Tag: philosophy

On Selfishness, Values, Creativity, Death

There is no selfless act. Though you die for values and ideals, they are nonetheless yours and yours alone, subjective and independent of external facts and realities. Insofar as self-preservation is the prerogative of all life, the preservation of ideals and values is the prerogative of the human consciousness.

But what of love? some may say. Love is a selfish conception. If it is not predicated as a pleasure or passion, it is predicated as a subjective concept projected onto the world to characterize a type of relationship. To die for another is to die for your ideals and values, not the subjective values of others. The act of dying for another or another’s values is embedded with subjective valuations. Camus said that what man believes to be true must determine his action.

Echoing Nietzsche in his essay On Truth and Lies in the Non-moral Sense, truth is a metaphorical representation that is coined from an originally subjective perception of experience and passed on as an objective fact of experience. Though it may be passed on as objective, its application in life through experience is nonetheless a subjective assertion. Insofar as we exist before we perceive the world, all that is conceivable and doable is a sui generis selfish act, whether it’s to preserve the well being of the body or preserve the conceptions of the mind.

But what of martyrs or saints? others will say. Are not these selfless acts of death or denial? I would reply that they are no more selfless than suicide or any other act that preserves a subjectively possessed belief or ideal.

The only selfless acts are those selfish deeds which indirectly and consequently improve upon the lives of others so that they must do the same when taken to denouement. That is, selfless acts are no more selfish than any other act, only that their corollary influences others to perform actions which empower others to empower others.

In this way one may pursue the ideal of freedom selfishly but in doing so he not only apprehends freedom personally, but apprehends this freedom for others as well. Likewise it is with equality, so that by cherishing equality for selfish motives he secures equality for all. What must be preserved in these acts is an inherent method of propagating the power of others to do the same.

Creativity must not be confused as being exclusively devoted to the arts. Creativity is the ability to stipulate something from nothing, to instantiate new conceptions according to new or existing demands. The constructive value to life inherent in creativity also contains an equally threatening detriment to life. By their very nature new and original conceptions destroy uniformity, disrupt equilibrium and threaten the familiar. The foreign and alien, the new and novel, have no place in circular systems. Circular systems arise from habits formalized as convention, routine, pattern, method and the like. They allow predictability and consistency and uniformity. Their adoption requires a suspension of familiarity so that a leap of faith is required for their assimilation. In many cases the familiar must not only be amended, but totally destroyed and annihilated to sufficiently accommodate change. In this way change requires adaptation, an alteration of existing units and relations within a system.

These systems may represent cultural practices, or histories, or traditions or rationale. One must not rely on the past to sufficiently guide and navigate the future. So long as there is time, there is change, and all change must be embraced accordingly. Negating the existence of changes is the source of all problems. If life is an activity characterized by growth, problems are a natural phenomenon and must be welcomed as such. But what is growth if it is not life? And what is life if not a continual pursuit of preservation? To preserve the past is to celebrate death; but this is precisely the natural character of humans. Nietzsche said “Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.” As with all things living, it is human nature to preserve the self, to struggle to exist, but the rarity arises in man’s specialized ability to preserve. This ability resides in the act of perpetuating equilibrium through adaptation, through the creative employment of reason and imagination to adjust to changes. Non-living matter can be said to be in the greatest equilibrium of all.

But this is where man diverges from other life. It is not enough to maintain equilibrium. Man contains a will to create equilibrium where there is not, to dominate his surroundings in an effort to project an ultimate equilibrium that renders a congruency between the inner life of the self and his environment. This is why Nietzsche dismissed the Darwinian notions of struggle for existence in favor of the will to power which more accurately reflects the nature of man. Evidence of the will to power becomes obvious when we turn to the modern day manifestations of man and witness artificial disequilibrium instantiated as civilization and technologies. Going far beyond all the past pursuits of life that merely sought to preserve corporeal existence, man has successfully learned to preserve the inner self. He has fully exercised his freedom to impress his inner world onto the outer world, to fashion it according to his liking.

Leaders are creators who operate to conjure and implement new realities and visions that accommodate real or perceived changes. While leaders can be oppressive in this way, they can be, more importantly, liberators who sow new realities and ideas that empower others. The difference lies in the values contained in the given vision and whether or not these values empower others to empower themselves to empower others.

Evidentialism

The Principle of Evidentialism states that a Subject is justified in believing p if the belief is proportioned according to evidence at a given time. That is, S is epistemically justified in believing a proposition at time t if and only if the belief is supported by S’s evidence at time t.

Suppose I maintain the belief that I will pass all my philosophy classes. The evidence I have for this belief is that I have received all passing grades through the semester, that there are no new assignments, there is no class curve, and it is now the last day of classes. I am justified in believing that I will pass because all the evidence supports this belief; namely that all my grades are undeniably above passing and there are no more opportunities to earn credit toward my grade.

This belief is justified because the proposition “I believe that I will pass all my philosophy classes” is supported evidence “it has been confirmed that all the grades I received in all these classes are undeniably passing” at the time the proposition was stated, i.e. at the last day of classes. It is important that all evidence is properly accounted for, including knowledge of a class curve and the relation of these grades to other students. Also vitally important is that the proposition is stated according to the evidence at time t. If it was stated earlier there would be insufficient evidence to uphold that belief because not all possible grades were completed.

Pragmatism and a priori Knowledge

Can a pragmatist accept a priori knowledge? Consider the following statements of a priori knowledge:

1) 4 beer cans and 3 beer cans equals 7 beer cans in total.
2) A can contains the properties metallic and cylindrical.

The mind has inescapable a priori knowledge that operates as an interpretative function for ordering and categorizing experience. A pragmatist can instrumentally stipulate any definition. If we take thought as a priori, i.e.capable of intuitions independent of experience,  one can stipulate necessary conventions for assimilating experience. In this way the self generates a priori thoughts that function as an interpretive structure brought to experience, but this a priori knowledge is uniquely exclusive to the self. Revisions to current a priori knowledge have no affect on past interpretations as they have already been interpreted as experience. All a priori stipulations provide a ‘perceptual gestalt’ or ‘interpretive lens’ composed of axioms that categorize experience into concepts to suit personal ends. The implications of a stipulation may even yield new insights about experience, as when two stipulated definitions render incompatible (contradictory or inconsistent) experience.

The two examples given illustrate concepts with definitions stipulated a priori that categorize experiences a posteriori. In this way the definition of a can brings classification to experience, so that experiencing the properties metallic and cylindrical classify an experience as a can.

While experience may provide material to stipulate categorical definitions, such as certain predications, it is not necessary for stipulating. Stipulations arise from the mind and are brought to experience as a priori categorical structures.

