Warning: This is a work in progress. It is not finished. It will not make any sense.
I have always been fascinated by the mystical, but at the same time I have always been a naturalist. I see progress in naturalism as demysticism. The greatest natural discoveries have been the results of quests for understanding the mystical. I began to see that what makes something mystical or natural has little to do with the qualities of the thing itself, but rather has more to do with the way the thing is evaluated.
Being that I have always been fascinated by the mystical, I have had many conversations with religious people. I found that they would often base their thoughts on rhetorical questions. True, originally, these questions would start out as axiomatic statements, but when I asked for details, I would always get rhetorical questions of the opposite condition. In the natural, axiomatic statements are based on reproducible demonstrations, but in the mystical, axiomatic statements are based on the lack of reproducible demonstrations.
Well, I have a habit of answering rhetorical questions.
Before I began the formal study of music theory at a University, I understood music to be generally considered fairly mystical, but I didn't expect that to be the case for people actually studying music formally. I just chalked it up to the ignorance of the general public on the subject. But after arriving at the University, I noticed a sharp difference in how it was studied compared to other "theory".
Being a naturalist, I was brought up with the knowledge of what makes a proper scientific theory. Certainly, I was familiar with alternative ways of studying theory, but associated them with things like metaphysics and religion, not music, a product of observation itself. Apparently, it had not occured to musicians that methods for studying based on observation could be applied to an artifact of the senses. Furthermore, I found this idea generally rare among the entire art community. After further research, I found that this had been identified as a problem since 1860:
The horizons of physics, philosophy, and art have of late been too widely separated, and, as a consequence, the language, the methods, and the aims of any one of these studies present a certain amount of difficulty for the student of any other of them; and possibly this is the principal cause why the problem here undertaken has not been long ago more thoroughly considered and advanced towards its solution.
Hermann Helmholtz,
On The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for The Theory of Music, Introduction
I found in music theory classes the same form of conversation as in my conversations with religious people. Guidelines were given that were not regularly followed, and when they were questioned, the conversation would always lead to a really strange demonstration of what happens when you don't follow the guidelines which would always be a straw-man mistake that no one in their right mind would do. And yet, the composers were regularly breaking the guidelines in ways that weren't questioned at all, but rather treated as if they had some sort of mystical connection to some muse. People would refer to my skills in music not as skill, but as a gift. A gift from what? The composition instructor's emphasis on notation is not unlike the religious emphasis on hermeneutics. I felt as if I were in some cult of composers seen as "inspired" cult leaders, dictating their command-oriented scenarios in unidirectional writings requiring expert interpretation.
The "intent" of the composer would often be discussed. Music was described as having "soul", or as being "lively" or "spirited". While I could see the relation between music and terms used in ontology, I always considered it entirely natural, and therefore never considered trying to understand music using the same methods that are used to study the supernatural. Looking back, I can see why, but I just did not expect then for it to carry over into formal study at a University.
But then it occured to me: if methods for demystifying music could be developed, could this aesthetic philosophy be applied to other fields which share the same terminology from ontology? What about ontology itself?
Ontology is about how media work in general. It is therefore medium-independent: orthogonal to media, and therefore should apply to any medium. A proper theory of ontology could apply even to patterns in binary.
To be continued...
| Informal | Formal | |
|---|---|---|
| External | History | Nature |
| Internal | Technique | Theory |
Science can be considered a descriptive approach to Natural Philosophy in that it attempts to explain the qualities of Nature itself. It does not deal with things like mere natural events, which are the scope of History. While History can use descriptive theories of Nature, therefore using a Scientific process, it is not itself a Science. For example, History is free to use historical artifacts to come up with theories about general historical trends (the Nature of History) which can be used to explain purely academic theories about historical events. In the same manner, the ear must use aural artifacts to explain aural events. The physiological layer of the aural sense assumes many descriptive theories about the Nature of Sound, determined by genetics, maintained by the process of evolution.
The importance of developing technique based on descriptive theories is in the distinction between technique and theory. Theories are formal: only the qualities of events can be determined by theory; not their values. Values are determined by testing theoretical forms within conditions; thereby instantiating them into some plane of being. It is not until the performance that valuation takes place, for it is the evaluation of the theory. Technique is approach to theoretical evaluation, and all technique presumes a set of conditions: the artistic medium for which the technical devices are developed.
As Nietzsche said: to view with bias means to view with the benefit of experience.
What is so bad about repeating history? History is full of great things.
What is with acquiring mass knowledge of particulars and instances? Learn the medium, and then you will be able to design the answer to any question; the solution to any problem.
Most people aim to be subtle with ambiguity and call it objectivity. I aim to be subtle with assertion and call it demonstration, for I provide you with something to evaluate. It is only through that method that I may provide you with value. Only through trade of value can an economy of value exist.
We focus on producing value, and yet we feel guilty to consume it and realize its meaning, only to spoil our instinct with tainted desire. Am I the only one that repects you enough to expect value from you? What is it, to expect beauty, you ask? See for yourself.
Although history is not falsifiable, all of its uses are. Nothing argued with reference to history is indisputable fact by definition, however academically sound it may be. To make a scientific argument requires reproducibility: the other must be able to create their own story. History is the story of others; useful for many things, including science, but is not itself a science.
Good philosophers have a distinct method to understanding things. They are able to understand things from whatever perspective is offered. They are perspective-independent. This is not to say that philosophers are objective or unbiased, but rather that the bias simply does not matter.
A good philosopher, like Socrates, is so sympathetic to whatever is presented to him that whatever is missing from the bias is revealed as whatever meaning is nullified by rationalization. In this way, The Republic can almost be seen as a political satire of a system gone horribly wrong.
This is why the method of philosophy is always to be sympathetic first, and critical second. The point of being critical is revealed by the sympathy itself.
Usually, this plays out in three stages:
The philosopher is introduced to a perspective, studying it intensely, internalizing it.
The philosopher lives the perspective casually, working out problems as a matter of course.
The philosopher returns to the perspective, studying what meaning was gained and lost by it.
In the end, it is the measuring of perspectives by what meaning is not lost that makes one a philosopher rather than, for example, a scientist.
Art and Science are not necessarily about acquiring value, but rather producing value for the acquirers. It is not uncommon for a producer to acquire so little value that he loses vision for his product.
Balance is a bad example for dealing with dichotomies. In a balance, one thing is countered by another. When people advocate balance, they are really intending to advocate a plurality of perspectives, which actually does the opposite: each perspective augments the other.
