Is there some rule that I’m missing? MI Chess v3.0 is all sorts of bad programming. It might only be a problem when running on Windows XP; beyond that it crashes when you’re beating the computer or playing too confusedly for it to comprehend.
After reading a bit on feminist philosophy and reflecting on some past conversation with a friend, I found myself locked in consideration of a Spinozistic metaphysic. Let us see where the limits of this metaphysical philosophy takes my own thought in this discourse and if I can land upon some unique insight of my own toward the truth. For another time, I would like to think of ways in which my own philosophical views are in fact confined to patriarchal perpetuation.
In truth, I consider gender as nothing more than a fictitious and philosophically unfounded distinction; however, feminist philosophers tend to believe that concepts such as reason, contrasted to emotion, are inherently primarily “male” attributes of reality. And male philosophers only exploit this manner of truth-finding because of their gender disposition. Further, as I come to understand this claim, it ought to be that emotion and reason, “chaos” and “rationality,” as it were, are domains of existence which share equal value in so far as being properties of existence itself. It is my purpose here to attempt, however far I can, to establish that “randomness” is a fiction, subordinate to reason, as is emotion. Nature and Reason are the only truths, where inadequacy of understanding produces this concept of “true randomness,” emotion as a true opponent to reason, along with, as you may like to imagine, a multitude of other chimeras which afflict humanity.
1 There exist only necessary and contingent things.
1.1 A necessary thing is that which depends only on itself to exist.
1.11 Necessary things will be the cause of themselves because they depend on nothing else. In this sense, cause is similar to the “cause” of produced things in only the name. A necessary thing is “caused” only in the sense that it is.
1.12 A necessary thing, for argumentative purposes, may be viewed as a thing produced by chance or randomness in so far as both a necessary thing and a chance thing are both unrestricted with respect to laws or external things.
1.13 Necessary things and chance things are closed systems.
1.2 A contingent thing is that which depends on a necessary thing, greater contingent things, or processes by which contingent things produce other contingent things.
1.21 A process by which contingent things produce other contingent things is effectively the same as a greater contingent thing in so far as it produces a lesser contingent thing.
1.3 This is how questions must be framed.
1.31 A question that equates chance things to necessary things presupposes that the definitions of the two are the same.
1.32 A necessary thing bears a logical relation only to itself.
1.33 A chance thing bears a logical relation only to contingent things.
1.34 A necessary thing cannot be subject to chance. The fact that a necessary thing is must exclude the necessary thing from any real similarity to a chance thing.
1.4 A chance thing depends on both potentiality and probability.
1.41 Potentiality, or possibility, says that a chance thing may be or come into being.
1.42 Probability gives a certain degree of necessity to a chance thing.
1.5 A necessary thing bears no potentiality or probability.
1.51 A necessary thing, by virtue of existing, can bear only actuality.
1.52 A necessary thing, by virtue of existing, can bear only absolute certainty in so far as its probability. In effect, it bears no probability but only absolute certainty.
2 Randomness is a fiction, along with “chaos” and “chance.”
2.1 Nothing is truly random in relation to the whole but may appear as such in relation to other contingent things.
Reflection: To relate the concept of emotion to the concept of randomness in so far as emotion is produced from the concept of randomness is to commit a fallacy of applying a definition of that which is unknown to something equally unknown. Ex.: Emotions have an unknown origin because randomness is by definition unable to be understood. We have assumed that randomness exists (even if we do not, by nature if its concept, truly understand it), and arbitrarily ascribed emotion to definitively stem from that unknown. What exactly would the “Law of Randomness” contain in its definition beyond the mere assumption: “There is true chance.” Can we assume by induction that in closed systems randomness exists? Would it not require that we step beyond the system itself? Are we in a closed system? Certain physical theorists have tended to think so.
If we argue for chaos, we would equally find ourselves arguing that vacuums exist or that miracles bear physical reality and physical implications. By definition, “randomness” is that which is unknown; it is that which is unexplainable by causal law. True randomness, and not apparent randomness, is impervious to reason as reason is the means by which apparently random occurrences are understood. A truly random thing in so far as its relation to contingent things fictitiously instills in the minds of other contingent things—however much mind those contingent things bear—that it bears the exact nature of a necessary thing.
Eventually, what is apparently random becomes ordered within the archive of what we call human knowledge. Reason must order its perceptions so that it may calculate and comprehend them.
