“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.”
―E.B. White
Were I ever to become a stand up comedian, I might do something unusual and compose my jokes with philosophers as my audience. I’d send invitations to philosophy professors, philosophy clubs and associations, etc., to ensure that only philosophers were in my audience.
Of course this will never happen. But if it did my opening joke on the first night would be this: “Leave it to philosophers to invent metaphilosophy.” I’d say it dryly. The audience would stare into black space in utter silence, but after four eternal seconds of pause, burst into laughter. I’d be a hit!
One thing I’ve discovered as I have sunk deeper into philosophical inquiry over the years is that very few people in the “general public” have much of a clue as to what philosophy is and what it is for — or why it is important and valuable. So an audience comprised of non-philosophers would’t get my joke. Odds are, many of my readers won’t get my joke either. Let me explain.
Just kidding. Ba-dump-bump.
Metaphilosophy is the philosophical study or reflection upon the nature, methods, aims, and assumptions of philosophy itself. In essence, it’s philosophy about philosophy. Metaphilosophy explores questions about the nature of philosophical inquiry, the limits and possibilities of philosophical knowledge, and the best ways to approach philosophical problems and concepts.
Philosophy: A Quest for Aptness
Although I have never read it, Wittgenstein’s book (posthumously published) On Certainty popped into mind as I was pondering what I wanted to say in this article (essay?). I’m told the book addresses the question of what certainty is (or might be). The book doesn’t aim to provide a conclusive stance on the possibility of certainty but rather to provoke thought and discussion on the nature and limits of certainty in our lives. I mention the notion of the quest for certainty here because that’s what many people — both philosophers and non-philosophers — imagine philosophy to be about. But that’s not what I do as a philosopher. It’s not my metaphilosophy. My metaphilosophy is, instead, to propose that philosophy is a quest for aptness.
We often think of aptness in relation to word choices in writing and speaking, and that’s one kind of aptness I do think important for practicing philosophers, but aptness can apply to pretty much any activity.
Dictionary.com defines apt as “suited to the purpose or occasion; appropriate.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines apt as “unusually fitted or qualified.” Etymonline defines apt as “suited, fitted, adapted, possessing the necessary qualities for the purpose” … “fit, suited, proper, appropriate.”
Just as words can be apt to our purposes, so can ideas, theories, concepts, methods, tools, technologies, behaviors, practices, institutions … and so much more. Each of these can also be inapt. They can be a slightly or a grossly bad fit.
When was the last time you heard someone say inapt (which means lacking aptness), or seen that word in writing? I can’t remember ever seeing or hearing it. Mostly, we hear and read “inept,” which means something very similar. Indeed, the words appear to be mostly synonymous.
Merriam-Webster again:
inept:
1: generally incompetent : BUNGLING
2: lacking in fitness or aptitude : UNFIT
3: not suitable to the time, place, or occasion : inappropriate often to an absurd degree
4: lacking sense or reason : FOOLISH
Fossil Obsolescence
Let’s now remember my concept of “fossil obsolescence” in part one of this series. Short for “fossil fuel obsolescence,” the larger concept / narrative I provided was one in which our civilization continues to design itself around (in accordance with) the premise of cheap fossil fuels (measured both in economic and ecological terms), even though those days are well behind us. A fundamentally key design premise which underlies our built environment, our mode of agricultural production, our globalized techno-industrial civilization and its economy, our workaday lives and modes of access to livelihood are now fully obsolete (as in no longer useful), and yet we continue to employ this design premise in most everything we do. We have fallen out of aptness and become collectively inept — in almost every imaginable way.
In terms of fittedness (fitness?) to “our environment” (ecosystems, the biosphere), our culture is simply wildly inapt and inept. It’s our culture, not our species, which is inept and not a good fit, inappropriate. And I’m saying that philosophy is necessary as part of the cure for our blundering (and dangerous, and catastrophic) ineptness as a culture.
This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped. As primary production drives Earth system biosphere functions, human appropriation of net primary production is proposed as a control variable for functional biosphere integrity. This boundary is also transgressed. Earth system modeling of different levels of the transgression of the climate and land system change boundaries illustrates that these anthropogenic impacts on Earth system must be considered in a systemic context.
— https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
If the purpose and function of philosophy is to pursue a quest for aptness, well, now we’re talking! I mean, we’re talking about our talking (meta-communication), for example. But we’re also talking about our doing, and about what we’re not doing, and we’re sincerely questing to understand why, collectively, we have been so (insert cuss word here) inept.
If you were to marry someone, only to discover a few weeks later that your partner was a bumbling dunderhead who perpetually sets fire to the kitchen and feeds canned dogfood to the tropical fish in your aquarium, you’d have a sense of how utterly inept our culture is in its ecological relations with the biosphere and ecosystems. And the marriage would not last long. Am I right? Not if he or she continues to make a disaster of everything, including dinner. At very least, you’d seek couples therapy, in order to try and set your relationship right.
