It is possible that Agnes Callard is autistic and this explains her obsession with talking and arguing. However, what permits her to write books is stupidity. The belief she holds- viz. that a superior state is achieved through talking and arguing than by studying and thinking- has been rejected by every type of Paideia or system of certification for knowledge in every culture and at all times. That is why, when taking an exam, you are expected to sit silently drawing on what you have learned and 'arguing against yourself' in order to reason correctly. Equally, if a person claims expertise in a field, he is expected to actually carry knowledge and skill in his own brain rather than rely upon an interlocutor. This is not to say that there can be a fruitful exchange of information or that one person can't point out a flaw in another person's argument. However, where information is routinely written down and disseminated without need for personal interaction, and where logic is well enough understood for people to spot their own fallacies, then 'argument' is a highly sub-optimal method of pedagogy save for particular purposes- e.g. training as an advocate or politician- which is not essentially epistemic or concerned with alethia.
Nautilis magazine has the following interview with Agnes Callard titled 'argue your way to a fuller life.' which I believe substantially plagiarizes arguments I made in my bestselling 'Dieter's guide to weight-loss through farting' which, alas, I haven't gotten round to writing.
Agnes Callard wasn’t happy with her answer to one of my interview questions. I asked what she thought of a remark by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins that existential “why” questions should never be asked because they’re unanswerable.
This was Lord Buddha's viewpoint. But that is because he subscribed to a doctrine of momentariness. It is perfectly possible that everything that exists does so merely virtually in a simulation running in negative time which is being used for some arcane computational purpose.
Only “how” questions were proper in science.
Natural science- sure. But we can't be sure the Universe is a natural, rather than supernatural, phenomenon.
That evening, the University of Chicago philosopher put the question to her family at their recurring “Chautauqua.”
Which was silly. None of them are natural scientists.
Callard’s three kids, ages 11, 16 and 21, plus her husband and ex-husband—who all live together—took part in the discussion. They traded ideas on science
of which they know nothing
and metaphysics,
of which nothing can be known because we have no means of going 'beyond' what is physical
the meaning of life and ethics,
in which any question is answerable any which way
what is empirical and what isn’t.
which is itself an empirical matter.
When one of her kids started talking about Wittgenstein,
a Tiger Mommy would have slapped the kid and taunted it for having failed to prove the Reimann hypothesis even though it turned eight a couple of months ago.
I couldn’t help feeling my own family conversations were sorely lacking.
As if the question 'who farted?' isn't one which engrossed Einstein in his salad days.
The intensity of the Callard’s dinner discussion epitomizes the philosopher herself.
If by intensity you mean obtuseness- sure.
Callard discovered Socrates in high school,
like most of us. But, in high school, we thought him a dick. It is only towards the end of a pointless life that you begin to see there was a pathos to him.
and by the time she was a senior in college, she was obsessed. “I didn’t just want to interpret Socrates,” she writes. “I wanted to be Socrates.”
Sadly, she didn't get busy quaffing hemlock.
She started hanging out on the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago and would walk up to strangers and ask if they wanted to have a philosophical discussion.
Like Woody Allen's 'Whore of MENSA'
At first, they were intrigued,
was she offering a golden shower or something more kinky?
but then they just wanted to get away from her. “I’ve kind of spent my whole life since then trying to figure out how to do that but not make people run away from me,” she said with a laugh.
The answer was simple. Get a job teaching that shite to kids who are too thick to understand they are being swindled.
Our discussion about “rational love” and “philosophical dissatisfaction” in a marriage are representative of Callard’s prescription, via Socrates, for a meaningful life.
Presumably she means a more meaningful life. Life would still be meaningful if you are a bachelor though, no doubt, you may find it difficult to find people to argue with. But wife beating too is a recreation which requires a spouse.
Which, Callard believes, can only come about through conversation—and especially argument—with other people.
Yet we may speak of our own dialogue with Socrates or Christ or the Buddha. More generally, we map out in our minds the way we would like conversations of a mission critical nature to unfold. We seek to anticipate ways in which such conversations may be deflected in a manner contrary to our interests.
