and neither am I.
I Just finished my first-half semester since spring of '05. That's four years, for those of you keeping score at home. It started out without much fanfare. Sure, there was an AP article a few months ago, but (surprisingly) a ticker tape parade was somehow deemed unfeasible. I say : If the public wants it, let them have it. Wasn't that one of the campaign slogans? Nevertheless, I decided to trod through this travesty and haven't looked back. Except right now. I remember my first day of school like it was January:
Like many addled adolescents, I stood, paralyzed with unbridled enthusiasm for the impending expedition I was to embark on. I got to my class -PHIL 6593 with plenty of time to spare.
Its official title is: Sem—Contemp Phil (How Do I Go On?)
That's right, How Do I Go On? Class commenced with us stating our names, for the record, and then a slight overview of the course. Most of the schedule was and has been devoted to studying Wittgenstein, who thought he had solved everything about philosophy in a book he wrote in his twenties, only to recant it in a book he wrote later (We are studying the later book).
My second class was PHIL 5523, the next day. This class is Epistemology (the study of knowledge).
What I found out in these classes was this:
Almost all modern philosophy has been dwindled down and devolved into a philosophy of language. The logical postitivists had made it their goal to make it a field of observational evidence only. So, the most intriguing areas in philosophy (all metaphysics and ethics) have been relegated to Xanga status: most people just don't care anymore.
Apparently, though, diving into the deeper waters of philosophy consists of things like:
- Using words like adjudicate and normative.
- Being extremely offended when non-philosophers use the phrase "begs the question"
- Taking fairly simple ideas and construing them in terms that don't really tell us about the real world.
- Taking more simple ideas and transplanting them into far-fetched scenarios that make you think: So this theory does not work because this situation that will never happen causes the theory to give unpleasant results.
But it is possible to imagine a world where 2+2=8. Therefore, because the theory of addition is not able to account for all possible scenarios, it cannot be an all-encompassing theory.
This is an oversimplification, but that is the gist of much of it. It only took pursuing a graduate degree to realize my field had become frivolous. And one could certainly argue that skolnick never had problems with frivolity in the past. On the contrary, in the past I have been an ardent advocate of it. But alas, even the most frivolous have the capacity to tire of it in one way or another. That is not to say I have given up; that is a decision to be made further down the road. Being a philosopher, however, is not a prerequisite to contributing to philosophy. There are still glimmers of hope in it, and I still feel like I have a great deal to say about it. But the theme for me has always been:
What I believe and know to be true is not found on the basis of any argument. Neither is it for anyone else. Not for my friends, my classmates, or my professors, regardless of what they say. Even in the presence of logical necessities, humanity tends to hold strong to what they believe. An evidence of faith, though it does not seem. In this, I do not profess to be distinct. But what I believe once hung on a tree. God pursues humanity.
