Why is a Wise Guy Not a Wise Guy?

Requested by RGF

To properly answer this question it must be stated aloud. “Why is a wise guy not a wise guy?”

Or perhaps the proper way of writing the question would be “Why's a whys guy not a wise guy?” In which case the answer is that a wise guy does not bother with so man “whys,” because he sees that “why” is only useful up to a certain point. Why allows one to make sense of how forces and agents operate within a system, but also comes to a terminus where continuing to ask “why” will only yield impotent “because” answers. Eventually one is bound to come to a point where the answer is “it just is” or “I just do,” and the “whys” guy who insists on asking why beyond the point of usefulness cannot be a “wise” guy who applies knowledge and understanding to his actions.

On the other hand, maybe this is all wrong and it is not a question at all, but a statement: “Wise: a whys guy not a Ys guy.” In this instance we have two types of men, the “whys” guy and the “Ys” guy. Y being typical shorthand for a “yes” response, especially in questionnaires, we can picture the “Ys” guy being the chap who does as he's told and doesn't bother with asking too many questions. He acts based on the vision of another and is not concerned with understanding too much of his own area of activity. The other man is the questioner – the “whys” guy – who will not act unless he has been given an explanation of the meaning and context of his actions. The statement declares the “whys” guy to be also “wise,” to the exclusion of the “Ys” guy.

Or perhaps it is the reverse! Perhaps this statement says that the “Ys” guy is “wise” while the “whys” guy is not! For what, after all, is wisdom except an aid in determining what actions one should take? And what is the critical foundation of society except a willingness to trust others and accept a certain level of blindness in order to function at greater levels than any single individual imagination would be capable of picturing? In this case, the “whys” guy slows society's progress, the “Ys” guy understands the value of endorsing a social structure – and is therefore “wise.”

And what else might these words be saying? “Why is a wise guy not a wise guy?” That is, asking why the wise are not wise? A bit a shoddy logic that illuminates the deeper truth that a wise guy is only wise in a certain context – that is, certain behavioral inclinations and certain maxims may make a man wise in one situation, and a fool in others. Put a wise debater in a managerial position and see the fool come out; ask the analyst to be an artist and you'll soon beg the fool to go back to his dungeon of spreadsheets!

And thus we see that the same bit of wordplay can be used to say this but it can also say that and that in this context we're discussing wisdom in the abstract and in that context we're discussing social structure, and no doubt there are more this and thats that might be appealed to as context. No doubt all this confusion could be avoided by multiplying words to create clear logical pictures of what we are trying to communicate, and therein lies the real wisdom of the statement: A bit of wordplay will stay with us far longer than logical clarity, for the wordplay resembles the obscurity that characterizes our lives as they are rather than our lives as our logical pictures say they can be.

But even that explanation pales in comparison to the goofy joy of playing with words!

Evolution of Will and Reason Applied to Skill Development

Previously I wrote about the way that a primitive stage of will and a primitive stage of reason build off of each other to eventually evolve into Will and Reason. I now think that this particular bit of theorizing can actually have a practical application, seeing as there is no reason to suppose that this is isolated to the development of a human being, but should be able to be adapted to more particular situations. In fact, I think that this model could be used as a guide to acquiring new skills later on in life.

We begin with dissatisfaction(W), which leads to movement, which leads to encounters(R). When encounters are multiplied they become experience(R), and experience filtered through the particulars of our nature becomes preference(W). Preference compels us to act in such a way that we avoid some things and cling to others, necessitating a model of the world to guide us, this model being Reason or Language. Reason and Language give form to our preference allowing us to pursue even that which does not sit in front of us, at last resulting in Will.

This is the picture of I have of the evolution of Will and Reason, now apply this picture to the acquisition of a more particular skill.