You recount a time in Leo Tolstoy’s life when he was going through a personal crisis. By his early 50s he was world famous and in a good marriage but was so unhappy that he was thinking about suicide. What happened?
He could easily lose his position as, it appeared, Turgenev was losing his. Also he was drinking way too much. He was clinically depressed.
He comes to realize he was looking away from some questions
these are the 4 last questions all Christians must ask themselves. Tolstoy was a Christian.
I once had a contentious interview with Richard Dawkins who said there are no big “why” questions.
He meant, in the natural sciences.
There are only “how” questions such as “How did the universe begin or how did birds evolve wings to fly?” I pushed back, suggesting it’s worth asking existential questions like “Why are we here?” Even if they can’t be answered. How would you respond to Dawkins?
The Humanities and the Social Sciences deal with purposive, that is teleological, phenomena. But, even the police have to establish motive in order to get a conviction for first degree murder.
My reasoning goes the other way. We need to answer these questions.
No. We may want to, or may get paid for, doing so. But a want is not a need. I may say 'I really need to tell you about the time I fucked both your Mum and your wife. I feel I will die if I don't.' But, if you punch me sufficiently hard and sufficiently often, I will understand that I don't need anything of the sort.
There’s a dialogue where Socrates is challenged by a Richard Dawkins kind-of-guy named Meno,
Meno, the pupil of Gorgias, was not a scientist. He was interested in rhetoric- i.e. persuading people to adopt one's point of view. One might say Plato's Meno shows him, quite ironically, achieving his aim precisely because he appears baffled and lets Socrates develop a wholly crazy 'karmic' epistemology- viz. that learning is recollecting knowledge acquired in previous lives- which begs the question of how this was done in those previous lives. One answer is that time is a snake swallowing its own tail.
who basically says, “I don’t think we can make progress on these questions.”
But progress can be made in virtue or any other worthy field by divine inspiration. The question is whether knowledge must supply its own aetiology or whether mere verification or independent confirmation is sufficient. This can still be an open question in Math & some branches of the Natural Sciences and thus is philosophical.
Socrates gives an elaborate answer to explain why he thinks it does make sense to inquire into these questions. He’s saying I’m going to be a better person if I have the courage to try to make progress on this project
He doesn't say that. Courage to do something foolhardy or impossible can't make you a better person.
—on which the value of human life hangs—without an advance guarantee that I’m going to succeed.
There is no advance guarantee that you won't drop dead one second from now. Why mention the topic?
Socrates puts it in a simple way: The unexamined life is not worth living.
Only for those who like examining it. A divinely inspired life is worth living even if the person living it never reflects on what he or she is doing at the command of the deity or daimon. However, in Socrates's case, his daimon had him examine himself and if he had to continue doing so only on the other side of the grave- so be it. Moreover what Socrates actually said was 'ho dè anexétastos bíos ou biōtòs anthrṓpōi'. Men can't live an unexamined life. There is judgment after death unless one is beforehand in this matter. This fits with karmic or other eschatological notions found around the world.
You call these “untimely questions.”
Christianity, like other Religions, says you have to ask yourself these questions while you yet have time to repent and expiate your sins.
Most of us don’t want to think about the deeper meaning of our lives.
Many of us believe in an after-life, if not for ourselves, then for our loved ones who certainly deserve Heaven.
We’ve got our careers, our children, our daily pursuits.
Kids can die. Careers can go up in smoke. Disability may curtail our daily pursuits. It is then that people turn to God or Karma or a mystical view of things such that everything which has ever existed participates in everything that is or will come to be.
As you say, “You put one foot in front of another, over and over again, right up to the moment when your journey is cut off by death.”
No you don't. Breathing is another matter.
By contrast, Socrates never stopped asking these questions.
In which case there is no big contrast between him and the guy who just kept walking till he dropped dead.
What did he do that was different?
Some 'Socratified Youth'- i.e. people he spent a lot of time talking to- conspired on three different occasion against the public weal. That's why he was executed.
Socrates discovered you can inquire into deeper questions about life by calling into question someone else’s answers.
Plenty had done so before him. 'Elenkhos' or cross-examination was practiced in the Courts.
