Month: October 2011

Random Reflections

 

Perspective

How does one create new knowledge from existing knowledge? That is: How can a conclusion go beyond the premises?

 

Begin with premises. Deconstruct. Reconstruct.

Abstraction globalizes problems/ issues and exposes gaps and missing links.

 

When you change words in your problem statement, you initiate an unobservable process in your mind that may lead to a new thought or idea.

 

Aristotle: words are sounds that become symbols of mental experience through the process of association.

 

Use words to suggest—to incite connections—rather than expressing and conveying.

 

Take statements—problems or perspectives—and invert their truth values: negative/ untrue statements makes us pause and slow down the thinking process.

 

Positive action statement (four parts):

  1. The action- thing you want to do
  2. The object- thing/ person you want to change
  3. The qualifies- kind of action you want
  4. The end result- result you expect to follow

 

Perceptual positions determine how we view things. Verbal description of reality is rendered impossible by the structure of language itself.

 

Context is the combination of axioms: they act as the categorical structure for arranging the ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ gathered from senses through experimentation (direct experience)

 

Axioms are useless if they are not intimately tied to experience/ sense. Creativity reconstitutes axioms into conceptions; that is, creativity rearranges axioms into different/ new grounds or orders, which establishes new context (new limits).  New sense impressions (experience) then yields new and varied axioms/ facts/ Most people think top down. Genius think bottom up: this requires recombination and synthesis, specifically with non-binding spatial thought.

 

Logic is applied to justify connection/ association of axioms from senses which establishes conceptions/ context. Logic and reasoning occurs after, not before, experience/ sensing. We apply logic to contextualize/ conceptualize (justification through limited premises) axioms/ facts in a way that yields a singular perspective.

 

 

 

 

Subjective perspective formation:

T: time/ progression of events

H: historical knowledge of past experience/ memory

A: Axioms/ true facts

C: Conceptions/ formalized opinions

 

 

H————————–H       [T∞h]

|        A1h A2h A3h A4h    |         |

P <        C1 C 2 C 3       >P       |

|        A1p A2p A3p A4p   |         |

S————————– S         V

[Tp]

 

Premise

P: subjective perspective

I: ideology

W: etiology/ worldview

S: Science discipline

E: epistemology

F: Facts

T: Testing

R: Relativity (time)

C: Concept

 

 

Judge the world as you judge yourself. Self-deception leaves you outside of the world you judge. We see the world as we are.

 

Creativity is dynamic processing.

 

Oppression leads people to believe that routine repetition is self-preservation.

Since most people are other people: if you want to know others, know yourself.

I am both an individual and an other. I do not exist simultaneously.

 

10/30/2011

Worldview: Etiology Formation

According to Apostel, a worldview is an ontology, or a descriptive model of the world. It should comprise these six elements:

  1. An explanation of the world
  2. A futurology, answering the question “where are we heading?”
  3. Values, answers to ethical questions: “What should we do?”
  4. A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: “How should we attain our goals?”
  5. An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. “What is true and false?”
  6. An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own “building blocks,” its origins and construction.

1. There are many explanations of worldly phenomenon, and therefore many worldviews, i.e. etiologies.
(The multiplicity of perspectives, variably determined by the union of direct experience and the influence of the prevailing ideologies within any given context of culture, render unique explanations for every individual; while similarities exist, no two perspectives are completely commensurable. Socialization, or more specifically enculturation, is the single most important determinate in shaping a subjective perspective.)

2. Each explanation contains its own end, or futurology. (Explanations may change when a subject recognizes and challenges the limits of their experience and the latent ideology maintained by their subjective perspective.)

3. Values and ethics are dependent on these ends and seek to preserve these ends.

4. The justification of ends, i.e. the methodology for their achievement, is dependent upon the content of these values and ethics.

5. A subjects epistemology is determined by their perspective, which in turn yields their explanations. (See 1)

6. A world view is domain constituted by the propositional content and functionality maintained by a subjective perspective. (See 1-5.)

Etiology Formation

According to Apostel, a worldview is an ontology, or a descriptive model of the world. It should comprise these six elements:

  1. An explanation of the world
  2. A futurology, answering the question “where are we heading?”
  3. Values, answers to ethical questions: “What should we do?”
  4. A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: “How should we attain our goals?”
  5. An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. “What is true and false?”
  6. An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own “building blocks,” its origins and construction.

