I've Got Oprah Winfrey On My Mind (to be sung to the old Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer jingle)

I'm not ashamed to admit that I adore Oprah. You don't even have to say her last name, you just have to say "Oprah", and everyone will know exactly to whom your voice refers. And of those souls around the world who have not yet heard of Oprah, they should -- and they will. Earlier this year, Oprah hosted a series of programs called "Best Life Ever!". An episode that aired January 5, 2009, was about weight. Oprah told us that weight isn't just a physical issue. Our inability to contro our eating stems from a lack of love (bet you didn't know that!). We must learn to love ourselves before we can shed the pounds (and as we all know, learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all). I remember this quote, "The overweight you doesn't stand before you craving food. It's craving love". The idea behind the episode is that what we think, in particular, what we feel about ourselves, influences how we act. This statement is a no-brainer. Oprah says that the cure for our food-induced self-destruction is this: You have to change your mind before you change your body. This, at first glance, seems like another duh statement. But, look at what she says. Immediately, several questions pop up. 1) what does the statement mean? 2) Does it mean that we must change what we believe about ourselves? 3) Is it possible to change beliefs in the way that Oprah suggests that we should? 4) Is she saying that we can make ourselves believe something? 5) So, for Oprah, is belief an act of will? I thought that, since I had no reason to assume that Oprah was insisting that changing one's beliefs is an act of will, what she was suggesting was a tactic that is a little milder, like Pascal's wager. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal suggested that we can acquire a belief in God by way of a "wager". Pascal asks, what have we got to lose by believing in God? Pascal says, if we believe in God, and there is none, then no harm no foul. We don't lose anything. But, if we believe in God and he does exist, then all the better. We are rewarded with eternal salvation. The idea is that your belief in God is prudential -- it is in our best interest to do so. This may be what Oprah means -- not as it pertains to God -- but in what we believe in/about ourselves. It is precisely ourselves that changing one's mind is supposed to fix. This is why I suspect that Oprah's edit is more forceful that Pascal's wager. Many dieters and addiction specialists know that, to change or end an addiction, compulsive behavior, or bad habit, such as smoking, gambling or overeating, one must change one's mindset (in addition to changing behavior). This may require throwing out our entire belief system or at least our beliefs that have to do with ourselves. This is the mechanism behind 12-step programs and rehab. As George Clinton famously said, "free your mind and your ass will follow". Again, a bit of a duh. We can say that this is a rehash of the mind-body issue. Descartes said that the world (reality) appears to him as he perceives it. Which is why Descartes employed his method of doubt to discern what he could accept as true (what he believed) about himself and the world. So, it seems that Oprah is suggesting that I must change what I believe if I want to gain contro of myself and my life. Perfectly Cartesian. But, there's a problem. It is this: If I believe or say that I think that I believe that I cannot lose weight, this is because I hold that I am helpless against my own lack of willpower. Therefore, I will not lose weight. My behavior confirms my belief. I cannot stop myself, so I will not lose weight. Oprah says that this cycle will continue so long as I do not change my mind. I must stop telling myself that I cannot lose weight. But how do I do that? She says that I must stop accepting that I cannot. This appears to be a true (using the term colloquially) statement. It's certainly anecdotally true, and may even be psychologically true. It may even be empirically true. But there's something dubious about Oprah's claim. When you start looking deeper at many of Oprah's claims, the stink of dubiosity begins to rise. The problem may be this: Oprah is simply guilty of using a poor choice of words or worse yet, she is guilty of non-specificity. When we say that we've changed or are going to change our mind, we're talking about what we think, believe or feel. We tend to use these words interchangably, but they are not the same (at least not philosophically). I suspect that this is what is going on here. This kind of word-switching is what is creating the problem. On it's face, Oprah's sentiment sounds wonderful and better yet, actually practicable. But, when we look at what the statement means, it