Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [38]
To get us going then, pragmatists always want to ask what the problem is. In Green Eggs and Ham, then, what’s the problem, and how can we think about it? Is it one problem or several? Anyone can see that C has at least one problem, which is Sam-I-Am won’t leave him in peace. But maybe C’s real problem is that he doesn’t get out enough, try new things, and without some prodding he’ll miss what needs doing in the world. Sam has a problem, too, and his really is mysterious: C won’t eat the foodstuffs. But we all vaguely sense that Sam has made this his own problem, has chosen the problem, perhaps even invented the problem. And we have to wonder whether it is a real problem at all.
That brings us to our first lesson in pragmatism. There was a curmudgeon of an old philosopher named Charles Sanders Peirce (it’s pronounced “purse”) who lived from 1839 until 1914. He actually invented the philosophy of pragmatism, and everyone pretty much agrees that if there was ever a contrarian in the world, it was Peirce. And in fact, he actually looked a little bit like C in Green Eggs and Ham. Peirce noticed that when we have a problem, we become aware of it when it paralyzes the flow of our action and causes us to think, whether we want to or not. In the case of C, he has a problem with Sam because Sam interrupts his reading. C never would have formed an opinion about Sam otherwise. It’s like that with all problems. I suppose Sam doesn’t feel he can get on with his life until C eats the meal—although why that is so is exactly what we need to figure out. So, by listening to Peirce, we just figured out that we have a problem, too, which is: why is Sam so very serious about disposing of this meal in this way? I have a feeling that we won’t get to the end of this chapter until we have worked that one out.
So that’s our problem. We want to know Sam’s motives, why it’s a problem for him not only that this meal is uneaten but also that C must eat it. I assume that when he solves his problem, he’ll go back to whatever he does when he isn’t pushing ova and pork. I mean, where did he get his supplies? He clearly has lots of friends and a large menagerie of friendly beasts. So let us at least venture a hypothesis, because without that, we have no direction. What do you think Sam would be doing if not for this problem? Go on, think about it while I fill in a little more about pragmatism.
The Shadow of a Doubt
You already have lesson number one about pragmatism, which is that you would never think at all unless you had a problem, and a problem is nothing apart from the interruption of your usual activity. We can go a little further. Thinking is an activity that is a substitute for bodily activity. What we do when we think is we sort of pretend to act without really doing it—we see how this action or that action will probably come out, and then decide to try it out for real, or we think about a different action and imagine how that one will come out. It may not ever have occurred to you before, but thinking is just acting out in your mind what you might do and then saying either yes or no to really doing it. (Most of the time it’s no, thank heavens.) If the answer is no, you’re still thinking. If it’s yes, you’re through thinking and now you’re acting something out. This can happen very