Survival of the FIttest 2 - Economics . . .

In the last post, Survival of the Fittest, I alluded to the idea of that doctrine being the justification of an aggressive egotism in the political-economic sphere. In the post as a whole was shown how self-sacrifice is an immeasurably higher principle in the perpetuation of at least higher life-forms - not denying that principle of egotism or self-centred strength as an aspect of life but is nonetheless very minor compared to the giving of oneself and one's energies for others, as most obviously in the raising of the young, without which there would be no ongoing life with which to compete for anything.

Anyway, here a quick look at that 'Darwinian' ethos or justification for the principle of hard egotism within the political/economical sphere or spheres, and how true the principle could be said to be. In a previous piece I wrote:

Poker is capitalism in something like its pure form - the only product being exchanged is money. And if a game of poker is indefinitely continued, all the money will find its way progressively into fewer and fewer hands.

Poker here is of course so useful as it equates to a purity of environment unattainable within the complexity of the human world proper, and so within these more or less perfect laboratory conditions is seen that arch-competitiveness leads to a total narrowing of the field of existence to the point of just one surviving winner or 'species'.

How well does this then equate to the living environment? Could life in any way be said to parallel this extreme, even total narrowing of the surviving forms as shown if the principle is given free-play within the perfect economic conditions of the poker game? And so given the almost endless profligacy of life-forms within life, the attempt to sum up life as primarily conforming to this dominant principle, which in turn handily justifies the purity of egotism within economic and political fields, is hopelessly inadequate. Within a strictly confined environment where the survival of the fittest principle is allowed free and dominant rein what results is an ever narrowing constriction inwards, as one would expect since this is what egotism is: a narrowing inwards; whereas in the open field of life, what by almost total contrast occurred in terms of multiplicity of life-forms is an enormous expansion outwards.

These inane simplifications as critiqued here one could say are the workings of a primitive or embryonic form of intelligence, trying to reduce life to crude intellectual forms comprehensible to and symptomatic of itself.

Surivial of the Fittest?

"You know that survival of the fittest idea as the kind of overarching of idea for life, beneath which everything else bows down. And even extending into spheres like economics or political philosophies  as a kind of final truth of egotism."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"It doesn't really work, does it."
"Why not?"
"Because if it was the over-ruling idea of life, then for the higher animals anyway life wouldn't get very far, or rather it wouldn't get going in the first place."
"Why's that?"
"Isn't it obvious - think about babies, in the wild they're all more or less totally helpless if left to their own, and so wouldn't survive if not for the self-sacrifices of the fittest, the adults. So self-sacrifice is a far higher principle for life than any kind of egotism, within which notion life would quickly die out with the pure selfishness of the self-serving individual. Though of course the self-serving individual wouldn't exist in the first place without the self-sacrifice of its parent or parents to bring through its long period of basic helplessness. And it's no good talking about this as being about species rather than individuals, because what kind of egotism is it that sacrifices itself for the good of the species? That's the opposite of egotism. And so all-in-all self-sacrifice is obviously enough a far higher principle for life."
"I'll have to think about it."

Good

"What do you think of your man Obama?"
"The fella playing him is pretty good all right yeah."

Cluster - Rosa

German band Cluster, comprised of Hans Roedelius & Dieter Moebius, from their 1974 album 'Zuckerzeit'. With guitarist Michael Rother they formed Harmonia and below is 'Sehr Kosmisch' from the album 'Musik von Harmonia' also released in 1974.

 

Though - and I don't know why I feel the need to be so educational - a more typical Harmonia piece is Watussi below:

 

Terrorists

"You're of course a great socio-political expert, a connoisseur if you will in government. What can you tell us about how to deal with terrorists."
"Well, if they didn't exist, you'd have to make them up."

Sticks

A long path led away from the town and up a steep climb; not the most well-trodden of paths especially the further it went, but still far from unwalked. It continued on up to the top of the climb and, while the path became fainter and fainter as the climb progressed its existence could still be discerned, even if fading as it progressed to little more than the steps themselves - that is the steps and path became one and the same.

A man appeared in the town, seemingly more of a city type, not the most physically imposing or impressive, glasses beneath which greedy, bird-like eyes darting about him. He had a kind of carnivorous look of trying to extract some inner marrow of whoever he was talking to, though given the nature of himself and his staccato disconnected attempts at conversing, I don’t think he was having much success with the locals in that line - though you never know, maybe he thought he was penetrating them to the core.

He came across the path one day, by chance or however, and it seemed he grew very excited by it. He was soon to be seen coming and going from the town, and on his goings carrying bundles of long pointed sticks, atop of which he had managed to tie flags, and it turned out he was sticking these flagged sticks into the ground at regular intervals, or at least what was probably meant to be regular intervals, up along the ascending path. Back he would come to the town and then away again with another bundle atop his obedient if not very sturdy back. He had the look, it was said, all this time of someone who’d been awaiting all his life for something special, some great moment, and now it had arrived, and so now there he was merging with it for all he was worth.

With word of what he was doing when I next went along that walk I expected to see it indented from start to finish with his flagged sticks, and indeed for some distance it was heavily scoured. The sticks though tended not to be much in the way of being particularly upright, instead at odd angles to each other creating a haphazard rhythm, while quite a few were already perilously close to toppling over outright and a few having already done so. At times the sticks departed the path and struck out at some tangent for a few yards before these digressions coming to abrupt halts, occasionally one or two sticks then making unconvincing looking efforts to bridge and rejoin the apparently re-found path a little further. Maybe he thought he was effecting some short-cuts or, unused to such uncivilized terrains, his eyes simply found it difficult at times, say of fading light, to discern what was path and what not.

At first the disfigured vista seemed to me a bit amusing but then I began to get annoyed at the thought and sight of this wild, quiet place being made look ridiculous - and by this stupid outsider, not that his being an outsider probably made much difference, though of course only an outsider would have behaved like this in the first place.

