An Initial Problem

I get extremely bored writing, for instance, about veridicality, or to what extent our truth accurately represents reality. This happens because in the past it has been written about so well. It feels to me as if there is no need or, if there were, my rendition of it will always be less. The upside is that I don't have to do it and I can rely on this writing as a beginning.

I say beginning because veridicality is paramount in starting the process of philosophy. To create and begin real conversations with willing participants I often say, How do you know reality is real? To which they most often (outside of academia) say, What do you mean and Why should I care? The answer to these, of course, are what this section is about.

Stepping away specifically from why people don't like philosophy and why, in the end, it is important, we can talk here about veridicality as a way of learning a primary issue; What indeed are the problems of philosophy?

It is no coincidence that the name of the book on which I rely is "The Problems of Philosophy," by Betrand Russell. You see, Russell endeavored to write simply (as opposed to his colleague Whitehead who endeavored to do the opposite). In this book he works at creating a list of the issues about which ordinary men make assumptions and philosophers expand and make their life's work. These issues, or on this issue, he contends at least about one, "which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked." (PIP, p. 1)

Russell makes a very commonsensical statement about the separation between most people and philosophers in regard to critical thought. To understand this, especially through the course of a number of different but related "problems," is to understand what it is we are really talking about when we say we are doing philosophy.

I can do no better in terms of veridicality than his first chapter other than to suggest that he relies mostly on the subjectivity and unreliability of the senses as a criticism of the easy path the knowledge of things, and that I would include the separation of the data from the senses and what we call mind. Russell focuses on the objects and how they change, etc, and less on the inherent problems in our own understanding of mind. But that is neither here nor there. The truth is that a reader can gain a more complex worldview just by reading this book and no other at the outset of a philosophical journey.

Russell truly wants to show how the complexity of the world is much greater than most people imagine and that their distaste for philosophy no doubt comes from their ignorance about complexity. Once exposed to the idea, for instance, that the object of perception is very hard to prove by our experiences (an idea famously enlarged by David Hume), most people understand not only that greater depth is needed in order to prove mundane objects, but also things which effect us in ways that might be called more serious.

I ask first that readers explore at least the first chapter of PIP and then return to the discussion here in this series. Instead of a group of scattered quotes from the book, it makes sense for a serious student to read it him or herself.

In addition, if the reader has made it this far, I also ask you to participate in an unrelated experiment. I am looking for my best or at least most engaging and substantive essay in all of these posts. If you have read multiple essays, please write and express in your own way which one deserves this title.