What to do when you don't have an answer to philosophical questions

General Philosophy
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I know philosophy isn’t a discipline with a lot of hard answers or easy solutions, but what does one do when you read a new idea and don’t really have an answer to it?

That’s happened a lot for me. I’ve come across a lot of ideas, lots of questions, but I don’t really know what to think of them. Questions about identity like whether we are just a collection of cells with the human individual being an illusion, how do I respond to that?

Or even questions about what is real and how to know what to put stock into. There is no shortage of ideas that challenge one’s assumptions and intuitions, and yet what if you don’t know what to make of it? Would you be “wrong” to ignore it and go on as normal? Is there even a wrong answer in philosophy?

Sorry this isn’t more thought out, it just came to mind. My experience with philosophy is people have a lot of strong thoughts on topics and there isn’t much room for indecision. Like if you don’t have an alternative view you have to accept what is given. But what if you don’t? What if you don’t know what to make of it? How does one respond in that case?

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First off, do you care about the answers? I am only interested in specific issues on the forum. If you don’t really care, why worry about them.

As for questions you do care about, why? What’s important about the answers? What do they say about your beliefs and values?

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I think this is an important point. Much of philosophy is indeterminate. We take a view based on our beliefs and on what makes sense to us, and failing that, we may even resort to reason.

Personally, I don’t consider mastery of any subject to be critical to my experience of living. Politics, economics, art, and philosophy are all immense subjects with a multiplicity of perspectives and scholarship, and I am quite comfortable having little expertise in any of it.

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The answers tend to impact how I view the world and treat others, like with the case of identity. Philosophy however doens’t have easy answers and much of the time I struggle to see the practical applications of it in daily life

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I think that’s the hardest thing to wrap my head around. That people can write such long and passionate defenses of their viewpoints and yet at the same time it’s only one viewpoint.

Sometimes a case seems so strong that it appears to be the “right” answer.

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What I would say, personally, is to question the very foundations of the question itself. When somebody says to you, “We are not a person, but merely multiple bodily impressions entangled together to create what appears to be a person,” Then ask, “What do you mean by bodily impressions? What are they, and how does their entangling create an emergent property that appears to become a human person?” This is what lies at the heart of most philosophical inquiry; not merely to take questions or assertions as they are, but to question their very conditions, and to see if those conditions hold, and are reasonable, across all instances where they are used. For example, if I asserted, “All hotdogs are sandwiches,” and someone asked me, “Well, what is a sandwich?”, and then I responded, “Any food where different foodstuffs are placed between two separate pieces of bread,” and then he followed up by saying, “So, they need to be separate pieces of bread?”, and if I say, “Yes,” then my whole argument lost, because he can then point out, “well, a hot dog is not two separate pieces of bread; they are a single piece sliced into a fold. Par your very definition of sandwich as ‘foodstuffs placed between two separate loaves of bread’, you cannot coherently say that all hotdogs are sandwiches, given that at the same time, they definitionally cannot be a sandwich, because of how you’ve defined them.” This is a tool in philosophy known as dialectic, and it is a pretty effective method for, at the very least, coming to a deeper understanding of whatever questions it is that you want to attempt to answer. Some questions in philosophy may be too open-ended, or the support for a question’s underlying premises may be too vague, to answer fully. Nevertheless, you can get very far by simply questioning things.

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If you don’t see why a position is meaningful, then you should not spend much effort engaging it. If you don’t know whether a position is true or false, then you should not give assent one way or another. Simple, but true.

It is unfortunate that philosophy in our day and age has become fairly pointless and contrived, but I don’t think the answer is to pretend that the contrivances are actually really interesting after all. I think the answer is to start discussing things that really matter—things that we find genuinely interesting and relevant. It’s the old confrontation between Socrates and the Sophists, where one side wants to earnestly discuss relevant matters, and the other side wishes to appear erudite. Reality vs. appearance.

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I think the question is more a matter of perspective than anything solid. Like people see we are made of cells and conclude we are illusions because we “really” are just cells. But then what of cells? Are they illusions for being made of atoms? What of atoms? They are excitations in quantum fields. And so on and so on. It never really ends, it just seems like you pick one view based on circumstances.

IMO it really just boils down to how you choose to see it. To me we are more than mere collections of cells because the whole is greater than the sum. It also doesn’t really explain why we are like that and didn’t just stay as single cell organisms.

