Wisdom is not accidental.  If we are to become wise, we must begin by seeking it.

Etymologically, to seek it is to be a philosopher.  The word ‘philosopher’ means ‘lover of wisdom.’

Since seeking something is not the same as finding it, there are two kinds of philosophers:  those who are (still) seekers and those who are wise.  Let’s call those philosophers whose search has been successful “sages.”  To be a sage, then, is to be a successful philosopher.

My thesis is that there are two different conceptions of wisdom, two different conceptions of what it means to be a sage.  Perhaps a less abstract way to state this is to claim that there are two different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy.  Everyone agrees that the purpose of being a philosopher is to become wise.  What, though, does that mean?

One important understanding of the purpose of philosophy is that philosophers use the dialectical method of arguing back and forth about fundamental issues in order to develop a value-free, objective understanding of the nature of reality and how we apprehend it with the ultimate goal of using that understanding to better guide our decisions.  The wisdom of sages comes from their better view.

On this first understanding, the fundamental ideas are being (reality, existence), knowledge (understanding, evidence), and value.  Ontology (metaphysics) is the study of reality.  Epistemology is the study of knowledge.  Ontology and epistemology are the core of philosophy.  Why?

A claim that something is real is unjustified unless it can be explained how we are able to know that it is real.   A claim that something is knowable is unjustified unless it can be explained how it is real.  So ontology and epistemology are like two sides of a coin.

Axiology is the study of value.  Value judgments (valuations) are always made in a certain context, which is an apprehension of a real situation.  Axiological progress is achieving greater agreement about valuations, in other words, settling more of our disagreements. So axiological progress depends upon greater agreement about ontology and epistemology.

In short, in theory we are able to think (conceptualize) our way to wisdom.  It comes from obtaining the true view.  Sages are great thinkers.

There seem, however, to be insurmountable problems with this program.  First, there has been no clear indication in the last 2500 years that there is growing agreement about fundamental issues in ontology and epistemology.  It’s well-known that there is a multiplicity of views.  From this perspective, it’s not surprising that there’s also been a lack of axiological progress.  Second, even if there were a value-free, objective solution to fundamental issues in ontology and epistemology, how would any value judgments follow from them?  If there are no propositions about values in the premise set, how could any conclusion about values be validly derived from that premise set?

The other important understanding of the purpose of philosophy is that the dialectical method is fundamentally flawed because there is no value-free, objective understanding possible.  When we learned language and became literate, we necessarily learned a way of understanding the world that was both subjective and value-laden.  However rational they seem to us, the views or theories that we develop from our particular historical, social, and linguistic perspectives are never able to provide us with a value-free, objective understanding of the nature of reality.

If so, this immediately undercuts any attempt by philosophers of thinking their way to wisdom.  Wisdom is not itself a view or a theory.  If not, what is it?

On this second understanding it’s the absence of suffering.  (Distinguish physical pain, which is inevitable, from suffering, which may be optional.)  Some philosophers have suggested that it’s our attachment to views that is the problem.  The specific views are not the problem; instead, it’s our attachment to them that is the problem.  If so, detachment from views is the solution, the path to becoming a sage.

In short, wisdom comes from dropping attachment to all views.  There is no one true view.  Truth is pragmatic: if something works to diminish suffering, keep doing it; if it doesn’t, drop it and try something else.  Sages are free from suffering.

If so, being a sage requires a kind of incessant conceptual flexibility.  This, though, is just what is required.  Why?  Everything is impermanent; the world is in incessant flux.

Might human suffering be dramatically reduced if we all practiced greater detachment?   I personally am excited about the possibility that philosophers such as Nagarjuna and Candrakirti, who were followers of Gotama (The Buddha), may have uncovered the way to wisdom.

Understanding the abstract notion of the general adaptation syndrome stages can prove surprisingly helpful when making concrete decisions in daily life.

Suppose, for example, that you unexpectedly inherit $1000 and that, since you have started and stuck to a new exercise program for 90 days, you want to reward yourself by spending the money on something that will make you feel happier.  How should you spend it?

Since you’ve never had one and have heard good reports about them, you’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new flat-screen television.  On the other hand, you have not been out of town for six months and are tempted by a real change of pace like a hiking and camping vacation in the mountains.  Which alternative would best increase how happy you feel?

What is your answer?  What’s the chief argument in favor of your answer?  Please answer these two questions for yourself before reading the rest of this post.

[Did you actually do it?  No cheating!]

