The rhetorical appeal of logical priority. An argument a priori is a defense against any argument a posteriori, but an argument a posteriori is no attack against any argument a priori.

Philosophy has traditionally two views concerning time, namely, the ‘static view of time’ and the ‘dynamic view of time’. The static view of time as embraced by philosophers like Parmenides and Zeno of Elea held that the appearance of temporal change is a mere illusion.
This means that events deemed ‘past’ in one frame of reference must be deemed as the ‘future’ in other frames; thus hinting that the difference between the past and the future might be just one that is subjective to experience rather than a real ontological divide. The dynamic view of time chosen by philosophers like Heraclitus and Aristotle, maintained that the future lacks the certainty of the past and the present therefore reality is continually being added to as time passes. This implies a ‘movement of time from the past into the future’ as ‘future events become present before finally receding into the past’.

Both views of time are true to a certain degree. In fact, both views seem to complement each other and produce a more complete picture of our understanding of time. More importantly, both views show us a fundamental principle in philosophy, that is; some things change and some things do not change. Coming to this point, the task of the philosopher is to determine to a certain degree of accuracy the things that change with time and the things do not.
We all know that some laws of nature and physics do not change relative to time. For example, as long as certain conditions are met, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. If this law of physics do not hold true, no corporation would dare manufacture electrical stoves and kettles! Besides physics, other concepts and principles especially those found in mathematics are constant regardless of the flow of time. We can always with utmost certainty answer that 5 + 7 = 12 since we cannot conceive a world where the answer to such a question would be any different than the one we already know.

These unchanging laws in reality lead us to examine two kinds of propositional knowledge which philosophers call a priori and a posteriori.

Knowledge is said to be a priori when it is a necessary truth, independent of the sense-experience. The most cited example of this kind of knowledge is again mathematics because the authority and validity of mathematical knowledge do not depend upon evidence obtained through experience.
On the other hand, knowledge is said to be a posteriori when it refers to a contingent truth that is authenticated and justified only through the sense-experience. But what can we say about the concept of time? Is it a priori or a posteriori knowledge? -see full article at Eternity in an Hour

UPDATED AGAIN: The response from the involved party is that I have misrepresented or failed to understand how they were using A Priori. The use of the term is very diverse and so this is very possible. I tried to base my discussion based on the examples and illustrations provided. The essay still applies to the idea that an ethical or value based system can be derived entirely internally by the individual sans experience. I have recently studied the way Murray Rothbard, Roderick T. Long, and to a lesser degree Ludwig von Mises use the term. Without these more detailed explanations I initially found their refusal to test their theories or apply them empirically problematic, but after understanding what they really meant I can now more strongly support praxeology. I may explore that more in a future post.

UPDATE: Made some semantic changes to essay. Changed Pure A Priori to Pure A Priori thought process. Also, gave new definition of a priori in terms section. Real content of essay unchanged but wanted to prevent semantics from being a diversion.

The following essay is in response to recent conversations that I have had. I have kept in fairly general so it can be understood outside of the context of those conversations. However, I plan to follow up with a short essay more specifically addressing some of the topics of the conversation with context provided. I will also post any responses from the opposing parties on this topic. The available formats for viewing the essay are after the break.

html

doc

Burada ikinci defa soru sorma küstahlığı/cahilliğini gösteriyorum. Aydınlatın beni Übermenschen

Bu soruyu kaç gündür düşünüyorum. Halen bir yerlere varabilmiş değilim; zaten genelde bir şeyleri toparlamaya çalışırken ya çıkmaza ya olmaza varırım bu sebeple bunu her zamanki dağınıklığımla yazacağım.

Öncelikle bir şey olmak isteyen neden tuğla olsun ki? Sonra Termodinamik – 3. kanun?  (tasarım ve a priori ye, 3 kanun tezat oluşturuyor olabilir, burası biraz daha iyi bir çözümleme gerektiriyor; okumak filan lazım)

Yine kopuk bir şekilde başka bir dala atlayarak, toprak seni olduğu gibi kabul edebilecekken sen onu neden ateşe attın gibi başka bir soru soralım. Bu sorunun cevabını “eksiklik” olarak görüyorum. Bir eksiğini kapatmak için icat ettin tuğlayı; hoş, toprak ateşi sevmeseydi belki şimdi bir kazma ne kazmak ister gibi bir soru da soruyor olabilirdik.

Eksikliğimizin çatısı altında toprak ve ateşten tuğlaya oradan yapıya giden bir durum var gibi [Burada ben başka bir soru daha sorayım: toprak neyle kaynaşmak ister? Alın size sürdürülebilir mimari ]. Tuğla, yapı içerisinde ateş ve toprak özünden kurtulabiliyor ve kendi kimliğini oluşturuyor diyelim. Tuğlanın kimliğini bulduğu bu yer de bu sefer tasarımcının içerisindeki başka bir eksiklik devreye giriyor bence, buna bir arayış da der misiniz bilmiyorum. Kimisi ilk eksikliği kapatsam yeter diyor belki, kimisi tuğlaya kimlik vermek için deneysel bir sürece başlıyor, bazıları bir yerde duruyor, bazıları aramaya devam ediyor. Bütün bilgimizin deneyimle başlaması kısmı böyle bir şey herhalde fakat bütün bilgimiz deneyimden doğar mı?

Hani bu soruyla o bahsi geçen filmde adamın elinde tuttuğu tuğlayla yaptığı sunumun sonunda karşılaşmasaydım; belki, tuğlayı birey olarak algılar buradan da sabah çiftçi, öğlen işçi, akşam yazar olmak istiyor gibi bir sonuca da varabilirdim ama varmadım.

A very worthwhile sermon by Mr. Gordon on the principal meaning of ALL Scripture.

T. David Gordon: What Scripture Principally Teaches…Christ Crucified!

Las siguientes notas tienen como fin el hacer de esquema de práctica dirigida para los alumnos del curso de Ética de Gonzalo Gamio, del cual soy jefe de práctica. Tiene como fin, pues, el ser una especie de guía esquemática e introductoria a una serie de problemas abiertos (y relacionados), en parte, con la propuesta ética de Immanuel Kant. El texto base para esta sesión es el segundo capítulo “Tránsito de la filosofía moral popular a una metafísica de las costumbres” de la Fundamentación para una metafísica de las costumbres, traducción de Roberto Aramayo, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2002.

***

Ahora la cuestión es pensar cómo son posibles dichos imperativos.

En el primer caso no hay problema: quien quiere un fin, quiere también el medio para ese fin. Si quiero el efecto, entonces quiero la acción que lo produce.

En el segundo caso el problema radica en definir qué es la felicidad. La razón radica en que los elementos de la definición de la felicidad son empíricos, ya que se trata de un bienestar máximo en todas las circunstancias. El problema es que los seres finitos no pueden hacerse una idea clara de lo que realmente quieren.

• Riqueza: preocupaciones.
• Grandes conocimientos: agudeza para ver más males.
• Larga vida: podría ser una gran calamidad.
• Gran salud: muchos excesos.

Conclusión: para saber lo que a uno lo haría feliz se necesita omnisciencia, que los seres racionales humanos por definición no tienen.

En el tercer caso tenemos dificultades para expresar lo propio del imperativo. para empezar no podemos dar ningún ejemplo, ya que los ejemplos y la experiencia son insuficientes para captar este imperativo. Cualquier ejemplo podría esconder, en el fondo, un imperativo hipotético. Es un imperativo incondicionado. Por su necesidad es el único que puede ser llamado una ley práctica en sentido estricto, porque no tiene un propósito más allá que podrímos abandanor para abandonar el actuar.

El imperativo categórico es una proposición sintético-práctica a priori. Es un imperativo que contiene la ley y la necesidad de que la máxima sea conforme a la ley. Una universalidad a la que debe de conformarse la máxima de la acción:

Así pues, el imperativo categórico es único y, sin duda, es éste: obra sólo según aquella máxima por la cual puedas querer que al mismo tiempo se convierta en una ley universal (104).

Pero puede reformularse este imperativo si tenemos en cuenta que la naturaleza es lo que tiene que ver con la universalidad de la ley. Esto tiene que ver con cosas que están determinadas por leyes universales. De ahí que la segunda formulación sea:

Obra como si la máxima de tu acción pudiera convertirse por tu voluntad en una ley universal de la naturaleza (104).

No debemos olvidar de que la máxima es el principio subjetivo del obrar, mientras que la ley práctica es el principio objetivo. Esta ley es el principio válido para todo ser racional, el que concierne al deber. A partir de aquí, Kant distingue entre:

1. Deberes perfectos. No admite a la inclinación.

2. Deberes imperfectos.

Ejemplos:

• Suicidio. No podría ser una ley universal de la naturaleza, que promueve la vida.
• Mentir para obtener un préstamo. Nadie creería ninguna promesa.
• No desarrollar un talento por comodidad. El ser racional quiere desarrollar sus capacidades.
• Alguien a quien le va bien, pero no le importa ayudar  a los demás. Uno mismo se arrebataría el auxilio que esperaría para sí.

