Philosophy 3, or, the Unphilosophy

In my last post ("Philosophy 2 ...") I ended with:  It's good to be able to say "I don't know" or "I don't care".

Supposing one couldn't say those things.  What then?

Well, not being able to say "I don't know", one might be forever having to answer every question, either by doing a lot of good research, or by lying, or by incompetently giving some poor answers to some questions.  One could opt for saying nothing at all, which is antisocial.

While not being able to say "I don't care", one is likely to be often accosted by people who want involvement -- like telemarketers for charities.  One could say to them, "Sorry, I cannot help" which would often be a lie.  One could just say "No"without giving an excuse, but that's about the same as saying "I don't care" -- you would at least be thinking to yourself, "I don't care about this, compared with other things".

I do love to know some things -- I just don't want to do it every time somebody else wants me to, and I don't want to have to make excuses to them.   And there are going to be lots of things I won't be able to figure out.

Whereas in the posts Philosophy 1 and Philosophy 2, I was saying that in addition to the respected ways of knowing by "observing" and "reasoning" there is a third, undefined way that I call intuition, now in Philosophy 3 I say that in addition to knowing there is not knowing, and in addition to caring there is not caring, and, depending on circumstances, all these may be options.

So, sometimes I care and want to know, and sometimes I don't.  During the typical middle class life such as mine, the option of not caring or not pursuing a particular truth is as important as being able to know.  So, for the well-rounded individual, there are both philosophy and unphilosophy, and either one might occasionally be better than the other, in social situations, such as when one is asked questions, or in private, such as when one is just sitting still, alone in a room having quiet time.

I hope that when I'm interested in a topic (such as to know a truth and to reason what is a better way to do things) others will be interested enough to get involved too.  But generally it's good for them to have a choice in which things they do or don't want to get involved in.  I might know it's really important that they be involved in a topic, such as climate change, but if they are to have meaningful existence as individuals, they should have options and choose for themselves which things they want to get involved in.

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