Permit me to answer another question first and then to use its answer to give you my answer.  What are the general adaptation syndrome stages?

There are five general adaptation syndrome stages.  I’ll chose an actual example from my own life — my time as a cigarette smoker.

The first of the general adaptation syndrome stages is the initial response.  I remember my first cigarette:  it tasted terrible, made me cough, and gave me a headache!

The second of the general adaptation syndrome stages is adaptation.  For psychological reasons, I persisted smoking cigarettes and my body quickly adapted to protect itself from the chemicals contained in the noxious smoke.

The third of the general adaptation syndrome stages is exhaustion. After a few years, I decided that I didn’t like the effects of being a smoker.  It undermined my stamina and diminished my ability to smell and to taste.  It made my breath and clothes stink.  It was expensive.  Worst of all, I had lost my freedom not to smoke.

The fourth of the general adaptation syndrome stages is recovery.  I quit smoking.  Fortunately, I wasn’t as addicted as some of my buddies.  It was difficult to quit, but it wasn’t that difficult for me.  The advantages of being a nonsmoker quickly outweighed the advantages of continuing to smoke.

The fifth of the general adaptation syndrome stages is hypersensitivity, which is really a return to the first stage.  For me, it was a learning experience that taught me to trust my bodily responses more.  Today, I cannot imagine becoming addicted to something that initially tastes terrible, makes me cough, and gives me a headache!

The television or the vacation?

Well, use the notion of those general adaptation syndrome stages to imagine beyond your initial experiences with either the television or the vacation.  What will happen afterwards?

Nobody today has any knowledge of future consequences.  All we can do is to imagine that future connections will sufficiently resemble past connections.

Let’s assume that your initial experiences with both the television and the vacation will be quite enjoyable.  What will happen next?

After, say, a hundred days of watching it, will your enjoyment of watching your new television be as intense as it was the first day or two you had it?  Of course not.  You’ll have adapted to it.  It’ll just be your television.  (This phenomenon is sometimes called “the hedonic treadmill.”)

As for the vacation, even if your enjoyment of it never stimulates you to again hike and camp in the mountains, you’ll continue to remember it as having been a unique, enjoyable experience for as long as your memory lasts.  In a sense, it will become part of yourself; you’ll identify yourself, in part, as one who successfully spent time in the mountains.

In this way it’s useful idea to keep the general adaptation syndrome stages in mind as you make daily decisions.  Let’s consider two more examples.

Should you eat strawberry shortcake for dessert?

Think about how quickly you adapt:  isn’t the first bite of an apple always the best bite?  Instead of having, say, a huge strawberry shortcake, why not have just one or two strawberries?  After all, the fifth strawberry won’t taste as good as the first, right?

Should you keep using the same strength training protocol for years on end?

Though a surprising number of trainees do, of course not!  Change it every couple of months.  Why?  Since your body will adapt to any new one in a few weeks, keep challenging it by deliberately changing what you are doing every two or three months.  Use different exercises or a different sequence of exercises or a different set & rep scheme.

So that’s how understanding this abstract notion can enable us to make better decisions every day.

[Incidentally, the idea of happiness is one of the five big ideas I discuss in 5 Ways to Diminish Failure Almost Instantly.]

For Nagarjuna, the doctrine of the emptiness of formative causation is the adequate middle way between two extremes.  What does that mean?

The idea of the middle way is the ideal promoted by Buddhist sages.  This is an application of the idea that there is a middle way between the two extremes of being a slave to one’s desires and asceticism.

With respect to formative causation, Nagarjuna thinks that the doctrine of dependent origination from conditions, which is the same as the doctrine of the emptiness of formative causation, is the adequate middle way between two extremes.

Like Hume in western thought, Nargarjuna believes that our conventional thinking and discourse accurately reflect the brute inexplicability and regular coherence of the world.

The extreme of reificationism makes the mistake of thinking that our ordinary conventional discourse denotes genuine causal powers between causes and effects.  Since no such causes are experienced,  they are unintelligible.

The extreme of nihilism makes the mistake of thinking that there is no possibility of appealing to experienced phenomena at all in order to explain what happens.  In fact, regularities between and among event types occur frequently.

All phenomena arise from conditions.  Those phenomena, however, lack essences.  Since, like the Buddha and Hume, Nagarjuna is a nonsubstance ontologist, conditions don’t give rise to phenomena with essences.  If not from conditions, where else could [fixed, eternal, independent] essences come from?

