Epistemologie Paper: Objectie tegen de Cartesiaanse Demon

Epistemologie Paper 

Stelling:  ''Het is niet noodzakelijk om een onderscheid te maken tussen de noumenale en de fenomenale wereld.'' 

·         Objectie:  

Het onderscheid tussen de fenomenale en noumenale wereld is met een goede reden gemaakt. In de antieke traditie was het verschil noodzakelijk om de kennisvoorwaardes te formuleren voor ons kenvermogen. De reikwijdte van ons kennen werd gelimiteerd tot de zogeheten ''fenomenale'' wereld. Dit was de wereld zoals die zich aan ons presenteerde, wanneer men gebruik maakte van diens zintuigen. De noumenale wereld is datgene wat in de Platoonse traditie als de ware werkelijkheid gepostuleerd werd. Dit was de werkelijkheid die onafhankelijk van de zintuigen bestond. De vraag die nu noodzakelijk gevraagd moet worden is deze: 

''Hoe kan men zeker zijn dat dit onderscheid ook redelijkerwijs gemaakt mag worden?'' 

Het onderscheid werd in de antieke traditie door Plato gemaakt. Het feit dat men in het particuliere het vermogen had om het abstractere en daarbij het volmaaktere te kennen, gaf genoeg steun om aan te nemen dat het bestaan van het abstracte ook bestaansrecht had die men kon kennen, omdat hij reeds gekend was. In de anamnesis (herinnering) kreeg het subject een Aha-Erlebnis, omdat er overeenstemming kwam tussen dat wat op particuliere wijze werd waargenomen en een bepaalde eidos (Idee of Vorm) dat in het subject besloten zat. Het was dus epistemisch noodzakelijk om te spreken van twee werkelijkheden om een weg te kunnen vormen naar het ware kennen.  

Het dubium over de zintuigen is dus geplaats. De ware werkelijkheid is tot op een bepaalde hoogte via de zintuigen kenbaar, maar voor echte kennis behoort men in contemplatie te gaan naar de begrippen die het fenomenale kenbaar maken. De vraag is wederom, hoe kan je opgesloten in je eigen ik, met enkel de zintuigen tot je beschikking, überhaupt tot zekere kennis komen over de noumenale wereld? Plato zou antwoorden dat men behoort na te denken met datgene dat even los staat van de materie als de transcendente begrippen, namelijk de rede.  

Echter, er zit een probleem in Plato’s Ideeënleer, die van te veel axioma's uitgaat, die men niet kan rechtvaardigen. Bijvoorbeeld, hoe neemt het particuliere deel aan het abstracte? Als de Ideeën intern in ons kennen besloten liggen, dan is er niet meer sprake van externe inwerking en is daarbij de voorwaarde voor een externe, abstracte werkelijkheid geëlimineerd. Aristoteles heeft de problemen verder uitgewerkt en opgelost door het kenvermogen te beperken tot datgene wat Plato ''de vergankelijke werkelijkheid'' zou noemen.  

De zoektocht naar een objectie schrijdt voort richting René Descartes. Aristoteles heeft veel problemen van de metafysica en epistemologie opgelost door het kenvermogen te verschuiven naar de materiële wereld en het daartoe te beperken. Echter, deze verandering van metafysisch wereldbeeld komt met een prijs. De axioma, die per definitie de grootste twijfel teweeg brengt, is juist die aanname, die überhaupt Aristoteles' kenwereld mogelijk maakt: de verheerlijking van de zintuigen.  

Descartes gaat als rationalist tegen dit empirisme in. Hij contempleert en komt tot een radicale conclusie, die de epistemologie deed veranderen. Volgens hem was het initieel onmogelijk zeker te zijn over wat dan ook. De meditaties brachten twijfel en vragen teweeg. Kan het zo zijn dat we dromen? Of wellicht bedrogen worden door een demon, die ons de werkelijkheid als rechtvaardig, maar onwaar doet toeschijnen? De enige toegang tot de werkelijkheid, die we hebben zijn de zintuigen. Er is immers niks wat ons in staat stelt om zeker te zijn dat ook die zintuigen niet ons bedriegen. Het is daarom meer dan noodzakelijk dat er een onderscheid wordt gemaakt tussen de noumenale en fenomenale wereld om te kunnen twijfelen. Doen we dat niet, dan laten we de optie open dat we wellicht wel tot kennis kunnen komen die te rechtvaardigen is, maar die buiten ons kenvermogen, volledig mis is. 