The main argument was him saying he doesn’t believe in individuals for the above reasons, but to me that seems like semantics more than anything else.

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I wish it was that simple but I simply cannot do that, I don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s hard to expalin.

For me it’s a matter of applying this to our daily lives. A lot of the ideas I’ve read don’t really seem to matter in terms of living. The “why is there something than nothing” seems moot given we are here now. Even if you had the answer what would you do with it.

If we had all truths what then? I guess my view is more pragmatic than curious. We talk about identity but what would the world look like under different views, how would society work? Speculation is well and good but at some point I feel like I need more than just that.

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Philosophy became very speculative beginning in the late Medieval and early Modern periods. For the ancients philosophy was eminently practical (and Pierre Hadot is a great expositor of this difference).

Taking a cue from Newman’s Grammar of Assent, I would recommend hearing out an argument, listening to the different sides, and thinking through the issue, but then allowing the ideas to digest in your subconscious mind. In most cases you don’t have to make a decision immediately, and very often a quick assent will be premature. We make better, more informed decisions when we allow things to settle and integrate with the background knowledge that has accumulated through the years. And if you delay assent and end up forgetting about the topic altogether, that’s usually okay too (because in that case it probably wasn’t that important after all). The conscious decisions and assents that you make in the present are only a small part of who you are. Don’t give them disproportionate importance.

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I’m no philosopher but I understand where you’re coming from. There isn’t time in life to address all of the problems that philosophers raise, but then I don’t have any interest in most of them so that is a good culling mechanism. But some issues seriously engage me and I feel compelled to make an attempt to get to the bottom of them.

When I read around the subject matter I find that a lot of it is pitched way to high for me, like the author can’t get down to my level of ignorance to address the issues I’m having with it. That’s to be expected – philosophers can’t begin their explanations at the bottom all the time. They have to assume some familiarity with the material so they can make their point succinctly.

I rely on a little nagging voice in the the back of my head that gives me a feeling of dissatisfaction. The problem for me then is to identify the absent piece of information that is responsible for that dissatisfaction, because it’s not always clear to me what I’m missing. Once I’ve identified it then I can ask the right questions and get a little further, but I’m a slow learner so I’ve learned to accept that feeling of dissatisfaction as a chronic condition.

But it’s also an exciting condition, because that’s where the progress lies. That itch. And staying inside your comfort zone is not a great catalyst for progress.

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Nobody has answers to philosophical questions. That’s why they are called ‘philosophical’.

So we read books, participate in discussions, analyse the ways the words are used, take a stance, defend some and attack others. It matters little whether you have an answer. What matters is the question and its assumptions: is it a genuine question or a mystery evoked by an obscure or ambiguous use of words?

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I’m going to read your question in the way I find interesting: “If I care very much about a new idea but am uncertain what to make of it, what do I do?”

Put this way, it comes up all the time for me. One of the blessings of lots of experience with philosophy is that it relieves one of the urgency of having to have a yes-or-no opinion about every new idea – worse, a quick opinion, an opinion that can be checked against some theoretical construct one has been defending.

I know there are those who find this satisfying, but it seems to me a very poor fit with the philosophical impulse, and the way the philosophers I respect practice it.

So . . . “what do I do?” Listen more carefully. Read more extensively. Perhaps ask a few clarifying questions if there’s a proponent of the idea available. Try to situate the new idea in a conversational or historical context that will most enhance charitable interpretation.

In fact, writing this, my answer might just come down to “Do everything you know how to do in order to arrive at a charitable interpretation. Then consider next steps.”

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Then write a meditation about it: see Descartes meditation.

This is how you expand your knowledge, by exploring. Note that many philosophical writings are in this form. Look at the Heideggerian lengths.

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I understand your problem. We open a book which sounds sort of interesting and are presented with conundrums which the author thinks are important. We try to get it, but we do not. Truth be told, there are quite a few people with extra time on their hands and nothing better to do than spin speculation which might or might not be interesting but is probably not useful to anyone.

I’m not against books, of course. I love books. New ones roll off the presses every day. Just because somebody found a publisher doesn’t mean that the book is of any value. Do you think the authors of insoluble philosophical problems lay awake all night, twisting and turning, trying to figure it out? No. They move on with their lives, doing whatever it is that they make a living at. Maybe driving for UBER.