There’s a certain kind of thinking you can’t do by yourself because you have blind spots.
That doesn't matter. You can read what other people have written to discover what those might be. I have a 'blind spot' when it comes to understanding Math. But I can read books which enable me to 'fill in the gaps' such that I can use a mathematical technique well enough to get paid for it.
You have a whole self-justifying, rationalizing edifice that supports all your mistakes.
You may do. But why bother? It is easy enough to 'course correct' when you discover you are mistaken. Thus, when I discovered that 'double entry' didn't mean what I thought it did in a book-keeping context, I gave up Accountancy. I didn't try to justify what I was doing by claiming that there was a new Statement of Standard Accounting Practice issued by the British Institute of Chartered Accountants which licensed what I was about to do to the photocopier. Anyway, if the Partners did it to typists, what was so wrong about my seeking to pleasure the photocopier? Was I being victimized coz I iz bleck? Also, it was a Japanese photocopier- i.e. totes slutty.
It’s often very easy for other people to see your mistakes but incredibly hard for you to see them.
It is easier yet for other people to see your mistakes when you haven't actually made any.
But there are other models that value interiority for probing a difficult question.
Sadly, they aren't super-models which is why Trump didn't try to bang them. The plain fact is interiorities which aren't moderately good looking don't get probed. Callard lucked out in that respect though she wears glasses and men seldom make passes at such creatures. Thankfully, philosophers have lower standards.
I might go off by myself for deep reflection, or a writer might work this out on the printed page. That’s the opposite of what Socrates did.
We don't know that. It appears he did write stuff which, probably for a very good reason, his admirers kept shtum about.
As an academic philosopher, I give a lot of talks. Before I do, I’m thinking to myself, “What objections are the audience going to come up with?” But every time I give a talk, I get questions that surprise me.
Presumably because you are autistic or just plain retarded.
How did I not ask myself that?
How did you not know that the same question which surprised you was asked thousands of years ago? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing unless what you are paid to teach is psilosophy- slender wisdom.
And the answer is, I was very invested in thinking that I was right about an idea. Other people are the ones who can help me see when I’m wrong.
Even when you aren't wrong. That's the problem with other people. Guys keep phoning me and warning me that I am committing a terrible mistake by refusing to share with them my password and Bank account details.
And this is especially the case with ethics, right?
Ethics is about changing your own ethos- what you are for yourself- in a manner which makes you a better human being. Don't listen to others when they tell you that it is unethical of you not to give them a blowjob. By all means approach a person manifestly better than yourself and seek instruction or mentorship.
Right. Socrates believes you can’t really think about ethics except in relation to other people.
No. It is a different matter that he himself was inspired to 'inquire into human' rather than divine, or scientific, or legal affairs.
What you’re holding onto, in trying to be good, only comes from conversations with people.
Which is why the deaf and dumb are truly fucked.
That’s all you’ve got.
No. Language isn't that important. It may be that meditating in a Himalayan cave for fifty years can enable you to become a morally perfected being. But Socrates had a different mission- one directed at his own natal Polis.
Deep down inside yourself, you don’t know what the right thing to do is.
Sure you do.
Socrates says the greatest favor that you can do for another human being is to refute them.
An even greater favor would be to punch them in the nose and then run away.
And he thinks, “Yeah, be kind and loving,” which is to say, explain to people why their fundamental understanding of their lives is wrong.
Sadly, Mike Tyson objects to people telling him that he is a homo who ought to be sucking cock.
Most people would take offense at being told they’re wrong.
Fuck taking offense. What should worry you is being knifed or shot.
I’ve had this experience many times. It happens in my classrooms or when an interviewer says, “Wait a minute.” You could respond defensively, like, “No, here’s why I’m right.”
If you have a 'knock-down' argument, just produce it already. It's like that time I got into an argument with Vikram Seth. His 'knock-down' argument was that he was a Chinese lady. Also, the reason my bill was so extortionate was because I had drunk two bottles of Kweichow Moutai. The wonder was I could see at all.
But if you set aside that response and take a step back, there are openings, moments when things get interesting.
Not if you are talking to a boring turd who teaches nonsense to imbeciles.