·          Antwoord:

De filosoof die ik moet aanhalen bij de synthese tussen het enerzijds rationele probleem van ons kenvermogen, gepostuleerd door Descartes en anderzijds de empiristische, zoals Aristoteles, is Immanuel Kant. De versmelting manifesteert zich in het idee dat twee zaken noodzakelijk zijn om van kennis te kunnen spreken, namelijk het verstand en de waarneming. Beide zijn even noodzakelijk om kennis überhaupt mogelijk te kunnen maken. In het verstand zit structuren, die voorwaardea vormen om de a posteriori kennis mogelijk te maken. Ruimte en tijd zijn bijvoorbeeld nodig voor iets om kenbaar te zijn aan het verstand. Kant refereert naar dergelijke voorwaardes voor kennis als de categorieën. De categorieën kenmerken zich verder hierin dat ze eigenschappen zijn van het verstand en niet van de noumenale wereld. De categorieën vormen de reikwijdte van ons kenvermogen; ze maken het mogelijk, dat we premièrement in staat zijn van kennis te spreken. Echter, juiste deze zelfde categorieën vormen op ambigue wijze tegelijkertijd de grens van ons kenvermogen. Alles wat buiten de categorieën valt kan niet gekend worden door het verstand. Op deze wijze is het verstand begrensd en beperkt tot de fenomenale aanblikken van de werkelijkheid. 

Enfin, het is cruciaal om in te zien dat kennis enkel bestaat in overeenstemming, niet als een ontologische waarheidsbegrip.

Of zoals hijzelf mooi formuleert in Kritik der reinen Vernunft:

Begriffe ohne Anschauung sind leer, Anschauung ohne Begriffe ist blind

We hebben dus aangenomen van Kant dat kennis beperkt is tot de overeenstemming van de werkelijkheid met het verstand en dat op deze wijze alles wat buiten het verstand valt, wat hij het Ding an Sich noemt, noodzakelijkerwijs niet gekend kan worden.

Is het nu mogelijk om een objectie te geven aan het dubium van Descartes? Zeker.

Kant heeft zekerheid weten te geven aan de zintuigen, terwijl hij tegelijkertijd de twijfel van Descartes meebrengt op elegante wijze.

Zeker, we kunnen nooit het Ding an Sich kennen, de optie is open dat we bedrogen worden. Het kan dat buiten het kenvermogen van het verstand en de werkelijkheid, de noumenale wereld een leugen is.

Echter, wat Kant wel duidelijk maakt is dat we voor zover het kenvermogen ons toelaat, we een bepaalde mate van kennis kunnen vergaren, namelijk die binnen de categorieën van het verstand vallen.

Hierdoor borrelt bij mij dan de vraag op, waarom eigenlijk het onderscheid tussen twee werkelijkheden maken? Anders dan Plato, is de scheiding van de werkelijkheden niet eentje die metafysisch bestaansrecht hebben. Kant en Descartes postuleren de mogelijkheid van een noumenale wereld enkel als concept om de reikwijdte van het kennen te kunnen begrijpen, niet als transcendente volmaakte werkelijkheid.

En wanneer dus Kant de hypothese heeft gesteld van de fenomenale wereld en de noumenale wereld en hij heeft daarbij het kennen beperkt tot de fenomenale wereld, enkel ervan uitgaand dat de noumenale bestaat uit allerlei Dingen an Sich, dan is de noumenale wereld enkel ondersteund door de redenering die uitgaat van de noodzaak van een dergelijke wereld, omdat er anders niks is wat ons fenomenaal kan toeschijnen. Als dat de reden is dat het onderscheid gemaakt moet worden tussen een conceptuele noumenale wereld en een tastbare en bovenal epistemisch kenbare ‘fenomenale’ wereld, dan lijkt het me meer dan rationeel om het kennen te beperken juist tot die fenomenale wereld, omdat de notie van een noumenale wereld enkel tot onnodige redundantie leidt. Niet omdat het alleen praktisch is, maar omdat het categoriale kenvermogen dat van ons dwingt. 

