Main Philosophy
Death and Dying
I can think of nothing more exciting than dying. As long as I could have minimal consciousness, and a pad and paper I would die this minute. There is something naturally interesting about death because I believe there is a point where we straddle our universe and something else. It is at this point that I believe we finally find the answers (and questions) to our lives.
I also find death fascinating because I believe in reincarnation. Quickly, reincarnation is the belief that a person’s soul can be reborn in different bodies. The purpose of reincarnation is to allow the individual (soul) learn through life.
I believe in reincarnation not because it is a major feature of my religion, but because I have seen proof that it exists. It is not uncommon for young children (ages 2-4) to recall information from a previous life when stimulated by encountering something that was particularly memorable in their last generation.
I witnessed such a recollection while on vacation in my home country, Lebanon. While on one of many obligatory visits to far-removed relatives, my youngest cousin (about 4 at the time) decided to come along. As we neared our destination, the boy became increasingly restless and fidgety, staring intently out the window as if searching for something. After a few more minutes, his squirming reached a fever pitch and he began telling the driver to turn into a nearby alley. The confused driver continued forward but quickly swerved onto the path when the boy unleashed a piercing scream.
After arriving at a small house deep inside the town, the boy leaped out of the car and strode towards the door in a manner that greatly belied his four years, pointing out various aspects of the house and surrounding property that he had “builtâ€.
A long conversation with the homeowner resulted in the identification of my young cousin as the deceased husband of the woman who owned the house. The boy recalled many details about his life including a long-standing quarrel with his brother, and the location of a pass to his studio whose location had been lost with his death.
The point is that there is some kind of a connection between lives (perhaps indicative of a continuing soul), and that there could be partial consciousness “during†death and the ensuing transition. These memories also suggest that not all information must have a somatic base.
I read a story once of a group of professors who promised that the first to die would attempt to contact the rest (with some surprising results), and I have a similar idea. Reincarnation requires the existence of a soul, and as we saw from the story above, the soul can – at least – hold information that can be accessed by the succeeding body. Although there will be an interesting predicament with Time (who’s passage will be peculiar to say the least), I promise to actively attempt to record and publish my experiences when I die. The mechanism of my communication is unknown, as it was with the professors, but I can at least attempt…
Knowledge
My questions arose during a Greek Drama course I’m taking – CL316 – when the professor was mocking filmmakers for their heinous mispronunciation of a classical Grecian character. He laughed arrogantly and remarked with complete certainty that it was “Priam” (pree-am not pry-am).
Before he continued on his tirade on the defilement of Ancient Greece by Hollywood, I asked him how he knew the proper pronunciation.
“Well, it’s underst…and some writings refer to…I don’t know…”
Granted it was only a minor oversight, but it bothered me for the rest of the day. Perhaps it wasn’t the only class where I was being taught something that was false or unproven.
And thus, it began, I examined each class intently, trying to find proof of their content’s validity…and to my surprise, (another example of my tremendous naivte) I found none.
For example, Evolutionary Biology, is almost entirely unreasonable, as our introduction to the theory included the admission that numerous other hypotheses fit better in terms of theory validation (Although evolution is clearly the most plausible).
What is true? What can I see, touch, or understand that I can know is fact. Is matter? No, it could disappear as abruptly as it began. What about my senses? Can I trust my eyes? If I were blind, and suddenly regained my sight, would everything look be the same?
The only thing that I have been able to find that most regularly resembles fact is instinct. By this, I am not referring to the romanticized definition, but to its psychological explanation as an innate behavior that can be in response to a specific stimulus. This inborn information, such as the senses themselves and motor control, is completely true, unique, but fact.
The reason that I believe innate information to be unquestionably true is because it has not been affected, and the original information must be true because it is what, essentially, controls our biological functions.
This truth is most likely not stored within the brain itself, and is therefore much less dynamic. One interesting paper even suggests that instincts may be stored genetically in the excised portions of the human genome called introns. These introns are not expressed in protein synthesis, but they are believed to have alternate purposes since they comprise the largest part (over 90%) of the organism’s genetic information.
