Values as a necessary and also as a created experience is a basic and common aspect of rational organisms and their desire to survive and find meaning in the world that they happen to find themselves in. Everyone shares some values, but one can also say, that in general everyone has different values. Without organisms to value things then things have no value, because value is about necessity and desires and also meaning and things do not have a value in themselves independent of a necessity, desire or a meaning that may be attached to them. Even though values are connected to desire and meaning; material values like food and water are primary to all organisms and are a necessity. Other significant material values are sunlight, shelter, clothing, etc, but are less necessary than food and water, but make existence more bearable and enjoyable. The four main type of values that we encounter regularly are: moral values (moral virtues), material values, quality values (the quality of material things) and content value (the things that interest people; whether concrete or abstract that are valued). There are many other values I am sure beyond the four main one's, such as the conditions, states and emotions that certain things give us that are unique in that way that they do this for us. All people value and share some of the material values, but not necessarily some of the other values that have been mentioned. People who share more of the same types of values and things, have more of an affinity with each other than do people who share less alike values with each other. That we tend to get on well with and also have an affinity with the people that we share the same types of values, virtues, interests and ideals is obvious. We may value the same virtues as someone else, but not necessarily share the same virtues as them. We may value a virtue that someone else has that we don't have ourselves. Having values makes us have judgements about the things we value as well as the other things that are relative to the things that we value and this happens whether it is a moral, material, quality or content judgement etc... Factual judgements are different to judgements concerning the value of things. Judgements concerning the value of things are necessary, contingent and are also personal (subjective). Factual judgements are scientific, empirical, objective and impartial. Judgements of value can also contain a mixture between value and fact, such as the value of something due to its quality in regard to fact (i.e. the quality value of a piece of scientific equipment relative to another and so on). Considering that most values are personal and subjective to each individual apart from certain material values means that most values have no value in an objective and absolute sense, for example, the concept of God is something that is valued psychologically by some people as a concept that gives them hope, but it has no factual value because we cannot value it factually; we can't make a factual judgement on it (because it is a negative). We cannot prove, disprove or judge a negative. It does not matter whether people are theists, deists, atheist or agnostics; what matters is that we can all get on together with each other, just like people of different races should get on with each other or people of different sexual orientations as well, because we all have to share the same planet and we all have to interact with each other and also be happy following our own values and so on. People should not allow their own values as well as their judgements of other peoples values to cloud them from what is objectively real and knowable; our personal values should not be confused for objective and empirical truths.
We as human beings cannot escape values; for us, values are always there in all that we do. Ideals can be said to be the values of the highest kind that we can have. I have always considered truth, reason, honesty, beauty, goodness and love to be significant ideals to follow. There are many other ideals that I could have added to my list, but I will leave them to the imagination of my readers. Life is a dynamic process that is full of joy, pleasure, pain, struggle, suffering, reason and effort and so many other experiences. Values and lofty ideals add to the processes of life and enrich it and give it a long term meaning and purpose that has a value that is worth struggling for; for us and for future people. When following our ideals we may sometimes fail miserably and find ourselves behaving badly towards others, but what counts is that we can value our ideals and never quit thinking that our ideals will improve our lives and also the lives of those we know.
Values like justice, law, rights, democracy, egalitarianism, happiness for all people as well as compassion and mutual cooperation are what count for people generally.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Saturday, 24 May 2008
ON THE LIMIT OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT C
The hypothesis that I am going to propose in this brief essay; will I am sure seem odd, but hey! The universe is a strange and mysterious place anyway, so any good theory that intends to describe aspects of the universe should not necessarily be free of strangeness. Now the vibratory activity of particles in a confined area like in atoms cannot vibrate and move at anywhere close to the speed of light, but when you get particles in atoms connected together in a field moving in a circular or elliptical translational movement with a continued energy flow feeding into itself all together at full speed, then this will produce the speed of light velocity and also its limit. The energy activity described above cannot exceed the speed of light because these activities are the limit of its abilities as such. Now this energy activity and speed that I just described above produces kinetic energy in the form of an electron flow emitting photons. Photons that are emitted from this field will travel at the speed of light and this is because this velocity of the photon has been given this velocity or momentum due to the full limit velocity of the field itself that has emitted it. The processes in Physics as a whole go from crude forces to a more refined state to a dispersion to a state of crude forces again and so on and so they can never excede limits in their own natural state. Experiments have proven that the speed of light c limit can only be exceeded by small quantities of matter which have been shot artificially with extra momentum to exceed the speed of light c limit. Objects or masses as they approach the speed of light c limit tend to disperse because their electric charge breaks down. Is there a reason why the electric charge in masses breaks down at the speed of light c? I am sure there is a reason why! The following is I think and I may be wrong the reason why it happens; because the processes and vibrations within the inside of the object are in a sense slower and cannot keep up with the external speed of the object which is faster and so the electric charge in masses in a sense disperses due to this. The speed of light c limit exists for a reason and it will always fascinate the curious at heart and the most fascinating aspect about the speed of light c limit is the fact that it is more constant than anything else that we know about, because the addition or subtraction of the speed of a moving object relative to it has no affect on it and it always remains constant.