The recognition of a perspective is no argument against any other perspective. Perspective is not exclusive. The whole point of perspective is that it is one of many. Perspective is basically a formulation of relations from one point to another. Each different perspective is merely a reformulation of the same thing.
It is not opposing perspectives that people counter, but rather it is misunderstandings of them. The best way to counter an opposing perspective is to actually understand it even better than those who misunderstand it. The aesthetic philosopher embraces perspectives.
Man has always preferred to live on the coast, away from depth and height. Shallow water and valley fields are preferred. Like animals, adapting to environment, not creating it. Many beavers have more culture than men.
I aim to realize science as an aesthetic phenomenon: as critical feeling.
All of God's questions are rhetorical; all of life's questions are not.
Criticism is often considered a pessimism when in fact it is an optimism of what is possible. To see no more possibility in the current state-of-affairs: that is pessimism.
For some, fear of the unknown is more comforting than fear of the known; we call them optimists. For others, fear of the known is more comforting than fear of the unknown; we call them pessimists. It is the outlook of what is unknown to which the label applies. On the other hand, cynicism refers to belief rather than knowledge; futher, it refers to discomfort of fear of what is believed. What word is there to refer to the catharsis of instinct that is the comfort of fear of what is believed? Spirituality.
It is not soul that lives forever: it is spirit! Although the soul is eternal, it never actually lives. This is the first step to overcoming Plato. Spirituality is not about ideals. It is about evaluation. It is about action.
In fear of confronting, and perhaps even resolving, contradictions, we separate concepts and label them cultures, an action that is itself most uncultured. To protect ourselves from our own independence, we make ourselves independent from others, and call it indepedence. We forget that independence is actually the default state of being from which we seek escape.
We recognize that this separation from others allows us to make statements about others without bias. In an attempt to speak truth, we become all-too-true, only able to state tautologies: what is already inherent. We become able to see truth, but not be a part of it. What good is it to know what truth is if we don't know what it does?
The shallowness of zealousness: all systems, no matter how flawed or contradictory, when analyzed to the point of zealousness, can be wrapped in a layer of consistency.
What is lost by this consistency is the ability to derive meaning from things that are considered evil, but which, through another perspective, have meaning. Things are made into a balance of good and evil: ranges of the gamut are lost; and palettes are made smaller.
It is thought that a single system of perspective is adequate, and perhaps even preferred, as long as it is consistent. What is not realized is that anything can be made to be consistent when made shallow enough for it.
In a reality full of a plurality of conflicting wills, there is one natural right to life commonly acknowledged by those who value the spirit of life. The prime example of "wild" life is the hunt of a beast of prey, usually in the form of a lion preying on wildebeests. This great hunt is offered as the height of a balanced tree of life where all is natural, just, and fair.
And yet, somehow, man, who came from this perfection, even from the mediocre primates, went beyond perfection — to become cultured.
Man did not just become social. Even ants are social. Any organism can evolve into a society over millions of years. An environment will mold an organism into a system naturally. Ants don't have culture. If you place them somewhere else, they adapt to that environment over time.
To become cultured means not only to exist within a system, but also to be creators of that system. This is a memetic action, not genetic. It means to create an environment that is suitable for whatever is desired. Culture can exist within a single entity. More deadly to culture than isolation is civilization; more to it: fear of isolation; fear of self; fear of perspective.
The old universal right to life is overtaken by another: the right to create. Just as the prime example of wild life is the hunt, the prime example of culture is art. We create environments to suit our own reifications of nature. We control ourselves from within that which controls us. In this light, God is not an entity to worship, but rather an environment to satisfy.
We struggle to find meaning in this because we recognize the tautology of it all. When we see the tautology, we lose sight of the relations. We see the forest, not the trees. We forget that, in order to reify nature, we need to experience nature first. We need perspective. Only through perspective do we develop the aesthetic sense required for culture.
Life is action. Life is a stage, but the performance is improvised. In an improv, when you do something you don't intend, you follow it with things that make it work after-the-fact; the same is true of life. Perfection is the satisfaction of some condition: for what are things perfect? That can be changed after-the-fact.
life is a medium. Like any medium, when an event occurs on it, there is a corresponding response. When the response cannot pass through the medium, the medium is damaged. In this sense, liberty can be thought of as liberty of the medium: that the medium is able to direct that which passes through itself. The more precise, the fewer tolerances. The harder, the more brittle. Life is a medium which can adapt to environment. Culture is a medium which can create environment.
It is often thought that pain is necessarily harmful, but harm occurs only when pain is not handled. When media is able to react to a force, it is not harmed.
In a sense, cockiness does not become anyone. Cockiness is a statement of being. Ambition is a statement of becoming. The man of action is not cocky.
Artists don't know about art: they feel it.
If only the studio were actually a laboratory. Then perhaps the failures could be contained.
As much as art is for the audience, it is also its burden.
An artist doesn't just adapt to an environment: an artist creates environment.
There are generally two ways things are produced: with an understanding and orientation toward the medium, and without. When things are produced without this understanding, there is a tendency to produce the first solution that presents itself. However, when things are produced with this understanding, a proper solution can be designed for the problem.
Why is it that high-value society often looks back on the classics? It is not because of the value of the classics themselves, but rather in the value of overcoming great limits as an inspiration for the future. Hence: "If only they were alive today..." This is the great distinction between conservatism and classicism. Classics are built on great progressions by future-oriented people: the opposite of conservatives. Classics overcame the classical of their time by looking beyond, not back.
Bach is the Plato of music: just as each philosopher must overcome Plato in their own way, each composer must overcome Bach in their own way. The same can be said of Nietzsche and Wagner.
While The Greeks are more difficult to overcome, The Existentialists are more difficult to overcome properly because they deal with philosophical problems that go beyond Science. Science, by way of The Enlightenment, is what overcame The Greeks. Existentialism came after Science for a reason: to overcome Science, and most scientists are completely unaware.
It is difficult enough to go beyond Science, let alone Existentialism. The Positivists took Science as far as it could go, but if you look at where they differ, for example Russell and Wittgenstein, you will see what lies just beyond them: the problems that The Existentialists were trying to overcome.
What is next may be known as a kind of Existential-Positivism: something that must overcome the art-science dichotomy — something that will place physiological percepts in between psychological concepts and physical recepts the way Hermann Helmholtz attempted: something that can address the human condition on a subjective, personal level, even more difficult than the scientific examination of the human condition on an objective level.