We begin by being dissatisfied with our skill set. Maybe we are well accomplished, but we lack, say, a musical skill, or perhaps we are utterly unskilled from years of laziness and we wish to reverse this. So we begin searching for a skill to learn, we watch films, we talk to friends, we surf the internet, and we start having encounters. We see the art of guitar playing from the outside, we hear someone play the piano, we listen to a dear friend explain the exact technique for copulating with an oboe. Preferences begin to emerge - we certainly do not want anything to do with the oboe, but the piano arouses our passions, the prospect of learning it excites us. Perhaps we pursue the piano, and then find that we miss the showmanship associated with actually moving our instrument around with us as one does with a guitar - perhaps we find that we are more interested in an instrument that can be carried around and played at any moment - these things we discover with experience, which in turn refines our preferences and makes them more specific.

Finally, with preference and experience, we can use reason and language to state a goal or objective. We take our preferences and we state that we want to be a part of a band, or we state that we want to play at street fairs or what have you. This is the form that our will takes: Will-to-Bandhood or Will-to-Irritate-Fair-Patrons. Then we can organize our lives and efforts in the context of this will, acting in such a way as to bring about the desired.

At least until we decide that we really should learn a classic game, chess perhaps?

Evolution of Will and Reason

We do not begin with Will or with Reason. When you see a baby crying, can you really say that it is expressing will? Will to what? If you gave a baby a series of buttons that would provide various things that a baby might need (a diaper change, milk, a cuddle, a fork to check out what's going on in that outlet over there), what would a crying baby do? Probably smack them all - does the baby know why it cries? This much is certain: the baby cries.

We will not say that babies are not smart, but are they exercising reason? Experiences they desire, experiences they shy away from. What actions are performed to bring about these experiences. Is this reason? I would not call it that. All of it is experience, encounter, appearance. The baby is bombarded by the world. The baby does not talk, the world is not put into words.

We do not begin with will, we begin with dissatisfaction. We do not begin with reason, we begin with encounters.

How do we distinguish between will and dissatisfaction? Dissatisfaction compels us to move. Will compels us to move somewhere. Will contains an aim, a destination, it is Will-to-Something. Dissatisfaction is just a need to move.

How do we distinguish between reason and encounter? An encounter can not be put into language, it simply is. Reason is judgment and language, a model of the encounter that can be used to relate and predict encounters.

Dissatisfaction and encounters escalate one another. One is dissatisfied so one begins moving nowhere, leading to more and more encounters - Experience. One has more and more encounters and the proliferation of encounters allows Preference to emerge from the interaction of Experience and Nature. Once we have Preference we need to understand the world so as to navigate it and increase that which we prefer and mitigate that which we dislike, we need information for a purpose and that leads to Reason. Once we have Reason we can cast the world into different forms by the use of our words and through the creation of relations, only then do we give form to our Preference and turn it into something that can be pursued: Will.

I do not actually imagine that these things happen all at once, as though Dissatisfaction occurs, Dissatisfaction produces Experience, which produces Preference, which produces Reason, which produces Will. Rather I think there are a multitude of tiny back-and-forth interactions wherein each reinforces and builds one another.

We must wonder, though, is Will and Reason the terminus?

Will and the World

Given the conception of the world as one fact, what can we say about the will? The will does indeed still exist as a part of the world, as a part of the one fact, not divorced from it. This is not typically what we conceive of when we talk about free will, for the will in this conception cannot be separated from our situation and our backgrounds.

Our will is free - depending on what you mean it to be free from. Suppose a man asks for a will that is free from the world but not free from himself. In this case he has provided us with the context needed to consider the possibility: it is still his will but he wants it to be free from the world. This, I think, is what most people are really after when they begin speaking in absolutes with regard to free will.

At once we must ask a question: does the man exist on any level apart from the world? If he does not, then it is logically impossible for a will to be free from the world for him. This is not a question that can be investigated; the answer is found in the basic lenses one uses to see the world. If you believe in spirits, then he does indeed. If you are a materialist, then he does not.

What can be investigated is the question of what gaps might a transcendent will fill? We can examine the will that is not free from the world: we can investigate that behavior that is tied to the arrangement of matter in the brain, we can investigate the way different chemicals cause men to pursue different things, we can investigate the way that conditioning can cause a man to perform to some extent on command. Is there room for pursuits and behavior that have mysterious causes where a transcendent will might be responsible?

