“All I know is that I know nothing.” – Socrates
“Are you familiar with the book Nasty, Brutish, and Short,” asked Erich, my good friend, through a text message.
“No,” I replied.
“It’s endorsed by Ryan Holliday.”
“I should buy it then,” I texted back.
Erich knows me well. I really like Ryan Holliday.
Before I could order it, it showed up at my door in the familiar Amazon box. I owe Erich a beer.
Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids by Scott Hershovitz is a clever play on words. The phrase comes from English philosopher Thomas Hobbs, who wrote his seminal work, Leviathan, in which he expressed his views about the nature of human beings and the necessity of governments and societies.
“… and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Leviathan, i. xiii. 9).
Pretty pessimistic. But “Nasty, Brutish, and Short” is also a play on words for children, who Hershovitz argues are some of the best philosophers due to their “beginner minds,” as a Buddhist would say. More on that later.
The book has been challenging, in a good way, as many philosophy books are. One chapter in particular had me riveted – the chapter entitled Knowledge.
Essentially, Hershovitz, who is a legal philosopher and attorney, asks the question inspired by his children – how do you know? It’s a simple question that is incredibly hard to answer when we break it down.
Take for example a pair of socks. Your favorite pair of socks – the ones with llamas on them you wear during Christmas. You know they are in your sock drawer. However, your partner mistakenly gave them to Good Will. Therefore, what you think you know is wrong, and you truly do not know – even if you think you do.
This is simple, yet one of the world’s most impactful thinkers, René Descartes, didn’t want to settle on not knowing. He sought to truly understand that which he thought he knew is what he knew! So, he doubted everything and became a “super skeptic” (my term). He even tried to analyze if he was real or a dream. He thought he was alive, but how did he know he was? Long story short, he answered this question with his most famous line: “I think, therefore I am.”
Being able to think and use our rationality, to Descartes, means we are not in a dream (or a computer simulation, if we were to make this more modern). Whew…
Descartes was instrumental in helping us define “knowledge” – the act of knowing. To truly have knowledge, philosophers long defined through the concept called justified true belief, or JTB. According to Hershovitz, a justified true belief must have the following components:
- One must believe the knowledge to be true.
- One’s belief must be true. They can’t want it to be true.
- One’s belief must be justified, or that is, there must be adequate evidence. Guessing isn’t good enough.
If all three criteria have been met, then you have knowledge. This has been the agreed upon case for hundreds of years – until a guy named Edmund Gettier came around in the 1960s.
He proposed an idea that was later called the Gettier Problem, which destroyed any concept of true knowledge from which no one was able to recover. Fun!
Gettier wrote his paradigm shifting work “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” In it he describes the Gettier problem, which is any example that demonstrates that an individual can satisfy the classical analysis of knowledge – justified true belief – without possessing knowledge. So you can be right, but not know, therefore not possessing knowledge.
Here is his theory as explained by Hershovitz:
“You believe there’s a copy of The Joy of Cooking in your house. You bought it years ago, and you’ve used it many times since. And it’s true: there is a copy in your house. But the copy in your house is not the one you bought. Your partner laned that one out, and it hasn’t come back yet. As it happens, a friend sent you the book for your birthday, not realizing tha you already had it. It’s wrapped, in your living room, waiting to be opened.
“Do you know there’s a copy of The Joy of Cooking in your house? You believe that there is, and your belief is true. Moreover, you’re justified in believing that you have a copy – you bought it yourself and you’ve often used it. So if the JTB account of knowledge is right, you know that you have a copy. But Gettier says that’s wrong, and just about everyone who encounters these sort of cases agrees. You’re just lucky that there’s a copy in your house. It’s not something you know.”
Since the publishing of Gettier’s paper, philosophers have tried feverishly to solve the Gettier Problem. Alas, it’s likely something that will never be solved. Any account of knowledge that does not bind truth and justification is likely to encounter Gettier-style counterexamples. Ultimately, this may be an inescapable problem.
