Philosophers have a hard time because their nemeses are living in their minds. Like parasites. But why are intellectual fights so common? By the very definition, isn't an intellectual fight an anti-thesis to the very concept of intelligence. If you ask a child, they would be perplexed to find that two intelligent people can fight gratuitously over an issue. And if you ask them to solve this perplexment, they will probably say one of them is not intelligent. The simplest answer, of course. In this short essay, I will try to give my answer to "why do philosophers fight"?
Two rights make a wrong
A question that often comes to my mind is what if one event has two causal explanations. What does it say about a) the explanations and b) the event itself. I will base my ideas on the research of Daniel Kahnemann (and many others) who says that there are fields which are not sufficiently regular for one to develop reliable "expertise" in. For example, if the economy is going down, the political left has one answer and the political right has another. Who is actually right? Nobody knows, both may be wrong and both may be right (in parts). That is the very limitation of an irregular field. Finding the truth is near impossible or may not even exist (there need not be a manifest truth) but what is easier? Defending your thesis. Allow me to condense this into a pithy phrase: two rights, (usually) make a wrong.
Fighting over an issue in an irregular domain is easily the most common phenomena: politics, economics, culture, artistic expression, etc. It is also the domain with most number of "incompetent" people participating, because all one needs is a thesis close to one's feelings. But this doesn't explain the fight that happens between learned philosophers in "regular" domains like science.
Scientists are animals too
Science has had its share of childish feuds which probably have set progress back by hundreds of years. From arguing why earth cannot be round to how evolution by natural selection is absurd, every new scientific theory goes through its share of hand-wavery and sometimes, ridicule. Who are the people fighting? The most learned and logical men living in that generation. And why do they?
If we use the argument in the previous section, then it doesn't really work. After all, science is the very definition of a regular field. But here is the catch. The scientific people are fighting on the boundary of what is known and what is unknown. Science is practically undiscovered for most parts and to make a discovery is nothing short of making a wild suggestion. Wild suggestions will be viewed suspiciously and all efforts will be taken to prove that it is "wild". This is the problem with anything new, it doesn't fit nicely with known thought. Lots of convincing is required to push an idea forward towards legitimacy. Almost all attacks have to be defended against and not just that, other competing ideas have to be shown to be inadequate. This is a lot of additional work and very easy to make a person annoyed and aggressive. Allow me to condense this into a pithy phrase: scientists believe that a needle cannot be found in a haystack, but they try.
50 shades of logic
The final discussion will be in the area of decision making. The decision itself might be in a regular or an irregular field but it's different from the previous reasons for argument. The argument here is not about what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, but it is about the most optimal discourse given we do not fully understand a situation.
Here, the biggest reason for fighting happens because of different starting assumptions, different final objectives and different ways of execution. In any given argument between two decision-makers, it is often very hard to spot that they actually differ fundamentally in any of the aforementioned three aspects. But it is also the most tractable situation, because enumerating these assumptions and objectives is not very complicated. But it has a lot of communication effort: requires detailed elucidation from one direction and patient listening from the other. Any gaps in either direction, and the logical discourse can easily turn into an illogical fight because of misunderstanding. Illogical fights, by very definition, can only lead to frustration and exhaustion. Allow me to condense this into a pithy phrase: there are 50 shades of logic.
In parting: philosophy is a wonderful activity but just like any difficult field, it takes time and practise to do it right.
Two rights make a wrong
A question that often comes to my mind is what if one event has two causal explanations. What does it say about a) the explanations and b) the event itself. I will base my ideas on the research of Daniel Kahnemann (and many others) who says that there are fields which are not sufficiently regular for one to develop reliable "expertise" in. For example, if the economy is going down, the political left has one answer and the political right has another. Who is actually right? Nobody knows, both may be wrong and both may be right (in parts). That is the very limitation of an irregular field. Finding the truth is near impossible or may not even exist (there need not be a manifest truth) but what is easier? Defending your thesis. Allow me to condense this into a pithy phrase: two rights, (usually) make a wrong.
Fighting over an issue in an irregular domain is easily the most common phenomena: politics, economics, culture, artistic expression, etc. It is also the domain with most number of "incompetent" people participating, because all one needs is a thesis close to one's feelings. But this doesn't explain the fight that happens between learned philosophers in "regular" domains like science.
Scientists are animals too
Science has had its share of childish feuds which probably have set progress back by hundreds of years. From arguing why earth cannot be round to how evolution by natural selection is absurd, every new scientific theory goes through its share of hand-wavery and sometimes, ridicule. Who are the people fighting? The most learned and logical men living in that generation. And why do they?
If we use the argument in the previous section, then it doesn't really work. After all, science is the very definition of a regular field. But here is the catch. The scientific people are fighting on the boundary of what is known and what is unknown. Science is practically undiscovered for most parts and to make a discovery is nothing short of making a wild suggestion. Wild suggestions will be viewed suspiciously and all efforts will be taken to prove that it is "wild". This is the problem with anything new, it doesn't fit nicely with known thought. Lots of convincing is required to push an idea forward towards legitimacy. Almost all attacks have to be defended against and not just that, other competing ideas have to be shown to be inadequate. This is a lot of additional work and very easy to make a person annoyed and aggressive. Allow me to condense this into a pithy phrase: scientists believe that a needle cannot be found in a haystack, but they try.
50 shades of logic
The final discussion will be in the area of decision making. The decision itself might be in a regular or an irregular field but it's different from the previous reasons for argument. The argument here is not about what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, but it is about the most optimal discourse given we do not fully understand a situation.
Here, the biggest reason for fighting happens because of different starting assumptions, different final objectives and different ways of execution. In any given argument between two decision-makers, it is often very hard to spot that they actually differ fundamentally in any of the aforementioned three aspects. But it is also the most tractable situation, because enumerating these assumptions and objectives is not very complicated. But it has a lot of communication effort: requires detailed elucidation from one direction and patient listening from the other. Any gaps in either direction, and the logical discourse can easily turn into an illogical fight because of misunderstanding. Illogical fights, by very definition, can only lead to frustration and exhaustion. Allow me to condense this into a pithy phrase: there are 50 shades of logic.
In parting: philosophy is a wonderful activity but just like any difficult field, it takes time and practise to do it right.
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