Welcome the Fikr Education's course on Comprehensive Philosophy.
What is Philosophy?
The word philosophy comes from the Greek roots "Philo" meaning love and "Sophia" meaning wisdom. Love of wisdom is the direct translation. Practically, philosophy is the study of stuff. What exists, why does it exists, what should we do about it, and whether we are right or not? These questions constitute philosophy. Philosophy is the same as problem solving, and the subject is so vast because not only are there an infinite number of problems but also potentially infinite ways to solve those problems.
We can divide these questions into categories that become the branches of philosophy such as Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and so on. We will deal with all the major branches in due time. However, you may ask, why is philosophy important? Why is it important to talk about what does it mean for something to "exist"?
Why is Philosophy Important?
Practical Problems
When we think about problem solving, we should think about practical problems. Practical problems are a part of the human experience. We have ideas about what should happen and we muster our resources to make that happen. In the blink of an eye, apes from Africa have built a civilization reaching the stars. The foundation of our civilization is the two types of problem solving, theoretical and practical problem solving.
The practical side of problem solving is science. It is we figuring out how to use iron to make tools. How to grow more food, how to safely cook food, how to create and use electricity, how to send information through radio waves, how to vote, how to apprehend and punish criminals, and so on. At a cursory glance, everything that we humans do that built our civilization is because of incremental improvements on how we solved our practical problems. So what use is the theoretical side of problem solving?
Theoretical Problems
The theoretical side of problem solving is what we can call philosophy. It is the process of organizing thoughts and information to make meta-claims about the whole of reality. These claims are often wrong but follow a pattern like this; Pythagoras and Aristotle claim that the universe is eternal, and then Al-Ghazali counters that it had a beginning hence not eternal.
Then, Al Ghazali talks about determinism and claims that we do not have free will. In response, Ibn Rush rushes in to say "No! We do have free will". However, 600 years later Spinoza chimes back in the discussion and claims that we do not have free will and the cycle repeats.
Similarly, someone claims that life is meaningless, in response; another argues that life has meaning. A third person then asks you to create your own meaning since there is no innate meaning. All of these questions push society into one path or the other, for better, or for worse but transform it nonetheless.
When it comes to ethics, we have ideas about whether we should be concerned with consequences, follow rules, or be selfish. Aristotle says we should adopt character traits in the form of virtues and that is enough. Religious philosophers ask us to follow rules. Bentham says that we should only be concerned with the consequences of our actions. Kant says that we should only follow absolute rules no matter the consequence or situation without exceptions. These are not just academic exercises but change what a society thinks is right and wrong action and what to do with its people who do not conform to its moral standards.
All of these complex ideas and others exist in the world because of someone doing philosophy. First, they change the way we think, and that implores us to create new systems in which those ideas become the truth. These complex ideas shape civilizations, allow Genghis Khan to make the biggest disruptions in history, start and end the Islamic Golden Age, and disintegrate entire empires.
Capitalism and communism are such ideas. There are areas where capitalism feels alien and areas where communism feels alien, it is because neither is inherent to us humans. Political philosophy is the arena where the impact of philosophy is easiest to observe. The United States' ideas on the importance of liberty, equality, and separation of powers come from the philosophy of John Locke and Montesquieu. Similarly, Russian and Chinese political thought has descended from the philosophy of Karl Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Democracies, Aristocracies, Monarchies, and Republics were once just philosophical ideas; some of them beyond written history, but from thought comes reality.
It is important to know the importance of philosophy because Rome fell, the Aztecs and Mayans, the Dutch, the Mongols, the Mughals, the Ottomans, and so many more empires and sultanates fell. World history is the graveyard of empires. Never at any point did these empires forget how to solve their practical problems, but they fell anyway. My claim is that the theoretical side of problem solving is fundamental to the shape and survival of a civilization. When you make the wrong conclusions to these theoretical problems or fail to keep up with the demands of the time, your empire will either internally crumble or be run over.
In the modern world, we have beliefs about the way the world works. There is a belief in science, a belief in the power of human ingenuity, a belief in principles of equality, good governance, human rights, and a general optimism that things can be better. You remove these beliefs and you will not be able to conceive of the practical problems that you have to solve to become better. There are so my different cultures in this world doing things differently. Why are some cultures more resilient? Why are some cultures more accepting? Why are some cultures more relaxed? New York has its own philosophy different from LA and Chicago. We are used to the hidden beliefs that shape our entire reality, beliefs that were shaped by philosophical thought, again, for better or for worse.
