Inspired by “Conversation with Samuel Barnes on Iconoclast (Skepticism, Hume, Embodied Philosophy)” w/ Raymond K. Hessel
How Wikipedia is an emergent case study in the inescapability of philosophy
I adore both Samuel Barnes and Raymond K. Hessel, who recently spoke on Raymond’s channel about The Iconoclast, the new book by Mr. Barnes. The gentlemen discussed many things, and I liked Raymond’s notion of “The Iconoclast” tending to appear precisely when “revaluation” of a “Dogmatic Order” is needed, which is also dangerous, because “autonomous philosophy” (a philosophy which denies its inability to directly access “The Meta-Question”) could prove to be a force of destruction and danger. “The Iconoclast” can be seen as a “productive madman” of “managed mania,” and yet also potentially a dark reaper. It all depends.
Everything I’ve said needs elaboration, and for that I would highly suggest reading The Iconoclast — again, it’s excellent. Here, I mainly wanted to quickly draw attention to a comment Raymond made right at the beginning of the conversation, regarding how basically everything on Wikipedia eventually leads to “The Philosophy Page.” This blew my mind. I looked it up and, sure enough, I found a Wikipedia page about the Wikipedia phenomena. The first paragraph of the article reads:
Clicking on the first link in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually leads to the Philosophy article. In February 2016, this was true for 97% of all articles in Wikipedia, an increase from 94.52% in 2011. The remaining articles lead to an article without any outgoing wikilinks, to pages that do not exist, or get stuck in loops.
A theme of O.G. Rose has been the inescapability of philosophy, and for me this is a live and emergent case study which suggests just that very point. Nobody planned or meant for the high majority of Wikipedia pages to eventually lead to “The Philosophy Page,” but the very fact that this is the case suggests that philosophy is in “the background” of human cognition itself (perhaps we could say philosophy is cognition, structurally). Philosophy is everywhere, suggesting that, as Barnes notes, anything can be a topic and question of philosophy, and that philosophy is indeed unique in its ability to meta-reflect on itself and consider “the philosophy of philosophy.” All of this is explored in great detail in The Iconoclast, a text I cannot suggest enough.
If philosophy is “always already” at play (at the very least, because we’re always acting according to values, as argued in Missing Axioms by Samuel Barnes), then we must always be using something philosophical that could prove very dangerous and destructive, exactly as Mr. Barnes warns. There’s no avoiding risk, and that means we must learn how to “use fire” without getting burned or unintentionally burning everything down. How we might accomplish this is not easy to answer and requires numerous papers and works to explore, but given the Wikipedia case study, there is reason to think that building society, constructing economies, raising families — everything — will have philosophy somehow “lurking in the background.” We ignore philosophy at our own peril, but acknowledging philosophy must be the first step toward handling it. Equipped with fire, the future can be brighter for the right reasons, versus because we ignorantly and unintentionally let it be set ablaze.
.
.
.
For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram, Anchor, Facebook, and Twitter.