gives us no means for actually solving our problem. It's nothing more than flowery self-affirmation claptrap dressed in a nicely tailored, but empty suit. Before we do anything, we have to figure out what we are working with. Figuring out whether we are dealing with thoughts, emotions, or beliefs is crucial to whether we can follow Oprah's advice at all. Since feelings do us absolutely no good when things philosophically, we must throw that out. Let's assume that Oprah feels the same way about emotions as philosophers do (it's not that they don't have their place -- it's just that they don't here). Let's assume that Oprah wants us to change either our beilefs or what we think. If I say that I think something, I realize first off, that I can think of nearly anything. I can think that the sky is orange, or that I am 5'1, or that I will find a unicorn that knows and can sing the entire Donovan songbook, or that I will get a Ph.D in philosophy (hey, it could happen). But my thoughts can be anything that comes to my mind. They need not be true or actualizable. My thoughts need not be "thought through". Unfortunately, my thoughts can and are often wrong. They are merely whatever I can conceive of in my mind. I could change my mind, but there is no obligation that changing my mind has to changing my body. I think that what Oprah is going for is something stronger -- that if I change my mind, it will necessarily lead me to change my body. If that is what she is asking us to do, then what we must change are our beliefs. What I think differs from what I believe in that my beliefs are the thinks (if you will) that I am entitled to. My beliefs are connected (necessarily) to the idea of Truth. My beliefs cannot be any old thing or some willy-nilly notion. I must be justified, or have a good reason, for believing (a think) before I can call any think a belief. Without adequate evidence or unless something is analytically true ( I suspect that some will claim that what Oprah says is), I am not entitled to believe anything. Ok, this is what Oprah wants us to do, but the question that confronts us here is can we actually do what she wants us to do? Maybe not. There is a problem with what she is saying. The problem is two-fold: 1) Oprah is being vague (although one might say that the problem is ambiguity). Because we don't know what Oprah is saying, we must make alot of assumptions (the only thing that I took away from my logic 300 class is that we don't assume anything unless we have to). Oprah's directive lacks clarity and definitude. Even though we might assume the she wants us to change our beliefs (as opposed to changing thoughts), we don't really know. We're not clear on what we're doing because we're not clear on what we're doing (this may sound like a confusing duh, but it is really a sailent point to our discussion). 2) it's impossible. If we are merely changing thoughts, Oprah's advice is easy. But, if we are changing beliefs, then we might run into a problem. Namely, beliefs are not so easy to change. We cannot force ourselves to believe something, even if believing so will be better for us in the long run. Beliefs cannot be willed. Unlike body movements or thoughts that I can change by deliberate action, I cannot do so with beliefs. Truth is a necessary element to belief. What is true must also reflect what is. I cannot will what is true or what is not true. My beliefs aren't the product of decision-making. If I accept one belief as true, but I have an opposing belief, I cannot accept both as true (lest I dare contradict of the Law Of Non-Contradiction). If I take both as true, I am guilty of self-deception. Worse yet, if I take contradictory beliefs to be true, I may be delusional or endulging in the worst kind of bullshitting (I could make a pretty good argument that this is exactly what Oprah requires one to do to follow her advice in the first place). The problem is, is that she doesn't tell us either way. Our solution is to close our eyes, hold our noses, pick one (thought or belief) and hope for the best. While I'm on the subject over whether we should be dealing with what we think or with what we believe, I just thought of the tons of advice out there urging people to "think". I, myself, own a T-shirt bearing the quote, "Think: It's not illegal yet" (come to think of it, I think George Clinton said that, too!). I recall that the commedianne Janeane Garofalo used to sport a tattoo bearing the word "Think" on her wrist. After thinking about all this Oprah, I think that our emphasis on thinking is a part of why we're having so much trouble with what we're doing. Perhaps the city of Baltimore had the better idea with its billboard campaign that urged the citizens of the city to "Believe". I think, perhaps, that believing is better than thinking. I wonder what Oprah would say about that?