 

 

Insanity

What is insanity? The most familiar definition that comes to mind is from Einstein who said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is peculiar to think of insanity this way, particularly because it flies in the face of normalcy. Many believe that the socially responsible and acceptable thing to do is to adhere to certain norms and customs and traditions, and that these will allow you to adequately function in society. What normalcy doesn’t guarantee, however, is individuality, or originality. To be an individual, one must do things differently and expect different results. But what of a society that values doing things differently only to achieve the same results, such as participating in all the counter-cultural rituals to gain acceptance as an ‘individual’ ? Can it be said that such a person has achieved individuality?

‎”Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -F.Nietzsche

Insanity. What I find insane is society. Civilization. Tradition. Custom. Ritual. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the utility of consistency. I understand the pragmatic element of predictability, from a linguistic standpoint as well as a logical and epistemological standpoint. After all, learning curves are greatly reduced by assimilating the knowledge past down by forbearer, no? And we can’t very well go about creating our own neologistic language and expect to be effective interpersonally, now can we?  But where do we draw the line between maintaining and gaining? Passing on and passing over? Subsisting and thriving? Progress requires change. Change requires adaptation. If we sell out to maintain the status quo, if we fail to commit to the efflorescent incarnations of possibility in favor of the denouement of equilibrium, we must embrace our death; for we have already died.

Society is insane. Look at the way they scuttle around in the rat race, trying to secure these temporal provisions; see how they frantically instill meaning and comfort into fabricated facticities. Observe the perduring populous that embodies repetition; always allied to the alacritous attachment of doing the same thing, over and over again, and always expecting different results. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. In the end everyone’s demise is the same. Society is a self-fulfilling prophecy; a reflexive perpetuation proselytizing more of the same. The social consciousness does not readily expand but rather, it promptly strengthens itself onto itself.

So what is insanity? A break from conventional norms, I suppose. So sanity, once again, is doing the same thing over and over again. The endorsement of cultural customs, e.g. materialism, hedonism, consumerism, aceticism, celebrityism, sciencism, etc. I suppose the great majority of people think they aren’t insane because they don’t expect different results. Predictability is offered as a sycophant of security.

That is the real tragedy. When people not only do the same thing over and over again, but they do not expect different results. They have been sedated or conditioned or desensitized to rudimentary routines and rituals. 9 to 5. Primary, secondary, tertiary schooling, followed by a stint of rebellious youth, cue the career, make room for marriage, corral some kids, restfully retire, and then comes the inevitable surprise of death.

Sanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.” This rationalist program will inevitably suffer the same stifling fate as freedom. Time waits for no man. If you are not progressing, you are regressing. Life is meant to flourish. Growth and evolution should be the cynosure of contemplation, the mark of progress. But not by any quantitative measure imposed by external authority. It should be an inward journey. Growth is not static.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”  -R.W. Emerson

Insanity is characterized by senseless or abnormal behavior by societal standards. But how amazing it is to look at societal standards! Especially through the perspective lens of time! How standards change!

So the question of insanity remains. Are you insane for following your desires? Even if your desires lead to your demise? Even if they cast you into chains? Even if they toss you into pain and hardship? Would you be willing to escape sanity and embrace the lucres of authentic freedom? At what price?

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
-A. Camus

 

Absurdity

Existence? There is no reason.

Absurdity: when the inference of reason reveals itself to be wholly dependent on cognitive activity alone, the sole work of consciousness. Inference ceases to follow from the nauseating compulsion of objective necessities and the world readjusts itself as a relative, subjective condition of man. Inference positions itself as alien to the world from which we attribute it.  When we posit the question “why?”, we reveal the lack of inference and elucidate the feeble follow through of reason. We realize, through an awakening, that inference is a machination imparted to the mind, rather than a process inherent to the world. Justification is born out of intention, out of the desire, to survive or thrive.

Inferential causation. Rationality.

We cannot negate this absurdity with rationality and simultaneously escape it.

Consciousness undergoes an awakening under its own weariness. The question ‘why?’ invites a break with a life of routine habit, of poor reflection and inauthentic living.

Creativity and rationality are incommensurable. As is art and clarity. Either one accepts absurdity and the lack of genesis, or one willfully bears the ligatures linking man to unreflective leitmotivs.

Revolt with freedom and passion; embrace existence as protean possibility. The possible is the absurd.

Worldly Pleasure

An excerpt from Pascal’s Pensees:

666. Fascination. Somnum suum. Figura hujus mundi.
The Eucharist. Comedes panem tuum. Panem nostrum.
Inimici Dei terram lingent.122 Sinners lick the dust, that is to say, love earthly pleasures.
The Old Testament contains the types of future joy, and the New contains the means of arriving at it. The types were of joy; the means of penitence; and nevertheless the Paschal Lamb was eaten with bitter herbs, cum amaritudinibus.
Singularis sum ego donec transeam. Jesus Christ before His death was almost the only martyr.

Blaise Pascal was a philosopher who contributed to a variety of academic disciplines. I find that his fragmented writings in Pensees are the most fascinating artifact left of the man. It was compiled from a handful of notes and letters and scraps. It offers a glimpse into the innerworkings of a great man, a man of prodigious contribution and genius.

The passage in bold resonates with me. It describes those who, swept up in a world of self-indulgence, go about “licking the earth”. While I’m no religious advocate, I believe there is a lot of truth in the bible and other religious texts. I think that sometimes secular and biblical minds get caught up in the differences they share rather than their similarities. They often talk past each other when talking about the same thing.

Whether you’re a Christian or secularist doesn’t detract from the fact that preserving the self is important. Ravaging it with temporal self indulgences, material luxury, and cheap thrills won’t leave you any more of a person. While the Christian equates this life to that of a sinner, a secularist would just look at this man and think how empty his inner life must be if he feels the need to continually fill it with such vapid pursuits and possessions.

Reliablilism

Reliabilism is a form of epistemic externalism that generally states that a belief is justified when it results from a reliable belief forming process that is either doxastically dependent or doxastically independent. That is, S knows that p iff p is true, SBp is true, and S has a reliable process for arriving at p.  In this way, SJp (att) iff (1) it is not in other epistemic evaluative terms, (2) explains how SJp is justified is a function of SBp’s genesis. This principle emphasizes the virtue of the belief forming mechanism and the veridical historicity of the belief over the truth value in order to account for the possibility of a false belief.

Suppose that I claim knowledge of my age, 24. I believe that my age of 24 is true. The process I possess to justify my age is to check my birth certificate. As a notarized document of the government, I believe the process of checking my birth date to its data yields reliable knowledge. I justify this belief forming process from the fact that everyone verifies their age in this way and it is most accurate and consistent. Additionally, I believe the government would not falsify this data as a notarized document. This is an exemplary example of reliabilism because my knowledge is based on the virtue of the belief forming process, naming checking the birth certificate, that is historically reliable and still allows for the possibility of falsity if say, my birth certificate was lost, or doctored, and I forgot my real birth date.

