I have discussed this question several times before. Here is my short answer. By all means, go to graduate school in philosophy, but only if you satisfy all of the following conditions.
1. Philosophy is your passion, the one thing you think most worth living for.
2. People in the know have advised you that you have philosophical aptitude.
3. Your way is paid in toto via fellowship including tuition remission or else you are independently wealthy. No student loans!
4. You are willing to live for 10-12 years, minimum, before relaxing with tenure. (I began grad school in '73 and received tenure in '84 = 11 years.) You will be under a fairly high degree of pressure during that decade or so, including such stressors as: living on a meager income as a grad student, writing a dissertation, earning the doctorate, landing a tenure-track position at a school where there is a real chance of getting tenure, surviving the tenure review.
5. You are willing to chance jumping though all the hoops, and then not get tenure, in which case you are no longer young somewhat damaged goods who may have to re-tool career-wise, or accept a lesser position. I know a philosopher who failed to get tenure at the University of Hawaii and had to take a job in Toledo, Ohio. It was a full-time philosophy position, but Toledo ain't Honolulu. It is easy to go up, hard to go down.
6. You understand that, if you do get tenure at Cleveland State, say, then you are stuck there for the rest of your career unless you are unusually talented. Tenure is a boon and a shackle, 'golden handcuffs' if you will. The security is purchased in the coin of a reduction of mobility.
7. You understand that the humanities are in trouble, the job market is bad, and that competition for tenure-track positions is ferocious.
In sum: if philosophy is your passion, you are good at it, have an opportunity to pursue it for free at a good school, and would not consider the years spent in grad school wasted if no job materializes — then go for it! Live your dreams! Don't squander your self for pelf!
Within limits we have the power to control our minds, our moods, our responses to people and things, and in consequence our happiness. Happiness is in some measure made or unmade in the mind. We all know people who make themselves miserable by their refusal to practice very elementary mental hygiene. Just as I can let myself be annoyed by someone's remark or behavior, I can refuse to let myself be annoyed or affected. The trouble, however, is that this power of detachment is limited. What's more, it must be developed by protracted thought and practice, a fact that requires that one be well-endowed and well-placed — facts not in one's control. I am in control of my responses to the world's bad actors and unfavorable circumstances, but not in control of the circumstances in which alone I can develop the Stoic's self-therapeutic armamentarium. I have the leisure, inclination, and aptitude to pursue Stoic and other spiritual exercises. But how many do? I can't see that a solution that leaves most out in the cold is much of a solution.
The Stoic wisdom may not take us far, but where it takes us is a worthwhile destination. In the end, however, Augustine is right: it is no final solution. Wretchedness partially and temporarily alleviated, and by some only, is no satisfactory answer to the wretchedness inscribed in our nature. Of course, it doesn't follow from this that there is a satisfactory answer.
Mutatis mutandis, the above applies to Buddhist self-therapeutics as well.
The left-leaning Washington Post awarded President Obama four, count 'em, four pinocchios, its highest (dis)honor, for the repeatedly told lie for which he is now notorious. In one of its variations, it goes like this: “And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.”
Now the sense of Obama's assertion in all its variations is clear. But when Bob Schieffer asked Senator Dianne Feinstein On Face the NationSunday morning about Obama's statements, she offered the following interpretation of its sense (at 6:06): "You can keep it [your health plan] up to the time the bill is enacted; after that it's a different story."
You heard right.
Now that is mendacity at its most creative. It is an example of an Orwellian misuse of language: semantic subversion by semantic inversion. 'True freedom is enslavement to the state." "Welfare is self-reliance." "War is peace."
And Feinstein's "Obamacare law will allow you to keep your doctor and health plan but only until the bill becomes law."
Did Schieffer call Feinstein on her outrageous insult to the intelligence of the American people? Watch the video and find out.
A Pond away, the American-born Janet Daley of The Telegraphsee things with exceptional clarity. Concluding paragraphs:
Economic freedom, as well as political liberty, is being traded in at a startling pace even in the US, where it was once the be-all and end-all of the American dream. US citizens are discovering that their president’s flagship health-care programme is going to force them to buy the sort of health insurance that he believes they should have rather than the (cheaper, less comprehensive) kind they had chosen for themselves. They may have been willing to take their chances with minimal coverage that would pay only for catastrophic events, but the government says no. In its paternalistic wisdom, it will insist (by law) that they pay for everything it thinks is desirable, whether they want it or not.