It's Fun To Do Bad Things

The great sage Oprah Winfrey says that the #6 thing that she knows for sure is "what you believe has more power thsn what you dream or wish or hope for. You become what you believe". One morning, while I was eating my bowl of peanut butter crunch, I watched the local news cover a story about a little boy who, along with his little kid buddy, stole his grandmother's car and went for a joyride. Eventually, the pair was stopped by the local fuzz. When the boy was questioned as to what possessed him to take his grandma's car, he simply stated, "It's fun to do bad things". It amazed me that a seven year old kid had already come to the revelation that it iis, indeed fun to do bad things. This is what this kid believes. If you ask a psychiatrist, they'll try to convince you that, by the time that a child reaches the age of seven, a professional mind shrinker can tell which children are destined for a life of crime. That's what they say. I usually take such forecasts with a grain of salt. But in the case of that kid, I wholeheartedly believed that that kid was going to end up in the poke much sooner than later. After I stopped laughing about a seven year old child declaring that doing bad things is "fun", I thought, 'wait a minute. This kid stated a belief. He said that he believes that it is fun to do bad things!'. Obviously, most people would find something wrong about what the kid said. But why? Then I thought about Oprah's #6 thing she knows for sure. It strikes us as wrong because we believe, although we do not often expressly say so, that what we believe has to do with who we are. Who we are, in turn, affects how we act. In short, what we believe affects how we act. When we say that we believe any thing (a proposition, an idea, etc), we often ask why do we believe one thing as opposed to another. What we are looking for when we ask this question of ourselves is a reason why we would accept a particular belief as true. We want justification for our beliefs. If our beliefs are justified, we are entitled to hold them. We think that our justified beliefs are true or more than likely to be true than not. This is essentially what Oprah is saying when she says that a belief "has more power" than a wish or hope. We often wish or hope for things that we know are based on shoddy evidence. Wishes and hopes often are unrealistic. (I was going to give an example concerning a wish and why I became a philosophy major, but I don't think that to reveal it here would be appropriate. But trust me, it was very unrealistic). Beliefs carry an idea of truth, or that they represent some thing in the real world. If we look at the matter psychologically, we know the axiom that we become what we believe (unless you're Andy Warhol, and you believe that we become what other people think that we are). So, if what we believe (by way of justification) is true (or more likely to be true -- perhaps necessarily so), then what we believe has power. So say, that I believe that it is fun to do bad things. What's the problem with believing that? I say that I am not a philosopher, not interested in philosophy (it's a bunch of bullshit anyway), and that whether or not I hold justified beliefs is of no consequence. In the real world, I say, none of that philosophy crap really matters. So there. If I say to the epistemologist that I don't care about justifying my beliefs, can he still "get" me on what I believe? Am I still committing a wrong in believing that it's fun to do bad things? Unfortunately he can. The thing is, is that when we consider our beliefs, actions, etc, from a philosophical point of view, we rarely look at it from one side. That is to say, our beliefs in God and the afterlife are rarely strictly ontological issues. Our belief or lack of a belief in a supreme deity affects our moral choices as well. Likewise, our beliefs and whether we are justified in believing them not only carry an epistemic burden, but also a moral burden as well. What we believe affects how we act, and how we act is a question of morality. If we look at Oprah's statement, "what you believe has more power...", and we think about what we think of when we use words like "power", it's easy to see that words like "power" have moral implications. If we are going to endow something with force, it must not only be epistemically accounted for, but morally justified as well. Our actions carry force. When we act, we affect not just ourselves, but others. A child who goes for a joyride in his grandmother's car affected (and potentially affected) the lives of all of those who were involved: the children, the grandmother, the police who chased the duo, anybody on the street who may have been hit during the chase, and so on. When those childern took the car, they were not only acting physically, but morally. A better example of how this works is William Clifford's story of the shipowner who reasoned that his ship was seaworthy despite the fact that his ship was old, needed repairs, and had always made it back home. The shipowner believed that his ship was safe in the face of evidence that it was not. As expected, the ship sank, and people were killed. The shipowner was not only unjustified epistemically, he had committed a moral wrong for believing that his ship was seaworthy when it was not. The shipowner, according to Clifford, had no justification for believing that the ship would sail without incident. He had based his wrong belief on inadequate evidence (namely that his ship needed repairs and was old...). If asked, he could offer us no good reason why he believed his ship could make the journey. So, Clifford says, the act of believing in a wrong belief is wrong. This is, because what we believe leads to action. Clifford says, "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". I think that what Clifford says is true. If the way or what I believe is connected to how I act, then is I believe in things that are wrong, I am certain to act accordingly. My neighbor sometimes stands on her driveway and stares down the neighborhood. If I were the paranoid type, I could believe that my neighbor is stalking me. But, other than the fact that