1. There are many explanations of worldly phenomenon, and therefore many worldviews, i.e. etiologies.
(The multiplicity of perspectives, variably determined by the union of direct experience and the influence of the prevailing ideologies within any given context of culture, render unique explanations for every individual; while similarities exist, no two perspectives are completely commensurable. Socialization, or more specifically enculturation, is the single most important determinate in shaping a subjective perspective.)

2. Each explanation contains its own end, or futurology. (Explanations may change when a subject recognizes and challenges the limits of their experience and the latent ideology maintained by their subjective perspective.)

3. Values and ethics are dependent on these ends and seek to preserve these ends.

4. The justification of ends, i.e. the methodology for their achievement, is dependent upon the content of these values and ethics.

5. A subjects epistemology is determined by their perspective, which in turn yields their explanations. (See 1)

6. A world view is domain constituted by the propositional content and functionality maintained by a subjective perspective. (See 1-5.)

Strang/le

I feel the weight of death.
That’s all you need to know about me.
Unfortunately,
the significance of that burden is never fully appreciated.

Childhood exists as a series of poems.
Fragmented
words,
feelings,
senses.
A confetti of experience tossed here and there.

Our civilization barely breathes anymore.
We are slowly strangling ourselves;
and we love it.

The weight of my conscience makes my bones ache.

Possessed and pregnant with thoughts.
Some thoughts manage to explode,
spewing their guts on these pages.
Other thoughts quietly implode,
sucking my life and everything in me with them.
The beam of consciousness strikes,
and all thoughts shine,
for a moment.

Floating thoughts,
suspended in time,
glittering like gold,
only to find an edge of darkness
and pass quietly into oblivion.

I want to follow my thoughts there,
to the event horizon
where the weight of the universe lies,
where thoughts disentangle,
and oblivion pulls.

Talk of material goods,
possessions
and luxuries.
Talk of little lives
and big things.

She held out a smile, Continue reading “Strang/le”

Intellectualism vs Scientism

This is my ranting response to the article Timothy Ferris: The World of the Intellectual vs. The World of the Engineer.

The author fails to see the reciprocal relationship between intellectualism and engineering- what I would respectively equate to abstract and applied thought (The false dichotomy he seems to be presenting is between intellectualism and scientism). He over and under generalizes the utility of both. His arguments for their failure and success are also weak. For as many failed intellectual theories there are just as many failed scientific theories (Think Fleischmann and Pons’s Cold Fusion, Einstein’s Static Universe, Phrenology, Blank State Theory, Luminiferous Aether, Phlogiston Theory, Ptolemaic Solar System, and the list goes on.) Progress is piecemeal, accreting and tossing out new and old information as we continue to test our understanding in an ever evolving world.

The author states, but fails to appreciate, that intellectualism is about the generation of ideas, whereas science is the testing of these ideas. Intellectualism is concerned with asking the right questions; science is concerned with giving the right answers. Both require each other. Both require trial and error in order to explore their limits. Insofar as these ideas continually stand up to the rigor of the scientific method, they become facts. But facts- being derived from experience- are probabilistic and not true. Facts treated as truths lead to dogmatism, intellectual blindness and stagnation. Intellectualism aim’s to continually challenges facts to render more pragmatic solutions for persistent problems. They challenge the ideologies and methodologies that produce the facts.

He says that Freud did nothing, made no contributions? What of his discovery of the nature and functioning of the unconscious mind? And Marx theories were a complete failure? His theories contributed to what we now call sociology. In addition he contributed to the gender neutral workforce labor theories associated with feminism, formulated labor theories of value by investigating the production and circulation processes of industrial capitalism, developed economic Materialism, expanded on economic theories of the state, and many more. One of Einstein’s favorite authors and greatest influences was philosopher Immanuel Kant, particular his book The Critique of Pure Reason, whose metaphysics would later play on a role in Einstein’s famous re-conceptualization of time and space. But even Einstein’s genius is a temporary artifact on the road to progress (It seems recent evidence at the LHC will likely disprove Einstein’s mass equivalence theory.)

The author seems to think that science and engineering are devoid of ideologies of their own. This is completely wrong. They operate within their own ideologies and paradigms. Chances are, if history has taught us anything, their current paradigms are flawed and may be restricting their ability to see solutions. Read Philosopher’s of Science Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos for more on how ideologies are an inescapable aspect of our subjective psychology.