Hasta aquí lo que tenemos es el poder querer que nuestras máximas se conviertan en leyes universales. Quedan fuera las máximas que no pueden pensarse sin contradicción como leyes universales de la naturaleza (el deber más estricto), así como el hecho de que podamos querer que eso pudiera suceder. En otros casos la voluntad es la que entraría en contradicción y no la ley (un deber más lato).

A veces somos conscientes de que nuestras máximas no son susceptibles de ser universalizables y sin embargo realizamos esas acciones. Kant sostiene que es porque lo que estamos haciendo es una excepción para nuestras inclinaciones, excepción que no estaríamos dispuestos a tolerar para otros. Lo que tenemos aquí es una especie de conflicto entre la razón y la inclinación.

Para poder constatar el carácter a priori de dicho imperativo, Kant considera necesario no buscar abstraerlo de algún atributo de la naturaleza humana, además de (obviamente) no querer derivarlo de ejemplos concretos y empíricos. Y es que el deber ser y la obligatoriedad de la acción es algo que obliga e impera en cualquier acción racional, sea o no sea humana. De ahí que la ética de Kant por momentos trascienda el ser una ética meramente humana. Su universalidad la lleva a contemplar la posibilidad de valer universalmente para cualquier ser que sea racional, independientemente de que sea o no un ser humano.

(…) no hay que esperar nada de la inclinación del hombre, sino todo el poder supremo de la ley y del debido respeto hacia ella o, en caso contrario, condenar a los hombres al autodesprecio que les hace aborrecerse a sí mismos en su fuero interno (111).

El imperativo es algo a priori y vinculado con el concepto de voluntad de un ser racional en general. Hay que buscar los fundamentos de lo que debe suceder, aunque nunca llegara a suceder. Se trata de leyes objetivo-prácticas. Se trata de una voluntad determinada puramente por la razón, suprimiendo todo lo empírico. La razón debe determinar a la voluntad de manera puramente a priori.

La voluntad es pensada como una capacidad para que uno se autodetermine a obrar conforme a la representación de ciertas leyes. Y una facultad así sólo puede encontrarse entre los seres racionales. Ahora bien, fin es lo que le sirve a la voluntad como fundamento objetivo de su autodeterminación y, cuando dicho fin es dado por la mera razón, ha de valer igualmente para todo ser racional.

Kant va a distinguir aquí entre:

1. Móvil. Es el fundamentos subjetivo del deseo. De acá uno puede inferir fines subjetivos que descansan sobre móviles. Acá los principios prácticos son materiales. Los fines materiales son arbitrarios y relativos. Todo esto es el fundamento de los imperativos hipotéticos.

2. Motivo. Es el fundamento objetivo del querer. De acá uno puede inferir fines objetivos válidos para todo ser racional. Acá los principios prácticos son formales. El fundamento requerido aquí debe ser el de la existencia de algo que posea un valor absoluto, que sea un fin en sí mismo.

Kant sostiene para que (2) pueda tener sentido, que todo ser racional es un fin en sí mismo. Los seres puramente de la naturaleza son seres irracionales, cosas, medios para nuestros fines. Los seres racionales son personas. Las personas son objetos de respeto y no pueden ser tratadas con pura arbitrariedad. Como son (2) eso quiere decir que no son (1), es decir, no son un fin subjetivo.El fundamento entonces es pues, que la naturaleza racional existe como fin en sí misma. La formulación del imperativo será la siguiente:

Obra de tal modo que uses a la humanidad, tanto en tu persona como en la persona de cualquier otro, siempre al mismo tiempo como fin y nunca simplemente como medio (116).

Retomemos los ejemplos para echar nuevas luces sobre ellos, a partir de la nueva formulación.

• Suicidio. Es utilizarnos a nosotros como medios y no como fines. No puedo mutilarme, estropearme, ni matarme, desde esta formulación (a menos, claro está, que sea para preservarme.
• Mentir para obtener un préstamo. Estamos utilizando a los demás como medios y no como fines en sí mismos.
• No desarrollar un talento por comodidad. No se promueve a la humanidad como un fin en sí mismo, aunque pueda mantenerse como tal.
• Alguien a quien le va bien, pero no le importa ayudar  a los demás. Los fines de los demás son, por definición, mis fines.

]]> http://martinjost.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/es-ist-alles-schon-da-man-muss-es-nur-sehen/ Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:05:08 +0000 Paul Pretens http://martinjost.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/es-ist-alles-schon-da-man-muss-es-nur-sehen/ http://architecouture.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/above-construction/ Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:23:19 +0000 architecouture http://architecouture.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/above-construction/

Resolution #1.023

♣

Under Construction

“Analytic” sentences, such as “Ophthalmologists are doctors,” are those whose truth seems to be knowable by knowing the meanings of the constituent words alone, unlike the more usual “synthetic” ones, such as “Ophthalmologists are ill-humored,” whose truth is knowable by both knowing the meaning of the words and something about the world.

Beginning with Frege, many philosophers hoped to show that knowledge of logic and mathematics and other apparently a priori domains, such as much of philosophy and the foundations of science, could be shown to be analytic by careful “conceptual analysis.” This project encountered a number of problems that have seemed so intractable as to lead some philosophers, particularly Quine, to doubt the reality of the distinction. There have been a number of interesting reactions to this scepticism, both in philosophy and in linguistics, but it has yet to be shown that the distinction will ever be able to ground the a priori in the way that philosophers had hoped.

(Via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is but a dream

As a child, I had deep and profound experiences of Déjà vu to the point where I would purposefully try to act out of step with the sequence I knew was taking place in front of me.  Most often, any attempt to break the spell, to do anything which might stop the unexplained happenings which were affecting me was unsuccessful and even contributed to the effect.  I even went so far as to study C.G. Jung’s work on dream interpretation and to try practice lucid dreaming so that I could take an active role in my dreams and therefore in my waking life.  Performing a series of almost self-hypnotic practices as I lay in my bed just before sleep helped, as did writing my dreams down after awaking.  I reached a point of being able to, for example, remember the experience of controlling flight while in a dream.  I was able to achieve recognition that I could affect events unfolding up until the moment when my mind considered the fact that I was experiencing itself in a dream state.  Dreams seemed to be grouped into patterns and often were repeated nightly.  In my experience they were repeated to the point where I began in my conscious understanding to make sense of and interperate them.  Inexplicable dreams such as repeated and revisited dreams and nightmares were common.

A very significant set of dreams I had was of three separate pyramids; The first surrounded by desolation and desert as if I was witnessing the remains of the past, The second in the midst of vast jungle at the top of which could be seen a panorama of lush nature and beauty, and the third pyramid was made of glass and steel, inside which I wandered aimlessly until I was brought by my father to a room in which the rules of the game were presented to me as a giant chess match with peoples lives as the pieces.

It is in light of my attempts to interperate and affect my dream states when I was younger that I read C. G Jung’s work entitled Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.

The book approaches a subject which in past centuries would have been the domain of mysticism, religion, or alchemy and with an eye toward the attempts of modern physics to begin to offer a psychological explanation for events such as precognition, powerful coincidences, “big” dreams, déjà vu, and even prayer.  Personally, my experiences with déjà vu, the non-local power of thought, and the presence of meaningful coincidences has diminished as I have become more and more a part of the social and economic milieu which is adulthood.  Perhaps it is a lack of sleep, perhaps it is the full demands and responsibilities of home and family, perhaps it is just for lack of trying, but I no longer have access to what I once was certain was my own personal connection to the collective psyche.  In modern adult life we seem in most cases to compress or even repress our exposure to events which do not fit the typical day to day understanding of the world.  Our exposure to such experiences is limited into smaller and smaller isolated incidents such as the birth of a child, a wedding, or the death of a loved one.  But being so disconnected to life outside of our conscious minds we tend to find ourselves out of practice when it comes time to recognize the presence of meaning beyond ourselves.  Most people pass off as juvenile the connection to this part of life, until of course we find ourselves faced with the inexplicable.  If we are lucky, we can at some point in our lives come face to face with this experience.  Most people will however either ignore such an opportunity or will take solace in the religion in which they were raised, seeing the experience as a sign of the power of God.  For the most unlucky of us, we go though life altogether unaware of meaning outside of our consciousness, and have our first (and last) experience with it at the moment of our own deaths.  For the majority of people in this situation however, the opportunity to recognize meaning in death is ignored just as it was repeatedly in life.  For those people the future seems uncertain, and for them we should try not to unnecessarily swat mosquitoes.

It’s not however just extraordinary atypical experiences that present meaning to our consciousness.  Jung is most famous for his idea of the “collective unconscious”, a sort of shared network of experience which each individual psyche draws from and contributes to.  In this work on Synchronicity, written in tandem with Wolfgang Pauli, Jung uses the findings of quantum physics and special relativity to provide the backdrop for an attempt to understand both the typical experiences of the psyche and the atypical events which we often dismiss as either coincidence or randomness.