Unless objects had substantial individual essences [substrata, "undesignated matter"], how could there be absolute others by means of which to identify phenomena?  If phenomena cannot be absolutely singled out apart from others, how could they be independently characterized?  Objects that lack an intrinsic nature cannot be essentially different.  Objects that are not essentially different, are interdependent, which is point of the doctrine of dependent co-origination; in other words, formative causation is empty.

What, then, holds the world together?  Since causation is empty, it’s nothing but the regularity of conditioned dependent arising. Sometimes the regularity obtains and we understand what’s going on, and sometimes it doesn’t and we realize that we don’t understand what’s going on.  Therefore, our explanations depend upon regularities, and, in our theories, we explain regularities by referring to additional regularities.  That’s all.

Nagarjuna has a commonsense, as opposed to metaphysical, view of the world.

If this topic interests you, I strongly recommend Jay L. Garfield’s translation of and commentary on Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika.

You gotta pay the price, because nothing valuable is free.

I’ve been realizing that more and more as I think about both institutions and individuals.  It seems true for both.  If you disagree, please provide some counter-examples below.

What about human institutional progress?  Here are four major examples that are widely considered to be paradigms of our progress.

Did we have to pay the price for the industrial revolution?  Even limiting ourselves to considering the development of factories (mechanized manufactories) just in the west in just the last two centuries, it’s difficult even to imagine the cost in terms of treasure, time, and health paid by the millions of humans who created and worked in them.

Did we have to pay the price for the agricultural revolution?  Where would civilization be without farmers?  We’ve been deliberately exploiting plants for over 10,000 years—and if you don’t think that growing plants well doesn’t involve sheer physical toil you’ve never even had a successful garden.  Cereals provide most of the calories consumed by humans today—wheat, corn, rice, barley, oats, rye, sorghum, and several kinds of millet.  Without them, how could we feed our human billions?

Did we have to pay the price for the domestication of animals?  We began with domesticating dogs, but think of the labor involved domesticating what Jared Diamond calls the “Big Five,” namely, sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and horses.  What kind of civilization could we have had without the toil required for domesticating and training those animals to serve us?

Did we have to pay the price for developing language?  Only a few thinkers seem to realize the enormous cost we have paid for language.  Yes, as with my first three examples there are often cited advantages we have gained, but the price we have paid, particularly once we developed writing, continues to be high.  The truth is that written language enables us to live most of our lives cut off from the natural world!  While not the chief cause of our pain, my view is that that is the chief cause of suffering.

What about individual progress?  Do I even need to cite any examples?

If you are fat and fail to improve your dietary and exercise habits, do you really think that your percentage of body fat will spontaneously decrease itself?

If you are broke and fail to understand what others want, how you could help them get it, and then implement your plan, do you really think you are going to become a millionaire?

If you are ignorant and fail to improve your daily reading and other educational habits, are you suddenly going to wake up one morning with a vastly improved understanding of how the world works?

If you are dissatisfied because your mind is out of control and you fail to pay the price in terms of disciplining it, are you ever going to live as well as a sage?

Everything we value has a cost.

I just returned from a camping vacation in my favorite place, namely, Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park.  I genuinely enjoyed it, but I certainly had to pay the price for that enjoyment.  For example, I had to obtain all the camping and fishing gear.  I had to learn how to use it properly.  I had to provide myself with suitable food and potable water.  I had to move everything by myself to and from a well-selected campsite.  I had to learn how to protect myself from biting insects as well as the occasional raccoon or bear.  And so on.  My education on how to do well in the bush has continued for years.  In fact, such a trip involves such a high cost that few people do it regularly.  (Once you own most of the equipment, though, the financial cost is quite modest.)

Would you value a great love affair if it were easy to create and sustain one?  Would you value artistic masterpieces if they didn’t involve great talent and sustained, intense effort?  Would you value spiritual liberation if it were not difficult to obtain?

The world just is the way it is.  If you want something, be willing to pay the price for it.

Please don’t complain about it.  Just do it—or forget about it.

What are some specific examples of metaphysical issues?

In the previous post I argued that the task of ontology is to answer the question:  “What kinds of entities are real?”  What does that really mean?

I.     There is the proto-ontological issue of the nature of being an entity.  Since doing ontology without first answering the proto-ontological question is logically backwards, it’s surprising that many major philosophers have little to say about what an entity is.  [I state my view in the post "Define Reality."]

