Personal Reflections: What is Philosophy? Am I a philosopher?

Returning to the source is serenity;

it is to realize one's destiny. To realize one's destiny is to know the eternal. To know the eternal is to be enlightened. Not to know the eternall is to act blindly and court disaster. Whoever knows the eternal is open to everything. Whoever is open to everything is impartial. To be impartial is to be universal. To be universal is to be in accord with heaven. To be in accord with heaven is to be in accord with the Way. To be in accord with the Way is to be eternal and to live free from harm even though the body dies.
(Lao-Zi, Dao De Jing)

Philosophy is to the Chinese, the way道 that will create a unity of self with heaven. It is the universal, impartial, moral and humane primal source of everything in the world. We cannot see the way道 because its metaphysical nature is obscure and mystical it escapes all definition. It is hidden and indescribable yet, it is the absolute which flows everywhere and nourishes life. The way道carries a dialectical perpetual movement and gentleness which is supposed to be truth. The way tells us that those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know. It speaks ill of our human’s doctrines of knowledge morality and by urging that these are our cause of hypocrisy, chaos and disorder. It urges us to abandon wisdom and cleverness to rediscover love and duty, to discard profit to be freed of thieves and robbers. It insinuates that our current world is too complicated and that life is rather quite simple. Is philosophy the way of life? Is it my movement? Is it a will to passivity or activity? Is it Nietzsche’s will to power? Is it Lao Zi’s will to some mystical universal truth that will forever elude our grasp? I think philosophy is a means not to nihilism or power. It is neither but rather, a will to weave out a structure of understanding based upon realization a profound interruption of a person’s experience and understanding of human life. I do not think I can be called a philosopher in the Western analytic sense. My sense of logic bears a contorted face and is rather displeasing to the professional analytic philosopher’s eye. I am better a Sociologist and Historian but sometimes, I don’t think I seem to fit in. I come from all over to establish synthetic connections. Am I a philosopher? that I have made incursions into what is now called, philosophy reading Kant, Husserl, Beauvoir, Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Foucault, Adorno, Baudrillard, Hobbes, Sen, Machiavelli, Kiekegaard, Descartes, Hume, Leibeiz, Berkeley and so on. There are many but these are the few that first come to my mind. There seems to me to be a tendency to regard people who work on logic, epistemology, mind, language and metaphysics philosophers. So we also have Bertrand Russell, John R Searle, Thomas Nagal, Hilary Putnam, P. F. Strawson, Wittgenstein as the usual Great philosophers of our time. These are certainly great philosophers who have influenced our method of thinking and I have the utmost respect for their works, some of them I have read and deeply thought about. But do we consider people like Husserl, Heidegger, Satre, Merleau Ponty, Albert Camus philosophers? Is phenomenology and existentialism not as well, Great philosophy? Have we left out the names of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Judith Butler? What is philosophy? We are all aware of the great chasm between continental philosophy and analytic philosophy whose categories do not even parallel each other in the logical sense.

The reason why I bring this questions up is because, I think we must re-define or rather, re-appropriate philosophy and in a manner, transcend these sub-categories that seem to make us philosophers. I think philosophy belongs to each one of us. By philosophy, I mean a radical questioning of our knowledge, reality, political rights, morality, and aesthetics of everyday life. I think the act of questioning has already a sort of radical alterity inherent in it which is evoked because of certain a disrupted, outraged and unease with present reality and our experiences that come along as we grow older. We come to know hetero-normative gender norms and marriage institutions are patriarchal. We know also that discursive racial lines are often used to support and legitimate the power of despotic rulers and leaders. We know that the nation-state is a rather recent modern phenomenon that does not occupy the entire span of human history. We know that capitalism is not heaven’s treat and is the basis of ineffaceable class inequalities. I think then philosophy must be the act of thinking, the primal source and drive to understand these social problems. Well then, am I a social philosopher? But I come from everywhere and am nowhere. I practice philosophy in the dawn of the mornings and usually write through the night. The pen is like my wand and my thoughts are my engine. Through the text, I fill in the gaps of my experience of reality. I take make incisions, tear them apart and piece distant fragments together. I establish relations and a structure of thinking about things. The process is much like a Queen ant’s hive whose ant-workers never stop working in hope that one day I can attain serenity and universality. I crave for power. But power over what? I do not think most philosophers really desire power and perhaps fame in that sense but yes, power over one’s understanding of life. Philosophy is quite interesting it makes you feel as if those who have not practiced it are floating above the ground and wavering like jelly puddings and whose opinions float from air. Whereas after a certain time of practicing philosophy, you do find yourself with an in grown mode of ever-change that is firm and grounded to what you experience and see.

I think this is because philosophy is both historical and universal in nature. It is historical because it is always written in sometime and hence even the purest philosophy reflects its culture and mode of thinking of its time. Philosophy is I think a sense of radical grounding and the unwillingness to take things as it is, a floating obscure sense. Philosophy is my life and even as it is always changing, it is my structure of thoughts that will never abandon me and will always feed me with an understanding of my social reality. Through philosophy, I establish a certainty of my world and engage with an everyday task of a radical understanding of life. Philosophy is mine and I embody the thoughts I philosophize about. Through philosophy, one becomes individual. Philosophy is the way to be individual and to embody its own mode of transcendence. Philosophy is also a permanent immanent movement. If the question comes about again and I be asked if I were a philosopher, my answer would be yes because philosophy is the will to a form of grounded yet perpetual movement that animates the mind and transposes it out of its static reality. Philosophy is the invisible primal source of my life and a very serious personal vocation.

Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: On Consumption, Duration and History (from p. 66 to p. 85)

Imagination has a big role to play in this modern cultural economy and this is shown in practices of Consumption and this I think is best shown in Appadurai’s writings on Fashion and Nostalgia (p. 75). Mediascapes and together with the global ‘frenzied condition’ a term I think best suits the flux of modernity, can sometimes created “imagined nostalgia” (p. 77) – nostalgia for things that never were (p. 77). Fredric Jameson calls this “nostalgia for the present” a term he uses to discuss films that project a future whose present is historicized and misrecognized as something the viewer has already lost (p. 77). The present is showcased as if it has already slipped away (p. 77). Fashion and movie trends often bite on this to sell ‘a product’ that can help ease our “lost past.” All they need to do is to supply our memory (sell to us) an image that we have never actually suffered but created in our imaginations. Appadurai calls this nostalgia, an “armchair nostalgia” – one without lived experience or collective historical memory (p. 78). Such nostalgia creates the simulacria of periods of time – periodicities – that constitute the modern imagining subject’s flow of time often comprising of a present conceived as lost, absent or distant (p. 78). Time thus becomes commoditized as something that can be fashioned and sold and this itself has several effects. It can produce what is called “free time” away from work for the consumption of leisure. Luxury, cruise and packaged vacation is thus commodified as “time out of time (p. 81).” Consumption becomes the daily practice of nostalgia and fantasy in a world of commodified objects (p. 82). With this, our experience of time and the present also becomes transformed

Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: On the Global Cultural Economy (from p. 27 to p. 47)

Appadurai brings up how Deleuze and Guattari calls the world we live in now rhizome or sometimes just schizophrenic (p. 29) from which also emerges theories of rootlessness, alienation, distanciation or also, the phenomenon ‘electronic propinquity’ (p. 29). I identify with these conceptual theories because I have always seen modernity as a sort of transcendental uplift and a constant state of frenzy. Sometimes, there indeed is no synchrony between the real referential world and its signifiers and everything is like a sort of cultural rerun, gyrate, circularity (p. 29-30). This modern global order is highly disjunctive such that a central-periphery or homogenization/heterogenization understanding of it may not be quite so sufficient.
What Appadurai suggests is to see this disorganized capitalism, or disjunctures between the economy, culture and politics in terms of five dimensions of global cultural flows he calls, ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. The suffix –scape is supposed to point to the meanings of fluidity irregularity of our global landscape (p. 33). This ‘landscapes’ are building blocks for imagined worlds that most people in this global world live in.

Ethnoscape refers then to the tourist, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and moving groups that constitute our world. It signifies how the ‘warp of stabilities is everywhere shot through the woof of human motion’ as we all have to deal with the notion of moving or wanting to move to somewhere other than our very own locality (p. 34). Technoscape refers to how technology now moves at high speeds across various spaces. Financescape refers to the disposition of global capital that is now a more mysterious, rapid and difficult landscape to follow e.g. currency markets, national stock exchanges, commodity speculations etc (p. 34). Appadurai rightly argues the global relationship between the ethno, techno and fiancé –scapes is deeply disjunctive and profoundly unpredictable because each of its landscapes has its own constraints and incentives and each acts as a parameter for movements in others (p. 35). There is also the mediascapes and ideoscapes. Mediascapes refer to the distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations and film production studios) and the images of the world created by these media. Mediascapes entail different modes of delivery, hardware, audiences and people who control these mediascapes (p. 35). The effect of the mediascape is that it blurs the lines between what is realistic and fictional. Mediascapes help to produce imagined worlds that are chimerical and aesthetic (p. 35). Mediascapes are image-centered, narrative based accounts of strips of reality out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives. They help constitute the narratives of the Other and protonarratives of possible lives (p. 36) that can in turn form the basic desire for acquisition and movement (p. 36). Ideoscapes Appadurai claims are political and often have to do with ideologies of states, counterideologies of movements oriented to capture some state power (p. 36). They include ideas/narratives such as freedom welfare rights sovereignty representation democracy etc. Such ideas govern the communication between elites and followers in different parts of the world although they can be subjected to specific contexts (p. 36). These scapes thus form Appadurai’s model of global cultural flow (p. 37) which is characterized by disjunctures, movements and violence. For instance the spread of martial arts to form the basic notions of masculinities and violence spurring increasing in arms strade, the spread of action-packed AK-guns in films (mediascapes), influencing ideas of state secuirity and military activity (ideoscapes) and so on. The key to note is that different sorts of global flows can result in different sorts of landscape and hence, the ‘global landscape’ is usually very uncertain. We may not know what is the product of different inter-mingling scapes.

