09.04.08
Posted in SEO, marketing, metaphysics, philosophy, preterphysics at 2:09 pm by nogre
I’ve made some progress on my metaphysics; enough to think about writing a monograph.
Today (Sept. 2 ‘08) I tried thinking of a name for this monograph. My thought process was to call it something with metaphysics but I couldn’t think of anything good. First of all the word metaphysics is inherently confused, so it is hard to use well. Its history, so I’ve been instructed, can be traced back to a librarian organizing Aristotle’s books on the shelf. The untitled book that contained what was to become Aristotle’s Metaphysics was sitting in front of Aristotle’s Physics, so the librarian called it ‘before physics’, Metaphysics. I know little of how words come into existence to pass judgment, but I am sure that I want to avoid all the baggage that this word has accumulated since then.
I thought about the Tractatus. ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ is sufficiently meaningless such that it would be hard to regret calling it that later. I mean really. Of course it is a treatise, what philosophical text isn’t? And it’s on some logic and philosophy, ooo so descriptive. So even if W. changed his mind about any of the content, the title would still hold up.
So I began to wonder if it is worth it to have a particularly descriptive title at all. Then the hyphenation caught my eye. ’Hypermetaphysical’, ‘Pseudometaphysics’ and other prefixed monstrosities ran through my thoughts but I finally came upon pretermetaphysical. It is just too damn long. Preterphysical is less long, is meaningless though suggestive, and preter- means nearly the exact same thing as meta-.
No baggage either. Google returned 3 results for preterphysical and 0 for preterphysics. Of the 3 that came up for preterphysical, one was a cached reference to one of the other pages and 404ed when I tried to view it and the other 2 used the word one time each and only in passing. That sealed it. I am writing The Preterphysics.
Now no one steal my cool name. I claim it!!!!!!
————-
[For anyone who wonders why this was filed under SEO and Marketing, one of the goals of this post is to claim the name "The Preterphysics" for myself. In less than 3 days of publishing this post I'll likely be #1 in Google for a search for "Preterphysics" and "Preterphysical". (UPDATE: I am #1 now, only 6 hours after publishing) By having a blog and posting regularly (and no spam) Google and the other search engines regularly scan this site for new content. Granted, these words are made up and so there aren't other people who are using them, so there is no competition for becoming #1. However, this is irrelevant to my purposes: I am trying to claim some intellectual property space and being first counts for something. I am still 3, 4 and 6 in Google searches for "relativity biology" because of these posts months ago. One of the purposes for this blog is to be a record of things I have written and, since I am outside of academia, having a public record of when my work was published goes a long way in establishing a timeline of ideas (showing that the ideas were mine). At this point it would be hard for someone to make a claim to any of my philosophy of biology since it has been public domain for a good while now (and philosophy carnivalled). Sure I could try to get my work into a journal -all considering it would hit my target audience a bit more than this website and provide an even more secure record of my work- but journal publishing is much about being an academic (and takes forever and I'd probably not make the cut anyway). I'm concerned with getting my ideas out there, claiming the intellectual space for myself, and making it available to anyone who is like-minded. This post (even as silly as it is, making fun of Wittgenstein for titling his book as he did, completely deflating any meaning from my own words, and harping on hyphenation) does all of that because of the established internet machinery.]
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
07.18.08
Posted in marketing, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy at 2:58 pm by nogre
I’ve put up another paper under ‘My Metaphysics‘ entitled ‘The Imperius Curse‘. No, it is not about the Imperius curse from the Harry Potter books exactly - it is about control, determinism and free will - but I am re-purposing the term for my own uses (just like the paper entitled ‘Occlumency‘).
When I approached the subject of free will and determinism from my metaphysical perspective, I felt that philosophers have focussed upon naturalistic or religious or logical issues and not enough upon our influence over each other. Basically, since we have to be convinced by some person (ourselves included) that the world is determined in some way, I see this as a more fundamental kind of control. Convincing someone to do or believe something is a Leadership skill, and I strongly believe that the concept of leadership has been neglected in philosophy. Hopefully some of my discussion of leadership will be of interest to non-philosophers as well (Charm is defined in this essay as well, which is fun.).
