Charvaka Philosophy Research Paper
Ghost, are they real? What is real? A child trembling in the dark may be fearful because he believes that reality is more than the hard material objects around him. Reality for him also includes an unseen spiritual realm. You may defend yourself against these fears by insisting that such a realm cannot be a part of reality. Reality consists only of the hard, enduring objects around you that can be seen, heard, touched, and smelled. But what grounds do you have for this belief? In fact, many intelligent and thoughtful people have concluded that reality includes more than material objects. And many people have suspected that spirits are very real. What reasons can you give for saying that they are wrong? Don’t virtually all religions declare
…show more content…
The Charvaka philosophers were also known as “Lokyata,” which means “those who go the worldly way” because of their view that we should seek our happiness in this material world and its physical pleasures, and turn away from religion and its delusions. The views of the Charvaka philosophers were based on the idea that there is only one valid source of knowledge about the world around us: sense perception. Other possible sources of knowledge, such as inductive or deductive reasoning, they argued, are invalid. Inductive reasoning is generalizing about what we observe. For example, after observing many cases of smoke accompanied by fire, we might generalize that “where there’s smoke, there’s always fire.” The problem with such inductive reasoning, they argued, is that generalizations always go beyond what we can observe. Deductive reasoning is also unreliable because deductive reasoning always appeals to general statements to reach its logical conclusions, and it ultimately depends on the generalizations that inductive reasoning produces. So, deductive reasoning can be no more reliable than the inductive reasoning on which it is based. Therefore, all reasoning with inductive or deductive, about what the world around us is like is unreliable. Our only reliable source of knowledge about the world, then, is what we can immediately see, hear, touch, smell, or taste with our
The Charvaka philosophers were also known as “Lokyata,” which means “those who go the worldly way” because of their view that we should seek our happiness in this material world and its physical pleasures, and turn away from religion and its delusions. The views of the Charvaka philosophers were based on the idea that there is only one valid source of knowledge about the world around us: sense perception. Other possible sources of knowledge, such as inductive or deductive reasoning, they argued, are invalid. Inductive reasoning is generalizing about what we observe. For example, after observing many cases of smoke accompanied by fire, we might generalize that “where there’s smoke, there’s always fire.” The problem with such inductive reasoning, they argued, is that generalizations always go beyond what we can observe. Deductive reasoning is also unreliable because deductive reasoning always appeals to general statements to reach its logical conclusions, and it ultimately depends on the generalizations that inductive reasoning produces. So, deductive reasoning can be no more reliable than the inductive reasoning on which it is based. Therefore, all reasoning with inductive or deductive, about what the world around us is like is unreliable. Our only reliable source of knowledge about the world, then, is what we can immediately see, hear, touch, smell, or taste with our