We are All Philosophical Animals

 
We are all philosophical animals:
How would I introduce philosophy to first-year undergrad students?

Preliminary remarks: Over the course of years, I have engaged in teaching philosophy to first-year undergrad students as a TA. I have always found it exciting and challenging to think about the best way to introduce philosophy to a general audience and people with no background. Finally, I overcame my hesitations and tried to pen down a sketch. Maybe I will use this material if I ever get to become a philosophy professor and have to teach an introductory course in philosophy. Anyway, please let me know what you think. 

We are all philosophical animals

 In this course, Intro to Philosophy, we are supposed to deal with some canonical philosophical texts and try to interpret and understand them. That is a very good way to be introduced to philosophy. Still, the drawback is to be lost in the trees and not see the jungle. All professional philosophers and philosophy students can attest to the fact that sometimes one feels lost when engaging with philosophical debates and questions, forgetting what philosophy is truly about. Still, what I want you to take away from this course is not just an aggregate of questions and debates unearthed from old philosophical books. Most of you will forget about the names, dates, and specific arguments unless you become a professional philosopher. Still, I think there is deeper takeaways that could stay longer with you than memorizing details of books and arguments. And that is Philosophy is a life skill. If you take away philosophy as a life skill that goes beyond the limits of narrow academic disciplines, I will feel successful in facilitating this course.

Conceptual Animals?

 So, what is philosophy as a skill? You see, there have been very interesting developments in the philosophical literature about the question of what philosophy is, also called meta-philosophy. One recent interesting breakthrough is an approach called conceptual engineering. It might sound complex and intimidating. Still, the basic idea behind it is pretty basic and simple. We are social animals that have to coordinate our behaviors with other members of our species and nature. As a species, we are equipped with a very unique technology for coordinating our behavior that is unprecedented in the whole animal kingdom, that is, words and concepts. You see, other complex animals may have very intricate systems of communication and signaling that enable complex forms of social coordination and organization. Bees and other social insects are interesting examples of well-evolved communication and signaling systems. In fact, some research shows that some songbirds could be as good as we are in vocal learning and production. We are one of the few primates with the capacity for vocal learning and production. Still, our communication system and vocal production are uniquely revolutionized with this unprecedented capacity. Our words, the units that form communicative expressions, are conceptual. We are the only conceptual and linguistic animals on this planet, and this is probably mostly by evolutionary chance. Let's unpack that. We have many instances of causal learning in the animal kingdom, that is, animals can associate one event with another and coordinate their behavior based on that. Namely, when I (let’s say I am a pigeon in this scenario) push that button in the experimental box, I will receive rewards. So, I will do that. Still, no animal, except for us, has a concept of cause. Cognitive psychologists have studied this deep cognitive gap between animal learning and humans, split by this conceptual capacity. Human, even their infants, can name the first event cause and the second one effect. Moreover, they can generalize from E1, E2 to another occasion when there are E3 and E4, and also call that cause and effect. They can project this structural relationship between cause and effect onto very different events. That is roughly what we call human distinctive conceptual reasoning. Now that we roughly know what our distinctive conceptual capacity is and what it means to say our words and threads of words are conceptually loaded, we can ask: Where does philosophy come into the picture?

Arguing with Mom: Where Philosophy Begins

 Every concept-word that we have, like an Amazon package, comes with an instruction for how to use it to coordinate your behavior. Take the example of a simple concept like “mother.” Of course, I use this term to refer to my mom, this specific person, this token. But with the same act, I also refer to a concept that is embedded in the world and is shared in my mind, my mom's mind, and the mind of the linguistic community to which I belong. Now, when I refer to my mom, I am coordinating my behavior with her and establishing and reproducing certain implicit social norms, codes, and rules involved in that act. By referring to, by using the concept, behaving according to it, or letting it guide my behavior, it coordinates my interaction with her, with the rest of the family, and the society. The term mother is supposed to pick out a social kind and an interpersonal role. Mom, this individual who is supposed to be the organism who biologically gave birth to me, who is supposed to take care of me, loves me. Cook for me (if you live in a patriarchal society) and sleep with my dad and not strangers (if you live in a monogamous society). All these implications of the term-concept mom give us a list of conditions of application of this concept in that speech community or that “representational tradition.”