–
Also, through the wonderful statistics that you can get for your website, I know that exactly 0 people have actually read any of my metaphysics and I’m sure this message will fall on deaf ears. Nonetheless I push on with the same expectations. I’m thinking that one day I’ll have enough for a proper book, which no one will read either, but this all makes me happy, so it’s going to happen.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
05.24.08
Posted in Heidegger, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy at 10:05 am by nogre
In Being and Time Heidegger makes a distinction between death and demise: death is the ending of Da-sein, or Being, and demise is physical perishing. I think this is a good distinction and since I break up ontology into 3 sorts of things - commitments, objects & descriptions - I will have three ways to die:
- Fallen: the perishing of all commitments of a living person.
- Demise: the perishing of physical attributes of a living person (traditional death).
- Annihilation: the perishing of all descriptions that a person has made.
Now Heidegger’s use of death was meant to be a fundamental orientation that Da-sein ‘has’ towards its own end (Those are his quotes around has, not mine- see p. 247 of B&T, p. 229 of Stambaugh) and demise was as above. Hence death and demise are somewhat separate because demise is the physical end and death is the way we are oriented to the end of being.
My view is that demise is one kind, a subset, of overall metaphysical death. I am less concerned here with the existential questions about death (though these are important) and more concerned with the ontological relationship between demise and other sorts of perishing. What follows is the insight separating overall metaphysical death from the three particular ways of perishing.
I’m using fallen in a (only somewhat) technical sense to mean the loss of all commitments. If you lose all capability to have commitments, then you have fallen, almost as in ‘fallen off the map.’ “Gone” is similar- you may not be physically dead, but if you are gone (e.g. to some foreign place never to return) you are dead to those with whom you had made commitments. Comatose, but without physical symptoms, is another example. You’re body may still live and for all anyone knows your mind may be as sharp as ever, but you are incapable of keeping commitments and are therefore ‘dead to the world’.
Demise is death as is traditionally defined: when you have met your demise your body is destroyed. Of course there may be some afterlife in which you may keep your commitments (think Ghost, the movie) or your descriptions of the world may continue (Plato will live forever through his writings - I wonder if someone, somewhere is discussing Plato at every instant of every day), but you’re physically dead as a doorknob after your demise.
Annihilation is the destruction of a person’s descriptions of the world. Describing things is perhaps the most basic of human accomplishments - we reward babies (and philosophers) handsomely for accurate descriptions - and if this is taken away from a person, then that person will not have even achieved the simplest of human accomplishments. Annihilating someone is making the world forget that he or she is a person: it is to become nameless. Perhaps the way to think of it is as in Kafka’s Metamorphosis: Gregor is changed into a vermin/bug that has a working body and (for a while) can fulfill some commitments, but eventually is unable to communicate how his/its world has changed. At this point any future that Gregor had has been annihilated: the thing he became could continue living, but its life would bear no resemblance to what was formerly Gregor. If all evidence of Gregor’s history was erased, even if the thing he turned into still lived, then Gregor would be completely annihilated.
So to completely metaphysically die, you need to be dead (traditional), gone and forgotten.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
03.02.08
Posted in metaphysics, mind, philosophy, science, technology at 4:24 pm by nogre
This interview with Hubert Dreyfus (just the parts about computers: part 1, part 2. via Continental Philosophy) briefly outlines one of the major criticisms leveled against artificial intelligence: computers will never be intelligent because our intelligence is based upon our physical interactions in and with the world. Very briefly, our intelligence is fundamentally tied to our bodies because it is only through our bodies do we have any interaction with the world. If we separate our intelligence from the body, as in the case with computers, then whatever it is that the computer has, it is not intelligence because intelligence only refers to how to bodily interact with the world.
