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Major
Philosophic Systems
A Brief Description
of Some Terms as Used in Modern
Thought
Naturalism
-- Pragmatism
-- Dualism
-- Realism
--
Intuition
-- Mysticism
-- Idealism
The following systems consider the total view of
the world proceeding from an arrangement of
knowledge built on beliefs or evident truths. Such
beliefs depend on a man's learning, his
disposition, his intellect, and affect his life and
destiny.
1.
Naturalism
This philosophical viewpoint considers the whole
of reality to be in nature, regarding Nature as the
sum total of objects in space, time, and sense
subject to causal, natural laws. Therefore, only
nature exists and from it Mind and Reason emerge.
Three principal varieties of Nature operate in
cosmic life:
- Materialism asserts that matter is
the ultimate reality and its laws explain
all.
- Dynamism opposes mechanism,
contending that force is the basic concept
rather than motion or mass.
- Positivism asserts that only objects
of sense-experience are known and that any
metaphysics is impossible.
Naturalism embodies the physical sciences --
physics, chemistry, and the other natural sciences
-- embracing life and mind.
- Naturalism involves evolution, maintaining
that effects are deduced from causes, emergents
or the unpredictable effects.
- Naturalism includes human nature -- biology,
psychology.
- Naturalism provides its own ethics.
- Naturalism provokes skepticism and
agnosticism.
- Naturalism denies rationalism, pure reason,
and metaphysical truth.
2.
Pragmatism
This philosophical position appeals to the
will to achieve conclusions, distrusts
pure reason and intellect. It is a form of
action regarding ideas, beliefs, etc. as working
tools in the business of living.
Pragmatism's broad formula is: A belief is
true if it works for the majority of men.
Pragmatists vary in philosophic exposition.
There are two main groups:
- William James and his followers --
voluntarists, opposing agnosticism regarding it
as indecisive, incomplete, and insufficient.
They give priority to the source of belief
rather than to empirical testing.
- John Dewey and his followers --
oppose rationalism asserting there are no a
priori truths. Dewey sets up hypotheses as
experimental means to be modified freely by
empirical testing.
All pragmatists maintain that truth is relative
and an individual matter.
3.
Dualism
Dualism is the recognition of two irreducible
principles, such as body and mind.
Materialism maintains that everything is matter,
space, and motion being part of it. Herbert Spencer
argues for the ultimate scientific proposition:
space, time, matter, motion, and force are the
manifestations of one reality, known as energy,
force, power.
Some philosophers conclude that to understand
things rationally a pair of contrasting realities,
such as body and mind, are needed and that
experience is a necessary conflict between two
antithetical principles such as:
- Good and evil;
- The ideal and the material (Plato);
- Mental substance and material substance
(Descartes);
- The unknowable external reality and
materials of sense (Kant);
- The uniqueness of life and mechanism
(Bergson);
- Body and mind.
Basic theories of body-mind relationship
are:
A. Parallelism: Body and Mind are two
processes rather than two substances.
- Brain events and Mind events act in
correspondence, one to the other.
- Body and Mind are two different aspects of
the same thing, with one series of events
(Spinoza). When parallelism is dualistic it is
necessarily deterministic, the physical being
separate from the mental.
B. Interactionism: Body (brain events)
affects Mind, and Mind (mental events) affects
Body.
- Our thinking is supernatural, something is
done beyond the physiology of the brain.
- What does the mind do which the physiology
of the brain cannot do? Neovitalists reply that
there is something in the behavior of living
organisms which mechanism cannot explain. A
machine cannot respond to an idea or meaning or
value, it can respond only to mechanical
pressure. The living body moves to a purpose,
pursues "ends" with the choice of "means." Henri
Bergson emphasizes vital principles. Mind is the
source of energy, not physical laws. Mind
substitutes an intelligent reaction for the
mechanical response. Intelligent reaction grasps
the meaning of facts; it is inventive and guides
the organism to desired ends.
4.
Realism
This philosophic viewpoint generally recognizes
the independent reality of the experienced
world.
- Realism is interested in objects and facts
-- objectively. It de-mentalizes and
de-personalizes the world. Objects of knowledge
do not depend on any mind for their existence
and character. Objects are independent of
us.
- Realism primarily is a way of knowing
sustained by logic and analysis. Analysis may
give the facts but it does not solve the
problem. Realism separates the object and
knower.
5.