Saturday, 10 May 2008
THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC ABILITIES
The mistake psychics and mediums have made in the past is that they have attributed their powers to external causes rather than to themselves. Psychic ability and mediumship is an ability that exists latently within the psyche of most human beings and goes largely unnoticed unless activated and developed, which is the case with the people in whom it is most evident. Psychic ability can be said to be more prevalent in woman than in men; for the simple reason that women are more in touch with the irrational parts of the mind than men are. As I have mentioned elsewhere in my writings, irrationality is not a state of mind that is devoid of order and reason all together, but is merely indicative of the confusion that is found in consciousness because of the nonlinear states of mind which are difficult to comprehend due to the psyche's desire to grasp complex aspects of reality by nonlinear means and somehow not being able to rationalize the process rationally or because of confusion for other reasons also. Irrationality has order just like rationality does, it is simply that irrationality has an order that is harder to comprehend than the order that can be found in reason. The utterances from the Pythia of Delphi in classical Greece is a perfect example in which to illustrate that the strange irrational and incomprehensible words of a woman could in some strange way have an order and a relevance to them that was so profound that it somehow related to ordered choices in events of a rational kind that applied to any given circumstance put forward for judgement. The Pythia believed that she was in direct communication with the god Apollo and was his mortal human representative on earth during these moments of oracular insight. Most psychics use a combination of intelligence and intuition mixed with an intensely strong belief in their own powers to make the predictions that they are able to come up with. A definition of intuition is that it is a faculty which is a balanced marriage between instinct and reason and therefore combines the senses with the rational cognitions of logical thought. Intuition as a faculty must have been developed by organisms as a means in which to understand their environment both rationally and instinctually. Some thinkers are of the opinion that rational desires, thoughts and feelings do not affect choices in natural selection and that choices are purely selfish and instinctual, but this is not so, seeing as though it cannot be any other way that both the instinctual and rational play a part. Advantageous faculties are adopted and desired by organisms for their usefulness. There are also those cynical people among us who think that psychic people and all mediums generally are either delusional people or are exploitative charlatans and so on, but this does not take away from the fact that a genuine proof of nonlinear ways of thinking have been displayed by psychics and mediums in many cases. Instinct, intuition and reason must all be aspects of psychic ability and also all true explanations of psychic ability, I am sure, must also be explainable by reason and not by beliefs in external mystical forces and influences.
Monday, 14 April 2008
TIME, PROCESSES AND CHANGE
Time is an artificial human construct and has been created as a tool to record the changes that occur in the processes within matter and abstract reality, because time in a sense represents "change itself" as a facet within processes. Time as a human construct, one can say, is an illusion, but the processes in matter, that time represents are not an illusion and are real. Now time is not an independent thing in nature that exists by itself naturally. Even though time exists artificially as a representation it is also universal and therefore represents certain truths which exist in processes. Time as a regular representation of duration in moments can only exist as an internal constitution of objects and this is because time cannot be outwardly intuited and is relative in regard to one moving object relative to another in certain cases. If time as we have found out is an internal constitution of objects then time must correspond to the internal processes of objects and how they are affected by the objects activities.
Time only has the one dimension which is successive and if time is to be consistently regular and if its duration in moments are to be standard measures then the time in any given object must be measured in a stationary position.
The duration of the moments in time in an object is either standard and regular as in a non-moving object, or they are affected by the objects activities. Now the duration of the moments in time of an object is affected by the changes occurring to the molecular constitution of any object due to its activities, such as its proximity and distance from any major gravitational sources and also the speeds at which an object travels through space affects the vibration of the molecules of an objects inner constitution and are slowed down by the pure and empirical intuition of space of the moving object itself. The molecules in the brain of a person travelling at fast speeds will not notice the difference in the duration of the moments in time because the vibration in the molecules in their brains have been slowed down also and so therefore they do not perceive the difference in time relative to a non-moving object. Some people have held the contention, that time as a human construct is merely an illusion, which it is, but the processes in matter, that time represents are not an illusion and this is because if these processes were an illusion then time would not be governed by exact universal laws of change, and mathematical equations would not be able to record these changes and as Pythagoras once said: "time is the soul of this world". The processes that time represents could only be considered an illusion if it was unaffected by the exact changes relative to other processes and was completely changeable and inaccurate, but this is not so because time is an accurate indicator of the processes and the changes that occur in objects internally and relative to other objects and space itself. If these processes that time represent were an illusion then time would not be considered as a dimension in its own right and this is because time measures abstract quantities which can be accurate enough to allow people and events to coincide at specific locations at certain times and so on. Most of the causes in nature are more like inevitable processes rather than actual purposeful and intentional causes, and only a few of the causes in nature are intentional, deliberate, and calculated.
All the inevitable causal processes that exist in nature are responsible for the changes that exist in the universe and everything in the universe changes but at different rates. Now the changes that occur in nature give the impression to the senses of human beings that most changes occur suddenly and as definite causes, but change in nature is consistent, gradual and slow with occasional causes and changes that are obvious amongst all this causal change. Everything in the universe changes except for what Aristotle called: "the unmoved mover" and this unmoved mover is the perpetual and ceaseless vibration within energy itself and is the cause of all the gradual and consistent changes that occur in processes generally but is in a sense unaffected itself.
The unmoved mover (or what the rationalists viewed as the primary substance) changes things in processes but remains the same in certain ways and this is because it retains its stability, integrity, and consistency throughout the effect it has had on all the processes that have been affected by it. A lot of the processes in the universe change very slowly and evenly with a sense of stability and consistency and time in a sense is a good way of recording this. Animate organic life as opposed to inanimate inorganic life gives you the impression that it is quick changing and inanimate inorganic life gives you the impression that it is slow changing and does not change much, but these are only rates of change, but they both change none the less. Slow changing processes have more stability than the quicker changing processes and so can be considered less affected by the unmoved mover than are the quick less stable processes.
All the changes that occur in processes are continuous and consistent and eventually resolve themselves, and all these processes can only come from a force (i.e., the unmoved mover) that is stable, consistent, continuous, interactive throughout all its parts, vibratory, perpetual, ceaseless, infinite, eternal, extensive and so on. To suggest that the unmoved mover as a force has the qualities that I have enumerated infers that our universe would be only one among many and according to the eminent scientist Stephen Hawking universes exist as bubbles side by side and also expanding throughout the vastness of infinite space. The hypothesis of Stephen Hawking makes a lot of sense and makes much more sense than saying that an universe by itself can appear from a finite singularity out of nowhere and disconnected from everything else amongst the infinite energy and space that exists out there. The so-called bubbles of Hawking's theory can be viewed more as being like fields of connected energy which interacts with one another side by side amongst the vastness of space. Time does not exist independently in nature because processes in nature are simply changes. What the people in the past noticed is that the processes of change in nature repeated as seasons and cycles of gradual change and could be divided mathematically into years, seasons, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc; so they began to build stone structures like Stonehenge to keep a record of time and its passage. For instance, in some parts of the world the new year begins in spring, which I would think is a more logical time to begin a new year. Time as we know it today is a human construct and a useful illusion as well as a tool which in a sense is founded on the supposed exact day of birth of Jesus Christ and months like july and august are named after people like julius Caeser and Augustus caeser respectively.