There are related issues concerning, for example, essence and predication.  With respect to essence, is there an important distinction between essence (whatness) and existence (thusness)?  How should they be understood and what is the relation between them?  With respect to predication, there are issues concerning language and ontological analysis (such as ‘Are there ontological simples?’).

II.  The following are some traditional metaphysical issues.

A.  Perhaps the paradigmatic metaphysical issue concerns how best to understand the nature of qualities.  As I mention in the post “Define Qualities,” if there were no qualities there would be no intelligibility.  In other words, a world requires qualities.

That explains why nearly all the great philosophers have either an explicit or implicit position on the nature of qualities.  Unfortunately, they don’t all use the same terminology and sometimes the issue concerning how best to understand generality is confused with the issue of how best to understand the nature of qualities, but it is almost always possible to figure out which of the three alternatives a major philosopher holds.  [I argue for, but don't defend, my answer in that post on qualities.]

B. What is it to be an individual (particular)?  Specifically, are individuals substances or not?  This is an important metaphysical issue for self understanding.

If they are, what are substrata?  Are they momentary or continuant?  Is there one substance or two substances or many substances?

If they are not, how are an individual’s qualities clustered together?  How are individuals individuated without substrata?

[Although I do not defend my position by answering objections there, I give my answer in the post "Substance."]

C.  Assuming that numbers are not the same as numerals (because they are what numerals denote), are numbers real?  For example, do negative numbers, imaginary numbers, and infinite numbers exist?

Pythagoras thought so.  For him, this wasn’t merely a question in the philosophy of mathematics; it was about everything in the world.  His ultimate explanation went beyond standard ones about body [matter] to form, specifically, to the idea that reality can be understood as numbers.

D.  Is anything divine real?  In other words, do gods exist or does a god exist?

Answering this intelligibly first requires defining what is under discussion, and that proves to be very difficult, which may not be very surprising in the sense that you are trying to use natural categories to understand a supposedly supernatural subject matter.  In practice, there is a lot of philosophy to be learned by seriously examining this question.

E.  What is mind (consciousness)?  Are all entities somehow mind?  If some entities are not mind, what is the relation between mind and those entities?

F. What is body?  Are all entities somehow body?  The concept of matter has radically evolved over the millennia.

G. What is the role of logic?  Is it somehow due to us or is reality itself somehow logical?

This list of metaphysical issues could be extended and is meant to be representative and not exhaustive.  However, it is sufficient to provide a clearer idea about the kinds of topics addressed by ontologists.

Perhaps the most important issue is about metaphysical issues themselves.  Is it possible to solve them conceptually?  [See the posts "Define Understanding" and "Epistemology."]

Discursive (conceptual, discriminatory, divisive) reason is dualistic.  If reality is unitary, it is impossible for discursive reason to apprehend it.

For example, Zengcan, the third patriarch of Chinese Zen [Chan], wrote “Affirming Faith in Mind,” which is considered to be the oldest extant Chan document.  In it, he argues, “When you assert that things are real, you miss their true reality / But to assert that things are void, also misses reality.” [Rochester Zen Center translation.]  Reality cannot be adequately grasped conceptually.

His criticism is quite clear:  “Remaining in duality, you’ll never know of unity . . . Thought cannot reach this state of truth.”

His prescription is also clear:  living well, living without being misled, requires us to “Cut off all useless thoughts and words.”

Notice that he is not recommended that we somehow stop conceptualizing, which is impossible.  What he is recommending is that we stop all useless conceptualizing.

Are criticisms like Zengcan’s (and Kant’s) correct?

The only way to tell is to follow his prescription and determine for yourself whether or not it cures “the mind’s disease” of incessant conceptualizing that actually prevents us from apprehending what is ultimately real and “beyond both emptiness as well as form.”

Metaphysics is the formal science of being qua being. ‘Formal’ here means ‘nonempirical’ and ‘science’ means a ‘system of understanding.’  ‘Qua‘ is Latin for ‘as.’

In the west, philosophers such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Plato preceded Aristotle in discussing the nature of reality; however, Aristotle was the first to write a book devoted to investigating being qua being.

After his death, an editor named the book ‘Metaphysics’ (meta ta physika, which literally means “after the things of nature’) simply because it came after Aristotle’s book on physics in the collection of his writings.  Despite this origin, the name stuck-although today philosophers use it interchangeably with ‘ontology,’ which means the study of being.

To understand how fundamental metaphysics is, consider the following three questions:

C.    What is a wise human being?

B.    What is a human being?

A.    What is being?

Many thinkers have attempted to answer question C; many thinkers have advanced theories of how to live wisely or well.  Most of their theories, though, are vague and ungrounded.  Why?

