Rupert asked:

How do Philosophies and personalities converge? If it is true that you need certain qualities in life to
be happy, for example, does that not also have to do with the personality? In other words, is
personality a limiter on all forms of philosophy? Can logic overcome personality or does philosophy
belong to a personality? Okay, so it's not well put but I think you might follow me. I hope so.

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I have considered what I think are similar questions in the past. On holiday in the beautiful
Wildschoenau valley in the Austrian Tirol last summer, I asked myself: "Can philosophy only appeal to
certain temperaments?" I am keen on the idea that philosophy should be made accessible to as many
people as possible, but in the Gatwick departure hall, my parents and I sat and watched a group of
people eating McDonalds food and drinking beer for breakfast, and smoking in the non-smoking area.
"So," I declared; "can we introduce philosophy to all these people?" "I shouldn't think so!" retorted my
mum. Interestingly enough, the people at the Gate waiting for the flight to Salzburg looked more likely
to be converted to philosophy than the general mass of humanity in the departures hall.
Tongue-in-cheek, I wrote that I thought this was because "They look quieter and more educated!"

I certainly believe that philosophy does in fact only appeal to certain kinds of people. It is harder to
say exactly what personal qualities might dispose you towards philosophy, but I think you have to
have a reasonable level of intelligence and be interested in educating yourself. Some people appear
to think that learning is boring or unfashionable, and it is hard to see how they could ever become
interested in philosophizing.

It's good that you are expressing your thoughts about philosophy, even though you feel you haven't
done it well. Putting your thoughts, feelings and ideas into words takes practice. It helps if you can
discuss your ideas with another person face-to-face; then it's much easier to check with them whether
they have understood what you were trying to express. They may put their understanding of what you
said into their own words — and you can see if you still recognize it!

Still on the subject of character and philosophy, I am still trying to get through a book that Geoffrey
Klempner recommended to me several years ago. It is quite long, and has very small print, but tells
about the lives of some famous philosophers, and suggests how their life and character influenced
what they thought. The book: The Philosophers — their lives and the nature of their thoughtby
Ben-Ami Scharfstein, published by Oxford University Press.

Katharine Hunt

If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that, for example, if you are an optimist, you are
not going to produce a pessimistic philosophy; if you are a pessimist, you are not going to produce an
optimistic philosophy — and so on.

The metaphysician F.H. Bradley sums this up nicely in the Preface his treatise Appearance and
Reality(1893):

"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct but to find these reasons
is no less an instinct."

Well, that just about scuttles the philosophical enterprise! You're never going to get at the truth
because on this view, what 'the truth' is for you depends upon your 'instincts', your gut feelings, your
emotional outlook, your personality. Whatever reasons you put forward will be 'bad' reasons: not only
will they not be your real reasons, but they will be less persuasive reasons than the reasons you
already have, prior to doing any philosophy, for holding the belief in question.

So, why bother?

It is a paradox. I believe that my philosophical theory is the true theory, and that the other theories are
false. I believe that my arguments are good arguments, valid arguments, and that the arguments for
the other opposing theories are invalid arguments. — But, being me, I would believe that, wouldn't I?

How can I believe thatand also believe my own theory?

Geoffrey Klempner

This is a very interesting question, and one which I'm not going to answer philosophically, really.
There is a lot of work going on right now on the interactions between the emotions and our reasoning
processes. Damasio's book, Descartes's Error,was one of the catalysts for that work, and I highly
recommend it. This area, really, is best answered by looking at studies of this sort, in the field of
cognitive science, I believe. It turns out that when someone has prefrontal lobe damage, one can, if
the damage is slight enough, score basically as well on IQ tests as previously, yet be unable to cope
with life. Why? Because one has lost one's emotionalbiases in guiding one's decisions and actions.
In other words, we can function like computers, using logic, reason, etc., but in doing so, we reach
decision points where choices must be made on the basis of what are really emotional biases. In
Damasio's studies, he found people who worked extremely hard at absolutely trivial, very difficult,
tasks, who were unable to tell the difference between trivial and important work because our
judgment of "importance" is relevant to context, to society, to our beliefs, to all those emotional biases
that we take as background but which are absolutely essential in making decisions about general
courses of action.

