Logic of Being
Structure of our language depends on the way our mind functions. Our mind functions in a way that is suitable for our existence in this world. This suitable way of thinking, we learnt through our experiences in this world. We don't think it viable to unite contradictory ideals in our thought that is why we believe in the law of non-contradiction. We do not want to remain ignorant of any thing that is why we have created an answer to each and every question. For instance God as an answer to the question regarding the principle cause behind all causes.
Metaphysicians gave this cause the name God and attributed all sorts of positive adjectives to this logical construction. He is the necessary Being, the un-moved mover, Causa Sui, Summum Bonum etc. While attributing all sorts of positive attributes to this concept God, metaphysicians did some thing illogical. Nietzsche says, "Causa sui is the rape of logic. 'They committed a logical fallacy that influenced all the coming generations of metaphysicians. However, in recent times thought pattern changed and man learned to live amidst uncertainty.
This new daring attitude gave man the ability to restrict his knowledge within the limits of his experience’. Man learned how to base his knowledge on his experience alone. Human experience however is a highly diversified thing. It is devoid, and simultaneously, full of logical necessities. It is both rational and irrational; it is both logical and illogical. It can be any thing. It is certain and uncertain simultaneously. It tells us about change and it tells us about permanence.
This varied phenomenon of human experience, since it moulds and fashions our thoughts and our mind, also generates our language. The contradictory nature of human experience is fashioning -forth new languages different from all previous languages and underlying thinking attitudes. It is giving a new form to our language by adding some thing to it on every passing moment. And more than this it is creating a new logic, a new set of categories. It is defining our concepts anew in different terms. It is teaching us logic of uncertainties. In fact our experience has told us that instead of God man himself is that necessary being. For man is a necessity and not a mere chance.
We know things because there is some thing permanent in things that we know. Our new logic does not consider it as a necessary fact. We know things despite the fact that there is nothing permanent in them. A man borne and dies and during the time elapsed between his death and life every thing changes .Each and every aspect of his being undergoes change, yet we remember that person as a particular person who remains self same. Is it not a logical fallacy on our part? But we are bound to commit this mistake because we can not do otherwise. We have to believe that the person who is known to us as a certain Mr. A continues to exist as Mr. A through out his life span. We can't believe otherwise though we know that the unchanging element is missing in the being of Mr A.Mr A changes instantaneously and that’s why does not qualify as a proper object of knowledge according to our age old Platonic definition of being.
Now let us consider two important facts that are involved in the constitution of a person 'A'. First of all his appearance that undergoes changes. Then the kind of experience that we have when we encounter Mr A, or the kind of experience that Mr A undergoes when he encounters his own self in a particular situation. Among these two facts the first one undergoes changes, the second one repeats itself.
Permanence of an object is to be redefined as a repetition of certain set of attributes. In humans it is repetition of a certain kind of experiences. I am what I am because I experience this world in a certain way peculiar to myself .I know myself because of the kind of experience that I always have while operating or acting in this world. My existence is my experience in this world. I encounter things in my own way, a way which never changes, which remains self same .This self same experience is a kind of returning of myself to myself. I return to myself after every experience after every wayfaring, after each adventure. That is why my permanence is my experience.
What is death then? Death is some thing alien to me or to any other person. One experiences death as others' death and as one's own potential. One experiences death as a future possibility and as a phenomenon that marks an end to every thing. Death is a complete end that gives a sense of finitude to our being. My death is a potential state when I will cease to experience myself as myself, when I will not experience things the way I am accustomed to experience.
I learned about this phenomenon called death while experiencing other's death .There is an immediate deduction involved in this knowledge. I deduced death; I inferred it, while looking at others' death. And what in fact I learnt was the reality that a certain person ceased to exist the way he had existed during his life time. That I can no more experience him the way I used to experience him in his life time. Neither that person himself can experience his being as he did in his life time. Death is the end of experience. It is the end of the substance; it is the end of the permanence.
