Among the French materialists of the 18th century, Marx admired Diderot the most, listing him as his "favorite essayist." Diderot's finest prose work was The Nephew of Rameau, which Engels called, together with Rousseau's On the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality, a "masterpiece of dialectics" by the French of the 18th century. Diderot's books are always filled with many seemingly ambiguous statements, which can easily be confused for those who do not understand dialectics. Some of his arguments are also quite shocking, such as saying that "marble also has feelings", "man is a piano that can play himself", etc., which seem absurd, but after Theodero himself explained, there is another truth in it.
The French philosopher Diderot
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > the basic logic of Diderot's philosophy</h1>
Ancient philosophers mostly studied "existence", such as the water of Thales, the fire of Heraclitus, the atom of Democritus, and Plato's rationale to reveal the problems of the world; in the Middle Ages, the church fathers turned existentialism into proof of "God's existence", making philosophy a theological handmaiden. It was only in modern times that Bacon's New Tools critiqued the logic of scholastic philosophy and led it in the direction of "thinking"; and Descartes, who was a little later than him, pointed out that existence was questionable except that the existence of the thinker himself was unquestionable. The existing problems are gradually ranked behind the thinking and understanding.
As a person who can think, I must first examine my cognitive ability to ensure that it can correctly understand the existence of the world, and then I can talk about "what the world is like" and "why the world exists". For example, before I can see the world correctly, I have to check whether my eyes are healthy and make sure I am not colorblind, so as not to mistakenly think that the world lacks color—from modern times on, epistemology has replaced ontology as a fundamental problem of philosophy.
Philosophers' investigation of knowledge is nothing more than two kinds, one is observation, that is, empiricist sensory theory; the other is thinking, that is, rationalist rationalism. They tend to study the "mind" in "thought and existence" and then explain existence from the mind; Diderot proceeds from the opposite direction, he tends to study "existence" first, and then use existence to explain the mind.
Diderot believed that "existence" is the natural world or the material world with characteristics such as heterogeneity, material diversity, and the necessity of movement, which exist independently of human will. He criticized the idealist confused view of existence by saying:
"It is these philosophers whom we call idealists: they are only aware of their own existence, and of the sensations which arise within themselves, and do not recognize anything else: this arrogant system, which seems to me, can only arise from the blind; a system which, to say, is a shame of the human heart and philosophy, absurd but difficult to refute."
Condiac, didero's contemporaries, the materialist and Berkeley, were idealists, and their positions, though diametrically opposed, shared the same empirical logic, both using sensations as the starting point for philosophy. Diderot argues that Condillac only says that sensations are the source of knowledge, but not what is the source of sensations, so it is easy to slip to The side of Berkeley—an idealist by worshipping experience. Thus he tried to speak of sensations, thoughts, and consciousness from the point of view of existence, proving that they were merely properties of matter, and these expositions focused mainly on his conversation with D'Alembert.
Locke's empiricist believer Condiac
< h1 class="ql-align-justify" > marble feels like? </h1>
D'Alembert was a mathematician who had participated in the compilation of the Encyclopedia, and he had known Diderot for a long time and often discussed philosophical problems with each other. Diderot recorded an interesting discussion between them in his 1769 Conversation between D'Alembert and Diderot.
D'Alembert believed that there is a soul in this world, and the soul is essentially something different from matter but at the same time connected with matter, which follows behind matter, pushes matter, interacts with matter. This is a bit like Aristotle's "Hidden Lech", or the prevailing theory of vitality at the time, which held that there was a soul independent of matter, and that it was under the action of these souls that matter moved.
Diderot denies the soul, arguing that motion is a property of matter, that matter is inherently dynamic and does not need a soul independent of it to propel itself. There is no soul outside of matter—or the soul is just an attribute within matter, which we call sensibility. That is to say, matter has a universal, fundamental property —having feelings.
Matter has feelings, how should this be understood? D'Alembert retorted that something like marble has no feeling, which Diderot explained, starting with:
"The movement of an object from one location to another is not movement, but only the result of movement. There is also motion in moving objects as well as in immobile objects. ”
As long as the obstacle to the movement of the object is removed, the object will continue to move, and the resistance of the obstacle is divided into large and small, manifested as vitality and death; in the same way, there are some obstacles that hinder the sensory ability of matter: the larger obstacle is called sluggish susceptibility, and the smaller obstacle is called active sensitivity. Just as the reduction of resistance to the movement of an object will make the transition from death to vitality, the decrease in the force that hinders sensation will also make the transition from dull sensitivity to active sensitivity.
