Anecdotes, Aphorisms and Comments

The Apologetics of Pantheism

2009-08-30T10:34:00.003-05:00

To any readers that I may still have: I apologize that it has been so long since I have posted. Those of you who are familiar with this blog know that it is more or less a thought-journal. These posts are not rigorous, though they are often technical. This does not mean that the thoughts themselves are not rigorous. Rather, it means that I expect the reader to do some of the work in reaching the same conclusions I do. Anyhow, the informal nature of this blog should suggest that it is something of an experimental test-grounds. My notions are often controversial, and I like to use this space to lay them out in fuller detail than I normally would in conversation. In short, one simply cannot remember everything, so one must begin to write.

The long hiatus is not because I have run out of ideas. Far from it. Rather, I have been spending my time researching and branching out into other fields. Now that I am no longer pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy, I have discovered that my interests are quite broad: it is these interests which I am now developing. I am also developing my thoughts on them. When I have developed my thoughts on these subjects, I will post about them.

This post is the first in a series of posts which seek to explain to a reader what a consistent pantheistic spiritual position would look like. In my philosophico-spiritual journey, I have arrived at a zen-influenced pantheism underpinned by Wittgenstein, Collingwood, and a broad notion of fictionalism (or "virtualism" as some call it). The series includes five posts whose subjects will be as follows:

1. Rational Support and Apologetics
2. Theology
3. Creation Story
4. Prayer and Ritual
5. Ethics

1. Rational Support and Apologetics

Why am I a Pantheist? To answer this question is to answer two questions embedded into a single one: Why am I a theist? and Why do I believe that God is everything?

1.1 Medieval Proofs of God's Existence

I am a theist not because I find myself compelled by any proof of God that I have ever seen. I find these proofs to be uncompelling because they all make critical assumptions of the nature of the world. The famous five proofs of Aquinas all make the Prime Mover Assumption. The Prime Mover Assumption is the the assumption that large-scale events which we imagine via metaphor to be congruent to events typically caused by human action are, themselves, caused by some large-scale being similar to a human. So the appearance of design in the natural universe suggests a designer (the metaphor of human action); the infinite causal chain suggests a first causer (the metaphor of free-will); the apparent teleological nature of the world suggests a being driving it to its end; etc. These arguments all make the mistake of sharply defining the very entity for which they are searching. They also assume the small-scale notions (such as freedom) have large-scale doppelgangers. For these reasons, they are more like scientific experiments than proofs. They make some assumptions and then test human reason to discover whether these assumptions lead to a favorable test result (does God exist?). In short, these proofs are too narrow in scope and they ignore too much evidence.

The ontological proof, on the other hand, strikes me as entirely pathetic. There is no reason to think that humans have any such concept as "the being than which no greater can be thought." We might imagine a being and apply the label to it because we are hoping that such a concept really does exist. But it is obvious that it doesn't make sense: there is no objective standard by which to measure "greatness". And it is this word which effectively sneaks God into the proof. Whatever else God is, he is certainly great (says the theist), so it is his standard of greatness which informs our standard of greatness: circularity. Without God fixing his own standard of measurement, then we have no reason to think that the being imagined is God. Perhaps "greatest" is largest. We will have Sun-worshippers. Perhaps "greatest" is greediest. We will have divine dictators. Etc. Etc. If there exists any compelling proof, it is the inexplicability of the genesis of life and matter.

1.2 A Modern Proof?

While I have seen compelling arguments that the Big Bang did not, in fact, happen; the question is not as crucial as most think. If it did happen -- that is, if all matter and energy erupted into existence rather than maintaining eternal existence -- then either there is another being outside the universe which caused it or else the universe itself caused it. The simpler explanation is that the universe caused its own creation. This explanation is typically thought to be nonsensical because no being is known to cause its own creation. Creation is always creation by another. It is for this reason that creation by an external God is often adopted: we can allow God to be eternal and uncreated, thus avoiding the problem of a self-creator. Hence, if the Big Bang happened, we have two options: if we can accept the existence of a self-creator, then the universe caused its own existence; if we cannot, then we must posit an external being with which we have no direct contact (for we cannot escape the universe). Most theists go the second route, so they experience major problems in their efforts to define God. We have no direct access, so really we can only guess.

Suppose the Big Bang did not happen? Well we have another genesis to deal with: the genesis of life. This is equally unexplained because no random event has yet generated a strand of DNA, which all life forms (and even viruses) have. Nor have proteins been randomly generated. These critical molecules are basic building blocks of life which seem to have simply appeared in the universe without good explanation. Either (1) they created themselves, (2) the universe created them, or (3) a being external to the universe created them. But because DNA strands are part of the universe, (1) and (2) effectively collapse into a single alternative: (part of) the universe created (part of) itself. Typically, theists again choose the mystical, inaccessible alternative.

So if the Big Bang happened, the universe was either self-created or another being (possibly eternal) created it. If it did not happen, then the universe is eternal and uncreated. Even so, the existence of life demands explanation as much as the existence of the universe: Big Bang or not, we are still confronted with the notion of a creator.

1.3 Pantheism vs. the External God

The simplest explanation, then, is pantheism -- unless there cannot exist a self-creator. But if it can be demonstrated that there exists a self-creator within the universe, then it must not be impossible that the universe itself is a self-creator. If we have evidence that such a thing exists, then it must not be as logically impossible is many philosophers will have us believe.

Interestingly, there exists such a being. The first act of any conscious being its coming into consciousness. A human being fully becomes a human being (read: a child grows up) when it becomes aware of itself as a human being. This is the very act of self-creation. It is not an inevitable event during a human lifetime, because there are many persons who never emerge from childhood. It is an event that one chooses to enact. Nevertheless, it is not an absolute act of self-creation because it always occurs within the context of a community which contributes to the choice. So the community and the individual collaborate in the act of creating consciousness. Nothing else need be credited with causing consciousness because, as physicalists love to remind us, the physical world does not need consciousness in order to continue operating: physical causes seem to be quite sufficient to drive all the events in the universe. And yet we are conscious. While I believe this physicalist story to be an oversimplification, suffice it to say that there seem to be very few actions which are directly impacted by conscious activity: most of the time we are merely reacting based on prior conscious precedent. Consciousness, like life and matter before it, seems to have burst onto the scene without any particular reason. Yet, we have direct experience of its creation. As its creators, we know that we are the ones who choose to become conscious (this applies to anything about which we may become conscious: an eminent lifestyle change, a major breakthrough in self-knowledge, etc.).

In any case, this is a metaphor for the kind of self-creation I have in mind. The means by which an entity creates itself is specific to the kind of entity that it is. Consciousness thinks itself into existence. Matter and energy burst themselves into existence. Life organizes itself into existence. Each of these entities has a different modus operandi, and it is according to the modus that the entity acts -- even if the act is an act of self-creation. It is these metaphors which support my conclusion that self-creation is not a nonsensical notion.

Consequently, I am a theist because I find the evidence for some form of creation (be it matter, life, or consciousness) to be compelling. I am a pantheist because Occam's razor prevents me from adopting extravagant theologies.

Manifesto of Free-Will

2009-04-22T13:57:00.004-05:00

Manifesto of Free-Will
A Short Treatise

For those of you who have found ways to control and organize your lives, you probably remember what it was like before you had any driving motivations. You probably remember being told by your parents that you could be anything you wanted to be, but as a child you simply let culture tell you what you wanted to be. And this is perfectly normal, for all children must first learn what it means to have a dream before they can decide what their own dreams are to be. Most of my friends dreamed of being astronauts or rockstars, and I was no different. In fact, the mark of childhood is that psychical receptivity (and consequently also naivety) which provides children with the appropriate interpersonal context in which to learn rapidly. Children learn from each other and from adults far more than adults seem to learn from each other, and it is precisely because children are naturally more receptive. Of course, this also makes psychically children dependent upon each other, for without the benefit of a culture which provides for the child a set of possible dreams, children will simply not learn how to invent dreams on their own -- at least not as rapidly.

Nevertheless, we grew out of childhood and began to express ourselves as individuals rather than as children who follow the lead of others. We have made active decisions in all facets of our lives based on our personal motivations backed by human reason. We, as functional adults, have begun to make our own choices, for example: when to lead and when to follow, what to believe, which relationships to keep and how to keep them. These are all things that a functional adult has thought about and come to personal positions concerning. Let us say that an issue is epistemically undetermined if it is not hitherto proven by some standard method of epistemic assessment, such as direct empirical evidence, scientifically predictive accuracy, logic and mathematics. With this definition in mind, then, what it means for you to have an opinion is for you to have given an epistemically undetermined issue significant rational consideration, and for you to have come to a position concerning the issue based on this consideration. Opinions, then, are had by persons who actively cultivate critical thought.

So, you might ask, what sort of beliefs do children have if adults have opinions? Children have dogmas, for the means by which children acquire their beliefs is typically unreflective. Children who have no belief on an issue will simply accept a belief which is given to them until the belief begins to cause obvious trouble for the child. I can provide a good example of this from my own experience. When I was a child, I was raised a devout Catholic by my parents. We went to Mass every Sunday, and there were long periods in my life in during which we went every single day. I went to retreats with the church youth group and I attended to Catholic schools for about 11 years of my life (including my undergraduate career). If ever anyone was, I was raised dogmatically -- at least in regards to religion. This is evident in the fact that neither I nor any of my siblings ever came anywhere near considering being anything but Catholic during our childhood.

So how did I take to being Catholic? Well, my experience with other Catholics proves to me that the religion really works for many people. Catholics are not crazy, on the whole (though they sure can be), and the principles of Catholicism are certainly no necessary impediment to personal enlightenment. In fact, as a philosopher, I found it quite easy to defend the principles of my religion, because most of the difficult work had already been done years ago. Nevertheless, the rituals always got under my skin. And though I had heard the theological arguments about why Catholics go to Confession and why they believe in the Eucharist, it still just rubbed me the wrong way. And it still does -- more so than ever. In my most irreverant moments during the Masses I have attended recently with my family, it sometimes seems like the Mass is a slow moving carnival complete with costumes, events, incense, chants, food and drink. It's not that I dislike rituals out of principle, it's just that I prefer faster, more spontaneous rituals.

Of course this aesthetic preference is not the only reason that I have abandoned the faith of my childhood. I have also abandoned it because I have significant ideological problems with the guilt-based morality which is a central feature of Catholicism. You can imagine how reluctant I always was to go to Confession which represented, for me, a double discomfort: I found myself both aesthetically and ideologically repulsed. But as a an aspiring Good Catholic, I went to Confession anyway and simply wrote the discomfort off by telling myself that I was only uncomfortable because I had sinned too much.

So in my case, I was handed dogmas in a certain issue (my religion). These dogmas I promptly believed, because I had been given no other alternative regarding that issue. But when the dogmas caused obvious problems in my life, I had a choice: either I could continue to live in the misery that my dogmas were causing me or I could revise my beliefs and decide whether the dogmas should be retained. In actual fact, it was my decision to do the latter which I consider to be the moment that I chose to become and adult. And I expect that those of you who also take an active role in the formulation of all of your beliefs (regardless of the issue) have had some experience (maybe similar to mine) which you came out of with an awareness of what it meant to take control of your life.

Though I ended up relinquishing my faith, I did not relinquish it because Catholicism is universally bad. I do not believe this at all -- recall how much time I spent in defending it in my undergraduate career. It is easy to see why a person might be a Catholic, but there are other rational alternatives, and now that I know who I am, I know that I would never have thrived as a Catholic. In fact, this pluralism is a fundamental part of my personal philosophical System (a which has not been explored in much depth yet on this blog), so it is perhaps worth emphasizing that no value judgment can be made about a person's chosen position on any given epistemically undetermined issue, so long as that position is coherent. To put the matter another way, the history of philosophy suggests that we do not have access to the One True Theory, because we do not have enough evidence to whittle our set of candidates down to one. We have sets of theories in competition with each other, each of which is a candidate for the One True Theory, but none of which possesses a proof in any standard method of epistemic assessment.

One might respond to my argument for a rational pluralism by complaining that none of our candidate theories is even completely coherent yet. To this I respond that complete coherence is not a necessary feature for rational doxastic acceptance (viz. belief based on reason); rather, a Candidate One True Theory need only admit the potential for coherence (given sufficient thought) and be deemed the best of the alternatives. In fact, this objection misses the whole point of the argument. Because no Candidate One True Theory can be proven a priori, no Candidate One True Theory could ever be established as the Genuine One True Theory against its future competitors. Thus, we can only ever have Candidate One True Theories. What grants any Candidate Theory rational doxastic acceptance is, in fact, not even part of the theory -- it is in the agent. To be more precise, it is the doxastic acceptance which is the task of the agent. Rationality is what lies in the Candidate Theory proper, though even this rationality has a dependency on the community of theorists who work to determine the Candidate Theory's coherence. For a Candidate Theory's potential for complete coherence is measured by the work which has already been done to render that Theory coherent. There may, for example, be major logical problems in the Candidate Theory which have not yet been discovered by those researching it.

It is this meta-theoretical pluralism which underlies the human task of self-determination. If it were possible in principle for us to come to a Genuine One True Theory -- a perfect theoretical description of existence -- then self-determination would be an absurdity. If we had access to this Genuine One True Theory, then all persons would believe the same things because there would be no need for judgment in our act of learning: we would not need to think critically about what we believe. It appears that epistemic pluralism plays a major role in our experience of free-will.

Now before we consider free-will, I would like those of you who have found inner purpose, who have the ability to control their lives, to consider the poor soul who can not control his life. This is the poor soul who merely floats through life as a paraplegic on a raft in an unpredictable river. In one sense we find ourselves disgusted with such a generally lazy person, but in another sense we find ourselves pitying him. For indeed, we know how miserable a life without motivation and activity can be. I, myself, remember how debilitating and emotionally draining it could be to deal with the guilt that comes from accepting a Catholic Theory that did not fit my personality. What I want to point out about this poor confused fool is that he is entirely unfree. Whenever someone suggests that his actions are his own fault, he finds some external force which made it impossible for him not to be lazy. Such a lazy person is miserable, yet he sees himself as blameless in the face of that misery -- he does not even realize that he has caused his own misery by not growing out of childhood. This is not the only form of human determinism with which we are phenomenologically acquainted. The more familiar examples are children, the insane, and the mentally disable, and the drugged.

Aside from certain drug-induced states, this laziness is the only form of human determinism which is chosen. Thus, it is evident that the very first genuine choice which can ever be made -- if there are any genuine choices -- is the choice to choose. Or, less abstrusely, the choice to become an active and critical determiner of one's beliefs and desires. And what grounds this first genuine choice is the pluralism of rationally and doxastically acceptable Candidate Theories. As William James says, we may only genuinely choose a path which is a live option, i. e. one which we find aesthetically and ideologically appealing. So the means by which we determine which Candidate Theory to accept determines which Candidate Theories are live options. And these must be decided by factors which are wholly subjective. When I actively choose what style my clothes will be, there is no rule I follow in doing so, except the rule of self-expression. If I am an active determiner of my wardrobe (i. e. a free-willer), then my wardrobe is an act of self-expression, and it cannot be taken to mean anything more than this act of expression. Similarly, if I am an active determiner of my spiritual beliefs, then my spirituality itself is an act of self-expression. It is in this way that our beliefs are tied to our choices: belief is subject to choice, not determinate of it. This absolutely must be the case, because without access our Genuine One True Theory, there is a multitude of conflicting yet rational Theories which must be arbitrated -- and how else are we to arbitrate if we cannot rely on reason? And this intense subjectivity to which our beliefs are subjected is the beginning of a concept of free-will.