Death educates us about change; death gives us an awareness of time. It is time that separates non -being from being. It is time that separates life from death. Time is the distance yet to be traveled. But is this distance unknown to us? Do we not know what will happen next? We know the end of the time and we know what entity ends at the end of the time. The entity that ends with death is our own being and our being is our experience. And this experience is known to us, it is our identity. That is why we know what is there to come. We know each and every detail of our future. Our future is not unknown to us. It is in time that our experience is going to repeat itself despite all apparent changes.
Time gives us room for experiencing ourselves. It displays this world and tells us about the order of things. It makes cause and effect possible. It tells us that there possibly is a permanent pattern behind things which we know and count this knowing as our knowledge about things .Though this pattern is permanent, it is not necessarily so. It can be otherwise and we know this fact well. For time renders change to every thing and no pattern can continue to maintain a selfsame existence. Every thing is bound to change. There is a great uncertainty in this world .No one knows what will happen next in the world of things. So we experience certainty in ourselves but we face uncertainty in the world of things. I am what I am and I will be like this till I exist, but things are changing and in the realm of things change is a rule.
Thus change pertains to the outer world and it is the ruling principle in external reality. This change is not infinite. Change is finite .Possible states are finite. The possibilities of becoming are not infinite. An object can change to acquire certain forms and the number of these possibilities is finite. A planet can acquire a certain number of forms after going through a change and their number is finite. Possibilities are finite in number, but it is difficult to say which possibility will come first and which one will come last. We can not tell the order in which change can possibly occur; this is the meaning of uncertainty and indeterminism.
We can not say any thing about the order of the things or the order in which things are likely to occur. It does not mean that we know for sure that we are unable to say any thing about the order of things. Perhaps we may be able to do so in a certain way unknown to us. Perhaps there is a certain logic that can tell us about the order of the things or to guess this order to a certain degree of accuracy. But right now we know nothing but our experience. We are habitual of experiencing a self same pattern. But we don't know the logic by which a certain event always precedes a certain event. Why a cause A always comes before an effect B. Why A and B are related to each other. Cause and effect relationship is merely a convention; it indicates that we can not say any thing about the relationship of an event A with its effect B.
Since we don't know the exact relationship between a cause A and its effects B, therefore we finish any further discourse on this issue by saying that A and B are connected to each other as cause and effect. That A precedes B in the order of events. But there is a certain logic behind the phenomenon of event A always preceding even B. There can be logic beyond cause and effect. In fact logic begins when we further elaborate the relationship between cause and effect.
An event A of which an event B is the effect may have been followed by any other event .But it was followed by event B .Is there any role that circumstances and conditions played in this occurrence? May be there is a role that conditions play in all such circumstances but that role again is unknown to us. We don't know the exact constitution of reality. We don't know how things are mathematically configurated. There should be a mathematical order in things. World of things must and should follow a mathematical principle, though not in the form of an exact law .It should be a principle of probabilities. We are capable of knowing the possible combinations of events. In fact the only thing that we can know now at this stage is the set of combinations that reality can manifest itself in. We can assign different weights to this combinations increasing or decreasing the likelihood of their occurrence.
Hence the law that governs this world is the law of probability and our observation can tell us about possible combinations of reality and the weight that we can allocate to these combinations. This structure of reality gives way to chance .Things by and large are dependent on chance .It can be head or tail, and both occurrences have same or different probabilities. It is by chance that out of many combinations of event AB, AC, etc, only AB occurred whenever we repeated a certain experiment in certain approximately selfsame conditions. Amidst this chance, necessity belongs to living things and above all to mankind, for mankind has consciousness. We can exercise our will, we can act intentionally that is why we ought to behave as a necessity, in a necessary way.
This necessity gives birth to our moral life. We evaluate because we ought to do what is necessary. We ought to do what should be done. We are evaluators, we choose the best option. We can redeem ourselves from chance and accident and at times we can exploit chance to our benefit. We can either respond to an external stimulus or we can suppress any response and remain indifferent towards an accident. All depends on our will and volition.
