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Logic of  Propositional Attitudes 1. Basic Natural Philosophy

1. Basic Natural Philosophy

This chapter expounds the general philosophical

assumptions that men and women find natural and
indeed do assume in their daily lifes, at least as a
foundation to communicate and interact with other
people. 

General Introduction: definition

"Philosophy"

1. Reasons for philosophy

2. Reasons why philosophy is

important

3. Philosophical problems

4. Ideology, religion and philosophy

5. The study of philosophy

Natural philosophy

6. The fundamental problem of

presuppositions

7. Natural Language

8. Natural Logic

9. Natural Realism

10. Philosophical assumptions

     Sections

"Philosophy"

the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on

Historical Principles tells us is

1.  (In the original

and widest
sense.) The love,
study, or pursuit
of wisdom, or of
knowledge of
things and their
causes, whether
 theoretical or
practical.
2.  That more
advanced study,
to which, in the
mediaeval
universities, the
seven liberal arts
were
introductory; it
included the
three branches
of natural, moral,
and
metaphysical
philosophy,
commonly called
the three
philosophies.
3.  (= natural p.) The
knowledge or
study of natural
objects and
phenomena; now
usu. called
'science'.
4.  (= moral p.) The
knowledge or
study of the
principles of
human action or
conduct; ethics.
5.  (= metaphysical
p.) That
department of
knowledge or
study that deals
with ultimate
reality, or with
the most general
causes and
principles of
things. (Now the
most usual
sense.)
6.  Occas. used esp.
of knowledge
obtained by
natural reason, in
contrast with
revealed
knowledge.
7.  With of: The
study of the
general
principles of
some particular
branch of
knowledge,
 experience or
activity; also,
less properly, of
any subject or
phenomenon.
8.  A philosophical
system or theory.

9.  a. The system

which a person
forms for the
conduct of life.
b. The mental
attitude or habit
of a philosopher;
serenity,
resignation;
calmness of
temper.

This is as clear a definition as any, and

we shall presume it for our subject. It
also immediately poses a problem we
have to give some sort of initial answer
to. Up

1. Reasons for philosophy: 

Why should a human being be interested

in philosophy? Isn't philosophy fit for
fools only, or isn't it a merely academic
trifling and hairsplitting in search of
unobtainable knowledge?

Or isn't philosophy mostly a set of false

illusions from the past - sophistries
designed to comfort one's desires by
wishful thinking and presumption - that
these days have been replaced by
science and mathematics?

I can be fairly brief about why philosophy

ought to be studied in some sense and
why the opinion that it is useless trifling,
hair-splitting or in search of unobtainable
knowledge is inappropriate. TOP

 
2. Reasons why philosophy is important:
 

1. All human beings orient their lives around ideas about what
reality is like, that they believe explain their experiences,
and ideas about what reality and human beings should be
like, that they use to guide their behaviour. The first of these
kinds of ideas is a metaphysical theory, the second an
ethical or moral theory.
 2. Human beings seem to need metaphysical and moral ideas
because they are not born with instincts that determine for
them what they should think and want, and are born with
the capacities to make up their own minds and to question
any belief they have or meet.
3. It is evident that most of the ideas in history that people
have used to explain human experiences have been false or
unfounded in many respects, and it is also evident that most
of the ideas in history or direct human behaviour have been
harmful to other human beings or to themselves.
4. On the other hand, it is also evident that whatever adequate
understanding people have of themselves, of others, and of
their environments and possibilities, is based on the asking
and answering of the type of general questions that are
philosophical and scientific, and that there seems to be no
way of being human without trying to ask and answer such
questions.
5. All ideas about philosophy or science, including those that
ridicule or condemn philosophy or science, are themselves
philosophical ideas, and such as declare all philosophy
useless, trifling, or impossible are little better than a refusal
to do any serious philosophical or scientific reasoning.
6. The ideas people live and die for, go to war for and kill each
other for, or let themselves be inspired to the making of
great art or science, are all philosophical ideas.

The lives people lead and the choices they make are the result of
the philosophies they hold, whether they are conscious of this fact
or not.