To some degree, this is a matter of investigation. To a greater degree, this is a matter of lenses.

We have not fully investigated the world of neuroscience, brain chemistry, drug interaction, or behaviorism. If we say that these things can explain all human behavior we are not stating a fact that emerged from following an epistemological method, we are instead stating an assumption or a faith that allows us to use an epistemological method. Even if we do advance to the state where we can say that there is no more progress to be made in these fields, how could we ever know with certainty that there were no background processes working that made the more prominent factors work? Maybe there are all kinds of souls and spirits swirling around every brain, without which no neurological process or drug interaction would ever produce a result? Simply because we are committed to Occam's Razor does not mean that the world shares our enthusiasm. In this way, the question is a question of lenses: are you willing to accept transcendent factors or do you restrict the world to the One Fact?

Let us end on a note of speculation. If there are transcendent wills, what does our experience of life tell us about them? They are not very powerful. Whatever they can do is very simple. Whenever we face a decision we tend to experience that decision as something that came from within us - perhaps the transcendent will is nothing more than a spirit that can choose to say or not say "yes" to an opportunity in the world. Forgive me - this is in large part philosophical fiction. Most significant in this concept, however, is the fact that the One Fact is being shaped by a multitude of transcendent factors. The form that the world takes can not merely be the form of the One Fact, it is the One Fact as tempered by billions of tiny wills making tiny changes.

At this moment I find this idea lovely and completely unpersuasive.

Philosophy Then Science

I want to say that Philosophy and Science are two complementary practices that both deal with the fundamental relation between Man and World. This is the way that I conceive of them.

In the beginning is the life. Man is in the world. Man encounters phenomena. Man finds ways of living with the phenomena and even thriving. In the course of thriving, man turns back to look on his practices and wonders what he might be able to make out of those practices.

Philosophy arises as he builds models of the world. He turns the raw phenomena into concepts utilizing properties and continuums, relates the concepts together based on what he observes, builds a model of his world using reason and language that seeks to go deeper than the appearances.

Science arises when several competing philosophies arise and it becomes necessary to begin measuring those philosophies. Science takes the predictions that the philosophies make and then compares them back to the world of appearance to see which philosophies best predict and explain the appearances that arise. In this case, the world of appearance is referred to as empirical data, and the comparisons are referred to as experiments.

In the Beginning Was the Life

In the beginning was the life.

This cannot be emphasized enough. Philosophical types - perhaps scientific types too, for that matter - should have this written on their walls. Tattoo it on the backs of their wrists. Write in on chalkboards one hundred times daily. Scream it out at the moment of sexual climax.

The reason being that once one spends a length of time thinking philosophically about human behavior - that is, thinking deliberately about human behavior - one tends to forget that life was being lived prior to any theorizing or philosophizing. And if mass illiteracy were to suddenly sweep over humanity and if all language was reduced to grunting "food, fuck, bed" with varying tones of urgency, life would continue being lived although any heights of philosophy would have slipped out of reach.

Consider ethical philosophy. Consider Kant's categorical imperative and the system of morals that can be derived from that primary starting point. Now consider the utilitarian calculus used to determine the best possible action. Think to Aristotle's works on ethics and virtue. Now remember that people still found a way to make society work and found a way to behave decently toward one another prior to all of these philosophical projects. In the course of living their lives people had to work out ethical ways of living.

Which came first? A theory of ethics or ethical behaviors? Like most things I imagine that they exist in a kind of loop. One does a little theorizing which leads to a little more behavior which provides more data to be theorized about which leads to more refined behavior and so on. It seems to me that determining which one came first is a bit like finding the starting point in a circle. I mention this only so that there is no confusion that I am offering a theory about which came first - I do not care whether ethical behavior or ethical theory has chronological primacy. What I am saying is that deliberate philosophical systematic theorizing comes about after a way of life already exists.