Essay on Freedom (Existentialism)

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Theme 5 - Ethics
‘All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible people, but there are no guilty ones.’’
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Whenever I think of Camus, I wonder what stops us all from committing suicide. After all, according to the existentialism, life has no meaning.
Life is always an intense battle between becoming someone you want to be and coming to consensus with whom you were in the past.
Thrown into the world without an essence and forced to use the world to your advantage as disadvantage to become who you want to be.
This paradox of existence is something that only a human has to undertake, because we have the fortune as misfortune of being able to reflect on who we were, who we are and who we want to be.
With this grand task that has to be carried out throughout our whole life, what exactly is this paradox I am speaking of?
The paradox I am speaking of is the paradox of freedom in our existence.
Every single one of us, no exceptions made, has been thrown into this world without our consent or our disagreement. We never had the choice to reflect on the world we are thrown in. Namely, for such a thing to take place it is necessary for us to be able to have a consciousness, that makes us take every step we are going to take in consideration and then ask itself the question: Do I or do I not want to be a part of this world, as this person in this environment?
And this isn’t the case. Consciousness and self-reflection can only take place the moment it can even out events to one another that take place in the subjective and physical world and to then take the conclusion whether its actions and the consequences of these actions appeal to it or not.
Which simply means, there was no I before the existence.

I can now state that we have been born completely freely, without any strings attached to us that swing us towards the path of life we are obligated to follow.
The paradox of existence is this: with every decision we take, we become less and less free.
With every observation and thought we encounter, we are filling ourselves with information and becoming less free. Less free in the sense, that it is difficult for us to begin from a total point zero and then work towards an alternative style of thinking and living.
The unfortunate part is, that we can’t blame the invisible strings for what we have become. We can’t blame our environment either.
After all, weren’t we thrown freely into the world to make any choice we want?
Sartre would be nodding yes, because you always had the choice to do something else; now that you made your current choice, it is necessary for you to take the consequences and live with it.
With that said, with every step we are taking we have become less and less free. We have become a slave to our own existence, because there is no escape and there is no one else to blame except for you.

This raises the next question: why don’t we all just commit suicide?
Life sounds difficult, it seems pointless and I have just shown you that we have no one else to blame except ourselves.
The answer I am going to give you is very simple.
Although many claim that suicide is an act of freedom, it is in my eyes an act of imprisoning yourself forever.
By committing suicide, you are not freeing yourself from this world.
No, you are taking away any possible chance of becoming another you. You are taking away your freedom of choice, how limited those choices may seem; because by being dead there is no chance that a person can realize and manifest himself in this world anymore.
This shows us that we have no choice but to exist.
And this is the grand paradox of being human and the freedom of choice.

Camus states: ‘’A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up.’’
-The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
With that said, he has made a select group of people who have this special mindset and they are willing to take any consequences that come out of their actions.
Suddenly though, he draws the line from this select group of people, to all the people that exist.
‘’There may be responsible people, but there are no guilty ones.’’
What does this say about his statement? I can only conclude that Camus assumes that every person on this planet thinks about every action he makes and is willing to accept the consequences that it brings.
That is not the case and I will explain why.
The moment we have been thrown into this world, we had nothing to work with. With that I mean, we had no moral structures, we didn’t even have the ability to speak. Is it possible to accept of a baby to take full responsibility of his actions, when there was nothing before his existence and almost no information after his existence?
Now let me extend that a bit more.
In our life, we never are able to predict all possible outcomes of every possible action in whole the world. Instead we merely narrow down, by past experience, the best possible action we can take at that moment without being one hundred percent sure of the outcome. We only assume the most plausible outcome possible.
That is why I used the baby as an example. We have nothing to work with at the beginning, but the more we live the more narrow our choice of actions become; this doesn’t mean that we can be more certain about the outcome with every year we age.
With that said, what Camus assumes is not something that is, but how it should be.
It is very important to make this distinction between something that is the case and something we think should be the case.
And unfortunately what is the case is the fact that we can’t take full responsibility of our actions.
However, as I have stated before, we can use the world to our advantage and make ourselves into something we want to be, with the unfortunate side effect of always being in risk of being guilty of immoral behavior.
Fortunately though we can narrow down this risk by learning the system of morality and using it to our advantage.
After a large period of time we have learned more and more and we will never be finished with learning, because there are always unpredictable situations that urge us to learn more about our morality and ourselves - although having learned enough to function properly in our society.

