The Strategy

Philosophical texts are usually hard to understand. It's a good idea to read through a text once without worrying too much about understanding it. The real work of "getting it" happens on the second or third (or fourth, fifth, ...) go-round.

The point of a philosophical text is always to convince the audience of something. Perhaps the author wants to draw your attention to a problem no one has seen before. Perhaps the author wants to propose a solution to a problem. Perhaps the author wants to show you that some claims are connected: if you believe one, you should believe the other, for example.

That means that the best way to read a text is as an answer to questions.

• What is the author trying to convince me of? (What's the thesis?)
• Why should I believe her? (What's the argument?)

Continue to Getting a Handle on the Thesis.

Getting a Handle on the Thesis

Very often, especially in texts of more recent vintage, the thesis is pretty clearly marked. The author will say things like "I'll argue that..." or something of the sort. Sometimes, it takes some doing to figure out what the thesis is. Indeed, sometimes it's easier to see that an argument is being made, and you have to just assume that the author's main thesis is whatever the conclusion of the argument turns out to be.

If the thesis is easy to identify, it's a good idea to stop for a minute and think about it. Do you understand what it means? Does it contain technical vocabulary that's new or unfamiliar? If so, the first thing to do is find the definitions or explanations of the terms in it. Often, these explanations are in the paper itself. Sometimes, they aren't. At that point, you need to consult other resources. If you're doing reading that's assigned for a class you're taking, you can ask your TF or your professor. You can also avail yourself of some of the resources the web has to offer. A good one is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). It's got excellent entries on many topics, and it is continuously updated. The Wikipedia is also a decent resource, though not as reliable as the SEP.

Likewise, if the thesis you've identified is stated in metaphorical (non-literal) terms. The point of making sure that you understand the thesis is to make sure that you know what would count as a reason for or against believing it. If a thesis is stated metaphorically, that's often hard. In philosophy, metaphors can be suggestive, but they might also hide important distinctions. So it's a good idea to try and restate the thesis in non-metaphorical, i.e., literal, terms.

Once you've ID'd the thesis and figured out what it means, ask yourself whether you find it plausible. Why might someone disagree with it? Come up with at least two reasons why you shouldn't accept it. This'll put you in a properly critical frame of mind.

Continue to Reading the Rest.

Reading the Rest

Now read the rest of the paper. After each paragraph, ask yourself the question: what is the author doing in this paragraph? And why does the paragraph appear here? Some of the things an author will usually do at some point in the paper are:

• Explain her terminology
• Explain why her topic is important, for example by relating it to other problems in philosophy
• Give her main argument
• Give examples to illustrate a principle she's discussing
• Present an objection to a view she disagrees with
• Present an objection someone might raise against the author's own position
• Respond to an objection

Continue to Extracting and Argument.

Extracting an Argument

An argument seeks to give you reasons for accepting a conclusion. To do so, an argument needs to have two virtues. The reasons adduced must be relevant to the conclusion. Here's what that means in more concrete terms. Suppose there's a certain reason on offer. Suppose you accept that reason. Does that mean that you should then also accept the conclusion at issue? If so, the reason is relevant. If not, it's not. Usually, the reasons are themselves claims. In order for these reasons to be good reasons, the claims must be true. (Incidentally, these two virtues correspond roughly to the formal features of validity and soundness.)

So in order to extract an argument from a text, you need to look at all the claims that are offered as reasons. You need to think about why they might be reasons. And you need to ask whether they claims offered as reasons are good on the merits---whether they're true.

All of this undoubtedly sounds good and perhaps even obvious in the abstract. Let's look at a specific example.

Continue to An Example.

An Example

This example is taken from Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy, first published in 1912. These paragraphs are the opening of Chapter 6.

As a first pass, read through the whole thing once.

In almost all our previous discussions we have been concerned in the attempt to get clear as to our data in the way of knowledge of existence. What things are there in the universe whose existence is known to us owing to our being acquainted with them? So far, our answer has been that we are acquainted with our sense-data, and, probably, with ourselves. These we know to exist. And past sense-data which are remembered are known to have existed in the past. This knowledge supplies our data.

But if we are to be able to draw inferences from these data -- if we are to know of the existence of matter, of other people, of the past before our individual memory begins, or of the future, we must know general principles of some kind by means of which such inferences can be drawn. It must be known to us that the existence of some one sort of thing, A, is a sign of the existence of some other sort of thing, B, either at the same time as A or at some earlier or later time, as, for example, thunder is a sign of the earlier existence of lightning. If this were not known to us, we could never extend our knowledge beyond the sphere of our private experience; and this sphere, as we have seen, is exceedingly limited. The question we have now to consider is whether such an extension is possible, and if so, how it is effected.