As Jung begins the work he states:

“Modern physics has altered our understanding of the universality of natural law.  Very small levels of physics demonstrate that causality is a relative law, that it is only statistically valid.  We understand that psychologically the experiences of multiple individuals produce a consensus ominum out of the majority of similar observations.”

Each of us shares and communicates information about the world which functions according to a set of laws, at least according to the majority of human experience.  There are of course always those rare experiences which are unique.  According to Jung we use words like “chance” or “coincidence” when describing events which do not fit within the sensible understanding of normal causality.  For Jung, these are “acausal” events we cannot explain as chance and ignore.  It is important that everything that happens is not either A) completely predicable and causal; or B) Completely random and the result of pure chance.  The fact that in general, existence is a mix of the two points to the fact that in the world it is the statistically valid which rules; it is the “predominance of the probable”  which seems to best describe reality.  In this world when we make statements of fact or observations from experience we can at most say that we know the statistically true.  Everything around us points to the dominance of it; nothing is absolute, yet everything isn’t relative.  As Jung says “It is the occurrence of the statistically improbable, rather than the statistically probable occasional randomness which points to the flaw in our predominant understanding of events.”

To well documented occurrences such as improbable sequences of occurrences (events, symbols, numbers, etc..); to the appearance of a series of events which are causally unconnected, but which each express similar meaning to an observer we ascribe the title of “meaningful coincidence”.  To events of this kind we attribute luck, both good and bad, without requiring or seeking out a full causal explanation.  Generally, as long as these events do not exceed the limits of probability we are comfortable with assuming the nature of reality.  However, the very existence of order instead of randomness, of laws instead of chaos is itself however something of an improbability.  Why something instead of nothing?  Why this reality instead of an alternative?  Why is the probable probable and the improbable improbable?  Various explanations throughout history from a “preexisting harmony” to the operation of fate, to the free exercise of matter in a void, to the constant battle of competing wills have all been used to attempt to explain why reality is the way it is.

In an attempt to begin to answer some of these questions Jung states that to the equation of space, time, and causality a fourth principle must be introduced, that of synchronicity, or the “acausal psychically conditioned relativity of space and time”.  In other words the existence of events which are simultaneous in either time across space or in space across time, but without a causal connection can be seen to exhibit a meaningful presence in relation to the psyche.  Like the effect that the observation of subatomic particles has on their position in space according to the principles of quantum physics, so to psychologically a person’s psyche does not just passively observe events unfolding according to a chain of cause and effect.  Instead, the psyche conditions the relativity of time and space.  Experiments with phenomenon such as ESP point to the influence of one’s positive or negative expectations, ones preconceptions or beliefs, and ones level of interest or boredom, in the outcome of events which are not the result of a causal connection and which do not necessarily require a proximity in space or in time in their effect.  Traditionally, the acausal effect of the psyche was reserved for beliefs such as the practice of magic or the power of prayer.

The experiments of JB Rhine with “Extra Sensory Perception” and “New Frontiers of Mind” for Jung provide evidence for the non-local (that is acausal across space and time) nature of the effect of the psyche on the results of the physical world.  Not to be confused with a belief in a sort of energy transfer, synchronicity is posited to be a kind of simultaneity.  In other words, the psyche, what we normally call “our mind”, but which for Jung is both our conscious mind and its unconscious state, is able to have an effect across space and time, not through some sort of energy moving at the speed of light, but though the relativity of space and time itself.  Just as an electron can be said to be in two locations at once across a spectrum of potentiality until such time as it is observed and the wave spectrum of potentiality collapses into a focal point in space; so to does the psyche inhabit an unconscious spectrum of potentiality until such time as the focal point of consciousness observes the unconscious.

“In themselves, space and time consist of nothing, they are hypostatized concepts born of discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and they form the indispensable co-ordinates for describing the behavior of bodies in motion.  They are, therefore, essentially psychic in origin, which is probably the reason that impelled Kant to regard them as a priori categories.  But if space and time are only apparently properties of bodies in motion and are created by the intellectual needs of the observer, then their relativization by the psychic conditions is no longer a matter for astonishment but is brought within the bounds of possibility.  This possibility presents itself when the psyche observes, not external bodies, but itself.” (pg 20)

As Jung suggests, an understanding of the nature of reality according to the findings of quantum physics and special relativity forms the basis on which an understanding of synchronicity is possible.  Synchronicity is not just the occurrence of two events at the same time, but the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but otherwise unrelated events.  Synchronicity is “the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state – and in certain cases, vice versa..” (pg 25)  In other words it is a relationship, however subjective, between a psychic state and a corresponding external event.

We can see this in our dreams.  In a case such as lucid dreaming which I mentioned earlier the mind or psyche inhabits a spectrum of possibility such as flight until such time as the conscious mind observes itself dreaming.  But a question arises.  If in dreams the unconscious mind exists potentially across a statistical spectrum of space and time, does it necessarily cease to exist as such when consciousness collapses it into a single local point?  If it is possible to lucid dream is it possible to tap into the unconscious while awake?  Surely dreaming is just imagination right?  Surely all that we dream simply takes place among neurons in our brains right?  What then of experiences of people who dream or see premonitions of events?  What then of the waking experience of intuition where no reason can be given but which compels people to choose previously unknown possibilities?  If you’ve ever had, or been struck by the story of someone close to you who has had one of these experiences, it becomes more and more difficult to dismiss this line of thinking as just naive mysticism.

Jung relates examples from his experience analyzing patient’s dreams and psychic states, cases where material events inexplicably coincide with a patient’s dream imagery or psychic state.  Most often, it seems to Jung, the unconscious mind is able to manifest in situations where a patient has reached a dead end using their conscious mind to understand their situation.  Often the seeming impossibility of coincidence between say a dream of a volcano erupting and the realization that upon waking that there was a volcano eruption half way around the world, is enough to propel the patient past their preconceptions of what is possible and impossible and begin to open their mind to the unconscious.  Interestingly, Jung states that a person’s emotional state has a significant determining factor in the manifestation of the unconscious in our lives

“The observer can easily be influenced by an emotional state which alters space and time by “contraction.”  Every emotional state produces an alteration if consciousness… that is to say there is a certain narrowing of consciousness and a corresponding strengthening of the unconscious which, particularly in the case of strong effects, is noticeable even to the layman.  The tone of the unconscious is heightened, thereby creating a gradient for the unconscious to flow towards the conscious.” (pg 30)

Throughout history instruments such as astrology, or the Tarot, or the I Ching have been used as a material canvas or symbolic language by which the presence of non causal, synchronistic events might occur and be interpreted.  Each method, used for the purposes of creating randomness by which the non-randomness of the acausaly connected can appear, has numbers at their source.  It is Jung’s contention that numbers are formative part of reality.  In his words “numbers were as much found as invented.” (pg 41)  The basis of all divination, all dreams, all religion, all thought could said to be numbers.  The concept of numbers even belies our need to visualize, categorize, and observe reality.  First there was One.  And then two appeared, a splitting of the unity.  Then a third or fourth and so onward into infinity.  This process underlies every material or psychic construction to such a degree that reality, without these categories is by definition, inconceivable.  We have only to witness the still unexplained “miracle” of the first cell division at conception.  Two individuals, an egg and a sperm come together to create one cell, which divides into another, and so on…  Patterns of thought, individuals among species, organic DNA, and inorganic chemical structure all are examples of a simple numeric process repeated in variation to infinity.

Taking this logic and applying it to our study of the psyche we can postulate that if the unconscious exists as a field of statistical probability and consciousness exists as a single focal point it should be possible to express the relationship in terms of numbers. If our psyche and everything that exists have at their source numbers, we can also postulate that that it should be possible that dreams, thoughts, people, animals, objects, planets, galaxies, and “God” express their relationship in terms of numbers.  We see then the possibility that we have within us the means for an intimate connection with all that exists.  These ideas are of course ancient and lay at the root of most human cultures.  Jung, however was one of the first to begin to apply the lessons of modern science to the understanding the psyche, of the world at large, and of our place within it.  From his single focal point on the idea of synchronicity, which Jung advanced at the very end of his career and life, a large horizon of possibility opened up for future decades and centuries of the evolution of our understanding of reality.

Looking back on the experiences of déjà vu in my youth I wish I had learned to incorporate those moments into my life instead of consciously seeking to reject them.  I wonder if  the dreams of the three pyramids weren’t symbols of paths I was to take in the future: my education, my marriage, and my work.  I wonder if the pyramid in the desert wasn’t Egypt to which I traveled when I was in college, I wonder if the pyramid in the jungle wasn’t Coba in the Mayan Riviera in Mexico which I visited on my honeymoon.  Finally I still wonder if the dream of the pyramid of glass and steel wasn’t an archetypal representation of how I would spend hours, days, and years inside man made towers laboring at seemingly abstract and innocuous numbers.

