09.17.09

On Charitability

Posted in language, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy at 7:45 pm by nogre

There is no such thing as a private reality.  By private reality I mean any portion of reality that you alone can experience, that no one else could possibly understand.

There is, however, reality that is yet unexperienced and unknown to you.  Others may have experienced it before you, like explorers who have been to a far away place.  If a philosopher is clever, it is possible that she found a way to imbue her words with such an experience.  Since there are no private realities, it is also possible that you may be able to extract those experiences.

The allure of philosophy is then the allure of the unknown, the exotic and unexplored.  To be charitable is to approach philosophy in search of some yet unknown bit of reality.

Under these circumstances it is futile to give specific instructions on how to be charitable; each of us must understand how to prepare ourselves for adventuring beyond the relative comfort of what we know.

If anything, have faith in yourself and do not make assumptions (even charitable ones) about what you are doing.

Permalink Comments

04.26.09

Of Duckrabbits and Identity

Posted in epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, wittgenstein at 7:27 pm by nogre

Of late I’ve become increasingly concerned with the meaning of identity.  When we say, ‘x = x,’ we don’t mean that the x on the left is exactly identical to the x on the right because the x on the left is just that, on the left, and the x on the right is on the right, not the left.  Since equality would be useless without having 2 different objects (try to imagine the use of a reflexive identity symbol, i.e., one that for whatever object it is applies to, indicates that the object  is identical with itself), there is something mysterious about the use of identity.

But what is the mystery?  It cannot be anything to do with the subjects being declared identical: these objects are arbitrary to the particular topic being discussed.  For example if I say ‘the morning star = the evening star’ then we are talking about planets, and if I say that ‘3 = y’ then I am talking about numbers.  The identity sign is the same in both, even though the objects being discussed are rather different.

It is easy enough to believe that by paying attention to the different objects being declared identical we can know how to act (some sort of context principle *cringe*).  But this doesn’t address the question specifically: although we can know how to use the identity symbol in specific instances, this tells us nothing about how identity works or what it means.

Take a look at this:

=

The picture is the same save for location on the webpage.

———–

But what if we call the one on the left a duck and the one on the right a rabbit: what is different?  The features obviously don’t change, only the way we are seeing (perceiving? apprehending? looking at? interpreting?)  the two images.

(Triple bonus points to anyone who can look at the two pictures at once and see one as a duck and the other as a rabbit. Hint- it is easier for me to do it if I try to see the one on the left as a rabbit and the one on the right as a duck… focus on the mouths.)

In this example, as opposed to the others discussed above, a decision was required to be made – to see one picture one way and the other another way – before the differences even existed.  Now, in the above examples it appeared that there was a difference of knowledge: at one point we didn’t know that the evening star and morning star were one and the same, or that y was equal to 3.  This isn’t the case when looking at identical duckrabbit pictures because there is nothing about the two pictures that is different; the difference is entirely in the mind.

Let me make a suggestion about how to describe the phenomenon of being able to see one image two different ways: the image can be instantiated in two different ways, i.e. it has an associated universe with a population of two.  There are two possible descriptions associated with this image and until we make a decision about how to describe it, the image is like an uninstantiated formula.

Identity, then, is an indication that the two associated objects are things that can be generalized to the same formula.  The picture of the duck and the picture of the rabbit can be called identical because they both have a single general formula (the duckrabbit picture) that can be instantiated into either.  The identity symbol indicates that the two associated objects are two instantiations of the same general thing, be it a number, planet or image (but not objects in space-time because that would be self-contradictory… space-time and instantiation, a topic for another day).

How identity works can now be identified: it is to instantiate and generalize.  Consider the mystery of how we see the duckrabbit one way or the other: no one can tell you how you are able to see the image one way or the other.  However, you are able to instantiate the image in one way and then another, and recognize that both the duck and rabbit are shown by the same image.

Instantiation and generalization are skills and the identity symbol between the two images above indicates that you have to use that skill to generalized both to one formula.  Most of the time it is non-trivial to instantiate or generalize in order to show two things (formulas) to be equal.  In the case of the duckrabbit it is trivial because the work went into the instantiation process (to see the images one way or the other); in the other examples the situation is reversed, such that we had the instantiations but not the general formula.  In all cases, though, only when we can go back and forth between different instantiations and a single generalization do we claim two things identical.