But, in a certain metaphorical sense, we’re all married to a culture which is a bumbling dunderhead, and we can’t possibly get a divorce. All we can do is practice a lot of meta-communication in order to sort things out as best we can, and try to develop greater aptness in our relationship. There is no planet B, no matter what Elon Musk may have to say on this question. We’re not going to terraform Mars. (Sheesh.)
I’d like to invite you to see a pattern. How we are doing our relationship with Earth’s biosphere just might possibly be mightily similar to how we are doing our intra-species relationships. Am I right? Think of the present Israel / Palestine relationship, the Russia / Ukraine relationship. Think of your landlord neighbor who lives in the front house, and you live in the back house, and he sprays your meticulously organic vegetable and herb garden with pesticides without even consulting you first. Think of the neighbor who uses a leaf blower on dry dusty summer soil in freaking August in New Mexico … to clean up the yard, thus stirring up dust when you don’t even have a freaking air conditioner … and so open windows are how you cool down your tiny little casita with a cross breeze. Think of the dog barking in the yard all night freaking long. But try not to work yourself into a lather of desperate despair tinged with contempt and everlasting traumatized sorrow toward your neighbor … who wants to live trap squirrels and raccoons and take them way up into the mountains to release them, that’s gonna work out you damned….
Anyway, you get my point.
Ba-dump-bum.
Meta-communication
Metacommunication refers to communication about communication. It involves the exchange of information beyond the explicit message being conveyed and focuses on the context, tone, or manner in which messages are delivered. It’s the conversation about how we communicate rather than the content of what we’re communicating.
Metacommunication can include nonverbal cues, such as body language or tone of voice, which can greatly influence the meaning of the actual words spoken. For example, if someone says they’re fine but their body language suggests otherwise, the metacommunication might imply that they’re not entirely okay.
Moreover, metacommunication plays a crucial role in resolving misunderstandings, establishing rapport, and ensuring clarity in interpersonal relationships. It involves discussing how communication is understood, interpreted, and the impact it has on the individuals involved in the conversation. — ChatGPT
Sorry to toss in a quote from ChatGPT. No, I am not fond of A.I. “bots”. Just no. But there are other things to talk about, and frankly Wikipedia and dictionaries are not very helpful here. Sigh. (A sigh is perhaps a bit of non-verbal meta-communcation.)
The way I initially learned the concept, meta-communication was introduced to me, mainly, as “talking about our talking”, or “learning how to communicate better with one another by talking about how we are talking.”
My observation is that interpersonal relationships of any sort are apt (another very different sense of apt) to go sideways whenever the partners in the communication are not meta-communicating well (aptly). This is certainly true when the people involved are a couple, or when they are neighbors, or when they are astronauts in space suits driving their Tesla sports car toward Mars for terraforming.
Meta-communication, in my view, is among the most fundamental skills (at least for humans) toward the aim of apt interpersonal relations — on any scale of participants, being individuals (‘intra-psychic’ meta-communication, a.k.a, talking with one’s self about one’s talking with one’s self), couples, triads, quads….
- Individual
- Dyad (Pair)
- Triad (Trio)
- Quad (Quartet)
- Quintet
- Sextet
- Septet
- Octet
- Nonet
- Decet (or sometimes called a dectet)
Thanks GPT!
If philosophy boils down to “a quest for aptness” don’t you think it largely comes down to communicating well together (whether the “parts” communicating” are “internal” or “external”?
And that’s where “I” slip in a magician-philosopher’s trick question! That’s where the shaman-philosophizer pulls a goddam flower pot out of a rabbit’s butt… pulled from a hat! I’m not bragging here. I’m saying, in a meta-communicative but also very lost and confused sort of way that I have no certainty here. Here’s where I embody the Trickster, Coyote. Not as a braggart but as a beggar, for no one would embody Trickster deliberately without failing miserably. I can’t — and never have — chosen to embody Trickster on purpose, deliberately. It comes with the price of a wound. No one embodies Trickster without having been deeply, utterly, profoundly wounded — fractured, broken, a bit crazy or mad.
All philosophers are wounded
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal
All philosophers are wounded.
All of the wounded are beggars.
Therefore, all wounds are begs.
Okay, maybe that last one wasn’t quite a logical syllogism.
But there is something to it. We tend not to wonder very deeply until we have to. Indeed, we tend not to wander very far until we must.
When we are far under water for a long time we are desperate to swim to the surface and gasp for breath.
And sometimes the only thing that will inspire us to swim for breath is generosity and kindness. Love.
Self-seeking will not be sufficient motivation. We’d rather drown than to be such a self.
That’s where the Trickster is coming from. She’s desperate.
— To Be Continued —