Passions are not the subject of choice (obviously). And, in fact, it is passions that lie at the root of desires. It is these various passions that must be organized by our beliefs. This organization produces desires, which are nothing more than passions which we allow ourselves to give in to based on the organization which our beliefs have given them. However, desires are not all organized. Unorganized desires have two possible causes: Either the belief system which organized the desires is itself unorganized (i. e. incoherent), or the belief system impedes self-expression and causes us to organize our passions in a manner which is not ideally self-expressive. My desires would be unorganized if I were to believe an ethical theory which entails contradiction, just as they would be unorganized if I were homosexual and accepted a religious ethics which suppresses the needs of a homosexual. In cases of unorganized desires, psychological complexes tend to occur (and I was once one of them). Our desires, then, are a result of the relationship between passions and the beliefs which organize them, and the desires will only express our will if we organize them with a coherent belief system which does not inherently impede self-expression (or expression of will).

I expect that the reader might object here that I have defined freedom into existence. While I agree that defining freedom into existence is a standard libertarian move, it is not the move I am making here. This source of subjectivity in our personalities might, itself be determined. Scientists might one day be able to predict exactly what my subjective leanings might be. They might be able to predict that I'd prefer philosophy rather than physics, women as lovers rather than men, creating music rather than pictures. They might be able to predict what sort of women I am attracted to and why. I will not deny biology, psychology or sociology their explanatory power. But the one thing that these three fields cannot explain about our subjective nature is when and why we choose to choose. It is only in this very first choice that we are genuinely free.

Human freedom amounts to nothing more than the ability to decide whether our actions will express our individual natures, determined though these natures might be. The only choice a person ever makes is the choice to become an adult or to remain a child.

But why should this choice be the only choice we make? Well this is because consciousness is dualistic in nature. All human persons have two minds. The first is the active and conscious mind which does all the thinking and is always present, here, now. This active mind is what feels the duration of time and the immediate sensory and emotional sensations. The second mind, however, is the subconscious mind. This passive mind is designed to follow the instructions it is given. It is the collection of habits and default actions that we resort to when our conscious mind is busy elsewhere. As children, we keep our conscious minds occupied on the task of finding material to input into the subconscious mind. But because the conscious mind does not know anything about itself or the world, it is not competent to decide what gets inputted into the unconscious mind. The conscious mind of a child is not adequate to the task of selecting which programs are inputted into its subconscious mind, and it knows that, so it trusts the words of other children and adults. In short, the conscious mind subjects itself to the culture and allows the subconscious mind to be filled with habits until the conscious becomes aware that it is competent to begin to make decisions. Because this subjugation of the conscious mind seems to be present in children from birth, it is reasonable to think that maturity amounts to a series of awakenings to self-consciousness: first the conscious mind becomes aware of the world; second, the conscious mind becomes aware of the subconscious mind and begins to learn about the world; third, the conscious mind becomes aware of other human beings and develops interpersonal relationships with them; fourth, the conscious mind becomes aware of itself. Though there are likely many other awakenings involved in human maturity, these are the only awakenings which are critical to this short treatise.

Human freedom occurs only when the conscious mind becomes aware of its own competence and supplants the prior dominance of the subconscious mind. The act of choosing to choose, then, is an exercize of the conscious mind's power, its authority, over the subconscious mind. As soon as this occurs, the reversal of psychical dominance is already complete, and the conscious mind now needs only to be vigilant that it does not accidentally accept an unexamined habit of the subconscious mind. Freedom is the exercizing of the conscious mind's power over the subconscious mind.

A Comment on Capitalism

2009-04-19T21:18:00.008-05:00

The capitalist system in America today amounts to little more than a concerted effort by all the institutions of Man to convince and eventually coerce us to waste as much of our money and time as they can in as lavish a manner possible. This is most prominently seen in the amount of time that we spend every day being advertised to. In a capitalist system like ours, the world not only doesn't care about you, it also repeatedly dupes and swindles you.

On the Conscious Regulation of Emotions

2009-04-18T22:19:00.003-05:00

Collingwood on Emotions

R. G. Collingwood's phenomenology of human emotions begins with expression. The often involuntary gestures that I might make make when I experience strong emotions are expressions of my emotions to other people. If I express fear, for example, I may cause onlookers to become frightened simply because they see the fear in me. Though this expression is not necessarily intentional, it is still said to express the emotion because other people not only recognize the emotions I am expressing, they sympathize by expressing their own emotions. Collingwood calls this an emotional contagion: we experience emotions and spread them through the vehicle of expression. The contagion itself, Collingwood refers to as "sympathy," which seems to me an appropriate name. This simple psychical emotional contagion or sympathy can be seen most clearly in the actions of unorganized mobs: terror and riot.

Collingwood comments that animals seem to experience these same psychical emotions and that we sympathize with them because of it. Dogs, for example, chase cats because cats run. Dogs experience aggression in the face of fear, just as cats experience fear in the presence of a perceived strong force (such as a dog). In at least this way, we are akin to animals.

For Collingwood, psychical emotional expression - sympathy- is the ground upon which communication and language are built. But it does not stop there, at least for human beings. Collingwood observes that love, hatred, anger and shame are "conscious" emotions. Consciousness is a prerequisite for these emotions:

"Hatred is a feeling of antagonism; it is an attitude towards something which we regard as thwarting our own desires, or inflicting pain upon us, and this presupposes awareness of ourselves. Love is a feeling toward something with which we feel our own existence to be bound up, so that a benefit or injury to it is a benefit or injury to ourselves. Anger, though unlike hate it does not involve the idea of any particular thing or person that angers us, is like it in being a consciousness of ourselves as baulked or opposed. Shame is the consciousness of our own weakness or ineffectiveness" (The Principles of Art, 232).

Conscious Emotions and Animals

Though these forms of self-awareness are easily seen in human beings, I want to point out that my experience with domestic animals has demonstrated to me the presence of conscious emotions in animals. And I expect that other pet-owners have experienced the same conscious sympathy with animals. I would even be willing to conjecture that anyone who denies these conscious emotions of at least certain animals has probably had very limited experience with animal emotions.

1. Hatred
Dogs, for example, can tell when human beings do not like them or wish harm upon them. This makes the human a source of pain for the dog, and so the dog reacts with hatred. It is also how fighting dogs are trained.

2. Love
When either Sarah or I are sick, our cats will make sure to lay down next to us to comfort us. They want us to feel well because our well-being is bound up with their well-being: they love us.

3. Anger
There was a time when one of our cats, Alex, got into a fight with another cat. Alex had a rather nasty bite on his back and Sarah didn't want to let him outside because he would be likely to reopen the wound and infect it. Alex loves the outdoors, though he sleeps inside, so to have to go for days without going outside changed his mood entirely. He did not respond to any affection and would growl at us for trying to show it, though he never tried to hurt us. He meant no harm, but he did want us to know that things were not as they should be: he was angry at us.

4. Shame
Sarah and I often notice shame in older kittens who love to be daring about jumping, but do not yet have good balance. When they fall, they hide from us, because they know we saw them screw up.

5. Depression
Collingwood does not himself name this conscious emotion. Nevertheless, when we become conscious of a permanent loss in our lives or the absence of something loved, we become depressed. Because depression is parasitic upon love, it is necessarily a conscious emotion, and depression is often noticed in animals whose favorite human has died.

Therefore, in these ways, we are also akin to animals. It is particularly interesting to note that this means that there is at least a relevant sense in which animals are conscious of themselves. The really interesting question is this: How does our consciousness differ from theirs'?

This is a difficult question to address. We can all think of examples of the unmanageability of a frightened wild cat. These generators of superficial skin scratches cannot be calmed or contained; rather, they are to be allowed to escape. While one might say that these cats act on instinct, cats seem to be more rational about their fear when they are tamed: when they are familiar with the beneficence of a human being, they allow themselves to be approached without fear. However, this distinction between a tamed cat and a wild cat is not an entirely faithful one. They are all of the same species: they are all domesticated cats. The difference between the tame cats and the wild cats is that the natural ecosystem of domesticated cats is in human care. The natural habitat of a domestic cat is a human community. Thus, the wild cats are cats that are in permanent survival mode because their habitat is not conducive to their capabilities. One might notice a similarity between such wild cats and human beings driven insane from extreme isolational circumstances. In fact, every animal seems to know how to respond to every other relevant lifeform which occurs in the natural habitat of the animal in question. A whale knows how to respond to the presence of fish, sharks, etc. An ant knows how to respond to the presence of foliage and other small insects. It is when an animal is forced into an environment in which they do not have a place they they become insane and desperate from terror, like the wild cat. They respond to the environment in the ways that they know how to respond, but if there are not enough small birds and rodents for the cats to hunt, then they will soon face the consequences of a misplaced cat population: starvation. It is familiarity with the beneficence of a human being that tames a cat and keeps cat populations healthy.

Animals and Men

This difference between tame and wild domestic cats is an example of the ways in which animals have limited adaptability. All animals have a specified set of tools and skills which apply to certain atmospheres. When fish is dropped on dry land, it is entirely helpless. We often hear that dolphins are the most intelligent animals apart from humans, but their inability to build the structures humans build prevents them from adapting to any atmosphere but an underwater one.

The difference between human beings and animals is not our ability to adapt to an atmosphere, but our ability to adapt an atmosphere to ourselves. Our bodies provide the perfect tools for us to build further tools to enhance our abilities. Intelligence is not the only reason a cat cannot build tools: it also lacks the proper body mechanics to build tools. So even if a cat were intelligent enough to create tools and gear, the cat could never actually do it because it lacks an opposable thumb. Even our teeth reveal that we operate always with gear in mind: we cannot eat food without first preparing it, because our teeth are not adapted to tearing into either raw animals or most raw foliage. We'd be leaf-eaters if we could not use our hands.

Consciousness and Adaptability

But what does this new form of adaptability amount to? In short, it amounts to a new form of consciousness. Animals are intelligent enough to adapt and react to an environment. They can change their diet if there is a shift in other animal populations, they can find safe areas to nurse their wounds and their young, etc. But they are not intelligent enough to adapt the atmosphere to themselves, because no matter what effect they have on the atmosphere, it will not be an intended organizational change. A dog does not have the presence of mind devise bridges to cross bodies of water. Instead, it will try to either swim or go around the water. We have what Collingwood calls intellection, which is the creation and manipulation of functional formal structures. It is through this awareness of formal structure that we can construct and sustain changes in an environment. This new consciousness is evolutionary self-consciousness. Human beings understand change and progress, and we have the ability to encourage it. Thus, all of history is the evolution of the human race via cultural development. In a metaphorical sense, we are the product of evolution itself becoming self-aware.

The self-awareness of evolution can even be extrapolated from the story of the dinosaurs. In the course of the evolution of life on Earth, it looks as if at one time dinosaurs were head honcho. Presumably, primates and other smaller creatures were dinosaur food if they did not stay hidden. But when catastrophe struck, the dinosaurs could not handle the task of ruling the world. They systematically died, and the animals which were more clever and adaptable remained. Evidently, evolution took this catastrophe as a lesson that an entire living world cannot be adequately ruled with power and strength alone. A good ruler also needs a plan: enter Mankind.

This aggressive adaptability of which human beings are apparently the sole possessors is, as we said, a result of Man's ability to comprehend and create functional formal structures. The tools and skills that animals have (e. g. the claws and agility of a cat) are the functional formal structure imparted to that animal by evolution, but Mankind has been imparted a special tool: manipulation of functional formal structures. This entails that there is no functional form imposed upon Mankind by evolution. The ability to manipulate a functional formal structure grants Mankind access to an unlimited set of tools and skills. And because the limitations of a species' tools and skills are the limitations of its adaptability, given enough time, it appears that Mankind has no particular limitations in adaptability. Nature has not dictated that man acts and any one particular fashion. In plain English, Mankind has no natural habitat, for Mankind's habitat is artificial.

A Few Consequences

But if Mankind's atmosphere is pure artiface, then there are a few profound consequences.

First: whether or not metaphysicians agree, Mankind possesses a certain freedom. Mankind is free to devise its own functional structures, and He does so. Culture is the pure expression of human freedom. Consciously self-imposed functional structures (othewise known as 'disciplines') are freely chosen and practiced by human beings everywhere.

Second: This freedom is logically dependent upon and a necessary consequence of intelligence. It is because we have the ability to understand formal structures that we have the ability to manipulate them. Thus, intellect is distinctly and inextricably bound to freedom.

Third: Because this freedom implies and is implied by intelligence, Whenever human intelligence is at stake in any philosophical question, freedom is also at stake. This principle suggests to us that a human ethics can be arrived at through reason, but that this ethics will be an ethics of freedom and not an ethics of constraint.

Fourth: Because Mankind is a creator of functional formal structures, we should expect Mankind to invent stories about how He, Himself, came to be. We find these stories, these mythologies, littered throughout history. What is particularly strange about them is that human beings do not seem to recognize that these mythologies were invented by other human beings. It is as if we forget that inventing stories to explain the phenomena is just what Mankind does.

How ironic that the one species which has the freedom to invent His own habitat so often insists that this freedom does not exist and there there really is a single natural habitat for Mankind. Our cultures constantly demand that we conform to them, rather than allowing us to conform the culture to ourselves. Have we forgotten what it is that culture does? Or are we being manipulated by our culture? In this latter case, perhaps it is our culture itself that has become conscious.

Emotion and Manipulation

It is through our emotions that we allow our culture to manipulate us, so we ought to take this as a sign that it is time for us to re-examine our emotions as a Species. In point of fact, each of our conscious emotions teaches us a lesson about life.

1. Hatred teaches us that what causes us great pain and harm should be either avoided or neutralized.
2. Love teaches us that we are dependent upon the world, so the world must be treated with care.
3. Anger teaches us that when a system functions improperly, it must be corrected -- by force if necessary.
4. Shame teaches us that there is always more to learn, which is why humility is a necessary condition for growth.
5. Depression teaches us that even the greatest things in life are still ephemeral, so we must find ways both to limit and to deal with loss and absence.

Animals do not learn these lessons except through direct experience of the conscious emotions involved. Human beings, on the other hand, have the capacity to learn these lessons. Therefore, learn them we must, and once we know the wisdom of conscious emotions, we have the power to regulate which emotions we feel and when. We can organize our emotional lives just as we organize our active lives. Such a master of conscious emotions will choose to feel love more often than any other emotion. He will choose to reject shame as a useless emotion once its lesson is fully learned. He will avoid hatred as an impediment to love, but will prize anger as a useful tool in times when immediate and forceful action is necessary.

So let us be masters of conscious emotions. Let us organize our lives with a rich an complex set of beneficial emotions, just as we ought to organize our diet, our work, our daily habits, etc. We are creators of functional formal structures, and emotions are no exception.

What Are the Minimal Ontological Commitments of Intelligent Design?

2009-03-04T02:29:00.004-06:00

Suppose that natural biogenesis could be proven statistically impossible. Suppose, even further, that by all scientific laws it is impossible. For example, we can imagine that a fundamental structure of life, such as DNA, might admit absolutely no plausible explanation from any scientific theory applied to it. Some claim that this is, in fact, the case. If this hypothetical situation obtains, it would demonstrate that the origin of life amounts to an ad hoc introduction of an information-containing system into the generally chaotic natural universe.

