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.