Why Study Philosophy

Rows of books lined the shelves. He leaned back in his chair thoughtfully and looked at me for a moment, then threw his hands up and asked, “So what do you want? Why do you study philosophy?” He looked at me over his desk with his elbows resting on the manchettes, hands folded just below his face, with a curious patient smile.

I hesitated a moment. I knew what I was going to say. I’ve thought about this answer so many times I could write a book on it. I suppose I was trying to distill it into something powerful, so he could feel the conviction.

“Why do I want to study philosophy?” I thought out loud and my eyes drifted upwards as if looking for higher inspiration. “I want to be a better thinker. I want to develop my critical thinking skills, my problem solving skills, my ability to change perspectives and look at and identify problems differently…” I paused again. I just blurted that out. Calm yourself. “Actually…” I collected my thoughts and tried thinking practically. “Well…I’m not looking for truth, because honestly, I’ve ruled out that there’s an ultimate truth. So I suppose I want understanding. I want to understand myself and the world and my relation to the world. I want the skills and ability to solve problems and surmount whatever challenges come before me, in whatever I do. I want to look at problems and see possibility, no matter what the task or challenge.”

 

 

Conversations in Procrastination

Interlocuter1:Why don’t you act?
Interlocuter2:I am fearful. I am fearful of failure. I am fearful that when the time comes to perform, I will flounder and fail. That my faculties will not produce according to my intent. That my work will be a reflection of the inner man and that that inner man will reveal an inauthentic dilettante.

I1:So you postpone action?
I2: I postpone the inevitable. I know full and well that the work will get done, but I am reluctant to throw myself into a task until I know I am prepared and ready and present to meet the challenge.

I1:Does postponing action work?
I2:I find that the more I defer the inevitable, the less time I have. The longer I wait to execute, the greater the anxiety festers within me. Sometimes I wait for this anxiousness to bubble over and spurn a genius reaction within me, but I know all too well that when it’s all said and done the work I produce still falls short of my ideal, and even more so with the constraints of time.

I1:Do you enjoy the anxiety?
I2: On the contrary, I loath it. I loath it so I run from it. I run inward and outward, retreating, as it were, from the pressures that plague my attention, that grab hold of my freedom. I seek solace in the dreaded distraction. Even though my gut writhes in disgust. The deadlines approach like an impending doom. The clock ticks like a pick axe into my core. Every passive second that passes leaves me feeling mutilated and weak. However, when I do rise to the challenge, which I most always do to varying degrees of intensity and resolve, I am lifted on clouds of inspiration. Regrettably, these inspiring clouds quickly burn away as I travel upwards toward my illusory ideals, until my elation reaches a determined zenith and I sputter and fall through their cover into a maelstrom of doubt. I land with my face planted into the earth, my eyes cast downward, and I am pummeled by self loathing, the hellacious hail of petty dreams.

I1: How much longer will you persist like this?
I2: The question is entertained, as possibility often is, but I am left with the trammels of procrastination delaying even this decision. It is queer that death seems a suitable sacrifice for such a decision.

I1:Death over action?
I2: I am aware of the irrationality. Destruction poses at the feet of this deceit. It seems that death and chaos, in all its abandonment and denial, are preferable to embracing a self steeped in shame.

I1:What would it mean if you failed trying?
I2: My convictions are two fold: either I do, and reserve the hesitations of action for the timid and weak, and press my determination into the folds of time so there is no escape of triumph; or I try with a pathetic weariness, a gesture to save myself from the humiliation of self-criticism, an act that resents the gesture itself and propagates the very frailty that robs me of any hope securing victory.

I1: It seems the former is should win out; why not opt for winning?
I2: I will now do.

Science as Logic of Discovery: Examining Kuhn’s Critique of Popper

This essay will examine and critique Thomas Kuhn’s thesis in his article titled Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research. To accomplish this I will summarize Kuhn’s thesis, identify key critical arguments made against Karl Popper, analyze these arguments, and critically evaluate the argument with supporting examples. Each of Kuhn’s arguments will be stated clearly and analyzed so that the evidence in favor for or against Kuhn’s claims becomes clear and distinct. I will then present an argument in favor of Kuhn’s criticism on Popper.

Continue reading “Science as Logic of Discovery: Examining Kuhn’s Critique of Popper”

50 Habits of Successful People

Simmer in its wisdom.

Habits of successful people….

1. They look for and find opportunities where others see nothing.

2. They find a lesson while others only see a problem.

3. They are solution focused.

4. They consciously and methodically create their own success, while others hope success will find them.

5. They are fearful like everyone else, but they are not controlled or limited by fear.

6. They ask the right questions – the ones which put them in a productive, creative, positive mindset and emotional state.

7. They rarely complain (waste of energy). All complaining does is put the complainer in a negative and unproductive state.

8. They don’t blame (what’s the point?). They take complete responsibility for their actions and outcomes (or lack thereof).

9. While they are not necessarily more talented than the majority, they always find a way to maximise their potential. They get more out of themselves. They use what they have more effectively.

10. They are busy, productive and proactive. While most are laying on the couch, planning, over-thinking, sitting on their hands and generally going around in circles, they are out there getting the job done.

Continue reading “50 Habits of Successful People”

Virtue

What is virtue? Moral excellence. I’ve recently drifted from notions of virtue, relying instead on my philosophical knowhow and personal ratiocinations to guide appropriate and pragmatic behaviors.

Once upon a time I was obsessed with the notion of moral excellence. I strove daily to master the principles and virtues that upheld an outstanding character. I’d meditate daily on aphorisms and parables and definitions extolling the virtues of a moral character. I reasoned that, if I am in fact a product of my thoughts, I should take take strides to hone and refine those thoughts.

Thoughts become actions. Actions become habit. Habit becomes character. Character becomes destiny.

Ben Franklin committed himself to the upbuilding of a moral character. He created a plan to internalize and embody thirteen virtues. Each day he committed himself to fulfilling and practicing one. At the end of thirteen, he’d begin again. He kept this up for years and recorded his progress in a daily journal. The thirteen virtues he strove to emulate are listed as the following:

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
12. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

I desire and strive to surround myself with people who typify these virtues. I’m going to make a habit of looking at these thirteen daily and be extra conscientious about whether they are being appropriately exemplified through my actions.

Pollack’s principle of objective epistemic justification

Pollack’s principle of objective epistemic justification, whereby objective epistemic justification entails justified true belief, states that:

S is objectively justified in believing P if and only if:
1. S is (subjectively) justified in believing P; and
2. there is a set of X truths such that, given any more inclusive set Y of truths, necessarily, if the truths in Y were added to S’s beliefs (and their negations removed in those cases in which S disbelieves them) and S believed P for the same reason then he would still be (subjectively) justified in believing P.