What is interesting about this hypothetical result is that we would be forced to deal with the consequences of the truth of Intelligent Design (reader beware: Intelligent Design (ID) should only be invoked in biological cases where evolution fails. This is because evolution is explainable in terms of physical science, whereas ID is not).

So who is the intelligence? Perhaps aliens, you say. Well, this is unfortunately a pseudo-answer. If Earthly life was designed by super-intelligent aliens, then there still exist life-forms whose origin is unexplained. To blame it on the aliens is to simply push the question back a step.

A Christian will scream and shout at this point that it must be God, but we must shun the Christian's dogmatism and focus on what the facts actually tell us. The standard Christian mistake is to associate the complicated Judeo-Christian God with the Designer. The designer must be an intelligence, but it seems as if this intelligence cannot simply be a material being. If it were a material being, then one might ask where the being's brain is if it has such a powerful mind that it can think such complicated patterns on such a fundamental level. In other words, the Designer, as an explanation invoked when science admits that it cannot explain the phenomenon of life, is an explicitly unscientific explanation. But keep in mind that science is nothing more than the explanation and description of the function of energy and matter. This tells us that we may infer from the (hypothetical) truth of ID that there exists some other kind of thing besides energy and matter.

Some intelligent design theorists call this third type of thing (though it is really only a second type of thing because energy and matter are reducible to each other) "information". It is interesting that this type of thing is described as information, because the only thing that can process information is a mind. So we find ourselves attributing a mind to the Designer. Well this is no surprise, though it starts to play into the hand of the Christian scientifico-theologist.

So what sort of mind must it be? The standard response is that the mind must be infinite because the universe is infinite in size (though perhaps not in matter and energy content). But is this so? An infinite mind would be required to think such a universe, but we are not talking about the creation of a universe we are only talking about the creation of life. Because the functional features of a single-celled organism (from which all life presumably sprang) are finite in detail, one may assume that an infinite amount of knowledge is not necessary to be able to design such a thing. In fact, it is not implausible that the human race might one day produce an equally complex form of life. Or at least that we might be able to completely reverse-engineer such an organism.

The only thing that ID proves to us, then, is that Mind must exist, and it must be much more powerful than we originally thought. So we have two principles: World and Mind. These principles are also know in the more familiar terms "matter" and "form". The reason I prefer "World" and "Mind" is that it is mind that thinks form and it is the universe which contains matter. The principles that I am positing are more fundamental. Where form and matter are really just categories of existing things, World and Mind are the names of the entities without which form and matter would not be possible.

In this dualism, one will find that there is no better reason to call the Designer "God" than there is to call the World "God". The reason is that each is dependent upon the other. Because the Designer's only task is to generate more beings like itself (minds), the Designer would not exist if there were nothing to design. And this is an intuitive truism, because it is almost certain that a human mind would never think if it had no sensory input. For a human mind cannot even develop out of infancy without input.

This probably reproduces Hegel's argument for the dependence of God upon creation, but I have read very little Hegel, so I feel no obligation to give him credit for this thought. In any case, it is important to note that what is minimally necessitated by the position of ID is the existence of a World and a World-Mind (if you will). But just as matter is part of the world, so we would want to say that form (or information) is part of the mind. In previous posts concerning Wittgenstein, I have gone on at length about how information -- meaning-- exists only in the mind (as distinct from physical explanations of behavior). If my argument that all meaning exists only in the mind and is merely recorded in the physical world holds, then we have an interesting result: We seem to be the peers of Mind. We are solar-systems in the galaxy that is the Mind: we emulate Mind on a smaller scale. But the solar-system is part of the galaxy, just as we are part of Mind (for we are ultimately the invention of Mind)

Thus, pantheistic-dualism is ID's bare-bones theology. Crazy, huh? Makes me wonder how plausible ID really is.

-Priam's Pride

On the Severity of the Economic Condition

2009-02-22T23:04:00.006-06:00

I have recently found numerous useful videos and links concerning the current economic crisis. I believe that the economic danger that the entire world is in cannot be overstated. If you want to know what I believe this, then this is where I recommend you begin:

First, I recommend a very clear visual explanation of the current crisis involving sub-prime mortgages: Part 1, Part 2. It is called "The Crisis of Credit, Visualized". This is about the easiest way to understand what is happening in the economy right now if you only have 10 minutes. I would like to point out that according to the explanation in this video, it appears that the bailout package is nothing more than the American people paying the loans that banks took out so they could leverage them into mortgages. In other words, we are paying for the risks that they took to make a little more money. How absurd, considering we received none of the benefit of the leveraged mortgages!

The next piece I would recommend is an explanation of the mechanism of the Fed. A good place to start is an interview with political and economic guru, G. Edward Griffin, who explains why the Fed and its large brethren banks are a scam.

Considering that the banks' practice of creating money out of nothing (selling us debt) is the cause of inflation, watching this interview (only the first 8 1/2 minutes) ought to invoke a note of horror as one realizes that the ultimate economic effect of this inflation is to reduce the amount of money the middle class has and increase the amount of money the top tier has.

If the preceding links do not convince you that something is fundamentally wrong with how our economy is working, then I urge you to at least listen to Gerald Celente, whose social, political and economic trend-casting has been astoundingly accurate.

So who should we turn to? Who has a solution? If only the government were run by persons like George Soros. Then perhaps we would have a few critical minds who have a clear vision of how problems need to be solved rather than avoided. Though perhaps Soros' infamy would preclude him in particular from being considered a leader; nevertheless, his understanding of how people function in large groups is impressive. I have already mentioned Peter Joseph and the Venus Project who have a very optimistic vision of how the world could be. Perhaps we just need the appropriate goal. George Soros, of course, is not nearly as optimistic, at least for the near future.

Something big is about to happen. It's time to have Plan B prepared, folks.

-Priam's Pride

How Student Loans Have Helped Make America Stupid

2009-02-20T15:17:00.006-06:00

Out of youthful indifference, I attended an undergraduate school that no-one has ever heard of. Looking back on this choice, I sometimes wonder where I would be if I had put some effort into thinking out how I wanted to live my life and how I was going to survive after college. But this is not to say that I regret the choice, for to do so would be to deny that the school ultimately came to mean something to me, which it did. Nevertheless, indifference in my youth caused two things: (1) an absurd amount of student loan debt, due to the fact that I attended a private school; and (2) a degree with which I could do virtually nothing. Again, do not think that I discourage loving a subject so much as to want to study it without regard for the monetary outcome. Indeed, I myself would rather be a starving artist than than a thriving businessman. So it is not that I reject love of the arts, as this would be contradiction considering my own love for them. Rather, I reject that there is such a dichotomy as starving artists versus thriving businessmen. And yet it seems as though, today, I must become a businessman of some sort in order to survive.

I am now in my last semester of a Master of Arts program in philosophy at LSU. "Why are you there?" you might ask me. To this I would respond that I am here because my appetite was whetted in my undergraduate career and this was a chance to learn more about a subject in which I had already promised myself a future Ph.D. I am here because in order to get a decent job doing philosophy, one must come out of a top school. But what if I do not get into a top school, because admission rates are cutthroat? Sounds like I'm in trouble, aren't I? And this is all prior to the process of attempting to find a job in academia. It seems as if I simply must have high standards for myself from now on, so that I can scrape by. "At least," I will tell myself, "I am doing what I want to be doing."

But is being a professor what I want to be doing? Suppose that in the course of my career at LSU, I discovered that I needed no more direction in philosophy except for access to an excellent library and an occasional conversation with an expert. Suppose, that is, that I have matured enough academically to be competent to begin work on a dissertation. Suppose also that I have no particular love for teaching in the traditional classroom setting. And while we're imagining possible worlds, let us consider that even if I do land a professorship, I will be bogged down by bureaucratic policies which are designed to save the school money rather than advance human knowledge. It seems as if professors are required to teach classes that they often do not want to teach (for not everyone wants to be training novices -- it takes a certain kind of love), in addition to their requirement to jump through administrative and bureaucratic hoops. So let us imagine that the road to getting a Ph.D. is long, difficult and redundant (considering how many classes I will still have to take); and let us imagine that obtaining a professorship is extremely difficult; and finally let us imagine that when I am a professor, I will still have very little time for research, writing, and teaching those who want to hear what I have to say. Now let us cease imagining, for this picture is reality.

But if this possible world is the real world, then it seems as if I will not be doing what I want to do if I end up being a professor. So why on Earth would I put myself through all the hard work, all the lip-synching, all the form-filling that is involved in acquiring a professorship? What is the real reason that I am still pursuing a Ph.D.? It is because I was fooled, hoodwinked, I've been had. When I was a kid I was convinced that it was a good idea to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt in the hopes of being able to pay that back. But this is not a lucrative investment. I have been sold a raw deal before I even knew what a deal was. The fact of the matter is that my investment is virtually guaranteed not to be able to pay for itself. The reason for this is that while I am in school, my interest compounds (because my parents were not quite poor enough to secure subsidized loans for me) and increases the capital; but, statistically speaking, I will almost certainly never get a job in philosophy that will allow me to pay back these loans in any reasonable or comfortable fashion. The most likely way for me to pay back my student loans (if I ever do) is through hard work at a job that I will probably hate.

So why am I still in school, then? The reason is simple. While I am in school, I do not have to pay back the student loans. So as long as I stay in school, the absurd dream of landing a perfect professorial job is still alive, and I need not pay for anything.

You might suggest to me that I enter a different field. And if I were to meet my former self, I certainly would have tried to give him some sense before willingly accepting all those loans. But the problem is that I have been groomed for a professorship -- it seems to be my doom. I am trained in virtually nothing else (nothing practical, anyway).

My best solution is this: (1) I will stay in school as long as I can; (2) while I am here I will seek reform; and (3) if reform is not possible, I will assist in revolution.

What the America is doing to its young intelligensia is criminal. We are crippled by debt incurred before we even know the consequences. We are soon to become the educated but homeless. Our parents owed it to us to secure us a good education which can be attained without personal debt, but this has not been done. We are the future and we are being downtrodden; it is as if America wants its leaders to be unintelligent and uncultured profiteers. It's no wonder that popular culture reduces to little more than advertisement and immediate unhealthy physical pleasure. The first generates profit and the second appeals to the palate of the ignorant. For example, most people do not know what good art is because they have been provided no experience of it. And you know, reader, what I mean. When you speak to the average American about music or movies, you are always disappointed at the overt ignorance and poor taste that the average American has. From Brittany Spears to The Fast and the Furious, from CSI to John Grisham novels. You are disappointed and I am too.

America has become stupid and ignorant. And now they do not even have a profit to show for their ignorance. We now have the opportunity to learn the lesson that our ignorance and stupidity cannot be allowed to persist any longer. We cannot let ourselves be fooled by banks who sell you money for more money. We cannot let ourselves be fooled by political parties who are more interested in combating each other than devising a sustainable political atmosphere. We must come out of our ignorance!

But are we already too stupid and ignorant to learn this lesson?

-Priam's Pride

Why Are Peter Joseph and Alex Jones Opponents?

2009-02-07T11:01:00.007-06:00

To anyone reading this who has not availed herself of the new political activist movie, Zeitgeist: Addendum, I highly recommend you watch it. This is one of the most profound works of film I have ever seen. Be warned, there are some inaccuracies in the film, but on the whole it seems to accurately characterize the spirit of the times. In fact, parts of this post assume some familiarity with the film, so if you won't watch it for yourself, at least watch it for me.

I just watched the debate between Alex Jones (of The Alex Jones Show) and Peter Joseph (creator of Zeitgeist and Zeitgeist: Addendum) on Alex Jones' show in a four-part You Tube series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I have to say that there is an important event happening right now, which this debate outlines. These two men each represent a social movement which is attempting to build up support. Alex Jones' movement has sped up lately and Peter Joseph entered the scene with a bang. What is interesting about these two movements is that they are almost parallel in their criticism of the status quo.

Both have been accused of being conspiracy theorists, and therefore they live on the social margin. Alex Jones believes that the Bilderberg Group is a self-conscious tyrannical entity. This group is populated by the very most powerful persons in the world, and Alex Jones' movement believes that this group uses the corporate machine (most notably the American economy, which in turn affects to all other economies) to control and herd the less fortunate masses. Details about this can be found in Alex Jones' documentary Endgame.

Peter Joseph, on the other hand, believes that the conspiracy is more organic and less self-conscious. Peter Joseph may or may not believe that they Bilderberg Group is responsible for all tyrannical governmental and corporate acts, but he does believe that there is a de facto social stratum which has enslaved the rest of the population. For Peter Joseph, the Bilderberg Group is considered to be the most powerful of the elite stratum which does the enslaving, but that does not make it the only autonomous such group. Peter Joseph seems more inclined to think that the Bilderberg Group is simply a powerful symptom of the tendency to tyranny which the practice of using currency ushers in. For Peter Joseph, in the end the corporate elite end up ruling the world because they have all the money. They probably do not sit at a large round table to discuss how they can further enslave the world and commit other such evil deeds.

What is interesting about these two is that they are both highly critical of the received story of 9/11. Both believe that it was a set-up which was agreed upon by those who rule -- the difference is how they believe it was conceived. For both men, the point of the attack was to push legislature through the system via scare tactics. They might even agree on who ordered the attack. What they disagree about is this: for Alex Jones, the attack was a plot to enslave the world; for Peter Smith, the attack was a plot to increase profit which ultimately ends up enslaving the world.

But what does this difference amount to? It amounts to a great deal. Alex Jones believes that the men in charge are highly intelligent, but evil. For Alex Jones, the Bilderberg Group knows nothing that we do not know -- it's just that they have no qualms with destroying us. For Peter Joseph, the Bilderberg Group, or what he calls the "corporatocracy" is not self-consciously evil. For Peter Joseph, the corporatocracy are merely corrupt. This conclusion is a natural result of the claim that the ethical code of the corporatocracy is the maximization of profits, regardless of te consequences.

This difference highlights an issue on which these two movements butt heads. There are a few such issues which I wish to address in this post. The reason I want to address these issues is that these two movements have been trying to undermine each other lately, which is obviously folly. There is so much in common between them that the fact that they cannot have a rational debate makes them both look foolish. For both sides actively support rational debate and critical thought. Consider, for example, this post which collects much criticism of religious claims in Zeitgeist. One can also check ConspiracyScience for many good critical points about claims throughout Zeitgeist, (and, by association, Loose Change). What is particularly absurd about these sorts of critics is that many of the people who actively try to debunk claims made in Zeitgeist are Alex Jones supporters. ConspiracyScience even goes so far as to claim that Peter Joseph is a member of the NWO (hence he is evil). On the other hand, those who subscribe to the Zeitgeist Movement typically criticize Alex Jones followers as adopting too religious of a tone.

