The Non Being and therefore Un-Sayable

After reading passages from Parmenides and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, along with the opposite views of Heraclitus and Spinoza, I understand that for a long time a large argument is about what what the nonbeing is and what can be said about it. Parmenides responds to Heraclitus when Heraclitus said that “the road up and the road down are one and the same” and relative to the being/nonbeing argument it means that anything can be said or thought about the road towards being or non being. Parmenides comes back by saying that the nonbeing cannot be thought or said upon (he does so in a variety of ways other than just one quote stating his stance like Heraclitus’ roads, but he does say that “thinking and being are one and the same” stating his ultimate stance about why nonbeing cannot be thought or said).  My aim is not to discuss the arguments that both Heraclitus and Parmenides had in Greece, but it is to discuss Parmenidesian and Wittgensteinian opinion that what doesn’t exist cannot be thought or said. I take up the matter because it is evident and has been evident in all of time that people think and say about things that are in fact non existent. I involve Parmenides and Heraclitus in the matter because they are one of the first philosophies to come about, and both had good arguments upon the same matter Wittgenstein and other philosophers discussed. Finally, I choose to bring Wittgenstein into this same matter because in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus Wittgenstein says: “I cannot think what I cannot think. What I cannot think I cannot say either”.  When discussing what he cannot think is referring to those things that do not exist within the human perception. This was one of the propositions that led to his solipsism and neutral monism ( numerous writings about Wittgenstein’s neutral monism and solipsism on this webiste, look in the category Ludwig Wittgenstein and/or the archives to find them, theres like 6 I think) that I refute totally, but have respect for the propositions leading up to them. These arguments between Wittgenstein and Spinoza’s monism, and the other numerous arguments between Heraclitus and Parmenides along with other Presocratics are not the subject for discussion, the only subject for discussion is that the non being can be thought and said, so much so that the non being can be made into being by planning through discussion.

Nonbeing can consistently be thought of and reflected upon. When thought of as a being, nonbeing cannot be thought of leading to the notion that nonbeing cannot be thought of or said about. When contemplating upon any contradiction at all, no results will come forth because little can come of such thought (the being in nonbeing is what is thought here).  I say so because when people think about nonbeing, it is a common misconception to think of it as a being, which is totally fallacious and contradictory, therefore nonbeing cannot be thought or said at the outset.  But getting further in nonbeing, we have to get specific of what does not exist to think and say things about nonbeing itself.  For example, eons ago before the genesis, the only thing that existed was God and his angels in a spiritual world. The physical creatum was not in existence before God created it (note that God, angels and the heavens are not part of the general creatum), and yet He conceived the idea of this world, and he made it so. Because God can conceive the nonbeing, so can we to a lesser extent.  Like said before, nonbeing thought of in terms of its being in the world cannot be thought of and the notion is preposterous, but down to nonbeing’s specificities in terms of how it would be if it was can be conceived.

Hopefully I am getting to the point of how nonbeing can be thought of and said. Again, nonbeing can be both thought and said if it is thought of down to its specificities. If nonbeing is thought of in a broad perception little can be obtained from the notion, and yes it is lacking in thought and speech. But if we think of nonbeing specifically down to what certain thing does not exist, thought and speech can be made upon it, possibly even allowing us to turn this specific nonbeing into being.

If nonbeing is thought down to its specificities (examples), we can think and say things about it, and the best part of it (as evident in society) is that we can possibly make the nonbeing into being. If this were not true, then there would be no inventors of the products and services we use daily. Take Alexander Graham Bell for instance. In Bell’s time, there was no device that could enable 2 people 100 miles apart to talk to each other by voice (there was a telegraph, but it was not by voice). The telephone was a nonbeing object. Bell and his assistant worked together with this notion of this telephone device and turned nonbeing into being by inventing their notion into being. They invented the telephone.  Here, nonbeing was thought, and even said. This mere example of Bell’s achievements falsifies Parmenides’ and Wittgenstein’s opinion that the nonbeing cannot be thought or said.

Another example of nonbeing transitioning into being because of our thoughts and speech about the nonbeing, is the fairly recent idea of a liger.  A liger being a cross between a tiger and a lion. This was on the movie Napoleon Dynamite where Napoleon draws the liger, calls it his favorite animal and shows it amongst the people around him. If what Parmenides and Wittgenstein say is true (that what doesn’t exist cannot be thought or said), Napoleon would have no notion of a liger, and anyone thinking or talking about a liger would not be possible because of the fact that ligers are of the nonbeing. Even more recently, biologists tried to make a liger by breeding a tiger and a lion, and they were successful in producing it so the nonbeing notion of a liger did well because it led to an actual being state of the liger. It was born a very weak animal and may not do very well and could regress back into nonbeing.  If what Parmenides and Wittgenstein say is true, the telephone, many other inventions and the breeding production of the liger would never have been possible because we would never have the ability to think about the nonbeing.

My ending inference from my unorganized thought process is this: there is nothing we cannot think, and therefore there is nothing we cannot say. Nonbeing presents one of the many obstacles in thought and speech, but it can be easily hurdled. Wittgenstein’s statement that we cant think what we cant think and what we cant think we cant say is just a resolution to many philosophical problems of dualisms and what some may call ‘philosophical hell’, and the proposition is a great thought, but after searching philosophically, the proposition I refute rejects a lot of areas of thinking that are unexplored and deserve consideration and thought. Wittgenstein’s solipsist and neutrally monist principles when taken for truth would rule out about 1/2 of philosophical exploration that needs to be done in the future. I, personally, look forward to exploring these unexplored areas, and refute any proposition that make exploration of those areas redundant.  In philosophy, there cannot possibly be unthinkable or unsayable  just because there is some nonbeing within metaphysics. If there was, philosophy would not have come as far as it has because more than half of it would be redundant.

If you want more thinking in the nonbeing being said and thought read into Lawrence Sklar and his geometries relating to philosophy and epistemology because of how Euclidean geometry long passed into geometrical law are falsified immediately (i.e. making a triangle with 3 90 degree angles within a whole triangle, which is nonbeing until discussed specifically).

