Question Everything: Metaphysics, Science, Philosophy & Common Sense

Here are thoughts on a short video linked below, but I would frankly assert that the thoughts presented here in this reflection or meditation are more interesting and more useful than the talk that they are commenting on.

This seems to me an unnecessarily obscure talk (linked below), even though the subject is admittedly challenging.

The question is, or one of the central questions is, what is the relationship between our perception of reality, and reality itself. It is extremely useful to state the problem, and the subject, clearly from the outset.

And we should remember what the brilliant philosopher Alan Watts said: “Most metaphysics are unconscious metaphysics, and unconscious metaphysics are bad metaphysics.”

Then you may, at some point, explicitly state what you are definitely not saying, or not intending to say, at least. That is, I would say, for myself, I am not asserting a philosophical position or world view of nihilism, eternalism, dualism, materialist-reductionism, atomism, or a mechanistic view, nor solipsism, Skepticism, Sophism, Interactionism or Idealism.

What that leaves is non-dualism, or some other cruder approximations to it, such as an ecological world view, a systems theory world view, or pantheism, panpsychism or monism. I am asserting non-dualism is the reality, to be clear and precise.

But then you must clarify further.

Here Chomsky seems to agrees with the dominant view in science, which is to take Hume’s challenge to our assumption of a correct, accurate or valid relationship between our thoughts, mental constructs or perceptions of reality and reality itself, seriously enough to refuse to say anything about reality, but to speak only of our perceptions of reality. Of course, that is solipsism, or radical Skepticism, and is unlivable in the real world of daily life. So in practice, we pay lip service to Hume, if we pay any attention to him at all, but then disregard him completely. That utterly anti-empirical and anti-science, utterly unfounded mode of thining and of relating to the world, is what we erroneously call science, philosophy, and common sense.

In short, neither science, in general, though there are some scientists who differ, nor philosophy, nor the common view of life and reality, has any firm basis in reality. Who answers Hume adequately? Only Nagarjuna, the preeminent philosopher of Buddhism, and the Middle Way view of Buddhist philosophy, I would strongly suggest, and state flatly.

Chomsky is brilliant in political analysis, though not infallible, brilliant in political philosophy, and brilliant in linguistics. He does not seem so brilliant in terms, of metaphysics or the philosophy of science, but more run of the mill, and mistaken.

Question everything – and everyone.

J. Todd Ring,

April 5, 2021