In an example similar to Pollack’s Tom Grabit case, it becomes evident that the structure of epistemic justification and the complexity of epistemic norms is the crux for objective epistemic justification:

Suppose I see a sign indicating that the home of particular neighbor Mr. Beech is for sale on my street. I am sure that I am familiar with this neighbor who is an economics professor at the local college and know he lives there. The following day I arrive at work and report that Mr. Beech’s home is for sale, on the account that I have met him and seen a for sale sign on my street. However, unbeknownst to me, my wife insists that Mr. Beech is not moving anywhere, on account that she spoke with him the day before and he made no indication of doing so.

However, my wife did not know that Mr. Beech was ashamedly the victim on a Ponzi scheme and lost all him money, and that he desperately wanted to move to save face and needed to sell his house to recoup money. In light of this evidence, it becomes apparent that I did know that Mr. Beech was moving.

This example supports Pollack’s principle of objective epistemic justification because S instantiated argument A that objectively justified P so that A prevailed undefeated in relation to the inclusive set of truths presented. In the example, S is objectively justified in believing P as a result of knowledge that was undefeated by true defeaters.

Pollock’s principle of objective epistemic justification

Pollock’s principle of objective epistemic justification, whereby objective epistemic justification entails justified true belief, states that:

S is objectively justified in believing P if and only if:
1. S is (subjectively) justified in believing P; and
2. there is a set of X truths such that, given any more inclusive set Y of truths, necessarily, if the truths in Y were added to S’s beliefs (and their negations removed in those cases in which S disbelieves them) and S believed P for the same reason then he would still be (subjectively) justified in believing P.

In an example similar to Pollock’s Tom Grabit case, it becomes evident that the structure of epistemic justification and the complexity of epistemic norms is the crux for objective epistemic justification:

Suppose I see a sign indicating that the home of particular neighbor Mr. Beech is for sale on my street. I am sure that I am familiar with this neighbor who is an economics professor at the local college and know he lives there. The following day I arrive at work and report that Mr. Beech’s home is for sale, on the account that I have met him and seen a for sale sign on my street. However, unbeknownst to me, my wife insists that Mr. Beech is not moving anywhere, on account that she spoke with him the day before and he made no indication of doing so.

However, my wife did not know that Mr. Beech was ashamedly the victim on a Ponzi scheme and lost all him money, and that he desperately wanted to move to save face and needed to sell his house to recoup money. In light of this evidence, it becomes apparent that I did know that Mr. Beech was moving.

This example supports Pollock’s principle of objective epistemic justification because S instantiated argument A that objectively justified P so that A prevailed undefeated in relation to the inclusive set of truths presented. In the example, S is objectively justified in believing P as a result of knowledge that was undefeated by true defeaters.

Dislike

Whenever you see something you dislike, it represents something you are repelling inside you.

This world exists wholly in our minds, constructed from the myriad of experiences composing life. The world is not an objective place. Meaning is not inherent. We imbue the world with meaning, subjective meaning, meaning conjured from the toil and joy and heartache we wrought from it. From an amalgam of experiences limited in perception and imagination.

When I look at something I dislike, when I have a negative reaction towards something or someone, my first inclination is to ask myself ‘why?’ What am I opposed to here? Past associations wrapped in irrational and emotional bias? I must never catch myself reacting without fair trial. My conceptions are as limited as my experience, something infinitely oblique and narrow. In order to grow I must be willing to step outside experience and into unknown and uncomfortable confrontations. I must aim to actively dispel any negative reactions inside me.

I must remain open and free from the vice of hasty judgment; in this way I may remain free from judgment. Love the world, in all its spectacular curiosities. We do not judge the people we love.

However, I must say, judgment does not mean doing away with discernment and prudence. We must act wise, reacting in the interest of goodness with truth in mind.

Spatia Ante Materia

Spatia ante Materia (Spatia Rem or Spatia et Materia)

Is consciousness chosen? No. Therefore, there is no free will.

Consciousness was pulled out from within, forced into by demand.

The objective of life is to satisfy demands. All matter is a response to space. As matter, we exist to fulfill these flowing demands of space.

I want to write a magnum opus on a theory of everything which explains phenomena such as mind, knowledge, and reason. The theory will take on a form resembling mathematics, whereby balance and equilibrium serve as the natural progression for all cause and effect.

The exposition will begin by grounding three main concepts: polar pairs  (+, -), equilibrium (=), change (, ->)

What is important is not what is included, but what is excluded. Cause precedes effect, just as demand precedes supply, as space precedes matter, as form precedes substance.

Demand and Supply

Demand: (-),space, empty, negative, cause, pull, question, eternal, infinite, possibility, freedom

Supply: (+), matter, full, positive, effect, answer, temporal, finite, actuality, necessity

Equilibrium: (=), balance, harmony, synthesis, (life energy of being)

Change: (), (->), condition, (A third relation between +&-)

Why do we live in a dualistic world?

Phenomenon: L.L. phænomenon, from Gk. phainomenon “that which appears or is seen,” noun use of neut. prp. of phainesthai “to appear,” passive of phainein (see phantasm). Meaning “extraordinary occurrence” first recorded 1771. Plural is phenomena.

What is the origin of phenomena? Occurrence? Change?

Equilibrium, a balance of tensions, results from change.

Why is there space at all?

Life is a progression of changes toward equilibrium.

Entropy is a progression toward an equilibrium state.

Is life the most efficient form of entropy?

Reality is a question; not an answer.

Time a measure describing a rate of change, . Time is not constant but relative to rates.

Knowledge is never so pure than in its moment of conception.

Change must not be rigid, otherwise is will not adapt. Knowledge is inherently rigid: determinate; composed and formed. Understanding is fluid: indeterminate; flexible and open. Knowledge sufficiently supplies for necessary demands.

Where S & + are matter and D & – are space:
MP: S->D/ S// D
MT: S->D/ ~D// ~S

Demand is a necessary condition for all supply: without demand, there is no supply; without space, there is no matter; without problems, there is no knowledge. Supply is a sufficient condition for demand; knowledge is a sufficient condition for problem. As a sufficient condition, demand may be satisfied by any posited supply; problems may be satisfied by any posited knowledge. Equilibrium is reached by a supply that accounts for and satisfies maximum proximate demands.

LEM: (+ v ~+), that is (+ v -)
LNC: ~(+ ∧ ~+), that is ~(+ ∧ -)
LI: (+=+), that is (+<=>+), reflexive relation/ tautology

Mind

Intentionalism:

“In an intentional state, something is presented to the mind. So any intentional state is a presentation. What is presented is called an intentional object; for a state of mind to have an intentional object is for it to be directed on that object, So, insofar as a state of mind is directed, it has an intentional object. The intentional object of a thought is given in the answer to the question ‘what is your thought about?/what is your thought directed on?’ For a state of mind to have aspectual shape is for it to present its object in a certain way. And so, insofar as the state of mind has aspectual shape, then it has intentional content. The intentional content of a thought is given in an answer to the questions ‘what are you thinking?/what is in your mind?’ Since, according to intentionalism, all mental states have directedness and aspectual shape, then all mental states have an intentional object and intentional content.”