I see my neighbor standing on her driveway, do I have evidence for believing that she is indeed stalking me? No. Not really. Besides the fact that she can make an equal claim about my always staring at her (after all, how would I know that she's always looking at my house if I'm not also staring at hers?), I have no compelling evidence that she's maddogging me and what I do. What I found more amazing is the fact that Hollywood is filled with Clifford-esque situations! I was watching the movie Jaws last Saturday. I know that Beetlejuice said that The Exorcist gets funnier with each viewing, but my choice is definitely Jaws. That whole Quint telling the story about the USS Indianapolis being torpedoed and the survivors getting eaten by sharks is just plain funny. Don't get me wrong, it is a horrific story, but the whole Jack Sparrow delivery takes any of the tragedy out of it. (If you want to see a pretty funny riff on that scene, I suggest checking out the Fox comedy Get A Life, starring Chris Elliott. In an episode, he gets stuck in a homemade submarine with his dad in a bathtub, and launches into Robert Shaw's monologue. It's freaking hillarious.) Anyway. Chief Brody, based on the fact that a local swimmer has been chomped by something bigger than a goldfish, wants to close the local beach. He has adequate evidence for believing that there is a killer shark patrolling the waters off of Amity Island. Namely, the death of Chrissy, the local girl, and the very much in public eating of Alex Kintner by said shark. The mayor wants to say that the girl was killed in a boating accident. The mayor also believes that the shark that is caught by some fishermen is the shark that killed the boy (but he refuses to agree to an autopsy of the shark). Chief Brody, Quint, and that dude that Richard Dreyfuss played -- I think it was Matt something, decide to kill the shark. That's a little besides the point, but the point is, is that Chief Brody believed that there was a great white shark that had made the waters off of Amity Island it's feeding ground. He was right. He had adequate evidence for believing so. And, we know that, so far as the moral highground goes, Brody definintely has it. Sticking with the nautical theme, the same goes for the crew of the USS Caine in the film The Caine Mutiny. Captain Queeg, played by Humprey Bogart, is clearly out of his mind. The executive officers decide, after a series of increasingly disturbing events, to find a way to relieve Queeg of his command. After Queeg nearly loses the Caine in a storm, the officers decide to forcefully take command of the vessel. Even though they faced courtmartial, they knew that their belief -- that Queeg was batshit insane -- was right. They had more than enough evidence for believing that Queeg was mentally unstable. Additionally, they had a moral duty to take the ship from Queeg. If they allowed Queeg to keep command of his ship, the lives of the crew were in danger. This movie has a really cool ending. They totally diss Fred Mac Murray. This dude throws a drink in his face and all of the guys walk out like he was a dishonored Klingon. They should have kicked his ass! Ok, that's great -- if we're right. But being right isn't always the case. Our beliefs are flat wrong more often than we'd like to admit.Unfortunately, like when we're right, we also act on our beliefs when we're wrong. In George A Romero's Day of the Dead, the character Rhodes, after having spent what we can presume to be years in an underground bunker, is more than a little mad. He begins to suspect that the scientists are acting against the interests of Rhodes and his men. Does he really have any evidence to believe this? No, he does not. Rhodes becomes so wrapped-up in his paranoia, that he kills several of the scientists and facilitates the breech of the facility by a horde of flesh-eating zombies. As a result of Rhodes' wrong beliefs, many people die. By the way, stay CLEAR of the re-make of Day of the Dead. Awful! In the Cohen bros. flick, Burn After Reading, Linda Litzke (played by Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (played by Brad Pitt), believe that the disk found in the ladies' dressing room of Hardbodies gym, contains top secret information. Chad reasons that the fact that there are department heads' names and dates that it obviously means that the information is classified (it's not. It's the notes for a book that is being written by Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich). The "evidence" they have for believing that the disk has secret info is scant -- it's Chad's assumption (problem 1). Believing that the disk has information that may be of some interest to other parties, they attempt to pass it along to the Russians. This makes matters worse. The fact that they're wrong eventually leads to the death of one of the pair. I'm not going to say which one, but it's the one who starred in other films such as Legends of the Fall and Interview With the Vampire. This is what Clifford was getting at when he condemned our holding beliefs on insufficient evidence. In the worst-case scenerio, people get killed. When those people die, they die because we failed to believe what is true. Their deaths are on us because we failed epistemically and morally. And so, we bear a doubly heavy burden. So, what does this mean about Oprah's advice, "what you believe has more power than what you dream or wish or hope for. You become what you believe"? What it means, is that it is true that our beliefs have a moral obligation that we owe to others. If we believe the wrong things, even if doing it is fun, we are responsible for others who may be hurt or affected by our actions. Lastly, the reason why we must believe only what we are morally entitled to believe is obvious when we look at those who do wrong and believe that it is good to do so. Those are the people that we should not aspire to be. We should, when we look at them, remind ourselves that those individuals are not... well, they're not good people. A person who believes that it is fun to do bad things will more than likely end up on the bad side of life. And that's not much fun in the long run, is it?