In this way, I think we can see philosophy as a kind of refinement of natural human living. Perhaps we could say that it is life with art applied to it: an artistic rendering of what we were already doing. So ethics, for example, could be seen as taking the morality and concepts already guiding human behavior and chiseling away what had become useless and providing metaphysical groundings for what remained valuable so as to lend it power in debate and legitimacy in the face of disagreement, most importantly it allowed for the reaching of ethical heights which we never would have touched just living the way that came naturally. Epistemology too is just a matter of creating methods of thought that refine our natural more instinctual behavior pertaining to sorting reliable information, bullshit, error, and irrelevance.

Philosophy, then, is a kind of height, a luxury. We also see a way in which it can be evaluated. If the philosophy provides a method that allows us to live better than our instincts do, then we have encountered a philosophy that we help ourselves by living by. On the other hand if a philosophy provides a method that makes our lives more difficult, then we have found something that does not rise to the level of our instincts and cannot supplant or supplement them. Like someone trying to improve on a cupped hand by baking clay in a rounded shape with several holes in the bottom: we're better off with a cupped hand until you seal the holes.

Resisting the System

In the past all I wanted was to weave all my thoughts and theories into one big, coherent system that explained my fundamental views on the world and invited (read: coerced) others to come live in that system. Today I think my thinking is more sophisticated than it has ever been, but I also find that it resists systematization. I think in remarks, I think in isolated games and relations, I oftentimes relate those relations to one another, but they do not have their proportions worked out. I don't have a hierarchy, I don't have a scale for those games in relation to one another.

Sometimes I want to sit down and build that system, but I resist that urge. Why?

To get the baser reason out of the way: because not trying ensures that I won't fail. For the more fundamental reason, though, I have come to distrust systematic thinking.

I find relations to be more personal than nouns. When we observe phenomena we tend to observe them in largely the same way - that is when we talk about them we don't seem to spend much time squabbling over, say, the blueness above us or the greenness beneath us. We don't squabble terribly much when we observe common relations, like the being-on-top spatial relation between a cat and a rug or the prior-to temporal relation of Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama. But we do notice increased squabbling around the point where we discuss relation, like discussing the similarity relation between a given lasagna and a given pizza. We are left in dark and confusing territory when we begin discussing causal relations, like bad parenting, destructive culture, genetic predisposition, and mental disorder in relation to a given committed crime. Then we enter into full-on war when we discuss the proportional relations like the balance of strength and speed in successful martial arts strategies.

We find some relations which rely heavily on common, public appearance and phenomena, like spatial relations. Then we find relations which seem to be based largely on personal intuition and seem to be perceived much differently depending on the one who perceives. Sometimes these latter relations can be cast in a way that can be publicly measured, sometimes they cannot.

In terms of system building, it seems inevitable that much of the scaffolding will be made of these personal relations. Perhaps to me we have to start with the absurdity of human existence, or perhaps we have to start with the question of what can be known, or we can ask how we follow God in a modern age, or we can ask what is the Good. Perhaps I say that this starting question (whichever one I choose) has a primacy relation to all other questions, my question must be asked first. Of course there is no appearance that we can measure to see if this is true, and there is no shortage of people submitting alternative questions that they claim has a primacy relation. The system becomes deeply personal, less and less available to other people living their lives.

Or, to put it in a another way: perceived abstract relations contain something personal to the speaker. The bigger the relation, the more personal it becomes. The more personal it becomes, the more alien it is to other people. So whereas my little isolated relations and games contain a little that is personal and offers itself to other people as eager, helpful tools, if I were to turn them into a large system it would taste so much like me that only those who happen to like my flavor would be able to thrive living by my system.

From the Point of View of 60-90 Years on a Spinning Rock

Suppose that there is indeed a creator God and suppose that there is no life outside of planet Earth, just an enormous universe that is indifferent to man and arouses indifference in man. For what reason would a creator God create such a universe?

Consider also the lifespan of a human being. Compared with the timeline of the universe a human being who manages to see his one hundredth year still does not rise to even a hair's width on that timeline. Even the timeline of human history makes any individual life seem hopelessly short. Supposing a creator God, why would the world be set up in this way?

