What are the conditions of the possibility of the existence of thought?
That's the question I would like to bet on for this year. That question seems to encompass all of the more detailed questions in philosophy. The question also has a solid foundation, in the sense that the existence of thought cannot be doubted except by presupposing the existence of thought.
One interesting feature of thought is that thought can cut itself off from all other things. This feature is the source of a wide variety of different psychological phenomena, such as doubt, fear, apathy, and even madness, as well as certainty, courage, intention, and intellectual repose. In philosophy, however, this feature of thought also accounts for error and dogmatism.
One example of such an error is Descartes' substance dualism. Descartes first argued for the truth of the existence of a thinking substance, mind. Then, he subsequently argued for the truth of the existence of an extended substance, matter. However, Decartes was unable to provide an explanation of how thought and matter "relate" to each other. In fact, Descartes was unable even to formulate a hypothesis as to the nature of this "relation" beyond the pitiful metaphor of thought "affecting" the body through the pineal gland. Here, thought cuts itself off from matter, and stubbornly hangs on to this dualism.
German idealists after Kant - notably Fichte and Schelling - tried to overcome Descartes' dualism. Fichte tried to explain how thought comes to "posit" matter. Schelling went one step beyond Fichte and tried to explain how matter develops into thinking matter. What these two thinkers argued, basically, is the following. Take a concept like matter. First, since it is a concept, it has to be a product of a process of thought. Therefore, there is a need to explain how one's process of thought comes to arrive at the concept of matter. Second, matter is not "just" a concept, it is also something actual, something which "exists" without the existence of the concept. Therefore, the concept of matter is a product of matter's own development. Here, then, one needs to explain how matter develops into the concept of matter.
At this point, one problem arises. What if the concept under consideration is untrue? For example, say I have a "concept" of a bicycle. A bicycle obviously cannot think. Yet, given the above logic, am I not obliged to ask how the bicycle comes to develop into the concept of a bicycle?
The difference between the concept of matter and the concept of a bicycle is this: in some intuitive sense, matter is a condition of the possibility of thought, whereas a bicycle is not. That is, thought can still exist in a world where there are no bicycles, but thought would not be able to exist in a world without matter.
Another question arises here: how do we know that thought cannot exist without matter? Or, more generally, how do we tell which concepts are necessary for the existence of thought?
Hegel enters the picture at this point. The main problem which Hegel aims to tackle in his Science of Logic is precisely the problem of finding these concepts which are the necessary conditions of the existence of thought. For example, "existence" is one necessary condition, because thought would not exist without the existence of existence! Since now we know that existence is such a necessary condition, we then move on to explain (1) how the concept of existence arises out of existence itself, and (2) how existence is "posited" by thought as a concept of existence. Now obviously the concept of existence alone is far from sufficient to provide a satisfactory explanation. After all, all this concept tells us is that existence exists. We need other categories, such as "something" (thought is something, after all), "appearance" (thought appears, after all), "relation" (thought relates to that which is thought), and so forth, before such an explanation can be completed.
Now there is a major and well-accepted interpretation of dialectical logic, according to which each concept must be preceded by a specific concept, and be succeeded by another specific concept, with absolute necessity. Thus, there is supposed to be a "transition" from existence to, say, "something."
On my alternative picture, the above interpretation is wrong. Logic involves a lot of guesswork, and there is a leap involved in every step. You cannot just "transition" to something from existence, just by thinking about existence! As noted already, thought has this tendency to get stuck at a particular point and cut itself off from all other things. Thinking about existence just means that you are stuck with the concept of existence, cutting it off from all other things. There needs to be a "leap" if thought were to think of other conditions for its own possibility.
These "transitions" are not really transitions. Rather, the order of the concepts in logic is just the order of conditions. That is, something cannot exist without the existence of existence; something cannot appear without the existence of something; and so forth. Thus, existence precedes something, something precedes appearance, appearance precedes relation, etc. This neat ordering comes after one discovers a new concept. It is like solving a jigsaw puzzle: you either pick a spot and look for the piece, or pick up a piece and look for the right spot to fit it into. You cannot do both at once.
So, one task of philosophy is to explain how thought is possible, how it is that thought exists. This involves not only pure logic, as I was expounding in some detail above, but also interpreting the empirical sciences such as mechanics, physics, cosmology, biology, and neuroscience. Now, physicists, cosmologists, and biologists are not necessarily interested in explaining the conditions of thought. In fact, not all neuroscientists are interested in explaining how thought is made possible. This is why interpretation is required, and it requires care and patience to interpret the findings from these sciences well. One person cannot do it. Many people need to collaborate, just like in the other sciences.
A few years ago, a newspaper article ridiculed the Australian government for funding a research project on the nature of the self. Recently, several friends of mine - some philosophy students, others not - have expressed their disbelief and shook their heads at the fact that a Canadian professor was given a 80 million Swedish kroner grant by the Swedish government to conduct research in moral philosophy. Taken in the abstract, yes, these research projects are far less exciting, and their benefits far less obvious, than, say, projects in astrophysics or nanotechnology. However, trying to discover the conditions of thought is, I think, a very important enterprise. Research on the nature of the self or of morality, if such research may add to the explanation of the existence of thought, might be part of that larger enterprise. Moreover, such research might have practical consequences for the other sciences. For example, research in abstract logic might one day produce a new concept, which might help someone solve the problem of unifying quantum mechanics with relativity theory. Or, maybe a good philosophical interpretation of a certain set of results from the empirical sciences might help us understand the relation between human physiology, the natural environment, and thought. Who knows what might come out of such an understanding - we would not be able to speculate at present, precisely because we do not yet understand!