Permalink Comments

01.21.09

Deriving Philosophy of Science

Posted in metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, science at 5:27 pm by nogre

Two posts ago I claimed that

The goal of science is, therefore, to separate the settled from the anomalous.

So what is the settled?  What is the anomalous?  How are they separated?

If we take these concepts to be fundamental then we are unable to analyze the concepts of settled, anomalous and separation scientifically: if they are at the bottom of all science, then everything within science depends upon them.

How then to understand?

At the bottom of it all is our ability to understand. We learn and we understand.  With this comes the ability to determine what we believe we understand and what we do not:  For certain things we have reasons that explain those phenomena and for other things we will not have reasons nor explanations.

These abilities are not based in science; they are metaphysical and logical.  Claiming that you cannot understand (in general) is paradoxical.  If you claim to not understand what it is to understand, then you must understand what it is not to understand.  But if you understand what it is not to understand, then you must know what it is to understand not understanding.  So you must understand what it to understand. But then you are denying being able to understand…  Hence it is nonsensical to deny understanding understanding.

Therefore we get understanding, not understanding and the difference on non-scientific grounds.   Insofar as reasons and explanations are part of understanding, we get them too.

How do we understand what is settled and what is anomalous?

Again paradox:

If you claim that it is not settled what it means to be settled then you must have known what it is to be not settled, that is, it is settled what it is to be not settled.  Then you must know what it is to be settled, i.e. it is settled.  But then you claim that it is not settled… Therefore you cannot claim that what it means for something to be settled is not settled.

If we assume that not settled and anomalous are identical in meaning (not settled = anomalous; not anomalous = settled) then we have nearly all the concepts we need.

But here comes the hard part: how do we separate the settled from the not settled?

Well, since we already have understanding, this requires doing actual science, as in creating a theory and then  going and seeing if that theory actually makes something that was anomalous no longer so by predicting it accurately.  This isn’t the post for me to get down off my metaphysical cloud, so Good Luck, you’re on your own (for now at least).

Permalink Comments

01.09.09

Truth is… and other short thoughts

Posted in ethics, language, logic, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, science at 1:04 pm by nogre

Truth is whatever you are willing to wager your sanity on.  This works because sanity is relative to people, so if you are willing to wager your sanity on something, so should other people.

Deontology has a problem because no one can definitively tell you what it is to follow a rule.  So deontologists can’t fault others for appealing to unexplained concepts without undermining their own argument.

Whereas the meanings of particular words may be conventional and subject to historical accident, there are distinctions that the words create that are not conventional.  If logical operators are conventional, but must exist is every possible world (you must define the world using such operators), then conventional loses its meaning: it ceases to be a convention and is instead a necessity of the universe.

The concept of structure in ’structural realism’ is ontological, causing problems for ontic structural realists.  By calling the theory structural, structural realists are attempting to exploit the concepts associated with ’structure’ from areas other than philosophy of science.  This means that the term is not being used ontically because the concept of structure is taken to have real properties.  So at every turn ontic structural realists are appealing to an ontological concept.

—–

oh and information aesthetics is back from break! woohoo!

Permalink Comments

11.10.08

Part 2 of the Preterphysics: Metaphysical Ontology

Posted in art, epistemology, ethics, language, logic, metaphysics, mind, ontology, philosophy, preterphysics, science at 4:12 pm by nogre

What follows is the second part of my metaphysics, which includes the basic outline of just about everything in this world: nature, science, ethics, language and more.  Again it is impossibly short, but the overall structure is correct, so you get a flavor of how I think about everything non-preterphysical.

————

1 Metaphysical Ontology

1.1 Undisciplined Substances

To be disciplined is to take other people’s ontological position into consideration. Since it is impossible, without being crazy, to do otherwise, what is meant by `undisciplined’ is the minimal position: to take other people’s ontological position into consideration as little as possible.

1.1.1 Objects, Processes and Nature

Objects cannot exists alone. To observe an object, to recognize its existence, requires observing some process that the object is part of. Rational beings can lose their rationality; the process of losing rationality identifies a rational being, because the process could not occur without the existence of one.

Objects and processes are what make up Nature.

