Clever one-liners and profound-sounding slogans have always been very popular with wannabe philosophers. These slogans help them pose as intelligent (when they are not), enlightened and well-meaning (when they probably do not know what these things even mean). With the advent of internet and the profusion of social media, matters have gone from bad to worse. To the extent that there are more philosophers and deep thinkers than anybody knows what to do with, each one with the correct diagnosis for all the ills afflicting humanity along with their infallible remedy.
If the objective of the whole exercise is to sound smart, mindless parroting of such slogans is counterproductive because what it does instead is make one sound the exact opposite of smart. Unfortunately, mindless repetition of slogans is not a cognizable offence, and people take full advantage of the fact. They fail to realize that for a philosophy to be taken seriously the first condition that it needs to fulfil is that it is not self-contradictory. Questions regarding its other merits and demerits are important, but they are asked later. Unfortunately, most of the stuff that passes as wisdom on the social media (including the so-called philosophy forums) fails to satisfy the condition of self-consistency. Some of these slogans can even be traced back to some very impressive sounding men and movements.
For example, barely a day passes on the internet without one coming across this one liner, attributed to Christopher Hitchens: ‘That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.’ It sounds extremely profound until one thinks about it. Since those who keep triumphantly quoting it usually do not believe in giving anything a serious thought, they fail to realize that this principle itself is being asserted without evidence, and so the ‘golden’ rule demolishes itself as soon as it is applied back to itself. A self-defeating ‘argument’, if ever there was one.
Self-consistency is a huge subject, but it is always a good first step to apply any enthusiastically enunciated principle back to itself. For, as seen above, many grandiose-sounding philosophies fail this first hurdle.
Flashback to the early twentieth century when the Logical Positivists presented their criterion of knowledge, namely: ‘To have a meaning, any factual statement must at least in principle be empirically verifiable.’ Again, one does not need to be an Einstein to see that this is a factual statement that is not empirically verifiable. The Logical Empiricists were therefore forced to take a step back and say instead that the statement was only a methodological stipulation (whatever that meant). Unfortunately, nobody informed those who, to this day, keep asking for empirical proof for every statement before it can be considered.
Then there are the materialists who are hell bent on reducing human beings to the level of snooker balls, atoms, and molecules. Their famous slogan is that there is no free will, and that everything is predetermined. If the statement ‘everything is predetermined’ is true, then the claim of this statement itself is also predetermined, which makes the claim self-referential. Again, applying a theory back to itself does the trick. Also, according to the materialists’ own doctrines, the mind itself is a collection of matter, subject exclusively to external forces. This would mean that the knowledge that ‘everything is predetermined’ was generated by the arrangement of atoms and molecules inside man’s skull, which must have been caused solely by the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics, etc. And since all this was predetermined, it means that natural laws must cause knowledge, including knowledge of themselves, which is absurd.
There are other philosophies like this that people subscribe to. Each is enunciated in a manner as if it is the final word on philosophical thought. Each one bites the dust as soon as it is applied back to itself. For example: ‘You can never be sure of anything.’ Really? Can we be sure of this principle? Or ‘Thinking can lead you astray.’ Are we supposed to think about it? Or ‘Beware of proofs because they could fool you.’ ‘Can you prove it?’, one wants to ask them.
Finally, my favourite slogan of this type: ‘There is no point to the universe.’ Or its many variants, for example, ‘The universe does not make sense.’ Again, sounds intellectual enough. The problem however is that if there is no point to the universe, then there is no point to anything in it. And that would include the statement itself. Therefore, there is no reason whatsoever to take it seriously. Similarly, if the universe does not make sense, then the statement to that effect should make no sense either. Which makes its passionate pronouncement rather foolish.
Self-consistency is a huge subject, but it is always a good first step to apply any enthusiastically enunciated principle back to itself. For, as seen above, many grandiose-sounding philosophies fail this first hurdle.