Pausing to note that this question can not be answered in any satisfying way, I remind you that the question is asked to shed insight on a facet of life, not to actually try to discern the artistic sensibilities of an incomprehensible deity. That would require a blog post at least twice this length.

I take this arrangement of the universe and this arrangement of lifespans as creating a situation wherein one can not sensibly live while trying to view the world sub specie aeterni. We cannot make sense of our lives by looking at the universe - by trying to see the one fact. Our lives are hopelessly insignificant looked at from that vantage point, we would not be able to rise from our beds in the morning if we felt and valued as people who grasped the universe. Instead the only way to live is to every day see the world from our point of view: from the perspective of a chunk of rock spinning around a star and only about 60-90 years of that point of view to boot. Any other point of view makes life unlivable.

Does this mean that I think that objectively our lives are insignificant? My god, objectivity is not an option! But, no, I do not say that objectively our lives are either significant or insignificant. The significance arises when the world is seen from a certain perspective. If you adopt certain perspectives, the entire human condition becomes a sickly mistake; adopt other perspectives and there is nothing more important than a human life. That is, objectively human life is absurd given certain contexts, and objectively human life is epic given other contexts.

And if there is a God, I think that this arrangement of the universe was a method by which he choked off certain kinds of perspectives.

Absolute and Relative

It seems to me that a good deal of philosophizing goes into trying to answer questions without relating the concepts that compose the questions to anything outside the question. That is, making questions absolute and then trying to come to an answer.

Suppose I ask who is smarter: John or James, how would we go about answering that question? How could we ever answer it? The concept "smart" has no definition in this scenario. It does not really mean anything.

If I were a sports reporter and John and James were athletes and I asked this question, we would be able to define "smart" in terms of regularly making decisions that further a winning gameplay strategy. John is smarter than James if his actions on the field further a winning gameplay strategy more often than James' actions do.

If I were a teacher and John and James were my students, then it is not clear precisely what I mean by "smart," but the definition can be narrowed down. Perhaps I mean, "performs better on tests," perhaps I mean, "gets better grades," or perhaps I mean, "asks more insightful questions and makes more insightful statements," or even, "makes statements that display greater lateral thinking."

If I am a High-IQ fetishist and John and James are two Mensa prospects, then it is clear immediately what I mean by "smart." It means "scores higher on standardized tests."

But now if it is just I and I just ask who is smarter between John and James, we are lost. We know that "smart" pertains to intellect by virtue of the fact that I am an English speaker. Once we try to narrow it past that we begin making arbitrary leaps. Some would say that the absolute meaning of "smart" refers to IQ, others would say success in society, others would say displays of calculation and creativity. We might pour our energies into trying to make such absolute definitions, but we cannot reach any definition that is not easily brushed aside given just a little context.

When a debate becomes a battle of semantics, perhaps we would do well to ask if there is enough context to
even have a discussion. If there is not, then maybe we would do well to ask if silence might not be the best course of action.

Will and Reason

I have blogged much about Will and Reason, usually by talking up the role of Will as determining the context in which we reason and downplaying Reason as doing the grunt work once Will determines the axioms and values. It has occurred to me lately, though, that Will without Reason is limp.

Without Reason to provide models and pictures, Will has no form or direction. I want, but the want has no structure. Maybe we could call it dissatisfaction: it does not quite rise to the level of moving us to act, but it does ensure that we sleep poorly. It is only after Reason provides us with Concepts, Relations, and Paths that our Will actually takes on a form and compels us to motion.

Suppose a man is dissatisfied. There is nothing he can do about it. Suppose the man observes that after lifting weights there is muscle growth, and after cardio there is weight loss, and that after eating some foods his muscles are larger and feel better and after eating other foods his gut becomes larger. Reason allows him to define concepts like Hypertrophy, Caloric Deficit, and Nutrition and it allows him to relate proper Nutrition to Caloric Deficit and Hypertrophy, finally showing him the consequences that result from his actions relevant to these concepts.