Walking on after a while just where the incline began to get a bit more serious I came an end of the sticks, and a few yards further on lay the very man, stretched out and gasping, still with a few sticks in the bundle tied to himself. I’m afraid he didn’t provoke much in the way of compassion in me, he’d be all right in a while, but I could hardly just walk on, much as I might have wished, and so having asked him was he all right, to which he was unable to reply, I stayed by him a bit, and with the help of a drink of water he slowly began to recover himself.

“Are you feeling better now?”
“I am improving. It is the same every time.”
”What is?”
”This is as far as my body goes. I cannot go myself any further. But you, you don’t think you could . . .”

In short what he was telling me, while not losing that greediness to his look though with now I thought an added tone of some secret comradeship, that his path-marking was coming up against something of a brick-wall and that being his body’s collapsing in exhaustion somewhere around this point. The walk was bad enough, but with the weight of the sticks added to the load . . . But me, might I not wish to involve myself, to mark out the rest of the path? ‘I’m afraid not.’ He seemed to find this incomprehensible - not to be a colleague in this great work - but rather than explain myself, I said good luck and headed off up the path.

I came across him similarly stretched out and gasping over the next few days, back or forward a few yards from the same point, but usually back a bit: the weight of the added sticks he’d added to his pile and having to carry the entire already attained distance presumably too much for him. He didn’t ask me again to help him, but added to his embittered looks me was some latent pleading along with, deeper again, some uncomprehending sense of betrayal, whatever mystery about which he must have thought we were in league.

I suppose you had to admire his efforts with these flagged sticks, at least in theory you did, but in practice to be honest I didn’t. He failed to ever manage to get much farther with his sticks along the path, and soon, these limits to his endurance unsurpassed, he disappeared altogether. In his absence many more of his sticks toppled over.

It wasn't the end of things though and soon enough other people, diluted versions you could say of the first, began appearing. And why? To see The Sticks for themselves (their pronunciation somehow included the capitals). Sent on their way up the path, they were as excited about what they came across as the first man had been, and in their own ways turned out to be just as busy – this time not sticks but rulers, maps, measuring tapes, graphs, cameras . . . If in the midst of their activities someone happened to walk past them heading off up the incline, out past the limits of the sticks, these men wouldn’t it seemed even notice him. Even if said hello in passing he still wouldn't appear to register.

Their activities proved endless. You might think they’d soon enough exhaust all they could do but there was no end to distances and angles of and between sticks and so on that could be measured. Incidentally any stick that in the meantime fell was left where it was and no more interest paid it.

As time went on the fame of the original man and his sticks, and even some of the later men, grew and grew. No mention though ever seemed to be made of the path.

Outpouring of the Inner

Every inner state will naturally produce thoughts, even ascending to the heights of a philosophy, as direct emanations and justification of that state as truth, even final truth. The state becomes, particularly the more one becomes immersed in it, self-evident in its truth, it is that person's reality, and the thinker is not distinct from it.
Atheism is for instance the emanation of and simultaneously the attempt to justify a narrowed egotistical sense of being as truth. Whatever the inner state is tends not to be satisfied with itself simply as experienced reality due to, say, a certain way of life, but instead to be exclusive in proclaiming itself jealously as final truth. Atheism again so is the attempt of the petty ego sense of being to not shamefully feel itself as petty and narrowed down, but to actually proclaim this narrowed down state of being as the proud summit of reality - and as this gets pushed deeper in particular that particular individual's ego sense as final truth.

Fallen

A word, or maybe words, fell from above - naturally . . . that is naturally they fell from above, they could hardly have fallen from below . . .  but anyway in the falling the word or words hit something hard, the corner maybe was it of the roof, and broke into pieces onto the dirt. Something of course so interesting was hardly going to be ignored, but efforts in trying to put together again the pieces ended in, if not failure, confusion . . . though it might be more truthful to say failure and confusion, not to mention mud. The pieces  were so small no one could agree, never mind what word or words the letters comprised but what letters the pieces comprised, though of course this didn't stop the most violent certainties arising and clashing with other violent certainties. Anger, self-righteousness, proclamations, etc.

Anyway all involved were and are behaving as if these fallen words were of the utmost importance, unquestionably; and there was no one even to suggest otherwise. But why couldn't they have been maybe just tossed by some shoemaker from a dirty attic window! Why a shoemaker? I don't know. Egalitarianism. Though of course they could be right - from the heavens and all that. But you'd think if someone had gone to the trouble of sending it from the heavens, they'd have managed to avoid it smashing off the edge of some stupid roof. Ah but that maybe that was the whole point - the smashing bit . . . as well as the falling.

But isn't this all a bit too allegorical, crude even? Maybe, whatever it's all supposed to mean. But don't blame me, I only wrote it down.

Suspect

"You must admit it looks strange - “
"I admit nothing."
" - your fiancé's head found in your shopping bag."
"I fail to see ... "

Horse

Omar

"Do you think Omar Sharif really is a great bridge player or is it more about who he is?"
"I don't really know. He's probably good all right."

Death Penalty Paradox

I wrote some few posts back about the Epimenides/Liar Paradox, showing there was no paradox, simply faulty language. A thought however along its lines struck me regarding the logic of the death penalty, in its general use anyway, which goes:

Killing is wrong.
Therefore we will kill you.
Therefore killing isn't wrong.

So obviously as an ethical statement it falls apart completely, and perhaps what it really is is an opportunity to make a very potent statement of power by the State - however dubious the reality of that supposed entity may be. The arbiter and implementer of the law is beyond or outside of the law.

Nothing

It's very hard to be alive in this day and age . . . well no, it's not, being alive is a given, all you have to do is keep eating and breathing. And breathing, if you think about it, isn't even something you have to try to do, it happens by itself, the effort would be in the not breathing - which might seem a bit odd, it being harder to not do something than to do something. And as for eating, there's some effort involved there all right, but even still not a whole lot, you'd hardly call us hunter gatherers, and again it would probably take a lot more effort ultimately, more willpower, not to eat than to eat.