You say parents should have philosophical conversations with their children. How should we talk to our kids?
We should talk to them in Mandarin. Say things like 'Wei wun Ping Pong. Nix Sun ding dong.' They'll soon get the hang of it and answer us back in like fashion. Other parents will think we have spent mega-bucks arranging tuition in Chinese for our kids.
Your kids give you a chance to learn about how the world looks from someone who hasn’t been fully shaped by it.
Kids do say the darndest things. This is why it is important to get them to make only Chinese type noises. Otherwise they tell teechur all sorts of things which lead to a visit from Child Protection.
That should be an exciting educational opportunity for parents. I see that as one reason to have kids.
Sadly, kids tend to lose patience with parents who ask questions like 'why is a cow?'
My kids are very used to me posing questions to them because I raised them to not know there was any alternative.
I suppose she also gets the toddler to write her books. That's smart.
If someone came to my house and I peppered them with questions, they might wonder, “Why are you doing this?” But once you do it a lot, it starts to come naturally to you.
No. It came naturally to you which is why you did it.
You also say we need to get better at talking about politics.
more particularly, to cats.
How can we have good political arguments that don’t just focus on defeating your adversary?
Good political arguments seek to persuade people with different affiliations. You have succeeded, when the issue ceases to be partisan. Let politicians compete on the basis of who is more attached or capable of delivering the policy proposal in question.
You need to get into the mindset where you’re prepared to learn from them.
No. You just have to find a policy proposal which all stakeholders gain from. Other people can sell it to the bigots and mugwumps within their own ranks.
They’re the people who can educate you because they have the opposite view.
They can't educate you. They can contradict you in a manner which causes you to wonder whether you have been mis-educated.
You might say, “Let’s identify the fundamental point on which we disagree.”
The answer is 'you think you are smart. I think you are a cretin. That's the point you need to shove up your fundament.'
It’s very striking when you do that because you find it’s hard to identify. If you say, “We believe in freedom,” the other side will say,
'No you don't. What you call freedom is slavery'.
“We believe in freedom too.”
In that case, you are on the same side.
You may then discover that your principle, which you thought had a deep, strong, emotional moral intuition, wasn’t stable but subject to your moods.
You know this is the case whether or not you have anybody to talk to. In principle, I like swimming for one hour every day. In practice, sometimes I'm not in the mood to engage in any type of exercise.
The difficulty comes when people have a hard time believing their opponents can argue in good faith.
No great difficulty is involved in pointing out the reason you think they are arguing in bad faith- e.g. that is what they are paid to do.
It’s probably not going to help if there are a lot of people watching.
It may help. It may not. Some people will only exert themselves if enough people are watching. There is little point in mopping the floor with your opponent if only the cat is present.
People tend to be more performative when there are people watching.
Or they may clam up while looking daggers at you. The meaning is, 'I'll gun you down the moment these potential witnesses are gone'.
Sometimes the Socratic approach seems counterintuitive. You write about “rational love,” which sounds like an oxymoron. Isn’t love emotional rather than rational?
It is rational to have an emotion which promotes good outcomes for you. The Stoic doctrine of 'oikeiosis' or the notion of 'ordo amoris' explains this.
Typically, yes. But I try to make a case for rational love. The thing that led to my intervention in this discourse is that something is really wrong with love.
Loving the wrong thing is wrong. No discourse needs to be intervened in to make so obvious a point.
Maybe you have this romantic ideal: Grow up and marry someone and settle down.
Marriage is a commitment to settle down with one person- at least, in America.
But the thing you want is not to find the perfect person or the perfect match.
Nothing wrong with wanting that or, indeed, in believing that is the case.
That’s a kind of perfection in yourself that you’re seeking.
There may be. There may not.
You’re aware that you’re not the person you should be, but you might be with another person’s help.
Or with God's. Marriage, in many cultures, is a sacrament.
Then the question is, “What’s the thing that could potentially perfect you in a way that would make sense?” And my answer is knowledge, to understand how things work.
The evil genius may understand how things work better than anybody else. But he may still want to blow up the world. Knowledge has nothing to do with Perfection.