It’s because a coherent answer to question C depends upon a coherent answer to question B.  If you don’t know what a human being is, it makes no sense to attempt to divide humans into those who are wise and those who aren’t.  In other words, the answer to question B is more fundamental than the answer to question C.

There’s no issue about this.  It’s simply a logical point.  The answer to question C may be more important than the answer to question B, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the answer to question B is more fundamental than the answer to question C.

Similarly, many thinkers have attempted to answer question B; many thinkers have advanced theories of what it means to be human.  Most of their theories, though, are vague and ungrounded.  Why?

It’s because a coherent answer to question B depends upon a coherent answer to question A.  If you don’t know what a being is, it makes no sense to attempt to divide beings into those who are human and those who aren’t.  Again, there’s no issue about this, and it is doesn’t mean that the answer to question A is more important than the answer to question B.

To answer “What is being?” is to do metaphysics or ontology.

In practice, there are two questions to distinguish.

The logically first question is:  “What is an entity?”  The word ‘entity’ here refers to an existent, a real being.  The task of proto-ontology is answering this question.  [See the post "Define Reality" to find my answer.]

Traditionally, the task of metaphysics or ontology is answering this question:  “What kinds of entities are real?”  The word ‘kinds’ here refers to categories (sorts, divisions, groupings) of entities.

Proto-ontology is logically prior to ontology because it makes no sense to attempt to divide entities into various categories without first becoming clear about what it is to be an entity.

Different metaphysicians divide reality differently.  To give reasons for and against various divisions is to participate in the classical metaphysical dialectic.

Reasons are required because a claim that some kind is real is worthless unless justified.  This is why metaphysics and epistemology are two sides of the same coin.  Real entities must be known to be real, and knowledge must be about something real.  [See the post "Epistemology."]

Together, metaphysics and epistemology are known as “first philosophy.”  They may not be first in importance, but they are logically first in the sense that they are the most fundamental philosophical disciplines.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge.  ‘Knowledge’ is here used very broadly; perhaps a better word would be ‘apprehension.’

To apprehend conceptually is to employ our epistemic capacities in an effort to understand reality.  [See the post "Define Reality."]

There is no guarantee that it is possible to conceptualize reality correctly, but it is important to come as close as possible.  The less deluded we are, the less likely it may be that our decisions have disastrous consequences.  Epistemology has practical importance.

Ordinary thought and speech seem to regard believing and knowing as the two modes of apprehending; if so, this commonsense view of the subject matter of epistemology requires revision.

With respect to beliefs, where ‘p’ stands for some proposition, it is senseless to make statements such as “I am believing that p.”  A belief is not an occurrence.  (Since there are no occurrent beliefs, a belief cannot be a disposition to assent to an occurrent belief.)

Epistemologists have had great difficulty answering the question, ‘What is a belief?’  If that surprises you, just try answering it clearly for yourself!  Without a clear answer to that question, let’s set aside the notion of believing.

Instead, let’s focus on judgments.  We regularly experience being conscious of a (real or unreal) state of affairs (fact, situation), and that is all that an occurrent judgment is.  A judgment is a direct mental relation to a (real or unreal) state of affairs; judgments are either occurrent or dispositions to engage in such episodes of consciousness.  Judgments are familiar, distinctive, unquestionable, and not further analyzable.

Making judgments is independent of evidence (justification). So a simplistic, straightforward voluntarism in this context is false.  For example, if I’m walking across a road and suddenly notice that a truck is rapidly approaching, I am hardly at liberty to choose to refrain from that judgment or not.  I simply jump to avoid the truck.

On the other hand, if I claim to know that p, then evidence is required.  What is evidence required for knowledge?

Demonstrative evidence is incompatible with the falsehood of the judgment it is evidence for.  What is demonstrative evidence?

The phenomenological rock bottom here is the brute psychological fact of one’s finding it unthinkable that one is mistaken in judging the particular proposition in question to be true.  Knowledge is the unthinkability or inconceivability of mistake or error.

(Since the particular proposition in question may be contingent, knowledge is not the unthinkability of its falsehood.)

The relevant inconceivability is neither vague nor abstract, and it is neither purely conceptual nor purely logical; instead, it is the inability by a particular person at a particular time and in a particular context to think there is a mistake about a particular proposition.