Time only has the one dimension which is successive and if time is to be consistently regular and if its duration in moments are to be standard measures then the time in any given object must be measured in a stationary position.
The duration of the moments in time in an object is either standard and regular as in a non-moving object, or they are affected by the objects activities. Now the duration of the moments in time of an object is affected by the changes occurring to the molecular constitution of any object due to its activities, such as its proximity and distance from any major gravitational sources and also the speeds at which an object travels through space affects the vibration of the molecules of an objects inner constitution and are slowed down by the pure and empirical intuition of space of the moving object itself. The molecules in the brain of a person travelling at fast speeds will not notice the difference in the duration of the moments in time because the vibration in the molecules in their brains have been slowed down also and so therefore they do not perceive the difference in time relative to a non-moving object. Some people have held the contention, that time as a human construct is merely an illusion, which it is, but the processes in matter, that time represents are not an illusion and this is because if these processes were an illusion then time would not be governed by exact universal laws of change, and mathematical equations would not be able to record these changes and as Pythagoras once said: "time is the soul of this world". The processes that time represents could only be considered an illusion if it was unaffected by the exact changes relative to other processes and was completely changeable and inaccurate, but this is not so because time is an accurate indicator of the processes and the changes that occur in objects internally and relative to other objects and space itself. If these processes that time represent were an illusion then time would not be considered as a dimension in its own right and this is because time measures abstract quantities which can be accurate enough to allow people and events to coincide at specific locations at certain times and so on. Most of the causes in nature are more like inevitable processes rather than actual purposeful and intentional causes, and only a few of the causes in nature are intentional, deliberate, and calculated.
All the inevitable causal processes that exist in nature are responsible for the changes that exist in the universe and everything in the universe changes but at different rates. Now the changes that occur in nature give the impression to the senses of human beings that most changes occur suddenly and as definite causes, but change in nature is consistent, gradual and slow with occasional causes and changes that are obvious amongst all this causal change. Everything in the universe changes except for what Aristotle called: "the unmoved mover" and this unmoved mover is the perpetual and ceaseless vibration within energy itself and is the cause of all the gradual and consistent changes that occur in processes generally but is in a sense unaffected itself.
The unmoved mover (or what the rationalists viewed as the primary substance) changes things in processes but remains the same in certain ways and this is because it retains its stability, integrity, and consistency throughout the effect it has had on all the processes that have been affected by it. A lot of the processes in the universe change very slowly and evenly with a sense of stability and consistency and time in a sense is a good way of recording this. Animate organic life as opposed to inanimate inorganic life gives you the impression that it is quick changing and inanimate inorganic life gives you the impression that it is slow changing and does not change much, but these are only rates of change, but they both change none the less. Slow changing processes have more stability than the quicker changing processes and so can be considered less affected by the unmoved mover than are the quick less stable processes.
All the changes that occur in processes are continuous and consistent and eventually resolve themselves, and all these processes can only come from a force (i.e., the unmoved mover) that is stable, consistent, continuous, interactive throughout all its parts, vibratory, perpetual, ceaseless, infinite, eternal, extensive and so on. To suggest that the unmoved mover as a force has the qualities that I have enumerated infers that our universe would be only one among many and according to the eminent scientist Stephen Hawking universes exist as bubbles side by side and also expanding throughout the vastness of infinite space. The hypothesis of Stephen Hawking makes a lot of sense and makes much more sense than saying that an universe by itself can appear from a finite singularity out of nowhere and disconnected from everything else amongst the infinite energy and space that exists out there. The so-called bubbles of Hawking's theory can be viewed more as being like fields of connected energy which interacts with one another side by side amongst the vastness of space. Time does not exist independently in nature because processes in nature are simply changes. What the people in the past noticed is that the processes of change in nature repeated as seasons and cycles of gradual change and could be divided mathematically into years, seasons, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc; so they began to build stone structures like Stonehenge to keep a record of time and its passage. For instance, in some parts of the world the new year begins in spring, which I would think is a more logical time to begin a new year. Time as we know it today is a human construct and a useful illusion as well as a tool which in a sense is founded on the supposed exact day of birth of Jesus Christ and months like july and august are named after people like julius Caeser and Augustus caeser respectively.
Friday, 21 March 2008
ON THE SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MODES OF INQUIRY INTO TRUTH
Whenever it is found that we are able to think for ourselves on any given topic or aspect of reality to be observed a part of us becomes, so to speak liberated from the common mass of thinking that most people do and in so doing we also find ourselves enveloped by a sense of wonder and purpose in these moments of pure unconditioned thought.
From the moment we are born we are prepared for a conditioned life by those in authority who happen to raise us whether they are our parents, relatives or some other guardian and in us is instilled by others subjective modes of thinking due to our conditioning in this regard.
Now to follow societal conditioning without questioning it, I must add, seems to me to be a long road towards ignorance and error and this is because all second hand conditioned thinking is merely impersonal and lacks all trace of a personal judgement and assessment of the truth. Historical facts must be accepted as they are written but should also be compared to the common sense aspects of reality that we know of as well as to the other written or factual sources that exist for their truths to be understood realistically and beneficially. There are amongst us those completely delusional human beings who think that the fantasy and the conditioned thinking impressed on them by society could somehow apply to the experiences of their senses in the real world that they live in. Now clearly these fantasies, delusions and societal conditioning that they have thought about do not exist as part of their sense experiences in any shape or form. Errors in judgement usually occur when the subjective is confused for the objective and this is because all ideas of the truth originates from objective reality via the senses. Intense and acute subjectivity is a repression of one's own desire for objective and impartial truth and most human beings suffer from far too much subjectivity at the expense of objective truth and this is because of societal conditioning and plain old ignorance and mental laziness.
Objective truth and modes of thinking tends to get repressed because it usually undermines and puts into doubt many of the things that have been learned due to societal conditioning that is currently believed to be true whether religious or spiritual or just general things we have been taught by our guardians and society. The concept of the pure knowing subject is how the objective truth in matters is allowed to flood and saturate our consciousness and this is achieved in a sense by being empty, impartial and unopinionated in one's judgements of matters and to allow comparisons, differences, diversity, similarities, identities and sameness in ideas to occur by itself until a conception of the truth of a matter is arrived at in one's understanding organically and by itself without any subjective prodding or interference. The ego, the subjective and the personal aspects of one's being can be highly illusory and are what leads people astray and it is the universal and the objective which yields impartial truth. The solutions to the problems in the world and also in our lack of understanding of reality can be found once we have overcome all the false and arrogant aspects of the ego and the "I" that exist within us and this can only occur when we realize that the universal is preferable to the personal mind and ego and its petty, temporary, self-important and illusory attitudes. The personal mind and ego are only an illusory dewdrop relative to the universal and objective truth that is like an ocean and we should all learn to become one with this ocean of truth that exists out there in the cosmos. What I propose is that we as human beings live truthfully, straightforwardly, sincerely and objectively rather than subjectively, dishonestly and selfishly without any care for the truth, posterity and the universal. Impartial truth is only revealed inwardly when one is empirical, objective, real, factual, unbiased, unemotional, analytical, logical, scrutinizing and so on. There are emotional subjectivists who claim that truth does not even exist and if it does it only exists in language games or in opinion, all of which are sophisms, I might add.
From the moment we are born we are prepared for a conditioned life by those in authority who happen to raise us whether they are our parents, relatives or some other guardian and in us is instilled by others subjective modes of thinking due to our conditioning in this regard.
Now to follow societal conditioning without questioning it, I must add, seems to me to be a long road towards ignorance and error and this is because all second hand conditioned thinking is merely impersonal and lacks all trace of a personal judgement and assessment of the truth. Historical facts must be accepted as they are written but should also be compared to the common sense aspects of reality that we know of as well as to the other written or factual sources that exist for their truths to be understood realistically and beneficially. There are amongst us those completely delusional human beings who think that the fantasy and the conditioned thinking impressed on them by society could somehow apply to the experiences of their senses in the real world that they live in. Now clearly these fantasies, delusions and societal conditioning that they have thought about do not exist as part of their sense experiences in any shape or form. Errors in judgement usually occur when the subjective is confused for the objective and this is because all ideas of the truth originates from objective reality via the senses. Intense and acute subjectivity is a repression of one's own desire for objective and impartial truth and most human beings suffer from far too much subjectivity at the expense of objective truth and this is because of societal conditioning and plain old ignorance and mental laziness.
Objective truth and modes of thinking tends to get repressed because it usually undermines and puts into doubt many of the things that have been learned due to societal conditioning that is currently believed to be true whether religious or spiritual or just general things we have been taught by our guardians and society. The concept of the pure knowing subject is how the objective truth in matters is allowed to flood and saturate our consciousness and this is achieved in a sense by being empty, impartial and unopinionated in one's judgements of matters and to allow comparisons, differences, diversity, similarities, identities and sameness in ideas to occur by itself until a conception of the truth of a matter is arrived at in one's understanding organically and by itself without any subjective prodding or interference. The ego, the subjective and the personal aspects of one's being can be highly illusory and are what leads people astray and it is the universal and the objective which yields impartial truth. The solutions to the problems in the world and also in our lack of understanding of reality can be found once we have overcome all the false and arrogant aspects of the ego and the "I" that exist within us and this can only occur when we realize that the universal is preferable to the personal mind and ego and its petty, temporary, self-important and illusory attitudes. The personal mind and ego are only an illusory dewdrop relative to the universal and objective truth that is like an ocean and we should all learn to become one with this ocean of truth that exists out there in the cosmos. What I propose is that we as human beings live truthfully, straightforwardly, sincerely and objectively rather than subjectively, dishonestly and selfishly without any care for the truth, posterity and the universal. Impartial truth is only revealed inwardly when one is empirical, objective, real, factual, unbiased, unemotional, analytical, logical, scrutinizing and so on. There are emotional subjectivists who claim that truth does not even exist and if it does it only exists in language games or in opinion, all of which are sophisms, I might add.
Friday, 14 March 2008
ON THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY
Anyone with a deep interest in philosophy will from time to time encounter cynical, apathetic, skeptical and generally negative attitudes towards the value and necessity of philosophy from the opinions of others. Anyone with a healthy interest and love for philosophy I feel would find that it is of great significance that he or she in a sense reassesses what philosophy really means to them and what they hope to accomplish by it. Speaking for myself I would say that philosophy is a science that is objective, empirical, real and factual and it does not have a thing to do with the subjective fancies that some people are known to invent in their imaginations, but in a sense philosophy does not deny and is not against the subjective experiences people have where and when it counts, for example, in the improvement of our lives and in self mastery. It is a well known fact that most of the ideas of the truth that we attain in our consciousness as human beings has been received through our senses and only a minority of the truths that we have are subjective. Subjective truths correspond with the minor facts of our lives and also to the few original ideas or insights we might happen to have.