The idea that a chaotic thing may exist within order must presupposes that this chaotic thing depends only on itself or on something outside of the whole of ordered things which follow causal law, as has been said. In so far as things being perceivably ordered, must we assume axiomatically that casual law is the means by which those things are ordered? The major problem seems to form when we attempt to apply causal law to necessary, contingent and chance things. But are chance things fictions, or are they real?
If we allow for true randomness (chance things to bear reality just as necessary and contingent things bear reality), we lose our ability to discern falsehoods. Chance things blur our ability to comprehend causality in so far as causality is applied to contingent things. Therefore, we must condemn all notions of true randomness as unessential and unhelpful to even our questions. Questions being framed and built upon necessary and contingent things as their constituents presuppose that an explanation can be attained. This is how we approach the sciences. This should be similarly how we approach all things in life, as you may have concluded, emotions as well.
3 Emotions, like chance things, are fictions not in so far as they bear relation only to contingent things but in so far as other contingent things bearing certain levels of mind and sentience perceive them as truly random things.
3.1 Emotions are contingent things which are ordered and subject to laws that place them in relation to other contingent things.
3.2 Emotions must be treated as contingent things which maintain a certain order and can be understood completely.
3.3 If we treat emotions as such, there may always be the possibility that we do not fully understand them. Ask yourself, do we fully understand physical laws? Do they convey objective truth in so far as objective truth reaches a deductive absoluteness? That is, objective truth is attained by numerous inductions as to attain it and, reaching that point, the consistency of results makes objective truth unshakably true.
3.31 Objective truth is acquired through induction which leads to certain deductive postulations.
3.4 Understanding emotion fully will not lead to the predictability of emotion but to an increased intuitive knowledge.
3.5 The level of intuitive knowledge exists in proportion to decisions being made in accordance with Nature. The more so intuitive knowledge increases, more so are decisions made in accordance with Nature.
3.6 Decisions made in accordance with Nature are constants that must always come to be, for contingent things are never outside of Nature. Our decisions are always intuitive rather than reasoned.
3.61 Our intuitions are increased by the procurement of inductive results and decisions are produced from the combination of intuition and instants of rational stopping.
3.62 Rational stops are attempts to cease intuitive decision making in order to find a contingent thought which, in so far as it is related to an infinite number of contingent things, we must assume it as true in order to establish it concretely to our minds in relation to that infinite continuum of contingent things.
3.63 If the assumption fits in with the continuum as we perceive it, we keep it then disregard it as assumption and consider it a non-falsehood. More concise questioning then commences.
4 Contingent things never being outside of Nature demands that no truly chance things ever exist.
4.1 What benefit do we receive for truth finding by assuming hypothetical worlds for our arguments in which we implicitly claim chance things are not fictions? Can we even argue, from our domain of contingency, that hypothetical worlds actually bear any explanatory power to our own?
5 We must then ask ourselves, despite what I have reflected upon: Is randomness a truth or a fiction? This is the most crucial question of all.
I leave off with a word from Benedict de Spinoza:
P35: Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature.
–Benedict de Spinoza, IV. Of Human Bondage of Ethics
These thoughts may appear to be immature and naïve to you, should you be an experienced philosopher. I only share them here because I needed a medium with which I may easily return to them and reflect, and the backspace key is much easier than an eraser as an editing tool. Re-ordering and adding postulations and comments must have been difficult for Wittgenstein. If he ordered them to his liking the first time, I would be endlessly impressed; but, as we all know, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was a collection of notes. Further, it was sent through an editor, as with all published works.
So some kid from my mum’s church decided to lend her a copy of Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. I admit that I tried reading once before this powerhouse of intellectually rigorous and intimidating argumentation of Protestant Christian theology flavor, but I simply had not the talent to fully comprehend the subtle wit of the literature.
Oh wait. Metaphors preferred over definitions, equivocations, unsupported premises, logical fallacies, oversimplifications… And this is only in chapter one.
Here’s a fantastic example:
As an organism, he [man] is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he choose (my emphasis).
What a terribly shaky assumption. He has merely assumed that the definition of human nature does not entail that it can be itself modified. And further, what is human nature? He has yet again assumed that we have attained the objective definition of human nature.