Much of the history of the 20th century - "The Century of Total

War", in Raymond Aron's apt phrase, which is the title of one of his
books - is the more or less direct product of a small number of
philosophical ideas and the philosophers who made them up:
Marxism ruled the lives of more than a 1000 million people;
Fascism destroyed the lives of millions of people and caused a
World War; both Marxism and Fascism were opposed by men in
the name of Liberalism, Democracy, Catholicism, Protestantism, or
Science, each of which are themselves either specific philosophies
or derived from more comprehensive philosophical systems.

While men like Marx and Nietzsche in their own lives may be
regarded as unsuccessful, their ideas and values, or rather what
was made of these by their self-proclaimed followers, have in the
20th century created and destroyed civilizations and the lives of
millions of human beings.

To show the remarkable practical 'success' of the philosophies of

Marx and of Nietzsche in terms of human deaths, there is the
following table, derived from R.J. Rummel's Death by
Government [Transaction Publishers, 1994]. This table lists only
civiliand deaths and no military deaths in wartime, and I have
added the column "Philosophy".
Of course, neither Marx nor Nietzsche is responsible for what their -
self-declared - followers did in their name, but the table makes clear
several things, including why philosophy is quite important even for
those who are not interested in it at all: There is a good chance you
may be killed or persecuted in the name of some philosopher,
supposedly in your own best interests, and for what are said to be
the highest human ideals and the noblest human morals:  TOP

1. All human beings orient their lives around ideas about what
reality is like, that they believe explain their experiences,
and ideas about what reality and human beings should be
like, that they use to guide their behaviour. The first of these
kinds of ideas is a metaphysical theory, the second an
ethical or moral theory.
2. Human beings seem to need metaphysical and moral ideas
because they are not born with instincts that determine for
them what they should think and want, and are born with
the capacities to make up their own minds and to question
any belief they have or meet.
3. It is evident that most of the ideas in history that people
have used to explain human experiences have been false or
unfounded in many respects, and it is also evident that most
of the ideas in history or direct human behaviour have been
harmful to other human beings or to themselves.
4. On the other hand, it is also evident that whatever adequate
understanding people have of themselves, of others, and of
their environments and possibilities, is based on the asking
and answering of the type of general questions that are
philosophical and scientific, and that there seems to be no
way of being human without trying to ask and answer such
questions.
5. All ideas about philosophy or science, including those that
ridicule or condemn philosophy or science, are themselves
philosophical ideas, and such as declare all philosophy
useless, trifling, or impossible are little better than a refusal
to do any serious philosophical or scientific reasoning.
6. The ideas people live and die for, go to war for and kill each
other for, or let themselves be inspired to the making of
great art or science, are all philosophical ideas.

The lives people lead and the choices they make are the result of
the philosophies they hold, whether they are conscious of this fact
or not.

Much of the history of the 20th century - "The Century of Total

War", in Raymond Aron's apt phrase, which is the title of one of his
books - is the more or less direct product of a small number of
philosophical ideas and the philosophers who made them up:
Marxism ruled the lives of more than a 1000 million people;
Fascism destroyed the lives of millions of people and caused a
World War; both Marxism and Fascism were opposed by men in
the name of Liberalism, Democracy, Catholicism, Protestantism, or
Science, each of which are themselves either specific philosophies
or derived from more comprehensive philosophical systems.

While men like Marx and Nietzsche in their own lives may be
regarded as unsuccessful, their ideas and values, or rather what
was made of these by their self-proclaimed followers, have in the
20th century created and destroyed civilizations and the lives of
millions of human beings.

To show the remarkable practical 'success' of the philosophies of

Marx and of Nietzsche in terms of human deaths, there is the
following table, derived from R.J. Rummel's Death by
Government. This table lists only civilian deaths and no military
deaths in wartime, whereas I have added the column "Philosophy".