Socrates didn’t care about many things we take for granted in a relationship, like the importance of accepting and admiring your partner.
He didn't spend a lot of time with his shrewish wife.
He believed these are “static” qualities.
Even he preferred a spouse who didn't sleep in every bed but her own.
Instead, he thought a successful relationship should be based on “philosophical dissatisfaction.”
The Parmenides describes a successful relationship between Parmenides and Zeno. There is no reason to think either is 'philosophically dissatisfied'.
Can you explain this?
Here’s one way to think about it. What are the paradigmatic romantic activities—not necessarily sexual but romantic? One example that people give is the long, winding, transformative conversations that you have with someone when you’re beginning to become romantically interested.
OMG! This girl is actually talking to me! Fuck is she saying? I suppose she is talking about her boyfriend. I bet he has a ginormous dick. Wait a mo. She's kind of leaning in and looking into my eyes. Maybe she is an optician. Fuck! I probably have a cataract or some such thing. No. I had an eye-exam just last week. Her lips look very nice. Wish she'd shut up and let me kiss her. Obs, I'll tell everyone I got to third base. Fuck that. I'll say she went ass to mouth. In for a penny...
Socrates wants to say, “Yeah, that’s what it’s all about.” But you don’t need to relegate that to the first three months of the relationship. There’s a reason why those conversations were so reliably venturing into philosophical territory.
Rather than her talking about her ex's ginormous dick or, as more frequently happens, her mentioning how much she charges per hour. Also, my pimp is a big black dude. He will fuck you up if you have been wasting my time.
It’s because there’s something that your soul wants. Inquiry is a fundamentally dissatisfied activity.
It is a dissatisfying activity when done by shitheads.
It isn’t contentment. It isn’t staring into each other’s eyes for hours and just being happy to do that.
Actually, that's pretty good too. The trouble with kissing is what happens to your noses? Don't they get in the way? Also, I shouldn't have eaten all the garlic bread. My breath must be foul.
No, we were put here to achieve something together.
But ended up teaching stupid shite instead.
Socrates was no prude, but you say he thought inquiry rather than sex is what is “truly dangerous, transgressive, and exciting.”
He liked chatting. Moreover, there were risks to what he was doing. There are none in present day America. You will only be executed for first degree murder and that too only in certain States.
Right. To have sex with someone is to be vulnerable with that person.
Not to mention vulnerability to various STDs.
But Socrates discovered we have an even deeper form of vulnerability—the fear about the core ideas that make us who we are.
Only crazy people have any fear of this sort. If such 'core ideas' exist they are inaccessible, which is why Wizards can't change them so that we turn into frogs or lizards.
The person we are is a construct that could be shattered.
We can be battered. Shattered- not so much. We aren't made of glass.
In Socratic inquiry, you allow that to happen.
Nobody was shattered or battered by Socrates. Even buggery appears to have been off the table.
It’s very intimate and lends itself to people feeling somewhat violated, upset, jealous.
Socrates mentally sodomized me in the library! Help! I thought Universities were meant to be safe spaces.
This is the moment when things, as I said, get interesting.
If by 'interesting' you mean 'as boring as shit'- then, sure.
But for the interlocutors who haven’t fully been trained in this practice, there are going to be a lot of casualties.
Socrates killed more Athenians than the plague. He mentally sodomized them till they shattered.
How does this way of thinking figure in your own life? You’ve been married twice, both times to philosophers.
i.e. people she worked with or whom she taught
Is your approach to marriage different from most people?
Yes, I think it is. It’s important that my husband can hold me to account for this Socratic view.
In other words, it is important that both can talk bollocks while pretending to listen to each other. This is quite common in marriages and family life in general.
He reminds me of it all the time. He’s like, “We just have to figure this out by talking about it.”
i.e. talking rather than knifing each other.
So, there’s a certain move that’s kind of prohibited in my marriage, which is, “This is just the way it is.”
In other words, nobody holds the other to account for saying stupid shit.
We may not be able to talk something through in a given moment, but everything is amenable to discussion. We’ll often be talking about a movie, and the disagreement we have about the movie will be like, wait a minute, this means we think differently about this other thing, and we should rethink that. From the outside, it might look very unstable.