The fact that we are in a sort of cultural flux, over-fluidity or simply put imbricated in uncertainty can jump start people to search for a stable present which manifests itself as fundamentalisms, revival of religious movements etc. The key point Appadurai is making is that cultural forms are fragile, fractal, overlapping and characterized by non-resemblance or non-isomorphism

A naturalistic view of morality: Mencius’s conception of the moral nature of Human Beings

Mencius argues that humans differ from animals because we have moral virtues that are innate to us (Lee, 2006: p. 69). Also, Mencius argues that there is a sort of human nature that is universal in all human beings because human beings belong to the same species (Lee, 2006: p. 69). Because morality is innate in us, we have a potential to develop moral sense. Mencius uses an analogical argumentative form that seems to be quite weak to me. He argues that humans are alike in our tastes for flavour, ears for music and our eyes for beauty such that we would recognize great chefs, great musicians or great beauties (Lee, 2006: p. 70) and so all humans cannot have minds that differ from our sensory organs. We must be alike in minds. Sages are among us and sages morally superior and are recognized. So our minds must appreciate morality just like how our taste buds appreciate food (Lee, 2006: p. 70). If we have a liking for great chefs and musicians, so must we have a liking for sages’ moral conduct (Lee, 2006: p. 70). The problem with this argument is that it is too generalized. Mencius wants to prove that people naturally and universally prefer the Good or Moral as opposed to the vices by claiming that everyone would have the same taste for the Good or Moral. But, just as how a Muslim may not appreciate the best Pork cut or the Buddhist cannot appreciate the best Beef cut, it is spurious how all human beings can appreciate what is Good and Moral universally.

Hence from the above we can see that Mencius disagrees with Gaozi that righteousness or yi comes from external impositions. This has important implications because if one thinks that the individual cannot do the right thing in the right context, then one is implying that the individual does not have moral autnonomy and we would require external rules, laws and prohibitions to regulate the individual’s behaviour. Mencius however thinks that respecting the elderly come’s innately and yi comes from the heart not imposed by anyone from the outside. The beginning assumptions matter because if one thinks that individuals universally have moral sentiments innately, then we would promote policies that facilitate the sprouting of such moral virtues such as education etc. instead of external regulatory laws (Lee, 2006: p. 68-72). Mencius believes that human nature contains ren, yi, propriety and wisdom and we can cultivate these moral virtues.

Mencius goes as far as to argue that “there is no human who does not tend toward goodness” (Lee, 2006: p. 72). He argues that there is no one who sees a young child fall into a deep well and not feel alarm and compassion in itself (Lee, 2006: p. 72). Mencius argues that this is the beginning of humanity in their nature. Yet the weakness of this argument is that even if one has such natural comisseration and sentiment, it does not necessitate moral actions. It does not take into account that one could just ignore the child or still push the child into the well.
On this count, Mencius differs from the Western philosophers in that he is also implying that the beginning of morality is not in the seed or Reason but in human emotions and sentiments. Mencius believes that moral sense is natural to human beings (Lee, 2006: p. 76).

Mencius argues that if we fail to do the moral thing, it is because our sensory desires (desire for food, sex and material goods) compete with our mind/heart (Lee, 2006: p. 76). Our mind/heart has four functions of thinking/reflecting; feeling/having emotions and sentiments; willing/zhi that makes resolution and the employment and cultivation of moral qi (Lee, 2006: p. 77). Our sensory desires can deviate from the moral path (major part of us). Another reason is because we do not have a strong enough will and hence even if we wish to do Good, we will give up half way (Lee, 2006: p. 77). It can also be because we fail to cultivate the right qi and we give up ourselves and deny ourselves to do good (Lee, 2006: p. 80).

If one does the moral thing, one need not try to show it. It will be manifested in us especially our eyes. It seems that Mencius thinks that it is pointless to pursue universal love (what Mozi thinks). He adopts the Confucian stand or doctrine called the “love with distinction” that claims that we love our family more than we love a stranger.

On the points of Shu (Empathy) and Ren (man of humanity)

The notion of shu or empathy plays an important role in Chinese Confucian philosophy. Shu is titled in Liu JeeLoo’s Introduction to Chinese Philosophy as a ‘Golden Rule’ much like Kant’s categorical imperative. Shu means “Do not impose upon others what you yourself do not desire (Lee, 2006: p. 53).” This I think is an important golden rule because of its implications on our relations with the greater human sociality. It provides a guiding compass as to how to act in society. We can first imagine what we do not desire. We do not desire to be humiliated, laughed at, stolen from, harmed in any way or mistreated. So we conclude that we should not treat others in these ways as well. Shu also helps us to appreciate what other people in other roles are doing and how they are feeling (Lee, 2006: p. 55).

The confucian moral ideal seems to be based on the assumption that helping others, altruism and contributing to society is the best. A person who is morally superior is called a junzi or “gentleman.” Those who help others to cultivate themselves are men of humanity or called ren and those who extend benevolence to the masses are called sages sheng. This moral ideal is not a notion as opposed to “actuality” or “reality.” In Chinese Confucian thinking, ideals should be or can be embodied in actual reality. Humans are perfectible creatures and should pursue moral cultivation. Confucian Philosophy is optimistic of human beings for it focuses on “what humans can become” (Lee, 2006: p. 56). It is concerned with what is right or virtuous (Lee, 2006: p. 57) and we can become righteous by pursuing the Dao or the Way. A junzi or superior person has the Dao as one’s ultimate way of life. To do so means that one pays full attention to one’s moral growth by constant self examination (Lee, 2006: p. 57). Lee (2006) claims that such a person constantly asks 3 questions. 1. Have I failed to delve deeply into what I have learnt? Have I moved in the right direction of the Right based on what I have just learnt? 3. Have I been able to alter myself upon recognizing my misdeeds? We can say that the moral ideal or the Way is sought inward through a diligent and scrupulous process of self examination and reform.

To be cleansed of evil is to be Ren. Ren is a state of being and it represents the ideal state of a human being (Lee, 2006: p. 58). To be Ren alone is not enough for if one wishes to establish one’s moral character, one also should help others establish their moral characters (Lee, 2006: p. 58). One should share joy, help each other to grow and love one’s fellow man. This is something quite similar to Spinoza who also argues that it is impossible for growth to take place alone but must be done so in a polity. Spinoza also argues in favour of the view of helping others because we are always in a polity (relations of human beings), and if others fare well, they will necessarily better ourselves and well-being and the vice versa is true. Ren also means to master oneself and to return propriety (Lee, 2006: p. 60).

The most noteworthy point in this study of Confucianism and Chinese philosophy is that Confucius says: “Do not worry that you are not known to others; worry rather that you yourself lack ability.” Confucius claims that a virtuous person does not seek recognition from others (Lee, 2006: p. 63) but only constantly scrutinize oneself, think about one’s words and deeds and its measure towards truth. The measure of Goodness is sought of from within and one should not seek recognition. The most abhorrent person is one who only appears virtuous (Lee, 2006: p. 60). I say that this is the most noteworthy point because I think that in our modern society, in contradistinction to Confucius’s ideal of a Ren, the modern masses’s ideal is that of fame and outward recognition. These ideals are sought outwardly. As such, one is concerned not with one’s self and one’s self growth but an outward appearance of how one appears to be. One is no longer concerned with being but with one’s appearing to be. If virtues and the morally ideal stems from our innate state of being, attitude, intentions and actions in our everyday, then being only concerned with how one appears to be does not in any way foster the sort of scrupulous self-scrutiny of one’s life and actions. One would not be engaged in a process of reasoning with oneself and hence learning the right Way or pursuing the Dao with Reason. The modern masses more concerned with appealing to others are highly susceptible to engaging in petty and shallow affairs such as: personal favours, bantering, bootlicking etc that are not in tandem with virtuous state of being and life.

General differences

Chinese philosophy differs very much from Western philosophy. There is a tendency for Western Philosophy’s theories of ethics and morality to stem Reason and the Will.

Morality for instance for Kant is grounded in a universal categorical imperative that applies to all of humanity. This is manifested in the humanity formulation of the categorical imperative that says ‘Act in such a way that you treat humanity whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never as a means only (G 4:429).’ The basis of this formulation stems from several key percepts. (1) Humans have Willkur or the power to make choices about which ends we will adopt and (2) Wille which presents or legislates categorical moral principles to moral agents (Dean, 2009: p. 85). A rational being is one who accepts the a priori categorical imperative or practical law and subjects himself to it i.e. make it the determining ground of his will (CPrR 5:62). Moral actions and being is hence governed by an a priori law that our Wille presents or legislates. Kant wants to argue that because humanity or rationale nature is an end in itself it can ground a universal categorical imperative (Dean, 1990: p. 90) applicable to everyone. A subjective principle of ‘my’ actions is also an objective principle for it is the way every ‘other’ rational being conceives his own existence (Groundwork 4:428-9). Any self sufficient reason for action is hence always self-legislated by our Wille in accordance to the categorical imperative.

We see such ideas very prevalent in Western philosophy that the universal is above the particular; intellect as prior to the sensuous intuitions and so on. Husserl in his discussion of the Universal under ‘transcendental analytics’ evokes the Platonic term ‘eidos’ ἰδέα standing for idea to be that which has no extension consisting of empirical facts and actualities. The pure eidetic generality and judging only has an extension of pure possibilities (S88 S90 p. 299) says Husserl. Shortly later on (S90 p. 299ff), Husserl claims that every actuality given in experience is necessarily subject to the a priori conditions of possible conditions - something that Kant himself has also argued for in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Chinese philosophy on the other hand differs from this sort of universal principle in that its highest moral ideal is not grounded in reason but Ren and Care. The notion of Ren and care does not take place in a metaphysical empty space but in a relational context. The question is of how to lead a moral life includes obligations to one’s self, family and people (Li, 2008: p. 176). The highest moral ideal of Ren is to love others (Analects 12.22). Inclinations, affects and desires alike are seen as insufficient for moral actions in the Kantian tradition but on the other hand, Mencius establishes in Chinese Philosophy, Ren as a key to moral action and being. Ren refers at once to having compassion for others. Ren in Li’s essay is noted to be benevolence, love, altruism, tenderness, charity, compassion, human-heartedness, humaneness and so on (Li, 2008: p. 177). The ideogram of Ren consists of a human figure and two horizontal strokes that is often interpreted as reaching out to others (Li, 2008: p. 177). This suggests again that Ren does not take place in a metaphysical empty space but in the context of human relations. Confucian morality is grounded in a context of the metaphysics of a moral universe – one that is outlined in the yijing (Lee, 2006: p. 34). In the yijing, the eight basic trigrams (of heaven, earth, lake, mountain, fire, water, wind and thunder) each have their own moral attributes. For instance Heaven exemplifies attributes of creativity and constancy; thunder represents forcefulness and fearfulness; fire represents radiance and clarity; water represents humility and continuity and so on (Lee, 2006: p. 34). The moral universe is the source of our moral attributes and inspiration for our moral conduct (Lee, 2006: p. 35) and the moral thing to do is to emulate attributes of Heaven and Earth (Lee, 2006: p. 34). Coming back to the Ren, we can see Confucius evoking “Heaven” or the Moral Universe as a ground for achieving Ren. Confucius says that one can achieve Ren if “everywhere under Heaven [one] practice[s] the five: courtesy, breadth, good faith, diligence and clemency (17.6).” Ren is to love or ai – love- or care for others. To be a moral person is also to develop a heart of shame, courtesy, modesty and right and wrong. Li notes the comments of Gilligan that the ideal or concept of care is a real time or actual activity of relationship of seeing, responding and taking care of the world by sustaining the web of connection so that no one is left alone. Recall that Kant says that the rational nature is an end-in-itself but here Chinese philosophy insists that Ren and caring is an end in itself.

