EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third part of a series of postings by the author discussing the philosophical mind/matter issue in semi-popular style. As the language is not very formal on the whole, those readers who are not used to formal philosophy should not be scared away by a few unavoidable special terms. And what is more important, this discussion provides a metaphysical basis for an accurate comprehension of the author’s and, more extensively, of the New Legalist’s discussions on political, economic and cultural matters.
THE TEXT
3.0. Return to Eastern Philosophy: Negation of philosophical realism (实在论) and its extensions in various fields of academic thought
Philosophical realism has extended from ontology and epistemology to various fields in natural and social sciences. Here are the major issues:
3-1. Philosophical Categories – Space, Time, & Causality: From Substantialism (Real Existence) to Relativism (Relative Perception)
These categories are based on the view of all things as substantial, or real, or things-in-themselves, each having a nature of its own that is independent of any perceiver’s senses. Since all the things are substantial, there must be SPACE for them to be located in. Since things-in-themselves are perceived to be changing, then occurs the sense of “before” and ”now” -- hence the concept of TIME. When different things in different spaces repeatedly present a similar pattern of relatedness in their changes through time, it gives rise to the idea of association between CAUSE and EFFECT. Just imagine yourself to be a tiny little droplet of water vapor lost in a vast expanse of thick fog with no sense of separateness from the environment, and then there would be no such concepts as SPACE, TIME, or causality at all.
Moreover, our intuitive sense of the space as having three (instead of two or four etc.) dimensions also depends on the view of our own living body, the perceiver, as something substantial. If one tries to jump up, he will drop down right away -- UP and DOWN make up one dimension; One can only see things in front, not those behind one’s back without turning round – hence the FRONT-BACK dimension; Our body is symmetrical – then the third dimension of RIGHT-LEFT. Just imagine yourself as a round ball with the dimensionless center point as your sole sensor, floating high without any sense of the existence of the earth or any other celestial bodies, would there be any concept of three, or any other number of, dimensions?
Without a sense of differentiation between “substantial” things, there would be no concept of either space or time. The following experience may be familiar to everyone: If one has had a very sound sleep without awareness of anything around him, even of his own body, then on waking up he would feel he has just slept for a short while though the clock shows it has been quite a few hours. But if one has slept badly, tossing and turning restlessly in bed and being aware all the time of himself, the quilts, the bed, the room, etc., he would feel the time dragging on too slowly. It shows that the sense of time is inseparable from that of things around us as really differentiable “substances”.
Such is also the case with the concept of causality. People may wonder if Buddhists are consistent when they talk about the “insubstantiality” of all things and yet at the same time about the consequences (“effects”) of a person’s actions (“cause”) that will determine his fate in his future life (karma). This author thinks that these two Buddhist ideas, if correctly understood, are not inconsistent, because the cause-effect relation can be interpreted on two different levels: On the metaphysical-ontological level, all things emerge as a result of coming together of causes and conditions (the philosophically realistic discourse used as an expedient “finger”) and therefore have no nature of their own, or no substance for human beings to hold onto (the “moon”, or the ultimate truth); and on the practical-educational level, the idea of karma is meant as an expediency to inhibit evil (i.e., clinging to selfish desires) and encourage good (i.e., being merciful to all living creatures). Obviously, the two interpretations about cause and effect are mutually complementary in aiming at one goal. In a word, there should be no confusion between the expedient “finger” of apparently realistic discourse and the ontological “moon” of the indescribable ultimate reality.
As a matter of fact, if we rigidly mistook the intuitive 3-dimentional space as “objective reality”, there would not have emerged the 4-dimensional time-space in Einstein’s relativity theory, nor the still later talk of 10- or even 26-dimensional space. Though still using the realistic term of “space”, the relativity theory was actually the beginning of deconstruction of the realistic conception of space. Besides, doubts about the linear way of thinking regarding time and causality have also been emerging in the fields of science and philosophy.
All in all, space, time and causality are all relative existences dependent on human consciousness, not absolute substantial realities.
3-2. Philosophical Theory of Knowledge (1): From Materialism-Idealism Divide to Mind-Matter Interaction
Materialists mistake the human-perceived world as “objective reality”, and the sole reality, independent of human consciousness, thus excluding other possibilities that are really independent of human consciousness. Obviously, this is nothing but anthropocentric idealism.
