So recently at a event on personal identity some philosophers essentially told us in answer to the question “Did I exist yesturday?” and more generally “Who am I”, that I am Me and that is is unanalysable any further (definitely oversimplifying things here!). Also in my tutorials for Metaphysics people (including me!) have certainly felt some of the contemporary questions of metaphysics are so pointless they are not worth asking let alone answering. However I don’t think this is true, I think philosophy is important and so I will rant:

• It’s important because the world has the potential to be destroyed through climate change and a lack of bees and no one really has any idea how to evaluate or deal with this
• Its important because we don’t have any Nuclear power plants
• Its important because the government is ignoring scientists on drugs and speed cameras whilst listening to pop psycologists on lilly allen and no one know who why or what to listen to
• The media is building fear and conspiracy theory to a large degree and we need to know how to combat that
• Its important because of Richard Dawkins!
• Its important because Richard Dawkins is building an army of scientifically minded philosophically engaged politically active young people and they are going to be important. (What next?)
• Its important because philosophy has failed to bring about the world peace we were promised and murder is still wrong.
• Its important because religion is growing in importance in our world, rather then dying out and people are still stuck arguing Hume’s argument and attacking the Onological argument
• Its important because China, its philosophy and its influence is growing and the west still have no idea of how to embrace it.

So I believe these are all important aspects of our world and include philosophy.Why?

Because everyone does philosophy!

Every single one of those points has people somewhere sitting around and thinking, they are then going on and writing and sometimes their writing is in newspapers, sometimes it is in academic journals, sometimes it is behind closed doors or within organisations. But the thoughts and writing continue and as long as that is happening philosophy is happening even if people don’t like calling it that. Because it is definitely happening and impacting us anyway, we need to know what it is, we need to talk about it.

And it starts in metaphysics, it starts in epistemology. Talking about Tibs and Tibbles, about universals, about how we know things, about protocal sentences leads into the philosophy of science. Which leads into why people dislike evolution and climate change, it leads into Nuclear power and its implications, it leads into morality and how to deal with china. It tells us that murder is wrong and lets atheists and theists talk about thing. And it turns the Richard Dawkins people from an angry rabble into a well-informed powerful people.

Category: Christian Thought -> Cause it is!