Biting the Bullet

A major reason I became attracted to philosophy were the clarity and certainty it appeared to offer. To my high school self, a major determining character trait in people was the possession of a very specific kind of intelligence, which I saw philosophy as exemplifying.

Those who I considered weaker and less intelligent were often uncertain what to believe, would believe things because they hoped them to be true, or, worst of all, didn't seem much interested in examining their beliefs. I imagined the philosopher as the exact opposite sort of person--someone who is constantly scrutinizing their beliefs to ensure they're held for compelling reasons, or not at all. Naturally, I saw myself as this latter sort of intelligent, tough-minded person.

Nothing let me publicly declare this allegiance as strongly as "biting the bullet." My earliest memory of biting the bullet was my far too joyful rejection of free will. I had heard arguments that free will was incompatible with determinism, which was a very difficult conclusion for most people I knew to accept. Part of my certainty that we didn't have free will came from the arguments themselves, but I think a large part of it came from how it let me set myself up as the sort of person I wanted to be. If someone didn't immediately embrace the unpalatable conclusion, it was easy for me to see them as either too stupid to grasp the arguments, or too weak to accept the conclusion. And, of course, my certainty was a clear indicator of my own superior intelligence and commitment to reason.

Now, I tend to lean in the opposite direction--I usually refuse to bite the bullet of a difficult conclusion because (or so I tell myself), its difficulty usually indicates that it represents something important, not to be overlooked or rejected. But I think this can also be seen as a sort-of biting the bullet. The psychological mechanisms are the same; I just have a new concept of what it really is to be tough-minded.

As my above descriptions may have revealed, I consider the sort of absolutist thinking involved in biting the bullet sort of juvenile. Biting the bullet isn't bravely following reason wherever it may lead, but desperately clinging to easy answers that might make you feel smart, or certain, but at the cost of ignoring important aspects of reality. A really tough-minded individual won't be seduced by too clean an argument, but will steadfastly accept logical tensions and conflicts because they reflect how reality really is. Once again, this kind of set-up re-inforces my feeling of certainty because it gives me a way to understand my conclusion as the one a really intelligent and tough-minded person would make. Biting the bullet is what those who are intellectually narrow or insecure do.

Having realized this, one response might be to re-double my efforts to believe things on the strength of the arguments themselves, rather than on how their structure lets me interpret myself. Knowing these twin pitfalls, I might re-examine my conclusions to look specifically for their biasing effects. For whatever reason, I haven't felt like this is the right way to look at things at all.

Instead, I've increasingly started to see philosophy as a normative activity. Accepting or rejecting free will, for example, isn't a matter of looking to the arguments to see what's most likely the truth. It's simply a choice to see the world one way or another; and each way has its own focus, blind-spots, dilemmas, and consequences. This leaves for me the question of how philosophy should be related to other disciplines (including those that I do see as pursuing specific forms of factual truth) and our everyday lives.