No. It would look very very boring. I recall my feeling of shock when I discovered that my wife thought the film 'Mary Poppins' was about a nanny or a governess or some such creature. I explained that Satyajit Ray had intended the film as a critique of Eurocentric coloniality as the catachresis of the anteriority of the Neo-liberal cash nexus. She said 'darling, it is a Walt Disney movie. It isn't by Satyajit Ray. Also, you weren't really married to Mary Poppins during your time as a Secret Agent with a license to kill.' It was only then that I realized that the poor girl had been brainwashed by Ernest Stavro Blofeld. But this meant I hadn't really killed him in the volcano crater. He must have had a clone.
You both seem to like arguing with each other.
My husband and I have been arguing for the past two days about something. I can’t tell you what is—it’s private—but it’s been nonstop arguing for two days.
Must we argue? Yes! Don't you understand that if we don't keep arguing, then, arguably, our heads may disappear up our own rectums! Is that what you really want? Me with my head stuck up my own ass? Do you really think I'm that ugly?
We spent yesterday at the Art Institute in Chicago.
Which, according to Tripadvisor, is a slightly more pleasant way to pass the time then poking your eyes out.
We were there for hours and we just argued the whole time.
Why the fuck do we have to come to this horrible place? You know why. I really don't. You said you'd still love me if my head was stuck up my rectum. What's so terrible about that? Didn't Socrates say to Alcibiades that he'd still be gorgeous with his head stuck up his own anus? No! That was Wittgenstein you fucking retard! Boy, did your mother do a number on you! Talk about being closeted! Not that again. Yes, that again! Only a fag would want a lovely lass like me to stick my head up my own asshole. But didn't Sappho herself do so to retain the affections of fickle Phaon? No. I think that was Mary Wollestonecroft. British women are as ugly as shit. No argument there! How dare you! There is an argument there. I bet I have a lot of turds in my intestines much prettier than any British woman. I think I'll quickly stick my head up my arse to have a look. Please don't, dear. This is the Art Institute after all. Why not save that sort of thing for when we visit the Fart Institute? Don't tell me when and where I can shove my own head up my own rectum! I was merely suggesting... No you weren't! You were trying to control my body! OMG! You are right! I'm so ashamed! I'm going to stick my head up my arse because I literally can't show my face anywhere. You're just saying that to get out of this argument. Just like Wittgenstein? Fuck Wittgenstein. If you love him so much why don't you marry him? Not that again! Yes, that again! etc.
We kept trying to look at paintings, but we kept being drawn back into argument. It was very emotionally draining. We weren’t angry at each other, but it wasn’t pleasant. It was stressful and upsetting. But it also felt like, OK, there are big stakes here.
No. There was nothing at all at stake.
And that does happen pretty regularly for us. We can discover that we’re not on the same page and it’s deeply upsetting. And then each of us realizes we don’t have to justify our view as much as we thought we did through the conversation. We’re trying to arrive at a shared view of the situation, but that could take a long time.
Fortunately both these cretins teach nonsense and so their arguing fills a Wisdom shaped void in their lives.
This sounds exhausting. Maybe this constant back and forth arguing works if you’re married to another philosopher, but what’s wrong with just having a comfortable marriage?
You might end up doing something useful or realizing that you could do so by quitting your job which is to teach nonsense.
“This is exhausting” is a response I get a lot from people, not just in terms of marriage, but also just in philosophy.
What they mean is the thing so pointless that one feels exhausted just thinking about it.
People often ask, “When have I done enough? Can I do it for half an hour or an hour a day? Is that enough?”
People often humour a lunatic by asking such wide-eyed questions.
But when you do more of it, you become more tolerant of it. It’s not like philosophers can handle it 100 percent of the time. I certainly can’t handle as much as Socrates did.
Because he wasn't obliged to teach shite.
But I try to live up to the standard as much as I can, and then I will always fall short of it. But I’m not just living out my life in accordance with a script that some people handed me.
Don't live your life in accordance with a script handed out by this nutter. Find your own way of being unproductive. Take up Socioproctology.
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