Falling Asleep to Philosophy

Earlier this week, my friend Diane said that she made up a conversation to herself right before she went to bed. One person was her, and the other was me. She pretended that she told me something about her daily life and she pretended that I responded to her with some philosophical take on the subject. She said it knocked her right out and she slept very well. Evidently it's so much of a habit of mine that people are doing it without me around as a tool to fall asleep. Would you be offended? Right, me neither.

In the same way, I was talking to my friend Kevin from a big tourist trip. He came over to sit down next to me on the bus, and said that we should have a deep conversation. Well I hit him with just about all the Spinoza anecdotes I had learned in the past year. "Spinoza believed in an immanent God, not a transitive one!" I said. I was overjoyed that someone cared about all of this stuff. I looked over and he had fallen asleep. Whatever, I was basically talking to myself anyway.

One problem in philosophy is loneliness. Maybe that's just a problem with some philosophical connotations. Dialectic, where two people speak, is a little bit more fun. Still, it's lonely in the matrix! It's lonely being a brain in the vat!

Thirdly, in 2008 around may or june, I was reading to my brother about Spinoza before bed. He fell asleep, too!

Frankfurt describes a relief about the realization of the truth in On Truth. He says that there are certain math problems or epiphanies where we are just relieved.

But on the other hand, taking someone's word for it means that we can go on with our lives. Or, in my case, people trusting me that I can handle stuff means they can go to sleep.