]]> http://aristotlethegeek.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/philosophy-and-practice/ Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:18:45 +0000 Aristotle The Geek http://aristotlethegeek.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/philosophy-and-practice/

I have always placed politics, a term that subsumes everything that has to do with society and human relations, above everything else when it comes to philosophy. This was true when I wasn’t aware of the complexities inherent in philosophy, and its true today. Meaning, whatever comes out of philosophical contemplation should add something good to our knowledge of society, and should tell us how society should be structured. That’s what investigations into metaphysics, epistemology and ethics should aim at. If men lived alone without ever meeting each other or making use of each other’s ideas and labor, we could simply stop at ethics. But that is not what mankind is all about.

Because of this bias of mine, my interest in metaphysics and epistemology (I will comment on ethics some other time) is limited to their use in combating irrationalism and absurdism. That is their only practical use. And its here that much of what is done in these fields disappoints. Philosophers debate on things that don’t seem to have any connection with reality. Some believe that consciousness creates reality, some believe that the universe and consciousness are one and the same, some believe only consciousness exists, some deny that there is any such thing as cause and effect, some take pride in saying that we are all irrational and so on. You could try to keep all this aside declaring them to be the ravings and rantings of mad men, but that isn’t likely. All these ideas soon find their way into ethics, politics and even science. Einstein was influenced by Hume, the philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell contributed to the anti-metaphysics philosophy of logical positivism, and you will find similar influences everywhere. Its up to the individual to see if his ideas correspond to reality or are plain flights of fancy. Lots of obviously bright people don’t bother. So, instead of providing a foundation for a sane ethics and politics, philosophy actually undermines the whole enterprise. King writes-

Many scientists who are exposed to philosophy come away with the realization that if their work were to be attempted within the muddy, vague, and contradictory intellectual frame-of-reference of the philosophers, they would never achieve anything useful. So they simply abandon all philosophical considerations and confine their lives to the realm of clear, precise and meaningful scientific investigation. Thus it is that during the past 300 years the human race has gained an immense store of practical knowledge about the natural world while the philosophers are still struggling to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Steven Weinberg: “I know of no one who has participated actively in the advance of physics in the post-war period whose research has been significantly helped by the work of philosophers.”

Physicist Max Tegmark: “To tell you the truth, I think most of my colleagues are terrified of talking to philosophers – like being caught coming out of a pornographic cinema.”

The philosophers talk vague nonsense. At times their terms are so loosely defined that what they say cannot help but be partly true. Unfortunately, the sort of language that is admired by many philosophers does not, in fact, mean anything at all. All too often, they use language not as a means of communication but as a way to establish and defend an academic reputation. But there is nothing surprising here. In the mind of a professional philosopher rhetoric is always more important than reality. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in his mind rhetoric is reality.

—

On many occasions I have linked to material where philosophy is used as a cover for nonsense. Newspapers, and even science journals seem to enjoy defying common sense. But all this does have an effect. It breeds irrationality; even seemingly rational people who don’t have an expertise in either a specific field of philosophy or one of the sciences can be baffled by some pronouncements. The public reaction to the financial crisis is proof of the dangers of bad ideas. They don’t understand cause and effect. They conflate the “capacity to be rational” with the “necessarily rational” or worse, omniscience and infallibility. Kooks fanned the flames, and people went berserk blaming the wrong “cause.” The public always gets what it wants, or it can be made to follow kooky ideas. Nazism, Communism and Fascism are proof enough.

There are a few reasons behind my writing all this. Among them is an anti-Rand article* written by Michael Shermer. The article is only significant because of another article by its author. As I said, I have written quite a few posts on metaphysics and how some people use relativity and quantum mechanics to spin theories which suit their view of the universe. These theories together, or at least their various “interpretations,” have in some way, shaken metaphysics and epistemology. In one post, I called it quantum mysticism. Though I know what it is I was describing, I didn’t know that there is a wikipedia article on that term. And the Shermer article I refer to labels such mystical interpretations as “quantum quackery”-

[What the #$*! is going on here?]’s avatars are New Age scientists whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as “quantum flapdoodle.” University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says in the film: “The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies.” Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground’s tendencies.

The work of Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, author of The Hidden Messages in Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure of ice crystals–beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the word “love” taped to it, whereas playing Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel” causes other crystals to split in two. Would his “Burnin’ Love” boil water?

The film’s nadir is an interview with “Ramtha,” a 35,000-year-old spirit channeled by a woman named JZ Knight. I wondered where humans spoke English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many of the films’ participants are members of Ramtha’s “School of Enlightenment,” where New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.

The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from University of Oxford physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light.

Another article with the same name, this one by physicist Victor Stenger, is available here.

(As if to prove that there are various opinions when it comes to the interpretations of verifiable facts, a professor of psychology, Hameroff, above, critiques Shermer’s article.)

Alan Sokal, a physicist and mathematician, actually managed to get a bucketful of quantum c**p published in an academic journal – the Sokal affair. People have no clue, and they are ready to sacrifice reason at the first sight of some unknown quantity, or worse at the sight of it supporting their viewpoint. Now I know why people believed eclipses were caused by demons and dragons. Sometimes, it pays to be a skeptic. There are some philosophical positions that deny that we are bound by real laws external to us. Sokal, just like Shermer above, has something to say on it-

Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)

I could link to a few more articles similar to those above, but it would be the same ideas expressed differently. Just one more though. This one, by a usual suspect, too is responsible for the post-

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg famously said: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

The first question that springs to mind is, if the universe is pointless — as in being a random or one-off event — then why should it seem comprehensible? Because anything comprehensible has to have a point to it.

He’s playing word games. Comprehension relates to knowledge, pointlessness to judgment. I could understand how a particular machine works, but I could still think that the machine serves no purpose.

—

Mises was one person whom Rand quoted quite approvingly in her political works. But given her position on ethics (ethical objectivism), and epistemology (all knowledge is derived from experience; there exists no a priori knowledge), I doubt if she approved of his ethics (utilitarianism) or his epistemological position on economics (praxeological knowledge is a priori in nature). The debate on a priori vs. a posteriori knowledge is a very interesting one. Because I simply don’t get how it is relevant. The only danger I can see of conceding that some knowledge can be a priori in nature is – such knowledge would not have been “filtered” through reason and anyone could come in and declare anything as a priori. One fellow did do it. Immanuel Kant. In his “Critique of Pure Reason,” he said that space, time, causality etc are known a priori. Not only that, they exist only in your mind. The world we experience is not the real world. We cannot know the “real” real world. Even his ethics is a priori in nature. I guess you could refute all his claims. But does the possibility that someone like Kant could come around and kill philosophy mean that one should not grant the possibility that some knowledge can be a priori in nature? Keep the door open rather than slamming it shut? This is an epistemological debate, one among many. I am writing about this because I recollect the chapter on “epistemological studies” in Mises’ “Memoirs.” It’s worth reading in its entirety, but I will quote the most important part. Mises writes-

The principles of logic are said to be arbitrarily chosen conventions that have proven themselves practical or useful. Viewed in this way, one is only postponing the problem without bringing it any closer to resolution. One may claim that man has tried various arbitrarily chosen rules and, in the end, has held fast to those that have proven themselves effective. But in terms of what purpose did these rules appear effective? If this is the question posed, then one has arrived again at the problem of intellectual mastery of worldly things, and at the problems of explication and truth. For this reason it is also futile to attempt to solve the problems of truth through an appeal to usefulness.

Since these principles of logic were arrived at arbitrarily, could one just as easily have chosen other principles, if their effectiveness were the same in terms of purpose? No, certainly not. The basic relations used by logic to link statements are necessary to and inseparable from human thought; irreconcilable relations are unimaginable. The category of negation is not arbitrarily chosen; it is necessary to thought. No thought can dispense with it. Even if we wanted to assume that the distinction between yes and no were a product won by experience, or that once arbitrarily established proved itself through experience, one has not yet refuted the contention that, logically, the ability to comprehend yes and no must precede all thought.

The basic assumptions of logic have been called the rules of the game. But what must be added is that this game is our life: we are born into this game and must play as long as we live; for man there is no second game with a different set of rules.

Praxeology’s special calling is to reveal the fallacies of conventionalism, as it does not adhere to the cult of the word “purpose.” The purpose of action is to attain success in the world that is our environment. Adjusting to the conditions of this world and its order is therefore expedient in any case. If the human mind can give birth to rules of the game that are useful in this adjustment, then only two explanations remain open: either there is something in our minds that belongs to the environment and permits us to understand it—an a priori; or the environment plies our minds with rules that enable us to deal with it. In no case is there room for arbitrariness and convention. Logic is either active within us or effected within us. It affects the world through us, or the world affects us through it. Logic is the stuff of the world, of reality, and of life.