Let us take as an illustration a matter about which none of us, in fact, feel the slightest doubt. We are all convinced that the sun will rise to-morrow. Why? Is this belief a mere blind outcome of past experience, or can it be justified as a reasonable belief? It is not easy to find a test by which to judge whether a belief of this kind is reasonable or not, but we can at least ascertain what sort of general beliefs would suffice, if true, to justify the judgement that the sun will rise to-morrow, and the many other similar judgements upon which our actions are based.

It is obvious that if we are asked why we believe that the sun will rise to-morrow, we shall naturally answer 'Because it always has risen every day'. We have a firm belief that it will rise in the future, because it has risen in the past. If we are challenged as to why we believe that it will continue to rise as heretofore, we may appeal to the laws of motion: the earth, we shall say, is a freely rotating body, and such bodies do not cease to rotate unless something interferes from outside, and there is nothing outside to interfere with the earth between now and to-morrow. Of course it might be doubted whether we are quite certain that there is nothing outside to interfere, but this is not the interesting doubt. The interesting doubt is as to whether the laws of motion will remain in operation until to-morrow. If this doubt is raised, we find ourselves in the same position as when the doubt about the sunrise was first raised.

Continue to The Thesis (Main Point).

The Thesis (Main Point)

Now that you've read it once, let's look over it again. The first thing to look for is the main point Russell is trying to make. The main point is not contained in the first paragraph. You can tell, because Russell just tells you what's happened so far. He suggests that we have certain data that experience can give us.

So let's look at the second paragraph.

But if we are to be able to draw inferences from these data -- if we are to know of the existence of matter, of other people, of the past before our individual memory begins, or of the future, we must know general principles of some kind by means of which such inferences can be drawn. It must be known to us that the existence of some one sort of thing, A, is a sign of the existence of some other sort of thing, B, either at the same time as A or at some earlier or later time, as, for example, thunder is a sign of the earlier existence of lightning. If this were not known to us, we could never extend our knowledge beyond the sphere of our private experience; and this sphere, as we have seen, is exceedingly limited. The question we have now to consider is whether such an extension is possible, and if so, how it is effected.

There's a dead give-away that will point you immediately to the point: Russell says at the end that "the question we now have to consider is whether such an extension is possible, and if so, how it is effected." So even though we don't know what answer Russell ultimately wants to give, we at least know what question he wants to ask in this chapter. He wants to ask how "such an extension" is possible.

I told you earlier that once you've identified the main point, you need to make sure you're clear on everything that's used to state it. In this case, Russell talks about "such an" extension, i.e., something that he's talked about earlier. What is it? It's drawing inferences about things we can't observe directly on the basis of what we can observe.

So here's the main question: how do we draw inferences about what we can't observe directly based on what we can observe directly?

What's going on in the rest of the quote? The third paragraph contains an example. We all expect that the sun will rise tomorrow (that's something we can't observe right now, though we can observe it tomorrow). Russell wants to know why we do. Notice that at this point, Russell makes his question more precise. He says:

Is this belief a mere blind outcome of past experience, or can it be justified as a reasonable belief?

Presumably, he's re-stating the question he asked in the previous paragraph here. But look at how we interpreted the question earlier, and how he states it now:

• Earlier statement: How do we draw inferences about what we can't observe directly based on what we can observe directly?
• Now: Can our inference about what we can't observe directly by justified as a reasonable belief?

So what Russell really is asking is not how we draw the inference (a psychological question, presumably to be answered by cognitive scientists), but what reasons we could possible have that would make this a justified inference to draw (a question smack-dab in the purview of philosophy).

Continue to Finding some Arguments.

Finding some Arguments

On to the final paragraph of the quote. What is he doing? Here it is again.

It is obvious that if we are asked why we believe that the sun will rise to-morrow, we shall naturally answer 'Because it always has risen every day'. We have a firm belief that it will rise in the future, because it has risen in the past. If we are challenged as to why we believe that it will continue to rise as heretofore, we may appeal to the laws of motion: the earth, we shall say, is a freely rotating body, and such bodies do not cease to rotate unless something interferes from outside, and there is nothing outside to interfere with the earth between now and to-morrow. Of course it might be doubted whether we are quite certain that there is nothing outside to interfere, but this is not the interesting doubt. The interesting doubt is as to whether the laws of motion will remain in operation until to-morrow. If this doubt is raised, we find ourselves in the same position as when the doubt about the sunrise was first raised.

The point of a paragraph is often stated either at the beginning or the end, so let's look at these two places. The beginning canvasses a possible answer to the question, and the end of the paragraph tells us that "we find ourselves in the same position as when the doubt about the sunrise was first raised." That is to say, the answer canvassed at the beginning does not help us answer the question we're after. Russell is considering a possible answer the question he asked and rejects it in the paragraph.

