Danny ChaiI have a final tomorrow morning and decided to be good and got into bed at 12:00, only to find that I could not, for the life of me, fall asleep. The thing is just 30 minutes prior I had been exhausted. Nothing makes me as sleepy as studying. At any rate, I’m trying to get sleepy again so here I am.
I essentially read a quarter’s worth of philosophy today. I basically speed read it, so I have only a basic understanding of everything, but at least I touched on all the basic issues, as superficial as it is. Call it the IE approach. Ha! I decided today that if I could really have my choice of what to do with my life, and if my success were guaranteed, I would go into philosphy full time, and on the side be a music producer. Because philosophy really, really floats my boat. It just excites me. It’s fun stuff. It’s the kind of stuff I do anyway, and I’d love to do it all the time. And I think I could hang with everyone, too. Bold, but I would say I understand what the author is saying better than 95% of the people in my Philosophy class. Not that that is indicative of my philosophical studness, but it is. I am getting sleepy now. It’s working.
Anyway, this one author just kills me because his arrogance is so transparent in his writing. At one point I just laughed out loud because he talks about his position and then states that the majority of philosophers on this subject have not given this (his) argument sufficient awareness and many do not have the sophistication to be compelled by it. Because of this, he says he will at times pretend that the general position is true, just so he can talk about it. That killed me. He will pretend the consensus position is true. He also whines in many places about how his argument hasn’t received enough attention. And other stuff. It’s just funny how he doesn’t even try to hide his arrogance.
Anyway, one thing I realized is that everyone must believe that you are right. I mean, when it comes down to it, everyone must and does believe that they are right, and by extension, that everyone else’s beliefs, if they do not cohere with their own, are wrong. I don’t care how open-minded you think you are, at the fundamental level, you must think you are ultimately wrong. Even if you think you are wrong, you must think that you are right that you are wrong.