With that said, we have learned that behind every action lie consequences that we are responsible for.
However, I can’t make the claim that we aren’t guilty, because we are.
This merely means that with every immoral action that goes against the systems of morality, we learn where we can line the borders of our freedom.
And everyone that crosses that border has never understood the long and hard road that took us towards the border of the systems of morality.

The Meaning of Facing Death

The Meaning of Facing Death

‘’They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.’’

- Arthur Schopenhauer

I am often told by my closest friend that looking up at the sky can cause the most intense feelings.

It will make you feel small, insignificant, unimportant. As if you are just a speck of dust in a whole galaxy of stars.

On the other side, it can cause a strange sensational feeling of power. Knowing that the things, that may seem the most important to you, won’t matter in the long run.

This begs the question whether I should see my life as significant as I do or whether it is, like myself, a undefinable small accident caused by the universe itself.

Let me rephrase myself: is it courageous of me to think of my life as important as I do or am I really just replaceable?

And if so, how courageous can it be for me to end my life at any point I desire to?

To begin with, it is a fact that it has never been our personal choice to be born. Whether you enjoy life or despise it, you have always been placed on this earth without your own permission.

After all, how is it even possible for us to choose life? For something like that to take place, it is necessary to have consciousness and lots of experience to evaluate the value of your own life and to then decide whether it is worth living or not.

Knowing that this is impossible, this will lead us to us the conclusion that we are humans placed on the world without our own permission.

What the exact relation between a human and the world is, can be explained in two substations, namely consciousness and matter.

Consciousness is that which makes me aware of my own being and the matter is that which carries my consciousness.

The process that takes place between that, which takes place inside my subjective ability and that, which the worlds puts inside of me in the form of information, forms who I am.

I am therefore a series of processes going back and forth between my inner machine and the outside world.

There is one thing though that makes my consciousness a little bit different than the consciousness of an animal and that’s the fact that I am also self-aware.

With other words, I am a self-conscious being.

The fact that I am self-conscious does also mean that I am limited by my perception of reality and my subjective ability of judging that reality.

However, there are a few things that I can be certain about.

The first is that we will never be able to perceive something that is good on its own, because we are limited by ourselves to perceive that.

This consequently means that everything that is being labelled as good or wrong is in fact a judgment based on someone’s own interpretation of reality, rather than the real reality.

Even so, we are still social creatures.

So what we do is that we adapt our abstract concept of thinking into something that is valid and the most passable for every person in order to make our lives more liveable.

And because I have stated, that we live because of each other and grow up with one another, this raises the question when it is your own decision to commit suicide and when it is due to your environment that you have been driven to commit such an act.

Of course it is due to your environment that you are driven into such an act.

It is the same as any other act that isn’t based on satisfying the primary needs.

Your very own sub-consciousness has been filled with your environment from the moment you were born. There is no escaping of it.

This fact degenerates the human into a machine, that only gathers information and spits it out into its environment.

That is not what I am trying to say.

Surely the human is a machine, but it is not just a machine. It is more than a machine.

Unlike a machine, every human has the ability to dream and fantasize, to create a free space in which he can move freely and reason with himself before taking any harsh decisions.

And exactly this way of existing and being is what makes us more human than machine.

The fact that we can look at ourselves at the environment in such transcendent way and then do what seems right at that moment.

When a person with suicidal thoughts does exactly this, he is no longer a part of the world, but he has transcended that.

This may cause a trigger in which that person realizes that Death is an escape from the fusion between his consciousness and the world.

People who look at themselves in such a manner have long been mentally death.

They decide on that, which is their very own property.

Taking this last step is not brave nor cowardly.

Committing suicide is only the last chapter in their book of life, in which they take the last step to close it.

About the Everything in the Nothing (Metaphysics)

‘In this world which we enter, appearing from nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide.’

-Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (1978)


I felt rather delighted when I read the quote of Hannah Arendt, because there is nothing as subjective as metaphysics itself and the interpretation of it.
Neither of us can be wrong.
However neither of us can be right.
I will try to interpret the quote of Arendt from my own perspective and then try to extend this quote by adding some of my own philosophy into it.

