Category: philosophy

I love Kant, the later Wittgenstein, Derrida, post structualism, postmodernism and the philosophy of language.

We can only ever be inductive

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Inductive reasoning is reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is probable, based upon the evidence given.

From Essentials of Logic by Copi, Cohen and Flage.

I do not think we can ever come to a certain truth, because we have only access to the reality through our senses and perception. It must forever be probable. So philosophy will always be an argument of who has got the better probability.

Not Materialism

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I mentioned to a friend that perhaps there are physical or material things only. He said that is rather naive.

If I were to take the impermanence seriously, then even physical things (like mental things) do not exist as such. What is to say the appearance of things seemingly longer than thought is not as immaterial as thought itself. Just because the length of appearance is longer and seemingly more permanent does not mean it is permanent. So there is justification that things are not real as well.

No evidence for other universes

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After I wrote this post I did some reading. And, yes, people do think about what is outside our universe, but have found no evidence for other universes interacting with ours. But neither is there evidence for a god-creater (if you ignore secondary evidence such as the Bible) either.

There is nothing like consilience, the convergence of evidence to something.

What is wrong with rationalism?

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This was supposed to be posted here instead of my other blog. 

Warren Tang's avatarghoti

The assumptions.

Rationalism assumes that reason gives us all knowledge. It overrides emotion and belief. It also override the senses as the path to truth. It is directly opposed to empiricism.

Reason takes on a mysticism similar to that of the soul, whereby a body is unnecessary. So it is part of the mind-body problem in Western philosophy, culture and thinking.

Sensory knowledge is not perfect. But neither is rational knowledge. Both should be considered inseparable. And both should be considered necessary to any knowledge.

Rationalism and Empiricism should not opposing ideas. There should be a philosophy of Rational Empiricism or Empirical Rationalism.

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Rationalism and Empiricism (not Rationalism versus Empiricism)

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The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.

From Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

I agree with Rationalists that concepts and knowledge can be gained independently of sense experience, insofar as there is nothing outside of space-object-time. Some kind of knowledge must exist first of space-object-time before other kinds of concepts and knowledge can come into being independently.

Empiricist are therefore right to claim also that sense experience is the source of all our concepts and knowledge, insofar as rational concepts and knowledge depends on the first source of sense experience.

There are therefore two sources of knowledge – sense experience and reasoning. Rationality must come from the first instance of sense experience, be it a lifetime of one second or one hundred years. Without that “spark” there are no rational concepts and knowledge.

Towards a Buddhist Materialism 

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I have come to the conclusion that nothing exists except for the physical world. The mind is a product of an object, namely an body. A personality is a product of the mind. This evidentially converges with the Buddhist concept of non-self (anatta). To me, what is called the ‘self’ is not what it seems. It may be considered a kind of illusion. 

Philosophy from looking at a piece of paper

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The Zen buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh once spoke of the impossibility of looking at a piece of paper seeing its front face and not presume that it has no back face. Most people will not argue that. Intuitively we will presume this, if we are of sound (without mental disabilities) and mature (old enough to have enough experience) mind.

Maurice Denis began a revolution in Western art with this insightful statement,

« Se rappeler qu’un tableau, avant d’être un cheval de bataille, une femme nue ou une quelconque anecdote, est essentiellement une surface plane recouverte de couleurs en un certain ordre assemblées. »

“Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”

which led to (or summed up) pretty much all modern art. The Cubist paintings of Picasso are an expression of this idea. And Cezanne tried the same in his still-life works before Picasso.

In literature, Eliot, Woolf and Joyce are good examples of this approach and understanding. In linguistics, Saussure said as much about meaning in language. And in philosophy, Wittgenstein, after Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and Derrida had pursued an understanding to the same end.

In Zen, all things are linked, and all things are empty. The back of the piece of paper can be safely presumed to be there even if we do not directly see it by virtue of the existence of the front of it. The back relies of the front for its meaning and existence, as does all language relies on all words for each other’s definitions. Nothingness only means what it does because of somethingness. The reverse is true as well.

Materialism must take precedence

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If life, in the form of a non-material entity, can exist independently then there would not be a need for a physical being in the first place. The simpler solution is usually the most economical. So life must require a physical form to exist in the first place. The mind or soul is therefore a product of the body, not the other way around. Nor is the mind/soul independent of the body.

Yet, the body is what produces the very illusion of the soul in the first place. It is a part of the material world and it is a necessary part of our humanness. Without this we would not know what we know, and we would not live how we live. That is the irony of the mind and body.

Ergo cogito sum

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The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that Descartes has it wrong. It is not cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) but ergo cogito sum (I am therefore I think). 

It is the sensing then perceiving that makes the world. Without this contact between the object world and the mind objects nothing would derive any meaning from an inanimate world. 

All that I am is this perception of my relationship to the world.