But outside of these physiological details, it's not easy to be alive now, and here by contrast it is perhaps a lot easier not to be alive than alive. Not that anyone is forcing one not to be alive, but it's, we'll say, a state, this inner unreality, perpetually suggested, invisible hands are pushing one into this unreal domain. Are they real, these hands, that is are there real people behind the pushing, or is it so to speak the inner logic of a process that hasn't really anything to do with anyone? Maybe, not that it perhaps really matters, it's a bit of both - to some degree behind the invisible suggestive hands are real hands, that is real people setting the pushing into non-being in motion, helping it along. But it could be - as far as they're concerned, the people doing the pushing - that all the movement, the collective migration into unreality, some great cumulative nothingness, is just to do with their personal gain, what they personally get out of people leaving reality behind - money, docility, whatever - and even if they were aware some bit of some inner logic to the whole process, this for them is all by the way, superfluous, secondary, unnecessarily complicated. It might even be an affront to their cleverness this supposed inner logic that does most of the work for them. And who knows, maybe if you mentioned unreality, they'd look back blankly . . .  though really that should hardly be a surprise, for what would you expect out of, or inside of, a servant of unreality but more unreality, and the higher up they've gone in that whole business, rather than the less so the more so.  So rather than cynically awake and aware at the controls, they're the most unaware of all. Which you could say is poetic.

So what is it, this nothingness: some kind of machine, something like an elaborate bicycle, various sized wheels, lots of whirring, smaller ones feeding into the movement of bigger ones, people pedalling, but it's not anyone in particular's bicycle however much they're pedalling and, even they might think, steering.

So all this impersonality, no one's to blame, not even the people who are to blame, they've just gone so deep into whatever they've gone into, there's nothing left of them. But then again maybe it's all not  so impersonal, maybe it's even the opposite - all this invisible hands and machinery and wheels and so on  is all Me, me, me! to the very core. But it just so happens that me, me, me to the very core is nothing but nothingness. And meanwhile maybe all that really matters, or the best you can do anyway, is not getting gently or not pushed into it all. For where's their wheels then?

Resonance

This piece has been accused of lacking emotional resonance, which is of course an outlandish accusation. It is perhaps one of the most emotional things ever written.

Cork

The following, or something in genesis of substance like it, entered my conscious mind last night and, having been largely ignored, rather than return to silent oblivion as would be usual, has been persistent enough to re-enter it again a few minutes ago, and so I can hardly go on ignoring it but had better try and write it down.

A cork was floating in a glass of water, some of it naturally submerged below the waterline, some of it above - though why I imagine anyone would need that clarified is a bit of a mystery. So there it was anyway bobbing about gently, even imperceptibly, though if someone banged against say the table for instance on which the glass rests, the introduction of a bit of sudden violence to the environment . . . or say if someone lifts the glass, placing it down again maybe with a bit of a bang . . . precarious even so perhaps momentarily the cork's remaining within the glass . . . but anyway regardless, in it, the glass of water, it remains, sedately in general but with some fluctuations.

But then - carelessness, deliberateness, somehow - the bottom of the glass breaks though perfectly cleanly, the rest of the glass remaining intact, unflawed, and out the water pours down the bottom, but the width of the glass was wider a fair bit at the top than at the bottom, and while initially of course the cork followed in the wake or along with the vanishing water, when it got to the bottom of the damaged glass it wedged and remained there, stuck.

Why this banal vision bothered itself with me, not once but twice, I have no idea. Presumably it thought itself possessed of some great inner substance and so whose embodied incarnation had to be insisted on; but whatever it is and even if it is, this substance, I'm not for now all that interested. Maybe if it had come in some more colourful, fantastic form, I would be more interested, intrigued . . . but then again I might have dismissed it out of hand - as vulgar, trite, whatever. And also to be fair, maybe it, this image of cork and glass, had to come in precisely that form or, whatever it is, it would no longer be itself but some other substance altogether. But then again maybe it's all just a random image being treated with far more respect than it deserves but as of now who am I to judge.

Doesn't

This needs no introduction.

. . . Though then again someone might say, 'Of course it needs an introduction. Noone knows what you're on about!' They could be right, but I'm afraid it's all a bit late now. I can hardly start writing an introduction after having already written that first bit, it would be more an epilogue, and what kind of an introduction would that be?

Worth Remembering

Democracy was invented by Bono on U2's seminal album Techno-Opera Atom Bomb.

Liar Paradox

In the Epimenides Paradox post,  I looked at the easily refuted "This statement is false," where obviously enough it is seen that there is no statement, and so the line is intellectual gibberish. If the line is changed to "This sentence is false," the same refutation basically applies as there is no claim here which justifies this sentence being described as true or false, and so it is a false construct and despite appearances not a valid sentence.

Not that I remember but when I did a number of posts on alleged paradoxes way back, maybe I hadn't initially even formulated to myself the inner motivation behind the refutations, and on a surface level was perhaps simply struck by the faulty logic of the individual cases, but after a while it becoming clear that a general truth was involved which was that language used properly cannot result in meaningless conclusions, while the paradox acolytes like Borges were claiming otherwise - that language and even by extension life were inconsistent, faulty systems. But all that has happened with the 'paradoxes' is, without noticing it, people have intellectually gone wrong.

So now onto the Liar Paradox, which is closely related it seems to Epimenides paradox but far more clever or tricky to unravel. To add, I'm not really going to look into the history of these 'paradoxes' and whether the Epimenides Paradox truly is "This statement is false" isn't the point or just considered an equivalent of it. It is the inner logic of the given sentence that I am dealing with, and even if just for the sake of demarcation we'll call that the Epimenides and the following the Liar.

So lifting from elsewhere:

The Liar Paradox is among the simplest of paradoxes. It can be traced back at least as far as Eubulides of Miletus, a fourth-century B.C. Greek philosopher.
Eubulides’ version of the paradox is this: A man says that he is lying; is what he says true or false?
However we answer this question, difficulties arise.
If we suggest that what the man says is true, then we end in contradiction: if the man’s claim that he is lying is true, then he is lying, in which case what he says is false.
If we suggest that what the man says is false, then we are no better off: if the man’s claim that he is lying is false, then he is not lying, in which case what he says is true.