The quote begins with the rather confusing words ‘In the world which we enter’.
That sentence alone has so much more meaning behind it than the 6 words you read, that I had to mention it separately.
We enter from somewhere in this world.
So there is another place above our observation from where we enter our current world.
Another place that is the big nowhere and nothing, which decides to throw us into our current world and then when it’s over, it takes us back to a nowhere.
What is Arendt actually trying to say that happens the moment we are thrown inside this world?
What do we gain the second we are born which we lacked before our birth?
To be born is the moment that human observation takes place.
The moment you come out of a nowhere and you suddenly experience everything.
I can only imagine that as a huge climax in which the senses experience perception.
Breathing for the first time after being inside the water for too long.
Breathing after being inside a nowhere for too long.

Her quote references to the Greek philosopher Epicures, who said this:
When we are, the death isn’t, when death is then we aren’t.
Death is the disappearance of our human senses.
When we die, those human sense die with us.
This means that we end up back inside the big black ocean of nothing and cease to experience every form of human senses.
Arendt says that being born and dying coincide, the only difference is that it takes place in another order.
And I have to give her right, subjectively speaking.
But that’s the whole point.
It is very subjective.

One thing that triggered me a lot is that Arendt made a difference between the world, which we enter and the world where we enter from.
She clearly states a world which we enter, which means we enter from another place: namely a nowhere.
A separation.
Objective and subjective.
Objectivity is the transcendent place that we cannot experience the moment we are born and we go back to the moment we die.
This is the place where no form of subjectivity exist.
Subjectivity is perspective in which we use human senses as means to process information we gain from the outside world which we then experience all individually in a unique way.
That is exactly the crucial point that I want to discuss.

And just like Arendt I believe in this separation.
Everything around us is the result of the human subjectivity and what the humans decide to do having this subjectivity.
And the most difficult part of subjectivity is the fact that it’s so unique.
So extremely unique that no other person can process the world the way you can process it.
It can even be problematic.
People can start having arguments due to this because they just don’t understand the world of one’s experience.
That’s what I want to bring across; be aware of your uniqueness and even embrace it.
But do know that due to being so unique, it is also very difficult to deal with subjectivity when you are confronted to understand another person’s perception.

So beginning by the begin.
What does it mean to be born?
Being born is exactly the separation in which the objective essence that exists in all of us is released into the world.
When that takes place, our objectivity is gone for the rest of our life until death.
Why is that?
Because we have been released from the transcendent into the worldly.
We have been put inside a complex thinking machine that always wears pink subjective glasses and experiences the world from his own perspective.
Leave the homo sapiens for what it is.
We are the homo subjectiva.

But going back to Arendt, can we even be sure that we come from a nowhere and disappear in a nowhere?
I can firmly say, I don’t know for sure.
Having my subjectivity as limit I can only use my unlimited fantasy as to how that objective world looks like.
The limit of my subjectivity can also mean the limit of how I experience world using my senses as means.
And this the subjectivity has layer over it of the education we have gained through life and the people we have met.
With other words, it is a big nowhere solely because our subjectivity doesn’t allow us to know for sure what the transcendent is.
But what gives me grip is the capacity to use the ratio, which is for me the closest form of gaining pure knowledge even though I’m sure that it still stained by my subjectivity.

What I noticed furthermore is that Arendt only quotes about being born and dying, she skips a big part I would like to discuss.
Namely life.
What does it mean to live knowing the theory I brought about earlier?
What is that one force that makes us want to keep going?
It’s something I would like to indicate with the term ‘Love’.
This term does not have the meaning we would add to it nowadays
Love it the undeniable urge to go back to the objective world.
And until that we live our lives with one goal and that is to experience our subjectivity to its fullest.
When we are thrown into this world we wear our subjective glasses from the very beginning until the very end.
This subjective view is being layered and twisted and turned by our environment, but never changed.
What subjectivity does is taking those experiences inside the big complex machine and then experience its very own and unique way.
Putting two people in exactly the same home and letting them grow up exactly the same way does not program them into robots who are copies of one another because they solely grew up in the same environment.
I am definitely not denying that our environment plays a huge part in who we become later.
Our environment gives us the options of showing different way of how to experience our subjectivity.
But it never changes the subjectivity we already have.
However, what plays an even bigger role is our perspective and what we decide to do with the data that we gain from the outside inside our complex machine.
That is exactly the point I everyone to be aware of.
Know that you are unique and try to understand that the other is.
Never make the foolish mistake of trying to put yourself in the shoes of another.
You simply can’t; there is always a big layer of subjectivity that denies us the possibility of seeing everything the same way.
The only solution would be pure logical thinking or ratio.
This comes closest to thinking in a transcendent manner; namely by analysing every little thing you think up and knowing that this is something you gained from your environment.
Or by throwing away all dogmas and prejudices you gained in all these years.
Only this way we can try to understand each other the best.
And if you don’t have the capacity to do so, try to embrace subjectivity on its own for what it is and leave the other to do the same.

