A weedy florilegium

To lionize ourselves against physicality and limitation, we postulate that physical reality cannot achieve certain ends. It is a tragedy–that we aim to insult that which has no obvious voice of its own because of our faulty egos and suffocated minds. Our physical senses qua limitation imply our bias in communicating with Nature. We wholly are egoists. Humans roar, but as brick walls, at the world, “The physical world may wrought the death of my physical because I am so attached to it (ontologically), but I’ve outsmarted death by the limits of the physical [which I postulate]!” Tell me, are asteroids cognizant of the planets they destroy? Can they care? And can we? This is the concern for morality.

“… there must be simple substances, because there are compounds: for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.”

Essentially, Leibniz says this, “Compounds presuppose simples” & “simples entail compounds”.

How is this claimed to be true? Descartes & Spinoza admits that individuation is perceived through the mind (See: Descartes & the wax); “parts” as such are presuppositions of the mind which form “from the fact that they suppose an infinite quantity to be measurable and composed of finite parts” (Ethics II).

Infinite number, for instance, is not “measurable” in such the way that a finite number might be. Infinite number, by definition, contains all numbers. We do not “measure” or “count to” infinite. It is ontically a misapplication of attributes. It isn’t that you “cannot” do it; you simply don’t. The idea that infinite number is composed of numbers is due to our mind’s inability to “perceive the infinite”; so, we impose finite objects onto the infinite in proportion to the limits of our minds. This restriction on Mind leads to the [objective] causation of all effects, which are of the infinite set. The limits of our understanding (”modes of thinking”, “perception”, etc) cause us to assume ethical dilemmas and assume they are solved. The concept that nature is “limited” is a prejudice of the mind; it is easy to consider individuated objects as such if we assume they have an identity uniquely dependent only upon their own internal qualities. Thus, rocks are hard simply because they have “hardness”; but where does “hardness” originate? Not in rocks! But neither in the “infinite” or God or what have you. Maybe I drift to a nominalist perspective now…

In any event, I reject the infinite, even in practice. It is without meaning and without (ethical) use; no, technological advancement is not a “use,” but a pleasure, an inclination, as if populations’ wants dictate what is moral. Because we give the infinite a name and foolishly use it “meaningfully” is the source of all inhumanity in ethics, as well as every other discourse. Speaking of it even in applied calculuses is improper, but we’ve got to move something! Shite on this rambling.

Mathematics as if it corresponded to the Infinite

Mathematics was not “invented” in the sense that someone takes two objects together and derives a new use from those objects as a singular object. Mathematics is a way (a science, set of operations, a calculus) in which our minds handle Number. Mathematics is to Number as Grammar is to Language. Arithmetic (as Mathematics) can be done poorly just as someone can have poor grammar. However, arithmetic, arguably, is less susceptible to flux in so far as its conclusions. (Mathematics is more likely to yield “rigorous” results. Who says the opposite is true of linguistic grammar? Mathematicians got it “straight” at the beginning of the 20th century; i.e. Frege, Russell, et al) Of course, the very question is the context of arithmetic; is it universal or, like grammar, context-checked? (You’ve got a solid handle of grammar among your friends, but among prescriptivists? How can we speak of “local mathematics” or regional mathematics? e.g. Vedic mathematics, the nuances between Leibniz-Newton calculuses, etc) But ask yourself, is someone who judges the speed of an arithmetical operation just like someone who judges the quality of grammar in English prose?

Anyway, no one will say that language is the totality of vocabulary, or just an index of names for objects. Individuated numbers came about through the minds ability to declare finites (or inability to perceive the infinite as infinite and make use of it). Our lack of use of the infinite does not imply that our usage of finite numbers (through mathematics) has any value-judgment, by the way. Mathematics is simply a way which we’ve arbitrarily legitimized to make up the world. The fact that we have seemingly consistent mathematical theories does not show their correlation with the World or the Infinite, but are telling of the way the Human Mind works within the Domain of the Infinite or the World.

The presupposition that mathematics reflects the Infinite accurately leads to anthropocentric arrogance. In Spinozistic terms, Mathematics is a mode of a mode of a mode.

Mathematics is a mode of Number whereas Number is a mode Thinking whereas (Human) Thinking is a mode of the attribute of Thought, an expression of Deus sive Natura’s absolutely infinite essence.

Witty on Infinite

1 Moral facts reduce to socially, psychologically, or culturally crafted feeling-states which express certain physiological predispositions. (”Abortion is wrong” translates to “When I hear a nearby opinion on the issue I get a queer feeling of this sort.”)

