Is there a philosophy of stupidness?

Question

In the near past, I've read about the work of Tversky and Kahneman, the text said that they presented their work to a famous American philosopher (without mentioning names) and he said that he wasn't interested in a philosophy of stupidness. From what I know, Kahneman and Tversky wrote about biases, not specifically stupidness. So, is there someone else who wrote some philosophy of stupidness?

Answer 1

There is a nice little book by Erasmus of Rotterdam called In Praise of Folly. It discusses several forms of stupidity and their different "uses"... I don't know whether this counts as philosophy, though.

Answer 2

Carlo M. Cipolla wrote about stupidity from the point of view of the benefits or losses that an individual causes to him or herself and to others, in his book The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

Answer 3

Matthijs van Boxsel wrote an encycopledia of stupidness 'Morosofie' (Morosophy) and an introduction to stupidity, both currently only in Dutch as far as I known.

Answer 4

I always thought "philosophy of stupidity" was a reference to "The Dog", the greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope

Answer 5

Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's cradle is intended as a story of human stupidity. To quote:

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

Answer 6

I will attempt to create a philosophy of stupidness here in this post.

Let us start from a simple question - is there stupidity? From billions of good and not so good answers we arrive at the conclusion that stupidity DOES exist.

Second, let us continue with the question - is there NO stupidity? From billions of good and not so good answers we arrive at the conclusion that stupidity does NOT exist.

On this solid ground i base my philosophy of stupidity.

Stupidity is a fundamental ingredient of the universe which both exist and does not exist.

Stupidity is very closely linked to the question of existence of others.

When others do not exist they become stupid, because only existence brings light. On the other hand when others start to exist they can not be stupid, because only existence brings light.

Same fundamental method applies to God. If he exists he can not be stupid. On the other hand if God does not exist then he is stupid because he could not achieve existence.

After that brilliant discoveries i also see dual connection between stupidity and existence. When existence is there stupidity is not, and when stupidity is there existence is not.

Right from here it becomes clear that sleep is stupid because it deprives us from existence.

Furthermore my philosophy of stupidness offers a correct interpretation of classical philosophers. For example famous Descartes - "Cogito ergo sum" really means - "I exist therefor i am not stupid"

My philosophy of stupidity is so fundamental (stupid, as a dual counterpart to existence) that it even applies to itself.

When others reject my philosophy it proves how correct it is, on the other hand when others accept it it deprives it from the object of study.

Stupidity is so fundamental that i had to base my philosophy of it on it itself . That is why it is clearly visible that in some parts of the text author is there and in others we lost him.

Answer 7

Old question, one which has been more or less answered. But what about the ship of fools?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_fools

An allegory from Plato's republic, designed to show the usefulness of his form of governance. Quite famously

Relying on M. Foucault's (1967) work, Madness and Civilization, many contemporary writers of abnormal psychology textbooks report the existence of ships of fools as a common medieval method for the segregation of the mentally ill. It is argued here that these reports often contain embellishments not provided in Foucault's account. A search for documentary evidence of such ships failed to find any. It appears that the only existence such vessels ever had was in the form of Lenten processional floats and as literary vehicles for moral allegories

Which is humorous.

Apparently they existed as nautical leper colonies.

You'd expect philosophy and philosophers to have a lot to do with fools (as an antonym of wisdom); philosophers often seem reluctant to make foolish people seem foolish, perhaps due to exasperation

Plato’s argument against hedonism, and a new, unified, account of his argument that there are ‘false pleasures’. It reads Plato’s argument as cumulative, involving different but related senses of ‘false’, one that appeals in the end to the foolishness of certain pleasures, which foolishness the subject cannot himself appreciate while he is in their grip... [however] the die-hard hedonist is more easily brought to worry that he is a fool than that he is a knave.

Answer 8

if stupidness means the lack of wisdom, then the whole idea of philosophy is that human are stupid. note that philosophy is the love of wisdom, not the wisdom itself. we can only pursue wisdom, but can never really or finally achieve it. that's what Socrates meant by saying: only god has wisdom and every person is unwise.

to understand this is to understand the very core of philosophy, that is, the essence of reason. reason is to do one thing and one thing only: reflect.

whatever you have or have achieved, you have to reflect it.

once you have stopped reflecting, you are doomed. it means death.

like here in china, there is only one truth, one doctrine, unquestionable, unshakable. and it proves to be a dead society.

dear friends from the west, dive into the classics of your great ancestors, like Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, etc. they as a whole are the only beacon light that whole human race has amid the dark cloud of uncertain fate.