Of course, neither Marx nor Nietzsche is responsible for what their -

self-declared - followers did in their name, but the table makes clear
several things, including why philosophy is quite important
even for those who are not interested in it at all: There is a good
chance you may be killed or persecuted in the name of some
philosopher, supposedly in your own best interests, and for what are
said to be the highest human ideals and the noblest human morals:

Dictator Ideology Philosophy Country Years Deaths

Joseph Soviet 1929-
Communist Marxism 42,672,000
Stalin Union 1953
Mao Tse- 1923-
Communist Marxism China 37,828,000
tung 1976
Adolf 1933-
Fascist Fascism Germany 20,946,000
Hitler 1945
Chiang 1921-
Militarist/Fascist   China 10,214,000
Kai-shek 1948
Vladimir Soviet 1917-
Communist Marxism 4,017,000
Lenin Union 1924
Tojo 1941-
Militarist/Fascist   Japan 3,990,000
Hideki 1945
1968-
Pol Pot Communist Marxism Cambodia 2,397,000
1987
Yahya
Khan
Militarist   Pakistan 1971 1,500,000
Josip 1941-
Communist Marxism Yugoslavia 1,172,000
Broz Tito 1987
 

 
Of course,

 
 
It should be remarked in fairness that although the 20th Century
was blighted by political philosophies that persecuted and
murdered many millions, earlier centuries were similarly plagued by
religious philosophies, though the number of deaths was not as
large, mainly because the technology to kill and persecute was not
so highly developed.

And it makes also sense to compare earlier centuries with the 20th
century, and note what is and was common, say the last twenty
centuries or so, when we speak of ordinary men and women:

1. In great majority human beings have been equally

totalitarian in emotions.
2. In great majority human beings have been equally
ignorant and fanatical about their own religious or
political ideologies.
3. In great majority human beings have sincerely
believed in absurd religious or political ideas.
4. Human beings tend to commit the greatest evil in the
name of the highest good.
5. Whatever the propaganda, the great majority of
human beings believe and practice that anything is
permitted to whomever does not belong to Us.

To conclude this section:

These very common "human-all-too-human" shortcomings, that so

well illustrate Voltaire's "If we believe absurdities, we shall
commit atrocities", are mostly due to a combination of native
lack of intelligence and curiosity and of egoistic conformism.
In brief, it comes to this: For the great majority of the untalented, it
is safer, more rewarding, more convenient, much easier, and
socially much more popular to try to appear - to act, to speak, to
dress, to look, to feel, to think - like the great majority of the groups
and societies they belong to. ("Video meliora proboque; deteriora
sequor" is the normal way of the human heart - "If in Rome, do as
the Romans do; if among cannibals, do as the cannibals do.")

The very many millions murdered and persecuted by their fellow-

men may have been murdered and persecuted because of the
instructions of some obviously psychopathic leader - but even so
the very many millions murdered and persecuted were usually
murdered and persecuted by quite normal, ordinary, decent
patriots, party-members or faithful, of some country, party or
faith to which the victims did not belong.

Their best excuse is not the psychopathology of the leaders who

they revered and whose orders they followed, but their own native
lack of intelligence and courage.

3. Philosophical problems:  

More specifically, and apart from the evils done in

the name of politics or religion, serious philosophy
is concerned with such problems as raised by:

logic: what are the foundations and principles

of sound reasoning
 science: what are the foundations of our
scientific and technological knowledge
language: what does language have to do with
human thought
meaning: what is meaning and how do we
succeed in representing one thing by
another
ethics: what are the foundations of the
judgments that acts or the men who
commit them are good or bad, and in what
sense are such judgments true or different
from mere matters of taste
aesthetics: what makes beautiful things appear
beautiful or ugly, and what is the use of
having an aesthetical capacity
self: whether there is a self, and if so, what it is
and what is its foundation, or, if not, what
is the reason for this popular delusion
free will: whether human beings are in any
sense free to act as they please and
responsible for the consequences, or only
determined to falsely believe they are free
to believe as they please
death: whether death indeed is final, what is
the point of fearing something one will
never experience, and whether there is
anything else than self-contradiction in the
belief in a life or a judgment after death
happiness: the good life: what a human
individual should and should not do,
believe and desire to lead a good life
the good society: what relations between
human individuals contribute to the good
life

