"The Right and Wrong of Clay." " Now we have touched on the true meaning of the proposition that 'existence is perceived. This was how Klein thought about it. For me, the existence of an apple is nothing more than seeing its color, smelling its fragrance, touching its shape, warmth, softness, sweetness, and so on. Without these qualities, there would be no apple. The color, shape, fragrance, sweetness, softness, and so on are nothing more than my feelings. Without these qualities, my feelings would no longer have these qualities. Therefore, the existence of this apple and its perception by me are one thing. It is just a feeling that exists in my heart. Of course, I can imagine the existence of an apple that I have never seen, but I can only imagine it as my feelings. It was futile and meaningless to conclude that there was some kind of invisible apple's 'entity' outside of these feelings. This principle applies to everything I face, including other people I see. Therefore, for example, my father and mother are just some feelings in my heart. They don't exist independently outside my heart...
At this point, you will definitely shout, That's ridiculous. Were you born from your feelings? Yes, even Clay himself thought it was ridiculous. In order to avoid such an absurd conclusion, he had to assume that other than the mind of "me", there were other minds, even the mind of God. All existences were guaranteed to exist because they were perceived by the omnipresent mind of God. This assumption is obviously very forced, and we can ignore it. What was worth thinking about was the premise of Clay: We can only perceive the existence of things through our senses, so for us, the existence of things is inseparable from their perception. From this premise, could one deduce the conclusion that "existence is perceived"? There were actually two questions: First, is the existence of a thing the same as the existence of its perceivable nature? Was there an unperceivable "entity" behind these properties? In more philosophical terms, was there a "thing in itself" behind the phenomenon? Second, is the perceivable nature of things the same as the feeling of 'I'(the subject)? Is there any external phenomenon that causes me to feel these feelings outside of my feelings? In more philosophical terms, is there an object outside of the subject? Is there an objective object outside of consciousness? These were two different questions. For example, the first equation, which denied the existence of a "thing in itself" behind a phenomenon, was something that most philosophers today would agree with. However, he went on to argue for the second equation, which denied the existence of a phenomenon outside of "me", which most philosophers today would disagree with.
16. The story of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly
It was a very common phenomenon to have dreams when one was asleep. Normal people could distinguish between dreams and reality and would not confuse them. If someone dreamed that he had become a butterfly, and after waking up, he continued to treat himself as a butterfly, spreading his arms and flying between flowers and grass all day, everyone would think that he was crazy. However, more than 2,000 years ago, there was a Chinese philosopher named Zhuang Zhou. Once, he dreamed that he had become a butterfly. When he woke up, he asked a famous question:
"Did Zhuang Zhou dream that he had become a butterfly, or did the butterfly dream that he had become Zhuang Zhou?”
It seemed that no one regarded Zhuang Zhou as a madman because he raised this question. On the contrary, everyone recognized him as a great philosopher. Philosopher and lunatic were probably different from normal people, but they were different from normal people in different characteristics. Lunatics could not understand some of the most basic common sense, such as being unable to distinguish between dreams and reality like normal people, so they would encounter serious obstacles in their daily lives. Philosophers understood the meaning of common sense, but they were not satisfied with it like ordinary people. Instead, they wanted to get to the bottom of common sense that everyone took for granted and asked if it really made sense.
According to common sense, no matter what I dream of, a dream is just a dream. When I wake up from the dream, I will return to real life. This real life is definitely not a dream. However, the philosopher insisted on asking: How do you know that the former is a dream and the latter is not a dream? What makes you think you can differentiate between a dream and reality?
Don't underestimate this question. It's really not easy to answer. You might say that you can tell what is a dream and what is reality just by feeling. For example, the feeling in the dream was vague, but the feeling after waking up was clear. The things in the dream were often unpredictable and lacked logic, while the things in reality were more stable and organized. People would wake up from their dreams sooner or later, and when they woke up, they could not wake up again, and so on. However, philosophers will ask you, are your feelings really that reliable? Sometimes, you would have such a dream. It would feel so clear and vivid that you would not know that you were dreaming and would think that everything in the dream was real. How do you know, then, that the whole of your waking life isn't a dream of the same nature, only much longer? In fact, in most dreams, you really didn't know that you were dreaming. Only when you woke up did you realize that it was a dream. So, is it because you haven't woken up from the big dream that you don't know that your waking life is also a dream? Was there really a difference in principles between dreaming and waking?
In this way, although Zhuang Zhou's question seemed absurd, it was actually a very important philosophical question. The question was, does this phenomenal world that we perceive with our senses really exist? Zhuang Zhou was obviously suspicious. In his view, since we can feel that something that does not exist exists in our dreams, this proves that our feelings are very unreliable. Then, the existence of ourselves and the world around us that we feel when we are awake is also likely to be an illusion, an illusion like a dream.
17. Could the feeling prove the existence of the target?
In China and abroad, there were quite a few Zhe Tangbao who held similar views to Zhuang Zhou. They all believe that we can only perceive the existence of the world through our senses, and the senses are unreliable, so the world we feel is just an illusion. As for whether there was a real world that was different from the illusion behind the illusion, their opinions were divided. Some said yes, some said no, and some said they didn't know. There are also many philosophers who disagree with their views and believe that our feelings are basically reliable and can prove the existence of ourselves and the world around us. Take Zhuang Zhou's dream of a butterfly as an example. They would explain it this way: The reason why Zhuang Zhou dreamed that he had become a butterfly was because he had seen butterflies when he was awake. If he had never seen a butterfly, he would not have such a dream. Therefore, the real existence of Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly, as well as the fact that the real Zhuang Zhou had seen the real butterfly, was a prerequisite. This proved that there was a difference between waking up and dreaming. The feeling when waking up was basically reliable. Of course, this explanation would not convince Zhuang Zhou. He would definitely think that it was not an answer to D but an evasion of the question. In his opinion, the problem was precisely, when you see a butterfly, how do you know that you are not dreaming? Why did he say that seeing butterflies was the reason for dreaming about butterflies? Could it not be that the relation between clearer dreams and more vague dreams?
In daily life, people have a simple belief that the things we perceive through our senses are real. Without this belief, we cannot live normally, and philosophers are no exception. The above explanation actually took this simple belief as a starting point, and then used it to explain the phenomenon of dreaming of butterflies. In the history of philosophy, this kind of viewpoint from simple beliefs was called "simple realism" or "simple realism". However, in the eyes of a philosopher like Zhuang Zhou, this view was only at the level of common sense and was not worthy of being called philosophy, because philosophy was the basis for questioning common sense and simple beliefs. Therefore, if you are really interested in philosophy, you must face the question raised by Zhuang Zhou. You might not agree with him, but you must give a reason. You have to explain: How do we know that the phenomenon we perceive through our senses is real and not an illusion? Could the feeling itself provide this evidence? If not, was there any other evidence? As long as you seriously thought about these questions, regardless of whether you could find the final answer (very likely not), you were already doing philosophical thinking.”
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