This follows up on the two previous posts; together, the three of them
attempt to answer the questions,
- How, and why, did I come to choose "philosophy" as a major, and
go all the way to a Ph.D. in that subject?
- What does that [the answer to the first question] tell one
about my outlook on life, even now, more than forty years
later? (And in particular, how might it help one to
understand "where I'm coming from", and "what I'm getting at", in
[some] things that I write today?)
The post
dated
August
8 of this year began the process by laying out the bare bones of
the autobiographical facts which need explaining, and then posing the
questions.
The one dated
August
18 offered a partial answer to the first part of the first
question; that is, it focused on some factors that kept me from
choosing another, otherwise appealing, academic path: majoring in a
"hard science" subject like physics.
But now we reach the heart of the first question: what were the
positive factors which drew me to choose philosophy as a major, and
then as a Ph.D. subject?
I don't know (don't remember?) what answer I would have given to that
question at the time. But I am fairly sure that I would not have
come up with anything like the answer I shall give now.
This answer isn't simple: there's no way to reduce it to a single
sentence. I shall, indeed, first give the answer as briefly as I
can, and then expand on it a little; but even the shortest form must
begin with some background, that is, by stating some [alleged] facts
about my state of mind at the time.
I was in considerable emotional distress much of the time, and it was
at its peak during my sophomore year -- the year in which I was
supposed to declare my major. (Apparently, for sensitive
souls, having a particularly hard time during the second year of
college is actually rather common.) A good part of the distress
was associated, in my mind, with a lack of clear goals for my life; a
lack of clear reasons for doing anything, in fact. And it seems
that I believed that studying philosophy would (or at least might)
remedy this: might lead me to discover a sense of purpose.
Some of the pain had a more specific cause: I can remember some that
was about romantic difficulties. But at times, I had some quite
seriously suicidal thoughts, and a few times, took actions towards
implementing them; and at those times, the thought in my conscious
mind was that there was no reason to go on living, because there was
no reason ... no "valid" reason ... to do anything.
Some readers may have the highly logical response: if there's no
reason to do anything, then, in particular, there's no reason to kill
yourself. If that occurred to you, congratulations, because my
self-perception is that that very thought saved my life, more than
once. I believed that I was getting ready to kill myself; and
then I didn't, because (again, in my conscious mind) it then occurred
to me that there was no good reason to complete this action, any more
than there was a good reason to do anything else.
If I recall correctly, at those times, I followed out the implications
of these thoughts rather accurately ... for a while. I can
remember a time in an attic when I was thinking of hanging
myself. Once I "realized" that there was no reason to do that
(either), I sat there and didn't do anything (except breathe)
for, perhaps, twenty or thirty minutes. Then I got hungry, or
felt a need to pee, and acted on that desire.
In some ways, then, my thought processes were highly logical (one
might also say, frightfully so) ... given my premises. But not in all respects. For instance, I didn't ask myself if there was
anything to be learned, relevant to the "big question" of
purpose in living, from the fact that certain desires did lead to
action, without stopping to consider whether, say, being hungry
actually gave me a valid reason for seeking out something to eat.
And even more strikingly, from my present perspective: I don't recall
that the following question ever occurred to me, after I had
established, in my mind, that if there's no reason to do anything, then
it follows that there's no reason to kill myself. That question
is: why was it that, even after that, brooding about having no reason
for anything still, in fact, led me to thinking of killing
myself?
(I also don't recall being bothered by any inconsistency in the fact
that, as described in my previous post, I managed to come up with what
I considered a valid reason not to major in physics, though that was
otherwise appealing. It would seem that accepting a valid
reason not to do something was, for some reason, less
problematic.)
At any rate, it was against this background that I made the decision
to become a philosophy major; and then I pursued the subject all the
way to a doctoral degree. I knew that questions like "what are
good (or valid) reasons for doing things?" were questions that [some]
philosophers worked on trying to answer. (They fall into the
sub-field known as "ethics".)
I was regarding the question, "are there any good reasons for doing
anything?", as, quite simply, an open question. (And thus,
adopting what must have seemed like an appropriately skeptical,
"nothing is certain" attitude, applying that even to my own apparent
certainty that there were not any good reasons for doing
anything.) It was, in my eyes, a philosophical problem that had
not yet been solved, at least to my satisfaction; and I proposed to
try to solve it.
I must have been hoping that the answer would "turn out to be":
yes, there are such things as good, or valid, reasons; for only in
that case would finding the answer relieve me from further instances
of the distress associated with thinking that there are not. And
I do, now, have a confident, intuitive sense that the desire to escape
that distress was, at some underlying psychological level, the
true motive (note in passing: not "reason") for choosing to
follow this path. Or a big part of the motive, anyway.
And that brings me to a stopping place, for I have completed an answer
to the first question: how, and why, I came to pursue the academic
career that I did.
One might think that the next step would be to try to answer the
second question: what does this piece of my history tell one, that's
important in understanding the mind-set that I bring to life
now? I do intend to try to answer that, but not right
away. (Nor even "in the next post", nor "Real Soon Now".)
Instead, I plan to put this topic aside for a while, and go about the
business of living ... including "writing about computers, life, and
society". That may well include a different kind of follow-up to
this topic: having made this momentous decision to devote myself to
the study of philosophy, with emphasis on questions like "Are there
any good, or valid, reasons for doing anything?" ... did I come up
with any sort of answer?
But as to what all this tells you about me ... that may just
sort of come out in the process, and not need to be answered
explicitly. Also, perhaps y'all will be able to help me figure
it out.
Categorie(s) for this post include:
About me;
Philosophy;
Quakerism
12:24:33 PM 
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