So, the relevant line here is "I am lying." Again unfortunately like "This statement is false," this is a meaningless construct. About what is he lying? There is no statement which as above can be true or false. So the intended gist of this must be put a little differently to make at least more apparent sense; and so a better variation is the line "All Cretans are liars," said by, it is said, a Cretan. Here we do have an apparent statement. Also it could equally be put, "Everything I say is a lie." Again, rather than just saying "I am lying", this seems at least to be a definite statement about an aspect of reality - that everything I say is a lie. The resulting train of thought then goes or is alleged to go that if everything I say is a lie then this is itself a lie, and everything I say is hence not a lie. Or if the statement is true and so is itself a lie, this this implies everything I say is not false, which contradicts itself. And the wider philosophical implication being that language is capable of being used correctly and yet leading to untenable conclusions; this showing that language is ultimately a flawed system, and so Truth is an illusion, reality is intellectually corrupt, etc.

So with truth and coherence at stake, onwards. It turns out however that this has already been covered in the previous post, with the point that logic follows from true statements, not false ones. An intellectual process is real when every step is true, every line is in accordance with the inner logic of language and accurate representation of external reality. A mathematical or linguistic line, theorem, etc is real on such a basis, and if error occurs the overall construct which follows is unreal, does not in truth exist.  And so to begin with 'Everything I say is a lie', means that the logical process has been immediately flouted at source, and so there is no further justifiable process. It is a degradation of the logical process to go any further, since the line is not real, not in accordance with the truth to which logic must conform. Logic applies to the logical implications of true statements, not false ones.  The line explicitly describes itself an untrue and so unreal, and so reality cannot proceed from unreality.  It is not real but for someone who wrongly follows a supposed train of logic along this illogical pathway, an intellectual hallucination or something which appears to be real ensues, such as a supposed paradox resulting from imagining the false conclusion has been arrived at legitimately. The false conclusion though should be the giveaway that it is the intellectual process that has been degraded or simply gone wrong.

.........................................................................................................................

To some degree I imagine the above denying of the validity of the process that supposedly leads to the paradox could be felt to be a bit unfair, and I will now look at the matter from a slightly different angle.

Is it intellectually possible - i.e. can it make sense - for me to say that everything I say is a lie? - which is the essence of the Liar Paradox.  The whole supposed point of a paradox being of such import is that it is allegedly logically coherent and yet leads to illogical conclusions. And we should try being as existential as we can and first realise the 'logical deductions' which follows the line "Everything I say is a lie" are as yet nowhere to be seen; it is that line itself that we should be looking directly at.

Quoting from an earlier piece - "To say anything in a true intellectual sense is to involve oneself necessarily in an acceptance that the language one is using is real and imbued with meaning; that the words one is using- if used correctly, i.e. meaningfully- are meaningful." This is the necessary ground and of course is the ground from which logic proceeds. So to say that everything I say is a lie is immediately a total violation of the ground upon which argument and logic sits. And so it is self-contradictory as a piece of logic. Truth doesn't dwell within falseness or lies, and so, as more or less said earlier, it makes no sense for such a line to be considered to dwell within the world of logic or logical statements. So there is no great truth revealed by this 'paradox' as the line can't be said to exist intellectually.

That it is worthy of any intellectual interest is that it is a truth claim, but here it is clearly self-contradictory for a truth-claim to deny itself as precisely that, to claim itself to be a lie, and so not to fall within the sphere of logic. Even following the supposed logic though doesn't lead to the paradox but simply to the falseness of the line's claim. So, having laboured the point, going back to looking directly at the statement, "Everything I say is a lie," and seeing if it can be legitimately said. The idea of the paradox is that the relevant line can be said but the conclusion of this valid line contradicts truth, thus revealing language's flawed nature. Generally the supposed sophistication of these paradoxes comes out as quite a childish and stupid misunderstanding however - such as with the inane "This statement is false", and its deflating riposte"What statement?"

                                              Everything I say is false.

 Is it possible for everything I say to be without exception false, that is in practical terms, to be with every utterance relentlessly lying? And as this extends philosophically, can Falseness be a consistent cohesive system? And so, the reach of all this has extended with more at stake than what one might have thought.

So the key now is whether it is possible to relentlessly lie. As already shown, to use language is to accept its truth and meaningfulness, and the very fact that we are discussing whether this Liar Paradox is a viable or true language statement shows how impossible it is to escape this. But now we are seeing whether Falseness can exist relativistically, to dwell cohesively at some more minor level within the necessarily admitted greater truth of Truth. Someone can of course within a trivial range lie with everything he says, from what he had for breakfast to who won a football match, what age he is, etc. Such a life of relentless lying could happen. But that's not the issue. Is this unbroken lying possible as an entire system when pushed to its intellectual limits? In a theological sense, could a Satan console himself with the truth of his defiance of Truth, even while reluctantly accepting God's existence and primacy?

Well and perhaps surprisingly, the line itself "Everything I say is false" reveals the impossibility of the coherence of this edifice of falseness. Lying reaches its own limits, trips itself up, as if I am lying with this very statement, then this implies that not everything I say can be false. So falseness as a system collapses in on itself, and has no consolation.

Strapped

There was a man walking along under the strain of a quite large rock he had strapped to his back. "But where is he going with it?" "He isn't going anywhere with it. He's just going. Though if you asked him where does he think he's going with it, he might tell you he's going somewhere great with his rock, even if he says it grimly, maybe even with anger. Then again he mightn't even be aware of the rock, might look at you like you're a madman, and on he goes."

Epimenides Paradox

On the continued theme of the paradox, I saw mentioned last night in a television programme on mathematics the alleged paradox "This statement cannot be proved." And this apparently a tangent of what is called the Epimenides Paradox, which seems to go in something like its pure form:

This statement is false.