It is not at all obvious what is to be achieved by doggedly contesting the a priori. Even if we were to assume that experience leads us to comprehension of the category of means and ends, the question remains open: what is in us that allows for experience at all, and indeed, such experience wherein a different outcome appears plainly absurd? What sense does it make to claim to have gained this knowledge through experience when we cannot boast of other outcomes to which other experiences could have led? When I say that experience has shown A to be red, it is meaningful in that our minds could have also recognized another outcome. But if it were said that experience had led us to the category of negation or that of means and ends? This is senseless; what, then, could other experiences have taught us?

The same is true of conventionalism. What other rules of the game could take the place of logical principles or the praxeological concept of action? One could play a game that differs from a standard game of chess in that one of its rules is replaced by another arbitrarily chosen one. But can one “play” with thinking that does not distinguish between yes and no? If this question is answered in the negative, then it is plain to see that the nature of this difference is one that deviates from the rules of the game. Here, again, we encounter the inescapable a priori.

There are a lot of things which you may not be able to classify as right or wrong unless you understand the “rules of the game,” the subject matter. You can, once you do. When I think about it, I realize that a lot of it starts with imitation. One then slowly “understands” what one is doing. That is the role experience plays in knowledge. But does everything come from experience? I don’t think I can answer that conclusively, not yet.

K.M. makes the distinction between the faculty of reason, and the product of reason, between logic, and knowledge. He writes-

I believe that the mind is built with the capacity to use logic, but not with the knowledge of the laws of logic. This is a subtle point. What I am saying is that the mind has an inbuilt ability to determine whether something makes sense. But active effort is required to use this ability. And further effort is required to identify why it makes sense. Men obviously have been using logic for millenia. But it took Aristotle to identify the laws of logic. The operation of the laws of logic is part of the nature of the mind but the knowledge of the laws of logic is not. It takes active effort to grasp the laws of logic – to realize that when something “makes sense”, it is because that something is consistent with the laws of logic. The faculty that is capable of doing this grasping is reason. Man is born with the faculty of reason. But it is the use of reason that results in knowledge.

I won’t say I disagree with this point of view. But then, as Mises says, the thoughts “2 * 2 = 4″ and “2 * 2 = 5″ are different; one of them is obviously right and the other is obviously wrong. Unlike Kant, I don’t claim that mathematical knowledge is a priori in nature. But surely the “making sense” exists within our brain. And thus, we hit a brick wall, the unknown quantity – the mind. Consciousness.

Brand Blanshard, another philosopher who Rand is supposed to have respected, a rationalist and epistemological idealist fought against a string of anti-reason philosophies through his works. On the argument, its a Schopenhauer-like one, that man’s reason is subservient to his instincts etc, he writes-

[T]hought, we are told, is under constraint from within. It reflects, not the outward pattern of things, but our hidden loves and hates, desires and fears. In The Future of an Illusion Freud explained religious belief as due to the persistence of the infantile need for a father. According to Westermarck, what is expressed by our moral judgments is no character in the act, but our emotional attractions and repulsions. In a recent book a distinguished psychologist, Professor Holt, has written: “The entire history of philosophy is little else than a tiresome and futile series of pictures in which each philosopher has imagined what he most yearned to have in his own ‘best of all possible worlds’. This,” he adds, “is levity.” Such skepticism about reason, though anything but new, has perhaps never been more popular and more formidably supported than in recent years. What are we to say of it?

The first thing that we must say of it is a commonplace. It is that if the argument is pushed through and made general, nothing further is called for; like so many other attacks on reason, it disposes of itself. If it is true that we are always governed by non-rational pulls; then of course our conclusion that we are so governed is also produced by non-rational pulls. But if it is, why should it have more respect than any of the other illusions produced by such pulls? Surely the attempt to prove by rational processes that rational processes are irrational is the last irrationality.

Kant wasn’t the only one who used a priori to attack reason; the logical positivists did it too, they rode in along with Kant. But then I am digressing. (BTW, how much of all that i have written till now has any direct relation to real problems, to “practice”?) I bring Blanshard in because of his writing on the nature of the mind.-

Mental activity is the sort of activity everywhere whose reach exceeds its grasp. So far as is now known, human beings top the scale; but when a man makes a choice––say of one action rather than another as the right one––can he give any adequate account of why he chooses it? Quite possibly he could take a step or two ahead; he wanted to better his business or home or income. But if pressed as to why he wanted this, and why he wanted the further end that this in turn subserved, he would soon falter. This does not imply that his choice is unwise, or even that it is not firmly guided; the saint who has the surest sort of practical judgment may cut a very poor figure when he philosophizes on ultimate good. But we may go much further than this. Even in our clearest cases of purposive action, there is a large element of this mysterious kind of end-seeking. When a philosopher philosophizes, he is trying to solve a problem, and he is anyone should know what he is about. Does he? The Greeks had a dilemma for it: If the man who seeks after truth knows what he wants, there is no use seeking, for he has it already; and if doesn’t know what he wants, he won’t recognize it when he finds it. Their answer to this puzzle, of course, was that he may know in general what he wants without knowing in detail, and that this general end is enough to guide his search and check it. The answer is sound so far as it goes. But need even this general end be explicit? And whether it is or not, how can so vague and end exert a control so firm and precise over the course of its realization?

I won’t quote the rest, I will only say that according to him, the functioning of the mind is a teleological process, a purposive one. And he thinks that in the end, all cognition is conation (volition, the COED defines it).

—

If the world has to make any sense, if ethics and politics have to be possible, if life has to be possible, metaphysics and epistemology have to come to a conclusion in which rational people inhabit an intelligible world. For if one concludes that people are irrational, its obvious that neither morality nor politics is possible. If one concludes that there are some things beyond reason, one gives every kook the license to spout any theory and claim that we can’t understand it, we have to “believe” it. If one concludes that the world doesn’t operate according to a particular knowable set of rules, its workings cannot be modeled, howsoever crudely, into a theory or a law, why bother with anything? But all these problems don’t seem to disturb philosophers. They surely would not live their lives according to their theories. I am sure someone who says that consciousness creates reality does not believe that he created his wife. And I am sure that someone who says cause and effect do not exist will duck when I hurl a rock at his head. As King writes-

I am reminded of the story of the Logical Positivist who gave a lecture on why the word “God” is meaningless, then asked for directions to the nearest synagogue so he could say his prayers. “What has philosophy got to do with living?” he asked indignantly.

That’s why after thousands of years of civilization, while man has improved his knowledge of the world, and his standard of living many times over, philosophy is still stagnating in the jungles of Africa. For someone who is interested in politics, and to a lesser extent ethics, nonsensical metaphysics and epistemology is a huge hurdle. They do not offer any practical help in determining hows and whys, but they have the ability to destroy all sense of reason.

—
* This one. His position is quite similar to the one taken by Huemer, I think – both are what you can refer to as pro-free market, rational libertarians, and both have problems with some aspects of her philosophy. Read it if you haven’t. I came across this one through a site that had a post on “deprogramming” where a comment accused Rand and Mises of bastardizing libertarianism. I guess if people don’t believe that there are some inviolable rights that humans possess, those who do believe that become some kind of “zealots.” The only thing I can tell such folks is – believe what you want to believe, but don’t force it on me.

This will help structure the foundation of Active Philosophy, taken from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason:

“Accordingly the Transcendental Analytic leads to this important conclusion, that the most of the understanding can achieve a priori is to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general.  And since that which is not appearance cannot be an object of experience, the understanding can never transcend those limits of sensibility within which alone objects can be given to us.  Its principles are merely rules for the exposition of appearances; and the proud name of an Ontology that presumptuously claims to supply, in systematic doctrinal form, synthetic a priori knowledge of things in general (for instance, the principle of causality) must, therefore, give place to the modest title of a mere Analytic of pure understanding…”

So what are the consequence of Kant’s ideas?

At the time, his words were significant in dismissing intractible religious postulates – the immortal soul, God, final causes – as being indemonstrable a posteriori. They are equally possible as impossible, but not metaphysically knowable.  Not in the sense that space and time are discernible a priori, furnishing the necessary environment for experience to even take place.

Mankind’s condition has changed since Kant’s day, nonetheless the fundamental state of conditioned consciousness holds strong.

Kant selects two very useful words:

“At the same time, if we entitle certain objects, as appearances, sensible entities (phenomena), then since we thus distinguish the mode in which we intuit them from the nature that belongs to them in themselves, it is implied in this distinction that we place the latter, considered in their own nature, although we do not so intuit them, or that we place other possible things, which are not objects of our senses but are thought as objects merely through the understanding, in opposition to the former, and that in so doing we entitle them intelligible entities (noumena).  The question then arises, whether our pure concepts of understanding have meaning in respect of these latter, and so can be a way of knowing them.”

This method lends itself to scientific reasoning, which as my co-blogger has illustrated is not based in any certainty, instead it finds justification and success through diligent and honest evaluation of situation.  It also is damning towards any religion that does not embrace doubt/uncertainty, which attempts to prove the existence of a necessary creator through analysis.

