Simon Blackburn - Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Until recently he was Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and from 1969 to 1989 a Fellow and Tutor at Pembroke College, Oxford. His hooks include Spreading the Word (1984), Essays in Quasi-Realism (1993), The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (1994), Ruling Passions (1998), Truth (co-edited with Keith Simmons, 1999), and Being Good (2001). He edited the journal Mind from 1984 to 1990.

SIMON BLACKBURN

THIS BOOK GREW FROM years of wrestling with the problems of trying to interest people in ideas. I have done this as a teacher, but also as someone who has tried to explain the value of the humanities in general, and philosophy in particular, to a wider audience. Indeed my first debt is to the climate of the times, whose scepticism about the value of higher education made it evident to me just how urgent this task is. A second, more serious debt is to all the students of many years, whose nods and frowns eventually shaped the book. I also owe a debt to teaching assistants here at the University of North Carolina, who had first-hand experience of engaging students in earlier versions of the work. I would never have taken the plunge, however, had it not been for the generous encouragement of Catherine Clarke and Angus Phillips, at Oxford University Press. Angus has closely monitored the progress of the work, and I owe much to his support and advice.

Earlier versions of the material have been read by Huw Price and Ralph Walker, who each provided invaluable suggestions. Yuri Bal- ashov and Dan Ryder gave me help with specific topics. For the sake of brevity I have not included a glossary of philosophical terms, which would in any case have echoed definitions found in my Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.

The superb editing of Maura High and Angela Blackburn gave mean uncomfortable sense of my shortcomings as a writer, while happily disguising them from the wider public. Angela, of course, had also to suffer the usual burdens of having a writing husband, and without her support nothing would have been possible.

Simon Blackburn

I

THIS BOOK IS FOR people who want to think about the big themes: knowledge, reason, truth, mind, freedom, destiny, identity, God, goodness, justice. These are not the hidden preserve of specialists. They are things that men and women wonder about naturally, for they structure the ways we think about the world and our place in it. They are also themes about which thinkers have had things to say. In this book I try to introduce ways of thinking about the big themes. I also introduce some of the things thinkers have had to say about them. If readers have absorbed this book, then they should be on better terms with the big themes. And they should be able to read many otherwise baffling major thinkers with pleasure and reasonable understanding.

The word `philosophy' carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird. I suspect that all philosophers and philosophy students share that moment of silent embarrassment when someone innocently asks us what we do. I would prefer to introduce myself as doing conceptual engineering. For just as the engineer studies the structure of material things, so the philosopher studies the structure of thought. Understanding the structure involves seeing how parts function and how they interconnect. It means knowing what would happen for better or worse if changes were made. This is what we aim at when we investigate the structures that shape our view of the world. Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing in which we live. We may end up proud of the structures we have built. Or we may believe that they need dismantling and starting afresh. But first, we have to know what they are.

The book is self-standing and does not presuppose that the reader has any other resources. But it could be augmented. For example, it could be read alongside some of the primary source materials from which I frequently quote. These are readily available classics, such as Descartes's Meditations, or Berkeley's Three Dialogues, or Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, or his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. But it can equally well be read on its own without the texts to hand. And after finishing it, the reader should pick up the classics, and other things like logic texts or writings on ethics, with a mind prepared.

WHAT ARE WE TO THINK ABOUT?

Here are some questions any of us might ask about ourselves: What am I? What is consciousness? Could I survive my bodily death? Can I be sure that other people's experiences and sensations are like mine? If I can't share the experience of others, can I communi cate with them? Do we always act out of self-interest? Might I be a kind of puppet, programmed to do the things that I believe I do out of my own free will?

Here are some questions about the world: Why is there something and not nothing? What is the difference between past and future? Why does causation run always from past to future, or does it make sense to think that the future might influence the past? Why does nature keep on in a regular way? Does the world presuppose a Creator? And if so, can we understand why he (or she or they) created it?

Finally, here are some questions about ourselves and the world: How can we be sure that the world is really like we take it to be? What is knowledge, and how much do we have? What makes a field of inquiry a science? (Is psychoanalysis a science? Is economics?) How do we know about abstract objects, like numbers? How do we know about values and duties? How are we to tell whether our opinions are objective, or just subjective?

The queer thing about these questions is that not only are they baffling at first sight, but they also defy simple processes of solution. If someone asks me when it is high tide, I know how to set about getting an answer. There are authoritative tide tables I can consult. I may know roughly how they are produced. And if all else fails, I could go and measure the rise and fall of the sea myself. A question like this is a matter of experience: an empirical question. It can be settled by means of agreed procedures, involving looking and seeing, making measurements, or applying rules that have been tested against experience and found to work. The questions of the last paragraphs are not like this. They seem to require more reflection. We don't immediately know where to look. Perhaps we feel we don't quite know what we mean when we ask them, or what would count as getting a solution. What would show me, for instance, whether I am not after all a puppet, programmed to do the things I believe I do freely? Should we ask scientists who specialize in the brain? But how would they know what to look for? How would they know when they had found it? Imagine the headline: `Neuroscientists discover human beings not puppets.' How?