As Dreyfus says this problem is attributed to a Merleau-Ponty extension of Heidegger and the only proposed solution is to embody computers by providing them with a full representation of world and body. I don’t think there is generally much faith in this solution; I certainly don’t have much faith in it.
However, this bodily criticism is a straw man. Computers have ‘bodies,’ they are definitely physical things in the world. But what of the physical interactions required for intelligence? Computers interact with the world: computers are affected by heat, moisture, dirt, vibration, etcetera. The only differences are the actual interactions that computers have as compared to humans: we experience humidity one way and they experience it differently. So yes, computers will have different interactions and hence they will never have the same intelligence that we have, but that does not imply that computers cannot have an embodied intelligence. It only means that computer embodied intelligence will be significantly different than our own intelligence. Therefore the above argument against computer intelligence only applies to those people who are trying to replicate perfect human intelligence and does nothing against people trying to create intelligence in computers.
For example, light-skinned and dark-skinned people have very slightly different physiologies. Now I see the above argument as saying that someone of different skin color cannot have the same sort of intelligence that you have because their interactions with the world are inherently different. Sure, everyone experiences things slightly differently due to having different bodies, but to claim that this creates incompatible intelligences is obviously wrong: No one on the face of the earth would be able to communicate with each other due to everyone being physically unique. Computers may be physically different to a greater extent, but this does not impact intelligence.
The criticism of computer intelligence based upon the need for a body is no more than subtle techno-racism.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
02.26.08
Posted in metaphysics, mind, philosophy, religion, science at 11:27 pm by nogre
I have written an article entitled “Occlumency.” Occlumency, for those of us without intimate knowledge of the world of Harry Potter, is the skill that seals the mind against magical intrusion and influence. No, I have no magical ability, but thanks to my metaphysics some skills not previously included in the human repertoire can now be accessed and explained: The paper’s aim is to teach the reader how to metaphysically seal the mind against certain kinds of intrusion and influence.
I have had some very positive feedback from the few I’ve already shown it to, and more is welcome. No special knowledge required, though I suggest reading the Harry Potter books anyway.
Here’s the PDF, with nice LaTeX formatting.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
02.08.08
Posted in metaphysics, mind, philosophy at 4:21 pm by nogre
After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave–a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead: but given the way of men there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.–And we–we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
~F. N.
If want to study the mind, we believed that we needed to understand intentionality:
Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. –SEP
However intentionality is nowhere to be found. Intentionality is supposed to give us everything, it is the power of the mind, but in giving us everything, it itself is nothing.
These are the cases:
- Intentionality is the mark of all mental states.
- Intentionality is the mark of some mental states.
If intentionality exists in every mental activities, it’s then on par with ‘It’s raining or it’s not raining,’ and just as vacuous: any and every mental activity would be intentional implying that ‘mental activity’ = ‘intentional activity’. It is a distinction without a difference.
On the other hand allow for some mental things being intentional and other mental things not being intentional, i.e. the intentional is a subset of some greater mental activity. Then we’ve conceded that we aren’t asking about what we are or how we do what we do, but labeling a subset. I’m all for getting things labeled correctly, but we’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
Intentionality is dead. Whatever use we have gotten out of it in the past we should be thankful for but it is time to move on.
Long live Commitment
I stated in my metaphysics that conscious things make commitments. We are committed to doing certain things at certain times and other things at other time because of other commitments we have made. If we are committed to remembering someone’s birthday, then we take steps to ensure that we know what time of year that person was born. If these steps include some power of the mind ‘to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs,’ so be it, but all these things are secondary to the commitment initially made.
Some may call foul at this point: The objection to intentionality above applies to commitment and hence I am not practicing what I preach. If everything is a commitment then commitment is just as vacuous a concept as intentionality was accused of being.