-Crane, Stephen: Elements of Mind (2001)

I would like to explore the origin of presentation. The presentations that give rise to mind result from causal demands. All matter maintains a spatial relation between other matter. Equilibrium progress manifests relations as tension from unresolved demands. Bodies present themselves in relation to other bodies; everything else. Matter is not inclusive, but exclusive. This relational tension manifests a pull, a demanding force, a gravitation. All bodies, exclusive and distinct, are in misrelation until an equilibrium reaches universal homogeneity.

Consciousness

Consciousness was pulled out from within, forced into existence- into a condition, a being, a change, a continuous enactment- by demand.

Equity

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
~Carl Jung

Balance. Harmony. Sine Curves.

Positive & Negative. Peak & Valley. Light & Dark. Life & Death. Possibility & Actuality. Infinite & Finite. Eternal & Temporal. Freedom & Necessity. Active & Passive.

Being & Nothingness.

Silent Virtue

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” -Plato

I am ever painfully aware of my contributions.

I have nothing to prove to myself. My knowledge is my own and needs no verification on the ears of others. I do not offer a supply where there is no demand for fear of flooding the citadels where fragile egos reside.

When one is fully competent in their knowledge, in their experience, in their ability to responsibly manage their inner life, one earns a reverent respect for humility and the virtue of silence. Open doors reveal the inner chambers of existence and expose the relative beauty or disarray where mindful solace is sought. When one speaks incessantly, without merited or solicited warrant, one does not offer up new knowledge but new insights to these potentially barren chambers of existence.

When we talk, we do not extol the storehouse of our knowledge but, more often than not, the lack thereof.

Self

“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

The notion of self. Self. What is self? What is consciousness?

I can’t just dive into it. I must rivet it out of me. The self is reflexive. It is an enactment, a verb, a being. The self is a struggle, a despairing misrelation between polarities, between infinite and finite, temporal and eternal, possibility and necessity. It is idealism and realism. It is the struggle that we cannot stand still within and move without.

How to consider what is and what will be. Induction and deduction. Static and flux.

Life stands out in all its sinewy gnarliness. The rudimentary lines drawn along the edges of contoured bodies, people and trees and other furniture filling the landscape of life. Self. There is no intermediary between the subject and object: there is only the self. We stand between ourselves. We are the demons that claw within, we are our own worst. The relation. The self-hood. This reflection.

I stare into the mirror and see a body. I move and this image moves correspondingly. An extension. A living breathing extension. I relate myself to this image that is myself. The dilating eyes. My dilating eyes. I cannot objectify this experience without losing hold of it. Thus we have the story of self.

The world is like a painted canvas. These objects are nothing but smearings of color that bleed in time and space and affect my sensitivities, prompting an involuntary response. I manage by distinguishing these smearings.

Distinctions. The whole is a comprised of parts, distinctions. Let us grapple the whole. Let us toss the parts. The whole is the self. We cannot construct a full self with handfuls of parts. Everything is a distinction. Dissolve distinction; then peel it back. Peel back the teguments and unveil the nature of experience, awaken your being.

Intention: Directedness that holds objects and content; point of view, reference, marked by aspectual shapes. We point and see the contours of experience.

The self is a continual realization of what was and what will. Faith places one in the now, somewhere in between.

Irresponsible Man

“It is remarkable, all that men can swallow. For a good ten minutes I read a newspaper. I allowed the spirit of an irresponsible man who chews and munches another’s words in his mouth, and gives them out again undigested, to enter in me through my eyes. I absorbed a whole column of it.”

-The Steppenwolf

I deactivated my facebook. I should have deleted it. I will not read the news any longer. No more mindless humdrum from the journalists besotted with duplication and mass delusion.

I find myself perpetually engrossed in the petty mulling’s of a world from which I am entirely too detached. I refuse to endorse the pleas and cries and pathetic wimper’s of worldly ramblings. What need have I of their thoughts? Haven’t I my own? If one should read, one should think; just as one should eat and digest. I realize I have not been obedient to myself as of late; gorging as it were and swallowing unmasticated material whole. It becomes evident when I look into the mirror and painfully press my gaze into the amorphous reflection of a hideous schizoid.

My masks continue to meld with each dram I swallow and soon I find that I can come up with no identity for the occasion. Instead I wear the obvious, a ghostly conglomerate of faded and bitter glories that foul the air.  It is bad taste to feign the obvious.

I oscillate between beast and man, occupying not two poles, but the spectrum in between, scuttling between the shifting margins of good and evil, asceticism and hedonism, restraint and indulgence.

Solitude is independence, a wall-less cell, an open cage. How to choose between buying in and buying out?

Wisdom in Action and Reflection

Once one knows what really matters, one ceases to be voluble. And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking—-and these are the sum of all wisdom…Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out. Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Meaning: Thoughts

I don’t have much experience in epistemology so it’s difficult for me to be certain about anything I think about ‘meaning’.
First of all, what is meaning?  An intention: an attitude held toward a proposition? Information? A sense: the intension or extension of a referent? The truth condition?
For the sake of clarity, lets say that meaning is the intention instantiated to a sign or symbol, such as a word or picture. We’ll say this intention is characterized by a purpose.

In the same way a coin losing its embossing due to usage and wear, so too does the meaning of language lose its power and force. Perhaps the repetition of a word can cause it to lose the meaning intended to it upon being coined- it’s original intended meaning- but I would argue that the meaning of any uttered word is ultimately possessed according to the present intentions of the speaker. I want to go so far as to say that a word’s meaning is possessed according to the present shared intentions of a speaker and hearer. If the speaker uses a word but no one else can understand it, can we conclude that the word is meaningless? Only when we extend the principle of rational accommodation can we understand the intention of the speaker. Only when there is a shared intention can we interpret the word and render it meaningful. Donald Davidson said that any partial failure of interpretation can be remedied with the principle of rational accommodation and Tarski’s convention-T to formulate a passing theory of meaning.  If we cannot interpret these noises with a passing theory, there is a total failure of communication and the noises are not translatable and meaningful.  (I have many more thoughts. This is a really challenging topic to think about and consider.)

However, there are social costs for using words outside normative standards and conventional usage. If a speaker uses the word ‘blue’ to refer to an apple instead of using the accepted standard usage of ‘red’, the hearer may be able to interpret what the speaker is saying (e.g. using convention-T: the sentence ‘apple is blue’ is true if and only if ‘apple is red’) but not without a certain social costs, e.g. credibility, intelligence, etc.

Death

Random thoughts on death:

The ultimate meaning is found in death. We procrastinate the inevitable by creating death denying illusions.

