Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > The Big Questions of Philosophy

As a course, The Big Questions of Philosophy is well-designed, effectively presented, and immensely thought-provoking. For some, this is another kind of introduction to the major areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. However, it is more than a course because the big questions are spot on. Their sequencing makes sense as they do not appear like excuses to introduce any set of philosophers or their theories in any particular order. More importantly, the attempts to answer are genuine, with every chapter razor focussed on the issues at hand without any needless digressions. It is almost like whatever philosophical theories one learns are just a side-effect.

While the Professor does not equivocate, he is far more persuasive while denying or destroying proposed answers than in providing assertive, constructive resolutions to any topic. His unequivocal refutations of many cherished beliefs mean the course will have a pleasant and palatable appeal to those who already share the author’s perspective.
There is likely to be a self-selection in those who pick the course; it is an echo chamber of sorts.

The biggest question for this reviewer, because of the book and not addressed in it, is why it is so easy in Philosophy to refute than to construct. This question is not as superfluous as it sounds. In a way, it is the mother of all questions that provide a context to why most philosophical arguments cannot but lead nowhere once done with criticizing others.

Conventional languages are grossly inadequate in the attempts to tackle myriads of real-life issues they try to address. History of how these languages evolved, on the one hand, and the ever-rising complexities of life as humanity progresses, on the other, make the inadequacies exponentially more flagrant over time. Philosophers' habitual efforts to arrive at one-size-fits-all generalized proclamations work until the next one sits down to rip them apart.

Imagine if the world had stuck with only Pythagorean-era Math and Newton or Bohr were needed to compose their theories in them. Conventional languages have not evolved at all compared to real life. This was when they were inadequate to address the life that was right from the start.

Philosophers' artificial constraints – imposed to arrive at universal or generalizable conclusions – make their quests doomed before they begin. Let's use another example: we know that languages do not have sufficient words to describe billions of viruses and bacteria that exist out there. Simply asserting that some virus or a bacterium causes Covid is no more helpful than ascribing it to a demon. Suppose the statement “virus causes Covid” must have a strict truth value of 0 or 1. In that case, you could almost expect a horde of intellectuals going back and forth for centuries arguing how most "viruses" do not cause this or how this statement might conflict with another one that says a virus is a cause of something non- Covid or it is not just a particular type of virus that is a cause always but only within a context.

Let's use this ridiculous example to see how similar philosophical wrangles on finding universal moral or even legal principles from conventional language are. A principal “Lying is bad” by one philosopher would evoke nothing but above virus-like, must-have wide range of exceptions to highlight the inadequacy of the dictum. This is even before the smarter ones begin debating the definition of a “Lie” or what is “Bad” in the same vein as trying to arrive at the meaning of what is meant by “conscience,” “soul,” “free will,” or “God.”

Machine Learning tools are the latest scientific/technological set proving how we cannot achieve much in a structured quest using words or categories invented by ancestors eons ago. The best philosophers spent ages trying to fine-tune the meanings of the words to make them usable, only to be summarily dismissed by the next generations.

As the professor concludes, this does not make philosophical quests, courses, or arguments unnecessary. We are wired such that many of us will want to seek the answers to the kind of big questions posed in the book, fully knowing the futility. Still, somebody should attempt a course on what could happen to a being who refuses to think about existential issues and universal principles while focusing on broad guidelines and creating room for addressing specific situations as they arise rather than looking for perpetual hypothetical answers.