This was just an unorganized thought process coming from reading some ancient writings of Parmenides and Heraclitus and reflecting back on my studies of Wittgenstein.

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G.E. Moore’s Sense Data and of the Hallucinative Forms

After explaining sense data in the previous writing on Moore’s sense data, I feel it is necessary to address the forms of sense data that do not usually come about, and even may not even be connected to an object.

This is just a brief discussion about sense data’s objects that it comes from. When Moore introduced the sense datum he exemplified and explained most about the actual sense data, and little of where it comes from. Epistemology from Moore to Russell and on can lead to and often involve rejection of metaphysics and theology (like the Vienna Circle), making the relation between sense data and its material object not something searched for. I am concerned with both epistemology and metaphysics and where the sense data comes from concerns me more than the sense data itself mostly because the sense data itself is easy to understand, but its source is something difficult and ambiguous.

Moore even stated that sense data comes from a variety of sources that either may or may not have an object. After understanding Moore, the sources of sense data I state to exist are similar and almost equal. Sense data generates from one of these things: 1) material objects 2)redistribution of color without object 3) the mind’s images. I mainly am concerned with the third category in this brief discussion because I discussed sense data of material objects and redistribution of color in my previous writing about Moore’s sense data. My reason for having concern with the third category is because the first two categories exist because they reside with an outlining object. A tulip resides in category 1 because there is an outline to it that is the flower and the color within it (yellows and greens) are the sense data that is represented to our minds.  The mind’s images do not work the same way and are wholly ambiguous in nature.

The mind is a complex entity and does many complex processes causing confusion within us by many ways of doing so. A mirage known to come before one thirsty and tired in a desert can create any image the mind chooses and we will believe the image to be a true object when really it is only imaginary. After not sleeping for days the same thing will happen. After taking certain harmful narcotics the same thing (in a more extravagant way) will happen. One with schizophrenia will have the same thing happen to him but in a more scary and different way. All of these things appear to us in the same form as sense data in that a tulip actually existing will look just as clear in color and shape as a miraged bottle off water. These pseudo-sense data being unusual are ambiguous and I know not what to think of them because of the fact that I know not where their sense data originates from.

I choose to equate a material object’s sense data with a hallucination or schizophrenic image because in both states of mind both look exactly the same in color and clarity. The only inference I can possibly make is that for hallucinations of all forms no sense data is present. After going through logic and epistemological contemplation, (I actually did go through a lot of thinking metaphysically even about it), I do not see any possibility that true sense data exists unless an object lies beneath.

No sense data can be perceived unless an object lies beneath.

I say this boldly and confidently because all hallucinations being compared to true object originated sense data are faulty and inconsistent. Sense data obviously exists when objects push the data strongly through consistency and clarity. Even though all hallucinations are always as clear and visible as object sense data, the hallucinations appear less frequently for the object it portrays and is very inconsistent. The hallucination can be clearly discerned from the object sense data. If we can see the clear distinction between real sense data and sense data of the hallucinative form, we can decide which is truthful and which is false. My philosophical statement is that the hallucinative form of sense data has no object behind it and therefore is false in nature and origin. The mind, however, is complex enough to deceive us with these sense data of the hallucinative form, and making this distinction is a must.

For this, it was necessary to speak only to sense data of the hallucinative form while a person is awake because when one is asleep it is easy to understand the state one is in because of clarity and usualness of the data being perceived. I felt the need to discuss the hallucinative sense data and to discern it from the true sense data Moore states to exist. We all have stayed up to late and seen something unreal, and some of us may have even taken a hallucinogen narcotic, and some of us may be (not myself) schizophrenics, so I felt it necessary to understand what is true amidst all our perceptions.

Thanks for the support. Longer writings on Deleuze, Berkeley, Locke, Heidegger and more to come in the near to more distant future.

Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy: First Meditation

Rene Descartes published a ground breaking set of meditations on his philosophy including 6 meditations that presented great thoughts. My aim is to talk about each meditation and its philosophy in detail. Previously I posted a writing of mine of a synopsis and discussion about all meditations together (which actually was a paper I did almost 2 years ago) and that can be found amongst the Archives and the Rene Descartes category to your right. Here I only want to talk about the first Meditation and what it says about  concerning things that can be doubted.

Descartes begins the meditation by looking back on his previous opinions and states them to have doubt and therefore to be false. A big statement in the beginning of the meditation is when he says that anything that can have some ground for doubt, can be immediately rejected. He looks for complete truth, and stating this is a good start, but goes a little bit to far in my opinion. If I recognize something to have doubt, it would be my opinionated decision to get to the root of those doubts about it, and possibly modify my hypotheses to resolve the doubts. Often the resolution of doubts can lead to ultimate rejection of what is discussed, and in this case Descartes would be right. This rejection of all doubted things is too broad and should be specialized to certain doubts, while excluding other doubts for further discussion and exploration towards a resolution of it. Doubting things is good because it leads to further understanding, and should not be a shortcut to abandonment of the whole hypotheses.

After having said this Descartes discusses the instances of dreams and perceived reality and how we cannot be sure which is which. He clearly states that he previously strictly relied on the senses. But now stating that senses having deceived him before, it cannot be a certain action to rely on something that has deceived us even once. Descartes questions here if he is awake in a certain space and time, because he has some question of his senses because they have deceived him. He goes on to say that a God exists that is all powerful and all knowing, as he states the deception of his senses. The meditation ends by him stating the powerfulness and goodness of God, but with an evil spirit within God. And that God uses the senses and creates illusions to appear to them, simply to deceive him.  He further states that knowing this he can circumvent this deception of God by not accepting any falsities into his beliefs and therefore defeating God’s purpose in deceiving him.

I can understand Descartes’ recognition of the senses deceiving him because our sensory organs are not reliable and can often deceive us simply by mistake. There is not a real purpose behind the mistakes our sensory organs make other than it is something that can often confuse us. Our senses using sight can produce mirages, hallucinations, epistemologically false sense data and others, but it is only a mistake our distorted sensory organs make. My end point is that God does not deceive us, but He distorts our understanding in a lesser form of deception which I get to. This paragraph is not of Descartes’ philosophy by the way, it is of my own. The distortion God put unto our senses is not because he wants to deceive us, and Descartes’ view of God is totally false. However, what Descartes perceived was the distortion we all experience causing us simply to have questions and seek out understanding.

