Jane: This is But Why, A Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions
from curious kids just like you, and we find answers. Every now
and then, actually, more frequently than you might think,
we get questions that are really, really big and very hard
to answer. These are the questions from kids who are
wrestling with what we call "existential questions," things
like: Why do humans exist? Why is life sometimes unfair?
Questions about punishment and kindness, how we define art, or,
what if we're all living in a dream and we just don't know it?
Another way to describe these kinds of questions is to say
they're philosophical in nature. What's philosophy?
Scott Hershovitz: My favorite definition of philosophy
actually comes from my son from when he was in second grade.
Jane: That's Scott Hershovitz . He teaches philosophy and law at
the University of Michigan.
Scott Hershovitz: He said philosophy is the art of
thinking, which I think is a really perfect description. So
what we do when we do philosophy is we think about the world, and
we think about ourselves, and we try to understand them better.
Jane: Because Scott's a philosophy professor, he spends
a lot of his time thinking about these kinds of complicated
questions that don't always have a straightforward answer. Like,
why do we need to follow the law, or why do parents or other
adults get to tell you what you should or shouldn't do?
Scott Hershovitz: What are the reasons to let some other people
decide what you're going to do sometimes, and when are those
times, and when is it okay for you to do what you want to do?
So that's a philosophy question, because the way to learn about
it is not to go into a laboratory, and it's not to go
search for, you know, things in the woods, or it's not to do
science. It's just to think really carefully about the
problem and see what we can learn about it.
Jane: Well, let's talk about some of the... what we call
existential questions that kids have sent us. And so the idea of
an existential question is it's a question about our existence.
It's a question about who we are and what the world is and why it
works the way it does, and how do we know that? And one of
those fundamental questions is one we've gotten from a lot of
kids who wondered, basically, just what's the meaning of life?
What's the purpose of life?
Ben: My name is Ben. I'm from Philadelphia. My question is,
Nick: My name is Nick. I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm seven
what's the meaning of life?
years old. Why are people's purpose made?
Leighton: Hi. My name is Leighton. I am eight years old.
I live in Austin, Texas. My question is, why do humans
exist?
Aviad: My name is Aviad. I am six years old. I live in Israel.
I want to know what is life for?
Violet: My name is Violet. I'm five years old. I live in Eagle
art, California. Why do people even exist?
Avery: Hi. This is Avery. I am seven year seven and a half. I
live in Seattle. Why are we here this moment, and how did we
exist?
Scott Hershovitz: Yeah, I think this is such an important
question, and it's a question that everybody thinks about. And
I think there's different ways in which we might go and going
about trying to answer it. So some people who are religious,
some people who believe in God, think that maybe the world was
designed and we were put here for a reason, and that maybe
that we can try and find out what God's purpose is for us.
And then there's non-religious ways of thinking about this
problem. Just think about the size of the universe. I think
how big it is, right? It's it's billions and billions of light
years across, and there's billions of billions of stars
and probably billions and billions of planets, and we're
just on a tiny planet, right? That's the third rock from a sun
that from a star that's not even all that specialist star. I
think, Wow, this the whole universe couldn't really be
about us, right? So I'm not sure that there's a purpose to our
lives. I'm not sure that there's meaning to our lives, but I
think we can give our own lives a purpose, and we can make
meaning in our lives. So that's a distinction. Philosophers
sometimes draw a difference between finding meaning, what is
the meaning of our lives, and finding meaning in our lives.
And so I think one of the coolest things about getting the
chance to be a person is deciding what, what meaning
you'll have in your life. And that may be meaning that you
find in important relationships, your relationships with your
family and your friends. It might be meaning that you find
in work that you do right. Maybe you'll be a doctor or a
firefighter and you'll get to do really meaningful things,
helping people or saving people, or maybe it'll be meaning that
you create through art. There's so many different things you can
do that will be meaningful to you and meaningful to other
people. And so I think instead of trying to find out what we're
for, we should think of the world as the canvas that's been
put in front of us and we can decide what we're going to paint
on it.
Jane: Janelle, in Vancouver, puts a slight twist on the
question.
Janelle: What is the point of life if you're going to die
anyway?
Scott Hershovitz: Oh, wow, that is a really tough question. So
here's a way to think about it. So the thought behind Janelle's
question is, if something's going to end, then maybe it
doesn't have a point. Maybe it's not worth engaging in. And so
I'm thinking right now about other things that have ends, and
wondering whether that's true, right? So a book has an end,
right? But I love books. I love them, even though I know the
story is going to come to an end, or music comes to an end,
but I still think music can be really lovely, and maybe a human
life is like that, right, so it's the kind of thing that has
an end, right? There can be lots of beauty and significance and
important things that happen inside that life.
