Thinking about knowing: How philosophy changed my life

One of my biggest life lessons was something I picked up when I first started studying philosophy, about 19 years ago.

I was in my early 20s, and having made a mess of high school, had spent a few years failing to complete a lab technician diploma, drinking too much and smoking too much weed. Over this time, almost organically, my friends and I had developed an interest in the occult and all things mystical and paranormal. Meeting wicca practitioners and taking acid did throw fuel on the fire, but I’d always had a sense of the undercurrents of reality, even as a child. Ironically, it’s this sense of life maybe not being as it appears that led me to philosophy, and a radical change in my outlook.

The University of Newcastle has for many years run programs for people who want to get into a bachelor’s degree, but who don't have the high school grades to do so. Basically, you did 6-12 months of coursework, they’d calculate the equivalent of an entry rank, and if you did well enough let you into a full degree. Seeing as I’d always thought I’d enjoy philosophy, I picked that as one of my subjects.

And I did enjoy it, immensely. One of the things we spent a lot of time talking about was what counted as knowing something, and whether or not knowledge was different to belief. We discussed the classical idea of knowledge – Justified True Belief, as well as the more modern conception that knowing something means using or believing the best available theory. What changed in me wasn’t sudden. But across 1999 something was slowly percolating in my head.

By 2000, as I started in on my first year in undergrad, my grasp of reasons to think something was true (or not) had grown a bit, and was now coming into conflict with the strangeness around me. It was pretty chaotic. People close to me had gotten enmeshed in the seamy underbelly of pseudo-pagan cults, and much of the conflict within our group of friends had taken on a very supernatural flavour. No longer was it just that someone was talking behind someone else’s back, they were accused of mounting psychic attacks and/or other clandestine spell-casting. The irony that we discussed this supposed metaphysical meddling behind each other’s backs is not lost on me. I was equally guilty of this, such was my depth of belief at the time.

I couldn’t tell you the date things changed. But I remember the moment quite well. I was walking home from a class, crossing the footbridge between the main library and the School of Architecture. It was a dreary afternoon – the kind where the clouds cast a bluish light and concrete structures seem particularly cold – and I had felt the perceived weight of spiritual attacks settling on me like an invisible wet blanket.

Halfway across the bridge, I finally allowed myself to have the thought that had been brewing for some time: What if what I thought was happening, or at least some of it, actually wasn’t?

What if interaction of non-physical psychic phenomena wasn’t the best explanation for what I was feeling and how we were all behaving? (I may have stopped at that point. For dramatic purposes, let’s just say I did.)

What if what I thought I knew about life, mind, the universe and my little corner of it actually had no justification? I suddenly perceived that these beliefs, many of which played a role in how unhappy I was at the time, seemed without foundation, and that I could summon no good reason to hold them as being definitely true (or anywhere near it).

What if none of it was actually happening?

From the outside, it might have seemed that not much changed. I don’t remember what I did when I got home that afternoon – probably played computer games, smoked too much, and continued to thoughtlessly sabotage an already doomed and toxic relationship. I wasn’t totally transformed either – it took another few years for me to learn how to be in a relationship without being a total asshole, as well as make the connection between my ridiculous personal life and the anxiety I was experiencing at the time. But my attitude towards what I thought was true was irreparably changed from that day on.

Before any of my former coreligionists get up in arms, I’m not saying that your spiritual beliefs aren’t true. I’ve grown out of a less reflective form of atheism into a more open-minded agnostic, so I’d say a lot of the time I simply don’t know if your version of God or Goddess is right or not (or even if that’s the best way to think about such questions). And anyone who has read my earlier post regarding my experience with Salvia divinorum will see that I still wonder if there is more to existence that our everyday perceptions and scientific paradigm tells us. I have seen and experienced things I can't explain, but I now no longer rush to explain them, and I think about why I choose some explanations over others.

The lesson of thinking about why I hold something to be true has stayed with me, and acts as a foil to my tendency to project negativity onto people and events around me. Why do I think that person does/doesn’t like me? Why do I think something good/bad is going to happen? Sometimes there’s good reasons for these assessments, but often, there isn’t.

Of course, thinking this way isn’t without cost. I’ve had to admit that some things I thought I knew about, like quantum physics, are actually things I believe on the basis that someone I trust told me they are good theories. Being aware of how pragmatic and (at best) probabilistic our everyday thinking is can be uncomfortable too. But in general, I’ve learnt to not worry about this sort of thing too much. Mindfulness is good for this – my thoughts come and go – I’m aware of them, but they needn’t rule me.

So that's my lesson - think about why you believe things! Think about what you know, and why you feel you know it. But be warned, it could change your life (and not just because you could end up a philosopher, as I did).

Thanks for reading. Upvotes, resteems, and most of all, comments are deeply appreciated.

Photo by Harm Weustink on Unsplash