We reflect to solve problems. To solve the problem, you have to know what the problem really is. But to know what the problem is, you have to know what questioning is. A question is a system of ideas that is trying to fix a problem in its own structure. Questioning clarifies the problem to figure out how to solve it. Once the system of ideas is as complete as we can make it, we can construct theories. The more complete the system, the more the solution is better, easier, and faster. Wording the question well is part of the process of answering it.
Very few can or do truly think. Many minds wander from the subject in hopeless reverie or they just get bored. They can't think about ideas. They may be tired or distracted or just not interested. Or they may be over-emotional. They might be insane, or just plain wierd. These things we pass by. They distort and disrupt by breaking in from the outside.They have an importance, and some thinking is at the mercy of those factors.
But thinking can can never surrender itself completely to the control of the subject-matter and it can be objectively logical, even though it can be influenced by instincts, desires, and feelings. If that were not the case, one could not know that fact, much less state it. If all thinking is governed by non-logical factors, then that statement itself is also governed by those non-logical factors, and that statement has no more claim on our acceptance than any other non-logical factor. If we can't solve a problem, it's because of a lack of knowledge or lack of creativity or the will to inquire.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Free Yourself
The opinion that everyone must sacrifice themselves for everyone else, is assumed to be both true and beneficial. It’s repeated often and never questioned. But it's unnecessary, causes bad attitudes, involves conflicts that have nothing to do with you, destroys natural incentive, is logically and practically self-contradictory, and it harms those who are supposed to be benefited by it.
Consciously question those assumptions. They are no longer obstacles. The methods you choose will get rid of restrictions without as much pain and effort as might have been thought. You focus on the methods and the steps .
You maintain control when you focus on the positive as well as thinking out alternatives to the negatives. You control your situation because you know your alternatives.
Knowledge works by merely having it.
Becoming free is simple. It doesn't depend on the support of others. I'm not urging you to accept these ideas.
You’re not obligated. You don't have to change society. You don’t have to convince anyone of anything. You don't need my support of the support of the public.
These ideas depend only on you. If you were the only person who knew about them, they would still be useful. Whether they work for anyone else is irrelevant. You decide whether they can work for you.
You have to make the decisions. I can't tell you how to live. I'll point out alternatives and techniques. You’ll decide which ones to use.
Only deciding everything for yourself produces the purpose and conviction necessary to live freely.
You decide what, how, and why. Otherwise, your hopes, plans, and enthusiasm will cave, once there's interference. I'm not telling you how to live. You have to decide how to live. You have to decide what to do with these ideas. I’m not demanding anything from you. You decide everything for yourself.
Assumptions and restrictions accepted without challenge are often empty once examined closely. There are many specific ways to free yourself from complex problems and perpetual burdens. These techniques for changing to a free life are not some ideal image. I'm not trying to make you conform. They work, if freely chosen and tailored to who you are, what you control, and what you want.
You don't have to accept obligations, liabilities, and demands that others may try to hand you. There's a better way. You are about to discover a fascinating world of naturally motivating and sustaining opportunities.
Consciously question those assumptions. They are no longer obstacles. The methods you choose will get rid of restrictions without as much pain and effort as might have been thought. You focus on the methods and the steps .
You maintain control when you focus on the positive as well as thinking out alternatives to the negatives. You control your situation because you know your alternatives.
Knowledge works by merely having it.
Becoming free is simple. It doesn't depend on the support of others. I'm not urging you to accept these ideas.
You’re not obligated. You don't have to change society. You don’t have to convince anyone of anything. You don't need my support of the support of the public.
These ideas depend only on you. If you were the only person who knew about them, they would still be useful. Whether they work for anyone else is irrelevant. You decide whether they can work for you.
You have to make the decisions. I can't tell you how to live. I'll point out alternatives and techniques. You’ll decide which ones to use.
Only deciding everything for yourself produces the purpose and conviction necessary to live freely.
You decide what, how, and why. Otherwise, your hopes, plans, and enthusiasm will cave, once there's interference. I'm not telling you how to live. You have to decide how to live. You have to decide what to do with these ideas. I’m not demanding anything from you. You decide everything for yourself.
Assumptions and restrictions accepted without challenge are often empty once examined closely. There are many specific ways to free yourself from complex problems and perpetual burdens. These techniques for changing to a free life are not some ideal image. I'm not trying to make you conform. They work, if freely chosen and tailored to who you are, what you control, and what you want.
You don't have to accept obligations, liabilities, and demands that others may try to hand you. There's a better way. You are about to discover a fascinating world of naturally motivating and sustaining opportunities.
