Tag: philosophy

“If you did then how would you know you didn’t?”

One reason I decided to study philosophy at an academic level—the reason I suspect Wittgenstein would appreciate most—is that I found I couldn’t stop thinking. There were moments that the Buddhist/Dharmic (and I can’t say a word like that without my raised-in-the-‘90s brain interjecting “yoga flame!”) ideal of clearing my mind was achievable and desirable, such as in moments of crippling self-doubt, but, as much as I wanted those moments to stop, I wanted more that I should continue, that I should not let the venomous thoughts and feelings swallow me whole, that I should think my way through them. Thinking was and remains a useful pastime that I cannot help doing. It only made sense that I should apply whatever talents I had for it to the recorded thoughts of the great minds from the ancient, medieval, or contemporary world. It was through my schooling that I was introduced to the analytic and continental schools of philosophy inquiry. So as not to overwhelm you with digressions, I shall make understanding the difference between the two a sub-topic for another day, but it will suffice and oversimplify to say that the former is more purely scientific and the latter artistic. I have been trained more thoroughly in the former, but my preference by far is the latter.

The portion of my mind trained in the analytic tradition sees this question simply as a kind of absurd paradox. While I am not skilled enough to formulate the question in formal logic, I know the basic structure would be something like, “If x, then how would you know not-x?” The easiest way to answer this is to disregard the human experience of sentences, by which I mean all one need do is to chop off the antecedent in the conditional, as the truth value thereof will be the same even if all that is addressed is the consequent. It is then a simple epistemological question that will be answered differently by rationalists, empiricists, and Kantian lambs who will soon serve as my dinner.

That isn’t very fun, though, is it?

No, indeed, and it’s only half-right.

It is an epistemological question cloaked in an absurd paradox, to be sure, but it is only by taking into consideration the antecedent, the head we chopped off, that the question can be answered thoroughly. Curiously, a thorough answer is quite short:

“If you did then how would you know you didn’t?”

Whatever way you would otherwise know you didn’t.

Now, I’m about as hardcore a skeptic as they come, especially where epistemology is concerned. The senses are not wholly reliable, reason is not wholly reliable, and the two acting in concert can be a death trap. I’m a stickler about certainty, and certainty is a concept relying to whatever degree on objectivity, which I do not believe exists. This is all to say I am in no way the best person to ask. That said, there are certainly rationalists and empiricists and Kantian lambs who will read these words and they will answer according to their methodology, regardless of any epistemology that I might propose. The easiest part is that there is no verb attached to the question, so anything can be supplied.

For example:

“If you made, how would you know you made not?”

Let us expand:

“If you did make, how would you know you did not make?”

Simply:

You probably would not, provided there was no alarm set up to alert you that you had not made.

Back to the original, this time as dialogue:

“If you did then how would you know you didn’t?”

“I would know I didn’t if there were a wire tripped to let me know I didn’t once I hadn’t done, but I did. Relax.”

With care,

~ Grigori

“Is water wet?”

Please indulge me in a bit of fantasy.

There is a bench in front of you. On it is a sign: “WET PAINT.” Having been alive for a reasonable amount of time, you understand that you are not witnessing a bench screaming the words “wet” and “paint” at you for no reason, but quite obviously a warning for anybody passing by who would otherwise wish to sit there that, were that body to take a load off on that bench, the fine linens and operatic pants with which that body is undoubtedly clothed would be ruined by the paint that has not yet dried. Why is this important? Well, it’s not, but it does hint that there’s a distinction worth making between being wet and being dry.

If water is wet, water can be dry. What is dry water? It is an oxymoron. Ergo, water—liquid, really—is the agent by which a substance is made wet.

There is one caveat: dry ice is real. Use that information as you will.

With care,

~ Grigori

“What’s the difference between a duck?”

In a word, the difference between a duck is: substance. That’s the word philosophers used back in the time before the dinosaurs to say that something was there. Elon Musk eventually came along and gifted us humans with jetpacks and flamethrowers and we all joined forces to melt the dinosaurs’ faces off. It was then that the philosophers had a change of heart and decided “matter” was better, cleaner, or at least less pretentious as a way to describe the same stuff referred to by “substance.” The decision was objected to by all the usual suspects, including those two or three philosophers who had intended to count both anti-matter and that chthonic weirdness that was most definitely NOT matter they had discovered just a few days before among That Which Should be Studied, but they decided to keep their mouths shut upon remembering that they’d told no one and now here we are.