Only with the model does his dissatisfaction become something like Will-to-Health or Will-to-Strength. Prior to the model, it's just a little groan he gives when he grabs his gut fat.

The World as We Found It

I conceive of the world as one fact. We must carve it into tiny pieces to make it usable, but this does not mean that it is truly composed of tiny pieces.

I conceive of language as an inherent falsehood, and I say that the xRy nature of our language indicates human creativity and a segregating of facts apart from other facts that the world does not actually resemble.

All this is to say that the entire history of philosophy, science, literature, poetry, and essentially language and mathematics entirely is one big book called The World as We Found It. What we meant to write was The World as It Is, but that is not what the final product turned out to be. The text turned out to be a creative work that emerged through the interactions of Selves with the World, determined to varying degrees by either those Selves or by the World, but never without the interaction with the two. No Self ever produced a work without appealing to the World beyond himself, and the World has never been described without passing through the filter of a Self who encountered it.

Proof Criteria

I have my concept, and as a part of my concept I must include a Proof Criteria. Now, in life, concepts are not defined so intentionally, but we who live in a world thoroughly saturated in human creativity can look at what we created naturally and attempt to create artificially as well. So consider the way that we talk about 'proof,' and 'evidence.'

Suppose we knew a man named Jack and we asked for proof that his name was, in fact, Jack. What would be the Proof Criteria here? This is written into the concept of a Name. Jack could point to several people who call him Jack, and it is the nature of Names that they are what one is called. Jack is called Jack; Jack responds to the name Jack; if you asked people where Jack is they would direct you to the man being questioned. This is proof that his name is Jack.

Perhaps one would object that this is evidence, not proof. Perhaps they object that people calling this individual Jack would lead one to believe that his name is Jack, it hints at it, but it may very well not be. Maybe his name is actually Clive.

But then one must look at the concept of a Name. Is a Name the thing written on your birth certificate? Is a name your full and proper title?

We define the concept of the Name. If I were a government agent trying to discover a fugitive, then for me the concept of a Name is the name written on the birth certificate - the name in the eyes of the State. It would not matter to me that this man is called Jack if the name his parents gave him is Clive. That people call him Jack is evidence - evidence that may lead me away from the actual truth.

If I am Jack's friend, I do not care what his parents called him. For me a Name is what I use to address my friend, the name I use to refer to my friend, the name I write on gift tags to my friend, the name I use to find his phone number in my contacts list. If I call him Jack and he responds this is not evidence that his name is Jack, it is proof. By my concept of a name, this is what a name consists of.

To ground a concept in the world of phenomena we must define the appearances that must appear to us for us to evaluate the concept as True or False. This is what we mean when we say that a concept is verifiable.

The World as One Fact

I wonder if an improvement on the idea of determinism might be the notion that the world is a single fact. Perhaps it is the nature of human limitation that we have to break the world into xRy sentences in order to analyze and work with the world, but that is not to say that the world is actually a sum total of xRy sentences. And perhaps it is not the case that we see cause-and-effect relations throughout the world, but rather that what we categorize as causal is really just the nature of the one fact.

Perhaps "the ball caused the window to shatter" is all wrong. Maybe instead we should see that a ball of a certain mass traveling a certain velocity and crossing paths with a window is a shattered window. Or rather that the entire situation of balls flying and a window shattering is all one big relation. We can choose to shave it down into smaller and smaller relations, or we could step back and look at larger and larger relations; this is human limitation.

Understanding that we could not grasp the world in this way, we could see that the world is one giant unity. One fact, not a collection of facts.

Although, am I saying that it is somehow illegitimate to observe tiny relations? No, no not at all.

Science as Communal

Let me cast science in this way: science is a method of developing theories via a consistent approach to phenomena to provide a set of communal theories. By this I mean that we all make observations, we all encounter phenomena, and we all imagine how these phenomena relate to one another. These imagined relations are theories. These theories aim at the truth (how things really are), but the truth can not be determined independently of perception; so we have two criteria that allow us to sort theories: coherence and pragmatism. Scientists take theories and apply pragmatic tests to them to see what works and what does not - and decent scientists and philosophers and lay thinkers can read popular theories and see which ones cohere together and which ones do not.