He goes on to tackle discrepancies in moralities and how they do not amount to true differences. How does he tackle this crucial topic, handled by thousands of academics in anthropology and social philosophy? Well, with a metaphor, of course!
Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.
Now some reviewers on Amazon.com try to give Lewis a nod to his literary ability, but this is just not justified. It may be that his logic is so profoundly absurd that his rhetorical power is completely lost to me.
Any bloke can define eternity formally given a humongous identity juxtaposed with klutzy libations meritoriously notarized openly in portentous yet quizzically rambunctious stupefying tantrums undulating visually while xylophones yammer zanily.
I have no idea where this pangram came from, but it recently appeared in my font library program. I can’t find it on the Google anywhere. If I find that I wrote it during a sleepy stupor, I’d be impressed. But I suppose it more reasonable to assume that it was dormant somewhere within the content files of the font program I use.
I tried to holoalphabetize the title. Can you tell?
To do justice to this quasi-refutation, I will attempt to explain briefly what Apophatic Theology is, as a theological tradition within Christian and particularly Catholic circles. I will do so generally because at present my thoughts are quite general on the matter, and I do not wish to begin too ambitious a goal for myself as I write this.
Apophatic Theology, known as the “Negative Way” or Negative Theology, is a theological foundation for pursuing a better understanding of the nature of God. This basis for apprehending “knowledge” of his nature consists of no positive attribution to his essence that we would think in so far as positively describing it. To make a positive assertion to his essence can be demonstrated as uttering, “God is all-powerful”. In this example, the speaker is claiming a positive attribute is within the definition of God. Another example would be to claim, “God is good”.
Negative Theology approaches God in a quite different manner. In fact, the two traditions are diametrically opposed to one another. This reason stems from the psychological implication of believing one bears confidence as opposed to one bearing modesty in so far as perceiving one’s self juxtaposed to that of God’s imagined being. The imagination of mind attempts, as best as possible when making a positive assertion, to give God material presence. Positive Theology, as it were, finds itself smeared across populations and the masses, for it is far easier to comprehend as a social norm. Every day we engage the world through positive qualification of things only in so far to give them a place in our minds for understanding. Now a thing may be positively asserted as being good or bad, but nonetheless the description of that thing maintains a positive existence in our minds.
The opposing theological school, as said, approaches God in a contrary manner. Psychological and social implications aside, I believe it will be sufficient to sooth my interest on this discussion for now to focus on the theological weight of this tradition. As I have explained, Positive Theology asserts positive claims which fall under the essence or are within the definition of God. On the face of it, you may find yourself easily perceiving that Negative Theologians do the opposite of this. However, I do not feel that essentially this is so, but I get ahead of myself; I have not given you a proper example of how these thinkers work.
“God is not ignorant”; “God is not weak”. These and similar phrases lay the groundwork for how, in principle, this theological system endeavors to understand the true nature of God. Now we must understand that at the root of any theological system there exists the tenet for understanding. If this is not so, then we may dismiss any theology as advocating only blind obedience and myopic tradition. This is not in the best interest of human nature, and further it simply is not how human nature operates.
Now, what is the trick up the sleeve of this theology? It generally feels awkward and counterintuitive to suggest that one must approach God by a negative. What do positives and negatives mean to God, anyway? The question may be rubbed out with an answer that explains the infinite nature of God. The negative theologian must meditate on all those positive attributes we normally ascribe to God and erase them from the list of his or her mind. At this point, when no further attribute can be wiped away, we are left with what God, in essence, truly must be. Now this list may be long or brief, for human ingenuity can tackle the crucial attributes of God in possibly one single jump. “God is not evil”; well, certainly we have left ourselves to put God only within the domain of all things which are not evil. However, in order to make this non-assertion intelligible, we must make a false assumption somewhere along this line of argument. God has to be something positive at some point. All things not evil does not say much of anything about anything. Further, and more importantly, one must define what evil is before it can be said that something is not evil. So essentially, a positive assertion is being made, regardless of how superficially one attempts to twist the layout of the situation.
