"The hearts of others." "People sometimes imagine a great, omnipotent mind called God. God could not be seen or touched, so it depended on whether one believed it or not. It was fine whether one believed it or not. This would not affect people's normal lives. However, the philosopher who liked to make a fuss raised this strange question: Do you really have reason to believe that other people have minds? How absurd this question sounds. Don't the people we deal with have hearts? This is our daily life. We can't say that the people we come into contact with are actually animals or machines, right?
However, the philosopher will tell you right away that he also completely believes that other people have a mind, but it is a bit difficult to prove this. We can't believe something for no reason. In other words, why don't we believe that a table and a frog have a mind? It seems that we have to find a way to prove that others have hearts.
First of all, it can be noted that tables, frogs, and other things do not look like people, and that people look like people like us. However, the similarities and differences in form were not very reliable proof. If humans were to create a robot that looked exactly like humans in every way, could we say that it had a mind like ours? Furthermore, the similarity in form could not lead to inevitable inferences, but it was only a hypothesis that seemed to make sense. Therefore, we need a stronger reason.
It wasn't hard to discover that because I had a mind, I could do certain actions unique to humans. Therefore, I can infer in reverse: Because they could observe other people's unique behavior, they had a mind. This inference seemed to be more powerful, but it was not enough to speculate on the existence of other people's minds. It was like speculating that there was a mastermind behind a certain event. This was not real proof. If the mind of another person was always like a hidden ghost, we would feel very unhappy.
We cannot perceive the minds of others as we perceive other things. The mind was not a thing. I can't even really feel my mind, I can only feel my thoughts and emotions. But my mind is easier to prove, as Descartes proved: If I try to doubt that I am thinking, then this doubt shows that I am indeed thinking. However, this method of proof could not be used to prove the heart of others.
Think about it. Under what circumstances would I have a true 'heart to heart' relationship with someone else? My mind and the mind of others can meet without hindrance?”"Also, we learn a lot from schools, books, and society, and we usually trust knowledge. Although knowledge was not wrong in most situations, it might be wrong in key areas because knowledge was not necessarily the truth. Some people might say that when knowledge is wrong, it is because there is not enough knowledge, but philosophers will tell you: The more knowledge one had, the more mistakes one would make.
Among all kinds of knowledge, the most trustworthy is scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge about the world of experience. Then we will use scientific knowledge as a model to examine it. The general structure of scientific knowledge was like this: First, he used the concept of causality to explain what caused what, and then he used the logic of induction to explain what would always cause what. Here, we encountered two problems: 1. The concept of causality had always been an unclear and unsolved problem. 2. Even if the concept of causality is clarified, it is difficult for us to overcome the confusion of induction. The problem of induction was proposed by the British philosopher Hume. Some phenomena often repeat themselves, so we want to summarize it as a universal law. However, the materials used to summarize are all things that happened in the past, which does not include the material of " deducing the future from the past." Therefore, Hume pointed out that it was completely an illusion to infer the future from the known facts. There was a little story about a turkey that was an inductionist. Based on its past daily experience, it came to the conclusion that it would eat at nine o'clock every morning. However, one day, it was wrong. The breeder did not send food at nine o'clock that day but killed it. Since science also relied on induction, then scientific knowledge was only reliable knowledge, not completely reliable truth.
Truth demands necessity. However, the glory of the truth lay in the fact that it could provide new information. It was indeed difficult to satisfy both of these requirements at the same time. There was a truth that had no light, and that was nonsense. There was nothing wrong with talking nonsense. For example, you could tell someone in the rain that it was raining now, or make a bet that it would rain or not tomorrow. But what was the use of this nonsense? We attach no importance to this truth.
However, there was a special kind of nonsense. Although it was dry and boring, it was extremely important. This was the logical truth or the pure form of thought. for example
"Two contradictory statements cannot both be true or false"(Law of contradiction and Law of excluded middle). Since this truth was purely formal, it was equivalent to a formula with universal application value, just like a2-b2=(a b)(a-b) in algebra. The reason why this kind of purely formal truth was not useless nonsense was that it had practical value and acted as a criterion.
Now we have seen that scientific knowledge can tell us some new discoveries, but it is not necessarily reliable. Although logical truths were reliable, they could not add new knowledge. Was there knowledge that had both advantages? Many philosophers thought so. Kant, the German philosopher, cited mathematics. Some philosophers believed that mathematics was not a perfect knowledge with both advantages. The reason was that mathematics was essentially " logical." However, there were many philosophers and mathematicians who believed that mathematics was perfect enough.
In addition to mathematics, people also hoped for a richer and perfect type of knowledge. Some philosophers (such as Kant) believed that philosophy could become this kind of knowledge. However, this was somewhat suspicious. There seemed to be no real evidence that philosophy had an unusual advantage. At least, philosophy was still imperfect.
You may have seen that it is not easy for a kind of knowledge to have the identity of truth. This means that there is very little truth, and that the things that actually manipulate our minds are a lot of unreliable knowledge and messy ideas. Interestingly, that unreliable knowledge had actually brought mankind countless successes.
25. Understanding and Believing
When ideals are shattered, people sometimes say: "I won't believe in anything in the future!”The true meaning of these words was to express his strong emotions, not to really believe in nothing. If a person really did not believe in anything, then he would quickly become a mental patient. Everyone had to believe in many things.
The religious philosopher Augustine had a famous saying: "People usually say that you can only believe if you understand. And I said, you can only understand if you believe me.”This could lead to some questions worth pondering. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't believe or not believe something for no reason. We always had to understand it first. We always had to know that it was true before we believed it. However, not everything that we believe in can be understood in advance. For example, religious beliefs are believed before they are understood. As some religious philosophers have pointed out, things like God, which are " incredible," cannot be understood first, because since they are " incredible," the only question left is whether to believe them or not. Then, could it be said that when we know something is true, we must believe it? And when we don't know if something is true, can we even believe it?
Let's say there's something, and for convenience's sake, let's use x to represent that thing. Now someone said," I don't know if x is real, but I'd rather believe in x." It seemed to make sense, because everyone had their own wishes, and everyone had the right to believe what they wanted to believe. However, if someone said," I don't know if x is true, but I believe in x," this statement would be a bit problematic. First of all, we can assume that this statement is true. Then this statement means that " I believe in x without any evidence."" I can also not believe in X without any evidence." If one moment he believed X without any evidence, and then he didn't believe it, things would be chaotic. Imagine if someone thought that Zhang San had stolen something without any evidence, and then thought that Zhang San didn't steal it without any evidence. This was obviously irresponsible behavior. Now let's consider a somewhat unusual statement: I know X is real, but I don't believe that X is real." For such a subtle problem, philosophers would have different views. Some would think that this statement was contradictory, while others would think that there was no contradiction and could lead to some profound conclusions. In short, this was not a problem that could be easily solved. Perhaps this bizarre statement was just an inappropriate way to express an important problem.
People tend to get philosophical questions wrong, don't they?”
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