Buddhism is Psychedelism

[draconica]

All reasoning is philosophy, but not all philosophy is reasoning.

My dear reader might not know that I run a philosophy blog titled Draconica; and that's fine. We can't know everything. If you run a philosophy blog, I might very well not be aware of that, because that's how my awareness is limited.

"Yeah, but surely all reasoning can't be philosophy. There must be a reason why reasoning and philosophy are two different words."

Okay, okay, you can't argue with the dictionary. We can't truly say that all reasoning equals to all philosophy; that every instance of reasoning is instance of philosophy. Philosophy is the kind of thinking associated with Descartes and his famous "To be or not to be", or Aristotle and his theory of how jellyfish produce laser beams to scare away demonic presence. Did you know that the adjective "Cartesian" refers to anything related to Descartes? Where did the Des go?

Surely, everyday reasoning can't be philosophy, and we will attempt to prove that with reasoning and a little bit of philosophy. Let's say, you are at the crossroad, and the traffic light is red, and you, by employing the reasoning ability of your brain, conclude: "I must not go, or a car will hit me", so you stay. This simple line of reasoning can be expressed by the syllogism:

S1. When the traffic light is red, the road is dangerous (for me, a pedestrian).
S2. The traffic light is red.
S3. The road is dangerous (so I, a pedestrian, will not cross the road).

It's not strictly a syllogism, but rather a syllogism with tiny horns (in the parentheses); they encode the extra facts necessary to understand the context of the syllogism. If we remove the phrases in parentheses, we'd have to create an extra syllogisms:

R1. A pedestrian should not cross the dangerous road.
R2. The road is dangerous.
R3. A pedestrian should not cross the road.

We will also have define ourselves a pedestrian, so this entire reasoning is one definition and two syllogisms.

We don't usually think in definitions and syllogisms. In fact, you, a pedestrian, when you approach the traffic light, don't necessarily apply reasoning, because you're more likely just conditioned to behave a certain way when encountering the traffic light. Maybe you don't even notice the traffic light and you stay because there are other people at the crossroad and they're staying, so you stay as well. Some don't even care about the traffic lights.

But anyway, let's consider the hypothetical case where we employ the reasoning to conclude that we should stay. Surely, this must be an instance of non-philosophical thinking, a counter-example we were looking for. It does not deal with abstract problems, like what is time, or what is space, or what is mind, or what is love, or what is just, or what is fair. It deals with the concrete problem of "should I go or stay". The problem is solved not through the extensive considerations of various aspects of the problem, but via the simple reading of the traffic light. It's almost like arithmetics: if red then go; else stay.

So yes, it must be the answer. We did prove that! Congratulations, dear reader.