Group Solipsism

Oprah's # 2 thing that she knows for sure: You define your own life, don't let other people write your script. I used to think that this idea was existentialist, and at it's face (excuse me, prima facie) it appears to be so. Telling a person to "define your own life" is straight out of the existentialist handbook. (By the way, there actually is one: The Ultimate Guide To Navelgazing and Self-Overexamination. I think it's available on Amazon or something like that. Maybe not). Existentialist philosophy says that the meaning and purpose of life is defined by the individual. We have no innate nature that determines what or perhaps more importantly, who we become- which fits perfectly with the last half of the statement, " don't let other people write your script". Existentialism, like Oprah, is all about how we relate to the world. Oprah's #1 thing she knows for sure " what you put out comes back all the time, no matter what", certainly addresses the fact that we operate in a world with others, for and with whom our actions will be held in to account. And, like Heidegger, Oprah believes that the way that we live authentically is manifested in the way that we deal with the situations that we are "thrown" ( to use Heidegger's term) into. The way that we act in a given situation, both believe, is reflective of who we truly are. So far, the philosophy of Ms. Winfrey seems to tell us nothing that we haven't heard before. It may come out of the mouth of Deepak Chopra or Dr. Phil ( and you can absolutely trust that either of them has read Heidegger or Sartre, among others), but on it's face, Oprah is giving us early 20th century French philosophy.And this totally falls in line with any other talk/advice show host that has taken a whack at the self-improvement tree of knowledge. And that's what I thought while I started watching Oprah's "best life ever". I thought that she was purely, albeit a little mixed up, chatting the existentialist rag -- until I thought a little harder about what she was saying. The first lightbulb ( I suppose Oprah would call it an "a-ha" moment) went off while I was watching Oprah's show about weight. All the time she was speaking, she was singularly focused on herself. Nothing new, afterall it was Oprah. I know that existentialism, by its design, focuses attention, perhaps too much attention, on the self. After all, it's all about figuring out how you, the individual, relates to the world. But then, I really started to pay attention: it wasn't just ordinary self-centeredness; there was something else at work in what she was saying. The something else was revealed when Oprah said that we need to put ourselves back on out to-do list. It seems that we haven't been self-centered enough. we've been spending too much time doing nice things for other people, and that is wrong. We need to reclaim the focus of our attention. We need to be at the top of the list. So, I thought, I'm at the center of the universe, and no one is going to define my life for me. I thought that defining something, especially when one is defining a life, is an act of invention or creation. It clicked: I create my life. I CREATE MY LIFE. It was if there were a flash of light and the sky suddenly parted. All my definitions are self-created. And, it seems, no one else can write the definitions for me. I am more than mastering my own life, if I follow Oprah, I am creating my own reality. I thought, this is amazing. Oprah is saying so much more to us than pop-psych clap trap that you can get any afternoon listening to Dr. Laura. Oprah is laying down some serious metaphysics. So, once more I thought about Oprah's #2 thing she knows for sure: "You define your own life, don't let other people write your script" I thought, that I would, break the statement in half and look at the two parts of Oprah's #2 statement separately. I thought, what if the second half of the statement " don't let other people write your script" wasn't just encouraging existentialist authenticity, but instead a statement about the states of other people's minds? What do I know about other people's minds, I thought. The answer: nothing. I can't even be sure if other minds exist. Maybe this is what is motivating what Oprah is saying to us, I thought. I don't know what intentions others have for me, so I cannot