So do we have here what Borges described as a crack in the architecture of reason where we see that the world is false? The supposed logic going, "Well, if it is true that it is false, then it is true. Which means it is false. Which means it is true." And so on. A unsolvable paradox. Logic has been breached. We are free!

The vital essence of language in the form of reason, rather than say poetry, is that at every level what one says is reasonable - makes sense. And here, as should be immediately obvious, is where this alleged paradox gets in trouble. "This statement is false." What statement? There is no statement here, simply the referring to one which does not appear. The sentence, without the accompanying statement, is linguistically meaningless. And so it is of course meaningless to describe a non-existent statement as true or false.

"My dog is black" is a statement which may be true or false, depending on the colour and existence of my dog, and in this correct understanding of what a statement is, no paradoxes occur. The statement exists- refers to something. "This statement" is not however a statement, and so the supposed paradox is simply resting on a foundation of gibberish. And so, alas, no paradox.
Identically - "This statement can't be proved." What statement?

Even if, and here I am giving far more respect and time to this nonsense than it merits, "This statement is false" wasn't meaningless and actually made some kind of sense, the moment it is false it makes no more sense to apply logic to it. It is illogical to treat illogical statements as logical- you don't build and form deductions from a foundation of "Two plus two equals five." Logic doesn't apply. You don't apply rational conclusions to irrational statements. That is simply, and literally, insanity: take meaningless nonsense and run with it. Logic applies to the logical implications of true statements, not false ones.

So summing up, "This statement is false" is linguistic nonsense as it isn't a statement, but in any case a logical train should not follow illogical statements.

As written in a separate post, "Just because words combined may make what appears a proper sentence doesn't mean the structure is a legitimate one, i.e. language isn't simply a matter of structure but of course meaning also, and here the meaning is absent."

A follow-up on the Liar Paradox here.

The Divided Self

Just came across an unusual and thought-provoking line from Peter Watson's The German Genius:

More than one rider fainted from the heat but not the Kaiser's twelve year-old grandson, Wilhelm, who, despite his withered left arm, contemptuously refused to acknowledge a spectator who called out to him as 'Wilhelmkin'.

Naturally I initially struggled with the meaning of this, but now I take it to mean that the young Wilhelm's withered left arm did indeed wish to acknowledge the spectator's salutation but the rest of him refused to budge. His withered left arm must have had a sense of empathy the rest of his more robust self sorely lacked.

Faith, the Intellect

I said in the last post I'd go into the issue of faith and so . . .

To use a language, mathematical most obviously, is to accept that language's intrinsic meaningfulness. Identically with the language of words. Talking about language's formation, evolution, etc as if this is a negating counter-point is as absurd as imagining talking about historical discoveries of things like Pi undermine the purity of the language of mathematics - as if these are historical truths rather than language truths, whereas such a truth regarding say the circumference of a circle, is so regardless of one's position within the field of time. To use language is to inescapably accept that language's intrinsic cohesion, truth or meaningfulness is a given. It is impossible to dispute this since as obviously enough the very act of trying to argue otherwise is itself an intellectual exercise or operating under the same umbrella of language's meaningfulness. So we are bound up inescapably here in an act of faith, though there generally seems to be a faulty idea of what faith involves or is.

A mathematician has faith in mathematics but there is no gap between himself and what he has faith in. There is no justifiable  dubiousness regarding mathematics' intrinsic meaningfulness, and the same with 'ordinary' language. It is a given. Faith is an absolute given in language and life, but even naming it is a symptom of atrophy or disease. Lack of faith, intellectually or/and with regard to life is an artificial self-contrived state that is absurd and meaningless at every level. How can a being inseparable from life be in any sense distinct from life in order to have a lack of faith in it? Such a state is simply delusional, a hallucinatory inner reality created by faulty language.  We are not agreeing to pretend language and life are 'true' out of necessity; it is simply an intellectual impossibility to act otherwise. There is no leap of faith, implying a rational field of doubt over which one takes a hopeful jump, setting aside one's reason in order to achieve a dubious certainty regarding one's relationship with life at an absolute level. At risk of labouring the point, another relevant extract from elsewhere with regard to this Doubt as a permitted intellectual position over which faith supposely leaps:

To say anything is to involve oneself necessarily in an acceptance that the language one is using is real and imbued with meaning; that the words one is using- if used correctly, i.e. meaningfully- are meaningful. This is the necessary ground from which one can say anything. So to ask the very question- how can I trust in the reality of the 'real'- is to begin with the foundation that language is real and that one is engaging in a meaningful and real act. To accept the reality of anything- in this case, language- is necessarily to accept the reality of reality. Reality cannot exist within unreality.

The position of Doubt is contrarily a nihilistic intellectual proposition in the true sense, within the framework of which one cannot grant oneself the liberty of believing language to be real and intrinsically meaningful. And so, within this framework of doubt the question of doubt cannot be asked, as to ask the question requires an acceptance of the very reality or meaningfulness of language which doubt if true to itself must doubt. And so, since the question of doubt cannot be formed, then doubt cannot exist, as doubt requires a mind utilising language so as to doubt. 

Doubt is an intellectual activity, and all intellectual activity necessarily involves a faith in the reality of the language one is using, be it mathematical, linguistic or otherwise. This is the necessary ground. 
All in all, the sceptical position is self-contradictory, and should be destroyed as a sensible proposition immediately at source.

To sum up: To ask the question of Doubt is to accept the reality of the language used in the asking, which is to refute the question. 

So onto science and it is perfectly obvious that the same faith seamlessly extends.  The scientist proceeds from, operates under, faith in the cohesiveness of what he observes in the world, and the meaningfulness of the language he is using, though again it would be wholly artificial for him  to even mention this faith as though it were a concept within the umbrella of the intellectual framework; it is rather the other way round. And so the  related and vital point that what science, or true science, consists of is true language statements, and so the first principle of science is the innate and intrinsic meaningfulness of correct language; and science in all its applications also demonstrably shows the intrinsic truth and power of correct language, while also emphasising the absolute necessity of the language's correctness and precision.