The key to the difference between Descartes’ reality and the real reality is in God’s identity as a deity.  Descartes sees him as powerful, and mostly good, but having evil spirit in him. Saying that a good God has evil spirit in him is a blatant contradiction. In the real world God is sympathetic, loving, caring, generous, and amazing. God also does not deceive anyone, that is Satan’s business.  Our purpose on earth is to worship God, and to find Him amongst the evils. Without the senses we have being distorted, there would be no purpose in life because we would know everything, and God’s purpose for putting us here on this earth would be nullified. So the real God’s distortion of the human’s senses is justified because if this distortion were not existent, our purpose for being here would not exist. But this distortion of our sense is not deception as Descartes understands it. Deception involves tricking a person to lead them down an evil, dead, horrific path that if a person goes down this path, the deceiving would have won, and the deceived would be led to ultimate demise. Satan works in this business, and often leads many down this very path, and they end up in the fires of Hell. God does not do this deception. God’s distortion of our senses and understanding is to lead us towards the narrow path towards  eternal salvation. Descartes fails to recognize that God is entirely good and has all good intentions for his choice to distort our sensory understanding. God does this distortion to our senses because he wants us to eventually seek Him for guidance, where in the event of one doing that, they are rewarded with eternal salvation. For example if one aims to see what is in heaven and hell and at first seeks no help in God, he will be led nowhere in his investigation. God uses this being led nowhere to lead people to His teaching, and to realize (in this specific example) that heaven and hell are to be totally understood when we get to heaven by eternal salvation. Descartes endorses the common misconception of God in that people see God as the fear mongering, angry, acting, and wrath enacting God which is false in all areas. God really is loving, saddened (not angry) at sin, generous, forgiving and great. Descartes misunderstanding of God falsifies his whole argument about doubts and the illusions the sensory data he says it to be.

Based on his false misunderstandings, he states that he can defeat the deceiving God by not admitting any falsities into his philosophy. If he does this he wins against the deceptions. Now, odd as it is, a true statement came out of a false one in that upon his false misunderstandings, he states that no falsities should be admitted into ones own philosophy. This is entirely true in that we should never admit falsities into our philosophy if we can see ever that a certain proposition is false.

It saddens me to see that someone sees God in such a way, but the meditation provoked my thought in the inferences that were somewhat true in their nature. I plan on discussing the next 5 meditations in Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy.

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G.E. Moore’s Sense Data and the Material Object

Finally back to writing and thinking now. I was on a bit of a vacation for about a week from school, where I went fishing, just hung out, and just worked a bunch. Enough about my life, because one thing I loath is a blog talking about one’s life events that never lead toward a logical or philosophical concept or belief. This writing being my official return to activity here, is about G.E. Moore and questions and information in his Information of Sense Data. There is a particular question about sense data that I have interest in.

Sense data and sensations are two different things that Moore used to influence epistemological debates and thought. Sense data is the data our perceptive senses gather when seeing a material object. If one states to be seeing a seashell, the sense data about it would be things gathered by the senses. For example, sense data of observation of the shell would include patches of white and pink (color from sight), about as big as my head, and a jagged amorphous shape. Color is one that is important because of the fact that size and shape can be stated to be within the material object while color is only what our brain perceives of the object and what its surroundings causes it to appear to us. The sense data we have about a material object allow us to be able to draw a picture of it how we see it and be accurate. Sensation is Moore’s term for apprehending the sense data and is nothing of my concern  about the relationship between the material object observed and the sense data that goes with it.

An early teacher of mine was talking one on one with me about the effects of light upon certain surfaces and used an example of when he went to a clothing store for specifically black socks. The store worker helped him with what he wanted and presented ‘black’ socks to my teacher. My teacher rebutted by saying that,”No, these socks are clearly blue. I need black socks.” The store worker came back with saying that those socks ‘are’ black socks, and they only appear blue because of the light bulbs in the ceiling producing light with fewer colors in its spectrum than most natural light. The light coming from the bulbs in the ceiling reflected off the socks making the socks appear to be blue, when really they are black. I might have gotten the colors in this story mixed up, but it is beside the point I strive to make, and it does not matter. What only matters is that in one setting the socks are one color , in another setting the socks appear a complete different color. If one thing can appear different in different settings, it leads me to question whether or not the sense data of an object will always coincide with the actual object. Furthermore, I think that sense data can easily overlap when material objects are in close proximity of each other making confusion because of how far sense data goes far away from the object it is derived from.

It is my imperative reason for this writing to state that I think sense data has very very little connection with the material object in question. And because of this, the sense data is not confined to certain things, and can become loose in shape, and often easily relocated away from the object it is assigned to. As I said before, I think sense data can overlap with other sense data, causing a lot of confusion. When sense data overlaps, and is confused, the object it is connected with is hard to discern. I find this true from personal observation of certain sense data that relocates from the object it supposedly comes from. Whether or not certain sense data comes from certain objects is something difficult, and almost impossible to figure out, but we can make suppositions about the matter. An example exemplifying the relocation of sense data is church windows with red glass in it having real sunlight shined through it projects a red patch on the wall of the inside of the church. This is a red patch among the wall of other sense data where the object does not relocate the sense data. The patch on the wall does not include an object, it only is sense data. Another example would be light shining on a person standing in a field, he casts what we call a shadow. It is a patch of darkness among lighter patches. The object of this sense data is upright and erect, while the sense data is laying flat on the ground. This clearly is relocation of sense data because when sense data is not relocated it is in the same spot as the object. Such as, a flower with red color, along with green surroundings. The color of the flower is in the same spot as the color, and is not relocated to other locations.

