Thinking Purely

To think purely is to disregard emotions, biases, our will, etc. However, what is good about disregarding our natural abilities in trying to achieve the truth? Maybe there is something good about it, maybe not.

Regardless, to think purely is a good exercise. If we see our rationality as a faculty that we can improve upon usage, it would be good to improve this faculty. Just like our physical muscles, we improve this quality by using them; using them in a particular way, in a pure way. An analogy is fitting here. Consider how we train our swimming, first we only use our leg to propel ourselves through the water to build up our leg techniques. Then we only use our hands when we train our hand techniques. Only then when we have mastered both can we swim skillfully. This is an example of a 'pure' training. Such training allows us to focus on a particular aspect of the thing that we want to learn. The same goes for thinking, when we detach our emotions from our thinking, we are essentially just training our thinking muscles without interruption from our emotions, such that our thinking techniques may be perfected before we synthesize it with everything else.

Perhaps a pure exercise of emotions may also be conducted. Such exercises are surely more complex and abstract, but I could think of an example. Try being moved by an art form without any thought.

Thus, here I am not proclaiming the supremeness of thought but I am merely advocating pure exercises for thinking and for emotions.

Beauty?

One can appreciate beauty without dissecting a work. But it is by dissecting, the details of an object of appreciation is made known to Man. If appreciating beauty involves appreciating each intricate details, then inevitably, beauty can only be appreciated in its entirety by dissection. But can Man really appreciate beauty in its entirety after it is dissected? After all, when Man at last desires to capture beauty in its wholeness, Man needs to take a step back from his dissection and assemble it all back together. Yet beauty cannot be captured still, since human restoration ironically can never restore an initial state, let alone the initial beauty. In the mind of Man, the work is no longer a whole but a mutilated corpse. How can we see the corpse as a man with individuality, conscious life and freedom?

The highest appreciation of beauty is without dissection. Without dissection and yet every intricate details must perceived all at once in an instance together with the whole. Only a true artist can perceive beauty with such perspective, not the art theorist.

Mathematics?

Let us consider the view that mathematics is discovered. This does not necessarily mean that mathematics is the language of nature (or reality) or that abstract (mathematical) objects exist, but it can also mean that mathematics is discovered not from reality but from our psychology.

Consider two possibilities. First Platonism in one of its forms may be true and mathematics is just discovered truths about some of these abstract objects. This cannot be proven or disproven I suppose.

The other alternative is that mathematics is a discovery of our psychology, of our rational nature. This can be illustrated by a particular example. Suppose mathematics started with counting, cavemen had a bunch of apples and they started to invent words to count, one, two, three and so on and hence there was numbers and summation, and maybe most mathematics proceeded from this. If this is the case it may seem like mathematics is an invention of these cavemen, but It would still not be an invention per se. Prior to the invention of words to describe quantities and a system of operations, there exist independent ideas in the cavemen's mind which is not derived from observation. Discreteness, hence an apple can be said to be one, categorization, hence we can add apples (things of the same category/kind), are just two examples of such ideas which exists in human's psychology (mind).

Could mathematics be the truths regarding the relationships of these ideas in human's psychology, and by discovering mathematics, we discover our psychology?