1.1.2 Words, Descriptions and Language

Words cannot exist alone; they are inseparable from descriptions. For a word to exist is for that word to be part of some description. Without being part of a description, a word is indistinguishable from anything else.

Words and descriptions are what make up Language.

1.1.3 Commitments, Values and Responsibility

Commitments cannot exist alone; they are inseparable from values. Values are how commitments are ranked. Without values all commitments are equal, and hence non-existent.

Commitments and values are what make up Responsibility.

1.2 Disciplined Substances

When you take other people into consideration when considering substance, then you have disciplined substance.

1.2.1 Science, Art and Craft

When we describe objects and processes in a disciplined way then we are describing nature scientifically. This means that the objects and processes are described in a way that is not limited to a particular person or place.

Craft is a level of discipline that is not as universalized: when you describe nature such that it refers to a group of people or various places, then you are describing craft.

1.2.2 Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

When we describe words and descriptions in a disciplined way then we are are talking about the language’s grammar. This means that the words and descriptions are described in a way that is not limited to a particular description. If we are describing features that all languages have, then this is called logic.

Rhetoric is a level of discipline that is not as universalized: when you describe grammar such that it refers to a group of words or descriptions, then you are describing rhetoric.

1.2.3 Ethics, Worldview and Society

When we describe commitments and values in a disciplined way then we are talking about ethical responsibilities. This means that the commitments and values are described in a way that is not limited to a particular person or place. If we are describing features that all ethics have then this is a worldview.

Society is a level of discipline that is not as universalized: when you describe ethics such that it refers to a group of commitments or values, then you are describing a society.

Permalink Comments

10.25.08

Prologue to the Preterphysics

Posted in epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, preterphysics at 3:07 pm by nogre

A word of explanation before the actual text.  Besides never setting out to write something like this, I think it is at best good; likely not too bad.  Perhaps it is horrible, but all these determinations I leave to others.  I wrote it because I felt there was nothing else to be done, and it is the best I can do at the moment.

So what did I write?  The best way to describe the Prologue is to make a comparison to Descartes Cogito.  I set out the barest basics for what I believe can be used as a foundation for knowledge and inquiry, and for what exists in general.  And all in less than a page…

1 Prologue: Insanity

If am insane, then I have a problem. If I believe that I am insane, then there is nothing to be done because I am irreparably damaged and won’t be able to learn or understand anything.

I do not believe myself insane.

1.1 Substances

If I affirm the previous sentence then I may infer a few things:

1. Descriptions and words exist, else I wouldn’t have been able to make the above statement; I wrote it.
2. Commitments exist, else I wouldn’t have been able to affirm the above statement; I’m committed to it.
3. Something other than words, descriptions and commitments exist, else I wouldn’t have had anything to describe or commit to.

These three existential statements are inferred from affirming that I am not insane. So if you say you are not insane then you can also be said to believe in commitments, descriptions, and other objects.

1.2 Discipline

Being irreparably damaged is the same as being insane; if damaged you’re incapable of understanding what others can understand. Therefore if you deny that you are insane then you deny that you are damaged.

Anyone who asserts that they are not damaged, not insane, is committed to an ontology that everyone who is sane will understand.

If it were false, i.e. you claim you are not insane and you are committed to an ontology that some who are sane cannot understand, then those who you say cannot understand are damaged in some way becaues they cannot understand but are also not insane. However, claiming that someone is incapable of understanding but not insane is nonsense.

Therefore there is no preferential ontological perspective: ontology is relative to the sane. All sane people are equal in the sense that they can understand each other, are reasonable, when researching the kinds of things that exist. This is not to say that there won’t be disagreements or that understanding will not take time and effort, but that there is no third option of being niether sane nor insane. Either you understand and can be understood or you do not and cannot. and this space between sanity and insanity will be dealt with in the section on preterphysics.

Permalink Comments

09.04.08

The Preterphysics

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 1 Comment

07.18.08

more of my metaphysics

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 Comments

05.24.08

Demise, the Fallen and Annihilation

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:

1. Fallen: the perishing of all commitments of a living person.
2. Demise: the perishing of physical attributes of a living person (traditional death).
3. 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 Comments

03.02.08

Computers, Intelligence and the Embodied Mind

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 Comments