That many of the questions properly raised within

philosophy so-called in earlier days are now raised
and answered by special sciences is true - and
changes nothing about the fact that human beings
are such as to lead themselves by general ideas
and values, and that one of the tasks that remains
philosophical, however many of earlier
philosophical questions have now turned into
problems of some specific science, is to try to
integrate whatever specialized knowledge
different sciences produce into one comprehensive
view of reality and humanity. TOP

 
4. Ideology, religion and philosophy:  

Philosophy, or more precisely, philosophy's

everyday appearance, which is a political or
religious ideology, guides and misguides the lives
of human beings, and every human being meets
daily with many philosophical ideas, and makes or
 avoids many of his daily choices by appealing to
and relying on philosophical considerations.

Literally millions of people have been murdered in

the 20th century and other millions of people have
been sent to concentration camps for what were,
in the end, crude philosophical ideas (of the
Marxist or Fascist variety, often).

All supposedly 'practical' men, whether they did

the killing in the name of a philosophy or were the
victims of men acting out a philosophy or stood at
the side gawking while declaring all philosophy
useless or nonsense, were as philosophical - in the
sense of being moved by general arguments about
what the world is and should be and how human
beings should behave - as any man, except that
these supposedly 'practical' men were less
conscious of that fact.

In any case, it is an illusion to believe that

philosophy only pertains to the goods of the mind
or only is of importance to a few intellectually
gifted and curious individuals:

Whatever happens in society and whatever

human beings consciously do and do not do
to others and for themselves is based on
general ideas and values that are very
properly speaking philosophical, and this has
been so since human beings started to
think.

And part of the reason is that all men need to

answer the questions what there really is, what
they should and should not do, and why they
believe they know things. These questions cannot
be answered by any special science and must be
somehow answered by all human beings.

Also, it is important to recognize that the

philosophies that influenced much of the history of
the 20th Century, Socialism and Fascism, were - at
least in practice - dangerous delusions, and that
indeed the same holds for religions, that tend to
be beliefs that are held in irrational and fanatical
ways, and tend to be very dangerous for those of
a different belief. (This last fact should give people
pause who believe in an all powerful and
benevolent deity. It seems to me that the most a
believer in God is entitled to claim, within reason,
if this is possible, is that he believes in something
that is totally beyond human understanding.) TOP
 

5. The study of philosophy: 

In general terms, philosophy aims at a

way of life, namely one based on reason
based on natural and moral knowledge. 

The value of philosophy is the scope and

clarity of mind it provides, especially as
regards the fundamental general
questions every human being somehow
must answer, if only by tacit and blind
consent to previous answers. (Likewise,
the value of any specific science is the
scope and clarity of mind it provides as
regards the special questions the science
aims to answer.)

Although the foundation of all things

human is the individual human mind,
human beings live, develop and die in
cultures and civilizations: 'the human
mind' is the coordinated product of the
ideas human minds have produced in the
past, and many of the questions no
human individual can reasonably hope to
solve himself can be solved by the
efforts of many individuals through the
course of time.

My case for philosophical contemplation

is simply that it aims at answering the
questions that lie at the foundation of all
societies and all human communication
and interaction, and that all human
beings must answer in some fashion, if
only by unthinkingly following someone
else's philosophy of life.

If all men and women must philosophize,

simply because they are human beings,
who need to make up their own minds on
all manner of questions of belief, desire
and action simpler animals have instincts
for, should one study philosophy
academically and seriously?

I would not recommend its academic

study to anyone (other than as an
adjunct to a serious scientific study) for
by and large academic philosophy is
related to philosophy as is literary
criticism to literature: as the oldest
professionals are to real love.

Real philosophers have rarely been of

the type of a modern academic, and
doing real philosophy is difficult and
normally unrewarding: philosophers are
apt to find fault in many human
endeavors, and to get into trouble with
others for that reason.

Indeed, many of the persons known to

later times as great philosophers, were,
 in their own time, persecuted,
discriminated, killed, or removed from
society. This applies i.a. to Heraclitus,
Buddha, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicure,
Lucretius, Ab�lard, Bacon, Ockham,
Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume,
Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Peirce and
Russell, to name some.

