"A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring." Ludwig Wittgenstein

Perennial Pairing: Pain & Progress

"Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?" (Nietzsche)

My Angelic Niece: The Philosopher

“Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and then ask an adult 'What is that?” 

LIFE IN EGO'S VERNACULAR:

"Each individual’s life offers a scope for ego-activity, and death is the first test of the synthetic activity of the ego. Psychologically speaking, there are no pleasure-giving and pain-giving acts; there are only ego-sustaining and ego-dissolving acts. An individual’s deeds prepare his ego for dissolution, or discipline him for a future career. The principle of the ego-sustaining deed is respect for my ego as well as other egos. Personal immortality, then, is not ours as of right; it is to be achieved by personal effort. Man is only a candidate for it. The most depressing error of Materialism is the supposition that finite consciousness exhausts its object. Philosophy and science are only one way of approaching that object. There are other ways of approach open to us; and death, if present action has sufficiently fortified the ego against the shock that physical dissolution brings, is only a kind of passage to a new state of consciousness characterized by a change in the ego’s attitude towards time and space." 

(SIR MUHAMMAD IQBAL)

MY FOUNDATIONAL TRAITS:

"Under 
peaceful conditions, 

a warlike man sets upon himself!" (Nietzsche)

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” (Nietzsche) 

SELF-DESCRIPTION OF A GENIUS

“Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people's capacity to achieve, 

yet not to achievewhat is beyond their capacity of apprehension; therefore, Talent finds its appreciation rather frequently. The mind, assessments, ideas and achievements of Genius, on the other hand, transcend not only humanity's capacity of achievement, but also its capacity of apprehension; therefore, average mankind does not become immediately aware of a Genius. 

Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others can see but cannot reach; Genius, on the other hand, is like a marksman who hits a target - which others can not see." 

(Imran Nadir)

INSTINCT vs. INTELLIGENCE

"Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments." (Henri Bergson)

SELF'S DILEMMA: To SEE or To BE

"The Ultimate aim of the SELF is not to see something, but to be something. Knowledge enables the SELF to see, but it is actionable passion that enables the SELF to be."  (I.N.)

Instructional Baby-talk:

“Baby-talk with my niece is instructional and philosophical for me. Our ‘conversations’ enable me to focalize on an individual’s linguistic limitations and assumptions in comprehending language, thereby adding to my ostensive-examples of – what Wittgenstein called – ‘a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense’.” 

(Imran Nadir – June 25, 2015)

Types of 'Mistakes'

"Is the word "mistake" used in only one way? Think: Are our mistakes in arithmetic of the same nature as in experiential sciences? The word "Mistake" is used in different ways in science and in arithmetic; and this shows how little attention we pay to our language." (Wittgenstein - Philosophy For Mathematicians)

Elements of Greatness!

"It is the essential nature of Great spirits to become Great if Greatness is expected of them. Greatness is never an accident, but a conscious existence composed of iron-will, inhuman spirit, resolve, and courage." (I.N.)

SCIENCES & INDUCTIVE DEDUCTIONS

"The general principles of science, such as the belief in the reign of law, and the belief that every event must have a cause, are as completely dependent upon the inductive principle as are the beliefs of daily life. All such general principles are believed because mankind has found innumerable instances of their truth and no instances of their falsehood. But this affords no evidence for their truth in the future, unless the inductive principle is assumed."  (Bertrand Russell)

LUST: The Potent Impotence

“Lust is a wayward highway both to and of sensual intoxication, with heavily-priced tolls. Much like on an actual highway, the faster you drive on this highway, the greater the euphoric-intoxication; and yet, all the while, you are depreciating your asset, accruing exorbitant fuel costs, and risking all that is around. 
Anyone who keenly accounts for and analyzes his senses knows, firsthand, that once he experiences the object of his “lust” – and experiences it repeatedly – Lust dissipates with time. Putting it as an abstract rule, the ‘desire’ for any or every sensual desire (including “lust”) has an inverse relationship (of diminishing satiety) with the actualization of that particular desire. Both Morphology and Physiology confirm that the final upshot of any use of an “intoxicant” is weak nerves – both at the physiological and psychological levels. As for the origin of such feeblemindedness, Tolstoy’s words capture its essence: ‘Boredom: the desire for desires!’ ” (I.N.)

Lessons From My Niece

"For all those who level mountains and valleys of a subject-matter by reducing it to the 'right'

perspective - irrespective of its conceptual simplicity or complexity - I recommend a social experiment: Attempt a casual conversation with a preschooler, and evaluate yourself!
Sometimes, no amount of linguistic simplifications, pictorial notations or gesticulations will be sufficient to convey your meaning - 'perspective' - to the child. Why?
Conceptual incongruence; the only precursor of verbal short-circuiting in a social setting.
Perhaps, this experiment will familiarize you with my difficulties in social interactions with adults." (Imran Nadir)

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

"Anyone with basic analytical abilities knows that Happiness remains an illusion if it is pursued directly. In Thinking, those who discipline their thoughts by seeking only to know the facts and resist succumbing to their base-desires on personal Happiness are more likely to achieve permanent Happiness than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires."(I.N.)

