A Philosopher's Ruminations

Psychologism conflates a genetic account of the acquisition of concepts with the truth of those concepts. In other words, it regards how we come to consider something as true as an explanation of the truth of the belief. This reduction of epistemology to psychology depends on an ontological reduction of the object of thought to the underlying psychological process of thinking. The account is irremediably circular, as can be seen in Hume’s psychologistic reduction of the relation of cause and effect. According to Hume, the philosophical relation of cause and effect is reducible to a natural relation consisting of the feelings of facility in moving from one idea to another and vivacity that compels the mind to believe that something is present to consciousness. Consider a person who regularly sees smoke wherever there is fire without any counterexamples. This leads him to associate the two together and regard one as the cause and the other as the effect. The source of the idea does not ...

  LOVE AND RELATIONSHIP In the following passage we find JK linking thought, identification and possessiveness, the sense of me-mine that is at the root of all conflict: “It is thought that is breeding violence – my house, my property, my wife, my husband, my country, my God, my belief, which is utter nonsense. Who is doing this, creating this everlasting ‘me’ opposed to the rest? Who is doing it? Education, society, the establishment, the church are all doing it, because I am part of all that.” “Thought must inevitably divide; look what has happened. Thought says ‘Nationalism is pretty rotten, it has led to all kinds of war and mischief, let us have brotherhood, let us be united’. So thought forms a league of nations or United Nations, but thought is still operating separatively and maintaining separation: you who are an Italian, you keep your Italian sovereignty and so on. Talk about brotherhood and yet keep separate, which is hypocrisy; that is a function of thought to pla...

  You love something when that something gives meaning to your life. And if I may say so philosophy is the most meaningful activity of life. Without philosophy who are we? We get a job to survive in the world, have kids, make money that we would never really get to use and the same routine in and out of office goes on for years until we grow weak and our infirmity prevents further activity. That is when we stop and start thinking what was the meaning of all this. Only when we realize we are mortal and things may end soon for us that we begin to take stock of life to see how our life has been. The problem is all our life we have done something for the sake of gaining something else. But we have not done anything for the sake of itself. When we turn back we realize that our most happiest period has been our childhood where we have no achievements to show for yet we were happy. Philosophy is meaningful because it breaks us from a mechanical pattern - it allows you to be more than just...

  Philosophy is love for wisdom and this love is fulfilled in the mode of contemplation or meditation. To contemplate one has to withdraw from the realm of facts, don’t take it in the wrong sense that facts do not matter to a philosopher, what I mean by this is, in the contemplative mode facts acquire a different significance altogether than the one they have within the practical mode. In the practical mode, there are facts and theories to explain those facts which are incriminated, as if in a court of law, on the basis of whether or not they accurately represent facts or not, in physics for instance a theory is regarded as correct to an extent it allows correct predictions or more accurate observations i.e. there is a set criteria to   follow   to regard a theory as valid but the philosopher is interested in the norm or the criteria itself due to which something comes to be regarded as valid. For philosophy it is not so much the particular results of a science that matte...

  Three Objections To Philosophy And Reply Objection 1 : Philosophy is impractical. What is meant by impracticality? It means one that philosophy has no relevance for our daily life and two it is devoid of practical significance i.e. it is theoretical and lacks practical application. Reply: First the charge of irrelevance. The objection presupposes that the only thing meaningful in life is something that is tangible or can be measured or in other words has a price. We act in order to achieve our goals and select appropriate means for that purpose. Philosophy too says that its goal is wisdom but of what use is wisdom. Does it solve our problems regarding food, clothing and shelter? Does it help to solve our problems when people in authority oppress us? To this my reply is first life is not a profit and loss statement; basic necessities are important but there are more valuable things in life than that like friendship, relationships — love a parent has for his child or a child’...