The other day I was thinking about justice, and was trying to understand the meaning of justice, a heinous task that i have forced myself to engage for quite some time now. Why is something just to me, unjust to someone else. The conceptions of justice varies with people in the same efficacious sense as with me. I do not have a tad of doubt in doing things that I presume is just to me. So how did this notion of right/wrong come into me?
To start with, I was wondering where to start? How did I start learning things? How did I learn to differentiate just and unjust (to me)? How do I form opinions about any topic in this life ? Why should I have opinions about anything and everything in this life?
A simple answer would be because I am a human and "I think". For any educated and trained mind A is A. We all think of our thoughts and notions as sui generis and truly unique. But little we realize the difference between objective truth and subjective truth. Perhaps a difficult philosophical question would be to ask yourself, "Am I a rationalist?". I am sure most of us, who claim ourselves to be radical would have asked that question and would have come to a conclusion that "Yes I am one, and a pretty good one at that.." with aplomb. But sadly, that is not the truth, or to be specific, that is not the objective truth. Its simply because, while asserting that question, you make a dubious assumption that "my set of axioms/assumptions (need to) concern only me". A rationalist is a generic term and for all of us to fall into that category we must have had same set of assumptions. And yet, it is as clear as water, that there are different rationalists in their own way.
Simply put, we all start with a null set "U", then as years go by we all have our own taste of life, we start adding elements to that set, based on experience, observations, reasoning which form the objective subset of "U". There is also a subjective subset associated with this set, which comes from the feelings, emotions and reactions to any given situation. Rationality in the sense of subjectivity is driven by the motive of acheiving your goals in an optimal manner. i.e what is good to you, is good to you alone and need not be good to others. Whereas objective truth is something that's always "1" even if you bring in human feelings and emotions. I have tried to be objective in my thinking from the moment I learned the meaning of the word objectivity.
Justice, objectivity, subjectivity, rationalism..... How are these things interconnected? What do you think is rational justice?
I have had this take on rationalism all the while but never got an opportunity to realise what i felt about it until yesterday. It was a normal sunday afternoon siesta. I just got up from my sleep and came out of my bed to the hall, where I saw deepak (my room mate) with a friend of his, Chao Ying, a girl from china and Raj, Nanyang Heights room mate . One of the advantages of studying in an international university is the acquaintance of different people, and cultures from all over the world. After getting introduced, we all sat down over a cup of tea and started picking out topics from air to have a light-hearted banter.
Ying said, " Raj sits next to Fahd (who is from Pakistan) and I just went and put an imaginary line between them, stating this is the border between and India and Pakistan :D "
I said, " Yeah, and China has to make that decision :P "
We all laughed over it. It was just a topic of discussion for us, over a coffee. But there is more meaning to that than this.
"We are told in our schools that we are always right on the face of war, it's "they" who caused problems first", said Chao Ying.
"That is so damn true", I said.
This is the idea of rational justice that is being propagated through out this world. Its all relative (even in thinking), Einstein was right about relativity theory (laughs). If I rack my brains to find one such situation where India or any country for that matter, have accepted their mistake, unless its so obvious, during the face of war, then probably the world would have been a better place to live in. We were taught about how bad the communal riots were, and so Mahatma Gandhi had to separate Hindustan into India and Pakistan. If one thing that i have learned from my social text books, they are that the historians lie, your parents lie, everybody lies, but they all cover it up saying its for a specific greater good." Greater good", is the good of their kin and friends. Good, here is with no doubt the subjective good, where in, its good for few sect of people, and bad for others.
The division of humans based on ideologies and notions is far more a menacing problem than the division based on religions. This is because, these trained minds, with different ideologies were the pioneers in finding different religions/sects/caste. The other few trained rationalists who call themselves the heads of the society used it for their advantage, and its the common man who is facing the repercussions of such a brutal division. Religion, which is considered a primary cause for many man-made calamaties of the nature, follows a set of rules, which changes as and when the ruler changes. There are also people who do not believe in religion and yet beign rationalists are cause of such dreadful events. Its because of the fact that, they close their minds to all those other sets that describe the reasons of actions. One of the evasive replies I get from my friends who like to believe in religion and god is, we are better off following a doctrine of principles, where in the real truth is hidden, and its hard to think of the consequences of public knowing the real truth, for which case the apparent truth is seen as a solution, which gives them the desired mental peace. The other non-god followers, do not want to open up to new "sets" of thinking , simply because they do not seem to see the picture from their systematic gathering of observations. Reason is universal to those people. The rules of my definition of being radical are purely objective and algebraic. 1+4 = 5 always, no matter what. That is objective truth.
