Where do we start?

What a shame some say. Why bother with philosophy? I can listen and be told how to behave and that way I won’t have to think for myself. Oh, but what a slippery slope you wind up on when you leave it to other to show you the way. How will you know they got it right, and if you don’t like something, how you goin’ no the boss man right? Trouble is all philosophic questions are interrelated so you can’t just start, say, with politics, or esthetics. That makes it tough.
You have to make use of an idea, but in order to do so, you have to understand it in context and ultimately to use the idea to live. Let me introduce you to Philo, the answer man and to Estudia, the one asking all the important questions that Philo tries to answer.
(Se le presento a Philo, el hombre de las respuestas, y también Estudia, el estudiante con muchísima curiosidad.) Quizas - Maybe we’ll get some help from the rest of the world via comments and maybe we won’t, but heck, let’s see if we can bootstrap this rationality idea from the cave to the stars. Let’s listen:

Philo: Any way we first have to start with the fundamentals.

Estudia: Where and what are they?

Philo: The concepts at the base of knowledge (what humans know most fundamentally). They have to be irreducible principles of thinking, not derived from other ideas. We need the primaries of our existence, the philosophical fundamentals.

Estudia: Why?

Philo: Why, what?

Estudia: Why do we have to begin with fundamentals? Why can’t we just start with a good idea like we should be honest or just or peaceful? Or fair for that matter? Aren’t all those things good and worthy and don’t we know that already?

Philo: Ay, good question. Pick anything like say honesty. How would you know when to be honest? Do you have to tell the truth to someone who wants to find out something that would hurt you on someone else? Do you have to show the thief where you keep your money? Who knows and why? Can you be happy in life or is there another life beyond this one waiting where honesty doesn’t matter? How do you figure this out?
No, there are too many loose ends to clean up if you start in the middle. You have to start with something you are sure of. Something fundamental, like things exist.

Estudia: What things?

Philo: Something, anything. I don’t care what or where or when, but there is something and I think you and I are things too. We are something, somewhere at some time so there. Don’t try to deny it. I tried and it can’t be done. That’s a fundamental. You can’t get around it.

Estudia: Sure I can. Nothing exists, it’s all in the mind of … God or me or yours. Things aren’t what they seem anyway. Now you can make a picture have anything you want in it and the scene is not anywhere but it exists in that picture and in my mind. It’s real if I think it isn’t it?

Philo: Sorry, but if you keep up this crazy talk I can’t help you. If there are no things, why are we going to talk about? Ideas are things, but there has to be something to have the idea and so on. Forget it, it’s a fundamental and there is no way to deny it. I love things like that.

Estudia: Ok, you’re right. There has to be things. They are all around, in, under, over and behind me doing all kinds of things. Great, you there, I’m here and that’s real, right?

Philo: You got it. We’re making progress. From nothing, we now know there is something and we can think about that until next time. Hasta la vista!