I have more to say, but I’m done ranting. I’m sure I’ve left a lot out. I guess I don’t know what the author’s point is. What is intellectualism, really? Thinking abstractly? I guess we disagree on the utility of abstract thinking. Science and intellectualism are indispensable to one another’s success. I’ll leave you with this:

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear asPlatonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)

Random Weekend Updates

This past weekend was fall break. I traveled to Hilton Head Island, SC with my room mate and  a mutual friend for the weekend. We had studying and work to do and initially planned to stay on campus but ultimately decided that doing work at the beach is infinitely better than continuing the daily monotony of Nashville. It was an interesting weekend. We took a day to trip to explore the historic district of Savannah, GA and even went to some local Hilton Head dive bars. For whatever reason I decided to be on the prowl when we went to the bars, something I typically shy away from. I figured “screw it”, I was on vacation, and my friends needed a wing man.

What is a wing man? A friend who accompanies you when he’s trying to hit on or pick up women. Having another person with you diverts some of the attention and relieves some of the pressure when approaching a girl or groups of girls. A wing man ultimately makes you look good by talking you up, referencing your awesomeness and offering plenty of admiration. They act as moral support. They help to distract the girl’s other friends so that her attention is on you and you alone. Anyway.

Even though I had every intention of being a wing man this weekend, it didn’t end up totally working out that way. I have a tough time turning down a good looking girl. Especially one who eye fuck’s me from across the lounge. Especially one that stands sensually by herself and makes no obvious effort to seek the company of friends or other guys. What girl stands by herself in the middle of hoppin bar, lookin all seductive and pretty, just ’cause? No girl. Unless, of course, she has motives. And this one definitely did.

So I’m a sucker for the slender, fragile looking ones with delicate features and voluptuous curves that radiate with the purity of youth. What can I say? Something inside me takes control and justifies why I must make her apart of my life, if only for a moment.

Anyway. I don’t feel like going into details about the various women I picked up this weekend. All I’ll say is it was fun and refreshing.  And women are funny.

When I woke on Sunday I found myself still resting in the comforting embrace of yesternight’s dream. I recalled that I was a reknown intellectual whom everyone revered and respected as a polyglot and world traveler. What stood out what my ability to speak so many languages. People automatically attributed a deep respect for the culture they perceived me to possess.  The dream left me impassioned with a residual glow that lingered behind my thoughts as I gathered myself for the day.  I found myself reliving the dream throughout the morning- relishing in the adulation, the respect and admiration- over and over again until suddenly I had the desire to do something about it.

I decided that I wanted to learn another language. Sure, I know a bit of Spanish, but the years of crappy education and listless enthusiasm for the study has left me mired with disaffection.  But what language? There are two languages that immediately stand out due to my cultural and academic interests. These two are French and German. The most prolific and influential thinkers and philosophers of the past several hundred years have originated in these two nations. I would love nothing more than to explore the roots of their worldview by learning their language. In the end I decided to teach myself French because of my previous background in Latin languages, and because French just sounds so damn sexy.

And I decided to learn a language for myself. Not because of anyone else. I’ve learned that the best teacher is often yourself, and anytime I’ve wanted to learn something badly enough I didn’t wait around for a teacher or risk my education with their crappy instruction. I just teach myself.

So I jumped on google and did research for the best books on learning French grammar, vocab, and conversation. I also found some excellent books written in French. I jumped on Amazon and began  filling my basket when, to my displeasure, I realized I had thirty some books already in my basket that were waiting to be purchased.

My problem is I love books. More specifically, I love learning and knowledge and tend to think that books are the second best way to learn, second only to direct experience. So I have the habit of saving relevant, important, and recommended books until I’ve read my current stack or I have the extra income to spend fifty to several hundred dollars on buying more.  The issue arises when the list of  books I want to read exceeds my ability to reasonably read and pay for them. The result from this issue is that I have over seven hundred books marked “saved for later” in my Amazon account basket. Anyway.

Seeing as how I was finished with my current reading, and seeing as how I had a little extra cushion in my bank account, I decided to blow a hundo to buy a dime stack’s worth of books. The result was several books on French, Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, a book on Godel’s incompleteness theorem, books on the philosophy of science, works by both Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos, including lectures and correspondence between the two, books on linguistics, language and culture by Noam Chomsky, and book titled the Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style.

That being said, I want to learn to speak conversational French within a year. Over the past several years I have had the pleasure of witnessing several of my close friends make the decision to learn a language- Japanese, Spanish, Chinese- and succeed. I watch them pick away at it little by little until, over the course of a year or two, they possess an entirely new language. I want that.  At least thirty minutes a day, every day? So doable.