I present these things because the epistemological phenomenon we experience sometimes can distort and hold back our destination to understanding the world. The mind misconceives things, and even when it does not misconceive things the world is confusing because of the way our mind sees it. First, we may have difficulty understanding the world with our epistemological characteristics because of the fact that the material object (stated by Moore) cannot even be known to exist or seen. The only thing we know exists or see is the sense data. Second, we may have difficulty understanding the world because of how the sense data is not organized by any means. The sense data is somewhat sitting with its possible object, but often the sense data is relocated to further our quest for understanding. Sense data can be especially confusing concerning what object is where and associated with what sense data in an example where a man dyes some glass a green color, and holds  the small piece of glass up to his cheek face to look at it. So the man’s face is not mostly covered, but a smaller patch of red exists amidst all the whiter patches (patches of color was Moore’s term to describe specific sense data). If the small piece of red glass was specifically over his nose, you would see all the beige skin color patches everywhere in the immediate area, and then in the middle you would see a reddish lighter nose. This is overlapping (not relocating) sense data because the nose before the red glass was a white beige skin color patch just like the rest of the face, but when the red glass is put over the nose, the nose’s sense data is no longer, but many questions are posed as to what object lies under the red glass, and what sense data would accompany it. I believe the sense data to overlap and relocate  to be another part of our difficulty in understanding the world as specifically and purposely done by God when the creatum was created. Not to take a religious curve at the end of a big discussion on sense data. I have many epistemological questions and this is the beginning of my formal course towards epistemological understanding.

Thanks for the support. Glad to be back..finally…

Jean Baudrillard The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact: Mental Diaspora of the Networks

Mental diaspora of the networks is stated by Baudrillard to mean the disconnection between the symbolic images and the reality. This occurs causing the lack of ability for  value judgments to occur among other inabilities to trust symbols and images. Baudrillard states this to happen because  of the fact that we cannot take media and its symbols for reality, and we must search further for truth. As I read this part of the Intelligence of Evil I was lead to ask why, and how this mental diaspora could have happened. knowing that why/how it happened may be the key to deciphering the diaspora. Baudrillard states little about why/how, and mostly about what, and how it effects the people exposed to the media and its misleading images. The what and how it affects is to be discussed here, but I first want to dedicate some discussion as to why and how this mental diaspora happened in the first place. First, these inferences being solely of my own, I think that media, images, symbolism, and art have greatly progressed over the years and have gotten more non-conforming to the art around it. Media has grown to include everything including a growing area of it that diverges from the main stream. By now, this diverging media from the main stream has to be about a half of all media, symbols, images, and art. I must add about this diverging media from the main stream that its qualifications do not include coherence with reality. This front of media, knowing of the other half cohering to reality, mostly does not cohere with reality for artistic, creative, and entertaining purposes. This growing diversity of media I think is what causes the mental diaspora. Baudrillard did little in his book to talk about why, or how it came to be, but I find it extremely important in knowing what, and how it is now.

Baudrillard states that mental diaspora of the networks occurs (and does so rapidly) when 2 opposite poles (of symbol or media) merge into each other until each emergence previously distinguishable is no longer able to be taken from it. The 2 opposite poles existing often coheres with reality allowing us to have some understanding as to what media denotes reality, but when the mental diaspora occurs, this deciphering ability toward the reality basically disappears. Moreover, Baudrillard exemplifies in the book his discussion with Susan Sontag on the one time they witnessed on television about the moon, where Sontag states that she viewed images of the moon (a screen showing the moon) but she did not really see the moon from the television. The network between media and reality was at first strict in that media denoted some sort of reality, but the diaspora scattered all of the media and infused it with the diverging unreal media. When at first virtual intelligence denoted a high level of intelligence, if we still relied on virtual intelligence we would all be ignorant and basically stupid. The mental diaspora of the networks infused the reality coherent media with the diverging and emerging creative yet not reality coherent media, causing all media to be contaminated, and allowing none of it to be truly trusted for knowledge about truth and reality. I may have exaggerated this mental diaspora of the networks a little too much, but I still feel I have accurately stated it for its face value. This diaspora can be exemplified  by Fox News pretty much having been reporting truthful stories and politics before the mental diaspora of the networks (recognize the poles of truthful news, and tabloid news), and after the diaspora, not being able to know what is truthful or real reports on a blatantly tabloidal scandal. Or, another example, before the diaspora, a person looking for heterosexual entertainment, could easily find it and get what the person wants, but after the diaspora, the same person may see a piece of media that looks totally heterosexual on the outside, and appears so throughout, but gives the person not what he/she wants, and ends up really being homosexual when the media is fully viewed. Before the diaspora, that material would have been clearly represented as homosexual, and no ‘hetero’ labels would be assigned to it. The diaspora of the networks makes it hard for any media to denote reality because of how all of the media has homogenized with each other. Also, if the diaspora had not occurred, picking out movies to see in the theater would be a lot easier because we would know for sure whether we would probably like a movie or not. We would never have to see a bad movie again. But, for example, the movie The Informant looks like it might be funny because of the photo on the cover, and because of the way it converses with the viewer of the ad, making someone think it a better movie than it actually is. I rented the movie thinking that the dork on the front of the cover would mean it would be a funny movie, but it turned out to be about a worker at an ethanol oil company and a crisis that happens there. And I like informative, interesting  movies, but in my opinion the Informant was not interesting by any means, so this ad mislead me. I think the diaspora effected even more propaganda and advertising in that these advertising and propaganda projects are more misleading every day. For some forms of media, the diaspora was a good thing, like for art, I believe the diaspora served a good purpose, and it was good for it to happen. I say this because I think that art should not have a presupposed meaning to it. The artist should have his/her own meaning for the artwork, and it should be left up to the viewer to interpret it in any other way. The diaspora helps the industry of art, but art is only a division of media. The diaspora was negative for (advertising and propaganda like said before) political campaigns, news, and for non fiction writing. It did well for fiction/literature writing because it often leaves meaning/interpretation up to the reader. Politics, and campaigns are badly effected by the diaspora because the tendency to ‘rake muck’ occurs more because of the homogenized media. Muck is raked on bills, propositions, lawmakers, and politicians even if the muck is not true muck, but the muck badly effects those trying to help the nation with his/her political tactics. Overall, I do not think things would work out if the mental diaspora of the networks had not occurred by now because of how society has developed around it. I may be taking the notion of the diaspora way too far, but I feel that it does in fact go as far as I say.