Therefore, the inconceivability of mistake does not entail truth; it is not the same as infallibility, which trivially entails truth.  However, since what is unthinkable is one’s not apprehending truth, the inconceivability of mistake is the closest we can come epistemically and conceptually to truth.

The inconceivability of mistake is self-validating.  Why?  Appealing to the phenomenological rock bottom experience guarantees genuine self-evidence; the brute psychological fact is epistemically critical.  How could there be any circularity or infinite regress?

If so, a traditional, major problem in epistemology is solved.

Nondemonstrative evidence, on the other hand, is compatible with the falsehood of the judgment it is the evidence for.  The concept of nondemonstrative evidence is useless, inapplicable.  Why?  It lacks a phenomenological ground.  It’s a conceptual phantom.  There is, at least so far, no concept of epistemic probability.

Hume is the western philosopher with the most important arguments about nondemonstrative evidence.  Two excellent contemporary works are Panayot Butchvarov’s The Concept of Knowledge and Skepticism About the External World.

If the arguments of Hume, Butchvarov, and others similar thinkers (like Paul Feyerabend) are sound, they undermine any supposedly articulate understanding of rationality or rational belief or probable belief.

This consequence is not just important in epistemology.  It is very important in ethics and political philosophy as well as in the philosophy of science.  Our ability to apprehend reality conceptually is restricted (and perhaps distorted), which is a point that many monists and mystics have made.

This explains why the nature of nondemonstrative evidence is the most serious problem in epistemology.

My hunch is that it is insoluable.  Why?  To conceptualize reality is to distort reality [see the post "Define Understanding"].

Does this mean that reality [what-is, truth] is beyond our reach?  Not necessarily.  It may be beyond our ability to conceptualize, but what if we are able to apprehend it directly without conceptualizing it?

Some sages have thought that a direct, undistorted grasp is possible–but only if we let go of conceptualizing completely.  The requisite experience is known as awakening (spiritual enlightenment, satori).

What is being philosophical and what is its importance?  The answers may surprise you.

Mastery of anything valuable requires disciplined, focused, persistent training of the right kind.

Etymologically, a philosopher is a lover of wisdom.  Since to be wise is to live well, a philosopher is someone who lives well or seriously seeks to live well.  It’s the serious attempt to master life.

It’s really that simple:  being philosophical means being wholeheartedly committed to mastering life.

How?

It’s not obvious how to live well.  You are on the right track if you make the uncomfortable admission that you are ignorant about how to live well and resolve to cure that ignorance.

What philosophers have in common is that they live examined lives.  They seriously question life.  They are determined to live well or to die attempting to live well.  They believe, as Plato puts it, that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Living well never happens accidentally.  If you don’t commit yourself to living well, you never will live well.

Common misunderstandings about philosophy abound.  For example, it’s a mistake to equate being a philosopher with doing well taking courses in philosophy or even being a professor of it.  Yes, it is an academic discipline known for asking fundamental questions; however, the purpose of questioning is wisdom, living well, rather than mastering some obscure texts or theories.

Being philosophical is a way of living.  Successful philosophers are sages; you cannot merely read, write, or think your way into being a sage.

It’s certainly true that some good thinking is necessary to practice philosophy, but, if it detracts from living well, becoming a master thinker is actually detrimental to living well.

The values we adopt determine how we live, and every coherent set of values is grounded upon an understanding of reality. Therefore, the ideas that are fundamental to a philosophical life are value, reality, and understanding.  These are the subject matters of axiology, ontology, and epistemology, which are the core philosophical disciplines.

Which values should I adopt?  What is evidence?  What is real?  How is it possible to apprehend what is real?  How is it possible to make consistently good decisions?

All normal people, especially when they are children, do wonder about life and at least occasionally, especially in times of crisis, examine it.  In this sense, it’s natural, at least for literate humans, to be philosophical.

If you are not a philosopher and if your life isn’t working well, if you are suffering too much, then you should consider becoming more philosophical in order to liberate yourself from dissatisfactions and discover how sages live.

It’s important to avoid thinking that you understand what living well is like without experiencing it.  Wisdom is not merely a matter of theoretical understanding; it has immense concrete value.

Understood correctly, instead of having the least value of all the academic disciplines, it is the most relevant!

Sages are the only masters of living well. They are the only wise humans, the only ones who lead blissful lives without suffering, liberated lives of detachment, peace, equanimity, and lasting joy.

My belief is that that is an option for all of us.  It’s difficult to do, but it is certainly possible.