The last point I will discuss is death.
When we die, all of these collective experiences come together into the big nothing (or objective world) and I by God do not know what happens there, but I can conclude one thing that we have in this world which does not exist in the objective world.
Subjectivity.
The capacity to experience life from a unique perspective.
The only thing that does is the absolute opposite of the objective world.
Experiencing ourselves and our uniqueness.

Concluding as Arendt said, we disappear into a nowhere.
And I fully agree on calling it a nowhere.
Losing the capacity of seeing the world from our own perspective gives us the opportunity to call it a nowhere, because that is exactly what it is in our eyes for whom nothing except the subjective world is known until death unites us.

On the Existence of Words (Metaphysics)

The fish trap exists because of the fish.  Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap.  The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit.  Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare.  Words exist because of meaning.  Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.  Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?  (~ Chuang  Tzu)

When I read the list of Serious Quotes for the first time, I found it rather curious to come across Chuang Tzu.

Mainly because he was the only Eastern name between all the Western names I read.

Never have I heard of him before, nor am I familiar with his works and his philosophy.

I thought to myself, how can I ever write an essay about him?

Firstly because I assume the original language was Chinese.

That’s where the problem already began. 

The real essence of a philosophical quote loses its value the moment it has been translated.

What I am reading right now in English, is a broken version of the original language.

The real essence of his thoughts have been lost in translation.

How can I even comment on a quote that has lost his real value and meaning?

It can easily be compared with Plato’s Dialogues.

The moment the original Greek is translated to English (or any other language for that matter), the originality and the real essence of the dialogues get lost.

Never can someone translate the Greek word pronèsis to its original meaning and content.

So my problem is, that language is a mean of a group of people to communicate.

Language is something subjective gained by empirical observation.

The words we use daily are the results of subjective and empirical observation of our environment.

I see my environment differently, the people who created the language I use today see it differently than Chuang Tzu did.

We can never fully understand the essence, because our words just are slightly different in subjectivity and observation of our reality.

The only logical thing for me would be to start learning Chinese to understand the essence of Chuang Tzu’s philosophy.

However since it’s obviously time consuming, I will continue my essay commenting on the content of the quote rather than the language or origin. 

I have stated before that I am not familiar with Eastern philosophy, my interpretation may differ from that of student who is, in fact, familiar with it.

This said, I will comment on the quote using my Western philosophy that I have gained until now, because after all that’s what I am familiar with.

I can already say that it’s a rather curious encounter of two different worlds coming together. 

Due to the lack of context can I never imagine in what circumstances Chuang Tzu has spoken these words.

The logic behind it is rather clear; something exists because of something else. When you have it, you can forget the means.

A philosophical quote that is rather easy to follow.

The slow and easy structure gives a nice example of what he means using daily objects as reference.

The fish trap exists because of the fish.  Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. 

It begins with an easy construction, using something the student or reader is familiar with so he or she doesn’t feel lost in Chuang Tzu’s philosophy right away.

The idea gets repeated again so the reader fully can associate with the thought, once again with something they’re familiar with and that is outside of themselves so it’s less abstract and easier to follow; namely a rabbit trap. 

With the previous two comparisons in their head it suddenly reaches its climax:

Words exist because of meaning.  Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. 

The similarity between the fish trap and words sounds so logical, because of the same structure used again, that it causes the reader to follow along with the conclusion:

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?

This is rather fascinating but also very confusing.

How can someone talk without words?

The reader goes back and forth.

Reads the lines again.

Compares the sentences.