Yes commitment is fundamental and hence may appear vacuous to some, but commitment comes with an internal structure that intentionality lacks. Intentionality is a power of the mind. Powers lack any internal structure: they act without having a more fundamental thing causing them to act, else that thing would be the power.
Say I am committed to my friends’ happiness and because of this commitment I send them cards on holidays. Commitments allow for structured derivative commitments, e.g. being committed to my friends’ happiness means I am committed to sending out letters and a commitment to sending out letters means a commitment to remembering and recording addresses. This food chain of commitments that is created, where the smaller commitments become part of bigger commitments which are part of even bigger commitments (with all sorts of interrelations between chains), gives us plenty of relations to investigate. Therefore it is true that analyzing a single commitment alone will get you no nowhere (e.g. analyzing a commitment to recording addresses) but analyzing groups of commitments will be far from vacuous.
Understanding ourselves and how we do what we do requires us to have a perspective on commitment, which I’ve discussed in briefly in my metaphysics. As meager an analysis as I am currently able to provide, it is still more than I felt we had before. Commitments determine our perspectives on certain situations and our perspectives likewise determine our commitments. Through analysis of our commitments and our perspective on things, we can understand how and why we do what we do. I don’t mean this to be a merely theoretical point but a practical one as well: we try to accomplish different things for specific reasons and when asked, we are able to give those reasons. Sometimes we have to preface our explanations with a description of how we perceived the situation to justify actions that seem unreasonable in hindsight, but this is all part of how we actually do and explain things.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
02.06.08
Posted in logic, metaphysics, mind, philosophy at 12:22 pm by nogre
Aaron Cotnoir has suggested that people think that paradoxes are meaningless. I think they are lucky that they hadn’t suggested that to me unless they wanted to see me freak out.
It was my good fortune to have my first real exposure to the work of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein be from Thomas Ricketts. I can’t remember verbatim what he said, but this is close:
No one knows how long it took Frege to understand what Russell had written in his letter (Russell’s Paradox), be it a few seconds, a minute, ten minutes or a few hours. But we do know that at that moment his entire universe collapsed.
Only out of gross ignorance of history can anyone believe that paradoxes are meaningless. Frege’s project up until Russell came along and spoiled everything was, at least in part, to give a firm foundation for mathematics based solely upon logic. With just a few laws coupled with his newfound quantification he was able to provide a seemingly consistent theory and then also provide sophisticated philosophy of language to bolster his views.
There was probably a moment when Frege allowed himself to dare to think he’d solved one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Not only had he legitimately and demonstrably changed mathematics forever, but the ramifications of his theory were obviously far-reaching into philosophy and science. Then Russell sent him that letter that struck at the very axioms of his theory. It was a jugular shot and I can’t see Frege feeling other than like all the blood had been drained from his body. Everything he had worked for was put in jeopardy.
So if anyone believes that paradoxes are meaningless, I suggest to go read some history. Paradoxes can destroy. Any theory that comes along and says paradoxes are meaningless, is garbage.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
01.29.08
Posted in Relativity, logic, metaphysics, mind, ontology, philosophy, religion, science, wittgenstein at 12:16 am by nogre
I didn’t think I’d be able to write this at all and I am still surprised now. It was only a few weeks ago that I had believed that it could be up to three years before anything would have been started. That said, I can’t speak much for the quality of the work. My own naiveté and lack of scholarship leads me to think that better people have long dismissed the few ideas that I have presented here. Still, in my defense, what I do present is what I sincerely believe and if there is nothing new here, then I at least have accomplished stating with whom I agree.
Writing this has made me feel more free than perhaps anything else in my life. All criticism is welcome.
Metaphysics 1
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
Posted in Relativity, metaphysics, mind, philosophy, religion, science, wittgenstein at 12:07 am by nogre
1 Ontology
1.1 The Cogito
“… I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.” - R.D.
There are three things most should agree upon1
in light of this statement:
- When something is put forward or conceived, it is not possible to deny that something is doing the putting forward or conceiving.