I want to construct this systematic logic and in doing so I will take help from the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
Structure of our language depends on the way our mind functions. Our mind functions in a way that is suitable for our existence in this world. This suitable way of thinking, we learnt through our experiences in this world. We don't think it viable to unite contradictory ideals in our thought that is why we believe in the law of non-contradiction. We do not want to remain ignorant of any thing that is why we have created an answer to each and every question. For instance God as an answer to the question regarding the principle cause behind all causes.
Metaphysicians gave this cause the name God and attributed all sorts of positive adjectives to this logical construction. He is the necessary Being, the un-moved mover, Causa Sui, Summum Bonum etc. While attributing all sorts of positive attributes to this concept God, metaphysicians did some thing illogical. Nietzsche says, "Causa sui is the rape of logic. 'They committed a logical fallacy that influenced all the coming generations of metaphysicians. However, in recent times thought pattern changed and man learned to live amidst uncertainty.
This new daring attitude gave man the ability to restrict his knowledge within the limits of his experience’. Man learned how to base his knowledge on his experience alone. Human experience however is a highly diversified thing. It is devoid, and simultaneously, full of logical necessities. It is both rational and irrational; it is both logical and illogical. It can be any thing. It is certain and uncertain simultaneously. It tells us about change and it tells us about permanence.
This varied phenomenon of human experience, since it moulds and fashions our thoughts and our mind, also generates our language. The contradictory nature of human experience is fashioning -forth new languages different from all previous languages and underlying thinking attitudes. It is giving a new form to our language by adding some thing to it on every passing moment. And more than this it is creating a new logic, a new set of categories. It is defining our concepts anew in different terms. It is teaching us logic of uncertainties. In fact our experience has told us that instead of God man himself is that necessary being. For man is a necessity and not a mere chance.
We know things because there is some thing permanent in things that we know. Our new logic does not consider it as a necessary fact. We know things despite the fact that there is nothing permanent in them. A man borne and dies and during the time elapsed between his death and life every thing changes .Each and every aspect of his being undergoes change, yet we remember that person as a particular person who remains self same. Is it not a logical fallacy on our part? But we are bound to commit this mistake because we can not do otherwise. We have to believe that the person who is known to us as a certain Mr. A continues to exist as Mr. A through out his life span. We can't believe otherwise though we know that the unchanging element is missing in the being of Mr A.Mr A changes instantaneously and that’s why does not qualify as a proper object of knowledge according to our age old Platonic definition of being.
Now let us consider two important facts that are involved in the constitution of a person 'A'. First of all his appearance that undergoes changes. Then the kind of experience that we have when we encounter Mr A, or the kind of experience that Mr A undergoes when he encounters his own self in a particular situation. Among these two facts the first one undergoes changes, the second one repeats itself.
Permanence of an object is to be redefined as a repetition of certain set of attributes. In humans it is repetition of a certain kind of experiences. I am what I am because I experience this world in a certain way peculiar to myself .I know myself because of the kind of experience that I always have while operating or acting in this world. My existence is my experience in this world. I encounter things in my own way, a way which never changes, which remains self same .This self same experience is a kind of returning of myself to myself. I return to myself after every experience after every wayfaring, after each adventure. That is why my permanence is my experience.
What is death then? Death is some thing alien to me or to any other person. One experiences death as others' death and as one's own potential. One experiences death as a future possibility and as a phenomenon that marks an end to every thing. Death is a complete end that gives a sense of finitude to our being. My death is a potential state when I will cease to experience myself as myself, when I will not experience things the way I am accustomed to experience.
I learned about this phenomenon called death while experiencing other's death .There is an immediate deduction involved in this knowledge. I deduced death; I inferred it, while looking at others' death. And what in fact I learnt was the reality that a certain person ceased to exist the way he had existed during his life time. That I can no more experience him the way I used to experience him in his life time. Neither that person himself can experience his being as he did in his life time. Death is the end of experience. It is the end of the substance; it is the end of the permanence.