We are all living in the illusion of this deliberative rationality, where in we assume we are rational in our thoughts, and justice is universal. But the bare naked truth is we are not considering the totality of all sets that ascertain our system of reasoning. Will opening up your minds to all probabilities and possibilities be a solution? No not yet, there again comes the problem of your definition of "all the sets and assumptions".
Thus, I have shared my purely objective (" you can choose to differ") thought about rationalism and justice that seems to be a pivotal problem in this world along with the minacious problems such as religion, terrorism and God. (No offense to anybody for including God here, because I feel, that is, one of the problems that is affecting human kind in a bigger way than any of us can imagine). Rational Justice is not universal. We all Lie. We should question the existence of every possible and impossible idea, and from there starts the process of learning. These are the hidden truths, that I see in the alto relievo of the sculpture life, and you too have one. We form a taxanomical classification.
To start with, I was wondering where to start? How did I start learning things? How did I learn to differentiate just and unjust (to me)? How do I form opinions about any topic in this life ? Why should I have opinions about anything and everything in this life?
A simple answer would be because I am a human and "I think". For any educated and trained mind A is A. We all think of our thoughts and notions as sui generis and truly unique. But little we realize the difference between objective truth and subjective truth. Perhaps a difficult philosophical question would be to ask yourself, "Am I a rationalist?". I am sure most of us, who claim ourselves to be radical would have asked that question and would have come to a conclusion that "Yes I am one, and a pretty good one at that.." with aplomb. But sadly, that is not the truth, or to be specific, that is not the objective truth. Its simply because, while asserting that question, you make a dubious assumption that "my set of axioms/assumptions (need to) concern only me". A rationalist is a generic term and for all of us to fall into that category we must have had same set of assumptions. And yet, it is as clear as water, that there are different rationalists in their own way.
Simply put, we all start with a null set "U", then as years go by we all have our own taste of life, we start adding elements to that set, based on experience, observations, reasoning which form the objective subset of "U". There is also a subjective subset associated with this set, which comes from the feelings, emotions and reactions to any given situation. Rationality in the sense of subjectivity is driven by the motive of acheiving your goals in an optimal manner. i.e what is good to you, is good to you alone and need not be good to others. Whereas objective truth is something that's always "1" even if you bring in human feelings and emotions. I have tried to be objective in my thinking from the moment I learned the meaning of the word objectivity.
Justice, objectivity, subjectivity, rationalism..... How are these things interconnected? What do you think is rational justice?
I have had this take on rationalism all the while but never got an opportunity to realise what i felt about it until yesterday. It was a normal sunday afternoon siesta. I just got up from my sleep and came out of my bed to the hall, where I saw deepak (my room mate) with a friend of his, Chao Ying, a girl from china and Raj, Nanyang Heights room mate . One of the advantages of studying in an international university is the acquaintance of different people, and cultures from all over the world. After getting introduced, we all sat down over a cup of tea and started picking out topics from air to have a light-hearted banter.
Ying said, " Raj sits next to Fahd (who is from Pakistan) and I just went and put an imaginary line between them, stating this is the border between and India and Pakistan :D "
I said, " Yeah, and China has to make that decision :P "
We all laughed over it. It was just a topic of discussion for us, over a coffee. But there is more meaning to that than this.
"We are told in our schools that we are always right on the face of war, it's "they" who caused problems first", said Chao Ying.
"That is so damn true", I said.
This is the idea of rational justice that is being propagated through out this world. Its all relative (even in thinking), Einstein was right about relativity theory (laughs). If I rack my brains to find one such situation where India or any country for that matter, have accepted their mistake, unless its so obvious, during the face of war, then probably the world would have been a better place to live in. We were taught about how bad the communal riots were, and so Mahatma Gandhi had to separate Hindustan into India and Pakistan. If one thing that i have learned from my social text books, they are that the historians lie, your parents lie, everybody lies, but they all cover it up saying its for a specific greater good." Greater good", is the good of their kin and friends. Good, here is with no doubt the subjective good, where in, its good for few sect of people, and bad for others.
