Limited Philosophy 04, Marxism Bridge of Limited Philosophy
Limited Philosophy is the return of Western philosophy to Chinese philosophy, and uses Marxism as the bridge.
The conceptual basis of finite philosophy lies in the limited ability of human cognition, which can be directly explained through the material principle of Marx's dialectical materialism. Therefore, it is said that Marxism is the bridge from Western infinite philosophy to Chinese limited philosophy.
The material principle of dialectical materialism , simply put, believes that everything in the world is nothing but material or material phenomena. For example, air is composed of many gas molecules, and its body is an objective reality of materiality; air flows to form wind, which cannot be said to be matter, but it is a specific movement and change phenomenon of material reality. There is no phenomenon that is not dependent on matter. From the premise of the principle of materiality, we can certainly say that "consciousness is a reflection of matter", but from the perspective of how the subject's behavior occurs, it should be said that consciousness is also a material phenomenon, that is, the specific behavior manifestation of the specific material subject in which the human brain nervous system is related to the outside world.
Of course, when the human brain nervous system undergoes conscious behavior, it requires certain environmental conditions. For example, people need to cultivate conscious ability in a certain social environment and have social appearance. But no matter what, from the perspective of subject occurrence, the conscious phenomenon must be based on the human brain nervous system, and it is also a material phenomenon.
If the standards are lowered, it can also be said that animals have a low-level awareness. But no matter what level of consciousness, a common feature is that each occurs based on its specific special substances, such as monkey brain, frog brain, dragonfly brain, and even the flagellar brain (assuming its nervous system is also the brain). In short, conscious behavior is inseparable from the principle of materiality.
Starting from the principle of materiality, it is not difficult to clarify the ideological basis of limited philosophy. The derivation is simply: special means limited, and limitation means limited. To put it more detailedly, the essential content is limited, or specific; the external manifestation and external function are limited.
In the past, we usually said from the perspective of the object that "consciousness is a reflection of matter", but we did not clarify what kind of reflection this is. Now, after looking at the problem from the perspective of the subject and clarifying that the subject of the conscious behavior is a specific and special substance, we will make new discoveries in this regard.
Comparing the human brain, frog brain, and flagellate brain, we can clarify that a type of consciousness is based on a specific and special material type as the main body. Human consciousness takes the human brain as the main body, and frog consciousness takes the frog brain as the main body. That is, the material subjects on which the conscious behavior is based are specific and special, and are the functional manifestations of a specific and special substance.
is not a general substance, but a specific and special substance, so there will inevitably be limitations and specificities. Everything at the macro level is composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. First, the general proton neutron electrons form more than a hundred chemical elements through the combination of different numbers. These chemical elements then form different elements or compounds, and then manifest themselves as all things in the world. Compared with the general proton neutron electrons, each chemical element is specific and special. Although the proton neutron electrons that make up nitrogen and oxygen are not essentially different, once they are combined into specific special nitrogen elements and oxygen element , the nitrogen elements and oxygen elements are definitely different. When nitrogen and oxygen elements are further combined with nitrogen , oxygen , and nitrogen dioxide , the difference between them becomes more obvious. The different physical and chemical properties can be described in chemistry textbooks. The reason why these gases have various differences is naturally because they each have their own specificity, which is also a limitation. If oxygen is not limited to the various manifestations of oxygen, how can we identify oxygen?
The limitation and specificity caused by the specific particularity of matter are essential limitations, specificity, and regular limitations and specificity.Nitrogen is limited to the essential content of nitrogen, oxygen is limited to the essential content of oxygen, and nitrogen dioxide is limited to the essential content of nitrogen dioxide. The reason why we say that nitrogen is different from oxygen, and oxygen is different from nitrogen dioxide is that they are each limited to their own essential content and cannot be changed at will. Our identification of whether a gas is oxygen is based on its specific essential content.