Remember those Christmas llama socks?
So, what do we do and what the hell does this have to do with human resources?
I wouldn’t argue we become radical skeptics and claim that we know nothing. I think that’s counterproductive to the real world. I define philosophy as the art of thinking put into action to become a better person.
I think. I act. Therefore, I HR.
We need to remember that our jobs are not to do these wonderful, complex, and maddening thought exercises for fun or tenure. We do these thought exercises to become better people, and by extension better HR practitioners. Philosophers need to act on their thinking to improve themselves, and by extension, the world around them.
As we “HR” in our day-to-day cubicles, because Elon Musk said we needed to come back to the office – we suck working at home, remember – we need to be reasonably sure, if not doubly sure, that we know what we know, even if it’s impossible to know 100 percent of the time. Our actions and jobs have consequences. We advise on hiring people, terminating people, running investigations, offering coaching on how to do a merger, offering guidance on building teams, bringing in technology to assist with retirement account efficiencies, and so much more. Being in HR is hard. Knowing is hard. HR needs to know, or at least be as reasonably sure as much as is humanly possible.
HR practitioners need to consider the ways we use knowledge in our daily lives. Knowledge serves an important evolutionary function, whether knowing the location of a fox’s den while walking your Shihtzu or knowing that there’s a COVID-19 outbreak in Chicago. So, we need a reliable process for deciding when to trust our senses and others’ testimony, even if this process does not result in a perfect analysis every time.
So, how do we take the theoretical and make it actionable?
It’s important HR practitioners know what they do with certainty. Not just assume they know.
It’s important to know what they don’t know, as well.
To do this, one must remember a few concepts. First, remember to train one’s mind to avoid “good” or “bad.” Perception initially must lack judgement. Jumping to any conclusion before proper knowledge is confirmed leads only to disappointment at best and potential legal action on the other side. As William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Thinking slowly at times is an asset. Cultivate it.
A second approach is cultivating a beginner’s mind, which can help one avoid hasty judgements. Having a beginner’s mind means you approach situations as if it’s the first time you are experiencing it. The term is translated from the word, Shoshin, which comes from Zen Buddhism. of the wonder children exhibit when they see the mundane to an adult. An adult or expert mind is an attitude taken when someone believes they know enough about something in order to achieve what they need to do.
With this mindset, people make assumptions and don’t tend to ask questions about a given situation before they make a decision. They believe there is one correct solution, and that whatever deviates from this is “wrong.” Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen Budhist monk who helped popularize his religion in the US, says “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” This is likely why children make excellent philosophers, as Hershovitz would argue.
A third approach is learning to question one’s perceptions. Is what I am seeing true? How do I know? Train yourself to ask these questions and learn to examine deeply. Our experiences can color our perceptions poorly, shade areas that should be colorful. Learning to question what you’re perceiving is important – it allows for greater understanding before using perception as a basis for beliefs, judgments, and knowledge. Questioning your first impressions can help you better analyze your perceptions for biases and assumptions.
Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself: “It’s all in how you perceive it. You’re in control. You can dispense with misperception at will, like rounding the point.”
While there are many other concepts to help us develop a questioning mind, I will finish with a mantra I tell myself everyday: Ego is the enemy. No one truly knows as much as they think they do. Experts believe they know, but they don’t. Non-experts think they know, and they don’t. It’s OK to not know. It’s not OK to not know and bloviate about it, or worse, pass policies or “lead” others.
As Epictetus taught, “What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.”
Ultimately, can anything be known? I’d argue that it can be. I know plenty. Or at least I think I do. Much of it is likely useless trivia knowledge – like The Simpsons quotes or world geography. I also think I know an awful lot about brewing beer, except that part where it’s actually brewed. I also think I know a lot about human resources. Maybe someone on the other end of a PIP disagrees.
Regardless, there is one thing I do know for sure, and it’s that I don’t know nearly as much as there is to know. And that makes life worth exploring.
Well, maybe I know two things for certain. I do owe Erich a beer.
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