What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

Even if life as a whole is meaningless, perhaps that's nothing to worry about. Perhaps we can recognise it and just go on as before.

The most radical conclusion to draw from this would be that your mind is the only thing that exists.

Our idea of the things that exist is just our idea of what we can observe.

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

If you can't prove that anything exists outside you own mind, is it all right to go on believing in the external world anyway?

The question whether moral requirements are universal comes up not only when we compare the motives of different individuals, but also when we compare the moral standards that are accepted in different societies and at different times. Many things that you probably think are wrong have been accepted as morally correct by large groups of people in the past: slavery, serfdom, human sacrifice, racial segregation, denial of religious and political freedom, hereditary caste systems. And probably some things you now think are right will be thought wrong by future societies. Is it reasonable to believe that there is some single truth about all this, even though we can't be sure what it is? Or is it more reasonable to believe that right and wrong are relative to a particular time and place and social background?

The sum total of a person’s experiences, desires and knowledge, his hereditary constitution, the social circumstances and the nature of the choice facing him, together with other factors that we may not know about, all combine to make a particular action in the circumstances inevitable.

Physical science has progressed by leaving the mind out of what it tries to explain, but there may be more to the world than can be understood by physical science.

Philosophy is different from science and from mathematics. Unlike science it doesn't rely on experiments or observation, but only on thought. And unlike mathematics it has no formal methods of proof. It is done just by asking questions, arguing, trying out ideas and thinking of possible arguments against them, and wondering how our concepts really work. The main concern of philosophy is to question and understand common ideas that all of us use every day without thinking about them. A historian may ask what happened at some time in the past, but a philosopher will ask, "What is time?" A mathematician may investigate the relations among numbers, but a philosopher will ask, "What is a number?" A physicist will ask what atoms are made of or what explains gravity, but a philosopher will ask how we can know there is anything outside of our own minds. A psychologist may investigate how children learn a language, but a philosopher will ask, "What makes a word mean anything?" Anyone can ask whether it's wrong to sneak into a movie without paying, but a philosopher will ask, "What makes an action right or wrong?" We couldn't get along in life without taking the ideas of time, number, knowledge, language, right and wrong for granted most of the time; but in philosophy we investigate those things themselves. The aim is to push our understanding of the world and ourselves a bit deeper. Obviously, it isn't easy. The more basic the ideas you are trying to investigate, the fewer tools you have to work with. There isn't much you can assume or take for granted. So philosophy is a somewhat dizzying activity, and few of its results go unchallenged for long.

Kendimize kendi "dışımızdan" gelen bir anlam yüklemek istiyoruz. Eğer yaşamımız bir bütün olarak anlamsız görünürse, o zaman bir parçamız -her zaman omuzlarımız üzerinden ne yaptığımıza bakan parçamız- tatminsizlik hisseder. Çoğu insanın çabaları, özellikle de hayatlarını devam ettirmeye ve refaha yönelik çabalarından ziyade ciddi hırslara hizmet eden çabaları, enerjilerinin bir kısmını bir önemlilik hissinden -yaptığınız şeyin sadece sizin için önemli olmadığı, daha büyük anlamda bir önem taşıdığı, sürekli bir önemi bulunduğu hissinden- alırlar. Bundan vazgeçmemiz gerekirse, o bizi yelkenlerimizi suya indirmekle tehdit edebilir. Eğer yaşam gerçek değilse, yaşamın amacı yoksa ve yaşamın sonu nihayette kabir ise belki kendimizi bu kadar ciddiye almak gülünçtür. Öte yandan, eğer kendimizi ciddiye almadan yapamıyorsak belki de sadece gülünç olmaya katlanmak zorundayızdır. Yaşam sadece anlamsız değil, saçma da olabilir.

Impressions and appearances that do not correspond to reality must be contrasted with others that do correspond to reality, or else the contrast between appearance and reality is meaningless.

Si yo fuera solipsista, probablemente no habría escrito este libro, pues no creería que hubiese alguien más que lo leyera.

There may or may not be an external world, and if there is it may or may not be completely different from how it seems to you—there’s no way for you to tell. This view is called skepticism about the external world.