Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

popular culture so that they fit together. To see how it does this, though, we need to learn something about conceptual schemes.

The Complete Two-Minute Introduction to Conceptual Schemes

All of us see the world (metaphorically, but not just metaphorically) in different ways, if only because of the rather trivial fact that none of us are ever in exactly the same place at exactly the same time. But two people who see the world differently might nevertheless use similar categories or concepts in their seeing. You believe that Californians are the secret controllers of the world and read the news accordingly, spotting the devilish Californian hand in every market fluctuation and weather report. I think you’re nuts, because I know its the Texans who really run things, calling all the shots. For all our differences we have much in common, insofar as we both see the world by means of the same categories—secret oppressor, oppressed, news report, and so on. Conceptually-speaking, we are pretty much a match; we use the same concepts and have the same conceptual scheme. And for our purposes, this is all we need to understand by ‘conceptual scheme’.

I invite you to venture beyond the safety of this book and read more about conceptual schemes. (Though you should do so with care; much of the discussion is hard going and some of it is not just confusing, but confused. It’s also a bit dull, but more about that later.) You’ll find much more to read, because conceptual schemes—and they go by many names, among them ‘linguistic frameworks’ and the overused ‘paradigm’—have been all the rage, inside as well as outside the world of college professors. In fact, it’s become popular to regard philosophy as a sort of manufacturing and testing facility for conceptual schemes. This is actually a rather radical idea, since it departs from the notion of philosophy that Hume, for example, had in mind. Hume thought philosophy was after various truths about, for example, how humans work. If we think of philosophy as the manufacturing facility for conceptual schemes, though, truth itself shows up as a part of one conceptual scheme among others, indeed, among many. So if philosophy is the construction and examination of conceptual schemes—ways for us to think about the world—then it’s not a search for truth, whether it’s truth about us, the Holy Grail, or anything else.

And Therefore . . .

I once believed that philosophy was the search for truth. In fact, I went on and on about it in my Ph. D. dissertation, and I remember around the same time that when non-philosophers sidled up to me and said “Hey, Gary, what is philosophy?” I’d say back, “Well, it’s the search for truth.” But now I think philosophy is the presentation and elaboration of conceptual schemes, not a search for truth. This doesn’t mean I have anything against truth; I don’t. I just see it as part of a conceptual scheme that we can adopt or not, as we choose.

One reason I like the conceptual schemes idea, and not the only one, is that it explains why that particular mix of Monty Python and philosophy worked, and still works. Believe for the moment the notion that philosophy consists in the construction and elaboration of, and reflection upon, conceptual schemes. Think if you will of philosophy as a remarkably elaborate and often ridiculously precise exercise of describing how, in general, we can look at things, in general. And though it presents this or that conceptual scheme, it is not the adoption of this or that conceptual scheme. Philosophers build the conceptual glasses, but they don’t actually wear them or even, perhaps, put them on. They look at them, not through them.

Even people who love to do this recognize it is rather dry and removed from everyday life. All of us, though, are driven to do this sort of thing to some degree; we are inclined not just to see the world but to reflect upon how we see the world. Hume didn’t know anything about conceptual schemes, but I think he would have appreciated that constructing and examining conceptual schemes is in this respect akin to the search for truth he imagined philosophy to be.

And Hume would have appreciated what a difference there is between such reflection and actually seeing, or at least being shown, the world in some new way—that is, actually taking on, or being shown, some new conceptual scheme. The latter is far more exciting, for one. So we can cast Hume’s philosophy-popular culture divide in terms of conceptual schemes. It is just the difference between, say, skiing and talking about skiing, between eating great Indian food and discussing Indian food, between visiting a cheese shop uncontaminated by cheese and talking about visiting such a cheese shop.

And that’s it. That’s the connection between Monty Python and philosophy. What we have in philosophy is the discussion of conceptual schemes. What we have, so often and so well, in Monty Python is a glimpse of what some new conceptual schema would be like if we, or those around us, actually lived in it. In philosophy you talk the aesthetics of skiing, the nature of the taste of Indian food, and the meaning of life in a world of disappointment. What Monty Python gives you is the conceptual scheme in action, as it were, animated, brought to life. You’re on skis headed toward the cheese shop, Indian food in mouth. Well, not really of course; but at least you’re not just talking anymore.

From the philosophy-as-examining-conceptual-schema point of view, my talk on philosophy and Monty Python looks something like this: Philosopher talks about philosophy and how philosophy has been understood by philosophers. Philosopher shows Monty Python clip of philosophers playing football. Philosopher talks about the notion that any belief could be held in the face of any evidence at all if one is willing to make adjustments in one’s other beliefs. Philosopher shows clip of