Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Notes on the Basics of Kant 4: Kantian Ethics Explained According to Kant, in his, Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals , there is only one thing that is good in itself which is The Good Will. Everything else has to be qualified, The Good Will is the only good without qualification. While other things can be good, The Good Will is good in itself. Being intelligent can be a good thing but one could also use their intelligence for evil if The Good Will is not present. Courage can be good to save someone out of a burning building but a thief can have courage when robbing a bank. Being healthy can be good but without having a Good Will they can spoil the individual with pride. Having good virtues such as moderation is a step in the right direction but they need to be directed by having a Good Will. Jeremy Bentham would say that the Good Will is that which leads to the best consequences or utility for the greatest number of people. However, according to Kant it is not about the effect b...

Notes on the Basics of Schopenhauer         Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher known for his pessimistic philosophy which is exemplified in his work, “The World as Will and Representation”. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics drew from Kant whom I have several blog posts on but in short, Kant believed in the Noumena-Phenomena distinction or Transcendental Idealism. Phenomena are the things we perceive through our senses which are shaped by our mind’s faculties and subject to the categories of understanding. Noumena, on the other hand, are things as they are in themselves that are beyond human perception and conceptualization. Kant argues that while we can understand phenomena through empirical investigation, we can never truly know noumena because they lie beyond the limits of human cognition. Thus, noumena represent the realm of things as they exist independently of our perception that are ultimately unknowable. Since we can never know the t...

Kantian Idealism and the Quest for Ultimate Reality   I pondered over Kant and his philosophy of transcendental idealism and then contemplated Descartes and discovered they have significant overlap. Kant claimed we cannot know the world in itself i.e. the noumena but only have knowledge of the world as it appears to us i.e. the phenomena. Then I drew a parallel of this idea to Descartes’ radical doubt which claimed that we cannot know if the external world exists or not, but the one thing we have epistemological certainty of is Cogito Ergo Sum or I think therefore I am. The overlap being lack of true knowledge of the external world. Then I thought about how religion can be incorporated. It is explicit in Descartes that the external world is clear through his faith in God through his ontological argument but for Kant such a thing is absurd as he believes philosophizing about God is beyond the scope of what philosophy can accomplish and therefore he rejects cosmological and ontologi...

Exploring Monism in Kantian Philosophy and Schopenhauer’s Will Through Advaita Vedanta     This blog post explores monism within Kantian philosophy and Schopenhauer’s concept of the “Will” through drawing parallels with Advaita Vedanta, a school of thought in Hinduism, as the title suggests. In Kant's philosophy, the noumena, or the “thing-in-itself” represents the ultimate reality of objects independent of our perceptions. Kant argued that we can never have direct knowledge of the noumenal realm because our knowledge is necessarily mediated by the structure of our minds and senses. This is explored much more in-depth in my other blog posts on the basics of Kant. While we can perceive and understand phenomena—how things appear to us—the nature of the noumena remains inaccessible. Kant posited that our experiences are shaped by the 12 categories of the understanding and the forms of intuition, and these mental structures impose limitations on what we can know about the underl...

Has Truth Always Existed?              What is true are propositions and propositions abide in the mind. But this does not mean that objective truths require a mind as they are independent of it. Propositions in the mind correspond to objective facts. Objective facts are the truth-makers while propositions are the truth-bearers that represent objective facts. God grounds the propositions as He is the necessary being and all facts are contingent upon Him. If there was no God then there would be nothing to ground truth. If this was the case then truth would begin when the first mind comes into being. Then how does one explain necessary truths like the law of noncontradiction or excluded middle? If there was an eternal mind to ground these truths then these laws would always be true. In other words, if the truth-bearers are propositions and propositions are grounded by minds and if minds have not always existed then truth is not always et...

Notes on Immanuel Kant Part 3              Kant attempted to synthesize the rationalist and empiricist tradition since he said that Hume had awakened him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Rationalists like Descartes and Ibn Sina believed that there is knowledge that is a priori or independent from experience while empiricists like Hume and Locke believed the opposite. Hume was critical of the traditional notion of causation, arguing that the belief in cause and effect is not grounded in reason but rather in custom and habit. He argued that there is nothing in the cause that necessitates the occurrence of the effect. In other words, one may observe one event regularly following another, but there is no inherent connection or power in the cause that compels the effect to happen. A rationalist, on the other hand, would contend that knowledge of cause and effect is, at least in part, a priori—that is, independent of experience. Kant argued that...

Notes on Immanuel Kant      Kant developed a reason-based ethical theory i.e. not based on emotions. Ethics and morality are two things that one can discern from correct and proper reasoning. In divine command theory, one may act good according to the will of god to reach heaven or because of the fear of punishment. At the same time, if one proposed heaven for the one who murdered and hell for the saint, people would become murderers. Kant would disagree with this mode of ethics as one’s allegiance is given to the highest bidder. For deontology, intention is everything. Kant’s ethics begins with having a good will. Furthermore, a good will is the only good thing that is good in and of itself in this world. Everything else is contingently good such as strength, it can be used for good or evil. To have good will in a Kantian paradigm can be defined as having a pure practical reason. Once good will is established, the next step is the categorical imperative, to will that you...