- Show: Philosophize This!
- It seems likely that there is an "absolute truth" about each individual facet of everything that exists - some blanket code about everything that is, the truth.
- It's what truth is and what makes it "true" when viewing it through the lens of the human that is the tough question. We're all viewing the same scenes in-front of us, but we're all viewing it through different filters and vantage points.
- We might have to be willing to accept that as humans we can't arrive at an absolute truth, and that it isn't a function of our existence, and we might not have the equipment to find the truth.
- It also depends on what you believe in
- Evolution suggests that since we evolved from monkeys, our brains aren't designed to understand the fabric of space and time, but simple to socialize and reproduce.
- But as "spiritual beings" programmed into this body by God or some creator, maybe he didn't put us here to understand everything, but to follow a certain set of behavioral restrictions and to be judged.
- This makes the truth a really subjective term: people come to their own conclusions and think of things in terms of "their truths".
- People don't always agree on truths, evidently. Someone arrives at what he sees as the absolute truth and then uses that truth as the basis for subjugating entire groups of people, committing mass genocide and even trying to take over the world.
- But what's scarier is that most of these truths, at the time they were arrived at, seemed to be based on sound logic.
- Philosophers have focussed on that question: what is truth and what is the proper method to arrive at it?
- The entire middle-ages, when it comes to philosophy, is distinguished by a heightened focus on logic, and finding the truth.
- The three islamic thinkers and their different approaches still relate to modern times in some unique way.
- Before Avicenna, two cultures clashed (almost like tectonic plates), over a long period of time - the newly created Muslim empire in the 7th century, and the large region of Iran, Iraq and Syria.
- The city of Baghdad, the capital city of the newly founded Muslim empire.
- Truth for the Muslim empire was legitimized by the sword.
- If you were living under the control of the Persian empire, and the Muslims conquered you, you had two choices: convert to Islam or pay an extremely high tax that most people couldn't afford.
- How do you command the front lines of this culture war that is going on simultaneously?
- Could the though of the area, thought based around truth being arrived through reason be reconciled with truth based on fulfillment of prophecy, the truth given to us by God? Is it even possible to reconcile the two?
- And for the Muslim empire, the question is: what is the best way to deal with this problem?
- Forcefully take over cultural control of the area? Find a common ground between the two so they can coexist?
- Philosophers tried to reconcile these two very different ways of looking at the truth to coexist: and this is what defines this "before Avicenna" stage where they mostly translated work by Greek philosophers into Arabic.
- But it wasn't just translating - they wrote commentaries on the earlier philosophers trying to explain to the people of their time.
- Al Farabi
- Avicenna didn't understand Aristotle's metaphysics until Al Farabi wrote commentary on it - this was because of the giant cultural divide between the Greeks and the Arabs.
Aristotle expressed the cannons of logic by means of words customary among the people of his language And used examples that were familiar to and current among the people of his day. but since the explanations of the people of the Arabic language are not customary to the people of Greece and the examples of the people of this time are different from the examples familiar to he Greeks, the points that Aristotle intended to clarify by means of these examples have become unclear to and not understood by the people of our time.
- Al Farabi realized that Aristotle was communicating it through a lot of necessary limitations, and the language and culture of his days. He wasn't thinking of future generations. Al Farabi updated the examples, and explained it in a way that people actually cared about.
- Al Farabi was a peacemaker between the two cultures, and this is what defines the philosophy of the time period.
- Avicenna didn't understand Aristotle's metaphysics until Al Farabi wrote commentary on it - this was because of the giant cultural divide between the Greeks and the Arabs.
- Al Kindi
- He spent a lot of his time trying to create a full philosophical system that fused together the best parts of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, who as we know are typically seen as too different to ever be fused together.
- The most important peacemaking venture he went on was making the case that using philosophy to search for the truth and arriving at the truth through fulfillment of prophecy are not mutually exclusive things.
Indeed the human art which is highest in degree and most noble in rank is the art of philosophy. the definition of which is the true knowledge of things insofar as is possible for man.
- Al Kindi believed that we can't expect to arrive at ALL truth through our ability to reason. We should use reason to find out as much as we can and then add on divine knowledge given to us through prophets to fill in the gaps.
- At the end of the day, the most important thing is the truth, not our feelings about it, nor the looks of the person bringing you the truth.
We ought not to be ashamed of appreciating the truth and of acquiring it wherever it comes from even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. For the seeker of truth, nothing takes precedence over the truth. The status of no one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennoble all.
- One search for truth that almost everybody goes through in modern times at some level, is trying to find where we fit in the spectrum of modern politics - politics isn't interested in the truth, or in ennobling us all. They would never acknowledge it if science discovered that the other side was absolutely correct.
- So, it was the translations and commentaries by people like Al Kindi and Al Farabi that led to a great thinker like Avicenna.
- Al Ghazali
Consequently as i drew near the age of adolescence, the bonds of mere authority ceased to hold me and inherited beliefs lost their grip upon me, for i saw that christian youths always grew up to be christian, Jewish youths to be Jews and Muslim youths to be Muslims. My inmost being was moved to discover what this original nature really was and what the beliefs derived from the authority of parents and teachers really were. And also to make distinctions among the authority based opinions and in distinguishing between the true and false in them. Therefore i said within myself, to begin with, what i am looking for is knowledge of what things really are so i must undoubtedly try to find what knowledge really is.
