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203 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
203 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
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% Unity of Knowledge and Action
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> It is impossible for a rational person to both believe in imminent rise of sea
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> levels and purchase ocean-front property with their own money.
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>
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> -- Steve Landsburg, on [Al Gore]
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[Al Gore]:
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http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/05/13/from-an-eternal-perspective/
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As indicated in my [Philosophical Survey] I consider the Unity of Knowledge
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and Action to be one of the four most important ideas known to man. But, what
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exactly *is* this idea? It is so unknown, particularly outside the Sinosphere,
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that you have probably no clue what it is. Let's change that.
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[Philosophical Survey]: /reflections/survey
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Wang Who?
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=========
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It is really unfortunate how unknown **Wang Yangming** (王陽明) is in Western
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culture. His influence on modern Confucianism is huge. He is easily one of the
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most important Chinese philosophers. But unless you are familiar with Chinese
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philosophy, you probably never even heard of him. Let me remedy this a bit by
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presenting you his, in my opinion, most important idea - the Unity of Knowledge
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and Action.
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Can you know what's right, but fail to act on it?
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=================================================
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Before Wang came around, Chinese philosophy, like most people even today,
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considered Knowledge and Action to be two separate things. Knowledge means
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understanding the world in such a way that you would know how to act in it, i.e.
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to know what *is* and what you *should* do. Action, then, is doing it. Ideally,
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you would *know* what to do and then *act* on it. But because the two are
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separate, you would typically acquire your Knowledge first, without any Action.
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This leaves one huge problem, something moral philosophy has been trying to
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solve for millennia - you could have Knowledge, but **fail to act**.
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You know the drill. "Yes, I *should* be eating healthier, but when I try, I
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fail." or "Sure, stealing is wrong, but that's just a company pen, right?" are
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familiar to all of us. It seems obvious that Knowledge and Action are separate.
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And here Wang Yangming comes in and awakens us out of our little slumber to the
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truth that we are *completely and horribly wrong*. I will try to demonstrate
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just how wrong this is. But as the idea is subtle and so easy to understand
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something else that is not quite it[^hard], I will really hammer it down and
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illuminate the core point again and again. I hope I do not bore you with it.
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[^hard]:
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I'm not going to sugarcoat this - it's not just a minor problem of
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misunderstanding or linguistic confusion, but a profound level of ignorance
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that leads us into thinking Knowledge and Action are two things. They are
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absolutely not and getting this is extraordinary difficult, it seems. I know
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not a single living Western philosopher that gets it. Pretty much the only
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people to get this, as far as I can tell, are mystics (or something close).
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My, isn't that motivating? But to be honest, that isn't actually very
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surprising. The other 3 most important ideas - Impermanence, Not-Self and
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Suffering - are just as hard and even the greatest teacher, the Buddha, had
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to travel all over the country in search of a single person who would get
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them. It is not that they are so hard. To the contrary, they are impossible
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to *not* get when you make a serious effort of understanding reality. But it
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is so easy to never make this effort that it is a rare sight to find
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somebody that made it.
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Case Study: The Christian Sinner
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--------------------------------
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Consider a normal, devout Christian. Don't worry about denomination or anything
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like this because pretty much any Christian agrees when it comes to the
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following three ideas:
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1) There are certain laws God wants you to keep.
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2) If you break those laws, God will severely punish you.
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3) God, being omniscient, will always know whenever you break such a law.
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Simple, right? Now consider that this Christian actually commits a sin, i.e.
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breaks one of those laws. There are plenty possible scenarios, like stealing a
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deodorant in the supermarket, or telling a lie to a boss or partner, or
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committing adultery. Those happen all the time and if you ask people about them,
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they will readily admit to having done something like that at least once.
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So isn't that a case of separate Knowledge and Action? They know they shouldn't
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break the laws, but did anyway? No. Let's go with the thief and see why that is
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not the case.
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Imagine that there would be a Man in Black who would constantly and visibly
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follow the thief, just about a meter away. He carries a camera to record every
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action, takes notes of everything, even has a gadget that can read the thief's
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mind and record their thoughts. Should the Man in Black catch the thief, then he
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will draw a gun and shoot them, on the spot. All this the Man in Black announces
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time and again to make it very clear what is going on.