allow them to set my agenda. And if I cannot be sure of the existence of other minds, I surely cannot allow them to determine what is the best course for my life. I must be in control of what goes on in my own life because I only know what I think is good for myself. Likewise, I must be in control because I can only know myself so far as I know that I exist. So then, I looked at the first half: " You define your own life". I was reminded of something that I had heard that drifted along the same lines. Not to long ago, a Bush Administration staffer announced that the Bush Administration created it's own reality. Meaning, that if the president said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, then by golly, they did, even if your "reality" contradicted theirs. (this may be a slight distortion of the real meaning of that statement, but this distortion fits the point that I am trying to make, so bear with me). Well, I think that I wouldn't be wrong if I assumed that, as far as Ms. Oprah defines it, that "define" and "create" are similar in this context. I define who and what I am. If everyone else thinks that I am a dork, so long as I do not share the same sentiment, I am not. I must remember that I refuse to let anyone else define my life -- all evidence to the contrary. If I take Oprah's advice (to the extreme), so long as my "life" is defined by me, then that life -- at least my sentiments and beliefs about that life -- is true, meaning that life is my authentic or "real" life. And, being the empiricist that I am, my beliefs about the world are my basis for what I hold is true about the world. If I see the bullet to the heart kill the fisherman, than I believe that the bullet to the heart killed the fisherman. And it is true, because I cannot let others define it for me, because I cannot be sure of their intentions for me. I am the only mind that I can know, or at the very least, I am the only mind that I can trust. So, if my mind is the only mind that I can trust, and that mind is the mind that defines, or creates my life , and my life (or beliefs about) is a reflection of an overall "reality", then I define reality. Wow. But it's not just that, it goes further. If everyone who follows Oprah's advise will also define their own lives, the result is the creation millions of separate "realities" -- each for every Oprah viewer. If this is the case, then Oprah isn't advocating existentialism, but group solipsism! Each of us exists in a self-defined universe of one. As crazy as it may seem, I believe that this is what Oprah is truly getting to. We not only create our own perspective on what we believe is real or true, we create our own universe -- a separate entity wherein we reside, creating and changing its own separate reality as we see fit. ( so, if I say that someone is on a different world than I am, this statement may be more than mere metaphor, but a statement of fact. Stew on that for awhile). I know that there are some non-adventurous philosophers who would say that Oprah and her ilk are damaging the philosophic enterprise by allowing people like me to take what she says and distort the bejeezus out of it. I will not disagree. On the othre hand, I would also assume that there is some posmodernist who welcomes the destroyers and distorters of philosophy and welcome the opportunity of finding a new way of beating a dead horse. As disfond as I am about fence-riding, I think that there is room here to split the difference. I think that it is, at least, worth the effort to look at what our popular culture is doing to the theories that philosophers hold so near and dear to their hearts. We must remember that philosophic ideas are out there, and that it would do philosophers a little good to roll around with those who may be more clever at peddling distorted philosophical theories than they are at peddling the correct ones. But for now it seems, the media reigns, Oprah is more popular than Swinburne, and so we stand on the precipice of a new view: Oprarian philosophy. I'm not sure where Oprarian philosophy will get us, but I'm sure if it gets us to somewhere where we don't want to go, we can simply choose to redefine it, our lives and the whole universe, and start over again. Maybe by then, some talk show host will have succesfully distorted Kant.

Epistemology with Oprah!

