Heraclitus and Freud
It dawned me a little while ago that the human condition is one of ongoing tension between the way the world is (ontology) and the way our mind works (psychology).
The world is inherently unpredictable - even our best attempts to make it predictable ultimately fail. We have trouble predicting the weather more then a few days ahead and predicting earthquakes and volcano eruptions are even more unpredictable.
Heraclitus had a great insight when he proclaimed that: "You cannot step twice into the same rivers ; for fresh waters are flowing in upon you" (Fragment No. 12). Heraclitus understood that the world is ever changing and nothing is ever the same.
Our human psychology, however, has difficulties accepting this eternal change. Sigmund Freud thought that we are not as free as we think we are, but are ultimately creatures of habit. More about the problem of free will in a future blog.
Our minds are designed to find regularity, even where there is none. Hume's sceptical argument regarding inductive inferences is a great illustration of how this works.
Also in this respect we need to jump into the abyss, as argued in my previous blog entry. This does not imply that we should just accept the chaos and not use our mind to attempt to understand the world. We should, however, accept that all our attempts to grasp the world around us in neatly packaged theories will never succeed. All knowledge is practical knowledge and can only be judged in its ability to produce the desired effects.
The world is inherently unpredictable - even our best attempts to make it predictable ultimately fail. We have trouble predicting the weather more then a few days ahead and predicting earthquakes and volcano eruptions are even more unpredictable.
Heraclitus had a great insight when he proclaimed that: "You cannot step twice into the same rivers ; for fresh waters are flowing in upon you" (Fragment No. 12). Heraclitus understood that the world is ever changing and nothing is ever the same.
Our human psychology, however, has difficulties accepting this eternal change. Sigmund Freud thought that we are not as free as we think we are, but are ultimately creatures of habit. More about the problem of free will in a future blog.
Our minds are designed to find regularity, even where there is none. Hume's sceptical argument regarding inductive inferences is a great illustration of how this works.
Also in this respect we need to jump into the abyss, as argued in my previous blog entry. This does not imply that we should just accept the chaos and not use our mind to attempt to understand the world. We should, however, accept that all our attempts to grasp the world around us in neatly packaged theories will never succeed. All knowledge is practical knowledge and can only be judged in its ability to produce the desired effects.
Labels: philosophy, psychology
posted by Peter Prevos | 21:20
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