- "Authority based opinions": people follow authorities without questioning it.
- These figures are usually right, but not always.
- What should truth be based on? What can we know for certain?
- The only things we can know for certain are things that are so true that it's impossible for anyone to even cause a doubt in your mind. Things that are so true they are practically self-evident.
- ^ How do we arrive at anything that is self-evident?
- He concludes: there are only two things we can be certain about: sense perceptions and necessary truths.
- Sense perceptions: [[Maya and the concept of perception]]
- Necessary truths: things that are the case, because it's essence makes it so. It's necessary that a square has four sides.
- How can I be sure that I am not dreaming? How can I ever be sure that I won't exist in a realm where necessary truths no longer apply?
Is my reliance on sense perception and my trust on the soundness of necessary truths of the same kind as my previous trust in the beliefs i had merely taken over from others? And as the trust most men have in the results of thinking? Or is it a justified trust that is in no danger of being betrayed or destroyed.
- This lead him to skepticism about everything for 10 years: affected his physical health. But he found the fundamental flaw in the way he was thinking that cursed him.
Faith in prophecy is to acknowledge the existence of a sphere beyond reason; into this sphere an eye penetrates whereby man apprehends special objects of apprehension. From these, reason is excluded in the same way as the hearing is excluded from apprehending colours and sight from apprehending sounds and all the senses from apprehending the objects of reason
- In summary, we are humans with limitations - we can't know everything through reason alone to come to conclusions. We need the prophets to tell us the truth. When you're using reason to arrive at conclusions, you're never experiencing the truth first hand.
What a difference between knowing the definition of health together with its causes, and being healthy.
- There's a difference between knowing a lot about something and actually experiencing it: you can never think your way to arriving at the conclusions that the prophets laid out, it is futile to even try.
- Accept on faith that the things the prophets said are true and once you do, it will become clear that it is the truth because this first hand experience is much more powerful.
- My thoughts: I'm not sure how much I believe this, and how this still relates to modern times. This is a big dilemma - understanding how what the prophets said still hold good, and whether to believe them as ultimate truths without questioning it. Like how it could be a "fundamental truth" that all non-Muslims will go to hell, etc
- Accept on faith that the things the prophets said are true and once you do, it will become clear that it is the truth because this first hand experience is much more powerful.
- These other philosophers claim to be free from the shackles of authority baed opinions, but fall into another new cell block - the confines of only reason to arrive at the truth.
- Maybe human reason in itself is incapable of grasping certain elements of the truth, maybe the only way to know them is to accept them as truth first, and then look around and see the effects.
- But this is a dangerous thing: Human beings are good at mistaking correlation with causality.
- If you accept something on faith first, you're relying on your own judgment to make accurate correlations and that's something we've proven we're not very good at.
- Al Ghazali talked about "the incoherence of philosophers" and Averroes talks about the "incoherence of incoherence"
- Averroes
- A time when the relationship between religion and philosophy in the east could be symbolized as one. It was way beyond finding some alternative way of looking at older philosophy and finding a way it is compatible with Islam. Now Islam had it's own philosophy.
- After studying for centuries what everyone else had to say, they now knew who they agreed with and who they didn't.
- He didn't think either religion or philosophy was a useless way to arrive at truth, he just thought they specialized in different areas. Some things philosophy is better at, some things religion is better at.
- Philosophy should appreciate religion because there is no way people could dedicate their lives to thinking about stuff it wasn't for the civil order that religion provides. Not everybody is intellectually capable of understanding philosophy, or of grasping certain concepts, so what religion does is provide an easily digestible version of the truth - which they should accept on faith - because they are never going to arrive at those truths through reason
The religions are, according to the philosophers, obligatory, since they lead towards wisdom in a way universal to all human beings, philosophy only leads a certain number of people to the knowledge of intellectual happiness, and they therefore have to learn wisdom, whereas religions seek the instruction of the masses generally, he goes on, since the existence of the learned class is only perfected and its full happiness attained by participation with the class of the masses, the general doctrine is also obligatory for the existence and life of this special class
Further, he is under obligation to choose the best religion of his period, even when they are all equally true for him, and he must believe that the best will be abrogated by the introduction of a still better
- I don't think most people are incapable of understanding philosophy - but we know more about human psychology and genetics. Most people aren't incapable, but rather perhaps unwilling.
- Knowing that, if people are born into a world where they have a choice, the ethical doctrine that is right in front of them, or the ethical doctrine arrived at through hundreds of hours of contemplation weighing the pros and cons of each individual virtue, which path can we expect most people to take?
- If the only difference between the person who is honest after being told to and honest after weighing out pros and cons themselves, is that one person attributes all the good in their life to a supernatural god reaching his hand down and blessing them for doing things right, and the other person attributes all the good to being a natural byproduct of living virtuously, I wonder, and Averroes would wonder too, why there is a significant group of people that think religion as an institution should be abolished.
- Are there things we cannot prove with reason alone, that aren't in the slightest bit magical, that every day whether we realize it or not, we accept them on faith?
- A time when the relationship between religion and philosophy in the east could be symbolized as one. It was way beyond finding some alternative way of looking at older philosophy and finding a way it is compatible with Islam. Now Islam had it's own philosophy.