Wednesday, October 13, 2021

The Undeserved Deification Of Historical Philosophers

Literally anyone who simply tries sincerely and without making assumptions could discover a host of philosophical facts or at least think of several issues or concepts just by using reason.  In other words, there is hardly anything conceptually inaccessible to the masses about logical facts like the self-evidence of axioms, the impossibility of consciousness itself being illusory, or the impossibility of knowing if an object one visually perceives truly exists or not.  These are actually rather basic facts despite being abstract and of extreme epistemological and metaphysical significance.  It is just that most people neither care about truth in a thorough sense nor try very hard to think about reality without constantly looking for validation or prompting from others.

Ironically, I have yet to find a single historical philosopher who specifically addresses to a slight extent logical axioms as self-evident foundational truths that are absolutely certain, as most, if not all, such philosophers focused on other things even if some of those issues naturally overlap with the topic of logical axioms.  Not all of the examples I gave are even recognized by most popular philosophers in history or academia except vaguely, or they are not given the prominence in worldviews and conversations their nature calls for.  Still, they are fitting examples of logical facts and philosophical issues that are utterly foundational and accessible to any being at all that has the power to reflect, which is only possible if that being grasps the laws of logic even if they do not think about them directly or rationally.

Only a true fool would either deny that logical axioms and one's own existence are objective truths--or deny that anyone can understand them by simply attempting to, no matter how many people may or may not have done the same or talked about doing so.  As an analogy, the first person to specifically think about gravity in an abstract or empirical way (which would emphasize different aspects of gravity), something that is nowhere near as important as the absolute certainty of foundational things like the truth of logical axioms and one's own existence, would have been the first to explicitly ponder such a thing, but it is not as if no one could have easily contemplated gravity with or without that other person having done so.  Even the very existence of that person is unnecessary!  Anyone at all who wants and tries to think about gravity could think of at least some specific conceptual and empirical aspects of the matter.

Coming to truths because they are true, looking to nothing outside of reason except where certain experiences are necessary to give ammunition for looking to reason, is always more important than needlessly praising other people who have already discovered things that every single person needs to realize if they are to have dedicated almost any sincere thought to understanding reality.  Those who do not care about understanding reality are indifferent towards the one thing that would legitimize their pursuits and beliefs: being on the right side of the truth.  If every person would genuinely try, it would be impossible for them to forever fail to grasp the self-verifying nature of at least deductive reasoning and the fact that they are having conscious experiences.  Anyone who believes that only a handful of elite thinkers could or would discover such basic (but immensely important) truths is delusional.

No comments:

Post a Comment