Summing up, faith is an unquestionable given regarding life while the real anomaly and contradiction in intellectual terms is lack of faith and its attempt to impose a negative value judgement on life - all of which amounts to nothing other than a weird, delinquent immaturity.

The Question Of The Existence of God

I'm going to write a bit here about the existence of God as an intellectual matter; that is where God, or the notion of God, stands within the proper and hence true use of language; and all this is more or less in reference to a post I previously wrote titled 'Life and Meaning', and also its offshoot, the brilliantly titled Life and Meaning Again. The issue of God's existence is actually contained more or less wholly within those pieces, though perhaps seemingly only inferentially, and so hopefully this will clarify things.

Within the first piece mentioned above I wrote [editing a little the extract] :

When using language as an intellectual truth-tool, if that language is to produce the correct results, then it must be used properly, not in a self-contradictory manner. And so it makes no sense to introduce within intellectual discourse elements that are alleged to be external to life. Life is all that is, and if God is, then the two flow inseparably into one another, cannot be separated into distinct realms. To say that life and God are distinct is to necessarily infer that life is less than the totality of all that is, which is obviously linguistic nonsense. And to say that God is external to life and what is is to say that God, being not part of what is, is not, and so does not exist. If something isn't part of what is, then it is part of what isn't! which is to say there is no 'it' to speak of.

To treat God as an object of intellectual discourse is necessarily to falsify an absolute. Firstly as shown above, God cannot be treated as external to what is, and secondly, God cannot be treated as an element within life - this is the attempt to turn an absolute into a relative, where God has somehow become submerged within God's creation, and so is another object of creation and a lesser being than life. 

So it is clear that God cannot be discussed in this sense of intellectual argument without necessarily falsifying God, and so the question "Does God exist?" is an impermissible and absurd use of language. This however may seem very unsatisfactory, almost a cop-out, even if reluctantly admitted to be the strictly intellectually correct position. This frustration would however be little but a misinterpretation of the above, and thankfully a correct equivalent question can be asked, and that question is: "Is life intrinsically significant or accidentally so?"

So to clarify: the question does God exist is an illegitimate use of language where God is necessarily falsified by the naming and hence particularising process - 'God' being necessarily reduced to an element of, within and inferior to life. Even to say for example, "God is the totality of life" fails as a totality is necessarily something limited and finite. A totality has limits, whereas infinity endlessly spills beyond imaginary limits.

A directly equivalent question as to God's existence or not can however be properly asked - this being whether life is intrinsically intelligent or significant or accidentally so - and it is essential to realise that this is not in any sense a diluted, lukewarm version of "Does God exist?" And it is not a humanistic variation where we are seeking to ascribe meaning to life out of necessity or convenience, i.e. that the human need for significance justifies and even necesitates us to pretend relative humanly created values are actually absolutes because otherwise, in the vacuum of their accepted absence, a resultant intellectual and ethical chaos would ensue.

No, this question as to whether life is intrinsically significant or accidentally so is in truth precisely what is meant by the God question but properly asked. And here it is quite obvious that the atheism side of things has sought to argue along the lines of life's accidental significance - that the structures of life have organised themselves in cohesive forms through variations of the random fluctuations of matter within a temporal environment; that certain 'operating programs' within life develop that render the likelihood of such cohesions more likely, and so on. I have in those two linked pieces examined the sustainability of the Accidental Significance position, and so for example:

. . . the attempt to posit the intrinsic intelligence of life as accidental, that things were senseless and unintelligent, and through chance and time eventually structures of accidental intelligence ensued, and so while offering the impression of being 'meaningful' these structures are only accidentally so.

With the evolution argument when turned to an imagined philosophical overview, and other 'scientific' stances, is generally the attempt to posit the intrinsic intelligence of life as accidental, that things were senseless and unintelligent, and through chance and time eventually structures of accidental intelligence ensued, and so while offering the impression of being 'meaningful' these structures are only accidentally so.

But as written earlier: "Every structure that exists is intrinsically of an intelligent order; if it weren't internally intelligent it wouldn't cohere as a living/real structure. The fact of its existence, be it an atom, a stone, a bird, insect, human, etc. is absolutely dependent on its being intelligent and in itself meaningful." 

There is no point within existence where this intrinsic intelligence of life's or reality's structures is flouted. The existence of every millisecond of being and the existence of everything that exists within every millisecond is inseparable and absolutely intwertwined with and dependent on this intrinsic intelligence. This intrinsic intelligence doesn't enter the equation of reality accidentally somewhere down the line of existence. Every atom, every gas, everything that can explode leading to further refinements of structure, an explosion itself, time and existence itself are and can only be because of their being of an intelligent order.

That this intrinsic intelligence is unarguable and present at every point is perhaps best illustrated when we consider what the ground of intellectual analysis or penetration of any 'structure' that 'science' is is based on. In this sense of intellectual penetration of structure I am including phenomena from atomic particles to phenomena like gravity, light, sound, etc. And what this ground is from which intellectual vision proceeds is that the structure observed and analysed is of an intelligent order. If it were not intrinsically intelligent then the discoursing intellect could produce no results.

And so again is shown the falseness of the notion of accidental meaningfulness; there is no point where an observing intellect can declare that this meaningfulness is accidentally introduced into the system of life as there is not and cannot be any point at which the meaningfulness can be said to be absent. The entire basis of the intellect being able to state anything about any system is that of the system's being of an intelligent order; thus it can meaningfully yield meaningful statements. If a system were declared devoid of intelligence, well then it could not be a system in the first place and so the statement self-contradictory.