Philosophy is not life. Your collection of cells, of which you are quite fond, and which 99.99% of the time you do not doubt makes up “you”, has stuff to do. Get on with it.

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Some classify questions thus:

  1. Real questions: For which there’s evidence
  2. Pseudo-questions: For which there’s no evidence

Examplarily, science asks question class 1 and religion asks question class 2. An instance of a real question would be, are there wild water buffallos in the state if Arizona? and a pseudo-question would be, does the universe have a purpose?

So if you find yourself looking at a wall, it’s because you’ve asked a pseudo-question and if you can see for miles in front of you, you’ve asked a real question.

Inquisitive folks asking questions can be hugely problematic in certain domains. There’s this guy who went to his priest, hoping to resolve contradictions like (13.8 billion years, 6 days) - (evolution, A&E), and he was told, “nice boys don’t ask that question”.

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What about finding a different ‘experience with philosophy’. Not one that concentrates on argumentation of either/or positions. Where the strength lies not in finding, or taking and accepting an absolute answer: ‘Yes/No’ or ‘Right/Wrong’ — but looking around with eyes expanding.

If you really must understand an idea, new to you, then take the time and space to ask questions of yourself.

Why does it matter?

As usual, your questioning (as in title), elicits many different perspectives — based on learning and experience. We can all relate to that, one way or another. Listening and sharing.

We choose to read topics that are of previous and present interest, even passion, but are sometimes reluctant to go beyond. Once we feel ‘safe’ why discomfort ourselves?

It reminded me of how some things are pretty much unintelligible, and if you are ‘pragmatic’, then use your ‘gumption’. Definition: guts, courage, common-sense and resourcefulness.

‘Gumption’ is a word used in Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. As is his important ‘Quality’.

2 types of ‘gumption traps’: setbacks and hang-ups.

I read it a long time ago. The ideas very new to me. So, for your thread, I refreshed my mind using wiki:

  • Cognitive understanding or “truth traps”: these can be described as misunderstanding the feedback of a given action.

  • Reliance on yes-no duality may cause misinterpretation of results. Pirsig notes the concept of mu and suggests the answer to a particular question may indicate that the question does not match the situation. An appropriate recourse may be to reconsider the context of the inquiry.

I’m not sure I would want to re-read it. However, the journey blew my mind at the time. Maintaining or changing identity within society. Zooming along the highway with wind in my hair…

What do you mean by ‘how would society work’ under different views of identity?

That’s where we are. Like it or not, we are plural and we have different perspectives. We are part of society, as selves, groups, nations — whatever.

Philosophy discussion matters to deal with extremes. Pirsig talks of Chatauquas and Phaedrus.

To talk about ‘Love’, even if it screws up your brain. To see this from past to present. From ancient Greek to modern technology, we are little things but if we don’t matter to ourselves, then what?

What about the future? We will still mix ‘our crazy self with our sane self, the greatness in us with our ordinariness’ — Beverly Gross (1984) writes that Pirsig is seeking a synthesis. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Wikipedia

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Sleep on it. Once in a awhile the answer will come to you in a dream. If you sleep on the same problem numerous times, you increase the odds of that happening.

Furthermore, it improves your mental health by helping you to realize that no matter how significant a problem may appear, it doesn’t help to lose sleep over it. In fact, the inverse becomes evident. Sleeping on it is often the best way to solve your problems. Got any ideas why that might be the case?

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Read. Stay humble. Try not to argue with every response to the question. Do my best not to have any strong emotional response, prior to looking into the readings around it.

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This is difficult because I feel compelled to give an answer right then and there. Also due to current anxiety issues I have a tendency to cling to things that make me feel bad or interpret them as negative, in short I view how it makes me feel as a metric of truth. So letting it settle hasn’t worked out very well.

I heard the term masochistic epistemology (what is painful is true) and that seems accurate for me. My subconscious mind tends to spit out conclusions that make me feel worse so it’s not trustworthy.

Most philosophy works go over my head when trying to read them so I end up needing people to water it down so I can understand.

But contrary to your view I think I could benefit from relieving the urgency to have a yes or no answer, since my instinct is to cling to the first conclusion I make rather than sit with ambiguity. That’s difficult though because it feels like avoiding a painful truth or living in delusion, even though neither of those are what is happening.

As humans our instinct is to have an answer, even a bad one, rather than admit we don’t know.