Not fooling yourself: the quiz!

Question one:
do you 'let ideas die in your place'? That is, do you have a positive attitude towards criticism and not take realising you're wrong personally?

Question two:
Are you optimistic that problems have solutions?

Question three:
Do you actively seek criticism of your ideas?

Question four:
Do you have some, at least a basic, understanding of logic, reasoning and argument

Question five:
Do you have a lot of strongly held beliefs: 

yes, one's I've thought a lot about consciously 
yes, one's I've thought a bit about
yes, but I don't realise it because they're all inexplicit beliefs

Question six:

Think of your three mostly highly regarded theories. Got them? Good. How many hard criticisms have you had challenge each in the last 6 months?

Question seven:
Do you, in large, have the same beliefs as your peers? If so, which came first, the peers of the beliefs?

Question Eight:
how often do you have a good debate or discussion, or read something to a similar effect?

Question Nine:
Do you have at least one friend who'll eagerly try to tell you why you're wrong about stuff?

Question Ten: 
Think of a few of your intellectual idols. People who have influenced your own thoughts. Can you readily think of problems you believe there are with their work?

Question Eleven:
Are you willing to think of bold solutions to problems and not just sit on the fence, where you'll be more prone to fallacies of common sense?

Question Twelve:
Do you frequently have Socratic episodes in which you realise that you are naiver or more ignorant than you thought?

Question Thirteen:
Do you think you did well on this test?

Why we Promise

A business man puts his reputation on the line when he promises a client that his product will be of X quality at T time. It's a completely different thing than if he merely said in passing that he thinks it will be X good. When a person promises it means they are assuring you that you can hold them to their word on this matter.

It's the same sort of thing with personal relationships, too. It's not exactly 'reputation' on the line, but no one would want to put their friend off being their friend because they aren't reliable to their word.

And so this social practice has helped people make many good stable agreements over the years. You could say, it's helped make relying on people more reliable! If you say you'll do something and you forget, then it's not clear how blameworthy you are. Perhaps you're careless, or perhaps it was a simple mistake. But if you promise someone you'll do something and forget, this is more obviously very neglectful of you and therefore blameworthy. After all, everyone knows the rules of promises.They're serious stuff, you can't just neglect to remember.

But if promises are so great, why don't we use them even more?! Why don't I get my friend S, who's always 5 minutes late, to promise to be on time, and this way he has to make the extra effort that he's not currently making or else he might lose me as a friend? Why not order promises at every single junction?

Well, quite obviously, we don't do that because that'd be horrible. Specifically, it would be horrible because we need to, to get along with each other, be a bit more tolerant of each others mistakes. We also need to be tolerant in other ways that effect promises, like we need to be tolerant that people change their minds. So the question really is, what makes the instances where it's good to make a promise so special that we are less tolerant of our friends making a mistake (like forgetting, or not being able to do it) or having the freedom to change their minds?

The intuitive answer is: when the promisee really needs the promiser to keep their promise. It's a bit annoying that S is always five minuets late, but it's a fairly tolerable quirk as far as quirks go, particularly in an age of smart phones. But if a person is injured at the side of a road, and you promise to come back for them with help, forgetting isn't really OK. Or if a dad promises his son he'll be at his birthday party, it wouldn't really be OK to change his mind in preference of the pub. But wait, now we're in the territory of things you're probably obligated to do regardless of the promising.

So the criteria needs to be that the action is not something you are obligated to do unless you promise to do it, and yet something that you could fairly be not tolerated for not doing. Perhaps our answer lies where we started, with the business man trying to keep your business.

Here's an example: Rebecca asks John, her friend, if he can be around tomorrow night because she needs to go over a very important pitch she'll be giving at work that could get her a promotion. He promises he will.   If he didn't keep this promise, unless he had a very good reason, he wouldn't be a very good person to be friends with. This is actually completely different from my friend S always being 5 mins late, because this kind of thing won't really effect how good a friend that person is (we'll assume the friendship has other assets).

certain relationships come along with certain things you actually have to be reliable for in order for that relationship to last. Good neighbours have to water the plants when you're on holiday and keep the noise down after 10 PM. Friends have to be there for you when you're having a personal problem. Boyfriends and girlfriends have to share an affection. But these are consensual 'have tos' I am using. Without your continued agreement you don't have to be a good neighbour  or a friend, or a boyfriend/girlfriend, or a two people trading, or anything other kind of human relationship. Promises are one of many ways we confirm we want to keep 'doing business together', so to speak, and accept the cost of doing so.

Cult Philosophy

Western philosophy is defined by its tradition of criticism. So when you get a ''movement'' in philosophy it is just as notable for its internal divergences as for its shared principles. What you get very little of, then, are philosophy cults. Of course, cults, which are common enough, operate according to a certain "philosophy" in the sense that they hold certain ideas or world-views, but this is different from the sense of "philosophy" western philosophy is interested in because it lacks a critical attitude.

Once in a while, though, there are borderline cases: A group of thinkers who discuss positively a shared set of beliefs, who to one set of people may appear to be philosophy, and to another a cult. (An example of this may be Rand's Collective or Objectivists more generally.)

The reason these borderline cases have an appearance of a cult to them is due to the ways in which they go against the traditions of Western philosophy as hinted at above. They tend to have qualities like: the group seeking guidance from an authority rather than each member of the movements taking their lead from problems they've identified with their superior's theory. Or they lack careful and rigorous exchange with their opponents, (instead often considering their opponents only according to the most naive or negative interpretation).

The reason they have the appearance of not being a cult is that they will in some way have attributes that are too "serious" to be a cult. Perhaps, for instance, the participants of the movement consider the ideas carefully and do not take them on blind-faith. Or perhaps the participants are a part of the movement for the ideas themselves, and not "to belong" or other such psychological determinants typical of cults.

Perhaps then, instead of discreet categories when it comes to belonging to a movements--one being a school of philosophy and the other a cult--it would be more accurate to say that both exist at two extremes of a continuum. This might be a more fitting interpretation.

Yet two categories do spring to mind: the learner and the thinker. Let me explain.

We might ask, what is actually so bad about one of these borderline cults if the ideas are actually good? Yes, there are criticisms, good criticisms, most important of which is that criticism is an important weapon against fallibility and this must be taken seriously, which the borderlines aren't as good at. But there are assets, too.

Sometimes a philosopher is so busy carefully understanding something, so as to rip it to shreds, they miss a lot of what's good and useful about a theory. In this respect the likes of Rand's collective are being more thorough--certainly they could tell you more about what's good about objectivism and how to put it into practice in your every day life than most other ethical movements could with their theories.

So perhaps we need both! We need a bit of cultishness to learn the best of good theories inside and out (the learner). And we need the traditions of western philosophy to then alleviate us against dogma and to go on to use our own understanding of things (the thinker).

You see, I suggest what is actually bad about some of these borderline cases, isn't their bits of cultishness per se, but is the degree to which they mistake themselves for thinkers when they are are learners.

It is good to know which you are doing, and if you were to mistake one for the other, you could find yourself in a very dogmatic position.