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Now think about it. Would the thief - under those circumstances - ever steal
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anything? Of course not! So what does this tell you about the sinner? Clearly
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they can't be in a similar situation. One thing stands out: *they think they can
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get away with it*. They think that somehow, maybe, God won't notice or a
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loophole can be found or something like this. And this demonstrates that they,
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in no way, even understand the idea of an omnipresent, omnipotent god. They
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can't! If they actually understood this, then they would *know* that there is no
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loophole, no unnoticed moment, nothing like that at all.
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But they don't. And the Action demonstrates it. Knowledge and Action are united.
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The moment the Christian understands those three ideas, they would be completely
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unable to sin. There is no gap.
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The fact that almost no Christian actually *believes* in Christianity might seem
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weird at first, but becomes very clear when you realize that "Church is not
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about God". Instead, what you are seeing is Signaling - doing A, but pretending
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to do B because it gives you higher status. [Robert Hanson] has a great
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explanation of it, so check it out.
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Also note that I have made this case from the perspective of punishment and
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Hell. The same case can be made looking at reward and Heaven, as
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[SisyphusRedeemed] and [Doug Stanhope] have done.
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[Robert Hanson]: #TODO
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[SisyphusRedeemed]:
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[Doug Stanhope]:
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Another Case: Neo
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-----------------
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The best movie ever, The Matrix, has a great demonstration of the Unity of
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Knowledge and Action, showing exactly how they are one.
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At the end of the movie, Neo desperately tries to escape the Agents, but
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ultimately gets trapped into a hotel room and is shot. He drops down dead, but
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arises only moments later. He now sees through the Matrix and effortlessly
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defeats the Agents.
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![Neo sees the Matrix](#IMAGE)
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Before all that, Neo has been told again and again about the nature of the
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Matrix. It is a computer simulation, just a bunch of code, the Agents are just
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programs. At first glance, it seems weird. Exactly what was it that Neo learned
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after his resurrection? What is *new*? Shouldn't he have known all this already?
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He did not. His knowledge was false, only an illusion. Until that moment, he
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didn't actually understand what the Matrix was. Sure, he had gained some power,
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being able to move faster than ever before, but he was still completely confined
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by the Matrix. He was still playing by its rules because he still thought that
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it was *real*. He had no understanding of what it means for the Matrix and the
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Agents to be just code.
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But when he is reborn, this changes. Now he really gets it. He attains
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Knowledge; the world simply drops away and he sees the raw code, sees what
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actually *is*. At the same time, without any delay or need for further training,
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his Action is changed. The Agents have no power over him anymore. The victory is
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now inevitable.
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I know what I know!
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===================
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There is another important implication here, which will immediately come to mind
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when you think about what the sinner himself might think of this. Maybe you even
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ask yourself, do I act like this? Do I know this behavior?
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And it won't make sense. The sinner *knows* how what is expected of him, doesn't
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he? If you ask him, he will tell you quite clearly what he was supposed to do.
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The reason it doesn't make sense is because you make a false assumption. You
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believe that knowledge and being aware of knowledge always go hand in hand. You
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can't *know* something and don't *know that you know*, can you? Actually, you
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can.
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Gambler-experiment.
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A Tangent: Qualia
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=================
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A quale (plural: qualia) is the direct experience of something that can't be
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communicated. It's the redness of red. I can tell you that an apple is red, what
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wavelengths red corresponds to and so on, but what red *looks* like to me, I can
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never tell you. It is a quale.
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The question is, do qualia really exist? Plenty of modern consciousness
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scientists reject the notion. The most common basic theory, functionalism, is
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incompatible with qualia, as is materialism in general. What exactly is a quale
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supposed to be in material terms? It can't be any information or you could
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communicate it. It can't be a property of things or materialism could detect it.
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So qualia must be a powerful delusion, a mistake.
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But that's not possible according to the Unity of Knowledge and Action. It is
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exactly the qualia that matter. You *can't* learn what red looks like without
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seeing it yourself. You must always act, you must do something to learn
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something. It is not possible to learn *about* red and at some point will you
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magically transition into *knowing red*.
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Mary.
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So it is not surprising that Wang Yangming was an Idealist. He really couldn't
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have been otherwise. But I offer this not as a refutation of materialism or
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defense of qualia. Instead, I found it interesting that an idea that arose out
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of moral considerations also takes down important misconceptions about the mind
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and the world. But maybe there is another direction, too. If you already are on
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the qualia side of things, maybe David Chalmers convinced you?, then it should
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be clear to you that Knowledge and Action must be united. Qualia are exactly
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this unification. Only when you achieve the quale, when you act, do you achieve
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full understanding. Before, you were just Mary.
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