And I'll go one step further. There are lots of philosophers
who have thought that it's the end of our lives that gives
meaning to what happens in them, right? So just imagine what it
would be like to be a mortal, to live absolutely forever, right?
And if you were immortal, you really wouldn't have to make any
choices, right? You wouldn't have to make a choice about say,
are you going to be a doctor or a firefighter, right? Or are you
going to be an artist or an auto mechanic? Because if you were
immortal, you could be a doctor and then a firefighter and then
an artist and then an auto mechanic. And you wouldn't have
to decide what instruments you were going to learn to play,
there'd be time to learn to play all of them. And many
philosophers have thought it's the scarcity, it's the having to
make a decision, it's the not being able to do everything that
makes our choices important. So maybe it's the end of our lives
that gives the things we do within them appoint
Jane: Well, here's another question that I think a lot of
us have wondered, too, and often when hard things come into our
lives.
Viven: My name is Viven. I am six years old. I am from
Gardenside, Pennsylvania. My question is, why is life sad?
Scott Hershovitz: Yeah, why is life sad? Well, I think there's,
there's different kinds of reasons that we get sad. So
sometimes we're sad because say we've lost someone that we love,
or maybe we've lost something that we love, or maybe there was
an activity that we were excited about, and now that's behind us,
and we're feeling a little bit sad. And I think one thing to
remember when we're sad for those kinds of reasons is that
it's, in some ways, the other side of love. So, you know, to
love someone is to feel really attached to them. And it's it's
what comes along with feeling really attached to them as being
sad when we lose them, and that can be true for things in our
lives, special objects that we care about, or special times in
our lives. Maybe you love going to camp, or maybe you love going
to the swimming pool, and that makes it a little bit sad to
leave, but that sadness is a marker of something really
special, of the love that you have for it. And they kind of go
together.
When I was thinking about this question, I think there's
another kind of reason we get sad, which is when people don't
treat us very nicely. And you know, we really hope that people
are going to be kind, and they're going to, philosophers
like to use the word goodwill. They're going to show us
goodwill and treat us respectfully. And we get sad
when they don't, because it doesn't seem like they're taking
us seriously or caring about us, and that kind of sadness I think
we could live without. I think we could all do a better job of
treating each other nicely and showing respect and being kind,
and then we'd have less to be sad about. But the first kind of
sadness, the sadness that just comes along with love, I think
it's actually a good thing that we have it in our life, because
we really wouldn't have love without it.
Stella: My name is Stella. I am eight years old. live in
Singapore. Why are people always too distracted by being in life
to ever think about the theory of it?
Scott Hershovitz: Well, I love this question, because I think
that it's most grownups who are too distracted by being in life,
but kids are not. And I think one is they have a lot of
responsibilities. It's the grownup maybe that has to cook
dinner or do the laundry or go work at a job to have money to
pay for all the things that we need in life, and that stuff can
take up a lot of time, and it can be very stressful. And I
think when we feel busy and stressful, it's hard to take
time to think about these deeper questions, these harder
questions to answer, especially if we're not sure that we're
going to find answers. But part of the reason that I like to
teach philosophy, and part of the reason that I like to talk
about philosophy with kids and with other adults, is I think
that even grownups do have the same kind of curiosity about the
world that kids do, and that it's good to slow down sometimes
and think about that, think about the harder questions, in
part because it can remind you what's beautiful about the world
or what's puzzling in it, or to notice the things that are
special about it, and partly because it may lead you to to
wonder whether you should be spending so much time on things
like your job or the dishes or laundry. Maybe those actually
aren't the best ways to spend all of our time, even though
they can be important things, and philosophy invites you to
think about that.
Jane: So let's dive deeper into some of these questions that
arise when we're thinking about existence and the world. Here's
one from Gemma, who's seven and lives in Vermont.
Gemma: Where was I before I was born?
Jane: We have a whole episode that's all about how babies are
made, scientifically speaking. We'll link to that episode in
our show notes. We know a lot about how the physical pieces of
us come together from the DNA of our biological parents, but how
our minds or our essences form remains a big mystery.
Scott Hershovitz: Yeah, it's a it's a real puzzle, and it's,
it's connected to some of the hardest problems that I think
philosophers but also a lot of scientists are trying to figure
out. So we're made out of physical things, but that human
being has a mind, right? And we don't really understand what the
relationship is between the stuff that we're made out of and
the minds that we have, right? So some people think that our
minds just are our brains, right? And other people think
that our minds must be different things than our brains, but then
it's not clear what they are or how they relate to each other,
and I don't know the answers to this. I hope some kids listening
will help us figure it out someday.