The division of humans based on ideologies and notions is far more a menacing problem than the division based on religions. This is because, these trained minds, with different ideologies were the pioneers in finding different religions/sects/caste. The other few trained rationalists who call themselves the heads of the society used it for their advantage, and its the common man who is facing the repercussions of such a brutal division. Religion, which is considered a primary cause for many man-made calamaties of the nature, follows a set of rules, which changes as and when the ruler changes. There are also people who do not believe in religion and yet beign rationalists are cause of such dreadful events. Its because of the fact that, they close their minds to all those other sets that describe the reasons of actions. One of the evasive replies I get from my friends who like to believe in religion and god is, we are better off following a doctrine of principles, where in the real truth is hidden, and its hard to think of the consequences of public knowing the real truth, for which case the apparent truth is seen as a solution, which gives them the desired mental peace. The other non-god followers, do not want to open up to new "sets" of thinking , simply because they do not seem to see the picture from their systematic gathering of observations. Reason is universal to those people. The rules of my definition of being radical are purely objective and algebraic. 1+4 = 5 always, no matter what. That is objective truth.
We are all living in the illusion of this deliberative rationality, where in we assume we are rational in our thoughts, and justice is universal. But the bare naked truth is we are not considering the totality of all sets that ascertain our system of reasoning. Will opening up your minds to all probabilities and possibilities be a solution? No not yet, there again comes the problem of your definition of "all the sets and assumptions".
Thus, I have shared my purely objective (" you can choose to differ") thought about rationalism and justice that seems to be a pivotal problem in this world along with the minacious problems such as religion, terrorism and God. (No offense to anybody for including God here, because I feel, that is, one of the problems that is affecting human kind in a bigger way than any of us can imagine). Rational Justice is not universal. We all Lie. We should question the existence of every possible and impossible idea, and from there starts the process of learning. These are the hidden truths, that I see in the alto relievo of the sculpture life, and you too have one. We form a taxanomical classification.
10 comments:
"We were taught about how bad the communal riots were, and so Mahatma Gandhi had to separate Hindustan into India and Pakistan. "
Do you have an alternate version?Apart from the fact ofcourse that Gandhi had little to do with partition; he was the one trying to keep things together and eventually got shot for it by the same people who now sit in Parliament as the largest opposition party in the country.
As for rationalism, every time I feel too 'rational' I remind myself that I am an atheist who is still afraid of the dark.
@ RCB exactly my point.. the reality is not seen as it is in the so called history text books.. we just believe what the historians say.. historians arent ppl who have lived when the incident happened (generally)...I m not accusing Gandhi here. I m merely stating a point that's been told by my history teacher and few others..neither am i trying to convince others that its the absolute truth...
Historians give us an account of our ancestors, which according to them must have occurred, based on the data they have collected and the info they have.. and here too, the data needn be congruent ..diff historians have their own data and believe theirs is right... and for us to believe them or not depends on our level of understanding and 0ur opinion. And such an opinionated world is never rational nor just.. rationality shud be objective, and based on mere algebraic expressions, n not based on human emotions... that's what i have tried to convey...
I hate Mr. Gandhi....thats the only conclusion I can derive from this post....everything has gone over my head due to heavy traffic of truck loads of info that is being directly fed into my brain through the hyper channeling :D
@ Quest
haha... did i give that opinion? well i don't hate Gandhi.. after all he was pivotal in bringing India together for the freedom struggle. But i don't approve certain methods and decisions of him. Nevertheless the point i wanted to convey with that was, historians lie, and what credibility do we have to accept some historians and disapprove others? It is based only on majority. If many historians say it, we believe it..though that need not have been the truth..
I said I hate Gandhi, not you :D
"Thus, I have shared my purely objective (" you can choose to differ") thought about rationalism and justice"
You beautifully summarized that however objective any thought can become, it is only objective within the bounds created by "our definition of 'all the sets and assumptions'". You also substantiated that with "Greater good is the good of their kin and friends" and not the good of the mosquitoes of that locality. But after all this, how is this purely objective, unless its a pun in the following way :
Its not "a purely objective thought" but "my purely objective thought" - meaning its still subjective but since nothing can really be objective, the word "objective" itself needs to be used in a relative (non-objective[?]) fashion (more objective or less objective as opposed to absolutely objective). Also we need to explicitly start treating opinions subjectively and there by keep our minds open to all angles of approach.
What is the answer?