Another form of idealism is seeing the human-perceived world as a product of a certain “objective spirit” independent of human consciousness, but actually such “objective spirit” is merely an externalized embodiment of human consciousness, which, among other forms, usually appears in human form (such as the Christian God). Hence, in the final analysis, it also traces back to the human mind as the primary source of everything. This is the case with all forms of idealism, no matter whether it is “subjective” or “objective”.
Theistic religions are typical forms of objective idealism. If the “god” worshipped by people is an embodiment, a symbol, of some noble value or “objective spirit”, such as universal love, equality, mercifulness or benevolence, such a belief might play a positive role under certain historical conditions in helping in a certain degree purify and elevate people’s souls and change the society for the better. But on the other hand, if the god is a spirit that is floating above, that is, outside of and thus unrelated to, all existence and accordingly not well defined and yet still speaking the human language, then it can be easily distorted or falsified by some social forces in pursuit of their selfish interests and consequentially become harmful to the society by poisoning people’s minds, for instance, sanctifying wars of plunder in the name of a certain “God” punishing other believers or non-believers.
In a word, just like mind and matter, materialism and idealism are the two inseparable sides of a coin. As to “dialectical materialism”, while a step closer to truth than “mechanical materialism”, it still smacks of mechanicalness so long as it differentiates between matter as “primary” and mind as “secondary”. However, its recognition of the “reaction” of mind on matter is an acknowledgment of the interaction between mind and matter, which marks a step forward in human consciousness towards viewing mind and matter as one. Besides, what is also worth notice, 20th-century Western phenomenology and hermeneutics may also contribute to a deeper understanding of how the structure of human consciousness defines what it is conscious of, i.e., to the deconstruction of philosophical realism and the return to MindMatter-as-one worldview.
3-3. Philosophical Theory of Knowledge (2): From Scientism to Deconstructionism
In a sense, it is necessary and beneficial to favor materialism, especially dialectic materialism, against idealism so as to guard against and overcome subjective one-sidedness and gain more nearly correct knowlege of things around us so far as our limited mental structure allows, or to see the world more “scientifically”. However, it would be a new kind of superstition, called “scientism”, to depend on positivist science as the sole effective way to know about the world and worship it as the highest accomplishment of the human mind and as the supreme judge for all human activities, including such mental and spiritual endeavors as philosophic inquiries and religious practices. This blind worship has actually assumed the status of a new religion for today’s world and has been blocking the other path leading towards an intuitive understanding of the Supreme Way, or the Dao, through direct contemplation side by side with abstract reasoning. Just because modern science has lost touch with the world of existence as an integrated whole, highly developed as it is today, it has failed so far to help alleviate poverty, or stop wars, or reverse the deteriorating process of the ecological environment, etc., but has on the contrary become an instrument for a handful of greedy and selfish people to engender such evil things. Even if science makes it possible to send men into space and colonize other planets, it will just turn those other planets into a second, third…Earth, if human beings do not change their way of thinking as represented by the mainstream ideology today.
Fortunately, more and more people are coming to realize the serious harmfulness of scientism. Post-modern Western deconstructionism, among other schools of thought, represents a backlash against it and the beginning of return to the tradition of direct perception of the Supreme Way. Human happiness can be achieved step by step only through repeated efforts at bridging the gap between the human-perceived world and the transcendental chaos, between self and non-self, between the internal mind and external things, between knowing and doing, and between ideological construction and deconstruction.