Note that even in this example, we can see how screwed up the consequences of letting the concept guide our behavior could be. By letting the pre-given concept of mom shape my coordination with my mom, I am imposing certain constraints, expectations, and roles on her and myself. When I call her mom unreflectively, I am reinforcing a patriarchal structure of family on her. I also imply that, hey mom, if you want to deserve the name I'm calling you, you should cook for me, you should love me, you should be monogamous and only sleep with my dad, and so on and so on. All these? Can you believe it? What peculiar species we are! Our behavior, our social life, is heavily concept-laden, and this is where philosophy comes into the story. Philosophy is that creativity, that freedom, that flexibility that allows us to ask why, what are the reasons for using this concept, this way, not the other way.

 

Concepts Are Our Tools, Not Our Chains

As a linguistic community, we have some implied rules, a list of conditions of application of a concept. We have implicitly agreed to prioritize some items on the list as a necessary and sufficient condition of the application of a concept. Let's again take the concept of mom. In more traditional societies, biological birth, cooking food and exclusive sex right were on the top of the list, nowadays we have re-arranged the list, your foster mom could still be your mom, only not your biological mom because biological birth is no longer considered to be essential for the concept, sometimes we call our pets our children, so we are their mom or dad, so we don't have to even belong to the same species in order for me to be your dad. Isn't that crazy? that how creative we are as a species with our concepts?

 Now, what does philosophy do? Firstly, it acknowledges our concepts are flexible; we can redefine them, we don't have to behave and coordinate with our moms in the same repetitive and mechanical way for generations after generations and centuries after centuries. Secondly, philosophy makes sure that we have good, convincing reasons behind our definitions and redefinitions of our concepts. What we consider as a convincing reason change over time, maybe the reason for using the concept mom in that way is because God is happy that way or because individuals are freer that way or because it helps us to live in a free and equal society for all, we can be reflective on that level and question or change our reasons for defining concepts in one or another way, the concept of mother is just one example, we can think of a whole set of other examples, the concept of freedom guide our political actions and shape our political institutions, the concept of natural law or science guide our self-perception as scientists and our scientific practices. Political philosophers help to reflect on the use of the concept and reason behind it, so when we are engaged in political action, we don't get confused, and we don't use it in harmful ways. Philosophers of science redefine concepts guiding scientific practices.

Philosophy: Not Just for Old Bearded Guys

Now, what do all these mean? philosophy is not primarily an academic discipline; it is a cognitive skill shared among all members of humanity. We are all philosophizing and reshaping our concepts and behavior when we are disputing or arguing with our moms about the role of a good son or daughter. We are philosophizing when we ask our partner what is love, or why do they love us, we are philosophizing whenever we reflect, redirect our behavior and self-perception for a good reason, we are philosophizing whenever we are not being a non-mechanical, flexible and reflective in our social behavior, philosophy is what makes us humans and reflective animals, we are philosophical animals.

Now, what I wish you to take away from this introduction to philosophy, if anything, is that you develop a skill, a habit, an ethos, a philosophical ethos. Here are some examples:

1-    1- Being a philosopher, a good philosophical animal, means that you are patient, you don't always rush to act, you reflect, you give yourself time to reflect on your concepts and behavior, to take step back and reflect why, are there good reasons to see this matter in this way or respond in this way, or are they only arbitrary and ad hoc.

2-     2-Being a good philosopher means you resist peer pressure, the force of habit, and conformity to society and tradition. It means that you are independent, and you don't repeat, you don't act inflexibly, mechanically, without reflection, you don't just follow orders. A society that dictates “just follow the order” is uprooting philosophical ethos in people; these societies have always been prone to fascism and disaster.

3-     3- Being a good philosopher means to not be one dimensional, you cannot say that all I know is that I want to become a rich or famous or a successful person and make my family proud and I don't care about the rest, you don't get away with that, you should expand your language and do not run away from certain concepts or questions. Fortunately or unfortunately (whichever best fits you) human language has inherited your concepts like freedom, equality, humanity, art and music, you cannot shy away from redefining these concepts, you cannot avoid making connection between your definition of happiness, richness, family and the concept of freedom, equality, politics and art, you cannot carve out a part of language and its concept and forget about others, you should be courageous and do not hide from curiosity.

4-  4-Finally, being a good philosopher means you acknowledge that there is a problem, tension, and oppression. You don’t brush things under the rug. It means that you are willing to sit down and address the problem, so if you hate people, you don't like talking to people, you yell at them, and just want to be left alone in your antisocial world, then you, I'm afraid to say, are not a good philosopher. You have failed this course, even if I gave you an A for memorizing some details.

 

 

September 2025, London, Ontario

Farid Saberi