I was looking for meaning and running into dead ends. I recently read up on Ernest Becker and his thoughts illuminated a good deal of what’s been on my mind.

We are going to die. The more we deny this fact, the greater confidence we can maintain in our ability to be. Death reminds us of our frailty.

Our world is divided into the physical world and the symbolic world. We create symbolic meaning in order to transcend the physical. The physical world is marked by change, by finality, by inconsistency, by impermanence. The symbolic world is enduring, consistent, eternal.

Beliefs and ideologies manifest as mere illusions. I look around me and I see self-deceived masses. I ask myself why people adopt such deceptions. For what reason? These deceptive beliefs offer a denial of death. We are the hero in our beliefs. We seek eternal life through our beliefs and ideologies. They provide life by allowing us to procrastinate death. Traditionally, any different belief is a direct threat to our life and should be annihilated.  We do not practice tolerance to differences. There can only be one illusion. If we are wrong, we must reconcile and face our death.

Life wants to deny death. It creates devices such as technology in order to prolong life. All knowledge is a death defying mechanism. Humans want to be god, want to maintain an eternal life.

Content, comfortable. No one wants to die. We all want to live. Dominate or be dominated. Who’s illusion is stronger? Has stronger evidence?

More thoughts later.

Watch this movie

Civil Society

How do you help someone without enabling them? How do you teach someone to teach themselves?

I’ve grown more and more disenchanted with institutions and structures the longer I wade in their depths.

I believe we are living in oppressive times. I believe that education is the main culprit for facilitating this oppression, and following closely behind is advertising and the media. Students filled with curiosity walk into classrooms at an early age, an innocent age, and endure a torturous process of desensitization as their wonder is pulverized day after day. Regurgitate. “Do not pose questions; give answers. Our answers” as the school motto goes. If only schools taught students to think and ask questions, rather than to know and give answers.

By the time a student graduates secondary school they have been robbed near successfully of their ability critically engage with a world that is theirs. This sacrifice, however, is not without recompense. The rewards of this imitation, this regurgitation, is a place in the ranks of society where your life consists of a position admired by a host of other automatons. Additionally, the appetitive desires that have been baited and primed for so long by advertising and jealous lust can finally be realized with the meager allowance you receive for your time.

We are born into this world no sooner to be robbed of it. The only way for oppression to continue indefinitely is through consent. Recompense is the false generosity that serves only to perpetuate the system; luxuries that only serve to enslave.

Pills and medication assuages the anguish that festers as we deny ourselves. Civilization, its cold and hardened systemization, corrupts. It consolidates, standardizes, values, and devalues according to criteria cognized by a few according to their ends.

Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Derrick Jensen’s book Walking on Water, and Adlous Huxley’s Brave New World illuminate this reality in a powerful way.

Eh. I think about these things, and then I think how critical I sound. Then I realize that being critical is good. It sharpens insight, outlines boundaries and traces over the margins dividing understanding with the unknown.

Perhaps government needs to be this way? No. I cannot let myself believe it. Must order come at the expense of freedom? Freedom is not ordered. Its pellucid intentions must be preserved. Man must allow no room for blinds that would otherwise stifle the contagious flame of freedom. It is humanity’s only beacon.

What is life? Did we decide what makes us happy? That car? That house? Those clothes? How do we spend our time? Plugged in to the net? To the tube? To the media? To the bottle?

I might be overgeneralizing a bit, and I believe I am, but there is something frustrating about a world where the great majority of people are empty. If the saying “A man is what he thinks about all day long” contains any inking of truth, then what does that say about the vast majority of people? Have they been robbed completely of the ability to create meaning and ends that are unique? Where is the original thought? Wholly original?

I’m still coming up with an alternative myself. Thinking, reading, talking about challenges and adventures and novel experience: are these any better? I should like to think so. Still, I may be wrong.

I suppose the system is such that, so long as you choose a path that has been already laid out, you can achieve a level of happiness. I am inclined to think that this contributes to a bad faith, a lack of responsibility so to speak, to the possibility of blazing a path of our own.

I may be a bit pessimistic. After all, I find myself amongst a swath of college students who indifferently drone on about how little they remember any class material, and all the while they seek escape in video games, TV programming, and intoxicating binges. To blunt a reality they are far too ill prepared to face? I really do wonder what people think when they find themselves solemn and still. I poke and pry with questions of my own and even with the closest of friends I find it astonishing how colorless their inner life appears. It might be they can’t articulate it, but if that were the case, I’d suspect that some evidence of this inner life would be found in their outer life as expressed through activity. On the contrary, there is none.

What excites you man? Tell me? What gets you passionate? Let’s talk about those things. Lets get into it together. Lets merge the minds and unhinge the doors of perception. Is there nothing that moves you that is wholly organic? I don’t want to hear the what or the who. Heck, I’ll settle with the how and when. But tell me, can you give me a why? Not people or things or events. I want ideas. Do you have any ideas? Lets let them germinate in open air. Don’t be timid about letting them soak up the new light. Lets see if these ideas of yours are sound and sturdy, novel and new.

Anyway.

Thoughts and Books

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddah

Although it’s been coined in different ways by different people throughout the ages, the message is the same. We are what we think. We become what we think. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. A man is what he thinks about all day long.

The first step I took in personal development was fully recognizing the significance of these aforementioned words. It’s not enough to read them or understand the base meaning of them. You need to get meta. Their power is contained in reflection. ‘We are what we think’ implies that you have a degree of control over what you think about, and how you think about things. You must look at your thoughts as if they are not you. They have been following you your whole life, attached to the proper name that you are: Michael. All those thoughts that follow you are not you.

You can change what you think about by changing your actions. We are a product of our environment. This means our thoughts are influenced by the things we are surrounded with, be it the geography, the people, the culture, the religion, the media, the education, etc.

Changing your thoughts means exposing yourself to new knowledge, new experience, new environments. One of the first and best ways I came across for exposing myself to this knowledge was through books. Books offer insights that men took a lifetime to glean from their life experiences. In many cases, the collective lifetimes of several men. They contain gems of knowledge.

I recently took to reading some of the best Literature and Philosophy that has ever been written. These books have inspired genius, started cultural revolutions, and elevated the consciousness of men since their inception. Here are some works that immediately come to mind:

Literature

  • The Brothers Karamazov
  • Nausea
  • East of Eden
  • Brave New World
  • 1984
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • The Fall
  • Walking on Water

Philosophy

  • Pedagogy of the Oppressed
  • Genealogy of Morals
  • The Will to Believe
  • Nichomachean Ethics
  • Self Reliance
  • Civilization and It’s Discontents
  • Plato’s Five Dialogues
  • Meditations on First Philosophy
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
  • Truth and Lies in the Non-Moral Sense
  • The Gay Science
  • Candide
  • Philosophical Investigations
  • The Social Contract
  • In Defense of Anarchism
  • On Liberty
  • Man’s Search for Meaning
Books. Yum.