Teddy: My name is Teddy I'm eight years old, and I live in
London, England, and this is my question: how do we know life is
not a dream?
Scott Hershovitz: So I have met so many people that wonder about
this, young and old in philosophy, there was a guy
named Descartes, who was also a mathematician, who was sitting
by the fire one day, and he was wondering whether he might be
dreaming everything. And even thousands of years before that,
there's an ancient Dallas text called the Zhuangzi, where a man
named Zhuang Zhu said, one day he dreamed he was a butterfly
floating and flitting around, and then he woke up, and he was
solid, unmistakable, ZhuangZhu, but he wondered whether he was
ZhuangZhu who dreamed he was a butterfly, or whether he was a
butterfly who dreamed he was ZhuangZhu.
And so human beings have just been wondering about this
question forever. And one thought you might have is, we
can't know for sure, right? So philosophers call this
skepticism, right? The idea that maybe we don't know what we
think we know, and maybe that applies to absolutely
everything, including, like, are we awake or are we dreaming? And
I think it's okay to be unsure. And to recognize that there's
kind of limits to what we might know, and to realize that we
might be confused, right? But we might think, well, I'm happy
with the way things are, or at the end of the day, it doesn't
matter. It's good to remind myself that I can question
absolutely anything, but that doesn't mean I should question
everything all the time.
Mugumo: My name is Mugumo. I'm 11 years old, and I live in
Nairobi. Why is it that sometimes many people in a group
are punished for something that only one person did like in
class?
Scott Hershovitz: I love this question. This is another
philosophy question about law, because the law often hands out
punishments. And I think there's two ways of answering this
question. One might be to say, what's the grownup who punishes
the class when one or two kids has done something bad? What are
they thinking? Well, sometimes they're thinking that I can use
the other kids in the class to put pressure on the kids that
were behaving badly to start acting well, right? So they
think that the kids who are behaving badly may care more
about what their friends think than about what the teacher
thinks, and so if the friends get upset with them because they
got punished, then maybe they'll behave better. So philosophers
talk about collective punishment, and this is a kind
of collective punishment, and I think that's one reason that
people sometimes use collective punishments. A different kind of
question we can ask about it is: is it fair to do collective
punishment? And I don't think it is. I think that when a teacher
says I'm going to make everyone in the class unhappy because a
couple people did something bad and that I'm going to try and
use that peer pressure to get better behavior from the kids
who are behaving bad, she's kind of using the other kids, the
ones that were acting well, as a tool, right to accomplish
something and not treating them as individuals, not treating
them with respect. So I think collective punishment is the
kind of thing that can work, but I don't think it's a very nice
thing to do. I think we should be treated based on the way
we've acted and not based on the way other people behave.
Oskar: Hi, my name is Oskar. I'm eight years old. I'm from
Iceland. How do we learn from our mistakes?
Scott Hershovitz: So I have this conversation with my students a
lot, not necessarily with like big important mistakes, like
being mean to someone or hurting someone, but even just when they
make mistakes on a test. Sometimes they just want to look
at the answer, the right answer, and then they think they're
done. And I think, no, that's just the start of learning from
your mistakes, because what you need to do is then think back to
when you took that test and ask yourself, how could I have done
things differently so I would get to the right answer? And so
I often think that that's true even when we make a mistake,
like saying something mean to a friend, right? So what we need
to do is kind of a little bit of mental time travel. We need to
think back to what we were feeling in that moment and ask
ourselves why we said what we said, or did what we did, and if
there was a better way to handle those feelings and maybe try and
make a plan for next time something like that happens. I
think that's a way to learn from your mistakes, is to kind of
plan out what you'll do differently if the same kind of
situation arises.
Jane: After the break, we'll ponder more questions with Scott
Hershovitz, like is graffiti art and how can narwhals be real?
Stay with us.
This is But Why. I'm Jane Lindholm. And today, we're
talking with philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz,
who's here to help us tackle some of the biggest, hardest
questions about our lives and our world. Here's one from West
in Baltimore.
West: I see art on the bridges when I'm going to school, and
why, and it's called graffiti. Why do people do it?
Jane: And West's question to me, is interesting on the face of
it, but also is interesting in the idea of, what do we call
art, and what do we call vandalism, or painting something
on other people's property when they shouldn't, what's art and
what's not art?