So why do these two sides not try to find some way to cooperate? Well, this is not too hard to figure out, though it seems as if many of the constituents of these movements, in fact, have not found out. Alex Jones and his followers tend to be religious types. Why? Because the claim is that the NWO is an evil empire of Illuminati Satan-worshippers. The only way to construe today's Tyranny (the Bilderberg Group, for Alex Jones) as both intelligent and Satan-worshipping is if one can construe them also as evil. In other words, only if one accepts that Satan exists in the first place can one actually bring oneself to believe that the most powerful people on Earth are Satan-worshippers. To an atheist or an agnostic, it is just foolhardy to believe such a thing. The most powerful people on Earth are probably also some of the most intelligent, so if one does not accept the existence of Satan, then it seems rather implausible that such an unpopular religion would dominate the elite. What is even more absurd about the claims that Alex Jones' followers make is that it seems as if anyone who is against Alex Jones is part of the NWO. Sounds like a cult to me -- or at least a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I won't even begin with the Biblical prophecies derived from the Book of Revelation or the prophecies attributed to Nostradamus. Frankly, the strangely hypocritical closed-mindedness of the followers of Alex Jones (and Alex Jones himself) will likely be the downfall of this movement. In any case, it seems as if Alex Jones has lost himself in his own bizarre dogmas, so at the end of the day we might have to dismiss him as an eccentric.

Peter Joseph, however, is also not free of blame. If anyone claims to be a friend of truth, it is Peter Joseph. Yet the first part of Zeitgeist is now famous for asserting a multitude of inaccuracies about the history of religion. In the movie, Joseph claims that the Christian religion essentially plagiarized most of its central features from other previously existing religions. The support he gives for this, though, is mostly found in non-scholarly New Age works with an anti-Christian lean, such as the infamous Acharya S. (whose views are nevertheless admirable). In any case, a rather poor scholarly showing in Zeitgeist has undermined Joseph's claim to be a harbinger of truth. Of course, we must ask the question whether Peter Joseph knowingly included misinformation. If he was simply a poor researcher, then he may be forgiven (for he is an artist by trade). However, if he is consciously distorting the facts, then his motives may be questioned.

So how do we decide which of these is true of Peter Joseph? Well the answer is not so clear. All one needs to do is watch an interview of Peter Joseph to see that he truly believes what he is saying. Based on the way he speaks, it is really quite difficult to believe that he is trying to distort the truth. He really believes that there are problems with the status quo, the popular religions, and dogmatic claims in general. Is he willing to sacrifice his integrity as an advocate of truth in order to attack what he conceives as the demons of the world? That's a question that Peter Joseph himself must answer (publicly, in my view). Nevertheless, his worldview is a generally healthy one, provided that a few aspects are modified. First, he must distinguish between religion and spirituality. Joseph is frequently accused of advocating a world religion, but what he really wants is a recognition that spirituality can be achieved without the need for religion at all. His opponents do not see the distinction, so they accuse him of being a religious figure. It is, therefore, a burden that Peter Joseph must bear to explain this distinction. Second, he must relinquish his ties to conspiracy theories like the 9/11 conspiracy theory he advocates in Zeitgeist. His message is powerful enough that he does not need a controversial conspiracy theory. His theory about the de facto conspiracy, a conspiracy which is not conscious of itself, is a much more plausible theory.

Given these modifications, I can accept Peter Joseph's (and the Venus Project's) vision as the most profoundly beneficial and progressive vision advanced thus far. Unfortunately, I don't think that the world is ready to accept such a vision. As much as I would love to begin building a world where there is no money and where machines can take care of the menial tasks that people are employed to do, I don't think it is yet possible to convince people to let go of money. We've buried ourselves too deeply in money to simply jump out of the grave; we must climb. Therefore, we ought simply to focus on wrestling control of the world from corporate hands. Perhaps when this happens, a Rawlsian vision of the world may be realized. And we will see what happens from there.

-Priam's Pride

The World As a Riddle

2009-01-08T09:54:00.003-06:00

If the world is inherently knowable by the human mind -- or even if it is a knowable construction of the human mind -- then it would not be inappropriate to categorize it as a riddle. For in any riddle the answer lies hidden in the question. This is why philosophers always talk about asking the "right" questions.

-Priam's Pride

Do Genuine Miracles Necessitate a Supernatural Explanation? Or: What Did Wittgenstein Really Mean?

2009-01-04T19:30:00.009-06:00

I apologize for having been silent so long. I've been working on papers and trying to enjoy the bits of winter break that I have allowed myself.

My wife, our friend Jessica, and I were watching Jessica's Indigo Girls DVD (they are a bluesy girl duo) today. During one of the songs, there was an image of some statue of Mary which was bleeding. Having been raised Catholic, I was not surprised by the image, nor do I doubt that it is genuine. I know of enough reports about miracles, from ghosts to group visions to bleeding statues, that I do not doubt that such things have, indeed, happened. In many cases, large crowds witnessed some particular event and all reported agreeing experiences. These crowds are sometimes public and, therefore, consisting of constituents of many different sections of society. To simply dismiss such varied sources of consistent data seems crazy; just as singular people who believe they have had such experiences seem crazy.

So, let us say that this bleeding statue is genuine. That is, suppose that I have a miraculous experience. What should it mean to a godless person like myself? The standard religious argument against the naturalist is: how do you explain miracles? The standard naturalist response is to prove that there are no miracles. David Hume did most of the work in his naturalist reduction of miracles to events which simply admit no current physical explanation, but might in the future. Today the explanation is merely an updated and sometimes modified Humean reduction.

Should it seem more likely that miracles exist than that miracles do not exist, then the Humean reduction will not work. So, for instance, if a statue is found to be bleeding real human blood and if upon examination the statue is found to be normal in every way, then one should conclude that no scientific explanation can be had. The anomaly is simply too bizarre. Now I have never had such an experience and I do not expect to have such an experience in my lifetime, so there is no personal urgency for me to find an explanation for such an experience. But should I have such an experience, how might I explain it?

First, I will posit that it is a basic feature of human existence that I must find an explanation for any experience that I have. This means that I must somehow produce for myself a reason or description of the causal mechanisms which bring the events which I witness into existence. Or, to put it yet another way, that I ask both "How?" and "Why?" about every aspect of my experience is part of what makes me human. I take this principle as basic without argument, but an argument can be had -- just not here.

Second, I posit the existence of the physical world because common sense dictates that I must.

Third, we also assume that this physical world must be a world that is capable of being explained; that the question "How?" is generally answerable. And science is the answer. These will be my three premises.

Now we see that the religious apologist has required us to explain miracles based on his acceptance of the first premise. So if I respond to the religious apologist's demand, then I also accept the first premise.

So how can we explain the statue? Well, the statue is part of the physical world, as is the blood. Therefore, I should look first at the physical world in which my experience occurs. Because the last two premises are the ones which support most of our physical explanations, this would be the most likely source of explanation in this particular case. Like Hume, I would try to find some scientific explanation that could make blood materialize on the surface of a statue. This, of course, is as ridiculous as turning straw into gold. The physical world simply does not have the ability to construct human blood out of air. The physical world can only construct human blood inside of a human body, which can only come either from other human bodies or from a long process of evolution. It is very difficult for the physical world to create human blood, so the hypothesis that it simply materialized naturally on the surface of the statue is just absurd.

So, if Hume fails us, must we conform to the demands of the religious?

Not so fast. Are we ready to begin positing new beings? That is, should Occam's razor have any sway over us? Well, because naturalists have rejected religion in the first place, one must assume that such naturalists have a reason to do so. This reason is, of course, their acceptance of Occam's razor. Thus, if we respond to the religious apologist's challenge, then we have already assumed Occam's razor, just as we have assumed the first premise. Occam's razor, then, will be our fourth premise.

So before we begin to create new beings (such as gods), let us examine our first and fourth premises. For it was our second and third premises which failed as an explanation earlier.

Our fourth premise, Occam's razor dictates that we are allowed to posit only those entities which are necessary to the explanation of the phenomena. It is a metaprinciple insofar as it regulates the sorts of principles which are admissible. Thus, this principle cannot explain the materialization of blood on the surface of a statue.

So that only leaves the first. Recall that we assumed as a basic feature of human nature that we are compelled to explain the phenomena we experience. But, if we are naturalists, should this first premise not be subsumed under the second and third premises? If humans are purely physical beings, then the compulsion to explain experience can, itself, be explained by scientifically explaining the human brain. But whether this premise is entirely captured by the second and third premises depends on what we mean by "explain". That is, if the act of explanation can also be reduced to an explanation of physical phenomena, only then will we be able to subsume the first premise under the second and third. But this is not so easy. Is it possible for an explanation of the phenomena explain itself? It is explanatory self-reference which we must now address.

So then what is an explanation? An explanation arises when a person observes a similarity within the occurrences of phenomena and seeks to provide a theoretical background for that similarity. An explanation is a rule which we have interpreted from the experiences that we have had. Indeed, it is almost the same concept as Wittgenstein's concept of a "rule". Where Wittgensteinian rules are only grammatical rules, rules governing meaning; the concept of a scientific explanation is a set of rules which govern physical interaction. But, as Wittgenstein suggests, we are limited in the degree to which we can intuit rules. The rule that I follow cannot be demonstrated to be the same rule that you follow, because the only input that I have from you is your behavior. But your behavior can be demonstrated to accord with many different rules (e. g. Kripke's "addition" and "quaddition" example). So human behavior, as a finite set of data, is insufficient to determine the infinite extension of the single rule that it is purported to follow.

Just as scientific theory is underdetermined by the sensory evidence, so behavioral rules are underdetermined by the sensory evidence. So a scientific explanation of how we explain things is underdetermined by the evidence. But the scientific explanation itself is underdetermined by the evidence. Scientific explanations are formulated in languages, which follow grammatical rules. So if the grammatical rules are underdetermined by the evidence (we could all exhibit the same behavior and still secretly be following different rules), then the the language of science is underdetermined by the evidence. And because the explanation of our concept of explanation occurs in the language of science (for it is really an explanation of the brain), the scientific explanation of our act of explanation is doubly underdetermined by the evidence: once when we formulate the language to do science and again when we actually do science. At this point, we will realize that science is supposed to explain the language, which explains the science, which explains the language, and so on ad infinitum. Not only do we have a regress on our hands, but we now have an infinitesimal explanatory capability -- we have underdetermined our explanation into oblivion. Before moving on, I should observe that I believe the preceding is the argument that Quine meant to expound in his "argument from above".

Clearly this is a problem to be avoided. It should be evident by now that explanations of behavior and explanations of physical phenomena are both constructed through the act of inductive reasoning. For in this type of reasoning, we observe a finite set of data and infer from it a rule of infinite extension. That is, we create classes for those events and objects which we observe to be the same in some way. So then what is it for two things to be the same? That is, what counts as criteria for an act of inductive reasoning? We cannot describe a class of beings unless we can know whether the beings fit into the class in the first place. But sameness of anything (sameness of red things is what Wittgenstein considers) still relies on behavioral evidence. I can only know what sorts of things people believe to be red by their behavior -- the things that they point to and call "red". So if I describe red things as being the same in their redness and describe the word "same" behaviorally, then I am stuck in the very same unacceptable regress as with the "explanation" and "rule".

The problem is that we have too many variables and not enough equations. We will never find the solution to a set of three equations which have four variables. Not enough input is given to us to explain the input given. In trying to solve these three equations, we will find ourselves producing solutions of any three variables in terms of the fourth one. This is just what we have tried to do above. We can produce explanations of various different concepts in terms of other concepts that are different from them, but we cannot definitively explain any of these concepts. In trying to do so, we only prove that we have explained away our ability to explain in the first place. Or, as I have said before: all terms are defined in terms which, themselves, require defining.

For Wittgenstein, the problem is that we have not taken enough as basic. Indeed, when you exhibit the behavior that accords with the addition rule which I follow, I find that I believe that you are also following this same addition rule. So if, in any behavior of yours which follows a rule, I take you to be following the same rule that I follow, then I assume that in at least these ways, you are the same as me. For, as Wittgenstein says, this is our life-form. What we must ultimately take as basic, then, is the act of inductive reasoning. We must take it as basic that we are all inclined to infer rules with infinite extension from a finite set of data.

Thus, when I interpret what you mean when you speak, or when I interpret what your body-language suggests, I can be much more certain about whether we mean the same thing, because human beings naturally think in the same way. Of course, this means that there is no guarantee that we could speak with aliens, should we meet them. Or, as Wittgenstein puts it, we would not be able to converse with a lion if the lion could speak -- for they are a different life-form. Because scientific explanations cannot by themselves explain the certainty with which we believe we understand each other, we have chosen to take this certainty as basic. The result is that we no longer have the problem of explaining behavior, as we are inclined to behave in the same way (minimally speaking). We are inclined to devise languages between each other just as we are inclined to mate, to eat, to sleep, etc. But, of course, the animal instincts can be explained through science. Our problem is exclusive to human discourse, because science itself is a human discourse.

But, you might object, if we classify our inclination to reason inductively as a disposition, then it seems as if it would be subject to scientific explanation. That might be true. But we have not yet explained the mechanism by which we are disposed to reason inductively. In other words, not nearly enough is known about the brain to secure an explanation of inductive reasoning. Therefore, our taking this disposition to inductive reasoning as basic cannot, itself, be explained scientifically. Furthermore, if we do not yet have an explanation of the act of inductive reasoning, then we do not yet have good reason to assert that human beings share a life-form. To claim that inductive reasoning can support itself is to put the cart in front of the horse. Thus, the certainty with which we believe we understand each other (as evidenced by the volume of the literature we have written to each other) cannot be supported by the empirical evidence.

Based on the above considerations (thanks to Wittgenstein), I think we have good reason to take our ability to reason inductively as a basic premise of philosophical discourse -- and of discourse simpliciter. In fact, we have good reason to believe that we already do take our ability to reason inductively as basic. But what does this amount to? If inductive reasoning is taken as basic, then we can recognize what is the same; we can categorize these things; we can produce explanations of the differences between categories. In short, we can devise theories about the phenomena that we experience. But the very rules which we follow (addition rather than quaddition) are learned through inductive reasoning. We learn what is red by being shown red things. So our language begins with inductive reasoning and the language-game which we have mastered is nothing more than a theory of meaning.

But is the theory of meaning public or private? Well, we don't always mean the same things. You and I can have a conversation for 10 minutes thinking we are talking about the same thing and never discover that we were actually talking about different things all along. In other words, I can tell you the rule, but unless you actually do understand the language that I use in the same way that I understand it, you will not understand the rule. So if language can admit of multiple adequate understandings -- that is, if two persons can rationally interpret a single sentence in two different ways -- then those two persons mean the sentences in ways which are private. Of course, this doesn't mean that the content of the sentence is private. The whole point of the assumption that we have the same life-form is to secure the public nature of meaning. But the complex set of interlocking rules about appropriate word-usage and the concept of sameness -- i. e. our theory of meaning -- is one that is secured based on the assumption that meaning can be public. Therefore, the certainty that meaning is public is, itself, private. In this way, my theory of meaning may not be known to anyone else, but it is not necessarily private. Nothing that can be said is, itself, private. The only thing about meaning that is private is the certainty that you and I have the ability to understand each other.

But in allowing ourselves to assume the ability to reason inductively -- allowing ourselves to give in to the certainty that meaning is public -- means that we have granted ourselves an ability that we have not granted the rest of the world. The mind is privileged over the material world insofar as it has the ability to explain. But in granting the mind a unique ability, we also grant it basicality. If the human mind were not basic, then the ability would really be an ability that the world has. But the world can only produce human beings who scribble things down and make noises at each other. The physical world, by itself, does not produce meaning. We do.