Pleasure by Intoxication or Intoxication of Your Painful Existence?

"Recreation & Pleasure by way of intoxication of senses? 
How can 'senselessness' be a condition for pleasure? A contradiction of contradictions!  
Only for the feeble, the gloomy, and the wretched for their recourse to 'pleasure' & 'recreation' would be spineless, artificial, external, and menial!" (I.N.)

What is Difficult?

"We often say: "Thinking is difficult."

What does this really mean? Why is it difficult? - It is almost like saying "Looking is difficult". Because looking intently is difficult. And it is possible to look intently without seeing anything, or to keep thinking you see something without being able to see clearly. Looking can tire you even when you don't see anything." (Wittgenstein - Culture & Value, 1948)

CRITICISM OF THE METHODOLOGY IN PSYCHOLOGY

"Psychology, as a subject, will remain on the fringes of its true disciplinary walls unless it is liberated from the shackles of the contemporary scientific calculi used to propose, investigate, and verify its theories. Contemporary Scientific calculi and inductive reasoning, successfully employed in Physics, are not suited to measure the results of most hypothesis of Psychology, for the foundational assumptions of Determinism and Causality are invalid in Psychology, unlike in Physics." (Imran Nadir - August 27th, 2013)

Conceptual Abstractions Of The Word "God"

"Problems with words like "God" and "Soul" are similar to the word "Number". Even though we have no ostensive definition of these three words,  we still explain them in substantial terms. Explanation of such words, however, does not prove the actual existence of these nouns, but shows their linguistic application - their grammatical-morphology." 
(Imran Nadir - Stray Thought, July 2013)

PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS:
114. (TractatusLogico-Philosophicus, 4.5): ' "The general form of propositions is: This is how things are."——That is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look  at it.' (Wittgenstein)

Pleasure: An Opium for the Average

Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain 
is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain 
always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to 
keep within itself and not look backward. (Imran Nadir)

"Life offers a scope for ego-activity, and death is the first test of the synthetic activity of the ego. There are no pleasure-giving and pain-giving acts; there are only ego-sustaining and ego-dissolving acts. It is the deed that prepares the ego for dissolution, or disciplines him for a future career. The principle of the ego-sustaining deed is respect for the ego in myself as well as in others. Personal immortality, then, is not ours as of right; it is to be achieved by personal effort. Man is only a candidate for it." (Sir Iqbal)

Technique or Discovery?

"There is no discovery that 13 follows 12. That is our technique - we fix, we teach, our technique that way. If there is a discovery ---- it is that this is a valuable thing to do so."  (Wittgenstein - Foundations of Mathematics)

TRUTH OF A LEGAL ORDER:

"To speak of just or unjust in itself is quite senseless; in itself, of course, no injury, assault, exploitation, destruction can be 'unjust,' since life operates essentially, that is in its basic functions, through injury, assault, exploitation, destruction and simply cannot be thought of at all without this character. One must indeed grant something even more unpalatable: that, from the highest biological standpoint, legal conditions can never be other than exceptional conditions, since they constitute a partial restriction of the will of life, which is bent upon power, and are subordinate to its total goal as a single means: namely, as a means of creating greater units of power. A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness." (NIETZSCHE - THE WILL TO POWER)

Where is the "Intention"?

"The intention with which one acts does not 'accompany' the action any more than the thought 'accompanies' speech. Thought and intention are neither 'articulated' nor 'non-articulated'; to be compared neither with a single note which sounds during the acting or speaking, nor with a tune. 'Talking', whether aloud or silently, and 'thinking' are not concepts of the same kind; even though they are in closer connection." (Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations II - Remark 280)

THE SENSE OF NONSENSE: 
"The words 'nonsense' and 'sense' get their meaning only in particular cases, and may vary from case to case. The sentence 'Mr. X came to today's redness' will be considered nonsense, whereas we hardly call the sound of a whistle nonsense!
And so, we can still talk of sense without giving a clear meaning to 'sense', just as we talk of winning or losing without the meaning of our terms being absolutely clear." (Wittgenstein - Foundations of Arithmetic)

Picture of a Soul!

"What am I believing in when I believe that men have souls? What am I believing in, when I believe that this substance contains two carbon rings? In both cases there is a picture in the foreground, but the sense lies far in the background; that is, the application of the picture is not easy to survey."
(Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations - Remark no. 422)

Test of True Thinking

"Whoever thinks more deeply knows that he is always wrong, whatever his acts and judgments." (NIETZSCHE - Human, All Too Human)

Private Experience

"The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible - though unverifiable - that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another."

LANGUAGE: A LABYRINTH

"Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about."
( Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations - 203)

SOLECISM

"Let us examine the following conception of most people: that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it. - It is important to note that it is a solecism to use the word "meaning" to signify the thing that "corresponds" to a word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When someone named Mr. Smith dies, for example, one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say this, for if the name ceases to have meaning, it would make no sense to say 'Mr. Smith is dead'."
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations

Purpose?