The way we see the world, the amount and type of interest we take in our surroundings, other people,
various intellectual interests, has almost nothing to do with rationality... and this is, in my opinion, one
of the most unfortunate aspects of the human condition. Colin Wilson was very concerned with this
also; you might look at some of his early books. The question is, why can't we just willour emotions to
change; why can't we just decideto become interested in, say, baseball, or philosophy, or home
decorating, or just decide, as Wilson puts it, to always have the attitude we have when we are "on
holiday", and take interest in — delight in — what we would usually consider the most absurd trivia;
and then have our emotions follow our decision? The science-fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote an
early book, Brain Wave,about the same kind of thing. What if we suddenly had the ability to shape, to
tailor, our personalities as we wished? What kind of person would you want to be if you could shape
your personality as easily as you decided which direction to look or to walk? Why can't we just decide
to be continually motivatedto learn, or to do sports, or write poetry, and then, just as we turn our
heads when we decide to perform that action, "turn" our emotions, interest, motivation, to those
ends? But we can't, at least not without tremendouseffort, and this is, in my very strong opinion, one
of our great tragedies, and Wilson concurs.

Consider, also, the effects of drugs and mood swings. This is what antidepressants do, to a certain
extent; and why people who are manic-depressive do not want to be cured. Because when the drugs
are working, or when the person is in the manic phase, everythingis interesting, fascinating,
delightful. Unfortunately, it's quite a general effect; drugs won't allow us to change details, nor sculpt
specifics of our personalities... and even more unfortunately, there are virtually no drugs of this sort
that do not have fairly severe long-term side effects. Prozac (fluoxetine), for example, seems to be
strongly addictive if given long-term; "ecstasy" (whose actual name I forget offhand) destroys much of
our serotonin systems after one or two large doses; the damaging long-term effects of the
antipsychotics are well-known; and so forth. Caffeine seems the most innocuous physically, and it is
also extremely non-specific.

In addition, as we age, our brain chemistry changes, usually for the worse. We are not as motivated,
not as enthusiastic... I'm speaking on the average, of course. And these changes are due, in large
part, to factors like the degeneration of the serotonin system, which is involved very strongly with
emotions, enthusiasm, pleasure, and thus motivation. Can we compensate? Again, to a limited
extent. I just had an encounter, a few weeks ago, with a women in her 60s who, in order to help her
stop smoking, was put on mild antidepressants. From a person whom I was not too friendly with, and
found not to pleasant to interact with, she changed virtually overnight into an interesting, lively, fun
person with whom I enjoyed chatting for a couple of hours. Amazing, right? What changed, aside
from her attitudes toward life and other people? Why couldn'tshe, alone, without drugs, have made
those changes? Well, perhaps she could have... but given what one sees normally, this does not
seem likely. At any rate, I'm not advocating drugs nor insanity... the opposite, in fact. The way to go, I
think, is through a combination of sheer force of will and behavior modification, but that force, and the
formation of new habits, needs to be tremendous and fairly long-term to effect significant changes.

This kind of motivational boost, is, in my opinion, what makes religion so attractive to so many.
People are "given" a reason to live, to work, etc.... but why do we need to be giventhat? Why can't
we create it for ourselves, motivate ourselves, generate from within our directions, goals, and impetus
for actions? Well, some people can. But no one, that I know of, can directthat generation with any
facility. We need to be made aware of that, and to work to change it, and that is extremely difficult.
The "self-help" books one finds more or less work toward that end, similarly to religion. But they suffer
from the same problems; they tend to be extremely superficial, "cookbook" remedies, and in addition
do not question themselves. In other words, one is exhorted to follow a particular guru, system, or
whatever, without question, in order to effect a change... but one is nottaught to be flexibleand to be
able to self-generate one's ownchanges and directions; or to be able to change those motivations
further.to something radically different, if necessary or desirable.

You see what I mean? We just don't, by and large, have this kind of control over ourselves, and that's
unfortunate because it limits our flexibility and adaptability, our interests, the depth and kindof our
investment in life. When such changes canbe made, and I believe they can to some extent, it is with
great difficulty and over time. So our "philosophies", as you put it, are indeed limited, and severely
and tragically so, in my opinion, by our personalities.

Steven Ravett Brown