Nevertheless the structure in both sentences causes the reader to think that Chuang Tzu is right, leaving the conclusion open to debate.

And this is where it gets interesting;

Chuang Tzu has left it at such an amazing cliffhanger that it causes the reader to think about it thoroughly.

If this was indeed his goal, he has reached it. 

It got me thinking.

How can these premises causes such a strange and still (so I thought at first) logical conclusion? 

Firstly,

The structure is so distracting that it takes the attention of the reader to the way it has been written, rather than the two totally different things being compared.

Looking at it thoroughly, and with that I mean only with your regard on the content and nothing else, the conclusion doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. 

I’ll expand on this.

In the quote means and goal are being compared.

The one is the means and it functions for a goal.

The fish trap exists because of the fish. 

The means is the fish trap.

The goal is the fish (or rather to catch fish).

Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap.

This is a very crucial sentence.

Take note that once you have gotten the fish you can forget the trap.

With other words:

Forgetting the trap has no further influence on the entity of the fish.

The same goes with the rabbit snare.

The interesting part begins when Chuang Tzu starts comparing it to words.

I’ll just use the same principal of analyzing the sentence.

Words exist because of meaning.   

The means are the words.

The goal is the meaning.

Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.

Referring to my past analysis, you can easily conclude that this sentence doesn’t make any sense.

The is no consistency with the previous statement made, which is sad because that’s the point of comparing two things.

Forgetting the words does have further influence on the meaning.

Why is that?

It’s stated in his conclusion.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him? 

Forgetting the means backfires the goal.

Forgetting the means does have further influence on the goal, because it damages the entity of the goal.

Forgetting words will stop the spread of meaning, which is what Chuang Tzu is trying to get across.

He is contradicting himself so horribly by comparing these sentences, especially since his conclusion proves how inconsistent the quote actually is.

But to be honest.

After I was done analyzing it, it struck me that I couldn’t possibly possess more logic than an Eastern philosopher.

I am speculating on the off chance that Chuang Tzu might be aware of this flaw.

Even so that he did it on purpose, with as only goal to make his statement seem simple yet very powerful and impressive at the same time.

If you put all the logic aside and solely look at what he is trying to say, you can easily conclude that what he is trying to bring across is a simple yet very powerful idea that is understandable for everyone who is trying to follow his philosophy.

The idea behind it is very simple.

Where can I find a man who has achieved so much in life, that he understands the full meaning behind every single word?

Let me grab back on the beginning of my essay. 

As I said before words and meaning are connected to language, which is something you can gain by experiencing it.

When you see a flower, you experience and acknowledge its existence.

The object is then named using empirical observation.

Keeping that in mind, we can all conclude that someone who knows the meaning behind every word, to the extent that he has according to Chuang Tzu forgotten the words itself, has experienced a lot in life.

And that is the most crucial point Chuang Tzu is trying to bring across.

One must try to experience a lot in life to the extent that he understands the meaning behind every single word. 

The Fault in Our School System (Ethics)

‘Non vitae sed scholae discimus.’

A pun on the famous Latin expression ‘non scholae sed vitae discimus’, which means that we do not learn the most important things by sitting in a classroom and listening to what the teacher has to tell, but that we as human beings only truly can gain knowledge by experiencing certain events that we want to know more about.

Seneca has made a pun by switching two words, namely vitae and scholae and with this play on words Seneca’s thoughts about the role that school plays in our society is shown.  

Let me first start by explaining how I interpret this quote.

Non vitae sed scholae discimus.

Meaning

We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life.

Seneca’s way of thinking was the total opposite of what was custom during that time. (I mean the period of the Roman Empire)

Seneca has switched the words to make his statement clear as to how much his environment has changed.

In his eyes we do not longer learn what is the right thing for ourselves to do in life.

We purely do whatever our teachers expect us to.

Basically, Seneca believes that society is based on whoever can shout the right answer in class without the learning process having any further result in the life of the relevant student.

Contrary to the previous belief that it is not important what we exactly learn at school, it is important to know how to apply the knowledge to our own life.

The things we used to learn were not given to us by our teachers, it was all solely self-discovery by experiencing every bit of knowledge.

Of course the teachers played a huge role in the process to gain this knowledge.

However, it was not important to be the best in class and do the best in class to be able to make the best of your own life.

