phenomenology: A method of inquiry that attempts to describe reality as it is perceived and understood by human consciousness, as opposed, for example, to scientific description. Phenomenology, for instance, describes the phenomenon of “lived time,” or time as we experience it, as compared to “clock time.” In the movie Manhattan, when Woody Allen says, “We hardly ever make love—only twice a week,” he is expressing “lived time”; likewise when his screen wife declares, “He always wants to make love—like twice a week!”
post hoc ergo propter hoc: A logical fallacy, meaning literally, “after this, therefore because of this”; the fallacy that because A precedes B, it must therefore be the cause of B. The book Freakonomics points out loads of these fallacies, especially in the realm of parenting. A parent says, “My kid is smart because I played Mozart to him while he was in utero,” while in fact there is no correlation between these two circumstances. Chances are the kid is smart because he had parents who had heard of Mozart (i.e., were educated and therefore probably smart).
pragmatism: a school of philosophy that stresses the link between theory and practice. A true theory, for example, is defined by William James as a useful theory, or one that spawns further knowledge. Some people find James’s definition useful; others don’t.
rationalism: The view that reason is the primary—or the sole—path to knowledge. It is often contrasted with empiricism, which is the view that sensory experience is the primary path to knowledge. Traditionally, rationalists have preferred reason because the senses are notoriously unreliable and knowledge based on them is therefore uncertain. They preferred the flat-out certainty of statements arrived at by reason, such as, “This is the best of all possible worlds.” You had to be there . . .
satori: In Zen Buddhism, an experience of enlightenment in which we suddenly see the true nature of ourselves and the world. To quote the Red Hot Chili Peppers, “If you have to ask, you don’t know.”
supreme categorical imperative: Immanuel Kant’s overriding moral principle that one ought to act only according to those maxims that can be consistently willed as a universal law. It’s sort of like the golden rule with umlauts, but not quite.
synthetic statement: A statement that is not true by definition. For example, “Yo mama wears army boots” is a synthetic statement; it adds information not included in the definition of the term “Yo mama.” This is also true of the corollary “Yo Yo Ma wears army boots.” Contrast analytic statement.
telos: Inner aim. The telos of an acorn is to become an oak tree. Similarly, the telos of a graduate student in philosophy is a tenured professorship at Harvard. This is his or her inner aim, despite the higher odds of a career at Wal-Mart.
utilitarianism: the moral philosophy that right actions are those that bring about more good for the persons affected than any alternative. The limited utility of this moral philosophy becomes evident when you try to please both your mother and your mother-in-law on Thanksgiving.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We don’t know anybody other than ourselves who is willing to take responsibility for the idea for this book, but we do want to acknowledge a couple of joke-meisters who supplied us with some of our best gags: Gil Eisner and Herb Klein.
Professor Robert Wolff, our philosophy tutor at Harvard, deserves credit for teaching us to think philosophically . . . sort of.
Bill Hughes and Stefan Billups, photographers extraordinaire, made us look both smarter and funnier than we really are.
Thanks to Martha Harrington and Satch Lampron, innkeepers of the Nestle Inn in Conway, Massachusetts, our tolerant hosts during our marathon final edit.
No respectable acknowledgments page would be complete without a heartfelt smooch in the direction of our wives and daughters. You know who you are. And if not, those smooches are for Eloise and Freke, Esther and Samara (whose help went far beyond the bounds of filial duty).
We especially want to thank Julia Lord of Julia Lord Literary Management, our agent and a woman of astonishing intelligence and wit, not to mention patience.
Also, a tip of our collective hat to our editor, Ann Treistman, who steadily encouraged us to improve this manuscript in spite of ourselves.
David Rosen, vice president and publisher of Abrams Image, championed the book from the outset and became the head cheerleader for Team Plato. Thank you very much, David.
Finally, we want to express our belated apologies to Immanuel Kant for never completely understanding him. We feel your pain, Manny.
—TWC/DMK
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