Monism, Dualism, Pluralism, Existentialism and Logic Explained

Rene Descartes, inventor of the Cartesian co-ordinates, mouths: "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think therefore I am."

In some ways, he was asserting the concert of the mind-body dualism, with an emphasis perhaps, that the mind somehow has a more overwhelming hold on the body, it being superordinate and the body subordinate.

By extension, I could also assert that if I think I am a pig, I am, sort of a reincarnation of Hinduistic religious beliefs. Or if my She-Ape ex-colleague thought she was a pongo pygmeus, she has to be because we would whole-heartedly lend credence to that notion.

That wonderful mass of neuronic synaptic tangle can do so much for our self-image and self-esteem and radically alter our perception of the world. So on a bad hair day, I can simply pre-meditate and think the people in the world are neurotically cataleptic or mute and they are. Or my neighbor's twin monozygotic off-springs are brattish pain-in-the-asses and what do you know, they are too.

Extrapolating, when I think dudes at the swimming pools are hunks, I likewise see a sea of hunky dories. Or if the women are bitches, I similarly see a platoon of dogs, female dogs, that is.

I think you are a bunch of bastardy bastards and you are. I think she is a smellysmock snollygoster and hey presto, she is.

What a marvellous philosophical treatise Descartes has left us. We can simply tune in or tune out our eye-diffraction grates and cerebral cognition just at the snap of our fingers!

Now the mind-body dualism can also mean working in opposites. We just have to look around our public transport system to see this extremophilic preponderance!

Anorexic bitch A walks in front of you and her body suddenly stops to listen in on her celly. Fussock bitch B, on the other hand, blocks your path as she mindlessly and zombiely saunters along. A good and fine example of mind not working but body is.

In fact, both examples would exemplify monism too.The reality is only as real as their bodies are in motion and nothing else.

Principia Motionia, ala Sir Issac Newton, states that all bodies tend to continue in their line of motion unless stopped by some opposing forces. Like when they slam into the wall or another person in front of them, ruining their eyeliner and peeling off their mascara in this clash of accident. Maybe even warranting maxillo-facial microsurgery!

Dualism also shows traces of the dichotomous dichotomy we spoke of earlier but in the strictly "anti" sense.

Now the most famous of all philosophical exposition has to be the ontological argument or ontology issue. This is where I failed my philosophy exam. I mean being more an agnostic, I couldn't really relate to such profundity in cosmological, ecclesiastical or logical dissertation.

I mean who cares for the "Designer" argument for seeing a time-piece as a first person God-designed-one any more than I care to tell the time to check if I am late for an appointment.

Or the egg or chicken ontology argument. As far as I am concerned, both make sumptuous dinner eats and I do not need to know their nature or first being at all! That would qualify as truly true-blue American pragmatism.

Just so you can really grasp this dualism precept, it goes beyond the "mind-body" argument and extends to a myriad of theological dualism - good/evil, divine/human and spiritual/physical.

So like today I decide to peck my good friend a "muack" but tomorrow it could be a "burke". Or I kick Jen physically but feel remorseful spiritually. I clean up the orphanage one day but raze it to the ground the next. The list of antagonistic forces goes on.

Dualism can mean eonism in certain ways too. It is also a tussle of the mind-body control. A man decides to cross dress. Mentally he is yang but physically he is yin. But the yang wasn't enough to overpower the yin, so he ends up being a transsexual eventually.

Pluralism is self-evident and you can think of that multi-dimensionalism we discussed before. If I have to expound on this, I choose to use our very own Singaporean pledge of "regardless of race, language or religion". A pluralism, in my context, means more than 2, and it must be the official languages of Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English.

Now this is the quintessential pluralism.

An Indian can be a Muslim who speaks English. A Chinese Muslim speaks Tamil. Awesome pluralistic manifestation indeed.

However you rarely find a Malay Muslim speaking any language other than English or Malay , so more dualism.

As for me, I am a Chinese Christian who speaks English and Mandarin - thus not quite pluralistic. But if you account for the other dialects and a spattering of Malay and European languages I dabble in, well then maybe I am.

Existentialism is that unique experience an individual and only an individual himself undergoes which is independent of the environment that goes on unperturbed around him. Note that this is a necessary condition.

An ant losing his feelers experiences just that. But no other animal in the arthropodic phylum is going to give two hoots about that. They are just going to carry on as usual , unmoved, much like we reeling from catalepsy and mutism in our society today.

At best a fellow passing ant reaches out into thin air, cannot feel our "antennaeless" ant and unaffectionately crawls along till he meets another. Think of this poor "antennaeless" ant as being an alien of sorts, dropping in on a colony of his former comrades.

It is just his luck to have lost his feelers either by choice or by accident. Nobody is going to take notice.

On top of that, this "alien" ant has the free will to either 1) completely disappear from the surface of the earth or 2) carry on his same "antennaeless" antics.

In any case, he faces the consequences of either 1) not being missed at all or 2) not even being seen or noticed in the least bit. He is a walking, fucking ghost for pete's sake.

Now that is existentialism. Schizophrenic? Well yes to a large extent. Isn't dualism exactly that too?

Logic is the ultimate of all philosophies. It teaches inductive and deductive lines of reasoning and thinking. But logicians worry more about the form rather than the content. We can
have absolutely valid arguments with implausible or even meaningless premises.

Just to illustrate this syllogism:

All Singapore girls are chio
All Singapore girls are bu.
Therefore all Singapore girls are chio-bus

Or this one:

All Singapore males have dicks
All Singapore males have testis.
Therefore all Singapore males have dik-tests.

Finally, logic assumes non-contradiction, or rhetorical logic, as it is popularly known (my concoction anyway): If A, not B, then C ?.

If Dwayne is a glutton
but Daryl is not a glutton
Then who is?.

Call this New Age rhetorical logic if you must.

You got that logic right? Good luck, you need it.