1.1 Physiological predispositions express (speech, letters; in public, directly or indirectly) themselves as “emotional states” which are public only if perceived by another individual who too bears physiological predispositions; this can cause a ripple effect in the social and political waters. (Indirectly: “Susan told me her views on abortion, and I’m inclined to agree. She might not do anything about it, but her ‘private views’ have compelled me to public action”, etc.) If an emotional state is not public, then describing it as “emotional” would lead to a performative contradiction. Emotion presupposes a social context (a public discourse); without a public environment, emotions are communicatively inert. Emotions presuppose some kind of effect (transmission of an idea); otherwise, they are only physical states without meta-data (ideas). (I cannot be or become angry without focusing on an object that acts as a referent for my emotional state; the object and my state go hand-in-hand, otherwise, I cannot be said to be “cognitively active.” Further, “emotion” needs a third party; for something to be called “emotional” or a “display of emotion,” an emoter, an object of emotion, and a perceiver (someone to receive the relation between, or idea that describes, emoter and object) are all three necessary.)

1.2 Physiological predispositions of individuals originate from prior causes and the building of societal edifices which presuppose the within themselves the tools for future modification and change. (”Headline: Candidate propose change to the political climate”, etc; but the candidates are largely influenced by the environment they wish to change, even if just to learn, as if very distanced and tactical, how to change it; nevertheless, it will touch them in a significant way.)

1.21 These presuppositions of change which inhere; that is, the negation of themselves (society qua society), define the limits and identity of every societal context—the society itself. It cannot stand as society if not changing. (Heraclitus asserted, “All is flux, nothing is stationary”; here is the principle that we share with Nature.)

2 Moral facts impose themselves like possible worlds onto our factual world. (”I have read the book of salvation, and I purport the world it describes…thou shalt not!”) Possible worlds demand urgency of argument, though undeserving, and even the principle of possible-worlds theory untenable; this is the only world, and its possibilities are infinite. “Everything that can happen (is possible; not an outright contradiction or is fictitious) has occurred, is occurring or will occur”—this is the principle of the world’s necessity. Possible worlds reduce to this world with its “modifications” by virtue of our finite intellects that posit their plausibility but lack the capability to describe them to any meaningful extent.

2.1 Every individual moral fact (”Murder is wrong”, etc) asserts more than its evidence allows, if even it has evidence. Moral facts, which depend on no evidence, are like souls: You are kind to your neighbor (You obey the fact’s implicit imperative) because you fear the negative consequences its power (speaker) implies.

2.2 Moral facts do exist, but they do not exist in the sense that they ought to be argued. They do not carry truth-value assignments. But you will argue with them; however, your argument is necessarily for persuasion (power). Read books, study the debate, etc only to enhance your sense of power.

3 “power” is the influence entities maintain that displaces. Every thing displaces. What is the nature of this ontological fact?

i. Physically, what do you displace?
ii. Morally, whom do you displace? (And do not let arbitrary geographic or bureaucratic “boundaries” preclude probable answers!)
iii. Metaphysically, why do you displace?
iv. Logically, when and where do you displace?
v. Scientism: What does it morally reduce to? What does it ignore in principle?

3.1 Ask yourself absurd questions like these. You are guaranteed contingent answers; that is, answers which promote real further movement. This is “philosophy.”

3.2 Moral facts are subject to the weight of power; power of entities (people, communities, etc) will dictate the travel and impositions of certain descriptive, or more precisely “culturally representative,” moral facts, which are only the expression of those entities’ strength. Moral facts of this sort carry (or presuppose) those identities they just so happen to consign to whatever unresearched political or social environment. This is the problem of “capitalism.”

3.3 Your “moral facts” do not fit our paradigm, our machine, in the way we unwittingly, though specifically, defined it; nevertheless, we reposition you in this way. Capitalism is the deus ex machina of the world. Pun aside; I would drop the Book too.

4 We argue for what is most pleasurable (rational). Rationality has become a pleasure. It is an object which contrasts “emotion.” (”That sculpture shows a keen sense of rationality. Did the sculptor go to such-and-such university?”)

4.1 This word (”rationality”, “rational”, etc) does not break free from the confines of the language-game in which it originated. It has been and always will be used as a way to describe what is “ordered,” what is easily apprehended by our memory, our mind. “Rational,” like “emotional,” must be viewed as stripped of all superlative descriptions. Like emotiveness, we in principle cannot confide in our rationality. What is the “rational” equivalent of murdering your children? Is everything I write here symbolic of a “rational outburst?” We look at emotionality through the scope of psychology. Do the same for “rationality”! Perhaps I—we—have lingered too long on postmodernity?