The Eastern religions appear suddenly much more appealing – embracing compromise a worthy pursuit.

“At the very outset, however, we come upon an ambiguity which may occasion serious misapprehension.  The understanding, when it entitles an object in a [certain] relation mere phenomenon, at the same time forms, apart from that relation, a representation of an object in itself, and so comes to represent itself as also being able to form concepts of such objects.  And since the understanding yields no concepts additional to the categories, it also supposes that the object in itself must at least be thought through these pure concepts, and so is misled into treating the entirely indeterminate concept of an intelligible entity, namely, of a something in general outside our sensibility, as being a determinate concept of an entity that allows of being known in a certain [purely intelligible] manner by means of the understanding.”

Ratiocination is a critical evolved tool.

But just as the bee’s strength in flight tricks it into drowning in a clear pool, the human intellect endangers and limits itself through hubris.  This faith in the accuracy of thought without meticulous care leads to war and deprivation – events nobody “wants.”

Active Philosophy makes headway by applying Kant’s basic empirical tenets to society.

All ascertainable knowledge, or reason in Kant’s words, derives from the conscious synthesis of sensible phenomenon.

The further our thoughts travel from this initial tactile intuition, the greater empirical regress.  The more removed from the reality of experience our ideas stray, the more murky our understanding becomes.

I am not suggesting that these categories imply certainty, but merely proposing the estimation or priority we ought to grant to different manner of understanding when constructing a sensible system:

Sensible phenomenon is the purest form of comprehension.  These are more or less the six Ṣaḍāyatanas.

1. Eye and Vision
2. Ear and Hearing
3. Nose and Olfaction
4. Tongue and Taste
5. Skin and Touch
6. Mind and Thought

Carrying the empirical regress to the next logical perceptive development, are subjects that exist in nature that we have provided with tentative predicates and names.  These obviously are understood to various degrees, all validated partially by empirical skepticism.

June bugs.

Snowflakes.

Dancing

Gravity

Hunger

Unprecedented levels of atmospheric CO2.

Cognition and communication insofar as they are actions are also included.

And here discernible existence (phenomena) ends.  This alone is a doozy, as the worrying and almost untenable action of positing subjects/predicates and labeling/dividing is itself imperfect and controversial.

Setting all phenomena aside, we are left to sift through noumena -notions conceived purely in the understanding.

These cannot be said to exist with any credible scientific evidence, beyond the concept itself.  But a thought is not reality in the waking-life tradition, unless you like Fichte believe the whole world to be a priori and utterly generated within the consciousness.

So what are some of these representations posing as objects in themselves?  Before proceeding it is good to define varieties of noumena - the verifiable possible and the verifiable impossible and unverifiable variants of each, which we find to be identical.

The verifiably possible are possible phenomena that honest inquiry on the part of most can only label noumena; these are more or less useful:

Theoretical physical laws, experimental particles, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, miracles, alternative realities.

Race is most likely going to be disavowed, and in a sense gender is close behind.

The unverifiably possible includes:

∞, 0, God, Fichte’s assertion.

The unverifiably impossible is necessarily the same:

∞, 0, God, Fichte’s assertion.

These are related to a higher understanding – enlightenment – that comes about from a deeper understanding of the limitations/implications of experience and appearances, ontologists have argued about the ramifications of these since our earliest days.

Lastly we come to the verifiably impossible – what Malatesta called the “metaphysical tendency.”

It must be noted that consensus and groupthink do not constitute reality.  Just because the majority considers the world to be flat does not make it any more true or valid.

The “tendency” is consequently even more deplorable given the considerable scientific and philosophical advances based on empiricism.

This final category, most interestingly, contains the types of thoughts we tend to prioritize all others.  These include all conceptual noumena that never pretended to contain one speck of reality, not one corporeal particle, force, or necessity:

Nations.

Property/Ownership

Other Sects/Divisions/Institutions.  Any division within humanity, which is a valid subject, that we see as logical is likely flawed.

Cultures, traditions, rituals, actions exist, but oftentimes not the unifying conceptual semiotic.

For example, McDonalds does not exist in reality, it merely is a concept masked as an object that guides our actions and punctilio within designated spacial and temporal settings.

A better example is capital.  In Das Capital Marx defines capital as representative of real labor, subjugated to the conceptual/symbolic.

These notions, like the state, exist only because of passive consensus and the power with which we endow them.  Therefore only active philosophy can overcome our logical deception, which is rightly rooted in scientific empiricism.

The action of labor is real, but the notion of wealth contains no tangible objective reality.  It is merely an endowed, preconceived notion.

Based on these categories we find that feelings, Bigfoot, God, and spontaneous creation have more credibility than America, or China.  Yet we apply certain terms “Greek” or “Lebanese” in the same manner that we say “tall” or “short.”

Good and evil, status, morality, laws, all these things must be recognized not as sensible phenomena in themselves but merely highly regarded notions that we delegate the task of regulating our lives and society, instead of more immediate and therefore trustworthy perceptions such as intuition and empathy.

Despite grasping the limitations of these words on several levels, we have hitherto been unable to detach ourselves from conceiving of representations as things-in-themselves.  In lieu of qualifiable success, we prefer to instead insist that it is inevitable for humans to attach themselves to myths and fallacies – “that’s the way it is.”

But the world is always changing, history mimics nature in its quest for balance and the fluid dreamwave sends ripples through our callous naturalized obstinance.

Haha I find myself a bit glib about these exciting possibilities – so for the sake of readability will continue later with ethical implications…

In Necessary and Contingent Truths, I asked whether you the reader thinks the metaphysical necessarily exists/functions based on the presence of the extant/physical.

One way to view the Metaphysical are the laws/properties governing existence, another is God, or truth, or existence etc.

However, as activephilosophy astutely pointed out, whether or not we think there are laws/a harmony governing all energy/matter, really doesn’t have much bearing on our lives.  Since we live in the existential world, we ought to focus on this one.

In the end this is the only sensible answer.  However, the problem persists.

I consistently experience a strange phenomena, leading me to believe perhaps erroneously that my life somehow is assembled in several directions and perhaps fragments within my own chronology.  It could be coincidence but if so coincidence is an incredible thing, no less supportive of the notion of fate/destiny.

I began reading Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason shortly after writing the post on Leibniz.  Interestingly, he confronts the same question raised on this blog.

“…in a realm beyond the senses, where experience can yield neither guidance nor correction, that our reason carries on those inquiries which owing to their importance we consider to be far more excellent, and in their purpose far more lofty, than all that the understanding can learn in the field of appearances.  Indeed we prefer to run every risk of error rather than desist from such urgent inquiries, on the ground of their dubious character, or from disdain and indifference.  These unavoidable problems set by pure reason itself are God, freedom, and immortality.  The science which, with all its preparations, is in its final intention directed solely to their solution is metaphysics; and its procedure is at first dogmatic, that is, it confidently sets itself to this task without any previous examination of the capacity or incapacity of reason for so great an understanding.“

Kant is motivated to crack the greatest dilemma facing metaphysics once and for all.  This is driven by the “unavoidable problems” that face us as humans and mortal beings – God, freedom, and immortality.

Kant seeks within knowledge the truly a priori.

“Now the proper problem of pure reason is contained in the question: How are a priori synthetic judgements possible?“

“That metaphysics has hitherto remained in so vacillating a state of uncertainty and contradiction, is entirely due to the fact that this problem, and perhaps even the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements, has never previously been considered.  Upon the solution of this problem, or upon a sufficient proof that the possibility which it desires to have explained does in fact not exist at all, depends the success or failure of metaphysics.  Among philosophers, David Hume came nearest to envisaging this problem, but still was very far from conceiving it with sufficient definiteness and universality.  He occupied himself exclusively with the synthetic proposition regarding the connection of an effect with its cause (principium causalitatis), and he believed himself to have shown that such an a priori proposition is entirely impossible.  If we accept his conclusions, then all that we call metaphysics is a mere delusion whereby we fancy ourselves to have rational insight into what, in actual fact, is borrowed solely from experience, and under the influence of custom has taken the illusory semblance of necessity.  If he had envisaged our problem in all its universality, we would never have been guilty of this statement, so destructive of all pure philosophy.  For he would then have recognized that, according to his own argument, pure mathematics, as certainly containing a priori synthetic propositions, would also not be possible; and from such an assertion his good sense would have saved him.“

Kant walks through the empirical frame in the philosophical wall, stepping into a whole new fruitful way of thought that would encourage existentialism and logical positivism.

We begin to see a severing of the existential from its subservience to metaphysical notions brutally enforced – the greatest feat of modernism.  The postmodern period is a realization of these efforts.

