Everyone is a Philosopher

This is day # 3 of 30 days of blogs on philosophy. This month, as part of the Praxis philosophy module I am blogging every day about something that I am in the process of learning. If you are between 17-25 and interested in becoming awesome at life find out more at discoverpraxis.com
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What are we even talking about? Do we know most of the time?

Or do we spend our time having conversations with others, where both parties are using the same words for different things?

To different people, words have different meanings. A word is a tool I can use to evoke a response within you. Whether that is intellectually by asking your opinion on something, or emotionally, by calling you a dick head.

Language isn’t static. It’s constantly evolving. Changing and taking on new meanings to different people. The definitions you have for almost every word you know are probably surprisingly different to the average person on the street.

When you get find yourself disagreeing with someone, you should first stop to make sure that you are actually talking about the same thing. You can argue with someone all day about something you actually agree on because you are using different words to describe the same idea.

In the not to distant past Neil deGrasse Tyson upset some philosophers.

“I always felt like maybe there was a little too much question asking in philosophy…my concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it’s, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?…” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

Philosophers disagreed. And started arguing the merits of philosophy. What they didn’t do was think about what Tyson believes philosophy is.

Philosophy is a pretty big catch-all term. It means all sorts of things to all sorts of people.

When Tyson thinks of philosophy, he is probably thinking of something drastically different from what the average philosopher would think of.

I don’t know Neil deGrasse Tyson, but it sounds like he was talking about philosophy in the academic sense. The tenured professors who write papers that no one will ever read about abstract issues that don’t have relevance to living life.

The responses attempted to engage Tyson in a debate about the worth of philosophy (which, ironically, would have been a philosophical discussion), instead of looking to have him be more specific about what he was actually talking about.

If you are talking to someone, and you don’t know how they define the concepts you are debating, you are going to be mutually running into the same wall over and over again. You won’t be talking about the same thing. You could be arguing about something that you actually agree on.

Academia has really helped along philosophies definition problem. Somewhere along the way, universities decided that intellectual disciplines need to be split up into neat categories. In order to spend endowment funds on fancy buildings they NEED to be sure of what intellectual pursuit will be taking place inside which building.

So philosophy became a department. Just like social work, education, or business.

Instead of being the groundwork of all other disciplines, the foundation on which all knowledge is built. The word philosophy was taken and made to mean something closer to intellectual masturbation. The discipline of thinking about important life questions was made to look like something boring and impractical.

Instead of philosophy being your operating system for life, the word was made to define a certain category of thinking. Broadening the appeal of philosophy, is less about convincing people that philosophy has value and more about convincing people that their definition of philosophy needs to be A LOT broader.