My own philosophical hero is Master Gotama, the Buddha.  If you are interested in living better, a good place to start is to learn about the life of The Great Sage of India.

His view is that we are all innately “awake,” but we don’t realize it.  We are all naturally sages, but it is necessary to quiet our distractions and still our minds to realize that.  With continued practice, the tranquility realization involves infuses all aspects of our lives.

Here’s what I suggest you ask yourself:  “What if he’s right?  Why not decide that I may really be a sage and do what it takes to realize that?  What could be more worth doing?”

The issue concerning the reality of substance is the most important issue in ontology. It concerns the nature of individuals, and we are individuals; furthermore, realizing one position on this issue may be required for living well.

The traditional question of ontology [metaphysics] is:  “What kinds of entities are real?”

Different thinkers separate entities into different categories.  Assuming there ought to be a distinction between individuals [particulars] and qualities [commonalities; see the post "Define Qualities"], the issue here is about how to understand individuals.

Is there anything else in addition to its qualities that constitutes an individual? Is there an ontological surd beyond them?

Consider any individual– perhaps a physical object like a stone.  Is there something underlying its attributes (such as its shape, size, color, and so on) in which they inhere?  If there is, what is it?  If there is not, how should we understand the togetherness of its qualities?

In western philosophy Aristotle gives the classic presentation of a substance ontology in his Categories and Book XII of his Metaphysics.  The critical mark of one for him is its ability to remain the same while changing qualitatively.  For example, you can be warm at one time and cold at another time and still be the same individual person [3b20].

For there to be such change, there must be something that changes (such as a quality) and something that remains the same to change, which is the logical substratum.  [If there weren't one, instead of one changed entity there would be two different entities.]  A “continuant” is something that is the same at two or more times.  So the notion of continuant substrata goes with the claim that individuals change, which seems to be commonsensical.

It is the notion of a logical substratum that is critical.  Nobody denies the appearance of change, but the reality of change has been denied.  There is not just one way to understand flux.

Even some later western substance philosophers eliminate an Aristotelean analysis of flux with the idea of “bare particulars,” which are momentary substrata devoid of any qualities except their ability to hold qualities together to constitute individuals.  What appears to be one individual changing over time is, for them, actually a sequence of momentary individuals.

It is precisely this notion of logical substrata that many modern western philosophers such as Locke, Hume, Nietzsche, and Bradley question or reject.  After all, if to be real is to be multiply singleoutable [see the post "Define Reality"], substances do not exist because they are not singleoutable.  It’s impossible to pick out something with no qualities.  So substances violate the Principle of Acquaintance.

To give an example of the dialectic [the back and forth or argumentation], one of Bradley’s arguments for his view that positing substances leads to an infinite regress is this:  Let ‘a’ denote a substance and ‘F’ denote a quality.  Assume that a is F.  Either a is related to F or it is not.  If it is not, it must be false that a is F.  If it is, there must be something that connects or ties a to F-but then there must also be, for example, something that ties the original tie to a and the original tie to F and so on.  However, this is a vicious endless regress.  Hence, the claim that a is F is either false or unintelligible.

Some substance ontologists reply to such arguments that substances must be real because, otherwise, the togetherness of an individual’s qualities cannot be understood and the problem of individuation cannot be solved.  After all, individuals are not merely sets or lists of qualities:  they are unified clusters of qualities.

Butchvarov, a nonsubstance ontologist, argues in response that substrata are not necessary to understand the togetherness of an individual’s qualities [see Chapter 8 of Being Qua Being].  To my mind, it’s always preferable to adjust one’s assumptions about the world rather than to rely on transcendental arguments about what must be real according to one’s prior assumptions.

In eastern philosophy Master Gotama, the Buddha, seems to have been the world’s first nonsubstance ontologist.  He did more than provide a Hume-like critique of substances more than 20 centuries prior to Hume; he argued that it is possible to prove that a nonsubstance ontology is correct in one’s own case and that it is very important to do so.

According to him all phenomenal individuals are characterized by annatta, non-self.  He does not deny that the notion of a self or substance has conventional validity, but he argues that the characteristic of non-self follows from the other two characteristics of individuals, namely, impermanence and dukkha (dissatisfaction, suffering).  All individuals are empty of a separate self or substratum.

It’s not just that there are no sound arguments for the reality of substrata and that there is a way to conceptualize the world adequately without positing their existence, it’s also that it is possible to realize that we ourselves are empty (and, so, extend that realization to all other individuals).  How?