Death educates us about change; death gives us an awareness of time. It is time that separates non -being from being. It is time that separates life from death. Time is the distance yet to be traveled. But is this distance unknown to us? Do we not know what will happen next? We know the end of the time and we know what entity ends at the end of the time. The entity that ends with death is our own being and our being is our experience. And this experience is known to us, it is our identity. That is why we know what is there to come. We know each and every detail of our future. Our future is not unknown to us. It is in time that our experience is going to repeat itself despite all apparent changes.
Time gives us room for experiencing ourselves. It displays this world and tells us about the order of things. It makes cause and effect possible. It tells us that there possibly is a permanent pattern behind things which we know and count this knowing as our knowledge about things .Though this pattern is permanent, it is not necessarily so. It can be otherwise and we know this fact well. For time renders change to every thing and no pattern can continue to maintain a selfsame existence. Every thing is bound to change. There is a great uncertainty in this world .No one knows what will happen next in the world of things. So we experience certainty in ourselves but we face uncertainty in the world of things. I am what I am and I will be like this till I exist, but things are changing and in the realm of things change is a rule.
Thus change pertains to the outer world and it is the ruling principle in external reality. This change is not infinite. Change is finite .Possible states are finite. The possibilities of becoming are not infinite. An object can change to acquire certain forms and the number of these possibilities is finite. A planet can acquire a certain number of forms after going through a change and their number is finite. Possibilities are finite in number, but it is difficult to say which possibility will come first and which one will come last. We can not tell the order in which change can possibly occur; this is the meaning of uncertainty and indeterminism.
We can not say any thing about the order of the things or the order in which things are likely to occur. It does not mean that we know for sure that we are unable to say any thing about the order of things. Perhaps we may be able to do so in a certain way unknown to us. Perhaps there is a certain logic that can tell us about the order of the things or to guess this order to a certain degree of accuracy. But right now we know nothing but our experience. We are habitual of experiencing a self same pattern. But we don't know the logic by which a certain event always precedes a certain event. Why a cause A always comes before an effect B. Why A and B are related to each other. Cause and effect relationship is merely a convention; it indicates that we can not say any thing about the relationship of an event A with its effect B.
Since we don't know the exact relationship between a cause A and its effects B, therefore we finish any further discourse on this issue by saying that A and B are connected to each other as cause and effect. That A precedes B in the order of events. But there is a certain logic behind the phenomenon of event A always preceding even B. There can be logic beyond cause and effect. In fact logic begins when we further elaborate the relationship between cause and effect.
An event A of which an event B is the effect may have been followed by any other event .But it was followed by event B .Is there any role that circumstances and conditions played in this occurrence? May be there is a role that conditions play in all such circumstances but that role again is unknown to us. We don't know the exact constitution of reality. We don't know how things are mathematically configurated. There should be a mathematical order in things. World of things must and should follow a mathematical principle, though not in the form of an exact law .It should be a principle of probabilities. We are capable of knowing the possible combinations of events. In fact the only thing that we can know now at this stage is the set of combinations that reality can manifest itself in. We can assign different weights to this combinations increasing or decreasing the likelihood of their occurrence.
Hence the law that governs this world is the law of probability and our observation can tell us about possible combinations of reality and the weight that we can allocate to these combinations. This structure of reality gives way to chance .Things by and large are dependent on chance .It can be head or tail, and both occurrences have same or different probabilities. It is by chance that out of many combinations of event AB, AC, etc, only AB occurred whenever we repeated a certain experiment in certain approximately selfsame conditions. Amidst this chance, necessity belongs to living things and above all to mankind, for mankind has consciousness. We can exercise our will, we can act intentionally that is why we ought to behave as a necessity, in a necessary way.
This necessity gives birth to our moral life. We evaluate because we ought to do what is necessary. We ought to do what should be done. We are evaluators, we choose the best option. We can redeem ourselves from chance and accident and at times we can exploit chance to our benefit. We can either respond to an external stimulus or we can suppress any response and remain indifferent towards an accident. All depends on our will and volition.
I want to construct this systematic logic and in doing so I will take help from the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
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