The principle of the ideological struggle with communism — that the power of the state was an inherent danger from which the individual must be protected — is being lost to memory. Government is always the custodian of virtue now, holding out against the wicked, self-serving forces of profit and private interests. It is as if we have learnt nothing from the history of the 20th century about which values and beliefs actually delivered a life that was worth living — and how much vigilance is required to preserve them.
I told myself that, come November, I'd put Jack back in his box until next October. But Kerouac month has bled over into November probably because seeing the movie Big Sur got me all stoked up again.
Here is Herbert Gold's review of the book (Saturday Review, 22 September 1962).
And here is nastly slap at Jack from a writer not much better, Edward Abbey: "Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism."
Cactus Ed on Updike:
John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing–like a faery breath!–upon the glass.
. . . the terms "calculated lie," "purposeful lie," "intentional lie," and "knowing
lie" (while referring to Barack Obama's claim that Americans could, if they so
chose, keep their insurance policy and their doctor). Calculation, purpose,
intention, and knowledge are built into the concept of a lie, so qualifying the
term "lie" in these ways is redundant and has the unfortunate effect of draining
the word "lie" of its meaning. Limbaugh uses "lie" as though it meant
"falsehood." It means far more than "falsehood." A lie is a very special
falsehood.
Right. I will now take the ball and run with it.
Every lie is a false statement, but not every false statement is a lie. A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive. Since intention to deceive is included within the concept lie, 'intentional lie' and its cousins are pleonastic. Someone who speaks of an intentional lie is treating the species as if it were a genus. 'Intentional lie' is like 'true fact.' Use of these pleonasms marks one as uneducated or worse.
There are two related mistakes one must avoid. The first is the redundancy mistake just mentioned. The other is the use of 'lie' to mean a false statement. The temptation to do so is strong indeed. Many of us are inclined to think our opponents not just wrong, but culpably wrong: you lied! Michael Medved speaks irresponsibly of ten big lies about America. But none of his ten falsehoods — and I agree with him that they are all of them falsehoods — is properly describable as a lie.
Here is one: "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party."
Like Medved, I consider that to be false. But is it a lie? Do the people who believe the quoted sentence know the truth but are out to deceive us? Of course not. I met a woman once who claimed that the moon was its own source of light. Was she lying? She uttered a falsehood, which is not the same as lying. Once I jokingly said to my wife that she was lying when she said that the room was cold. "You lie!" First of all, there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not the room is cold. Her cold is my hot. So what's to lie about? The only fact of the matter in the vicinity is wifey's feeling cold.
Jethro claims that the bottle is half-empty while Earl maintains that it is half-full. Is one of these yahoos lying? Here there is a fact of the matter but one describable in two equivalent ways.
If a person affirms (denies) the existence of God is the person lying? Here there is a fact of the matter but one hard to make out. It is rational to be a theist, but also rational to be an atheist. So perhaps my definition needs augmenting:
A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive about a definite matter of fact about which knowledge is possible.
To lie is to misrepresent willfully the way things are when the way things are is ascertainable with a fairly high degree of certainty. For example, the way things are with respect to the content of PPACA is easily ascertained: you just read the law. There is a matter of fact as to what is stated in the law and that fact is easily established.
Suppose you and I are discussing some very difficult question in mathematics or metaphysics or cosmology. I assert that p while you assert that not-p. It follows that one of us is wrong. But it does not follow that one of us is lying.
Suppose that A and B each have the intention to deceive the other. A asserts that p, while B asserts its negation. It is a very interesting question whether both are lying. One of them is lying, for at least one of them is saying something false with the intention to deceive. But are both lying? Is the intention to deceive sufficient for lying, or must the content asserted also be false?
Here is a further nuance that will bore some of you. The type-token distinction comes into play. "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party" is not a statement but a statement type. You don't get a statement until some definite person utters or otherwise tokens the type. (To token a type is to produce a token of the type.) But no statement-type can be a lie. For statement-types float free of language users, and to have a statement, an occurrent stating, a particular speaker must use the statement-type — must token the type — on a particular occasion. This is another reason to deny that Medved's ten big falsehoods are lies. Note that a falsehood is false whether or not anyone utters or otherwise tokens a sentence that expresses it. But a lie is not a lie whether or not anyone utters or otherwise tokens the sentence that expresses it.
