Author: Warren Tang

I write about linguistics and philosophy. I also write poetry and take photographs.

things

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The world is the totality of facts, not of things. (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)

I think Wittgenstein is wrong.

The world is the totality of things, not of facts.

To be sure, his assertion is a firm rejection of materialism. I firmly reassert it. What remains always are things, not facts, not souls. This is an inducted reason. Like a good philosophical citizen, I do not claim deduction.

Logic has its failings. It regards language as flawless a medium for expressing ideas. It is far from it. Philosophy must investigate language as well.

Today, everything exists to end up on the internet.

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“That most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarmé, said that everything exists in the world in order to end in a book. Today, everything exists to end in a photograph.” (Susan Sontag, On Photography, p24, 1971)

In 2019, everything exists to end up on the internet.

Coma, time, idealism

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Within a comatose state the body is without wakefulness and awareness of the eternal world. Is this a kind of idealist-rationalist bliss? If such a mind can survive without having to deal with the outside, would it remain in this state to do so?

It is interesting that coma patients when they recover do not know how much time has passed since they became comatose. Is this not evidence that time is only known observation of the change in the relationship of things. In other words, do we not have to be awake and aware of the environment to know time?

Philosophical projectionism

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What is philosophical projectionism?
Projectionism is the theory (my theory) that perceived objects have not qualities as such but that qualities are projected onto them by the perceiver. This naturally means an object can have as many projections upon it as there are perceivers of it. The object does not “change” in any way, and it is not directly affected it by the perception of it. Objects remain the same whether perceived or not. Qualities therefore do not exist accept for within perception. Projections are concepts. They are conceptualised. The end of all conceptualisation is the end of the concept, but not the end of the object.

The dualism paradox

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I do not subscribe to the dualist view of mind and body. And this is the reason why.

If indeed the mind and body are separate things then I will have to ask when the mind comes to this conclusion why not discard the body and just continue as a mind? Why not escape the body? I do not see many people die by willing their death. Dying is not as easy as changing trains, or underwear. These actions are easy. Leaving your body in some kind of out-of-body experience is near impossible and undocumented. Furthermore, all attempts of leaving the body entails destruction of the body.

Secondly, when there is a separation between the mind and body – that is, death – there is no evidence for the mind to be found anywhere. All that remains is the body.

Admittedly, I have only my experience and the observation of other people’s experience for evidence. Much is assumed. But I see no other alternative but to make assumptions. One cannot escape assumptions.

Emergent or projection?

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Does the quality of something emerge from it or do we project into it the quality we want to see?

Are these appropriate metaphors for the way we experience the world?

Can we do away with metaphors?

I think how we approach the world as a sentient being determines how we engage with it.

The stimulus of the mind and being

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What is the mind if there is no first stimulus to start the process.

A physical brain with nothing to conceptualise would be still a like a stone.

Break open a stone and all you find is more stone.

Break open a brain all you find is white and grey matter, and perhaps a lot of blood. No mind or being can be found other than this.

When ideation ends …

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Ideation – the formation of ideas and concepts – is an internal process of a thing. Those ideas and concepts stored in the thing will disappear with the end of the process of accumulation (remembrance or memory). This end is called death.

My Neohumanism

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There is value in humanism. The move away from God as an explanation for everything was a necessary step. However, the complacency that came with such a move – and rightly feared by Christianity – is that human beings will take their false sense of superiority to mean their rights over the rights of other things and beings.

My version of neohumanism (not the Sarkar-kind) calls for humility in the face of our understanding of our place in the universe, namely, we are but one of the many lifeforms on this planet and beyond, that there is nothing special about the human being as an animal.

Reason, logic, reality

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Consider the following definitions from the LDOCE 6th.

reason – the ability to think, understand, and form judgments that are based on facts

logic – 1) a way of thinking about something that seems correct and reasonable, or a set of sensible reasons for doing something; 2) a formal method of reasoning, in which ideas are based on previous ideas

The problem seems to start with fact and idea in the two respective definitions.

From the LDOCE again, a fact is a piece of information that is known to be true. What does “to know” mean? Can we know something or anything without experiencing it? And if something that is true now will it be true in the future, or was it true in the past? And is there something, anything, that is eternally true?

And an idea is a general understanding of something, based on some knowledge about it. Can our understanding of things or knowledge of it be based on anything other than learning (reading and study) or experience?

If we are to base truth on information, ideas, reason, and logic alone then we will forever be trapped in the mind. By interacting with reality through rationality we fully engage with what is there. Rationality alone will take a being towards insanity (being unable to interact in the reality) . A balance between our physical and mental capacities is necessary.