[Part 2 of 2. Read Part 1 here.]
We relate ideas the way we do (and call it reason or logic) because, as Kant said, it is the only way we can. But that does not indicate, nor guarantee, truth about the ideas, nor the relations that we mistake for connections. Our “reason,” our “logic,” is thus quite suspect, on these grounds. Perhaps reason and logic are not the only way with which ideas may be related or connected. Perhaps there is nothing other than relation, at least in the way that our dualistically conditioned minds can think about it at the moment. How our minds relate ideas and sensory perception of data is at issue—the nature and condition of why we see things the way we see them.
We think about the way that other beings process the world in the context of how we do, but that automatically precludes us from really understanding how they perceive and process it. We cannot help but be anthropomorphic about everything in our realm of perception, because we cannot escape the process that is our thought process. At least that is my simplified interpretation of Kant’s argument, and it is a compelling one.
The Buddha implied that we can escape the prison of the hard-wired way we process the data of existence. I think he is right, but in a way I am unable to explain. In this way I could be considered an idealist and a materialist. I do think that things exist independently of our perceptions of them. Otherwise, how could there have been what we call dinosaurs? It really is that simple. But I also think that we are indeed in the prisons of our minds and our conditioning, and perhaps even of the hard-wiring of our minds which dictates to us our very understanding of anything and everything.
Can we escape these limitations? I think we can awaken to reality, and that reality is not what we think it is. Truth is to be found in what is, though by this I do not mean what “is” in a positive sense the way we understand it. The question is not only “what is?” but “how is it?” (as in the quality of it; not that it exists, but the way it exists). The question is not whether things exist, but if we can ever understand, know, or experience them as they are without the distorting and coloring effects of the way we process the data of our experience and perceptions. This is the thing-in-itself concept. Can we ever really experience things as they actually are as opposed to how we perceive them to be? This is the question of reality, of metaphysics, and a mindful understanding of it is of fundamental importance to everything on which we base our ideas, whether it be ethics, morality, love—any concept we have, which we cannot separate from this thought process of ours.
We can agree on a definition of “truth” that makes sense to us and chalk up truth after truth based on that definition. Just as we can set up what we agree to be reason, and base what is true on that definition and context. But all the truths we build, all the subsequent opinions and beliefs and laws and realities we build upon that original “truth,” are all nothing but illusion and fantasy if that original definition of truth is bogus. So, sure, I can agree that what you say is “true” according to your concept of what “true” means within your subjective conceptual framework, but your truth is only as valid and sound as the conceptual framework on which it is based. This is one problem with “logic.” It is as valid as the conceptual framework in which it is understood. The two will probably end up with only each other for justification, thereby betraying their inherent impotence.
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From my personal notes, 8/19/99.