Seneca is stating that this kind of self-discovery by experiencing the interesting things in life has been pushed aside.

It is all about learning what the school system expects us to answer.

Shout the right answer the loudest in the classroom.

We should do as is expected of us, if we want to aspire anything higher in life, because after all according to Seneca: society has taught us that we do not learn anything by experiencing itself.

After all the right answer is there, with your teacher. We should only learn that and simply repeat what we have been told.

Even though I do not know in what circumstances this quote was written, I can understand which direction Seneca is going with these kind of thoughts, because I observe the same kind of behavior in my own learning environment. (The fact that school comes before the self-development of the talents a person possess.)

I only think Seneca has missed a crucial point.

You see, Seneca states that not P but Q is the case. (We only learn for school and not for life.)

I rather think that these two, almost opposite seen, cases actually walk hand in hand during the life of a student.

In my eyes because of P à Q is possible. (Because of school we are able to experience life to its fullest.)

Seneca states that in order for one to take place (P) the other should be absent (Q).

We solely learn for the schoolroom, not for life.

If learning for the schoolroom is taking place, automatically the learning of life isn’t.

My opinion is that we will be able to experience life to its fullest with a proper education system.

Let me substantiate what I mean by this.

The reason we are in the classroom to begin with is because we see ourselves as people who have not experienced enough in life to fully be developed into our superego (=the person we want to be, opposite to who we are right now) and we don’t understand everything that we come across to.

We are still infants, who look at the world with big astonished eyes.

There is someone needed to help this infant and help him develop those potentials in which he excels.

This is the teacher who does not want his students to push their self-development aside and solely repeat after him.

This teacher is not denying their potential knowledge, this teacher is not trying to suppress the talents of his students in the suffocating classroom.

This teacher acknowledges the talents of his student and his purpose is to lead these students to the end of their learning journey, so they can become self-conscious people who will use the knowledge of the teacher to experience life to its fullest and thereby understand every event that befalls them.

This teacher adds meaning to the these experiences.

Therefor he should be seen as a companion, who travels behind the infant and helps him whenever this child is looking surprised at the big world, because he has potential to understand life but not the knowledge of how to develop these talents to its fullest and thereby experiencing life.

Thereby I believe that because of the schoolroom we are not shutting ourselves off.

Not at all.

We gain knowledge from people who have experienced everything we want to experience.

It is only logical to embrace this knowledge given to us as aid in our further journey what is known as life.

The question is, why is self-development so important?

Why should we gain experiences?

I see this as the most important thing in the ladder of life.

Next to the primary needs like water, food, shelter and secondary needs like family, friends and respect, the highest form of living, in my eyes, is the chance to be able to live in an environment where self-development is possible so we can know who the real me is the accept it and love it for who it is.

Even though I showed you earlier that there were a few points that I didn’t agree with, I can’t say that Seneca is fully wrong.

What I showed you earlier was, in my eyes, the ideal school system and I honestly don’t think our school system is that bad.

However it is slightly much more focused on getting high grades and passing classes.

I am not stating this as a bad thing, not at all actually.

There needs to be some kind of motivation in order to do the thing you should do.

In exchange you get recognition for your intelligence in the form of a grade.

This can make a person happy or rather self-satisfied, because, if done correctly, the student knows that this grade only tests him on his ability to understand what he wanted to understand and he passed it, therefor he has gained more knowledge and will have more experience in the rest of his life by using this gained knowledge.

Unfortunately this kind of behavior is lacking.

When a student gets bad grades, he or she is rather frustrated about the fact that he’ll get trouble with his environment than the fact that he didn’t learn as much from the class as he should have, because that is after all what should be the priority when you go to school.

Theoretically speaking things like cheating and fooling your teacher shouldn’t take place at all, just in order to achieve a high grade.

By doing this you’re forgetting the reason you’re going to school.

But it is understandable.

The classroom is full of anxious students, who know that their intelligence will only be recognized in the form of a grade, typed down in big black letters on their grade card.

I am not saying grades should be banned, it is an encouraging way for the students to show what they know.

However I think that method on which our school system is based emphasizes grades and repetitive behavior a lot more than the self-development of the students.

Achieving the opposite of what school is intended for, not self-development but exactly as Seneca stated.

Non vitae, sed scholae discere

Not learning for life, but for school.