Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and I teach philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University and Seminary
in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
I want to talk today about a common error that many beginning students of philosophy
make, and that is the error of assuming that philosophy is arbitrary, that is, that there
is no standard of judgment in philosophy beyond individual preference and therefore one philosophy
is as good as any other; you can just take your pick.
I think in essence that many students come to the study of philosophy implicitly accepting
Nietzsche’s view that philosophy is simply an expression of one's personality, that
a philosophy either fits you, fits you like a suit of clothes or fails to fit you; there's nothing more
to be said about the truth of the matter.
Now, I think this is an intellectually lazy view of philosophy and I think it's also empirically false.
That is to say, it's a false description of what philosophy is and the way philosophy
works, even in terms of one's own point of view. One doesn't simply *feel* like an idealist.
If you are an idealist, you have reasons for being attracted to idealism.
You may not be able to articulate them, but that's part of the job of philosophy.
So I think philosophy is not standardless and I'll argue today that philosophy has at
least three standards that it should meet that are objective: two standards of reason
and one standard of experience.
The first rational standard that any philosophy, any philosophical theory or system, should
meet is the standard of internal consistency.
That is to say, a philosophy should not contradict itself.
Any philosophy that does contradict itself has some serious points against it in our consideration.
We're justified in rejecting it on that grounds alone.
For a quick example of this, take a look at Socrates’ refutation of Meletus in Plato's
Apology, where Meletus claims first that Socrates is an atheist and believes in no gods, and
then a few minutes later claims that Socrates believes in some kind of
mysterious new divinities or gods.
Socrates quite rightly says, “Meletus, you've contradicted yourself here in front of the
jury and no reasonable person will take you seriously anymore.”
Notice the penalty for failing the test of internal consistency is that reasonable people
now disregard your opinions. They don't take them seriously in designing their own opinions.
The second standard of reason is that of proper inferences.
That is to say, any philosophy that is presented to us that is more complex than just a single
claim should be drawing conclusions out of premises in a logically correct way.
A general guide is that our conclusions should not go beyond what can be justified by the
evidence that we offer in favor of them.
So no philosophy should make huge leaps in logic from one idea to the next without being
able to carefully explain the justification.
The third standard is the standard of experience.
And here this would be an appeal to the common experience of mankind.
We are all human, and philosophy is a human pursuit.
And therefore our philosophy should find its assumptions and starting points in common
human experience, and it should in some way end up in human experience as well.
It should be satisfactory in practice, it should satisfy the longings of the human heart
or the drives in the human intellect that push us towards asking philosophical questions
in the first place.
It should have no holes, or as few holes as possible in terms of its ability to account
for our experience of the world.
What I think is missing in many students’ initial encounter with philosophy is an idea
of *judgment*, that is to say, an idea of judgments that go beyond mere opinion.
Judgments, unlike opinions, are well reasoned and informed.
They are defensible without appeal to mere preference.
Anybody can have an opinion about anything, but only some opinions can be backed up with
reasons and justifications.
If we can articulate our opinions, our judgments, with their justifications, then the business
of philosophy is to debate the quality of the justification, in part by using the three
standards I've just articulated.
That's what philosophy is, and it's not arbitrary.
A final thought: what I've been doing the past couple of minutes is in fact philosophy.
I've presented you with an definition of “arbitrary” and I've cited some facts about philosophy
that lead me to the conclusion that it, that the category arbitrary, doesn't apply to it.
“Philosophy is non-arbitrary,” I say. I've given you my justification. I invite you to evaluate it.
And you may go away from this video thinking, “I used to think that philosophy was arbitrary
and now I realize, having listened to Anadale, that it's not.
And I have reasons: I can explain why I think it's not to other people.”
Well, congratulations: you've just done some philosophy.
That's my comment for today. Thanks for watching; bye.