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
(Wittgenstein)

Convictions Convicted:

"Convictions are, invariably, straw: they originate, propagate, and - if one is a gifted-cynic - terminate with words." (Imran Nadir)

Punctuate Yourself!‏

'All so-called Great Ages committ 'Great' errors.
Ours: How absurdly we equalize 'Explanation' of an event with its 'Understanding', and then infer 'Knowledge' - as if 'Explanation' secured by studying a set of data suffices here. Does it, really? An error of mistaken superficial similarities!
Let us not put so much faith in this process of reasoning for an 'intellect' with a visual cortex a thousand times more receptive than ours would 'explain-away' our 'Explanations'. Imran Nadir

RESURRECTION TEST

"Every death is accompanied by a valid, yet hidden claim on resurrection, but to stand up again is the play of a lionhearted, free individual. Surely, the fool and the timid never see this because of complete absence of, and obliviousness to, what it takes to resurrect oneself.
Not surprisingly then, fools and cowards never experience death - and hence, are incapable of resurrection - because to die, one has to be alive at some point in time." (Imran Nadir)

"Create Your Own Station" (SIR IQBAL)

Your Atom is light, Absolute You are,

Luminosity, sight of the Heavens You are,

Your prey, the humble angels and heavenly virgins,

For Eagle, ‘King of all Creations’ You are

Philosophy itself bears: Musalmani,

Kaleemi and Unveiling of the covert.

I tell you the recipe of Faq’r and Monarchy:

In destitution, guardianship of the SELF

AGAINST NATIONALISM:

"Will all of you - proud citizens of your countries - believe me? Do you want to be undeceived, and set free from the shackle of Nationalism, a coinage of supreme conmen?
This construct, bigoted as any religious or caste-system in its intent and applicability, was the brainchild of wicked minds; an apparently concentric circle for blockheads, it is yet another signpost under which you - member of the herd - can stand, and 'feel' elevated, secure!
Investigation of the domain of citizenry will render you perfidious for you will bring the very depths of Nationalism alight where there is much that is terrible to see!" (Imran Nadir)

Survival Of The Fittest?

"It is not the 'fittest' but the 'sickliest' that survive; just look around! Collective morbidity suffices here, re-defining the very touchstones of supreme fitness.
Anyone who still believes in the theory of 'Survival of the Fittest' belongs to the 'sickliest'."Imran Nadir

Life: Black & White Or Grey?

Disregarding the veracity of fallacy of materialism for this argument, who would you consider blind, really?
The one able to differentiate amongst multiple shades – lightest to darkest – of ‘black and white’ or the imperceptive observer whose sense-perception is easily betrayed and continues to betray him for he is prone to equalizing the apparently inconspicuous shades of ‘black and white’, generalizing their subtle intermediary gradations as ‘grey.’ Such ineptness adduces either dullness or hopelessness of optico-cerebral acuities.
Indeed, such is precisely the case with the visual, intellectual and perceptual faculties of the one who views life and its seemingly obscure situations as ‘grey.’
Intellectual blindness and imperceptive senses - yielding inferior inferences, boring me beyond endurance - at work individually or collectively, are no arguments for beholding a ‘black and white’ world as ‘grey!’ (Imran Nadir)

MORALITY: HIGHWAY TO STUPIDITY?

"Morality makes stupid.-- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid."
Nietzsche - FROM: "DAY BREAK"

MY NEW RESOLVES:

* "Is there any soul with greater lust for affronting the "Self"? I seek him - for I am incessantly skirting the abyss, in my quest to expose the subterfuges and stupidities of the scintillating and simpleton, respectively!"

* "Summon up all the retroactive and currently proactive energies of humanity, funnel them into the dungeon of 'Imran's soul', and attempt transposing their collective 'potential' into 'kinetic'!

EXCERPT: 'DEMOLISHING IDEALS' by Imran Nadir

RATIONALITY UNVEILED BY AN INTELLECTUAL GIANT: NIETZSCHE

Cause and Effect:

"Such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there are an infinite number of processes which elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality."

Nietzsche: The Gay Science, s. 112

DEATH - DESTROYER OF LIFE?

"Isn't it probable that the domain of LIFE of EGO extends itself through and beyond the door of physical dissolution? That the factual wholeness of life is a kind of unity which when viewed through the prism of death appears a duality? Moreover, could it be that this apparent bifurcation of ‘life’ and ‘death’ is merely an illusion? Are n't you living in illusion about yourself and 'the confronting other' all the time, and that too fleetingly? Yet, you feign objectivity and rationality. Unqualified is Man at his current intellectual development to investigate matters requiring both ratiocinative honesty to the point of harshness and perceptibility of acutest intensity."

(EXCERPT: ‘DEMOLISHING IDEALS’ by Imran Nadir)

PARADOXES!

• "Procreation is an upshot of impotence; now you figure out this paradox." [I.N.]

• "Lack of linguistics and philology interfused with serial architecture of the former are rendering me impotent ideologically for I wrestle with words to secure communicability, dreading that soon my ideological discoveries will not be explicable at least in print!" [I.N.]