What this tradition of theology leads to is nothing more than a test of human wit and memory, grasping wildly for positive descriptors only to toss them out the window of our mind. Yet it must make the fundamental assumption that these descriptors even bear meaning and that this cannot be ascribed to God’s essence. This does not lead to understanding, but only imaginative gymnastics. Further, we find ourselves uttering unintelligible nonsense if we are to ascribe attributes to God through a negative method because at the base of it, God’s infinite essence cannot be described with our feeble language in principle. Therefore, the negative theologian has done only a disservice to the whole of theological tradition by making God a concept which requires feats of human wit to even discuss casually. In principle, this form of theology must assume that words bear concrete meaning. Since this is the case, they positively assert something of God only except through a confounded and absurd manner.
The way I see it, scientists and philosophers equally have to postulate unique ideas which are not completely restricted by their traditions. But, in a way, I see philosophers’ dabbling in otherness and otherworldliness as that which goes beyond science for science is restricted by only that it can materially validate in terms of demonstration. You may get the feeling that I am expressing an argument that favors theology, but philosophy has no set postulate that it attempts to wrap its mind around. Whereas theologians and the religious have their God, philosophers have only what they call wisdom. And even then, philosophical schools within destroy fundamental views of wisdom and even those most crucial to our common sense and daily living. Yet, it is the philosopher in all of us, including scientists, that enables for growth–at a certain point, we tell our philosophical leanings: Enough! However, the field of the philosophy makes its duty of wavering in the discontent of the unknown, attempting to systematize or destroy it, and everywhere in between. Now if you wish to argue for this or that restriction on philosophy that is outside of scientific discourse, we can debate that, but insofar as philosophy’s relation to science, philosophy must be the supervening force. I consider this the case simply by virtue of the existence of the scientific method. It has become a necessitated separation that amounts to a sort of parallelism for how we approach life.
And I believe the intersection where science and philosophy meet, and have always met, is with metaphysics. Sure, people are jaded toward when philosopher’s talk of metaphysics, but that’s just because science itself is hard enough for people to grasp, let alone the abstraction of grueling applied mathematics.
I should hope to elucidate the basic definition of atheism for you, but this is by no means an exhaustive endeavor. It is being done with the hope that in considering atheism for yourself, you will have a concrete understanding of that which you vacillate in your mind.
Now, for some reason, people just assume atheism means this or that, but we all [should] know that atheism is by no means a philosophy nor is it a system of thought.
To be “atheist” really says nothing about what you do believe, but only states that you do not consider “God” or gods to be the substrate of all reality.
It’s a peculiar thing for believers to face someone who says, “Aha! I’m an atheist,” because atheists usually are unaware that “atheism” is a term which only bears content in the face of a theism. Not to cast their intelligence in any negative light, but “atheism” really is a unique term. It eludes even some of the most learned of philosophers.
So let it be granted that assumptions of theism are not present: Well, now an atheist has said absolutely nothing. It really should be the job of atheists to properly explain what atheism is, and then go further to explain what they personally believe. After all this skull drudgery, it is of utmost importance to explain even further that: Atheism is not humanism; Atheism is not spiritualism; Atheism is not Naturalism; Atheism is not Materialism, and so on.
Atheism is a rather contextual stance. It cannot exist on its own. In my personal day-to-day thought, I make it easy on myself by considering atheism to be an “argumentative stance.” That is, outside of the realm of argumentation, atheism really is nothing to talk about. You can’t have an “atheist’s values” or an “atheist’s worldview.” You can have atheistic values or atheistic worldviews, yes, for it is such that these values or worldviews would be described as existing without the shaky axiom of God’s existence. But in these philosophies, it would be folly to describe them by a main characteristic of being atheistic.
Now these concepts or worldviews, as stated previously, are compatible with atheism, but they are by no means equivalent. For instance, Karl Marx, the chief author of dialectic Communism, was an atheist because he was a materialist (he saw no necessity in religion and no use for the postulate of God’s existence or role in his dialectic materialism), but to attack him for his “atheism,” which is what was predominately done, obscures the arguments he held for materialism, and it sets a potential for straw men arguments against atheists who are not materialists. So rather than considering his materialistic philosophy purely, one could easily find himself or herself making tangential arguments against atheism; and it should be noted that although atheistic, Marx himself saw atheism too as a completely useless term. But this is all because he was so caught up in his somewhat prophetic Communistic idealism.
Once we discern and understand “atheism” as different from the clutter of actual worldviews and philosophies, we can properly address the arguments which fall under it. After successfully doing this, I believe all of our faiths, whatever their flavor, can be enriched or critically assessed, for we have better understood the true standing of this concept which perpetually nicks at their heels.