When it comes to aesthetic value, objectivity is merely intermediary. However, that is an important role. A bridge is needed to go beyond objectivity: to recognize objectivity as a means of providing co-subjectivity.
I have heard a man describe Bach's music as "never sounding wrong". No matter how much one appreciated his music, Bach always had control over the sound itself. It is the descriptive understanding of music over which Bach had control. He understood music physiologically. This is something that doesn't come entirely into fruition in even other "great" composers. While they had counterpoint, they did not overcome counterpoint the way Bach did.
Just as an artist mixes light to produce an additive effect, a musician mixes waves of sound to produce an additive effect; but also just like the artist, the tools have subtractive properties: instruments are the pigments of musicians.
It is the qualities that absorb waves that define the instrument. The result is an expression of both the actuating, additive force and the subtractive properties of the instrument. Even percussive instruments follow this pattern.
The ear, tuned to reverse this process, also separates tones into subtractive objects and the additive forces upon them. In this way, sound provides to the listener general physiological symbols for subjects and predicates where a tone is a complete statement.
Most artists, when speaking of art, praise "art for the sake of art". I have always wondered at that expression because, while I find myself appreciating such art, I have always felt that too idealistic and circular. And yet it is supposed by many to contain a meaning of that which is higher. What kind of meaning can there be in such things?
But then I remember that art is actually empirical. Somehow, the artist manages to show by mere construction. Isn't construction a rational exercise? So it appears that out of the rational comes the empirical—for out of The Eternal comes The Temporal. This is no praise of pure rationalism, however: it is only by the empirical that the rational can be applied in a way that is meaningful to the temporal human condition.
Recognizing art for the sake of art as empirical is to recognize it as art without language. When people speak of meaning in art, they are referring not to linguistic meaning, but to the meaning one gets out of observing nature. It is a meaning that is abstracted—manifested by living. The role of the artist, as opposed to the communicator, is therefore to elucidate Nature itself, not thought.
But how does one do this? How does one bring out Nature? It seems silly sometimes. If one wanted to see Nature, one could simply look around, and live. What makes art more natural than other things? To understand this, one must understand the distinction between the studies of Nature and History.
The difference between Nature and History is the difference between how and what, the general and the particular, processes and events, and so on. When one conveys linguistic meaning, one is writing a History of some kind, whether real or imagined. When one creates art for the sake of art, one is really showing for showing: writing a Nature of some kind. This is done by extracting Nature—the process of things—from the appropriate events, and reifying them into a more concise set of events, chosen merely for process itself. In this is a way of speaking not by conveying ideas, but by conveying scenarios: the context that ferments ideas.
So now we see art as having a proper, formal place in communication: where linguistic communication is more specific and less accessible; art is more general and more accessible.
Art is the reification of Nature.
It is easier to make decisions for other people, for instincts are always easier to trust when your own life is not at stake.
When instinct is not trusted a common response is to do the opposite of what instinct suggests. It is in this way that a bad experience involving the trust or expectation of a single thing creates a more general problem by spoiling instinct.
Any psychological prescription that advises just a change in thoughts or feelings is bogus, and only furthers the problem by perpetuating the idea that the current thoughts and feelings, what represent self, are wrong, ugly, and bad. Thoughts and feelings don't change without a change in experience... or body chemistry. However, experience tends to have a more lasting effect. A proper psychological prescription advises a change in action, yielding new experience; the old, corrupt thoughts will be tested against the new experience.
I am not afraid of depth. Even yours.
Many lies are the thorns of omissions seeded by the fear of the inability of others to traverse depth. If a person is comfortable with another person's ability to evaluate another perspective, respect and trust naturally follow.
Make it known that you agree with your enemies, especially if they don't agree with you. Then it will be understood that not only do you know what they know, but you also must know something else. You will be seen as above them, knowing a superset of what they know.
People have a way of subconsciously dealing with the problems of their conscience, yet it is the fear of this that is often on one's conscience. What one fears consciously, one respects subconsciously.
Not dealing with something on the level of one's chosing forces one to deal with it on another: that of shame and guilt.
It is ironic that it is the Republicans who most tend to ignore categorical imperatives most precisely because it is they who are most familiar with idealism, and therefore are most familiar with its problems.
Two heads are better than one, but one will is better than two.
What is represented in democracy is not the will of the people, but rather the problems of their will: the unwill, or willingness, of the people. Will is a quality, not a quantity.
We don't have free will: we have free willingness — we are free to allow ourselves to be subjected to whatever we choose. It is action of the denial of subjection that expresses will. Will is something earned.
Representative democracy is power-oriented democracy, not issue-oriented democracy.
Individual culture must exist before group culture. That is where leaders come from.
To evaluate for yourself is genuine. To share an evaluation is to be part of a society. To act on your own evaluations is integrity. To create as part of a society is to be part of a culture.
Is it not obvious now why our leaders lack integrity? Republics are incapable of producing leaders. Representatives are the opposite of leaders.
The purpose of many political systems, including a republic, is to align the will of those in power with those who are not. In a republic, it is the people who are leading the representatives, not the other way around. At least, that is the theory.
No one will is leading anything, and we wonder why our leaders are corrupt and have no values? They are forced to abandon their identity, have no perspective, and to represent all values. Representives can produce nothing worth following.
The production of a great leader in a republic requires not an adaptor-adopter, but rather a creative force that directs the will of the people toward itself. What are leaders for if not exactly this?
In this light, when leaders are the most unrepresentative, it is preferable for leaders to be fascist enough to become genuine. Let the system overcome itself for a while, for that is how a proper revolution is initiated.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, philosopher
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948, political activist
Politics is naturally conservative. Philosophy is the head, always leading the way. Politics is the ass, the last to adopt cultural change. That is why it seems that representation is the best procedure for politics.
But what is represented? It is not necessarily the people, but rather the culture. But culture is driven by a minority: thus the paradox.
Voting does not work unless the voting populus is generally cultured. That is why Greek-style democracies with limited citizenship tend to do better.
However, their own success becomes their downfall: they become idle and stale. This usually does not happen in a single generation, but instead happens when culture is not passed down to the inheritors of success.
Unlike the British, I don't merely seek value, but rather I seek high value.
A great question for politicians: would you say, as a representative, that you lead the people, or that the people lead you? Force them to reveal their misunderstanding of leadership.
Protesting is not a sign of power, but rather a sign of weakness. It is done by people who don't have better things to do, like exchanging with a representative a private interest for a public one.
The Pope no longer crowns kings. Today, that is done by corporations. Before, the church allowed you to sin. Today, money does. Naturally, the selection of leadership follows.
Freedom is quality; power is quantity.
Freedom is a private matter. It is only when made public that it expresses power.
Those who lack freedom seek power to gain freedom, while those who lack power seek freedom to gain power.
Power is a solution, not a problem. What is the problem? The problem is a state of being. Who will become the solution? The solution does become.
Expression is not something to be protected. Freedom is not expressed by the protection of things. Rather, freedom is simply expressed. Freedom is about action, not inaction.
The law is anaesthetic and guilt-driven to the core: when an aesthetic sense for value is manifested in oneself, when duty is overcome by moral integrity, the law loses its significance. Value is placed in the law when the value of life is diminished.
The anaesthetic nature of the law is why the aesthetic component, the judicial, is separated from the legislative component.
It is often those who overcome the law who are its greatest allies, for they lose the desire to change the law to reflect reality, seeing more the benefit of using the law to affect reality.
To yield can be an expression of power, just as to accept can be an expression of respect, but the ability to respect is also an even greater expression of power.
To be humble is easy because it is internal: it requires no aesthetic character to evaluate a self-contained system. To evaluate something external requires extension: some form of aesthetic.
It is not godlessness that makes the law required: it is the inability to acknowledge reality. Where one sees beauty, one creates; where one sees ugliness, one destroys. This is not merely to say that beauty begets beauty, but also that seeing, acknowledgement, evaluation, the aesthetic process, is essential for moral integrity. Independence of spirit leads more to moral integrity than the codependence of spirit in belief.
Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage to face what he already knows.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, section 2
We think by knowing something that we gain power over it when we merely relate to it. When we wish to become the parent we become the child. Knowledge is not power after all. Power requires interaction. Power requires spirit.
But people don't want power. People don't want the responsibility that comes with power. People want to be dutiful. People want someone to be responsible and accountable for them. People want to be near power. The ideal woman.
That there is meaning in this world just because you see it. That is a scary proposition. That there is more meaning in the world than could possibly be imagined. That is a scary proposition. That you can create your own meaning. That is a scary proposition. That objectivity is before the fact and lost by the fact. That is a scary proposition. That there can be unshareable meaning. That is a scary proposition.
And yet it is a wonderful proposition: all you have to do is be free enough to connect — to make yourself interdependent with the world. What is interdependent in soul is free in spirit. What is alone is imprisoned.
The main problem of power is the problem of inheritance. Originally, I thought that what is being inherited is the problem: unearned power; the problem of capitalism. Now, I think that what is not being inherited is the problem: the vision and sense for what to do with power; the problem of aesthetics.
People are afraid of perspective because there is an arbitrary nature to it. However, it isn't so much the arbitrariness of individuals that scares people the most, but rather more it is the arbitrariness of systems.
To deal with a single enemy is considered a just and fair fight, and even an affirmation of life in its purest form. It is only when enemies join with the strength of a system when the rules of justice change.
It is no wonder why Communism is so feared by those who advocate Free Enterprise. It is no wonder why Liberalism sees value in society as a defensive device, and no value in society as an offensive device. We even wish to think that our Imperial systems are the product of single men as in the case of Napoleon, and most extremely: God.
It is only through personifying something that it can have value, for perspective is what provides value. Systems contain no value. They are prior to evaluation.
However, systems entice people with their promise to tame the spirits of others, and so the weak subject themselves to systems as a preemptive strike against the fear of others doing the same. And it must take fear: it is harder to teach tame than to breed tame; just ask the British. But with the rise of Colonialism came Liberalism: the unbreedable simply left.
As Nietzsche said: duty is the opposite of moral integrity.
An aesthetic ethic determines value, a quantity, best because it is the only kind that determines condition, a quality.
An aesthetic ethic is descriptive: it describes the effects of actions. Only aesthetic ethics account for the actions of individual subjects. An idealistic ethic is imperative: it can only be categorical, and must apply to groups of subjects, and therefore by its very nature cannot address exceptions.
If only revenge were a sin.
"Who am I to judge?" Deferring judgement to others is a judgement in itself. All action requires judgement. It is no wonder those afraid to judge are also afraid to act.
Any amount of injustice is tolerated where one understands how it is avoided.
The preference for order over chaos is really the preference for the systematic simplicity to understand how one can avoid injustice.
The benefit of a legal system is the benefit of formality. It is not the ideal that is sought, but rather the simplicity of implementation. The goal is not a high standard, but rather an attainable standard: a workable system. And it is those who work the system that enjoy the benefit of formality. That is why the elders, with more knowledge of formality, appreciate it more.
But for this same reason, the elders no longer need to deal with the hardest part of justice: making value judgements. That is left to the young, labelled "responsibility" and "duty", and left mystified. And then we wonder why it is seen that the more "responsibility" and "duty" are mentioned, the less moral integrity (that is, integration with one's own conscience) is involved: with responsibility, integrity is not needed.
Does the law actually help juries decide whether a man is guilty? Of course not! That is the role of the facts of the case. The role of the law is outside the courtroom. The role of the law should be to get a case to the courtroom. Once a case is in court, the law should be ignored, for the case, at that point, is beyond the generality of the law.
In today's courtroom, the judge explains to the jurors how they should evaluate the case. Where is the moral integrity in that? The role of the juror is virtually nullified. It is not that jurors nullify the law when they rule on the specifics of the case, but rather that they are preventing the law from nullifying the case. In every other aspect of reality, the case is always more important than the law. Why should that stop in the courtroom?
Society believes that by creating an artificial yet attainable system of justice, it destroys injustice. Society believes that the satisfaction of a "social contract" is a resolution of injustice when actually it is a resolution of disorder. Contracts do not alter the value of things. That is supposedly why "human rights" cannot be contracted away. The ironic thing is that, in practice, legal systems bloat beyond the point where they actually produce disorder; perhaps more disorder than just evaluating cases properly to begin with.
An activist judge is a judge who evaluates the case over the law. Republicans, due to their love of categorical imperatives, believe that cases are evaluated by the law, an expression of the will of a creator, and not by any aesthetic sense.
What is guilt other than a sense of self-ugliness? Yet what does society find more ugly than legal systems!?
All justice systems are founded on aesthetic systems: their function is the removal of what is ugly from society. Justice is the art form of society. It is therefore through concepts of justice that one can find what is aesthetic and anaesthetic, or guilty, in how a society views itself. Let us rid justice systems of their own ugliness!
Societies view legal systems the same way they view any cleaning service: from as far away as possible.
We water-down our justice systems the same way we water down our pop art: to trivialize with a web of mysticism that provides some semblance of creative expression that allows the artist to reify the world into something that it is not.
All of those serving prison time for legal technicalities provide us with a veil of aesthetic value. It is through justice systems that we believe we overcome Nature... by contradicting Nature: making what is wrong appear to be made right.
Are not our concepts of justice the greatest causes of injustice?
There is a hidden message in all of the stories of the glory of ascetic ideals: duty rests one's conscience... by a lack of something; through boredom. It is not a very convincing glory. Conscience should be awakened by spirit, not rested.
Nietzsche, at the beginning of a book: "One should speak only when one may not remain silent; and then speak only of that which one has overcome—everything else is chatter, 'literature', lack of breeding."
Wittgenstein, at the end of a book: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
In the book of a lawyer: "Whereof others can speak, thereof one must be noisy."
Work for money? Work for why you want money: luxury!
We all work in the hope that it will enable us to appreciate life more fully, to live in luxury, yet we are afraid to create luxurious things if it is seen as not the most industrial thing to do. But what then is the point?
As much as Americans would like to think, industry does not directly correlate to luxury... unless you are also working luxuriously.
Some believe that it is fun that makes successful startups. That is not quite right, and therefore leads people to believe that a dichotomy is involved which needs to be balanced. In fact, it is the creation of high value that makes successful startups. What is high value? Luxury.
What leads people to believe that fun is involved is that creators need to know luxury to create it. What is needed are employees who know how to live a high-value life, and for employers to let their employees live that way even, and especially, through their work.
Mathematics.— Let us introduce the refinement and rigor of mathematics into all sciences as far as this is at all possible, not in the faith that this will lead us to know things but in order to determine our human relation to things. Mathematics is merely the means for general and ultimate knowledge of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book 3, section 246
It is always a wonder when one reduces the complexity of what is required to describe a part of Nature. This wonder is a constant throughout the philosophical history of mankind. Since the result of the process is an, often climactic, reduction in terms, the wonder is therefore associated with the reduction itself. This produces a strong aesthetic appreciation for axiomatic, atomic thinking that is praised as an end in itself.
However, the terms are nothing. The terms mean nothing without the relations between the terms and our own senses of Nature to which they apply. The aesthetic appreciation of merely a set of terms is something that can be done with no need for reality. Pythagoras did this. Plato did this. Decartes did this. Dogmatic scriptures do this. It is very possible, but is also not philosophy because it ends the aesthetic process at the point at which symbols and terms acquire meaning. Instead of simplifying the aesthetic process, they chose to do away with it altogether.
Therefore, the role of an aesthetic reductionism is the opposite: to provide access to meaning by describing a shorter path between Natural events and their resulting conceptions; thereby bringing Nature closer to our sense of Nature. Nature is not better understood by merely describing generalities through an increasingly vague perspective. Nature is filled with infinite complexity. Seeing things simply and finitely requires locality and proximity, not tautological remoteness.
Although what I describe is a reorientation of reductionism from logical deduction to aesthetic induction, it is important to recognize that all instances of reductionism are still a form of deduction. The goal is to increase the general accessibility of Nature by increasing the logical, linguistic accessibility of Nature.
An aesthetic reductionism such as this is not a reductionism that seeks grand unification. There is nothing aesthetic about chaos as a whole, eternal, simple singularity. It is in taking a temporal position in chaos in order (no pun intended) to view its internal harmonies that produces aesthetic significance. This is not to say that the eternal whole does not exist, but that it exists only in a lack of aesthetic perspective.
This is why I have no appreciation for the idea of becoming one with anything. It is not eternal life. It is the lack of life. It is often thought that by becoming one with something eternal—God—, one would obtain everlasting life. That, however, is a philosophical error that can be revealed in the terms. Something eternal is without time, while something everlasting is within time. Something eternal has no time variable. Something everlasting has a time variable with merely no upper limit.
To summarize, it is not the relation of Nature to The Singularity that is philosophically important, but rather its relation to plurality. The benefit of generalization is not that it guides one to The Singularity, but that it guides one to other related pluralities. The great part of replacing a set of some type with a general symbol is not in the symbolization of the type, but in the ability to relate that symbol to a larger set of a different type by way of a common class. It is the same benefit that language in general provides: the ability to understand more specifics by analysis of what is general between the unknown specifics and known specifics.
Sometimes people lie just because the explanation is too deep. Knowledge requires time.
Proof is not in being, it is in becoming: proof is in the demonstration, an event of presentation; something aesthetic.
Facts are agreements arrived at by demonstration.
Knowledge is not about what is merely familiar, but rather what is made apparent.
Knowledge is not of things: it is of scenarios. Opinion is of things. Flip whatever Plato thought.
Meaning is subjective: there are things that can have meaning for me that cannot have meaning for you.
Objective meaning refers not to the objectivity of meaning itself, but rather the objectivity of the subjective accessibility to meaning: the objectivity of the demonstration. The objective demonstration makes subjective meaning co-subjective across many subjects. That is why falsifiability and repeatability are required for objective meaning. Science is a process or technique of making meaning co-subjective. The result of science is knowledge of Nature.
It is precisely the special requirements of science which limit its scope. While the natural is subjective meaning that can be made co-subjective by the special requirements of science, the extra-natural —the historical— is subjective meaning that cannot be made co-subjective. Therefore history, still falling under Empiricism, cannot be objective, and cannot be a science.
Objectivity is merely a closed system of subjectivity and relativity; nothing more. That is to say that truths are tautologies of points and relations, or self-contained systems of being and becoming. These systems are all enclosed in The Tautologos: the system of all possibility.
To be objective is to be tautologically perceptive.
Certainty increases with decreasing scope.
It is not rationality that makes one honest, but rather only consistent: honest in part. It is honesty along the entire aesthetic path which matters.
The Conjurer and his opposite. — What is astonishing in the realm of science is the opposite of what is astonishing in the art of the conjurer. For the latter wants to persuade us to see a very simple causality where in truth a very complicated causality is at work. Science, on the contrary, compels us to abandon belief in simple causalities precisely where everything seems so easy to comprehend and we are the fools of appearance. The 'simplest' things are very complicated — a fact at which one can never cease to marvel!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, book 1, section 6
depth * specificity = complexity: as generality increases, complexity decreases. At the most general, when there is no condition, nor limit to existence, nor constraint of possibility, complexity no longer remains a problem.
Simplicity in definition is complexity in possibility:
Aesthetic simplicity is therefore only a result of complex structure. Conversely, the simpler the medium, the more power of expression.
Occam's Razor is based on one simple fact: simpler patterns occur more often. It argues for simplicity of the medium, not simplicity of resultant effects. The simplicity applies to the system as a whole, not its appearance; its eternity, not temporality.
It isn't that something cannot come from nothing, but rather that all finite things are within the infinite. The question is not of direction, but rather position. Direction comes after position. Beings become.
There is a distinct difference between containing no value and containing all value. It is the difference between something unevaluatable, or nullity, and something not yet evaluated, or infinity.
In a pure structural simplicity, all aesthetic effects are possible — the dawn of creation.
Although the Big Bang is the beginning of the observed Universe, it is not the beginning of creation, for the observed Universe is still temporal. However, it is an indication of how creation works.
Creation is temporal. Creation is an action which causes the start of the existance of an instance of some thing in some state-of-affairs. Once something is viewed as an instance, it has identity and some position within some plane. All of the words I emphasized are temporal words. The Universe was not created. The Universe is Eternal. It is not an instance of some thing. It has no identity. It has no position. It, containing all action, cannot be acted upon. It, containing all time, does not start or stop.
The question of creation, in metaphysics, is really the question of existence. To ask what created the Universe is to ask why the Universe exists. However, since the Universe is eternal, and existence is temporal, thought of existence in reference to the Universe can only be coherent when speaking of the set of all of its temporal elements. The answer is therefore dependent upon understanding how existence works in general.
To understand existence, one must understand the distinction between equality and identity. Consider the following programmatic statements expressed in Python:
# Label "a" the first instance of a 3-legged chair type. a = Chair() # Label "b" the second instance of a 3-legged chair type. b = Chair()
The Python interpreter treats them as two equal objects having different identities. This can be seen by how they are treated in comparisons:
| Comparison | Expression | Return Value |
|---|---|---|
| Equality | a == b |
True |
| Identity | a is b |
False |
However, if we were to declare them differently:
# Label "a" the first instance of a 3-legged chair type. a = Chair() # Assign a second label, "b", to the first chair, "a". b = a
The Python interpreter treats them as two names for the same object. The object refers to a single identity:
| Comparison | Expression | Return Value |
|---|---|---|
| Equality | a == b |
True |
| Identity | a is b |
True |
The interpreter actually compares identity by comparing their positions in memory. That is to say that if two equal objects are in the same place, they have the same identity. In summary, to determine whether two objects are equal, compare their forms; to determine whether two objects are identical, compare their forms and positions.
| Platonic | Eternal | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Operation | Equality | Identity |
| Operands | Value (form) | Instance (position) |
Existence can now be seen as dependent upon condition, for it is that something is positioned as an instance in some plane that makes it existant and temporal.
When thinking about existence, it is most intuitive to think about whether something exists, not how that is determined. While the end result is a boolean truth-value—true or false—it is actually a conditional that is used to determine the truth-value. A conditional is simply a test for whether a value satisfies some condition. As formerly shown, when determining whether some instance exists, its position must line up with some hypothetical position. This hypothetical position is the condition of the instance, hence the term "conditional".
The phrase "object x exists" is actually ambiguous, and we have to use common sense to fill in the implied rest of the statement. The full statement is "object x exists in condition y". Most people imply "the human condition", as in "reality" or "physical space". Physical space can also be thought of as that common space in which the scientific reproducibility of any proposition is constant. There may be other spaces, like the space inside our heads where propositions form.
One can propose the substance of objects in any space. For example, a synthetic, imaginary existence can be created for anything. It is the condition that makes it meaningful. That something exists is meaningless. Where or how it exists is the real question. Existence is not boolean true or false until it is tested against an imaginary existence in order to determine the truth of the imaginary existence, and that depends on the capabilities of the test, which is why scientists need good, testable theories in order to really know truth. So the question isn't merely "Does God exist?", but rather the fully-qualified question is "Does God exist the way we propose, in the space we propose?"
I believe that the role of epistemology is mainly how meaning is communicated or displayed on the material medium. When viewed this way, it is seen as aesthetic, which enlightens why beauty and knowledge are often associated. This association, I refer to as harmony.
Harmony is the use of the medium itself to convey meaning. Just as music uses the artifacts of the medium as part of the message, so too are the artifacts of Nature part of the message. The medium becomes the syntax on which the semantic meanings are conveyed. Language is viewed as an artifical medium of convenience where the continued networking builds upon itself to create its own syntactic artifacts thereby increasing the accessibility of the semantic meaning within the system.
The key to understanding all of this is in understanding the "artifacts", and their relation to what is formal. To understand that, one must understand sense.
| Layer | Scope From | Scope To | Affected By |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical | Event | Reception | Environment |
| Physiological | Reception | Perception | Genetics |
| Psychological | Perception | Conception | Memetics |
This was first identified by Hermann Helmholtz in his monumental work "On The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for The Theory of Music". In it, he explains how these three layers of sense need to be understood in order to fully understand any sense, and proceeds to apply this knowledge to our sense of sound in order to better understand music. I believe that this same technique can be used to come up with an aesthetic epistemology.
A convenient example is in the physiological layer of the senses, which has built up out of necessity a syntax for each sensory medium derived entirely from physical, material artifacts. Natural language therefore is the psychological, memetic extension to this aesthetic epistemology. Music is therefore the aesthetics of both psychological and physiological aural artifacts; with song towards psychology, and dance towards physiology.
What I appreciate in aesthetic approaches is that they break the dichotomy and orient understanding to the senses of the individual. A truly aesthetic understanding of something allows anyone to see it for themself. In that sense, science is actually a form of aesthetics. However, while science is an observational aspect of aesthetics, it does not address the creative aspect of aesthetics.
Of all forms of art, I appreciate music the most because it has the most limited physiological layer. The ear has to be able to come up with something meaningful from information obtained from a single dimension, and we only have two ears: two single-dimensional sources, easily dominated by the composer. Due to this simplicity, it also requires the most generic aesthetic understanding in order to master.
The physiological layer of other art forms provides so much information that the mind can easily rely on the psychological layer for much of its understanding of the medium. However, with music, the physiological layer has many built-in assumptions about the physical layer in order to help the mind come up with meaningful information. Due to this, there are many artifacts of the medium, allowing the composer who knows the medium the ability to use this layer to convey meaning.
The physiological layer of the optical medium mostly concerns artists with perspective and color blending, both of which are theoretically simple. Most artists spend their time on application of the theory, which is made more complex by the sheer number of objects involved and the ways in which they can relate, not by any difficulty understanding the concepts. However, explaining a single physiological artifact of the aural medium requires an in-depth explanation on harmonic theory and the way in which the ear approaches identifying tones. Then one can begin explaining the ambiguities on the ear's approach, and the resulting aural illusions. It is no wonder music theory is shrouded in mysticism.
When a composer masters their medium by gaining knowledge of this aspect, and starts developing techniques based on the artifacts of the medium, they feel a closeness with an aesthetic universal commonly sensible to any man. They feel that they have obtained the ability to display something objective to subjective man. Perhaps this is why Bach felt that his music was inspired by God.
What was so different about Bach is that he mastered counterpoint, the first descriptive theory of music, and understood it so well that his abilities went well beyond it while keeping what was so special about it: the fact that it was descriptive. The power of a descriptive theory is that it can account for the artifacts of the medium because instead of orienting things to some arbitrary value (for example, "this is good.", "That is bad.", "That is better.", etc.), a descriptive theory can orient things to their qualities (for example, "this is dissonant", "that is consonant".). The value can finally be recognized as part of practice, not theory, which allows many common problems of music theory to be solved. For example, the tastes of the listener can be understood as part of a performance, which is part of the practice of the theory.
| Perspective | Sense State | Objective | Relative | Subjective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analytic | Conception | Consilience | Logic | Identity |
| Synthetic | Perception | Matter | Nature | Artifactuality |
| Geometric | Reception | Plane | Shape | Position |
To be continued...
One of the most common epistemological problems brought up against any theory of metaphysics is the problem of subjectivism. The argument is made that the mind's interpretation of sensory data interferes with the sensory data.
I believe the problem with this distinction is the main problem with nearly all discussions of any dichotomy: the two poles of any dichotomy are different perspectives of the same thing. Just as good logic can lead one astray when founded on bad observational premises, good observations are of little use when understood with bad logic.
The real problem is simply the problem of incompleteness. In order to transcend them individually, proper use of one must be properly scoped with the other; reciprocally, towards completeness. This is an aesthetic approach.
By aesthetic, I am referring to the relationship between the subjective and the objective. Most metaphysics attempt to align with the objective. However, that does not solve the real problem, which is communicating the supposed objective knowledge to others.
The success of Science is due to its aesthetic nature. Theories are intentionally formulated to be as easily demonstratable to the individual as possible, for individuals are temporal beings. Science is not a collection of knowledge. Science is the method of designing objective demonstrations which yield subjective knowledge, for all knowledge is ultimately subjective. It is important to understand that what is objective about Science is not the knowledge itself. It relies on the objectivity of the demonstrations. The hypothetical conditions provided by demonstration, being arbitrary logical constructs, are what can be objective about science.
Although there will always be a problem with validity, I believe that this method deals with the problem of understanding, which I feel to be the real problem. Validity means nothing without understanding. A social theory of knowledge deals with the problem of understanding, not validity. Formulating epistemology for validity is limiting it to incompleteness. Epistemology must be formulated aesthetically.
Therefore, I also treat metaphysics aesthetically. This may seem to be backwards since, it is said, metaphysics is above observation, but metaphysics is actually about both logic and observation: it is about how they are linked. By reformulating between logic and observation—that is, dealing with the poles aesthetically—one can properly make metaphysical statements that are accessible to understanding at least in some form, which is all one can hope for.
The main problem of metaphysics is that it has been historically limited to rational thought. The scientist, who wants to know Nature aesthetically, tends to feel that Nature is logical. He feels that Nature is all illusions of logical patterns, and lives to uncover it. Many look to find a single pattern to it all: the Grand Unified Theory.
The Grand Unified Theory, I believe, is never to be found. The logic itself is the unification. That is easily understood. Nature is not to be studied for finding a grand theory. The study of Nature is an empirical thing. What observation gives us is not the structure of things. Hume showed us how observation does not even provide causal relations.
Nature is to be studied so that we can discover where we are in the realm of all possibility. It is by imagination, that which provides for us the realm of all possibility, a rational exercise, that we can "see" causal relations. All we can do with observation is to "see" whether we exist within the conditions in our heads.
However, this imagination is all just arbitrary logical constructions, and logic is not material. Logic does not make the world exist. It makes it valid. Condition is what makes something exist. Existence is temporal, but which inheres in The Eternal.
When we define something, we are merely composing a limiting description of it. The more complex something is, the more limits we are imposing upon it. The simpler something is, the fewer limits. The fewer limiting descriptions of a pattern there are, the more often patterns of its form will tend to appear.
This is also my argument for Occam's Razor, "plurality should not be posited without necessity.", which is often used in philosophy and theology to argue for the accuracy of simpler explanations over needlessly complex explanations.
A tautology is basically the opposite of a contradiction. While a contradiction is something that is inherently false, like "It is raining and not raining.", a tautology is something that is inherently true, like "It is raining or not raining.". Experience is meaningless to a tautology. You don't even need to know what rain is to know that something is either rain or not rain. Something becomes a tautology when all of its forms are contained and interconnected.
Sure, you hear people talking about how when something is a tautology, it is meaningless, and it doesn't matter. But tautologies are only meaningless in that you cannot relate them to things and find something other than what is already implied. However, everything inside of a tautology has relations to other things inside of the tautology, which means that everything inside of a tautology can have an environment, or plane of matter, because matter is relative. Something of no matter can contain objects with matter inside of it. Something with no environment can contain environments. It is simply a matter of perspective, as Wittgenstein said in Tractatus Logico-philosophicus:
- 6.45
To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole—a limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical.
When we return back to the idea that the simpler something is, the less it is defined, the more it can contain, the more ideas are implied by it, we begin to think about the relationship between voids and the chaos of everything imaginable. This has been thought of before, and is recorded in mythology:
Chaos has been described as the great void of emptiness within the universe from which Eros came and it was he who gave divine order and also perfected all things. In later times it was written that Chaos was a confused shapeless mass from which the universe was developed into a cosmos, or harmonious order.
But how can voids of no complexity be related to everything imaginable? When we think of everything imaginable, we think of chaos as wildly complex. But that is only because we are thinking of it from all sorts of perspectives. You are seeing the environments inside of chaos, and you are not looking at choas itself, on the whole, as the set of everything as a whole.
Everything as a whole is a form in which all of its forms are contained and interconnected. Everything as a whole is a tautology. Everything as a whole inherently is true and exists from the perspective which views it as a whole. The universe is simply what environment we happen to be in, in the chaos of all possibility, which we are viewing as a limited whole which defines our existence.