Lately, I've been paying alot more attention to what I'm saying. I guess it has to do with that brush with Frege not so long ago, when I was started on the business of worrying about to what I was really referring when I looked to to the moonlit sky and proclaimed that I was staring up at Hesperus. My, I would say, Hesperus is certainly bright tonight. By the way, it's easier to say it's Venus. Anyway, when you pay attention to what you're saying, you're also, consequently, paying attention to what you are thinking, and often asking to yourself not only the meaning of what you say, but also whether you're saying anything that you know for sure. I could have all my references correct, but is what I'm saying really known to me as fact? What? Ok, let me backtrack and try to make what I'm saying less jumbled. What I mean is that sometimes I'm so caught up in the meanings of what I say, that I've lost track of whether what I'm saying is correct at all. There. That said it. Maybe I should get straight on whether I am saying anything that I know before I try to assess whether what I'm saying means. With me so far? As all of my friends and family knows, I watch a tremendous lot of television. I think that the technical term for my TV watching is called "get a life", but needless to say, I do. Watch. Alot. I think that among philosophy types, it's the rather "in" thing to proclaim to you're colleagues that you either don't own a TV set, or that you don't have cable. (I only read Truthout and listen to Pacifica, they might say).That way, by saying so, you distinguish your eudaimonic lifestyle from that endless and decidedly unphilosophic television watching of all of the other swine. But, seeing that I disdain philosophic types and all that they stand for, especially those who shop at Trader Joe's and profess veganess, I freely cop to the fact that I do indeed watch TV. Alot. I think that the reason why so many philosophy types deny that they watch TV is because of the "low" culture of popular society, and the reputation associated with those who either use or participate in it. Popular culture is the sophist to the Socratic individual. If it is anything, popular culture is kryptonite to the philosopher. His philosophical powers are weakened by exposure to all things pop -- eventually resulting in complete philosophic collapse. Popular culture, especially TV, makes idiots of us all. (Or at the very least, it churns out a few empiricists). But I say, on this one, the philosophy type is wrong, for the modern age's greatest philosophical sage is on the air for all to see: Ms. Oprah Winfrey. This is no joke. I'm really quite serious. I know that there is almost a cottage industry of professional Oprah-bashing out there. I've participated in a great deal of it myself. But once I actually started watching Oprah instead of listening to what other people told me about the "Oprahdization" of society, I found that there are plenty of lessons in store for even the most Aristotelian-minded philosopher. I was browsing some time ago on Oprah's website, where there is listed 20 things that Oprah knows for sure. Now, as a philosophy type person, any suggestion made by someone that they know anything with certainty is bound to grab my ear. So I took a look at Oprah's list. At fist glance, the list can be easily dismissed as pop-psyche, motivational speaker babble. And in reality it is. But, there's something else at work behind the simple and obvious claims, like, "what you do comes back all the time, no matter what" (by the way, Oprah says that that statement is her creed). I thought when I read Oprah's creed, well duh, every culture on earth has some sort of idea of karma. I, for instance, ws raised with the "Golden Rule". Wiccans, I think, believ in a 3-fold law, and so on. But, how do I know that? How is it that Oprah's bit of advice failed to tell me anything that I didn't already know? Suddenly, Oprah's list of 20 became an exercize in seeking the epistemic nature of "duh". How is it that Oprah can claim that she knows anything for sure? And how is it that, without having seen Oprah's list before, I know these 20 things, too? John Dewey, the American pragmatist, said that the knowledge that we gain through our experiences must be of practical value. For the pragmatist, all that info is fine and dandy, but real knowledge tells us one simple thing: I can use it to so something. If it works, then it's good to know. If it does not, then the info is useless. Knowledge, for Dewey, enabled man to master our environment. For Dewey, the test for what counted as knowledge was a test of coherence. Does what I accept as true fit with what else I believe is true? If it fits, then it is true. Oprah's creed certainly has practical value. If we realize that we may be subject to human or divine retribution, our actions or sentiments (because Oprah believes that beliefs have force as well) are more likely to be kind instead of malevolent. Given similar religious or moral beliefs (and experiences)about how our behaviour can "come back" at us, Oprah's creed seems to pass the test of coherence. But, as Dewey admits, coherence is a shaky criteria for knoweledge at best. Because all people are different, all people do not share the same set of held "truths". We all have different beliefs to which a piece of data does or does not cohere. Anything approaching universal knowledge would have to be decided by committee, or at least hopelessly relativistic. But, Oprah tells us that