Philosophers: more than bearded intellectuals
Philosophy is more than an academic discipline in itself; it should be central to the moral and principled debates we have everyday, says Ellen Judson.
by Ellen Judson
Monday 10th June 2013, 20:03 BST
A few weeks ago I received an email about a pro-choice abortion workshop, with the tagline ‘Let’s talk about abortion’; it explained what the workshop would involve, namely a free discussion about people’s opinions and understanding of abortion; the email included the caveat ‘Please note that this discussion will not focus on philosophical ideas’. As a philosophy student, I understood exactly what this meant. When running a workshop that is meant to be an open forum for people to discuss meaningful issues, the last thing anyone wants is someone coming in and arguing that on the choice theory of rights it is implausible that a foetus can be a right-bearer, or claiming that the debate rests on whether we subscribe to Locke’s theory of personhood, or asserting that any debate about morality is pointless as all we do in moral debate is express different emotions. Philosophical ideas do not help debate; they hinder it. And what else might we expect from a subject where, if you say you don’t believe modus ponens is true (if you don’t know what that is: congratulations, you aren’t a philosopher!), you will be laughed out of the building, but if you say that you believe torturing babies for fun is wrong you can be sure of finding someone who will disagree with you?
The thing is, isn’t discussing a topic like this really part of the point of philosophy? For me, the attraction of philosophy has always been that it tries to answer questions that other disciplines simply can’t – where we meet the limits of science, of maths, of theology, that is where philosophy comes into its own. And abortion is surely one of those topics which cannot be answered by facts alone – we can know all the biological facts, and sociological statistics about abortion, but somewhere along the way we need to think about our values – values like choice, freedom, life. And that’s where we start philosophising – even if we don’t realise it.
For example, take the controversy over offensive messages posted on Twitter; Paul Chambers was arrested for sending ‘menacing electronic communications’ after joking about blowing up Robin Hood Airport); it was ruled that Sally Bercow had ‘seriously defamed’ Lord McAlpine on Twitter; Paris Brown, the youth crime commissioner for Kent, was investigated over ‘racist’ and ‘homophobic’ tweets. Opinions are sharply divided as to which of these cases ought to be pursued by the police; there are fears over restricting freedom of speech, but then it seems we cannot allow people to say literally anything they want, or there is great potential for people’s lives to be destroyed, by, for instance, false accusations or violent action coordinated on social media. There is a line to be drawn between speech causing harm which outweighs the benefit of freedom of speech, and speech which, though perhaps distasteful or offensive, we do not wish to restrict for fear of giving the state that much control over what we say. And to find where that line should be drawn, we have to think about why we want freedom of speech; what the harm is; what different kinds of offence there are; what the role of the state should be in governing our actions – and philosophy is the discipline that seeks to answer these questions.
The current outcry over the GCHQ intelligence gathering is another perfect example – we feel that we have a right to privacy, but we also want to be protected by the state from terrorism; how far the pursuit of one goal can impose upon our rights is thus a crucial, and indubitably philosophical question.
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