Intuition
This viewpoint emphasizes the direct or
immediate knowing without known cognition.
- Represents feeling and insight -- the vision
of the thinking man. It is expressed in poetry,
painting, foresight, prophesy.
- Reliance on intuition is older than reliance
on intellect, reason. Much philosophy is
intuition -- it provokes intellect intellect and
reason. Faith is intuition.
- Intuition goes beyond sense, extends sense
perception beyond the sense object. It holds
that reality is beyond phenomena, as life is
behind its forms. It maintains that reality is
attainable by intelligence.
- Intuition is the beginning of knowledge and
precedes perception and intellect. It completes
knowledge.
- Henri Bergson: nothing is known until it is
known intuitively. He regards time, space,
matter, motion, and energy as intuitive. Time as
measured by clock space is not real time. Time
is perceived by intuition, not by the senses; it
is the direct perception of man's inner
life.
Intuition has three major defects:
- It cannot define what it perceives;
definitions use concepts.
- It cannot communicate that it perceives;
language alone expresses concepts.
- It cannot defend truth; the critical
intellect prevents it.
6.
Mysticism
This is an immediate experience of reality
through a special mode of knowing independent of
perception.
- Mysticism has a long history. It is a stage
of intuitionism. The knower realizes his
identity with the inner being of his object of
knowledge.
- Mysticism stresses the absolute unity of
Reality -- calls it oneness. It seeks to
reach an intuitive knowledge by union with the
Absolute One. To know -- man must merge with the
Absolute, then we become part of it and it
becomes part of us. The knower and the object
belong to each other, they are the same in
Reality -- they are one. Thus, mysticism
conflicts with atomistic and pluralistic
metaphysics [Pluralism: there is not one
(Monism), not two (Dualism), but many ultimate
substances].
- The mystic has, therefore, a direct view of
Reality. He uses symbol and allegory to express
what cannot be defined in perceptual form. Yet,
Reality is indescribable -- it is God. Dante,
William Black, and John Bunyan head a long line
of mystics, Bunyan (The Pilgrim's
Progress) being the great Christian
mystic.
- Mysticism is often misunderstood. It is not
superstition, not occultism, but a special mode
of knowing.
7.
Idealism
According to Idealism, reality as a whole is
conceived in terms of ideas (thought) interpreted
in various ways.
- Idea-ism (idealism) is a spiritual
world-view, a world of self, and primarily a
metaphysic. Reality is of the nature of mind,
whatever is ultimately real is made up of ideas.
Idealism represents ideas rather than ideals.
The idealist is interested in physical behavior
but Mind is primary, brain actions are
derivative, hence Mind is not to be identified
with brain.
- The explanation of all things is mental,
i.e., the thinker and his thought, hence the
controlling factors of the world are not on the
surface, not naturalistic, not phenomenal, they
have to be "sought."
- Idealism, like mysticism, has its source in
intuition. It seeks to bring reason into the
spiritual intuitions of mankind. It applies its
principles to art, religion, politics, law.
Great idealist thinkers include Plato, Fichte,
Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Euchen in
Germany; Thomas Hill Green, F.H. Bradley,
Bosanquet, and Berkeley in England; Josiah
Royce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Borden Parker
Bowne in America. Henri Bergson foreshadows a
world-view tending toward idealism -- physical
nature must be explained by Mind, because it
depends on Mind (idea, spirit); hence it is
spiritual. George Berkeley asserts that
experience is made up of ideas.
Two main types of idealism are generally
recognized:
A. Subjective Idealism
- Experience is in the Mind, there is nothing
in nature that is not in Mind.
- Reality is mental by virtue of the creative
force of Mind.
- After learning from experience our minds
create.
- God becomes an object within man's mind, and
made by man's mind.
- Berkeley, Leibniz, and Kant favor subjective
idealism.
B. Objective Idealism
- All objects belong to some knower.
- Objectivism idealism answers the question
why does Nature exist, and what is its
application to the mind-body, freedom, destiny,
self.
- It retains all that is valid in subjective
idealism.
- It synthesizes subjectivism and naturalism,
each of which by itself is regarded as
incomplete. Nature depends on the creative mind.
Causality is purposive. The physical organ of
mind is the brain with its cells but only
because mind is present in the universe. Through
the body, mind communicates with other minds.
Within the processes of nature is the world-mind
and these processes are the reasonings of the
world-mind.
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