The Toys of Philosophy

Dr. Sarfaraz K Niazi (e-mail: niazi@niazi.com)

A half-baked philosopher is nowhere as harmful as a half-baked doctor; fact is that most of us spend the day with a great deal of philosophising, albeit subconsciously. Knowing more about philosophy not only helps us focus our attention to life better but also makes us good in striking meaningful conversations. Inject a bit of philosophy in any dull situation and people wake up, mostly ready to attack you and that's just enough to perk every thing up around you. The problem with philosophy is that those who know even a little bit about it don't want others to understand; the mystique of philosophy is part of being a philosopher. In reality, philosophy is simpler than doing our daily chores. If you have ever said, "Oh! Why me?"; you are already a philosopher. Here are some joyful toys of philosophy that you can use not only to enrich your conversation but also your life; and yes, you don't have to look like a philosopher to speak philosophy.

Zeno's Arrow: This old Greek paradox proves that things actually never move even though they may appear to have moved. If an arrow is shot in the air then at any point in its trajectory it can only be present at only one point, at a time. And it can be there only if it is not moving . If at any point it moved then it is not present at that point. In other words since the arrow did travel, it moved through infinite positions where it was stopped. So, how did it ever get to its destination if it was stopped all along? Philosophically speaking, the arrow never moved. The Greek Zeno drove his friends crazy with this paradox and provoked a crisis among metaphysicians. The mystery remains unresolved.

Plato's Cave: A bunch of people spend their whole lives chained up in an underground den, unable to turn around and behind them is a fire blazing and all they can see is their own shadows on the wall of the cave in front of them. Never having seen anything else, they naturally mistake these shadows for reality. In the same way, the rest of us mistake the world as we know it for the real world, whereas the objects, and even the qualities, of this world are only shadows of the pure forms that exist in the realm of ideas. For everything we see, there is out there a perfect form and by training your mind to contemplate the idea of the perfect thing, you can eventually struggle up out of the cave into the sunlight where you'll see with perfect clarity. Now that's heavy. In plain English what it means that what you see is not what you get. A bat does not see the corners of a table as we do; they actually do not see at all like we do. Who knows who is correct?

Buridan's Ass: A famous stumbling block to the concept of free will. An ass, placed equidistant from two identical bundles of hay, has no basis for choosing one over the other and ends up starving to death. Jacques Buridan claims that a man must choose that which his reason tells him is the greater good, but that he may delay making a decision until his reason has had sufficient time to gather all the information it needs. (Burdan's actually used a starving dog but his critics changed it to ass). The ass was intelligent for if he had chosen one hay stack over other then he would have erred for it was not possible to differentiate them because they were identical. Since in reality, the options available to us always have some differentiation, we ought to investigate them thoroughly until we are sure we know the difference--a practice seldom followed making us less intelligent than an ass.

Occam's Razor: "Entities ought not to be multiplied, except from necessity." The maxim for which William of Occam, the Franciscan scholar, is best remembered. It means that it is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer; we must eliminate all what is unnecessary of hypothetical entities in analysing a subject. We must dissect every question as if with a razor. Or, in other words, we should always cut the crap out.

Pascal's Wager: The pragmatic approach to God, and Pascal's attempt to save the sceptical soul through common-sense reasoning. Basically, his argument goes: If you believe in God and God existed then you win. If you believe in God and God did not exist then you did not lose. So believing is a safer bet and yes, everyone is playing, you have no choice.

The toys of philosophers may appear simple and even naive but they have helped man the rigors of living and evolve his thinking. Take for example, the Zeno's arrow or Plato's cave; they both point to our fallibility of assumptions and lead to the famous Buddhist query whether a tree exists in the jungle when there is no one to observe it. Does the jungle exist when you are not there? The Buridan's ass is a deep thinking situation; we all confront these situations daily and rarely analyse all he available choices falling prey to what is the most obvious option. The Occam's razor applies to our population as well to the words spoken. And of course, Pascal's wager simply tells you how to cover yourself without getting into the argument if you can not know the truth--a daily occurrence.

Now armed with these toys of philosophers, why not go out and practice some philosophy and if it does not work then you can do the disappearing act and leave people thinking you are still there.

[25 November 1994 The Daily Dawn]