Scott Hershovitz: Yeah, I wish we, I wish we could ask a follow
up question, because why do people do it? Could mean lots of
things, right? So it could involve a kind of criticism,
like you've painted on other people's property, and it's not
nice to do that without permission, and whether it's not
nice, I think might depend a little bit on the context. So in
some places, graffiti isn't welcome, but in other cities
around the world, there's a real tradition of street art and
painting, and maybe the folks who own buildings in those
places are more open minded and welcoming of that kind of
expression.
But there's a deeper question here, which is, why do we make
art? Why do we want to paint on the side of that bridge or on
that wall. And this is something that human beings have been
doing as far back as we know. They're human beings, some of
the earliest evidence we have for the existence of human
beings, is art that they painted on the wall of caves. And I
think there's a few answers. One is we make art to communicate
with each other. We want to express things about ourselves
and the way we see the world. And when I see graffiti,
sometimes I think there it's really beautiful or has really
interesting ideas that are captured in the pictures that
people are making. Sometimes I just think it's fun, right? To
make something beautiful. One thing I think kids know that
adults forget, is that something's being fun is a
complete reason to do it, and we don't. It doesn't need to have
some purpose beyond itself. And painting, whether it's graffiti
or on a canvas is one of those activities like dancing. It can
just be fun, and we don't need to ask why do it and have an
answer in mind beyond we like doing it.
Jane: Well, in that case, I'm going to give you maybe the
toughest question of the day.
Bella: My name is Bella. I am eight years old. I live in
Burlington, Vermont. Why do people like the meme six seven
so much?
Kid voice: Why does six seven exist? Why does the six seven
kid exist?
Jane: Why does six seven exist, and why does the six seven kid
exist?
Scott Hershovitz: Oh, wow, I might be too old to answer this
question. Maybe this is a question that belongs to kids,
but if I was going to try and answer the question, I think
it's just such a wonderful example of how playful human
beings can be, to take almost anything and to make a joke out
of it, or to make a game out of it. And I can't say at my age,
I'm 49 years old, that I fully understand the six seven game.
I've just noticed if I find a way to say "six seven" in my
classroom, that my students are amused. But I think of it as
just a way to play with with numbers and with language and to
have fun with each other.
Jane: I also think it's an example of how forever before
and probably forever into the future, kids will try to find a
way to confuse adults into being frustrated about what they don't
know, because so many times adults seem to act like we know
more than kids. And here's this thing that kids are like, you
know, all in the know about and all these adults are like, what
does it mean? And so it for me, reminds me too, yes, that
playfulness, but also that kids have some power in the world to
figure things out for themselves, that adults don't
have to understand.
Scott Hershovitz: That's definitely true. And my younger
son Hank likes to make clear how little I understand about the
way kids talk these days, so we'll roll his eyes if I try and
use the words I hear on TikTok.
Almira: My name is Almira. I'm five. I live in Leavenworth,
Washington. How can narwhals be real?
Jane: if you've never seen a narwhal, it's a kind of a whale
that lives in very, very cold ocean waters, and it has a long
tusk sticking straight out of its head. They're amazing
looking animals, and someday I really want to see a narwhal in
person. But how can those animals be real?
Scott Hershovitz: It's such a good question, because it looks
like somebody just sort of mashed up a whale and a unicorn,
and that it had to have been imagined into existence. But
actually it's real, and so it's a reminder that the actual world
is as cool as any world we can imagine. I have children who
liked narwhals, and so I did a little bit of research on that
tusk, and it turns out it's really useful to them, right? So
the tusk, because it extends far out from their heads, it's
really sensitive to vibrations, and so it helps them pick up
sounds, and it helps them pick up other things that are moving
in the water, and it can sense the temperature of the water
around them. So that tusk is giving the narwhal a lot of
information for helping it navigate and and so that's the
answer of how it evolved. Because, of course, the animals
that exist are produced by evolution, and the traits they
have tend to be the traits that that make them successful right
at the at being a narwhal, or make them successful at being a
dog, or make them successful at being a person. So narwhals
exist because that tusk is super helpful.
Jane: Well, Scarlett kind of we can build on that question with
Scarlett's question:
Scarlett: Why can't everything be the same, for example, like,
why isn't a banana on an orange the same thing, a crocodile or a
bird, or red and yellow?
Scott Hershovitz: Yeah, so this is such a fun question too,
because there was a philosopher who lived a long time ago in
ancient Greece named Parmenides, and Parmenides thought that all
differences were illusion, that there was only one thing in the
world. And anytime you were drawing a distinction, whether
it was between a banana or an orange, or between you and a
banana, right? You were laboring under illusion, because there
was just one thing. And he and some of his followers took this
idea very seriously, and they were not always careful for
their physical safety, because they believed in themselves
being a kind of illusion. And there was another philosopher in
ancient Greece named Heraclitus who held the exact opposite
view. He thought that everything is constantly changing, so that
banana right now is different than the way that banana will be
in a few minutes, which is different than the way it was
last week. And so he thought, you can never pick up the same
banana twice, right? As he put it, he said, you can never step
in the same river twice, because the river is always changing.
