The Philosopher in the Room

Following a series of conversations and classes with Lisa Heldke and generally in Philosophy, as well as the insight and queries considered in Philosophy and Ethics Bites, I feel that it is important to discuss the role of The Philosopher in the Room. I coin this phrase--as I am otherwise ignorant of its usage--because of its similarity with the "elephant in the room," though I like to think that philosophers tend to have different roles than elephants, it is also that the presence of one can have a sly or obvious impact on the surroundings that must be considered. The importance springs from the character a philosopher has in the effectiveness of discussion, decision making, and cooperation.

First, the philosopher in the room ought to resolve the problem of representation. In discussions where like-minded people are involved, issues like group-think, under representation, misrepresentation, and scapegoatism can develop and go unnoticed. Such is easily considered as a political issue--having to do with the relationships and interactions of people--that John Rawls attempts to handle with his "veil of ignorance." These and similar situations I refer to topically as problems of representation because they develop from the exclusion of particular parties that will be impacted by the decision and the progress or management of the conversation. For example, Professor Deane Curtin once shared this story:

An international aid organization was determined to help a community of women in a village. After observing the women in the village, the aid organization decided the women would benefit from solar stoves so that they would not have to search for firewood. The organization delivered the stoves and explained how they worked to the women of the village and how they would be beneficial; afterwards, the women wandered off and, perhaps, chuckled at the stoves and their would-be beneficiaries. The women, in turned out, could not use the stoves because the women cooked at night after their other work was done and they could no longer see to finish remaining chores.

The intentions of the aid organization were well-intended, but because no one cared to pay attention to the needs and voices of the women--i.e. no one represented them--the work was for naught. Here is one situation where someone needed to step in and actually ask questions; or, more specifically, ask the questions to the right people. Through the rigors of critical thinking and problem evaluation, a philosophically minded and trained person is better suited to understand and realize the importance of asking the right questions, asking them to the right people, and presenting the answers in the most meaningful way.

This sort of role leads into the problem of category, in which the argument or discussion at hand involves perspectives or terminology that characterizes distinct categories and how they relate to one another. Aristotle and Ludwig Wittgenstein spent a good deal of time and effort describing the notion of categories. Even given an utterly chaotic situation (a child's playroom, a legislative meeting, or certain descriptions of the universe), humans must undergo a system of categorization in order to act in the world effectively. These categories may be ultimately descriptive and characteristic of the world, such as the taxonomy of species, or simply organizational and arbitrary, such as all red toys go into one crate and all yellow toys go into another (the toys having nothing to do with one another except the wavelength of light they emit; a counter organizational method may be grouping by intended age group or source of origin, which would say something about their function or identity).

Professor Lisa Heldke once shared some insight concerning a food-based online discussion with my class. I do not recall the exact nature of the discussion, but the contention that needed resolution involved the articulation of distinct definitions and categories that were used by the interlocutors. In an involved discussion, it is important to describe the bounds of a concept or, in other words, define the term in an intelligible way. If someone posits a statement based on the definition of a term, but that definition is not itself explained, then a competing and simultaneously unstated definition may be used to argue against the other claim; in such a situation, it is less likely that the two or more parties are arguing than they are misunderstanding one another. This is another situation in which a philosopher in the room can resolve tension by deriving functional definitions from each party in order to explain the differences between one another.

In a more simple context, two young men came into Ivanna Cone (my place of ice cream scooping employment) and were debating about how one is evil. More explicitly, the question was, "Can someone be a little bit evil?" One young man was attempting to affirm the position, the other was attempting to deny the position. What occurred to me, and I added to the conversation, was that someone may be characterized in more specific terms, such as mischievous (one who enjoys causing annoying or complicated problems for others, but may or may nor make explicitly good choices in a moral sense) or opportunistic (one who pursues a situation that would provide a benefit for him/herself without likely repercussions, usually within the bounds of a certain system of law or honor; like a shrewd businessperson); these ultimately describe how a person may act in certain situations.

Evil, then, is the person with a series of overlapping negatively characterized characteristics, such as being cruel, thieving, arrogant, and the like. When one of the young men considered someone who had been good all of his/her life and then chose to kill someone, I suggested that that person had undergone a major character shift, perhaps the result of trauma or injury or heartbreak, which ultimately changes that person's identity (such a position is most coherent within virtue or character ethics). Another person may make immense contributions to charities--such as a philanthropic businessperson--but, perhaps, beats his/her spouse and children; or a business that provides healthcare and benefits to all of its workers but denudes forests and pollutes streams where it works, is another example. This, I would describe specifically as forms of fraud, deception, and/or greenwashing, given the specific nature of the example.

And finally, the issues that are effectively refered to as issues of causality or issues of heritage. These are, effectively, the same issue related to how subject x was derived from a, b, and c. (The causal or inheriting sources are, in actuality, a set that may end uncertainly in an ellipsis, just as the subject is part of a potentially infinite set of subjects.) Friedrich Nietzsche handled this sort of issue in the Genealogy of Morals, in which he traced the etymological roots of good, bad, and evil in order to place his ethical examination (that is, the positing of the amoral Ubermensch) within a meaningful theoretical structure (though that structure is very different than most philosophical writing). By tracing a notion backward--through causal time or inherited genealogy--that notion's reality in the form of its definition, function, coherence, or relation to the subject at hand can be made more understandable. With the example of Nietzsche, he ultimately argues that the notion of evil has nothing to do with the notion of good because evil is a fiction created to subvert the sociopolitical power of the powerful. In a more everyday example, I decided to start using kerchiefs because I realized that tissues were wasteful and it occurred to me that the "outmoded" kerchief provided a perfectly suitable function with less waste and more sturdiness.

I don't know if Nietzsche would appreciate that sort of comparison.