- When something is put forward or conceived, it is not possible to deny that putting forward or conceiving exists.
- When something is put forward or conceived, it is not possible to deny that there is something put forward or conceived.
Simply put, there are things that conceive which I will refer to as consciousness, there is the subject of the consciousness which I will refer to as matter, and there is how consciousness describes the matter, which I will refer to as description. These are the three things that exist upon reflection, always.
1.2 Substance
“If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.” - L.W.2
To analyze consciousness, matter and description, the analysis must be done in terms at least as fundamental as consciousness, matter or description. The only things as fundamental as consciousness, matter or description are consciousness, matter and description: these three are the only things that cannot be denied.
One option remaining is to analyze consciousness, matter and description in terms of each other. However, analysis of fundamental things in terms of each other leads to unexpected results. If matter and description are studied as functions of consciousness, then consciousness becomes neither describable nor indescribable and neither material nor immaterial. If matter and consciousness are regarded as descriptions, then description is neither alive nor dead and is neither material nor immaterial. If consciousness and description are functions of matter, then matter is neither alive nor dead and is neither describable nor indescribable. Therefore it is not possible to treat one of the three as more fundamental than the others without severe consequences.
In light of the results of the above discussion, all three are to be understood equally as substance. The three substances are consciousness, matter and description.
2 Explanation
With no one fundamental substance how is explanation possible?
2.1 Relativity
Relativity means there is no preferential perspective for the description of natural phenomena: each of us has a location as good as everyone else’s when it comes to describing the physical world. Relativity is applicable to substance as well: there is no preferential ontological perspective for substance and hence any understanding of substance is a legitimate place to begin analysis of substance. Anyone may consider the arguments from Section 1 regardless of prior ontological commitments.
Though I believe substance relativity to be self evident, a few words of support may be given. Consider the case if it were not true, i.e. there were preferential ontological situations, access to certain substances, that enabled those with access to have special insight to the mysteries of the world. People without this special access would have no way to gain it unless they were somehow given access by someone who had it; it would be undiscoverable. However, since we are investigating that which is common to everyone, as stated in Section 1.1, this is not the case and hence substance is relative.
2.2 Perspective
Relativity also means that the onlooker’s perspective has to be taken into account when describing natural phenomena: motion means motion relative to the agent describing the situation. When studying substance no one is free of ontological commitments and these need to be accounted for (just as any motion of the onlooker needs to be accounted for in physics). At any given point it is possible to be looking at a situation from the perspective of consciousness, matter or description.
For example take the question, “Does the sun shine?” From the perspective of consciousness, the answer is no: the sun is not conscious and hence it doesn’t do anything. From the perspective of matter the answer is yes: the ball of matter called the sun radiates photons, and radiating photons is shining. From the perspective of description the answer is possibly sometimes: when the sun is conceived of as shining, then it is shines.3
Whichever of the three ontological commitments is being appealed to will dictate the answer or explanation received. No one is beholden to any particular substance and can change ontological commitments in an instant, as long as the requirements of Section 1.2 are met, which does mean that there may be more than one `correct’ answer for a given question. This does not mean that all the answers are equal: saying `If you say it does,’ may be technically correct from the descriptive perspective, but many times only an answer from the other perspectives is accepted (or advised).
3 Instances
In physics, motions and locations are determined by perspective; what is determined by perspective in substance?
3.1 Commitment
As mentioned in the previous section ontological commitment determines what the explanation or answer that is given to a question. Making a commitment is an activity that only a conscious thing can do. Moreover:
- If something is put forward or conceived, then something committed to putting that thing forward or conceiving it.
If this is false, then something was put forward and nothing committed to putting that thing forward; it was put forward or conceived without some conscious thing committing to having done so. If this was done without the commitment of the conscious thing, then it was not put forward: only conscious things can put things forward or conceive of things. Therefore all conscious things that put forward or conceive of things make commitments.