4.2 Rationality is therefore a “moral fact” that is too subject to power; it is a feeling-state. “I feel rational”, “The government has legislated rationally”, etc.

5 Weapons and might are superficial, and thus fictitious, objects which express “power.” Arsenal, infantry, numbers, etc are all arbitrary facts of matter and position; they do not travel without meta-data (missions, purposes, names, geographic locations, diplomacy).

6 What is the relationship between relativism, knowledge, and power?

6.1 Relativism: The moral facts are everywhere seeking a Final Author or a Document of Standard written on the walls of Nature. Call this a “continuous state of affairs.”

6.2 Knowledge: Increases the gravity of the state of affairs with more evidence, more conflicting cultural viewpoints. “Relativism is true because my friends all disagree in detailed ways which I ought to respect and understand if I want to keep them happy.”

6.3 Power: My knowledge enhances my tools for persuasion of those external to me (external to societies, governments, etc).

6.4 Persuasion: Let’s call it “twisted euphemism for slaughter of ‘false ideals,’ with weapons or with words” (the effect of the massacre is what we analyze, what moves us); all life is a moral war that is translated into different aspects of the same struggle. Science is a moral war; Academia, the same, the media, the familial battleground, etc. I steal an idea: These are all inter-related/-locked language-games. We must distinguish the “enemy” within each and simply move that enemy aside. (”Let’s not impeach and hang Bush, but hope that the layout of Presidential term limits displaces his overarching authority, re-establishing our own.”)

6.5 There are no checkmates, only repositionings; life is movement, displacement; if you move, say, pull, etc, you are moving against, uttering to, pulling from.

7 This is morality: The mere repositioning of figures on a game board.

7.1 What is the rule for this game?—that one has the power to move others in various ways (persuasion as science, persuasion as religion, etc).

7.2 Jaded liberals will say, “Religion is more moral than Secularism. Look at what religion now accomplishes!” This presupposes that religion had the means to re-invent itself so that it could adapt. This is an incorrect view. Ideas do not re-invent themselves; ideas do not evolve. Humans evolve and through language and failed memory give names, which are pinned to ideas new life. (”Let’s call it ‘libertarian socialism’ instead of ‘anarchy’; or, “Let’s re-label our ideologies as such: [adjectival] + [adjectival]“; but what are we describing?) Back to my point: Religion is not the impetus for human salvation; religion does not “call to arms” for social justice. Human beings do so, and call it “religion” or “religious” because they were under the linguistic umbrella to begin with. We’re damned for new terms, and we’re stuck in the old. This is “synthesis.”

7.3 Jesus said, “…let the dead bury their dead”. Most interpret this as him saying that we ought to leave worldly matters behind as if dead, spiritually vacuous. Go a step further (keep him consistent)! Leave those people spiritually vacuous behind, the kingdom of heaven is not theirs, etc. This shows that Jesus was incongruent to human nature (proving his divinity and perfection). How? We assume no one is morally bankrupt. We travel great distances to “save” those “as Christians” or “as Muslims,” etc. Jesus had no home team to represent. He was the home team; his psychology was radically contrary to our own.

8 Again, we make presuppositions which stem from the our inclinations to modify things (”this is how it ought to be”): our limited societies implant in us those peculiarities (because society itself lacks) which make it seem fragmented and unstable. In fact, this gives it an identity that necessarily contains moral strife. The nature of every entities’ internal war necessarily involves at least a relationship with externalities, i.e. “science is part of the moral war”, “ethics [of] …”, etc.

116. When philosophers use a work—”knowledge”, “being”, “object”, “I”, “proposition”, “name”—and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?—What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
117. You say to me: “You understand this expression, don’t you? Well, then—I am using it in the sense you are familiar with.”—As if the sense were an atmosphere accompanying the word, which it carried with it into every kind of application.
If, for example, someone says that the sentence “This is here” makes sense to him, then he should ask himself in what special circumstances this sentence is actually used. There it does make sense.
118. … What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.
132. … The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing working.
—Philosophical Investigations; Wittgenstein

On my humanity, I stand discreetly
Smoke from fingertips; there arise
Deep particles of Intuition; we beckon
For complacency; but with rigor of mind
Everywhere comes the darkest dreg of confusion

Starlight and bulbs echo failed illuminance
Trees bear beacons for hope of better thought
The Black behind my eyelids reflects a world
To the ubiquitous shallows of my Reason
There I engage bitter cognition; higher, higher!

Humans posit their causality, storing places
For gross ideals which disturb the grid of Nature
Of its axis, I am an origin that fits great Beings
Together without falsehoods, without contradiction
The rule of my Reason tells humanity to stop