For a substance such as marble, its susceptibility is dull; for people, animals and perhaps plants, its susceptibility is active. Therefore, it is easy to admit that the two substances of man and animal have sensations, and that there are also sensations without seeing marble, because its sensibility is too dull and imperceptible. This dull susceptibility becomes noticeable in some cases, becoming sensitive sensations.
Here, Diderot proposes the transition process from the dull sensibility of marble to the human senses - diet. He said:
"You have assimilated food with you, turned it into meat, animalized it, made it feel, and what you do to things, I will let marble do it when I am happy."
Through diet, people absorb vegetables, fruits, and other dull and receptive things into the human flesh, so that their sluggish susceptibility evolves into sensations. Similarly, if one mashes marble, crushes it into a very fine powder, mixes it with manure, and then plants peas, broad beans, cabbage, and other vegetables on top of it, the sensibility of the marble enters my flesh through the vegetables and becomes my feelings.
In this way, Diderot could prove that sensation is a property of matter—because whatever kind of substance it can make its dull sensibility into human sensation through various channels. He used "diet" to realize the transformation of stone and man, cleverly arguing that "stone also has feelings", or that "stones have feelings because of people" - feelings come from people, and the starting point of philosophy should not be empiricist feelings, but materialistic people.
Diderot uses the marble problem to illustrate that sensation is a property of matter
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > person is a piano that can play itself</h1>
So how does feeling transition into thought? Diderot and D'Alembert deduce step by step that, first, man's existence is a kind of self-consciousness for himself, and he can be aware of himself; secondly, his consciousness is based on memory, which in turn is accumulated from some kind of organism. Diderot said:
"If a creature that has sensations and organisms suitable for memory associates the impressions it acquires, forms a history of its life by virtue of this connection, acquires its self-consciousness, it denies, affirms, infers, and thinks."
Diderot believed that as long as we could relate our respective sensory impressions through memory, we could produce thoughts, which were not innate, but developed from sensations. Sensations and thoughts are derived from material organisms (people) and are the functions of living things (people).
Diderot also compares the thinking creature (man) to a piano, saying:
"We are the instruments that are emotional. Our senses are the keyboard, and the nature around us plays it, and it often plays itself. ”
Man is a sentient creature, he is like a piano. External nature arouses his impression through the senses (playing the piano), and at the same time he himself can arouse other impressions through thought (playing himself). Feelings come from external stimuli, and thoughts come from the mind's thinking. The outside world stimulates our senses, just as the piano is played by others; and when we think through our own minds, it is the piano that plays itself.
The idealist Berkeley objected to the existence of the piano, to which Diderot satirized:
"In a moment of madness, the piano with feelings (subjective idealists such as Berkeley) once meant that it was the only piano that existed in the world, and that all the harmony of the universe happened to it."
Diderot insisted that only the materialistic recognition of thinking as an attribute of existence could avoid the speculative abyss of idealism, and although Condiak was a materialist, he, like Berkeley, started from feelings and thoughts, and did not realize that feelings and thoughts were only human attributes. In the basic philosophical problem of "existence and thinking", man belongs to "existence", and human consciousness is "thinking", thinking is the attribute of existence, existence is the origin, and thinking is its derivation. Existence includes man, including society and the natural world, and thinking is only the human mind.
It's not "being is being perceived," but "perception is an attribute of existence."
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > don't stop at thinking, but pay attention to experimentation</h1>
Diderot saw the faults of modern philosophers, who placed too much emphasis on experience and thinking and neglected existence. They appeal to experience and reason in all their problems, and thus despise the role of experiments. Experience and reason weigh only the possibilities in our minds, and then boldly assert that we cannot break down the light. Experimental philosophy, on the other hand, listens to all this, stays in the presence of the light for centuries without saying a word, and then suddenly points to the Mitsubishi Mirror and says, "Look, it breaks down the light."
The superstitious experience is keen to investigate nature, likes to collect all kinds of materials and specimens, like the piano that is played by nature, every day is overwhelmed and tired; and the person who is obsessed with speculation is like the piano that plays himself all day, he entertains himself, and gradually sinks in meditation. Thus, in Diderot's view, empiricism and rationalism have their own flaws, and a third form needs to be discarded, experimental philosophy, he said:
"We have three main approaches: investigation, reflection and experimentation with nature. Observation gathers facts; thinking combines them; experiments confirm the results of the combination. ”
We cannot stop at observation and thinking, as empirical philosophy and rationalists do, but need to go further and use experiments to verify the results of observation and thinking. Truth cannot be regarded as a purely theoretical problem; on the contrary, truth should be a question of practice, and the results of thinking must be verified by experimentation.
In order to correctly understand the world, it is necessary to achieve that "the observation of nature should be focused, thinking should be profound, and experimentation should be precise." ”