Analytic philosophy tends to approach language in a formulaic and mathematical fashion. It’s the kind of thinking one might expect from a man whose intent is to simplify language as much as possible so as to maintain clarity to the utmost degree. If objective reality—that which would be left remaining, were all human experience to be removed—is in some basic sense static and unchanging, many of the problems in philosophy may very well be due to misunderstandings and the lack of clarity in the language being used. I happen to think this approach is fundamentally mistaken in a number of ways, but it is worth engaging in such methodologies to see what these undeniably brilliant philosophers concluded AND for the purpose of answering a question such as this.

Within mathematics, the directive to simplify equations often results in numbers being added together, subtracted from each other, or otherwise consolidated. For example, before simplification, an equation might read:

10+4x+7y+0=43

For the purpose of illustrating the way I see and interpret the original question, I will translate the alphanumeric equation using words used in common language as opposed to those usually confined to mathematics, such as “plus” and “are”:

“Ten and four X and seven Y and nothing are forty-three.”

The simplified alphanumeric equation would be:

4x+7y=33

Translated:

“Four X and seven Y are thirty-three.”

I bolded “and nothing” in the translated equation before simplification and removed it in the simplified translation to illustrate the superfluous nature of such phrases in mathematics. Using analytic philosophy’s mathematical approach to language, the question I see is: “What’s the difference between a duck and nothing?” It is merely simplified. The only other possible answer as I see it is to get the nothing that comes from subtracting a duck from itself or comparing/contrasting the duck to that which is not there in between it, and “nothing” isn’t at all an interesting point to make, is it?

With care,

~ Grigori

“How many toes do you have and why?”

When asked about toes—this occurs much more often than you might think—I am reminded again of the way Martin Heidegger discussed the human perception of the hammer. He says more or less that we focus our thoughts on what it is the hammer is fixing rather than focusing on the hammer itself until or unless the hammer is broken and only then do we really see the hammer for the thatthere (I’m careful here not to say Dasein or use the word “object” simply because it wouldn’t be proper) it is. This comes to mind because I so often neglect my poor toes in my own thoughts unless something has gone wrong. It I stub one of them, if my boxers flip inside-out as I’m shaking it off my foot because it hooked my big toe, if I’m popping the joints, if any one of them snags some corner of the sock I’m putting on, I think of them and then they are nothing but a collection of tiny nuisances.

I am a human male. I suffered no birth defects that would affect my toes and I suffered no accident that would delete any of my digits from my body. I therefore have ten toes that help me balance and walk and dance, that let me wiggle them with joy even while giving it no thought at all, that help me do yoga and pushups, that remind me of my apely ancestors. I am grateful for them.

With care,

~ Grigori

“In the beginning was the Word…”

By the end, you will all know so many of my little secrets.

In the spring of 2016, I graduated from a prestigious university with a degree in philosophy. Armed with critical thinking skills, an imagination, and a solid grasp of the English language, I went out, fought off barbarians and oddly-aggressive oysters, and conquered the known world!

What do you mean, you don’t believe me?

I jest, of course—there is no such thing as an oddly-aggressive oyster.

The schooling I enjoyed in order to earn my degree helped me reexamine my biases, my sense of self, the way I approached writing and music, and much more that I’m sure will come out later. What it did not do—what I did not expect it to do—was provide a clear and profitable path for a career outside law. That path is not mine to tread. While I did find employment, and my employer was duly impressed by my credentials, I have not since graduating put to good use what talents I have, what training I received. I intend to remedy that with this site.

Offering absurd questions answers more serious than they would appear to deserve is not the only way to showcase creative writing and philosophical talent, but it’s my way. The more absurd a question is, the greater my opportunity to see how I might make sense of it. The point for now is simply for me to enjoy myself while I make evident what talents I have in pursuit of whatever greater philosophical endeavors may come along.

Stick around! Watch me explore perilous thought-caves so I can dig up and revitalize dead ideas for our mutual amusement! Watch me fall down rabbit holes surely populated by saber-toothed rodents! I’ll make you laugh! Perhaps I just did!

With care,

~ Grigori