The Problem with Philosophy

This is a combination of the ideas in Paul Graham's fantastic essay at http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html and my extrapolations, based on thinking about the essay and discussions with a few brilliant people.

1. Up to and including Aristotle, philosophers were working with brand new ideas (or ideas that were new to them). So there was a lot of progress.
   
   
2. At some point, philosophy encountered the problem that words are not precise (alternatively, our brains are not equipped to understand the universe at a non-superficial level). If you ask questions you actually need answers to, like "is this action just?", you first have to define justice. And then you go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole with no useful answers, just more questions.
   
   
3. To avoid this problem, philosophers started focusing on even more abstract ideas, such as "what is causality".
   
   
4. During the early enlightenment, Aristotle and Plato were so revered that nobody had the confidence to break down their work into simpler ideas. Instead people assumed the concepts they were talking about were the important ones to focus on. But we had not even invented tools to solve more basic questions, so it was trying to solve calculus without having learned arithmetic.
   
   
5. Up to the point of Wittgenstein, many smart people realized this problem, but did not try to change it. Instead they quietly chose other fields to work in. This is why the most brilliant people in Greek times worked on philosophical problems but now few of the smartest people become philosophers.
   
   
6. Wittgenstein made enough of a fuss about this problem that philosophers had to face it. From that point on, philosophy has been in even more disarray, and has become even more academic. Nobody knows how to build on what we have so far, which is why its hard to think of someone who has recently contributed anything great to philosophy.
   
   
7. Instead of trying to answer the most abstract and general questions, we should recognize the limitations of our brains.  We can try to find the answers that are useful and generalize them as far as our current tools allow. The test of usefulness is that if someone first learned this today, they would change how they behave. Some of these will not be as impressive as discussing causality, but we can find real general answers and build on these over time.  Some examples that come to mind are Mandelbrot's ideas on the fractal nature of the world, or the recent work people have done on complex systems.  There are ideas in these that are general enough that they move beyond science into philosophy.
   
   
8. We have to recognize that it is much harder to make rock solid building blocks in philosophy than in math, because of the imprecise nature of the questions. But it is worth it. A lot of progress could still be made because most of the useful work in it has only been done over a few hundred years.

Spiritual Music

I can no longer find this discussion online, but I once read that when Ravi Shankar was asked if his music was "psychedelic", he could not answer and even seemed confused at the question.  A participant in this discussion pointed out that perhaps the questioner should have asked if the music was "spiritual" - the response might have been very different.

I was narrating this story on an online group, and a classical music fan wondered how Beethoven and Debussy would respond to the same question?  Perhaps they would consider their music spiritual, but to me, their music is very  different to a class of music that includes Shankar's work as well as improv jazz and the Grateful Dead.

We humans seem to be programmed with a "spiritual / religious" mode that can be switched on with the use of a few well known devices. 

First, we need a location that sparks our sense of wonder and awe.  The ancient Greeks held religious ceremonies in deep underground caves lit using torches. Gothic cathedrals with their immense ceilings and stained glass windows do the trick as well. So do ornately decorated Hindu temples.

Second, we bring in chanting or music, whether this is the organ and chorus in a church or the bhajan in the Hindu religion or the recitation of the Quran in melodic tones (Tilawat). 

Third, we hand out mind altering substances.  Think of wine,  bhang (cannabis with flavored milk) or peyote.

Fourth, we need movement such as the dancing of the dervish, or back and forth rocking as in Jewish prayer.  

These devices are even more powerful when several people perform them in a coordinated manner.  Imagine the dervishes dancing with each other or the rhythmic, repetitive chanting of a cult.

Now our spiritual mode is triggered, and we are much more receptive to new ideas, ideas that we may reject when we are in our normal, skeptical state, which keeps us safe from many dangers.

So one of the devices we can use to trigger our  religious / spiritual mode is music.  But what kind of music is best designed to invoke this mode.  This is where what we call religious / spiritual / psychedelic music comes in. I consider this to include much improvisational jazz and Indian classical music and even some tracks from the Grateful Dead.  The Dead borrow much from improv jazz, especially from the John Coltrane trio, and the way they played off their great pianist, McCoy Tyner. 

All three forms of music above are different from Beethoven in their improvisation. A raga or a jazz piece could last for 3 minutes or for an hour if the musicians are so inclined at the moment.  In their altered state, musicians can almost telepathically anticipate each other's moves and counter-moves. And the audience, in their altered state, sense both the telepathy between the performers and a shared consciousness with each other.

All three forms of music are associated with mind altering substances.  Jazz musicians are famous for their use of cannabis going back all the way to the birth of jazz. Indian ragas are strongly associated with religion and Hindu religious festivals often involve bhang.  And Deadheads, of course, are well known for their pot and acid.

Why do we have this mode?  I don't know but I suspect it's as intrinsic to us as religion.  All cultures in our history have developed forms of religion and religious ceremonies.  Perhaps religion makes us less liable to do things that hurt the collective, and our pre-programmed mode makes us more likely to accept new religious ideas, protecting our tribe from our unfettered selfish interests.

In any case, it behooves us to learn to exploit this mode, so we can, at least temporarily, achieve a sense of sublime joy.