Since this information is entirely factual (and therefore functional), we can begin to look at other related areas that maintain the same factual basis, but go beyond simple biological instincts.
This is where the line between truth and untruth disappears. For the knowledge to be of any use, it must be learned and not inherited. Growing and gaining wisdom is dependant on the information and the process.
As a result, any knowledge that was gained comes from the outside, where it could have easily become false. This information cannot be verified by the senses, because as I stated earlier, only the process of sensing can be guaranteed as truthful. I am not saying that everything around us is an illusion, I am simply stating that very little is unconditionally true. Hopefully, I will be able to expand on these most basic truths in future articles.
I am sure this will spark a long and heated debate, and that is what philosophy is about. So go ahead, what is Knowledge to you?
Philosophy and Elitism
Perhaps it was because I was laying on the beach in hundred-degree weather, enjoying the sun, water, and related attractions, but I found it quite difficult to read Aristotle’s The Metaphysics.
What I do not understand is why philosophy has attained its current pompous air. It is an activity so vital to our growth that it should be as simple as any biological function. Instead, philosophy is associated with musky professors reading ancient, Latin manuscripts.
Philosophy is, essentially, curiosity; the human mind’s innate need to question its origin. While many revelations can be made through individual study, written works are invaluable supplements that allow budding thinkers to pass into a more profound, and rewarding level. Also, philosophical writings can be the impetus for a new interest in the field.
Unfortunately, philosophy is currently quite inaccessible to the public as a result of a sense of elitism among the major authors and publishers. The verbose translations of ancient works render them almost impossible to read for most of the public. A friend of mine recently took a look at my particular translation of The Metaphysics and almost immediately dropped it because of its cryptic wording. For example, very few people know the definition of “superficies” (I still think that it describes a strain of super fishes), and a non-elitist translator could have maintained the meaning of the sentence by using “surface” instead.
Philosophical authors should not try to discourage readers lacking a perfect vocabulary. Those that feel that readers who cannot understand the often obscure language of philosophical writings are not worth the content are sorely mistaken. I believe that the age of philosophy as a professorial activity performed exclusively at state dinners is long gone. Philosophy is within the masses and will return to them…perhaps cloaked by another word, but it will return.
Philosophy Is... (Part I)
I’m not exactly sure what attracts me to modern or contemporary philosophy. Most likely, it is the knowledge that the thoughts are still living and changing. Even a remote possibility of contact gives the writing a vivacity much more compelling than the somewhat dusty ancient philosophy.
I will begin my discussion of Modern Philosophy with Richard Rorty. I chose Redemption From Egotism simply becuase it was the first full work I came accross.
Within a few minutes, I immediately came across a few very unsettling thoughts in his comparison of philosophy and literature. In the first section – “Bloomian autonomy and the avoidance of cant” – Rorty agrees with Bloom’s concept that thought can be better stimulated through imaginative literature versus the generally more calculative philosophical writings. While I can accept this aspect of his argument, it is Rorty’s expansion that imaginative works (including fiction) is better suited to “liberate one from one’s own previous ways of thinking about the lives and fortunes of individual human beings.”
It is true that philosophical writings are usually much less exciting than the colorful works of imaginative literature described by Rorty, but this is not the due to a binding requirement that philosophy must be formulaically enumerated based upon ancient conditions. I believe that philosophy is the ultimate imaginative work because the author is not creating a fantastic setting, but is – essentially – modifying our existing setting which is a much more difficult task.
Later parts of his writing seemingly contradict his earlier discouragement of cant1.
“Grasping the content of what one hears or reads is a matter of fitting what is said into a coherent set of inferential relationships to other utterances.”