The Meaning of Life
If there is no God, then what is the meaning of life? Maybe what God supposedly wants or plans is just as unimportant as the possibility of being run over by Santa Claus or being kidnapped by the color green. But this does not diminish the meaning of life. Giving gifts is just as meaningful as ever, even though I don't believe in Santa Claus.
Why am I here? Why do I exist? Atheism has no answer only because the question assumes there must be a reason envisioned by some purposeful God.
It's not a limitation of atheism. The question is similar to "When did you stop beating your spouse?" assuming that the person being addressed has been beating their spouse. If they never beat their spouse, then technically they simply cannot answer the question. (52. Jerome Shaffer, Reality, Knowledge and Values (New York: Random House, 1971), pages 104-105.)
The theist must prove the existence of God. The theist offers an explanation of existence and must give reasons for accepting it. This also applies to the most basic assumptions of atheism, but more about that later.
If the reasoning for belief in God is faulty, then it can't support the claim that God exists. Ignorance of alternative explanations doesn't justify belief in God. Only knowledge justifies beliefs, not ignorance. We cannot cannot merely assume what we're trying to prove. And because we have to start with premises, it is impossible to prove God's existence.
So there is good evidence against the existence of God, generally as a good creator and specifically as in an ultimate personal mind.
Why am I here? Why do I exist? Atheism has no answer only because the question assumes there must be a reason envisioned by some purposeful God.
It's not a limitation of atheism. The question is similar to "When did you stop beating your spouse?" assuming that the person being addressed has been beating their spouse. If they never beat their spouse, then technically they simply cannot answer the question. (52. Jerome Shaffer, Reality, Knowledge and Values (New York: Random House, 1971), pages 104-105.)
The theist must prove the existence of God. The theist offers an explanation of existence and must give reasons for accepting it. This also applies to the most basic assumptions of atheism, but more about that later.
If the reasoning for belief in God is faulty, then it can't support the claim that God exists. Ignorance of alternative explanations doesn't justify belief in God. Only knowledge justifies beliefs, not ignorance. We cannot cannot merely assume what we're trying to prove. And because we have to start with premises, it is impossible to prove God's existence.
So there is good evidence against the existence of God, generally as a good creator and specifically as in an ultimate personal mind.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Useless Eaters and The New Human
Not everyone who read Darwin became a Nazi. Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenon like Naziism, but Darwinism or something equivalent to it, is a necessary condition for Naziism. --adapted from David Berlinski, interview with Ben Stein, 2008
"All that is non-viable in nature invariably perishes. We humans have transgressed the law of natural selection in the last decades. Not only have we supported inferior life-forms, we have encouraged their propagation. Their offspring has produced individuals lower than any beast. What we want from people in the future is different from what was wanted in the past. We must create the new human so that we will not succumb to the degeneration so typical of modern times." --from a Nazi propaganda film
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propogate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." --Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
"All that is non-viable in nature invariably perishes. We humans have transgressed the law of natural selection in the last decades. Not only have we supported inferior life-forms, we have encouraged their propagation. Their offspring has produced individuals lower than any beast. What we want from people in the future is different from what was wanted in the past. We must create the new human so that we will not succumb to the degeneration so typical of modern times." --from a Nazi propaganda film
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propogate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." --Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
Thursday, November 13, 2008
No Statement Gets a Free Ride
Logic is philosophical and relevant to daily life, even moment to moment.
"The ultimate standards of logical correctness are merely the everyday uses of ordinary language."
Is THAT statement merely an everyday use of ordinary language? If so, how can it even talk about ultimate objects used as universal criteria of truth? It's just language used a certain way, right?
You can often spot a grandiose self-referencing contradiction in its use of the word "merely".
Why would anyone, whose statements and thoughts are merely a way of using language, want to make statements about ultimate standards or criteria of anything?
The actual logical uses of ordinary speech are most obvious in the fact that ordinary conversation is what produced things like symbolic logic and even logic itself. And there are philosophical reasons for using ordinary speech in these ways.
Some say the way we use language is just accidental and has no philosophical intelligibility. But how then can language be used for such practical and theoretic efficiencies as intended goals and the construction of a system of philosophical concepts and terms?
What is properly or uniquely philosophical in being logical? What value is there in knowing logical techniques and procedures?
This line of questioning can be answered only by knowing something about the philosophical grounds and the importance of logical tools and techniques.
Constructing, analysing, and changing systems of thought is itself pre-theoretic, used much like breathing prior to any philosophical reflection.
