This is again, not about a book, rather continuing a previous philosophy rant I posted a few days ago. Apologies for the seemingly random subject matter.
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Paradoxical philosophy - part two.
On Knowing.
Experience with an activity is that which gives you perspective, to view the same activity in a different plane, and a totally different context thus leading you to see things in it, that the amateur cannot. At the same time, experience takes away the newness about an activity, probably causing boredom. These two reactions coexist, therefore making one wonder what knowing something really means. Does it heighten? Or does it deamplify? Is for instance, a basketball game more exciting to the seasoned fan, than to the newbie? The seasoned fan sees things that the newbie cannot. But the newbie can get far more excited about the initial limited things he understands.
Add the fact that everything, including the activity itself, is constantly in a state of change. The activity can be anything, a game, a tree, or a human being.
Knowing something, means nothing in itself. You delude yourself in thinking that you know something. That includes everything you have ever learnt. This delusion is necessary, because by itself, without self attached labels, nothing can ever mean anything, including parents, including cupboards. Some delusions are later recognised, for instance, the delusion that the earth was flat. But some never are, and never can be. This causes problems to this very philosophy. Knowledge is a function of perception. Perception is a function of expectation. And in fitting manner, expectation is a function of knowledge.
If one has to reduce everything seen and thought, including abstract notions and qualities, then one must sooner or later face the fact, that nothing is known for certain, and its quite unlikely, that it can ever be. All your understanding about confidence, about pain, about expectation, about ambition, and even about time, are probably just a set of context-sensitive notions, not really true or right in any other sense. In fact, getting something right in your own context itself is difficult enough.
Trying to understand what, say, ambition means, is readily possible under the attached labels you have stored it under, in your own mind, as a result of a number of inputs, including the media, including other lives, including opinions. But externally, these opinions and media, mean nothing. Consequently, even thinking that you understand something, is probably a necessary delusion.
But this philosophy has a huge problem. Take the above statement ''thinking that you understand, is a delusion''. Well, is ''thinking that, thinking that you understand, a delusion too?'' If what it says is correct, then it itself is subject to the same principle, and hence, the writer himself can never be sure of his understanding of the very topics he is trying to write about. Here comes the paradox. If I cannot communicate, how can I communicate the fact that I cannot communicate? If I cannot understand, how can I understand that I do not understand? This requires transcendence, something that is an impossibility. Assuming we understand impossibility. Which we say we cannot, since we say we cannot understand anything in its totality.
At this point, everything is a mess. All our carefully formed logical derivatives break down, simply because subjecting them themselves to their principles, causes huge paradoxes. Using the mind in understanding the mind. Black appearing on black.
Why then is this not reflected in our mathematics? That is because of axioms in mathematics that tell you to take things for granted without questioning them. Axioms in our real lives, can be termed beliefs. And when you question those, you may find there is no real validity, but neither is there cause to disbelieve them either.
But back to the original question, how does one solve the paradox? If one says, we will never understand and that we understand that fact, we are back to the paradox. The paradox refuses to leave, regardless of what choice we choose to view it as. Cause and effect crops up everywhere.
Trying to solve this paradox, firstly one should realise that everything you see and experience is a brain process, and the brain does not really see what is out there, but only what it has receptors for. This has been realised a long time ago.This applies to all your senses. So we try to formulate a consistent model based on consistent but totally incomplete data, perhaps that causes all the paradoxes.
Secondly, one must realise that understanding does not imply communication. It is very likely that if you understand something, you cannot communicate this in any known means of communication, including that overrated medium, language. It is well known that language uses axioms too, and explaining something, in terms of something else is what we consider understanding it. Labels do not imply understanding though.
For instance, we may label the act of procreation as fertilization, and imply that we understand it, though having no idea about a reality beyond labels. We may label the attraction between objects in the universe as gravity, and feel we understand it, but the ''gravity'' label still tells us nothing. It may answer the ''what'' but the ''why'' of it is left unanswered, and answering ''what'' does not imply understanding. ''Why'' implies understanding, but then we are left trying to explain the cause of the cause, of the cause, and infinity brings back the very paradox we are using infinity to explain.
Perhaps the reason we are left with the paradox again, that we have not really understood what 'understanding' is. But if that is so, then we never can. Because we do not have the tool, to build the same tool.
So does this lead anywhere? More importantly, can it? That is like asking, does your life mean anything? The answer, is a personal assumption defying explanation. Is it much better to go through life without thinking about anything beyond our immediate needs, both physical and mental? Because analysing something immediately opens up a pandora's box of immensely ununderstandable labels.
Why does this immediately cause discerning realization that everyone is an island, in a very real sense? Why does it sadden? Why do you feel bad that you can share no feeling, that you can only label it as something, and pass on the label, leaving someone else, to understand your feeling, as he or she understands that label. Do you really think ''happy'' brings the same mental processes in everybody? Does a needle prick feel the same to everybody?
Here, let us consider a point. Were this as true as the above paragraph implies, then perhaps it wouldnt have remained an unknown. Such things cannot be hidden. If what I see as black, you see as yellow, sooner or later, somehow, it will be known. There are too many other labels each label is attached to, to exist in isolation and to be cuckooned in a shroud of anonymity.
Why does this give you hope? Analyse that!