has limitations, specificity, and there will naturally be limited. The external manifestation of a thing is determined by its essential content. When its essence is limited, its external manifestation must be limited, whether in terms of its nature or in terms of its ability. Nitrogen dioxide gas can exhibit many physical states under different temperature and pressure conditions, and can also have different chemical manifestations in combination with many chemical substances. However, all these physical and chemical manifestations are limited to the special substance of nitrogen dioxide, so they are limited after all. Nitrogen dioxide cannot be expected to exhibit physical and chemical properties similar to aluminum trioxide . Its external manifestations are ultimately limited, both in terms of nature and ability. The performance of nitrogen dioxide gas in this world is only enough to allow us to see the existence of nitrogen dioxide and understand the content of nitrogen dioxide, but not enough to let us understand the entire world from this.
Although the extrinsic conditions can affect the extrinsic performance, they do not affect the limitations of the inner essence. This essential limitation can be explained by the help of functional images. Assuming that the essential content, or limitation of each special substance, means an function relationship , then the various conditional parameters of the substance that manifests itself are equivalent to the independent variable , and the dominant trait is equivalent to the strain variable. As the conditional parameters change, the dominant traits will also change accordingly, but there is always an unchanging functional relationship. We say that finiteness and finiteness are based on this functional relationship.
For example, the volume of one kilogram of nitrogen varies with temperature and air pressure conditions, but the functional relationship between them remains unchanged. Assuming that the functional relationship of nitrogen is y=2x and the functional relationship of nitrogen dioxide is y=2(x-1)2+3, then in the plane rectangular coordinate system , its images are a straight line and an parabola , respectively. Although the value of the independent variable x and the corresponding function value y of each graph line are theoretically infinite, on a plane, they only cover the area involved in their respective essence, are just a curve, and do not represent the entire plane. Therefore, through their respective curves, they are only enough to indicate their respective essential limitations, and not enough to indicate the entire world.
Of course, there will be people talking about acquired variability, but acquired variability ultimately has a possible range, and this possible range is not separated from innate particularity. In fact, there are acquired possibilities in both life and spiritual phenomena. The same DNA makes innate provisions for living individuals, but innate provisions are not rigid, and the acquired development of individuals actually has various possibilities. But on the other hand, the acquired possibility is not "everything is possible", it is just a possibility within a limited range. The same tiger DNA will produce different tiger individuals, but no matter how it changes, we still see a tiger instead of a frog.
In short, specificity must be limited, because of its limitations, we can be grasped as the object of knowledge.
Similarly, as the external function of the human brain, human consciousness, based on the specific and special human brain system, from the subject's perspective, human cognitive ability must be limited. Whether we form, store, or use knowledge, the occurrence of consciousness phenomena is based on the human brain and depends on the material human neuron network system. Since human neuronal networks have the limitations of specific special substances, their activities must follow certain laws of matter, so they cannot get rid of the routine of "special means limitation, limitation means limitation means limitation". Although as a holistic manifestation, the activity rules of the neuronal network system are not equivalent to the laws of the neuron, it is inevitable that it has certain essences and rules.In this way, our conscious behavior is affected by it, and at the most fundamental point, there must be specific and specific ways of human cognition. Human beings reflect the world in specific and specific ways of human cognition, so their cognitive ability must be limited.
Similarly, the so-called specific human way of understanding also has problems with innate regulations and acquired possibilities. Assume that time and space are the innate specific ways for humans to understand the world, but the specific space-time model to understand the world also has certain acquired variability. For example, in the past, we naturally used Galileo- Newton- space-time, but with Einstein's theory of relativity, we can also switch to the theory of relativity. But no matter how it changes, the need for space-time methods remains unchanged.
The key to the limited ability of human cognition is that human consciousness has its limitations of specific special substances. Due to the limitations of specific materialized human ways of understanding, we cannot expect to cultivate the light of the gods to directly see through the essence and laws of its own existence, or the absolute truth of its own existence, but can only observe phenomena and summarize relative truths from phenomena. As for the process of human brain summarizing phenomena into knowledge, and even extracting logical knowledge from them, no matter how it works, we can believe that it must rely on the network activities of neurons, and this way of activity is still of humanity due to the limitations of the principle of materiality. Husserl's phenomenology's pursuit of the foundation of truth can only be an eternal dream.