It is also worth observing that the concept lie as I have defined it is not a normative concept. The definition merely tells us what a lie is. A lie is a statement made with the intention to deceive. But it is a further question whether deception is morally impermissible. And if it is, is it so in all cases or only in some?
Is a liar one who lies? No. One can lie without being a liar just as one can get drunk without being a drunkard. A liar is one who habitually lies. Does it suffice for a person to be a liar that he lie habitually about just one topic, or must he lie habitually about more than one topic? Interesting question.
Obama lied repeatedly when he said that under his collectivist scheme every one would get to keep his health plan if he so desired. May we infer that Obama is a liar? Or to judge him to be a liar must we also adduce his other (repeated) lies?
And then there is the epistemology of the situation. How do I know that Obama lied when he made his now-famous asseveration? I didn't peer into his soul. I know, or at least I have good reasons for believing that he lied, because he knows the subject-matter of his false statement and he had a very powerful motive for misrepresenting said subject-matter. Had he spoken the truth, it is a very good bet that the PPACA would not have passed and become law.
So plenty of evidence points in the direction of his being a damned liar.
Addendum 3 November
Dennis Monokroussos comments:
Apropos your post “On Misusing the Word ‘Lie’”, it would be better to say that a lie is (among other things) a statement its utterer believes to be false. Also, similarly, your augmented definition seems to require the same qualification; to wit, that it’s about something believed to be “a definite matter of fact about which knowledge is possible”.
My initial definition was this
1. A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive. (That is to be understood as a biconditional: for any x, x is a lie iff x is a statement made with the intention to deceive.)
DM suggests
2. A lie is a statement believed by its utterer to be false that is made with the intention to deceive.
(2), however, allows for the possibility of a true lie. For suppose a statement is made with the intention to deceive but is falsely believed by the utterer to be false. In such a situation the utterer says something true with the intention to deceive. Has he lied?
Well, what are we trying to do here? If we are trying to capture the ordinary language meaning of 'lie' and cognates, then I am inclined to say that (2) fails. For in ordinary English, a lie is a falsehood, though not every falsehood is a lie. I am making an empirical claim about English as she is spoken by people like me and Monokroussos (educated white male Americans not too far apart in age). People like us do not use 'lie' in such a way that it is sufficient for x to be a lie that x be made with the intention to deceive.
Having made an empirical claim, I am open to empirical refutation by a linguist.
If, on the other hand, we are trying to elaborate a systematic theory of lying, bullshitting and related truth-sensitive phenomena, a project that involves replacing the ordinary language concept with a supposedly better one, then perhaps (2) is acceptable.
But now we are headed for the metaphilosophical stratosphere. What is the role of ordinary language analysis in philosophical theorizing? Ought philosophy be theoretical and explanatory at all? Should it perhaps content itself with description? What is analysis anyway? And what about the paradox of analysis? And so on and so forth.
It debuted hereabouts in Scottsdale this morning at 11:00 AM at Harkins 14. There were exactly three souls in attendance, mine included. Beautifully done and especially moving for this native Californian Kerouac aficionado who knows the book and the road and the bridge and the views and has had his own remarkable experiences at Big Sur. Gazing out at the Pacific over 40 years ago I felt as if locked into the same nunc stans that I had glimpsed a few months before at Playa del Rey on the southern California coast. Nature in the extremity of her beauty has the power to unhinge the soul from the doorjambs of what passes for sanity.
Why write an article on a subject you know nothing about? This is a question that Amia Srinivasan might usefully have asked herself. She is a Prize Fellow in philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford, one of the most prestigious academic positions in the academic world; and her webpage at Oxford includes several papers of outstanding merit. You would never guess that she is a serious philosopher, though, from her article “Questions for Free-Market Moralists” in The New York Times, October 2013. The “free-market moralist” she has principally in mind is Robert Nozick, the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). If Srinivasan has read this book at all, the experience appears to have passed her by.
Barack Obama does not have proprietary rights in presidential mendacity: he has many illustrious predecessors. But Obama has pushed the arts of deception, prevarication, and empty bluster to new heights. Unfortunately for him, the economy is bad, which fact will make it difficult for him to get away with his lies, bullshit, and Orwellian abuses of the English language.
I'll give the guy this much: it takes balls of brass and chutzpah on stilts to lie brazenly about what can be easily checked. Was he ever a used car salesman? Of course, he would have spoken of 'pre-owned vehicles.'