Like always, @Reply on Twitter, comment below, or email at cosmosuniversez@yahoo.com to discuss your opinions, and if I stated anything wrong.

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Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses: The Care of Poverty

The Christian Discourses of Kierkegaard make up some of his most amazing works in that they are worded in such a way that they have the ability to make the worried man feel better. Poverty is such an issue that is the concern of many people worldwide and the things said in this discourse are only things that can comfort the reader. Having first read this, certain Bible verses come to mind that his philosophy takes root in, and noticing that makes me feel even better about the message Kierkegaard aims to set forth with this discourse.

The discourse begins by saying this care (the care of poverty) is not a care that the bird has. He proceeds to state that the bird lives on heavenly bread that never goes stale. This heavenly bread being what the bird’s liveliness is and that which it only has enough to survive with. Because of the fact that the heavenly bread is scarce and only comes when the bird needs it, the bird has little, and therefore is poor, but the key is in the fact that the bird does not give recognition to the fact that he is poor. Kierkegaard states that the lack of care about the state of poverty in the bird needs to be transferred to the humans that are poor, because we should put trust in the lord concerning what we eat and drink. The bird does not care about his poor state, and nor should we because of the trust we have put in God’s hands. Kierkegaard infers that because of our ability to put all trust in God concerning what we will eat and drink, we are not therefore poor, but we have so many heavenly riches, that we are of the most rich state. Because of all the aforesaid things: “Therefore you should not worry and say: What will we eat or what will we drink?- for all such things the pagans seek”(Kierkegaard). The pagans seek these things because they are not able to have the heavenly riches that the Christian has of putting our trust in the hands of God. Finally the bird is then displayed as being carefree because it is so poor and yet does not worry about it.

There are great verses in the Bible that set forth the same principles, and inspire the reader to trust and love God. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition,  with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” and ” I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” -Philippians 4: 4-7 and Philippians 4: 13. These two parts of Philippians are what I use to govern most of my life, and it helps a lot when you are worrying about your life, and are uncertain about the future about what will put food on the table. Kierkegaard and many pastors refer to the bird and ask if the bird (another of God’s creatures like yourself) questions where it gets its food and drink when people are going through rough times. I first heard this when my pastor of my church did a sermon on this part of Philippians and why we should not worry about our lives if we have full trust in God. The bird has heavenly bread because he does not worry about his poor state, and he continuously has food to eat and water to drink. People, being more complex in the head, are prone to worrying about our lives when times get hard. God answers us with those verses in Philippians.  Using the bird and asking us “does the bird worry about where it gets its food? And yet the bird always survives..” is really helpful to people in a state of deep worry. Examining the mindset of the bird and its poor state is key to seeing why God does not want us to worry, and is key in understanding the answer to our worries.

I could continuously preach about how Philippians and the bird are shown to tell us to not worry, but the main proposition in the Christian Discourse Care of Poverty by Kierkegaard is that whatever cares we have based on poverty or other concerns, can be dealt with by putting all of our trust in God and stopping the worry. If we do this we are actually in a state of great riches (heavenly riches that is). It is my opinion however that to confidently put our worries and trust in God’s hands and expect all to work out perfectly, we must have given our lives to God for salvation, be living a righteous life in the eyes of God, and continuously repenting of our sins. We must be doing all of these things or at least trying our very hardest to be doing all of these things if we want our worries and trust to be correctly handled in the cosmos. If we are living a hypocritical life, and not trying at all to be what God wants us to be, and expect that He meet our worries and trust with good things, we are sadly mistaken. We will always sin, and do bad things, but if we are making a conscious effort to thwart sin, and making a conscious effort to repent of the sins, God recognizes it and treats the person well for it. If we are making a good conscious effort in all of these things, we can be confident that our worries of poverty, and that our trust in Him will be handled the best way possible. The verses in Philippians confirm this proposition.

These Philippians  verses in the Bible and Kierkegaard’s Discourse on the Care of Poverty make it known how bad it is to worry obsessively and to not put our trust in anything but ourselves. The verses and the discourse make it known how much of a bad thing it is to worry without trusting in God. At the same time it reveals another reason that God is such a loving and amazing God.  Kierkegaard is amazing for having written these things in a distinct Christian discourse.

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Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason: The Transcendental Logic I (Logic in General)

Kant’s book Critique of Pure Reason contains in it the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements which has the landmark concepts of time, space, transcendental logic, among other things including the concept of a priori intuitions. In the first part On logic in general, Kant talks about certain intuitions along with the sensibility all pointing towards the qualifications for an intuition to be a priori. This Transcendental Doctrine is one of the things making Critique of Pure Reason one of Kant’s amazingly thought provoking and amazing books.

First in this part on logic, Kant talks about reception of representations and faculty for cognizing an object by means of these representations.  Reception of representations is our nature of being given representations of the world. We are given these things without much thought being necessary to achieve them. The faculty for cognizing an object comes to us through our thought and contemplation upon the representations we receive. This faculty for cognizing comes to us only through our thought of things, and are not given to us as the representations are. Kant states these fact to lead up to his distinction of intuitions between those that are empirical and pure. Empirical cognitions are those that have sensation contained in them. Pure cognitions are those without any sensational involvement. Kant goes on to say that only pure cognitions are a priori, and empirical cognitions are a posteriori.  From this he goes on to talk about understanding and what it is made up of: “If we call the receptivity of our mind to receive representations insofar as it is affected in some way sensibility, then on the contrary the faculty for bringing forth representations itself, or the spontaneity of cognition, is the understanding” (Kant). Receptivity being the ability of our mind to receive representations that are affected by sensibility is not that complex of a process, but understanding involves more thought and is therefore more complex. The faculty for “thinking of objects of sensible intuition on the contrary, is the understanding. The logic used towards the understanding is then divided into general and particular logic in use of the understanding. General logic is logic used for understanding that is the basic absolutely necessary rules of thinking. The particular logic for the use of understanding is the rules for thinking about a certain kind of objects or thoughts. General logic is further divided between pure and applied logic. Pure logic being logic of understanding dealing with particularly a priori principles. Applied logic being understanding for the sensible and psychological purpose because of the sensibility involved. The empirical, pure, general and applied can be crossed with each other to have different logic and understanding. Kant’s main proposition of this part of the book: “A general but pure logic therefore has to do with strictly a priori principles,  and is a canon of understanding…” (Kant).

