Philosophy

Problems of Hegelian-Marxist Ideologies

Hegel is credited to have been the first in the Western world to bring the study of history as a subject of philosophy proper. He did so by creating the thesis-antithesis-synthesis framework for history. Hegelian philosophy became the foundation of Marxism that saw society in terms of dualisms of antithesis and thesis. Their conflict led to a revolution in which both...

The Implications of Compression and Incompressibility

No two people are completely alike. No two roses look exactly the same. No two oranges are identical. Even as we classify the world into concepts, those classifications do not entail that two things are exactly alike. This fact is accommodated in modern physics by permitting different distributions of matter and energy, subject to some additional constraints (e.g., that the total...

The Conception of God in Vaiṣṇavism

Vaiṣṇavism presents a conception of God that doesn’t fit into well-known categories such as monotheism, polytheism, monism, pantheism, panentheism, henotheism, deism, and others. This is because Vaiṣṇavism accepts all their assertions and rejects all their negations. For example, the monotheistic claim that “God is one” doesn’t negate the polytheistic claim—i.e., “God is many”. Likewise, the panentheistic claim that “the world is...

Free Will—Self-Control vs. Other-Control

In Abrahamic religions, free will is defined as the soul’s capacity to control matter. The soul is said to be free in the sense that it can do whatever it wants with material things. Conversely, the soul shouldn’t do such things to other souls, unless they acquiesce, because they too are free. Since animals and plants don’t have a soul (and...

Nigama and Āgama

Vedic texts are broadly classified into Nigama and Āgama. They respectively pertain to theory and practice. The practice is accepted due to Nigama and the theory is confirmed due to Āgama. In this post, we will discuss the differences and relationships between Nigama and Āgama, how a complex Nigama is simplified by an easier Āgama, whose grasp is simplified by an...

Pratyakṣa: Observation vs. Measurement

Pratyakṣa or observation is considered one of the types of pramāna, proof, or evidence in Indian epistemology. We sometimes loosely call it empirical evidence. This nomenclature is, however, then confused with scientific empiricism, which is not observation but measurement. That can lead to the false idea that Indian epistemology supports measurements as a way to knowledge. In this post, I will...

Why the Material World is Called an Illusion

Imagine that you are sitting inside a room. You will likely say that there is a space, inside which there is a planet, in which there is a country, inside which there is a city, inside which there is a house, inside which there is a room, inside which the body is currently situated. If you believe in the existence of...

The Personification of Knowledge

Modern logic is defined by three principles—identity (A is A), non-contradiction (it cannot be both and A and not-A), and mutual exclusion (it cannot be neither A and not-A). In Vedic philosophy, we will call this a dualistic logic in the sense that the categories neither and both are logically forbidden forever. This dualistic logic is applied to knowledge by saying...

The Modal Conception of Reality

Epistemology in the West is defined as the “theory of knowledge”, especially with regard to the methods of knowing and questions about whether these methods deliver truth. However, owing to numerous dualisms in Western philosophy, including the strict separation between the observer and the observed, it has never been clear if knowledge is possible. Even if we assume that reality is...

What is a Machine?

A few articles ago, I discussed the nature of Personhood as six traits—self-awareness, intention, emotion, cognition, conation, and relation. Then we discussed Personalism vs. Depersonalization: A person is governed by free will and the depersonalized is governed by laws. As a follow-up, in this article, I will discuss what I mean by a machine in contrast to a person. I will...

Differences Between Western and Eastern Personalism, Impersonalism, Voidism, and Materialism

Śrila Prabhupāda described the Western worldviews as nirviśeśa and sūnyavāda, which are translated as impersonalism and voidism. This has always perplexed me because the West is rooted in Christian Personalism. How can a worldview based on Personalism be called voidism or impersonalism? The problem compounds with the Indian versions of nirviśeśa and sūnyavāda, called Advaita and Buddhism, because they too are...

Why Metaphysics is Pointless

Western philosophy has a famed distinction between appearance and reality. This distinction began with the idea that appearances are outward projection, while reality is the thing in itself. For example, consider a cheater, who talks suavely and pretends to have your best interests at heart, but in fact, he is trying to deceive you. Here, the bodily appearances (things that you...