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...

Exploring Kantian Ethics: The Moral Implications of Lies of Omission Recently, I've been contemplating a philosophical dilemma revolving around lies of omission, or  when someone intentionally withholds relevant information, leading the other person to believe something untrue , and whether they align with Kant's principles of deontological ethics (read my blog post on Kant for background information). As per lying, Kant believes one can never lie no matter the time or circumstance due to the categorical imperative: Act according to the maxim that you would wish all other rational people to follow, as if it were a universal law. If lying is made a universal law then society would collapse and therefore lying is immoral. Therefore, when the axe murderer asks Kant for his prey, Kant would have to tell the murderer (but maybe this is a gross oversimplification that will be explained later). However, what would Kant's position be on lies of omission (if it is even a thing?)? On...

 Laws of Logic Logic relies on fundamental principles known as the three classical laws of thought: the law of identity, the law of excluded middle, and the law of non-contradiction. Together, these laws lay the groundwork for reasoning and logical analysis such that philosophy, mathematics, and everyday conversation could not stand without them. In this blog post, we will delve into these three rules that govern rational discourse.   1. Law of Identity: The law of identity states that every object is necessarily identical to itself. For example, if we have a statement A, then A is true if and only if A is true. It can be represented as "A = A".   2. Law of Excluded Middle: The law of excluded middle states that for any proposition A, either A is true, or its negation is true as there is necessarily no middle ground or third option. In simpler terms, a proposition is either true or false, and there is no other possibility. This principle can be expressed as "A ∨ ¬A...