I explain the above because it is my opinion that sensibility clouds propositions and judgement creating the need and therefore existence of some a priori logic and understanding. Empirical applied logic and understanding  is in my opinion corrupted by sensibility. The senses we have govern too much our logic and understanding, when we should not rely very  much upon them. I believe Kant felt the same about senses and sensibility because of the fact that he made sure that a priori logic only included that which had no sensibility. I do not choose to discredit  sensibility totally, but it clouds judgement away from the real and the truthful because of how our brains are complex enough to make things appear different from what they really are.  If there were no  a priori principles we would be lost in this world and all of us would resort to  foolish philosophies (like solipsism, and atheism if I may say so). If there were no canon of understanding we would be so lost that we would not be able to come back from it. There are reasons we cannot have all a priori knowledge, but we cannot succeed in the world without some of this a priori knowledge. I think that Kant called a priori principles general and pure because of how the sensibility corrupts logic and gives it impurities. This canon of understanding is what helps us have the ability to sort through the corrupt and false principles and understand what is true and real. I appreciate Kant for making the distinction between these logical distinctions. This philosophy endorses what the Christians believe about the knowledge God means for us to have while on this earth. We are given just enough knowledge to find our way, but there is enough possibly corrupted sensible empirical knowledge to lead us astray.

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Henri Bergson Mind-Energy: Consciousness

I haven’t read any Bergson in awhile, so if anything I say in this post is wrong or misinterpreted please say so (you know how).  Bergson’s essay book Mind-Energy begins with the Life and Consciousness essay where he discusses the qualifications and characteristics of consciousness and the beings that have it. Naturally, when I read something I generate my own opinion about it whether it is for or against the author’s stance. Bergson had his opinions about what consciousness included, and they coincide with the definition of the word consciousness, even though he chose not to formally state it.

I want to state the qualifications of consciousness as stated by Bergson before discussing consciousness as a whole. “In like manner, consciousness in man is unquestionably connected with the brain: but it by no means follows that a brain is indispensable to consciousness” (Bergson).  Bergson states that consciousness coincides with a being having a brain of some shape or sort. “The faculty of choosing, at first localized in the brain, extends gradually to the spinal cord, which then, probably, constructs somewhat fewer mechanisms and also mounts them with less precision” (Bergson).  In this part of the essay Bergson makes the distinct boundary between brainless automatons and conscious choosing beings.  “…consciousness retains the past and anticipates the future, it is probably because it is called on to make a choice”(Bergson).  The previous quote leads Bergson to his conclusion that consciousness is the bridged gap between the recognized past and future. Also, he concludes that consciousness coincides with life. Bergson talks a lot about the brain and its components including the spinal cord to further elaborate upon his discussions about consciousness. I however am mostly interested in the main propositions about life and consciousness.

Concerning the proposition that consciousness coincides with a brain being present, I agree with Bergson in the fact that it would be an extremely rare situation where consciousness would exist in a being without a brain. Bergson goes to talk about parts of the brain especially the spinal cord that further make it known that consciousness could probably not exist without the being’s body having a brain. A brain is one generally accepted and known characteristics of conscious beings.

When he states that the conscious being has choice, he compares beings that are automatons (predestined without choice) and conscious beings that have choice.  Consciousness yields free choice. Automatons have no brain, and have no choice in their life.

The conscious being (stated by Bergson) almost always  coincides with life. The conscious being with the brain, also has life. The conscious being  must always have life. Finally, the consciousness is the recognizance of the being (and memory of) of the past and the future. All of these, and aforesaid things together make up the conscious being.

Concerning the characteristics of consciousness that the conscious being always has a brain, and that the being has recognition and memory of the past and future, I think they both are always true. There can never be a conscious being without a brain, or without recognition and memory of the past and future.  I elaborate so much upon the characteristics of consciousness because of the fact that the conscious being always having life, and the consciousness being dormant at times are specific in their truths and falsities.

First, the conscious being always having life is true only to some extent. Yet there cannot be a conscious being without life. There can however be life without consciousness.  There are beings without consciousness, and there are beings with dormant (Bergson’s term) or as I like to call it absent consciousness.  For example, there are plants such as the hibiscus. They have life and parts that function as a brain of the plantae purpose. The hibiscus however is not conscious. All fungi, protista, and monista are also not conscious of their surroundings and do not have memory or recognition of the world around them. From the plant phylum down to the monista there are no conscious beings because of the lack of brain parts, and the lack of recognition and memory of the past and future. The animal kingdom does however have beings that have life, a sufficient brain, and therefore consciousness.

The consciousness of the animal kingdom is difficult to distinguish because of the fact that many animals have limited consciousness. A fish sees a worm in the lake around it, grabs on, and gets hooked painfully in the mouth. He gets pulled up to the dock while the human grabs him, takes the hook off and lets him loose. The fish, after 10 minutes, forgets that the previous hooking ever happened, sees another worm with a suspicious shiny thing, and grabs on again. The fish has limited consciousness because of the fact that the past was only memorized and recognized for 10 minutes. Many other animals have this limited consciousness because of how the past and future are only recognized for awhile before their brain blackboard is erased. As the intelligence of animals goes on up to dogs, cats, bears and other mammals, the consciousness is much less limited. A dog being owned by an abuser gets horribly abused by the owner and gets rescued by the ASPCA, and one year later given to a loving caring owner. The dog would still be cautious and a little scared of his or her new owners because of the fact that the dog remembers someone of the same look having done something terrible to him or her. The consciousness is larger as the complexity of the animal goes up. There is little rhyme or reason to distinguish the less limited between the more limited, but it is easy to understand. Then humans have limited, to dormant/absent, to full consciousness depending upon the situation.

