A well-known scientist (some say it was the philosopher Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?”
“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
Although all philosophy revolves around using reason and rational argumentation to convince others of your position, there is no way to convince others that reason and dialogue matter unless they are already of that mindset. That’s how I interpret “the tortoise myth.” There’s nothing supporting the turtle (except other turtles), just as there is nothing — except for good faith — at the basis of ethics.
nicomachus.net is hosting the May 14th Philosophers’ Carnival. Since finishing graduate school (and really before then too), I have stood firm beside the opinion that practical philosophy is the philosophy that matters most.
Talking about the National Humanities Center recently with Bob Ashley, Editor of The Herald Sun, I told Ashley that the humanities is just the dialogue on topics we all think and care about every day — history, identity, morality. Reason and dialogue have power to change the world, of that I am convinced. But it will change only if we engage the world — the one we live in. Like Albert Camus, whom the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut once described as his favorite Nobel Prize winner, Vonnegut himself concluded that the only moral choice in the face of an absurd universe is to be a force for good. Vonnegut, again like Camus, was not afraid of philosophy. But nor was he afraid of talking about the pain and suffering that define the real world too.
So this issue of the Philosophers’ Carnival will celebrate practical philosophy — that is, philosophy that matters outside the classroom. Anything from environmental ethics to aesthetics to the absurd to the meaning of death and dying is fair game. This list is not comprehensive, but please, just for one week, no Kripke’s modal logic or possible worlds theories. None of theat pie-in-the-sky stuff. Just some down home, unpretentious reflection on topics you think matter.
Email me your entries or drop them in the submission form.