The significance of Edward Said: The text and its creation of the categorically Oriental

The text is a mysterious thing. It is somewhat innocuous as a mere text yet, the text carries a presence and a weight. Said re-asserts alongside Foucault that the text can create not only knowledge, but also the very reality they appear to describe. Texts purport to contain knowledge and expertise that academics, institutions, and governments accrue to (p. 94). Texts produce a tradition or discourse (p. 94). The oriental discourse suffuses ‘what it means to be Orient’ with formally imposed Occidental-style meaning, intelligibility and reality. Said even says that this Oriental discourse has metamorphosized from a scholarly discourse to an imperial institution (p. 95). Once produced, a ‘dialectic of reinforcement’ is enacted whereby ‘the experiences of the readers in reality are determined by what they have read’ reproducing the very oriental categories and experiences supplied by the text (p. 94).

The text becomes alive when it transits from a merely textual apprehension, formulation or definition of the Orient to a real practice in the Orient’s life (p. 95). By virtue of the production of certain texts, Orientalism manages to override the Orient imposing its system of thought over the Orient ontologically by treating the Orient as an unchanging object of study thereby reifying and objectifying the Orient. As the object of study, the orient is endowed with a historical subjectivity characterized by passivity, uniformity, non-activity and non-autonomy (p. 97). It creates the a-historical Orient and transfixes its very being at that moment. The Orient is watched. His behaviors form the reservoir of peculiarity (p. 103). He is the Occident’s spectacle. Better put, he becomes what Said calls the ‘living tableau of queerness’ or similarly put, ‘foreignness’ or ‘otherness.’ The Orient became the fascination of Darwinian anthropologists and phrenologists (p. 99) and the object of missioning and colonizing or “moral voyages” (p. 100). The text became the basis and medium by which the Occidents “understand” the Orients, as an essentialized other. The Orient against the backdrop of a Judeo-Christian monotheism became seen as humanized, antidemocratic and barbaric (p. 150). Through the expedition of Napoleon and the texts of Sacy, Renan et al., Orientalism’s discursive identity was fashioned.

‘Every interpretation, every structure created for the Orient, then, is a reinterpretation, a rebuilding of it (p. 158).’

The way this is done is best shown in Said’s analysis of Lane’s writings (read and cited by Flaubert and others) on e.g. An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) (p. 158ff). Lane is often quoted as a source of knowledge about Egypt or Arabia. His writings sought to impart a sense of neutrality (p. 159). The description was one way: they spoke as he observed and wrote down. What was written was intended as authoritative and useful knowledge for the West (p. 159). His friend Sheikh Ahmed is described curiously. He is portrayed as a grass-eater and a polygamist and in such descriptions, the distance between Lane and the Muslim is laid. ‘Lane enters the Muslim pattern only far enough to be able to describe it in a sedate English prose (p 160-61).’ The account was accurate, general and dispassionate (p. 161). Festivals, rites, laws, character, music, magic, domestic life became objectified sections in a text. The narrative voice used by lane is ageless whereas his subject seems to go through an individual life cycle (p. 161). In a similar way the particular is subsumed under the generic categories, the Orient’s subject is subsumed under the ageless and timeless Western Narrative form. Through textual depictions such as this, an asymmetric of power established between the Occident and the Orient. Through the sheer, overpowering, monumental description, Lane makes the Egyptians totally visible (p. 162). Egyptians are described without depth and in swollen detail (p. 162-163). He blends religion, excess of libidinous passions and licentiousness with ‘Muslims.’ All this is done with a sense of detachment in relation to his Egyptian subjects. The establishment of detachment and distance is important because in such a way of doing, Lane preserves his authoritative identity as ‘a mock participant,’ gains scholarly credibility and legitimacy – the cold detachment of scientific study of human society (p. 163).
Through textual descriptions such as this, 1) consciousness of an oriental Other is established – also, an Occidental consciousness of himself or herself consists exactly in this knowing that the Orient is an other from oneself. 2) Authority of one over the other is created. 3), Oriental material is acquired and disseminated as a form of specialized knowledge (p. 165) which seems to me to be the very basis of a continued sort of subjection of one to the other. 4) Through writing, Lane for instance re-situated and re-made the experience of being Orient. Lane framed the Orient’s life as filled with eccentricities, with odd calendars, exotic spatial configurations, hopelessly strange languages and its seemingly perverse morality (p. 166). The experience of the Orient is framed as if it were a field of unimaginable antiquity, inhuman beauty and boundless distance (p. 167). Through the writings of Volney and George Sale (p. 168), the Orient’s life was seen as one with fierceness and an inordinate melancholy (p. 168).

The essence of the text and writing can be briefly put, to be change-effecting. It has the power to (re-) generate, (re-) formulate and (re-) constitute the medium through which we experience the world.

Notes and Reflections: John Stuart Mills on the conception of Truth and the liberty of thought and discussion

“Every truth which men of narrow capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world, or at all events none could limit or qualify the first (p. 53).”

When we silence discussion, refuse to hear an opinion or rather, forbid man to speak simply because he may err, Mills argue that by doing so, we are assuming the infallibility of our opinions. The likelihood however, is that we can never reach absolute infallibility or certainty especially in a rapidly changing modern landscape.

Judgment is given to man so they may use it (p. 20). To assume something is the truth, we must first grant the complete liberty of contradicting and disproving of our opinions. An opinion must be put out against objections and difficulties in order to prove its validity without which, no validity maybe presumed. One of the most common ways members of society forbid an opinion to be heard is to claim that the opinion is not useful to members of society (this is not withstanding the fact that the usefulness of opinion is itself a matter of opinion and hence, disputable and open to discussion).

No one state, church, sect, group or institution should assume infallibility of an opinion or doctrine for others (p. 25). This is so for many reasons. (1) To discover for oneself and to the world something that deeply concerns it and of which it was previously ignorant and to prove that the prevalent temporal or spiritual interest is false is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on mankind (p. 29). It is a unique human faculty to judge and reason based on empirical facts presented to the human being. This is not a prerogative of the West or a privileged segment of anyone of society. The naturalness of reason (including its paralogisms and syllogisms that can make us reason wrongly) is shown in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
(2) Any opinion that is not vigorously and earnestly contested (p. 54) or in other words, not attained without sufficient struggle for its validity will be received with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds (p. 54). (3) As a result, the meaning of the doctrine will become dogma and its real meanings and heartfelt conviction of these real meanings will be in danger of being lost (p. 54).

Reasoning that the opinion is immoral or impious and therefore should not be heard is invalid for no opinion can be considered an infallible truth unless it can withstand the onslaught of other opinions. Moreover, it seems to me that there is no reason for persecution or the hearing of an alternate opinion unless there were some sort of truth in the very opinion to be heard.

As Mills argues, the nature of truth is such that “… it maybe extinguished once, twice or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it… (p. 30).” In other words, even if truth were to be suppressed in present time, what has truth will one day in favorable circumstances arise again. It cannot be put to death forever. “Our merely social intolerance, kills no one, roots out no opinions but induces men to disguise them, or abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. (p. 33).” It seems that it is in Mills’ opinion that teal infallible truths will withstand even time just like how Socrates was put to death but Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven (p. 33). Intellectual pacification Mills firmly states is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind (p. 34). What is truth maybe prevented from spreading, but they do not disappear (p. 34).

Based on the idea of fairness, all opinions should be heard in a thorough way. Based on the dignity of thinking beings, all opinions should be heard in a thorough way. That which is not fully frequently and fearlessly discussed is not a living truth but a dead dogma (p. 36). Truth thus held is mere superstition held by the suspension of judgment or led by authority and sheer inclination. It is not one held by a rational thinking being. Only in light of the full force of the difficulty of the problem can anyone discover for himself the portion of truth that met and overcome that very difficulty (p. 38).

Persons possessing simple minds will not be able to understand and resolve such difficulties (p. 39). Not many people have weighed and considered all the bearings of a problem and experience the entire character of the issue. Most, torpidly and passively assent but in doing so, whatever opinion that is passed down will cease to connect with the inner life of the human being (p. 41-42). Nothing, not any religious or traditional doctrines must be received as “closed” truisms that is to be repeated in rote.

Popular opinions are seldom or never the whole truth. Mills says: “They are a part of truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted and disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited (p. 47).” With human progress though, we can substitute a partial and incomplete truth for another. We will and can improve because new fragments of truth is wanted and adapted to the needs of our time.

Truth is about reconciling and combining opposites (p. 49). It requires minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make adjustments. Mills did not suggest that the route to truth will be a smooth one. In fact, he recognizes that it is a tough battle and struggle and often use terms such as “fight” and “combating” to describe the attainment of truth of any sort. Obedience to any sort of morality, submitting oneself to any sort of Supreme Will passively is argued by Mills to be, servile.

An exploratory essay of a philosophical understanding of what does it mean to think?

To think is to center one’s consciousness as all unity of thought. It is to be conscious of an inner sense that is the highest principle of all synthetic judgments and that all object stands under the necessary conditions of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience. To think is not only to be capable of analytic judgment or to locate an intuition within the bounds of certain given concept but to be able to advance beyond the given concept viewing it in relation with other concepts. To be unable to do so is to be quite eternally bounded to any given system or concept and to be trapped in one’s own mind. To think is to combine the manifold that can never come to us through our senses Kant says. Thinking is independent of sensibility to quote Kant in S21 – deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding - of some of his observations. To think is thus never just to be a holder of contents of our daily experiences. To think rather means to learn to use the faculty of spontaneity to create concepts or new categories of unity for which we can continually till the end of our lives ground unique and/or logical thought and being and so as to continually build different ways of experiencing and viewing the world. Thinking is original and definitely ours. ‘I think’ is something that belongs to us and that accompanies all our representations. That humans have different categories of thought is the most precious quality of being human. To think is to imagine beyond what is already given. It is to be able to determine our inner sense with understanding – the original power of combining the manifold intuitions. To think means to learn how to formulate new categories of thought. It is to create new categories of combination. It entails the need to understand the reasons for such categories and the reason(s) why we should stick with them revamp them or dispose them. To think is to restore the individual with the power to decide in this finitude of life how to go about her way of life without necessarily succumbing to any reified method blindly. To think is hence an arduous task that only the valiant and sincere will undertake. It is the will to originality and the will to see the readily given not as a privilege but as an insult to the human mind. To think entails the exploration of the depths of the human potential even if in the end, the humanly attempt maybe futile. It is the paradox to acknowledge the success of failures. To think is to not only doubt but to realize that doubt is always present in most of our daily affairs and that the only thing the separates us from these doubts is the will to knowledge.

To think is to know that we do not know too much well like Socrates’s wisdom that he knows naught. To know for Kant is to know our limits of knowledge as Kant says, “accordingly, I have no knowledge of myself as I am but merely as I appear to myself.” It is not the dogma of “I think therefore, I am” the author of whom we need not further mention. To think is to realize that even the knowledge of ourselves is limited for we are intuit-able only according to/within relations of time as intuitions.

To think is a will to be different and to deviate from the average called ‘normality.’ To not think is hence to be normal within which, one cannot be much too different. The will to be different can quite rightfully be called the will to knowledge because it entails needing to re-formulate ground works for moral and ethical disposition and action and concepts of understanding the world often, anew. It is hence, the will to be open to contradictions and falsehood and the will to overcome them because it is a gamble of which the stakes are the sensibility of the individual’s entire subject hood. It is the subject’s trial to face falsehood. It is something that all human beings must go through to reach out towards truth and the universal that is paradoxically not to be found outside the individual but within the individual. As one searches outward more, one penetrates the inward even more. It is the realization that there is no linearity in thought and no end to paradoxes and inquiry. Should the will to think not end, then the vigour in the mind of the pursuer of thought will only heighten.

It is the will to the fundamental believe that the individual and the human mind and potential is priceless. It is the will to present to others, an individual-hood as an ongoing project of possible progresses and regresses.

Notes on Hilary Putnam The nature of mental States

Some rules of analytic philosophy Putnam says includes (1), that “being A is being B” is correct only from the meaning of the terms A and B and (2), “being A is being B” must be reductive to be philosophically informative (for instance, being in pain is having a certain behavioral disposition). Hence, philosophers may argue that ‘I am in pain without knowing I am in brain state S shows that pain cannot be brain state S.’ But Putnam argues that this is as hilarious as we cannot know that the stove is hot without knowing that the molecular kinetic energy is high (trying to reduce temperature to molecular kinetic energy – empirical reduction). Putnam argues that all that follows that I can know I am in pain without knowing that I am in brain state S is that the concept of pain is not the same concept as the concept of being in brain state S. Hence, pain maybe a brain state S. Asserting an identity between both is absurd.

So, what ‘is’ pain? Pain is not a brain state (physical-chemical state) but some kind of state entirely. Pain or the state of being in pain is a functional state of a whole organism (p. 199). The entire argument seems to be impossible for me to understand at this stage of my study but it seems to be as follows (according to Putnam):

(1) All organisms capable of feeling pain are Probabilistic Automata.
(2) Every organism capable of feeling pain possesses at least one Description of a certain kind. Being capable of feeling pain is possessing an appropriate kind of Functional Organization.
(3) No organism capable of feeling pain possesses a decomposition into parts which separately possesses Descriptions of the kind referred in (2).
(4) For every Description of the kind referred in (2), there exists a subset of the sensory inputs such that an organism with that Description is in pain when and only when some of its sensory inputs are in that subset.
Putnam then hypothesizes that the Functional Organization must include a “preference function/ordering and something that resembles inductive logic “i.e., the Machine must be able to “learn from experience.” They should also have pain sensors that signal damage to the body and that transmit a special subset of inputs referred to in (4). Putnam argues that pain is a functional state rather than a brain state or a behavioral disposition. It is species independent

The will to knowledge (1)

The world is vast and opaque.
We intend it as it cries out to us.
Where our voices and thoughts illuminate only one corner of the southern seas.
The depths of which we can never reach.
Silhouettes of which we can only trace thinly with our fingers
and contribute to it an insignificant core.
We give as we take.
There is no one analytic fate.
As we go along, brighter, dimmer, stronger, weaker,..
Our consciousness ebbs and wades.
Swayed and thrust into the depths of knowledge
of reality unfair,
paralysis, paralysis, no, rage.
adumbrations, senses, intention relates.
the object of which, in our Kantian minds we can never reach.
By logic, by faith, by reason by the day,
The conjectures we make, history will take.
We are small but magnificent creatures.
Minds of which undermined constantly by the herd or the masses.
One day into which we will want to soar, out of the silent shadows of the majority
and into Plato's light that warms our pores.
No, into the individual’s rights, or the what makes us humans afterall…
The desperate rush to understand reality
Is to be understood in the disappointment of our current modernity.
Its senselessness, unthinking, immorality.
Its cold, heartless, breeding inequality.
Its refusal to acknowledge man’s finitude.
Its escape from despair and absurdity that leaves the absurd real man in a lunatic lurch.
Truth. Depth and a free and wild imagination.
Humility, love and meaning.
These are estranged values that our present modernity has forgotten about.
Shallowness, depthless simulacrum and idols we take as Gods.
Things we have never thought about but also never want to sought out.
Merry?
Merry Merry. It is all we seek and value as a reason to not-Understanding.
Decimate the knowledge lovers.
Dampen their efforts!
Make them work for money and make them like us un-thinking, un-loving, un-imagining.
The masses… the masses.
They are the nothingness with infinite neutralizing powers that all knowledge-lovers have to encounter and counter.
They are the real counter-sense.
The inevitable horde from which we draw our ideas of normality.
Where is the individual? Where is the human?
There is no human to talk about.
It is the end of metaphysics and the beginning of the history of the masses of which we must write about.
Its sanity we must turn into insanity.
Its logic we must prove syllogistic.
Its dialectic we must prove is nothing.
Its political apathy we must dispel.
Where is the intellectual? Buried in the masses even though they are the only human beings left in this barren desert.

Notes and Reflections on: Richard Rorty from “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories.”

Rorty does not seem too convinced by Baier’s argument which seems to be that the first person epistemological authority cannot be over-riden. Baier argues that the private subject matter is the kind of thing that cannot be over-ridden. So a sufferer cannot be mistaken to have pain since such a pain is inconceivable (even if there were a brain gadget on our head that notes no cerebral processes on occasions he or she felt a pain). Baier thinks that introspective reports or private subject matters are incommensurable with public subject matters. So Baier think that no matter how good the evidence maybe one can never show to the sufferer that he is mistaken in having had a pain.

The question is, is there a criterion to judge whether a person knows how to use pain in the correct way? Does Jones know how to use the word pain correctly? Rorty says that when we do raise this question, the question, (1) Does he know which sensations are called pains? And (2) Is he a good judge of whether he is in pain or not? Are two ways of asking the same question i.e. “can we fit his pain reports into our scheme for explaining and predicting pains? And/or “shall we disregard his pain reports or not? (p. 134).

Can we be mistaken? Rorty argues that our inability to be mistaken is after all no more than our ability to have such hypothetical statements as “if you admit that I am sincere and that I know the language, you have to accept what I say” accepted by our fellows (p. 135).” Where a clear cut public criterion does exist for knowing the language (Wittgenstein argues that sensation-reports must conform to public criteria or else be disallowed), inability to be mistaken does not entail inability to be over-ridden. Hence, we can still be over-ridden. Others may still think we do not understand pain if we do not produce utterances that conform to the public criterion. But this does not compromise our epistemological authority.

Rorty hence takes a finer and safer line of argument as opposed to Baier who claims that we surely cannot be wrong.

Reflections on Strawson’s ‘mind self and body’

Maybe the question is about how we derived at the Cartesian split. How can Cartesians hold that the notion of the individual mind or consciousness is perfectly intelligible from the notion of the person? To accept this ‘split,’ Cartesians must hold unswervingly that the dualistic reduction of the analysis of a person is possible – that subjects can be designated either by their mind/consciousness or body. The idea of the individual mind can be derived from the individual person. This is derived usually from a delusionary mental introspective looking in that from this, we can be conscious of our various mental states and contents and hence claim that ‘I’ am… ‘I know… that I am…’ But this is problematic for Strawson quotes Kant on this that there is nothing in the ‘I’ that does not exclude the possibility of a thousand other experiences at that moment when we say ‘I…’ So, ‘I…’ cannot know that I am not experiencing these other thousand experiences perhaps as the psychoanalysts would think, unconsciously. To say that I can, is to say it in a very dogmatic manner that is not explanatory in nature.