Logical forms are about things, pertain to things, predicate something about some object, and that's why they're the natural tools for knowing things.
But how do logical forms intend?
Underlying all artificial languages is the necessary natural intuitive logic or common sense which is designed not just for scientists, scholars, technicians, and other specialists but for anyone who wants to understand reality.
Logic is the universal mind-tool correlated to an actual world. And even if one believes the world to be illusory, that illusion has to be treated as an actual world. And all issues remain.
"The ultimate standards of logical correctness are merely the everyday uses of ordinary language."
Is THAT statement merely an everyday use of ordinary language? If so, how can it even talk about ultimate objects used as universal criteria of truth? It's just language used a certain way, right?
You can often spot a grandiose self-referencing contradiction in its use of the word "merely".
Why would anyone, whose statements and thoughts are merely a way of using language, want to make statements about ultimate standards or criteria of anything?
The actual logical uses of ordinary speech are most obvious in the fact that ordinary conversation is what produced things like symbolic logic and even logic itself. And there are philosophical reasons for using ordinary speech in these ways.
Some say the way we use language is just accidental and has no philosophical intelligibility. But how then can language be used for such practical and theoretic efficiencies as intended goals and the construction of a system of philosophical concepts and terms?
What is properly or uniquely philosophical in being logical? What value is there in knowing logical techniques and procedures?
This line of questioning can be answered only by knowing something about the philosophical grounds and the importance of logical tools and techniques.
Constructing, analysing, and changing systems of thought is itself pre-theoretic, used much like breathing prior to any philosophical reflection.
Logical forms are about things, pertain to things, predicate something about some object, and that's why they're the natural tools for knowing things.
But how do logical forms intend?
Underlying all artificial languages is the necessary natural intuitive logic or common sense which is designed not just for scientists, scholars, technicians, and other specialists but for anyone who wants to understand reality.
Logic is the universal mind-tool correlated to an actual world. And even if one believes the world to be illusory, that illusion has to be treated as an actual world. And all issues remain.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Superficial Plausibilities
Philosophy is my more or less intuitive sense of what life really means to me. Intuition comes before analysis anyway. It's the first step toward thinking about the meaning of life.
That's why we have to learn definitions, for example. They're not already there for all we encounter.
What is true about this universe I'm in? What should I do? What do I want? What do I expect? What is my final destiny? Is immortality possible? Would this life affect any possible future one I might have? Why is everything a struggle, including the struggle to think through these questions? What am I, anyway? What does all this mean?
It's easier to come up with superficially plausible answers to these kinds of questions than it is to discover answers based on convincing reasons from organized analysis. But only post-experience reflection uses evidence and possible answers to fill in an already-existing system.
No limited mind has the complete structure. For that reason, my thought is episodic, uneven, and disconnected. So to develop my thought, I must attack it comprehensively so that it will include a more complete integral system of compared possibilities.
That's why we have to learn definitions, for example. They're not already there for all we encounter.
What is true about this universe I'm in? What should I do? What do I want? What do I expect? What is my final destiny? Is immortality possible? Would this life affect any possible future one I might have? Why is everything a struggle, including the struggle to think through these questions? What am I, anyway? What does all this mean?
It's easier to come up with superficially plausible answers to these kinds of questions than it is to discover answers based on convincing reasons from organized analysis. But only post-experience reflection uses evidence and possible answers to fill in an already-existing system.
No limited mind has the complete structure. For that reason, my thought is episodic, uneven, and disconnected. So to develop my thought, I must attack it comprehensively so that it will include a more complete integral system of compared possibilities.
Fun With Devolution
"Humanity would rather do for itself what is right in the moment than consider the wider consequences of its behavior.
I feel like the cow who runs into the field screaming, 'Hey, you know that truck that takes some of our friends away every month? Well, they don't take them to another field like we thought. They shoot them in the head, bleed them dry, cut them up, and put the pieces into packets. Then those humans buy them and eat them!' Imagine what the reaction of the rest of the herd would be: 'You're crazy, man. They'd never do that. Anyway, I've got shares in that trucking company and I get a good return.'"
--David Icke
I feel like the cow who runs into the field screaming, 'Hey, you know that truck that takes some of our friends away every month? Well, they don't take them to another field like we thought. They shoot them in the head, bleed them dry, cut them up, and put the pieces into packets. Then those humans buy them and eat them!' Imagine what the reaction of the rest of the herd would be: 'You're crazy, man. They'd never do that. Anyway, I've got shares in that trucking company and I get a good return.'"
--David Icke