value system emerging from this school of thinking that we take so much for granted that we are in danger of forgetting its source. But it is extremely vulnerable; like philosophy, freedom it is a ready-made object of ridicule and easily polluted. There have been very few liberal eras in the history of mankind, all of them children of philosophical thought. You will not find a philosophy in any of the others.

Jürgen Lawrenz at PhiloSophos.com

Christopher asked:

My “philosophy 101” textbook states that Nietzsche’s conception of the supreme human is a passionate person who has his/her passions under control. This may be so, but this seems to me like pretty low standards for the most supreme people of the human race. Obviously this statement is a generalization as well, but I would imagine that his vision of the Ubermensch would have a lot to do with power. This leads to my question of what kind of power? Power over what/whom? Power over our passions has already been stated, but there has to be more than that, doesn’t there? My interpretation is that the Ubermensch would not be Christians, for example, but a Christian can be passionate and have their passions under control, so there is a contradiction.

Answer by Martin Jenkins

Christopher, Karl Jaspers noted that Nietzsche’s writings are full of contradictions. I think it is because he writes in a style that is a ‘flow of consciousness’, feeling now this, now that – echoing the flow of life itself.

Power

Yes the Ubermensch is to do with power. Yet Power not in an instrumental sense of power to use, abuse, employ. Power is Macht in German. The root Mak is found in the English word ‘make’, as in to make something. So ‘Power’ could be interpreted a creative, affirmative ontology and not a reductive one of instrumental domination.

Power is immanent, it is present in all manifestations of life, human and non-human; it is present in all the drives which constitute life from the weakest and lowest, to the strongest and highest. [Beyond Good and Evil #36] The more Power Macht a drive has, the stronger it is. The greater the amount of intensive drives that constitute a human being, the greater the degree of Will to Power possessing a person.

Christianity

Nietzsche proposes that the majority of human beings suffer from sickness. Their drives are in chaos, anarchy and this leaves then exhausted, depressed and so weary of life itself. [See also The Problem of Socrates in Twilight of the Idols]. Expedients are found which address this sickness. Nietzsche identifies one such expedient as Christianity. It gave the sick the beliefs by which they could order their drives, expressing some but repressing others. Subsuming themselves within the doctrines of what became Christianity, people engaged in Willing – the orientation, galvanising of drives in one direction which would otherwise be in chaos [BGE #188]. Willing appears to be the key for as Nietzsche writes in On the Genealogy of Morality at the end of the final Treatise: For man would even will nothingness than not will at all.

As described in BGE #200, there have generally been two solutions to give order to the chaos of drives in those that require it. The first is that of weakness. Escape from and an ending to the war that one is the panacea found in rest, lack of disturbance, a flight from the world of drives into another – a ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’ as St Augustine termed this, which was his and Christianity’s solution.

The other is not to negate and suppress the raging drives, it is to value them as a stimulus to life; to control, outwit and incorporate them. Then ‘what emerges are those amazing, incomprehensible and unthinkable ones, those human riddles destined for victory and seduction.’ Alcibiades, Caesar, the Hohenstaufen Frederick II and Leonardo da Vinci are cited by Nietzsche as examples of this approach.

Nietzsche Contra Christianity

As you note Christopher, Christian’s can be passionate yet master such passions. So this is nothing exceptional. However, Nietzsche believed that this type of mastery was a symptom of decadence precluding more powerful types who would equally master their drives but – drives of a greater and higher magnitude and complexity.

Christianity was a response from the Priests – themselves sick – to the general sickness of humanity. Decadence as Christianity’s type of morphology – a shaping of the drives – cultivated a human being lesser than s/he otherwise could be. Ascending drives were condemned as ‘Evil’. Being for oneself, being the power that one is, is condemned as immoral. Meekness, humility, putting others always before oneself and the annihilation of human difference under equality before God, stunts humanity. A general levelling occurs which is contrary to life. For life is Will to Power and Will to Power manifests itself in varying degees in different people. To suppress this is to decapitate life itself.

So whereas mastery might be practiced, it is practiced at different levels. The Ubermensch/New Philosoper Creators are possessed by stronger, higher drives. By their very intensity, they will rise above and beyond restrictive the restrictive egalitarianism of Christianity and its secular descendents of Modern Ideas, which will conflict with their endeavours. For Nietzsche believed that a healthy society was an Aristocratic one.