I admit, I feel a bit of shame for not including more. This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. I’ll have to supplement, revise and refine this list later.

Meaning of Life

Random thoughts

I was thinking about the meaning of life and how integral it is with intention and activity. Some of the ideas are self-evident but I figured I’ll get them out anyway.

Intention. What is intention? The idea of intention has stuck with me the past few days. Intention is characterized by some end-some purpose or aim; it can be said to be about things. It is an orientation, so to speak, a mental or emotional disposition, with a relation. It can be said that a person possessing an intention maintains an intentional state. If thinking and feeling can be marked by changed, one can conclude that an action caused something to occur to bring about this change. In this way the process of thinking and feeling can be considered actions. The intention is a property of being about something. This about is characterized by the end.

All knowledge is a result of actions that bring about an experience that elucidates the nature of the intention. If there is no experience, is there is no meaning? Yes. Even a thought or emotion is an action and surely we experience thoughts, i.e. memories and reflection. (I need to think more about what an experience might be. A property? A substance? Must it necessarily exist? A thought?)

Intentionality gives rise to meaning through human activity. With no intentionality there is no end or purpose. With no end or purpose there is no activity. With no activity there is no meaning.

Depression can be marked by a lack of intention which leaves one to conclude there is no meaning. Anxiety can be marked by an over awareness of intentionality; that is, overwhelmed by the possibilities to act.

Action gives rise to meaning. Action generates experience. A first hand empirical account gives rise to personal meaning. The first hand empirical account is an experience which is attained via sense impressions. The experience resulting from sense data gives rise to meaning when reconciled with the intentional state. If the sense data does not have anything to do with the intentional state (or maybe a peripheral intentional state), it is rendered meaningless.

Meaning is gleaned from the accretion of new experiences and eventually contributes to a web of beliefs, likened to the character or the constitution of a person. A web of beliefs forms as each new experience assents or dissents according to the meaning of past experience. As a result of conditioning and habituation, meaning slowly forms beliefs which cause a person to respond in predictable ways. Establishing unique personal intentions requires that the consciousness critically engages reality for itself. In this way wholly original and unique meaning can be coined that correspond to beliefs and convictions that were personally cognized and verified through personal experience. This is a bottom up approach to arriving at meaning.

In the same way, meaning can be adopted through enculturation. That is, the observation, experience and instruction as a result of human interaction. Meaning, and the beliefs and ideologies they constitute, is transposed onto us second-hand through others. This meaning is not immediately personal or relevant. On the contrary, it is oppressive and robs a person of a critical consciousness that cognizes personal intentions. This oppression transplants meaning and intention that was cognized by another. This is a bottom up approach to arriving at meaning.

If one hopes of finding meaning in life, one need only to adopt an intentional state and act upon in. That is to say, one only needs to set purposes and goals for himself and act upon them. The more focused and deliberate the intent, the more meaningful the action. One can create a life of meaning from the bottom up by cognizing and choosing intentions that are personal and relevant to their degree or interest for themselves. They can weave a web or beliefs that are unique to their intentions, their actions and aims alone. Activity alone will not breed meaning. It must be accompanied with an intention that carries a distinct and clear purpose or aim. One can act without thinking. For example, any oppressive action is simply forcing one person’s intention onto another. It is simply going through the motions. This is why personal goals are necessary. They elucidate the intention and give activity a context for meaning to develop.

The specific nature of the purpose or properties of the end will bring about an activity that is proportionally specific. That is, the more specific the goal, the more specific the activity. For achieving a specific goal, one needs to undertake specific activity. The clearer the goal, the more exact the activity, and the greater likelihood for achieving that goal.

Blah. Anyway. I need to continue clarifying these thoughts.

Bottom line is this. If you are anxious, focus your intention, your mind, on something specific. If you are depressed, chose a purpose or aim and get into action. Chose an intention and act on it. It is near impossible to be sad with your mind is occupied with a purpose and acting on its attainment.

Language as Human Activity & Impression Preservation

Regarding the social nature of man, a realistic or productive theory of language cannot be developed that doesn’t include human interaction. Any such theory rests on private language arguments where, even if a code were developed within the mind, it is by nature inaccessible to any other mind and therefore indecipherable.  With regards to memory, the reason language helps aid in recall is because of the iterability of signs. The continual convergence of passing theories gives rise to normative linguistic practices as a result of learned conditioning. The repeatability of a word allows for a reliability of an expected usage to emerge and a convention to persist that provides words with their semantic force during a conversation. The conditioning of language is no different than any other form of conditioning. By performing an action and monitoring a reaction we become conditioned to a predictable sense of the relationship between the two. It doesn’t seem that a private language would necessarily develop as a corollary.

In fact, I’d almost say that memories (the ability to recall past impressions that results from conditioning or habituation) can be just as harmful as they are helpful. If the repeatability of words is the conditioning force that anchors meaning into the memory, and if we think in words, then these words can seriously distort a clear perception of reality. If our operating system, our belief system behind our world view, is inured with meaning constructed from words and thoughts conditioned from the past, then we are left with a clouded perception of the present. We exist within a world representative of the distorted figments of past impressions that do not represent a lucid state of being possessed in the now. Our inner world manifests an illusory outer world through a bundle of habits perpetuating memories of fictional meaning that pull the mind into the oblivious past. The memories constructed from our language possess the pervading ideology that manifests as our identity through every psychological and physiological action.

Does Language Exist?

To say that there is no such thing as language would be to say there is no such thing as a theory of meaning. This equivocation becomes confusing when trying to establish semantic or foundational theories of meaning that rely on the use of propositional attitudes or cultural identities.

Davidson makes very compelling arguments for why the ordinary notion of language- “the ability to converge on a passing theory from time to time”- should be abandoned. While I am apt to agree with his conclusion, he fails to fully account for the role that socialization plays, what Wittgenstein refers to as enculturation and Bourdieu refers to as censoring, in shaping a learners beliefs and reducing indeterminacy to contextually determinate linguistic practices.

While Davidson rejects the building block theory, the seeming core of Wittgenstein’s language game theory, they both agree that human action is the starting point for any linguistic theory discussion. For Davidson, words are meaningless unless they occur within a sentence, just as sentences are meaningless unless they occur within a context of some purpose or aim: the semantic content is rendered radically indeterminate without a context. As a corollary, one sees that sentences are meaningless unless they communicate a set of propositional attitudes that harmonize with the interlocutor’s beliefs about the action or aim, beliefs tightly bound to purpose or aims unique to the community of the interlocutor. The purpose or aims directly reflect the social and environmental demands that the community works to resolve through cooperative human activity, as Wittgenstein illustrates with the enculturation of language games. Each ‘language’ contains the propositional attitudes associated with this human activity. The defining characteristic of a language then is the evolving social and environmental demands manifesting as a shared intentionality which take form as common propositional attitudes or beliefs that become embedded into the language and words.