First, people who have mental disorders that cause problems in perception therefore cause problems in the memory and recognition of past and future. For example, if you have seen 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler meets this girl (Drew Barrymore) at this breakfast cafe in Hawaii where she eats breakfast and makes houses out of her waffles every day. After dating her, he understands that she was in a car accident where a part of her brain was damaged making her memory become erased every night when she goes to bed. Her dad and brother give her the same issue of the newspaper every day along with doing other things to make her think it is still the same day. She  lives one day, goes to bed, gets  up and thinks it the same day. She reads the same newspaper issue, and does the same thing every day to protect her from being confused. This mental disorder (among many others) causes her to have a very limited consciousness because she only remembers the past, and cannot recognize or remember the continuation of time or the future.

Also, consciousness becomes absent (dormant) when we go to sleep or lose consciousness (from drugs/alcohol or injury). When we have dreams we do not know or understand time. When we get up we do not know how long we were sleeping and we cannot remember well the dreams we had. The consciousness leaves for a time while we are sleeping or passed out.

Finally, I think that consciousness forever departs from us in the instance that we become ‘vegetables’ or people too sick to remain conscious, feed ourselves, or do other otherwise daily things. We cannot be conscious in this state because we cannot understand past and future nor can we have true recognition and memory of them.

I did this writing just because I understood and liked Bergson’s essay on life and consciousness and felt it necessary to state the characteristics of conscious beings to make the distinction.

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Gilles Deleuze The Logic of Sense: The Paradox of Regress

Sense being one of the main discussions in Deleuze’s book Logic of Sense, the fifth series talks about sense and why it is more than the presuppositions it leads to on a daily basis. This series in Deleuze’s book has a few paradoxes of sense in it. One being the paradox of regress. This series has difficulty in coming to understand it because of how Deleuze believes the sense to regress.

But I am all about paradoxes and understanding them.

“…I never state the sense of what I am saying. But on the other hand, I can always take the sense of what I say as the object of another proposition whose sense, in turn, I cannot state. I thus enter into the infinite regress of that which is presupposed” (Deleuze).  Deleuze state the sense to be not which is discussed out in front, but it is what is presupposed in any discussion on any issue. The sense that is used in any proposition/statement is not needed to be brought into discussion even if it is dominant in everything. Because the sense is so widespread, the sense of one proposition reaches the boundaries of other propositions, although the sense of this proposition is different and cannot be stated because of the fact that it is a different sphere of knowledge and propositions. Because of how the sense is presupposed in all propositions, it becomes ambiguous (?) creating the inability to actually state the sense of the other propositions that the sense for the discussed proposition had also.  “This regress testifies both to the great impotence of the speaker and to the highest power of language…” (Deleuze).  I state this quote because the high power of language contributes to this infinite regress of the sense, and the infinite regress of the sense causes a lot of the impotence of the speaker. “In short, given a proposition which denotes a state of affairs, one may always take its sense as that which another proposition denotes.” (Deleuze).  I quote Deleuze so much in this writing because no one can put this infinite regress better than he did. Deleuze states this paradox to be Frege’s paradox (other writings on Frege on this website, not on language but on logic in the ~F Logic page found in the above right). Deleuze again refers to Alice to exemplify in a real example this infinite regression.  Alice speaks with the Knight about a song he intends to sing. He states the name of the song to be Haddock’s Eyes,  where the Knight responds by saying that that is what the name of the song is called. With more discussion, the name of the song is called The Aged Aged Man. The song is then said to be ‘called’  The Ways and Means. With more discussion, the song ‘is’ A sitting on a Gate. The names (Aged Aged Man, Ways and Means, A sitting on a Gate, and Haddock’s Eyes) vary about the same song because of sense and how it reaches from statement to statement while ambiguously varying. One name is ‘what the song is called’, another is ‘what the name of the song is called’, another is what the song ‘is’. The same song being discussed is presupposed to have one name, but it has many different names when it is concerned what of the song is discussed. The talking between Alice and the Knight is stated by Deleuze to not be the infinite regression discussed, but it is finite in the fact that they get to understanding what the song is. Infinite regression (could even happen with the song, Alice and the Knight’s discussion could go on forever if they keep bringing up propositions about the same song varying because of the same sense that occurs in all of them) occurs when you do not come to a finite conclusion because different aspects of the same thing bring up different propositions because of the ambiguous outsretching sense that occurs in everything in existence. Sense cannot be defined and stated outright in a single proposition because it is not a state of affairs or an object, it is a quality and a feature that occurs in all states of affairs and objects because of the sense humans have. I explain this detailedly because I think (Deleuze also thought) that this infinite regression of sense being from our perception is a part of the power of language and contributes to the fact that language is not advanced enough to represent and state wholly our thoughts and ideas. This infinite regression is the clear reason for the faults language has when comparing it to our thoughts, and is the reason for the (unfortunate) enormous power language has over all. If sense was more simple and fathomable philosophy and linguistics would not be necessary (much science wouldn’t be necessary either) because we would easily be able to understand the world around us. I believe that God intentionally made sense this way so that we would seek him out and trust him with our lives, and so that we would know that we have to wait to get to Heaven to understand God’s works and everything else. Sense not having this infinite regression would defeat the purpose of our lives because of the fact that our purpose of life is to find the Lord and to seek salvation in him. If we knew everything we would all be  followers of the Lord which would be against what God wants for this world and His followers. We are all here together to sort through the nonsense of this world and find Him. There are reasons we are not able to know some of the things around us. God made it that way so that we would seek something to trust in. People respond to this worldly ambiguity by seeking God, atheism/agnosticism, solipsism/neutral monism, and other things. Solipsism and neutral monism (by Wittgenstein) are obviously (as stated in previous writings on this website), not the way to seek truth in the world. We can seek truth in the world, but we must know that we cannot know everything, and we must turn to faith for the rest.