So the contradiction you cite would hold only amongst equals. Nietzsche’s opposes equality between those who are unequal.

Martin Jenkins received the ISFP Fellowship for his dissertation ‘Aristocratic Radicalism or Anarchy? An Examination of Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Will to Power’. He is a Pathways Mentor.

Jawaid asked:

What is the future of religion?

Answer by Craig Skinner

There’s no sharp distinction as to what counts as religion and what doesn’t.

Commonest is shared belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal Creator, worthy of worship and interested in us, plus rituals affirming allegiance. In short, Theism (as in Judaism, Christianity, Islam). Deism, polytheism, panentheism, and much else also count. And some religions recognize no supernatural entities, although I find this use of the word confusing.

My guess is that religion will be alive and well for the indefinite future.

I have two main reasons for this view:

1. Religion is a deep-seated feature of human nature.

2. Whether God or gods exist is undecidable, and a view either way is reasonable.

To deal with each point:

1. Religion exists in all societies at all times. It appears to be an innate, evolved feature of humans. The front-runner naturalistic explanations are:

(a) it promotes tribal solidarity and moral order, giving the group a survival advantage in inter-group conflict or competition (David Sloan Wilson’s view).

(b) it is an extension of the brain’s agent-detector device, a hyperactive agent detector device (HADD) as Dennett terms it. The idea here is that overdiagnosis of agency is a naturally selected, safe default option: better to think the stripey pattern in the long grass is a tiger and to run off, than to think the more likely option that it is just a trick of the light; we hear a creak at night and instantly suspect an intruder etc. By extension, we impute thunder, rain to specialist gods, crop failure to angry gods, ultimately all of creation to an almighty god.

Whether (a) or (b), or both, or some other explanation is correct, we don’t know, but future research may clarify.

Of course, existence of an evolved tendency to religion doesn’t help us with (2) – atheists are happy with the Darwinian explanation, so are theists (evolution is how God has gone about creating us including our capacity for knowing and relating to God).

2. Theism and atheism are both rational views.

Some fundamentalists (e.g. Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society) tell us atheism is the devil’s work, others (e.g. Dawkins) tell us theism is irrational, even delusional.

My view (and I think it is shared by most theist and atheist philosophers) is that, in the light of the evidence, belief either way is a reasonable all-things-considered stance.

The a priori Ontological arguments are unconvincing. But, in the light of accepted science, modern Cosmological and Design arguments make Theism at least as likely as atheism.

I would particularly cite:

* the existence of a universe (as opposed to absolutely nothing).
* the fact that the universe had a beginning (Big Bang). If it were eternal, like God (allegedly), no startup cause need be sought. But science tells us it isn’t.
* the order of the universe (it might have been chaotic with no natural laws)
* the fine-tuning (for emergence of life) of the constants of nature.
* the existence of conscious minds (the ‘hard problem’ for physicalism).

I am well aware of naturalistic suggestions to account for these facts (quantum fluctuations producing universes; multiverses, eternally inflationary or otherwise, coupled with the anthropic principle; ’emergence’ of consciousness to be explained in due course; etc). All speculative. Some may be on the right track. My point is that theism is as plausible a hypothesis as atheism in the light of the findings of modern science. And note that God is central in this theistic view, not a ‘God of the gaps’.

Many theists point to their personal religious experience (feeling God’s presence). I have had no such experience, and that may be why I am less impressed with such evidence.

So, good and bad things will continue, both in the name of religion and without it. Some extremists will enforce views and harm dissenters. Moderates will urge mutual tolerance of differing religious views. Agnostics may agonize or just shrug their shoulders. I see no prospect of religion withering away (it isn’t just primitive superstition as militant New Atheists declare). Nor prospect of any universally-held world religion. God, if existent, may know the ultimate position, but if God really gives us freedom to accept or reject him as we choose, maybe even an omnipotent being can’t then be sure how it will go with humanity.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

Darlin asked:

What is your reflection about, ‘Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.’?

Answer by Shaun Williamson

This is a remark from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It is a reminder of what he thought the task of philosophy should be.