My strategy is to learn sentences first. I figured the best way to learn a language is to just learn how to say exactly what you want to say. This way I learn usage of both proper grammar and vocabulary, as well as conjugations. When I learn enough sentences that allow me to communicate what I want to say, I feel like I’ll be able to intuitively mold and shape the component parts comprising these functional sentences to construct new sentences. I get the impression that this is how children learn language anyway. They don’t learn grammar. They don’t learn vocab. They just know that they have a desire to communicate something and then find the appropriate ‘noise-language’ to say it. Soon they learn to identify which word and part of speech functions to do what, and slowly, after a period of trial and error and self correcting, they become proficient in the language.

I know this is a simplistic rendition of how the learning process will actually end up looking, but its how I imagine it most effectively working. Anyway.

Thoughts

My favorite activities, in serial order, consist of: ‘Increasing my value as a person’, through meaningful work or study, and engaging in relationships. I do not enjoy relationships if I do not believe I have any value to bring to them. My relationships are most enjoyable when I believe I am positively contributing some of my own value to them. I am most fulfilled when I am studying, accreting new experiences, or achieving some worthwhile purpose or aim.

These are random thoughts- know that I’m a humanists, not a male chauvinist, and that I believe in equal rights and conceptions between men and women:
In The Republic Plato wrote that literature is feminizing and that combat is masculinizing. I’ve wrote about this before, but I think that education, on a certain level, is feminizing because it requires the passive consumption of information. This is why, I think, there are more women in school and, on average, they do better than their male counterparts. Men as not passive, on a whole, but more active. They challenge and are not as receptive to authority.  In this way men are creative and more apt to spread their influence and dominate through their own authority. Even though there are more women in the education system and even though they do better than males on average, it is not often that they contribute to higher knowledge in a profound and paradigm shattering way. If you look at Nobel Prize winners, the vast majority are men. This may be because we live in a gender biased world. However, it seems that men are more apt to create and dominate and challenge accepted views and authority more often then women. This may be attributed to the common notion that men are, on a general whole, not passive consumers but active creators. More later.

Excellent Living

The topic of discussion last night was whether or not you have volitional control to permanently change your mind. More exactly, can you simply choose to be happy?

The debate raced through a whole load of topics of all sorts of different natures. I don’t like to dichotomize people or ideas, but the debate shifted between two opposing perspectives that can be boiled down to optimists and cynics; or, in other words, idealists and skeptics. One position was that you could see the world however you’d like, choosing and creating the perspectives that best suit your aims or desires. The other was the cynic who held a fairly deterministic, mechanical worldview where being realistic about what is is tantamount to choosing a wholly favorable perspective.

The optimists position was a world view governed by faith and creativity and independent of the influence of unfavorable or negative externalities.  The corollary of this view is an under-appreciation of all the details comprising life, a failure to account for relevant information, which causes a certain naivety and willful ignorance. In this view the hero is the ego. The ego shapes the world we see. They believe that it influences the perceptions and therefore by changing what the ego wants, one can change perception and therefore knowledge. This renders knowledge as relative to each subject. What is unfavorable is simply the result of a flawed perception rather than anything inherently unfavorable existing in a thing or circumstance or effect. There is no essence. Bad and good change according to what ends you hold highest. The optimist personality is creative.

The cynic position views the world as an absurd place with no inherent meaning and obvious goodness. In this world every perspective counts, however favorable and unfavorable, and a person’s duty is to account for all those details if he wants to remain objective. The corollary of this view is an over emphasis on externalities, and an under emphasis on the individual’s perception and attitude to shape and determine certain externalities. The result is a certain nihilism and helplessness. In this view there is no hero. The ego counts for next to nothing. What is important are the facts which the external world often hands us through direct experimentation or by receiving knowledge through other people via dialogue where we inherit knowledge as it is passed on from one person to the next. On a certain level, the cynic assumes objective perception is attainable. This causes him to hold fast to knowledge as atomistic and almost irreducible. Relativity is simply ignorance. The cynic personality is analytic.

For sport I adopted the optimistic position, arguing that our world is dictated by our perceptions, and that if we change out perceptions, the world as we see it literally changes. Of course, I do not believe simply believing we will fly changes the limiting facts of physics, but it allows us to take certain measures and partake in certain activities where flying becomes a possibility, such as devising flight technology. What changed was how we thought about our limitations, not the limitations themselves.