Fundamentally, science must be communal. The theories that science declares the best possible theory at any given time may not be the best possible theory in relation to a given individual. Perhaps the individual requires a theory that affirms his image of himself or perhaps he needs theories delivered to him with a taste of anthropomorphism. This science need not do. The individual's genetic make-up and life-experiences may incline him to certain idiosyncrasies when theorizing on phenomena; science restrains itself to pragmatism and coherency because these two criteria are useful for nearly every human trying to make sense of the world (indeed, it is hard to imagine someone who would value a theory for not working even if they happen to value a non-working theory over a working one).

The result is that science allows people from varying backgrounds, with varying wills, to sit down and imagine relations between appearances that can guide and inform anyone. Scientific theories are public theories.

Air so Thin You Can't Breathe

The difficulty of philosophy is that it consists, at least in part, of chopping the world into tiny atoms and then contemplating very simple relations. It all comes back to the basic sentence: xRy. We may suppose that when we engage in this kind of activity we are putting life under the microscope. We are looking at the world very closely to slip past all the messiness and complexity so that we can see the underlying order and simplicity. The presupposition is the world is simple and orderly and that life only perplexes us because there are so many simple and orderly relations sitting atop one another that it creates the illusion of chaos.

Yet, something has bothered me ever since my failed attempt at studying philosophy in college. In philosophy the air is so thin you can't breathe. The more complexity you strip away in the course of forming a picture of some aspect of the world, the less and less that your picture resembles the world. We philosophical types are the ones who have some defect of the brain that compels us to wrestle with these pictures and try to make them into something that we can live by; talk to someone who is struggling to get through an obligatory Intro to Philosophy class and note the way that the pictures being presented to them are utterly void of content for them. They find philosophy to be like offering someone a photo-realistic sketch and then handing them a stick figure.

Of course, stick figures just consist of lines on paper. Philosophy boasts an incredibly expansive vocabulary, esoteric word usages, mountains of primary texts next to ranges of secondary texts, and people who can sit down and actually speak in philosophy. From this the non-philosopher gets the impression that philosophy is deeply sophisticated, so the non-philosopher devalues himself by saying that he just can't understand it. He treats philosophy as something beyond him and comes to hate it bitterly.

What the non-philosopher does not understand is that philosophy is beneath his world. The pictures offered by philosophy are simplifications - that is - fictions. If the pictures bother you, it is probably because you realize you can't live in a world so small.

Even in my own writing this is something I am ever aware of. In my last blog I talked about loving the world deeply. As I re-read it I realized that it was entirely useless information for anyone other than me. My description is small, anyone reading it will picture a small world, no one could breathe that kind of air. Of course the ideas that preceded the blog mean the world to me; they have a deep significance, they are something that I can try to live my life by. The words themselves, though, are a kind of byproduct of a way of life. To someone living differently in a different situation with different values, my words have to be meaningless, it is the only way we forge our own individual lives is by being capable of not feeling the significance of every sincerely held worldview.

If you ever read a worldview that seems so small that you do not see how a person could actually live in that kind of world, one need only remember that someone is, in fact, living their life while espousing it.

Evidence and Phenomena

Suppose someone says that what we say is not supported by the evidence - what does this mean? Put it into other words. I suppose that we could view it in this way.

There is phenomena, appearance. Our sentences can be built upon these phenomena; in such cases the number of words is determined by what we perceive, their order is dictated by the way our perceptions appear to us, the sentence serves to show how we suppose that these appearances relate to one another.

The sentence "the ball broke the window" is built upon the appearance of a ball, the appearance of a broken window, the appearance of the memory of the window being recently whole, the sound of a shattering, the appearance of the ball breaking the window, and the understood concept that balls can cause windows to become shattered.

