5. The Blueprint

Where are we now? We are trying to answer the What Is? question. We want to explain the subject (our self/mind), the object (the world) and the nature of knowledge (how we learn about the world), put together as ontology and epistemology. We did a walk through of types of knowledge - Experience (empiricism), thinking (rationalism) and a mix of both. Different philosophies may accept one or more of these as valid types of knowledge.

Now our job is to add an ontology to complete a philosophy that answers the What Is? question. Building a philosophy that explains the nature of reality and knowledge requires us to use multiple statements. For example,

1. God created the world
2. Both the world and God are real
3. People like us are part of the world
4. What we perceive is real in this world, but we cannot perceive God.

These four statements together form a philosophy that is consistent. But none of these statements have any proof. I mentioned in the previous chapter that the requirements of a philosophical system are:

1. The system must be consistent within itself
2. The system must explain the self/mind, the world and the nature of knowledge

What the system is not expected to do is to have a proof for every statement. Some statements could just be said as a matter of fact without proof. In fact, we cannot build a philosophical system where all the statements are proven. We will learn why later in this chapter.

Considering the two requirements we have for a philosophical system, is there a structure to what a philosophical system generally looks like? There is indeed. Maths has something called a Formal System. There is a technical definition of what it means, which I will not go into, because we are not going to use it. We will build something else that is less strict and is just enough to help us build what we want to build. Let us call it the Informal System and it has the following components.

• Brute statements - These are plain statements taken as facts without any proof. They are akin to axioms in mathematical language.
• Inferred statements - These are statements which are inferred from the Brute statements or other inferred statements. The brute statements or other inferred statements from which this statement is derived are the proofs of this statement. The inferred statements are akin to theorems in mathematical language.
• Rules that the statements have to follow to be part of the system.

What are these rules? They are there to ensure that the requirements for a philosophical system are met.

• The statements are about reality and knowledge which are considered true in the philosophical system that is proposed.

• You can’t have two statements in a system saying logically contradictory things. For example, ‘The pizza was tasty’ and ‘The pizza was not tasty’ are contradictory statements and have no business being in our informal system together.

• Any inferred statement must follow one of the rules of inferences. For example:

  • Brute statement - God punishes bad people
  • Brute statement - Murderers are bad people
  • Inferred statement - God punishes murderers

Any statement going into the informal system must follow the above rules. And here we hit something. While I said that different philosophies pick up different types of knowledge between empiricism and rationalism, there is a part of rationalism that we cannot avoid - Logical reasoning and inferences. We need this for the sake of our goal to keep it consistent.

If we avoid this, there is no point in philosophical debates. This is how a debate would go, if we don’t have these rules:

Philosopher A: I think that any multicellular organism is conscious and must be treated as equal to a human life.

Philosopher B: Alright, so you are willing to face punishment for swatting mosquitoes?

Philosopher A: No. Punishments should be given only for taking away human lives.

Philosopher B: But you said that all lives are equal to human life.

Philosopher A: Yes, I am a hypocrite.

As you can see, someone can come up with a philosophy full of contradictions. If there are no basic rules of consistency which are to be met, what are we even going to debate about? There are philosophers who believe that even logical reasoning shouldn’t be taken seriously. They say that logical reasoning is a human invention and shouldn’t be taken for granted as a fundamental form of knowledge we should all rely on. How would these philosophers argue against logical reasoning without using logical reasoning? They won’t.

Anyway, let us ignore those philosophers and ensure that the rules I listed above are met in any philosophical system we build. One may add more rules but not take away any of those rules. This is not because their philosophies are bad. It is just because it is fruitless to argue against such philosophies.

Chicken or Egg

How do you go about building this system? Do you start with brute statements and then come up with inferred statements? Or do you start with some inferred statements and then figure out the brute statements which will let you find the inferred statements?

You can do both. How you build the system is up to you. The latter idea of starting with an inferred statement may sound a bit illogical. But we do it often, especially in science. We observe something in a lab or outside or in the cosmos and then we go and find a physical law that leads to our observation. The physical law becomes a brute statement and the observation becomes an inferred statement. It is controversial to call a physical law a brute statement. But hold on to that thought. I will get back to it in a couple of chapters.

Mathematics on the other hand mostly uses the first approach where we generally have a set of well-defined brute statements known as axioms and we try to derive theorems using laws of inference from these axioms.

Münchhausen trilemma

Before we go further into building this system, I am going to dampen your mood by pointing out a problem with it. The philosophical name for this is The Münchhausen trilemma.

Let us say we want to add a statement to the system. We either add it as a brute statement or an inferred statement. Can any statement in the system be completely proven? As you can see from the system’s definition, any statement is a brute statement itself or inferred from other brute statements. Take one statement from the system and ask why it is true. If it is an inferred statement, the question can be answered by brute statements or other inferred statements which lets you derive the statement. If you ask why about one of these inferred statements, it would take you to other inferred or brute statements.

If you keep asking why about the statements in a system, going back in the chain, what happens?

According to the trilemma, there are only three ways of completing a proof of any statement:

• The dogmatic proof - Accept it as a brute statement. For example - God Exists and you have to assume irrespective of a proof.

• The circular proof - The proof of inferred statement A is inferred statement B. The proof of inferred statement B is inferred statement A. One could make bigger circular proofs too. Here is an example of a circular proof:

  • I have an idea of a God and hence God Exists.
  • A God wouldn’t deceive me and hence any ideas I have must be true.

• The regressive proof, in which each proof requires a further proof which needs a further proof and it goes on to infinity.

For example, consider the statement “Light from the sun takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the earth.” If I ask for proof, one might say that the speed of the light is X and the distance of earth from the Sun is Y, that makes time to travel Y/X and so it takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds. There are multiple statements in this proof. I can point out one of them and ask for proof. For example, I can ask them to prove that the speed of light is indeed X. To prove that, they have to use the theory of electromagnetism. I can stop there or keep asking for proof for the theory of electromagnetism and I can keep going this way. There are only three possible outcomes if I keep asking for a proof -

• Stop at some point and say, “This statement is true because it’s a law and there is no further proof for it”
• Lead me in circles.
• Keep answering for an infinite period of time.

Translating this to our informal philosophical system, if we keep going back in the chain, we will eventually end up with a brute statement we have to take for granted, go in a circular chain between statements in the system or go in an infinite regression with no end in sight. For the last thing to happen, the set must have an infinite number of statements.

Most popular philosophies rely on dogmatic proofs - A bunch of brute statements which set a solid philosophical foundation for the rest of the statements. There are some philosophies which rely on circular proofs too, something that René Descartes is accused of - the so-called ‘Cartesian circle’ spotted by his contemporary Antoine Arnauld. As for infinite regression, there are some obscure philosophies which are based on infinity itself.

This means that any informal philosophical system we build will have at least one of these:

• Brute statements (Most common)
• Circular references
• Infinite number of statements