2. What Is? What ought to?

Let us begin with the kind of problems Philosophy tries to solve. The first thing that comes to the mind of most people when they think about philosophy is “Why?” Let us look at some examples to see what the why question means in this context.

Why is that car parked upside down? Because it lost control and went off the road at high speed.

Why are roses red in colour? Because they are made of molecules which absorb light and primarily emit light of red colour wavelength.

Why did you buy so many lemons? Because I want to drink lemon juice every day.

Why should we ban drunken driving? Because we want to keep the road users safe.

Why is the sum of lengths of two sides of a triangle always greater than the length of the third side? Because…. Some mathematical proof that I was taught in school but I don’t remember now.

As you can see, the different why questions have different answers. In the case of the parked car, the answer was about what happened in the past, that explains the state of things in the present. In the case of roses, the answer explained the colour phenomenon in terms of what happens at a molecular level. In the case of the lemons, we answered it by saying what we plan to do in the future. In the case of drunken driving questions, we answered in terms of what we do not want to happen in the future. In the case of the triangle question, the answer was a mathematical proof using mathematical concepts.

What is the common thread across all the answers to the why questions? The answer always gives some information or knowledge based on which we can infer the predicate of the why question. When someone buys too many lemons, we don’t have enough information to know why. The moment he says that he wants to drink lemon juice every day, we can infer that he wants a lot of lemons.

Now, the why question doesn’t stop there. I can ask him why he wants to drink lemon juice everyday. He then tells me about a health article that he read about the benefits of drinking lemon juice every day. I can ask again, why the health article says it is healthy. He might explain the presence of Vitamin C in lemons that gives us health benefits. I can test this person’s patience by asking why again. At this point, he will ask me to do one. But anyway, you see what I am getting at?

Pretty much every event that happens and every fact known can be formulated as part of the why question if we want a reason or an explanation. To formalise it, asking the why question about an event or a fact implies that the person asking the question is missing some information or knowledge that would explain this event or fact.

Philosophy doesn’t ask the why question on such mundane things. It usually asks what is supposed to be the ultimate why question - Why are we experiencing the world as it is?

It is an earnest wish to learn more about reality. How did we find ourselves in this world? Why are we experiencing time and space this way? Is the sequence of the big bang, an expanding universe, a galaxy, a star, a planet, life and evolution all there is? Is there a God? Is there something else? Is this all a dream? Are we in the Matrix while our real bodies are locked in a pod with tubes attached to us in awkward positions? These are one kind of questions philosophers try to answer. It would make things more precise, if we replace the why question with the What Is? question. This questions the nature of reality and existence.

Because we humans are capable of thinking and acting, at least sometimes, there is another kind of question philosophers ponder over - What Ought To? This is the field of philosophy that focuses on what humans are supposed to do. What is the purpose of life? What are the moral values we should take? Even political and economic theories emerge from these studies.

How does the what ought to question relate to the why question? Other than the fact that we experience this world, we also seem to have something like free will and that means we act with intent, maybe not when we are drunk. We have a feeling that we have a choice to act in so many ways. The philosopher asks what one ought to do and the reason why one ought to do it. Consider the following question and the two potential answers.

Why did you decide to climb that dangerous mountain?

Answer 1: Because I have seen the pictures and the brain cells and nerve cells in my body reacted in a way to push me to climb it.

Answer 2: Because humans need to have purpose and ambitions. And my ambition is to climb that mountain. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The first answer explains it in biological terms which is primarily related to the What Is? question. The second answer explains it in terms of human will though one might argue that climbing the mountain might indeed kill him. The second one is the kind of answer we expect when we are dealing with the what ought to question. We have numerous choices when we decide what we want to do.

Some philosophers argue that the What Is? question is the ultimate question and what ought to and many other questions are downstream to the What Is? question. But other philosophers respond by pointing out that humans will never find answers to the What Is? question and hence we should try to find answers for what ought to question irrespective of the answer to the What Is? question.

As I promised in the Introduction, I am not going to take sides here. All you have to know is that philosophy tries to answer two primary questions.

We experience a world. What is the nature of this world?

We have the ability to choose how to act. What Ought To? The question deals with our moral values and purpose of life.

We will deal with the What Is? question in the upcoming chapters, after which we will move on to the what ought to question.

Further Reading

• A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton