In a previous post I described the journey I took to get into philosophy. In this post I want to describe what kind of philosophy I’m doing. Philosophy can mean different things to different people so I just want to describe my process and methodology which I call Sensemaking.
I talked about the big questions in the previous post. Many people get to the big questions at some point in their life. There are many ways in which people find or try to find the answers to these questions. Religion and spirituality provide traditional wisdom along with support structures and community. Philosophy tries to answer them directly. Political ideology provides a powerful purpose. Self-help provides an alternate goal to pursue; like success, productivity, discipline, wealth etc. Then there are those who can’t find any answers and instead use coping mechanisms such as consumerism, content consumption, distractions, alcohol, drugs and other things that make us temporarily happy.
Within philosophy, I see that many people get into philosophy hoping to find the right philosopher to follow. Or perhaps picking and choosing different elements from different philosophers and building their own curated philosophy for life. I’ve also noticed that many people feel that there is no final solution to be found and all they can do is remain a seeker for the rest of their life, whether this is within philosophy or more broadly with spirituality and religious doctrine as well.
I’m not interested in philosophy as a noun; as a jungle of ideas to explore and discover hidden truths. I’m interested in philosophy as a verb; something you do yourself; to philosophize. In simple words what this means to me is to think clearly and systematically and check my own thinking. This can be done while exploring any topic, but of course, the big questions are the main topics I’m interested in. I want to do philosophy to figure out what the world is and how I should live in it. At the core of it, it is a very personal project. I’ve been doing this project for the last 4 years and have already made changes in my life that have made a real difference. Now I want to share it with the world.
The Fundamental Assumption of Philosophy
While I was studying logic and epistemology, I discovered that there is a fundamental assumption in philosophy that most philosophers assume. That knowledge must be at least certain, if not also absolute. Early philosophers tried to find the absolute truth about the big questions. As philosophy developed, they began to realize that there is no way to prove that their answers are the absolute truth. Still, the assumption of certainty remained. Instead, philosophers began questioning whether the questions themselves were meaningless. Or they got lost in word mazes they created themselves. Philosophy as a discipline seems to have forgotten the need that makes people ask the big questions in the first place. It also seems to have forgotten that lay individuals need answers in their lifetime.
However, if you let go of the assumption that knowledge must be certain, you realize that provisional answers can be found. If you think about it, humanity acquires certainty last. In fact, claims of certainty often slow down its progress. It’s not the case that early ancestors of humans first held the “true justified belief” about how to make fire and only then figured out how to make fire. We learn by doing; by trial and error. Then we make up stories to explain our knowledge. We only understand the underlying theory much later. The same process can be followed for the big questions as well.
Sensemaking means to find the best possible answers to the big questions that we can find right now based on the knowledge and experience that we have. The answers don’t have to be final or certain or absolutely true. We just need to build a reasonable picture of the world and life to orient ourselves. That’s all we need to start acting in life. Then reality gives us feedback in the form of the fruits of our actions. If we remain open to the fact that our worldview is provisional, we can incorporate this feedback and improve our worldview over time.
The Jigsaw Puzzle Analogy
One good way to explain what sensemaking is, is to think of a jigsaw puzzle. But instead of having a thousand pieces in a box with the final image on the cover, we only have a few pieces scattered around all over the house. We have to find the missing pieces and we don’t know what the final picture is supposed to look like.
Life is like such a puzzle when you face the big questions. You want to see a complete picture to make sense of the world and figure out how to live. But you only have a few pieces in place.
Traditionally, humans have solved this problem through meaningmaking. Meaningmaking finds all the pieces it can find and then plugs the holes of the missing pieces with handmade pieces. It cuts cardboard and draws its own picture on it and places it in place of the missing pieces to complete the picture. The problem is that Meaningmakers claim that this complete picture is the truth and the handmade pieces are the real pieces of the puzzle.
Religion, spirituality, political ideology, all create such pictures of the world and claim them to be the truth. If you can believe in it, then you won’t be lost anymore. You won’t wonder about the big questions anymore and find meaning and purpose in life. But if you don’t have faith then you can see the crudely painted handmade puzzle pieces. You say, “this is clearly made up. I need to find the real pieces.”
This is where humanity started doing philosophy and eventually science. What science does is not meaningmaking but truthseeking. Science refuses to make any handmade puzzle pieces. It says we’ll only use the actual pieces we can find. And if that means that the puzzle remains incomplete then so be it. Truth gathered over generations of industrious and highly detailed work is what science wants. It doesn’t care if people can’t see a complete picture in the meantime. This is not a judgment of science. It’s just a fact.
Sensemaking is a middle path between these two extremes. I’m saying that while science is right in its place, we should not forget that humans do need a complete picture to feel oriented in life. So, we do what meaningmaking does. We cut cardboard pieces to complete the picture. But there’s a difference. We don’t claim that this is the ultimate truth. We retain the awareness that we’re making up pieces for a specific purpose. We also retain the willingness to update our picture whenever science finds a new piece.
This is not an excuse to believe whatever you want to believe. I’m also not claiming that truth is subjective. We still need to use philosophical methods of logic and reason to check our thinking and our claims. We want our handmade pieces to be as close to what the real piece might be like. Because we don’t want to delude ourselves with a reassuring but completely false picture. We try our best and remain open to changing the handmade pieces whenever it feels necessary.
This is what sensemaking is. It is a personal way of doing philosophy to meet the need of orientation. I’ve built such a picture of the world with the pieces found by science and my own handmade pieces. I’ve been living according to this picture for a while. It helped me recover fully from my depression. It has finally made me solve a problem that has been my bane since I was 16 years old: how to make myself do what I want to do. I’ll be sharing this picture through essays next.
Cover Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
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