The highest expression of a collective will to power is an evolving drive toward the arts; life is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. And so the Greeks are an aesthetic people (Volk)—not aesthetes, however, but tragic recreators, performers of the universe. In the highest expression of a people, they embody themselves as scientific-minded philosophers
Greg Whitlock's commentary on Nietzsche's "The Pre-Platonic Philosophers", page 165
The notion of cause is part of the apparatus of common sense. I do not think it would be true to say that common sense regards objects as the causes of our perceptions; it would not, unless challenged, think of bringing in causation in this connection. It looks for causes when surprised, not when an occurance seems perfectly natural. It demands causes for a mirage, a reflexion, a dream, an earthquake, a plague, and so on, but not for the ordinary course of nature. And the cause which it looks for, wherever the event concerned has great emotional interest, is pretty sure to be animistic: the anger of the gods, or something analogous. The idea of universal causation, and of causation divorced from purpose, belongs to a later stage of mental development, and marks the beginnings of philosophy and science.
Bertrand Russell, Analysis of Matter, Chapter "From Perception to Common Sense", p150
Electoral reform. Different voting methods contain inherent bias which produces candidates of different qualities depending on the qualities of each voting method. Our electoral system needs to be reevaluated to account for those values we want to see at each position, and design the electoral system for our needs. For example, some voting methods contain bias for centrist candidates for an even hand, and others contain bias for a diverse group of candidates for better proportional representation.
The last political domain to which The People have no access for change is the justice system. Primarily, the current justice system is imperative in nature. We need a declarative justice system. That is to say, instead of issuing commands, we must use values to describe how to evaluate the moral meaning of actions. It is the imperative justice system that leads to law bloat because it cannot handle innovative behavior, making the legislative process impractical. Even if we had the best representatives, they are not able to effectively express values in the legal code.
With the change to declarative justice, the role of the judge would change to be to evaluate each case advised by the law, not to determine whether each case is within the law. The imperative law of today is categorical, and by that very nature it will always be too shallow.
And to think we select Supreme Court justices on whether they will follow an imperative law, when it is precisely the special cases which need declarative law. Today, in order to operate at all, higher justices must reformulate law into declarative terms anyway.
Engineers tend to be systematizers: they are idealists. Scientists are not necessarily idealists since, as empiricists, they tend to be more realist. Even though they often try to explain systems, they don't create systems as engineers do, unless they are in an applied science like engineering. It is interesting that the theory/practice dichotomy is turned on its head: it seems that it is actually possible that some who develop theory can actually be more down to Earth than some who use theory to create. Both aspects have connections with reality, but perhaps this study is indicating that one has more of a potential to lose that connection to a greater degree. Just as what happens to many artists, it is easy to lose touch with reality when you are making your own reality, even if it is not a reification. The idealist thought processes remain the same.
An essential part of leadership is persuasion.
Why is ontology important? The hypothetical as the link between existence (ontology) and morality: it scopes the should x for y.
In America, the East Coast is great for its historical outlook; the West Coast is great for its futuristic outlook; and the Mid-West is just not great. During the Western expansion, the East ruled from afar, the West conquered, and the Mid-West was tooled.
What is experimental art? Most experiments fail.
Experiments are for theory, not practice.
As much as art is for the audience, it is also its burden.
Musicians who only play a part in an orchestra tend to have difficulty becoming orchestrators. They are so accustomed to the singular view of their instrument that they have little concept of orchestration. Everything is a concerto to them.
The singer/songwriter also tends to have this problem. Foreground and background are only loosely integrated. The position of the foreground melody loses meaning when the background context merely provides harmony and rhythm as a dance beat. Funk countered the problem well, but few can pull it off because it takes the aesthetic sense for orchestration.
Complexity is seen as a logical distance: a kind of distance of logical structure. Aren't all distances aesthetic from the point view of the points involved?
Complexity is apparent: dependent upon perspective. Complexity is an a posteriori result, not a cause.
Generalities provide access to more specialities. Unfortunately, we are not also provided with their location.
It is popular for men of science and academics to praise the ability to be disinterested, unbiased, and objective. These same people caution against bad interpretation of results. But why is it that interpretation is a problem? There is no such thing as objective interpretation, but luckily it isn't even necessary. An aesthetic philosophy like that of proper science has no need for non-subjective interpretation precisely because the whole point of science is to orient Nature to subjective observation by way of demonstrations.
It is The Press which seems to have popularized, at least lately, this strange demand of themselves, implying that it is even possible. This is the same group which speaks so highly of the reliability of sources. There is only one reliable, falsifiable, repeatable, demonstratable source; it is not a person nor a book: it is Nature itself. When The Press starts citing demonstrations, it can begin to appeal to a sense of objectivity. Until then—
The value of the dense philosophy is seen in the responses. Dense philosophy is what has historically provided the foundations for important progress. They provide very well-formed systems that make difficult concepts easier to discuss. It is important to actually read them in order to be able to fully appreciate the more fun philosophers, for they are usually making fun of the dense philosophers.
It is also a good exercise in learning to read sympathetically, for to be able to effectively explain what is wrong with a philosophy, one needs to be able to explain why the philosophy was mislead. Otherwise one is bound to ignore the reason why that philosophy adopted that stance in the first place.
These concepts come in handy when thinking of "the problem of universals", which is one of the fundamental problems of existence. The problem of universals is the distinction between what is universal and what is individual.
| Universal | Individual |
|---|---|
| Eternal | Temporal |
| Abstract | Concrete |
| Imaginary | Real |
| General | Special |
| Formal | Informal |
To be continued...
Along with the illusion of the "free will", sentience, comes a perspective of all apparently animate things as individualistic, for we see ourselves as one being, despite the fact that we know we are composed of many little things. We separate ourselves from our supersets and subsets. This is all to make the argument for personal responsibility. Yet that argument is void.
So then it makes sense that we can become confused by thinking of things as either abstract or concrete. What makes something concrete has nothing to do with its form, and has everything to do with its context. So in our minds, instead of recognizing that the dichotomy is an artifact of perspective, we project individuality onto things which suit our way of thinking.
I have been continually noticing that most major social and political problems of today can be much better understood with mere set theory. Society today has an understanding of liability that shows its bias towards "free will". Society is only able to recognize responsibility and fault at one level in the hierarchy: the person in the chain who is most easily blamed. The legal system does not know how to find fault in many parties because it does not know how to deal with that.
To be continued...