What is essential to understand is that we are not simply reflective creatures. We are reflexive creatures. As both an observer and a participant, how we choose to participate changes what we will observe.

The conversation essentially revolved around how one can change their perceptions. We talked about the role of thought, habits, and actions, and, given the plasticity of the brain, the role in changing mental states, mind and perceptions. A person cannot literally change his entire brain after years of habituated thoughts and actions. Especially after establishing a life, or world around you, that attributes and reacts to you according to those thoughts, seeing you as unchangeable rather than evolving. No, the mind changes all the time, in the present. Changing a single thought will not change the mind. Think “How you spend your time defines who you are.” It literally dictates who you are, what you are. If you spend all day doing math, you will cultivate a brain that is oriented for math, you will think math, act on behalf of these math thoughts, and people will (although not always) contextualize you according to your propensity for math.

Thinking thoughts over and over again changes the mind. It reinforces neural pathways, reorients entire neural networks. Once a thought settles in the mind it has permanence, but its influence does not. To increase the influence of thoughts requires their repetition. We are creatures of habit. In this way a conscious thought becomes ingrained in the mind, internalized into the subconscious, so that it becomes apart of our character and influences us even when it is not consciously acknowledged.

But can you simply will yourself to be happy? Not in a single moment, just like you can’t will yourself to lift 400lbs on a whim. It requires that you act and live the thought or activity you desire to emulate on a frequent basis. You must anchor it through repetition, through practice.  But practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect. You must practice excellence, repeat excellence, every time. There is no good days and bad days. Every day you must desire and hit the mark dead on. The best only have the habit of doing the best day in and day out.

You are a product of your environment, no doubt. You have years of habits that are most likely less than excellent. Overcoming them requires overwriting them. It requires forgetting everything you knew about the past and adopting and doing what you best desire right now. You cannot stand within and move without. You must step out of the past and any conceptions and experiences that do not support your current aim. You must redefine yourself every moment with perfect thought and action, consistently, day in and day out, until you become your aim.

To do this you must be your aim and goal from the start, and nothing less than your aim and goal. You will not become the best by trying or doing. Only by being. In this way you do not do in order to have in order to be. No. You must be in order to do in order to have.

 

More later.

Good Company and Discourse

At the start of the semester I told myself that I will no longer be preoccupied with parerga and meandering thoughts of no immediate consequence, but focus solely on what’s most important, namely school and career hunting. I’ve been diligent with this commitment and it’s left me feeling significantly less tormented by my thoughts. On the flip side, I feel fairly superficial and empty, like I’m gliding and skimming along only the surface of life. I understand that now isn’t the place to get deep about existential questions. I’m not a professional social critic. I’m not a paid philosopher. I’m a student looking for a job, and that should be my priority.

But, as a human, it sucks not thinking. Reflection makes life vastly more interesting and curious. As much as it’s tormenting to continually swat at every biting thought, it’s an activity that keeps your keenly aware and awake.

I haven’t been writing. Writing. Writing. Writing. What is it about writing? this act of making thoughts visible and known to yourself and the world? It’s fascinating.

I had a late night last night. After I was through studying at a local cafe, my room mate and I visited a close friend of ours to indulge in red wine and friendly discourse, my two favorite postprandial activities. Nothing is better than open discussion with fellow oenophiles whom you love and love you. There’s never animosity or resentment or pride or fear to keep you from opening up and sharing yourself; just a plenum of mirth saturated with mutually authentic appreciation for courageous and novel thought.

It is in these moments and minutes and hours where you can really get to know yourself, sometimes even more than you get to know about your interlocutors.  These friendly games of discourse allow you to bask in the luminosity of unexplored streams of understanding, streams flowing with ideas long incubating, just waiting to hatch in the calescent glow of the right company. This is why a close coterie of friends is so vital, for they act as midwives who aid in the birth of fledgling ideas which we then pry and coax to fly with open discussion.

A good cadre provides an invitation for exploration, a warming refuge where the teguments of belief can be peeled back and catechized.  Discussion properly exorcises the most nascent conceptions and undeveloped beliefs, pulling them to the surface as it were, so they are rendered bare and vulnerable for inspection. Anyway.

Wittgenstein said “A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.” How wonderfully pleasant is that? It invokes fresh imagery that flowers like spring. Introducing new words into a discussion that has tossed around the same for long enough livens the debate and renews the flame that lights understanding. New words are like new keys which open new rooms, or new seeds that add blooming colors to variegate the garden of discourse.