Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Great Essay. So many threads to pull on! A book that I found very interesting was "Trying not to Try' and talks about Toaist Wu Wei which is your zen or flow state created by that mastery. One of the less focused on aspects of Wu Wei is Intentional Non-Action. (in the Army we call this tactical patience) In a world of forced response, a proper outcome may be to not respond. This is both a zen state as well as avoids the virtue signalling you see everywhere.

What I find about my own personal application of Wu Wei is when you do it online, you start to see and realize it does nothing and the right answer was to do nothing. Evenentually, the situation re-frames and you see what you can, and should do that matter. Like volunteering in the soup kitchen vs. updating you facebook profile pic badge to "I support the current thing"

Expand full comment
Apple Pie's avatar

"A milestone in the development of my disenchantment being this piece by primatologist Richard Wrangham... Philosophy’s lack of robust decision mechanisms is why the Rousseau-Kropotkin v. Hobbes-Huxley argument (humans are intrinsically noble and cooperative v. humans are intrinsically savage) has gone around and around in Political Philosophy for centuries, yet gets resolved by Primatology."

Such a relief to find someone with a degree in philosophy who understands this! I've been wandering substack talking to philosophers who can't be convinced that there even *is* an insufficiency of decision mechanisms in philosophy, let alone that this might be a problem for the field. The general assumption seems to be "But we must have answers right now; never mind that the answers are arbitrary, unconvincing, and contradictory."

As someone with training in philosophy, what would you say is the solution? I tend to look towards mathematics for direction, since mathematics has made incredible breakthroughs without the need for empirical input, and philosophy often cannot obtain data to answer its questions. But I don't know that this is the wisest course. Have you given much question to the ways in which philosophy could be reformed, or, do you largely think it's just up to the scientists, now?

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts