BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
4/1/2010
LECTURE ON THEFT, ZINN AND THE CORPORATION
Theft is a difficult issue, one that has particular implications today. First we will examine the context and history of theft, and then use the Ethical concepts we have studied as lenses
The notion of ‘property’ is bound up with European and Western identity, often seen as a principle of politics particular to Europe or fully realized in full within European historical development. We can easily see, however, that the origins of property, like most human cultures, has its origins in ape social behavior. While Europe has developed cultures of property that are highly sophisticated, these stem from cultural borrowings as much as they do from within Europe itself. Consider Islamic cultures of borrowing with interest, writing and cashing checks, etc.
Turning to ape behavior to see precedents, we can clearly identify with apes both in focusing on and becoming possessive of objects and forgetting this possession and its objects. Consider that an ape will become attached to a banana, fight against other apes that try to take the banana, and then, upon seeing a better banana, the ape will abandon the first and ignore whether or not the first falls into other hands. We can see that the ape can come to possess as ‘mine not yours’, and come to forget this possessing (‘neither mine nor yours’). This is parallel with self-other distinctions already discussed, as with the child psychology that says in the beginning there is neither and both must arise together in tension (codependent arising of Jainism and Buddhism).
There is also evidence that apes can not only fall into a ‘mine vs. everyone’ relation of possession (of objects), but apes can also recognize other apes as possessing objects themselves (selfish as other). Consider the case (from an old Anthropology class of mine) of the female chimpanzee ignoring another male chimpanzee trying to give her a banana for sex, and how the female only snatches the banana for herself when the male ape gets bored and goes out of sight so that there is no expected reciprocity. We should be cautious of the sexism here (females ‘push bananas’ at males too), but also marvel in how familiar this behavior is to humanity (next week, we will see that apes know lying too).
Humans, of course, have taken these impulses and instincts and complexified them with many inter-competing cultures, cultures that are actually capable of stealing from each other as much as they can describe and criminalize stealing themselves! While there are many intellectuals who have defended the view that while trade is universal only the West developed ‘capital’, I am critical of this view (interestingly enough, the one to coin this specialized term was the great opponent of Capitalism, Karl Marx). We have yet to do justice to intercultural borrowings, and ‘The West’ is very proud of its economics today. Is ‘capital’ a new device, particular to Western thought? I think that a study of Islam passing to Europe shows this can only be a partial truth, but we get a better view if we turn back the clock to the origin of the device known as MONEY, capital being one of its distant yet certain relatives.
Where does money come from? Why does it exist? What relationship does money have to theft, and is this different from the relationship between theft and any other object?
Money is a very interesting and unique device. Before wood pulp paper bank notes, the Sumerians and Babylonians get the credit for coining money first, the government controlling the pressing process of coinage. Today, we use Chinese style paper bank notes, backed by the government, just like in China after 500 CE or so. Wood block printing and the block printing press are other devices of Chinese origin that are crucial to this process. These two stages suggest that ‘capital’, though it may have been developed to its extent today in Europe and increasingly in American privatizing economics, cannot possibly have been a ‘inwardly European’ device of the ‘Western mind’. Other cultures of mind have had no problem inventing and using devices that are the ancestors of modern day capital.
But, WHY MONEY?
Before money, people of course possessed many things and traded them between individuals and groups. This trade was always barter, swapping one sort of thing for another sort of thing without the device of money as swapping medium. As people settled into city states, practices of borrowing and lending became stabilized. The first money was likely tokens indicating amounts of stuff borrowed from the ruler or other wealthy individuals.
The culture which includes the device of money has advantages over the culture of mere barter. Money as a device is very simple, simple the ways that numbers are simple for much the same purpose. Money is good (and bad) because it is very easy to gather/amass and divide/distribute, much more than any other object or substance.
Consider the salmon fisher in a village. She goes down to the water, and scores 20 large salmon. This is far more than she can eat, but she can trade salmon for other things that she needs in the barter culture. However, salmon does not keep for long, even if one knows how to salt and preserve it. What happens if she goes to the market and not many people want or need salmon that day? What if she has enough salmon to get what she wants, but there are not enough people who need salmon to trade with her for what she wants? In a culture where the salmon can be sold for money, you can keep the money for thirty years (even with inflation and other problems, deterioration of coins, etc) but no one can keep salmon for thirty years, even with freezers! In this way, money is much easier to amass and to keep than salmon.
In the same way, money is easier to divide than salmon. Let us say our fisher comes to market with 20 large salmon, and wants to trade for a basket. I, the basket maker, tell her that one third of a salmon is worth one basket, but I want the front half of the salmon. What happens if she wants to leave the salmon uncut, or if she needs four fifths of a salmon later for someone else? What if she wants to keep all the fish heads for herself? Money has no features to it other than quantity, even though the pictures are often very pretty. Fifty dollars is just fifty things, nothing less, so there is no problem with changing it to two twenties and a ten. You cannot make a whole salmon again from twenty salmon heads! In this way, money is much easier to divide and distribute than salmon. If we consider the bustle of a crowded market, it becomes clear why money would be such a useful (and thus abuseful) device, and how its invention allowed for the modern merchants and bankers of today. Consider the trillion dollar bailout today, how this is very abstract yet very real for many people. Luck for us we do not need to bail out banks with truckloads of salmon!
There are, however, two great disadvantages to the culture of money use:
First, theft, like trade, becomes easier! In fact, money not only creates and supports many types of legal economics, it simultaneously creates and supports many types of illegal economics like paying money for sex or drugs (Derrida and the signature).
Second, the desire for money becomes quite intense. Considering that money, sex and cocaine have been shown to light up similar areas of the human brain, money to barter is like cocaine to chewing coca leaves. Since money can be traded for anything, even ironically illegal things, the draw towards money becomes the draw towards any and everything desired. In this sense, the desire for money is far more intense than the desire for salmon because money can buy salmon, or remain money, or buy anything else if one ceases wanting salmon. Just as having salmon means that the possibility of eating salmon is now practically guaranteed, having money means the possibility of satisfying any desire whatsoever is guaranteed. This ultimately means that there is far more reason to steal money than there is to steal salmon, strange considering that you can eat salmon and live off of it alone!
In terms of world politics, which includes the Zinn reading I gave you, stealing and money are central issues of identity. Communism and Capitalism are divided on the issue of money, even as Communists print government money and Capitalists organize socialist programs (public education like BCC, social welfare, public roads and institutions). The question is: do you trust the government or the corporations more with your money and economics (an instance of the one/many problem again)? America has shown that there are great advantages to privatization, letting corporations control economics rather than the centralized government. Unfortunately, this does not do away with problems of authority and corruption (consider that PG&E is still in charge of California’s power, a pretty plum, in spite of being convicted of stealing from Californians en masse). Truth be told, both America and the Soviet Union told third world countries that they would not steal from them or enslave them like their other surely would, only to both be guilty of similar forms of corrupt authoritarianism.
A great book to read on all of this is John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He actually came to BCC last semester for a reading, but I had my other job. As Perkins says so perfectly, in American foreign relations we try to get people in debt to us because that binds everyone to our economy and our desires. I know firsthand from UCB Hass Business School students that indebting the poor here in America and poor third world countries is an open practice, spoken of openly in instruction. The financial crisis today was clearly caused by irresponsible and predatory lending. Our newspapers never speak of these things, but a piece on NPR my friend gave to me will tell you just as clearly and honestly an economics professor at Hass. CREDIT is itself like money, a device that has its advantages but also its disadvantages, especially for the disadvantaged. If our economy falls far from where it is today, it could very well be due to the disadvantages of credit and capital that we have stalled and distanced from ourselves for the time being as a privileged and advantaged culture. The point is: money helps the advantaged steal from the disadvantaged, even as it helps the disadvantaged gain advantage! This is why Americans are relatively wealthy yet there is an increasing gap between rich and poor here as well as in the third world. While the ‘American way’ sometimes allows the poor to get rich, it also very much allows the rich to get much richer and there is only so much in the pot.
Of course, the rich are also more encouraged than ever to steal from the rich as well as from the poor. Consider in 1996 CIA convicted of manipulating business to favor Americans over Australians. Neither Australians nor Americans can recall this, due to lack of media coverage in both locations. Since America and Australia are both wealthy Capitalist countries, you are only doing the system disservice by making such a scandal public.
Now that we have briefly examined the history of money and advantage, we have set the stage to ask the question of theft. The Ethical question we must ask is: Is theft ever justified?
We can use our Ethical concepts we have studied to give various answers to this question. While I will not say that there is a certain answer here, we can see that there are many ways of answering the question but each has its problems. This is how we know we are investigating the question in matters of real life and not in an ideal construct.
Principle
Kant, of course, would give the first and most positive answer to this question: NO, theft of property is NEVER justified. Notice that Kant, living in the German Enlightenment of the 1700s, is very proud of the culture of property and considers the possession of property to be an entirely reasonable and principled act. This is questionable when we trace its roots all the way back to chimpanzee behavior, of course.
This answer has the obvious advantage of never getting one involved in most questions of stealing, but there remain issues. What if one’s society is stealing from another, and legally one has become wealthy within the stealing society? While we could imagine that one is ignorant of the ongoing theft and therefore not DIRECTLY guilty of theft, one is INDIRECTLY guilty. Societies, especially America, store their wealth in the pockets of the wealthy. America stores its wealth in its millionaires and billionaires primarily, and encourages these individuals economically to siphon money from other economies and put it in their pockets because this is the central way that America gets wealthier. Thus, while one may hold fast to the principle of ‘I shall not steal’, one could be complicit in groups and cultures that are engaged in theft that benefits the individual and the individual actively supports (even in the absence of conscious consent).
Virtue & Consequence
According to the concept of ethical virtue, theft is fully justified as long as the individual is virtuous or becomes virtuous through the act of theft. In a very similar way, Utilitarians and Consequentialists would argue that theft is justified if in the long term it results in good and justice, much happiness and prevention of harm. Seems impossible? Robin Hood is the perfect example for consideration. If I rob the evil rich people and give to poor people who are starving (i.e. if we construct an example in which many would agree), many would say that I am virtuous and that I have acted for the best ends in the long view. I may be hanged for the crimes, but my actions benefit others and can be argued to benefit my own character (though this is debatable).
Balance
The concept of balance draws our attention not only to the duality of stealing and not stealing but also to the duality of possessing and forgetting about possession, grasping and letting go. There is a great passage of the Dao that says, ‘if you want to be free from robbers, do not store up treasure in your house’. If one stores up wealth, one brings theft to one’s doorstep. If one stores up wealth and becomes attached to it, one brings fear of theft to one’s mind (a Zen koan theme is calling intention in the mind a thief, that the grasping of desire in the mind is the real thief). If you do not worry about money, not only do you not have to worry about stealing from others, you do not worry about others stealing from you, no matter how much one has!
Also, consider that if one steals and gets away with it, this makes the compulsion for stealing stronger. One continues to steal, and then gets caught. Getting away with stealing can be a major cause of getting caught stealing, a paradox similar to the bad example attack on Utilitarianism (in this case, ‘good’ examples can lead to bad just as bad examples can lead to good).
One problem with using balance here: should we think that we can do bad as long as we balance it out with good? If we give to charity every time we steal, does this balance things for our own merit or for the shared situation?
Drive and Self Interest
At first, it seems that this concept would tell us, ‘steal to your heart’s content’. This may prove harder than it sounds. Is it in one’s self interest to steal from everyone? Not if everyone has large sticks and helmets haven’t been invented yet. Unfortunately, this concept is best for understanding the international situation and the reading I gave you from Zinn. America today feels that it must indebt the third world to itself to strengthen its capitalist way of life, as it did during the Cold War. Supporters of the Vietnam war as well as the ‘War on Terrorism’ today say openly on the News that we need to ‘defend America’s interests’. Thought the word ‘economic’ is left off the front of ‘interests’ here, this is essentially what is being argued. America is a very fine omelet (a money credit omelet, if you will), and this means eggs need to be stolen from the hen house. Perkins’ book gives us excellent insight into its mechanisms.
Perspective and Intersubjectivity
To repeat what was said at the beginning, we have all had the experience of stealing and having things stolen. Hopefully there is something that moves us towards wisdom in not stealing even though theft seems an inevitable and in fact integral part of our world. Aside from the ‘Golden Rule’, there is likely no other constant source of deterrence from theft considering that the government that prints the money and prosecutes the theft also in some circumstances supports theft between its citizens and steals from other governments in the name of life.
To further show the mechanisms and complexity of theft in the modern world, there is no better nor more relevant documentary than ‘The Corporation’.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Intro Philosophy Lecture April 1: Islam and Early Europe
BCC Introduction to Philosophy
Eric Gerlach
3/30/2010
LECTURE ON ISLAMIC AND EARLY EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY
First, we look at the rise of Islamic civilization and its relationship to medieval European civilization with regard to philosophy, technology, science and scholarship. This is important to know, especially today. Second, we will look at central Islamic and medieval European philosopher/logicians (especially Avicenna and Aquinas).
America is particularly bad at Islamic Scholarship, though it is hard to beat out Europe. The United States has very few scholars who have contributed to the field. Because of this, there are no good comprehensive books about Islam published in the US, so books from the 50s and 60s are republished and taught (I have found this is true of Babylon and Persia as well). Centers for Islamic or ‘Near Eastern’ Studies focus on Islamic cultures in modern times, after the rise of Europe, so there is little opportunity to study the golden age of Islamic civilization and its massive influence on European civilization. In addition, philosophy departments rarely offer courses on Islamic philosophy or logic, and few departments of any subject study Islamic religion, literature, philosophy, or science.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture. It was the multi-cultural, scientific, and philosophical culture before Europe and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of technology and study. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. It is a good example of what has been called the “grandfather effect”: the grandfather (China and India) has tension with the father (Islam), the father has tension with the son (Europe) but the grandfather and grandson get along great because there is no direct relationship or conflict. Because Islam has always shared a border with Europe, Islam has always been portrayed in a negative light as warlike and despotic.
Here are some awesome ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them. 1492 is a good example: it is the year that the Christian Kings of Spain and Portugal retook those lands from Muslims, and the start of the Spanish Inquisition that brutally attacked Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians.
Algebra is possibly the most used device (if it can be called a device) in human history. It is important to consider algebra because in the second half of the course logic becomes an algebraic language (remember, logic used to be about debate in the ancient world, but it gradually became a highly specialized form of math that was intended to ground the foundations of mathematics). Before algebra, much of the world used the Egyptian doubling method (including ancient Greece and Rome) to do mathematics. Unfortunately, this method could not keep track of remainders and could not take account of series and other functions critical to the growth of math, trade and mechanical technology. Islamic mathematicians and logicians (some of whom are listed below) took the Indian base 10 system and began doing math in the form of equations we are all familiar with today (taught by law to everyone up through college).
Algebra allowed trade caravans to keep greater accounts of goods, as well as sophisticated forms of insurance and banking. Islamic merchants traded by caravan all the way up through Russia and Scandinavia, as coins discovered attest. In dark age Europe, Islamic culture was passing through town with the latest things and systems of thought (books come this way too from China). Castles are Questles, the Persian word for fort. Medieval dress and decoration are not modeled on Roman but rather Islamic Persian society. Consider hospitals with many beds, dosages measured with algebra, mechanical innovations such as gears, the chain and belt drive, pistons and clocks were all passed from Islamic to European hands before Europe became wealthy and successful.
Central to logic, it was with Islamic mathematics, philosophy, logic and science that equations became the language for structures. The ancient Greeks such as Euclid and Aristotle talked out problems in paragraph form. Today, many scholars use algebraic logic to explain ancient Greek ideas but is quite anachronistic and misleading to do this.
One of the sources of algebraic science was code-breaking or cryptography (also cryptanalysis). Between questles, codes had to be sent and algebra was used to make and break these codes. As nature was studied with mathematics, the philosopher/scientists discovered that algebra is an amazing tool for CODE BREAKING NATURE. What we call “science” is still very much this today. Consider the constant of gravity as a hidden code or message to be discovered and phrased in algebraic language.
ISLAMIC JESUS
Jesus is mentioned in the Koran more than anyone, the greatest prophet after Mohammed.
He is the patron saint of scholars and wisdom, and he sounds much like Confucius.
The worst man is the scholar who is in error, since many people will err due to him.
The one who has learned and taught is great in the kingdom of heaven.
Stones, mud and gold are equal in my sight.
‘Teacher, who are the people of my race?’ ‘All the children of Adam.’
No one taught me. I saw the ugliness of ignorance and avoided it.
How many fruits, but not all are good! How many sciences, but not all of them useful!
THE MAIN DIVISIONS OF ISLAM
Many are familiar with the Sunni-Shiite split of Islamic cultures without realizing that the central issues between groups are philosophical positions on human reason. The Sunni believe that revelation such as the Koran is the supreme authority, and all else is secondary. The Mutazilites, a smaller sect of Islam and one of the great forces for philosophy and science, believe that God/Being is fully reasonable and human reason and logic are supreme to following tradition or scripture. Mutazilites argued that God can not contradict reason and thus cannot possibly commit error, which became a major theological and philosophical issue in the golden age of Islamic thought and civilization. The Shiites, the second major sect of Islam like the Sunnis, take a middle position between reason and scripture/tradition. Sunnis argued that one must investigate matters when scripture and reason contradict each other. This is important to recognize today, as Muslims are often believed to be unquestioningly traditional and literal in their understanding of the Koran.
THE GREAT ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHERS:
Al Kindi (801-873)
Pioneer of Islamic sciences, cryptography and the experimental method,
introduced Indian numerals and base ten system to Islam, where it was developed into Algebra. Wrote numerous medical treatises (including the memorable Treatise on Diseases caused by Phlegm). Unlike Galileo and Newton, who came much later, but like Einstein, argued that time and space were relative, as all things save Being or God are relative, subjective, and contingent. Avicenna took up this position powerfully later.
Argued that Islam and Philosophy/Logic are completely compatible. Our scholarship says that he mostly merged Neoplatonism and Aristotle, but he also incorporated Zoroastrianism and Indian/Buddhist Logic. Even though Christians in Europe followed Islamic Alchemy and Astrology for centuries, he was an early voice against both, saying they were both pseudo-sciences and the best method of knowledge was strictly observation and experimentation.
Al Farabi (872-950)
Little is known about Farabi’s origins or ethnic background. It is argued by scholars that he was Turkish or Persian. Farabi took the Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria, Egypt and expanded beyond. Maimonides famously said he could not understand Aristotle at all until he read Al-Farabi’s commentary, and then got it. Paid much attention to Imagination, as this is central to science, philosophy and religious prophecy. He argued that if you learn and get right, you have visions of the cosmos and its workings. This is close to Wittgenstein’s thought experiments in his later thought.
Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037)
Foremost doctor of his time. His Cannon of Medicine was used as a text book for Europe in translation until the 1700s. His medicine was based on experimentation and clinical trials, fusing Persian, Greek, Indian and other texts together. He is credited with formulating the nature of infectious disease, randomized control trials, neuropsychiatry (hallucinations, insomnia, mania, dementia, epilepsy), and the syndrome, as well as hypothesizing microscopic organisms as the cause of disease. The first to correctly show the workings of the eye. He learned Indian Arithmetic from and Indian grocer. This is ignored in most. He was one of the key authors for understanding Aristotle and scientific investigation, even as he argued against Aristotle Europeans often took up his ideas as genuine fruit of Aristotle’s tradition of thought, thus ‘Aristotelian’.
His floating man thought experiment, showing self-consciousness, shows imagination.
This is considered by some to be a source of Descartes’ ‘I think’ with demon.
After this, there was a split in his followers: which is primary, the essence or existence?
Essentialism (What it is 1st, the thing second) vs. Existentialism (thing first, what 2nd).
Al Ghazali (1058-1111), Persian
One of the most celebrated scholars of Sufism. Sufism is Islamic mysticism, who like mystics of other religions and cultures believe that all is a supreme One and judgment and desire obscure this from human vision. Many are familiar with the Sufi story of the blind men and the elephant, a story that Sufis argue is about their practice being the religion of all religions. Ghazali was a pioneer of skepticism and doubt. His work ‘The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ criticized Kindi, Farabi and Avicenna as thinking too much of arriving at certain human knowledge. When he says ‘The philosophers say’ I have read authors say, ‘this means Plato and Aristotle’, but I trust the scholars who say he means ‘Avicenna says’ as the position he always attacks. He does say that Avicenna is beyond all doubt the most distinguished philosopher. He argued that Atoms are the only true things, and all else in the world is accidental. In his ‘Alchemy of Happiness’, wrote of Negative theology of embracing the One. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great ethics teacher of Christianity, read Ghazali as his favorite and central author. Unfortunately, Aquinas is in spell check today, while Ghazali is not.
Averroes, Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) Cordoba, Spain
Wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle’s works, thus central for Europe Aristotle.
Wrote ‘The Incoherence of the Incoherence’, arguing against Ghazali and for Farabi etc.
He was another central author in Europe for science and philosophy. He turned back to Aristotle from Avicenna, and Europe followed him. He is credited more than anyone with turning Europe on to Aristotle. Our science is now more like Avicenna, but for the longest time it was Aristotleian thanks to Averroes. It was only with Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s declaring the syllogism as necessary to be flawed that Europe swung back into a ‘all is contingent’ Avicenna direction.
NEOPLATONISM AND THE GREAT MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS
First, they would have called themselves ‘Platonists’. Neo was added by first translator into English, and the title has been adopted by scholars in Europe and America. The start of the tradition comes from Alexandrian (Egyptian) Greek Platonists who were reading the Timaeus and participating in religious/philosophical debates amongst the many cultures of the trade port, including Egyptians, Nubians, Gnostic Christians, Coptic Christians, Jews, Indians, Persians, Mesopotamia etc.
Two texts that were central to Platonism were the Chaldean Oracles, which were supposed to be the secret teachings of Zarathustra from Persia, and the Hermetic Corpus, the secret teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (Thoth-Tat as a sage) from Egypt. These two sources became very important in the Renaissance, showing us that it was much more than a love of Greece and Rome that artists and scholars celebrated. These two texts actually had just been invented by Greek authors who were clearly using Plato to try to back-form the wisdom of Persia and Egypt that the ancient Greeks themselves praised, but at the time they were believed to be authentic and then well past by European scholars. Thus, they were sources that were believed to be earlier than Plato, which conveyed the wisdom that Plato himself developed and passed on as the true philosophy of all cultures.
Most famous Hermetic text is the Emerald Tablet, a short set of aphorisms. The line most quoted: the world is a sphere in which the center is everywhere and nowhere. Chaldean oracles aphorisms:
Explore the river of the soul, to rise to the order from which you descended.
When you see a formless fire, flashing through the depth of the world, hear the voice of fire.
The intelligible draws open the flower of the mind.
Central teachings of this tradition of Platonism:
The Soul must return to the One, the All (All-Lord or God), which it must do by way of lesser gods or angels and demons. The system is very much psychology of the soul, which is also angelology and demonology in classifying forces of the cosmos.
The macrocosm is the microcosm- small and big, so soul/mind is the universe.
Opening up the mind is returning to the cosmos that produced you.
Theme of the Fall and the Return (later in Christians id with Adam and fall from Eden).
There are two motions of mind to develop:
Kataphania and Apophania, positing and negating, affirming and doubting.
To get to the One, you must move Dialectically, back and forth, to open up and become the whole.
Humans occupy a unique place in the cosmos. They have the ability to subsume all the motions of things low and high, thus are most like the all-motion of the One.
Humans are the One fallen away from itself, journeying back to itself.
Time and space are the eternal moment and unity fallen and fragmented.
This is truly the most beautiful thought of Europe, which most don’t know about because it happened long before the gap of tech and science separated Europe from other cultures.
All the main thinkers of European Christianity were (Neo) Platonists for quite a while, and it thus still held much sway even after things branched out considerably.
Augustine, Pseudo Dionysius, Boethius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino and Pico of the Ren (we will speak of them in particular), Bruno, Ren artists like Michelangelo, Botticelli, scientists like Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler.
Augustine (300) brought it into Christianity (from ‘Pagan’ authors). One of the most important author and church father, he was North African. He made the gods angels officially (each with an office) and talked about how light into the mind creates visions/theophanies/ideas of the cosmos and its order.
Pseudo-Dionysius (500) was a Syrian Christian who read Augustine and other authors and was big into negative theology, kataphania. He argued that the journey to the One was essentially one of unknowing or kataphania, and the One was the great Unknown, above all qualities or being (just like 99 names of Allah).
Eriugena (800) merged these two, working them together with many other authors, to create an amazing system. The first European Christian Platonist, Hegel wrote about him in his History- ‘With him, true philosophy first begins’, since Hegel is tracing an evolution of all thought up to himself, and Hegel is quite a European Platonist.
Notably, Hegel ignores the Islamic Zoroastrian Platonists who are writing at about the same time we learned about last week. Eriugena was one of the only people who could read a bit of Greek at the time, and so he was protected in the court of Charles the Bald who protected him from the Pope in exchange for translating and commentary on PD.
Basically, Augustine was cannon, and Eriugena was heretically saying that Augustine and PD are two sides of the same coin.
Eriugena saw the One as HyperOusia- the sum of being and non-being, the source of both but neither of the two at the same time. He took the radical unknown One of PD and made it the unknown source of both known and unknown in all levels of the cosmos.
God splits apart into oppositions to then form all the differentiations of the cosmos.
For Eriugena, psychology is physics, as we co-create our world as a product of our vision and the One’s vision. The One is unknown to itself/fully known to itself above human divisions of judgement, and it shares both of these with human beings, the special mediators of the cosmos. Like in Sufism, Humans are unique in potentially being God, encompassing the lowest and highest of all orders (the worm and the angel). Humans have free will thus- it was defending this radically which led to condemn. Authority comes from Reason, not the other way around.
Nicholas of Cusa’s mustard seed thought experiment- the boundless and infinite are present both active/potential, in the mundane of the world, just like the One/Christ.
St. Francis of Assisi (later San Francisco in Spanish) Visited Sultan’s Court, came back with a very Sufi vision. All religion is one brotherhood in God, give all to the poor, contemplate all through radical love. At the end of time, we will be standing side by side, hand in hand with sister death and brother fire.
The Renaissance (1400-1500)
‘Italy’ was not something that Ren people would have known. “Florence”, the city state was their nation. ‘Italy’ had yet to be unified and titled such, so ‘Italian Ren’ is a bit of a mis-title. Central power of the Pope had withered, and now trader city states can create competing cultures (another fall apart, good for thought time).
Vatican Library shows how books and Greeks had yet to be popular in 1400 Europe:
1443- 2 Greek books, 340 books total (that’s it)
1455- 400 Greek, 1200 total
1484- 1000 Greek, 3650 total
Frequently assumed by scholars that Renaissance was celebration of Greeks and Romans, both Philosophy and Art. Taking a close look at Ficino and Pico, the two major Platonists of the Renaissance and thus fathers of all European scholarship to follow, shows that the Egyptian and Persian wisdom was given a higher place than Plato.
Cosimo Medici founded the Platonic Academy of Florence in 1462 (meeting, not building as thought) and Ficino rose quickly to soon lead it, with Pico della Mirandola as student. Cosimo de Medici, when he knew he was dying, ordered Ficino to put aside translating Plato’s complete works and finish translating the Corpus Hermetica, the supposed secret wisdom of Egypt passed to the Hebrews and Greeks. Shows who was important. Plato is a follower of Hermes, and Zarathustra. Ficino translated ‘Maat’ as Logos, which is a bit of a confusion. Ficino finished translating the 17 texts in 1471.
Ficino argued there was one unbroken tradition of wisdom which included the Eyptians, Persians, the Brahmans of India (who he doesn’t go into detail on) and the Greeks.
This is like the Sufis, as well as arguing that Phil and Bible were compatible.
Ficino gave Europe the first Latin trans of Plato’s works, many derived from Arabic sources. Ficino thought that Zarathustra was the first prophet of the one true phil/rel, followed by Hermes from Egypt, then Moses, then Plato, then Jesus.
Pico, his student, thought it was first Hermes of Egypt, then Zarathustra, then Abraham, then Plato, etc. These remained the debated opinions for centuries.
Thus, Bruno and Masons follow Pico in Egypt being lost center of all wisdom.
Ficino repeatedly uses the Zoroastrian oracles to back up his points, and continuously mentions the 3 persian Magi visiting Jesus as infant in the Bible. Ficino writes that Plato had a third eye, which contemplated the union of being and nonbeing (The One), which came from a strange source.
Pico major with Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, saying it was Egyptian.
Eric Gerlach
3/30/2010
LECTURE ON ISLAMIC AND EARLY EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY
First, we look at the rise of Islamic civilization and its relationship to medieval European civilization with regard to philosophy, technology, science and scholarship. This is important to know, especially today. Second, we will look at central Islamic and medieval European philosopher/logicians (especially Avicenna and Aquinas).
America is particularly bad at Islamic Scholarship, though it is hard to beat out Europe. The United States has very few scholars who have contributed to the field. Because of this, there are no good comprehensive books about Islam published in the US, so books from the 50s and 60s are republished and taught (I have found this is true of Babylon and Persia as well). Centers for Islamic or ‘Near Eastern’ Studies focus on Islamic cultures in modern times, after the rise of Europe, so there is little opportunity to study the golden age of Islamic civilization and its massive influence on European civilization. In addition, philosophy departments rarely offer courses on Islamic philosophy or logic, and few departments of any subject study Islamic religion, literature, philosophy, or science.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture. It was the multi-cultural, scientific, and philosophical culture before Europe and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of technology and study. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. It is a good example of what has been called the “grandfather effect”: the grandfather (China and India) has tension with the father (Islam), the father has tension with the son (Europe) but the grandfather and grandson get along great because there is no direct relationship or conflict. Because Islam has always shared a border with Europe, Islam has always been portrayed in a negative light as warlike and despotic.
Here are some awesome ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them. 1492 is a good example: it is the year that the Christian Kings of Spain and Portugal retook those lands from Muslims, and the start of the Spanish Inquisition that brutally attacked Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians.
Algebra is possibly the most used device (if it can be called a device) in human history. It is important to consider algebra because in the second half of the course logic becomes an algebraic language (remember, logic used to be about debate in the ancient world, but it gradually became a highly specialized form of math that was intended to ground the foundations of mathematics). Before algebra, much of the world used the Egyptian doubling method (including ancient Greece and Rome) to do mathematics. Unfortunately, this method could not keep track of remainders and could not take account of series and other functions critical to the growth of math, trade and mechanical technology. Islamic mathematicians and logicians (some of whom are listed below) took the Indian base 10 system and began doing math in the form of equations we are all familiar with today (taught by law to everyone up through college).
Algebra allowed trade caravans to keep greater accounts of goods, as well as sophisticated forms of insurance and banking. Islamic merchants traded by caravan all the way up through Russia and Scandinavia, as coins discovered attest. In dark age Europe, Islamic culture was passing through town with the latest things and systems of thought (books come this way too from China). Castles are Questles, the Persian word for fort. Medieval dress and decoration are not modeled on Roman but rather Islamic Persian society. Consider hospitals with many beds, dosages measured with algebra, mechanical innovations such as gears, the chain and belt drive, pistons and clocks were all passed from Islamic to European hands before Europe became wealthy and successful.
Central to logic, it was with Islamic mathematics, philosophy, logic and science that equations became the language for structures. The ancient Greeks such as Euclid and Aristotle talked out problems in paragraph form. Today, many scholars use algebraic logic to explain ancient Greek ideas but is quite anachronistic and misleading to do this.
One of the sources of algebraic science was code-breaking or cryptography (also cryptanalysis). Between questles, codes had to be sent and algebra was used to make and break these codes. As nature was studied with mathematics, the philosopher/scientists discovered that algebra is an amazing tool for CODE BREAKING NATURE. What we call “science” is still very much this today. Consider the constant of gravity as a hidden code or message to be discovered and phrased in algebraic language.
ISLAMIC JESUS
Jesus is mentioned in the Koran more than anyone, the greatest prophet after Mohammed.
He is the patron saint of scholars and wisdom, and he sounds much like Confucius.
The worst man is the scholar who is in error, since many people will err due to him.
The one who has learned and taught is great in the kingdom of heaven.
Stones, mud and gold are equal in my sight.
‘Teacher, who are the people of my race?’ ‘All the children of Adam.’
No one taught me. I saw the ugliness of ignorance and avoided it.
How many fruits, but not all are good! How many sciences, but not all of them useful!
THE MAIN DIVISIONS OF ISLAM
Many are familiar with the Sunni-Shiite split of Islamic cultures without realizing that the central issues between groups are philosophical positions on human reason. The Sunni believe that revelation such as the Koran is the supreme authority, and all else is secondary. The Mutazilites, a smaller sect of Islam and one of the great forces for philosophy and science, believe that God/Being is fully reasonable and human reason and logic are supreme to following tradition or scripture. Mutazilites argued that God can not contradict reason and thus cannot possibly commit error, which became a major theological and philosophical issue in the golden age of Islamic thought and civilization. The Shiites, the second major sect of Islam like the Sunnis, take a middle position between reason and scripture/tradition. Sunnis argued that one must investigate matters when scripture and reason contradict each other. This is important to recognize today, as Muslims are often believed to be unquestioningly traditional and literal in their understanding of the Koran.
THE GREAT ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHERS:
Al Kindi (801-873)
Pioneer of Islamic sciences, cryptography and the experimental method,
introduced Indian numerals and base ten system to Islam, where it was developed into Algebra. Wrote numerous medical treatises (including the memorable Treatise on Diseases caused by Phlegm). Unlike Galileo and Newton, who came much later, but like Einstein, argued that time and space were relative, as all things save Being or God are relative, subjective, and contingent. Avicenna took up this position powerfully later.
Argued that Islam and Philosophy/Logic are completely compatible. Our scholarship says that he mostly merged Neoplatonism and Aristotle, but he also incorporated Zoroastrianism and Indian/Buddhist Logic. Even though Christians in Europe followed Islamic Alchemy and Astrology for centuries, he was an early voice against both, saying they were both pseudo-sciences and the best method of knowledge was strictly observation and experimentation.
Al Farabi (872-950)
Little is known about Farabi’s origins or ethnic background. It is argued by scholars that he was Turkish or Persian. Farabi took the Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria, Egypt and expanded beyond. Maimonides famously said he could not understand Aristotle at all until he read Al-Farabi’s commentary, and then got it. Paid much attention to Imagination, as this is central to science, philosophy and religious prophecy. He argued that if you learn and get right, you have visions of the cosmos and its workings. This is close to Wittgenstein’s thought experiments in his later thought.
Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037)
Foremost doctor of his time. His Cannon of Medicine was used as a text book for Europe in translation until the 1700s. His medicine was based on experimentation and clinical trials, fusing Persian, Greek, Indian and other texts together. He is credited with formulating the nature of infectious disease, randomized control trials, neuropsychiatry (hallucinations, insomnia, mania, dementia, epilepsy), and the syndrome, as well as hypothesizing microscopic organisms as the cause of disease. The first to correctly show the workings of the eye. He learned Indian Arithmetic from and Indian grocer. This is ignored in most. He was one of the key authors for understanding Aristotle and scientific investigation, even as he argued against Aristotle Europeans often took up his ideas as genuine fruit of Aristotle’s tradition of thought, thus ‘Aristotelian’.
His floating man thought experiment, showing self-consciousness, shows imagination.
This is considered by some to be a source of Descartes’ ‘I think’ with demon.
After this, there was a split in his followers: which is primary, the essence or existence?
Essentialism (What it is 1st, the thing second) vs. Existentialism (thing first, what 2nd).
Al Ghazali (1058-1111), Persian
One of the most celebrated scholars of Sufism. Sufism is Islamic mysticism, who like mystics of other religions and cultures believe that all is a supreme One and judgment and desire obscure this from human vision. Many are familiar with the Sufi story of the blind men and the elephant, a story that Sufis argue is about their practice being the religion of all religions. Ghazali was a pioneer of skepticism and doubt. His work ‘The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ criticized Kindi, Farabi and Avicenna as thinking too much of arriving at certain human knowledge. When he says ‘The philosophers say’ I have read authors say, ‘this means Plato and Aristotle’, but I trust the scholars who say he means ‘Avicenna says’ as the position he always attacks. He does say that Avicenna is beyond all doubt the most distinguished philosopher. He argued that Atoms are the only true things, and all else in the world is accidental. In his ‘Alchemy of Happiness’, wrote of Negative theology of embracing the One. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great ethics teacher of Christianity, read Ghazali as his favorite and central author. Unfortunately, Aquinas is in spell check today, while Ghazali is not.
Averroes, Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) Cordoba, Spain
Wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle’s works, thus central for Europe Aristotle.
Wrote ‘The Incoherence of the Incoherence’, arguing against Ghazali and for Farabi etc.
He was another central author in Europe for science and philosophy. He turned back to Aristotle from Avicenna, and Europe followed him. He is credited more than anyone with turning Europe on to Aristotle. Our science is now more like Avicenna, but for the longest time it was Aristotleian thanks to Averroes. It was only with Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s declaring the syllogism as necessary to be flawed that Europe swung back into a ‘all is contingent’ Avicenna direction.
NEOPLATONISM AND THE GREAT MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS
First, they would have called themselves ‘Platonists’. Neo was added by first translator into English, and the title has been adopted by scholars in Europe and America. The start of the tradition comes from Alexandrian (Egyptian) Greek Platonists who were reading the Timaeus and participating in religious/philosophical debates amongst the many cultures of the trade port, including Egyptians, Nubians, Gnostic Christians, Coptic Christians, Jews, Indians, Persians, Mesopotamia etc.
Two texts that were central to Platonism were the Chaldean Oracles, which were supposed to be the secret teachings of Zarathustra from Persia, and the Hermetic Corpus, the secret teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (Thoth-Tat as a sage) from Egypt. These two sources became very important in the Renaissance, showing us that it was much more than a love of Greece and Rome that artists and scholars celebrated. These two texts actually had just been invented by Greek authors who were clearly using Plato to try to back-form the wisdom of Persia and Egypt that the ancient Greeks themselves praised, but at the time they were believed to be authentic and then well past by European scholars. Thus, they were sources that were believed to be earlier than Plato, which conveyed the wisdom that Plato himself developed and passed on as the true philosophy of all cultures.
Most famous Hermetic text is the Emerald Tablet, a short set of aphorisms. The line most quoted: the world is a sphere in which the center is everywhere and nowhere. Chaldean oracles aphorisms:
Explore the river of the soul, to rise to the order from which you descended.
When you see a formless fire, flashing through the depth of the world, hear the voice of fire.
The intelligible draws open the flower of the mind.
Central teachings of this tradition of Platonism:
The Soul must return to the One, the All (All-Lord or God), which it must do by way of lesser gods or angels and demons. The system is very much psychology of the soul, which is also angelology and demonology in classifying forces of the cosmos.
The macrocosm is the microcosm- small and big, so soul/mind is the universe.
Opening up the mind is returning to the cosmos that produced you.
Theme of the Fall and the Return (later in Christians id with Adam and fall from Eden).
There are two motions of mind to develop:
Kataphania and Apophania, positing and negating, affirming and doubting.
To get to the One, you must move Dialectically, back and forth, to open up and become the whole.
Humans occupy a unique place in the cosmos. They have the ability to subsume all the motions of things low and high, thus are most like the all-motion of the One.
Humans are the One fallen away from itself, journeying back to itself.
Time and space are the eternal moment and unity fallen and fragmented.
This is truly the most beautiful thought of Europe, which most don’t know about because it happened long before the gap of tech and science separated Europe from other cultures.
All the main thinkers of European Christianity were (Neo) Platonists for quite a while, and it thus still held much sway even after things branched out considerably.
Augustine, Pseudo Dionysius, Boethius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino and Pico of the Ren (we will speak of them in particular), Bruno, Ren artists like Michelangelo, Botticelli, scientists like Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler.
Augustine (300) brought it into Christianity (from ‘Pagan’ authors). One of the most important author and church father, he was North African. He made the gods angels officially (each with an office) and talked about how light into the mind creates visions/theophanies/ideas of the cosmos and its order.
Pseudo-Dionysius (500) was a Syrian Christian who read Augustine and other authors and was big into negative theology, kataphania. He argued that the journey to the One was essentially one of unknowing or kataphania, and the One was the great Unknown, above all qualities or being (just like 99 names of Allah).
Eriugena (800) merged these two, working them together with many other authors, to create an amazing system. The first European Christian Platonist, Hegel wrote about him in his History- ‘With him, true philosophy first begins’, since Hegel is tracing an evolution of all thought up to himself, and Hegel is quite a European Platonist.
Notably, Hegel ignores the Islamic Zoroastrian Platonists who are writing at about the same time we learned about last week. Eriugena was one of the only people who could read a bit of Greek at the time, and so he was protected in the court of Charles the Bald who protected him from the Pope in exchange for translating and commentary on PD.
Basically, Augustine was cannon, and Eriugena was heretically saying that Augustine and PD are two sides of the same coin.
Eriugena saw the One as HyperOusia- the sum of being and non-being, the source of both but neither of the two at the same time. He took the radical unknown One of PD and made it the unknown source of both known and unknown in all levels of the cosmos.
God splits apart into oppositions to then form all the differentiations of the cosmos.
For Eriugena, psychology is physics, as we co-create our world as a product of our vision and the One’s vision. The One is unknown to itself/fully known to itself above human divisions of judgement, and it shares both of these with human beings, the special mediators of the cosmos. Like in Sufism, Humans are unique in potentially being God, encompassing the lowest and highest of all orders (the worm and the angel). Humans have free will thus- it was defending this radically which led to condemn. Authority comes from Reason, not the other way around.
Nicholas of Cusa’s mustard seed thought experiment- the boundless and infinite are present both active/potential, in the mundane of the world, just like the One/Christ.
St. Francis of Assisi (later San Francisco in Spanish) Visited Sultan’s Court, came back with a very Sufi vision. All religion is one brotherhood in God, give all to the poor, contemplate all through radical love. At the end of time, we will be standing side by side, hand in hand with sister death and brother fire.
The Renaissance (1400-1500)
‘Italy’ was not something that Ren people would have known. “Florence”, the city state was their nation. ‘Italy’ had yet to be unified and titled such, so ‘Italian Ren’ is a bit of a mis-title. Central power of the Pope had withered, and now trader city states can create competing cultures (another fall apart, good for thought time).
Vatican Library shows how books and Greeks had yet to be popular in 1400 Europe:
1443- 2 Greek books, 340 books total (that’s it)
1455- 400 Greek, 1200 total
1484- 1000 Greek, 3650 total
Frequently assumed by scholars that Renaissance was celebration of Greeks and Romans, both Philosophy and Art. Taking a close look at Ficino and Pico, the two major Platonists of the Renaissance and thus fathers of all European scholarship to follow, shows that the Egyptian and Persian wisdom was given a higher place than Plato.
Cosimo Medici founded the Platonic Academy of Florence in 1462 (meeting, not building as thought) and Ficino rose quickly to soon lead it, with Pico della Mirandola as student. Cosimo de Medici, when he knew he was dying, ordered Ficino to put aside translating Plato’s complete works and finish translating the Corpus Hermetica, the supposed secret wisdom of Egypt passed to the Hebrews and Greeks. Shows who was important. Plato is a follower of Hermes, and Zarathustra. Ficino translated ‘Maat’ as Logos, which is a bit of a confusion. Ficino finished translating the 17 texts in 1471.
Ficino argued there was one unbroken tradition of wisdom which included the Eyptians, Persians, the Brahmans of India (who he doesn’t go into detail on) and the Greeks.
This is like the Sufis, as well as arguing that Phil and Bible were compatible.
Ficino gave Europe the first Latin trans of Plato’s works, many derived from Arabic sources. Ficino thought that Zarathustra was the first prophet of the one true phil/rel, followed by Hermes from Egypt, then Moses, then Plato, then Jesus.
Pico, his student, thought it was first Hermes of Egypt, then Zarathustra, then Abraham, then Plato, etc. These remained the debated opinions for centuries.
Thus, Bruno and Masons follow Pico in Egypt being lost center of all wisdom.
Ficino repeatedly uses the Zoroastrian oracles to back up his points, and continuously mentions the 3 persian Magi visiting Jesus as infant in the Bible. Ficino writes that Plato had a third eye, which contemplated the union of being and nonbeing (The One), which came from a strange source.
Pico major with Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, saying it was Egyptian.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Logic Lecture March 29: Islamic and Early European Logic
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/30/2010
LECTURE ON ISLAMIC AND EARLY EUROPEAN LOGIC
First, we look at the rise of Islamic civilization and its relationship to medieval European civilization with regard to logic, technology, science and scholarship. This is important to know, especially today. Second, we will look at central Islamic and medieval European philosopher/logicians (especially Avicenna and Aquinas).
America is particularly bad at Islamic Scholarship, though it is hard to beat out Europe. The United States has very few scholars who have contributed to the field. Because of this, there are no good comprehensive books about Islam published in the US, so books from the 50s and 60s are republished and taught (I have found this is true of Babylon and Persia as well). Centers for Islamic or ‘Near Eastern’ Studies focus on Islamic cultures in modern times, after the rise of Europe, so there is little opportunity to study the golden age of Islamic civilization and its massive influence on European civilization. In addition, philosophy departments rarely offer courses on Islamic philosophy or logic, and few departments of any subject study Islamic religion, literature, philosophy, or science.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture. It was the multi-cultural, scientific, and philosophical culture before Europe and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of technology and study. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. It is a good example of what has been called the “grandfather effect”: the grandfather (China and India) has tension with the father (Islam), the father has tension with the son (Europe) but the grandfather and grandson get along great because there is no direct relationship or conflict. Because Islam has always shared a border with Europe, Islam has always been portrayed in a negative light as warlike and despotic.
Here are some awesome ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Algebra is possibly the most used device (if it can be called a device) in human history. It is important to consider algebra because in the second half of the course logic becomes an algebraic language (remember, logic used to be about debate in the ancient world, but it gradually became a highly specialized form of math that was intended to ground the foundations of mathematics). Before algebra, much of the world used the Egyptian doubling method (including ancient Greece and Rome) to do mathematics. Unfortunately, this method could not keep track of remainders and could not take account of series and other functions critical to the growth of math, trade and mechanical technology. Islamic mathematicians and logicians (some of whom are listed below) took the Indian base 10 system and began doing math in the form of equations we are all familiar with today (taught by law to everyone up through college).
Algebra allowed trade caravans to keep greater accounts of goods, as well as sophisticated forms of insurance and banking. Islamic merchants traded by caravan all the way up through Russia and Scandinavia, as coins discovered attest. In dark age Europe, Islamic culture was passing through town with the latest things and systems of thought (books come this way too from China). Castles are Questles, the Persian word for fort. Medieval dress and decoration are not modeled on Roman but rather Islamic Persian society. Consider hospitals with many beds, dosages measured with algebra, mechanical innovations such as gears, the chain and belt drive, pistons and clocks were all passed from Islamic to European hands before Europe became wealthy and successful.
While it is not central to the study of logic, it is important today to mention that law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them.
Central to logic, it was with Islamic mathematics, philosophy, logic and science that equations became the language for structures. The ancient Greeks such as Euclid and Aristotle talked out problems in paragraph form. Today, many scholars use algebraic logic to explain ancient Greek ideas but is quite anachronistic and misleading to do this.
One of the sources of algebraic science was code-breaking or cryptography (also cryptanalysis). Between questles, codes had to be sent and algebra was used to make and break these codes. As nature was studied with mathematics, the philosopher/scientists discovered that algebra is an amazing tool for CODE BREAKING NATURE. What we call “science” is still very much this today. Consider the constant of gravity as a hidden code or message to be discovered and phrased in algebraic language.
Algebraic equations allowed for modern truth table logic and other forms that we study as Logic today. However, equations present us with a new problem that was recognized by the central philosophers of the golden age of Islamic civilization: Is the world truly structured by equations, or are they a model in the human mind? Positivists say that the world is truly mathematical and provides us with true knowledge, while skeptics say that mathematics builds models and remains human perspective and opinion. To see an interesting problem, consider the “proof that one equals two” (found easily online).
ISLAMIC LOGIC AND THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS:
Islam has a long history of debate, called “Qiyas” (translated most often as reasoning or argument). There were three types: Analogy, Induction and Deduction. A big issue for Islamic philosophy was which of these was primary, and which secondary. Ibn Hazm said Inductive is the only one, the others are illusions of the mind, while Al Ghazali (Aquinas’ favorite author and source) says Analogy is first, then Deductive second.
We will see more of analogy as central to analysis today with Avicenna, and near the end of the course in the later thinking of Wittgenstein.
Al Kindi (801-873)
Pioneer of Islamic sciences, cryptography and the experimental method,
introduced Indian numerals and base ten system to Islam, where it was developed into Algebra. Wrote numerous medical treatises (including the memorable Treatise on Diseases caused by Phlegm). Unlike Galileo and Newton, who came much later, but like Einstein, argued that time and space were relative, as all things save Being or God are relative, subjective, and contingent. Avicenna took up this position powerfully later.
Argued that Islam and Philosophy/Logic are completely compatible. Our scholarship says that he mostly merged Neoplatonism and Aristotle, but he also incorporated Zoroastrianism and Indian/Buddhist Logic. Even though Christians in Europe followed Islamic Alchemy and Astrology for centuries, he was an early voice against both, saying they were both pseudo-sciences and the best method of knowledge was strictly observation and experimentation.
Al Farabi (872-950)
Little is known about Farabi’s origins or ethnic background. It is argued by scholars that he was Turkish or Persian. Farabi took the Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria, Egypt and expanded beyond. Maimonides famously said he could not understand Aristotle at all until he read Al-Farabi’s commentary, and then got it. Paid much attention to Imagination, as this is central to science, philosophy and religious prophecy. He argued that if you learn and get right, you have visions of the cosmos and its workings. This is close to Wittgenstein’s thought experiments in his later thought.
Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037)
Foremost doctor of his time. His Cannon of Medicine was used as a text book for Europe in translation until the 1700s. His medicine was based on experimentation and clinical trials, fusing Persian, Greek, Indian and other texts together. He is credited with formulating the nature of infectious disease, randomized control trials, neuropsychiatry (hallucinations, insomnia, mania, dementia, epilepsy), and the syndrome, as well as hypothesizing microscopic organisms as the cause of disease. The first to correctly show the workings of the eye. He learned Indian Arithmetic from and Indian grocer. This is ignored in most. He was one of the key authors for understanding Aristotle and scientific investigation, even as he argued against Aristotle Europeans often took up his ideas as genuine fruit of Aristotle’s tradition of thought, thus ‘Aristotelian’.
The focus of the selection of Avicenna I gave you, was whether or not universals exist. Consider that Aristotle believed that universals are motions or forms of the eternal cosmos coming down from the stars. Today, in the wake of Islamic and European civilization, we understand universals to be concepts and mental rather than physical. Do our theories exist in the real world, or in our heads? This was the big issue. Avicenna asks: Does a unicorn exist? Does it exist in your head as one thing, the same way that a real horse is one thing? Does the horseness of the unicorn exist? Is it more or less real than the horseness of a real horse? Avicenna says that all are things (single beings) equally, but only the horse is real, while the unicorn and the universal ‘horseness’ are both mental. Avicenna uses the phoenix and unicorn as imaginary beasts to illustrate.
His floating man thought experiment, showing self-consciousness, shows imagination.
This is considered by some to be a source of Descartes’ ‘I think’ with demon.
After this, there was a split in his followers: which is primary, the essence or existence?
Essentialism (What it is 1st, the thing second) vs. Existentialism (thing first, what 2nd).
MOST IMPORTANT for this class: he pioneered propositional calculus, the medium of logic from here on out in this class (in most logic classes it is the only thing taught).
Al Ghazali (1058-1111), Persian
One of the most celebrated scholars of Sufism. A pioneer of skepticism and doubt.
His work ‘The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ criticized Kindi, Farabi and Avicenna as thinking too much of arriving at certain human knowledge. When he says ‘The philosophers say’ I have read authors say, ‘this means Plato and Aristotle’, but I trust the scholars who say he means ‘Avicenna says’ as the position he always attacks. He does say that Avicenna is beyond all doubt the most distinguished philosopher. He argued that Atoms are the only true things, and all else in the world is accidental. In his ‘Alchemy of Happiness’, wrote of Negative theology of embracing the One. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great ethics teacher of Christianity, read Ghazali as his favorite and central author. Unfortunately, Aquinas is in spell check today, while Ghazali is not.
Averroes, Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) Cordoba, Spain
Wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle’s works, thus central for Europe Aristotle.
Wrote ‘The Incoherence of the Incoherence’, arguing against Ghazali and for Farabi etc.
He was another central author in Europe for science and philosophy. He turned back to Aristotle from Avicenna, and Europe followed him. He is credited more than anyone with turning Europe on to Aristotle. Our science is now more like Avicenna, but for the longest time it was Aristotleian thanks to Averroes. It was only with Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s declaring the syllogism as necessary to be flawed that Europe swung back into a ‘all is contingent’ Avicenna direction.
THE GREAT MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHER/LOGICIANS
Aquinas (1225-1274)
Lived just after Averroes, about 200 years after Avicenna.
Augustine is the bringer of Plato and Aristotle into medieval Europe thanks to his reading of Islamic authors. He studied at the University of Naples until he was 16. Showed he was brilliant, so the Dominican order offered to support his scholarship. He became a Dominican, then was kidnapped by his parents who wanted him to come back home. His brother’s brought him a prostitute, but ‘he drove her away’. Then the Pope intervened, and he went back to being a Dominican.
He seems influenced primarily by Al Ghazali and Averroes, both of whom we said were critics of Avicenna, Averroes a supporter of Aristotle. Three years after his death, Aquinas was excommunicated for heresy due to following Averroes’ interpretation of Aristotle’s works, but then the Church reversed its position. This is after Aquinas defended the Church again and again as the only source of true authority and knowledge.
50 years after his death, he was pronounced a Saint. Later, at the First Vatican Council he was pronounced the central thinker of the Church (and thus Europe).
As an Averroist Aristotelian, Aquinas believed that universals are real beings that are even more real than physical objects. Thus, he is an essentialist. His argument for the existence of God shows this. He argues that all things are dependent on, possible because of, and less than a highest thing, which must be God, Being itself. Thus, like European thought, Being is essence of essences (we will see this in Hegel next week). The Superman argument is often used today in philosophy classrooms to shoot this down, along with Descartes who follows Aquinas’ argument for highest, most necessary being as God.
William of Ockham (1288-1348)
An Avicenna style Existentialist: Only objects and individuals are real, all else is mental construction and conception. Often called the first modern thinker, we can see that he is putting forward Avicenna’s ideas. His nominalism says that concepts are just our names for things, our add-ons. Just like Avicenna, only Being (God) is not contingent and custom.
Ockham is also known for ‘Ockham’s razor’: the simplest explanation is often correct.
Notice how this does away with hierarchies of universals as real, to call them simply mental and thus the simplest reasoning is the best.
Eric Gerlach
3/30/2010
LECTURE ON ISLAMIC AND EARLY EUROPEAN LOGIC
First, we look at the rise of Islamic civilization and its relationship to medieval European civilization with regard to logic, technology, science and scholarship. This is important to know, especially today. Second, we will look at central Islamic and medieval European philosopher/logicians (especially Avicenna and Aquinas).
America is particularly bad at Islamic Scholarship, though it is hard to beat out Europe. The United States has very few scholars who have contributed to the field. Because of this, there are no good comprehensive books about Islam published in the US, so books from the 50s and 60s are republished and taught (I have found this is true of Babylon and Persia as well). Centers for Islamic or ‘Near Eastern’ Studies focus on Islamic cultures in modern times, after the rise of Europe, so there is little opportunity to study the golden age of Islamic civilization and its massive influence on European civilization. In addition, philosophy departments rarely offer courses on Islamic philosophy or logic, and few departments of any subject study Islamic religion, literature, philosophy, or science.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture. It was the multi-cultural, scientific, and philosophical culture before Europe and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of technology and study. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. It is a good example of what has been called the “grandfather effect”: the grandfather (China and India) has tension with the father (Islam), the father has tension with the son (Europe) but the grandfather and grandson get along great because there is no direct relationship or conflict. Because Islam has always shared a border with Europe, Islam has always been portrayed in a negative light as warlike and despotic.
Here are some awesome ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Algebra is possibly the most used device (if it can be called a device) in human history. It is important to consider algebra because in the second half of the course logic becomes an algebraic language (remember, logic used to be about debate in the ancient world, but it gradually became a highly specialized form of math that was intended to ground the foundations of mathematics). Before algebra, much of the world used the Egyptian doubling method (including ancient Greece and Rome) to do mathematics. Unfortunately, this method could not keep track of remainders and could not take account of series and other functions critical to the growth of math, trade and mechanical technology. Islamic mathematicians and logicians (some of whom are listed below) took the Indian base 10 system and began doing math in the form of equations we are all familiar with today (taught by law to everyone up through college).
Algebra allowed trade caravans to keep greater accounts of goods, as well as sophisticated forms of insurance and banking. Islamic merchants traded by caravan all the way up through Russia and Scandinavia, as coins discovered attest. In dark age Europe, Islamic culture was passing through town with the latest things and systems of thought (books come this way too from China). Castles are Questles, the Persian word for fort. Medieval dress and decoration are not modeled on Roman but rather Islamic Persian society. Consider hospitals with many beds, dosages measured with algebra, mechanical innovations such as gears, the chain and belt drive, pistons and clocks were all passed from Islamic to European hands before Europe became wealthy and successful.
While it is not central to the study of logic, it is important today to mention that law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them.
Central to logic, it was with Islamic mathematics, philosophy, logic and science that equations became the language for structures. The ancient Greeks such as Euclid and Aristotle talked out problems in paragraph form. Today, many scholars use algebraic logic to explain ancient Greek ideas but is quite anachronistic and misleading to do this.
One of the sources of algebraic science was code-breaking or cryptography (also cryptanalysis). Between questles, codes had to be sent and algebra was used to make and break these codes. As nature was studied with mathematics, the philosopher/scientists discovered that algebra is an amazing tool for CODE BREAKING NATURE. What we call “science” is still very much this today. Consider the constant of gravity as a hidden code or message to be discovered and phrased in algebraic language.
Algebraic equations allowed for modern truth table logic and other forms that we study as Logic today. However, equations present us with a new problem that was recognized by the central philosophers of the golden age of Islamic civilization: Is the world truly structured by equations, or are they a model in the human mind? Positivists say that the world is truly mathematical and provides us with true knowledge, while skeptics say that mathematics builds models and remains human perspective and opinion. To see an interesting problem, consider the “proof that one equals two” (found easily online).
ISLAMIC LOGIC AND THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS:
Islam has a long history of debate, called “Qiyas” (translated most often as reasoning or argument). There were three types: Analogy, Induction and Deduction. A big issue for Islamic philosophy was which of these was primary, and which secondary. Ibn Hazm said Inductive is the only one, the others are illusions of the mind, while Al Ghazali (Aquinas’ favorite author and source) says Analogy is first, then Deductive second.
We will see more of analogy as central to analysis today with Avicenna, and near the end of the course in the later thinking of Wittgenstein.
Al Kindi (801-873)
Pioneer of Islamic sciences, cryptography and the experimental method,
introduced Indian numerals and base ten system to Islam, where it was developed into Algebra. Wrote numerous medical treatises (including the memorable Treatise on Diseases caused by Phlegm). Unlike Galileo and Newton, who came much later, but like Einstein, argued that time and space were relative, as all things save Being or God are relative, subjective, and contingent. Avicenna took up this position powerfully later.
Argued that Islam and Philosophy/Logic are completely compatible. Our scholarship says that he mostly merged Neoplatonism and Aristotle, but he also incorporated Zoroastrianism and Indian/Buddhist Logic. Even though Christians in Europe followed Islamic Alchemy and Astrology for centuries, he was an early voice against both, saying they were both pseudo-sciences and the best method of knowledge was strictly observation and experimentation.
Al Farabi (872-950)
Little is known about Farabi’s origins or ethnic background. It is argued by scholars that he was Turkish or Persian. Farabi took the Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria, Egypt and expanded beyond. Maimonides famously said he could not understand Aristotle at all until he read Al-Farabi’s commentary, and then got it. Paid much attention to Imagination, as this is central to science, philosophy and religious prophecy. He argued that if you learn and get right, you have visions of the cosmos and its workings. This is close to Wittgenstein’s thought experiments in his later thought.
Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037)
Foremost doctor of his time. His Cannon of Medicine was used as a text book for Europe in translation until the 1700s. His medicine was based on experimentation and clinical trials, fusing Persian, Greek, Indian and other texts together. He is credited with formulating the nature of infectious disease, randomized control trials, neuropsychiatry (hallucinations, insomnia, mania, dementia, epilepsy), and the syndrome, as well as hypothesizing microscopic organisms as the cause of disease. The first to correctly show the workings of the eye. He learned Indian Arithmetic from and Indian grocer. This is ignored in most. He was one of the key authors for understanding Aristotle and scientific investigation, even as he argued against Aristotle Europeans often took up his ideas as genuine fruit of Aristotle’s tradition of thought, thus ‘Aristotelian’.
The focus of the selection of Avicenna I gave you, was whether or not universals exist. Consider that Aristotle believed that universals are motions or forms of the eternal cosmos coming down from the stars. Today, in the wake of Islamic and European civilization, we understand universals to be concepts and mental rather than physical. Do our theories exist in the real world, or in our heads? This was the big issue. Avicenna asks: Does a unicorn exist? Does it exist in your head as one thing, the same way that a real horse is one thing? Does the horseness of the unicorn exist? Is it more or less real than the horseness of a real horse? Avicenna says that all are things (single beings) equally, but only the horse is real, while the unicorn and the universal ‘horseness’ are both mental. Avicenna uses the phoenix and unicorn as imaginary beasts to illustrate.
His floating man thought experiment, showing self-consciousness, shows imagination.
This is considered by some to be a source of Descartes’ ‘I think’ with demon.
After this, there was a split in his followers: which is primary, the essence or existence?
Essentialism (What it is 1st, the thing second) vs. Existentialism (thing first, what 2nd).
MOST IMPORTANT for this class: he pioneered propositional calculus, the medium of logic from here on out in this class (in most logic classes it is the only thing taught).
Al Ghazali (1058-1111), Persian
One of the most celebrated scholars of Sufism. A pioneer of skepticism and doubt.
His work ‘The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ criticized Kindi, Farabi and Avicenna as thinking too much of arriving at certain human knowledge. When he says ‘The philosophers say’ I have read authors say, ‘this means Plato and Aristotle’, but I trust the scholars who say he means ‘Avicenna says’ as the position he always attacks. He does say that Avicenna is beyond all doubt the most distinguished philosopher. He argued that Atoms are the only true things, and all else in the world is accidental. In his ‘Alchemy of Happiness’, wrote of Negative theology of embracing the One. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great ethics teacher of Christianity, read Ghazali as his favorite and central author. Unfortunately, Aquinas is in spell check today, while Ghazali is not.
Averroes, Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) Cordoba, Spain
Wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle’s works, thus central for Europe Aristotle.
Wrote ‘The Incoherence of the Incoherence’, arguing against Ghazali and for Farabi etc.
He was another central author in Europe for science and philosophy. He turned back to Aristotle from Avicenna, and Europe followed him. He is credited more than anyone with turning Europe on to Aristotle. Our science is now more like Avicenna, but for the longest time it was Aristotleian thanks to Averroes. It was only with Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s declaring the syllogism as necessary to be flawed that Europe swung back into a ‘all is contingent’ Avicenna direction.
THE GREAT MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHER/LOGICIANS
Aquinas (1225-1274)
Lived just after Averroes, about 200 years after Avicenna.
Augustine is the bringer of Plato and Aristotle into medieval Europe thanks to his reading of Islamic authors. He studied at the University of Naples until he was 16. Showed he was brilliant, so the Dominican order offered to support his scholarship. He became a Dominican, then was kidnapped by his parents who wanted him to come back home. His brother’s brought him a prostitute, but ‘he drove her away’. Then the Pope intervened, and he went back to being a Dominican.
He seems influenced primarily by Al Ghazali and Averroes, both of whom we said were critics of Avicenna, Averroes a supporter of Aristotle. Three years after his death, Aquinas was excommunicated for heresy due to following Averroes’ interpretation of Aristotle’s works, but then the Church reversed its position. This is after Aquinas defended the Church again and again as the only source of true authority and knowledge.
50 years after his death, he was pronounced a Saint. Later, at the First Vatican Council he was pronounced the central thinker of the Church (and thus Europe).
As an Averroist Aristotelian, Aquinas believed that universals are real beings that are even more real than physical objects. Thus, he is an essentialist. His argument for the existence of God shows this. He argues that all things are dependent on, possible because of, and less than a highest thing, which must be God, Being itself. Thus, like European thought, Being is essence of essences (we will see this in Hegel next week). The Superman argument is often used today in philosophy classrooms to shoot this down, along with Descartes who follows Aquinas’ argument for highest, most necessary being as God.
William of Ockham (1288-1348)
An Avicenna style Existentialist: Only objects and individuals are real, all else is mental construction and conception. Often called the first modern thinker, we can see that he is putting forward Avicenna’s ideas. His nominalism says that concepts are just our names for things, our add-ons. Just like Avicenna, only Being (God) is not contingent and custom.
Ockham is also known for ‘Ockham’s razor’: the simplest explanation is often correct.
Notice how this does away with hierarchies of universals as real, to call them simply mental and thus the simplest reasoning is the best.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Logic Midterm Review
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/18/2010
LOGIC MIDTERM REVIEW
Form of the Midterm: First multiple choice questions about the lectures (ex: Aristotle thinks that skeptics like Heraclitus are no better than PLANTS, Kanada believes there are 6 categories, including KARMA/action, etc). Second short answers that demonstrate your knowledge of the forms that we have learned so far (ex: recreate the square of opposition, the forms of syllogisms, Nyaya proof). No essay.
Logic, Magic and Riddles: We read in Malinowski’s Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings that tribes use all of the grammatical forms and pieces of reasoning that we all use. We saw difference of practice and theory, constantly intertwined, in the difference between shallow water fishing and deep sea fishing. We saw in the next article that in baseball, the same sort of split occurs between hitting/pitching and fielding. In wisdom tales, understanding contradiction. Logic switched from the study of debate in early cultures to foundations of mathematics in modern times with the rise of algebra.
Kanada: Karma as action/energy. We saw the basic structure of IF-THEN hypothetical statements. The Modus Tollens transformation: (If p then q), means also (if not q then not p). Ex: If we know “If there are clouds then there is rain”, we know “If there is no rain then there are no clouds”.
Nyaya: We saw the Nyaya form of the two sided debate: (X is Y) vs. (X is not Y). We saw that there are four sources of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony.
Inference shows us induction leading to deduction, gathering leading to rules/principles.
The Nyaya proof: Rule, Example, Reason, Conclusion
Wherever there is smoke, there is fire. As in a kitchen.
Because the hill is smoky, therefore the hill is on fire.
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot. (If p, then n, pot is both)
Because it is produced, Sound is not eternal. (Because s is p, s is n)
Note the subtle attack on the older tradition of the Vedas in the last two examples.
While Nyaya scholars believe X is Y or not Y, exclusively, we see that Jains think it must be some Y and some not Y, neither ALL or None. Buddhists argue that X can sometimes and somewhere be Y but also sometimes and somewhere not be Y. Nagarjuna’s Catuskoti.
Aristotle: Genus and Species (ex: animal, human), substances can have contrary qualities but only at different times, “if someone admits contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”, skeptics are destroyers, plants.
Square of opposition, All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y as four corners.
Top pair (universals) can’t both be true, bottom pair (particulars) can’t both be false.
If we know All X is Y is true, then we know two things are false: No X is Y & Some X is not Y.
If we know No X is Y, then we know All X is Y and Some X is Y are false.
If we know Some X is Y, then we know No X is Y is false.
If we know Some X is not Y, then we know All X is Y is false.
Exclusive and Inclusive OR:
Inclusive Or: X or Y and you can choose more than one.
Exclusive Or: X or Y but you can only choose one exclusively.
The Four Forms of the Perfect Syllogism:
First, the Positive Universal, ‘Barbara’:
All A are B, All B are C, therefore All A are C.
Example: If it’s a human, animal, living thing.
(Venn diagram of A within B, B within C, or partially/fully collapsed)
Second, the Negative Universal, ‘Celarent’
All A are B, No B are C, therefore No A are C.
Ex: All men are animals, No animals are stone, therefore No men are made of stone.
Third, the Positive Particular, ‘Darii’
Some A are B, All B are C, therefore Some A are C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, All humans are funny, therefore some animals are funny.
Fourth, the Negative Particular, ‘Ferio’:
Some A are B, No B are C, therefore Some A are not C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, No humans are reptiles, therefore Some H are not R.
Greek Skepticism: Heraclitus says do not trust experts, we are all a bunch of apes. Pyrrho argues anything against anybody, then the opposite. Sextus Empiricus says inference can be wrong.
Chinese Paradox: Lao Zi’s Wheel (positive, negative, both), Zhuang Zi’s perspective, sage’s this always has a that, Hui Shih’s left today arrived yesterday and greater and lesser similarity and difference, Kung-Sun Lung’s white horse is not a horse argument and two uses of “is”.
Eric Gerlach
3/18/2010
LOGIC MIDTERM REVIEW
Form of the Midterm: First multiple choice questions about the lectures (ex: Aristotle thinks that skeptics like Heraclitus are no better than PLANTS, Kanada believes there are 6 categories, including KARMA/action, etc). Second short answers that demonstrate your knowledge of the forms that we have learned so far (ex: recreate the square of opposition, the forms of syllogisms, Nyaya proof). No essay.
Logic, Magic and Riddles: We read in Malinowski’s Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings that tribes use all of the grammatical forms and pieces of reasoning that we all use. We saw difference of practice and theory, constantly intertwined, in the difference between shallow water fishing and deep sea fishing. We saw in the next article that in baseball, the same sort of split occurs between hitting/pitching and fielding. In wisdom tales, understanding contradiction. Logic switched from the study of debate in early cultures to foundations of mathematics in modern times with the rise of algebra.
Kanada: Karma as action/energy. We saw the basic structure of IF-THEN hypothetical statements. The Modus Tollens transformation: (If p then q), means also (if not q then not p). Ex: If we know “If there are clouds then there is rain”, we know “If there is no rain then there are no clouds”.
Nyaya: We saw the Nyaya form of the two sided debate: (X is Y) vs. (X is not Y). We saw that there are four sources of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony.
Inference shows us induction leading to deduction, gathering leading to rules/principles.
The Nyaya proof: Rule, Example, Reason, Conclusion
Wherever there is smoke, there is fire. As in a kitchen.
Because the hill is smoky, therefore the hill is on fire.
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot. (If p, then n, pot is both)
Because it is produced, Sound is not eternal. (Because s is p, s is n)
Note the subtle attack on the older tradition of the Vedas in the last two examples.
While Nyaya scholars believe X is Y or not Y, exclusively, we see that Jains think it must be some Y and some not Y, neither ALL or None. Buddhists argue that X can sometimes and somewhere be Y but also sometimes and somewhere not be Y. Nagarjuna’s Catuskoti.
Aristotle: Genus and Species (ex: animal, human), substances can have contrary qualities but only at different times, “if someone admits contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”, skeptics are destroyers, plants.
Square of opposition, All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y as four corners.
Top pair (universals) can’t both be true, bottom pair (particulars) can’t both be false.
If we know All X is Y is true, then we know two things are false: No X is Y & Some X is not Y.
If we know No X is Y, then we know All X is Y and Some X is Y are false.
If we know Some X is Y, then we know No X is Y is false.
If we know Some X is not Y, then we know All X is Y is false.
Exclusive and Inclusive OR:
Inclusive Or: X or Y and you can choose more than one.
Exclusive Or: X or Y but you can only choose one exclusively.
The Four Forms of the Perfect Syllogism:
First, the Positive Universal, ‘Barbara’:
All A are B, All B are C, therefore All A are C.
Example: If it’s a human, animal, living thing.
(Venn diagram of A within B, B within C, or partially/fully collapsed)
Second, the Negative Universal, ‘Celarent’
All A are B, No B are C, therefore No A are C.
Ex: All men are animals, No animals are stone, therefore No men are made of stone.
Third, the Positive Particular, ‘Darii’
Some A are B, All B are C, therefore Some A are C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, All humans are funny, therefore some animals are funny.
Fourth, the Negative Particular, ‘Ferio’:
Some A are B, No B are C, therefore Some A are not C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, No humans are reptiles, therefore Some H are not R.
Greek Skepticism: Heraclitus says do not trust experts, we are all a bunch of apes. Pyrrho argues anything against anybody, then the opposite. Sextus Empiricus says inference can be wrong.
Chinese Paradox: Lao Zi’s Wheel (positive, negative, both), Zhuang Zi’s perspective, sage’s this always has a that, Hui Shih’s left today arrived yesterday and greater and lesser similarity and difference, Kung-Sun Lung’s white horse is not a horse argument and two uses of “is”.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Logic Lecture March 15: Chinese Paradox
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/15/2010
CHINESE LOGIC AND PARADOX
In China, we find Daoists, Logicians and Chan/Zen Buddhists showing the skeptical side of logic and human thought that we have already seen in India (Jainism & Buddhism) and Greece (Heraclitus, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus).
DAOISM: LAO ZI & ZHUANG ZI
The Dao De Jing (formerly the Tao Te Ching) is the book by the fist Daoist patriarch Lao Zi (600 BCE) according to tradition. This book and the book of the second Daoist Patriarch Zhuang Zi (370-300 BCE) have many excellent examples of paradox and contradiction. We will consider some of these before the paradoxes of the Chinese logicians Hui Shih and Kung-Sun Lung.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is one of my favorites. It tells us that a wheel is only useful because of the hole in the center. The same is true of a jar made of clay, and the space in a room as well as the doors and windows. We naturally think of things as positives, as beings, but non-being, the holes and emptiness, goes hand in hand with the being. These things (as well as everything else, the text suggests) are and are not in very specific ways. The wheel is both solid and empty at the same time, but not in all of its parts equally. Positive and negative, being and non-being, work together to make things what they are.
If positivism tries for black and white judgments, all yes or all no, and skepticism tries for relative judgments, some yes and some no, this teaching on the wheel and the jar tells us that the solid objects that surround us, the things about which we are most certain, are somewhat and are not somewhat!
There is a Buddhist koan that says at first we see a thing as a thing, then after practice and contemplation we see the thing as a non-thing (a concept, or illusion), and then after further practice and contemplation we again see the thing as a thing (but also, in this third stage, as also a non-thing, our conception). Hegel, whose logic we will learn later, sees this same three-fold process in every stage of individual thought and history of philosophy. At first, if asked, the wheel is a thing, not a nothing or non-thing. Then, we see the hole when it is pointed out to us. Finally, we can see that the solidity and the emptiness of the wheel are both necessary and essential to the wheel being what it is together.
In the Zhuang Zi there are many excellent passages that back up this two-sided view. There are many parts of the text that are almost identical to fragments of Heraclitus. Both Zhuang Zi and Heraclitus say that things can be good to some and bad to others at the same time, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. Heraclitus says that salt water is poisonous for us to drink, but not for the fish who require it to live and breathe. Heraclitus also says that pigs like to bathe in filth. Zhuang Zi asks us which animal knows what tastes good if each eats something different? He says that birds like to sleep in trees, but humans certainly do not. Both thinkers say that humans are ugly to non-humans. Zhuang Zi says that the beautiful women of legend frightened minnows, deer and birds. Clearly, human beauty is of no matter to animals who find us frightening and ugly.
One passage I love asks if words say something or nothing and compares them to the peeps of baby birds. It goes on to say that a sage has a this and a that, but a sage’s this also has a that, and a sage’s that also has a this. Speaking of the Confucians and the Moists (two competing schools of Chinese thought at the time the text is being written) it says that what one calls right the other calls wrong, but we should right their wrongs and wrong their rights. Notice how similar this is to chapter 11 of the Dao. It suggests that a sage would see the wrong to a right and the right to a wrong, would see how something said is both meaningful and meaningless.
Another passage asks if the one who wins an argument is necessarily right, or if there must be one who is right and one who is wrong (remember the Nyaya form of debate and Gotama and Aristotle teaching tactics of debate).
Another passage which is important for the logicians to follow says that among the 10,000 things (the number signifies all, like “a billion” today) there are none that are not big, small, right, wrong, useful and useless. If we consider relativity, any particular thing must be bigger that some other thing and smaller than some other thing. If right and wrong, useful and useless are similarly relative, then the sage should see the back and forth, the some and some not to each of these in considering each individual thing.
THE LOGICIANS: HUI SHIH & KUNG-SUN LUNG
Hui Shih (380-305 BCE) is very similar to the Greek thinker Zeno. Both consider paradoxes of relativity in size, motion and other basic properties of things. When he says that heaven or the sky is as low as the earth, he is pointing out that the two meet in the middle, and so low and high are in a particular place equally low and high. When he says one goes to the state of Yueh today and arrives there yesterday, this is a famous puzzle that is quite like the wisdom tales we read in the beginning of the semester: if one crosses the border of Yueh at the stroke of midnight, then one was in Yueh and not in Yueh both today and yesterday, so one could say that one was going there today and arrived yesterday.
The paradox that is most impressive is the Lesser and Greater Similarity and Difference which many have said is similar to observations made in fractal geometry and chaos theory. He says that a great similarity is different from a small similarity, the lesser similarity and difference, but at the same time all things are similar to one another and different from one another, the greater similarity and difference. Consider a bowl with two apples and two oranges. An apple is quite similar to an orange in many ways but it is also different in many ways (the lesser). Anyone can tell that two apples are more alike than an apple and an orange, just as two oranges are more alike than an orange and an apple (this is the lesser similarity and difference). However, on the other hand, it is also true that any two apples are alike and yet different as any two oranges are alike and yet different (this is the greater similarity and difference). Notice that this means the first apple is similar and different to the second apple as well as to an orange. Viewed in a black or white way, the apples are the same and the apple and orange are different, but it is also true to say that the apples are different and the apple and orange are similar.
Kung-sun Lung (325-250 BCE) gives us the famous A White Horse Is Not A Horse argument. Many say that this argument is faulty, but if we follow the thinking of the Daoists and Hui Shih we can see what Kung-Sun is trying to say. He does not mean that a white horse is not in any way a horse, but that in one particular way “a white horse” is not the same thing as “a horse”. He argues that if one brings us a yellow horse, it would not fit the description “a white horse” but it would do fine for the description “a horse”. The two are thus different sets and are not identical though one set is a subset of the other. This means that “a white horse” is and is not “a horse” (in one way “is” and in another way “is not”), and so he can truly say that “a white horse is not a horse”.
Consider that your finger is you but also is not you. If we use “is” in terms of strict identity (like Clark Kent is Superman) then your finger is not you because you are much more than a finger. However, if we use “is” to mean a part incorporated within a thing (like a tree is green) then your finger is oneself because it is part of you. Bill Clinton famously tried explaining this with his “that depends what your definition of ‘is’ is”. Being an individual human, you are and are not humanity. In fact, you are only one human out of quadrillions so far, so you are very much NOT humanity, but what are you more than a human, thus of humanity?
CHAN (ZEN) BUDDHISM: HUI-NENG & JOSHU
Hui-Neng (683-713 CE) became one of the central patriarchs of the Chan (Zen in Japanese) Buddhist tradition by outdoing his fellow student in a poetry competition to see who had the superior understanding and would succeed the master. The student who everyone expected to be the next master wrote:
The body is the tree of enlightenment, The mind is like a clear mirror-stand.
Polish it diligently time and again, Not letting it gather dust.
Hui-Neng was illiterate as well as a southerner who was considered different and inferior by the other students. After having a boy read the first submitted verse to him, he composed his reply:
Enlightenment originally has no tree, And a clear mirror is not a stand.
Originally there is not a single thing, Where can dust gather?
The master called Hui-Neng and said that this verse showed the superior understanding. Consider the similarity of this exchange to chapter 11 of the Dao and the Zhuang Zi.
Joshu (780 CE) is my favorite Chan/Zen thinker. Many of his short quotes became focal koans for study by students of Zen. I will read passages in class.
(69, 77, 79, 177, 182, 222, 232, 291, 352, 370, 431, 470)
Eric Gerlach
3/15/2010
CHINESE LOGIC AND PARADOX
In China, we find Daoists, Logicians and Chan/Zen Buddhists showing the skeptical side of logic and human thought that we have already seen in India (Jainism & Buddhism) and Greece (Heraclitus, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus).
DAOISM: LAO ZI & ZHUANG ZI
The Dao De Jing (formerly the Tao Te Ching) is the book by the fist Daoist patriarch Lao Zi (600 BCE) according to tradition. This book and the book of the second Daoist Patriarch Zhuang Zi (370-300 BCE) have many excellent examples of paradox and contradiction. We will consider some of these before the paradoxes of the Chinese logicians Hui Shih and Kung-Sun Lung.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is one of my favorites. It tells us that a wheel is only useful because of the hole in the center. The same is true of a jar made of clay, and the space in a room as well as the doors and windows. We naturally think of things as positives, as beings, but non-being, the holes and emptiness, goes hand in hand with the being. These things (as well as everything else, the text suggests) are and are not in very specific ways. The wheel is both solid and empty at the same time, but not in all of its parts equally. Positive and negative, being and non-being, work together to make things what they are.
If positivism tries for black and white judgments, all yes or all no, and skepticism tries for relative judgments, some yes and some no, this teaching on the wheel and the jar tells us that the solid objects that surround us, the things about which we are most certain, are somewhat and are not somewhat!
There is a Buddhist koan that says at first we see a thing as a thing, then after practice and contemplation we see the thing as a non-thing (a concept, or illusion), and then after further practice and contemplation we again see the thing as a thing (but also, in this third stage, as also a non-thing, our conception). Hegel, whose logic we will learn later, sees this same three-fold process in every stage of individual thought and history of philosophy. At first, if asked, the wheel is a thing, not a nothing or non-thing. Then, we see the hole when it is pointed out to us. Finally, we can see that the solidity and the emptiness of the wheel are both necessary and essential to the wheel being what it is together.
In the Zhuang Zi there are many excellent passages that back up this two-sided view. There are many parts of the text that are almost identical to fragments of Heraclitus. Both Zhuang Zi and Heraclitus say that things can be good to some and bad to others at the same time, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. Heraclitus says that salt water is poisonous for us to drink, but not for the fish who require it to live and breathe. Heraclitus also says that pigs like to bathe in filth. Zhuang Zi asks us which animal knows what tastes good if each eats something different? He says that birds like to sleep in trees, but humans certainly do not. Both thinkers say that humans are ugly to non-humans. Zhuang Zi says that the beautiful women of legend frightened minnows, deer and birds. Clearly, human beauty is of no matter to animals who find us frightening and ugly.
One passage I love asks if words say something or nothing and compares them to the peeps of baby birds. It goes on to say that a sage has a this and a that, but a sage’s this also has a that, and a sage’s that also has a this. Speaking of the Confucians and the Moists (two competing schools of Chinese thought at the time the text is being written) it says that what one calls right the other calls wrong, but we should right their wrongs and wrong their rights. Notice how similar this is to chapter 11 of the Dao. It suggests that a sage would see the wrong to a right and the right to a wrong, would see how something said is both meaningful and meaningless.
Another passage asks if the one who wins an argument is necessarily right, or if there must be one who is right and one who is wrong (remember the Nyaya form of debate and Gotama and Aristotle teaching tactics of debate).
Another passage which is important for the logicians to follow says that among the 10,000 things (the number signifies all, like “a billion” today) there are none that are not big, small, right, wrong, useful and useless. If we consider relativity, any particular thing must be bigger that some other thing and smaller than some other thing. If right and wrong, useful and useless are similarly relative, then the sage should see the back and forth, the some and some not to each of these in considering each individual thing.
THE LOGICIANS: HUI SHIH & KUNG-SUN LUNG
Hui Shih (380-305 BCE) is very similar to the Greek thinker Zeno. Both consider paradoxes of relativity in size, motion and other basic properties of things. When he says that heaven or the sky is as low as the earth, he is pointing out that the two meet in the middle, and so low and high are in a particular place equally low and high. When he says one goes to the state of Yueh today and arrives there yesterday, this is a famous puzzle that is quite like the wisdom tales we read in the beginning of the semester: if one crosses the border of Yueh at the stroke of midnight, then one was in Yueh and not in Yueh both today and yesterday, so one could say that one was going there today and arrived yesterday.
The paradox that is most impressive is the Lesser and Greater Similarity and Difference which many have said is similar to observations made in fractal geometry and chaos theory. He says that a great similarity is different from a small similarity, the lesser similarity and difference, but at the same time all things are similar to one another and different from one another, the greater similarity and difference. Consider a bowl with two apples and two oranges. An apple is quite similar to an orange in many ways but it is also different in many ways (the lesser). Anyone can tell that two apples are more alike than an apple and an orange, just as two oranges are more alike than an orange and an apple (this is the lesser similarity and difference). However, on the other hand, it is also true that any two apples are alike and yet different as any two oranges are alike and yet different (this is the greater similarity and difference). Notice that this means the first apple is similar and different to the second apple as well as to an orange. Viewed in a black or white way, the apples are the same and the apple and orange are different, but it is also true to say that the apples are different and the apple and orange are similar.
Kung-sun Lung (325-250 BCE) gives us the famous A White Horse Is Not A Horse argument. Many say that this argument is faulty, but if we follow the thinking of the Daoists and Hui Shih we can see what Kung-Sun is trying to say. He does not mean that a white horse is not in any way a horse, but that in one particular way “a white horse” is not the same thing as “a horse”. He argues that if one brings us a yellow horse, it would not fit the description “a white horse” but it would do fine for the description “a horse”. The two are thus different sets and are not identical though one set is a subset of the other. This means that “a white horse” is and is not “a horse” (in one way “is” and in another way “is not”), and so he can truly say that “a white horse is not a horse”.
Consider that your finger is you but also is not you. If we use “is” in terms of strict identity (like Clark Kent is Superman) then your finger is not you because you are much more than a finger. However, if we use “is” to mean a part incorporated within a thing (like a tree is green) then your finger is oneself because it is part of you. Bill Clinton famously tried explaining this with his “that depends what your definition of ‘is’ is”. Being an individual human, you are and are not humanity. In fact, you are only one human out of quadrillions so far, so you are very much NOT humanity, but what are you more than a human, thus of humanity?
CHAN (ZEN) BUDDHISM: HUI-NENG & JOSHU
Hui-Neng (683-713 CE) became one of the central patriarchs of the Chan (Zen in Japanese) Buddhist tradition by outdoing his fellow student in a poetry competition to see who had the superior understanding and would succeed the master. The student who everyone expected to be the next master wrote:
The body is the tree of enlightenment, The mind is like a clear mirror-stand.
Polish it diligently time and again, Not letting it gather dust.
Hui-Neng was illiterate as well as a southerner who was considered different and inferior by the other students. After having a boy read the first submitted verse to him, he composed his reply:
Enlightenment originally has no tree, And a clear mirror is not a stand.
Originally there is not a single thing, Where can dust gather?
The master called Hui-Neng and said that this verse showed the superior understanding. Consider the similarity of this exchange to chapter 11 of the Dao and the Zhuang Zi.
Joshu (780 CE) is my favorite Chan/Zen thinker. Many of his short quotes became focal koans for study by students of Zen. I will read passages in class.
(69, 77, 79, 177, 182, 222, 232, 291, 352, 370, 431, 470)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Ethics Lecture March 12: Perspective, Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
3/12/2010
LECTURE ON PERSPECTIVE:
HERACLITUS, ZHUANG ZI & HEGEL
Perspective is not simply individual, but social. We share reality in so far as we share perspective. This means that we should not only try to see as many perspectives or as much perspective as we can, but also resisting the tendency to accept one’s own perspective as reality or the whole truth. Truth is in each and every perspective, but it is also always beyond and outside of each and every perspective. Focusing on the concept of perspective forces us to affirm our views as truths but also deny our views as the Truth (with a capital T).
Two of the greatest ancient thinkers on perspective are Heraclitus from ancient Greece and Zhuang Zi from ancient China. To consider perspective as an ethical concept we will be looking at the strikingly similar things that these two ancient thinkers say and then end with some insights of the German philosopher Hegel and discoveries of modern psychology.
HERACLITUS:
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire.
Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
We are going to go through the fragments according to themes, that show how Heraclitus sees the individual within the cosmos.
(1): The word from which all things follow (Fire-air(spirits)-earth(firm) in water.
Criticism of the experts and knowledge holders, who try for separate essences.
(92, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125)
Criticism of the commoners, asleep and isolated in otherness, (94)
(2): Listen to the great word and all is one, beyond experts and common
(5, 6) Many say they know (certain) but can’t speak and listen (give and take)
(7) Seek the unknown- Knowledge is a blockage (18,19- wisdom beyond- wisdom lit)
(10) Things keep their secrets- unknown in all things
Fire as all things (20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
(25) Air-Fire, Water-Earth (with fragment of souls smell- smoke by both)
Contending tensions/powers set all things (24, 25, 29, 31)
Hot cold and wet dry (39, 40)
Dry soul good, Wet soul pleasured, bad (72)
War is father of all, thus harmonies (46, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
(41) River twice, (81) I am and am not like the river (unknown)
(52, 53) Everything has qualities by perspective (relativity)
(71) No depth to soul- explored forever, (80) inquire within
(130) Silence- Healing (Note the parallels with Buddhism out of Jainism)
ZHUANG ZI
Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370 to 301 BCE and worked as a manager in a lacquer warehouse, a large ‘factory’ for making vases, bowls and general wood products (like bento boxes). Other than this, we know little of his life other than his work. Daoist tradition holds that Zhuang Zi wrote the ‘inner chapters’ of his work, and that the anecdotes about him and other stories were added by his disciples, the early proto-Daoists.
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good?
Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
HEGEL AND THE MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIP
Hegel, a German philosopher who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, believed that the history of the world and the process of thought in history and the individual was an evolution of perspective that works from opposite sides to bring itself to greater completion. One of the most famous parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit, a history of the evolution of thought, is the Master/Slave dialectic. This concept became very important for anti-sexism (like the feminist De Beauvoir), anti-racism (like Franz Fanon and Angela Davis) and anti-class thinkers (like Hegel’s student Karl Marx). These will be the last three topics for this class, the “Big Three” in universities since the sixties.
Hegel argues that as the self or identity (like a nation) comes into the world, it cannot understand how there can be others like itself that are not itself and so it tries to fight and kill its others. Then the self figures out that it does not have to kill its others and that it is more productive to enslave them (consider that the most selfish individual would tell everyone else “You are wrong” but the slightly smarter but still selfish individual would tell everyone else “That is just what I have been saying”, neither capable of tolerating opinions other than their own).
At first, the master is in the superior position. However, over time, the slave comes to do everything for the master and thus learns through experience while the master grows lazy and ignorant. The slave comes to realize that he can do things he never thought of for someone or something else, comes to grasp subjectivity and perspective, and thus overturns the master and becomes the greater and more highly developed master.
INSIGHTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY:
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION & THE HOSTILE MEDIA EFFECT
Modern Psychology has learned much from experiments in recent years about how individuals tend to interpret reality. This teaches us many things about perspective that extend and develop what Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel had to say.
Internal vs. External Attribution:
Many experiments have confirmed what is often called the actor/observer bias or internal vs. external attribution. If an individual succeeds at a task, they often attribute the success to themselves or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “I/We are really good at that”). If an individual fails at a task, they often attribute the failure to the situation (external attribution – “It was because of that thing”). However, if the same individual watches another (especially someone disliked or ‘other’ to the individual) succeed at a task, they often attribute the success to the situation (external attribution – “They just got lucky”, or “It was easier that time”), and when they watch another fail at a task, they often attribute the failure to the other person or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “That shows they are stupid”).
Notice the complete reversal and the contradiction of opposite perspectives given the same evidence. The attribution and perspective is one way or the complete opposite depending on who does the task and whether or not they succeed.
The Hostile Media Effect:
Other experiments have confirmed that both sides of an issue view media coverage and moderation (judges, referees) as hostile to their side. For example, liberals are angry that the media is conservative, and conservatives are angry that the media is liberal. One study at Stanford showed American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-Israeli students and pro-Palestinian students, and both sides said the coverage was clearly biased in favor of the other side. Another study had students from Princeton and Dartmouth (a big East Coast rivalry) view a Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game, and each group saw more illegal moves on the other side and each said that the referees missed more of these for the other side.
If we consider perspective, anyone in the middle of an issue is to the opposite side of anyone on the edges. I have a card I like that shows children on a see-saw with one standing on the middle, and it reads “I know I am being fair when both sides accuse me of unfairness”. Unfortunately, this is often true in the world of competing and opposite perspectives.
Eric Gerlach
3/12/2010
LECTURE ON PERSPECTIVE:
HERACLITUS, ZHUANG ZI & HEGEL
Perspective is not simply individual, but social. We share reality in so far as we share perspective. This means that we should not only try to see as many perspectives or as much perspective as we can, but also resisting the tendency to accept one’s own perspective as reality or the whole truth. Truth is in each and every perspective, but it is also always beyond and outside of each and every perspective. Focusing on the concept of perspective forces us to affirm our views as truths but also deny our views as the Truth (with a capital T).
Two of the greatest ancient thinkers on perspective are Heraclitus from ancient Greece and Zhuang Zi from ancient China. To consider perspective as an ethical concept we will be looking at the strikingly similar things that these two ancient thinkers say and then end with some insights of the German philosopher Hegel and discoveries of modern psychology.
HERACLITUS:
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire.
Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
We are going to go through the fragments according to themes, that show how Heraclitus sees the individual within the cosmos.
(1): The word from which all things follow (Fire-air(spirits)-earth(firm) in water.
Criticism of the experts and knowledge holders, who try for separate essences.
(92, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125)
Criticism of the commoners, asleep and isolated in otherness, (94)
(2): Listen to the great word and all is one, beyond experts and common
(5, 6) Many say they know (certain) but can’t speak and listen (give and take)
(7) Seek the unknown- Knowledge is a blockage (18,19- wisdom beyond- wisdom lit)
(10) Things keep their secrets- unknown in all things
Fire as all things (20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
(25) Air-Fire, Water-Earth (with fragment of souls smell- smoke by both)
Contending tensions/powers set all things (24, 25, 29, 31)
Hot cold and wet dry (39, 40)
Dry soul good, Wet soul pleasured, bad (72)
War is father of all, thus harmonies (46, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
(41) River twice, (81) I am and am not like the river (unknown)
(52, 53) Everything has qualities by perspective (relativity)
(71) No depth to soul- explored forever, (80) inquire within
(130) Silence- Healing (Note the parallels with Buddhism out of Jainism)
ZHUANG ZI
Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370 to 301 BCE and worked as a manager in a lacquer warehouse, a large ‘factory’ for making vases, bowls and general wood products (like bento boxes). Other than this, we know little of his life other than his work. Daoist tradition holds that Zhuang Zi wrote the ‘inner chapters’ of his work, and that the anecdotes about him and other stories were added by his disciples, the early proto-Daoists.
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good?
Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
HEGEL AND THE MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIP
Hegel, a German philosopher who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, believed that the history of the world and the process of thought in history and the individual was an evolution of perspective that works from opposite sides to bring itself to greater completion. One of the most famous parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit, a history of the evolution of thought, is the Master/Slave dialectic. This concept became very important for anti-sexism (like the feminist De Beauvoir), anti-racism (like Franz Fanon and Angela Davis) and anti-class thinkers (like Hegel’s student Karl Marx). These will be the last three topics for this class, the “Big Three” in universities since the sixties.
Hegel argues that as the self or identity (like a nation) comes into the world, it cannot understand how there can be others like itself that are not itself and so it tries to fight and kill its others. Then the self figures out that it does not have to kill its others and that it is more productive to enslave them (consider that the most selfish individual would tell everyone else “You are wrong” but the slightly smarter but still selfish individual would tell everyone else “That is just what I have been saying”, neither capable of tolerating opinions other than their own).
At first, the master is in the superior position. However, over time, the slave comes to do everything for the master and thus learns through experience while the master grows lazy and ignorant. The slave comes to realize that he can do things he never thought of for someone or something else, comes to grasp subjectivity and perspective, and thus overturns the master and becomes the greater and more highly developed master.
INSIGHTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY:
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION & THE HOSTILE MEDIA EFFECT
Modern Psychology has learned much from experiments in recent years about how individuals tend to interpret reality. This teaches us many things about perspective that extend and develop what Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel had to say.
Internal vs. External Attribution:
Many experiments have confirmed what is often called the actor/observer bias or internal vs. external attribution. If an individual succeeds at a task, they often attribute the success to themselves or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “I/We are really good at that”). If an individual fails at a task, they often attribute the failure to the situation (external attribution – “It was because of that thing”). However, if the same individual watches another (especially someone disliked or ‘other’ to the individual) succeed at a task, they often attribute the success to the situation (external attribution – “They just got lucky”, or “It was easier that time”), and when they watch another fail at a task, they often attribute the failure to the other person or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “That shows they are stupid”).
Notice the complete reversal and the contradiction of opposite perspectives given the same evidence. The attribution and perspective is one way or the complete opposite depending on who does the task and whether or not they succeed.
The Hostile Media Effect:
Other experiments have confirmed that both sides of an issue view media coverage and moderation (judges, referees) as hostile to their side. For example, liberals are angry that the media is conservative, and conservatives are angry that the media is liberal. One study at Stanford showed American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-Israeli students and pro-Palestinian students, and both sides said the coverage was clearly biased in favor of the other side. Another study had students from Princeton and Dartmouth (a big East Coast rivalry) view a Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game, and each group saw more illegal moves on the other side and each said that the referees missed more of these for the other side.
If we consider perspective, anyone in the middle of an issue is to the opposite side of anyone on the edges. I have a card I like that shows children on a see-saw with one standing on the middle, and it reads “I know I am being fair when both sides accuse me of unfairness”. Unfortunately, this is often true in the world of competing and opposite perspectives.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Ethics Midterm Review
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
3/9/2010
Review for Ethics Midterm
The Midterm Exam will consist of 20 multiple choice questions, three short answer questions covering central concepts, and an essay.
Principle, Moral & Law: Kant
Kant is a positivist with regard to principle, morals and laws. Kant believes that reason should rule over desire (like the early cosmology above) and principles that are figured out by reason should always be followed regardless of the consequences (note that the opposite position can be found in the Utilitarian/consequentialist position below). Kant believes that one starts with good will (good in itself without question) and reasoned principles follow, and one should use this good beginning regardless of what consequences follow (though he says this naturally aims at and leads to good consequences even if this is secondary). Kant calls this “the categorical imperative” and “unconditional universal law”. The example of this is the guy with the knife who asks you “Where did your friend go?”, to whom one should not lie regardless of how easy a good end can come from lying. One must “Do one’s Duty” even if one goes down with the ship.
Virtue & Merit: Aristotle
Virtue is like principle in being a good beginning, but it is also a state or end to obtain. Also, virtue can be individual in a way that principle is collective and for the group. The idea is that one gains virtue, merit or “goodness”, and one can then use this ability/capacity to do good. A virtue-ethicist believes that becoming good or virtuous is more important than following principles or simply having good consequences. One should be virtuous even if it means breaking principles or bad results in a particular situation. The upside of this is a virtue centered ethic is not slave to principle or always seeking the best consequences. The downside is that one could believe that oneself or one’s group is “the virtuous” and ignore principles and consequences to the degree that it becomes a problem for oneself or others.
Consequence, Utility & End: Mill
Consequentialism or Utilitarianism argues that one should focus completely on the ends or results to determine if an act or person is good or bad. Specifically, one should try to maximize pleasure/happiness and minimize pain/suffering for everyone, taking a long view (not a short, 15 minute view). Epicurus was an early Greek consequentialist, and he is followed by the Utilitarian school of Bentham and Mill. While Bentham leaned towards the positive side of the ‘pleasure principle’, maximizing happiness, Mill leaned towards the negative, minimizing harm. Mill is the best known, and has had an important impact on modern thought and theory of law.
Mill’s Utilitarianism is opposite yet similar in many ways to Kant. Both see their side as fundamental and the other side as a secondary consequence. Kant says always follow principle and you will likely be happy, and Mill says always try for happiness and you will likely be principled. Both see their own primary focus as good in itself without the possibility of proof or question.
Attacks on Utilitarianism include: Paradox of the bad as good example, Marx’s guess who gets to use who for whose happiness (the rich and elite), Happiness as unobtainable ideal, Environmental challenge to using the world for human purposes.
Balance & The Mean: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
Meaning and value work through pairs of opposites (good/evil, open/closed, individual/collective). A reoccurring theme of the world’s wisdom is that seeking the mean or middle between opposites is better than clinging to either side of an opposition. We can see some beautiful examples of this thinking in the Egyptian wisdom and Confucius passages. In the Egyptian wisdom, moderation of eating and drinking, luxury, and balancing one’s own interest with others are the clearest examples. Confucius offers particularly insightful sayings that call for a balance of one’s self with others for the cultivation of self and society.
Self Interest, Self Esteem and Drive: Nietzsche & Rand
Self is very much an end, though like Mill it can be phrased as a principle (focus on the ends).
While early ethics (in accord with ancient cosmology above) focused on the collective good, modern society has taken a turn towards the individual good. These two have always been complimentary, but devices and media have allowed us to be more enabled as individuals than ever before. Nietzsche and Rand both focus on individual achievement as the central end of life, but they are completely different as far as trusting judgment and truth. Nietzsche trusts no truth at all, calling all collectivism “slave morality” and performing his own misogyny as “Philosophy is always the personal confession of the author”. Rand believes her opinions to be objective, and calls her school the “Objectivists”. Rand’s idea of believing in yourself was repackaged as “self esteem” in the 1980s. While it is important to have self esteem, problems can arise when one trusts one’s own judgment and rejects all opposing judgments entirely.
Perspective & Intersubjectivity: Heraclitus & Chuang Tzu
A balance between thinking our views are completely right or wrong, truth or illusion, is the concept of perspective. The “objective” is very much the intersubjective, the similarity and difference of a group of subjective perspectives. Heraclitus and Chuang Tzu are both excellent thinkers to read to get good examples of this sort of thought. Both use perspectives of animals to show that collective human opinion is just that (pigs sleep in mud, birds sleep in trees). The concept of perspective is good for showing us that all views count, but they are also each limited and capable of progress and expansion.
Eric Gerlach
3/9/2010
Review for Ethics Midterm
The Midterm Exam will consist of 20 multiple choice questions, three short answer questions covering central concepts, and an essay.
Principle, Moral & Law: Kant
Kant is a positivist with regard to principle, morals and laws. Kant believes that reason should rule over desire (like the early cosmology above) and principles that are figured out by reason should always be followed regardless of the consequences (note that the opposite position can be found in the Utilitarian/consequentialist position below). Kant believes that one starts with good will (good in itself without question) and reasoned principles follow, and one should use this good beginning regardless of what consequences follow (though he says this naturally aims at and leads to good consequences even if this is secondary). Kant calls this “the categorical imperative” and “unconditional universal law”. The example of this is the guy with the knife who asks you “Where did your friend go?”, to whom one should not lie regardless of how easy a good end can come from lying. One must “Do one’s Duty” even if one goes down with the ship.
Virtue & Merit: Aristotle
Virtue is like principle in being a good beginning, but it is also a state or end to obtain. Also, virtue can be individual in a way that principle is collective and for the group. The idea is that one gains virtue, merit or “goodness”, and one can then use this ability/capacity to do good. A virtue-ethicist believes that becoming good or virtuous is more important than following principles or simply having good consequences. One should be virtuous even if it means breaking principles or bad results in a particular situation. The upside of this is a virtue centered ethic is not slave to principle or always seeking the best consequences. The downside is that one could believe that oneself or one’s group is “the virtuous” and ignore principles and consequences to the degree that it becomes a problem for oneself or others.
Consequence, Utility & End: Mill
Consequentialism or Utilitarianism argues that one should focus completely on the ends or results to determine if an act or person is good or bad. Specifically, one should try to maximize pleasure/happiness and minimize pain/suffering for everyone, taking a long view (not a short, 15 minute view). Epicurus was an early Greek consequentialist, and he is followed by the Utilitarian school of Bentham and Mill. While Bentham leaned towards the positive side of the ‘pleasure principle’, maximizing happiness, Mill leaned towards the negative, minimizing harm. Mill is the best known, and has had an important impact on modern thought and theory of law.
Mill’s Utilitarianism is opposite yet similar in many ways to Kant. Both see their side as fundamental and the other side as a secondary consequence. Kant says always follow principle and you will likely be happy, and Mill says always try for happiness and you will likely be principled. Both see their own primary focus as good in itself without the possibility of proof or question.
Attacks on Utilitarianism include: Paradox of the bad as good example, Marx’s guess who gets to use who for whose happiness (the rich and elite), Happiness as unobtainable ideal, Environmental challenge to using the world for human purposes.
Balance & The Mean: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
Meaning and value work through pairs of opposites (good/evil, open/closed, individual/collective). A reoccurring theme of the world’s wisdom is that seeking the mean or middle between opposites is better than clinging to either side of an opposition. We can see some beautiful examples of this thinking in the Egyptian wisdom and Confucius passages. In the Egyptian wisdom, moderation of eating and drinking, luxury, and balancing one’s own interest with others are the clearest examples. Confucius offers particularly insightful sayings that call for a balance of one’s self with others for the cultivation of self and society.
Self Interest, Self Esteem and Drive: Nietzsche & Rand
Self is very much an end, though like Mill it can be phrased as a principle (focus on the ends).
While early ethics (in accord with ancient cosmology above) focused on the collective good, modern society has taken a turn towards the individual good. These two have always been complimentary, but devices and media have allowed us to be more enabled as individuals than ever before. Nietzsche and Rand both focus on individual achievement as the central end of life, but they are completely different as far as trusting judgment and truth. Nietzsche trusts no truth at all, calling all collectivism “slave morality” and performing his own misogyny as “Philosophy is always the personal confession of the author”. Rand believes her opinions to be objective, and calls her school the “Objectivists”. Rand’s idea of believing in yourself was repackaged as “self esteem” in the 1980s. While it is important to have self esteem, problems can arise when one trusts one’s own judgment and rejects all opposing judgments entirely.
Perspective & Intersubjectivity: Heraclitus & Chuang Tzu
A balance between thinking our views are completely right or wrong, truth or illusion, is the concept of perspective. The “objective” is very much the intersubjective, the similarity and difference of a group of subjective perspectives. Heraclitus and Chuang Tzu are both excellent thinkers to read to get good examples of this sort of thought. Both use perspectives of animals to show that collective human opinion is just that (pigs sleep in mud, birds sleep in trees). The concept of perspective is good for showing us that all views count, but they are also each limited and capable of progress and expansion.
Teaching Multiculturalism, Not Eurocentrism
This is a basic guide to learning and teaching from a multicultural view, not a eurocentric view. I hope that our understandings of history, science, philosophy and all areas of study progress from eurocentrism to multiculturalism.
The Eurocentric View of the Ancient World:
Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Ancient World:
All ancient cultures had critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, were neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of the Modern World:
Modern Europe is the rise and success of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Modern World:
All modern cultures have critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Modern cultures, including modern Europe, are neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had little contact or trade. Thus, there was little cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe share the same culture and so influenced each other. In modern times Europeans opened the world to international trade.
The Multicultural View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had much contact and trade with each other. Thus, there was much cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe are one example of a chain of cross-cultural influences. In modern times Europeans took over trade that was already international since ancient times.
The Eurocentric View of Mathematics:
The great discoveries in mathematics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Mathematics:
Much of the ancient world, including Greece and Rome, shared the Egyptian system of mathematics. Islamic Algebra, which took much from Indian mathematics, replaced the Egyptian system in modern times because it was far more useful and precise.
The Eurocentric View of Science and Technology:
The great discoveries in science and mechanics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Science and Technology:
Much of ancient science and mechanics were discovered by the Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians. The Chinese and Muslims made great leaps in science and mechanics just before the great leaps of modern Europe.
The Eurocentric View of Philosophy:
Ancient Greece was a philosophical culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture. Thus, Western culture is more critical and skeptical than other cultures.
The Multicultural View of Philosophy:
All cultures have philosophers, critics and skeptics, even though these thinkers are often counter-cultural and go against the dominant culture as they did in ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe. Western culture is not distinctly philosophical.
The Eurocentric View of Politics:
Ancient Greece was the first democratic culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture.
The Multicultural View of Politics:
Since ancient Sumer, most societies have had a democratic body or group decision process that supported the rulers in decision making, even though this body was often composed of land-owning elites as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.
The Eurocentric View of the Ancient World:
Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Ancient World:
All ancient cultures had critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, were neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of the Modern World:
Modern Europe is the rise and success of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Modern World:
All modern cultures have critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Modern cultures, including modern Europe, are neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had little contact or trade. Thus, there was little cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe share the same culture and so influenced each other. In modern times Europeans opened the world to international trade.
The Multicultural View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had much contact and trade with each other. Thus, there was much cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe are one example of a chain of cross-cultural influences. In modern times Europeans took over trade that was already international since ancient times.
The Eurocentric View of Mathematics:
The great discoveries in mathematics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Mathematics:
Much of the ancient world, including Greece and Rome, shared the Egyptian system of mathematics. Islamic Algebra, which took much from Indian mathematics, replaced the Egyptian system in modern times because it was far more useful and precise.
The Eurocentric View of Science and Technology:
The great discoveries in science and mechanics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Science and Technology:
Much of ancient science and mechanics were discovered by the Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians. The Chinese and Muslims made great leaps in science and mechanics just before the great leaps of modern Europe.
The Eurocentric View of Philosophy:
Ancient Greece was a philosophical culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture. Thus, Western culture is more critical and skeptical than other cultures.
The Multicultural View of Philosophy:
All cultures have philosophers, critics and skeptics, even though these thinkers are often counter-cultural and go against the dominant culture as they did in ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe. Western culture is not distinctly philosophical.
The Eurocentric View of Politics:
Ancient Greece was the first democratic culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture.
The Multicultural View of Politics:
Since ancient Sumer, most societies have had a democratic body or group decision process that supported the rulers in decision making, even though this body was often composed of land-owning elites as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Logic Lecture March 8: Greek Skepticism
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/8/2010
GREEK SKEPTICISM: HERACLITUS, PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
HERACLITUS
He gives us the concept of the LOGOS, from which we get LOGIC.
This could be influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, though this is controversial.
Heraclitus is in the very beginning of Greek thinking, in modern day Turkey (the Eastern half of the area we denote as ancient Greece, the half that is not today called ‘Greece’ or on the European mainland). The presocratics were active before Socrates (hence ‘pre-Socratic), about 500s and 400s BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only fragments of the pre-Socratics. It was in the 1800s, the time of Hegel that the pre-Socratics were given attention and study. Schleiermacher, the most famous protestant theologian, was a big fan of Heraclitus, a major translator of Plato, and his theology is somewhat similar to Heraclitus and Plato: all down here is watery chaos, so we must exalt above all this to realize the Great all or One, symbolized by the sun, which is eternal above all of the species of being it produces.
Heraclitus was born in Ephesus supposedly just before 500 BCE. Ephesus is quite close to Miletus, the home of most of the pre-Socratic philosopher/scientists, but there is no record of Heraclitus interacting with any of them. Both cities were satraps or provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire. Indeed, though Heraclitus’ thought can be compared to Egyptian and Indian thought to give it a wider context, it is clear that Heraclitus closely resembles Zoroastrianism, while giving it a very Indian like skepticism about the watery impermanent nature of any particular being or perception of being. Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to Indian Buddhism and the story of the Buddha. Both thinkers were ‘mythologized’ as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception. Was Heraclitus getting Indian thought through Zoroastrian Persia?
Another reason why famous: Heraclitus vs. his predecessors. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. All that we know is that things arise from the energy of the cosmic fire, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear.
Heraclitus even ascribed to the Fire-air-earth-water cosmology, but believed that the particular forms, the species of being that are produced by the cosmos, are chaotic and thus simply forms of life that cannot be boiled down to knowable essences or types. The doctrine can be stated famously, though these are not Heraclitus’ words, “Everything is in flux”.
The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent. The whole and the operation of the cosmos has an eternal shape to it, but the shapes that arise out of the cosmos are only temporary. This goes for laws, which Heraclitus have to be defended as if they were city laws. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, but in fact he is showing that human laws are impermanent like city walls. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any satrap of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain.
Heraclitus is important to the Christian tradition. If a primal speaking of Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. John reads: and the Logos/word was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke and light was separated from darkness. Speech and intention here are dividing or burning the cosmos into opposites by fire. Our minds do this on a smaller level in an imperfect way, explaining how the cosmos created our minds.
PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
Sextus is a mystery. He is supposed to have lived towards 200 CE, 700 years after Heraclitus. He is thought by scholars to have been from Alexandria Egypt. He might be Libyan, thus African, but it has been assumed that he was Greek living in Egypt or Rome. It is thought that he is a doctor because he mentions medical cases to show how sometimes things are good but then surprisingly bad in other cases or vice versa, but there is nothing that proves this.
Sextus is the first Pyrrhoian Skeptic, quite similar to the Jains. Agnosticism of all judgment and plurality of perspective and truth are staples for both. When Alexander fought his way to the border of India, to try to conquer the rich and fertile area, he brought the philosopher Pyrrho with him around 300 BCE. Pyrrho met with some ‘gymnosophists’ in the historian’s texts, and scholars argue whether these were Buddhists, Jains or if either existed yet at the time. Pyrrho witnessed the yoga and extreme penances of the sages, had discussions, then came home and refused to write anything or live in society. People would come to visit him on the edges of town, where he would argue that everything is true and not true, that every perspective is true but also false. His thinking sprouted a school in Alexandria Egypt, a great center of Greek, early Christian and later Muslim thought. We know of this exclusively through the writings of Sextus.
For ex: Sextus calls upon the ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ example used by Gautama and Aristotle, and then brings up many cases where one would be mistaken to draw the inference. The point is not that it can’t be drawn, but it can never be certain in a particular situation.
The Issue: IS has a temporary and eternal meaning, back and forth, like IS has a whole-part back and forth meaning. (Clinton, Rumsfeld vs. dealing with the real issue)
Pyrrho and Sextus, just like Heraclitus, DO believe in saying things (maybe not writing for Pyrrho), but they do not like saying or judging in the long run, just for short term situations.
Thus, they all believe in a ONE LOGOS, but are skeptical of judgment to FINALLY and COMPLETELY judge the actions and parts of the One.
Eric Gerlach
3/8/2010
GREEK SKEPTICISM: HERACLITUS, PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
HERACLITUS
He gives us the concept of the LOGOS, from which we get LOGIC.
This could be influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, though this is controversial.
Heraclitus is in the very beginning of Greek thinking, in modern day Turkey (the Eastern half of the area we denote as ancient Greece, the half that is not today called ‘Greece’ or on the European mainland). The presocratics were active before Socrates (hence ‘pre-Socratic), about 500s and 400s BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only fragments of the pre-Socratics. It was in the 1800s, the time of Hegel that the pre-Socratics were given attention and study. Schleiermacher, the most famous protestant theologian, was a big fan of Heraclitus, a major translator of Plato, and his theology is somewhat similar to Heraclitus and Plato: all down here is watery chaos, so we must exalt above all this to realize the Great all or One, symbolized by the sun, which is eternal above all of the species of being it produces.
Heraclitus was born in Ephesus supposedly just before 500 BCE. Ephesus is quite close to Miletus, the home of most of the pre-Socratic philosopher/scientists, but there is no record of Heraclitus interacting with any of them. Both cities were satraps or provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire. Indeed, though Heraclitus’ thought can be compared to Egyptian and Indian thought to give it a wider context, it is clear that Heraclitus closely resembles Zoroastrianism, while giving it a very Indian like skepticism about the watery impermanent nature of any particular being or perception of being. Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to Indian Buddhism and the story of the Buddha. Both thinkers were ‘mythologized’ as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception. Was Heraclitus getting Indian thought through Zoroastrian Persia?
Another reason why famous: Heraclitus vs. his predecessors. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. All that we know is that things arise from the energy of the cosmic fire, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear.
Heraclitus even ascribed to the Fire-air-earth-water cosmology, but believed that the particular forms, the species of being that are produced by the cosmos, are chaotic and thus simply forms of life that cannot be boiled down to knowable essences or types. The doctrine can be stated famously, though these are not Heraclitus’ words, “Everything is in flux”.
The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent. The whole and the operation of the cosmos has an eternal shape to it, but the shapes that arise out of the cosmos are only temporary. This goes for laws, which Heraclitus have to be defended as if they were city laws. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, but in fact he is showing that human laws are impermanent like city walls. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any satrap of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain.
Heraclitus is important to the Christian tradition. If a primal speaking of Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. John reads: and the Logos/word was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke and light was separated from darkness. Speech and intention here are dividing or burning the cosmos into opposites by fire. Our minds do this on a smaller level in an imperfect way, explaining how the cosmos created our minds.
PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
Sextus is a mystery. He is supposed to have lived towards 200 CE, 700 years after Heraclitus. He is thought by scholars to have been from Alexandria Egypt. He might be Libyan, thus African, but it has been assumed that he was Greek living in Egypt or Rome. It is thought that he is a doctor because he mentions medical cases to show how sometimes things are good but then surprisingly bad in other cases or vice versa, but there is nothing that proves this.
Sextus is the first Pyrrhoian Skeptic, quite similar to the Jains. Agnosticism of all judgment and plurality of perspective and truth are staples for both. When Alexander fought his way to the border of India, to try to conquer the rich and fertile area, he brought the philosopher Pyrrho with him around 300 BCE. Pyrrho met with some ‘gymnosophists’ in the historian’s texts, and scholars argue whether these were Buddhists, Jains or if either existed yet at the time. Pyrrho witnessed the yoga and extreme penances of the sages, had discussions, then came home and refused to write anything or live in society. People would come to visit him on the edges of town, where he would argue that everything is true and not true, that every perspective is true but also false. His thinking sprouted a school in Alexandria Egypt, a great center of Greek, early Christian and later Muslim thought. We know of this exclusively through the writings of Sextus.
For ex: Sextus calls upon the ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ example used by Gautama and Aristotle, and then brings up many cases where one would be mistaken to draw the inference. The point is not that it can’t be drawn, but it can never be certain in a particular situation.
The Issue: IS has a temporary and eternal meaning, back and forth, like IS has a whole-part back and forth meaning. (Clinton, Rumsfeld vs. dealing with the real issue)
Pyrrho and Sextus, just like Heraclitus, DO believe in saying things (maybe not writing for Pyrrho), but they do not like saying or judging in the long run, just for short term situations.
Thus, they all believe in a ONE LOGOS, but are skeptical of judgment to FINALLY and COMPLETELY judge the actions and parts of the One.
Intro Philosophy Midterm Review
BCC Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: Eric Gerlach
10/13/2009
Review for Midterm
Shamanism: “One who knows”, common world culture of early tribal society, forms that appear in world religions, ecstatic experience as ‘standing outside’, initiation rites and ‘rebirth’, investigating problems and seeking visions of solutions, the All-Tree, the problem of the One and the Many, the problem of destiny after death, stories as transmission of knowledge
City State Priests & Egypt: Societies gather into larger societies and settle, authorities become traditional, specialization of experts and scholars, eternal stars of fire as order above, water as chaos below, air as ordering breath or communication, Egyptian wisdom texts show criticism of society and human behaviors, heart centered individual, warring state periods good for thought, polytheism to monotheism to abstract solar monotheism
Hinduism, Jainism & Buddhism: Three paths of worship (Bhakti devotion, Raja asceticism, Jnana scholarship), trinity of Brahma, Vishnu (salvation) and Shiva (destruction), multitude of gods who are yet are not these three, two types of afterlife (reincarnation and release of Nirvana), Vedas as multiple origin stories, Upanishads as philosophical ‘that is you’ inner meaning, Jain influence on Buddhism and Hinduism, Mahavira and the Tirthankaras, two principles of skepticism (non-one-endedness and postulation), practice of asceticism and austerities (fasting, postures, meditation), Jain all karma as negative and total release as joining the order of the cosmos, the Jain metaphor of the leaky boat (plugging and bailing), Buddhism concepts of Four Noble Truths, Doctrine of the Mean, Codependent Arising
Heraclitus: All is One/Fire/Cosmic Mind, all particular things are impermanent (even gods/planets), experts do not know much more than the common people, we are all apes to the gods, can’t step in the same river twice, perspective changing how things are
Plato: Parmenides over Heraclitus, Forms/Ideas as eternal models of things, the three parts of the soul (appetite, spirit and reason) corresponding to the three classes of the city (workers, police and philosophers), allegory of the cave
Confucianism: Mandate of Heaven as abstract monotheism, social order and rites (Li) as strength of society, study and civil service over meditation and nature of Daoism, criticism of the individual and equating others with oneself, right mind/intention over right body/action, love (Ren) as center of human and system, recognition of the lowest as oneself and self criticism, Neo-Confucianism as blend with Daoism and Buddhism
Daoism: Return to nature and stillness, seeing both sides of judgment, Yin and Yang symbol, influence on Chinese Buddhism and Zen, the great One/Way as nameless above all named 10,000 things, water-like in fluidity and getting everywhere, the wheel as both solid and empty together, Zhuan Zi and perspective, Cook Ting, all humans are ugly to minnows and deer, the Peng bird vs. dove and cicada
Instructor: Eric Gerlach
10/13/2009
Review for Midterm
Shamanism: “One who knows”, common world culture of early tribal society, forms that appear in world religions, ecstatic experience as ‘standing outside’, initiation rites and ‘rebirth’, investigating problems and seeking visions of solutions, the All-Tree, the problem of the One and the Many, the problem of destiny after death, stories as transmission of knowledge
City State Priests & Egypt: Societies gather into larger societies and settle, authorities become traditional, specialization of experts and scholars, eternal stars of fire as order above, water as chaos below, air as ordering breath or communication, Egyptian wisdom texts show criticism of society and human behaviors, heart centered individual, warring state periods good for thought, polytheism to monotheism to abstract solar monotheism
Hinduism, Jainism & Buddhism: Three paths of worship (Bhakti devotion, Raja asceticism, Jnana scholarship), trinity of Brahma, Vishnu (salvation) and Shiva (destruction), multitude of gods who are yet are not these three, two types of afterlife (reincarnation and release of Nirvana), Vedas as multiple origin stories, Upanishads as philosophical ‘that is you’ inner meaning, Jain influence on Buddhism and Hinduism, Mahavira and the Tirthankaras, two principles of skepticism (non-one-endedness and postulation), practice of asceticism and austerities (fasting, postures, meditation), Jain all karma as negative and total release as joining the order of the cosmos, the Jain metaphor of the leaky boat (plugging and bailing), Buddhism concepts of Four Noble Truths, Doctrine of the Mean, Codependent Arising
Heraclitus: All is One/Fire/Cosmic Mind, all particular things are impermanent (even gods/planets), experts do not know much more than the common people, we are all apes to the gods, can’t step in the same river twice, perspective changing how things are
Plato: Parmenides over Heraclitus, Forms/Ideas as eternal models of things, the three parts of the soul (appetite, spirit and reason) corresponding to the three classes of the city (workers, police and philosophers), allegory of the cave
Confucianism: Mandate of Heaven as abstract monotheism, social order and rites (Li) as strength of society, study and civil service over meditation and nature of Daoism, criticism of the individual and equating others with oneself, right mind/intention over right body/action, love (Ren) as center of human and system, recognition of the lowest as oneself and self criticism, Neo-Confucianism as blend with Daoism and Buddhism
Daoism: Return to nature and stillness, seeing both sides of judgment, Yin and Yang symbol, influence on Chinese Buddhism and Zen, the great One/Way as nameless above all named 10,000 things, water-like in fluidity and getting everywhere, the wheel as both solid and empty together, Zhuan Zi and perspective, Cook Ting, all humans are ugly to minnows and deer, the Peng bird vs. dove and cicada
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