I have some reservations about the overuse of strict logical arguments in philosophy, especially the common structure of “premise, premise, conclusion.” This approach works extremely well in mathematics, where the objects of reasoning are precisely defined and where symbols have fixed meanings. However, natural language does not work in this way.

Words do not have perfectly fixed definitions that exist independently of their use. Rather, we learn the meaning of words by participating in a linguistic community: by observing how words are used in different situations and by developing a network of associations connected to them. A word is therefore not like a mathematical symbol with a single precise meaning, but more like a cloud of related meanings, associations, and intuitions.

Because of this, philosophical arguments that rely too heavily on formal logical structures can sometimes become misleading. It is often easy to find an apparent flaw in an argument by taking one association of a word used in a premise and applying it in a way that goes against the intended direction of the argument. The problem is not necessarily that the argument is wrong, but that the word itself contains multiple overlapping meanings.

For example, morality can be understood both as something emotional and intuitive, connected to feelings such as empathy and guilt, and as something rational, connected to principles and reasoning. God can be understood both as a personal being with intentions and as an impersonal foundation of reality. Time can be understood both categorically, as a fundamental structure of reality, and relationally, as something dependent on observers and physical systems. Many philosophical disagreements arise because different sides emphasize different aspects of the same concept.

For this reason, I think philosophy should not rely only on constructing strict logical arguments. Language is not merely a tool for representing precisely defined concepts; it is also a tool for shaping perception. In this sense, language is perhaps closer to painting than to mathematics. A painter does not communicate by giving a strict definition of an object but by arranging colours and forms in a way that guides the viewer’s perception. Similarly, a philosopher often uses words not simply to transfer information but to direct attention toward a particular way of seeing the world.

Philosophical writing is therefore less like proving a mathematical theorem and more like creating a conceptual landscape. The goal is not always to move from premises toward a single unavoidable conclusion, but rather to guide the reader into a region of understanding where certain connections and insights become visible.

Just as a painter refines a painting by adjusting individual strokes until the overall image conveys what they intend, a philosopher refines language word by word until the meaning they want to express becomes clearer. The meaning does not arise from one isolated definition, but from the relationship between all the elements together.

One major argument in favour of idealism concerns epistemology: all knowledge of the external world is mediated through our senses, which we know from experience can be mistaken. On the other hand, our knowledge of our own mind appears to be direct and immediate. Our mind therefore seems to occupy a privileged epistemological position. Based on this assumption, thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Bernardo Kastrup, and Philip Goff develop their respective versions of idealism.

However, I am somewhat suspicious of the claim that we have direct, unmediated access to our own mind. This is not yet a fully developed argument, but rather a stream of consciousness exploring an intuition. Some time ago, I read Why Buddhism Is True, which argues that the mind is not a unified entity but rather consists of many different modules, each with its own drives and goals. For example, there may be a module responsible for the desire to have children, another for hunger, another for achieving social status, and so on. These different modules can come into conflict with one another. When we repeatedly act according to the impulses of one module, that module becomes stronger.

If we adopt this picture of the mind, it becomes less obvious that there is a single unified entity to which we have privileged access. Instead, we have to ask: who or what exactly is the thing that supposedly has this direct access?

To develop this further, we can look at the famous experiments with split-brain patients. In these experiments, one hemisphere of the brain can be instructed to perform an action, and afterwards the other hemisphere is asked why the person performed that action. Surprisingly, the speaking hemisphere often does not answer “I don’t know”; instead, it appears to construct an explanation after the fact. One interpretation of this phenomenon, also suggested in Why Buddhism Is True, is that the ego functions partly as a kind of public relations system.

Humans have always lived in tribes and social groups, where it was important for others to understand and trust our behaviour. Someone who acts randomly is difficult to trust because if we cannot understand their reasons, we cannot predict whether they will follow plans, rules, social norms, morality, or any other framework. Furthermore, a narrative system that explains and justifies our actions can help convince others that our behaviour is reasonable and beneficial, thereby gaining their support.

With this in mind, if I think of a triangle, it is not necessarily the case that there is one unified entity to which the triangle simply appears. Rather, there may be many different cognitive modules, each with its own interests, contributing to how the triangle is interpreted. In other words, the idea that everything appearing in consciousness is directly accessed by a unified observer may be a very naive understanding of how the brain functions.

Instead, our conscious experience may emerge from many interacting feedback loops that continuously modify and reinterpret what enters awareness. There is not simply something that appears to us and is then directly known; rather, there is a constant process of interpretation and reconstruction. We can observe something similar when we consider how our perception of things changes depending on our mood or our current mental state. The same object can appear differently depending on which cognitive systems are dominant at a given moment—not necessarily in its raw visual appearance, though this would also be an interesting empirical question, but certainly in its meaning and significance.

Therefore, I think modern cognitive neuroscience challenges some forms of idealism—not because it proves materialism, or because one can naively claim that the success of science demonstrates that materialism must be true, but because the more we understand the complexity of the brain, the less plausible a simple, unified, transparent mind becomes. Instead, we discover that our minds are far more fragmented, dynamic, and constructed than traditional philosophical pictures often assume.

Every ethical situation presents a demand to choose. This demand, the necessity of choosing between alternatives, of taking a stand, is what makes it an ethical situation at all. Not choosing is itself a choice, but one made passively, without the burden of active deliberation.

The obsessive construction of moral frameworks arises from a desire to abdicate this burden. Each ethical confrontation places a weight on the chooser: one must choose, and one must live with that choice forever. The responsibility is unsharable and permanent. To escape this, the individual creates or adopts, a moral framework. Then one says: ‘I did what is right’. The framework becomes a screen: responsibility is displaced from the individual onto an anonymous abstraction called “morality,” where it is diluted and depersonalised. The individual no longer stands behind a choice as its author, but hides behind a pre-approved category.

Following a moral framework is a choice made by proxy. The framework chooses in one’s stead. The decision was already settled before the situation arose, not because the agent reflected and resolved, but because the framework had already classified the kind of situation and prescribed the correct response. This is the deepest abdication: not the refusal to act, but the refusal to bear the weight of acting as oneself.