EMPIRICISM : DROWN YOURSELF

Hey Only brain Human bodies! Today is the day for Empiricism. Till Skepticism, The world had fallen in a deep abyss of doubt. René Fought with the "Evil Genius" by something called "Rationalism", 

Which is a way of thinking in which we consider that our senses may be false but the ideas that we develop in our minds can't be, if the ideas are thought in a truly rational manner. 

He went on thinking and concluded " I think therefore I am". Imagine René thinking all this today at 3,  

Memes aside and aside Rationalism, there was another way of thinking regarding this, namely, Empiricism. 

Empiricism is the way of thinking in which we think that the immediate reality that we experience by using our sense organs is the ultimate reality. Reason and rationality may lead us to truth but observation of immediate reality by sene organs may beat rationality Sometimes. The self evident truths are all Empirical because you don't probe them. They  are true because they are! 

John Locke, An English philosopher, was a pioneer of this who began with this mode of reasoning. 
John believed that we all are born with a blank slate mind. Nothing written on it. We call it "Tabula Rasa" or the blank slate hypothesis. 
Nothing inherent about this World and it's reality. All of what we know about this World, we know by our sense organs. Locke agreed with Descartes in the sense that not everytime our sense organs give us correct information. 
Now whether the senses give correct information or not, He classified the properties of all Objects as 

1. Primary Qualities 
2. Secondary Qualities


Primary Qualities are those qualities that are objective in nature. Like :- mass, solidity, shape, size, depth, height, motion, etc of an Object are it's primary qualities. 
Secondary qualities are those qualities that are subjective in nature. Everyone will have a different description about the property. 
For example :- colour, taste, texturetexture, smell, sound it makes etc. are some of these. 
I mean, if there is an orange of orange color what kind of orange is this, light, dark, it all depends on our perception at that time. I am eating that orange, what is it's taste? Sour, very sour, a bit sweet! Depends on what I ate before that. 

The argument of Locke was that the distinction between the primary and secondary qualities explained the difference in the perception of the reality. Obviously you can't disagree on something's primary qualities, but you surely can on secondary qualities and that creates a deception of a fake reality sometimes. 

The next stage of this reasoning was achieved by George Berkeley, an Irish Thinker. He dismantled the empirical thought structure by this argument. 

If you try to ignore the secondary qualities for sometime, you loose even the primary ones and hence the whole of reality. For instance, 

Imagine a colourless Apple! You can't believe me. You are probably imagining one which is either transparent in which it is actually the colour of the background that must be imagined or white coloured Apple which is obviously a flawed imagination. 
Imagine a textureless one. Similarly you will not be able to. 


So, Berkeley's argument was that since the two qualities are so much interconnected with each other, you can be deceived in any of those two. And Since, you can be fooled by your senses regarding any of those qualities, There is nothing physical in this world. There are only perceptions. There are only images and no objects. That's what He said. 

               ESSE EST PERCEPI
               (To be is to be perceived) 

We need Perceivers in order to exist. This is something Allama Iqbal, The great Urdu poet, writes in one of his couplets, 
        
         हज़ारों साल नरगिस अपनी बेनूरी पर रोता है, 
         बड़ी मुश्किल से होता है चमन में दीदावर पैदा! 

Interpreting it in our scenario, The immaterial objects cry on their fate for thousands of years till a perceiver takes birth. 


Berkeley is scary, isn't he? But wait. He gets scarier. He argued that since everything is perception, we need perceivers to perceive us unless we will seize to exist. May be that's why I am awake late at night. If I slept, I will seize to exist. But What if Everybody went asleep someday at the same time because of some Serotonin conspiracy of some mad philosopher doing an experiment to check Berkeley's Empirical arguments? 
On this, Berkeley said that God must exist. God must exist as an ultimate perceiver. When nobody watches, he watches. From here comes, this threat to privacy Statement. 

So Berkeley ended his argument on a positive note when he solved everything by making God exist. But as we know, God doesn't exist. (Sorry!) So it makes the point scarier again with this much level of understanding. Moreover, just imagine, if God exists, and for God to exist we need another permanent perceiver. So say, God himself. Sounds too religious, right? Let it be...! 

This leads us to the end of Empiricism, The way of thinking that leads us to question the legitimacy of the physical world and of matter itself. Next we will move to Epistemology, the second branch of philosophy and will see how to make this world not get ceased again. Let's see Who brings back this world. 


See you in the next blog (Yeah, you are being watched 🤫) . 
Till then, Keep reading. 
The only salvation! 


       
               

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