Review Zhuangzi Indexicals

1
Review Zhuangzi Indexicals

• Terms whose reference changes
• Refer but not fixedalways from here/now
• Relationalrelative many answers
• Not none, or one mystical, or cant say anything
• Rejects all is one anti-language
  contradiction
• Pointing to the onemakes two
• Dao Axis is infinite possibility
• But no actual position
• The view from nowhere
• Needs careful statement
• Or run into anti-language position

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Judgments

• Do make themaccept this
• But always aware that could be different
• From different position
• No view from cosmos (nowhere)
• But can gain from othersbroadening
• Maybe will workmaybe wont
• Handan walk
• Absolute point of view useless
• No argument for quietism/stoicism
• No argument for absolute toleration
• Mao and Gandhi are different from actual POV

3
So what advice?

• Strong skepticism doesn't entail anything
• This is mild skepticism
• No argument against your perspective
• Just awareness that there are alternatives
• Tolerance, openness, and dont kill b/c different
• Three bits of advice
• Flexibility and youth
• Accept convention as useful (no more)
• Skill transcendence (satisfaction in excelling)
• Cook/butcher Ting
• Slight inconsistency life limited
• Skill and Defect

4
Question

• Quiz and back to the West

5
Back to the West Nietzsche

• Long wait for an antithesis Nietzsche
  anti-rationalism
• Life
• Born 1844 Lutheran father
• Dependence on women. Anger!

6
Existentialism and Nietzsche

• Existence over essence (formula)
• Platos forms ? essence
• Opposes reason (rationalism)
• God, abstractions, reality, meaning and value

7
Two Theses Under Attack

• Rational metaphysics and Christianity
• Metaphysical basis of morality
• Plato God
• Christianity as blend of Greek rationalism and
  Judaism
• Science as their offspring
• Reason science
• Investigating the mind of god

8
Science Attacks Its Parents (Oedipus?)

• Godthe rational structure of the universe
• Thesis that gave science birth but
• Scientific reality has no affinity with our
  rational souls
• Cannot be known
• Changing, dead, and valueless
• No reality basis for meaning/value in life

9
God Holds It Together

• Constant threat from science
• Western conflict of science and religion
• Dim awareness that it is a myth
• God is deadthe madman in the marketplace
• We can no longer fool ourselves with the myth
• Nothing binds reality to value

10
Descartes

• "Father of modern philosophy"
• Rationalize science
• Make it compatible with religion-rationalism
• Classic detail of Nietzsche's target
• Science undermines his beliefs
• Copernican revolution, evolution, dead matter,
  light waves
• Can we really know anything?
• The evil demon--brain in a vat fantasy
• From new theory of vision

11
Cartesian "Radical" Skepticism

• Doubt everythingnot from specific arguments, but
  general ones
• Main target objects and other minds
• Strategy prove something immune to evil demon
  doubt
• I think, therefore I exist
• Even if I doubt, can't doubt that I'm thinking

12
Is Cogito Valid?

• Back to Parmenides
• If a sentence is true then its subject term must
  denote something
• Any true sentence of the form "X Q's" entails "X
  exists"
• So, if the premise (I think) is true then it
  follows as a matter of form that I exist
• "Santa Claus thinks" is false
• Thought doesn't matter here
• "Santa clause walks" is also false

13
Is Cogito Sound?

• Is the premise true?
• Certainly! Whenever I think it
• Can we know it is true? Yes
• It is true
• We believe it is true
• (When we think, we think we are thinking)
• We have good reason to believe it
• We are good judges of our own conscious states

14
Paradox Analysis

• To think you do not think is a paradox
• Different from semantic (liar) or prescriptive
  (Shendao) paradoxes
• The meaning inconsistent with truth
• Conforming inconsistent with meaning
• Pragmatic (action) paradox
• What you say is inconsistent with the act of your
  saying it
• "I cannot speak one word of English"
• The speech act of asserting is inconsistent with
  its truth

???
I cannot think
???
In English.
??
15
Thinking Thoughts and Thinker

• Next step cannot reach outside thought
• A way to get all rational truths backprove God
  exists
• So ontological argument for God
• Unique in following from definition alone

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Ontological Argument

• St. Anselm modeleasier and more famous
• Definition of the god' concept
• The perfect being
• Start with that thought of goda concept
• Can be thought of by a non-believer
• The non-believer contradicts himself in thinking
• God does not exist
• Not derived just from thinking
• From the content (meaning/definition) of the
  thought

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Existence

• Perfectdf has all positive qualities completely
• Qualities predicates
• 'Exists' is a predicate
• Exists is positive (better than ?)
• Not to predicate 'exists' of the being that has
  all positive qualities completely is a
  contradiction

18
So I am not deceived when I think clearly and
distinctly