Day 3870, a case.

Daily picture, My thoughts

A case for uncertainty and playing that we are certain.

Part 1

Descartes once asked himself what we can know for certain. He thought it was the thinking we do, and though that makes some sense, it also raises the question of who or what that “we” is that does the thinking. But “I think, therefore I am” is a useful starting point, because without thinking there would be little reflection and mostly awareness.

But I don’t want to debate Descartes’ philosophy; others are much better at that. I just like the idea of starting your philosophy from something you think is self-evident.

I always wondered how people can be so sure of themselves, or at least pretend to be. I still remember that when I was around 13 or 14, we were sometimes visited by young churchgoers who came to tell us that we did not come from monkeys but that God made us. I did not believe in God*, but that was not because I thought deeply about it, it was just not enforced on me. I do remember wondering how they could be so certain, while I and a lot of other kids in the class were not, or at least not bothered me about it.

I don’t talk to many religious people who take the word of their God seriously, but you don’t have to look far to see that many do. These people also know that there are thousands of different religions, and they must know that many who are as thorough as they are also believe firmly that they are right. You might assume that such knowledge would put some doubt in someone’s mind, but it is clear that it doesn’t.

We humans seem to have a hard time questioning our own beliefs. Is it even possible?

*You can replace the word with another, like your political taste, the football club you support, or your opinion about your neighbor.

Day 3862, Spinoza and me.

Daily picture, My thoughts

For many years now, I have had a big book by Spinoza called Ethics. It is written in a complicated way, with propositions, axioms, and definitions. It is philosophy in the form of an equation, you might say. I thought it might be interesting to feed some of my notes into a chatbot and have it present them using what is called the geometrical method, the way Spinoza writes in his book.

So you can read my thoughts, but in a form I could never produce myself at the moment. At the very least, it gives me hope that I can follow the way the book is structured, but it is still a lot of work.

Read his work here on Gutenberg.org

On Thought, Truth and Human Nature

An exercise in the geometrical method

Definitions

Definition I. By one’s own thought, I understand the way a person thinks, rather than the individual thoughts that occur to him.

Definition II. By common thought, I understand the ideas, values and conventions that a person inherits from the society in which he lives.

Definition III. By truth of one’s own, I understand a conviction that a person experiences as true, without this experience establishing its universal truth.

Axioms

Axiom I. No person chooses the circumstances into which he is born.

Axiom II. A person cannot think without being influenced by the world in which he lives.

Axiom III. The certainty with which something is believed does not determine whether it is true.

Axiom IV. Understanding a force that acts upon us does not necessarily free us from that force.

Axiom V. What humanity has created, humanity can, under different circumstances, create differently.

Proposition I

What a person considers his own thought necessarily contains common thought.

Demonstration.

By Axiom II, no person thinks independently of the world in which he lives. The language, knowledge and values through which he understands himself are already present before he begins to question them. Therefore, even what he experiences as his own way of thinking contains what he has inherited from others.

Scholium.

We may recognize this in other people more easily than in ourselves. Someone can understand why others think as they do and still believe that his own thinking is independent. Even the recognition of this contradiction does not free him from it.

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