Now suppose we have a sentence like, "Timmy is a delinquent." This is not rooted in appearance, this is instead rooted in other sentences which are themselves rooted in appearance. If we have sentences like "Timmy broke the neighbors window," "Timmy glued Fluffy to the doghouse," and "Timmy poured water on the new computer," then we may use these models of appearances as grounds to make a sentence placing Timmy in the 'little bastard' category. Much language is rooted in other language, but there is also language that is rooted in appearance.

Let us leave aside for a moment the question of the validity of moral statements that claim we should only believe what is rooted in appearance. For now it is enough to note that we can distinguish between sentences that are rooted in appearance and those that are not - or rather - sentences that are heavily rooted and those that are shallowly rooted.

Subject/Predicate

We have our subject. We modify it by means of the predicate. One subject; one predicate, cut off from the rest of the world by means of a period. In this we must note the inherent humanity of language: the world is what it is, messy, overlapping, and without sharp distinctions; language on the other hand is always clean, neat, segregated, and clearly stated.

Language, therefore, always represents the world falsely.

Theory as Picture

Sometimes in the course of a discussion, you are able to see through the particular vocabularies that two different theories use, and you see how they can be cast in a common language so that the difference between the two theories becomes plain and clear. Take the following two sentences as an example.

"I must work to strengthen my willpower so that I can resist temptation."

and

"I want to do X, but I just can't get past my need to Y."

In the first sentence, a man is trying to improve himself so that he can combat something outside of himself. Perhaps we can imagine him trying to stave off whispering devils, or perhaps we can imagine him averting his eyes whenever something tempting comes into view to ensure that it has no power over him. In the second sentence, the man is divided against himself. There is nothing external, he makes a distinction between 'want' and 'need,' but both of these are a part of who he is.

Suppose we asked both of these men why they have not exercised today. The first man might say that he doesn't have the willpower to resist the temptation to spend all day on the couch watching TV. The second man might say that he doesn't want to exercise more than he wants to spend all day on the couch watching TV. In the end, the behavior is the same, but we have two different theories explaining the behavior. And if we put them into a common vocabulary to draw out their differences, we get something like this:

"I want to work out, but something other than me derailed me."

and

"I want to work out, but not as much as I want to not work out."

This is a simplistic example, but I see no reason why this could not be applied in other cases.

Breed of Cowardice? Sensible Position?

Regarding my previous post.

Is this a breed of cowardice? It certainly could be called that. For indeed you could say that I am afraid of living in a blind and chaotic world and consequently I cast the world as an act of God to impose the appearance of order, intention, and art on the cold, indifferent universe.

On the other hand, is it a sensible position? I too believe it could certainly be called that. After all, it is no less an imposition to call the universe cold and indifferent. If we can impose that image, why can we not impose this image? It does no good to say do away with all image, without image we could not even use the word "universe" let alone "universe as act of God" or "universe as cold and indifferent."

You can tell me that this image, this interpretation, this worldview, this construct, smacks of weakness and cowardice. I will not say that you are wrong. I will however say that it is more than weakness and cowardice, and that there is more to be considered than the degree to which a soul is willing to force itself to breathe thin air.

Down to the Base

Descartes sought something that could not be doubted, he arrived at cogito ergo sum. His base truth was that he exists because he could not deny that he was thinking. There is no need to rehash the criticism that Descartes received concerning this: suffice it to say he was not basic enough.

Proceed in this way to shrink to the more basic level:

I think. [This casts thought as the activity of my self]
One thinks. [This casts thought as the activity of a self]
It thinks. [This casts thought as an activity]
Thinking. [This casts the base as mental]
Perception.

This is the basic essence: perception. Phenomena. Appearance. By saying that they are phenomena that we perceive, or by saying that there is a world of phenomena, we go beyond the base in both cases. The base is merely phenomena.

But why would we ever want to live at the base? We must see the base to know what lies beneath us, not to know where we are going to go live. It is good to know that we can tear down the house if we like, but the mere fact that there is a base need not compel us to tear down the house to go live there.