her creed is a truth "no matter what". It is universal and not subject to relativity. So, I looked another epistomological method to test the truth of Oprah's claim. I remembered that, some time ago, in my epistemology class, we discussed reliabilism. Now, if I remember correctly, reliabilism has something to do with accepting a belief as true only if it has been formed in a reliable manner or by way of a reliable process. I can't quite remember the example that we handled in class, but I remember thinking that reliabilism tends to yield alot of beliefs that are, for lack of a better word, "duh" beliefs (like Oprah's creed). That is, if my eyes never failed me before, that is, I can rely on the accuracy of what they are seeing, and I think that I see a steamroller coming towards me, I can reliably believe that there is, in fact, a steamroller coming towards me. Or something like that. So now I thought, is that the hidden epistemic factor at work with Ms. Winfrey? But, then I thought, it can't be -- Oprah says that she knows these things for sure . Even reliable methods fail from time to time. So then I thought, if Oprah knows these things for sure, what she knows for sure cannot be derived from any outside means. We know that if we hinge our knowledge on what we discover from the world around us, we may come across false information or worse yet, arrive at a false belief. So, Oprah's stipulation that she knows these 20 things for sure suggests that her basis for knowledge cannot be empirical. So then I thought, if not empirical, then we (or at least she) knows these things for sure without experience. And that led me to the rationalists: When Descartes wrote the Meditations, he asked of what things he can know for certain. Descartes stated that any knowledge he derived from his sense must be discarded until he could be certain that that knowledge was not subject to doubt. Ultimately, he arrived at the truth of his own exixtence. That knowledge, Descartes claimed, was known a priori -- without experience. Even if he doubted that he existed, something, Descartes reasoned, must be thinking that it does not exist -- so he exists. That fact at least cannot be doubted. But, Oprah makes an even bigger claim. She's not just stating that she exists, she's claiming a list of 20 truths that she knows with certainty . Now, I know that Oprah does not rule out the existence of a creator-being that put the world and events in motion. So, I guess that we could say that what is revealed to her as the truth concerning her 20 claims is the product of the Divine Light of Reason. I guess we could say that Oprah knows these things because God revealed them to her as true. This was Descartes' method of coming to the knowledge that the world outside of himself exists. Ok, that will do, but I think that there's something more at work, here. I feel that somehow, that explanation is not Oprahly satisfying. When I watch Oprah, I often hear her say that something is a gut feeling or known to us as some sort of intuitive notion of the way that things are or should be. So, that means, or at least suggests, that Oprah's 20 things are given to us (or her) intuitively. (hurray, GE Moore). (I'm not even going to attempt to explain intuititionism). But, here we find another snag. Oprah's creed, "what you put out comes back all the time, no matter what", seems to rely on some sort of empirical varification. How would we know that whatever we put out comes back unless we actually put out something that came back? Is Oprah telling us that her life lessons possess some sort of synthetic a priori quality? Kant suggests that there are some knowledge about the world that possess both a priori and empirical "qualities" (I use the word qualities, simply because I lack the proper vocabulary to express exactly what Kant means). In the case of mathematics, for instance, it is true that 5+7=12 a priori, but we need to see the operation of adding five to seven to varify, if you will that 5+7 does indeed equal twelve. I think that this may be putting us on the right track here. Indeed, what Oprah may be suggesting is that there is an intuitive a priori knowledge. The fact that there are things that we know for sure suggests that there are undoubtable truths that transcend our own experience. They are true "no matter what". But, there is also alongside that truth, the feeling that we know these things from our guts, that we simply "know" them, but they are not revealed it seems, until we actually begin to interact with others in the world. I'm not sure whether Oprah is correct that we can know one thing, let alone 20 things for sure. But, I also think that when we easily dismiss Oprah and other so-called mind numbing entertainment, or say that we cannot gain from watching them, we are wrong in saying so. It is arrogant, and I think, philosophically dangerous to believe that only those who are endowed with the proper philosophic credentials are credible sources for philosophic theory or discussion. If we want others to think philosophically, we should encourage them to see philosophic questions and answers in everything they see -- even on TV. As I wrap this up, I need only think to the slave that Socrates used to demonstrate that even the uneducated possess knowledge that they may not even know that they possess. That's worth thinking about or at the very least encouraged. And it's also worth thinking about the idea of intuitive a priori knowledge. I might make a name for myself at last!