He remarks in The Dhammapada that “There can be . . . no wisdom for those who do not meditate”  [Easwaran, tr.].  To meditate is not to conceptualize [see the post "Define Understanding"].  To meditate is to stop conceptualizing!

That’s a very simple idea and, I can assure you from personal experience, a very difficult one to practice.  However, many sages in addition to Master Gotama have argued that it is only by stopping our incessant tendency to conceptualize that we are able to attain a direct experience of undistorted reality.

They have also said, over and over and over, that there is no way to conceptualize or think or reason one’s way to that direct experience.

Furthermore, not having that experience, condemns us to ceaseless suffering!  It’s at this point that the ontological dispute regarding the reality of substances becomes very important.  If the Buddha is correct, nothing is more important to your well-being than letting go of your attachment to your self-concept (ego/I).

Is he correct?  There’s only one way to find out.

Is reality a concept that separates objects into those that exist and those that don’t exist?  If so, which concept is it?

Since the world is the set of entities (existents), sorting objects into entities and nonentities (nonexistent) is obviously a fundamental project for each of us.  What is the difference between real objects and unreal objects?

Permit me to suggest an answer.  Let’s begin by clarifying some relevant terms.

Reality is one of the three fundamental concepts.  (The other two are evidence and value.)

The traditional question of ontology [metaphysics] is:  “What kinds of entities are real?”  Different thinkers separate entities into different categories.

The question of proto-ontology is:  “What is an entity?”  Obviously, the proto-ontological question is logically more fundamental than the ontological question:  until you are clear about what an entity is, how could you separate entities into different categories?

The task of proto-ontology is to find some quality F that all entities have and all nonentities lack.  A quality F will be unacceptable if either a real objects lacks F or an unreal object has F.

Since reality is such a fundamental concept, it should not be surprising that only half a dozen candidates for F have been seriously proposed, namely:  unity, matter, mind, perception, power, and identity.

This post is not the place to review the relevant dialectic (argument back and forth).  Instead, let me just mention my belief that there are fatal objections to the first five just listed.  (For more on the dialectic, see my The Concept of Existence and Butchavrov’s Being Qua Being.)  If so, F is identity.  If so, the ontological dictum “no entity without identity” is true.

Let me suggest the power of the reasoning behind that conclusion with a simple example.

Suppose that you enter your bedroom and unexpectedly see a $100 bill on your bed.  Quick:  what’s the first thing you’d do?

You’d rush over to your bed and pick it up, wouldn’t you?

If you were able to pick it up, you would be successful in convincing yourself it was a real $100 bill, that you weren’t just hallucinating by seeing something you wanted to see.  On the other hand, if you weren’t able to pick it up, you surely would conclude that it wasn’t real.

Perceiving is the primary way of picking or singling out objects.  To make the identity judgment ” the object I am seeing is (one and the same as) the object I am touching” is to make the judgment that what appear to be two objects (namely, the visual one and the tactile one) are, in reality, one entity.  [For more on this, see the posts "Define Understanding," "Define Identity," "Define Indiscernibility," and "Define Qualities."]

In this way, to be an entity is to be multiply singleoutable.  In other words, an entity is two pure objects, which is the same thing apprehended in at least two ways.

Usually entities are indefinitely singleoutable, but all that is required for being an entity is that something be the subject of at least one true identity judgment, in other words, that it be singleoutable twice.

Notice that the view is not that to be an entity is to be multiple singled-out.  Anything multiply singled-out would be an entity, but, presumably, there are many entities in the universe (perhaps small planets in distant galaxies) that are not singled out at all (and never will be).

The domain of entities is a subset of the domain of objects.  The function of the concepts of reality and identity is to reduce the number of objects into a world, a set of entities, that has many fewer members than the domain of pure objects.  Without such a reduction, nothing would be intelligible, able to be understood.  If every object were different from every other object, there could be no conceptualization.

With a clear concept of reality, it is possible to go on and do ontology intelligibly.  We can enquire about the existence of such supposedly different categories of entities as physical objects, events, substances [substrata], activities, numbers, strings (in physics), minds, gods, God, and selves.  (If you are interested, consider a course in ontology.)

There are no criteria of the primary applicability of the concepts of existence and identity; ultimately, such applications are decisions, which are enforced.  This explains why the domain of objects may be understood in different ways, why different conceptual systems are possible.

It is false that there is just one conceptual scheme; obviously, there are many.  Any adequate account of understanding must permit this, and that is one virtue of the account presented in these posts.