The answer he's thinking about is this: I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has risen every morning so far. That's what I'll tell anybody who asks (if I even deign to answer a silly question like that in the first place). I might even tell some story about why that's a good answer, involving general laws that govern the motion of stars and planets. But then there's allegedly a problem: "the interesting doubt is as to whether the laws of motion will remain in operation until to-morrow."

In order to extract an argument, we really need to do the same work we did for the quoted four paragraphs for just this one. So far, we've identified the main point: the "interesting" doubt remains. But what does Russell mean when he talks about the "interesting" doubt. Presumably, he intends to contrast this doubt with a less interesting one. So let's try and say what the interesting doubt and the not-so-interesting doubts are.

Both of these doubts have to be about whether I know that the sun will rise tomorrow. If I raise a doubt, I ask a question like "how do you know that?" Different doubts will correspond to different reasons I might have for asking the question. Unfortunately, Russell doesn't really explain to us what the two doubts are, so we need to look at the other clues he provides us. The best clues we have are the answers he considers. He thinks that being told that the sun has risen in the past (and that future sun-rises accord with natural law) is a good way of dispelling one doubt but not another. So let's think about a question that this would be a good answer to. Here's one.

• First Question: Does tomorrow's sunrise fit into a pattern that you've seen in the past?

If that's what someone's asking, you can see why pointing to past sun-rises would help. The answer would be"yes," to wit, the pattern of past sunrises.

But that cannot really be what Russell has in mind when he talks about the not-so-interesting doubt, since it'd be completely irrelevant to mention the general laws govern the motion of stars and planets. So here's a way of asking a question where the appeal to the laws of nature isn't completely otiose.

• Second Question: Let's assume that there's a pattern of past sunrises that tomorrow's sunrise fits into and that we've in fact seen in the past. Do we have reason to think that it'll continue in the future?

That's a question that's at least addressed by the appeal to laws of nature. After all, you can say that yes, the pattern of mornings being accompanied by sunrises will continue, since there are laws of nature that ensure it.

If that's the question Russell has in mind, we can also see why he goes on as does: why should I think that the laws of nature will continue to hold? That is to say, we can now distinguish between two kinds of doubts that Russell might want us to think about.

• First kind of doubt: Let's assume that there's a pattern of past sunrises that tomorrow's sunrise would continue. Does tomorrow's sunrise really accord with natural law (or might the Earth be knocked off its orbit by an asteroid)?
• Second kind of doubt: Let's assume that there's a pattern of past sunrises that tomorrow's sunrise would continue. Let's also assume that if the laws of nature continue to hold, the sun will definitely rise tomorrow. Do we have any reason to believe that the laws of nature will hold tomorrow?

These two kinds of doubt map pretty well onto Russell's text, and it even makes sense of Russell's idea that the second kind of doubt (which is presumably the interesting one) is the same kind of doubt we had in the beginning. Here's how that goes: You want to know whether you have any reason to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. The initial reason you might give is that there's a past pattern that you have reason to expect to hold in the future. But suppose someone doubts that you really have good reason to believe that the past pattern will hold in the future. At that point, you point to the laws of nature. And now the same question arises for the laws of nature: you know that they've held in the past. Do you have any reason to believe that they will hold in the future? Only to the extent that you have reason to believe that past patterns will continue to hold in the future. And that's just what we're doubting in the first place.

Notice that the argument is really about doubts about whether you have good reasons to believe that past patterns will continue to hold in the future. That is the question we can't answer just by pointing to natural laws.

This is where I'll leave off from Russell's text. Feel free to read the rest of chapter 6 to get an answer to this "more interesting" doubt.

Continue to Summary.

Summary

So let's summarize. Russell does four things in these four paragraphs.

• He tells us where we are (paragraph 1).
• He tells us what question he's interested in (paragraph 2-3).
• He gives an example of how this question looks for a specific example (paragraph 3).
• He rejects an answer that is probably the first answer we would come up with (paragraph 4).

When you take philosophy classes, you're often told that the reading assignments are short because they're dense. One thing you might have noticed is that I spent a lot of time on just these four paragraphs. To put it mildly, there's a bit of work involved in getting at the main point, and how other material is related to this main point. For example, it turns out that what I thought was the main question at the end of the second paragraph is elaborated again in the third paragraph. But while the main question is explicitly flagged as such in the second paragraph, the elaboration happens in an off-hand comment that looks like a restatement, even though it really is asking a more specific question.

This is what is usually called "interpreting a philosophy text," and this is where a lot of work happens. It's also where a lot of the fun happens. The main thing I want you to take away from this discussion is this: there is no two-part process of reading a philosophy text, getting it, and then starting to think about philosophy. You cannot read a text and get it without doing lots of philosophy in the process.