Commitments and perspective are relative to each other: perspective depends upon what commitments are held, and perspective determines what those commitments are. For example if I am committed to one person then my perspective on other people will no longer include those people for a variety of activities. If my perspective is that monogamy is unrealistic, then a commitment to one person is likewise unrealistic.
3.2 Things
The things that exist are determined by perspective too. Depending upon available information and theory, different perspectives on what sort of things make up this world can be presented. Life, death, dogs, personality, atoms, words, food, pain, etc. Whatever can be put forth as a subject of the consciousness is a thing. No thing is `wrong’ in the sense that it is the subject of a consciousness.
Things and perspective are relative to each other: perspective determines what sort of things populate the world, and the things that populate the world determine perspective. Until the discovery of the subatomic particle, many people believed that the atom was the smallest building block of the universe. The discovery of a new kind of thing forced people to change their perspective on what the universe was made of. Conversely, if I have had a few too many unexplainable experiences then my perspective might allow for things like ghosts without me ever having witnessed one.
3.3 Meaning
The meanings of our descriptions are determined by perspective. You can pick your own examples of the meaning of a sentence meaning something different depending on perspective, but Rodney Dangerfield provides classics:
A girl phoned me the other day and said… Come on over, there’s nobody home. I went over. Nobody was home.
Rodney’s perspective caused him to believe the sentence to mean something other than the literal meaning, which was exactly what the girl intended. Conversely, if a rosy picture is painted, then this description is meant to determine the perspective taken on the situation.
Meaning and perspective are relative to each other: perspective determines what descriptions mean and what our descriptions mean determine our perspectives.
Footnotes:
1The statement, “Something happened or something did not happen,” is also always true. If people object to the use of the Cogito, perhaps this sentence will provide a sufficient alternative. Other tautologies (It’s raining or it is not raining) introduce something new (rain) and hence are not as fundamental.
2Wittgenstein, L. On Certainty #205
3“Will the Giants win the Superbowl?” Consciousness and matter are silent. This question asks what you can conceive and hence is purely descriptive. Unfortunately it is looking like this is as likely as conceiving a round square. Go Eli!
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
01.22.08
Posted in metaphysics, philosophy, science at 7:53 pm by nogre
Many people have a “scientific” view of the world. This means that the world operates according to the laws of science, i.e., there are no mysterious forces that cannot be explained by some combination of physics, biology, psychology, economics etc. It is a mistaken view.
The scientific view of the world can be summarized by this formulation:
S) The world is governed by science if and only if, given a specified way things are at a specific time, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
If you believe the scientific view then, insofar as it is about the world, the scientific view itself must be a scientific fact.
There two cases:
- The scientific view was discovered.
- The scientific view was derived from some previously proven scientific statement(s).
Considering the first case we must ask if we have discovered the scientific view. Unfortunately no one has yet found a theory of everything and therefore it hasn’t been discovered.
This leaves discovering the scientific view by taking our individual scientific theories and generalizing them to include everything. The argument is that we have many theories that predict many things and if we only had enough, everything would be determined.
However, our individual scientific theories merely predict what will happen. No individual theory makes the claim that it governs nature, only the statement of the scientific view above makes that claim. For instance take gravity: it says that matter is attracted to itself with a certain amount of force. Nothing about the theory of gravity limits nature to following the theory of gravity. It is likewise for every other theory: each makes a specific prediction but is agnostic on how to interpret this prediction. Science cannot tell us that it is fundamentally controlled by laws.
What is left, the correct interpretation of science, is that science is a method for making continually better predictions about what will happen. As soon as the jump is made to believing that nature is controlled by our predictions, then science has been left behind and the murky philosophical world has been entered. This is not to say that there are mysterious forces that cannot be explained by some combination of physics, biology, psychology, economics etc. (though there are and always will be) but that this belief is not scientific.
Permalink
Digg it
¨
del.icio.us
¨
¨
Email
¨
Google
¨
reddit
¨
StumbleUpon
« Previous entries