His expansion of this statement leads the reader to believe that clarity in writing comes dangerously close to cant, in that truly accesible thoughts must already be – at least partially – available in the reader’s mind. Thus, by Rorty’s definition, a truly original work would be almost unintelligible to a normal audience, who would be searching for comforting cliches littering a groundbreaking work.
Rorty did little to convince me of the merit of modern philosophy. As a result, I am now asking for some input…who do you feel is a great modern thinker?
1 Described as “what people usually say without thinking, the standard thing to say, what one normally says.
Philosophy was...
The change in thought, science, and technology since the time of the ancient thinkers has been enormous; however, there remain many aspects of ancient Grecian technology that cannot yet be reproduced. In areas of pure intellect, where only power of the mind has any effect, we still lag behind, and designs and plans sketched on age-old parchments cannot be recreated even today. The field of philosophy is different; all messages have the potential to be experienced and learned regardless of the setting. Therefore the degeneration of modern thought cannot be attributed solely to the superior intellects of the past, but we can learn a great deal from their works and try to return to their levels.
The ideas outlined in Plato’s The Republic and his other works encompass not only the basic premises of his theory on human epistemology, but also more personal ideals that go far beyond the static nature of his hypotheses.
If there has been such a major erosion of philosophy since the ancient times, what could have caused it? It is doubtful that nothing is worth thinking about since the millennia that have passed, but only a handful of “philosophers” are alive today and an even smaller number that actually deserve the label. A population with the permittivity of humans is ecologically incapable of becoming stupider (even over a relatively small period of 2000 years); therefore we cannot blame it on inevitability. This means that the shift must have been conscious, that the great thinkers of the past must have witnessed the overall decline of thought with the “growth” of a new generation.
The other possibility is that only the ancient philosophers were able to climb out of the hole of ignorance that surrounds everyone else. I think that this is the most likely option, considering the ripple effect that could be caused by the emergence of only a single great philosopher. These ripple effects may explain the “periods” of similar ideas that occur within a few decades of each other and why such amazing thinkers as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and more were all in the same era.
One of the most obvious results of great minds such as Plato was his work. Not only was his writing amazing in its beauty and simplicity, but also in its sheer volume and range of topics. Each of his works would be considered a lifetime achievement today, but Plato wrote dozens of books and essays explaining almost every aspect of life in a way that makes “For Dummies” books sound needlessly complex.
Accessibility is a major part of Plato’s writing, but this does not necessarily mean that it must lack profundity. The writing is special because it contains an interesting method of explaining different problems with each level. As the reader grows, they will encounter new questions, but will also be able to look deeper into Plato’s writing and will find new examples and statements that now cater directly to their present problem.
In The Republic (Book I), Plato uses Socrates to convey his arguments and ideas about justice and its purpose. The book is intended to be originally read as summary of justice containing the arguments posed by those who do not accept the precise “morality” of the philosophers (Sophists). Plato presents the arguments against his ideas strongly, giving an in depth description to the Sophistic claims that justice is merely the advantage of the strong. Providing a strong challenge shows that the reader has the freedom to learn from the opposition, and it also amplifies the power of the idea if the reader is convinced by Plato’s points.
Reading it the second time, The Republic takes on a much more different task. After understanding the basic question concerning Justice, the reader is drawn to parts in between; areas that may not have been essential in the base argument of justice seem to become highlighted across the pages. The writing now seems to describe Plato’s own struggle about his use as a philosopher in his society. With each time that it is read, only half (at best) can be understood, meaning that it can be read an infinite number of times and new ideas can still be absorbed. Book I ends with a transfer to a new (slightly more in-depth) question; setting the stage for a stair-like ascent through the ten books.
The works of Plato and other ancient philosophers are truly mind-blowing. His period created an enormous library of thought that has not since been surpassed. Modern philosophers (or even anything after his era) have tried so badly not to rehash old works that they have created ideals that are no longer useful. There is nothing wrong with working off of ancient ideas, as long as they are taken farther and questioned. It is stupid to fabricate a system of thought just to not add on to the open-ended early philosophy.