Since there is a specific way of understanding the human brain, we can only think that human reflection on this world is only enough to show the particularity of the human spirit, only enough to show the relationship between human beings and the world, but not enough to show the entire world, and not enough to allow human beings to fundamentally transcend this world. Therefore, human cognitive ability must be limited.
Of course, it is conceivable that you will encounter various criticisms as simple as the above. For example, there are two kinds of criticisms: First, human cognition is holistic, so it is fully capable of breaking through the limitations of the basic material principle; second, humans have now invented artificial intelligence , and artificial intelligence has significantly broken through the original human cognitive ability in some aspects. Therefore, with the help of artificial intelligence, people can achieve a leap from finite to infinite.
When understanding the life phenomenon mental phenomenon, the idea of holism appeared. The Copenhagen explanation of quantum mechanics even elevated holism to the level of ontological connection. Generally speaking, holism is relative to the previous reduction theory . The method of restoration believes that to understand a thing, you only need to break the thing down into various components or aspects, and through understanding each part or aspects, you can realize the overall understanding of the thing. This method is to reduce the whole to part or aspect, so it is called reductionism.
When understanding the phenomenon of life, people found that what is applied now is the holistic idea, that is, we can only see life from the holistic and systematic combination of life existence, and it is impossible to see life from the atom and molecules that constitute the living body. Holism tells us that although each atom is inanimate, when a large number of atoms combine into a whole of life, life can gain a foothold in its entirety in its systematic combination. Life does not exist in specific atoms, but in a systematic union between atoms. Similarly, human spirit and consciousness do not exist in a single neuron, but in the network combination between neurons.
However, the concept of overall combination cannot get rid of the basic control of the principle of materiality, and cannot get rid of the fate of "special means limitation, limitation means limitation means limitation". Although holistic expression means that new things are formed at a higher level, as long as the combination of holistic nature is still based on specific and special matters, limitation and finiteness will never be avoided.On the inorganic level, the so-called oxygen, nitrogen, and nitrogen dioxide mentioned above can actually be regarded as the overall combination of protons, neutrons and electrons. This overall combination does create new things, but don’t these new things also have limitations and finiteness based on the principle of materiality?
As for the emergence of life and spiritual phenomena in the holistic combination, the same is true. New things have indeed been created and elevated to a higher level, but at a higher level, we will still see various limitations and finiteness. Life is free from the limitations of inorganicity, but it also has new organic limitations. Is organic life still of various limitations? Is its ability limited after all? By this, how can mental phenomena be able to break through all restrictions just because they transcend life phenomena?
As for artificial intelligence, we can indeed say that it has broken through the original human limits , such as the computer's super memory, and the Go dog's learning and summary ability. However, the breakthrough of artificial intelligence in human intelligence certainly broke through the previous limits of human intelligence, but fundamentally speaking, it was just a tool to use tools to maximize the potential of human intelligence. In essence, it is no essentially different from the ancients who used abacus to improve their computing power.
The key to understanding this problem is that because humans have limited cognitive abilities, people cannot truly surpass humans, so it is impossible to truly grasp the limits of humans. What people thought before was just "thinking that was the limit". People use abacus, computers, and artificial intelligence to explore the potential of human intelligence to a greater extent. Even if one day artificial intelligence breaks away from human control and destroys humans, it is still inseparable from the conclusion that "human cognitive ability is limited", that is, when the situation deteriorates to a certain extent, humans lose the ability to control "self-destructive ability", which is no essential difference between people inventing kitchen knives for cutting vegetables but cutting their hands by kitchen knives.
There has always been a sense of "human power is sometimes poor" in traditional Chinese philosophy. Now it can be clearly defined as the concept of human beings because it can be directly derived from the principle of materiality. In this way, the dialectical materialist concept of Marxism has become a bridge for returning to Chinese philosophy from Western philosophy.