And so in the unfortunately lengthy enough extract above is shown how false is the imagined position of, famously at present, figures like Richard Dawkins, where science is supposed to defend an atheistic philosophical worldview of Accidental Significance. Science by total contrast to this imagined 'rational' position actually exists wholly within the framework of life's unquestionable, intrinsic significance. That life's structures are intrinsically meaningful, yielding intelligent results when perceived by an intrinsically intelligent mind is an absolute given, just as the intrinsic significance of the world of mathematics is an unquestionable given within that field. We don't have to for instance torture ourselves in conceiving how the 'structures' of gravity and electricity are accidentally intelligent; their intrinsic intelligence is a given. Similarly it is senseless to try to construct theories to place vision, memories, dreams, etc within a philosophical system that explains how they accidentally can exist. Instead again their intrinsic, intelligent 'isness' is a given. Or we don't have to do the same to explain how the plants that grow by some miraculous but accidental piece of good fortune contain minerals, vitamins, etc and that we can do this thing called eating of these entities and derive strength and health from them; or how we live as a consequence of the strange process of breathing air.  No, again this intrinsic meaningfulness of life and its diversities is a complete given. And it is very important not to imagine this intrinsic meaningfulness of life being a given is a kind of cop-out, that this is a facile "That's just the way things are" statement, just as there is nothing facile about mathematics being intrinsically meaningful and consistent.

So in short, it is unarguable that life and intelligence are inseparable at every imaginable point within the spectrum of life. Life/reality/ existence is existentially intelligent and cannot be otherwise. And as pointed to earlier when looking at God within such argument, this is not to be confused with Intelligent Design which deals in unsustainable and schizophrenic division of life being designed by an element external to life.

I might go into the question of Faith as it relates to all the above subsequently, and what actually this faith is. Here.

Tree falls, Perception, Language

I wrote before about Schrodinger's Cat and the meaninglessness in a pure intellectual sense of talking about the state of external phenomena one is not in a position to perceive. And also the contradiction of Bertrand Russell's line of "There is a house which no one perceives." That written about here. To say with such certainty of something's factual existence is to necessarily do so from a vantage point attained through perception - and so, lacking such perceiving, this statement about an unperceived house's definite existence is a self-contradictory use of language. Just because words combined may make what appears a proper sentence doesn't mean the structure is a legitimate one, i.e. language isn't simply a matter of structure but of course meaning also, and here the meaning is absent. It is a self-contradictory piece of language.

Why I bring this up again here is in relation to one of the famous thoughts, or thought-defeating questions in philosophy . . .  jumping to Wikipedia:

Philosopher George Berkeley, in his work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), proposes, "But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [...] and nobody by to perceive them.^[1] [...] "The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [...] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them."^[2] 

Albert Einstein is reported to have asked his fellow physicist and friend Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, whether he realistically believed that 'the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it.' To this Bohr replied that however hard he (Einstein) may try, he would not be able to prove that it does, thus giving the entire riddle the status of a kind of an infallible conjecture—one that cannot be either proved or disproved.

Going back to Berkeley, his mistake is saying the objects cease to exist when unperceived, or that they only exist when perceived. The correct thing to say here is that one cannot say anything about unperceived objects, whether they exist or not, what state they are in, and in fact to speak of 'them' at all is erroneous. One simply has to accept that by depriving oneself of perception, one is not in a position to make statements of true intellectual value. And so the worthlessness of talking about what may or may not be going on in Schrodinger's box, and also the falseness of attempting to say an unperceived object does not exist, as Berkeley does, or that it does exist as Russell imagined he could say. Nothing should be said about an unperceived object if we are being true to language. It's as useless as blind men talking about the nature of a silent film that may or may not be playing on a screen in front of them; all they could say is just empty conjecture.

So to look at the falling tree but more usefully altering it to: Can a tree be said to fall if no one perceives it - rather than bringing in the somewhat diverting and more scientific related issue of sound and hearing.
Well if no one is there to perceive its falling, then how do we know it falls so as to ask the question? It's an empty question, attempting to simultaneously occupy the contradictory camps of being in a position to perceive and not be in a position to perceive. So just as above, "Just because words combined may make what appears a proper sentence doesn't mean the structure is a legitimate one, i.e. language isn't simply a matter of structure but of course meaning also, and here the meaning is absent. It is a self-contradictory piece of language."

Just to clarify in case there seems to be a loophole here, and that being the use of 'If' in the posing of the question. The question could be posed another way without this little word: "A tree falls. Noone is there to perceive its falling. So does it fall?" And so again, If no one is there to perceive its falling then it is impermissible to make the statement of its falling; alternatively, how do we know it falls so as to ask the question?

We could see that a tree is lying on the ground and that therefore it evidently fell, in whatever manner, but of course we are back here in the world of perceived objects. In terms of everyday usage, yes of course it is reasonable to deduce the tree fell in the interval between perceptions of it standing and lying on the ground, but that doesn't change the fact that that twilight zone of non-perception, to be true to language as an absolute truth-tool, must simply remain a blank field.

Cantor, Mathematics, Sets, Infinity Again

Reading the very interesting 'The German Genius' by Peter Watson and coincidentally the issue of the last post here re infinity, sets and mathematics has surfaced, and so this is really little more than a reiteration of what was already said there. In the mentioned book is told, "Georg Cantor created the theory of sets and the arithmetic of infinite numbers. . . .  Cantor made the concept of "set" one of the most interesting terms in both mathematics and philosophy. But it was his next step that took mathematics by surprise(though in truth it was a surprise that no one had noticed this before).The series, 1, 2, 3 . . . n, was an infinite set and so was 2, 4, 6 . . . n. But it followed from this that some infinite sets were larger than others - there are more integers in the infinite series, 1, 2 , 3, . . . n than in 2, 4, 6 . . . n."

That this is nonsense is merely the repetition of the previous post, but here goes again anyway.
There can be no number bigger than an infinite set of numbers since an infinite series is by definition unfinished, never reaches a conclusion, and one thing - here a set of numbers - can only be bigger than another thing if both are complete entities. And so if the series 1, 2, 3 . . . climaxes at the number 175,987 and likewise 2, 4, 6 . . . does not go beyond the same figure, then of course the first set is far bigger than the second. However, obviously enough, we are now dealing here with a finite series of numbers, not an infinite one. There is no permitted climactic figure in the world of infinity, otherwise it is not infinite; and given this, then there is no 'infinite' set that is bigger than another one. An infinite series, tautologically, cannot dwell within the finite boundaries necessary for one set to be bigger than another.