And I think, and I think most of us think the truth is somewhere
in the middle, right? That the banana can be the same banana,
even though it's changing, even though it's rotting, maybe, and
I can be the same person, even though my hair gets longer or my
fingernails get shorter, or, if you're kid, you might be getting
taller. So I think that things can change but nevertheless be
the same thing, right? But part of what that tells us is that
what we mean by same isn't exactly the same in all ways.
What makes me the same person that I was last week, right, is
probably... I have the same memories and the same
personality, even though I don't have the same hair, right? My
hair is a little bit longer. So, so that's one way to think about
this question is, you know, we have different reasons for
thinking about sameness and difference. Another way to think
about the question is just to go back to the narwhal. Banana
trees and orange trees come from different environments, and
their different characteristics probably made them successful
for the environments that they're in. And I'm so glad that
oranges are not bananas, because I love oranges and I don't like
bananas.
Logan: Hi. My name is Logan. I'm six years old, and I live in
Austin, Texas. Why are humans made out of stardust but they're
not fragile?
Scott Hershovitz: Yeah, this is super cool. And so let's just
back up for a second. What do we mean when we say we're made of
stardust? We're made out of atoms, right? And most of the
atoms that exist inside our body say the carbon atoms and the
nitrogen atoms, they were made inside stars. Stars are big
nuclear reactors, and they're squeezing lighter atoms into
heavier atoms, and some of those heavier atoms are what you need
to make people. So the atoms in our body, they were at the
centers of stars once, and that is super, super cool, right?
Now, we know that dust, it's hard to make things out of dust.
It would be really fragile, but what we mean when we say that
we're made of stardust is just that we're made out of the same
kinds of things that dust is made of or made out of atoms.
And atoms can be put together in different ways, and some of the
ways we put them together are super strong, and some of the
ways we put them together are super fragile and breakable. So
when we put them together in glass, they're easy to break,
and when we put them together in steel, they're really hard to
break, and you probably need a chemist to come on and tell you
about exactly how they fit together and which arrangements
will be strong and which arrangements will be weak. But
we have stronger and weaker bits of us, right? So your muscles
might be really strong, but maybe some of your bones are
weaker, or maybe your biceps, you're really strong, but your
your nose is a little bit weaker, and that's going to be
because of the different arrangements of atoms in those
parts of your body.
Dexter: My name is Dexter, and I'm four years old, and I live
in Illinois. Why do hearts break?
Scott Hershovitz: Oh, wow. Well, this is kind of bringing us full
circle. Back to the question, why is, why is the world sad
sometimes? And I think I want to answer this question in the same
way, right to say, Well, again, there's always multiple
questions that are, that are... you know, lurking in any good
question. And so why do hearts break? You know, sometimes
physical hearts break because, you know, the valves don't work,
or someone has a heart attack. And so the heart is a kind of
machine that breaks down. But when we talk about our hearts as
people, sometimes we're not talking about the thing that's
beating inside us. Because sometimes we're talking about
the really important part of ourselves that loves others and
wants to be loved. And love is this beautiful, wonderful thing.
When we love somebody, we want to be with them, and we want to
enjoy them, and we want good things to happen to them, and
when bad things happen, or when we're separated from them, the
other side of that love is sadness about the loss.
Jane: Scott says it's not just philosophy professors who are
philosophers. We all wonder about these big existential
questions, especially kids. So do you know what that means? It
means you are a philosopher, too. That's it for this episode.
Thanks to Professor Scott Hershovitz for contemplating the
big questions with us today. Scott's also written a book
called Nasty, Brutish and Short Adventures in Philosophy with My
Kids. It's a book for adults, and I really loved reading it,
but it's all about how you kids think about these big questions
and can push adults to continue thinking about them as we get
older. We'll include a link to the book in our show notes.
As always, if you have a question about anything, have an
adult record you asking it on a smartphone using an app like
voice memos, then have your adults email the file to
questions@butwhykids.org. Our show is produced by Sarah Baik,
Melody Bodette and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont Public and
distributed by PRX. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo, and
our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. If you like our show,
please have your adults help you give us a thumbs up or a review
on whatever podcast platform you use to listen to us. It helps
other kids and families find us. We'll be back in two weeks with
an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious!