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My Philosophy
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Matt Faunce
Mar 22, 2021, 1:07:51 AM3/22/21
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______________My Philosophy______________
Chapter I. Introduction to Empirical Logic
If you have a barrel of 10,000 ping-pong balls and you want to know what
the overall color composition is of the balls in the barrel, and you don't
have the time or means to look at every one of them, you can infer the
composition by randomly sampling a percentage of the balls from the barrel,
inspecting those samples directly, and considering that sample lot as
representative of the whole barrel. The higher the ratio of
samples-taken:whole-barrel, the more secure your inference is. This is an
inductive inference.
If you're able to sample balls from anywhere in the barrel, and you pick
out 100 balls from randomly different places in the barrel, and see that 50
are red and 50 are white, you can infer with a significantly greater
security than 1/100 (100/10,000) that the composition of balls in the
barrel is pretty close to 50:50 of red:white.
If you're only able to sample balls from the top half of the barrel, say,
because your arm isn't long enough to reach the lower half, and you pull
out 50 red and 50 white balls randomly from within your reach, and if you
want those balls to represent the composition of the whole barrel, you are
logically required to weigh all 100 samples as one single sample. One
sample from a collection of more than one has the weight equivalent of a
mere hypothesis, i.e., a guess. The security of your inference is
1/the-number-of-possible-color-combinations, in other words, near zero.
The reason all non-randomly-picked samples must be weighed as only one
sample is because, in this case for example, for all you know the bottom
half of the barrel was filled with a separate batch than the top half, and
they were blue. Random sampling protects you from being wrong about any
assumption about how the whole was supplied or organized.
If you have a barrel of only two balls and you sample one, and it's red,
you then know the color composition of the barrel is at least 50% red but
you know nothing of the other 50% except that it's some color. You can only
guess if it's white, blue, clear, etc. Here, your security of knowledge of
the color composition of the whole barrel is
1/the-number-of-possible-colors.
But, in that second case of the 10,000 balls where your arm was too short,
while you are not logically warranted to have any confidence in an
inference about the color composition of the whole barrel, you are
logically warranted to have some confidence in an inference that the top
half of the barrel is 50:50 of red:white.
If you have pertinent information from a source outside of the barrel, then
you might be able to use that information to increase the security of your
inference. E.g., if you know that the balls will be for sale on the market
and that the greatest demand is for white balls, then your inference that
the lower half of the barrel contains white balls might have a greater
security than a random guess. Whether it will actually increase your
security or not depends on how randomly you sampled from the pool* of all
possible outside factors or not; how much it will increase your security
depends how large your ratio of random-samples:whole is. If all you know
about the relevant outside world is that there is at least this one
possible factor, then all you can do is guess whether it's outweighed by
other opposing factors or not. If you're able to sample from the whole
outside-world of possible relevant factors, then you can make an inductive
inference about that outside world, the result of which can be added to
your initial inference of the composition of the barrel. You'll need to
take random samples from this outside-world, judge** each sample for
whether it actually influenced the composition of the barrel or not, then
consider, with the appropriate level of security, that lot of samples as
representative of the whole world of relevant factors. Adjust your
inference about the barrel accordingly.
When taking samples for an inductive test of a hypothesis, you should be
careful not to give too much weight to the samples taken from your memory
of experiences from prior to the making of your hypothesis. They may not
have been taken randomly from the real world, and in many cases you don't
remember all of your past relevant experiences, but, often, only
experiences toward which you're biased. E.g., your hypothesis is "75% of
people's childhood experiences is of having fun." You likely have not
sampled randomly from the whole world of children; maybe you have a bias
toward noticing fun over not-fun events; and you may not have remembered as
many of the not-fun experiences in your own childhood. Give much more
weight to the samples taken after you formed the hypothesis that you're
testing, because for many cases, most people, if not all, will judge these
samples with less of a bias. For samples drawn from your memory of
experiences which happened before your hypothesis, do your best to discount
their value by as much as you honestly assess the selecting of them to have
not approximated randomness.
Lastly, you can't make an inductive inference of an infinite set that has
any security at all. It's impossible to randomly sample from an infinite
set, so with all your non-random samples weighed cumulatively as one, your
security will be zero, as 1/infinity=0, besides the fact that n/infinity=0.
For example, you don't know that anything will or will not change somewhere
in the infinite future; you don't know if it or anything else will even
exist, or not exist, in cases of physical objects, or whether a law of
nature that's relevant and applicable now will have any relevant
application later. So, you can't make an inductive inference about the
eternal character of something, e.g., the law of gravity, the existence of
matter, God's character. You can, of course, in certain cases, make a
deductive inference, e.g., in an infinite set of even numbers you can
deduce the fact that any number you pick, no matter how high, is even.
Way too often, I see smart people overestimating the security of their
inference, acting as if they (1) sampled randomly from the whole area of
which they're making their inference, when they didn't randomly sample or
honestly approximate randomness, (2) sampled from the whole area of which
they're making their inference, when they only sampled from a determined
subset, and/or (3) assumed their access to relevant outside information is
comprehensive, when it isn't.
You may ask, "How, then, do we know the sun will rise tomorrow? Isn't the
future similar to the bottom half of the barrel in that it's out of our
observational reach and so we can't take samples from there?" The answer is
that we don't know that the sun will rise anymore than scientists knew that
stones don't fall from the sky. As recently as the late 18th century
scientists thought they knew that stones don't fall from the sky because
day after day, year after year, their observations showed no signs of such
stones. However, we infer the future sun's rising from more than just its
past regularity; we also deduce it from the Major Premise that the forces
that make the sun rise regularly, and the laws that regulate the forces,
are stable enough (relative to all the other laws and forces that work
toward stopping the rising) for its cycle to continue into the foreseeable
future. But here, again, all we know about these stable forces is that
they've been stable in the past; we can't sample from their future states,
so we know nothing about their future. We don't know that there aren't
other forces out there that will stop the sun from rising before tomorrow,
e.g., maybe there's something, currently too far away to detect, heading
towards the Earth at an immense speed, which will obliterate the Earth
tonight and thus eliminate tomorrow morning. We can only guess what's
outside of our observational reach. However, if we had access to all areas
of the universe, and took random samples from the whole universe for
possible causes of catastrophe to our Earth or sun then we could know with
some degree of security that the sun will or won't rise again. We, so far,
haven't had full access to the universe, so every belief in the past that
the sun will rise the next day was a good guess on par with the belief that
an asteroid won't land in my backyard in my lifetime.
*You might think that because everything affects every other thing
(directly or indirectly), and because there are infinite ways to analyze
the world, and hence there are an infinite number of things which affect
the immediate thing that you're examining, that it's impossible to draw an
inductive inference with any security about anything, (as n/infinity=0.) It
is possible, for the following reason. It's not true that the importance of
every thing's effect on your thing is equal; there are diminishing returns.
And, it must be—lest induction, and the meaning of anything, is an
illusion—that the sum of the weight of (the importance of) the infinity of
affecting things is finite: this is analogous to the fact that an infinite
number of half-distances of a given distance has a finite sum which is the
given distance.
**Your judgment, here as with all judgments, will also be an inductive
inference. (Cf., John Venn, The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic,
chapter V.) It may seem that you have no ground for any inference when each
one is based on an infinity of layers of inferences upon inferences. But,
as long as that infinity has a finite sum, you are on solid ground. Your
ground is the coherent whole of the universe.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter II. Intellectual Integrity, Defined
Intellectual integrity has three components. One of them is the willingness
of a person to admit that the object of his belief might not be true, if
it’s brought to his attention that he has not sufficiently tested the
object’s veracity. Another component is the believer’s willingness to then
better test the truth of the object of his belief when doing so doesn’t
take an unreasonable amount of effort relative to (a) what he should
reasonably understand as the consequence of being wrong plus (b) the
reasonably-assessed probability that he is wrong. Those two components have
the prerequisite of being sufficiently open to information that’s contrary
to one’s belief in order for that information to merely catch one’s
attention.
Put conversely and starting with the prerequisite, (1) if the believer is
so unamenable to information about his possibly being mistaken that he
can’t see this information when that information is right in front of him,
then he lacks the character or intelligence to have intellectual integrity.
For example, a person’s belief might foster such a strong drive toward a
goal that he is unable to take notice of anything that is counter-useful
for achieving that goal. Say, his belief is that he is a morally good man;
his goal is to provide for his family; his drive toward that goal delivers
his goal in spades; and, in his relentless drive toward his goal, he can’t
see that his job as a corporate con-man has consequences that contradict
his belief, because deep down he doesn’t want to know about them. (2) If
the believer sees information showing the weakness of the justification for
his belief, and he’s unwilling to admit that he might be wrong, then he
lacks intellectual integrity. (3) If he does admit he might be wrong, and
he still holds the belief, but he’s unwilling to look any further into it
when that effort is relatively easy, then he lacks intellectual
integrity—and, the higher the consequences of being wrong, the more he
proves his lack.
?????
[I’m not very sure about this section, between the question marks.]
So far that’s only the aspect of intellectual integrity that regards the
ability to see and admit a probability of fault and pursue the further
testing if it’s reasonable to do so. If I were to follow the idea of C.S.
Peirce, that “Thought in action has for its only possible motive the
attainment of thought at rest,” (CP 5.396) I would leave it at that.
(“Thought at rest” is ‘belief’.) But, I disagree with Peirce’s idea and
think that another motive of thought is the invigoration of the spirit,
i.e., the maintenance of happily active thinking.
Given this other motive of thought, I’m inclined to add this: intellectual
integrity also entails the person’s willingness to expand his knowledge, no
matter how slowly he might want that expansion to happen, if he were
afforded the opportunity—he might, for example, be so occupied with
adjusting his belief system according to (2) and (3) that any expansion
would overwhelm him. Expansion of knowledge is done by (4) seeking new data
for (5) making new hypotheses, and then (6) testing new hypotheses when
doing so doesn’t take up an unreasonable amount of his resources.
Put conversely, a person who is unwilling to expand his knowledge if he has
the opportunity to do so, and therefore avoid mental torpor, lacks
intellectual integrity.
‘Integrity’ conjures the idea of a strong bridge or building that will
last. Does intellectual integrity really entail the willingness to expand
knowledge? I thought of the evolution of birds: I wonder if they’ve reached
a point of sufficiency where no further expansion of intelligence is
necessary, and that they, in their habits of mind and body, are perfect or
as good as it can get. So, perhaps my including ‘expansion of knowledge’ in
the definition of ‘intellectual integrity’ is only due to my bias toward
expansion of knowledge which, itself, has no substantial justification.
??????
Being right is not a necessary condition for having intellectual integrity;
and being wrong is not a necessary condition for lacking intellectual
integrity. Sometimes people with intellectual integrity are mistaken;
sometimes people who lack intellectual integrity get some things right.
A person’s holding of passively-attained beliefs that are wrong does not
mean that person lacks intellectual integrity. For example, before the
year, 1802 A.D., if a person said that rocks in a nearby field were “space
rocks”, as in rocks that came from outer space, almost everyone would have
assumed that person to be not only wrong, but kooky. In fact, this
happened: the scientist, Ernst Florens Chladni, who was the first to
confirm the existence of meteorites on earth, was, for some time, mocked
for believing his conclusion. Given most people’s lack of access to
evidence for meteorites just before the time of Chladni’s discovery, in
1794 A.D., and given the long time that had passed since Galileo’s first
telescope, so that the average person would have thought that science
would’ve had made such evidence available by then if it were true, it was
not unreasonable for a person who had never seen evidence for space rocks
to have believed that the believer in space rocks is kooky. Everyone holds
more passively-attained beliefs than they can possibly test; e.g., most
people who believe that Mars’s orbit of the Sun is an ellipse have not
checked out the astronomers’ observational data, mathematics, and
logic—they just believe the conclusion inferred by the consensus. They
merely assume that the scientific community is not making a mistake similar
to what the meteorite-deniers of 1794-1802 A.D. made, or any other type of
lock-step mistake. And, as far as intellectual integrity is concerned,
that’s OK. Following what you believe is the scientific consensus,
following your peers, following authority figures, sticking with tradition,
sticking with your first notions—none of that, by itself, is a knock
against your intellectual integrity. What matters is how you react to
information that’s contrary to your belief.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter III. Particulars and Universal, a Classic Problem. What Determines
or Guides Our Syntheses and Analyses?
A particular is an object that is distinct from anything else. A universal
is a class or category. Particulars are the physical things. Universals are
the ideas of what these things are. For example, on the page you’re
reading, this particular letter I is different from every other letter I
but it is still classified as an I. Each different I is in a different
place, which is enough to show that each one is a different object, but
also, when measured extremely accurately each I is also different in
height, width, thickness, and darkness from the others. They are similar,
but it takes a judgment to decide what things are similar enough to belong
to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive I’s each one mutated a little bit
more than the previous. Where do you draw the line between what is an I and
what isn’t? How should you decide? Are some judgments natural and others
artificial?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
due to the universal that we know the dot after the line (the period) isn't
a part of the letter. Likewise with all things, the understanding of any
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, therefore it takes a
judgment to decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong
enough. For another example, take one leg of a wooden chair which is
standing on a wooden floor. To you, the top half of that leg and the lower
half of that leg make a single unit called “chair leg”. To a termite, the
wood making a part of the floor and the lower part of the leg are a unit,
which he would call “a good meal” if he could speak. Each species has a
different natural way to analyze and synthesize his sense data. You can
understand the termite’s judgment, but the termite can’t understand
yours... Now, imagine a being whose intelligence is as advanced from a
human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s. He very well might
have a radically different way of analyzing and synthesizing his sense
data. He might synthesize several elements in a way that we would see as
arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that slight anomalies
within our sense-data are, for the most part, not recognized—we might not
even be able to recognize those component-elements because each of those
elements was due to a synthesis of even smaller elements too foreign to our
thinking, making his whole arrangement way too foreign to our way of
thinking.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one judgment (i.e., one analysis and synthesis of one’s sense-data)
might be so far away from yours that the other’s judgment is seen as
arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities for
analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), the other judgment might be infinitely far away from yours so that you
don’t see the differences as merely arbitrary but you can’t see them at
all. Let me say that again but phrasing it differently. As his judgment
moves farther away from yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his
world gets harder and harder for you to understand; if the limit of how far
that distance can be is infinite, then your understandability of his world
is zero at that limit. So, it is theoretically possible that, over
trillions of years, we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. But total incommensurabilty
is theoretically possible.
(Some philosophers bar the possibility of total incommensurabilty by
postulating its impossibility. For example, C. S. Peirce holds the
continuity of reality as one postulate, and the potential for inquiry to
reach all of reality as another postulate. These postulates allowed him to
create an overall philosophy that’s remarkable for its combination of scope
and coherence. That achievement makes his whole philosophy, with its
postulates, very convincing to many people. Still, there’s no reason to
accept or reject these postulates.)
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, embodiment is the
foundation for judgments. But, that just begs the question of how
embodiment and needs (which can only refer to their universals) are natural
rather than arbitrary judgments. What logical argument could possibly
justify the belief that any of our fundamental judgments are natural rather
than ultimately arbitrary, or vice versa?
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgment, there can be no
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. A true particular would have to be
indivisible, not just practically but conceptually, and this is
inconceivable. With no concept of an ultimate particular, do they exist?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies say that our most fundamental agreements, e.g.,
“the sun is a source of warmth”, are due to the convergence of ideas on a
truth that holds true no matter what any finite number of people believe
about it. They hold as a postulate that universally objective truth is the
foundation of logic. Relativist philosophies rest on the postulate that
agreement is the fundamental quality of thought, and so agreement itself is
the foundation of logic, and it has no need for a further foundation. They
say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our embodiment,
but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of an agreement,
that is due to a more ancient agreement that got established very early in
our evolution.
NB, The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no universally
objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many people
think. If their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about
reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a frame of reference, then their statement
can be restated as this:
“It is relevant, apt, and useful to believe, in our frame of reference,
that there is no belief that is relevant, apt, and useful in all frames of
reference.”
That is not a self-defeating statement if the frames of reference referred
to are incommensurable. What’s true in such a frame of reference, let’s
call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never, and nowhere, become false. Rather,
in the incommensurable frame of reference, frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’
will not exist as a statement that could possibly occur to anyone. It will
not be true or false because it will not be, nor will it be possible for it
to become.
A relativist who defines ‘truth’ as “a belief that’s relevant, apt, and
useful within a frame of reference” defines it that way because of the
prevalence of agreement upon that use of the term in his frame of
reference.
However, some forms of relativism are not very robust.
A “robust relativist” would admit the possibility that everyone in our
frame of reference could be wrong. How? It’s because our whole set of
truths needs to be as coherent as practically possible. Some truths carry
more weight than others, so, when two beliefs contradict each other, the
one with less weight is called a mistake. Clearly, one of the weightiest
beliefs in our frame of reference is that the principle of
non-contradiction applies to a large segment of reality.
You see, objectivist philosophers agree that some beliefs carry more weight
than others, but they think that the relativist’s definition of truth
doesn’t go far enough, so it’s inadequate. Whereas relativists think that
the objectivists go too far when they postulate an external realm of
reality when it’s not needed to explain any phenomenon in reality.
Even though there’s a prevalence of agreement in objectivism, the
relativist says their explanation is more coherent and elegant.
Therein lies the meat of the debate between objectivism and relativism.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God.
§1. An over-belief is a mindset adopted in order to act, whether mentally
or physically, in accord with what one’s instincts say is true when that
truth is so vague that it can’t be clearly expressed. It’s an overly
precise rendering—and as a result, a caricature—of a belief that is
inherently vague. It serves the purpose of (1) being more readily brought
to the forefront of the mind than the underlying belief, and (2) of being
more easily taught to children than the underlying belief.
[Insert James quote on over belief.]
The over-belief is (imperfectly) analogous to this: a way to relax is to
imagine that hot, but not too hot, water is being poured on your shoulders.
The object of belief is that hot water is being poured on your shoulders;
that’s obviously false, but believing it’s true helps you to live in accord
with the truth that your instincts insist upon, viz., that you should
relax. The analogy fails on the point that “you should relax” is also
definable, so a better analogy would be to some vaguer (harder-to-define)
truth.
A belief is defined by pragmatists as a habit of mental or physical action
with which at least one part of the believer’s mind consents. That is, a
belief in x is a self-approved habit of acting as if x were true. The
underlying beliefs of religion are very vague and not explicable except
with the vaguest terms. The problem is that the religious believer needs to
regularly practice these underlying beliefs in order to get the vital
benefits of them, but, because these beliefs are so vague, the believers
would have a hard time maintaining this practice without having
over-beliefs which can be readily remembered and easily taught to their
youth.
The loftiest things in life are the vaguest. Some other vague objects of
belief are love, beauty, and justice. These can only be defined using other
vague terms. The vaguest of beliefs which everyone believes is the belief
in reality. Reality has no genus or real differentia, so, whereas every
other thing is understood by the effects it has on things, and that
understanding is brought to light by how it’s effect differ from other
things’ effects, the understanding of reality cannot be gotten that way. We
know it’s here, we know some things in it, and we assume it’s the sum of
all things; that’s it. The opposite of ‘vague’ is ‘definite’ or
‘well-defined’. A triangle is defined quite well as a figure composed of
three straight lines which, two by two, extend to and meet at three points
thus making the three angles by which it gets its name.
The vital benefits of practicing the underlying beliefs of religion include
the becoming a better person by consistently aspiring toward the perfect,
and having a strong sense of overall purpose and hope, both of which
positively affect mental and physical health.
C. S. Peirce explained the vagueness of the object of the underlying
belief.
“So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I
answer, yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less
believes this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who
are accustomed to think the belief is entirely unfounded. The reason they
fall into this extraordinary error about their own belief is that they
precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in doing so, inevitably
change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be warranted,
even if it cannot be quite refuted. Every concept that is vague is liable
to be self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No
concept, not even those of mathematics, is absolutely precise; and some of
the most important for everyday use are extremely vague. Nevertheless, our
instinctive beliefs involving such concepts are far more trustworthy than
the best established results of science, if these be precisely understood.
For instance, we all think that there is an element of order in the
universe. Could any laboratory experiments render that proposition more
certain than instinct or common sense leaves it? It is ridiculous to broach
such a question. But when anyone undertakes to say precisely what that
order consists in, he will quickly find he outruns all logical warrant. Men
who are given to defining too much inevitably run themselves into confusion
in dealing with the vague concepts of common sense.” CP 6:496
§2. The object of the underlying religious-belief might be expressed as
“the ultimate Reason for hope.” I call this “God.”
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. (I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains
to the whole of reality.) A final cause is either a purpose or a law which
pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity of
that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which is true in the infinite long-run’. For
example, if you’re about to flip a coin that’s weighted toward heads, your
best bet is on heads. While you may get tails on this toss or the next
finite number of tosses, ultimately, that is, in the infinite long-run,
you’ll get infinitely more heads than tails. When you bet on the side of
logic, your betting on what you infer is the probability of how similar
incidents would turn out in the long run. The ideal infinite-limit is your
only guarantor; we only know that weighted coins fall more often on their
weighted side because of observations of that over many tosses unevenly
weighted objects tend, more so the more tosses, to land on their weighted
side. If there’s no ideal infinite-limit, there’s no way to believe that
our observations of the trend won’t reverse itself. All such matters are
outside the domain of logic, e.g., if you’re about to bet on what my last
coin toss resulted in, you have a 50:50 chance of guessing right, but if
you guess “heads” or “tails” you don’t have a 50:50 chance of being right.
You’ll be either 100% right or 100% wrong. That one toss is a sui genera
event, so its actual result is not a matter of probability (although your
guess is.)
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil is inevitable, if you want to know it, you want to
know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge. Note well
that the hypothesis that a subset of reality is hopeless is nonetheless a
useful hypothesis because if it’s true it means that what is hopeful is in
what’s outside of that subset. The hypothesis that all of reality is
hopeless is an utterly useless hypothesis, and as such it’s forbidden by
logic. Utter pessimism is anathema to logic. With hope being the basis of
logic, there’s no logical reason to bet against hope in general. So the
reasonable bet is for hope in general. Insomuch as ‘ultimate Reason for
hope’ can be called ‘God’ is as much as it’s reasonable to believe in God
and unreasonable to believe God is not real. (‘Ultimate Reason for hope’ is
a personal perspective on what I hope is the ‘Reason for goodness’ which is
the objective perspective.)
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because pessimism toward the
universe is unreasonable. You might respond, saying the course of the
universe is a sui genera event, so its actual outcome, good or bad, is not
a matter of logic. This is true! But if we’re going to guess what the
outcome will be it’s against reason to side with pessimism. Therefore it’s
reasonable to believe that God—the object of the underlying
religious-belief—loaded reality toward goodness.
[Insert James quote about the true being useful, the useful being true.]
[Insert Peirce quote on how logic looks to the long run.]
You can’t object to this with the idea that logic, i.e., the truth of
reality, has nothing to do with hope. That’s an anti-pragmatistic stance,
and it’s likely due to your holding on to a discredited Cartesian
principle. Pragmatism is against Cartesianism on this important point:
Cartesianism says that the truth of what is is so without any connection to
any inquiry into it, including the ideal infinite-limit of inquiry. The
pragmatist, C. S. Peirce, said that that last clause makes Cartesianism
nominalistic (anti-realist), because it makes knowledge impossible: it
supposes that there’s an impassable chasm between the inquirer and the
object of inquiry. In response to that, Peirce defined ‘the true’ and ‘the
real’ as such: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by
all who investigate, is what we mean by the true, and the object
represented in this opinion is the real.” Here, Peirce tied truth to the
infinite limit of inquiry.
My point in this essay rests on Peirce’s correction of Cartesianism, and
can be laid out like this:
(1) the truth of reality is connected to inquiry at inquiry’s infinite
limit;
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts into a habit;
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, the truth of reality, i.e., logic, contains within it a hope for
goodness in general.
Therefore it is perfectly logical to believe in a Reason to hope for a
general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there is no
Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe that a
subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you where the
good is. To believe that the universe, in its totality, is ultimately bad,
is useless.
§3. When someone says “There is no God,” I’m instinctively offended,
because I understand that person as saying “There is no ultimate reason for
hope, but there is an ultimate reason for despair.”
If someone says to me, “a cargo airplane is not a god, nor is or was the
man called Jesus”, I’m not automatically offended, but I’m ready to defend
both beliefs, as they are or were genuinely practiced, for their value as
over-beliefs which cover the response appropriate to the object of the more
important underlying beliefs. By genuinely practicing even the most
ridiculous over-beliefs, the believer draws on a real source of ultimate
hope; and that habit of drawing is that person’s underlying belief whether
he can verbally articulate any knowledge of the object of that underlying
belief or not. I think it’s cruel to attempt to pull that rug out from
underneath someone without knowing that they’ll have another but more
secure rug (over-belief) to stand on (to connect them to the real source.)
If the person who attacks another person’s over-belief had the goal or
effect of disconnecting someone from their source of ultimate hope, then
I’m instinctively offended. If it’s their goal, they’re Satanic; if it’s
their effect but not their goal, they’re Satan’s useful idiot. (I define
‘Satan’ as the Reason for despair.)
Despite the fact that your life is short, reality is continuous, so you are
connected to the infinite future. Just as, with a coin loaded toward heads,
in the infinite long-run you’ll get infinitely more heads than tails,
reality in the infinite future is infinitely good. You’re connected with
that goodness.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter V. Peirce’s Cosmology, My Interpretation.
Order in our universe is on a parabolic path from mostly chaos to mostly
order. Order is more fleeting the farther back you look, and it’s more
established the farther into the future you look. One asymptote is absolute
chaos, and the other asymptote is absolute order. The parabola never
reaches either asymptote, so there is no absolute beginning or end to our
universe, but there is an evolution of order out of chaos. This parabolic
path is not perfectly smooth; it has perturbations, but on the whole it’s
parabolic.
An ordered part of the universe is a habit developed by the universe. In a
mostly chaotic world, there was always a tendency of the ordered parts of
the universe to unite and usurp chaos’s realm. In the early days, these
creations would be small and fleeting, but as time continued these
creatures would have larger and longer lives. Today, the universe has many
habits that are relatively well established. Physical matter is deeply
ingrained habit. The mental world, on the other hand, is fairly established
relative to chaos, but relative to physical matter it’s relatively
restless, and so, inquisitive; mental activity is flighty, and more
susceptible to being disoriented by its encounters with the randomness of
the world. A mind is a segment of the universe that’s swimming in a more or
less chaotic world looking for a suitable belief in which to settle. A mind
is subject to deception by chance, but it uses chance to both broaden its
horizons and to use the perceived long-run trajectories of chance to help
it answer questions, e.g., taking random samples for an inductive
inference. The difference between mind and matter is the relative stability
of the habit. Matter was mind that stopped changing its mind.
The grand trajectory of the universe is toward its ideal state. At one
point in his writings Peirce called that state “death” in a material state.
This is not the best conclusion that can be drawn from his premises. Since
the impetus for all thought is hope, I think the best conclusion about the
universe as a whole is the most optimistic one. This thinking is rational
when applied to thought about the universe as a whole: a pessimistic
conclusion about the whole universe is utterly worthless and completely
ugly; but, it’s often useful to come to a pessimistic conclusion about some
subset of the universe, e.g., whether you can walk through a wall. I think
the ideal state of the universe is one where the balance of order and
chance yields the most beauty, and beauty cannot be appreciated except by a
creative mind.
Logic is a species of ethics, and ethics is a species of aesthetics. What’s
true is true because it’s what should be agreed upon by a
theoretically-infinite community which has perspectives as diverse as
theoretically possible—ethics is the science of what should be done. What
should be believed is what is most beautiful to the infinite
community—aesthetics is the science of assessing the beautiful. Even
so-called ugly facts are more beautiful than their denial if they’re
understood from the perspective of the infinitely wise community. For
example, it’s a fact, however horrible, that some innocent child is going
to get murdered tomorrow. This fact, if believed by our community, will
propel us to do good acts we otherwise wouldn’t have done, and thus will
propel us to reach toward heights of beauty which we otherwise wouldn’t
attain. Consider where we stand, today, in the evolution of feelings. Eons
ago, feelings were duller and so evil had less of a bad effect, but also,
goodness had less of a rewarding effect. Eons from now, feelings will be
much more sensitive, so the rewards of goodness will be more fully
appreciated. We’ll have eaten the fruit from the tree of
knowledge-of-good-and-evil and so we’ll understand more fully why we should
not do evil things. Doing the slightest evil in that future time will be
understood to be like, today, stabbing your own leg with a knife right
before what you would otherwise expect to be your happiest, most fulfilling
moment. Good acts will be more fully appreciated, and this fact will propel
us even further to doing good. In that future we will be in bliss—not in
ignorant bliss, though, but a very-aware bliss. So, truth is both what
should be believed and what will propel us toward a more beautiful future.
Falsehoods are both what shouldn’t be believed and what will impede our
evolution toward a beautiful future. The truth that a falsehood was told
should be believed, and this truth is beautiful in that overcoming the
deception will make us better, more beautiful people.
The telos of the universe is the ideal of perfect beauty which lies at the
infinite limit of the future. The universe will always reach toward the
beautiful, or that which is aesthetically good, whether it be
mathematically, musically, geometric, algebraic, physically,
interpersonally, etc., all of which will be harmonized in ever more
beautiful ways.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter VI. The Afterlife. A Hypothesis.
On the timeline, the present is a mere point on the line, and it has no
length. The past is the line before that point; the future is the line
after that point.
The past is what is remembered and what would be inferred given unlimited
time and resources for investigation.
The future is what would be inferred given unlimited resources for
investigation, plus the pure-chance occurrences which can’t be predicted,
e.g., the result of your next coin toss.
What we call the present is really the immediate past, where the memory is
still vivid, plus the inferable immediate-future.
You are nothing but a memory, inference at its theoretically highest
potential, and a set of probabilities. Your knowledge of yourself is
nothing but your memory and your actual (as opposed to theoretically
potential) inferences, including inferences of the limits of those
probabilities.
Consciousness and intelligence in the universe has been evolving such that
the power of both memory and inference has been increasing. Therefore, the
ongoing understanding of the present has been including more and more of
the past with farther and farther reaches into the future.
There will come a time, long after our deaths, where highly evolved,
conscious, and intelligent beings, who are made from recombined parts of
the material we were made of, will be able to infer and remember our lives
with as much clarity, vividness, and definiteness as we can presently know
and feel our present lives. Since they are made of our material and
material affected by our material, their knowledge of us will also contain
memory. These beings will literally resurrect us.
At that time, each person will become fully alive (i.e., as alive as he was
in his previous life) in a highly evolved world as a being with all the
habits he had established for himself in the previous world. Evil habits
won’t be rewarded as they sometimes were in his former world, but out of
habit he’ll continue them and suffer very harsh consequences. For people
who have established an attitude of unrepentance, their new life will be
Hell. For those who were evil but didn’t want to be, they will have a harsh
start, but they’ll adjust. Those who dedicated their life too doing good
will be rewarded the most quickly. But, everyone will be disoriented at
first. Once the adjustment to the new world is made, your evolution, and
the world’s evolution will continue forever toward more wonderful living.
This is Heaven.
At present, each dead person is remembered to some extent, and he is alive
to that extent, albeit that extent is a far cry from what it was when he
was commonly considered “alive”. These memories do fade, and so the dead
person’s vague life fades. But, over the evolution of consciousness and
intelligence in the universe, there will come a point in time where memory
and understanding of him will begin to grow, in fact, it will be parts of
him re-used by the future beings that will be remembering him. When the
memory plus understanding of him by the future beings reaches the clarity,
vividness, and definiteness as we presently know and feel our present
lives, he will be fully resurrected and as in control of his life as he was
in his former life.
As the universe evolves beyond this point of “full resurrection”, the
clarity, vividness, definiteness, and feelings of everything will increase.
And so, the appreciation of goodness and repulsion of evil will increase,
but as goodness increases and evil decreases, Heaven’s rewards will
increase.
I doubt that the first highly evolved beings, who will remember, i.e.,
awaken, the beings of history, will be humans or descendants of humans. In
the evolutionary race to reach this singularity of intelligence, humans are
like the hare in the race of the tortoise and the hare. So far, our great
abilities are being squandered by selfishness and arrogance. The more I
look into the history of science the more I lose hope for human evolution.
I have more hope that the mice will do it, but maybe we’ll have to wait for
the cockroaches. But if cockroaches fail, the tardigrades won’t fail us!
From the frame of reference of the living, after a person dies, many many
years will pass before he is resurrected with the clarity, vividness, and
definiteness we feel now. But, from his own frame of reference he will be
resurrected fairly quickly afterwards. This is analogous to a particle
traveling a large distance through space at a speed near the speed of
light: from our frame of reference it takes many years, but from its frame
of reference, only a few days pass.
--
Matt
Chapter I. Introduction to Empirical Logic
If you have a barrel of 10,000 ping-pong balls and you want to know what
the overall color composition is of the balls in the barrel, and you don't
have the time or means to look at every one of them, you can infer the
composition by randomly sampling a percentage of the balls from the barrel,
inspecting those samples directly, and considering that sample lot as
representative of the whole barrel. The higher the ratio of
samples-taken:whole-barrel, the more secure your inference is. This is an
inductive inference.
If you're able to sample balls from anywhere in the barrel, and you pick
out 100 balls from randomly different places in the barrel, and see that 50
are red and 50 are white, you can infer with a significantly greater
security than 1/100 (100/10,000) that the composition of balls in the
barrel is pretty close to 50:50 of red:white.
If you're only able to sample balls from the top half of the barrel, say,
because your arm isn't long enough to reach the lower half, and you pull
out 50 red and 50 white balls randomly from within your reach, and if you
want those balls to represent the composition of the whole barrel, you are
logically required to weigh all 100 samples as one single sample. One
sample from a collection of more than one has the weight equivalent of a
mere hypothesis, i.e., a guess. The security of your inference is
1/the-number-of-possible-color-combinations, in other words, near zero.
The reason all non-randomly-picked samples must be weighed as only one
sample is because, in this case for example, for all you know the bottom
half of the barrel was filled with a separate batch than the top half, and
they were blue. Random sampling protects you from being wrong about any
assumption about how the whole was supplied or organized.
If you have a barrel of only two balls and you sample one, and it's red,
you then know the color composition of the barrel is at least 50% red but
you know nothing of the other 50% except that it's some color. You can only
guess if it's white, blue, clear, etc. Here, your security of knowledge of
the color composition of the whole barrel is
1/the-number-of-possible-colors.
But, in that second case of the 10,000 balls where your arm was too short,
while you are not logically warranted to have any confidence in an
inference about the color composition of the whole barrel, you are
logically warranted to have some confidence in an inference that the top
half of the barrel is 50:50 of red:white.
If you have pertinent information from a source outside of the barrel, then
you might be able to use that information to increase the security of your
inference. E.g., if you know that the balls will be for sale on the market
and that the greatest demand is for white balls, then your inference that
the lower half of the barrel contains white balls might have a greater
security than a random guess. Whether it will actually increase your
security or not depends on how randomly you sampled from the pool* of all
possible outside factors or not; how much it will increase your security
depends how large your ratio of random-samples:whole is. If all you know
about the relevant outside world is that there is at least this one
possible factor, then all you can do is guess whether it's outweighed by
other opposing factors or not. If you're able to sample from the whole
outside-world of possible relevant factors, then you can make an inductive
inference about that outside world, the result of which can be added to
your initial inference of the composition of the barrel. You'll need to
take random samples from this outside-world, judge** each sample for
whether it actually influenced the composition of the barrel or not, then
consider, with the appropriate level of security, that lot of samples as
representative of the whole world of relevant factors. Adjust your
inference about the barrel accordingly.
When taking samples for an inductive test of a hypothesis, you should be
careful not to give too much weight to the samples taken from your memory
of experiences from prior to the making of your hypothesis. They may not
have been taken randomly from the real world, and in many cases you don't
remember all of your past relevant experiences, but, often, only
experiences toward which you're biased. E.g., your hypothesis is "75% of
people's childhood experiences is of having fun." You likely have not
sampled randomly from the whole world of children; maybe you have a bias
toward noticing fun over not-fun events; and you may not have remembered as
many of the not-fun experiences in your own childhood. Give much more
weight to the samples taken after you formed the hypothesis that you're
testing, because for many cases, most people, if not all, will judge these
samples with less of a bias. For samples drawn from your memory of
experiences which happened before your hypothesis, do your best to discount
their value by as much as you honestly assess the selecting of them to have
not approximated randomness.
Lastly, you can't make an inductive inference of an infinite set that has
any security at all. It's impossible to randomly sample from an infinite
set, so with all your non-random samples weighed cumulatively as one, your
security will be zero, as 1/infinity=0, besides the fact that n/infinity=0.
For example, you don't know that anything will or will not change somewhere
in the infinite future; you don't know if it or anything else will even
exist, or not exist, in cases of physical objects, or whether a law of
nature that's relevant and applicable now will have any relevant
application later. So, you can't make an inductive inference about the
eternal character of something, e.g., the law of gravity, the existence of
matter, God's character. You can, of course, in certain cases, make a
deductive inference, e.g., in an infinite set of even numbers you can
deduce the fact that any number you pick, no matter how high, is even.
Way too often, I see smart people overestimating the security of their
inference, acting as if they (1) sampled randomly from the whole area of
which they're making their inference, when they didn't randomly sample or
honestly approximate randomness, (2) sampled from the whole area of which
they're making their inference, when they only sampled from a determined
subset, and/or (3) assumed their access to relevant outside information is
comprehensive, when it isn't.
You may ask, "How, then, do we know the sun will rise tomorrow? Isn't the
future similar to the bottom half of the barrel in that it's out of our
observational reach and so we can't take samples from there?" The answer is
that we don't know that the sun will rise anymore than scientists knew that
stones don't fall from the sky. As recently as the late 18th century
scientists thought they knew that stones don't fall from the sky because
day after day, year after year, their observations showed no signs of such
stones. However, we infer the future sun's rising from more than just its
past regularity; we also deduce it from the Major Premise that the forces
that make the sun rise regularly, and the laws that regulate the forces,
are stable enough (relative to all the other laws and forces that work
toward stopping the rising) for its cycle to continue into the foreseeable
future. But here, again, all we know about these stable forces is that
they've been stable in the past; we can't sample from their future states,
so we know nothing about their future. We don't know that there aren't
other forces out there that will stop the sun from rising before tomorrow,
e.g., maybe there's something, currently too far away to detect, heading
towards the Earth at an immense speed, which will obliterate the Earth
tonight and thus eliminate tomorrow morning. We can only guess what's
outside of our observational reach. However, if we had access to all areas
of the universe, and took random samples from the whole universe for
possible causes of catastrophe to our Earth or sun then we could know with
some degree of security that the sun will or won't rise again. We, so far,
haven't had full access to the universe, so every belief in the past that
the sun will rise the next day was a good guess on par with the belief that
an asteroid won't land in my backyard in my lifetime.
*You might think that because everything affects every other thing
(directly or indirectly), and because there are infinite ways to analyze
the world, and hence there are an infinite number of things which affect
the immediate thing that you're examining, that it's impossible to draw an
inductive inference with any security about anything, (as n/infinity=0.) It
is possible, for the following reason. It's not true that the importance of
every thing's effect on your thing is equal; there are diminishing returns.
And, it must be—lest induction, and the meaning of anything, is an
illusion—that the sum of the weight of (the importance of) the infinity of
affecting things is finite: this is analogous to the fact that an infinite
number of half-distances of a given distance has a finite sum which is the
given distance.
**Your judgment, here as with all judgments, will also be an inductive
inference. (Cf., John Venn, The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic,
chapter V.) It may seem that you have no ground for any inference when each
one is based on an infinity of layers of inferences upon inferences. But,
as long as that infinity has a finite sum, you are on solid ground. Your
ground is the coherent whole of the universe.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter II. Intellectual Integrity, Defined
Intellectual integrity has three components. One of them is the willingness
of a person to admit that the object of his belief might not be true, if
it’s brought to his attention that he has not sufficiently tested the
object’s veracity. Another component is the believer’s willingness to then
better test the truth of the object of his belief when doing so doesn’t
take an unreasonable amount of effort relative to (a) what he should
reasonably understand as the consequence of being wrong plus (b) the
reasonably-assessed probability that he is wrong. Those two components have
the prerequisite of being sufficiently open to information that’s contrary
to one’s belief in order for that information to merely catch one’s
attention.
Put conversely and starting with the prerequisite, (1) if the believer is
so unamenable to information about his possibly being mistaken that he
can’t see this information when that information is right in front of him,
then he lacks the character or intelligence to have intellectual integrity.
For example, a person’s belief might foster such a strong drive toward a
goal that he is unable to take notice of anything that is counter-useful
for achieving that goal. Say, his belief is that he is a morally good man;
his goal is to provide for his family; his drive toward that goal delivers
his goal in spades; and, in his relentless drive toward his goal, he can’t
see that his job as a corporate con-man has consequences that contradict
his belief, because deep down he doesn’t want to know about them. (2) If
the believer sees information showing the weakness of the justification for
his belief, and he’s unwilling to admit that he might be wrong, then he
lacks intellectual integrity. (3) If he does admit he might be wrong, and
he still holds the belief, but he’s unwilling to look any further into it
when that effort is relatively easy, then he lacks intellectual
integrity—and, the higher the consequences of being wrong, the more he
proves his lack.
?????
[I’m not very sure about this section, between the question marks.]
So far that’s only the aspect of intellectual integrity that regards the
ability to see and admit a probability of fault and pursue the further
testing if it’s reasonable to do so. If I were to follow the idea of C.S.
Peirce, that “Thought in action has for its only possible motive the
attainment of thought at rest,” (CP 5.396) I would leave it at that.
(“Thought at rest” is ‘belief’.) But, I disagree with Peirce’s idea and
think that another motive of thought is the invigoration of the spirit,
i.e., the maintenance of happily active thinking.
Given this other motive of thought, I’m inclined to add this: intellectual
integrity also entails the person’s willingness to expand his knowledge, no
matter how slowly he might want that expansion to happen, if he were
afforded the opportunity—he might, for example, be so occupied with
adjusting his belief system according to (2) and (3) that any expansion
would overwhelm him. Expansion of knowledge is done by (4) seeking new data
for (5) making new hypotheses, and then (6) testing new hypotheses when
doing so doesn’t take up an unreasonable amount of his resources.
Put conversely, a person who is unwilling to expand his knowledge if he has
the opportunity to do so, and therefore avoid mental torpor, lacks
intellectual integrity.
‘Integrity’ conjures the idea of a strong bridge or building that will
last. Does intellectual integrity really entail the willingness to expand
knowledge? I thought of the evolution of birds: I wonder if they’ve reached
a point of sufficiency where no further expansion of intelligence is
necessary, and that they, in their habits of mind and body, are perfect or
as good as it can get. So, perhaps my including ‘expansion of knowledge’ in
the definition of ‘intellectual integrity’ is only due to my bias toward
expansion of knowledge which, itself, has no substantial justification.
??????
Being right is not a necessary condition for having intellectual integrity;
and being wrong is not a necessary condition for lacking intellectual
integrity. Sometimes people with intellectual integrity are mistaken;
sometimes people who lack intellectual integrity get some things right.
A person’s holding of passively-attained beliefs that are wrong does not
mean that person lacks intellectual integrity. For example, before the
year, 1802 A.D., if a person said that rocks in a nearby field were “space
rocks”, as in rocks that came from outer space, almost everyone would have
assumed that person to be not only wrong, but kooky. In fact, this
happened: the scientist, Ernst Florens Chladni, who was the first to
confirm the existence of meteorites on earth, was, for some time, mocked
for believing his conclusion. Given most people’s lack of access to
evidence for meteorites just before the time of Chladni’s discovery, in
1794 A.D., and given the long time that had passed since Galileo’s first
telescope, so that the average person would have thought that science
would’ve had made such evidence available by then if it were true, it was
not unreasonable for a person who had never seen evidence for space rocks
to have believed that the believer in space rocks is kooky. Everyone holds
more passively-attained beliefs than they can possibly test; e.g., most
people who believe that Mars’s orbit of the Sun is an ellipse have not
checked out the astronomers’ observational data, mathematics, and
logic—they just believe the conclusion inferred by the consensus. They
merely assume that the scientific community is not making a mistake similar
to what the meteorite-deniers of 1794-1802 A.D. made, or any other type of
lock-step mistake. And, as far as intellectual integrity is concerned,
that’s OK. Following what you believe is the scientific consensus,
following your peers, following authority figures, sticking with tradition,
sticking with your first notions—none of that, by itself, is a knock
against your intellectual integrity. What matters is how you react to
information that’s contrary to your belief.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter III. Particulars and Universal, a Classic Problem. What Determines
or Guides Our Syntheses and Analyses?
A particular is an object that is distinct from anything else. A universal
is a class or category. Particulars are the physical things. Universals are
the ideas of what these things are. For example, on the page you’re
reading, this particular letter I is different from every other letter I
but it is still classified as an I. Each different I is in a different
place, which is enough to show that each one is a different object, but
also, when measured extremely accurately each I is also different in
height, width, thickness, and darkness from the others. They are similar,
but it takes a judgment to decide what things are similar enough to belong
to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive I’s each one mutated a little bit
more than the previous. Where do you draw the line between what is an I and
what isn’t? How should you decide? Are some judgments natural and others
artificial?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
due to the universal that we know the dot after the line (the period) isn't
a part of the letter. Likewise with all things, the understanding of any
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, therefore it takes a
judgment to decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong
enough. For another example, take one leg of a wooden chair which is
standing on a wooden floor. To you, the top half of that leg and the lower
half of that leg make a single unit called “chair leg”. To a termite, the
wood making a part of the floor and the lower part of the leg are a unit,
which he would call “a good meal” if he could speak. Each species has a
different natural way to analyze and synthesize his sense data. You can
understand the termite’s judgment, but the termite can’t understand
yours... Now, imagine a being whose intelligence is as advanced from a
human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s. He very well might
have a radically different way of analyzing and synthesizing his sense
data. He might synthesize several elements in a way that we would see as
arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that slight anomalies
within our sense-data are, for the most part, not recognized—we might not
even be able to recognize those component-elements because each of those
elements was due to a synthesis of even smaller elements too foreign to our
thinking, making his whole arrangement way too foreign to our way of
thinking.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one judgment (i.e., one analysis and synthesis of one’s sense-data)
might be so far away from yours that the other’s judgment is seen as
arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities for
analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), the other judgment might be infinitely far away from yours so that you
don’t see the differences as merely arbitrary but you can’t see them at
all. Let me say that again but phrasing it differently. As his judgment
moves farther away from yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his
world gets harder and harder for you to understand; if the limit of how far
that distance can be is infinite, then your understandability of his world
is zero at that limit. So, it is theoretically possible that, over
trillions of years, we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. But total incommensurabilty
is theoretically possible.
(Some philosophers bar the possibility of total incommensurabilty by
postulating its impossibility. For example, C. S. Peirce holds the
continuity of reality as one postulate, and the potential for inquiry to
reach all of reality as another postulate. These postulates allowed him to
create an overall philosophy that’s remarkable for its combination of scope
and coherence. That achievement makes his whole philosophy, with its
postulates, very convincing to many people. Still, there’s no reason to
accept or reject these postulates.)
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, embodiment is the
foundation for judgments. But, that just begs the question of how
embodiment and needs (which can only refer to their universals) are natural
rather than arbitrary judgments. What logical argument could possibly
justify the belief that any of our fundamental judgments are natural rather
than ultimately arbitrary, or vice versa?
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgment, there can be no
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. A true particular would have to be
indivisible, not just practically but conceptually, and this is
inconceivable. With no concept of an ultimate particular, do they exist?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies say that our most fundamental agreements, e.g.,
“the sun is a source of warmth”, are due to the convergence of ideas on a
truth that holds true no matter what any finite number of people believe
about it. They hold as a postulate that universally objective truth is the
foundation of logic. Relativist philosophies rest on the postulate that
agreement is the fundamental quality of thought, and so agreement itself is
the foundation of logic, and it has no need for a further foundation. They
say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our embodiment,
but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of an agreement,
that is due to a more ancient agreement that got established very early in
our evolution.
NB, The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no universally
objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many people
think. If their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about
reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a frame of reference, then their statement
can be restated as this:
“It is relevant, apt, and useful to believe, in our frame of reference,
that there is no belief that is relevant, apt, and useful in all frames of
reference.”
That is not a self-defeating statement if the frames of reference referred
to are incommensurable. What’s true in such a frame of reference, let’s
call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never, and nowhere, become false. Rather,
in the incommensurable frame of reference, frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’
will not exist as a statement that could possibly occur to anyone. It will
not be true or false because it will not be, nor will it be possible for it
to become.
A relativist who defines ‘truth’ as “a belief that’s relevant, apt, and
useful within a frame of reference” defines it that way because of the
prevalence of agreement upon that use of the term in his frame of
reference.
However, some forms of relativism are not very robust.
A “robust relativist” would admit the possibility that everyone in our
frame of reference could be wrong. How? It’s because our whole set of
truths needs to be as coherent as practically possible. Some truths carry
more weight than others, so, when two beliefs contradict each other, the
one with less weight is called a mistake. Clearly, one of the weightiest
beliefs in our frame of reference is that the principle of
non-contradiction applies to a large segment of reality.
You see, objectivist philosophers agree that some beliefs carry more weight
than others, but they think that the relativist’s definition of truth
doesn’t go far enough, so it’s inadequate. Whereas relativists think that
the objectivists go too far when they postulate an external realm of
reality when it’s not needed to explain any phenomenon in reality.
Even though there’s a prevalence of agreement in objectivism, the
relativist says their explanation is more coherent and elegant.
Therein lies the meat of the debate between objectivism and relativism.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God.
§1. An over-belief is a mindset adopted in order to act, whether mentally
or physically, in accord with what one’s instincts say is true when that
truth is so vague that it can’t be clearly expressed. It’s an overly
precise rendering—and as a result, a caricature—of a belief that is
inherently vague. It serves the purpose of (1) being more readily brought
to the forefront of the mind than the underlying belief, and (2) of being
more easily taught to children than the underlying belief.
[Insert James quote on over belief.]
The over-belief is (imperfectly) analogous to this: a way to relax is to
imagine that hot, but not too hot, water is being poured on your shoulders.
The object of belief is that hot water is being poured on your shoulders;
that’s obviously false, but believing it’s true helps you to live in accord
with the truth that your instincts insist upon, viz., that you should
relax. The analogy fails on the point that “you should relax” is also
definable, so a better analogy would be to some vaguer (harder-to-define)
truth.
A belief is defined by pragmatists as a habit of mental or physical action
with which at least one part of the believer’s mind consents. That is, a
belief in x is a self-approved habit of acting as if x were true. The
underlying beliefs of religion are very vague and not explicable except
with the vaguest terms. The problem is that the religious believer needs to
regularly practice these underlying beliefs in order to get the vital
benefits of them, but, because these beliefs are so vague, the believers
would have a hard time maintaining this practice without having
over-beliefs which can be readily remembered and easily taught to their
youth.
The loftiest things in life are the vaguest. Some other vague objects of
belief are love, beauty, and justice. These can only be defined using other
vague terms. The vaguest of beliefs which everyone believes is the belief
in reality. Reality has no genus or real differentia, so, whereas every
other thing is understood by the effects it has on things, and that
understanding is brought to light by how it’s effect differ from other
things’ effects, the understanding of reality cannot be gotten that way. We
know it’s here, we know some things in it, and we assume it’s the sum of
all things; that’s it. The opposite of ‘vague’ is ‘definite’ or
‘well-defined’. A triangle is defined quite well as a figure composed of
three straight lines which, two by two, extend to and meet at three points
thus making the three angles by which it gets its name.
The vital benefits of practicing the underlying beliefs of religion include
the becoming a better person by consistently aspiring toward the perfect,
and having a strong sense of overall purpose and hope, both of which
positively affect mental and physical health.
C. S. Peirce explained the vagueness of the object of the underlying
belief.
“So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I
answer, yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less
believes this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who
are accustomed to think the belief is entirely unfounded. The reason they
fall into this extraordinary error about their own belief is that they
precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in doing so, inevitably
change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be warranted,
even if it cannot be quite refuted. Every concept that is vague is liable
to be self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No
concept, not even those of mathematics, is absolutely precise; and some of
the most important for everyday use are extremely vague. Nevertheless, our
instinctive beliefs involving such concepts are far more trustworthy than
the best established results of science, if these be precisely understood.
For instance, we all think that there is an element of order in the
universe. Could any laboratory experiments render that proposition more
certain than instinct or common sense leaves it? It is ridiculous to broach
such a question. But when anyone undertakes to say precisely what that
order consists in, he will quickly find he outruns all logical warrant. Men
who are given to defining too much inevitably run themselves into confusion
in dealing with the vague concepts of common sense.” CP 6:496
§2. The object of the underlying religious-belief might be expressed as
“the ultimate Reason for hope.” I call this “God.”
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. (I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains
to the whole of reality.) A final cause is either a purpose or a law which
pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity of
that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which is true in the infinite long-run’. For
example, if you’re about to flip a coin that’s weighted toward heads, your
best bet is on heads. While you may get tails on this toss or the next
finite number of tosses, ultimately, that is, in the infinite long-run,
you’ll get infinitely more heads than tails. When you bet on the side of
logic, your betting on what you infer is the probability of how similar
incidents would turn out in the long run. The ideal infinite-limit is your
only guarantor; we only know that weighted coins fall more often on their
weighted side because of observations of that over many tosses unevenly
weighted objects tend, more so the more tosses, to land on their weighted
side. If there’s no ideal infinite-limit, there’s no way to believe that
our observations of the trend won’t reverse itself. All such matters are
outside the domain of logic, e.g., if you’re about to bet on what my last
coin toss resulted in, you have a 50:50 chance of guessing right, but if
you guess “heads” or “tails” you don’t have a 50:50 chance of being right.
You’ll be either 100% right or 100% wrong. That one toss is a sui genera
event, so its actual result is not a matter of probability (although your
guess is.)
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil is inevitable, if you want to know it, you want to
know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge. Note well
that the hypothesis that a subset of reality is hopeless is nonetheless a
useful hypothesis because if it’s true it means that what is hopeful is in
what’s outside of that subset. The hypothesis that all of reality is
hopeless is an utterly useless hypothesis, and as such it’s forbidden by
logic. Utter pessimism is anathema to logic. With hope being the basis of
logic, there’s no logical reason to bet against hope in general. So the
reasonable bet is for hope in general. Insomuch as ‘ultimate Reason for
hope’ can be called ‘God’ is as much as it’s reasonable to believe in God
and unreasonable to believe God is not real. (‘Ultimate Reason for hope’ is
a personal perspective on what I hope is the ‘Reason for goodness’ which is
the objective perspective.)
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because pessimism toward the
universe is unreasonable. You might respond, saying the course of the
universe is a sui genera event, so its actual outcome, good or bad, is not
a matter of logic. This is true! But if we’re going to guess what the
outcome will be it’s against reason to side with pessimism. Therefore it’s
reasonable to believe that God—the object of the underlying
religious-belief—loaded reality toward goodness.
[Insert James quote about the true being useful, the useful being true.]
[Insert Peirce quote on how logic looks to the long run.]
You can’t object to this with the idea that logic, i.e., the truth of
reality, has nothing to do with hope. That’s an anti-pragmatistic stance,
and it’s likely due to your holding on to a discredited Cartesian
principle. Pragmatism is against Cartesianism on this important point:
Cartesianism says that the truth of what is is so without any connection to
any inquiry into it, including the ideal infinite-limit of inquiry. The
pragmatist, C. S. Peirce, said that that last clause makes Cartesianism
nominalistic (anti-realist), because it makes knowledge impossible: it
supposes that there’s an impassable chasm between the inquirer and the
object of inquiry. In response to that, Peirce defined ‘the true’ and ‘the
real’ as such: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by
all who investigate, is what we mean by the true, and the object
represented in this opinion is the real.” Here, Peirce tied truth to the
infinite limit of inquiry.
My point in this essay rests on Peirce’s correction of Cartesianism, and
can be laid out like this:
(1) the truth of reality is connected to inquiry at inquiry’s infinite
limit;
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts into a habit;
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, the truth of reality, i.e., logic, contains within it a hope for
goodness in general.
Therefore it is perfectly logical to believe in a Reason to hope for a
general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there is no
Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe that a
subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you where the
good is. To believe that the universe, in its totality, is ultimately bad,
is useless.
§3. When someone says “There is no God,” I’m instinctively offended,
because I understand that person as saying “There is no ultimate reason for
hope, but there is an ultimate reason for despair.”
If someone says to me, “a cargo airplane is not a god, nor is or was the
man called Jesus”, I’m not automatically offended, but I’m ready to defend
both beliefs, as they are or were genuinely practiced, for their value as
over-beliefs which cover the response appropriate to the object of the more
important underlying beliefs. By genuinely practicing even the most
ridiculous over-beliefs, the believer draws on a real source of ultimate
hope; and that habit of drawing is that person’s underlying belief whether
he can verbally articulate any knowledge of the object of that underlying
belief or not. I think it’s cruel to attempt to pull that rug out from
underneath someone without knowing that they’ll have another but more
secure rug (over-belief) to stand on (to connect them to the real source.)
If the person who attacks another person’s over-belief had the goal or
effect of disconnecting someone from their source of ultimate hope, then
I’m instinctively offended. If it’s their goal, they’re Satanic; if it’s
their effect but not their goal, they’re Satan’s useful idiot. (I define
‘Satan’ as the Reason for despair.)
Despite the fact that your life is short, reality is continuous, so you are
connected to the infinite future. Just as, with a coin loaded toward heads,
in the infinite long-run you’ll get infinitely more heads than tails,
reality in the infinite future is infinitely good. You’re connected with
that goodness.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter V. Peirce’s Cosmology, My Interpretation.
Order in our universe is on a parabolic path from mostly chaos to mostly
order. Order is more fleeting the farther back you look, and it’s more
established the farther into the future you look. One asymptote is absolute
chaos, and the other asymptote is absolute order. The parabola never
reaches either asymptote, so there is no absolute beginning or end to our
universe, but there is an evolution of order out of chaos. This parabolic
path is not perfectly smooth; it has perturbations, but on the whole it’s
parabolic.
An ordered part of the universe is a habit developed by the universe. In a
mostly chaotic world, there was always a tendency of the ordered parts of
the universe to unite and usurp chaos’s realm. In the early days, these
creations would be small and fleeting, but as time continued these
creatures would have larger and longer lives. Today, the universe has many
habits that are relatively well established. Physical matter is deeply
ingrained habit. The mental world, on the other hand, is fairly established
relative to chaos, but relative to physical matter it’s relatively
restless, and so, inquisitive; mental activity is flighty, and more
susceptible to being disoriented by its encounters with the randomness of
the world. A mind is a segment of the universe that’s swimming in a more or
less chaotic world looking for a suitable belief in which to settle. A mind
is subject to deception by chance, but it uses chance to both broaden its
horizons and to use the perceived long-run trajectories of chance to help
it answer questions, e.g., taking random samples for an inductive
inference. The difference between mind and matter is the relative stability
of the habit. Matter was mind that stopped changing its mind.
The grand trajectory of the universe is toward its ideal state. At one
point in his writings Peirce called that state “death” in a material state.
This is not the best conclusion that can be drawn from his premises. Since
the impetus for all thought is hope, I think the best conclusion about the
universe as a whole is the most optimistic one. This thinking is rational
when applied to thought about the universe as a whole: a pessimistic
conclusion about the whole universe is utterly worthless and completely
ugly; but, it’s often useful to come to a pessimistic conclusion about some
subset of the universe, e.g., whether you can walk through a wall. I think
the ideal state of the universe is one where the balance of order and
chance yields the most beauty, and beauty cannot be appreciated except by a
creative mind.
Logic is a species of ethics, and ethics is a species of aesthetics. What’s
true is true because it’s what should be agreed upon by a
theoretically-infinite community which has perspectives as diverse as
theoretically possible—ethics is the science of what should be done. What
should be believed is what is most beautiful to the infinite
community—aesthetics is the science of assessing the beautiful. Even
so-called ugly facts are more beautiful than their denial if they’re
understood from the perspective of the infinitely wise community. For
example, it’s a fact, however horrible, that some innocent child is going
to get murdered tomorrow. This fact, if believed by our community, will
propel us to do good acts we otherwise wouldn’t have done, and thus will
propel us to reach toward heights of beauty which we otherwise wouldn’t
attain. Consider where we stand, today, in the evolution of feelings. Eons
ago, feelings were duller and so evil had less of a bad effect, but also,
goodness had less of a rewarding effect. Eons from now, feelings will be
much more sensitive, so the rewards of goodness will be more fully
appreciated. We’ll have eaten the fruit from the tree of
knowledge-of-good-and-evil and so we’ll understand more fully why we should
not do evil things. Doing the slightest evil in that future time will be
understood to be like, today, stabbing your own leg with a knife right
before what you would otherwise expect to be your happiest, most fulfilling
moment. Good acts will be more fully appreciated, and this fact will propel
us even further to doing good. In that future we will be in bliss—not in
ignorant bliss, though, but a very-aware bliss. So, truth is both what
should be believed and what will propel us toward a more beautiful future.
Falsehoods are both what shouldn’t be believed and what will impede our
evolution toward a beautiful future. The truth that a falsehood was told
should be believed, and this truth is beautiful in that overcoming the
deception will make us better, more beautiful people.
The telos of the universe is the ideal of perfect beauty which lies at the
infinite limit of the future. The universe will always reach toward the
beautiful, or that which is aesthetically good, whether it be
mathematically, musically, geometric, algebraic, physically,
interpersonally, etc., all of which will be harmonized in ever more
beautiful ways.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter VI. The Afterlife. A Hypothesis.
On the timeline, the present is a mere point on the line, and it has no
length. The past is the line before that point; the future is the line
after that point.
The past is what is remembered and what would be inferred given unlimited
time and resources for investigation.
The future is what would be inferred given unlimited resources for
investigation, plus the pure-chance occurrences which can’t be predicted,
e.g., the result of your next coin toss.
What we call the present is really the immediate past, where the memory is
still vivid, plus the inferable immediate-future.
You are nothing but a memory, inference at its theoretically highest
potential, and a set of probabilities. Your knowledge of yourself is
nothing but your memory and your actual (as opposed to theoretically
potential) inferences, including inferences of the limits of those
probabilities.
Consciousness and intelligence in the universe has been evolving such that
the power of both memory and inference has been increasing. Therefore, the
ongoing understanding of the present has been including more and more of
the past with farther and farther reaches into the future.
There will come a time, long after our deaths, where highly evolved,
conscious, and intelligent beings, who are made from recombined parts of
the material we were made of, will be able to infer and remember our lives
with as much clarity, vividness, and definiteness as we can presently know
and feel our present lives. Since they are made of our material and
material affected by our material, their knowledge of us will also contain
memory. These beings will literally resurrect us.
At that time, each person will become fully alive (i.e., as alive as he was
in his previous life) in a highly evolved world as a being with all the
habits he had established for himself in the previous world. Evil habits
won’t be rewarded as they sometimes were in his former world, but out of
habit he’ll continue them and suffer very harsh consequences. For people
who have established an attitude of unrepentance, their new life will be
Hell. For those who were evil but didn’t want to be, they will have a harsh
start, but they’ll adjust. Those who dedicated their life too doing good
will be rewarded the most quickly. But, everyone will be disoriented at
first. Once the adjustment to the new world is made, your evolution, and
the world’s evolution will continue forever toward more wonderful living.
This is Heaven.
At present, each dead person is remembered to some extent, and he is alive
to that extent, albeit that extent is a far cry from what it was when he
was commonly considered “alive”. These memories do fade, and so the dead
person’s vague life fades. But, over the evolution of consciousness and
intelligence in the universe, there will come a point in time where memory
and understanding of him will begin to grow, in fact, it will be parts of
him re-used by the future beings that will be remembering him. When the
memory plus understanding of him by the future beings reaches the clarity,
vividness, and definiteness as we presently know and feel our present
lives, he will be fully resurrected and as in control of his life as he was
in his former life.
As the universe evolves beyond this point of “full resurrection”, the
clarity, vividness, definiteness, and feelings of everything will increase.
And so, the appreciation of goodness and repulsion of evil will increase,
but as goodness increases and evil decreases, Heaven’s rewards will
increase.
I doubt that the first highly evolved beings, who will remember, i.e.,
awaken, the beings of history, will be humans or descendants of humans. In
the evolutionary race to reach this singularity of intelligence, humans are
like the hare in the race of the tortoise and the hare. So far, our great
abilities are being squandered by selfishness and arrogance. The more I
look into the history of science the more I lose hope for human evolution.
I have more hope that the mice will do it, but maybe we’ll have to wait for
the cockroaches. But if cockroaches fail, the tardigrades won’t fail us!
From the frame of reference of the living, after a person dies, many many
years will pass before he is resurrected with the clarity, vividness, and
definiteness we feel now. But, from his own frame of reference he will be
resurrected fairly quickly afterwards. This is analogous to a particle
traveling a large distance through space at a speed near the speed of
light: from our frame of reference it takes many years, but from its frame
of reference, only a few days pass.
--
Matt
Matt Faunce
Jul 3, 2021, 8:03:48 PM7/3/21
to
_______________ My Philosophy _______________
that we don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow anymore than scientists
knew that a stone won’t fall from the sky tomorrow. As recently as the late
the continuance of the law of conservation of energy, we could know with
some degree of security that the sun will or won't rise again. That
security would be contingent on the continuance of the law of conservation
of energy; and just because energy has so far always been conserved doesn’t
mean it always will be conserved. We, so far, haven't had full access to
backyard this year.
solving; it also creates new areas of knowledge purely for the joy of
creating; and since we are naturally creative beings we should think this
way if we have the opportunity.
Given this other motive of thought, I’m inclined to add this: intellectual
integrity also entails the person’s willingness to expand his knowledge, no
matter how slowly he might want that expansion to happen. Expansion of
intellectual integrity.
Being right is not a necessary condition for having intellectual integrity;
and being wrong is not a necessary condition for lacking intellectual
integrity. Sometimes people who lack intellectual integrity get things
right; sometimes people with intellectual integrity make honest mistakes.
A person’s holding of passively-attained beliefs that are wrong does not
mean that person lacks intellectual integrity. Everyone holds more
consensus is wrong, like when it approved the liberal use of DDT as a
pesticide and said it was perfectly safe for humans. Most people merely
assumed that the scientific community did their due diligence and that it
consisted of mostly honest and moral people. And, as far as intellectual
integrity is concerned, that assumption is OK. Following what you believe
§1. The Question of What Determines or Guides Synthesis and Analysis.
A particular is an object that is distinct from anything else. A universal
is a class or category. Particulars are the physical things. Universals are
the ideas of what these things are. For example, on the page that you’re
closeness or strength of the force bonding them, e.g., the center point of
a circle may be very far from the circle and it’s not bonded to the circle
by a force yet we know it belongs to the circle. For another example, take
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one judgment (i.e., one analysis and synthesis of one’s sense-data)
might be so far away from yours that the other’s judgment is seen as
arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities for
analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), the other judgment might be infinitely far away from yours making it
theoretically impossible for you to have any cognition of it. However, this
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. But also, if the difference is merely
greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your understanding of his
world is practically zero. It’s possible that over trillions of years we
and synthesizing the universe outruns our ability to inquire into the past.
This is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over
the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Peirce built his
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
says all past facts are possible to eventually learn. Cf. Luke 8:17.
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths passed over the horizon and are no
longer true or false. Cf. Isaiah 65:17.
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, embodiment is the
foundation for judgments. But, that just begs the question of how
embodiment and needs (which must refer to their universals) are natural
universal would have to be indivisible, not just practically but
conceptually, and this is inconceivable. Is the particular’s dependence on
the universal a problem for its existence?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies say that our most fundamental universals, facts,
are ideas that hold true no matter what any finite number of people believe
about them. Their postulate is that there are universally objective truths
which make up the foundation of logic. Conventionalist philosophies say
that our most fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be
because of an agreement of minds. Their postulate is that minds are
primordial and that universals are agreements, and so agreement itself is
the foundation of logic. To conventionalists, all truths are conventional,
like the dotted i and the period in the example above. They say that
agreement, that is only possible because it’s built on a more ancient
agreement that got established very early in the evolution of thought in
the universe. To them, a truth of x is what is the most coherent and
elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible competing
statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements about
facts that support x. Objectivists disagree, saying there must be some
object that’s independent of the opinions of any finite number of men on
which an agreement on truth is made. (The object can be physical like a
rock, or purely theoretical like a perfect square in euclidean space which
doesn’t exist in nature but nonetheless is subject to objective laws like
being perfectly symmetrical and having internal angles that sum to 360°,
i.e., the same as a circle. Just because this perfect square is a purely
theoretical object, and therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly
say that it’s asymmetrical or that it has angles that sum to 400°.
Conventionalists would say that that violates more fundamental agreements.)
Relativists say that a truth in our current historical frame of
reference—what’s within our horizons, conceptually—is true because of its
relation to our historical frame of reference, and it does not necessarily
hold in another historical frame of reference. Every truth is true only
because it is supported by all the other truths in its historical frame of
reference. Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one
historical frame are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making
the truth which was supported by them not true, although not false either,
just not an idea. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no
is relevant, apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That
is not a self-defeating statement if (and only if) the frames of reference
referred to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference,
let’s call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere
be false. Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference,
because it’s not a concept at all.
Forms of relativism that assume that truth is relative to different frames
of reference, but that these different frames need not be incommensurable,
are self-defeating.
The crux of the debate between objectivism and relativism lies in the
question about whose platform offers the most coherent and elegant
explanation of all elements of reality. The only acceptable arbitration of
the debate could come with an infinite scope of history, past and future.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God.
§1. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs
“But high-flying speculations like those of either dogmatic or idealistic
theology, [...] These speculations must, it seems to me, be classed as
over-beliefs, buildings-out performed by the intellect into directions of
which feeling originally supplied the hint.”
–William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XVIII.
“[T]he theologians contention that the religious man is moved by an
external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of
invasions from the subconscious region to take an objective appearances,
and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life
the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is
primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are
controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”
–William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XX,
Conclusions.
An over-belief is a mindset adopted in order to act, whether mentally or
physically, in accord with what one’s instincts say is true when that truth
is so vague that it can’t be clearly expressed. It’s an overly precise
rendering—and as a result, a caricature—of a belief that is inherently
vague. It serves the purpose of (1) being more readily brought to the
forefront of the mind than the underlying belief, and (2) of being more
easily taught to children than the underlying belief.
reality is here, we know some things in it, and we assume it’s the sum of
are other easily definable objects like circles, and these are species of
the genus, geometric objects.
The vital benefits of practicing the underlying beliefs of religion include
becoming a better person by consistently aspiring toward the ideal of
perfection, and having a strong sense of overall purpose and hope, both of
William James, in the preface to The Meaning of Truth, defined ‘God’ as
such:
“My treatment of ’God,’ ’freedom,’ and ’design’ was similar. Reducing, by
the pragmatic test, the meaning of each of these concepts to its positive
experienceable operation, I showed them all to mean the same thing, viz.,
the presence of ’promise’ in the world. ’God or no God?’ means ’promise or
no promise?’”
The object of the underlying religious-belief might be expressed as “the
ultimate Reason for hope.” I call this “God.”
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. (I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains
to the whole of reality.) A final cause is either a purpose or a law which
pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity of
that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which is true in the infinite long-run’. For
example, if you’re about to roll a die that’s weighted to show 6, your best
bet is on 6. While you may get 1-5 on this toss or the next finite number
logic, you’re betting on what you infer is the probability of how similar
weighted side because of our observations that over many tosses, unevenly
our inductive test. That is, there’s no reason to believe that our
most general state. So the reasonable bet is for hope overall and in the
long run. Insomuch as ‘ultimate Reason for hope’ can be called ‘God’ is as
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because to be pessimistic toward
the universe is to cave in to hopelessness. Such a conclusion is worse than
worthless. You might respond, saying the course of the universe is a sui
generis event, in that its actual outcome, good bad or otherwise, is not a
matter of which logic can inform us. Good only has meaning relative to bad,
but the universe has no other thing or possible thing to offer the contrast
necessary for any such characterization. My response is that the formal
possibilities are (1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3)
the universe just is, and (4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4
is wrong: the universe is the most vague object, so it evades almost all
characterizations, but it can be characterized, vaguely, as “real”. Number
3 is a Cartesian assumption and as such it bars the possibility of a
subject having knowledge of the universe as an object, so it is rejected.
See the next section which is on the Cartesian problem and pragmatist
solution. Number 2 is a violation of the spirit of thinking. Number 1 is in
line with the spirit of thinking, so it’s true: the universe is good.
§3. The Cartesian Problem, the Pragmatist Solution, and the Inescapability
of Anthropomorphic Conceptions
The Problem with Cartesianism
If the object of inquiry is absolutely separate from the belief of the
inquirer, then the object cannot affect the inquirer, and therefore the
inquirer cannot possibly come to a true belief about the object. When two
things affect each other they are not separate, but they are linked by a
causal force. If every thing is either of mind or matter, and mind and
matter are separate, nothing could causally link the two. Cartesian duality
implies that the subject cannot know or learn about the object without a
third, non-mental and non-physical, substance acting as a liaison. However,
this postulated third-substance begs the question: if this substance is
also absolutely separate from mind and matter then it can’t act as a
liaison between the two, or if it’s supposedly not separate, then, by
Occam’s razor, we should just eliminate the postulate and admit that mind
and matter are not separate.
The Pragmatists’ Solution
Objective truth and subjective belief are not absolutely separate, nor are
the physical and mental realms. According to Peirce, truth is belief which
would be held at the infinite limit of inquiry; belief at the infinite
limit of inquiry is truth. (Cartesianists believe that some truth would
still elude the inquirer even at the infinite limit; this makes them
anti-pragmatists.) This pragmatist definition ties inquirers with the truth
(and, hence, the subject with the object) albeit at an infinite distance.
We don’t, however, need to complete the infinity to gain true belief.
During our inquiry, but before hitting upon the truth, we recognize that
we’re getting closer to the truth due to our ability to recognize that,
over time and effort inquiring, our trajectory of revised beliefs in regard
to the object is homing in on the truth—which we recognize by the
increasing efficacy of the revised beliefs. From this ‘narrowing down’ we
are able to better guess what is actually true after some finite time and
effort inquiring. Once we guess the truth and then repeatedly test that
belief in the real world, we will recognize the fact that this belief is
repeatedly being affirmed by its repeated efficacy.
The problem remains that to explain successful guessing at all, or the high
rate of success that mankind has achieved over its history, because of the
infinite or extremely large number of possibilities from which to guess,
especially at the beginning stage of inquiry, it seems that the guessing
has to have had guidance. Peirce, in efforts to explain how it’s possible
to form a true hypothesis, said that we were formed by nature, under her
laws, and because of this it’s to be expected that we have a natural
attraction—an “inward light”, “magnetic turning toward the truth”, “il lume
naturale”—to the truth of reality.
The Inescapability of Anthropomorphic Conceptions
Charles Peirce, in the Collected Papers, 1:316:
”I hear you say ‘This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic conception.’ I
reply that every scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon is a
hypothesis that there is something in nature to which human reason is
analogous; and that it really is so all the successes of science in its
applications to human convenience are witnesses. They proclaim that truth
over the length and breadth of the modern world. In light of the successes
of science to my mind there is a degree of baseness in denying our
birthright as children of God and in shamefacedly slinking away from
anthropomorphic conceptions of the universe.”
Peirce, in the Collected Papers 8.168:
“Many are beginning to feel that the only possible justification for a
hypothesis is that it renders the facts comprehensible, and that to suppose
them absolutely incomprehensible (which is what the doctrine of the
Unknowable comes to) is not rendering them comprehensible.” ... “To the
same general tendency belongs an opinion, now very common, that it is
unscientific to inquire whether there be a God; the only rational question
being what sort of God there is. With this is naturally associated the
further opinion that instead of its being shallow philosophy to suppose an
“anthropomorphic” God, if by “anthropomorphic” be meant mental, it is far
more consonant with the method of science to formulate the problem by
asking what sort of mind God is; and if we cannot in some measure
understand God’s mind, all science it is said with some color of justice,
must be a delusion and a snare.”
Peirce assumed God is a mind, or is mind rather than matter because matter
is what it is because it reacts with other matter according to laws of
nature, so matter is finite and subservient to laws, so that won’t fulfill
what most people think of as God. Laws are rules which matter follows;
therefore laws aren’t material, they’re mental. There’s obviously an order
of nature to which both our physical and mental selves are subservient.
There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically good and bad ways of
acting in response to that order. Peirce said that aspiration toward
perfection is the essence of religion, so we can call the laws themselves
or the law-maker, whatever the case might be, “God”. Science is the
activity of learning laws, or God’s Mind. If we cannot in some measure
understand some supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be
absolutely separate from us. If something is absolutely separate from us
then it can could never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So,
there’s absolute no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no
denying that the laws of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re
intelligent beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws.
We can learn about anything in reality….......
Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts inquiring yield progress in
knowledge, so if we’re not connected to God’s mind then all our efforts in
science have no relation to the progress we appear to have made.
????????????????????????????????????????????
My point in this essay rests on Peirce’s correction of Cartesianism, and
can be laid out like this:
(1) the truth of reality is connected to inquiry at inquiry’s infinite
limit; and we can recognize when we’re homing in on the truth.
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts into a habit.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, the logical thinking contains within it a hope for goodness in general.
Therefore it is perfectly logical to believe in a Reason to hope for a
general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there is no
Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe that a
subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you where the
good is. To believe that the universe, in its totality, is ultimately
neutral or bad, is useless.
§4. My Opinion on the Matter
When someone says “There is no God,” I’m instinctively offended, because I
understand that person as saying “There is no ultimate reason for hope, but
there is an ultimate reason for despair.”
If someone says to me, “a cargo airplane is not a god, nor is or was the
man called Jesus”, I’m not automatically offended, but I’m ready to defend
both beliefs, as they are or were genuinely practiced, for their value as
over-beliefs which cover the response appropriate to the object of the more
important underlying beliefs. By genuinely practicing even the most
ridiculous over-beliefs, the believer draws on a real source of ultimate
hope; and that habit of drawing is that person’s underlying belief whether
he can verbally articulate any knowledge of the object of that underlying
belief or not. I think it’s cruel to attempt to pull that rug out from
underneath someone without knowing that they’ll have another but more
secure rug (over-belief) to stand on (to connect them to the real source.)
If the person who attacks another person’s over-belief had the goal or
effect of disconnecting someone from their source of ultimate hope, then
I’m instinctively offended. If it’s their goal, they’re Satanic; if it’s
their effect but not their goal, they’re Satan’s useful idiot. (I define
‘Satan’ as the Reason for despair.)
Despite the fact that your life is short, reality is continuous, so you are
connected to the infinite future. Just as, with a die loaded to show ‘six’,
in the infinite long-run you’ll get infinitely more sixes than any other
number, reality in the infinite future is infinitely good. You’re connected
There will come a time, long after our deaths, when highly evolved,
awaken, the beings of history, will be humans or the direct descendants of
of politics, the more I lose hope for human evolution. I have more hope
that the mice will first reach it, but maybe we’ll have to wait for the
cockroaches. But if cockroaches fail, the tardigrades won’t fail us! In any
case, God’s will doesn’t depend on any finite subset of reality to become
fulfilled.
From the frame of reference of the living, after a person dies, many many
years will pass before he is resurrected with the clarity, vividness, and
definiteness we feel now. But, from his own frame of reference he will be
resurrected fairly quickly afterwards. This is analogous to a particle
traveling a large distance through space at a speed near the speed of
light: from our frame of reference it takes many years, but from its frame
of reference, only a few days pass.
My hypothesis for the afterlife is not one arbitrary possibility out of
infinity, but, in its spirit, it represents the most optimistic future
possible for all beings in the long run. If there’s an even more optimistic
hypothesis, I’d go with that.
__________________ The End _________________
knew that a stone won’t fall from the sky tomorrow. As recently as the late
18th century scientists thought they knew that stones don't fall from the
sky because day after day, year after year, their observations showed no
signs of such stones. However, we infer the future sun's rising from more
than just its past regularity; we also deduce it from the Major Premise
that the forces that make the sun rise regularly, and the laws that
regulate the forces, are stable enough (relative to all the other laws and
forces that work toward stopping the rising) for its cycle to continue into
the foreseeable future. But here, again, all we know about these stable
forces is that they've been stable in the past; we can't sample from their
future states, so we know nothing about their future. We don't know that
there aren't other forces out there that will stop the sun from rising
before tomorrow, e.g., maybe there's something, currently too far away to
detect, heading towards the Earth at an immense speed, which will
obliterate the Earth tonight and thus eliminate tomorrow morning. We can
only guess what's outside of our observational reach. However, if we had
access to all areas of the universe, and took random samples from the whole
universe for possible causes of catastrophe to our Earth or sun then, given
sky because day after day, year after year, their observations showed no
signs of such stones. However, we infer the future sun's rising from more
than just its past regularity; we also deduce it from the Major Premise
that the forces that make the sun rise regularly, and the laws that
regulate the forces, are stable enough (relative to all the other laws and
forces that work toward stopping the rising) for its cycle to continue into
the foreseeable future. But here, again, all we know about these stable
forces is that they've been stable in the past; we can't sample from their
future states, so we know nothing about their future. We don't know that
there aren't other forces out there that will stop the sun from rising
before tomorrow, e.g., maybe there's something, currently too far away to
detect, heading towards the Earth at an immense speed, which will
obliterate the Earth tonight and thus eliminate tomorrow morning. We can
only guess what's outside of our observational reach. However, if we had
access to all areas of the universe, and took random samples from the whole
the continuance of the law of conservation of energy, we could know with
some degree of security that the sun will or won't rise again. That
security would be contingent on the continuance of the law of conservation
of energy; and just because energy has so far always been conserved doesn’t
mean it always will be conserved. We, so far, haven't had full access to
the universe, so every belief in the past that the sun will rise the next
day was a guess on par with the belief that a meteor won't land in my
backyard this year.
So far that’s only the aspect of intellectual integrity that regards the
ability to see and admit a probability of fault and pursue the further
testing if it’s reasonable to do so. If I were to follow the idea of C.S.
Peirce, that “Thought in action has for its only possible motive the
attainment of thought at rest,” (CP 5.396) I would leave it at that.
(“Thought at rest” is ‘belief’ which is a habit of thinking a certain way.)
ability to see and admit a probability of fault and pursue the further
testing if it’s reasonable to do so. If I were to follow the idea of C.S.
Peirce, that “Thought in action has for its only possible motive the
attainment of thought at rest,” (CP 5.396) I would leave it at that.
But, I disagree with Peirce’s idea and think that another motive of thought
is the invigoration of the spirit via thought. Thought is more than problem
solving; it also creates new areas of knowledge purely for the joy of
creating; and since we are naturally creative beings we should think this
way if we have the opportunity.
Given this other motive of thought, I’m inclined to add this: intellectual
integrity also entails the person’s willingness to expand his knowledge, no
knowledge is done by (4) seeking new data for (5) making new hypotheses,
and then (6) testing new hypotheses when doing so doesn’t take up an
unreasonable amount of his resources. Put conversely, a person who is
unwilling to expand his knowledge and avoid mental torpor lacks
and then (6) testing new hypotheses when doing so doesn’t take up an
unreasonable amount of his resources. Put conversely, a person who is
intellectual integrity.
Being right is not a necessary condition for having intellectual integrity;
and being wrong is not a necessary condition for lacking intellectual
right; sometimes people with intellectual integrity make honest mistakes.
A person’s holding of passively-attained beliefs that are wrong does not
passively-attained beliefs than they can possibly test; e.g., most people
who believe that Mars’s orbit of the Sun is an ellipse have not checked out
the astronomers’ observational data, mathematics, and logic—they just
believe the conclusion inferred by the consensus. Sometimes the scientific
who believe that Mars’s orbit of the Sun is an ellipse have not checked out
the astronomers’ observational data, mathematics, and logic—they just
consensus is wrong, like when it approved the liberal use of DDT as a
pesticide and said it was perfectly safe for humans. Most people merely
assumed that the scientific community did their due diligence and that it
consisted of mostly honest and moral people. And, as far as intellectual
integrity is concerned, that assumption is OK. Following what you believe
is the scientific consensus, following your peers, following authority
figures, sticking with tradition, sticking with your first notions—none of
that, by itself, is a knock against your intellectual integrity. What
matters is how you react to information that’s contrary to your belief.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter III. Particulars and Universal, a Classic Problem. What Determines
or Guides Synthesis and Analysis?
figures, sticking with tradition, sticking with your first notions—none of
that, by itself, is a knock against your intellectual integrity. What
matters is how you react to information that’s contrary to your belief.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter III. Particulars and Universal, a Classic Problem. What Determines
§1. The Question of What Determines or Guides Synthesis and Analysis.
A particular is an object that is distinct from anything else. A universal
is a class or category. Particulars are the physical things. Universals are
reading, this particular letter I is different from every other letter I
but it is still classified as an I. Each different I is in a different
place, which is enough to show that each one is a different object, but
also, when measured extremely accurately each I is also different in
height, width, thickness, and darkness from the others. They are similar,
but it takes a judgment to decide what things are similar enough to belong
to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive I’s each one mutated a little bit
more than the previous. Where do you draw the line between what is an I and
what isn’t? How should you decide? Are some judgments natural and others
artificial?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
due to the universal that we know the dot after the line, the period, isn't
but it is still classified as an I. Each different I is in a different
place, which is enough to show that each one is a different object, but
also, when measured extremely accurately each I is also different in
height, width, thickness, and darkness from the others. They are similar,
but it takes a judgment to decide what things are similar enough to belong
to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive I’s each one mutated a little bit
more than the previous. Where do you draw the line between what is an I and
what isn’t? How should you decide? Are some judgments natural and others
artificial?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
a part of the letter. Likewise with all things, the understanding of any
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, therefore it takes a
judgment to decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong
enough. Furthermore, parts can be united for reasons other than their
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, therefore it takes a
judgment to decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong
closeness or strength of the force bonding them, e.g., the center point of
a circle may be very far from the circle and it’s not bonded to the circle
by a force yet we know it belongs to the circle. For another example, take
one leg of a wooden chair which is standing on a wooden floor. To you, the
top half of that leg and the lower half of that leg make a single unit
called “chair leg”. To a termite, the wood making a part of the floor and
the lower part of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if
he could speak. Each species has a different natural way to analyze and
synthesize his sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but
the termite can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence
top half of that leg and the lower half of that leg make a single unit
called “chair leg”. To a termite, the wood making a part of the floor and
the lower part of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if
he could speak. Each species has a different natural way to analyze and
synthesize his sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but
is as advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s.
He very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense-data are, for the most part, not
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those component-elements
because each of those elements was due to a synthesis of even smaller
elements too foreign to our thinking, making his whole arrangement way too
foreign to our way of thinking.
§2. Consequences to How the Question is Answered.
He very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense-data are, for the most part, not
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those component-elements
because each of those elements was due to a synthesis of even smaller
elements too foreign to our thinking, making his whole arrangement way too
foreign to our way of thinking.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one judgment (i.e., one analysis and synthesis of one’s sense-data)
might be so far away from yours that the other’s judgment is seen as
arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities for
analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
theoretically impossible for you to have any cognition of it. However, this
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. But also, if the difference is merely
greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your understanding of his
world is practically zero. It’s possible that over trillions of years we
evolve to a point where our new way of making fundamental judgments of our
world will become practically incommensurable with the old way of trillions
of years prior. That would be the case if, over time, our way of analyzing
world will become practically incommensurable with the old way of trillions
and synthesizing the universe outruns our ability to inquire into the past.
This is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over
the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Peirce built his
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
says all past facts are possible to eventually learn. Cf. Luke 8:17.
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths passed over the horizon and are no
longer true or false. Cf. Isaiah 65:17.
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, embodiment is the
foundation for judgments. But, that just begs the question of how
rather than arbitrary judgments. What logical argument could possibly
justify the belief that any of our fundamental judgments are natural rather
than ultimately arbitrary, or vice versa?
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there can be no
justify the belief that any of our fundamental judgments are natural rather
than ultimately arbitrary, or vice versa?
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. An particular that’s independent of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
universal would have to be indivisible, not just practically but
conceptually, and this is inconceivable. Is the particular’s dependence on
the universal a problem for its existence?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
are ideas that hold true no matter what any finite number of people believe
about them. Their postulate is that there are universally objective truths
which make up the foundation of logic. Conventionalist philosophies say
that our most fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be
because of an agreement of minds. Their postulate is that minds are
primordial and that universals are agreements, and so agreement itself is
the foundation of logic. To conventionalists, all truths are conventional,
like the dotted i and the period in the example above. They say that
agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our embodiment, but our
embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of a more fundamental
agreement, that is only possible because it’s built on a more ancient
agreement that got established very early in the evolution of thought in
the universe. To them, a truth of x is what is the most coherent and
elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible competing
statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements about
facts that support x. Objectivists disagree, saying there must be some
object that’s independent of the opinions of any finite number of men on
which an agreement on truth is made. (The object can be physical like a
rock, or purely theoretical like a perfect square in euclidean space which
doesn’t exist in nature but nonetheless is subject to objective laws like
being perfectly symmetrical and having internal angles that sum to 360°,
i.e., the same as a circle. Just because this perfect square is a purely
theoretical object, and therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly
say that it’s asymmetrical or that it has angles that sum to 400°.
Conventionalists would say that that violates more fundamental agreements.)
Relativists say that a truth in our current historical frame of
reference—what’s within our horizons, conceptually—is true because of its
relation to our historical frame of reference, and it does not necessarily
hold in another historical frame of reference. Every truth is true only
because it is supported by all the other truths in its historical frame of
reference. Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one
historical frame are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making
the truth which was supported by them not true, although not false either,
just not an idea. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no
universally objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many
people think. If their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief
about reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a historical frame of reference, then their
people think. If their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief
about reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
statement can be restated as this: “It is relevant, apt, and useful to
believe, in our historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that
is relevant, apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That
is not a self-defeating statement if (and only if) the frames of reference
referred to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference,
let’s call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere
be false. Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference,
frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could
possibly occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false
because it’s not a concept at all.
Forms of relativism that assume that truth is relative to different frames
of reference, but that these different frames need not be incommensurable,
are self-defeating.
The crux of the debate between objectivism and relativism lies in the
question about whose platform offers the most coherent and elegant
explanation of all elements of reality. The only acceptable arbitration of
the debate could come with an infinite scope of history, past and future.
o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God.
“But high-flying speculations like those of either dogmatic or idealistic
theology, [...] These speculations must, it seems to me, be classed as
over-beliefs, buildings-out performed by the intellect into directions of
which feeling originally supplied the hint.”
–William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XVIII.
“[T]he theologians contention that the religious man is moved by an
external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of
invasions from the subconscious region to take an objective appearances,
and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life
the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is
primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are
controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”
–William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XX,
Conclusions.
An over-belief is a mindset adopted in order to act, whether mentally or
physically, in accord with what one’s instincts say is true when that truth
is so vague that it can’t be clearly expressed. It’s an overly precise
rendering—and as a result, a caricature—of a belief that is inherently
vague. It serves the purpose of (1) being more readily brought to the
forefront of the mind than the underlying belief, and (2) of being more
easily taught to children than the underlying belief.
The over-belief is (imperfectly) analogous to this: a way to relax is to
imagine that hot, but not too hot, water is being poured on your shoulders.
Actually believing it is more effective than merely imagining it. The
imagine that hot, but not too hot, water is being poured on your shoulders.
object of belief is that hot water is being poured on your shoulders;
that’s obviously false, but believing it’s true helps you to live in accord
with the truth that your instincts insist upon, viz., that you should
relax. The analogy fails on the point that “you should relax” is also
definable, so a better analogy would be to some vaguer (harder-to-define)
truth.
A belief is defined by pragmatists as a habit of mental or physical action
with which at least one part of the believer’s mind consents. That is, a
belief in x is a self-approved habit of acting as if x were true. The
underlying beliefs of religion are very vague and not explicable except
with the vaguest terms. The problem is that the religious believer needs to
regularly practice these underlying beliefs in order to get the vital
benefits of them, but, because these beliefs are so vague, the believers
would have a hard time maintaining this practice without having
over-beliefs which can be readily remembered and easily taught to their
youth.
The loftiest things in life are the vaguest. Some other vague objects of
belief are love, beauty, and justice. These can only be defined using other
vague terms. The vaguest of beliefs which everyone believes is the belief
in reality. Reality has no genus or real differentia, so, whereas every
other thing is understood by the effects it has on things, and that
understanding is brought to light by how its effects differ from other
that’s obviously false, but believing it’s true helps you to live in accord
with the truth that your instincts insist upon, viz., that you should
relax. The analogy fails on the point that “you should relax” is also
definable, so a better analogy would be to some vaguer (harder-to-define)
truth.
A belief is defined by pragmatists as a habit of mental or physical action
with which at least one part of the believer’s mind consents. That is, a
belief in x is a self-approved habit of acting as if x were true. The
underlying beliefs of religion are very vague and not explicable except
with the vaguest terms. The problem is that the religious believer needs to
regularly practice these underlying beliefs in order to get the vital
benefits of them, but, because these beliefs are so vague, the believers
would have a hard time maintaining this practice without having
over-beliefs which can be readily remembered and easily taught to their
youth.
The loftiest things in life are the vaguest. Some other vague objects of
belief are love, beauty, and justice. These can only be defined using other
vague terms. The vaguest of beliefs which everyone believes is the belief
in reality. Reality has no genus or real differentia, so, whereas every
other thing is understood by the effects it has on things, and that
things’ effects, the understanding of reality cannot be gotten that way.
There’s nothing outside of reality to be affected by reality. We know
reality is here, we know some things in it, and we assume it’s the sum of
all things; that’s it. The opposite of ‘vague’ is ‘definite’ or
‘well-defined’. A triangle is defined quite well as a figure composed of
three straight lines which, two by two, extend to and meet at three points
thus making the three angles by which it gets its name. It’s differentia
‘well-defined’. A triangle is defined quite well as a figure composed of
three straight lines which, two by two, extend to and meet at three points
are other easily definable objects like circles, and these are species of
the genus, geometric objects.
The vital benefits of practicing the underlying beliefs of religion include
perfection, and having a strong sense of overall purpose and hope, both of
which positively affect mental and physical health.
C. S. Peirce explained the vagueness of the object of the underlying
belief.
“So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I
answer, yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less
believes this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who
are accustomed to think the belief is entirely unfounded. The reason they
fall into this extraordinary error about their own belief is that they
precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in doing so, inevitably
change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be warranted,
even if it cannot be quite refuted. Every concept that is vague is liable
to be self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No
concept, not even those of mathematics, is absolutely precise; and some of
the most important for everyday use are extremely vague. Nevertheless, our
instinctive beliefs involving such concepts are far more trustworthy than
the best established results of science, if these be precisely understood.
For instance, we all think that there is an element of order in the
universe. Could any laboratory experiments render that proposition more
certain than instinct or common sense leaves it? It is ridiculous to broach
such a question. But when anyone undertakes to say precisely what that
order consists in, he will quickly find he outruns all logical warrant. Men
who are given to defining too much inevitably run themselves into confusion
in dealing with the vague concepts of common sense.” CP 6:496
§2. The Logic of Believing in God
C. S. Peirce explained the vagueness of the object of the underlying
belief.
“So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I
answer, yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less
believes this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who
are accustomed to think the belief is entirely unfounded. The reason they
fall into this extraordinary error about their own belief is that they
precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in doing so, inevitably
change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be warranted,
even if it cannot be quite refuted. Every concept that is vague is liable
to be self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No
concept, not even those of mathematics, is absolutely precise; and some of
the most important for everyday use are extremely vague. Nevertheless, our
instinctive beliefs involving such concepts are far more trustworthy than
the best established results of science, if these be precisely understood.
For instance, we all think that there is an element of order in the
universe. Could any laboratory experiments render that proposition more
certain than instinct or common sense leaves it? It is ridiculous to broach
such a question. But when anyone undertakes to say precisely what that
order consists in, he will quickly find he outruns all logical warrant. Men
who are given to defining too much inevitably run themselves into confusion
in dealing with the vague concepts of common sense.” CP 6:496
William James, in the preface to The Meaning of Truth, defined ‘God’ as
such:
“My treatment of ’God,’ ’freedom,’ and ’design’ was similar. Reducing, by
the pragmatic test, the meaning of each of these concepts to its positive
experienceable operation, I showed them all to mean the same thing, viz.,
the presence of ’promise’ in the world. ’God or no God?’ means ’promise or
no promise?’”
The object of the underlying religious-belief might be expressed as “the
ultimate Reason for hope.” I call this “God.”
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. (I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains
to the whole of reality.) A final cause is either a purpose or a law which
pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity of
that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which is true in the infinite long-run’. For
bet is on 6. While you may get 1-5 on this toss or the next finite number
of tosses, ultimately, that is, in the infinite long-run, you’ll get
infinitely more 6s than any other number. When you bet on the side of
logic, you’re betting on what you infer is the probability of how similar
incidents would turn out in the long run. The ideal infinite-limit is your
only guarantor. We only know that weighted dice fall more often on their
weighted side because of our observations that over many tosses, unevenly
weighted objects tend, more so the more tosses, to land on their weighted
side. If there’s no ideal infinite-limit, then there’s nothing regulating
our inductive test. That is, there’s no reason to believe that our
observations of the trend won’t reverse itself.
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil event is inevitable, if you want to know it, you
want to know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge.
Note well that the hypothesis that a subset of reality is hopeless is
nonetheless a useful hypothesis because if it’s true it means that what is
hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. The hypothesis that all of
reality is hopeless is an utterly useless hypothesis, and as such it’s
forbidden by logic. Utter pessimism is anathema to logic. With hope being
the basis of logic, there’s no logical reason to bet against hope in its
Note well that the hypothesis that a subset of reality is hopeless is
nonetheless a useful hypothesis because if it’s true it means that what is
hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. The hypothesis that all of
reality is hopeless is an utterly useless hypothesis, and as such it’s
forbidden by logic. Utter pessimism is anathema to logic. With hope being
most general state. So the reasonable bet is for hope overall and in the
long run. Insomuch as ‘ultimate Reason for hope’ can be called ‘God’ is as
much as it’s reasonable to believe in God and unreasonable to believe God
is not real. (‘Ultimate Reason for hope’ is a personal perspective on what
is the ‘Reason for ultimate goodness’ which is the objective perspective.)
is not real. (‘Ultimate Reason for hope’ is a personal perspective on what
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
the universe is to cave in to hopelessness. Such a conclusion is worse than
worthless. You might respond, saying the course of the universe is a sui
generis event, in that its actual outcome, good bad or otherwise, is not a
matter of which logic can inform us. Good only has meaning relative to bad,
but the universe has no other thing or possible thing to offer the contrast
necessary for any such characterization. My response is that the formal
possibilities are (1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3)
the universe just is, and (4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4
is wrong: the universe is the most vague object, so it evades almost all
characterizations, but it can be characterized, vaguely, as “real”. Number
3 is a Cartesian assumption and as such it bars the possibility of a
subject having knowledge of the universe as an object, so it is rejected.
See the next section which is on the Cartesian problem and pragmatist
solution. Number 2 is a violation of the spirit of thinking. Number 1 is in
line with the spirit of thinking, so it’s true: the universe is good.
§3. The Cartesian Problem, the Pragmatist Solution, and the Inescapability
of Anthropomorphic Conceptions
The Problem with Cartesianism
If the object of inquiry is absolutely separate from the belief of the
inquirer, then the object cannot affect the inquirer, and therefore the
inquirer cannot possibly come to a true belief about the object. When two
things affect each other they are not separate, but they are linked by a
causal force. If every thing is either of mind or matter, and mind and
matter are separate, nothing could causally link the two. Cartesian duality
implies that the subject cannot know or learn about the object without a
third, non-mental and non-physical, substance acting as a liaison. However,
this postulated third-substance begs the question: if this substance is
also absolutely separate from mind and matter then it can’t act as a
liaison between the two, or if it’s supposedly not separate, then, by
Occam’s razor, we should just eliminate the postulate and admit that mind
and matter are not separate.
The Pragmatists’ Solution
Objective truth and subjective belief are not absolutely separate, nor are
the physical and mental realms. According to Peirce, truth is belief which
would be held at the infinite limit of inquiry; belief at the infinite
limit of inquiry is truth. (Cartesianists believe that some truth would
still elude the inquirer even at the infinite limit; this makes them
anti-pragmatists.) This pragmatist definition ties inquirers with the truth
(and, hence, the subject with the object) albeit at an infinite distance.
We don’t, however, need to complete the infinity to gain true belief.
During our inquiry, but before hitting upon the truth, we recognize that
we’re getting closer to the truth due to our ability to recognize that,
over time and effort inquiring, our trajectory of revised beliefs in regard
to the object is homing in on the truth—which we recognize by the
increasing efficacy of the revised beliefs. From this ‘narrowing down’ we
are able to better guess what is actually true after some finite time and
effort inquiring. Once we guess the truth and then repeatedly test that
belief in the real world, we will recognize the fact that this belief is
repeatedly being affirmed by its repeated efficacy.
The problem remains that to explain successful guessing at all, or the high
rate of success that mankind has achieved over its history, because of the
infinite or extremely large number of possibilities from which to guess,
especially at the beginning stage of inquiry, it seems that the guessing
has to have had guidance. Peirce, in efforts to explain how it’s possible
to form a true hypothesis, said that we were formed by nature, under her
laws, and because of this it’s to be expected that we have a natural
attraction—an “inward light”, “magnetic turning toward the truth”, “il lume
naturale”—to the truth of reality.
The Inescapability of Anthropomorphic Conceptions
Charles Peirce, in the Collected Papers, 1:316:
”I hear you say ‘This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic conception.’ I
reply that every scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon is a
hypothesis that there is something in nature to which human reason is
analogous; and that it really is so all the successes of science in its
applications to human convenience are witnesses. They proclaim that truth
over the length and breadth of the modern world. In light of the successes
of science to my mind there is a degree of baseness in denying our
birthright as children of God and in shamefacedly slinking away from
anthropomorphic conceptions of the universe.”
Peirce, in the Collected Papers 8.168:
“Many are beginning to feel that the only possible justification for a
hypothesis is that it renders the facts comprehensible, and that to suppose
them absolutely incomprehensible (which is what the doctrine of the
Unknowable comes to) is not rendering them comprehensible.” ... “To the
same general tendency belongs an opinion, now very common, that it is
unscientific to inquire whether there be a God; the only rational question
being what sort of God there is. With this is naturally associated the
further opinion that instead of its being shallow philosophy to suppose an
“anthropomorphic” God, if by “anthropomorphic” be meant mental, it is far
more consonant with the method of science to formulate the problem by
asking what sort of mind God is; and if we cannot in some measure
understand God’s mind, all science it is said with some color of justice,
must be a delusion and a snare.”
Peirce assumed God is a mind, or is mind rather than matter because matter
is what it is because it reacts with other matter according to laws of
nature, so matter is finite and subservient to laws, so that won’t fulfill
what most people think of as God. Laws are rules which matter follows;
therefore laws aren’t material, they’re mental. There’s obviously an order
of nature to which both our physical and mental selves are subservient.
There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically good and bad ways of
acting in response to that order. Peirce said that aspiration toward
perfection is the essence of religion, so we can call the laws themselves
or the law-maker, whatever the case might be, “God”. Science is the
activity of learning laws, or God’s Mind. If we cannot in some measure
understand some supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be
absolutely separate from us. If something is absolutely separate from us
then it can could never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So,
there’s absolute no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no
denying that the laws of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re
intelligent beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws.
We can learn about anything in reality….......
Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts inquiring yield progress in
knowledge, so if we’re not connected to God’s mind then all our efforts in
science have no relation to the progress we appear to have made.
????????????????????????????????????????????
My point in this essay rests on Peirce’s correction of Cartesianism, and
can be laid out like this:
(1) the truth of reality is connected to inquiry at inquiry’s infinite
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts into a habit.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
Therefore it is perfectly logical to believe in a Reason to hope for a
general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there is no
Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe that a
subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you where the
good is. To believe that the universe, in its totality, is ultimately
§4. My Opinion on the Matter
When someone says “There is no God,” I’m instinctively offended, because I
understand that person as saying “There is no ultimate reason for hope, but
there is an ultimate reason for despair.”
If someone says to me, “a cargo airplane is not a god, nor is or was the
man called Jesus”, I’m not automatically offended, but I’m ready to defend
both beliefs, as they are or were genuinely practiced, for their value as
over-beliefs which cover the response appropriate to the object of the more
important underlying beliefs. By genuinely practicing even the most
ridiculous over-beliefs, the believer draws on a real source of ultimate
hope; and that habit of drawing is that person’s underlying belief whether
he can verbally articulate any knowledge of the object of that underlying
belief or not. I think it’s cruel to attempt to pull that rug out from
underneath someone without knowing that they’ll have another but more
secure rug (over-belief) to stand on (to connect them to the real source.)
If the person who attacks another person’s over-belief had the goal or
effect of disconnecting someone from their source of ultimate hope, then
I’m instinctively offended. If it’s their goal, they’re Satanic; if it’s
their effect but not their goal, they’re Satan’s useful idiot. (I define
‘Satan’ as the Reason for despair.)
Despite the fact that your life is short, reality is continuous, so you are
in the infinite long-run you’ll get infinitely more sixes than any other
number, reality in the infinite future is infinitely good. You’re connected
humans. In the evolutionary race to reach this singularity of intelligence,
humans are like the hare in the race of the tortoise and the hare. So far,
our great abilities are being squandered by selfishness and arrogance. The
more I look into the history of science, neverminding the horrible history
humans are like the hare in the race of the tortoise and the hare. So far,
our great abilities are being squandered by selfishness and arrogance. The
of politics, the more I lose hope for human evolution. I have more hope
that the mice will first reach it, but maybe we’ll have to wait for the
cockroaches. But if cockroaches fail, the tardigrades won’t fail us! In any
case, God’s will doesn’t depend on any finite subset of reality to become
fulfilled.
From the frame of reference of the living, after a person dies, many many
years will pass before he is resurrected with the clarity, vividness, and
definiteness we feel now. But, from his own frame of reference he will be
resurrected fairly quickly afterwards. This is analogous to a particle
traveling a large distance through space at a speed near the speed of
light: from our frame of reference it takes many years, but from its frame
of reference, only a few days pass.
infinity, but, in its spirit, it represents the most optimistic future
possible for all beings in the long run. If there’s an even more optimistic
hypothesis, I’d go with that.
__________________ The End _________________
Matt Faunce
May 3, 2022, 1:26:08 PM5/3/22
to
Updated Draft
knowledge is done by seeking new data for making new hypotheses, and then
that you don’t slip into a mental torpor.
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, so, when the closeness
of parts or the strength of their bond is relevant, it takes a judgment to
decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong enough; and then
parts can be considered as belonging to a unit for reasons other than their
square drawn right next to the circle, yet we know the point belongs to the
circle and the square doesn’t. For a physical example, take one leg of a
wooden chair which is standing on a wooden floor. To people, the top half
each of those elements was due to a strange synthesis of even smaller
elements, making his whole arrangement of the world completely alien to our
analyzing and synthesizing the universe outrun advances in our ability to
very ability to bring their being to mind has passed over the horizon, so
they’re not ideas at all: only ideas actually held in a living mind can be
given an alethic value. Cf. Isaiah 65:17.
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, they say,
embodiment is the foundation for judgments which are the foundation of
logic. But, that just begs the question of how embodiment and needs (which
position, align with your bodily instinct, but this instinct is not a
logical foundation per se, but rather, it’s merely the habit of a species
based on how things have been. Mosquitoes have an instinct to fly towards
blue light, and that instinct served them well for millennia, but with the
invention of blue-light bug-zappers, that instinct is a clear example of an
instinct sometimes being illogical. Aligning your fundamental judgments
with bodily instinct is logical only when you’ve sampled the universe for
the possible forces of change to the conditions which formed your instincts
and then inferred that your instincts will continue to serve you well. Of
course, these samples of the universe can’t be based solely on your
instinctual ways of analysis and synthesis; you must learn to see beyond
your instincts. However, it’s impossible to see beyond all our instincts.
All we can hope for is to conceptually reach out toward what is less
instinctual, as the parabola reaches toward its asymptote.
?????????????????????????
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there can be no
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. A particular that’s independent of a
ideas that came to be because of an agreement of minds. A mind is an
agreement and an agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all
further universals, like the existence of matter, are wholly due to an
agreements of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic. To
up the foundation of geometry.)
Robust Relativists say that a truth in our current historical frame of
it. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no universally
non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that truth is relative to different frames
of reference, but that these different frames need not be incommensurable,
are self-defeating.
The only logical debate that I’ve seen between a robust objectivism, like
C. S. Peirce’s “objective idealism”, and Joseph Margolis’s “robust
relativism”, is that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder
if someone who takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof
based merely on his subjective opinion. (Be careful not to propose, as an
arbitration to the matter, that there’s a frame of reference that has an
infinite scope of history, past and future, which we might eventually learn
to see from. That solution is to assume the objectivists’ original
postulate, and to gratuitously counter the postulate of relativism.)
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see at the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a hypothesis that doesn’t afford for
such optimism. That new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the
hope to benefit from the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C.
S. Peirce’s form of realism, “objective idealism”, with the inclusion of
the new postulate, allows for infinite optimism which I can’t see matched
by Margolis’s robust relativism.
in reality. Reality has no genus or differentia, so, whereas every other
our inductive test. That is, if there’s no ideal infinite-limit, there’s no
reason to believe that the trend that we observe won’t change course.
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil event is inevitable, if you want to know it, you
want to know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge.
Every thought starts with a hypothesis, and the thought continues with a
deduction which is the drawing of necessary consequences, or an induction
which is the testing of the hypothesis against what is known about nature
or against what will be discovered. The hypothesis that a subset of reality
example, if you want to get to the other side of a brick wall, hoping that
you can walk through it will prove to be useless; the fact that it’s been
proven hopeless is a good thing, so you can look for another way, or adjust
your goal. On the other hand, a hypothesis that all of reality is hopeless
general state. So the reasonable hypothesis is for hope overall and in the
long run; the hypothesis that there is no hope overall and in the long run
is illogical. Since ‘the ultimate Reason for hope’ can be called ‘God’,
it’s reasonable to believe in God and it’s unreasonable to believe God is
that’s one characteristic. Number 3 is a Cartesian assumption whose
implications bar the possibility of a subject having knowledge of the
process of elimination, granting that I’ve identified all the formal
possibilities, number 1 true: the universe is good.
§3. The Cartesian Problem, the Pragmatist Solution, and the Inescapability
of Anthropomorphic Conceptions
The Problem with Cartesianism
If ‘objective reality’ is such that the object of inquiry is absolutely
philosophical world. For anyone, i.e., any subject, to learn about an
object, the object must affect the subject, directly or indirectly. When
one thing affects another thing, the two things are not separate in all
ways, but rather, they must be similar at least in the way in which they’re
absolutely separate from belief, but rather, truth is belief which would be
regard for what might be believed about it. This means the universe,
overall and in the long run, is not a source or signpost of hope. Due to
the fact that logical thinking is driven by hope, this universe is then
something no one could learn about. If that’s the case we wouldn’t have a
word for it.
therefore laws aren’t material, they’re mental. (Laws are nonetheless
objective because they don’t depend on the thoughts of any person or finite
number of people, but they are dependent on thought at its infinite limit,
i.e., laws depend on there being an infinite possibility of thinking.)
becomes farther stretched out. Take, for example, these four ideas to
illustrate this progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) every diamond is harder than
any rock, (3) the Grand Canyon is beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is
good. The logic that supports the first idea, 1, is clear and concise; the
logic of 2 is clear, but inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete
stretch of a parabola reaching toward the asymptote; the logic of 3 is
vague despite the truth of the idea being readily accepted by almost all
people; the logic of 4 is the vaguest of all. Some idea must be the
farthest reaching before crossing the threshold into being illogical, and I
think I’ve given a good argument, in this chapter, that the far-reaching
idea that ‘the universe is good’ is before that threshold.
There are skeptics who deny idea-2, viz., “every diamond is harder than any
rock”, saying that because it’s an inductive inference it’s only able to
show a finite segment of an infinite parabola, so it’s not believable. It’s
even easier to scoff at the belief in the truth of beauty, including the
beauty in idea-3, viz., “the Grand Canyon is beautiful.” The reasonable
man, however, needs to check his skepticism against his heart, i.e., his
sense of hope, and realize that he should foster that sense.
of the habit. Matter is mind that stopped changing its mind.
The grand trajectory of the universe is toward its ideal state. In a letter
to Christine Ladd-Franklin, Peirce said “The state of things in the
infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the
total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, and nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and
absence of our spontaneity.” A trajectory toward death is not very
optimistic. Since the impetus for all thought is hope, I think the best
On the timeline, the present is a mere point on the line, and as such it
inferences pertaining to us, and understanding of probabilities pertaining
to us. At that time, each person will become fully alive (i.e., as alive as
My hypothesis for the afterlife is not merely one arbitrary possibility out
testing new hypotheses when doing so doesn’t take up an unreasonable amount
of his resources. Put conversely, a person who is unwilling to expand his
knowledge and avoid mental torpor lacks intellectual integrity.
Being right is not a necessary condition for having intellectual integrity;
and being wrong is not a necessary condition for lacking intellectual
integrity. Sometimes people who lack intellectual integrity get things
right; sometimes people with intellectual integrity make honest mistakes.
A person’s holding of passively-attained beliefs that are wrong does not
mean that person lacks intellectual integrity. Everyone holds more
passively-attained beliefs than they can possibly test; e.g., most people
who believe that Mars’s orbit of the Sun is an ellipse have not checked out
the astronomers’ observational data, mathematics, and logic—they just
believe the conclusion inferred by the scientific consensus. Sometimes the
of his resources. Put conversely, a person who is unwilling to expand his
knowledge and avoid mental torpor lacks intellectual integrity.
Being right is not a necessary condition for having intellectual integrity;
and being wrong is not a necessary condition for lacking intellectual
integrity. Sometimes people who lack intellectual integrity get things
right; sometimes people with intellectual integrity make honest mistakes.
A person’s holding of passively-attained beliefs that are wrong does not
mean that person lacks intellectual integrity. Everyone holds more
passively-attained beliefs than they can possibly test; e.g., most people
who believe that Mars’s orbit of the Sun is an ellipse have not checked out
the astronomers’ observational data, mathematics, and logic—they just
consensus is wrong, like when it approved the liberal use of DDT as a
pesticide and said it was perfectly safe for humans. Most people merely
assumed that the scientific community did its due diligence and that it
pesticide and said it was perfectly safe for humans. Most people merely
consisted of mostly honest and moral people. And, as far as intellectual
integrity is concerned, that assumption is OK. Following what you believe
is the scientific consensus, following your peers, following authority
figures, sticking with tradition, sticking with your first notions—none of
that, by itself, is a knock against your intellectual integrity. What
matters is how you react to information that’s contrary to your belief, and
integrity is concerned, that assumption is OK. Following what you believe
is the scientific consensus, following your peers, following authority
figures, sticking with tradition, sticking with your first notions—none of
that, by itself, is a knock against your intellectual integrity. What
that you don’t slip into a mental torpor.
of parts or the strength of their bond is relevant, it takes a judgment to
decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong enough; and then
parts can be considered as belonging to a unit for reasons other than their
closeness or strength of the force bonding them, e.g., the center point of
a circle may be farther from the circular line making the circle than a
square drawn right next to the circle, yet we know the point belongs to the
circle and the square doesn’t. For a physical example, take one leg of a
wooden chair which is standing on a wooden floor. To people, the top half
of that leg and the lower half of that leg make a single unit called “chair
leg”. To a termite, the wood making a part of the floor and the lower part
of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if he could speak.
Each species has a different natural way to analyze and synthesize his
sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but the termite
can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence is as
advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s. He
very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense-data are, for the most part, not
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those elements because
leg”. To a termite, the wood making a part of the floor and the lower part
of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if he could speak.
Each species has a different natural way to analyze and synthesize his
sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but the termite
can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence is as
advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s. He
very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense-data are, for the most part, not
each of those elements was due to a strange synthesis of even smaller
elements, making his whole arrangement of the world completely alien to our
way of thinking.
§2. Consequences to How the Question is Answered.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one judgment (i.e., one analysis and synthesis of one’s sense-data)
might be so foreign from yours that the other’s judgment would be seen as
§2. Consequences to How the Question is Answered.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one judgment (i.e., one analysis and synthesis of one’s sense-data)
arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities for
analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), the other judgment might be infinitely far away from yours making it
theoretically impossible for you to have any cognition of it. However, this
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. But also, if the difference is merely
greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your understanding of his
world is practically zero. It’s possible that over trillions of years we
evolve to a point where our new way of making fundamental judgments of our
world will become practically incommensurable with the old way of trillions
of years prior. That would be the case if, over time, changes in our way of
analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), the other judgment might be infinitely far away from yours making it
theoretically impossible for you to have any cognition of it. However, this
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. But also, if the difference is merely
greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your understanding of his
world is practically zero. It’s possible that over trillions of years we
evolve to a point where our new way of making fundamental judgments of our
world will become practically incommensurable with the old way of trillions
analyzing and synthesizing the universe outrun advances in our ability to
inquire into the past. This is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of
history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Peirce built his
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
says any past fact is theoretically possible to eventually learn. Cf. Luke
history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Peirce built his
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
8:17. Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical
possibilities, and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the
very ability to bring their being to mind has passed over the horizon, so
they’re not ideas at all: only ideas actually held in a living mind can be
given an alethic value. Cf. Isaiah 65:17.
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
embodiment is the foundation for judgments which are the foundation of
logic. But, that just begs the question of how embodiment and needs (which
must refer to their universals) are natural rather than arbitrary
judgments. What logical argument could possibly justify the belief that any
of our fundamental judgments are natural rather than ultimately arbitrary,
or vice versa? You can make your default position, or your starting
judgments. What logical argument could possibly justify the belief that any
of our fundamental judgments are natural rather than ultimately arbitrary,
position, align with your bodily instinct, but this instinct is not a
logical foundation per se, but rather, it’s merely the habit of a species
based on how things have been. Mosquitoes have an instinct to fly towards
blue light, and that instinct served them well for millennia, but with the
invention of blue-light bug-zappers, that instinct is a clear example of an
instinct sometimes being illogical. Aligning your fundamental judgments
with bodily instinct is logical only when you’ve sampled the universe for
the possible forces of change to the conditions which formed your instincts
and then inferred that your instincts will continue to serve you well. Of
course, these samples of the universe can’t be based solely on your
instinctual ways of analysis and synthesis; you must learn to see beyond
your instincts. However, it’s impossible to see beyond all our instincts.
All we can hope for is to conceptually reach out toward what is less
instinctual, as the parabola reaches toward its asymptote.
?????????????????????????
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there can be no
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
universal would have to be indivisible, not just practically but
conceptually, and this is inconceivable. Is the particular’s dependence on
the universal a problem for its existence?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
conceptually, and this is inconceivable. Is the particular’s dependence on
the universal a problem for its existence?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that hold true no matter what any
finite number of people believe about them. There are universally objective
truths which make up the foundation of logic. Conventionalist philosophies
are built on the postulate that our most fundamental universals, facts, are
ideas that came to be because of an agreement of minds. A mind is an
agreement and an agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all
further universals, like the existence of matter, are wholly due to an
agreements of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic. To
conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the dotted i and the
period in the example above. They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth
may be embedded in our embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or
the consequence of a more fundamental agreement, that is only possible
because it’s built on a more ancient agreement that got established very
early in the evolution of the universe (mind-verse). They agree that the
period in the example above. They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth
may be embedded in our embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or
the consequence of a more fundamental agreement, that is only possible
because it’s built on a more ancient agreement that got established very
truth of x is what is the most coherent and elegant statement about x, as
compared with all possible competing statements, that comports with our
most deeply rooted agreements about facts that support x. Objectivists
disagree, saying there must be some object that’s independent of the
opinions of any finite number of men on which an agreement on truth is
made. (The object can be physical like a rock, or purely theoretical like a
perfect square in euclidean space which doesn’t exist in nature but
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to 400°. Conventionalists would say that
that a 400° square merely violates more fundamental agreements which make
compared with all possible competing statements, that comports with our
most deeply rooted agreements about facts that support x. Objectivists
disagree, saying there must be some object that’s independent of the
opinions of any finite number of men on which an agreement on truth is
made. (The object can be physical like a rock, or purely theoretical like a
perfect square in euclidean space which doesn’t exist in nature but
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to 400°. Conventionalists would say that
up the foundation of geometry.)
Robust Relativists say that a truth in our current historical frame of
reference—what’s within our horizons, conceptually—is true because of its
relation to our historical frame of reference, and it does not necessarily
hold in another historical frame of reference. Every truth is true only
because it is supported by all the other truths in its historical frame of
reference. Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one
historical frame are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making
the truth which was supported by them not true, although not false either
because it would not an idea at all, so no alethic value could assigned to
relation to our historical frame of reference, and it does not necessarily
hold in another historical frame of reference. Every truth is true only
because it is supported by all the other truths in its historical frame of
reference. Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one
historical frame are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making
the truth which was supported by them not true, although not false either
it. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no universally
objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many people
think. Their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about reality
that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths (defined the
same way) within a historical frame of reference, so their statement can be
restated as this: “It is relevant, apt, and useful to believe, in our
historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that is relevant,
apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That is not a
self-defeating statement if, and only if, the frames of reference referred
historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that is relevant,
apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That is not a
to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference, let’s call
it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere be false.
Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference, frame-B,
‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could possibly
occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false because
it’s not a concept at all. You can’t assign an alethic value to a
it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere be false.
Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference, frame-B,
‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could possibly
occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false because
non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that truth is relative to different frames
of reference, but that these different frames need not be incommensurable,
are self-defeating.
C. S. Peirce’s “objective idealism”, and Joseph Margolis’s “robust
relativism”, is that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder
if someone who takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof
based merely on his subjective opinion. (Be careful not to propose, as an
arbitration to the matter, that there’s a frame of reference that has an
infinite scope of history, past and future, which we might eventually learn
to see from. That solution is to assume the objectivists’ original
postulate, and to gratuitously counter the postulate of relativism.)
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see at the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a hypothesis that doesn’t afford for
such optimism. That new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the
hope to benefit from the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C.
S. Peirce’s form of realism, “objective idealism”, with the inclusion of
the new postulate, allows for infinite optimism which I can’t see matched
by Margolis’s robust relativism.
thing is understood by the effects it has on things, and that understanding
is brought to light by how its effects differ from other things’ effects,
the understanding of reality cannot be gotten that way. There’s nothing
outside of reality to be affected by reality. We know reality is here, we
know some things in it, and we assume it’s the sum of all things; that’s
it. The opposite of ‘vague’ is ‘definite’ or ‘well-defined’. A triangle is
defined quite well as a figure composed of three straight lines which, two
by two, extend to and meet at three points thus making the three angles by
which it gets its name.
is brought to light by how its effects differ from other things’ effects,
the understanding of reality cannot be gotten that way. There’s nothing
outside of reality to be affected by reality. We know reality is here, we
know some things in it, and we assume it’s the sum of all things; that’s
it. The opposite of ‘vague’ is ‘definite’ or ‘well-defined’. A triangle is
defined quite well as a figure composed of three straight lines which, two
by two, extend to and meet at three points thus making the three angles by
which it gets its name.
reason to believe that the trend that we observe won’t change course.
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil event is inevitable, if you want to know it, you
want to know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge.
deduction which is the drawing of necessary consequences, or an induction
which is the testing of the hypothesis against what is known about nature
or against what will be discovered. The hypothesis that a subset of reality
is hopeless is nonetheless a useful hypothesis because if it’s true it
means that what is hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. For
example, if you want to get to the other side of a brick wall, hoping that
you can walk through it will prove to be useless; the fact that it’s been
proven hopeless is a good thing, so you can look for another way, or adjust
your goal. On the other hand, a hypothesis that all of reality is hopeless
is an utterly useless hypothesis, and as such it’s forbidden by logic.
Utter pessimism is anathema to logic. With hope being the basis of logic,
it’s a violation of logical reasoning to bet against hope in its most
Utter pessimism is anathema to logic. With hope being the basis of logic,
general state. So the reasonable hypothesis is for hope overall and in the
long run; the hypothesis that there is no hope overall and in the long run
is illogical. Since ‘the ultimate Reason for hope’ can be called ‘God’,
it’s reasonable to believe in God and it’s unreasonable to believe God is
not real. (‘Ultimate Reason for hope’ is a personal perspective on what is
the ‘Reason for ultimate goodness’ which is the objective perspective.)
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because to be pessimistic toward
the universe is to cave in to hopelessness. Such a conclusion is worse than
worthless. You might respond, saying the course of the universe is a sui
generis event, in that its actual outcome, good bad or otherwise, is not a
matter of which logic can inform us. Good only has meaning relative to bad,
but the universe has no differentia, i.e., it has no other thing or
the ‘Reason for ultimate goodness’ which is the objective perspective.)
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because to be pessimistic toward
the universe is to cave in to hopelessness. Such a conclusion is worse than
worthless. You might respond, saying the course of the universe is a sui
generis event, in that its actual outcome, good bad or otherwise, is not a
matter of which logic can inform us. Good only has meaning relative to bad,
possible thing to offer the contrast necessary for any such
characterization. My response is that the formal possibilities of this are
(1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3) the universe just
is, and (4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4 is wrong: the
universe is the most vague object, so it evades almost all
characterizations, but you just characterized it as a sui generis event so
is, and (4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4 is wrong: the
universe is the most vague object, so it evades almost all
that’s one characteristic. Number 3 is a Cartesian assumption whose
implications bar the possibility of a subject having knowledge of the
universe as an object, so it is rejected. See the next section which is on
the Cartesian problem and pragmatist solution. Number 2 is a violation of
the spirit of thinking. Number 1 is in line with the spirit of thinking. By
the Cartesian problem and pragmatist solution. Number 2 is a violation of
process of elimination, granting that I’ve identified all the formal
possibilities, number 1 true: the universe is good.
§3. The Cartesian Problem, the Pragmatist Solution, and the Inescapability
of Anthropomorphic Conceptions
The Problem with Cartesianism
separate from the belief of the inquirer, then the object cannot affect the
inquirer, and therefore the inquirer cannot possibly come to a true belief
about the object. This was a big problem that René Descartes left the
inquirer, and therefore the inquirer cannot possibly come to a true belief
philosophical world. For anyone, i.e., any subject, to learn about an
object, the object must affect the subject, directly or indirectly. When
one thing affects another thing, the two things are not separate in all
ways, but rather, they must be similar at least in the way in which they’re
linked by a causal force.
The Pragmatists’ Solution
Objective truth and subjective belief are not absolutely separate, nor are
the physical and mental realms. According to C. S. Peirce, truth is not
Objective truth and subjective belief are not absolutely separate, nor are
absolutely separate from belief, but rather, truth is belief which would be
held at the infinite limit of inquiry; belief at the infinite limit of
inquiry is truth. (Cartesianists believe that some truth would still elude
the inquirer even at the infinite limit; this makes them anti-pragmatists.)
This pragmatist definition ties inquirers with the truth (and, hence, the
subject with the object) albeit at an infinite distance. We don’t, however,
need to complete the infinity to gain true belief. During our inquiry, but
before hitting upon the truth, we recognize that we’re getting closer to
the truth due to our ability to recognize that, over time and effort
inquiring, our trajectory of revised beliefs in regard to the object is
homing in on the truth—which we recognize by the increasing efficacy of the
revised beliefs. From this ‘narrowing down’ we are able to better guess
what is actually true after some finite time and effort inquiring. Once we
guess the truth and then repeatedly test that belief in the real world, we
will recognize the fact that this belief is repeatedly being affirmed by
its repeated efficacy.
So, consider (3) from above, viz., “the universe just is”; it is without
inquiry is truth. (Cartesianists believe that some truth would still elude
the inquirer even at the infinite limit; this makes them anti-pragmatists.)
This pragmatist definition ties inquirers with the truth (and, hence, the
subject with the object) albeit at an infinite distance. We don’t, however,
need to complete the infinity to gain true belief. During our inquiry, but
before hitting upon the truth, we recognize that we’re getting closer to
the truth due to our ability to recognize that, over time and effort
inquiring, our trajectory of revised beliefs in regard to the object is
homing in on the truth—which we recognize by the increasing efficacy of the
revised beliefs. From this ‘narrowing down’ we are able to better guess
what is actually true after some finite time and effort inquiring. Once we
guess the truth and then repeatedly test that belief in the real world, we
will recognize the fact that this belief is repeatedly being affirmed by
its repeated efficacy.
regard for what might be believed about it. This means the universe,
overall and in the long run, is not a source or signpost of hope. Due to
the fact that logical thinking is driven by hope, this universe is then
something no one could learn about. If that’s the case we wouldn’t have a
word for it.
objective because they don’t depend on the thoughts of any person or finite
number of people, but they are dependent on thought at its infinite limit,
i.e., laws depend on there being an infinite possibility of thinking.)
There’s obviously an order of nature to which both our physical and mental
selves are subservient. There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically
good and bad ways of acting in response to that order. Peirce said that
aspiration toward perfection is the essence of religion, so we can call the
laws themselves or the law-maker, whatever the case might be, “God”.
Science is the activity of learning laws, or God’s Mind. If we cannot in
some measure understand some supposed object, then that object must,
supposedly, be absolutely separate from us. If something is absolutely
separate from us then it can could never have a effect on us, mediately or
immediately. So, there’s absolute no reason to believe in such an object.
If there’s no denying that the laws of nature have an effect on us, then,
since we’re intelligent beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about
these laws. We can learn about anything in reality….......
Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts inquiring yield progress in
knowledge, so if we’re not connected to God’s mind then all our efforts in
science have no relation to the progress we appear to have made.
????????????????????????????????????????????
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
selves are subservient. There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically
good and bad ways of acting in response to that order. Peirce said that
aspiration toward perfection is the essence of religion, so we can call the
laws themselves or the law-maker, whatever the case might be, “God”.
Science is the activity of learning laws, or God’s Mind. If we cannot in
some measure understand some supposed object, then that object must,
supposedly, be absolutely separate from us. If something is absolutely
separate from us then it can could never have a effect on us, mediately or
immediately. So, there’s absolute no reason to believe in such an object.
If there’s no denying that the laws of nature have an effect on us, then,
since we’re intelligent beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about
these laws. We can learn about anything in reality….......
Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts inquiring yield progress in
knowledge, so if we’re not connected to God’s mind then all our efforts in
science have no relation to the progress we appear to have made.
????????????????????????????????????????????
becomes farther stretched out. Take, for example, these four ideas to
illustrate this progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) every diamond is harder than
any rock, (3) the Grand Canyon is beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is
good. The logic that supports the first idea, 1, is clear and concise; the
logic of 2 is clear, but inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete
stretch of a parabola reaching toward the asymptote; the logic of 3 is
vague despite the truth of the idea being readily accepted by almost all
people; the logic of 4 is the vaguest of all. Some idea must be the
farthest reaching before crossing the threshold into being illogical, and I
think I’ve given a good argument, in this chapter, that the far-reaching
idea that ‘the universe is good’ is before that threshold.
There are skeptics who deny idea-2, viz., “every diamond is harder than any
rock”, saying that because it’s an inductive inference it’s only able to
show a finite segment of an infinite parabola, so it’s not believable. It’s
even easier to scoff at the belief in the truth of beauty, including the
beauty in idea-3, viz., “the Grand Canyon is beautiful.” The reasonable
man, however, needs to check his skepticism against his heart, i.e., his
sense of hope, and realize that he should foster that sense.
The grand trajectory of the universe is toward its ideal state. In a letter
to Christine Ladd-Franklin, Peirce said “The state of things in the
infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the
total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, and nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and
absence of our spontaneity.” A trajectory toward death is not very
optimistic. Since the impetus for all thought is hope, I think the best
conclusion about the universe as a whole is the most optimistic one. This
reasoning is rational when applied to thought about the universe as a
has no length. The past is the line before that point; the future is the
line after that point.
The past is what is remembered and what would be inferred given unlimited
time and resources for investigation.
The future is what would be inferred given unlimited resources for
investigation, plus the pure-chance occurrences which can’t be predicted,
e.g., the result of your next coin toss.
What we call the present is really the immediate past, where the memory is
still vivid, plus the inferable immediate-future.
You are nothing but a memory, inference at its theoretically highest
potential, and a set of probabilities. Your knowledge of yourself is
nothing but your memory and your actual (as opposed to theoretically
potential) inferences, including inferences of the limits of those
probabilities.
Consciousness and intelligence in the universe has been evolving such that
the power of both memory and inference has been increasing. Therefore, the
ongoing understanding of the present has been including more and more of
the past with farther and farther reaches into the future.
There will come a time, long after our deaths, when highly evolved,
conscious, and intelligent beings, who are made from recombined parts of
the material we were made of, will be able to infer and remember our lives
with as much clarity, vividness, and definiteness as we can presently know
and feel our present lives. Since they are made of our material and
material affected by our material, their knowledge of us will also contain
memory. These beings will literally resurrect us with their memory of us,
line after that point.
The past is what is remembered and what would be inferred given unlimited
time and resources for investigation.
The future is what would be inferred given unlimited resources for
investigation, plus the pure-chance occurrences which can’t be predicted,
e.g., the result of your next coin toss.
What we call the present is really the immediate past, where the memory is
still vivid, plus the inferable immediate-future.
You are nothing but a memory, inference at its theoretically highest
potential, and a set of probabilities. Your knowledge of yourself is
nothing but your memory and your actual (as opposed to theoretically
potential) inferences, including inferences of the limits of those
probabilities.
Consciousness and intelligence in the universe has been evolving such that
the power of both memory and inference has been increasing. Therefore, the
ongoing understanding of the present has been including more and more of
the past with farther and farther reaches into the future.
There will come a time, long after our deaths, when highly evolved,
conscious, and intelligent beings, who are made from recombined parts of
the material we were made of, will be able to infer and remember our lives
with as much clarity, vividness, and definiteness as we can presently know
and feel our present lives. Since they are made of our material and
material affected by our material, their knowledge of us will also contain
inferences pertaining to us, and understanding of probabilities pertaining
to us. At that time, each person will become fully alive (i.e., as alive as
he was in his previous life) in a highly evolved world as a being with all
the habits he had established for himself in the previous world. Evil
habits won’t be rewarded as they sometimes were in his former world, but
out of habit he’ll continue them and suffer very harsh consequences. For
people who have established an attitude of unrepentance, their new life
will be Hell. For those who were evil but didn’t want to be, they will have
a harsh start, but they’ll adjust. Those who dedicated their life to doing
the habits he had established for himself in the previous world. Evil
habits won’t be rewarded as they sometimes were in his former world, but
out of habit he’ll continue them and suffer very harsh consequences. For
people who have established an attitude of unrepentance, their new life
will be Hell. For those who were evil but didn’t want to be, they will have
Matt Faunce
Jul 25, 2022, 7:42:03 PM7/25/22
to
Updated Draft, July 25, 2002
can’t see this information when it’s is right in front of him, then he
knowledge is done by making new hypotheses, with new or old data, and then
testing the new hypotheses. A person who doesn’t avoid mental torpor lacks
place, which is enough to show that each one different from the others, but
inside the circle and next to the center-point, yet we know the point
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those elements, because
his sense-data) might be so foreign from yours that his judgment would be
merely greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your capacity for
8:17. “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing
concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”) Joseph
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”)
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, they say,
embodiment is the foundation for judgments which are the foundation of
logic. But, that just begs the question of how embodiment and needs (which
must refer to their universals) are natural rather than arbitrary
judgments. What logical argument could possibly justify the belief that any
of our fundamental judgments are natural rather than ultimately arbitrary,
or vice versa? You can make your default position, or your starting
position, align with your bodily instinct, but this instinct is not a
logical foundation per se, but rather, it’s merely the habit of a species
based on how things have been. Mosquitoes have an instinct to fly towards
blue light, and that instinct served them well for millennia, but with the
invention of blue-light bug-zappers, that instinct is a clear example of an
instinct sometimes being illogical. Aligning your fundamental judgments
with bodily instinct is logical only when you’ve sampled the universe for
the possible forces of change to the conditions which formed your instincts
and then inferred that your instincts will continue to serve you well. Of
course, these samples of the universe can’t be based solely on your
instinctual ways of analysis and synthesis; you must learn to see beyond
your instincts. However, it’s impossible to see beyond all our instincts.
All we can hope for is to conceptually reach out toward what is less
instinctual, and hope that this reaching, by humans, causes us to evolve
toward being more and more capable of seeing the universe of possibilities.
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there can be no
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. A particular that’s independent of a
universal would have to be indivisible, not just practically but
conceptually, and this is inconceivable.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars a problem for its
being?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, i.e., facts, are ideas that hold true no matter
what any finite number of people believes about them. There are universally
above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above. They
agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even more ancient
agreements which got established very early in the evolution of the
reference but not to another frame of reference, and say that these
different frames need not be incommensurable—these forms of relativism are
self-defeating, because, if ‘x in frame A is true’ is commensurable with ‘x
in frame B is false’ then in the frame which makes the two frames
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and false
in frame C.’ (The movie by Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, is a philosophical
failure!, although, maybe it has psychological value.) If, however, frame A
and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which a contradiction
can be stated. ??????????????—Special Relativity—????????????
Promise is the objective aspect of hope; hope is the subjective aspect of
promise. The object of the underlying religious-belief might be expressed
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil event is inevitable, if you want to know it, you
want to know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge.
Every thought starts with a hypothesis (which is a guess or assumption),
and the thought continues with a combination of deductions (which are the
drawings of necessary consequences) and inductions (which include the
testing of the hypothesis directly and also the testing of the its
necessary consequences, both against what is already known about nature and
against what will be discovered). The hypothesis that a subset of reality
that there is hope overall and in the long run; the hypothesis that there
with, so its character is not a matter of which logic can inform us. Good
only has meaning relative to bad, but there’s nothing other than the
universe which can offer the contrast necessary for us to characterize the
universe.” My response is that the formal possibilities of this are (1) the
possibilities in the future. Is the trajectory bringing us toward a better,
worse, or the same quality of existence?
?????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??????
???????????????????????? we can call the laws themselves “God’s Decrees”,
and the infinite limit of thought, “God”. Science is the activity of
learning laws, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand
testing the new hypotheses. A person who doesn’t avoid mental torpor lacks
also, when measured extremely accurately each I is also different in
height, width, thickness, and darkness from the others. They are similar,
but it takes a judgment to decide what things are similar enough to belong
to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive I’s each one mutated a little bit
more than the previous. Where do you draw the line between what is an I and
what isn’t? How should you decide? Are some judgments natural and others
artificial?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
due to the universal that we know the dot after the line, the period, isn't
a part of the letter. Likewise with all things, the understanding of any
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, so, when the closeness
of parts or the strength of their bond is relevant, it takes a judgment to
decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong enough; and then
parts can be considered as belonging to a unit for reasons other than their
closeness or strength of the force bonding them, e.g., the center point of
a circle may be farther from the line making the circle than a square drawn
height, width, thickness, and darkness from the others. They are similar,
but it takes a judgment to decide what things are similar enough to belong
to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive I’s each one mutated a little bit
more than the previous. Where do you draw the line between what is an I and
what isn’t? How should you decide? Are some judgments natural and others
artificial?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
due to the universal that we know the dot after the line, the period, isn't
a part of the letter. Likewise with all things, the understanding of any
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, so, when the closeness
of parts or the strength of their bond is relevant, it takes a judgment to
decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong enough; and then
parts can be considered as belonging to a unit for reasons other than their
closeness or strength of the force bonding them, e.g., the center point of
inside the circle and next to the center-point, yet we know the point
belongs to the circle and the square doesn’t. For a physical example, take
one leg of a wooden chair which is standing on a wooden floor. To people,
the top half of that leg and the lower half of that leg make a single unit
called “chair leg”. To a termite, the wood making a part of the floor and
the lower part of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if
he could speak. Each species has a different natural way to analyze and
synthesize his sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but
the termite can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence
is as advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s.
He very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense data are, for the most part, not
one leg of a wooden chair which is standing on a wooden floor. To people,
the top half of that leg and the lower half of that leg make a single unit
called “chair leg”. To a termite, the wood making a part of the floor and
the lower part of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if
he could speak. Each species has a different natural way to analyze and
synthesize his sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but
the termite can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence
is as advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s.
He very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those elements, because
each of those elements was due to a strange synthesis of even smaller
elements, making his whole arrangement of the world completely alien to our
way of thinking.
§2. Consequences to How the Question is Answered.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one being’s judgment (i.e., one being’s analysis and synthesis of
elements, making his whole arrangement of the world completely alien to our
way of thinking.
§2. Consequences to How the Question is Answered.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
his sense-data) might be so foreign from yours that his judgment would be
seen as arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities
for analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), his judgment might be infinitely far away from yours making it
for analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
theoretically impossible for you to have any cognition of it. However, this
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. On the other hand, if the difference is
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
merely greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your capacity for
understanding of his world is practically zero. It’s possible that over
trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be the case if,
over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing the universe
outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This is what
Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce built his
trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be the case if,
over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing the universe
outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This is what
Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
says any past fact is theoretically possible to eventually learn. (Cf. Luke
8:17. “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing
concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”) Joseph
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”)
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, they say,
embodiment is the foundation for judgments which are the foundation of
logic. But, that just begs the question of how embodiment and needs (which
must refer to their universals) are natural rather than arbitrary
judgments. What logical argument could possibly justify the belief that any
of our fundamental judgments are natural rather than ultimately arbitrary,
or vice versa? You can make your default position, or your starting
position, align with your bodily instinct, but this instinct is not a
logical foundation per se, but rather, it’s merely the habit of a species
based on how things have been. Mosquitoes have an instinct to fly towards
blue light, and that instinct served them well for millennia, but with the
invention of blue-light bug-zappers, that instinct is a clear example of an
instinct sometimes being illogical. Aligning your fundamental judgments
with bodily instinct is logical only when you’ve sampled the universe for
the possible forces of change to the conditions which formed your instincts
and then inferred that your instincts will continue to serve you well. Of
course, these samples of the universe can’t be based solely on your
instinctual ways of analysis and synthesis; you must learn to see beyond
your instincts. However, it’s impossible to see beyond all our instincts.
All we can hope for is to conceptually reach out toward what is less
toward being more and more capable of seeing the universe of possibilities.
Particulars are problematic because parts are wholes made of smaller parts,
which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process continues
infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there can be no
concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no concept of a
part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. A particular that’s independent of a
universal would have to be indivisible, not just practically but
conceptually, and this is inconceivable.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
being?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
what any finite number of people believes about them. There are universally
objective truths which make up the foundation of logic.
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, like the existence of matter, are wholly due to an agreements
of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic. To
conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the meaning of the dot
universals, like the existence of matter, are wholly due to an agreements
of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic. To
above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above. They
say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our embodiment,
but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of more fundamental
agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even more ancient
agreements which got established very early in the evolution of the
universe (mind-verse). They agree that the truth of x is what is the most
coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
Objectivists disagree, saying there must be some object that’s independent
of the opinions of any finite number of men on which an agreement on truth
is made. (The object can be physical like a rock, or purely theoretical
like a perfect square in euclidean space which doesn’t exist in nature but
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to 400°. Conventionalists would say that
that a 400° square merely violates more fundamental agreements which make
up the foundation of geometry.)
Robust Relativists say that a truth in our current historical frame of
reference—what’s within our horizons, conceptually—is true because of its
relation to our historical frame of reference, and it does not necessarily
hold in another historical frame of reference. Every truth is true only
because it is supported by all the other truths in its historical frame of
reference. Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one
historical frame are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making
the truth which was supported by them not true, although not false either
because it would not an idea at all, so no alethic value could be assigned
coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
Objectivists disagree, saying there must be some object that’s independent
of the opinions of any finite number of men on which an agreement on truth
is made. (The object can be physical like a rock, or purely theoretical
like a perfect square in euclidean space which doesn’t exist in nature but
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to 400°. Conventionalists would say that
that a 400° square merely violates more fundamental agreements which make
up the foundation of geometry.)
Robust Relativists say that a truth in our current historical frame of
reference—what’s within our horizons, conceptually—is true because of its
relation to our historical frame of reference, and it does not necessarily
hold in another historical frame of reference. Every truth is true only
because it is supported by all the other truths in its historical frame of
reference. Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one
historical frame are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making
the truth which was supported by them not true, although not false either
to it. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no universally
objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many people
think. Their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about reality
that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths (defined the
same way) within a historical frame of reference, so their statement can be
restated as this: “It is relevant, apt, and useful to believe, in our
historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that is relevant,
apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That is not a
self-defeating statement if, and only if, the frames of reference referred
to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference, let’s call
it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere be false.
Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference, frame-B,
‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could possibly
occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false because
it’s not a concept at all. You can’t assign an alethic value to a
non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that a truth is relative to one frame of
objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many people
think. Their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about reality
that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths (defined the
same way) within a historical frame of reference, so their statement can be
restated as this: “It is relevant, apt, and useful to believe, in our
historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that is relevant,
apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That is not a
self-defeating statement if, and only if, the frames of reference referred
to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference, let’s call
it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere be false.
Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference, frame-B,
‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could possibly
occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false because
it’s not a concept at all. You can’t assign an alethic value to a
non-concept.
reference but not to another frame of reference, and say that these
different frames need not be incommensurable—these forms of relativism are
self-defeating, because, if ‘x in frame A is true’ is commensurable with ‘x
in frame B is false’ then in the frame which makes the two frames
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and false
in frame C.’ (The movie by Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, is a philosophical
failure!, although, maybe it has psychological value.) If, however, frame A
and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which a contradiction
can be stated. ??????????????—Special Relativity—????????????
promise. The object of the underlying religious-belief might be expressed
as “the ultimate Reason for hope.” I call this “God.”
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. A final cause is either a purpose or a law
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
which pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity
of that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline.
I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains to the whole of reality.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which is true in the infinite long-run’. For
example, if you’re about to roll a die that’s weighted to show 6, your best
bet is on 6. While you may get 1-5 on this toss or the next finite number
of tosses, ultimately, that is, in the infinite long-run, you’ll get
infinitely more 6s than any other number. When you bet on the side of
logic, you’re betting on what you infer is the probability of how similar
incidents would turn out in the long run. The ideal infinite-limit is your
only guarantor. We only know that weighted dice fall more often on their
weighted side because of our observations that over many tosses, unevenly
weighted objects tend, more so the more tosses, to land on their weighted
side. If there’s no ideal infinite-limit, then there’s nothing regulating
our inductive test. That is, if there’s no ideal infinite-limit, there’s no
reason to believe that the trend or pattern that we observe won’t change.
of that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline.
I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains to the whole of reality.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which is true in the infinite long-run’. For
example, if you’re about to roll a die that’s weighted to show 6, your best
bet is on 6. While you may get 1-5 on this toss or the next finite number
of tosses, ultimately, that is, in the infinite long-run, you’ll get
infinitely more 6s than any other number. When you bet on the side of
logic, you’re betting on what you infer is the probability of how similar
incidents would turn out in the long run. The ideal infinite-limit is your
only guarantor. We only know that weighted dice fall more often on their
weighted side because of our observations that over many tosses, unevenly
weighted objects tend, more so the more tosses, to land on their weighted
side. If there’s no ideal infinite-limit, then there’s nothing regulating
our inductive test. That is, if there’s no ideal infinite-limit, there’s no
Every logical, or reasonable, thought is driven by a hope for some good.
Even if you know an evil event is inevitable, if you want to know it, you
want to know because you hope to gain something good from that knowledge.
and the thought continues with a combination of deductions (which are the
drawings of necessary consequences) and inductions (which include the
testing of the hypothesis directly and also the testing of the its
necessary consequences, both against what is already known about nature and
against what will be discovered). The hypothesis that a subset of reality
is hopeless is nonetheless a useful hypothesis because if it’s true it
means that what is hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. For
example, if you want to get to the other side of a brick wall, hoping that
you can walk through it will prove to be useless; the fact that it’s been
proven hopeless is a good thing, so you can look for another way, or adjust
your goal. On the other hand, a hypothesis that all of reality is hopeless
is an utterly useless hypothesis, and as such it’s forbidden by logic. With
means that what is hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. For
example, if you want to get to the other side of a brick wall, hoping that
you can walk through it will prove to be useless; the fact that it’s been
proven hopeless is a good thing, so you can look for another way, or adjust
your goal. On the other hand, a hypothesis that all of reality is hopeless
hope being the basis of logic, it’s a violation of logical reasoning to bet
against hope in its most general state. So, the reasonable hypothesis is
that there is hope overall and in the long run; the hypothesis that there
is no hope overall and in the long run is illogical. Since ‘the ultimate
Reason for hope’ or ‘the promise of ultimate goodness’ can be called ‘God’,
it’s reasonable to believe in God and it’s unreasonable to believe God is
not real.
not real.
Since logic is the mode in which we think, and it’s driven by hope, not
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because to be pessimistic toward
the universe is to cave in to hopelessness. Such a conclusion is worse than
worthless. You might respond, “There’s nothing to compare the universe
pessimism, our guess as to whether reality is ultimately good or not should
not contain any pessimism. It “should not” because to be pessimistic toward
the universe is to cave in to hopelessness. Such a conclusion is worse than
with, so its character is not a matter of which logic can inform us. Good
only has meaning relative to bad, but there’s nothing other than the
universe which can offer the contrast necessary for us to characterize the
universe.” My response is that the formal possibilities of this are (1) the
universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3) the universe just is, and
(4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4 is wrong: the universe is
the most vague object, so it evades almost all characterizations, but you
just characterized it as a sui generis existence so that’s one
(4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4 is wrong: the universe is
the most vague object, so it evades almost all characterizations, but you
characteristic. Number 3 is a Cartesian assumption whose implications bar
the possibility of a subject having knowledge of the universe as an object,
so it is rejected. See the next section which is on the Cartesian problem
and pragmatist solution. Number 2 is a violation of the spirit of thinking.
Number 1 is in line with the spirit of thinking. By process of elimination,
granting that I’ve identified all the formal possibilities, number 1 true:
the universe is good.
Besides, the present can be compared with the past, and also with
the possibility of a subject having knowledge of the universe as an object,
so it is rejected. See the next section which is on the Cartesian problem
and pragmatist solution. Number 2 is a violation of the spirit of thinking.
Number 1 is in line with the spirit of thinking. By process of elimination,
granting that I’ve identified all the formal possibilities, number 1 true:
the universe is good.
possibilities in the future. Is the trajectory bringing us toward a better,
worse, or the same quality of existence?
?????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??????
and the infinite limit of thought, “God”. Science is the activity of
learning laws, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand
Matt Faunce
Jul 26, 2022, 12:45:48 AM7/26/22
to
Peirce assumed God is a mind, or is mind rather than matter because matter
is what it is because it reacts with other matter according to laws of
nature, so matter is finite and subservient to laws, so that won’t fulfill
what most people think of as God. Laws are rules which matter follows;
therefore laws aren’t material, they’re mental. (Laws are nonetheless
objective because they don’t depend on the thoughts of any person or finite
number of people, but they are dependent on thought at its infinite limit,
i.e., laws depend on there being an infinite possibility of thinking.)
There’s obviously an order of nature to which both our physical and mental
selves are subservient. There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically
good and bad ways of acting in response to that order. Peirce said that
aspiration toward perfection is the essence of religion, so
???????????????????????? we can call the laws themselves “God’s Decrees”,
and the infinite limit of thought, “God”. Science is the activity of
learning laws, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand
some supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be absolutely
separate from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can
could never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s
absolute no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that
the laws of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent
beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn
about anything in reality…....... Our thinking is driven by hope, and our
efforts inquiring yield progress in knowledge, so if we’re not connected to
progress.
Jeffrey Rubard
Jul 29, 2022, 5:23:36 PM7/29/22
to
"He's dead, you know."
"That is... that is... I guess I was kind of trying to say..." etc.
(Did your friend know him, then?)
Jeffrey Rubard
Aug 7, 2022, 6:31:35 PM8/7/22
to
Yeah, I guess.
Jeffrey Rubard
Sep 20, 2022, 7:22:31 PM9/20/22
to
No. (I was eight years old when he died.)
Matt Faunce
Nov 7, 2022, 4:44:01 PM11/7/22
to
This version is cleaned-up a bit from my last post.
Peirce assumed God is a mind, or is mind rather than matter because matter
is what it is because it reacts with other matter according to laws of
nature, so matter is finite and subservient to laws, so that won’t fulfill
what most people think of as God. Laws are rules which matter follows;
therefore laws aren’t material, they’re mental. (Laws are nonetheless
objective because they don’t depend on the thoughts of any person or finite
number of people, but they are dependent on thought at its infinite limit,
i.e., laws depend on there being an infinite possibility of thinking.)
There’s obviously an order of nature to which both our physical and mental
selves are subservient. There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically
good and bad ways of acting in response to that order. Peirce said that
aspiration toward perfection is the essence of religion, so
???????????????????????? we can call the laws themselves “God’s Decrees”,
and the infinite limit of thought, “God”. Science is the activity of
learning laws, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand
some supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be absolutely
separate from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can
could never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s
absolute no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that
the laws of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent
beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn
about anything in reality….......
Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts inquiring yield progress in
knowledge, so if we’re not connected to God’s mind then all our efforts in
is what it is because it reacts with other matter according to laws of
nature, so matter is finite and subservient to laws, so that won’t fulfill
what most people think of as God. Laws are rules which matter follows;
therefore laws aren’t material, they’re mental. (Laws are nonetheless
objective because they don’t depend on the thoughts of any person or finite
number of people, but they are dependent on thought at its infinite limit,
i.e., laws depend on there being an infinite possibility of thinking.)
There’s obviously an order of nature to which both our physical and mental
selves are subservient. There are aesthetically, ethically, and logically
good and bad ways of acting in response to that order. Peirce said that
aspiration toward perfection is the essence of religion, so
???????????????????????? we can call the laws themselves “God’s Decrees”,
and the infinite limit of thought, “God”. Science is the activity of
learning laws, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand
some supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be absolutely
separate from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can
could never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s
absolute no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that
the laws of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent
beings, there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn
about anything in reality….......
Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts inquiring yield progress in
knowledge, so if we’re not connected to God’s mind then all our efforts in
science have no relation to the progress we appear to have made.
Jeffrey Rubard
Nov 7, 2022, 5:53:14 PM11/7/22
to
Matt Faunce
Nov 15, 2022, 2:45:12 PM11/15/22
to
to Peirce, ‘truth’ is defined as what would be known at the theoretical
infinite limit of inquiry. Joseph Margolis built his philosophy on the
importance of practical possibilities, and as such he says some past truths
can’t be learned: the very ability to bring them to mind has passed over
the horizon, so they’re not ideas at all. Only ideas that can actually be
held in a mind can be given an alethic value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I
will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be
remembered, nor will they come to mind.”) For Margolis, truth means what
can’t be learned: the very ability to bring them to mind has passed over
the horizon, so they’re not ideas at all. Only ideas that can actually be
held in a mind can be given an alethic value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I
will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be
would be known at the practical limit of inquiry. More specifically, truth
is a belief about reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all
other truths (defined the same way) within a historical frame of reference.
(I explain this further, later on in this paper.) Because a practical limit
prohibits us from tying up all loose ends, his definition requires a vaguer
and more informal notion of the concept of truth. He scoffs at the idea
that all loose ends could be neatly tied up even in theory.
Some philosophers say that a creature’s natural analysis-and-synthesis is
that which is relative to its embodiment and needs. So, they say,
of logic. But, that just begs the question of how embodiment and needs
(which must refer to their universals) are natural rather than arbitrary
judgments. What logical argument could possibly justify the belief that any
of our fundamental judgments are natural rather than ultimately arbitrary,
or vice versa? You can make your default position, or your starting
position, align with your bodily instinct, but this instinct is not a
logical foundation per se, but rather, it’s merely the habit of a species
based on how things have been. Mosquitoes have an instinct to fly towards
blue light, and that instinct served them well for millennia, but with the
invention of blue-light bug-zappers, that instinct is a clear example of an
instinct sometimes being illogical. Aligning your fundamental judgments
with bodily instinct is logical only when you’ve sampled the universe for
the possible forces of change to the conditions which formed your instincts
and then inferred that your instincts will continue to serve you well. Of
course, these samples of the universe can’t be based solely on your
instinctual ways of analysis and synthesis; you must learn to see beyond
your instincts. However, it’s impossible to see beyond all our instincts.
All we can hope for is to conceptually reach out toward what is less
instinctual, and hope that this reaching, by humans, causes us to evolve
toward being more and more capable of seeing the universe of possibilities.
The idea that particulars stand on their own is problematic because every
(which must refer to their universals) are natural rather than arbitrary
judgments. What logical argument could possibly justify the belief that any
of our fundamental judgments are natural rather than ultimately arbitrary,
or vice versa? You can make your default position, or your starting
position, align with your bodily instinct, but this instinct is not a
logical foundation per se, but rather, it’s merely the habit of a species
based on how things have been. Mosquitoes have an instinct to fly towards
blue light, and that instinct served them well for millennia, but with the
invention of blue-light bug-zappers, that instinct is a clear example of an
instinct sometimes being illogical. Aligning your fundamental judgments
with bodily instinct is logical only when you’ve sampled the universe for
the possible forces of change to the conditions which formed your instincts
and then inferred that your instincts will continue to serve you well. Of
course, these samples of the universe can’t be based solely on your
instinctual ways of analysis and synthesis; you must learn to see beyond
your instincts. However, it’s impossible to see beyond all our instincts.
All we can hope for is to conceptually reach out toward what is less
instinctual, and hope that this reaching, by humans, causes us to evolve
toward being more and more capable of seeing the universe of possibilities.
particular can be divided into parts, and parts are wholes made of smaller
parts, which are again wholes of even smaller parts. Since this process
continues infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there
can be no concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no
concept of a part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the
part it is still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to
cognize a whole we have to rely on the universal. A particular that’s
independent of a universal would have to be indivisible, not just
practically but conceptually, and this is inconceivable.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars a problem for its
being?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, i.e., facts, are ideas that hold true no matter
what any finite number of people believes about them. There are universally
objective truths which make up the foundation of logic.
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, e.g., the physical world or any part therein, are wholly due to
continues infinitely, and since combining parts is due to judgments, there
can be no concept of an "ultimate particular", i.e., there can be no
concept of a part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the
part it is still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to
cognize a whole we have to rely on the universal. A particular that’s
independent of a universal would have to be indivisible, not just
practically but conceptually, and this is inconceivable.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars a problem for its
being?
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Objectivist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, i.e., facts, are ideas that hold true no matter
what any finite number of people believes about them. There are universally
objective truths which make up the foundation of logic.
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
an agreement of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic.
assigned to it. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is no
universally objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many
people think. Their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about
reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a historical frame of reference, so their
statement can be restated as this: “It is relevant, apt, and useful to
believe, in our historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that
is relevant, apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That
is not a self-defeating statement if, and only if, the frames of reference
referred to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference,
let’s call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere
be false. Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference,
frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could
possibly occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false
because it’s not a concept at all. You can’t assign an alethic value to a
non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that a truth is relative to one frame of
reference but not to another frame of reference, and say that these
different frames need not be incommensurable—these forms of relativism are
self-defeating, because, if ‘x in frame A is true’ is commensurable with ‘x
in frame B is false’ then in the frame which makes the two frames
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and false
in frame C.’ (The movie, Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa, is a philosophical
universally objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so many
people think. Their definition of ‘truth’ is that truth is a belief about
reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a historical frame of reference, so their
statement can be restated as this: “It is relevant, apt, and useful to
believe, in our historical frame of reference, that there is no belief that
is relevant, apt, and useful in all historical frames of reference.” That
is not a self-defeating statement if, and only if, the frames of reference
referred to are incommensurable. What’s true in one frame of reference,
let’s call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never become false and will nowhere
be false. Rather, in an incommensurable historical-frame-of-reference,
frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist as a statement that could
possibly occur to anyone. An inconceivable proposition is not true or false
because it’s not a concept at all. You can’t assign an alethic value to a
non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that a truth is relative to one frame of
reference but not to another frame of reference, and say that these
different frames need not be incommensurable—these forms of relativism are
self-defeating, because, if ‘x in frame A is true’ is commensurable with ‘x
in frame B is false’ then in the frame which makes the two frames
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and false
failure!, although, maybe it has psychological value.) If, however, frame A
and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which a contradiction
can be stated. (I’m not sure how the problems presented by Einstein’s
and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which a contradiction
Special Relativity affect my explanation. That’s something I need to look
farther into.)
fact that logical thinking is driven by hope, this universe is then
something no one could learn about. If that’s the case we wouldn’t have any
concept of it, and certainly not a word to denote it.
“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we
conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of
these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”
Just as our conception of any object is a conception of the effects of that
object, our conception of reality is a conception of the effects of
reality. All that’s meant by the mention if any object is the effects of
that object. The term “God” means the effects of God, and these effects
constitute Reality. Science is the activity of learning the laws of
Reality, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand some
supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be absolutely separate
from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can could
never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s absolute
no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that the laws
of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent beings,
there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn about
anything in reality. Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts
from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can could
never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s absolute
no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that the laws
of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent beings,
there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn about
inquiring bring us knowledge, so if we’re not connected to the Promise
which gives us Hope, i.e., to God’s laws and therefore God’s mind, then all
our efforts in science have no relation to the progress we appear to have
made—it’s all “a delusion and a snare.”
Matt Faunce
Nov 15, 2022, 3:01:00 PM11/15/22
to
_____________My Philosophy ____________
reality. All that’s meant by the mention of any object is the effects of
_______________The End ________________
that object. The term “God” means the effects of God, and these effects
constitute Reality. Science is the activity of learning the laws of
Reality, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand some
supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be absolutely separate
from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can could
never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s absolute
no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that the laws
of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent beings,
there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn about
anything in reality. Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts
inquiring bring us knowledge, so if we’re not connected to the Promise
which gives us Hope, i.e., to God’s laws and therefore God’s mind, then all
our efforts in science have no relation to the progress we appear to have
made—then it’s all “a delusion and a snare.”
constitute Reality. Science is the activity of learning the laws of
Reality, or God’s decrees. If we cannot in some measure understand some
supposed object, then that object must, supposedly, be absolutely separate
from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it can could
never have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s absolute
no reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that the laws
of nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent beings,
there’s no denying that we can learn about these laws. We can learn about
anything in reality. Our thinking is driven by hope, and our efforts
inquiring bring us knowledge, so if we’re not connected to the Promise
which gives us Hope, i.e., to God’s laws and therefore God’s mind, then all
our efforts in science have no relation to the progress we appear to have
Jeffrey Rubard
Nov 15, 2022, 7:53:46 PM11/15/22
to
Matt Faunce
Nov 19, 2022, 4:18:54 PM11/19/22
to
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which proves true at the infinite limit of
investigation. This infinity is an infinite investigation of space rather
than over infinite time: imagine that you could increase your perceptive
abilities for seeing distant objects, for seeing around corners and through
walls, for hearing over great distances, etc. Add to this, an increase of
logical acuity to assess your sense data. In a short amount of time you
would reach a conclusion which has a high probability of being true. If you
could increase these abilities to infinity, you would absolutely know the
truth. ‘Truth’ is defined as the conclusion at the infinite limit of
investigation.
The ideal infinite-limit of investigation is your only guarantor. If you
construe the infinite limit as being the limit of infinite time rather than
the limit of infinite power of investigation, unless that power allows you
to foresee the future, your conclusion is contingent on the assumption that
the laws won’t change. This is because you can’t sample from the future and
so you can’t know that new laws of nature won’t emerge and/or old laws
disappear. That contingency means you wouldn’t have absolute knowledge;
it’s the conclusion of investigation with infinite power that is synonymous
with absolute knowledge.
Matt
Matt Faunce
Nov 19, 2022, 5:31:58 PM11/19/22
to
______________ My Philosophy ______________
is made. Otherwise, there is nothing to agree on. They simply flat-out
reject the idea that what’s agreed upon is the consequence of earlier
agreements, and agreements recede into the infinite past. (The object can
ability to see into the infinite future.)
from us. If something is absolutely separate from us then it could never
theoretically learn about anything in reality. Our thinking is driven by
(truth); the logic of 3 is vague despite the truth of the idea being
Therefore, it is perfectly logical to believe in a Reason to hope for a
for general hope’, and if we accept the postulate that logical thinking
involves hope (which paves the way for the standard postulates of logic
enumerated in ch. 1 of John Venn’s book on Inductive Logic), then it’s an
inescapable logical conclusion that God is real.
reject the idea that what’s agreed upon is the consequence of earlier
agreements, and agreements recede into the infinite past. (The object can
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which proves true at the infinite limit of
investigation. This infinity is an infinite investigation of space rather
than over infinite time: imagine that you could increase your perceptive
abilities for seeing distant objects, for seeing around corners and through
walls, for hearing over great distances, etc. Add to this, an increase of
logical acuity to assess your sense data. In a short amount of time you
would reach a conclusion which has a high probability of being true. If you
could increase these abilities to infinity, you would absolutely know the
truth. ‘Truth’ is defined as the conclusion at the infinite limit of
investigation.
The ideal infinite-limit of investigation is your only guarantor. If you
construe the infinite limit as being the limit of infinite time rather than
the limit of infinite power of investigation, unless that power allows you
to foresee the future, your conclusion is contingent on the assumption that
the laws won’t change. This is because you can’t sample from the future and
so you can’t know that new laws of nature won’t emerge and/or old laws
disappear. That contingency means you wouldn’t have absolute knowledge;
it’s the conclusion of investigation with infinite power that is synonymous
with absolute knowledge (unless, of course, absolute power includes the
investigation. This infinity is an infinite investigation of space rather
than over infinite time: imagine that you could increase your perceptive
abilities for seeing distant objects, for seeing around corners and through
walls, for hearing over great distances, etc. Add to this, an increase of
logical acuity to assess your sense data. In a short amount of time you
would reach a conclusion which has a high probability of being true. If you
could increase these abilities to infinity, you would absolutely know the
truth. ‘Truth’ is defined as the conclusion at the infinite limit of
investigation.
The ideal infinite-limit of investigation is your only guarantor. If you
construe the infinite limit as being the limit of infinite time rather than
the limit of infinite power of investigation, unless that power allows you
to foresee the future, your conclusion is contingent on the assumption that
the laws won’t change. This is because you can’t sample from the future and
so you can’t know that new laws of nature won’t emerge and/or old laws
disappear. That contingency means you wouldn’t have absolute knowledge;
it’s the conclusion of investigation with infinite power that is synonymous
ability to see into the infinite future.)
have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s absolute no
reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that the laws of
nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent beings, there’s
no denying that we can, theoretically, learn about these laws. We can
reason to believe in such an object. If there’s no denying that the laws of
nature have an effect on us, then, since we’re intelligent beings, there’s
theoretically learn about anything in reality. Our thinking is driven by
hope, and our efforts inquiring bring us knowledge, so if we’re not
connected to the Promise which gives us Hope, i.e., to God’s laws and
therefore God’s mind, then all our efforts in science have no relation to
the progress we appear to have made—then it’s all “a delusion and a snare.”
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
becomes farther stretched out. Take, for example, these four ideas to
illustrate this progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) every diamond is harder than
any rock, (3) the Grand Canyon is beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is
good. The logic that supports the first idea, 1, is clear and concise; the
logic of 2 is clear, but inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete
stretch of a parabola (inquiry and discovery) reaching toward the asymptote
connected to the Promise which gives us Hope, i.e., to God’s laws and
therefore God’s mind, then all our efforts in science have no relation to
the progress we appear to have made—then it’s all “a delusion and a snare.”
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
becomes farther stretched out. Take, for example, these four ideas to
illustrate this progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) every diamond is harder than
any rock, (3) the Grand Canyon is beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is
good. The logic that supports the first idea, 1, is clear and concise; the
logic of 2 is clear, but inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete
(truth); the logic of 3 is vague despite the truth of the idea being
readily accepted by almost all people; the logic of 4 is the vaguest of
all. Some idea must be the farthest reaching before crossing the threshold
into being illogical, and I think I’ve given a good argument, in this
chapter, that the far-reaching idea that ‘the universe is good’ is before
that threshold.
There are skeptics who deny idea-2, viz., “every diamond is harder than any
rock”, saying that because it’s an inductive inference it’s only able to
show a finite segment of an infinite parabola, so it’s not believable. It’s
even easier to scoff at the belief in the truth of beauty, including the
beauty in idea-3, viz., “the Grand Canyon is beautiful.” The reasonable
man, however, needs to check his skepticism against his heart, i.e., his
sense of hope, and realize that he should foster that sense.
My point in this essay rests on Peirce’s correction of Cartesianism, and
can be laid out like this:
(1) the truth of reality is connected to inquiry at inquiry’s infinite
limit; and we can recognize when we’re homing in on the truth.
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts into a habit.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, logical thinking contains within it a hope for goodness in general.
all. Some idea must be the farthest reaching before crossing the threshold
into being illogical, and I think I’ve given a good argument, in this
chapter, that the far-reaching idea that ‘the universe is good’ is before
that threshold.
There are skeptics who deny idea-2, viz., “every diamond is harder than any
rock”, saying that because it’s an inductive inference it’s only able to
show a finite segment of an infinite parabola, so it’s not believable. It’s
even easier to scoff at the belief in the truth of beauty, including the
beauty in idea-3, viz., “the Grand Canyon is beautiful.” The reasonable
man, however, needs to check his skepticism against his heart, i.e., his
sense of hope, and realize that he should foster that sense.
My point in this essay rests on Peirce’s correction of Cartesianism, and
can be laid out like this:
(1) the truth of reality is connected to inquiry at inquiry’s infinite
limit; and we can recognize when we’re homing in on the truth.
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts into a habit.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
Therefore, it is perfectly logical to believe in a Reason to hope for a
general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there is no
Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe that a
subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you where the
good is. To believe that the universe, in its totality, is ultimately
neutral or bad, is useless.
If ‘God’ can be defined as ‘the ultimate Promise’ or ‘the ultimate reason
Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe that a
subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you where the
good is. To believe that the universe, in its totality, is ultimately
neutral or bad, is useless.
for general hope’, and if we accept the postulate that logical thinking
involves hope (which paves the way for the standard postulates of logic
enumerated in ch. 1 of John Venn’s book on Inductive Logic), then it’s an
inescapable logical conclusion that God is real.
Jeffrey Rubard
Nov 19, 2022, 5:47:02 PM11/19/22
to
Matt Faunce
Nov 21, 2022, 5:59:46 PM11/21/22
to
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ My Philosophy ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
as “the ultimate Reason for hope.” I call this, “God.”
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. A final cause is either a purpose or a law
which pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity
of that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline. I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains to
the whole of reality.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which proves true at the infinite limit of
investigation.’
universe.” My response is that the formal possibilities of this are as
follows: (1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3) the
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ The End ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
By “Reason” I mean something akin to Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ as it
applies to reality in general. A final cause is either a purpose or a law
which pulls nature, in its domain, toward a specific state. The specificity
of that state might be very general, i.e., allowing for various outcomes
within a specific outline. I capitalized ‘Reason’ because it pertains to
the whole of reality.
By “ultimate” I mean ‘that which proves true at the infinite limit of
follows: (1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3) the
Jeffrey Rubard
Nov 22, 2022, 3:03:24 PM11/22/22
to
Jeffrey Rubard
Nov 26, 2022, 6:07:16 PM11/26/22
to
Well, then, could you do *more* of that thinking *all for yourself*?
Matt Faunce
Dec 1, 2022, 2:28:53 PM12/1/22
to
______________ My Philosophy ______________
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
Realist philosophies are philosophies that say objects are real. They’re
about them. It says that there are universally objective truths which make
the opinions of any (finite) number of men on which an agreement on truth
The only logical debate that I’ve seen between a robust realism, like C. S.
testing of the hypothesis directly and also the testing of its necessary
So, consider (3) from above, viz., “the universe just is.” This means that
the universe has no connection to our minds. If that’s the case we wouldn’t
have a effect on us, mediately or immediately. So, there’s absolutely no
(1) the objective truth of reality is connected to the subjective mind at
its infinite limit of investigation; and before that limit a mind can
recognize when it’s homing in on the truth.
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the matter
into a habit of thinking about the matter.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, logical thinking contains within it a hope for goodness in general.
On the question of how good is good enough to maintain the settled state of
our thinking, I think that in the short run we will often temporarily
settle on ideas short of perfection, but in the long run, granting that we
continue to evolve, we will always strive for perfection or for ever more
beautiful conceptions.
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
________________ The End ________________
built on the postulate that our most fundamental universals, facts, are
ideas that hold true no matter what any (finite) number of people believes
about them. It says that there are universally objective truths which make
up the foundation of logic.
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, e.g., the physical world or any part therein, are wholly due to
an agreement of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic.
To conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the meaning of the
dot above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above.
They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our
embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of more
fundamental agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even
more ancient agreements which got established very early in the evolution
of the universe (mind-verse). They agree that the truth of x is what is the
most coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
Realists disagree, saying there must be some object that’s independent of
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, e.g., the physical world or any part therein, are wholly due to
an agreement of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic.
To conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the meaning of the
dot above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above.
They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our
embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of more
fundamental agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even
more ancient agreements which got established very early in the evolution
of the universe (mind-verse). They agree that the truth of x is what is the
most coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
the opinions of any (finite) number of men on which an agreement on truth
Peirce’s “objective idealism”, and Joseph Margolis’s “robust relativism”,
is that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder if someone
who takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof based
merely on his subjective opinion. (Be careful not to propose, as an
arbitration to the matter, that there’s a frame of reference that has an
infinite scope of history, past and future, which we might eventually learn
to see from. That solution is to assume the objectivists’ original
postulate, and to gratuitously counter the postulate of relativism.)
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see at the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a lesser optimistic hypothesis. That
is that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder if someone
who takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof based
merely on his subjective opinion. (Be careful not to propose, as an
arbitration to the matter, that there’s a frame of reference that has an
infinite scope of history, past and future, which we might eventually learn
to see from. That solution is to assume the objectivists’ original
postulate, and to gratuitously counter the postulate of relativism.)
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see at the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the hope to benefit from
the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C. S. Peirce’s form of
realism, “objective idealism”, with the inclusion of the new postulate,
allows for infinite optimism which I can’t see matched by Margolis’s robust
relativism.
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C. S. Peirce’s form of
realism, “objective idealism”, with the inclusion of the new postulate,
allows for infinite optimism which I can’t see matched by Margolis’s robust
relativism.
the universe has no connection to our minds. If that’s the case we wouldn’t
its infinite limit of investigation; and before that limit a mind can
recognize when it’s homing in on the truth.
(2) inquiry is driven by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the matter
into a habit of thinking about the matter.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, logical thinking contains within it a hope for goodness in general.
our thinking, I think that in the short run we will often temporarily
settle on ideas short of perfection, but in the long run, granting that we
continue to evolve, we will always strive for perfection or for ever more
beautiful conceptions.
Jeffrey Rubard
Dec 1, 2022, 9:20:28 PM12/1/22
to
Jeffrey Rubard
Dec 15, 2022, 3:58:20 PM12/15/22
to
"Then we wouldn't -- your discussion of any real issues involved is too paltry."
Matt Faunce
Dec 16, 2022, 6:47:14 PM12/16/22
to
realism and nominalism. Realist philosophies are philosophies that say that
there are real universals, real predicates, e.g., the hotness of fire and
the greenness of grass. The term, real, means that the truth of a universal
doesn’t depend on what anyone or any number of people believes about them.
Realism is the opposite of nominalism. Nominalist philosophies are
philosophies that say that universals are true in name only, i.e., that
objects have no truth on their own, that universals only have standing
because they were constructed and agreed upon by minds. Nominalists say
that the mindness of minds is also non-real. They admit that the coherence
of their own argument against realism is non-real. It’s plain to see that
nominalism is absurd: if it were true, there would be no possibility for
agreement on anything—you wouldn’t have agreements in you own
thoughts—there would be no thought at all. However, so-called “nominalists”
have been good at challenging realists to come up with better explanations
for realism. The best explanations so far are that the foundation or
cohesive force of truth, and therefore of meaning, is either the infinite
limit of inquiry, the practical limit of inquiry, or it’s the history of
agreements. (The idea that Platonic Forms are the foundation of reality is
too inelegant for me to accept. So not to make this paper too long, I don’t
explain why I dismiss this or other philosophies.)
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, e.g., the physical world or any part therein, are wholly due to
an agreement of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic.
To conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the meaning of the
dot above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above.
They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our
embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of more
fundamental agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even
more ancient agreements which got established very early in the evolution
of the universe (mind-verse). They agree that the truth of x is what is the
most coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
object that’s independent of the opinions of any (finite) number of men on
which an agreement on truth is made. Otherwise, there is nothing to agree
on. They simply flat-out reject the idea that what’s agreed upon is the
consequence of earlier agreements inexplicably starting with some primary
which an agreement on truth is made. Otherwise, there is nothing to agree
on. They simply flat-out reject the idea that what’s agreed upon is the
agreement or perhaps the consequence of an infinite series of agreements
receding into the infinite past. (The object can be physical like a rock,
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and not
true in frame C.’ (The movie, Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa, is a
philosophical failure!, although, maybe it has psychological value.) If,
however, frame A and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which
a contradiction can be stated. (I’m not sure how the problems presented by
Einstein’s Special Relativity affect my explanation. That’s something I
need to look farther into.)
The only logical debate that I’ve seen between a robust realism, like C. S.
Peirce’s “objective idealism”, and Joseph Margolis’s “robust relativism”,
is that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder if someone
who takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof based
merely on his subjective opinion. (Be careful not to propose, as an
arbitration to the matter, that there’s a frame of reference that has an
infinite scope of history, past and future, which we might eventually learn
to see from. That solution is to assume the objectivists’ original
postulate, and to gratuitously counter the postulate of relativism.)
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see by the end of this whole
however, frame A and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which
a contradiction can be stated. (I’m not sure how the problems presented by
Einstein’s Special Relativity affect my explanation. That’s something I
need to look farther into.)
The only logical debate that I’ve seen between a robust realism, like C. S.
Peirce’s “objective idealism”, and Joseph Margolis’s “robust relativism”,
is that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder if someone
who takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof based
merely on his subjective opinion. (Be careful not to propose, as an
arbitration to the matter, that there’s a frame of reference that has an
infinite scope of history, past and future, which we might eventually learn
to see from. That solution is to assume the objectivists’ original
postulate, and to gratuitously counter the postulate of relativism.)
being creative.
The grand trajectory of the universe is toward its ideal state. In a letter
to Christine Ladd-Franklin, Peirce said “The state of things in the
infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the
total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, and nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and
absence of our spontaneity.” A trajectory toward death is not very
optimistic. Since the impetus for all thought is hope, I think the best
conclusion about the universe as a whole is the most optimistic one. This
reasoning is rational when applied to thought about the universe as a
whole: a pessimistic conclusion about the whole universe is utterly
worthless and completely ugly; but, it’s often useful to come to a
pessimistic conclusion about some subset of the universe, e.g., whether you
can walk through a wall. I think the ideal state of the universe is one
where the balance of order and chance yields the most beauty, and beauty
cannot be appreciated except by a creative mind.
Logic is a species of ethics, and ethics is a species of aesthetics. What’s
what should be done. What should be done is what’s most beautiful, all
things considered—aesthetics is the science of assessing the beautiful.
Even so-called ugly facts are more beautiful than their denial if they’re
understood from the perspective of the infinitely wise community. For
example, it’s a fact, however horrible, that some innocent child was
understood from the perspective of the infinitely wise community. For
murdered recently. This fact, if believed by our community, will propel us
to do good acts we otherwise wouldn’t have done, and thus will propel us to
reach toward heights of beauty which we otherwise wouldn’t attain. Consider
where we stand, today, in the evolution of feelings. Eons ago, feelings
were duller and so evil had less of a bad effect, but also, goodness had
less of a rewarding effect. Eons from now, feelings will be much more
sensitive, so the rewards of goodness will be more fully appreciated. We’ll
have eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge-of-good-and-evil and so
we’ll understand more fully why we should not do evil things. Doing the
slightest evil in that future time will be felt and understood to be like,
reach toward heights of beauty which we otherwise wouldn’t attain. Consider
where we stand, today, in the evolution of feelings. Eons ago, feelings
were duller and so evil had less of a bad effect, but also, goodness had
less of a rewarding effect. Eons from now, feelings will be much more
sensitive, so the rewards of goodness will be more fully appreciated. We’ll
have eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge-of-good-and-evil and so
we’ll understand more fully why we should not do evil things. Doing the
today, stabbing your own leg with a knife right before what you would
otherwise expect to be your happiest, most fulfilling moment. Good acts
will be more fully appreciated, and this fact will propel us even further
to doing good. In that future we will be in bliss—not in ignorant bliss,
though, but a very-aware bliss. So, truth is what should be believed
otherwise expect to be your happiest, most fulfilling moment. Good acts
will be more fully appreciated, and this fact will propel us even further
to doing good. In that future we will be in bliss—not in ignorant bliss,
because it’s what will propel us toward a more beautiful future. Falseness
is what shouldn’t be believed because it’s what will impede our evolution
toward a more beautiful future.
Matt Faunce
Dec 16, 2022, 7:22:31 PM12/16/22
to
realism and nominalism. Realist philosophies are philosophies that say that
there are real universals, real predicates, e.g., the hotness of fire and
the greenness of grass. The term, real, means that the truth of a universal
doesn’t depend on what anyone or any number of people believes about it.
there are real universals, real predicates, e.g., the hotness of fire and
the greenness of grass. The term, real, means that the truth of a universal
Realism is the opposite of nominalism. Nominalist philosophies are
philosophies that say that universals are true in name only, i.e., that
objects have no truth on their own, that universals only have standing
because they were constructed and agreed upon by minds. Nominalists say
that the mindness of minds is also non-real. They admit that the coherence
of their own argument against realism is non-real. It’s plain to see that
nominalism is absurd: if it were true, there would be no possibility for
agreement on anything—you wouldn’t have agreements in your own
philosophies that say that universals are true in name only, i.e., that
objects have no truth on their own, that universals only have standing
because they were constructed and agreed upon by minds. Nominalists say
that the mindness of minds is also non-real. They admit that the coherence
of their own argument against realism is non-real. It’s plain to see that
nominalism is absurd: if it were true, there would be no possibility for
thoughts—there would be no thought at all. However, so-called “nominalists”
have been good at challenging realists to come up with better explanations
for realism. The best explanations so far are that the foundation or
cohesive force of truth, and therefore of meaning, is either the infinite
limit of inquiry, the practical limit of inquiry, or it’s the current
have been good at challenging realists to come up with better explanations
for realism. The best explanations so far are that the foundation or
cohesive force of truth, and therefore of meaning, is either the infinite
result of an infinite history of agreements. (The idea that Platonic Forms
are the foundation of reality is too inelegant for me to accept. So not to
make this paper too long, I don’t explain why I dismiss this or other
philosophies.)
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, e.g., the physical world or any part therein, are wholly due to
an agreement of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic.
To conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the meaning of the
dot above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above.
They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our
embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of more
fundamental agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even
more ancient agreements which got established very early in the evolution
of the universe (mind-verse). They agree that the truth of x is what is the
most coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
(The object, x, can be physical like a rock, or purely theoretical like a
make this paper too long, I don’t explain why I dismiss this or other
philosophies.)
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (a finite number of) minds. A mind is an agreement and an
agreement is a mind. Mind/Agreement is primordial and all further
universals, e.g., the physical world or any part therein, are wholly due to
an agreement of minds, and so agreement itself is the foundation of logic.
To conventionalists, all truths are conventional, like the meaning of the
dot above the i and the dot after it, the period, in the example above.
They say that agreement on the sun’s warmth may be embedded in our
embodiment, but our embodiment is an agreement, or the consequence of more
fundamental agreements, that is only possible because it’s built on even
more ancient agreements which got established very early in the evolution
of the universe (mind-verse). They agree that the truth of x is what is the
most coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.
perfect square in euclidean space which doesn’t exist in nature but
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to more degrees than a circle.
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
Conventionalists would say that the idea of a 400° square with a 360°
circle merely violates more fundamental agreements which make up the
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see by the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a lesser optimistic hypothesis. That
new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the hope to benefit from
the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C. S. Peirce’s form of
realism, “objective idealism”, with the inclusion of the new postulate,
allows for infinite optimism which I can’t see matched by Margolis’s robust
relativism.
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God.
§1. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs
“But high-flying speculations like those of either dogmatic or idealistic
theology, [...] These speculations must, it seems to me, be classed as
over-beliefs, buildings-out performed by the intellect into directions of
which feeling originally supplied the hint.”
–William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XVIII.
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a lesser optimistic hypothesis. That
new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the hope to benefit from
the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C. S. Peirce’s form of
realism, “objective idealism”, with the inclusion of the new postulate,
allows for infinite optimism which I can’t see matched by Margolis’s robust
relativism.
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God.
§1. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs
“But high-flying speculations like those of either dogmatic or idealistic
theology, [...] These speculations must, it seems to me, be classed as
over-beliefs, buildings-out performed by the intellect into directions of
which feeling originally supplied the hint.”
–William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XVIII.
William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XX,
Conclusions:
“[T]he theologians contention that the religious man is moved by an
external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of
invasions from the subconscious region to take an objective appearances,
and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life
the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is
primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are
controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”
Jeffrey Rubard
Dec 17, 2022, 4:06:51 PM12/17/22
to
"I'm playing a little bit."
I don't think you know much under the surface, either.
Matt Faunce
Feb 19, 2023, 4:59:23 PM2/19/23
to
______________ My Philosophy ______________
Table of Contents.
Chapter I. Introduction to Empirical Logic
because it would not be an idea at all. The relativist’s statement, “It is
forefront of the mind than the underlying belief, and (2) being more easily
drawings of necessary consequences) and inductions (which are the testing
other side, which is congruent with reality, or you can adjust your goal.
A person’s understanding of an object can only be what he conceives as the
object’s possible affect on him. An effect may come directly from the
object, e.g., sunlight glaring in your eyes, or it may come indirectly,
e.g., sunlight causing your child’s pupils to contract, which you, indoors,
see right after he comes inside to see you. A person cannot conceive of
something that is so remote from himself that it has no affect, however
indirect, on him. Furthermore, the idea of a thing which could
theoretically never affect you is a vacuous idea. If something is real, it
has a potential to affect you, however indirectly, and that gives you the
possibility to understand it in some measure. That potential and
possibility may not be practically realizable in your short life, but it is
theoretically possible, e.g., if you evolve enough you’ll eventually reach
a point where your powers of perception are acute and sensitive enough for
you to sense the effect. (Perhaps this example is not purely theoretical;
perhaps your soul actually evolves into the evermore, affording you ever
increasing knowledge.)
Every effect is only understood by how it affects the person who is
understanding it. Therefore, all conceptions are anthropomorphic. C. S.
Peirce defined the philosophical use of ‘anthropomorphism’, in the Century
Dictionary, as follows:
“In pragmatistic philos., that philosophic tendency which, recognizing an
absolute impossibility in the attainment by man of any conception that does
not refer to human life, proposes frankly to submit to this as a decree of
experience and to shape metaphysics to agreement with it. The term was
first used in this sense by F. C. S. Schiller (Riddles of the Sphinx).”
The term “God” means ‘the conceivable effects of God’; these effects
constitute Reality; when we learn about reality, we learn about God.
A Note on Degrees of Vagueness.
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
becomes more vague. Take, for example, these four ideas to illustrate this
progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) the sun is hot, (3) the Grand Canyon is
(representing truth). The logic of 3 is vague despite the truth of the idea
being readily accepted by almost all people. Its vagueness makes it very
difficult to prove to someone who is skeptical of its truth—of course, to
make it possible to prove, we’d have to hold him to the same standard of
proof that he accepts for other, equally vague things that he does believe.
The logic of 4 is the vaguest of all. This may be the farthest reach for an
idea before crossing the threshold into being unintelligible, and I think
I’ve given a good argument, in this chapter, that ‘the universe is good’ is
before that threshold.
§4. Recapitulation and Conclusion.
(1) the objective truth of reality is connected to the subjective mind at
its infinite limit of inquiry; and before that limit a mind can recognize
when it’s homing in on the truth.
(2) inquiry is driven, in part, by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the
matter into a habit of thinking about the matter. The other part driving
inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the answer will
invigorate the spirit.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, logical thinking contains within it a hope for goodness in general.
On the question of how good is good enough to maintain the settled state of
our thinking, I think that in the short run we will often temporarily
settle on ideas short of perfection, but in the long run, granting that we
continue to evolve, we will always strive for perfection or for ever more
beautiful conceptions.
Therefore, it is perfectly logical to believe that there is a Reason for
hoping in a general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there
ultimately neutral or bad, is useless, and as such, is illogical.
If ‘God’ can be defined as ‘the ultimate Promise’ or ‘the ultimate reason
for general hope’, and if we accept the postulate that logical thinking
involves hope (which, I think, paves the way for the standard postulates of
logic (enumerated in ch. 1 of John Venn’s book, The Principles of Inductive
Logic)), and we accept that the universe can be characterized at all, then
it’s an inescapable, logical conclusion that God is real.
§5. My Opinion on the Matter
When someone says “There is no God,” I’m instinctively offended, because I
understand that person as saying “There is no ultimate reason for hope, but
there is an ultimate reason for despair.”
If someone says to me, “a cargo airplane is not a god, nor is or was the
man called Jesus”, I’m not automatically offended, but I’m ready to defend
both beliefs, as they are or were genuinely practiced, for their value as
over-beliefs which cover the responses appropriate for the object of the
instinctively offended. If it’s the attacker’s goal, he’s Satanic; if it’s
his effect but not his goal, he’s Satan’s useful idiot. (I define ‘Satan’
Logic is a species of ethics, and ethics is a species of aesthetics. Logic
is the science of truth and falsity. Ethics is the science of what should
and shouldn’t be done. Aesthetics is the science of what’s beautiful and
admirable, and what’s ugly and repulsive. What’s true is true because it’s
what should be believed. What should be done is what’s most beautiful, all
things considered. Even so-called ugly facts are more beautiful than their
that truth is coherent with all other truths. Falsity is incoherent with
all other truths, and there could never be a world of nothing but falseness
that is coherent. Furthermore, truth propels us toward a better reality:
beautiful truths inspire us to create more beauty, and ugly truths propel
us to remediate the ugliness and replace it with beauty. For example, it’s
a fact—a horrible fact—that some innocent child was murdered recently. This
admirableness which calls us forward from the infinite limit of the future.
The universe will always reach toward aesthetic goodness, whether it be
mathematically, logically, physically, musically, interpersonally, etc.,
Table of Contents.
Chapter I. Introduction to Empirical Logic
Chapter II. Intellectual Integrity, Defined
Chapter III. Particulars and Universal, a Classic Problem. What Determines
or Guides Synthesis and Analysis?
or Guides Synthesis and Analysis?
Chapter IV. Over-Beliefs, Underlying-Beliefs, and the Logic of Believing in
God
God
Chapter V. Peirce’s Cosmology, with My Adjustments
Chapter VI. The Afterlife. A Hypothesis
o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
of the hypothesis directly and also the testing of its necessary
consequences, both against what is already known about nature and against
what is currently being discovered). The hypothesis that a subset of
consequences, both against what is already known about nature and against
reality is hopeless is nonetheless a useful hypothesis because if it’s true
it means that what is hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. For
example, if you want to get to the other side of a brick wall, hoping that
you can walk through it will prove to be useless; the fact that it’s been
proven hopeless is a good thing, so you can look for another way to the
it means that what is hopeful is in what’s outside of that subset. For
example, if you want to get to the other side of a brick wall, hoping that
you can walk through it will prove to be useless; the fact that it’s been
other side, which is congruent with reality, or you can adjust your goal.
object’s possible affect on him. An effect may come directly from the
object, e.g., sunlight glaring in your eyes, or it may come indirectly,
e.g., sunlight causing your child’s pupils to contract, which you, indoors,
see right after he comes inside to see you. A person cannot conceive of
something that is so remote from himself that it has no affect, however
indirect, on him. Furthermore, the idea of a thing which could
theoretically never affect you is a vacuous idea. If something is real, it
has a potential to affect you, however indirectly, and that gives you the
possibility to understand it in some measure. That potential and
possibility may not be practically realizable in your short life, but it is
theoretically possible, e.g., if you evolve enough you’ll eventually reach
a point where your powers of perception are acute and sensitive enough for
you to sense the effect. (Perhaps this example is not purely theoretical;
perhaps your soul actually evolves into the evermore, affording you ever
increasing knowledge.)
Every effect is only understood by how it affects the person who is
understanding it. Therefore, all conceptions are anthropomorphic. C. S.
Peirce defined the philosophical use of ‘anthropomorphism’, in the Century
Dictionary, as follows:
“In pragmatistic philos., that philosophic tendency which, recognizing an
absolute impossibility in the attainment by man of any conception that does
not refer to human life, proposes frankly to submit to this as a decree of
experience and to shape metaphysics to agreement with it. The term was
first used in this sense by F. C. S. Schiller (Riddles of the Sphinx).”
The term “God” means ‘the conceivable effects of God’; these effects
constitute Reality; when we learn about reality, we learn about God.
A Note on Degrees of Vagueness.
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) the sun is hot, (3) the Grand Canyon is
beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is good. The logic that supports the
first idea, 1, is clear and concise. The logic supporting 2 is clear, but
inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete stretch of a parabola
(representing inquiry and discovery) reaching toward the asymptote
(representing truth). The logic of 3 is vague despite the truth of the idea
being readily accepted by almost all people. Its vagueness makes it very
difficult to prove to someone who is skeptical of its truth—of course, to
make it possible to prove, we’d have to hold him to the same standard of
proof that he accepts for other, equally vague things that he does believe.
The logic of 4 is the vaguest of all. This may be the farthest reach for an
idea before crossing the threshold into being unintelligible, and I think
I’ve given a good argument, in this chapter, that ‘the universe is good’ is
before that threshold.
§4. Recapitulation and Conclusion.
(1) the objective truth of reality is connected to the subjective mind at
its infinite limit of inquiry; and before that limit a mind can recognize
when it’s homing in on the truth.
matter into a habit of thinking about the matter. The other part driving
inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the answer will
invigorate the spirit.
(3) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
badness because badness agitates the mind to search for a solution to it.
So, logical thinking contains within it a hope for goodness in general.
On the question of how good is good enough to maintain the settled state of
our thinking, I think that in the short run we will often temporarily
settle on ideas short of perfection, but in the long run, granting that we
continue to evolve, we will always strive for perfection or for ever more
beautiful conceptions.
hoping in a general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there
is no Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe
that a subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you
where the good is; to believe that the universe, in its totality, is
that a subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you
ultimately neutral or bad, is useless, and as such, is illogical.
If ‘God’ can be defined as ‘the ultimate Promise’ or ‘the ultimate reason
for general hope’, and if we accept the postulate that logical thinking
logic (enumerated in ch. 1 of John Venn’s book, The Principles of Inductive
Logic)), and we accept that the universe can be characterized at all, then
it’s an inescapable, logical conclusion that God is real.
§5. My Opinion on the Matter
When someone says “There is no God,” I’m instinctively offended, because I
understand that person as saying “There is no ultimate reason for hope, but
there is an ultimate reason for despair.”
If someone says to me, “a cargo airplane is not a god, nor is or was the
man called Jesus”, I’m not automatically offended, but I’m ready to defend
both beliefs, as they are or were genuinely practiced, for their value as
more important underlying beliefs. By genuinely practicing even the most
ridiculous over-beliefs, the believer draws on a real source of ultimate
hope; and that habit of drawing is that person’s underlying belief whether
he can verbally articulate any knowledge of the object of that underlying
belief or not. I think it’s cruel to attempt to pull that rug out from
underneath someone without knowing that he’ll have another but more secure
ridiculous over-beliefs, the believer draws on a real source of ultimate
hope; and that habit of drawing is that person’s underlying belief whether
he can verbally articulate any knowledge of the object of that underlying
belief or not. I think it’s cruel to attempt to pull that rug out from
rug (over-belief) to stand on (to connect them to the real source.) If the
person who attacks another person’s over-belief had the goal or effect of
disconnecting that someone from his source of ultimate hope, then I’m
person who attacks another person’s over-belief had the goal or effect of
instinctively offended. If it’s the attacker’s goal, he’s Satanic; if it’s
his effect but not his goal, he’s Satan’s useful idiot. (I define ‘Satan’
is the science of truth and falsity. Ethics is the science of what should
and shouldn’t be done. Aesthetics is the science of what’s beautiful and
admirable, and what’s ugly and repulsive. What’s true is true because it’s
what should be believed. What should be done is what’s most beautiful, all
things considered. Even so-called ugly facts are more beautiful than their
denial if they’re understood from the perspective of the infinitely wise
community. Truth is always more elegant than falsity because of the fact
that truth is coherent with all other truths. Falsity is incoherent with
all other truths, and there could never be a world of nothing but falseness
that is coherent. Furthermore, truth propels us toward a better reality:
beautiful truths inspire us to create more beauty, and ugly truths propel
us to remediate the ugliness and replace it with beauty. For example, it’s
a fact—a horrible fact—that some innocent child was murdered recently. This
fact, if believed by our community, will propel us to do good acts we
otherwise wouldn’t have done, and thus will propel us to reach toward
heights of beauty which we otherwise wouldn’t attain. Consider where we
stand, today, in the evolution of feelings. Eons ago, feelings were duller
and so evil had less of a bad effect, but also, goodness had less of a
rewarding effect. Eons from now, feelings will be much more sensitive, so
the rewards of goodness will be more fully appreciated. We’ll have eaten
the fruit from the tree of knowledge-of-good-and-evil and so we’ll
understand more fully why we should not do evil things. Doing the slightest
evil in that future time will be felt and understood to be like, today,
stabbing your own leg with a knife right before what you would otherwise
expect to be your happiest, most fulfilling moment. Good acts will be more
fully appreciated, and this fact will propel us even further to doing good.
In that future we will be in bliss—not in ignorant bliss, though, but a
very-aware bliss. So, truth is what should be believed because it’s what
will propel us toward a more beautiful future. Falseness is what shouldn’t
be believed because it’s what will impede our evolution toward a more
beautiful future.
The telos of the universe is the ideal of perfect beauty, elegance, and
otherwise wouldn’t have done, and thus will propel us to reach toward
heights of beauty which we otherwise wouldn’t attain. Consider where we
stand, today, in the evolution of feelings. Eons ago, feelings were duller
and so evil had less of a bad effect, but also, goodness had less of a
rewarding effect. Eons from now, feelings will be much more sensitive, so
the rewards of goodness will be more fully appreciated. We’ll have eaten
the fruit from the tree of knowledge-of-good-and-evil and so we’ll
understand more fully why we should not do evil things. Doing the slightest
evil in that future time will be felt and understood to be like, today,
stabbing your own leg with a knife right before what you would otherwise
expect to be your happiest, most fulfilling moment. Good acts will be more
fully appreciated, and this fact will propel us even further to doing good.
In that future we will be in bliss—not in ignorant bliss, though, but a
very-aware bliss. So, truth is what should be believed because it’s what
will propel us toward a more beautiful future. Falseness is what shouldn’t
be believed because it’s what will impede our evolution toward a more
beautiful future.
admirableness which calls us forward from the infinite limit of the future.
The universe will always reach toward aesthetic goodness, whether it be
mathematically, logically, physically, musically, interpersonally, etc.,
Matt Faunce
Feb 24, 2023, 11:37:52 PM2/24/23
to
the universe’ which can offer the contrast necessary for us to characterize
the universe.” My response is that the formal possibilities of this are as
follows: (1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3) the
universe just is, and (4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4 is
wrong: the universe is the most vague object, so it evades almost all
characterizations, but you just characterized it as a sui generis existence
so that’s one characteristic. Also, as you’ll see in §3, immediately below,
the universe.” My response is that the formal possibilities of this are as
follows: (1) the universe is good, (2) the universe is bad, (3) the
universe just is, and (4) the term “universe” is meaningless. Number 4 is
wrong: the universe is the most vague object, so it evades almost all
characterizations, but you just characterized it as a sui generis existence
all conceptions are necessarily anthropomorphic: I think this might be a
key for validating characterizations from a purely intrinsic perspective.
otherwise wouldn’t do, and thus it propels us to reach toward heights of
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 11, 2023, 11:45:32 AM3/11/23
to
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 11, 2023, 11:46:11 AM3/11/23
to
Matt Faunce
Mar 11, 2023, 1:33:18 PM3/11/23
to
______________ My Philosophy ______________
Table of Contents.
Chapter I. Introduction to Empirical Logic
Chapter II. Intellectual Integrity, Defined
Chapter III. Particulars and Universals, a Classic Problem. What Determines
Table of Contents.
Chapter I. Introduction to Empirical Logic
Chapter II. Intellectual Integrity, Defined
or Guides Synthesis and Analysis?
§1. The Question of What Determines or Guides Synthesis and Analysis.
A particular is an object that is distinct from anything else. A universal
is a class or category. A particular is an individual physical thing or a
§1. The Question of What Determines or Guides Synthesis and Analysis.
A particular is an object that is distinct from anything else. A universal
mental representation of an individual thing as an individual thing. For an
example of a particular as a mental representation, imagine three circles,
each of different size. Each different circle is a particular circle. For a
physical example, on the page that you’re reading, this particular letter I
is different from every other letter I but it is still classified as an I.
Each different I is in a different place, which is enough to show that each
one is different from the others, but also, when measured extremely
accurately each I is different in height, width, thickness, and darkness
Each different I is in a different place, which is enough to show that each
one is different from the others, but also, when measured extremely
from the others. They are similar, but it takes a judgment to decide what
things are similar enough to belong to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive
I’s each one mutated a little bit more than the previous. Where do you draw
the line between what is an I and what isn’t? How should you decide? Are
some judgments natural, like the identification of a tree as a tree, and
things are similar enough to belong to a category. Imagine 1000 consecutive
I’s each one mutated a little bit more than the previous. Where do you draw
the line between what is an I and what isn’t? How should you decide? Are
others artificial, like the identification of the student in a classroom
who is first in alphabetical order?
Without the universal there would be no reason to see the parts of a
particular as making a whole. For example, take this dotted i. It could
only be due to the universal that we know the dot above the vertical line
is a part of the letter. Also, without the universal there would be no
reason to see the sum of the parts, making a particular whole, as distinct
from its surroundings. For example, take this dotted i. It could only be
due to the universal that we know the dot after the line, the period, isn't
a part of the letter. Likewise with all things, the understanding of any
group of parts as isolated from within your field of vision (and/or touch,
taste, smell, hearing) and forming an entity is due to the universal. This
is true no matter how close in proximity or how strong the force bonding
the parts. "Close" and "strong" are relative terms, so, when the closeness
of parts or the strength of their bond is relevant, it takes a judgment to
decide how close is close enough and how strong is strong enough; and then
parts can be considered as belonging to a unit for reasons other than their
closeness or strength of the force bonding them, e.g., the center point of
a circle may be farther from the line making the circle than a square drawn
inside the circle and next to the center-point, yet we know the point
belongs to the circle and the square doesn’t. For a physical example, take
one leg of a wooden chair which is standing on a wooden floor. To people,
the top half of that leg and the lower half of that leg make a single unit
the lower part of the leg are a unit, which he would call “a good meal” if
he could speak. Each species has a different natural way to analyze and
synthesize his sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but
the termite can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence
is as advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s.
He very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense data are, for the most part, not
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those elements, because
each of those elements was due to a strange synthesis of even smaller
elements, making his whole arrangement of the world completely alien to our
way of thinking.
Is truth universal? That is, is there a standard of truth that stands
he could speak. Each species has a different natural way to analyze and
synthesize his sense data. You can understand the termite’s judgment, but
the termite can’t understand yours. Now, imagine a being whose intelligence
is as advanced from a human’s as a human’s intelligence is to a termite’s.
He very well might have a radically different way of analyzing and
synthesizing his sense data. He might synthesize several elements in a way
that we would see as arbitrary. In fact—due to the psychological fact that
slight anomalies within our sense data are, for the most part, not
recognized—we might not even be able to recognize those elements, because
each of those elements was due to a strange synthesis of even smaller
elements, making his whole arrangement of the world completely alien to our
way of thinking.
separately from anyone’s ideas about it, and which acts as our guide to
correctly analyze and synthesize our sense data into true facts? And
likewise, is whatever that is true for one being, true for all beings,
however alien to the other beings’ psychology it might be?
§2. Consequences to How the Question is Answered.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, one being’s judgment (i.e., one being’s analysis and synthesis of
his sense-data) might be so foreign from yours that his judgment would be
seen as arbitrary relative to your way. If the infinity of possibilities
for analyzing and synthesizing the world is infinitely expansive (i.e., not
contained like, for example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and
2), his judgment might be infinitely far away from yours making it
theoretically infinite expansion makes inductive inference regarding the
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. On the other hand, if the difference is
merely greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your capacity for
understanding of his world is practically zero. It’s possible that over
trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be the case if,
over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing the universe
outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This is what
Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce built his
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
says any past fact, or any fact recognized by any other being, is
universe impossible. Nonetheless, as his judgment moves farther away from
yours, the seemingly random arrangement of his world gets harder and harder
for you to understand. If the limit of how far that distance can be is
infinite, then your understanding of his world could, theoretically, never
be more than zero at that limit. On the other hand, if the difference is
merely greater than the practical reach of inquiry then your capacity for
understanding of his world is practically zero. It’s possible that over
trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be the case if,
over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing the universe
outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This is what
Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce built his
philosophy on the importance of theoretical possibilities, and as such he
theoretically possible to eventually learn. (Cf. Luke 8:17. “For there is
nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will
not be known or brought out into the open.”) According to Peirce, ‘truth’
is defined as what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of
inquiry. Joseph Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of
practical possibilities, and as such he says some past truths can’t be
learned: the very ability to bring them to mind has passed over the
horizon, so they’re not ideas at all. Only ideas that can actually be held
in a mind can be given an alethic value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I will
create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be
remembered, nor will they come to mind.”) For Margolis, truth is a belief
nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will
not be known or brought out into the open.”) According to Peirce, ‘truth’
is defined as what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of
inquiry. Joseph Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of
practical possibilities, and as such he says some past truths can’t be
learned: the very ability to bring them to mind has passed over the
horizon, so they’re not ideas at all. Only ideas that can actually be held
in a mind can be given an alethic value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I will
create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be
for a mathematical point, every particular can be divided into parts, and
parts are wholes made of smaller parts, which are again wholes of even
smaller parts. Since this process continues infinitely, and since combining
parts is due to judgments, there can be no concept of an "ultimate
particular" which grounds physical reality, i.e., there can be no concept
smaller parts. Since this process continues infinitely, and since combining
parts is due to judgments, there can be no concept of an "ultimate
of a part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. Subdivisions of a line or an area are
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
endless; they do not end with a mathematical point, but they home in
asymptotically toward a point. The idea of a point is held in our minds,
not by synthesizing its parts, obviously, but by its function of dividing a
line, dividing two lines on a surface, three lines in three dimensional
space, and multiple lines in multi-dimensional mathematics. As such, any
single point is a universal. You only recognize a token because of its
type. (‘Token’ is another term for ‘individual’ and ‘particular’; ‘type’ is
another term for ‘class’ and ‘kind’.) Without an understanding of its type,
a point, or anything else, is not only unrecognizable, but utterly
meaningless, and therefore inconceivable. A so-called ‘unique object’ is
still a type of object. Question: How then do you recognize the uniqueness
of something, e.g., the uniqueness of a person’s physical appearance?
Answer: Uniqueness is a unique type or unique combination of types.
Particulars by themselves are not recognizable or even conceivable.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
universal’s raison d’être is to synthesize and analyze the world of
particulars—a problem for its being? Or, are universals the primary
elements of reality, and particulars really subdivisions of universals? I
think that the answer to this last question is ‘yes’, and that means the
mental world is the primary mode of reality, and the physical world is
really a special case of the mental world, (similarly to how, in the
relativity of motion, standing still is a special case of motion.)
and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life
the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is
primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are
controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”
Peirce, in his essay, How to Make Our Ideas Clear:
“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we
conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of
these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”
A person’s understanding of an object can only be what he conceives as the
object’s possible effects on him. An effect may come directly from the
the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is
primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are
controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”
Peirce, in his essay, How to Make Our Ideas Clear:
“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we
conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of
these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”
A person’s understanding of an object can only be what he conceives as the
object, e.g., sunlight glaring in your eyes, or it may come indirectly,
e.g., sunlight causing your child’s pupils to contract, which you, indoors,
see right after he comes inside to see you. A person cannot conceive of
something that is so remote from himself that it has no effect, however
e.g., sunlight causing your child’s pupils to contract, which you, indoors,
see right after he comes inside to see you. A person cannot conceive of
indirect, on him. Furthermore, the idea of a thing which could
theoretically never affect you is a vacuous idea. If something is real, it
has a potential to affect you, however indirectly, and that gives you the
possibility to understand it in some measure. That potential and
possibility may not be practically realizable in your short life, but it is
theoretically possible, e.g., if you evolve enough you’ll eventually reach
a point where your powers of perception are acute and sensitive enough for
you to sense the effect. (Perhaps this example is not purely theoretical;
perhaps your soul actually evolves into the evermore, affording you ever
increasing knowledge.)
Every effect is only understood by how it affects the person who is
understanding it. You understand how an effect affects other things, but
theoretically never affect you is a vacuous idea. If something is real, it
has a potential to affect you, however indirectly, and that gives you the
possibility to understand it in some measure. That potential and
possibility may not be practically realizable in your short life, but it is
theoretically possible, e.g., if you evolve enough you’ll eventually reach
a point where your powers of perception are acute and sensitive enough for
you to sense the effect. (Perhaps this example is not purely theoretical;
perhaps your soul actually evolves into the evermore, affording you ever
increasing knowledge.)
Every effect is only understood by how it affects the person who is
you only understand how it affects other things by how its effects on those
things affect you. Therefore, all conceptions are anthropomorphic. C. S.
Peirce defined the philosophical use of ‘anthropomorphism’, in the Century
Dictionary, as follows:
“In pragmatistic philos., that philosophic tendency which, recognizing an
absolute impossibility in the attainment by man of any conception that does
not refer to human life, proposes frankly to submit to this as a decree of
experience and to shape metaphysics to agreement with it. The term was
first used in this sense by F. C. S. Schiller (Riddles of the Sphinx).”
The term “God” means ‘the effects of God’; these effects constitute
Dictionary, as follows:
“In pragmatistic philos., that philosophic tendency which, recognizing an
absolute impossibility in the attainment by man of any conception that does
not refer to human life, proposes frankly to submit to this as a decree of
experience and to shape metaphysics to agreement with it. The term was
first used in this sense by F. C. S. Schiller (Riddles of the Sphinx).”
Reality; when we learn about reality, we learn about God.
A Note on Degrees of Vagueness.
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
becomes more vague. Take, for example, these four ideas to illustrate this
progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) the sun is hot, (3) the Grand Canyon is
beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is good. The logic that supports the
first idea, 1, is clear and concise. The logic supporting 2 is clear, but
inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete stretch of a parabola
(representing inquiry and discovery) reaching toward the asymptote
(representing truth). The logic of 3 is vague despite the truth of the idea
being readily accepted by almost all people. Its vagueness makes it very
difficult to prove to someone who is skeptical of its truth—of course, to
make it possible to prove, we’d have to hold him to the same standard of
proof that he accepts for other, equally vague things that he does believe.
The logic of 4 is the vaguest of all. This may be the farthest reach for an
idea before crossing the threshold into being unintelligible, and I think
I’ve given a good argument, in this chapter, that ‘the universe is good’ is
before that threshold.
§5. Recapitulation and Conclusion.
A Note on Degrees of Vagueness.
As our ideas move from definite to vague the logic that supports them
becomes more vague. Take, for example, these four ideas to illustrate this
progression: (1) 2+3=5, (2) the sun is hot, (3) the Grand Canyon is
beautiful, (4) the whole of reality is good. The logic that supports the
first idea, 1, is clear and concise. The logic supporting 2 is clear, but
inductive and therefore it shows an incomplete stretch of a parabola
(representing inquiry and discovery) reaching toward the asymptote
(representing truth). The logic of 3 is vague despite the truth of the idea
being readily accepted by almost all people. Its vagueness makes it very
difficult to prove to someone who is skeptical of its truth—of course, to
make it possible to prove, we’d have to hold him to the same standard of
proof that he accepts for other, equally vague things that he does believe.
The logic of 4 is the vaguest of all. This may be the farthest reach for an
idea before crossing the threshold into being unintelligible, and I think
I’ve given a good argument, in this chapter, that ‘the universe is good’ is
before that threshold.
was always a tendency of the chaotic parts of the universe to join with the
ordered parts, shrinking chaos’s realm. In the early days, these creations
a dance, the pas de deux of Ananke and Tyche.
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 13, 2023, 5:41:59 PM3/13/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 13, 2023, 5:43:02 PM3/13/23
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Peirce wrote poorly. Also, are you trying to "give out" some of your own words as his own?
Matt Faunce
Mar 14, 2023, 1:38:06 PM3/14/23
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that any past fact, or any fact recognized by any other being, is
theoretically possible to eventually learn. (Cf. Luke 8:17. “For there is
nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will
not be known or brought out into the open.”) According to Peirce, ‘truth’
is defined as what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of
inquiry. Joseph Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of
practical possibilities, and as such he says some past truths can’t be
learned: the very ability to bring them to mind has passed over the
horizon, so they’re not ideas at all. Only ideas that can actually be held
in a mind can be given an alethic value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I will
create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be
remembered, nor will they come to mind.”) For Margolis, truth is a belief
about reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a historical frame of reference. (I explain
this further, later on in this chapter where I talk about “robust
nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will
not be known or brought out into the open.”) According to Peirce, ‘truth’
is defined as what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of
inquiry. Joseph Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of
practical possibilities, and as such he says some past truths can’t be
learned: the very ability to bring them to mind has passed over the
horizon, so they’re not ideas at all. Only ideas that can actually be held
in a mind can be given an alethic value. (Cf. Isaiah 65:17. “See, I will
create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be
remembered, nor will they come to mind.”) For Margolis, truth is a belief
about reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful relative to all other truths
(defined the same way) within a historical frame of reference. (I explain
relativism.”) Because a practical limit prohibits us from tying up all
are endless; they do not end with a mathematical point, but they home in
asymptotically toward a point. The idea of a point is held in our minds,
not by synthesizing its parts, obviously, but by its function of dividing a
line, dividing two lines on a surface, three lines in three dimensional
space, and multiple lines in multi-dimensional mathematics. As such, any
single point is a universal. You only recognize any individual thing
asymptotically toward a point. The idea of a point is held in our minds,
not by synthesizing its parts, obviously, but by its function of dividing a
line, dividing two lines on a surface, three lines in three dimensional
space, and multiple lines in multi-dimensional mathematics. As such, any
because of its type. (‘Type’ is another term for ‘class’.) Without an
understanding of its type, a point, or anything else, is not only
unrecognizable, but utterly meaningless, and therefore inconceivable. A
so-called ‘unique object’ is still a type of object, i.e., it belongs to
unrecognizable, but utterly meaningless, and therefore inconceivable. A
the class of all objects. How then do you recognize the uniqueness of
something, e.g., the uniqueness of a person’s physical appearance, except
by recognizing the particular? Something’s uniqueness is due to it being a
unique type or unique combination of types.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars—if, in fact, the
universal’s raison d’être is to synthesize and analyze the world of
particulars—a problem for its being? Perhaps universals are the primary
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars—if, in fact, the
universal’s raison d’être is to synthesize and analyze the world of
elements of reality, and particulars are really subdivisions of universals;
perhaps thought is the primary mode of reality, and the physical world is
Peirce’s, which says that objective reality is connected to thought at
thought’s infinite potential, and Joseph Margolis’s “robust relativism”, is
that one is more elegant than the other. We can only wonder if someone who
takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof based merely on
his subjective opinion.
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see by the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a lesser optimistic hypothesis. That
new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the hope to benefit from
the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C. S. Peirce’s form of
realism, with the inclusion of the new postulate, allows for infinite
takes sides in the matter sees elegance or the lack thereof based merely on
his subjective opinion.
I do take sides on the matter. As you’ll see by the end of this whole
paper, I believe, with a reason that rests on a new postulate, that
regarding the nature of the universe as a whole, the most optimistic
hypothesis should be preferred over a lesser optimistic hypothesis. That
new postulate is that the impetus for thinking is the hope to benefit from
the thought. Hope is optimism. As far as I can see, C. S. Peirce’s form of
Matt Faunce
Mar 14, 2023, 1:46:34 PM3/14/23
to
Matt Faunce <mattf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
>
> Table of Contents.
>snip<
> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
>
> Table of Contents.
I wrote this essay with the intent to present my thoughts to the type of
reader who hasn’t read any or much philosophy. I had in mind, mostly my
family and friends. A philosophy is a sphere of thought that can only be
presented as a string of sentences. The meaning of each sentence only makes
its fullest sense when understood in light of the whole sphere. This makes
the beginning steps of learning philosophy frustrating for most people.
There are two books that I think are masterpieces for their presentation:
The Principles of Empirical, or Inductive Logic, by John Venn, and Buddhist
Logic, by Th. Stcherbatsky. I highly recommend one of those books as a
first book in philosophy. I wish I knew of a first essay which I could
recommend as highly. I wrote my essay, inspired by Stcherbatsky’s and
Venn’s masterful presentations, with two purposes in mind: (1) with the
hope that it will show, in the space of an essay, that there is a sphere of
philosophical thought which is worth spending more time understanding, and
(2), with the hope that some people I know will gain a better understanding
of what makes me tick.
I posted this to Usenet mostly to have a secure backup for this essay. I
don’t want to connect to “the cloud.” I chose this newsgroup because it was
defunct, but I will respond to legitimate input.
Each next version that I post is an updated version. So, the latest version
is the one to read.
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 14, 2023, 5:06:02 PM3/14/23
to
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 10:46:34 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
> Matt Faunce <mattf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ______________ My Philosophy ______________
> >
> > Table of Contents.
> >snip<
>
> I wrote this essay with the intent to present my thoughts to the type of
> reader who hasn’t read any or much philosophy. I had in mind, mostly my
> family and friends. A philosophy is a sphere of thought that can only be
> presented as a string of sentences. The meaning of each sentence only makes
> its fullest sense when understood in light of the whole sphere. This makes
> the beginning steps of learning philosophy frustrating for most people.
"No, really aren't some of those words Peirce's and some yours and it's unclear which is which?"
> Matt Faunce <mattf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ______________ My Philosophy ______________
> >
> > Table of Contents.
> >snip<
>
> I wrote this essay with the intent to present my thoughts to the type of
> reader who hasn’t read any or much philosophy. I had in mind, mostly my
> family and friends. A philosophy is a sphere of thought that can only be
> presented as a string of sentences. The meaning of each sentence only makes
> its fullest sense when understood in light of the whole sphere. This makes
> the beginning steps of learning philosophy frustrating for most people.
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 15, 2023, 11:32:13 AM3/15/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 16, 2023, 11:24:41 AM3/16/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 16, 2023, 11:51:59 AM3/16/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 17, 2023, 11:30:02 AM3/17/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 17, 2023, 11:30:30 AM3/17/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 18, 2023, 11:09:01 AM3/18/23
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Matt Faunce
Mar 18, 2023, 2:55:17 PM3/18/23
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in reality, hot, moreover, there really is a fire-ness of fire (i.e., all
the necessary predicates to determine that a fire is a fire is really in a
fire). The term, real, means that the truth of a universal has standing
independently of actual beliefs about it. (I say “actual” because C. S.
Peirce’s form of realism depicts universals as being dependent on belief at
the theoretical, infinite limit of inquiry, but not short of that.) Realism
is the opposite of nominalism. Nominalist philosophies are philosophies
that say that universals are true in name only, i.e., that objects have no
truth on their own, that universals only have standing because they were
constructed and agreed upon by minds. For example, imagine a group of
that say that universals are true in name only, i.e., that objects have no
truth on their own, that universals only have standing because they were
people talking and acting as if the Earth has a second moon—except,
nominalists say that there’s not just one non-real thing plugged into an
otherwise real world, but rather, they say that everything that’s thought
about is equally non-real. Nominalists admit that the coherence of their
own argument against realism is non-real. They say that the mindness of
minds is non-real. It’s plain to see that nominalism is absurd: if there
were nothing forcing or guiding truth, there could be no possibility for
agreement on anything—everyone would live in their own world built in their
own mind—no, it’s worse!, a person couldn’t even have agreements in his own
thoughts—there could be no thought at all. However, so-called “nominalists”
have been good at challenging realists to come up with better explanations
for realism.
for realism.
show infinitely more sixes than any other number in the long-run of throws,
Matt Faunce
Mar 18, 2023, 4:44:49 PM3/18/23
to
(directly or indirectly), and because there are infinite ways to analyze
the world, and hence there are an infinite number of things which affect
the immediate thing that you're examining, that it's impossible to draw an
inductive inference with any security about anything, (as n/infinity=0.) It
is possible, for the following reason. It's not true that the importance of
every thing's effect on your thing is equal; there are diminishing returns.
And, it must be—lest induction, and the meaning of anything, is an
illusion—that the sum of the weight of (the importance of) the infinity of
affecting things is finite: this is analogous to the fact that an infinite
number of half-distances of a given distance has a finite sum which is the
given distance.
** Your judgment, here as with all judgments, will also be an inductive
the world, and hence there are an infinite number of things which affect
the immediate thing that you're examining, that it's impossible to draw an
inductive inference with any security about anything, (as n/infinity=0.) It
is possible, for the following reason. It's not true that the importance of
every thing's effect on your thing is equal; there are diminishing returns.
And, it must be—lest induction, and the meaning of anything, is an
illusion—that the sum of the weight of (the importance of) the infinity of
affecting things is finite: this is analogous to the fact that an infinite
number of half-distances of a given distance has a finite sum which is the
given distance.
inference. (Cf., John Venn, The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic,
chapter V.) It may seem that you have no ground for any inference when each
one is based on an infinity of layers of inferences upon inferences. But,
as long as that infinity has a finite sum, you are on solid ground. Your
ground is the coherent whole of the universe.
chapter V.) It may seem that you have no ground for any inference when each
one is based on an infinity of layers of inferences upon inferences. But,
as long as that infinity has a finite sum, you are on solid ground. Your
ground is the coherent whole of the universe.
otherwise is to think that there was an initial agreement which is utterly
inexplicable*. Conventionalists agree that the truth of x is what is the
most coherent and elegant statement about x, as compared with all possible
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
about facts that support x.**
competing statements, that comports with our most deeply rooted agreements
* Regarding inexplicableness in general, Peirce, in the Collected Papers,
8.168, wrote, “Many are beginning to feel that the only possible
justification for a hypothesis is that it renders the facts comprehensible,
and that to suppose them absolutely incomprehensible (which is what the
doctrine of the Unknowable comes to) is not rendering them comprehensible.”
** The object, x, can be physical like a rock, or purely theoretical like a
and that to suppose them absolutely incomprehensible (which is what the
doctrine of the Unknowable comes to) is not rendering them comprehensible.”
perfect square in euclidean space which doesn’t exist in nature but
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to more degrees than a circle.
Conventionalists would say that the idea of a 400° square with a 360°
circle merely violates more fundamental agreements which make up the
foundation of geometry.
nonetheless is subject to objective laws like being perfectly symmetrical
and having internal angles that sum to 360°, i.e., the same as a circle.
Just because this perfect square is a purely theoretical object, and
therefore mental, doesn’t mean you can correctly say that it’s asymmetrical
or that it has angles that sum to more degrees than a circle.
