h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi, Otto,
I read your entry "How to be a philosopher" and I just wanted to meet the writer... Hope you don't mind. I am very interested in philosophy and I'm impressed with the way you think. No hard words and stubbornness... Really impressed...

Greetings, Danica

Hello Dancia,

Thanks for your message. I'm glad you liked the entry - I wrote it a few years ago now, but I'm very pleased that people are still reading it!

Well, there is really no reason for people to stop reading it - it's very good.
I would like to know what is your real life experience with philosophy. You seem like you're at least a student of philosophy if not a professor. Of course I won't mind if you don't answer this, it's private after all.
All the best.

Yep - I studied philosophy at university and then took a research masters degree which involved writing a 60,000 word thesis. I did a bit of teaching, but not very much.

I wrote the article when I was just starting my thesis. There's a few things that I'd do a bit differently now, but I think it's held up pretty well.

Yes, I taught something like that...
What made you study philosophy? Sorry for being so stiff.

I love ideas, I suppose, and I like being able to be creative with ideas. It's fascinating to look at an argument someone has made, or an idea that someone has had, and try to work out what objections or arguments could be made against it, and what answers there might be to those. I also like the big questions. Philosophy is a subject where you can think what you like as long as you can back it up with strong reasons.

What drew you to philosophy?

I don't know... I was always a philosopher.I always asked philosophical questions and it made people around me mad. So I started reading philosophy to find these answers. Nothing convinced me yet but I discovered how philosophy is interesting. That's the story.
And now I'm trying to find someone interesting here on the internet...

Interesting.... I think you might be on to something about being "always a philosopher" - certainly I when I discovered it I felt I was 'home' in some sense, that this was a way of thinking that was a good fit with the way that my brain worked.

I'm not so sure that philosophy does provide answers, but I think it provides ways to ask better questions and understand what kinds of answers there might be and their strengths and weaknesses. The important thing about philosophy, I think, is the logical, thorough, rational, philosophical method by which one goes about searching for answers to whatever the question happens to be.

Sometimes I actually think that all people are philosophers some way, that philosophy is the natural way of thinking that exists in each one of us. The problem is that people are usually afraid to be natural. Why bother with thinking about "big questions" when there are so many easy ways to enjoy the life. I don't know, maybe they really can enjoy that way, but I know that I couldn't. I would feel empty.
I see philosophy as the best method of uprising the spirit which is terribly postponed today. But,hey, as long as there are philosophers, there's still hope for this world.

As for ability to provide answers... Well, I don't think I care about that anymore. I enjoy in the way philosophy keeps my mind busy. It's a discipline that engages the entire brain.
I'm not really sure is the most important about philosophy asking and answering or the influence it has on philosophers, the people that philosophy creates.