The great philosophers have been the

creators of the ideas and values many
people oriented their lives around, but
during their own lives they were
generally silent or in trouble, for they
dared to say what their contemporaries
did not want to hear, to discuss what
they did not want to face, and to study
and write what very few took interest in
or understood. TOP
 

Natural philosophy

6. The fundamental problem of presuppositions

If we want to know or study "ultimate reality"
(whatever that will turn out to be), what may we or
may we not presuppose?

This is a relevant question, if only because it seems

that whatever we do presuppose will have some
influence on whatever we come to conclude while also
it seems we cannot conclude anything without
presupposing something.

Now I shall sketch a number of fundamental

assumptions concerning language, reasoning, reality
and human beings that the vast majority of human
beings seems to tacitly presuppose in their daily lifes
and when communicating with other people, regardless
of the philosophies or religions they claim they also
believe.

First, it is clear that any human philosophy is the

product of people who already know and suppose
something, in particular some Natural Language to
reason and communicate with.

So any human being concerned with philosophy uses

and presumes in some sense some Natural
Language:                                                            Up

 
7. Natural Language:

We must start with presuming some

Natural Language

consisting of words and statements

(both sequences of letters) that
enable its speakers to represent
things to themselves and to other
speakers by pronouncing or
writing down the words or
statements that represent those
things

in which, at least initially, we can

frame philosophical questions
and provide philosophical
answers,

and it is also clear that each and

every human being that speaks a
natural language therewith has a
means to claim about any of its
statements that it is true or not
true, credible or not, necessary or
not, and much more ("probable",
"plausible", "politically correct",
"sexist", "morally desirable"
a.s.o.)

For the purpose of doing philosophy, in the

sense seriously attempting to ask and
answer general questions, some natural
language must be considered given, for
without it there simply are no questions to
pose or answer. And indeed, all philosophy,
including philosophies that conclude there
is no human knowledge, in fact presumes
some natural language.

This is itself a fact of some philosophical

importance that is often disregarded. One
of its important applications is to show that
people who propound skeptical arguments
to the effect that human beings cannot
know anything, or cannot know anything
with certainty, or cannot know anything
with more or less probability than its denial
(these are three somewhat different
versions of skepticism, that also has other
variants that are less easy to refute) must
be mistaken, since they all presuppose
some natural language known well enough
to state claims that nothing can be known.

It should also be noted with some care that

a natural language is not given to human
beings in a completely clear, perfect and
obvious way (since, for example, it is very
difficult to clearly articulate the rules of
grammar one does use automatically and
 correctly when speaking it), but it is given
to start with as a tool for communication
and expression that may0020be improved
and questioned, and that enables one to
pose and answer questions of any kind.

Natural language is, in other and somewhat

technical words, a heuristic, i.e. something
that helps one find out things. What other
heuristics do come with being human?

Every Natural Language includes many

terms and many - usually not very explicit
and articulated - rules that enable its users
to represent their experiences, and to
reason or argue with themselves or others.
We shall call this body of terms and rules
Natural Logic:     Up
 
8. Natural Logic:

In any Natural Language there are the

elements of what may be called its Natural
Logic:

a collection of terms and rules that

come with Natural Language that
allows us to reason and argue in
it.

Examples of such logical terms are: "and",

"or", "not", "true", "false", "if", "therefore",
"every", "some", "necessary, "possible" and
many more. Examples of such logical rules,
that are here formulated in terms of what
one may write down on the strength of what
one already has written down (pretending
for the moment that natural language is
written rather than spoken) are: "If one has
written down that if one statement is true
then another statement is true, and if one
has written down that the one statement is
true, then one may write down (in
conclusion) that the other statement is
true" (thus: "if it rains then it gets wet and it
rains, therefore it gets wet") and "If one has
written down that every so-and-so is such-
and-such, and this is a so-and-so, then one
may write down that this is a such-and-
such" (thus: "if every Greek is human and
Socrates is a Greek, therefore Socrates is
human").

