Critique of Rationality

Prologue

The current state of philosophy is not universalizable and has lost its systematic unity. Philosophy is not a sector that needs to be balanced in the global political market. Philosophy is a survival skill whereby you are honest with yourself to create a universalizable existence with human values in the name of all human beings. This book attempts to demystify philosophical discourses and to establish a new universalizable systematic framework of philosophy on an anthropological basis. Here we have tried to complement the weaknesses of the Analytical and Continental traditions with each other’s virtues. By doing this, we bid farewell to this philosophical origin from which we emerged and establish a new ground of philosophical discourse. The philosophy here is at the zero point of the Cartesian axis; it is the human philosophy of the future, based on mathematical logic. With the philosophy I have produced, I refuse to repeat the sins of history, and I take responsibility for the future. The history of philosophy, as I have used here, can serve as a very fruitful source of inspiration and a reference to its continuity of consistency. The philosophy that I am pointing out here, at its foundations, is as simple and clear as mathematics. No one should again say that philosophy is confusing, not understandable, an extension of the sciences, etc. I have carried the two and a half millennia of philosophical maturity back to its lost origin.

My epistemological background is continental philosophy; I have benefited from the Phenomenology circle of Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Husserl and the chain of his successor philosophers are one of my philosophical grounds. Analytic philosophy was not my field but I tried my best to use mathematical logical discourse to set up a new philosophical framework. A philosophical discourse cannot be philosophy without a logical foundation. My other source of inspiration is the Istanbul Philosophy Circle. Istanbul University is where European philosophy began in Turkey a century ago under the leadership of Atatürk. I have seen two controversial philosopher groups there, one that defends the Marxist and Turkic-Islamic perspective against imperialism, and the other, which looks for a universal discourse. I received their common sensitivity about the problem of universalizability and I believe that I deflate them in my theory and I pay back my compensation so as to satisfy both approaches.←13 | 14→

Introduction to Anthropogonia

This book has a new-Kantian approach, and draws the limits of our thoughts and consciousness between the mind and mind-independent reality by using mathematical logic with the support of neurology. Drawing our mental limits also has some limits; we cannot get out of our minds to compare the inside and outside, and define the limits. We tried to depict the functions and cognitive schemata of the mind from the inside. Diagnosing the limits between immanence and transcendence of the consciousness depends on defining some transcendental a priori categories in between as some basic axioms of the mind. We defined these non-intentional cognitive categories by using mathematical category theory. This basic model of the mind allows us to follow the logical possibilities in between that the mind can set up in its relationship with mind-independence. In this way, we defined the intentional categories of consciousness by using the mathematical set theory and obtained a self-representational higher-order theory of consciousness (SHOT). Finally, we combined the intentional and non-intentional categories with an algebraic topography and obtained a model of the mind. We established a new metaphysical linguistic framework by asking external questions while staying within the boundaries of the internal perspective, and we never crossed the linguistic framework. We answered the framework’s questions by observing the formal possibilities of cognitive functions from a phenomenological point of view. What we end up with is an external reality, not transcendent metaphysics, but the internal structural and functional cause of external illusions. The architectural structure of the mind that we have drawn is the problematic skeleton of philosophy with all its sub-branches as a human aura that can be traced throughout the six Cartesian meditations. The philosophical anthropology depicted eventually emerged as a purely naturalistic, shamanic prototype metaphysics radically different from the monotheistic Western tradition that began with Plato. We started from mathematics, but unexpectedly arrived at an archaic metaphysics. We call this philosophical theory “Anthropogonia”. After Anthropogonia, logically, truth-seekers in these ancient, imperial religions must retreat from their historically constructed Platonic theology to their shamanic roots, stop expecting obedience to the universal commandment they represent in a third-person discourse, and should become individualistic, more mystical.

The doctrine of Anthropogonia offers a paradoxical rationality. The nature of human intelligence is paradoxical. We cannot exit the horizon of our consciousness. Existence of the mind-independent world and the other minds are in an ←15 | 16→unexpected and inconceivable position. We approach them only from our point of view, and they are in their own existential processes; they, especially the other minds, surprise us very often. We need to know this distinction for better expectations and survival with them. The elements of mind-independent content take over us as their extension. We need to organize our behaviors rationally so as to join nature. This is the problem of rationality seeking better moral and technique connections in between mind and mind-independence. Paradoxical rationality is an art.

The psychological context of the paradoxical nature of the mind is also paradoxical: complexes form the nature of the psychic structure. Mental health is the ability to go through these natural complexes. Health is not a natural state, health is not universal, it is an individual story. Health is produced. Just as physical health is immunity to disease, psychic health is an immune system that is gained ←16 | 17→by recognizing complexes and taking a deliberate stand. Mental health can be defined as a mental immune system. In this sense, Freud was right about many things: the threefold of the Ego, the natural, evolutionary complexes, libido as a basic survival motive. It is necessary to define human psychology through its natural complexes and to build psychology on the diagnoses of complexes. For example, Vaillant's defense mechanisms can be read as the doors of the mind's inward and outward quadruple orientation to psychology: Pathological defenses offer the person an idealistic understanding of Cosmos that rejects mind-independent reality; the immaturity of Ego produces passive-aggressive behaviors, projection and schizoid fantasies such as the afterlife, aliens; neurotic defenses lead to manipulation, intellectualization, repression, and displacement on maladaptive micro-Cosmic mental models; maturity defenses to be aligned with the super-Ego cause a refuge in social virtues. In the end, even wisdom produces illusions!