Notes on Norman Malcolm’s “Knowledge of Other Minds”

Russell’s analogical reasoning is somewhat posed also by J. S. Mill’s question: “By what evidence do I know or by what considerations am I led to believe, that there exist other sentient creatures; that walking and speaking figures which I see and hear have sensations and thoughts or in other words possess minds?” In other words, these thinkers ask:

Is it possible and/or how do we know that a human figure has thoughts and feelings?” Mill assumes that there is no criterion for determining with certainty how we know. We can perhaps only induce this possible other minds. Mill says this (this quotation is cut short see Rosenthal p 92):

“I conclude that other human beings have feelings like me, because, first, they have bodies like me, which I know, in my own case, to be the antecedent condition of feelings; and because secondly, they exhibit the acts and other outward signs, which in my own case I know by experience to be caused by feelings ... I bring, other human beings, as phenomena under the same generalizations which I know by experience to be the true theory of my own existence (p. 92).”
What such reasonings do is this. They embark on an introspective inspection that goes: 1) ‘I have a pain.’ 2) ‘He has a pain.’3) ‘I understand the meaning of I have pain.’ 4) ‘He has a pain may mean the same thing as when I have a pain.’ 5) I infer from my experience that he has a pain on the basis of the pain that I have assuming that both ‘pains’ are same. This is way of analogical inference occurs even though one does not exactly have a criterion to make such an inference and the maximum result one can get get is a probable establishment of his pain (on the basis of the notion that we have “the same pain”). This sort of argument makes it seem as if we can only understand our ‘pain’ but not that others ‘have pain (what kind of pain etc).’ Based on such a line of argument, ‘My behavior is such and such when I feel giddy so probably when others exhibit the same behavior, they probably feel giddy too.’ This is how we understand others’ giddiness (by reference to our own giddiness).

Malcolm thinks that this recourse is futile because what is the criterion of this same pain? How do we establish (by what criterion) that this pain is the same?

Malcom also considers H. H. Price analogical reasoning:
One’s evidence for the existence of other minds is derived primarily from the understanding of language. Hence, if another body gives forth noises one understands providing new information that indicates that the foreign body uttered the noises animated by a mind like one’s own, I can believe that this body which produce such informative noises come from a mind like my own. This is even if these informative sounds did not emerge from a body like our own.

Malcolm argues that this is still a form of analogical reasoning. Price is saying that 1) I know by introspection that when I produce informative noises, they are products of my spontaneous thought. 2) Hence, if I hear someone producing such informative noises, I can assume that they have a spontaneous thought that is not a product of my own mind but of others. Such an argument argument implies the probability that the kitchen table or oak tree has sensations and thoughts. Malcolm argues that “that an object is a source of intelligible sounds or other signs would not be engouh by itself to establish that it had thoughts or sensations.” We cannot infer from the intelligible sounds that the thing has a mind. Malcolm argues that what does not embody a human form do not and cannot satisfy the criteria for thinking because when we think, we also (as shown in a baby’s behavior growing up) look, point, reach, fetch and so on.

The greatest mistake of the analogy, Malcolm argues is that it assumes that one learns from one’s own case what thinking, feeling, sensation are. Because if we proceed this way, we would end up with the conclusion that we cannot know anything outside our own mind because we can only learn/infer and know from our own minds. For instance: “when I say I am in pain, by pain, I mean a certain inward state. When I say He is in pain, by pain I mean (see) behavior. I cannot attribute pain to others in the same sense that I attribute it to myself.” Afterall, how do we know what the other person’s behavior refers to if we only learn/infer/know from our own minds? We fall to solipsism. The philosopher would always be stuck at trying to transit from his own case to the case of others. The inference bridge I call, makes the philosopher panick.

Malcolm however says that: “ When the philosopher’s thinking is freed of the illusion of the priority of his own case, then he is able to look at the familiar facts and to acknowledge that the circumstances, behavior and utterances of others actually are his criteria for the existence of their mental states.” Banishing this illusion is the first step to understanding that the behavior, utterances etc are not only his evidence of others’ mental states.

Reflections and Notes on Russell’s essay on “Analogy”

It is highly likely that we do not have certain knowledge of other minds, only highly probably knowledge. We do not have direct access to others’ minds. However, we do have some probably knowledge of their minds through postulates which as Russell has constructed goes like this:
“If, whenever we can observe whether A and B are present or absent, we find that every case of B has an A as a causal antecedent, then it is probable that most B’s have A’s as causal antecedents, even in cases where observation does not enable us to know whether A is present or not.”

For instance, we see that thunder causes a lightning. But at times, we may hear thunder without seeing lightning but we still infer upon hearing thunder that somewhere, there is lightning. “If you hear thunder without having seen lightning, you confidently infer that there was lightning because you are convinced that the sort of noise you heard is seldom caused by anything except lightning.” We based our knowledge of other minds through or from a subjective observation that I know that A (thought or feeling) causes B (body act or statement). From this, I know also that whenever B is the act of my body, A is the cause. So when I see someone (not my own) with bodily act B, I still infer that A because of my self-subjective observation/experience that A caused B. We infer from us that was an A that caused B although I cannot observe this A. On this ground, we infer that other people’s bodies are affected by their minds in some similar ways as how my mind affect my body. We understand others based on our self subjective experience and this inference/projectile may often be wrong

Caryn: We understand others based on our self subjective experience and this inference/projectile may often be wrong. If in interaction, I projectile my self (P1) subjective experience X and person (P2) projects subjective experience Y, then there will be a possibility of rupture, discussion, conflict that occurs in this exchange. This occurs especially when P2 and P1 come from different life experiences and spheres and engage in interaction which may produce new experiences. The creation of the new experiences and changes hence always emerge and uncertainty of the soul of one’s subjective experience is hence a permanent resident in the modern subject when one’s analogy or postulate may often fail in interaction.

Notes: Revisiting Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding

All human knowledge and/or Ideas according to John Locke, is derived from experience. There is (1) the external sensible objects. We gain perceptions of this sensible objects through our senses that convey them to our mind. There is also, (2) internal operations of our minds furnishing our understanding with perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing and willing. These ideas, the mind can get only when it reflects upon itself. The mind Locke says, in reflection, furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own Operations. It is only from these two sources that we derive all our knowledge a posteriori.

Locke seems to disagree with Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore, I am’ maxim for he says here that “Man thinks always, but is not always conscious of it (S19).” He further says “That a man is always conscious to himself of thinking; I ask, How they know it? Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind.” The problem seems to be that man cannot know that he is thinking. He may forget what he thinks or he may not be conscious of it. For instance Locke says, “Wake a Man out of a sound sleep, and ask him, What he was that moment thinking on. If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable Diviner of ATHoughts, that can assure him, that he was thinking (S19).” He cannot have experience of his thinking. Locke thinks one cannot know this because this is surely beyond experience. Every man has ideas wholly in himself from experience. From reflection, he can reflect that certain operations exist (thinking, doubting, believing etc). But one cannot hence say that I think.
I or a person is a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and that can consider itself as the selfsame thinking thing albeit in different time and place. Based on its present experience or sensations and perceptions, we form our self. But herein lies the Lockean paradox or the paradox that all empiricists would face. If the person or I is a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection of his present experience then when we transit from one moment T1 to T2, are we still the same self? (if from T1 to T2 we share different experiences, do we consider ourselves as different selves? SelfT1 and SelfT2?)

It seems that for Locke, all experience from which we derive sensations = perception = knowledge. Locke says this: “He can never be in doubt when any Idea is in his Mind, that it is there, and is that Idea it is; and that two distinct Ideas when they are in his Mind are there, and are not one and the same Idea. The same faculty of sensation that garners the intuitions is the same one that categorizes and understands it. This will be hotly criticized By Kant who distinguishes from the faculty of sensibility, understanding (and its apprehension), reason and ideas of reason etc and that our faculty of reason by nature reasons and reasons wrongly in driven to real a maximal highest ideal.

Locke has the notion that qualities in Bodies cause us to have perceptions/Ideas in our minds. This is discernible from Descartesian idealism that e.g. pain, colour or primary qualities in Lockean terms etc. are only in our minds since (whose essence is to think. Well, recall that Descartes thinks that the body cannot think). Locke seems to think that Descartes is mistaken for there exist many external bodies with inherent qualities in them that have the power to produce any Idea in our mind. Locke gives the instance of the snow-ball where the snow-ball has powers to produce ideas in us. The Cartesian skepticism of knowledge of the external world (apart from the mind and its container of ideas), is hence rejected by Locke who claims that in fact, our ideas are produced by powers of objects.

There are two types of qualities. Primary and Secondary. Primary qualities are for instance, Solidity, Extension, Figure and Mobility that no matter how you divide up an object will still retain these qualities. Ideas of primary qualities will carry resemblance with these bodies i.e. that such patterns really do exist in the bodies themselves. Secondary qualities however are colours sounds and tastes. Secondary qualities however have no resemblance at all. They do not themselves like primary qualities exist in bodies themselves. They are powers we denominate to produce sensations in us (Book II Chap VIII S23). Secondary qualities come from their primary qualities. They come “after” a peculiar manner on our senses and produce in us the different ideas of colours sounds smells tastes etc. They are modifications of the primary qualities (p 41).

Locke hence thinks that there are things themselves (primary qualities that are undeniable). Kant seems to be more reserved on this issue.
Locke says the some epistemological error occurs because our senses are not able to perceive any connection or unlikeness in the idea produced in us and the quality of the object producing it, we are apty to imagine that our ideas are resemblances of something in the objects and not the effects of certain Powers. For instance, we often think that

(a) The idea of heat or light received by our eyes or touched from the sun are commonly thought as REAL QUALITIES existing in the sun itself. Hence, i.e. the commonsense notion that the sun emits heat and the colour orange and that these two qualities are inherent in the sun itself.

(b) BUT when we look at the Wax which it melts or blanches upon the heat/sun, we look upon the whiteness and softness produced in the wax NOT as qualities of light and warmth but EFFECTS produced by powers in it.

Locke argues that this contradiction is demolished if we understand that colours sounds etc are merely effects of primary qualities itself. We should not look at it as bare Effect of Power even if we cannot see the clear connections between the primary and secondary qualities or what makes these qualitative changes (Locke surrenders that sometimes, the quality produced e.g. wax melt or e.g. heat conveyed by the sun may nhave no resemblance with the thing which produced it i.e. the sun).

Notes: On Thomas Reid v. John Locke

Notes: On Thomas Reid v. John Locke

Thomas Reid however, does not seem to agree with Locke that we can easily distinguish simple and complex qualities for Reid (seemingly the empiricist that he is urging us to pay no attention to hypotheses and analogical reasoning) thinks that ambiguity is natural. What Locke calls simple, e.g. fear (this for Locke is a secondary quality. We will come to this in a little bit) is often confounded with danger for instance. Qualities are naturally ambiguous, they come together and are hence often confounded. Operations of the mind are necessarily complex in nature they may contain two or more ingredients that can be disjoint only via thought. More specifically, the two things conjoined by nature is sensation in the mind and quality perceived in the body. The error that philosophers or common man in general make is that sensation taken by itself cannot imply immediately conception or belief in any external object (such as God or a sentient being). This error occurs because when we perceive, perception often implies an immediate conviction and belief of something external different from the mind that perceives and the act of perception. We need to be clear according to Reid that the act of perception (belief and conviction of the external) should not be confounded with our sensation. Reid’s empiricism and skepticism of knowing more than what the senses can give us is best illustrated here: “When I smell a rose, there is in this operation both sensation and perception. The agreeable odour I feel, considered by itself, without relation to any external object, is merely a sensation. It affects the mind in a certain way; and this affection of the mind may be conceived, without a thought of the rose, or any other object. This sensation can be nothing else than it is felt to be. Its very essence consists in being felt; and when it is not felt, it is not (p. 47).”

Locke thinks that we can perceive a resemblance of primary qualities with objects in itself. But this conviction is built on shaky grounds. We may have the sensation of this and that which indicates or “supposes a sentient being, and a certain manner in which that being is affected; but it supposes no more (p. 49).” Kant would later it seems further refine this sort of philosophical thinking that Reid seems to hold things like “the sensation I would hold is in my mind. The mind is the sentient being.”

Also, Reid seems to think that what Locke may call simple are actually a complex of sensations that is not very much whether it is governed by a primary/secondary division but better understood along the lines of animal (sensation)/rational/moral feeling division something that it seems Kant would again later build on.

Notes and Reflections on Hilary Putnam’s Brain and Behaviour

Notes and Reflections on Hilary Putnam’s Brain and Behaviour

Logical behaviorism (Vienna positivists) treated numbers as if they were logical constructions out of sets (see p. 151). Logical behaviorists believe that there are ‘analytic entailments’ between mind (meaning) statements and behavior statements. For instance, in diagnosing polio, doctors may be apt to say that people who have multiple sclerosis have some or all of symptoms X (analytic truth).

Putnam however seems to disagree with the logical behaviorists. He says that for instance, ‘pain’ is a cluster concept that the word ‘pain’ is controlled by a whole cluster of criteria, all of which can be regarded as synthetic. Hence, there is no one way of understanding what ‘pain means’ except by giving a synonym. Putnam believes that there are a million and one different ways of saying what pain is (p 153). Saying that ‘pain’ is a feeling evinced by saying ‘ouch’ is just one way.’ In the case of polio, it does not follow that disease talk/polio is translatable into some analytic entailment or symptom talk. Some people have all the symptoms but do not have the multiple sclerosis disease. Causes (pains), are not logical constructions of their effects (behavior) (Putnam or see p 153). Hence, coming back to ‘pain,’ ‘pain’ to the dualists or logical behaviourists would be something that manifests some event/condition that cause these responses. So when there is a pain, one would say ‘ouch.’ Putnam argues that this however sheds no light on what pain is (or isn’t) (p. 153). Pain talk is not translatable into response talk. Pain does not cause its whatever effects and pain is hence not equitable to its effect. There is no identity between the cause and its effects. For Putnam, pains are not clusters of responses.

Pain it seems for Putnam, causes of clusters of responses. It is absurd to not be able to ascribe to people a capacity for feeling pain. People have the capacity to feel pain and this causes a cluster of responses even if in Putnam’s constructed science fiction world, people are trained not to evince pain (super Spartans). There are no logical reasons for the existence of unconditioned pain responses in all species that are capable of feeling pain (p. 155). Pains may not have normal causes or normal effects. There may not even be pain reports in X-world. X-world people may super suppress pain and pretend not to know what the phenomenon pain is or refers to.
Putnam uses all his imaginary examples to show that logical behaviourism is false. i.e. (1) that there is a translatable pain talk into behavior talk but also, (2) that pains are responsible for certain behavior/responses. There maybe a world where there are no pain behaviours. From the statement X has a pain, it does not necessarily follow that a behavioral statement must follow. It seems that Putnam is saying that pain is governed by a cluster of synthetic indicators not necessarily an analytic one that they are responsible for certain kinds of behavior.

I may not have gotten this right but could one of the learning points be (for me) that pains may not be manifested in the ‘normal’ ways. If someone does not manifest certain pain behavior that in our culture counts as pain, it does not necessarily mean that he is not experiencing pain.

Notes on: P F Strawson’s “Person”

Notes on: P F Strawson’s “Person”

How is it that one can ascribe states of consciousness to others? How is it that one can ascribe to oneself not on the basis of observation, the every same thing that others may have on the basis of observation, a logically adequate reason for ascribing to one?

The proposition all experiences of person P are causally dependent on the state of a single body B is false. All experiences of person P does not mean the same thing as all experiences are contingently dependent on a certain body B. One must be referring to a class of experiences i.e. my experiences of which some are dependent on the body B. There is something logically non-transferable in our general scheme of thought. Our experiences are referred to as ours just as how experiences or states of experiences are identified with some person. “States or experiences, one might say, owe their identity as particulars to the identity of the person whose states or experiences they are (p. 105-6)” and as such, they must be possessed or ascribable.

“It is a necessary condition of one’s ascribing states of consciousness, experiences to oneself in the way one does that one should also ascribe them to others who are not oneself (p. 107).” One can ascribe states of consciousness to oneself only if one can ascribe them to others which is possible only if one can identify other subjects of experience. This is not possible if we can identify them only as subjects of experience or some possessor of states of consciousness (p. 107). This problem is based on a Cartesian mode of understanding others. It seems to be like this if we accept Descartes way of thinking that 1) there is the mind/body. 2) all experiences in the mind stand in a special relation to the body. 3) So this body (call M) is unique holder of its experiences amongst other bodies say X Y Z. Another subject also have this mind/body, special relation of his experiences…unique amongst others... (from p 108).

Strawson thinks that the concept of a pure ego is a concept that cannot exist as a primary form of Pure subject which accompanies all intuitions and perception. The word I does not refer to the pure subject (something apart from the body i.e. that the pure subject precedes the ego – stawson calls this primitiveness of the concept of the person). It also does not mean that the “I” does not refer at all (something it seems that is said by Wittgenstein) but that it refers because I am a person among others. Strawson argues that the concept of a person is logically prior to that of an individual consciousness. One must have the concept of a person before one can start to collate and infer that he has an ‘individual’ consciousness. So Pure consciousness, ego-substance etc. or even it seems, mind prior to the body is illusory (p. 109). The concept of the person Strawson says is not to be analyzed as that of an animated body or of an embodied anima (p. 109) – i.e. the way philosophers Kant, Descartes, Hume etc. conceives of the person but the concept of the person should be understood as the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics , physical situation etc. are equally applicable to an individual entity of that type. There is simply no sense in talking about a subject in P-Predicates ( predicates ascribing states of consciousness e.g. is smiling or is happy) and M-Predicates (applied to material bodies e.g. is in the room). What is the criteria of the ascription of P-Predicates? The thing is, to be able to ascribe P-Predicates to something, one must be able to observe the relation or correlation between the thing and P-Predicates and the criteria is namely, “our own (p. 110).” It seems that my interpretation is correct because a few lines after, Strawson writes: “There is no sense in the idea of ascribing states of consciousness to oneself, or at all, unless the ascriber already knows how to ascribe at least some states of consciousness to others. So he cannot (or cannot generally argue) “from his own case” to conclusions about how to do this; for unless he already knows how to do this, he has no conception of his own case or any case (i.e., any subject of experiences) (p. 110).” We need to accept this in order to explain the existence of the conceptual scheme in terms of which the Cartesian question/problem/problem of skepticism/implications of mind-body framework is posed.

The person based on my reading of Strawson seems to be that one is both a self-ascriber and an other- ascriber of such predicates and we must see every other as a self-ascriber. The conceptual schema of the mind/body split seems to have shifted and united in the person who is both a self-ascriber and an other-ascriber with the primary concept of ‘Person’ uniting all perception. “In order to understand this type of concept (both first and third person ascriptive use), one must acknowledge that there is a kind of predicate which is unambiguously and adequately ascribable both on the basis of observation of the subject of predicate and not on this basis – where the ascriber is also the subject.”

How is it that one can ascribe states of consciousness to others? How is it that one can ascribe to oneself not on the basis of observation, the every same thing that others may have on the basis of observation, a logically adequate reason for ascribing to one? How are states of consciousness possible?

This passage is indicative. “What I am suggesting is that it is easier to understand how we can see each other as persons if we think of the fact that we act and act on each other, and act in accordance with a common human nature. To see each other as persons” is a lot of things; but not a lot of separate and unconnected things. The class of P-predicates that I have moved into the center of the picture are not unconnectedly there, detached from others irrelevant to them. On the contrary, they are inextricably bound up with the others, interwoven with them. The topic of the mind does not divide into unconnected subjects (p. 112).”

This passage is indicative: “The point is, once more, that there is no sense in speaking of the individual consciousness just as such, of the individual subject of experience just as such: for there is no way of identifying such pure entities (p. 113).” Hence there is also no point in thinking about the philosophical problems of unity, of identity of particular consciousness of particular subject of perceptions etc (p. 114).

Notes: On Gilbert Ryle’s essay Descartes’s myth

Notes: On Gilbert Ryle’s essay Descartes’s myth

Gilbert Ryle I think does a good job in the filtering and clarification of Descartes’s theory he calls the “official theory” which does a huge logical categorical mistake of disjoining or even conjoining two things (mind and body). For this reason, “She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair” sounds as ridiculous as “she came home either in a flood of tears or else in a sedan chair.” Similarly, it is senseless to conjoin or disjoin the phrase “there occurs mental processes” and “there occurs physical processes.” Gyle maintains that it is perfectly proper to say in one logical tone of voice that there exist minds and that there also exist bodies. These expressions do not indicate two different species of existence. They simply indicate two different sense of what existence means. Existence is not a singular generic term.

What Descartes did was to place a binary between the mind and body within categories of ‘state’ ‘process’ ‘change’ etc. Hence for instance, minds are things, but they are different things from bodies. Mental processes are causes and effects but they are different causes and effects from bodies. It began from the posing of the question of how minds can influence and be influenced by bodies? For instance, how can a mental process such as willing cause spatial movements like our tongue to move? The body is hence casted as an engine governed by an internal engine i.e. the mind that is invisible, inaudible and has no size or weight. Bodies are rigidly governed by mechanical laws in the physical world of a deterministic system but the mental world by non-mechanical causes since it is not governed by any physical laws. The existence of what has physical existence is that it exists in space and time. The body exists in a common public field/space governed by mechanical laws whereas the mental processes/consciousness exists in an insulated field called the mind. The mind can cause the body to act in certain ways and there exist causal mechanisms and laws that facilitate bodies to cause bodies to act in certain ways. Only in the medium of the physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of the other.

Mental processes such as thinking feeling willing perceiving doubting etc, exists only in the mind. The mental processes established within an insulated capsule or made by Descartes to exist in the mind results in the hypotheses that so long as the mind thinks, the mind exists. He will know and will be conscious of it. The mind is the measure of itself it seems. It is absurd to say that one does not know what one thinks. The person and his mind will always be conscious of his present state and workings of the mind. Consciousness and introspection cannot be confused. If he thinks, he knows and he (the mind), exists. But sense perception can be confused. One is always unsure about what the external world of bodies give to the mind (sense perception). The second problem is that because each mind is an insulated capsule, one can only make problematic inferences to other minds. There is no directness or causal interaction between different minds it. Interaction has to be mediated by bodily behavior which when sensed and perceived always poses a problem or skeptical doubt. Absolute solitude Gyle says is the ineluctable destiny of the soul. All mental thinking intending doubting etc refers to his own occult state of consciousness and there can be no effective use of mental concepts to describe other minds. This absurdity Gyle asserts is a Descartes’ categorical mistake of presenting mental life as if it belongs to one category and bodily ones another for the purpose of explaining how the mind can infer the body and how the body can infer the mind – the logical mould or frame that Descartes uses. To do embark on such an explanation, Descartes had to set up such a binary which in the end gave birth to the problem of freedom of will. For if there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements then what laws govern the mental movements? Are there laws? Should there be laws? A.k.a. freedom of the will problem: “the problem of how to reconcile the hypothesis that minds are to be described in terms drawn from the categories of mechanics with the knowledge that higher grade human conduct is not a piece with the behavior of machines (p. 55).”

Notes and reflections on: Sydney Shoemaker from “How is Self Knowledge Possible?”

Notes and reflections on: Sydney Shoemaker from “How is Self Knowledge Possible?”

This paper is to me an eureka moment that gives the impression of dispelling some redundant philosophical concerns. The usual philosophical skepticism is that it is I know P because I see P. But how can I know that P? How can I be sure that P? (there are many reasons why I cannot be sure, philosophically) or I am in pain. But how can I be sure that I am in pain? What justifies that I am in pain? My perception that I am in pain… I observe that I am in pain therefore I am in pain. This may be a coincidence, an accident that statements asserted are true one can’t know for sure unless they are justified and then, the philosophical or epistemological question becomes how can they be justified?

The point Shoemaker is trying to make is that the making of first person psychological statements can be justified simply by the fact that statement is true. Perception is always from a point of view. There is always a contingent relation R such that for any normal person X if we know X stands in relation R to Y, we are normally justified in concluding on this basis of this knowledge that X has beliefs of a certain kind about Y. (For example (as it seems to be the case Shoemaker is trying to make that): It is not that a person is in pain because we observe that he is pain therefore it is justifiable that he is in pain and hence we have some certain degree that he is in pain).

Shoemaker says that for first person psychological states, there is 2 categories. (1) Corrigible. (2) Incorrigible. (1) Corrigible first person psychological states are for instance, memory statements, statements of material objects and states of affairs. (2) Incorrigible first person psychological statements are private experiences or mental events such as pain statements mental images and reports of thoughts. If a person says these (2), it is does not make any sense to say that he is mistaken or false. For example, if I say, I am in pain, it is ridiculous to say that my assertion may not be true, I may not be in pain, I may be deceived by something or I am delusional. A sincere assertion is a logically sufficient condition of its being true and that such a statement has been asserted with apparent sincerity is itself a criteria evidence that it is being true. Corrigible (1) states are those that can be false by reference to some other criteria for truth of statements. So we can make some perceptual statements on states of affairs sincerely and truthfully. For instance, we do think we see a tree out there.
Shoemaker argues that we have direct aceess to facts that are criteria evidence for truth. When one makes statements about oneself, one seems to know their truth in the most direct way. It does not seem that we are making some inductive statements. So if I am saying I have X experience, the truth of this statement is not something that is inferred. We don’t make it based on some inductive indicator on some fact. It is rather, the truth of the whole statement and not just its non personal components. For instance, I see an eucalyptus there on the hill must be based on the criteria of its being there of me that I see an eucalyptus there on the hill and not simply on the criteria for “its being there” therefore there is a eucalyptus on the hill. It is the entire first person statement that is true and that is the criterion of truth.
Being in a position to know something without evidence can be said to consist in having a property, a relational property (standing in R to something) that one might not have had. In giving a justification for a statement of one’s own is not simply claiming that one’s statement is justified, but is trying to show that it must be possible for others to see that it is (or it is not). It is senseless to say I am in pain. I am aware of something called pain. That these 2 positions are dichotomous and different and not together and that one is not in this exact position when one says one is in pain that there are seemingly two separate positions to unify. E.g. I am (entity a), observing a pain (entity b). It is absurd to say that I have a headache but I am not entitled to say I have a headache for I have no evidence that I have a headache. How am I to know? It is nonsense to speak from inductive grounds on the basis of the testimony of others that I am in pain. There is no logical possibility of my being justified in thinking that I am in pain so it is senseless to suppose that there is something other than what is logically independent of my thinking that justifies my thinking that I am in pain and senseless and pointless to ask what this justification is e.g. it is absurd to say I see something because I can see myself seeing something. It is simply that I am seeing something.

The question is then (it seems) is how is it that sincere statements can be true (somewhat by itself or in itself)? How is it that something can be true when sincerely asserted (assuming it is not that the person is acting he is sincerely asserting something) for it is generally the case that when a person claims to see an object of a certain kind, his eyes indeed are open and directed toward an object of that kind. Shoemaker states that facts hold if (1) bodily facts in question are criterion for truth of statements and that (2) these statements are made on the basis of these bodily facts because the speaker observes and has established that these facts hold. Philosophers though have the tendency to think that sincere and confident perceptual and memory statements are generally true contingentlyand not necessarily. So it is only contingently true of me that I generally utter the words “I see a tree” in a confident and assertive manner when my eyes are open and directed to a tree.

Shoemaker argues that this is not an epistemological problem but something that it seems is a basic human capacity (p. 123-124) that humans have the capacity to be trained in the use of language. The result of this training is that human beings will make similar linguistic responses in similar situations. If this capacity and training as part of a human nature were not true, then language would not be possible. What defines the correct response to the training in the use of a word ad what also defines what is to count as the correct use of the word, is the typical response of those to whom the training is given. The uniform effect of a certain kind of training is a tendency to utter certain sounds while exhibiting the behavioural manifestations of pain and not to exhibit them when experiencing e.g. well being and contendeness. Human beings can be taught “new pain behaviour” (Wittgenstein). Hence, another general fact of human nature is that human beings are capable of being trained in the use of language or in the making of sounds and gestures that as a result of their being given a certain training, there will exist in the behaviour correlations (R) that make it possible for uttering of certain sounds by members of a group of human beings to be regarded as the making of first person perceptual and memory statements. If human beings did not have this capacity, they would not be able to make perceptual and memory statements at all, and cannot be said to have beliefs that are expressible in such statements (p. 124). Human beings are taught to utter certain sounds e.g. I see a tree when certain conditions are satisfied e.g. when the speaker’s eyes are open and directed toward a tree, and utter them without establishing that the conditions are satisfied. Hence is is not that a human being makes statements I see a tree because he has established that such conditions that there is a tree is satisfied. It is a natural phenomenon not a epistemological problem. Truth statements are true because we are trained that stating it in such a way, we are taught that it is true. Hence, shoemaker nargues that first person psychological statements cannot be made on the basis of the criterion for their truth. They are a necessary truth and not a contingent one. It is a fact of nature that human beings can be so trained that they are able to make such statements. The result of training is an ability to say certain things under certain conditions without first ascertaining whether those conditions are satisfied. It is the result of training then it seems that we are even able to have and utter first-person psychological statements.

Notes: Revisiting Decartes’s theory of mind-body.

Notes: Revisiting Decartes’s theory of mind-body.

In a letter to Elizabeth on 28th June 1643, Descartes wrote that people who do not philosophize do conceive of a certain the union of the body and soul/mind. The metaphysician Descartes however obviously do not think so. The body and the mind are two distinct entities. The attribute or essence of the body is its extension. The modes of this attribute of the body includes shape, motion, position and duration etc.

The attribute or essence of the mind however is its thought or the act of thinking. The modes of thought include (1) perception and the “secondary modes” of perception include sensory perception, imagination, pure understanding and doubt. (2) Volition or will which modes include desire, assertion, denial, doubt etc. Because the essence of the mind is thought, so long as one thinks and have ideas of an apple or tree for instance, one is. Descartes theory sees knowledge and consisting in what we can perceive in our mind (although they may sometimes be prone to errors). One common error is that we think that pain or colour or the tree exists in the object itself out there. But this is quite false. Pain is often in “our minds” because recall, for Descartes, only that in thought or the mind that sensory perception occurs. Pain hence is a mode of thought – the essence of our mind – not body. This is the same for colours. One cannot say that one perceive colours in objects but they appear only as ideas of perception in our minds. This is why Descartes claims that “if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see it, clearly this entails that I myself also exist (p 24).” He says this only because it logically follows from the fact that because the essence of thought is thinking whose modes are having those stated in (1) and (2), then so long as one thinks about something, or has a mental state about something, one can infer that one exists, that one is thinking. I think, therefore, I exist.

The body and mind are two separate entities. Recall again the body’s attribute is extension. Extension is divisible. Thought is indivisible. For instance, when you amputate an arm, it is removed from your body but your mind can still have an indivisible idea of the body in its totality with the arm. Also, we can know the body, its extension only by perceiving this extension in our mind. Descartes seem to always think that bodies cause or in his words in the Sixth meditation “produces” these ideas (p 24) in our minds and our knowledge of these ideas of these things lie in the ideas in our minds themselves. There are many “bodies out there” (including ours) that can cause us to have such perceptions of ideas. We get ideas of these other extensions/bodies from our own body that we can never be separated from and from which we feel all our appetites and emotions in; pain and pleasure in. We do not get these ideas from other bodies but our own. Hence we can distinguish other bodies from ours that gives us our ideas and that these ideas are superior to our body.

…simply by knowing that I exist and seeing at the same time that absolutely nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I can infer correctly that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing… I can have a clear and distinct idea of myself insofar as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing (p. 26).

Michel Foucault and the philosopher’s practice of parresia

Based on/from Foucault, Michel (2003) ...in “The Government of Self and Others” At the College De France 1975-1976 ed. Frederic Gros trans. Graham Burchell USA: Palgave Macmillan

Philosophy is a particular activity of practicing veridiction in relation to power. The philosophical logos and ergon is a form of actual reality that is not just a counter logos violently raging against power and tyranny. The philosopher who speaks without being listened to, or again, who speaks under the threat of death basically only speaks hot air and pointlessly and indeed, the first test of philosophy is the listening it meets with (f, p. 235). The person whom the philosopher is persuading must be worth the very attempt (f, p. 236).

The philosopher lives in society with a particular state of mind. She engages in her usual actions but at all times she sticks to philosophy and a certain way of life ‘that gives her a sober mind, a ready intelligence, a tttenacious memory and skill in reasoning (f, p. 237).’ The philosopher as such has three forms of key attributes. 1), she is eumathes – able to learn easily; 2) she is mnemon – she has good memory and permanently retains everything she has learnt in a lively, present and active way and she is 3), logizesthai dunatos – she can reason in a given situation and conjecture or to use reasoning and apply it to the right decision (p. 240). The philosopher must be in harmony or symphony with herself (f, p. 269). She must ensure that she makes herself emphron and sumphonos – thoughtful and wise and moderate (f, p. 269). The philosopher must each day try to control herself in relation to herself – egkrates autos hautou (f, p. 270). She has three types of qualities that she always possess. She has 1) epistemen - knowledge 2) eunoian – benevolence and 3) parresian – frankness.

The philosophical endeavour in everyday life entails of much pains. One must occupy oneself with certain things which are the pragmata of philosophy so that one can at the right moments, show others the entirety of philosophy in its reality (f, p. 238). The practice of philosophy is a path that the philosopher has chosen, followed and the path whose end he wishes to reach and that he cannot live otherwise. “Ou bioton allon”: it is not possible for her to live differently (f, p. 239).

The very practice of philosophy is a set of practices through which the subject has a relationship to itself, elaborates itself and works on itself (f, p. 242). The reality of philosophy is to be found in the practices of the self on self (f, p. 255). The philosopher lives with philosophy (Sunousia - cohabitation, Suzen - living with) but must becareful not to dream of bringing ten phusin – nature before the eyes of everyone because that would very often be pointlessly dangerous (f, p. 249). Practicing philosophy is sufficient enough an endeixis – indication.

The philosopher’s practices or mode of being confronts reality and demands reality to show if her practices are true or false (f, p. 278). She is someone who practices parresia or truth telling to such an extent where not doing so would almost amount to committing an injustice to herself and she refuses to commit this injustice. The philosopher is an agent of the truth. She claims for herself the monopoly of parresia as a form of life, way of behaving, style of dressing (f, p.320-321) that tells and demonstrates the truth she wants reality wants and dares reality to evaluate. Her entire life is a manifestation and testimony of the truth (f, p. 343). To live philosophically is to show the truth through the ethos (the way one lives), the way one reacts (to a situation, a scene, when one is confronted with a particular situation), and the doctrine she teaches (f, p. 344).

The philosopher will only speak the truth, or remain otherwise, silent (f, p. 326).

Her philosophical discourse is none other than to care about herself and exhort others to care about themselves. ‘Care’ here refers to examining and testing at every moment a person’s relation to reality. The philosopher’s discourse owes its dunamis - strength to the very being which speaks through it and not claims to objectivity (f, p. 327). The philosopher’s truth is a constant and permanent function of her discourse.

Parrhesiastic courage is necessary (p. 372). The philosopher has to tell her truth courageously even if it means risking certain aspects of her life and even of death (f, p. 324). But more importantly, the philosopher has to consistently be parrhesiastic. The philosopher is one who practices truth-telling.

Commentary on Machiavelli’s The Prince

“Harsh necessity and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere.” (Aeneid, i563)

An air of distrust and deceit precludes Machiavelli’s The Prince. Machiavelli terms this climate in XXV (and elsewhere) as Fortuna which he describes as the ruling of chance, and changes and variations beyond our control arbiting of ‘half the things we do.’ He describes fortuna as a violent river which when enraged, flood the plains, tear down trees and buildings and forces everyone to yield to its impetus (Machiavelli, p.79) Fortuna is potent but man can control it if one were to construct dykes and embankments to channel their wild and dangerous. One will never know when fortuna strikes but must not assume in times of peace that it will not strike. Machiavelli chides that a common failing of mankind is to “never anticipate a storm when the sea is calm.”

All these produces an attitude reminiscent to Singapore’s “caution syndrome” (Hussin, pp. 353) or “crisis mentality” (Chua, p. 19) which sociologist Chua Beng Huat describes as the mentality which “produces an overanxious tendency in the administrative machinery to take pre-emptory ‘pragmatic’ measures to avoid certain presumed problems…” There maybe a very Foucauldian use to this sort of crisis mentality for it can be seen using the Foucauldian lens as a truth-construction for legitimate repressive interventions on part of the state.

Machiavelli thus cautions Lorenzo de Medici (duke of Urbino) to whom the Prince was to be addressed to originally, that in order for him to secure his principality, he must act perspicaciously. He must be wary of nobles who may form their own power-cliques (IV). Hence, The Prince must act to decimate long established powers and all enemies. Were the annihilation of all enemies not swiftly and mercillessly done, the king will himself be destroyed. For this reason, Alexander VI was praised as a good leader in VII.

The Prince’s self preservation is contingent on how he practices his virtues and vices. But virtues are not necessarily good and vices bad. Virtues may ruin the prince and what appears to be vices may actually bring The Prince security and prosperity. From XVIff, Machiavelli plunges deeper into the qualities of The Prince. The appearance of generosity is good but hard to sustain except conspicuously which will eventually dwindle The Prince’s finances and if he is not prudent enough, be seen as parsimonious. Hence, at times, being miserly is virtuous such as in the case of not giving away what is one’s own (p. 53).

The Prince must also maintain a reputation for compassion (XVII) rather than cruelty. It is never good to appear too over-confident or rash in his actions for if The Prince displays excessive distrust to his subjects, he will become unbearable (p. 54). An attempt to answer a crucial question of all state governance is seen in this section where Machiavelli raises the question of “whether it is better to be loved than feared or the reverse.” His conclusion is that it is better to be feared than love and this is concomitant of the climate of distrust that Machiavelli makes us think. Machiavelli thinks that love is sustained by a bond of gratitude “which men wretched creatures that they are, break when it is to their advantage to do so; but fear is strengthened by a dread of punishment which is always effective.” This however is at variance for Singapore’s General Elections 2011 has shown that former Minister Mentor and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s fear-tactics and paternalistic corporate-style governance has given way to current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s heart-ware tactics – pandering to the ground level sentiments of the hoi polloi. The driving power of “fear and respect” when sustained will ward off mutinous acts.

The Prince must also honour is word XVIII (but only if it is to his advantage). Machiavelli evokes the “lion and fox” analogy. He urges the Prince to learn from the fox and the lion. “The lion is defenceless against traps and [the] fox is defenceless against wolves. Therefore, one must be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves.” A lion without sagacity will not thrive and a fox without valiance will not succeed. The prince must know that if reasons for which he has made promises no longer exists, he must not honour his promise. The prince must know how to “colour is actions” and be ready to deceive others into showing that he is honourable. He must appear as compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless and devout although if the situation calls for it, he need not be so but only appear so. The prince “should know how to do evil if that is necessary (p. 58).” One of the most important things however, is to avoid being hated (XIX). In any case, it is only logical for The Prince to work towards being valued and loved otherwise he will always be threatened by internal instability and hence, conspiracy against him thereby inhibiting his good ruling.

A prince must also demonstrate great personal abilities and achievements and these innate qualities should belie the foundation of his power (XXI). What must help sustain it is also true friends of great quality and intelligence for which The Prince can always trust. This is surmised in Machiavelli saying that “A prince must never lack advice. But must take it when he wants to (XXIII).”

Perhaps Machiavelli’s The Prince is instructive in various ways. It shines light on PAP’s 2011 historic loss of a Group Representation Constituency - Aljunied GRC to the Workers' Party and its failure to re-secure a Hougang single constituency. Hitherto, the state’s political legitimacy has functioned on a ‘principle of equal exchange’ where social obedience and compliance is exchanged for a certain amount of social welfare and a comfortable material life. The state’s ability to provide the latter is symptomatic of its quality of government and protracted political helm. This however, is not the case anymore. Troubles of everyday life not circumscribed to rising costs of living, overcrowding, revulsion towards foreigners, rising housing prices are making people cogitate on the concept of a almighty and puissant state who is able to single-handedly offer perennial goodies. The masses have bequeathed to the state extensive and intensive discretion based on their trust on the state’s ability to deliver. This gave the state quantum amounts of power over the people. The state is seen as a patriarchal father. But this patriarchal father is one who no longer inspires respect and awe from the people and can no longer expect to rule tyrannically and autocratically. Its inability to deliver promises in the new global economy has resulted in a depreciation of its aura of invincibility. Its threats are now held as empty threats. No longer is the patronizing pronouncements of the mythical political leader former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew taken too seriously when claims that the younger generation 'does not remember from whence we came (ST, 9.5.2011)' or when he alleged poor quality opposition and immature: “do not believe that the Singapore flight can be on auto-pilot. We will run into a storm, we will run into all kinds of emergencies and we must have good pilots on board (ST, 9.5.2011)” for it is the unbefitting ineptitude of the current pilots that has resulted in the current ground predicaments.

Age old ancient rules that Machiavelli has taught us in The Prince have re-surfaced in our era. When the state fails to honour its promises, undermine its own abilities, appear cruel and dispassionate, its simulacra of competency will be threatened. The valiance of the Lion when left unbalanced by the fox and a heart of sympathy will only punctuate its own nerve-ending.