In other words, we have separated the mind from the matter. Reader beware: I am not trying to verify some sort of complicated soul. Indeed I do not think of the mind as a thing independent of the brain; rather, it seems like an emergent event that only occurs in a healthy human being. Yet, as a naturalist, I must keep in mind that if I want to maintain naturalism, then I must only support the thesis that the mind occurred naturally. There is no reason that a naturalist must also be a monist. Of course this sort of dualism entails that the physical world precedes the mental world both chronologically and logically, for there could not be a mental world without the physical world. But, you might ask, what is the mental world? Well, the mental world is the totality of human communication. It is that which is spoken, written, built, invented, and even that which is imagined. Of course not all of the mental world can be preserved over time. Spoken words, organized events and the like only have meaning for those who remember them. That which is imagined only has meaning for the person who imagines it (though an imagining is, in principle, available to the public both pictorially and linguistically). And as soon as the last person dies, there will be no more meaning because meaning depends on the existence of the minds who think it.

But if the mind is basic in the same way that matter is basic, then we would expect that its complexity rivals that of matter, and that both would require extensive explanation. We might even expect that our explanations are as complicated and intricate as our explanations of matter. Indeed they are: just look at economics, political science and psychology. The very name "social sciences" should suggest to us that mind is distinct from matter, for what else could separate "social science" from "physical science"? One might even include philosophy itself among the social sciences.

Therefore, if the mind is basic in the same way that matter is, then we would expect that there are anomalies in our explanations of the interaction of minds. We would also expect that there is a great deal that we do not know (just as there is a great deal we do not know about the human brain).

Thus, as a naturalist seeking an explanation for the bleeding statue, the second place I would look is to the human mind. Indeed a mechanism is lacking here, and insofar as the mechanism is lacking, the explanation is far from adequate. Nevertheless, it is still absurd to think that human blood could form naturally on the side of a statue. We know enough about the physical world to know that this is impossible. But we know much more about the physical world than we know about our own minds. Therefore, it might be safe for the naturalist to bracket the experience off as being a possible result of the collective effort of human minds.

If the human mind is mostly a mystery to itself, then it should not surprise us if our minds present us with mysterious experiences from time to time.

Keep in mind, though, that we have defined the human mind as a thing which is primarily concerned with meaning, intentions behind actions, reasoning, etc. Thus, if our minds can produce a mysterious physical phenomenon, then the phenomenon must have a meaning. For why else would there be a collective mental effort if that collective effort was not our own minds telling us something?

So then what could the bleeding statue mean? Well, this all depends upon whether the statue is caused to bleed by a single mind or by many minds. And if it is caused to bleed by many minds, then is this collective mental effort, itself, intelligent? To put the matter in a cartoonish way: do all our minds conjoin to form a super-mind? These are all answers that cannot be given based on the premises that I have posited. In any case, I believe that I have provided a sketch of how the naturalist might proceed if presented with an apparently miraculous experience.

Then again, perhaps the bleeding statue is merely a hoax.

-Priam's Pride

Oh World!

2008-12-06T11:38:00.004-06:00

This is a very rare occasion. I have felt compelled to write a poem, which has not happened in years. This poem is very unrefined. It does not have the sort of rhythm that it ought, and it does not rhyme at all. It's probably not a very good poem, but it captures something that I could not describe otherwise. If you think, reader, that I am writing about you, then you are right. So excuse my sometime pessimism, for not everyone can be upbeat everyday.

Oh world! You stony secretary standing
between my appointment and me,
You petulant frown upon my impatience.
Please, Miss, may I enter yet?
Oh world, I can wait only so long.
My confidence, once strong and chiseled
May soon be discarded by its sculptor.

Oh world, you beast! You vicious animal!
I only ever had love for you,
I only ever wanted the best.
Have you set your hellish minions upon me?
Do your spies feign to reciprocate?
You siren! Do not sing to my weakness,
For my weakness is my love.

And through the talk of politicians
And football, and school, and work,
Through the talk of money and need,
I always found you just beyond the word.
There you always stood, knowing my desire
To speak of you, to proclaim you to yourself.
I'd have been happy to speak only of you.

But your smirk, oh world, I cannot bear.
You mocked me with the voices of friends.
You despised me with the glance of my spouse.
You listened to my ardor in speaking of you,
Waiting until I'd said what I would,
Waiting until I'd said my greatest words
Only to reproach me for my senselessness.

So world, I apologize for ever caring
And stare at the ceiling wishing you'd let me be.
Wishing you'd hide yourself from me again,
For your beauty is unbearable as it is cruel,
Your cruelty lovable as it is absurd,
Your absurdity daunting as I am rational.
But I'll let you convince me of my insanity.

So I lay, filled to the brim,
Wondering, oh world, how it will end.
And I foolishly wish for ignorance of you
Until Somnus whispers in my ear
"There's still tomorrow, still tomorrow,
There's tomorrow, there's still tomorrow,
Tomorrow, there's always tomorrow..."

-Priam's Pride

On the Existence of Abstract Propositions and a Corresponding "Abstractese"

2008-12-01T01:21:00.005-06:00

In the question of the ontological status of propositions, the realist claims that propositions are actually existing abstract entities to which our that-clauses refer. But if this is the case, then they must be in some sort of language -- for if they are not expressed linguistically in abstract-land, then it is hard to imagine how that-clauses could refer to them. That-clauses refer to concepts which seem to be expressed entirely through language. Indeed, what is an expression if not some sentence in some language? So which languageis it? Is it English? Surely not, because then English would be the perfect language: the language of thought. No, surely it is not any language that we now speak because if such a pure and natural language existed it surely would have revealed itself by now.

I am aware that a scientist might, here, complain that the language of nature is mathematics. But, I would respond, mathematics cannot explain itself in its own terms, and this has been proven by Gödel. The basic gist of Gödel's theorem is that no mathematical system can proven from a finite set of axioms, which means that no set of axioms can develop a system in which those axioms themselves are all provable. There is always a further axiom that must be added. And if a mathematical system is not provably true, then, in the multitude of mathematical systems, no one system can be a more appropriate language for absractese than any other.

But, you might say, what about a logical system? For because mathematical systems can be derived from symbolic logic, the natural language must be logic, which is more fundamental than mathematics. But the problem here is that logical language cannot support itself, as Quine, Putnam and Kripke's Wittgenstein have all independently shown. Language cannot explain itself in its own terms -- it cannot account for the experience of meaning that we all seem to have. Nothing like Frege's concept of a "sense" of a word, which is a meaning that is independent from the group of things to which we apply the word, has yet been found within language itself.

Therefore, abstractese must be some language that none of us speak. Let us call this language abstractese. So who speaks the perfect language out of which all propositions are formulated? Who has complete access to proposition-land where abstractese is the language of omniscience? Everyone should know the answer by now: It is God. The semantic realist has found a way to sneak God in through the backdoor. "God must exist," such a realist might claim, "because without him, there is nothing we could mean when we speak!"

It seems appropriate that we call mathematical realism "Platonism." For it was Plato that suggested to us that it wasn't enough for us to believe in an ontology of two substances: mind and matter (though Heraclitus did believe this, to his credit). Rather, he wanted us to believe in a third: the Good, where Forms and Mathematicals and other strange abstracta float freely. This one mistake has sent philosophy reeling for millennia. Plato was the first systematic philosopher who had a system worth mentioning, but it was a system that assumed an unprovable monism. Plato ignored the mind altogether and contrasted the physical world to the abstract. Out of respect for the more mysterious force, Plato decided that the abstract was the primary realm, and the physical was the derived realm. Of course, Christianity found a way to borrow this concept as well, which has provided years upon years of highly nuanced philosophy, otherwise known as "theology". Indeed, it was not until Descartes that we finally remembered that the mind creates its own realm. What Descartes should have mentioned was what Kant ultimately did mention: it is the mental and the physical which represent the real dichotomy. Those who ask what is outside the mind or outside the world are trying to posit things without sufficient cause.

The problem of the reference of words, phrases and entire clauses is the standard point of attack for realists against anti-realists. In this instance, the realist proposes these putatuve abstractese propositions as the objects to which that-clauses refer. But my question is this: if there is only the world and the mind that thinks the world, then why should our thoughts refer to anything but themselves? A thought can only be had mentally, so if the reference of the thought itself is mental, then the thought simply refers to itself. So if we adopt a mental ontology stance for propositions, that-clauses just refer to thoughts. How utterly intuitive!

But is this proof that some object or event named "mind" is the source of meaning? Well, the only proof that mind exists is the experience that a particular mind has. But because the specific content of this experience can only be explained after the fact, its existence is not provable deductively. Thus, the only evidence we have for the existence of the mind is inductive. But this essentially means that the act of inductive reasoning can only be supported inductively.

And here we have our answer. Symbolic logic and mathematics lacked the capability to prove their own premises. That is, deductive reasoning cannot be proven uniquely. But inductive reasoning can. If it is assumed that inductive reasoning leads us closer to the truth, then inductive reasoning can prove that it leads us closer to the truth, without the assistance of any other premise. So we have good reason to believe that abstractese is really the same as mentalese.

-Priam's Pride

The Anti-Realist's Plight or Fictionalism to the Rescue!

2008-11-30T16:27:00.006-06:00

It has occurred to me that ontological fictionalism has a unique position in the defense of an anti-Realist (or a-Realist as I prefer to think of myself) position. The anti-Realist makes a career of finding ways to discount the various ontological claims that Realists find themselves making. However, the Realist would be out of a job if he found that his arguments actually convinced the anti-Realist. Indeed, the Realist also makes a career of creating entities to combat the various reductions that anti-Realists always try to get away with. For the anti-Realist, ontological fictionalism represents the ultimate reduction. Let us see why.

These days , the Realist is always a realist about some particular entity because it plays some noun-like role in language. For example, one might be a realists about propositions because we use them as nouns (i.e. they 'refer'). The usual argument is that because the noun is an integral part of some particular discourse, and because the discourse is one we want to preserve philosophically, there must exist a reference for the noun.One such standard argument concludes that numbers and other mathematical entities exist. Now, I don't buy this argument, but that is an explanation we can save for another day. The point is that the Realist has taken it upon himself to declare that all things about which we speak exist. Thus, the only way that the anti-Realist can really gain leverage is to find some noun or class of nouns that we use which uncontroversially fails to refer to an entity. If such a noun or class of nouns could be found (call them "empty nouns"), then the trick is to reduce to an empty noun every other noun which one does not want to refer to any real object. Fictional entities and fictional worlds, then, are the single most promising prospect for assuming the role of the class of empty nouns. If it could be shown that fictional entities and worlds do not, exist at all, then one can hope to reduce other strange entities to fictional beings or worlds. Thus we have all different breeds of fictionalism: modal fictionalism, mathematical fictionalism, semantic fictionalism, etc.

Now what would happen if, in his pursuit of fictionalism, the anti-Realist were to fail to provide the Realist any significant evidence that indicates that fictional entities and worlds do not exist? Well let us first determine what the plight of today's anti-Realist really is. Today's anti-Realist hangs his hat on a Dummett-like or Putnam-like argument which shows that language lacks the ability to escape its own strictures. Perhaps the most convincing anti-Realist argument is the argument Kripke expounds in his interpretation of Wittgenstein. This argument boils down to a rather Quinean claim that all meaning relies on definition and all definitions rely on other definitions. The goal of this method is to show that meaning does not rely on reference because it does not rely on truth-conditions. If principle this can be shown to obtain (and some believe it can), then we can evade the Realist's reference-based ontology.

Unfortunately this anti-Realist tactic of undermining the troubling concept causes just about as many problems as it solves. For if meaning does not rely on reference, then it makes as little sense to say that nouns do not refer as it does to say that they do refer. In other words, the anti-Realist is making claims about a realm that he commands the Realist not to make claims about. He is a hypocrite. Now, some anti-Realists claim that it is enough to simply show that reference is nonsense, and from this fact it is obvious without argument that a noun cannot refer. This objection is not without warrant, but I do not think that many Realists find it convincing.

What the anti-Realist needs, in addition to this skeptical argument, is an empirical coup de gras. Should the anti-Realist find empirical support for his claim that there are no entities beyond thought and experience, then he is home-free, for he has the advantage over the Realist on both the a priori and the a posteriori fronts. So if the anti-Realist cannot find a suitable means of supporting his claim that fictional entities and worlds do not exist, then we will find ourselves in a stalemate: the Realist can now posit an abstract entity (or concrete entity, if we are Lewisians) to counter every anti-Realist reduction. Just so, the anti-Realist can perform a reduction for every abstact entity (or concrete entity) that the Realist cares to posit.

In short, the program of anti-Realism rides on the back of the project of ontological fictionalism. for it is on this project alone that it relies for an empirical advantage to buttress its theoretical stalemate.

-Priam's Pride

On Aesthetics: the Emotion of Wonder

2008-11-30T11:46:00.004-06:00

Recently, I was washing dishes and had a small philosophical moment. The small whirlpool created when I let the water out of the sink caught my eye, and I couldn't help but wonder at the sheer beauty of the physics involved: The air bubbles through the bottom of the falling water and into the middle of the drain pipe, where it rises out of the sink to make way for the heavier water. At the same time, the water moves in a circular pattern down the drain pipe, creating the the inertial effect called centrifugal force. This circular motion pulls the water out of the middle of the spout, making way for the air.

After marveling at the beauty of the event, it occurred to me that I couldn't quantify what I was experiencing at that moment as anything but an emotion. Somehow I had never before realized that wonder is the philosopher's emotion, not just her attitude. Understanding wonder as a passion has made Plato's description of eros much more intuitive for me.

Anyhow, as any good emotion does, this emotion admitted to at least partial explanation. When I tried to figure out why the little whirlpool had made me wonder, the best I could come up with is that it was the simplicity and geometry of the event at which I was marveling, because I could not produce that sort of motion on my own. But it seemed strange to me that I would wonder at a simple geometric motion, because the most difficult motions to achieve are the complex ones -- ones the human body is good at creating. How does the whirlpool deserve wonder in the face of the violinist or the dancer?

There is a poem by W. B. Yeats which I am partial to, called "The Sorrow of Love". It is short, so I can just include it here:

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

First, I should note that this is a revised edition of the poem. The original is similar in structure, but much different in its ultimate content. The first stanza of the poem is a description of nature and an observation that "all that famous harmony of leaves had blotted out man's image and his cry." The second stanza of the poem is an expression of human sorrow, a sorrow epic in its content (indeed, Priam is a character very extreme in sorrow). For Yeats, this expression of sorrow is much greater than anything found in nature without human beings. Thus, the final stanza of the poem is a description of nature and an observation that "all that lamentation of the leaves could but compose man's image and his cry." Yeats, in his first act of wonder, has observed the world around him, amazed that there could be something so beautiful and sorrowful. But as soon as this observation has been made, the motion of his lover has turned his mind onto the beauty of humanity.

What I want to point out is that Yeats' prioritization of his emotion of wonder (that the human is more wondrous than the world) was appropriate for reasons that Yeats did not mention. In fact, the human mind and the human body alike have an architecture whose specific task is to do all those complex things that the world, by itself, cannot do. Indeed, it is we who do all the doing. Our sheer physical versatility allows us to create spectacular events and works of art, beings whose beauty lies not in a pure expression of geometric simplicity. Works of art are beautiful for their complexity. In nature, the beautiful panorama and the sunrise are events that occurs with ease, because the natural path is the path of least resistance. Conversely, works of art are events that require work. The human hand must force nature out of its normal course and into the course designed by that very hand. But this is only an a posteriori piece of evidence that human beings are more wondrous than their world.

There is, on the other hand, a priori evidence that humans are more wondrous than their world. For the emotion of wonder is an emotion that expresses an explicitly human attitude. I contend that wonder is the most human emotion there is. There can be argument that animals feel at least most of the emotions we feel when love, and it is clear that fear and anger are emotions that we share with animals. In any case, there is at least one thing that there is absolutely no evidence that animals do: recognize and adore beauty. Now those who think that I am making philosophy into the greatest career path ought to remember that wonder is not only the emotion of the philosopher. It is also the emotion of the poet, the musician, the dancer, in short -- the artist. It should not, then, be surprising if the most uniquely human emotion were expressed in its strongest forms as a reaction to the most uniquely human happenings. That is, it should not surprise us if our concept of beauty turned out to be an anthropocentric concept.

Obviously, this is just a suggestion, but I never claimed proof. The only a priori force behind this explanation of the phenomenon of wonder is the anti-Realist suggestion that all experience is inextricably tinged by the human mind that experiences it. Clearly, this suggestion rests on the primary metaphysical claim that we have no knowledge of a world beyond our minds and bodies. But, then, all personal positions rest upon a metaphysical claim of some sort.

As a side note, I should observe that an agnostic or atheistic metaphysical Realist would probably claim that the natural world is the most appropriate subject for the expression of wonder. A theist metaphysical Realist, on the other hand, would probably claim that something like God is the most appropriate subject. But, at least for me, my own experience disqualifies these possibilities. So, at the end of the day, it is the incompatible a priori positions that provide the alternatives for the possible subjects of wonder, and it is the a posteriori evidence that will determine which of these three alternatives obtains.

-Priam's Pride

Do Dogs Have Spatial Logic?

2008-11-23T12:42:00.003-06:00

Dr. Cogburn has mentioned in his metaphysics class that dogs have been shown to have spatial reasoning. The evidence of this claim, for Cogburn, is this: When a dog comes to a two-way fork in a path, while chasing a rabbit, he will only sniff one path before he decides which path to take. This means that if the dog sniffs in the direction that the rabbit did not go, it would know to go the other direction, because it is the only alternative left. Of course, such an explanation boils down to a logical deduction:

Let A = the path the dog sniffs
Let B = the path the dog does not sniff
Let C = the path the dog came from

Where did the rabbit go?

(1). A v (B v C)
(three-way split).
(2). ~A
(because the dog just sniffed there).
(3). B v C
(by 1 & 2).
(4). ~C
(because the dog was just there).
(5). B
(by 3 & 4).

Now, this is a very simple deduction, but had the dog sniffed both paths, then it would have gone more like this

(1). ~A
(because the dog just sniffed there).
(2). B
(Because the dog just sniffed there).

The first deduction is clearly more impressive than this one. So if this were, in fact, the dog's thought process, then I would agree that the dog exhibited spatial reasoning. What I contend is that there is a more likely explanation of the appearance of spatial reasoning, which reduces the phenomenon to a simple decision based on description of the sensory data rather than logical deduction.

I suggest to the reader to observe your spatial sensory data. However it happens, the mind interprets the sensory data and constructs for itself a vision of an environment. That is, a space is delimited to the mind. Now imagine that you are chasing some object in this visual environment without either the use of the other senses or the use of reasoning. Indeed under these conditions, one can only chase an object that remains in view. For as soon as the object escapes view, one could only guess where it is if vision is the only tool used.

With this imaginary artifice in mind, consider the dog. Dogs have very poor vision, and rely heavily on their senses of smell. Where the eyes, for us, delimit an environment more clearly than any other sense, it is reasonable to think that the nose, for the dog, delimits an environment at least as clearly as the eyes do. In other words, the dog, by smelling different areas in an environment, probably constructs these bits of sensory data into an entire olfactory environment. The rabbit, in passing through the environment left its scent swirling in the air. The dog is probably able to detect these fine-grain differences in direction, velocity and intensity of smell in the same way that we are able to detect fine-grain differences in direction, velocity and intensity of a sound. I think it is plausible to suspect that a dog's sense of smell functions in a very similar way to our sense of sound.

Should this description of a dog's sense of smell obtain (and I believe that it does), the dog in our example actually did smell the rabbit when it sniffed the side where the rabbit did not go. But it smelled the presence of the rabbit as a thing that was moving in a particular direction based on the scent left behind, and the dog simply followed this scent. So, given this broad description of the canine sense of smell, it is apparent that the dog need not do a logical deduction if the motion of the rabbit remains within the dog's sense of smell the entire time. The dog is still doing nothing more than following an object, which clearly requires no reasoning.

This is not meant to suggest that dogs or other animals do not ever exhibit rational behavior. Rather, it is meant to show that this one particular example does not provide evidence of rational behavior in dogs.

-Priam's Pride

Workoholism

2008-11-16T01:02:00.002-06:00

When I reflect on the job that I have and the job that I want, I sometimes find myself imagining that workaholics are some of the happiest people alive.

-Priam's Pride

Metaethical Fiat and Moral Outrage

2008-11-15T23:07:00.007-06:00

An interesting metaethical situation presented itself to me today. It is important to note that I have not yet done any research on metaethics, so these are virgin thoughts. It is likely that many (or possibly even all) of my points have been made by other people somewhere, but I do not know who or where.

Sarah and I went to the Renaissance Festival in Hammond, LA today. As far as Renaissance festivals go, it was quite mediocre, but this is not the point. We and some of our friends had purchased a heaping plate of Mediterranean food and were picking at it by ourselves on a set of wooden bleachers. We were having what counts, by any standards, as a lighthearted adult conversation. Being who we are, we spoke vulgarly at times and with sparse use of swear words for emphasis. As it turned out, a rather typical middle-class family had seated themselves next to us. As soon as I noticed them (and was surprised by their presence), I decided to stop using language that might be deemed inappropriate in front of children. However, I let this decision slip my mind, and incidentally uttered the word "fuck" without thinking about it. The father of the family had, apparently, had enough of our swearing and, with a note of irritation, asked if we could cool it with the "f-bombs". We were done eating, so I asked my friends if they were ready to leave the area.

These are the facts of the situation prior to any ethical judgment. What I wish to do now is explicate the events ethically. Clearly, my decision to stop swearing was an ethical claim that I made upon myself; this much is obvious. Loosely speaking, I probably made the judgment based on an ethics of personal reciprocity: I imagined myself bringing my young kids to a Renaissance Festival and dealing with the burden of them picking up new vocabulary words. It is important to observe that I was not necessitated to make this decision. That is, my ethics could have been different. I could, perhaps, have used an egoist ethics (which one of my friends did). In this case, I would observe that I had paid to attend the Renaissance Festival and had not agreed not to swear. Therefore, I was not ethically bound to not swear. Perhaps other plausible ethical assessments are also possible, but it is enough that there is more than one.

The father's reaction is also important. The father actually made two speech-acts when he asked my to stop dropping F-bombs. One speech-act is the actual request that he made: he was genuinely asking a favor of me. This speech act is not an ethical speech act, because he did not make a claim over me with it. Had this been his only speech act, it would be as benign as if he had asked me to pass the salt, which is generally considered an ethically neutral request. And by any plausible ethics, he would not be wrong to ask me to do so.

The second speech-act that the father made with his single question was moral outrage. His irritation revealed that he had expected that I would come to the ethical conclusion that I would come to and adhere to that conclusion. This irritation that this expectation had produced is evidence that he was holding me to an ethical standard (his own ethical standard) and that he was disappointed that I had failed.

What I find interesting about this contrast is that the father had imposed his ethics upon me before finding out what my ethics was! He did not simply ask if I would stop swearing, and judge from my reaction whether my ethics agreed with his -- that I should stop swearing. If I were adhering strictly to what I had agreed to do, then I might have said no. To elaborate this ethics further, I intend an ethics, here, of egocentrism. Such an ethicist might agree to do things that he was not bound to do by law, but only on the basis that it benefits him. For example, in this case, if I really thought that the children learning swear-words from me would not harm me or my world in any way (especially considering that they will learn them anyway), then I might be well justified in telling him that I would not stop swearing. As a matter of fact, I really do believe that his children learning swear-words from me, in particular, will not affect my world in even the remotest way. I could have been such an ethicist. Nevertheless, he did not pause to find out whether I was an egoist ethicist or a reciprocation ethicist.

Now not only did I make a mistake in forgetting to adhere to my own ethics; he made a mistake in holding me to his own ethics before determining whether such a metaethical claim even made sense. That is, in order for him to be able to ethically make an ethical claim upon me, his ethics must first demand that it is the only legitimate ethics. Naturally, there are many ethical systems which make this claim (many extreme religious systems, for example), but it is difficult to determine whether this appropriate. What we would find, should it be acceptable, metaethically, to demand universal acceptance of one's own ethical system, is that the entire field of metaethics would reduce to fiat. That is, the only metaethical principle is: 'All persons ought to share my ethical system'. Let us call this the Principle of Metaethical Fiat ("Fiat" for short). It is quite clear that such a metaethical move is simply implausible, because it would preclude the possibility of a peaceful plurality of ethical systems: we would always be at each other's throats forcing our own ethics down each other's throats. Therefore, if there exists any further metaethical principle, this additional principle would preclude the Fiat. For if there were any other metaethical principle, then it would be a principle of toleration, but the Fiat is a principle of non-toleration. Therefore, the Principle of Metaethical Fiat is inconsistent with any other metaethical principle.

These considerations on the Fiat entail that this principle is, effectively, a principle that there is no metaethics. If metaethics is determined publicly (and I believe that it is because metaethics is much more useful to the public than to individuals), and there are public contributors to the definition of metaethics who hold any other metaethical principle (and it is obvious that there are), then the Fiat is false. Simply put, if there exists a public metaethics, then the Fiat is false.

Thus, the father was bound by metaethics to discover my ethical system before he could be ethically justified in holding me responsible for having violated an ethical code (the code, that is, not to swear in front of children). He simply assumed that my ethical system was the same as his. This is evidence of a shift of blame. As soon as the father revealed his irritation, he broke his own ethical code just as surely as I broke my own. The most interesting thing about this dual violation is that in pointing out my personal error, he made an error of his own. And his error, as an offense against me, is an error for which I was justified in expressing moral outrage toward him. In fact, he was not justified in his moral outrage, whereas I would have been justified had I been morally outraged. In fact, had I been outraged, I could simply point to the fact that he sat next to us, and that there were plenty of equally comfortable places he could have taken his family. Thus, I could show him that he was presumptuous in expressing moral outrage to me, since he is equally responsible for sneaking up so close to a group of adults. Indeed, adult conversation is not surprising to hear from adults in a casual atmosphere.

But I did not express any outrage at all. Instead I was embarrassed because when he accused me of acting unethicaly, he was accurate in the accusation. In other words, the father was epistemically unjustified in his assessment of my ethics, and because his epistemic misstep factored into his action, he is guilty of epistemic irresponsibility. But despite this guilt on his part, I admitted my own guilt and we left his family because I decided I was likely to forget about the decision against swearing again.

Thinking back on this event, it is quite surprising to me that he was unjustified in being morally outraged, but became morally outraged anyway. One might find it equally surprising, on the other hard, that I was justified in being morally outraged, but did not become morally outraged. I'm not sure why I was so quick to forgive his presumptuousness. I should note that there are often times when I get morally outraged by the presumptuousness of others. Even when someone assumes that I believe something that I actually do believe, I am still prone to moral outrage because of presumptuousness. To the reader, this fact about my own ethical code is rather insignificant, but to me, it is evidence that there is something different about assuming ethical reciprocity.

But is it really a plausible ethics to adopt egoism rather than reciprocity? If moral outrage is the indicator of an ethical claim over others, then I invite the reader to examine her own instances of moral outrage, and determine whether it diminishes when one finds oneself as guilty as the accused. Intuitively, it seems that a person faced with such a fact would be likely to calm down, though this could again me a simply oddity about myself.

In closing, I would like to note that I believe that what I did is what Jesus actually meant by the phrase "Turn the other cheek" (assuming he ever said it). I don't think he was suggesting the slave-ethics that Nietzsche accuses him of. Unfortunately, many of his followers seem to believe that he did suggest this slave-mentality, but that is neither here nor there.

-Priam's Pride

It's Always Less Tragic on the Inside

2008-11-07T01:25:00.005-06:00

This is a phrase that my friend, Matthew Carlin, said to me yesterday in reference to a common acquaintance. I thought that this phrase counted as an aphorism, because there seems to be a very important idea compacted into it. It recently occurred to me that most aphorisms occur in the context of a larger discussion, and the aphorism usually just encapsulates the discussion. This was one that did. When a person's life is clearly tragic in nature (that is, in the old Greek drama sense: one can do everything to the best of one's ability, and still the world falls apart in one's hands), it seems possible that that person might not ever be confronted with the full force of the tragedy. Though Oedipus is fully aware of his tragedy, the only reason this is so is that he has outlived what should have been his own death. Instead he merely tore his own eyes out. Hamlet, on the other hand, is never aware of his grand failure, because that failure includes his own death. In Hamlet's own mind, it sucks pretty bad, but until his death, there is reason for him to think that things might still get better. For the tragic hero, and even for the tragic character, there is often hope left that the world will balance out. But it is only we who will outlive the person or who can foresee the eminent destruction of the person long before it ever happens, so it is only we who are truly acquainted with the tragedy completed -- the life finished. Often there is nothing one can do when one sees a person whose life will end tragically unless something changes. One can attempt to make this person see the incumbent tragedy, the grand event that will inevitably happen, but it probably won't work, and the person will become indignant.

Thus, it's always less tragic on the inside.

-Priam's Pride

The City and the Mausoleum at Night

2008-10-27T02:55:00.005-05:00

Another old anecdote.

Saturday, October 02, 2004 (edited, October 27, 2008)

When I stayed in Rome for a semester last year, we would frequently go to a city near campus called Albano (supposedly, it was founded by Aeneas, but he probably never existed), where we would go to bars or just hang out. Anyway, one of the most unique memories I have of Albano is the walk back to campus (we rode the bus there, but it was too late to ride the bus back). There were two sites that I always loved seeing: a panorama of the city of Rome from hill Albano was founded on, and the mausoleum on the side of the road.

A friend of mine, Kate Wolfe, used to describe that spectacular view of Rome as a sense of loss. She said that she loved seeing the City at night, especially Rome, because (as I interpreted her) it was like a human attempt to reach toward the beauty of the stars. What was lost were the real stars, because when a city is lit up all night the way Rome is, the light makes the the stars impossible to see. We have overwrought our emulation of the stars, because we block them out. To me, on the other hand, it was a succinct image of the desire that humanity seems to have to touch the divine. Our greatest dream is, if only in a small way, to finally do something that God can be proud of; to do something that the Cosmos can smile upon. However, she was still bothered by the fact that in seeing the brilliance of the City at night, she always had to sacrifice the stars themselves. And I don't know which is better to hold on to either. The only reason that the City outshined the stars was because we were so close to it, but everyone knows that those stars are so brilliant that they can cross an enormous chasm of space and still be clearly visible. The City is beautiful, but the stars are still the grand model. This is not to say that I think we should attempt to replicate the stars -- no, let the City remain only an analogy to the stars. Even better, let the stars remain visible to me at least in some places.

The mausoleum was much different, though. It was far more striking than the City. I never saw the mausoleum during the day, so I can only describe it in the ominous context of the midnight hours. We only saw it from behind a chain gate. It was a concrete structure that, in the dark, might as well have been black. It was set back from the fence about 20 feet, so it was just close enough to be visible in detail. This part of the road was always quiet. Perhaps the cars knew what they were passing, so they took different paths, in order to respect the silence of the dead. Of course, that probably didn't happen, but it seems that way, at least to my memory. The most interesting part of this mausoleum was that from the outside one couldn't tell whether there was a body in any one particular compartment or not, except by a single red light. Each compartment had a tiny, bright, red LED light on the front of it, to indicate that it was occupied (and would be for eternity). I couldn't help but think that as time passed, and these people were forgotten, they would gradually come to be known in the eyes of the living world as nothing more than red lights. An entire story, great enough for 10 tragedies and comedies at least, reduced to a single red light. How much wisdom did that light bear, and how much guilt? Every time I passed that mausoleum, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content that those little red lights were required to convey. This loss seems to me much more tragic than the loss that Kate saw in the lights of the City.

I don't think I will ever forget those two things. They are enough to make me want to go back to Albano one day...

-Priam's Pride

Goodbye Alex Ezell

2008-10-27T02:50:00.002-05:00

This is an old anecdote from a previous blog that I no longer use, but whose content I want to preserve.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

I recently found a few letters from an old friend. I hadn't spoken to her in about five years. I waited a few days before I called her to maybe catch up, have a nice conversation, who knows? During that time, I thought about maybe 100 things to say to/ask her. When I actually talked to her, not only did she not remember me very well, but she also wondered why I even called. I said I was just curious (I was). After six minutes of chat (no real conversation), she told me that she had to go. In dismay, I realized that she was saying goodbye forever. Of all those 100 things, I had the opportunity to say maybe two. Of all the possible conversations I had imagined, the one that I hadn't came to pass. That's what I get for telling the future. Goodbye, Alex Ezell.

It seems to me that perhaps she was telling me something about myself. She seemed to know that those two people who used to talk have long since perished. Whoever I am is foreign to whoever she is, and it would only be a confusion of our personalities to attempt to find something in an old friendship. We would be pretending that we were still those foolish children we once were (not that we aren't still foolish children). I think I am satisfied with the way that that relationship ended; would that others could end so well.

-Priam's Pride

A Few Aphorisms

2008-10-27T02:40:00.005-05:00

One of these is a summary of a previous post, but then all aphorisms are a summary of a complex thought, so I'm not really worried about it.

1) To anyone who asks whether I am a democrat or a republican, I respond, do you offer sacrifices to Zeus or Saturn?

2) 'I am who am' is true of everyone who speaks it; so be. And should you meed Yahweh, tell him the same.

3) There is no question that a democracy in which even a single person does not have any desire to vote is, for that person, a tyranny. What is in question is whether this tyranny is self-inflicted.

-Priam's Pride

The Nature of Time: Reflections on A-Series and B-Series

2008-10-26T23:55:00.008-05:00

I am currently taking a course on contemporary analytic metaphysics. For those who do not know what these three terms mean when used in conjunction, it is the study of the existence claims that current analytic philosophers have made and why. The most recent topic of discussion in the class is the quest 'What is the nature of time?' In reading about the current debate on the topic, I found myself intellectually revolted by the point of departure that modern discussion has taken on the issue. I find it amazing that the debate has been structured in the way it has been for so long. Essentially, I think there is a major problem with the way this issue has been structured, so I have decided to restructure the concept myself.

McTaggart's Argument:

The argument is composed a distinction and three logical steps based on the distinction. The distinction is between two different concepts of time, named A-series and B-series. McTaggart claims that: (1) B-series actually presupposes A-series, (2) A-series entails contradiction, (3) therefore both concepts are meaningless and there is no such thing as time.

The starting point of the debate is an argument formulated by John McTaggart. McTaggart sets up the argument by identifying two conceptions of time. First, there is B-series, which is time as composed of points which either precede or succeed each other. This conception in terms of succession is considered to be a static model in which every point along the dimension of time really exists just as much as any other point. Then there is A-series, which is time as composed of three distinct groupings: past, present and future. However, these groupings change as the future flows through the present into the past. Thus, this is a dynamic conception of time.

With these two distinct conceptions of time in the background, McTaggart observes that time presupposes change. But what does change mean? For Michael Loux, in the metaphysics intro we are reading (Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, 3rd ed., New York and London: Routledge, 2006), "at the very least change involves a variation in the way things are" (208). This seems to be true, but for whatever reason, McTaggart defines change in a much stronger way. We will, therefore, come back to this weak definition of change later. For McTaggart, change in "the way things are" is determined by the events that take place and how they come to be. Every change is an event, so it is the events that change over the course of time.

If time occurs in events, then events that are no longer happening must cease to be events and new events become. But this fact about time is incompatible with B-series, because the static nature of the conception prevents things from coming into being or ceasing to be. Therefore, if we are to speak temporally when we speak of time as a B-series, the temporal conception must be entirely appropriated from A-series. This is so because the concept of change fundamental to temporality is a dynamic concept of change, not a static one. In B-series, a thing's properties are fixed at every point in space-time, so there is simply no possibility of change. All speech about time, then, is only meaningful in terms of A-series, and B-series treats time in an artificial manner which presupposes A-series.

With step (1) accomplished, Mctaggart moves on to step (2). Because time is composed of the changing of events, it turns out that at some point in their career all events must be all three of past, present and future. This seems like contradiction. A supporter of A-series (an A-theorist) might respond that no event exemplifies all three properties simultaneously, so there is no contradiction. McTaggart, however, anticipates this objection by observing that when we say a thing x has a property P or 'x is p', the tenseless translation of what we are saying is 'in the present x is P'. Similarly, in the future, when x no longer has P, the translation of 'x was P' is 'in the future x is not P'; and in the past 'x will be P' becomes 'in the past, x is not P'. The problem, for McTaggart, every past and future moment was once a present moment, so each moment, past and future ascriptions can be made about x. These ascriptions, when broken down into tenseless language, differ. Therefore, we are ascribing contradictory properties to x.

Given these two steps, McTaggart decides that because his decriptions of time exhaust the possibilities of description of time (or so he thinks), time must not exist.

Evaluation of McTaggart's Argument:

I don't think I have ever seen a worse argument that has received as much attention as McTaggart's has. To be fair, the literature that the argument has produced is almost entirely critical -- no one actually believes that time does not exist except McTaggart. However, most of the responses serve to defend one of either A-series or B-series from attack, which has resulted in the fact that the overarching conception that McTaggart has imposed onto the debate does not receive a criticism. This overarching conception will be my target, and I will consider the claims of A-theory and B-theory as the bear on this goal.

I will accept McTaggart's distinction between A-series and B-series, because I think it is the best thing he wrote on the matter (even though these distinctions do not originate with him). Also, relinquishing these definitions would not mean that I do not take him seriously. What I want to question, first, is his claim that change must be defined in terms of events, because only events change. This claim is very strong and completely unwarranted. As a matter of fact, it commits us to a strange ontology of events. McTaggart, in assuming that time describes the change of events, also assumes the unity and identity of events themselves. That is, McTaggart must take as his most fundamental principle about time the concept that events exist as distinct from each other in a way described by identity. In other words, events can have names.

The assumption that events are fundamentally unified does not need to be made, though. In fact, change can be defined as the differences in spatial configuration that obtain between temporally contiguous moments. That is, change is the mere fact that at different points along the temporal axis, the matter scattered throughout space is arranged differently. The change is a discription of the differences between moments as a smooth function. This concept of change seems to me to be both scientifically sound and deeply intuitive. We often say that a surface changes, for example when I describe the topology of Louisiana, I can observe that the landscape changes from south Louisiana to north Louisiana such that the ground goes from soft and marshy to firm and hilly. This description of change is true even if time does not exist. Therefore, change is not a purely temporal term, and it is inappropriate to define it in terms of events which are purely temporal.

In fact, the difference between these two concepts of change is the difference between A-series and B-series. In A-series, time is conceived as events; and in B-series, time is conceived as a smooth spatial function over the dimension of time. But the differences between A-series and B-series go deeper than this. In fact, both series are a description of the things in time and a description of the context of these things (viz., time itself). For A-series, the things that exist in time are events and objects. Each event and each object has an identity that is maintained as unchanging, while the context is held variable: a single event can be spoken of as past, present or future. The only way that this can work is if events and objects are treated as fixed in the same way that a moving body can be treated as fixed in physics.

It is evident, now, that the reverse will be true of B-series. B-series holds the background dimensions fixed, and the objects and events that occur in this background are treated as varied and changing. Thus, for a B-theorist, when I refer to an object or an event, I am actually referring to a particular configuration of matter in occupying a finite space and a finite time. In other words, the B-theorist will bracket off a piece of space-time and refer to that piece as an event or an object. Here, we find that the physical matter and its dimensions are taken as fundamental, rather than the unitied objects and events that the matter comprises.

Now we must remember that events and objects are complex metaphysical concepts about which there is much debate. However, that debate essentially characterizes them in one of the two ways described above, so this cartoon representation of them will suffice as a sketch. A-theory and B-theory, then, is an extension of the nominalist/realist debate. The realist will typically claim that objects and events are fundamental and that time is inherently tensed and dynamic. The nominalist will typically claim that the concrete particulars that occupy space-time are fundamental and that time is inherently a static dimension. Both conceptions of time want to account for events and objects in time. This means that something must be held static and something must be allowed to vary. For B-theory what is held static is the dimension of time, and the objects and events are allowed to vary (we can take any grouping we want and call it an object or event). For A-theory what is held static is the objects and events, and the dimension of time is allowed to vary (we can refer to the same object or event in different tenses).

Responses to McTaggart's argument should be relatively evident at this point. His reduction of B-series temporality to A-series temporality simply does not work, because we have seen that there is a second perfectly good description of time to be had. His claim that A-theory entails a contradiction also does not succeed. McTaggart has not respected the fact that something must be allowed to vary if change is to be accounted for. He wants objects and events to be held static for A-series, but he also wants to be able to speak about time staticly (i.e. tenselessly). Of course, even if these first two logical steps could be made soundly, his conclusion would still not follow, because he has not exhausted the different conceptions of time. Without doing this, he cannot claim that time does not exist.

I do not find either A-theory or B-theory to be superior to the other. Both of them do a good job of describing time, but both are subject to temporal descriptions that the other has difficulty accounting for. Descriptions of events are very difficult in B-series, because places (where events occur) are difficult to define in sheer materialist terms. Similarly, descriptions of science are very difficult in A-series, because they are conceived in B-series (and probably necessarily so). What this means is that both theories have something to offer concerning time, but which one obtains (if only one does) will depend entirely on the metaphysical debate (concerning event and object identity) which underlies the two conceptions.

It seems to me that we ought to retain both conceptions, because, at least as far as human thought is concerned, they provide two different descriptions of the same thing, and each description states something true. The relevant way in which time is dynamic is that it always appears to be so to a human intelligence. The reason is that awareness is a fundamentally present-tense event. We are never aware of existing except in the present, and in the present, we can contemplate the future and the past, but to occupy the future or the past would be to make them present. Thus, time is dynamic at least for human awareness. Time is also static, however. This is so because scientific description of the world is inherently tenseless. Though it may be that only one theory is true of both the world and the entities that have awareness within it, it may also be that A-series is true of us, and B-series is true of the world.

-Priam's Pride

Experiencing Aural Intercourse

2008-10-10T23:32:00.006-05:00

I noticed today that among the music that I consider to be genuinely good, there are only certain albums that I find myself returning to over and over. Of course, there are albums that I listen to for weeks at a time after I first hear them, but this phase usually passes, and I may return to the album only rarely. For example, I think all four Coheed and Cambria albums are excellent, but whenever I scroll through my music to find something to listen to, the only Coheed albums that I really consider are the second and third (In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth, and Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One).

So how can I consider the other two albums to be genuinely good music if I almost never have any desire to listen to them? Clearly, we have at least two different processes at work. There are the set of albums that I consider to be good music and the set of albums that I desire to listen to. These two sets are distinct, but have some overlap. It then occurred to me that I don't seem to rewatch movies in the same way that I relisten to music. Why do I not have the same desire to simply watch some work of film art?

It is at this point that I had to introduce a distinction in order to make this strange situation make sense. On the one hand, the albums that I think are genuinely good are the albums that I think are good works of art. By "good work of art" I mean that the work accurately describes something about the world in a way that can only be described in the particular way that the work describes it. This means that a good work of art cannot be summarized without losing some content, and that there is no superfluity. Thus, each good work of art is indispensible to the entire canon of art, because it describes the world in a way that nothing else does.

On the other hand the albums that I desire to hear are aesthetically pleasing to me. What does this mean, though? Clearly, this description must exclude a concept of art, because then aesthetical pleasure would reduce to art, and we would lose our distinction. What is important about these albums that I desire to listen to is that when I listen I am actually captivated by the beauty of the music. These particular albums change my mood, they make me happier. In short, there is a kind of love at work. It is not exactly, love, though. It is eros. I don't mean eros in the sexual sense, but in the broader, Platonic sense. In his dialogue, Symposium, Plato's only female character describes eros as the love of beauty. And it is true, we don't just find these things beautiful, we desire them in a way that can only be compared to sexual desire. Any reader who has experienced the sheer pleasure that such an album can provide will know what I am talking about. But even if music does not produce this feeling, there are many people for whom other sensory inputs do produce this feeling. I imagine that painters find themselves in an awed state of ecstacy when they view certain paintings or certain other visual arts. Many people find the sunrise erotic in this way. The list goes on.

Returning to the subject of film: if my distinction between good art and aesthetic pleasure is accurate, then I must not find film, in general, aesthetically pleasing. And this is fine; I still have great appreciation for the artform (it is my third-favorite art-form, afterall), I just don't have an erotic desire for it. I then realized that I don't have any real erotic desire for any visual experience, save one. The only visual experience that I give me aesthetic pleasure is the female body. Now this seems like a trivial thing to say: I'm a heterosexual male, of course I find the female form erotic. But there is more going on here; another distinction needs to be made.

Sexual desire is not sensory. It is a deeper eros than that of sensory aesthetic pleasure. I do believe that it is aesthetic in just the same way that musical eros is aesthetic, but there is an important difference. Based on my experience, it seems to me that sexual desire is actually entity-oriented rather than experience oriented. This means that the intellect is involved. When I am having sexual intercourse, it is both the act and the partner that I desire; it is not simply the visual or kinesthetic experiences involved in sexual intercouse. The reason that many people believe that sexual intercouse is all about vision and touch is that visual and kinesthetic pleasure almost always accompany sexual pleasure. I do believe that there are many heterosexual males who do not find the female body to be visually erotic (when they see the figure, they imagine themselves having sex with the woman, which appeals to the sexual eros, not the visual eros). I, on the other hand, absolutely adore the sight of all beautiful women -- it is captivating.

Let us take this line of thought even further. If the albums for which I have an erotic desire simultaneously captivate me and bring me great pleasure, then it is not inappropriate to describe listening to them as a sort of aural intercourse. Similarly, allowing myself to be captivated by a female figure can be described as visual intercourse. This explains why so many people want to listen to their favorite albums during sexual intercourse: if one's partner is beautiful, then sexual intercourse becomes both sensory and sexual intercourse. How erotic!

