For the last several weeks I have been trying very hard to care about Anglo-American analytic philosophy. In general, though, (with some exceptions) I have found its problems and approaches to resolving problems too tedious, too inapplicable and too dry to keep me engaged. It is cognitively, practically and aesthetically irrelevant to me.

Or to put it in UX language, for me, the experience is not useful, usable or desirable. I am not the user of this stuff.

I suspect the user of analytic philosophy is other professional philosophers who want to philosophize to other professional philosophers.

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Anglo-American analytic philosophy is the UNIX of philosophies.

My project is to design a Macintosh philosophy. (A well-designed thing to be used by people who don’t want to be forced to tinker with technicalities, unless they want to. And perhaps a thing that appeals especially to designers looking for tools to help them design better.)

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Philosophy is a kind of design. It is a mind-reality interface.

Every philosophy permits us to render some aspects of reality intelligible, while confusing or obscuring others; supports us in some practical activities and while muddling others; helps us intensify the feeling of value of some things while devaluing others. In other words, a philosophy makes our life experience as a whole useful, usable and desirable. But like with every design, tradeoffs are necessary, and where to make these tradeoffs is a function of the user and the use context. We can be conscious about it and make these tradeoffs intentionally — or we can be like bad clients and persist in trying to have it all.

And as with all good designs, philosophies disappear.

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Even bad interfaces disappear, leaving only frustration, alienation, friction, dissipation, confusion.

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We would laugh at an argument over whether iOS or Android is truer. Maybe it is time we laugh at philosophical arguments the same way. Let other people  sit around and debate whose philosophy does the best job of representing the truth. I will do an experience assessment.