The Appeal of Philosophy

Why are people attracted to philosophical questions? My answer to the question is itself a philosophy: a metaphilosophy. It is, also, to be sure, completely speculative. Maybe people are attracted to what they are because they are a certain way. People naturally gravitate towards certain things and away from others. Of course, some people gravitate towards things not out of natural interest, but chance. Chance and the need to make ends meet also influence a lot of human behavior. Some people do jobs they don’t like, while some people like whatever they are doing. Maybe the context of understanding likes and dislikes is no different. I like philosophy because it rewards sustained dissatisfaction, and I happen to be the kind of person who is driven by dissatisfaction.

Philosophical people belong to the set of people who persistently and annoyingly ask “Why?” It’s an unfortunate, habitual skepticism, or scrutiny. This obsession is not necessarily unique to philosophy. It applies to the sciences or any investigative job, like journalism. But, in my mind, for philosophers, this question hammers a little extra hard, or at least hammers in a distinct style. They may question their own questions, like I am doing now, and they may question the meaning of the very words they are using. That’s something scientists spend less time on. They get bored after a while and want to start testing things.

Here’s a pathological way of thinking about it: while some people may have obsessive thoughts and continue on with their day, philosophers also have compulsions. They act to try and alleviate their obsessions by providing “rigorous” answers to their questions. They may then, and only then, remit. But, the problem with “why” questions is that the answer is continually changing. Reasons change. Memory is inexact. So, the obsessions and compulsions keep coming back because philosophers become dissatisfied with answers provided. Again and again. 

Now let’s take a brief pause. This explanation that I provided can’t be said to be true. What I have just done is created a story in the form of prose. I provided a narrative to make meaning and sense of my experiences. The sentence “People like what they do because they are a certain way” is a linear, causal way of thinking that attempts to explain an observation coherently. It is a hypothesis that I generated that is useful for me to understand the world. It is hardly provable. To prove such a claim would require alternate realities, counterfactuals, and hypotheticals. Like, “If you were a different kind of way, would you like something else?” It is impossible to say.

This point is further supported by how incredibly limited our knowledge is. Every mind, regardless of how much it knows about the world, constantly hypothesizes. Ask anyone, why such and such happens or why something is the way it is and they will have an answer almost instantly. It should be no surprise when considering the mind’s need for explanation and meaning. I’m not implying that stories and narratives are trivial— certain stories lead humanity to the moon, for example, because they are deeply meaningful. I’m not trying to discount that; they should just be acknowledged for what they are.

However, psychological scientists may speak up at this moment by invoking the idea of experimentation. Experimentation allows us to hold some things constant while manipulating other things. We can gather a bunch of people who are a certain way, for example people who tend to be open and curious in their personality, or people who had favorable socioeconomic factors growing up, and keep those traits constant while observing or manipulating their occupation. We will find that there is either a significant difference or a non-significant difference in whether those factors relate to occupation. That is one of the scientific method’s ways of answering many of the “why” questions. X “causes” Y when it is observed that changing X changes Y when all else is held constant. That’s an oversimplification, but we’ll go with it for now.

Philosophy, on the other hand, relies not on data, but on reasoning. Reasoning starts with premises and works its way to a conclusion. The main problem for philosophy, in my mind, is the nature of determining whether a premise is true or false. It is far easier to determine if it is valid, and less easy to determine its soundness. Soundness requires that the premises themselves are true, not merely that the reasoning is logical. If you disagree with the premise, offering a solid counterargument or counterexample that negates it often suffices. But the problematic part is that it rarely feels like a resolution or conclusion has been reached. The debate is never settled.

To some, the seeming endlessness and unsolvability deter them from being interested in philosophy because the point gets lost. But to others, the kind of people that my explanation was describing, the process is fun and stimulating. For them, it is simply a pleasurable experience to give and exchange reasons for or against something without using any other resource than reasoning. Even if they understand that arriving at an “answer” is fruitless. To them, that’s not the point.

Make up your own mind. Maybe I am just that kind of person who enjoys those kinds of conversations, or maybe there are more complete and compelling scientific explanations out there. You likely have your own thoughts about this sort of thing. What is important, in this moment, is that I have done exactly what I was speculating about with the obsessive-compulsive idea. I started out with a “why” question and provided a response that I am currently satisfied with, but I am under no illusion that I will remain satisfied for long. My obsession has remitted and now I can get on with my day. I hope you can too.