@RCB
As for rationalism, every time I feel too 'rational' I remind myself that I am an atheist who is still afraid of the dark. - lol; it summed it all
@vatsil
ya machan.. its exactly as u said and as i ve written it... its my objective thinking, meaning my sets of assumptions.. and thats abt it.. but i ve also emphasized on the question u asked... "Also we need to explicitly start treating opinions subjectively and there by keep our minds open to all angles of approach."
can we do that? can we consider all the cases in such a way that we cover all the assumptions and it becomes absolutely objective in its full sense? That's why we have so much difference in opinion among humans.. anybody with cogent reasoning can refute any idea.. no 2 human being goes thru same set of incidents to develop same set of assumptions.. and even if they do, they have this "acquired knowledge" about life and rational thinking which itself will alter the moral decision that has to be taken by him/her...
I would like to know your answer on these 2 very famous questions (guess u might already know this )
1) A train is approaching and, to your horror, you realize that it is going to hit and kill five people walking on the track. But there is a lever which u can pull and send the train onto another track, where it will only kill one person. Do you pull the lever? If Yes,is it rational that u pulled the lever? I want your objective answer on this, taking into consideration ur assumptions and experiences in life..
2) There you are again, standing on a bridge over a railway track. You see a train approaching and, to your horror, realize that it is going to hit and kill five people standing on the track. But here there is a well-built man on the bridge, and if you push him off on to the track, he will stop the train (or at least slow it down) and prevent the deaths, but will be killed in the process. Do you push the man off the bridge?
(The 2nd one is kinda stupid, knowing that one person cant stop the train, and even if we assume he can, we might not be able to push him on to the bridge, but just for discussion sake assume its possible)
3) Will your answer be the same , if those 5 ppl were some one whom yu loved?
@RCB, lol :P i dint see that part of ur comment ... like arun said, it summed it all :D
can we consider all the cases in such a way that we cover all the assumptions and it becomes absolutely objective in its full sense?
We cannot become absolutely objective. There is no need to be absolutely objective. If someone thinks something is absolutely objective, that means he has a closed mind. I do not want people to consider all cases; but when someone (presumably with different experiences) brings up an alternative thought, I just want people to be open-minded, listen to it and consider it. So whenever we conclude on anything, implicitly all of us should put a '*' near the conclusion.
* - subject to change when inputs change.
My objective (subject to change when I change - everything changes with time - and hence subjective) answers to the 3 questions :
1. I will pull the lever
2. I will not push the man
3. I will not push the man
P.S. 1+4 = 5 is not absolute truth. Its objective only within the realms created by the axioms of Algebra. Its absolutely subjective.
haha.. thats exactly what i meant thru the post machi... objective reasoning is within the limits of the assumptions we make.. and thats what i have tried to convey.. and when i mean 1+4=5 is absolute truth, i mean that, objective reasoning based on algebra makes a lot more sense than subjective. but since there is nothing called absolutely objective, u want to call it subjective. and i can see that we differ there only.. i do agree that we need to have a broad sense of thinking and open up to all possibilities.. i guess i have mentioned that too.. now coming back to the questions i asked..
when my dean asked me these questions in a presentation my immediate answers were yes and no, the same as urs... but after thinking later, just for argument sake, consider this... our answer (or at least mine)was based on the fact that... in the first case, 6 of them have placed themselves in danger by walking in the track, and in that scenario, sacrificing one life for 5 is the best bet.. (Again so i think).. and in the second case, there is no sense in sacrificing a person who hasn't put himself in danger to save 5 lives who have put themselves in danger by walking in the track.. now jus tell me... was it a rational decision? it wasnt? was ur decision based on numbers? saving 5 ppl to one is better no matter what? i guess not, cos ur 2nd answer was no.. so what i wanted to say using this example was, though it looks rational, decision isnt purely objective.. (u know that since u already believe everything is subjective, to persons who dont understand this, jus think what their answer wud have been) and in such cases, algebra can help us in being as u say atleast somewhere close to objective.. but in that case we shud have pushed that fat guy, and yet we dint.. so again it comes back to the point that, its all subjective,. i know i am saying the same things again, and in fact we both have been saying the same things.. the point is, in such cases, being algebraic is kin to being objective.. jus save the max number of ppl u can.. even if u need to kill one.. but we both know thats not rational... this kinda deliberate rational world only we are living in... so what can be done to remove this confusion? ans: being open to all possibilities.. and why arent ppl open to all possibilities? cos they simply don wanna believe that there exists other school of thoughts.. and thats one thing common in atheists like us which i don like (like yu) i, like yu, also think that we shud be open to alternate explanations at appropriate situations.. and then react.. and time will tell if the decision was rational or not. (Again SUBJECT to change as u change)
PS:- I think there are lots of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, wrote this late in the night, so bear with it :D
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