I look at the state of education online and I think I can do better. If I can do better, there is an idea that things can be improved. NVidia and Intel are releasing their best ever processors in human history and they are already working on the next versions because they know they can do better. They do not know how, but they know they can do better. For diabetes, we invented insulin and every day there are thousands of people around the world trying to improve that solution. We have been using casts for broken bones for centuries and there are thousands of people working to make better casts.
There are hundreds of countries trying to make cars cheaper, more efficient, more comfortable, or simply faster. Space programs are trying to drive robots on Mars and the freaking Moon and beyond. Advertisers are constantly trying to make new ways to get your attention. Art is evolving constantly. All because we humans of the 21st century believe in the general optimism that things can be better.
This is not an inherent idea. We were not born with this. Humans over the course of history did not believe this, and the entire human world does not adopt this belief either that we can do better. Technology was mostly stagnant for four thousand years and then the industrial revolution happened which did in two centuries what two thousand years could not do. If you do not fully agree with me that is fine, but you have to concede that the pace of progress has increased when Western civilization embraced the idea that we can do better.
In these two centuries, all we did was solve incremental practical problems, but the beliefs behind them were the reason we were able to look for and solve those problems. That is the power of philosophy. When Muslims accepted determinism, the idea that free will does not exist and God causes every event and action to happen, the Islamic golden age ended. The reason many countries like Pakistan have not been able to rival their peers is that the population does not have the general optimism that things can be better. There are no tangible and interesting goals to look towards or philosophy to guide them to actively pursue being better.
On the scale of civilization, philosophy shapes the entire world, for better or for worse.
Philosophy affects how we think
More important than all that, and more subtle, philosophy has an impact on how we think. In the modern world, we put things into categories and labels. Democrats and Republicans. Liberals and Conservatives. Mammals and Reptiles. Autocracy and Meritocracy. Fruits and Vegetables. Trees and Bushes. Herbs and Spices. Planets and Moons. Red Dwarfs and Neutron Stars. This type of thinking is prevalent and something we cannot shake off. Hence, we get into problems when talking about things that are on a spectrum. Where does red end and orange begin? Where does a man end and a woman begin? Where does non-binary start? What constitutes a heap of rice? There are so many paradoxes like the Ship of Theseus because we think in a certain way. The question then comes, is this the only way to think, the only perspective afforded to us?
We assume that our tendency to classify and label things and think in terms of boxes is a human thing to do. On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, Aristotle had something to do with this. He talked about the concept of classification and that habit has been pervading throughout human history. He is the first written source that I know where there is an intent to go through the process of classification for the ease of science, to group similar things together, and to make claims about items in a group. That is why Native Americans who did not have Aristotelian influences were more open to ideas about gender spectrum and lack of labels. Here is what I mean. I as a human am a mammal. However, mammals do not exist, we just listed a few characteristics and if you have these characteristics, congratulations you are now a mammal.
We can also see this classification being a problem in another field. I am depressed. However, depression does not exist either just as mammal does not. Instead, if I check some of the symptoms from a list, then the DSM says that I 'have' depression when what I have are symptoms.
There are two aspects to this, whenever we reclassify things from scratch, we make different and new classifications because there are so many ways to group the same number of items. We could divide animals into mammals, reptiles, and birds. Maybe this is better because we should know that whales, even though they live in water, relate to mammals. Alternatively, we could divide animals into land dwellers, aquatic, and aerial where whales belong with other fishes because of their physical features.
Maybe I am wrong and classification is some inherent tendency and capability, a result of our wiring. Alternatively, I am right and classification is a habit that we learned because of philosophy, all of what we know comes because we are constrained by the philosophy we inherited from ancient Greece.
There are hundreds of more examples of philosophy changing how we think about our place in the universe. Islamic philosophy has a concept that humans are stewards or vicegerents of God on Earth, which makes Muslims more favorable to authoritarian principles and less likely to be vegans.
These are not coincidences. These philosophical ideas not only influence reality by bringing change but also change the way we think up to the point that true consensus among the human race has become impossible. Why do you think that humans, after thousands of years of thought, have not come to the same conclusions? If we had a fixed way of thinking, after hundreds and thousands of philosophers, eventually, we would have come to the same conclusions, but it is not so. Our way of thinking is different.
It is because each region inherits a different way of thinking because of their philosophies. The way we think leads us into positions where mediation becomes impossible. Western Europe and US inherited the same way of thinking and are tightly aligned, the middle East inherited their own way, South East Asia have their own way, Russia and China have their own way of thinking.
That is how powerful and important philosophy is. I hope all of this has been able to set the scale and scope of the importance of philosophy in the modern world. Later on, as we explore different concepts and philosophies, try to see how those philosophies applied at scale to the civilization can have drastic impacts. With this exercise, you will realize that philosophy is not just an academic exercise; instead, it is the blueprint of civilizations.