How To Be A Philosopher: or How to Be Almost Certain that Almost Nothing is Certain

196 Pages·2010·0.73 MB·English

by  Gary Cox

How to Be a Philosopher
By the Same Author:
How to Be an Existentialist Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed
Sartre and Fiction The Sartre Dictionary
Also available from Continuum:

The Good, the True and the Beautiful, Michael Boylan How to

Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time, Iain King How

to Win Every Argument, Madsen Pirie Sex and Philosophy,
How to Be a
Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook
Philosopher or How to Be Almost
Certain that Almost Nothing is
Certain
Gary Cox
Continuum International Publishing Group
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-4478-2
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Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in
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Contents
Introduction 1

1 What is Philosophy? 11 Philosophy and defining 12
Defining ‘philosophy’ 13 Philosophy and cold, hard logic 18
Philosophy and free speech 24 The father of western
philosophy 27 Metaphysics and more Plato 30 Epistemology
and more Plato 33 The philosophy of doing the right thing 35
Summary 47
2 How to be a Philosopher – Phase One: Doubting

Everything 49 Philosophizing properly 50 Hallucination and
optical illusion 53 Appearance and reality 56 Solipsism – is
there anything out there? 62 The father of modern philosophy
68 Descartes and the method of doubt 73 Descartes, ‘I think
therefore I am’ and God 79 Descartes’ collapse into solipsism
81 Dispelling these clouds 87
3 How to be a Philosopher – Phase Two: The Tree

Question 89 Family Guy in the forest 89
Ask a stupid question 91 Common sense realism 92 The Vienna
Circle and no nonsense logical positivism 94 David Hume and
no nonsense logical positivism 97 The verification principle 99
Sound is consciousness of sound 101 Kant and transcendental
idealism 103 Sartre on differentiated and undifferentiated
being 107 Inconclusive conclusions 109
4 How to Make a Living from Philosophy 112

Bibliography 123 Visual, Musical and Internet Media References

126 Further Reading 127 Index 129
Introduction
Why have you started reading this book? Philosophers should
avoid guessing, but my guess is that you already know a few
things about philosophy and you want to know more. Or, at the
very least, you have come across the word ‘philosophy’ before
and you want to know what it means. Perhaps you already know
a fair bit about philosophy – having studied it at college or
university or in prison – but believe that knowing about
philosophy and being a philosopher are very different things.
Philosophers, if I am one, should really avoid assuming
anything, but on this occasion, instead of assuming that you,
the reader, know something about philosophy, which you
probably do, I’m going to force myself to assume that you know
absolutely nothing about philosophy. You have lived on this
earth for however long, you are intelligent enough and have
become educated enough to be able to read this book. More to

the point, you want to read this book; a remarkable thing in
itself in an age when ignorance is the new intelligence. None‐
theless, the meaning and significance of philosophy totally
passed you by like the proverbial ship in the night. You have
heard of psychology and sociology, even physiology, psychiatry
and philately, but philosophy just got overlooked somehow, like
a city you’ve never visited though you are well travelled, like a
visitor who called at your door during the 5 short minutes you
were in the shower.
Philosophy has a reputation for being complicated. Mostly this
reputation is undeserved although it is true that it can get very,
very complicated at the most advanced levels. Philosophy can
get more complicated than anything else in life in fact. More
complicated than relationships, more complicated than taxation,
more complicated even than cricket. (As with cricket, many
long, titanic struggles in philosophy end in draws.) Philosophy
can get so complicated that it makes rocket science look like . . .
well . . . not rocket science. Philosophy at an advanced level

definitely is rocket science, although it has nothing whatsoever
to do with designing vehicles that are capable of overcoming
earth’s gravitational pull or landing tiny probes on Mars by
remote control at a distance of 55–400 million miles. Do not,
however, be put off by all this talk of complexity. You will be
relieved to know that being a philosopher, at least at a basic
level, is actually incredibly simple. It really is, as this book will
show.
Philosophy is a vast body of arguments, a great network of
different points of view, a huge tangle of thorny issues that is
still growing and expanding after thousands of years like
unchecked brambles on a badly tended allotment. It would take
many lifetimes to read all that has been written in philosophy,
so not even the greatest philosophers know all the arguments.
My point, however, is that to be a philosopher you don’t actually

have to know any of the arguments! Philosophy, as some great
philosophers have said, is not so much a body of knowledge as

an activity. So all you have to do to be a philosopher, at least at

a basic level, is simply start doing philosophy; simply start
philosophizing. It’s a bit like playing tennis. You don’t have to
play tennis like Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal to be playing
tennis. You are playing tennis, after a fashion, if you simply pick
up a tennis racket and knock a couple of balls over the net, or
even down into it.
It is almost certain that you have philosophized a fair amount
in your life already without realizing it. In that case, you are
already a philosopher without knowing it. If you have ever
wondered where the universe comes from or if there is anything
after you die, if you know anything for sure or if life is totally
meaningless, if there is any good reason why you should be
morally good or even bad or if beauty is simply in the eye of the
beholder, then you were doing philosophy. The big irony for me
is that I’m writing this book to tell people how to become
something they almost certainly are already! I’m preaching to
the converted, teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, taking
coals to Newcastle and oil to Texas. So maybe the title of this

book should be How to Tell When you are Doing Philosophy or,

sounds a bit pretentious, How to Philosophize More Effectively.