3-4. Philosophical Methodology (1): From Formal Logic to Fuzzy Logic: From the Classic to a New “Law of Non-Contradiction”
According to philosophical realism, everything has a nature of its own and therefore what is black is black and what is white is white, i.e., either white or black but never both black and white at the same time. This is the most fundamental law of formal logic – the law of non-contradiction (or briefly called the law of contradiction). Undoubtedly, this law is valid and should be followed under certain given conditions. The attached “given conditions” implies that the law is only relatively valid. That is because in real life there are numerous cases of mutual overlapping, infiltration and transformation between black and white happening all the time. Social laws are supposed to make the clearest demarcations between right and wrong or black and white but are still not without so-called “grey areas”. Just as the Chinese traditional Taiji Yin-Yang Twin Fish Icon shows, there is always white in black and black in white, white turning into black and black into white (see illustration in “Traditional Chinese Culture…”). That may explain why there has appeared “fuzzy logic”. According to the latter, a statement can be partially true and partially false, or in other words, “both white and black at the same time” may not represent a contradiction. Hence the law of non-contradiction in an opposite sense. The two kinds of logic are both contradictory and complementary to each other at the same time. The law of non-contradiction in two opposite senses is itself a typical case of “both white and black at the same time”. If sticking to one sense only under all conditions and rigidly believing in formal logic as the sole valid way of thinking, no one would be able to go far enough without stumbling into pitfalls of fallacy.
3-5. Philosophical Methodology (2): From Self-Contained Substances to Dynamic Relatedness as Focus of Attention
It is often necessary, not always betraying a substantialist point of view, to temporarily disregard some of the relatedness of the object of study to other things or to assume in a relative sense that it has a nature of its own. What is essential about substantialism is to stop contented at a view of the object’s static structure or partial appearance at a given moment, and taking the conclusion made on conditions of the above-said “temporary disregard” and “relative assumption” as ultimately, absolutely and wholly true, instead of keeping observing incessantly the ever-going on variations in its properties, appearances and structure as related to all the endlessly changing situations and conditions inside and outside the object, so as never to stop revising previous cognitions, which are necessarily never perfectly true.
A typical example of focusing on dynamic relatedness of things is the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Aspects (五行. Note:“aspect” instead of “element” should be the more appropriate translation here since the latter just betrays an atomistic-substantialist misinterpretation). Yin vs. Yang represents the mutually generating and counteracting relations between all things, which are occurring everywhere and all the time. While Europe has its own theory of dialectics, the Five Aspects theory is characteristic of the Chinese tradition, the “five” representing the four phases in the alternate rise and fall of Yin and Yang plus the Yin-Yang dynamic unity as one whole that plays the role of Yin or Yang on a higher level. As opposed to the substantialist way of looking at existence as a heap of fundamental elements (such as Democritus’ atomism, the “four element” theories in ancient Greece and ancient India, and some Chinese scholars’ interpretation of the Five Aspects as “five fundamental elements”), the relationship involved in this “4 + 1” should be taken as the basic pattern for viewing all phenomena on and across all levels.
Besides, the reason why mathematics has been proclaimed as the king of all sciences is just because it disregards the qualitative specifications of things but instead focuses on the quantitative relations inside and outside of them, using numbers and geometric figures to conceal all the “substantial realities” behind them. In other words, mathematics is a typical science of relations and, just because of that, it can be put at the service of all other sciences.
The names of the “Five Aspects” and the Eight Diagrams stemming from the Yin-Yang theory in Chinese culture and the numbers and geometric figures in mathematics are all symbols, or special kinds of languages. As a matter of fact, the languages people use in daily life are also symbols. In the West, there is a sociological school of thought called symbolic interactionism, which says that the meanings of things as represented by language symbols originate in interactions between the people who use such symbols, not in the things themselves. Obviously, this is also a theory of dynamic relations as opposed to substantialist ones. All the various kinds of symbols mentioned above are but representations of various kinds of relations between people or things in interaction
The difference between the view of dynamic relatedness and that of substances can also be illustrated by the following mathematical brainteaser: There are three elder brothers and three younger brothers in a room. How many persons are there in all? If you do not pause to think, you may quickly answer “Six”. But if you are quick to realize that any two of them might be a pair of elder and younger brothers, you will answer “Three”. Both answers might be right. The first answer takes the word “brother” as representing a substantial entity, the same as “person” (something like a “particle”); hence 3+3=6. But actually, the word “brother” as a symbol represents a social relation (something like a “wave” in the theory of light); hence 3+3=3. The first answer reflects a substantialist view while the second one of “dynamic relatedness”. The latter does not exclude or cancel out but includes the former. But if one limits himself to the former view, then he would not be able to reach any higher level of cognition he is potentially able to or could even slip into quagmires of errors, e.g., neglecting the possibility of other relations among the “six” of them.
3-6. (To be continued)
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