Philosophy Is the Battle Against the Bad Framing Kraken

When you are born, you begin without a single good framing to understand the world, except perhaps some innate ones that clarify the role of your parents for you. In other words, you begin in a stormy sea without any navigational notion, and it is all but impossible for you to understand the world.

As you grow up, receive an education, and experience stuff, you collect framings that help you navigate reality and—why not—maybe even thrive in it. By the time you're an adult, in general, you have good enough framings for all the important things that happen in your life. Not always, because there's always something new or difficult happening to you that requires new framings, but there is usually someone who can point the way for you. All in all, you are equipped for survival on the main routes across the ocean of reality. Good sailing to you.

Enter the philosopher, the framing-hunter. She has all the same "daily life" framings as you and I do, but she's not satisfied. She doesn't just want to navigate the usual transoceanic routes through life. She wants to explore the untrodden nooks and crannies of all of the New World coasts. For that, the usual framings that we all use are no good. She's venturing into bad-framing waters, dangerous seas that no one has been able to tame yet. And her mortal enemy is the Bad Framing Kraken.

What does it mean for something to cause something else? Why do I feel like I'm conscious? What is the fabric of reality made of? There are plenty of blind spots, uncharted areas of the map of knowledge that our education and daily experience leaves blank, or warps conveniently out of sight. We don't need those answers in our daily lives! Or do we?

The philosopher heads straight for those bewitched waters, fully knowing that the Kraken is there somewhere, lurking below the surface, aiming to sink her ship. The bad framings may just be too bad to get where she's heading, their tentacles too strong and slimy and vicious. The good framings, the routes that lead beyond, might be hopelessly out of reach. But she, and her fellow philosophers, go there anyway. Most perish in the attempt, and end up in the Kraken's stomach. But if no one tried, we'd never get to see those mysterious coasts. ●