-Priam's Pride

A Metaphysical Materialism

2008-10-08T12:18:00.005-05:00

I was entertaining the thought of being an atheist metaphysician, and this is how it went. It occurred to me how complex the physical world has proven to be. Both common sense and science seem to have proven to us all our lives that the universe, before our impact, is absurdly complex, yet equally structured. It is this structured complexity that interests me. The entirety of physics, especially through the efforts of Newton, Einstein, Bohr and others, has revealed itself to us as infinitely impressive in both size and structure. Scientists have no choice but to marvel at the beauty of the thing they study. “How beautiful,” they might say, “this thing with which we humans have no choice but to be in contact!” But is the scientist’s exclamation of “Behold!” not also a testament to the beauty of the human reason which uncovers the physical world to itself. Where theologians of old have proclaimed the necessity of a “perfect reason” which would hold a perfect relationship to all that which can be known by such a reason (i.e. an omniscient God), it seems to me sufficient to observe that the very human reasoning which beholds the depth of the physical world itself is equally complex. For if it is necessary to posit a knower of the world, then it is necessary to posit a knower only equal in ‘perfection’ to the physical world. If perfection is measured by complexity, then it seems as if human reason by itself is sufficient for the claim of such a metaphysical realist. With no need of a God to posit, perhaps we may get away with positing merely this equality in ‘perfection’ between the physical world and human reason.

We assume, as stated previously, that to prove this equality in perfection between two systems is to prove the equality of the complexity of the two systems. There is at least one piece of evidence for the equality of complexity between human knower and physical world. The complexity of the world only reveals itself to us at the maximum complexity with which we can observe it. In other words, the scientists can only theorize about a world as complex as their faculty of reasoning allows them to. The bounds of this power of reason provide the boundary of the world that we observe. But there is a problem with this simple equation of complexity. The world that we observe is more complex than the science that describes it. If it were not, then one would think that we would be able to predict all events that admit the possibility of prediction. Science has certainly not achieved this goal yet. But the “yet” is important. There seems to be a potential in science to at least come close to such a complexity.

However, even if this potential, epistemic form of complexity is not as great as that of the universe itself (or at least the physical, experiential data we have of it), we would still have one other form of complexity to add to the total complexity of human reason: the very act of reasoning is complex. Epistemologists and AI programmers will all admit that the more we study the very act of reasoning, the more complex it seems to be. Here we find that our reason does seem to have a depth equal to the physical world in both complexity and mystery. Kant himself, according to myth, wanted his gravestone to read only “The starry skies above and the moral law within,” because these were the only things by which he found himself awed. If Kant is right, then we need not posit any being besides the world and the thinker (I and my peers). But then, I thought, why stop there? Why should we even posit anything besides the world?

So why is it that metaphysicians seem to believe that we must posit such metaphysical entities as ourselves (souls, as some people call them)? We have already seen how human reason is similar to the physical world; if human reason really does describe a separate entity from the physical world, then we must look for the difference between human reason and the physical world. The easiest way to do this is to attempt to recreate human reason. Let us say that we build a computer which is recognizably intelligent. This computer would have to have a set of algorithms which describe its reasoning processes, and it is likely that these algorithms would approach infinite complexity (so, for the sake of the thought experiment, we will leave aside whether building such a computer is possible at all). It is easy to imagine that a computer could perfectly replicate the actions of a house-fly, for example, because a house-fly clearly has no reasoning, and we would say that its actions are determined by its instincts (similarly to the way a computer's actions are determined by the way it is programmed). The question of whether a computer could imitate a human being perfectly comes down to whether our actions are determined or not. If they are completely determined by whatever it is about human beings that determines us, then the difference between us and the house-fly is trivial. And if we can imagine ourselves programming a computer to be a house-fly, then we can imagine ourselves programming a computer to be a person. Therefore, either there exists only a physical world, and the complexity of human reason really just comes down to the complexity of the human brain; or there exists both a physical world and a set of beings whose actions are not determined within this physical world. In other words, either there is the world alone, or there is the world and the knower of the world. Thus, we see that the question of whether human beings are metaphysical entities comes down to the question of whether human beings are free (physically undetermined) or unfree (physically determined). Unfortunately, the facts given to us by the world do not seem to determine an answer to this question: arguments can be constructed which make human freedom just as likely to be true as complete determinism. Kant had a thought similar to this one also: he thought that the free-will/determinism debate was an antinomy of pure reason, or an unsolvable puzzle. He presented what he thought to be irrefutable arguments supporting both sides, thereby concluding that reason cannot answer the question. We do not have the space to argue this point here, however, so, for the time being, we will assume determinism to be a thesis equal in epistemological strength to human freedom.

So which thesis do we posit? Let us first posit determinism. If the universe is completely determined (ourselves included), but there is no evidence to determine whether we believe ourselves to be determined or free, then we must make a choice as to whether we believe ourselves determined or free. Because this belief is insufficiently supported by fact, it must either be irresponsible or undetermined. Assuming that there exist epistemologically responsible persons who have an opinion on this thesis, a free choice must be made. Therefore, we are free. This is contradiction, so let us see what happens when we posit freedom. If we are free, then in any decision we make, we are determined to make a decision, as Jean-Paul Sartre observed in Being and Nothingness. We are not free to be free. If our freedom is determined, then it becomes difficult to locate that freedom in the first place. Freedom begins to look arbitrary, and arbitrarity is a form of determinism. Thus, we are not free. We have, then, an apparent paradox on our hands: if we are free, then we are not free; if we are not free, then we are free. Though this problem of freedom has some features of a paradox, the arguments above are sketchy and loose, so it may not be a paradox afterall. In any case, though, the problem of freedom can be seen as an unsolvable problem (and this will have to remain an assumption).

Metaphysically speaking, what is at stake in the question of human freedom is the question of whether we form a separate class of entities from the physical world. We have also seen how the structure of human freedom (viz. human reason) is similar in complexity to the structure of the physical world. These two notions taken together would entail that there are two classes of beings: beings of the physical world, and beings which make rational choices within the physical world. But must we call this second class of beings (human beings) a metaphysical class? The only reason we would have to do this is if we cannot classify them as material. So if I want to be a materialist, I can either prove that everything in the world adheres to my definition of materialism, or I can define “material” as everything in the world. Such a redefinition would only make sense if there is real similarity between one’s designated classes of material. If we claim, then, that the act of human reasoning is itself a material (similar to, say, Leibnizian monads), then the similarity is easy to show. Let us use B-matter (short for Being-matter) to describe physical matter, and F-matter (short for Freedom-matter) to describe “rational” matter. B-matter consists of all the protons, electrons, bodies, houses, mountains, planets and stars; while F-matter consists of all different types of rational processes exclusive to free rational beings. The F-matter that exists is, precisely, all the human beings who exist and all the choices that these human beings actually make. Similarly, the B-matter that exists is all the stars and planets that have actually come into existence, rather than the set of possible objects. The B-matter that exists is, literally, the matter that our experience tells us exists. One can imagine, then, a whole dimension of “free-willers” which can be measured based on what choices were made and what choices were not made. What I am trying to set up, here, is a parallel between being/non-being and free/un-free. The act of being which any physical object does points to its existence as B-matter, just as the act of choosing which any person does points to that person’s existence as F-matter. Just as a physical entity is comprised of the various electrons, protons, quarks, etc. from which it is built, so a rational entity is comprised of the various choices made in time, and the ways that these choices fit together in the system of human reasoning to form a whole person. Thus, when we say that everything is matter, but that there are two classes of matter, the claim is non-trivial. Pending the solution of the problem of freedom/determinism, it looks as if we can dissolve the divide between realists and non-realists about the human self.

Proponents of theism would note, here, that where there are at least two classes which bear a similarity to each other, these two classes themselves form a new class. Indeed, we have already named this class “matter” (and its constituents are B-matter and F-matter). It is quite apparent that the relationship between the two types of matter is what will inform our concept of the general class “material”. As a materialist, such a theist would have to observe that there exists nothing over and above the material itself, so the relationship between the two types of matter becomes terribly important. This relationship (vague as our description of it has been) is the only appropriate subject for the term “God”, should a materialist have any desire to posit a God. I do not claim to have proven God to exist, for I do not believe such a thing to be possible; rather, I have only provided the material space within which such a God can be named. But this concept is still too vague to be useful to any serious metaphysical thinker. What is important for the reader to take away from these metaphysical reflections is the notion that metaphysicians have been so interested in distinguishing the physical from the metaphysical that they have forgotten just how similar the two seem to be. The real question is, I think, if we can develop a science of human reason, do we acquire a science of metaphysics thereby? If the answer is “yes”, then we have been thinking about metaphysics in the wrong terms for a long time.

Surreal conjecture about a science of metaphysics aside, one may reasonably ask whether the inference I've made concerning materialism is philosophically trivial. It is important to keep in mind that I have only made a plausible inference based on inconclusive evidence. Essentially, our evidence is that there are at least two entities in human knowledge that we can be certain exist: the known and the knower. These two entities seem to bear a similar complexity to each other, which makes each adequate to the other, and does not necessitate a third entity. The inference is this: if there is a similarity in complexity such each is exactly the appropriate subject of the other, then there may also be a similarity in the nature of the two entities. Thus, our inference is non-trivial in one sense and trivial in another. It is non-trivial because thinking of human freedom as a fifth dimension and human knowers as material entities changes the ways we think about the self (e.g. that freedom no longer needs to be infinite and that it can be measured). It is trivial because one must still posit another realm of entities to augment the physical world. At the end of the day, most would still consider this metaphysical realm, but it seems to me a less abstruse (and thus, more plausible) metaphysics than is usually found.

-Priam's Pride

A Cruel Little Galaxy

2008-10-07T00:21:00.007-05:00

I live in Baton Rouge and decided to stay in the city for hurricane Gustav. Now it was an annoying hurricane for sure, but it wasn't really that bad in terms of catastrophes. The hurricane proper isn't the subject of this post anyway. The day before the hurricane, while it was still offshore, the sky was completely cloudless. At one point in the day, I noticed that a layer of fast-moving clouds as far as the eye could see had covered half of the sky. It was the outer bands of Gustav. I had never seen the edge of a hurricane before. I had Sarah take a few pictures of it, but I don't know how they came out. If they are decent, I will post them.

Anyhow, I noticed how peaceful and orderly the clouds were, despite the fact that they moved faster than normal clouds. They were very light, bright and had some gaps between them. In short, they seemed like friendly clouds not like hurricane clouds. I thought to myself that these were just the outer clouds orbiting the violent center. The spiral shape of the hurricane immediately made me draw an analogy to the galaxy in which we live. I thought about how the calm outer bands are like the calm part of the galaxy where we live, and that the violent center of the hurricane was like the star-cluster in the center of the galaxy. Even the empty center of the hurricane seems analogous to the theorized giant black hole in the center of the galaxy.

But if the hurricane were really like our galaxy, then it might have little intelligent beings occupying a droplet on one of these outer bands that I was watching go by. I thought, maybe these beings don't know that they are hovering over a planet with other intelligent beings. Maybe they don't know that their existence (which, admittedly is only a week or so), depends on the existence of a large destruction machine that brings misery to those without the financial means to overcome it. I wondered how they would feel about living in a universe whose very existence necessarily causes other people misery. Then I thought that maybe we are those little people. Maybe, we are three-dimensional beings in a three-dimensional galaxy which is really just a storm of a four-dimensional world, causing those four-dimensional people anguish (but at a much higher energy level).

Now, I know this analogy doesn't work perfectly. Hurricanes are three-dimensional objects, just like galaxies, so relying on alternate dimensions for the analogy is a little implausible. Not to mention the fact that modern science treats the world as a four-dimensional entity. If the analogy were perfect, it would not tell us very much about the world: we would just be comparing a thing to itself. What is really interesting about a good analogy is the ways in which the two things are not alike.

-Priam's Pride

Who Is the Tyrant?

2008-10-04T00:35:00.005-05:00

I have finally broken down and decided to create a blog. There are a number of thoughts that I have had which I want to write down -- things that I do not want to forget. I also believe that other people might like to know these things and maybe some of them would be better for knowing them. In any case, the first domino to fall is a domino of outrage. Don't believe that this blog is a record of bitching, because it is not; I want to do more than just rant. But the outrage is not mitigated at the moment.

It has come to this; I cannot be silent anymore. Our presidential and vice presidential candidates are a bunch of dolts, and it is embarrassing. These three events are necessary information for all intelligent Americans:

Palin Interview with Katie Couric
Obama Speech without Teleprompter
McCain Responds to Ron Paul's Question

What is happening here? Presidential candidates are undoubtedly supposed to be specialists in their field. They do not need to know as much as a lawyer does about law, and they do not need to know as much as a political scientist or philosopher knows about political theories. They do, however, need to know something about both, and they need to know a lot about current events. That is not too much to ask, folks! As a graduate student, I happen to be surrounded by specialists. If I ask a professor about anything even remotely close to her specialization, she will be able to answer cogently, precisely and honestly. How old are these politicians? Are they not in their thirties? How much time have they had to learn their professions? This is just inexcusable. We are voting for a bunch of yes-men.

Shouldn't Palin at least be able to state her positions when asked? I find it hard to believe that a real-live thinking politician would not be able to think of more than one court ruling that he disagreed with. Palin could only think of Roe v. Wade. How standard.

Why can't Obama fill in five minutes of a speech that he undoubtedly did not write, but at least had some familiarity with beforehand? Doesn't he know what he supports? Doesn't his reasons for supporting it?

The reader can guess why McCain can't answer Ron Paul's question. He, just like Obama and Palin, was only taught to yammer about the platitudes that his party had created for him.

This is a travesty! What has our once proud country come to? Our pride has been whittled down until all that is left is bigotry. Is this even a democracy anymore? Our candidates are exactly the same, but they wear different masks. None of them can think for themselves; they just represent the same old positions that their party tells them to represent. A democratic state ought to be able to select from the entire pool of qualified candidates, but we are only allowed to select from a pool of two underqualified candidates.

This looks all too familiar. We all thought that President Bush was a fluke, that we didn't know he was an idiot before he was elected. But this is evidence that we were wrong. We should not blame President Bush for being an idiot; rather, we should blame the parties for pushing idiots on us. The fact that these two parties are using the same set of tactics for fooling us into electing their respective mouthpieces seems more than a little suggestive to me. These two parties were supposed to be enemies, remember? The only reason enemies plot together is if there is a third party, a common enemy. I will tell you who this common enemy is. It is we! These parties are trying to stop us from thinking for ourselves, because they are perfectly content to feed us our beliefs. There are more than two worldviews; the "liberal" and the "conservative" do not form the poles of an axis on which all of our beliefs lie. I always thought that the benefit of a democracy was supposed to be that every person is able to vote for a candidate based on her own beliefs. If we all believe the same things, though, the democracy becomes a de facto tyranny. The only question to ask now is this: Who is the tyrant?

In closing, I would like to impart one last video, which will show how absolutely insane Bill O'Reilly is. Of course, this is nothing that most people don't already know, but let him be an example of how these puppets react when they meet intelligent people who know what they are talking about.

Bill O'Reilly is a compulsive liar.
Bill O'Reilly is intolerant of anyone not Bill O'Reilly.

-Priam's Pride