Conventionalists would say that the idea of a 400° square with a 360°
circle merely violates more fundamental agreements which make up the
foundation of geometry.
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 18, 2023, 5:55:08 PM3/18/23
to
inexcusably sloppy in intellectual discourse.
Matt Faunce
Mar 18, 2023, 7:39:05 PM3/18/23
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direct quote by Peirce. Show them side by side. Cite your source for the
direct Peirce quote.
--
Matt
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 20, 2023, 4:28:42 PM3/20/23
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Matt Faunce
Mar 22, 2023, 8:33:37 PM3/22/23
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in general, so, via that continuum a person’s thoughts have a connection
with the truth. Joseph Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of
off from anything else.
(2) There are real possibilities. For example, after I flip a coin and it
shows heads, it was nonetheless true that before the toss tails was a real
possibility. Theoretical truths are on the continuum of reality.
(3) The objective truth of reality is connected to the subjective mind at
the infinite limit of inquiry; theoretical belief at the infinite limit of
inquiry is truth; and before that limit a mind can recognize when it’s
homing in on the truth.
(4) inquiry is driven, in part, by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the
matter into a habit of thinking about the matter. The other part driving
inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the answer will
invigorate the spirit.
(5) a habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the answer will
invigorate the spirit.
Matt Faunce
Mar 22, 2023, 8:49:24 PM3/22/23
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matter into a habit of thinking about the matter. The other part driving
inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the answer will
invigorate the spirit.
(5) A habit can’t be settled if it’s not good; the mind cannot rest on
inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the answer will
invigorate the spirit.
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 24, 2023, 11:25:11 AM3/24/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 25, 2023, 11:22:29 AM3/25/23
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Matt Faunce
Mar 26, 2023, 1:49:24 PM3/26/23
to
indirectly. Here, I need to explain the fact-value interconnection. Until I
do, see Hilary Putnam’s excellent article, Beyond the Fact/Value Dichotomy.
https://inters.org/Putnam-Fact-Value Then I need to explain how it follows
that logic is a species of ethics, and ethics is a species of aesthetics.
Matt
Matt Faunce
Mar 26, 2023, 5:41:07 PM3/26/23
to
without any ethical or aesthetic value. Everything that is, that has being,
has ethical and aesthetic value because it’s connected with our minds.
Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 26, 2023, 7:14:25 PM3/26/23
to
Matt Faunce
Mar 28, 2023, 1:41:27 AM3/28/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Mar 30, 2023, 3:42:13 PM3/30/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 1, 2023, 5:53:12 PM4/1/23
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Matt Faunce
Apr 1, 2023, 6:34:24 PM4/1/23
to
by putting an excerpt of my writing side by side with the original that you
think I plagiarized, citing your source for the original. You didn’t do
that but kept on with your accusation.
--
Matt
Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 7, 2023, 4:08:53 PM4/7/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 14, 2023, 3:50:29 PM4/14/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 15, 2023, 5:10:40 PM4/15/23
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Matt Faunce
Apr 27, 2023, 10:20:38 PM4/27/23
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curve (representing inquiry and discovery) reaching toward the asymptote
order. Order is more fleeting the farther back you look, and it’s more
established the farther into the future you look. One asymptote is absolute
chaos, and the other asymptote is absolute order. The hyperbola never
established the farther into the future you look. One asymptote is absolute
reaches either asymptote, so there is no absolute beginning or end to our
universe, but there is an evolution of order out of chaos. This hyperbolic
path is not perfectly smooth; it has perturbations, but on the whole it’s
hyperbolic.
Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 28, 2023, 11:27:00 AM4/28/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 29, 2023, 5:05:21 PM4/29/23
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Matt Faunce
Apr 30, 2023, 1:10:59 AM4/30/23
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some judgments artificial, like the identification of a student in a
classroom as being first in alphabetical order, and some judgments natural,
like the identification of a tree as a tree?
example, imagine that a group of people constructed in their minds the idea
that the Earth has a second moon, which resides in the space a short
distance to the left of the first moon; and they talk and act as if it has
a reality equal in standing to the first moon. “Both moons are equally
contrived,” they say. Nominalists say that there are not just some non-real
things mentally plugged into an otherwise real world, as realists think,
Jeffrey Rubard
Apr 30, 2023, 11:19:16 AM4/30/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
May 12, 2023, 11:42:33 AM5/12/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
May 12, 2023, 5:35:11 PM5/12/23
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Interesting question.
Jeffrey Rubard
May 13, 2023, 11:33:52 AM5/13/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
May 14, 2023, 11:22:31 AM5/14/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
May 19, 2023, 5:07:47 PM5/19/23
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Matt Faunce
May 23, 2023, 2:10:06 AM5/23/23
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example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and 2), one being’s
judgment (i.e., one being’s analysis and synthesis of his sense-data) might
be so foreign from yours that his judgment would be seen as arbitrary
relative to your way. As judgments move farther away from yours, the
be so foreign from yours that his judgment would be seen as arbitrary
seemingly random arrangements get harder and harder for you to understand.
If the limit of how far that distance can be is infinite, then your
understanding of that limit has to be zero. (If the infinity of ways is
contained like rational numbers between 1 and 2, then, I suppose, two
different arrangements can be considered as approximately the same, like we
often consider 3.14 as a “close enough” approximation to pie.) It’s
possible that over trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new
way of making fundamental judgments of our world will become practically
incommensurable with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be
the case if, over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing
the universe outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This
is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the
horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce defined
way of making fundamental judgments of our world will become practically
incommensurable with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be
the case if, over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing
the universe outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This
is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the
horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
truth as that opinion “which would ultimately prevail if investigation were
carried sufficiently far in that particular direction.”
(http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/truth) Truth, for Peirce, is what
would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of inquiry. Joseph
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
value. For Margolis, truth is a belief about reality that’s relevant, apt,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
and useful relative to all other truths (defined the same way) within a
historical frame of reference. (I explain this further, later on in this
chapter where I talk about “robust relativism.”) Because a practical limit
prohibits us from tying up all loose ends, his definition of ‘truth’ is
historical frame of reference. (I explain this further, later on in this
chapter where I talk about “robust relativism.”) Because a practical limit
vaguer and more informal.
(Peirce’s idea is compatible with Luke 8:17: “For there is nothing hidden
that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or
brought out into the open.” Margolis’s idea is compatible with Isaiah
65:17: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things
will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”)
whole of reality. When we learn about any part of reality, we learn about
Matt Faunce
May 23, 2023, 2:41:47 AM5/23/23
to
limit your understanding of all things, except the infinitely small subset
which constitutes things in your practical reach, has to be nil. (If the
infinity of ways is contained like rational numbers between 1 and 2, then,
I suppose, two different arrangements can be considered as approximately
the same, like we often consider 3.14 as a “close enough” approximation to
pie.) It’s possible that over trillions of years we evolve to a point where
our new way of making fundamental judgments of our world will become
practically incommensurable with the old way of trillions of years prior.
That would be the case if, over time, changes in our way of analyzing and
synthesizing the universe outrun advances in our ability to inquire into
the past. This is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history
passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce defined
truth as that opinion “which would ultimately prevail if investigation were
carried sufficiently far in that particular direction.”* Truth, for Peirce,
I suppose, two different arrangements can be considered as approximately
the same, like we often consider 3.14 as a “close enough” approximation to
pie.) It’s possible that over trillions of years we evolve to a point where
our new way of making fundamental judgments of our world will become
practically incommensurable with the old way of trillions of years prior.
That would be the case if, over time, changes in our way of analyzing and
synthesizing the universe outrun advances in our ability to inquire into
the past. This is what Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history
passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce defined
truth as that opinion “which would ultimately prevail if investigation were
is what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of inquiry. Joseph
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
value. For Margolis, truth is a belief about reality that’s relevant, apt,
and useful relative to all other truths (defined the same way) within a
historical frame of reference. (I explain this further, later on in this
chapter where I talk about “robust relativism.”) Because a practical limit
prohibits us from tying up all loose ends, his definition of ‘truth’ is
vaguer and more informal.
*http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/truth
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
value. For Margolis, truth is a belief about reality that’s relevant, apt,
and useful relative to all other truths (defined the same way) within a
historical frame of reference. (I explain this further, later on in this
chapter where I talk about “robust relativism.”) Because a practical limit
prohibits us from tying up all loose ends, his definition of ‘truth’ is
vaguer and more informal.
Jeffrey Rubard
May 23, 2023, 11:54:15 AM5/23/23
to
Matt Faunce
May 25, 2023, 1:17:04 PM5/25/23
to
permanently rest on badness because badness agitates the mind to search for
includes awareness and feelings, is a part of your vivid memory and
inference. (Your knowledge of yourself is nothing but your memory and your
actual, as opposed to theoretically potential, inferences, including
inferences of the limits of those probabilities.)
Jeffrey Rubard
May 27, 2023, 5:00:17 PM5/27/23
to
Matt Faunce
May 29, 2023, 4:04:18 PM5/29/23
to
analysis?”, is this: Reality, as will be understood more and more over the
course of our evolving universe, is ultimately good and beautiful. Reality
guides our minds toward coming into harmony with it. The specificity of
that harmonious state is very open, like in music there’s no creative limit
on how different good compositions can be. We mostly choose the syntheses
and analyses that are most harmonious with our understanding of reality.
The syntheses and analyses that end up being harmonious in the long-run are
true; the rest are false. (Buddhists say that all views are false in the
sense that “clinging” to any view as incontrovertibly true, universally,
holds you back from realizing higher levels of reality. I disagree: I think
some facts are true and will always and everywhere be true, like, perhaps,
‘fire is hotter than ice’, and I think that over the course of our
evolution we’ll see these facts as more and more beautiful in relation to
the rest of reality. I think the Buddhists have many great ideas, but their
nominalism is a mistake.)
validating characterizations from a purely intrinsic frame of reference.
Jeffrey Rubard
May 30, 2023, 11:29:39 AM5/30/23
to
Matt Faunce
May 30, 2023, 2:21:59 PM5/30/23
to
Jeffrey Rubard <rehashe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 1:04:18 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>>
>> My answer to the question, “What determines or guides synthesis and
>> analysis?”, is this: Reality, as will be understood more and more over the
>> course of our evolving universe, is ultimately good and beautiful. Reality
>> guides our minds toward coming into harmony with it. The specificity of
>> that harmonious state is very open, like in music there’s no creative limit
>> on how different good compositions can be. We mostly choose the syntheses
>> and analyses that are most harmonious with our understanding of reality.
>> The syntheses and analyses that end up being harmonious in the long-run are
>> true; the rest are false. (Buddhists say that all views are false in the
>> sense that “clinging” to any view as incontrovertibly true, universally,
>> holds you back from realizing higher levels of reality. I disagree: I think
>> some facts are true and will always and everywhere be true, like, perhaps,
>> ‘fire is hotter than ice’, and I think that over the course of our
>> evolution we’ll see these facts as more and more beautiful in relation to
>> the rest of reality. I think the Buddhists have many great ideas, but their
>> nominalism is a mistake.)
>
> On Monday, May 29, 2023 at 1:04:18 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>>
>> My answer to the question, “What determines or guides synthesis and
>> analysis?”, is this: Reality, as will be understood more and more over the
>> course of our evolving universe, is ultimately good and beautiful. Reality
>> guides our minds toward coming into harmony with it. The specificity of
>> that harmonious state is very open, like in music there’s no creative limit
>> on how different good compositions can be. We mostly choose the syntheses
>> and analyses that are most harmonious with our understanding of reality.
>> The syntheses and analyses that end up being harmonious in the long-run are
>> true; the rest are false. (Buddhists say that all views are false in the
>> sense that “clinging” to any view as incontrovertibly true, universally,
>> holds you back from realizing higher levels of reality. I disagree: I think
>> some facts are true and will always and everywhere be true, like, perhaps,
>> ‘fire is hotter than ice’, and I think that over the course of our
>> evolution we’ll see these facts as more and more beautiful in relation to
>> the rest of reality. I think the Buddhists have many great ideas, but their
>> nominalism is a mistake.)
>
> Peirce didn't write about Buddhists.
>
Peirce refers to Buddhism in the second and second from last paragraphs of
>
his article, The Order of Nature.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_13/June_1878/Illustrations_of_the_Logic_of_Science_V
--
Matt
Matt Faunce
May 31, 2023, 7:14:59 AM5/31/23
to
given unlimited time and resources for investigation.
The future is what would be inferred about the future if given unlimited
resources for investigation, plus the pure-chance occurrences which can’t
be predicted, e.g., the result of your next coin toss.
What we call the present is really the immediate past, where the memory is
still vivid and inference is highly reliable, plus the highly reliable
be predicted, e.g., the result of your next coin toss.
What we call the present is really the immediate past, where the memory is
inferences of the immediate-future.
You are nothing but a memory, inference at its theoretically highest
potential, and a set of probabilities. Your sense of experiencing, which
includes awareness and feelings, is a part of your vivid memory and
nothing but your memory and your actual, as opposed to theoretically
potential, inferences, including inferences of the limits of those
probabilities.)
Consciousness and intelligence in the universe has been evolving such that
the power of both memory and inference has been increasing. Therefore, the
ongoing understanding of the present has been including more and more of
the past with farther and farther reaches into the future.
There will come a time, long after our deaths, when highly evolved,
conscious, and intelligent beings, made from recombined parts of the
potential, inferences, including inferences of the limits of those
probabilities.)
Consciousness and intelligence in the universe has been evolving such that
the power of both memory and inference has been increasing. Therefore, the
ongoing understanding of the present has been including more and more of
the past with farther and farther reaches into the future.
There will come a time, long after our deaths, when highly evolved,
material we were made of, will be able to infer and remember our lives with
as much clarity, vividness, and definiteness as we can presently know and
feel our present lives. Since they’ll be made of our material and material
as much clarity, vividness, and definiteness as we can presently know and
Jeffrey Rubard
May 31, 2023, 11:57:40 AM5/31/23
to
Matt Faunce
Jun 29, 2023, 11:51:49 AM6/29/23
to
smaller elements. His whole arrangement of the world would be completely
alien to our way of thinking.
The truth of any segment of reality, or of the whole of reality, is a
potential or actual statement about reality that cannot and will not fail
in its potential to successfully guide the actions of the one who believes
it—actions, that is, that are in regard to the segment of reality to which
the statement pertains.
Is that which is rightly recognized as true by one being, true for all
beings, without regard for how alien that truth is to the other beings’
psychology?
§2. Different Approaches to the Question.
If there are infinite possible ways of analyzing and synthesizing the
world, and that infinity is expansive (i.e., not contained like, for
example, the infinite rational numbers between 1 and 2), one being’s
judgment (i.e., one being’s analysis and synthesis of his sense-data) might
be so foreign from yours that his judgment would be seen as arbitrary
elements in close proximity to each other, imagine, for example, an alien
being for whom the following arrangement has practical importance: the
pattern of atoms on the tip of your left-hand index fingernail, plus the
average heat of the nearest quasar throughout its life, plus the average
sonority of the latest Ramirez guitar made, as played by me on a ship in
the open air in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while the temperature is
75°F. That’s a very arbitrary synthesis and analysis to us, but not to him.
For an even more foreign arrangement, imagine one where the sub-elements of
the elements arranged are also very foreign arrangements. As judgments move
farther away from yours, the seemingly random arrangements get harder and
harder for you to understand. If there is no limit to how far that distance
can be, i.e., if the limit of how far that distance can be is infinite,
then your understanding of things at that infinite limit has to be nil. (If
the infinity of ways is contained like rational numbers between 1 and 2,
then distant arrangements can be understood by their approximation to
relatively nearer arrangements, like we can understand the length of π in
inches by its approximation to 3.14 inches. But if the infinity of ways is
infinitely expansive like the numbers from 1 to ∞, then the segment of
reality that we are capable of understanding is infinitely small.) It’s
Matt Faunce
Jun 29, 2023, 12:15:09 PM6/29/23
to
infinitely small.) Even in a contained world, it’s possible that over
Jeffrey Rubard
Jun 29, 2023, 3:34:33 PM6/29/23
to
Matt Faunce
Jun 30, 2023, 11:35:26 AM6/30/23
to
infinite limit of inquiry is truth; and before that limit a mind can
recognize when it’s homing in on the truth.
(4) Inquiry is driven, in part, by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the
matter into a good and beautiful habit of thinking about the matter. The
recognize when it’s homing in on the truth.
(4) Inquiry is driven, in part, by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the
other part driving inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the
answer will invigorate the spirit.
(5) A habit can’t be permanently settled if it’s not as good and beautiful
answer will invigorate the spirit.
as theoretically possible; the mind cannot permanently rest on any amount
of badness or ugliness because they agitate the mind to search for a better
solution.
Jeffrey Rubard
Jun 30, 2023, 2:34:08 PM6/30/23
to
Matt Faunce
Jun 30, 2023, 6:26:58 PM6/30/23
to
Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 8:35:26 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
>>
>> snip <
> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 8:35:26 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
>>
>> ________________ The End ________________
>
> "Really, it's a way you mechanically churn out 'plagiarism'."
>
I need to plagiarize Putnam’s article on the fact/value dichotomy. Do you
>
> "Really, it's a way you mechanically churn out 'plagiarism'."
>
think Chat GPT would help it be less mechanical?
--
Matt
Jeffrey Rubard
Jul 1, 2023, 4:48:43 PM7/1/23
to
Matt Faunce
Jul 1, 2023, 6:44:40 PM7/1/23
to
Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 3:26:58 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>> Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 8:35:26 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>>>> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
>>>>
>>>> snip <
>>>> ________________ The End ________________
>>>
>>> "Really, it's a way you mechanically churn out 'plagiarism'."
>>>
>> I need to plagiarize Putnam’s article on the fact/value dichotomy. Do you
>> think Chat GPT would help it be less mechanical?
>>
>
> "I wouldn't care to give you advice on the topic. Those are just more like 'observations'."
>
I was kidding. Never mind.
> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 3:26:58 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>> Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 8:35:26 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
>>>> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
>>>>
>>>> snip <
>>>> ________________ The End ________________
>>>
>>> "Really, it's a way you mechanically churn out 'plagiarism'."
>>>
>> I need to plagiarize Putnam’s article on the fact/value dichotomy. Do you
>> think Chat GPT would help it be less mechanical?
>>
>
> "I wouldn't care to give you advice on the topic. Those are just more like 'observations'."
>
--
Matt
Matt Faunce
Jul 1, 2023, 11:30:56 PM7/1/23
to
The idea that particulars stand on their own is problematic because, except
for a mathematical point, every particular can be divided into parts, and
parts are wholes made of smaller parts, which are again wholes of even
smaller parts. Since this process continues infinitely, and since combining
parts is due to judgments, there can be no concept of an "ultimate
particular" which grounds physical reality, i.e., there can be no concept
of a part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. Subdivisions of a line, area, or space
are endless; they do not end with a mathematical point, but they home in
asymptotically toward a point. The idea of a point is held in our minds,
not by synthesizing its parts, obviously, but by its function of dividing a
line or many lines. A point is therefore a mental construct devised to
for a mathematical point, every particular can be divided into parts, and
parts are wholes made of smaller parts, which are again wholes of even
smaller parts. Since this process continues infinitely, and since combining
parts is due to judgments, there can be no concept of an "ultimate
particular" which grounds physical reality, i.e., there can be no concept
of a part that isn't due to a universal. No matter how small the part it is
still composed of a group of smaller parts, and for us to cognize a whole
we have to rely on the universal. Subdivisions of a line, area, or space
are endless; they do not end with a mathematical point, but they home in
asymptotically toward a point. The idea of a point is held in our minds,
not by synthesizing its parts, obviously, but by its function of dividing a
serve a mental function, and so it’s a universal belonging to the class of
mathematical devices. You only recognize any individual thing because of
its type. (‘Type’ is another term for ‘class’.) Without an understanding of
its type, a point, or anything else, is not only unrecognizable, but
utterly meaningless, and therefore inconceivable. A so-called ‘unique
object’ is still a type of object, i.e., it belongs to the class of all
objects. How then do you recognize the uniqueness of something, e.g., the
uniqueness of a person’s physical appearance, except by recognizing the
particular? Something’s uniqueness is due to it being a unique type or
unique combination of types.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars—if, in fact, the
universal’s raison d’être is to synthesize and analyze the world of
particulars—a problem for its being? Perhaps the answer is that universals
its type, a point, or anything else, is not only unrecognizable, but
utterly meaningless, and therefore inconceivable. A so-called ‘unique
object’ is still a type of object, i.e., it belongs to the class of all
objects. How then do you recognize the uniqueness of something, e.g., the
uniqueness of a person’s physical appearance, except by recognizing the
particular? Something’s uniqueness is due to it being a unique type or
unique combination of types.
Is the particular’s dependence on the universal a problem for its
existence? Is the universal’s dependence on particulars—if, in fact, the
universal’s raison d’être is to synthesize and analyze the world of
are the primary elements of reality, and particulars are really
subdivisions of universals; thought is the primary mode of reality, and the
physical world is really a special case of the mental world, (similarly to
how, in the relativity of motion, standing still is a special case of
motion.)
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
how, in the relativity of motion, standing still is a special case of
motion.)
This classic problem of universals requires this or that postulate to
solve. The debate among informed and honest philosophers is over which
postulate or set of postulates to accept. Every philosophy rests on a set
of postulates.
Jeffrey Rubard
Jul 2, 2023, 2:22:03 PM7/2/23
to
On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 3:44:40 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
> Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 3:26:58 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
> >> Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 8:35:26 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
> >>>> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
> >>>>
> >>>> snip <
> >>>> ________________ The End ________________
> >>>
> >>> "Really, it's a way you mechanically churn out 'plagiarism'."
> >>>
> >> I need to plagiarize Putnam’s article on the fact/value dichotomy. Do you
> >> think Chat GPT would help it be less mechanical?
> >>
> >
> > "I wouldn't care to give you advice on the topic. Those are just more like 'observations'."
> >
> I was kidding. Never mind.
>
I'm not. I don't really care to "give advice" to people doing things I don't like.
> Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 3:26:58 PM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
> >> Jeffrey Rubard <theleasth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 8:35:26 AM UTC-7, Matt Faunce wrote:
> >>>> ______________ My Philosophy ______________
> >>>>
> >>>> snip <
> >>>> ________________ The End ________________
> >>>
> >>> "Really, it's a way you mechanically churn out 'plagiarism'."
> >>>
> >> I need to plagiarize Putnam’s article on the fact/value dichotomy. Do you
> >> think Chat GPT would help it be less mechanical?
> >>
> >
> > "I wouldn't care to give you advice on the topic. Those are just more like 'observations'."
> >
> I was kidding. Never mind.
>
I don't really think I'm weird like that.
Jeffrey Rubard
Jeffrey Rubard
Jul 4, 2023, 11:30:30 AM7/4/23
to
Matt Faunce
Jul 4, 2023, 2:01:58 PM7/4/23
to
about the whole of reality, that has potential to successfully guide the
mental or physical actions of the one who believes it—actions,
specifically, that are in regard to the segment or whole of reality to
which the idea pertains.
own mind—no, it’s worse!, a person couldn’t even have agreements in his own
thoughts—there could be no thought at all! However, so-called “nominalists”
have been good at challenging realists to come up with better explanations
for realism.
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
agreement of (actual, and therefore a finite number of) minds. A mind is an
for realism.
Conventionalist philosophies are built on the postulate that our most
fundamental universals, facts, are ideas that came to be because of an
interconnection. In lieu of that explanation, see Hilary Putnam’s excellent
however indirect, or however slight, on him. Furthermore, the idea of a
thing which could theoretically never affect you is a vacuous idea. If
something is real, it has a potential to affect you, however indirectly,
and that gives you the possibility to understand it in some measure. That
potential and possibility may not be practically realizable in your short
life, but it is theoretically possible, e.g., if you evolve enough you’ll
eventually reach a point where your powers of perception are acute and
sensitive enough for you to sense the effect. (Perhaps this example is not
purely theoretical; perhaps your soul actually evolves into the evermore,
affording you ever increasing knowledge.)
Every effect is only understood by how it affects the person who is
understanding it. You understand how an effect affects other things, but
you only understand how it affects other things by how its effects on those
things affect you. Therefore, all conceptions are self-referential. Because
something is real, it has a potential to affect you, however indirectly,
and that gives you the possibility to understand it in some measure. That
potential and possibility may not be practically realizable in your short
life, but it is theoretically possible, e.g., if you evolve enough you’ll
eventually reach a point where your powers of perception are acute and
sensitive enough for you to sense the effect. (Perhaps this example is not
purely theoretical; perhaps your soul actually evolves into the evermore,
affording you ever increasing knowledge.)
Every effect is only understood by how it affects the person who is
understanding it. You understand how an effect affects other things, but
you only understand how it affects other things by how its effects on those
any man’s understanding of anything is largely dependent on his
interactions with the community of mankind, the term, anthropomorphic, was
used. C. S. Peirce defined the philosophical use of ‘anthropomorphism’, in
the Century Dictionary, as follows:
“In pragmatistic philos., that philosophic tendency which, recognizing an
absolute impossibility in the attainment by man of any conception that does
not refer to human life, proposes frankly to submit to this as a decree of
experience and to shape metaphysics to agreement with it. The term was
first used in this sense by F. C. S. Schiller (Riddles of the Sphinx).”
Because an object is wholly understood by the effects of the objects, the
“In pragmatistic philos., that philosophic tendency which, recognizing an
absolute impossibility in the attainment by man of any conception that does
not refer to human life, proposes frankly to submit to this as a decree of
experience and to shape metaphysics to agreement with it. The term was
first used in this sense by F. C. S. Schiller (Riddles of the Sphinx).”
term “God” means ‘the effects of God’. These effects constitute the whole
of reality. When we learn about any part of reality, we learn about God.
§5. Recapitulation and Conclusion.
(1) Reality is a continuum; nothing that’s real is absolutely cut off from
of reality. When we learn about any part of reality, we learn about God.
§5. Recapitulation and Conclusion.
anything else.
(2) There are real possibilities. For example, after I flip a coin and it
shows heads, it was nonetheless true that before the toss tails was a real
possibility. Theoretical truths are on the continuum of reality.
(3) The objective truth of reality is connected to the subjective mind at
the infinite limit of inquiry; the theoretical ideal of belief at the
infinite limit of inquiry is truth; and before that limit a mind can
recognize when it’s homing in on the truth.
(4) Inquiry is driven, in part, by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the
matter into a good and beautiful habit of thinking about the matter. The
other part driving inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the
answer will invigorate the spirit. Inquiry, and therefore logic, is nothing
(2) There are real possibilities. For example, after I flip a coin and it
shows heads, it was nonetheless true that before the toss tails was a real
possibility. Theoretical truths are on the continuum of reality.
(3) The objective truth of reality is connected to the subjective mind at
the infinite limit of inquiry; the theoretical ideal of belief at the
infinite limit of inquiry is truth; and before that limit a mind can
recognize when it’s homing in on the truth.
(4) Inquiry is driven, in part, by the hope to settle one’s thoughts on the
matter into a good and beautiful habit of thinking about the matter. The
other part driving inquiry is the hope that the search for the truth or the
without hope.
(5) A habit can’t be permanently settled if it’s not as good and beautiful
as theoretically possible; the mind cannot permanently rest on any amount
of badness or ugliness because they agitate the mind to search for a better
solution.
Therefore, it is perfectly logical to believe that there is a Reason for
hoping in a general and ultimate good; it’s illogical to believe that there
is no Reason to hope for a general and ultimate good. Again, to believe
that a subset of reality is hopeless is still good because it tells you
where the good is; to believe that the universe, in its totality, is
Matt Faunce
Jul 8, 2023, 6:16:35 PM7/8/23
to
there’s not even a theoretical possibility of understanding things at that
limit. (If the infinity of ways is contained like rational numbers between
1 and 2, then distant arrangements can be understood by their approximation
to relatively nearer arrangements, like we can understand the length of π
in inches by its approximation to 3.14 inches. But if the infinity of ways
is infinitely expansive like the numbers from 1 to ∞, then the segment of
reality that we are theoretically capable of ever understanding is
infinitely small.) Even in a contained world, it’s possible that over
trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be the case if,
over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing the universe
outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This is what
Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce defined
truth as that opinion “which would ultimately prevail if investigation were
carried sufficiently far in that particular direction.”* Truth, for Peirce,
is what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of inquiry. Joseph
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
value. For Margolis, truth is a practically attainable belief about reality
to relatively nearer arrangements, like we can understand the length of π
in inches by its approximation to 3.14 inches. But if the infinity of ways
is infinitely expansive like the numbers from 1 to ∞, then the segment of
reality that we are theoretically capable of ever understanding is
infinitely small.) Even in a contained world, it’s possible that over
trillions of years we evolve to a point where our new way of making
fundamental judgments of our world will become practically incommensurable
with the old way of trillions of years prior. That would be the case if,
over time, changes in our way of analyzing and synthesizing the universe
outrun advances in our ability to inquire into the past. This is what
Joseph Margolis means when he speaks of history passing over the horizon.
Is truth a matter of what is theoretically possible to learn, or is it a
matter of what is practically possible to learn? Charles Peirce defined
truth as that opinion “which would ultimately prevail if investigation were
carried sufficiently far in that particular direction.”* Truth, for Peirce,
is what would be known at the theoretical infinite limit of inquiry. Joseph
Margolis built his philosophy on the importance of practical possibilities,
and as such he says some past truths can’t be learned: the very ability to
bring them to mind has passed over the horizon, so they’re not ideas at
all. Only ideas that can actually be held in a mind can be given an alethic
reference and is harmonious with all the truths in its frame of reference.
Because everything changes, the supporting truths in one historical frame
are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making the truth which
was supported by them not true, although not false either because it will
are liable to become irrelevant in a future frame, making the truth which
not be an idea at all. Truth, being more of a practical matter than a
formal matter, is a belief about reality that’s relevant, apt, and useful
relative to all other truths (defined the same way) within a historical
frame of reference. The relativist’s statement, “It is true that there is
no universally objective truth,” is not necessarily self-defeating, as so
many people think, because their statement can be restated as this: “It is
relevant, apt, and useful to believe, in our historical frame of reference,
that there is no belief that is relevant, apt, and useful in all historical
frames of reference.” That is not a self-defeating statement if, and only
if, the frames of reference referred to are incommensurable. What’s true in
one frame of reference, let’s call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never
become false and will nowhere be false. Rather, in an incommensurable
historical-frame-of-reference, frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist
as a statement that could possibly occur to anyone. An inconceivable
proposition is not true or false because it’s not a concept at all. You
can’t assign an alethic value to a non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that a truth is relative to one frame of
reference but not to another frame of reference, and say that these
different frames need not be incommensurable—these forms of relativism are
self-defeating, because, if ‘x in frame A is true’ is commensurable with ‘x
in frame B is not true’ then in the frame which makes the two frames
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and not
true in frame C.’ (The movie, Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa, is a
philosophical failure!, although, maybe it has psychological value.) If
that there is no belief that is relevant, apt, and useful in all historical
frames of reference.” That is not a self-defeating statement if, and only
if, the frames of reference referred to are incommensurable. What’s true in
one frame of reference, let’s call it “truth-1-in-frame-A” will never
become false and will nowhere be false. Rather, in an incommensurable
historical-frame-of-reference, frame-B, ‘truth-1-in-frame-A’ will not exist
as a statement that could possibly occur to anyone. An inconceivable
proposition is not true or false because it’s not a concept at all. You
can’t assign an alethic value to a non-concept.
Forms of relativism that assume that a truth is relative to one frame of
reference but not to another frame of reference, and say that these
different frames need not be incommensurable—these forms of relativism are
self-defeating, because, if ‘x in frame A is true’ is commensurable with ‘x
in frame B is not true’ then in the frame which makes the two frames
commensurate, frame C, you’d have the contradiction, ‘x is true and not
true in frame C.’ (The movie, Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa, is a
philosophical failure!, although, maybe it has psychological value.) If
frame A and B are incommensurable then there is no frame in which a
contradiction can be stated.
contradiction can be stated.
Jeffrey Rubard
Jul 9, 2023, 11:47:09 AM7/9/23
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Jeffrey Rubard
Jul 22, 2023, 11:29:30 AM7/22/23
to
I don't really have "Pierre Menard problems", sorry.
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