In his later work Wittgenstein thought the following:

1. There are no philosophical truths or true philosophical theorems.

2. There are no solutions to philosophical problems.

3. There are no real philosophical problems.

4. The task of philosophy is to help us to disentangle our superstitions about our own language and to stop us thinking philosophically.

The only question here is, is Wittgenstein right? If he is right then we cannot prove that he is right, it is a matter of experience. If you find Wittgenstein’s method helps you to dissolve a philosophical problem so that you no longer feel the need to solve it then you will know that he was was right.

Shaun Williamson developed the Ask a Philosopher cgi script question.pl. He did his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

Ryne asked:

Hawking says that even what we take reality to be in science is shaped by theory. A couple of my friends are going back and forth as to if this is true or false. What’s your opinion?

Answer by Craig Skinner

It is true that we take reality to be as our best theories suggest, and its entities to be those postulated by such theories. And so we should.

Scientists intend and hope that their theories do describe reality. And, if a theory is well-tested and generally accepted, we do indeed take reality to be as the theory says.

Furthermore, I think reality often is as we so take it. In short, I think some of our best theories are true.

Of course, no theory can be proven to be true (a later improved theory may explain all that our current one does and also things our current one doesn’t). Nor, strictly, can any theory be proven to be false (all theories are tested along with auxiliary hypotheses as a package, and we can always salvage the theory when one of its predictions proves incorrect, by discarding an auxiliary hypothesis). Science, unlike mathematics, is not in the business of proof.

But don’t let these philosophical points persuade you to the view that just as past theories were mostly wrong (stock examples: phlogiston theory; caloric theory; the luminiferous ether; Newton’s gravity replaced by Einstein’s), so our present theories will eventually turn out also to be wrong, and therefore what we take reality to be is always wrong. Some current theories will turn out to be wrong (see below), but with others there is just no chance of this.

For example, it wont turn out that DNA is not the genetic material in cells or that the coding for amino acids doesn’t depend on the base sequence along the DNA strands. Nor will the periodic table of the elements, and its account of chemical properties depending on the number and arrangement of electrons in the atoms, turn out to be wrong. Nor will it be shown that planets don’t orbit the Sun in elliptical paths. Or that the Sun (and other stars) is not a huge nuclear fusion reactor.

On the other hand, very fundamental physical and cosmological theories are less secure, and leave us unsure as to how to take reality to be:

What are the ultimate constituents of matter? Successive versions of atomism have suggested tiny indivisible corpuscles, then mostly-empty-space atoms with tiny nuclei and shells of electrons, then nuclei composed of protons/neutrons, then these in turn composed of quarks, now speculations (no good theory yet) that all these (and other) apparently fundamental particles are composed of miniscule strings or loops, or even that ultimately they are all just parts of immaterial fields, in turn reducible to numbers or sets so that matter isn’t even material.

What is the reality behind quantum mechanics? Is consciousness necessary to collapse probability wave functions and produce definite states of affairs, or is there no collapse and instead endless proliferation of Everettian parallel realities, or are things yet some other way. We just don’t know.

Furthermore, our two best fundamental physical theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, each wonderfully well-confirmed in its domain, are incompatible at the level of the very small, so that one or both must be wrong, and the search for a quantum theory of gravity continues.

To focus on the cosmos now, rather than the microworld, The Big Bang origin of our universe is a well-established theory, so that we can safely say we live in an expanding universe containing visible matter, energy, so-far-mysterious dark matter, and maybe even-more-mysterious dark energy. But as to whether our universe is the only one or merely one of a vast ensemble (multiverse) we don’t know. Neither do we know what set off the Big Bang, nor why a universe exists rather than nothing at all.

So, whilst certainty, proof and infallibility elude us, we are definitely justified in taking many aspects of reality to be as theory says, although there are, and maybe always will be, some aspects beyond our grasp.

I have dealt with reality as being the natural world including the biosphere and the human species.

As to whether reality includes supernatural entities, that is another important matter, but not one for science, although findings of science are relevant to the question. And philosophy-savvy scientists contribute much to the theism/atheism debates (although I am reluctant to count Hawking, even less so Dawkins, as being in this category)

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com