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Native Americans Had it Worse during New World Settlement (Historical Opinion #1)

In case you did not know it about me, I am majoring in philosophy, and history, and now that my amount of history classes are going up, my thoughts in our past continues to be increased, causing me to think of more than just philosophy. This site is still going to be primarily for philosophy, but history and its involvements continues to be a part of my thought sphere, and I want to also write about it along with my philosophical writings. I  am beginning a new category for this site called Historical Opinion and this is the first one, being for all my writings that are opinionated about certain parts of history. I have not posted any writings all week because I have been studying for a 6 chapter American history test that I took earlier this evening, and I tweeted a quote by James Madison (find it to the lower right), and with that tweet, I had the thought that I could write about history too. The class the test was for was American history up to 1865 and it involved African slavery and the things we did to the Native Americans living here when we settled. This writing is to be about my opinion why African slavery and its evils are inferior to the evils conducted in the acquirement of the land we reside upon today. I wholeheartedly believe that African slavery does not even measure up to how evil it was to take land from, sicken, kill, and betray the Native Americans that lived here before us. I have my opinions why. In no sense do I think that African slavery up to the emancipation proclamation was right, but I think it is a very much lesser sin and evil than what we did to the Native Americans.

I want to make my point that the natives had it worse by why and how the Native Americans and the Africans came to their state of nadir (as the blacks termed the times of slavery, meaning ‘low point’, contrasting with zenith meaning ‘high point’). Lets start with the Native Americans. The indians (called that by Columbus because he thought he was in India when he was actually in America) lived all over North America each tribe having an established place here. When the Spanish, French, British, Dutch, and other settlers came here and pretty much invaded the land, the indians (going to call them this from now on to not have to type Native American each time I refer to them) retaliated furiously ending in their demise by being removed from their home. The indians were put towards their nadir through 1) being removed from their lands, 2) getting European diseases they had no bodily immunity to, 3) being enslaved for a very very short period, and finally4) being slaughtered during battle with settlers and colonists. There are probably other things that caused the indian’s point of nadir, but those 4 were the main reasons for their demise.  The indians were enslaved for a short period, but the settlers stopped enslaving them because they did not last long, and because the diseases from Europeans killed them off quickly from being exposed daily to the settlers. This is why Africans were brought to the New World and were enslaved because they had immunity and could last long in the sun working for long periods of time. During the peaceful life of the indians in North America, each tribe was attached to their holy home because of religion and sources of food and shelter that were there. Their native indigenous religion branded their home as holy land making the taking of their land an enormous tragedy and loss. Diseases that Europeans carried were exposed the the indians without immunity such as smallpox and other diseases killing tribes in vast numbers. That alone I feel is an injustice to those died from European disease, along with the survivors of the disease having lost their loved ones. The taking of the indian’s land by the settlers was not an immediate process. Colonists were given their boundaries for settlements that were just broken as settlers just moved west. When Europeans first settled in the New World in the 1600’s the indian’s saw that the Europeans were dying and not surviving there, and the indians came to their aid in a nice and formal way to help them survive, and did so just to have their land taken from them. At Plymouth (present day Massachusetts), Pilgrims (an unorthodox branch of protestant separatists) settled there and the Pilgrims had hard times surviving there because of lack of food, and harsh winters. The Wampanoag indians including Samoset and Squanto came to the aid of the Pilgrims by teaching them how to fish, grow corn (which they thought food for pigs at first, and declined to eat it until they began to starve), and do other things to ensure survival. The Wampanoags helped the Pilgrims get on their feet and to live. Later after established settlement in Massachusetts, after massacring Pequot indians, and encroaching on Wampanoag land, the Wampanoags attacked back at the settlers lead by Metacomet (King Phillip as termed by colonists) starting King Phillip’s war in 1675. The Wampanoag’s helped the settlers learn to survive here just to have their land taken from them to start a war between each other. Another similar incident in Virginia where Algonquian indians under Powhatan came to the aid of settlers as well only to have their land taken from them. Not only did the settlers just take their land, but as conflicts with indians proceeded, the Americans set forth many treaties and proclamations stating that they would not settle past a certain line to ensure indians of less conflict and removal from lands. For example the Proclamation of 1763 later in settlement of the New World that stated no settlement west of the Appalachian mountains. This proclamation was null as  settlers continued west to take more indian land. Much later after the American Revolution during the Andrew Jackson administration, he passed Indian removal acts making all indians in American states having to be transported to the midwest (present day Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas, and places north to the Canadian border). The indians having established their land again there, the Kansas Nebraska Act was passed making Kansas and Nebraska states before the Civil war (amongst slavery debate) again taking indian land. The indians were just continually pushed westward into foreign lands. Because of Jackson’s indian removal act, the trail taking them to Oklahoma gained the name Trail of Tears because of the tears shed from the depressed indians being removed from their beloved homes. Hopefully this has briefly explained the harships, depressing times, and betrayals to the indians because of European settlement of the New World. African slavery occurred for different reasons, and because of its roots it was a lesser evil than the mistreatment of the Native Americans.

The main reason I feel that enslavement of the Africans was not as big of a shocking part of history as the removal of the indians was because of the fact that Africans enslaved each other in their homeland of Africa before the Europeans enslaved anybody. Higher people in African society enslaved other Africans in Africa, and when Europeans went there as a part of their trade routes, they observed this enslavement, and seeing how the Africans could withstand that kind of work, they bought slaves in African slave markets and brought the African slavery back to the New World. As we look back on American enslavement of the Africans, the Americans of the time are often viewed as sick horrible people that could not have possibly done something so terrible. When in reality, the Americans  just got the idea from the Africans themselves. Because of this documented historical fact I now do not view African enslavement to be as terrible as I previously thought. African slavery was in places more than just America, and it being the new way to do things, it was adopted in America too. The situation of slavery was exacerbated when it divided the nation preceding the Civil War, which may be a reason why African slavery is viewed as so incredibly low.

I feel that slavery is a terrible evil, but to brand the white man as evil because of it is wrong because the black man started it all.

Because of the above stated fact, the removal of native Americans from their land greatly outdoes  the evil of African slavery. White and black people are both sinners because they participated in enslavement of equal people, but to polarize it towards saying that the white man is evil is wrong.

Hopefully I made my point without saying anything radical, fallacious, or blasphemous. Don’t try to say that the Africans did not enslave themselves first, because they did. This fact equalizes evils of white and blacks for enslavement of each other, and it removes the false polarization against the white man.

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