Eric: Is the examined life really aided by philosophy? Or is there sort of an infinite tower of questions and it's sort of an intellectual check kiting scheme by which you keep getting into deeper and deeper water by noticing something only to find out that the noticing created a larger problem than the previous one that you had?
Agnes: I think one way to put the case for philosophy is you have to have a right. You can't just draw a distinction. You're just not allowed to just draw a distinction. That's why I said about the quadripartite, you're not just allowed to slash the world up into bits.
The place where philosophy comes from is Parmenides. Parmenides was really the first philosopher, okay? And you know this was pre-Plato. This is the pre-Socratic philosophers. And you know he- Zeno's paradoxes are sort of woven into Parmenideanism. But Parmenides' basic thought is that there's only one thing you can say: "It is."
So there's just one thing: it. And there's one thing you can say about it: That it is. And you're like “Well Parmenides look there's also, like, 'this chair is.'” And Parmenides says "Well, if you say that the chair is, and you want to say that the chair is something and is different from, say, that table, then you're saying that the chair is not the table. So you're saying that the chair is not. But you're also saying that it is."
Parmenides and generations of people after Parmenides thought that this was like this really terrible puzzle about how non-being can be. How can there be anything that isn't? Like this chair not being this table?
The problem of non-being has a lot of different manifestations. Difference is one manifestation. Change over time. How can the chair at one time exist and then later it's collapsed and it's not there anymore? And Parmenides' thought was that our thinking cannot support this way of talking. It's like it's just words, when we talk about the diversity out in the world. And there's only one thing we can coherently say. There's only one thing where, when we say it, we've understood what we've said. And that's: "It is."
Now Plato comes along and he's like "No, Parmenides. That's nuts. We have to be able to talk about some kinds of difference. But you're right that the entire world as we see it - the entire sensible world - that's just nonsense. That doesn't make any sense. That's a bunch of contradictions. But there are these things called forms okay? Like the beautiful and the just or whatever. And at least the beautiful, it's always beautiful. The only thing that's true about it is that it is beautiful."
And that's something I can say. The beautiful is beautiful. The just is just. So at least I'm one step beyond Parmenidies. I can talk about these forms. I still can't talk about the chair.
Okay and then you get Aristotle. And Aristotle is like "No, guys. We have to be able to talk about like human beings and things and we need to enrich our language further."
Now the reason I bring all this up is that the basic philosophical impulse is that when you draw distinctions and you carve things up and you talk about layers, you've in a sense collapsed your own thought into a bunch of different things that are not unified. And you need to be able to see the unity of them. If you can't, you haven't actually had a thought. You haven't thought anything. You've just said words. So philosophers are constantly attuned to this worry that we might just be saying words and not having thoughts. And that there's a standard for the unity of a thought that's a pretty high standard. And so if you draw a distinction you need to understand the unity that underlies the distinction and what legitimates the distinction.
And so if I say, you know, I ate the cookie even though I knew that it wasn't the right thing to do. And you're like
"Well wait a minute. You freely ate the cookie? You chose to eat the cookie?
"Yes."
"So that was an intentional action?"
"Yes."
"So intentional action like when we have a reason?"
"Yes."
"So reason means you think that it's, all things considered, the best thing to do?"
"Yes, that's what a reason is."
"Wait a minute, you just said you thought it was, all things considered, the best thing to do. And you thought that there was something better that you should do. You just contradicted yourself."
And Parmenides thought that contradicting yourself was written into "This is a chair and this is a table." And so, you know, we've come really far! We can talk about so much now. But only, I think, if we can sort of back those checks. That these distinctions have some way of holding together.
-Professor Agnes Callard on The Portal #023 - Courage, Meta-cognitive Detachment and Their Limits