Language[1] then can be defined as a manner of speech which functions as a device of exchange ‘to make common’. It can be concluded that Davidson’s passing theory, similar to Wittgenstein’s language game theory, is simply the origin of language formation as a result of converging on an aim or purpose through a shared intentionality which gives rise to propositional attitudes. Mastering the art of interpretation requires the ability to converge on a common aim or purpose by successfully cognizing the demands or shared intentions of the interlocutor.

Does language exist? So long as common demands exist among interlocutor, then a convergence of purpose or aims, as facilitated through Davidson’s principle of charity, can be achieved as shared intentionality. The result is a commonality among the interlocutors that provides ground for future cooperative exchanges. The repeatability of practices gives way to customary norms and standard conventions that provides communicative exchanges with a contextual determinacy that aid in facilitating the translation of intentionality and successfully addressing shared purpose or aims.

Many philosophers have presented objections directly against Davidson’s claim against the existence of language. One difference argues a fundamental difference between translation and understanding that stresses the divide between the hearer’s stance and the detached perspective of the observer. Social objections include Putnam’s linguistic division of labor between experts for articulating semantic domains, questions of national and cultural identity that possess certain linguistic struggles and linguistic rights, the social costs emphasized by Bourdieu for departing from linguistic norms, and the reality of unintended meanings occurring within social contexts.

On a linguistic level, language, dialect and idiolect reflect the nuanced conventions of a community specific to the human activity contained in each of their unique purposes and aims. The development of a distinct language is the manifestation of enculturated conventions on a macrocosmic scale according to the social and environmental demands, while a dialect mirrors a more narrow deviation from this enculturation corresponding to more regional variations in demands, and idiolect even narrower still.

To assert the importance of one linguistic level over another would effectively overlook the function of language as a medium for facilitating the cooperation of human activity toward shared purposes and aims. Each level elucidates a degree of enculturation that distinctly comprises the purposes and aims of a family, community, and/or nation. A system of linguistic practices always develops as a result of the convergence of shared intentions between two or more persons addressing a common purpose or aim interactionally. However, as the demands change, so to do the purposes and aims as individuals arrive at new shared intentions. As a result, conversational exchanges become chained together as preexisting linguistic practices are inherited through the traditional conventions and customary norms embedded and passed on through the language as residue of antiquated conventions and outdated practices of the past

The consequence for individuals born into a preexisting language systems are the subtle ideological influences within in the language that contain inconspicuous propositional attitudes that shape an individual’s ideology and identity. While individuals can develop new linguistic practices by identifying demands and form shared intentions, they are constrained, insofar as they have been enculturated by institutional practices and habituated by ideologies inherited from the language. In this way language solidarity is achieved that supports a homogeneity among a populous which affords a more singular consensus and more unified propositional attitudes. The result is an integrated linguistic community that allows for greater ease in communicating purposes among people with demands that would be typically varied within a widespread population. As Bourdieu argues, this integration of a linguistic community is a condition for the establishment of relations of linguistic domination.

However, so long as an individual fails to recognize the inherited practices and ideologies of their language, and fails to embrace their ability to identify personal demands and purposes, they are bound to the conceptual scheme inherent to the language, for better or worse, and blind to see beyond its capacity for addressing possibilities and coining new meaning outside the language.

I can only conclude then that the idiolect, the variety of language created and instantiated by an individual, is the most important linguistic level of communication. Only at the idiolect level does an individual possess a role in the creation of a language that is relevant and meaningful according to their personal purpose and aims.

Davidson’s analysis of language is conducted on a metaphysical level by investigating the origin of language formation from an idyllic perspective void from any influence of enculturation. His work did a great deal to elucidate how language can arise between individuals, but failed to make a significant contribution to the discussion of how socialization affects the development of language. For Davidson, insofar as language was neither systematic, containing definable properties and rules, nor shared, as an agreed method, language was non-existent. In his essay A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs he argued that any prior theory of language was weak and insufficient describing the interpretation of meaning and that passing theory could not be reduced to methods. He concluded that if language was “the ability to converge on a passing theory from time to time” as a result of wit, luck or wisdom and not because of any regularity, we have simply “erased the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around the world generally.” Language is an intersubjective pragmatic process that develops between two individuals.

Bourdieu focused on this intersubjective relationship and delineated the way in which symbols such as language shape ideologies and creates class stratifications within a society.  According to Bourdieu, language possesses a symbolic power that maintains value as linguistic capital which is exchanged within linguistic markets as well as among overlapping linguistic markets that are politically and socially defined by lifestyles. An individual’s language makes him apart of a normative group, whoever or whatever that represents; it is not a communal tool available and equal to all. The consolidation of linguistic communities into official language is a means of domination by reinforcing the authority of it’s authors. This consolidation is achieved through instituting social apparatuses such as formal education and the creation of dictionaries as a means of creating a standard tongue within the nation. These institutions infiltrate the ideological apparatuses and reinforce prescribed ideologies through conditioning the habitus, an embodied way of responding to symbols or language, which dispossesses an individuals of their natural language and facilitates the loss of identity through instructed censorship that eventually develops into internalized self-censorship. This unification creates homogenous economic and cultural values which allows for the greater ease of governing.

Much like Bourdieu, Anzaldua discusses the function of language in identity formation and discusses the dispossession that occurs during censorship. In her books Borderlands, Anzaldua describes living on the fringes between two languages and hybridization that occur between the two languages. Much like Bourdieu’s notion of a linguistic market and their ideology, the Chicana hybrid between overlapping linguistic communities that developed out of necessity for a distinct identity. This identity serves as a reflection of the unique community situated at the borders and obscured by two dominating languages. Davidson would agree that the formation of the Chicana language is a special kind of creativity borne out of the unique shared intentions of the people. Anzaldua argues “I am my language” and that language is inseparable from identity and that to citizen someone for being poor in language is to criticize their value as a human being.

The tensions and struggles between languages is really a struggle for power. As language is born out of the shared intentions of a people, it begs the question of what these intentions seek to accomplish and who they serve. Language is a reflection of a communities identity, a way of life embedded with beliefs and ideologies. A break in language can lead to a devastating divide in the ideology of a people and the destabilization of a nation and government.

When Nietzsche proclaimed “God is Dead,” he essentially prophesized the break from religion that emphasized the supreme authority of a singular text and the ideology it possessed. The break from religions authority on language destabilized the notions of a singular truth and an ultimate meaning which led to the proliferation of existential freedom that challenged antiquated norms and created new perspectives for examining what it means to be.

[1] ‘Language’ is derived from the L. lingua meaning ‘tongue’.‘Communication’ is derived from the L. communicare meaning ‘to share, divide out; impart, inform, joine, unite, participate in” from communis meaning “to make common”.