AVI posted a link to some philosophy jokes, which indicates that at least one of you might be interested in such things. The jokes are usually only funny if you know the philosopher's work (and then they sometimes are too obvious to really be amusing, though the Descartes joke is great).
Also, try this comic strip. It has occasionally done some excellent work.
I love this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://existentialcomics.com/comic/55
Aretê, boys. You either got it or you don't.
ReplyDeleteI will also say, the site does a wonderful job giving you a quick glance into the ideas of philosophers. And it made me think of philosophy in general. Specifically, I wonder if the entire practice of trying to distill reality down to "atomic truths" might not actually be a fool's errand.
ReplyDeleteLet us take one element of philosophy that I am most familiar with. Symbolic logic and set theory. "That's not philosophy, that's Math!" I think it's both. Because the argument has been made by smarter people than me that psychology and medicine is nothing more than applied biology. And biology is nothing more than applied chemistry. And chemistry is no more than applied physics. And physics is no more than applied math. So, in fact, people and the universe we live in, are fundamentally math based. I'll explain why I don't actually believe that at the end of this.
It's already been discussed here in the Hall that there can be constructed paradoxes in the English language that cannot exist in set theory, and yet can still be constructed. Logically, such paradoxes (such as Zeno's or Epimenides') can be constructed, thus they exist in the set of reality, and yet they cannot logically be real, because they are paradoxes. Now, one can escape this seeming contradiction by assuming (what I believe to be true) that language itself is not a logical construct, and thus allows the conception of illogical things. A rock so heavy that an omnipotent being cannot lift it. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. And so on. These things exist only because language gives us the power to describe such things. But if we accept the premise that everything is fundamentally mathematics, and logic is a subset of math (which it is), then language should also follow the rules of math and logic, because language belongs to the subset of everything.
The problem with this is that I do not believe humans, and everything we do, is solely defined by the mathematical rules of the universe. And I believe this for precisely the same reason I believe in free will. Free will cannot actually exist if you believe that mankind is a biological machine, with all his life experiences bound as chemical interactions inside his brain. Because the chemistry is fundamentally math. And the equations which define those chemical interactions, as incredibly complex and beyond conception as they may seem MUST exist. Thus, everything you are, everything you do, every memory, every emotion, every element that makes you who you are could be reduced down to a fundamental mathematical equation... one that effectively defines who you are and who you CAN be. The normally used word for such a thing would be "predestination". You have no control over the choices you make. The choices are fundamentally determined by the electrochemical reactions in your brain which have been built over time. How can you claim to have free will if that is true.
Continuing:
ReplyDeleteIt is my position that it isn't true. That is my proof that there is a fundamental spirit that animates us. A soul, if you like, which is fundamentally our free will in action. To claim there is no soul because it cannot be measured, cannot be quantified, cannot be examined is to claim that there is no free will. How can there be? I submit that the soul (ghost in the machine arguments aside) exists outside of the rational, mathematical laws of the universe, because if it does not, then we are nothing more than pre-programmed machines reacting to our environment in a fashion pre-determined by our chemical make up. Now, you are free to believe I am mistaken, and in fact if I am wrong, then you are bound to, because your chemical programming determines that you be so bound. I absolutely cannot prove empirically that I am correct. But I can conceive of it.
And that brings us back to the beginning. I don't believe everything in human experience is bound to the laws of the universe. It is merely the place in which we exist. And because of that, I believe it is folly to attempt to find the elemental, empirical "truth". Because such a thing cannot exist so long as there exists beings of free will. We alter the very universe with our free will and the decisions we make with it. As such, I believe it to be impossible to set down a set of laws to define the reality of the human condition. We would simply change the reality as we went along (intentionally or otherwise).
So, in fact, people and the universe we live in, are fundamentally math based.
ReplyDeleteThat was Pythagoras' conclusion long before Socrates, albeit on different (but not dissimilar) grounds. I have a friend who still thinks it's right.
To claim there is no soul because it cannot be measured, cannot be quantified, cannot be examined is to claim that there is no free will.
It's also to make a claim about what it is for something to be real. Who is making that claim? Even if you don't want to say that it's the soul, it's certainly the mind! Yet the mind, as distinct from the brain and by which we mean the experience of being a conscious being, has the same problems.
This is a good argument, Mike. You're on your way to becoming a philosopher!
Now read Plotinus. :) You'll find a lot there about how the mind/soul must be beyond the laws of noncontradiction. That law is somewhat late, by the way: we usually credit it to Aristotle, but many pre-Socratics were bothered by the apparent impossibilities that the mind unifies.
This is a good argument, Mike. You're on your way to becoming a philosopher!
ReplyDeleteOne, that is quite the compliment, coming from you sir. And two, you have no idea how much that statement would have been scorned by the 20 year old me. :)
So far, my brief perusal of Plotonius seems to be too mystical for my taste. I would have said, "too gnostic" but I fear his spirit would haunt the snot out of me based upon his opinion of the Gnostics. It just seems too metaphyscial with this eudaimonia is achieved by indentifying with that which is best in the universe. And his belief that if one were truly happy, then even the most brutal tortures would not phase the eudaimoniac, because they would know that the pain was only being inflicted upon the mere physical. I submit that if any person ever existed in history, that they were likely foaming-at-the-mouth-insane.
ReplyDeleteReality gets a vote in this stuff too. And as much as one would like to believe that there exists a level of peace and serenity where the physical world disappears and rapture takes you away (while still alive), I think you'd have to have some pretty serious loss of self involved to reach such a state. The kind where people can happily cut off fingers and such. And that strikes me as barking mad.
Plotinus was supposedly able to kill someone with his daemon.
ReplyDeleteHe seems foaming-at-the-mouth insane at first. I think he turns out to be right about a lot of the basic structure of reality, though. Maybe you had to go mad to think the things he did.