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  Table of Contents for Philosophy Label Introduction To Philosophy Label (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) THE FIRST EXISTENTIALIST (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) DesCartes Deserves a Plaudit (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Materialist vs. Idealist (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) ILLUSION (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com) Illusion via Plato and Alchemy (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com)

  Introduction To Philosophy Label An often-quoted Socrates saying is “The unexamined life is not worth living”. As a young man, I thought of philosophy as a lot of meaningless conflicting speculations by long-bearded sages. But as I grew older, I was forced to face  some fundamental questions like, for example, that of the existentialists, “What does it mean? Why are we doing this?”. When my parents have both passed away, I see that I am the next in line, and then my children, and then their children. But to what ultimate end? I realized that Socrates was right. I began to examine life itself, with regard to the materialist-idealist dichotomy, DesCartes's fascinating “I think, therefore I am” argument. It addresses such questions as: What do I know for certain? This study of the nature of knowledge is called Epistemology. The study of the nature of reality is called Ontology. It considers questions such as: How do we define what is real? Is...

  THE FIRST EXISTENTIALIST Kierkegaard, in the 19 th century, was probably the first of the philosophers to emphasize the importance of the question, “What is the point of man’s life?” This fundamental question is one that some of us never confront, at least consciously. We simply take life at its face value and accept death without questioning. But for many others the question thrusts itself into consciousness, usually at some critical point in their life experiences. One may encounter a life-threatening illness, narrowly survive a potentially lethal accident, or suddenly become acutely aware of his own mortality on the death of one of his parents. At that point he may stop and ask, “Why are we going through this apparently meaningless cycle of infancy, learning, growing, working, marrying, having children to perpetuate the cycle, then facing death, and dying? Is there anything that I can do that will give this life meaning?” That point in his life i...

  DesCartes Deserves a Plaudit The study of the nature of existence is called “ontology”. We are especially interested in the nature of our own existence. DesCartes challenged conventional thinking on this issue and came up with a surprising conclusion. By way of introduction, I'll describe DesCartes's exploration of the problem of establishing the reality of his own body. He argues, “I think, therefore I am”. His reasoning is that he must exist as that thing that asks the question of his existence. He then argues that it is impossible to prove that that thing is a body. At first, it seems so simple. We know it exists because we see it, hear it, touch it, etc. But, following DesCartes's reasoning, those experiences don't prove anything. Why? Because it is the physical body itself that is providing the evidence – the seeing, hearing, etc. And therefore, that argument for the existence of the physical world is a circular argument - the physical body test...

  Materialist vs. Idealist There is a philosophical concept called “Idealism” which is opposed to “Materialism”, the view held by the vast majority of humans in western society. Here are brief definitions which I copied from an internet site on philosophy: “ Idealism is the belief that the mind and ideas is the primary structure of reality and that physical or material reality is secondary. Materialism is the opposite of Idealism and sees matter as the primary reality and all other things including thoughts as the product of interactions of matter.” It is difficult to have a meaningful dialogue between idealists and materialists because it is almost impossible to establish, as a starting point, anything on which the two agree. For example, if we ask the question, “Can matter generate an original thought?”, the materialist answers, “Of course, because thoughts are generated in the brain, which must be matter because there isn't anything else”. But t...

  ILLUSION In discussions of religion and philosophy the subject of reality will almost certainly enter at some point. The question, “What is real?” falls under the category of Ontology in philosophical circles. By its nature, it's closely related to the subject, “What is not real?”; which we will address in this post. The reason that we should be interested in this subject is that we want to avoid the mistake of devoting our lives to that which appears to be real but is not. The interactions between the real and unreal can strongly affect our lives. We'll address the question of reality from four viewpoints: Eastern religions, Christianity, Platonic philosophy, and alchemy. In the major Eastern mystical religions Hinduism and Buddhism the term Maya is normally used to refer to the ability of the physical senses to delude our minds into thinking that the sensations that they create in the brain represent a life of the spirit which periodically experiences a ki...

  Illusion via Plato and Alchemy In previous posts, we learned that DesCartes's proof of his existence led to the question of the nature of that existence, i.e., the Materialist/Idealist question. Then we found that the logical answer to this question is that of the Idealist: The true existence is that of the mind, or soul; and the life of the body has the nature of illusion. Then we saw that this concept of the illusory nature of the material world is not only compatible with the doctrine of Maya, or Illusion, in Eastern mystical religions, but also with Christianity. Here, we'll take a brief look at how this doctrine also relates to two other concepts: Plato's philosophy and alchemy. Plato is sometimes referred to as “The father of Idealism in philosophy”. For example, the “Allegory of the Cave” teaches the lesson of the illusory nature of the material world. This allegory concerns people in a cave who observ...