But, rationality – the tool used to restore common sense to our justifications of action and society – returns to the same nagging questions.  And we personally in the end similarly come full circle.  Empiricism, overdetermination, jouissance is not enough.  Or at least the rational mind insists otherwise…

“In the solution of the above problem, we are at the same time deciding as to the possibility of the employment of pure reason in establishing and developing all those sciences which contain a theoretical a priori knowledge of objects, and have therefore to answer the questions:

How is pure mathematics possible?

How is pure science of nature possible?

Since these sciences actually exist, it is quite proper to ask how they are possible; for that they must be possible is proved by the fact that they exist.  But the poor progress which has hitherto been made in metaphyics, and the fact that no system yet propounded can, in view of the essential purpose of metaphysics, be said really to exist, leaves everyone sufficient ground for doubting as to its possibility.

Yet in a certain sense, this kind of knowledge is to be looked upon as a given; that is to say, metaphysics actually exists, if not as a science, yet still as natural dispostion (metaphysica naturalis).  For human reason, without being moved merely by the idle desire for extent and variety of knowledge, proceed impetuously, driven on by an inward need, to questions such as cannot be answered by any empirical employment of reason, or by principles thence derived.  Thus in all men, as soon as their reason has become ripe for speculation, there has always existed and will always continue to exist some kind of metaphysics.  And so we have the question:

How is metaphysics, as natural disposition, possible?

that is, how from the nature of the universal reason do those questions arise which pure reason propounds to itself, and which it is impelled by its own need to answer as best it can?“

Kant’s ability to isolate the basic pressing questions is inspiring.  His philosophy continues along a Cartesian attempt to piece together existence from inside-out, taking for granted that such is possible.

The way that philosophy builds upon itself, its so-called canonical nature, has been widely criticized but is also quite revealing and instructive.

UPDATE: Welcome readers from 4Simpsons! Thanks for the link Neil!

In cosmology, we had to wait decades for the theism-friendly big bang theory to beat out atheism-friendly theories like the eternal universe model, the steady-state model, the oscillating model, etc. Piles of taxpayer money wasted trying to prove atheistic flights of fancy. But in the end, the evidence for the big bang was too much for the atheistic theories, and we beat them out.

Junk DNA

And here is another example of how atheism is bad for scientific inquiry: “Junk DNA”.

The purpose of the genome is to contain the instructions that allow the cell to build functional sequences of smaller components. If the sequences are done right, you get a folded-up protein that can be used for all kinds of things.

But what those parts of the genome that don’t code for proteins? Well, atheists have been calling them “Junk DNA” and hailing it as proof that there is no designer to life. I can remember Christian groups like Reasons to Believe predicting that a purpose for “Junk DNA” would be found. But atheists pooh-pooh’d that idea. Gee, I wonder who was right? The same people who are always right: THEISTS.

Denyse O’Leary cites this Princeton University press release on Post-Darwinist:

Now researchers from Princeton University and Indiana University who have been studying the genome of a pond organism have found that junk DNA may not be so junky after all. They have discovered that DNA sequences from regions of what had been viewed as the “dispensable genome” are actually performing functions that are central for the organism. They have concluded that the genes spur an almost acrobatic rearrangement of the entire genome that is necessary for the organism to grow.

…The term “junk DNA” was originally coined to refer to a region of DNA that contained no genetic information. Scientists are beginning to find, however, that much of this so-called junk plays important roles in the regulation of gene activity. No one yet knows how extensive that role may be.

She’s got a stack of other related links at the bottom of the post.

Commenter ECM also sent me this story from Cornelius Hunter’s new blog.

Excerpt:

One problem with evolution is its strong bias toward viewing everything in biology as a kludge. When a newly discovered structure is examined, evolutionists take one look and conclude it is leftover junk. After all, blind, unguided mutations and other processes just happened to produce everything we see. The evolutionist’s going in position is that biology is a fluke. We’re lucky anything works.

Hunter then cites this passage from some naturalist researchers who study “junk DNA”:

Here we have a molecule that serves an important role in how cells function and survive, but it contains these puzzling ‘junk’ sequences that don’t seem to have any apparent purpose. Our work suggests that this disorder is really a way of creating flexibility, allowing the protein to function as a molecular switch, a process that is thought to go wrong in certain diseases.

Evolution has provided researchers with convenient modular structures, areas that are repeated over and over again to make up proteins, and so we tend to dismiss the interspersed disordered sequences that don’t seem to have any definable structure. Here we show that the weak molecular interactions in a disorganized protein sequence are essential in giving this protein its unique attributes.

Know what? If you substitute “Flying Spaghetti Monster” in there for “Evolution”, it makes just as much sense! Try it! Evolution causes toothpaste to come out of the toothpaste tube when you squeeze it, and Shakespearean rhyming couplets to rhyme, and my Java code to compile. It’s all evolution!

Conclusion

Atheists, always remember this quote from agnostic NASA astronomer Robert Jastrow, regarding the progress of science:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

In the 1920s, there was no theory about a universe that begins to exist out of nothing, no fine-tuning, no DNA, no Cambrian explosion, nothing. Then science progressed, reducing atheism to a kind of childish delusion, still believed by ignorant snake-handlers and people with certain persistent moral, … ah… issues. But that’s what psychiatrists are for!

Science is always for us, it’s never for you. You have faith. Blind faith. We have all the evidence. We invented science, and every new discovery makes your materialism look more silly and naive… you bravely hold out hope for some hopeful Flying Spaghetti Monster to swoop in and rescue your atheism from the big, bad mind-independent reality. When will you grow up?

There is no Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Timothy Williamson asks the question of how methodologically different philosophy is from other disciplines, particularly the natural sciences. He entertains the rather traditional view that what makes philosophy special is that it makes frequent use of rational intuitions in its reasoning. For example, take the famously successful “thought experiment” known as the Gettier case. Prior to this, a subject’s having justified true belief were the necessary and sufficient conditions for that subject having knowledge

1.[] VxVp [JTB(x,p) <=> K(x,p)

Gettier comes along with a possible scenario, designated as a GC for Gettier case, where it is clear, according to the argument, that the subject has JTB but not knowledge of some proposition:

2.<> ExEp GC (x,p)

If this scenario is possible, then one can have JTB without having knowledge:

3. []VxVp (GCxp => (JTBxp & ¬ Kxp)).

Therefore JTB is not a sufficient condition for knowledge.

4.<>ExEp (JTB(x,p) & ¬K(x,p)

This argument, is taken to be a stalwart example of successful philosophical methodology. Williamson agrees that what it attempts to show is correct, but if it is as successful as we think it is, then this kind of argumentation must be shown to be reliable. It must be shown to be valid and sound.

It is at the question of soundness that Williamson questions this argument, for the traditional view claims that we hold the necessity claim of 3) on the basis of intuition concerning that case. But Williamson points out that this conditional is false. There could be scenarios where the subject fulfills the given text of the Gettier case without achieving even JTB, much less knowledge. The conditional is false, so whatever intuition the traditionalist used to arrive at this conditional does not track truth even in purportedly successful instances like the Gettier case.

But Williamson does not want to dispense with the Gettier argument itself, so he has to develop an alternative way of making 3) avoid falsity. The methodologically relevant point to this is that he can’t appeal to a rational intuition to do so. Instead, he proposes that 3) be counterfactualised such that if a Gettier case had obtained, then it would have been the case that if a Gettier case had happened then the subject in that case would have JTB without knowledge:

3*) ExExp GC(x, p) []-> VxVp (GC(x,p) => (JTB (x, p) & ¬K(x,p)))

On the face of it, this might not seem like this alteration does much to avoid the falsity problem. What saves it, according to Williamson, is that while the original formulation was an a priori necessity claim, this is a contingent, a posteriori claim. There are certainly possible instances where a Gettier case is fulfilled but the subject does not achieve JTB, but that doesn’t matter because this is not a necessity claim.

How then does this contingent conditional validly lead us to a conclusion like 4), as Williamson thinks it does? Before the necessity claim was what allowed the philosopher to validly move from 2) and 3) to 4). Now that that is gone, how can this argument proceed? Williamson argues that what justifies us in making this inference is the use of background knowledge about the case. He argues that this is in fact how we handle counterfactual conditionals in everyday scenarios. For instance, we can utilize background information such if a car had went around this curve above this speed, and if the roads had been icy or wet, then we can validly move to a conclusion that the car swerved off the road. This is a valid inference, though it is not a claim of necessity.

There are several things that might be said in response to this claim. First, the proposal Williamson puts forward confuses warranting knowledge with enabling knowledge. Enabling knowledge is whatever facts a subject might use to grasp certain propositions of a claim. This is not the same thing as warranting knowledge, which is the category of knowledge that provides justification for a claim. Someone presented with a Gettier case would require some manner of a posteriori knowledge that would allow her to pick out the relevant parts of the story that are true. But this is not the same thing as what justifies her in the claim she infers from that thought experiment. If someone was presented with a complicated arithmetical formula that the subject had to count on her fingers to come up with the answer, the (a posteriori) counting would not be the justification, but only the causal, enabling knowledge.