Mathematics, Infinity,

Looking up some mathematical issue regarding infinity I've come across the following page and I'll assume rightly or wrongly that it represents some kind of broader opinion, and to be honest I'm a bit shocked at the intellectual level at play. People should have a bit more humility when dealing supposedly with infinity, as it seems likely they'll end up otherwise blandly substituting it with something very finite, and postulating confidently and ever more wrongly from there.

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/interest/infinity.htm

What is infinity? It is bigger than the biggest number, but it is not a number itself.

What is wrong here is blatantly enough the description of infinity being bigger than the biggest number, as of course within the realm of infinity there is no such thing as a biggest number. It is only within a finite realm that there is a biggest number.

If you could do arithmetic using infinity, then you would end up proving that 1 = 2, which is not a good idea! So you cannot do arithmetic using infinity. It's where the number system breaks down.

The only means by which you would prove 1=2 is if you have decided for the sake of some childish convenience to pretend infinity is something falsely other than itself, which intellectual gibberish in turn can justify and produce such resulting gibberish as 1=2.

Surely there are more rationals (fractions) than natural numbers. 

Again the same obvious criticism. How can there be more numbers than an infinite number? There can only be more than a finite number. So again something finite, humanly conceived and definite has replaced the endless world of infinity.

Countable sets

So how can we say anything about infinity at all? In fact, we can say more than you'd think. First, we can say that there are infinitely many natural numbers. Now we have a way of counting infinite sets of numbers. Wait a minute - how can we count something that's infinite? Surely it would take a infinite amount of time, even for a computer? 

What has a computer got to do with the, surely by any kind of meaningful definition, impossibility of counting a never-ending stream of numbers to a conclusion?

Are all infinite sets of numbers the same size? No. The set of irrationals and the set of reals are not countable. There is no way that you can lay them out so there is a one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers. This means that there are different types of infinity. The countable sets of natural numbers and rationals are smaller than the sets of irrationals and reals.

Again no infinite set can be countable because to be able to count all of the numbers within a set again necessitates a definite, limited and finite number. And so naturally in truth there is no such thing as a set containing infinity, as infinity cannot be contained within form. So a closer look at the notion of "all the numbers within infinity." Take one of these numbers within the infinity of numbers; this being Pi. Pi is itself infinite, and so one cannot speak of 'all the numbers of Pi'; 'all' being an inclusive term, whereas infinity spills endlessly beyond 'all'. You cannot write down all the numbers as all of something requires a completed totality, whereas infinity again reaches no conclusion . A totality is finite, while infinity cannot be circumscribed within a system or set, else it is certainly not infinity despite whatever claims.

Follow-up to this here.

Time & Vision

Consider a video recording of a football match. As the game was actually played the players have absolute freedom to act of their own volition. However, watching this later their actions obviously will not change, which is not to say that they were deprived of free will as they acted. Similarly we could talk of a kind of external observer of life existing free of our notion of time, knowing exactly what happens within our time, but this not contradicting the freedom within the moment of the actors of the drama.

I wrote the above previously and bring it up again because it relates to another idea-image that has gone out of its way to strike me. An external observer of life is self-contradictory since to be an observer means one exists and so is necessarily part of life or what is and not be external to it, and so presumably the 'kind of' that I qualified it by . . . but anyway to try to deal with this time omnipresence or omniscience regarding what happens within time - accepting that language is struggling here and not really within its natural bounds. But something else first previously written:

As I stand in a certain spot looking in a certain direction, I do not occupy a definitive point of perception which excludes the reality of all other possible points of perception. Instead I occupy a continuously shifting position within the visual field, which is comprised of an infinity of points of perception all existing simultaneously. Reality here is the totality of this field of vision as opposed to the distinct reality of the individual points.
The same can be said of time. We occupy a continuously shifting position within this field, again with all the individual points of time existing simultaneously. 

So the idea I'll try to express here is something of a bridge between the above two extracts.

The thought alluding to this I had was how this omniscient, omnipresence relates to 'ordinary' seeing. The normal or traditional religious-philosophical view of things here is I imagine of God as a purely external viewer of life and with the freedom to set his gaze at any aspect of the presented images - and so like the initial quoted piece is like someone watching an unfolding drama on a tv screen - an apparently wholly external, uninvolved observer. The falseness of the idea of an external observer, or God as such, has already been dealt with above, and so . . .

Think of someone seeing with one eye open and one closed. We could even add to this constraint by having that person as seated with his head fixed and with blinkers as with a racehorse. And so vision is constrained to something like one point of perspective within the infinite possible field of perception within reality as described in the first piece. There is all this potential seeing, behind, above, in general around this somewhat fixed perspective point but which is inaccessible to this seer. Now, lazily using Wikipedia here, think of creatures with binocular vision such as ourselves, and more usefully within the analogical sense I am employing, some prey animals: "Some animals, usually, but not always, prey animals, have their two eyes positioned on opposite sides of their heads to give the widest possible field of view. In such animals, the eyes often move independently to increase the field of view. Even without moving their eyes, some birds have a 360-degree field of view."

Each of the organs of vision, eyes, could exist wholly independently of the other, as in with the other closed still a true visual presentation is offered or exists. And if the closed eye is opened and the opened closed, a somewhat different vista opens up. If the two are simultaneously open however what we experience is not a mind darting back and forth between the two perspectives but instead the 'two visions' coalescing as one visual whole. With us, the disparity of the two perspectives is not so dramatic, the eyes quite close together, but as with other creatures the field of vision could be comprised of essentially eyes at the front and back of the head, and yet the resulting visual field experienced as one organic film so to speak, rather than a materialistic construct of two distinct elements. And so with time and seeing.