It is true that philosophy does not produce anything in the way that science, engineering and industry does but this does not mean that philosophy is useless and redundant. Even though philosophy does not produce objects and things in the literal sense it cannot be considered of any less value therefore and this is because we cannot learn anything from the possession of objects themselves but only from what they can do, whereas we can actually learn many things from the use of philosophy itself as an act and a process and as a thing that we do analytically. Even though we can value physical objects as products and tools, they are ultimately of less importance and value to us than what is going on in our minds and feelings and actions and this is because how we live our life determines whether we are happy or fulfilled and so on or whether we are living purposefully. The value of our lives does not exist in the physical objects that we use and own as products but exists within us in how we live our lives, in our thoughts, feelings and actions. The way we live our life is enhanced and improved by the correct use of philosophy applied in all the aspects of our lives. Science, engineering and industry, etc, cannot teach us how to live and these things cannot teach us how to find meaning because only philosophy can teach us these things. Philosophers, for example, should not have to compete against scientists and this is because scientists only think about a few particular types of phenomenon and things, whereas philosophers think about all the different aspects of reality and its truths whether subjective and personal or objective or impersonal. Now philosophy attempts to figure out and describe the truths of reality, its laws, rules, principles, axioms, etc and philosophy uses logic and different methods of reasoning to do this and to attain knowledge. The more that philosophy evolves the more limited people attempt to make it and an example of this can be found in some of the statements of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus where he tries to make out that philosophy is only limited to the logical clarification of thoughts and he claims that philosophy has not a thing to do with nature, reality or the natural sciences. According to wittgenstein's narrow view a philosopher has no right to have theories on reality and nature, which begs the question; since when was natural philosophy not philosophy anymore?
The whole point about philosophy is that a philosopher can love wisdom and truth in all its forms and a philosopher should have theories, ideas, inferences, insights, hypotheses, etc, on all aspects of reality and nature and its truths. I have a strong belief people should quit limiting the role of philosophy in their opinion of what they think it should be. Jacques Derrida the 20th century philosopher claims that human reason has been shaped by a dishonest pursuit of certainty and that reason is indifferent to the other (i.e. the things it does not know or cannot account for either morally or factually) and in a sense this makes reason a tyranny which can only be sustained by the evils of repressing and excluding what is uncertain. According to this so-called dishonesty of reason humans are lead into atrocities such as world wars and the launching of atomic bombs etc... I do not think that reason is dishonest or blind in all the avenues it takes up or is applied to, but it does seem to be this way when it is used to back up opinion, choice or self-interest. But when reason is applied in an objective sense and also with a full awareness of right and wrong it becomes a tool that is useful and has aided human beings for thousands of years. Derrida's observation only points out that reason has both negative as well as positive aspects to it, but then again people can say this about many things in nature anyway. Reason can only be blind if it is clouded by the wills desire to fulfill its own blind, evil or dishonest needs and motives and also the will does not like to be opposed and opposition makes the will more evil and cruel. Objective reason on the other hand always attempts to create a balance and sense of justice in all assessments of behaviour or potential behaviour. Reason by its very nature has dual negative and positive aspects to it in the sense that it has a negative, dishonest and blind aspect to it, but it also has a positive, useful, harmonious and objective aspect to it also and so one has to be careful in how one uses, and justifies their own use of reason in the analytical sense of being able to explain it and condone its use in any given situation.
Obviously reason and rationality are more favourable than irrationality and confusion but the use of reason itself must be explained and condoned by facts and motives and by further reasons also otherwise it is merely blind or can be used for all kinds of ends whether these ends happen to be good or bad. All the motives and reasons for why people do things ultimately comes from their own inner nature and this is why people can use reason to condone and justify negative, positive and ignorant things because these are all aspects of human beings and this is because human beings are not perfect and there are also many things that they do not know or understand and this is because they have not given it sufficient thought in the course of their lives. All true philosophers know that it is not reason or logic that is at fault in the world, but it is simply that the world and the people in it are not perfect . Philosophy gives us certainty and guidance and solutions and also the knowledge of the reasons for things and also the knowledge of the truth. Where would human beings be without reason and philosophy? Animals do not have these things to the extent that human beings do and look at where they are in the scheme of things! It would be impossible for a great philosopher to abandon, or doubt his or her own philosophy in favour of the wretched ignorance of the masses and their herd type of behaviour. The worst and most useless kind of philosophers are the one's who cannot think for themselves and are known to swallow the philosophies of other thinkers hook line and sinker to the extent that they are even known to repeat the errors of those other philosophers they have followed. Even though the western philosophical tradition has given a lot to humanity it has a negative aspect to it in the sense that it puts a lot of emphasis on argument and critical thinking. Discourse itself should be a means to an end and peoples ego's should not get in the way of attaining to truths, solutions and conclusions in their propositions and hypotheses.
It has become clear to me why some thinkers and philosophers have a cynical or oppositional attitude towards a lot of propositions and theories that they encounter and this is because many people have an insecure and unsure grasp of the truth, but yet have a sort of misplaced ego-trip type of certainty and love of argumentation and critical thinking. Argumentation is only useful in a discourse when both parties are unsure of the result of the propositions and theories being discussed or when one party is not convinced of a truth the other happens to be sure of. Written philosophy as a representation, description and analysis of the truths of reality and phenomenon goes through long chains of rationalizations, because in a sense writing is an extension of speech and speech which is a passive action but of thoughts is in turn an extension of ideas which are representations of empirically perceived things which we have attained via the senses. Now for a person to claim that written philosophy is merely a dead useless undecided exercise which quickly loses its meaning will of course not find any value in philosophy because in their view there is no connection between observed truths and its representations in written form, but if this was so then one would not be able to practice philosophy at all or use it in any way which is not so because philosophy itself has been utilized by many people for thousands of years with obvious results, even the declaration of independence itself is a philosophy but presented in political form and is well known to have created many changes in the fabric of society both practically and as an ideal. Philosophy is not just a word game or a language error game like that cynical sophist Wittgenstein claims. Philosophy is not useless and absurd nonsense as some people assume. Philosophy is the most important and significant thing in our lives and this is because as a human being we have no choice about the fact that we need a philosophy. Science, materialism and all materialistic ways of thinking are secondary, whereas our philosophy and exact way of thinking, and feeling and how we live our life is a primary and vital thing to us and this can only be developed by our own philosophy both subjective and objective. Philosophy allows us to be truthful to ourselves at all times, and also about the world and our place in it. Philosophy also allows us to utilize reason to make the correct and best decisions for us personally. We can say that philosophy is a science in its reasoning abilities, in the sense that it can demonstrate most of its conclusions by example and evidence. Philosophy can also be viewed as a science because it can be systematically applied to phenomena to achieve results (in other words, it is a system like science). Philosophy is a science that is empirical, factual, objective, actual, real, logical, analytical, scrutinizing, impartial and unbiased. Philosophy deals in descriptions, propositions, statements, attempted explanations, advice, suggestions, theories, hypotheses and notions etc... Not all the conclusions and theories of philosophy can be demonstrated conclsusively, but one can say this about science also and this is because our senses cannot go everywhere to demonstrate everything.
All propositions in philosophy should be factual and rational and relate to actual things, either concretely, abstractly or logically.
It is true that philosophy does not produce anything in the way that science, engineering and industry does but this does not mean that philosophy is useless and redundant. Even though philosophy does not produce objects and things in the literal sense it cannot be considered of any less value therefore and this is because we cannot learn anything from the possession of objects themselves but only from what they can do, whereas we can actually learn many things from the use of philosophy itself as an act and a process and as a thing that we do analytically. Even though we can value physical objects as products and tools, they are ultimately of less importance and value to us than what is going on in our minds and feelings and actions and this is because how we live our life determines whether we are happy or fulfilled and so on or whether we are living purposefully. The value of our lives does not exist in the physical objects that we use and own as products but exists within us in how we live our lives, in our thoughts, feelings and actions. The way we live our life is enhanced and improved by the correct use of philosophy applied in all the aspects of our lives. Science, engineering and industry, etc, cannot teach us how to live and these things cannot teach us how to find meaning because only philosophy can teach us these things. Philosophers, for example, should not have to compete against scientists and this is because scientists only think about a few particular types of phenomenon and things, whereas philosophers think about all the different aspects of reality and its truths whether subjective and personal or objective or impersonal. Now philosophy attempts to figure out and describe the truths of reality, its laws, rules, principles, axioms, etc and philosophy uses logic and different methods of reasoning to do this and to attain knowledge. The more that philosophy evolves the more limited people attempt to make it and an example of this can be found in some of the statements of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus where he tries to make out that philosophy is only limited to the logical clarification of thoughts and he claims that philosophy has not a thing to do with nature, reality or the natural sciences. According to wittgenstein's narrow view a philosopher has no right to have theories on reality and nature, which begs the question; since when was natural philosophy not philosophy anymore?
The whole point about philosophy is that a philosopher can love wisdom and truth in all its forms and a philosopher should have theories, ideas, inferences, insights, hypotheses, etc, on all aspects of reality and nature and its truths. I have a strong belief people should quit limiting the role of philosophy in their opinion of what they think it should be. Jacques Derrida the 20th century philosopher claims that human reason has been shaped by a dishonest pursuit of certainty and that reason is indifferent to the other (i.e. the things it does not know or cannot account for either morally or factually) and in a sense this makes reason a tyranny which can only be sustained by the evils of repressing and excluding what is uncertain. According to this so-called dishonesty of reason humans are lead into atrocities such as world wars and the launching of atomic bombs etc... I do not think that reason is dishonest or blind in all the avenues it takes up or is applied to, but it does seem to be this way when it is used to back up opinion, choice or self-interest. But when reason is applied in an objective sense and also with a full awareness of right and wrong it becomes a tool that is useful and has aided human beings for thousands of years. Derrida's observation only points out that reason has both negative as well as positive aspects to it, but then again people can say this about many things in nature anyway. Reason can only be blind if it is clouded by the wills desire to fulfill its own blind, evil or dishonest needs and motives and also the will does not like to be opposed and opposition makes the will more evil and cruel. Objective reason on the other hand always attempts to create a balance and sense of justice in all assessments of behaviour or potential behaviour. Reason by its very nature has dual negative and positive aspects to it in the sense that it has a negative, dishonest and blind aspect to it, but it also has a positive, useful, harmonious and objective aspect to it also and so one has to be careful in how one uses, and justifies their own use of reason in the analytical sense of being able to explain it and condone its use in any given situation.
Obviously reason and rationality are more favourable than irrationality and confusion but the use of reason itself must be explained and condoned by facts and motives and by further reasons also otherwise it is merely blind or can be used for all kinds of ends whether these ends happen to be good or bad. All the motives and reasons for why people do things ultimately comes from their own inner nature and this is why people can use reason to condone and justify negative, positive and ignorant things because these are all aspects of human beings and this is because human beings are not perfect and there are also many things that they do not know or understand and this is because they have not given it sufficient thought in the course of their lives. All true philosophers know that it is not reason or logic that is at fault in the world, but it is simply that the world and the people in it are not perfect . Philosophy gives us certainty and guidance and solutions and also the knowledge of the reasons for things and also the knowledge of the truth. Where would human beings be without reason and philosophy? Animals do not have these things to the extent that human beings do and look at where they are in the scheme of things! It would be impossible for a great philosopher to abandon, or doubt his or her own philosophy in favour of the wretched ignorance of the masses and their herd type of behaviour. The worst and most useless kind of philosophers are the one's who cannot think for themselves and are known to swallow the philosophies of other thinkers hook line and sinker to the extent that they are even known to repeat the errors of those other philosophers they have followed. Even though the western philosophical tradition has given a lot to humanity it has a negative aspect to it in the sense that it puts a lot of emphasis on argument and critical thinking. Discourse itself should be a means to an end and peoples ego's should not get in the way of attaining to truths, solutions and conclusions in their propositions and hypotheses.
It has become clear to me why some thinkers and philosophers have a cynical or oppositional attitude towards a lot of propositions and theories that they encounter and this is because many people have an insecure and unsure grasp of the truth, but yet have a sort of misplaced ego-trip type of certainty and love of argumentation and critical thinking. Argumentation is only useful in a discourse when both parties are unsure of the result of the propositions and theories being discussed or when one party is not convinced of a truth the other happens to be sure of. Written philosophy as a representation, description and analysis of the truths of reality and phenomenon goes through long chains of rationalizations, because in a sense writing is an extension of speech and speech which is a passive action but of thoughts is in turn an extension of ideas which are representations of empirically perceived things which we have attained via the senses. Now for a person to claim that written philosophy is merely a dead useless undecided exercise which quickly loses its meaning will of course not find any value in philosophy because in their view there is no connection between observed truths and its representations in written form, but if this was so then one would not be able to practice philosophy at all or use it in any way which is not so because philosophy itself has been utilized by many people for thousands of years with obvious results, even the declaration of independence itself is a philosophy but presented in political form and is well known to have created many changes in the fabric of society both practically and as an ideal. Philosophy is not just a word game or a language error game like that cynical sophist Wittgenstein claims. Philosophy is not useless and absurd nonsense as some people assume. Philosophy is the most important and significant thing in our lives and this is because as a human being we have no choice about the fact that we need a philosophy. Science, materialism and all materialistic ways of thinking are secondary, whereas our philosophy and exact way of thinking, and feeling and how we live our life is a primary and vital thing to us and this can only be developed by our own philosophy both subjective and objective. Philosophy allows us to be truthful to ourselves at all times, and also about the world and our place in it. Philosophy also allows us to utilize reason to make the correct and best decisions for us personally. We can say that philosophy is a science in its reasoning abilities, in the sense that it can demonstrate most of its conclusions by example and evidence. Philosophy can also be viewed as a science because it can be systematically applied to phenomena to achieve results (in other words, it is a system like science). Philosophy is a science that is empirical, factual, objective, actual, real, logical, analytical, scrutinizing, impartial and unbiased. Philosophy deals in descriptions, propositions, statements, attempted explanations, advice, suggestions, theories, hypotheses and notions etc... Not all the conclusions and theories of philosophy can be demonstrated conclsusively, but one can say this about science also and this is because our senses cannot go everywhere to demonstrate everything.
All propositions in philosophy should be factual and rational and relate to actual things, either concretely, abstractly or logically.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
UNIVERSAL DEFINITIONS AND GENERAL AXIOMS
The desire to search and to find standard universal definitions for things and the need to believe that they are regular and objective truths which really exist eternally and abstractly and at times concretely as part of reality has haunted philosophers for two and a half millennia.
The need for universal definitions of the abstract and concrete qualities, states and conditions of things such as justice, beauty, love, fear and so on are usually part of any in depth thinking about the qualities, states and conditions of the things we experience in regard to whether they are universally intuited and felt or not. Some universal definitions for things require an abstract and a concrete analysis, such as universal definitions for beauty, whereas the quality and condition of some things are mostly abstract in definition.
The analytical process of actually searching for universal definitions from particular cases at hand is one of induction and requires that the thinker syllogize in inductive questioning concerning the quality and conditions of the things in question, for example, what is considered to have a beauty is not only pleasant to our minds, but is also something which is pleasant to our feelings and our senses also and this is because symmetry and proportion are aspects of what is pleasant to our senses in objects. Now the things which we think that are pleasant to our feelings and emotions usually involve how people and things behave and operate in nature and how they make us feel in the sense that they give us a pleasant feeling that is noticeable to us. A static work of art when observed can also give us a pleasant feeling in our being and in our emotions generally. When I mention that the conditions of a thing play a part in an assessment of its universal definition I mean to say, for example, that a damaged work of art is not as beautiful as an undamaged one or that justice has to be applied to actual situations rather than just being purely universal and abstract. Universal definitions and general axioms can only be arrived at by using induction. There are philosophers and scientific minded thinkers who view induction as a problem and claim that induction is a non-demonstrative method of inference therefore it is not justified or valid and any proposition, theory or inference based on it can be deemed false or worthless for the reasons mentioned. This so-called problem of induction exists only in logical procedures and their inability to assess processes in reality that cannot be demonstrated or proven outright. The validity of an inductive inference should be considered as being relative to the situation at hand and should also be dependent on the other forms and methods of reasoning at one's disposal for any given inductive assessment of a phenomenon or fact. Induction should not be viewed and applied as a rigid and regular method of reasoning to all situations and this is because philosophers and thinkers generally use many methods and forms of reasoning and logic simply to figure out one particular thing.
An example of the relative aspects of inductive inference and their dependence on other methods of reasoning for their validity can be shown by the following examples: All observed swans are white, therefore all swans are white, it is obvious that if one comes across a black swan this inference will be disproved but the problem with this pseudo inference is that it is based on what John Locke called a secondary quality because colour is not a real stable property of objects themselves and are variable and therefore it should never have been used for an inductive inference of this kind. Take for example, the claims of the inductive theories of evolution and also quantum physics as examples of induction which provide evidence that is hard to doubt and disprove as facts because they are backed up by evidence. Opposition to any inductive theory or inference can be crushed and neutralized if these theories and inferences have evidence to back them up, what would be the point of saying that these theories are false because they are non-demonstrative and therefore not justified if they have evidence to back them up. Also when one thinks of quantum theory it is not possible to imagine matter consisting of anything except molecules, atoms and particles in wave form, etc, what else is matter going to consist of instead of these things? Induction when it involves self-evident truths whether these truths happen to be empirical, universal, abstract or concrete or a combination of the two is what are known as legitimate conclusions and inferences and are valid unless proven otherwise.
The whole point about logic is that it can give valid reasons for things rather than being a tool to explain and demonstrate all things which cannot be demonstrated by using logic, an example of this inability of logic to demonstrate processes in reality is the claim of the theory of evolution that human beings and apes have a common ancestor; now how can logic and its premises demonstrate this? It cannot and the reason for this is because logic is out of its depth in this instance. Even though the theory of evolution is an inductive theory it does not need logic to validate itself in a demonstration and this is because it has the DNA research as well as all the other evidence in existence that can and does validate its authenticity and this is because non-demonstrative logic is only needed to explain the reasons of how and why things are so. Sherlock Holmes the fictional character or any detective in a real life situation would use deduction to solve crimes in a non-demonstrative sense also because they are not able to show you the actual crimes occurring but only in how they seemed to occur and how and why they happened due to evidence and apparent motives and this is not much different to inductive theories that have evidence or are self-evident but cannot be actually demonstrated.
A common argument that is used by people who doubt the validity of induction is that it is presumptuous to assume that the sun will rise tomorrow (i.e. the earth continues to spin on its axis and orbit the sun) because it has always done so as far as we know during our life. What these skeptical people who view induction as a problem fail to realize is that it is a valid enough conclusion to think that the sun will rise tomorrow due to our scientific knowledge and evidence. Also if something prevents the sun from rising tomorrow it will be due to another reason that will not have a thing to do with our original inductive conclusion. The universal and the particular, the potential and the actual are all aspects of reality which must be analyzed in a rigorous manner if universal definitions and general axioms are to be reached and found. Justice is in a sense an extension of the harmony and balance that can be found in nature but is perceived as necessary because it is impossible for a community of advanced forms of biological life to be happy without it.
The need for universal definitions of the abstract and concrete qualities, states and conditions of things such as justice, beauty, love, fear and so on are usually part of any in depth thinking about the qualities, states and conditions of the things we experience in regard to whether they are universally intuited and felt or not. Some universal definitions for things require an abstract and a concrete analysis, such as universal definitions for beauty, whereas the quality and condition of some things are mostly abstract in definition.
The analytical process of actually searching for universal definitions from particular cases at hand is one of induction and requires that the thinker syllogize in inductive questioning concerning the quality and conditions of the things in question, for example, what is considered to have a beauty is not only pleasant to our minds, but is also something which is pleasant to our feelings and our senses also and this is because symmetry and proportion are aspects of what is pleasant to our senses in objects. Now the things which we think that are pleasant to our feelings and emotions usually involve how people and things behave and operate in nature and how they make us feel in the sense that they give us a pleasant feeling that is noticeable to us. A static work of art when observed can also give us a pleasant feeling in our being and in our emotions generally. When I mention that the conditions of a thing play a part in an assessment of its universal definition I mean to say, for example, that a damaged work of art is not as beautiful as an undamaged one or that justice has to be applied to actual situations rather than just being purely universal and abstract. Universal definitions and general axioms can only be arrived at by using induction. There are philosophers and scientific minded thinkers who view induction as a problem and claim that induction is a non-demonstrative method of inference therefore it is not justified or valid and any proposition, theory or inference based on it can be deemed false or worthless for the reasons mentioned. This so-called problem of induction exists only in logical procedures and their inability to assess processes in reality that cannot be demonstrated or proven outright. The validity of an inductive inference should be considered as being relative to the situation at hand and should also be dependent on the other forms and methods of reasoning at one's disposal for any given inductive assessment of a phenomenon or fact. Induction should not be viewed and applied as a rigid and regular method of reasoning to all situations and this is because philosophers and thinkers generally use many methods and forms of reasoning and logic simply to figure out one particular thing.
An example of the relative aspects of inductive inference and their dependence on other methods of reasoning for their validity can be shown by the following examples: All observed swans are white, therefore all swans are white, it is obvious that if one comes across a black swan this inference will be disproved but the problem with this pseudo inference is that it is based on what John Locke called a secondary quality because colour is not a real stable property of objects themselves and are variable and therefore it should never have been used for an inductive inference of this kind. Take for example, the claims of the inductive theories of evolution and also quantum physics as examples of induction which provide evidence that is hard to doubt and disprove as facts because they are backed up by evidence. Opposition to any inductive theory or inference can be crushed and neutralized if these theories and inferences have evidence to back them up, what would be the point of saying that these theories are false because they are non-demonstrative and therefore not justified if they have evidence to back them up. Also when one thinks of quantum theory it is not possible to imagine matter consisting of anything except molecules, atoms and particles in wave form, etc, what else is matter going to consist of instead of these things? Induction when it involves self-evident truths whether these truths happen to be empirical, universal, abstract or concrete or a combination of the two is what are known as legitimate conclusions and inferences and are valid unless proven otherwise.
The whole point about logic is that it can give valid reasons for things rather than being a tool to explain and demonstrate all things which cannot be demonstrated by using logic, an example of this inability of logic to demonstrate processes in reality is the claim of the theory of evolution that human beings and apes have a common ancestor; now how can logic and its premises demonstrate this? It cannot and the reason for this is because logic is out of its depth in this instance. Even though the theory of evolution is an inductive theory it does not need logic to validate itself in a demonstration and this is because it has the DNA research as well as all the other evidence in existence that can and does validate its authenticity and this is because non-demonstrative logic is only needed to explain the reasons of how and why things are so. Sherlock Holmes the fictional character or any detective in a real life situation would use deduction to solve crimes in a non-demonstrative sense also because they are not able to show you the actual crimes occurring but only in how they seemed to occur and how and why they happened due to evidence and apparent motives and this is not much different to inductive theories that have evidence or are self-evident but cannot be actually demonstrated.
A common argument that is used by people who doubt the validity of induction is that it is presumptuous to assume that the sun will rise tomorrow (i.e. the earth continues to spin on its axis and orbit the sun) because it has always done so as far as we know during our life. What these skeptical people who view induction as a problem fail to realize is that it is a valid enough conclusion to think that the sun will rise tomorrow due to our scientific knowledge and evidence. Also if something prevents the sun from rising tomorrow it will be due to another reason that will not have a thing to do with our original inductive conclusion. The universal and the particular, the potential and the actual are all aspects of reality which must be analyzed in a rigorous manner if universal definitions and general axioms are to be reached and found. Justice is in a sense an extension of the harmony and balance that can be found in nature but is perceived as necessary because it is impossible for a community of advanced forms of biological life to be happy without it.
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