A side question arises with this distinction. Williamson is an externalist, and as such it seems plausible for him to deny this distinction. For an externalist the causal enabler might well be the justification. This is only a hunch, but this might be a response Williamson would give to this kind of distinction.

Nevertheless Ichikawa and Jarvis, in presenting this response to Williamson make several points. First, Williamson’s characterization of everyday knowledge as entirely contingent and a posteriori knowledge is inaccurate. Some of our everyday, i.e. non-philosophical, reasoning involves categorization of certain perceptions of behavior and other inputs as knowledge and some as non-knowledge. The perception of these behaviors itself may be a posteriori, but the knowledge that that perception can be filed away as a kind of non-knowledge is an a priori kind of reasoning. Everyday, non-philosophical reasoning can be either a priori or a posteriori, depending on the situation.

Returning to the Gettier argument, how do Ichikawa and Jarvis fix 3) to remove the problem of falsity? They introduce a notion of truth-in-fiction where there is more true in the story than is true only in the text. So someone entertaining a particular story grasps the set of all the true propositions about that story. This avoids the falsity problem because in the case where the Gettier case is fulfilled in a deviant manner, the antecedent of the conditional is false regarding that particular case, so those kinds of situations do not falsify the conditional. Furthermore

On closer inspection however, this is not without its difficulties. In grasping the set of true propositions about a particular story, we are not saying that “if the story is fulfilled in way A, B, C…, then person in the story will have NKJTB” for that would run into the falsity problem introduced at the beginning. No, instead we have to say that “if this story is fulfilled like that, then someone has NKJTB”. The problem this presents is that each person entertaining the same story will fill out that story, including the set of true propositions about the story, differently. When, as a result of entertaining different contents of those sets, two people arrive at opposed conclusions, there does not seem to be any criteria to which the two can appeal to adjudicate their differences. Perhaps, borrowing from the realm of aesthetics, we can appeal to the author’s intentions as the an arbiter between these two, but that seems far from satisfactory. Furthermore, even if the author’s intentions are relevant here, it is still hard to see how that is anything but an a posteriori kind of input.

Taking a step back, what do I of this dialectic as it relates to philosophical methodology in general? In the interest of full disclosure, I have a pre-theoretical disposition to hold onto both a priori and a posteriori forms of knowledge, as Ichikawa and Jarvis attempt to do, so that makes me partial, ceteris paribus, to their position. However it seems unclear to me at this stage that traditional methodology is actually vindicated against Williamson’s scepticism concerning a priori and judgments of necessity (perhaps that is reason to actually favor Williamson’s account, since it has faired well in such “hostile territory).

]]> http://philprac.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/frank-jacksons-argument-for-a-priority/ Mon, 11 May 2009 11:07:00 +0000 jnne http://philprac.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/frank-jacksons-argument-for-a-priority/

Here, I’ve alluded to Frank Jackson’s argument for epistemological analyticity. Let me sketch here what I take to be this.

In his `Scepticism and the a priori’, Jackson attempts to show that anti-scepticism entails there being a priori truths.
It is important to notice, however,  that Jackson applies `a priori’ to sentences and defines `a priori sentence’ in a manner similar to Boghossian’s epistemological analyticity or Williamson’s conceptual truth:
A sentence is a priori iff `[...] understanding it is sufficient for being able to see that it is true’ (p.324) or, more precisely, S a priori iff for all subjects A, if A understands S then A is able to see that S is true.
Therefore I think one can take his point as an argument for there being epistemically analytic sentences.

Jackson’s core claim  is that one has to endorse a priority if one wants to avoid scepticism, because knowledge is necessarily linked to understanding.
Most of a subject A’s knowledge, Jackson argues, is acquired by others’ testimony, that is, by understanding what their respective utterances or inscriptions mean. Thus, for most p, A only knows p if there is some sentence S such that A understands that S means p.

At this point, Jackson deploys what he calls the folk theory of meaning,
according to which a sentences’ meaning is the way it represents things as being. Taking `represent’  as primitive und being indifferent towards what
Jackson’s only further specification is that this representational meaning can be thought of set-theoretically (p.323). I will take him at his word and use the operator `rm’ standing for a function such that for any sentence S, rm(S)={x| S represents x as being}.
A understand S to the extent that she grasps rm(S).
To attribute knowledge to A therefore means to claim that there is some sentence S such that A grasps rm(S).
This (picture of a) theory of meaning could also be applied to general terms, which would also represent ways things are. Thus, I take it, the term `water’ represents things as being watery, such that rm(`water’) is the set of ways things are watery².

Based on this picture of meaning and understanding Jackson attempts to demonstrate that there are epistemically analytic sentences.
Once again, this means he has to show that the conditional
for any subject S (S understands p => S knows that p)
holds for some sentences p¹.

This conditional holds, he argues, for sentences of the form ^Every A is a B^ (*) where the representational meaning of B (rm(B)) includes rm(A), in other words, rm(A)$latex\subseteq$ rm(B).
Understanding (*), Jackson presumes, suffices to know both rm(A) and rm(B) which would entail knowledge that rm(A) rm(B).
Now it is a logical truth (in wolf’s  clothing) that for any x, x rm(A).
Understanding and knowledge of logical truth thus provides knowledge that for any x,  x rm(B), which is equivalent to for any x, x $latex\in$ rm(A) => rm(B), which would be the meaning of (*). Hence, knowledge of logical truths and understanding it is sufficient to know ^Every A is a B^.

An analogous argument Jackson provides for complex sentences such that, for some sentences P and Q, understanding P and Q and knowledge of logical truths is sufficient to know ^¬P v Q^.

I’m very worried about which important role the unfortunately indefinite theory of meaning plays in these arguments, but in the context of Williamson’s critique another point is important. In giving his arguments I have emphasised that it is understanding plus knowledge of logic which
Jackson isn’t that explicit. Perhaps he thinks that logic comes along with understanding, just as Boghossian seems to understand the understanding-relation (see Jay Carlson’s helpful remarks).
In this case, however, his argument does not meet what I take to be the core of Williamson’s challenge: That knowledge of logical truths is not given by understanding alone.

¹I’m painfully sloppy with quotation marks this morning…

²As a disclaimer: This is a rough sketch of a quite indefinite picture of meaning.

Jackson 2000 `Represenation, Scepticism and the A priori’ in: New Essays on the A Priori

Philosophical methodology is in large parts an epistemological discussion.
At its heart it is therefore about the truth conditions of sentences of the form S knows-that p.
As the discussion develops,  different kinds of truth conditions are identified
and based on these investigations results, categories are introduced to qualify knowledge attributions. Accordingly, the vocabular is extended by terms such as `analytic’ or `a priori’.
Now, it can be claimed that proposition p has specifically notable truth conditions by proposing

analytic(p)
and if one likes, one can derive from that the thesis

a priori(S knows-that p)

Other such terms, I take it, are `self-evident’ or `intrinsically plausible’. These expressions as used in the discussion differ in their formal properties.  Whereas `analytic’ is a one-place predicate applying to (names of) propositions, `a priori’ seems to me to be an operator applying to knowledge-attributions.
Based on this overly simplifying picture of epistemology, I want to suggest that `armchair’ is another operator, introduced to express or rather do argue about whether certain knowledge-attributions have exceptional truth conditions. A sentence of the form

Knowledge that p is accessible from the armchair
I would suggest to paraphrase as

for any S: armchair(S knows p)

This sketch has the advantage,  I suppose, that it allows to take a formal stance towards the armchair talk. One can ask, for instance,
whether `armchair’ is properly defined. I have the suspicion that it is not.

Certainly, `analytic’ is anything else but unequivocal, but the many different definitions themselves are fairly definite. The same holds, I think, for `a priori’. For `armchair’, on the contrary, I have not seen a single proper definition. But perhaps there is one out there? And what do you think of this view point in general?

I’ve still not worked out what Chapter 9 eventually adds to the earlier perception-imagination-notion of intuition. But what he defines¹ as `intrinsically plausible statements’ comes considerably close to epistemic analyticity, or so it appears to me (cf Boghossian 2003).
This at least seems to be a necessary condition (p.320)

U.

s intrinsically plausible if for any subject A: A understands s sufficiently clearly A recognises s as true.

Additionally, a sufficient condition is (p.319)

A.

If s intrinsically plausible then p accepted although s is not related to an external event

Furthermore, Parsons differs intrinsically plausible statements from principles of logic. That again puts it into the vicinity of those statements which have tempted philosophers to talk of analyticity.

These seem to me good starting points for what I’m up to, utilising Parsons complex notion of intuition to account for the a priority of mathematics.

Certainly, this is all still very inchoate, but, if you allow me the pun,
I’ve got the intuition that we’ve got a priority at least in the vicinity.

I really wonder why he doesn’t consider this questions himself…

——

¹  I did hesitate to apply this noble term to Parsons’ practise of alluding, qualifying and giving examples.