We presuppose Natural Logic in much the

same way as we presuppose Natural
Language: as something we have to start
with and precisify later, and that may well
come to be revised or extended quite
seriously, but also as something that at
least seems to be in part given in more or
less the same way to any able speaker of a
Natural Language: In it there are a
considerable number of terms and - usually
implicit - rules which enable every speaker
of the language to argue and reason, that
every speaker knows and has extensive
experience with.

Again, it does not follow that these rules

and terms are clear or sacrosanct. All that I
assume is that they come with Natural
Language and are to some extent
articulated in Natural Language and
understood and presupposed by everyone
who uses Natural Language.

Three very fundamental assumptions about

the making of assumptions that come with
Natural Logic are as follows - where it
should be noted I am not stating these
assumptions with more precision than may
be supposed here and now:

1.      Nothing can be argued

without the making of
assumptions
2.      An assumption is a
statement that is supposed to
be true
3.      Human beings are free to
assume whatever they please

These I suppose to be true statements

about arguments and people arguing,
where it should be noted that especially the
third assumption, factually correct though it
seems to be, has been widely denied in
human history for political, religious or
philosophical reasons: In most places, at
most times, people have not been allowed
to speak publicly about all assumptions
they can make.

Three other assumptions about

argumentation that should be mentioned
here are

1. Conclusions are statements

that are inferred in arguments
from earlier assumptions and
conclusions by means of
assumptions called rules of
inference, that state which
kinds of statements may be
concluded from the assumption
of which kinds of statements
2. Definitions of terms are
assumptions to the effect that a
certain term may be substituted
by a certain other term in a
certain kind of arguments
3. Rational argumentation about
 a topic starts with explicating
rules of inference, assumptions
and definitions of terms, and
proceeds with the adding of
conclusions only if these do
follow by some assumed rule of
inference.

The first two assumptions need more

clarification than will be given here and
now, but, on the other hand, again every
speaker of a Natural Language will have
some understanding of setting up
arguments in terms of assumptions,
definitions and rules of inference, and
drawing conclusions from these
assumptions and definitions by means of
these rules of inference.

The third assumption, when compared with

the normal practice of people arguing,
entails that mostly people do not argue
very rationally, at least in the sense that all
too often they rely in their arguments on
rules of inference, assumptions or
definitions they have not explicitly assumed
yet have used in the course of the
argument.

Next, it seems that most users of most

natural languages presuppose a
metaphysics I shall call Natural Realism.
This may be stated in many ways, for
example in terms of the following
assumptions:             Up
 
9. Natural Realism:

A minimal metaphysics that most human

beings share may be called Natural
Realism and stated in terms of the
following fundamental assumptions:

1. There is one reality that exists

apart from what human beings
think and feel about it.
2. This reality is made up of kinds of
things which have properties and
stand in relations.
3. Human beings form part of that
reality and have experiences
about it that originate in it.
4. All living human beings have
beliefs and desires about many
real and unreal entities, that are
about what they think is the case
in reality and should be the case
in reality.
 5. All living human beings have very
similar or identical feelings,
sensations,  beliefs and desires in
many ordinary similar or identical
circumstances.

What this might mean precisely, especially

what may be meant by the red terms, will
concern us later.

However, the present point is that some

assumption like natural realism is at the
basis of human social interaction, at the
basis of the law, and at the basis of
promises, contracts and agreements.

We shall assume it is also at the basis of

philosophy, at least initially, firstly, because
we must assume something to conclude
anything; secondly, because even if we -
now or eventually - disagree with Natural
Realism it helps to try to state clearly what
it amounts to; and thirdly, because it does
seem assumptions like those of Natural
Realism are involved in much human
reasoning about themselves and others,
and about language, meaning and reality.

I shall presuppose Natural Language,

Natural Realism and Natural Logic in what
follows, and shall repeatedly turn to the
issues what these assumptions all might
mean in more precise (but at least equally
intuitive and clear) terms and whether they
are true, and if so, in what sense. Up
 
 

 
On Philosophical Assumptions
See also: Sections
(links to all sections)

Introduction
 

This chapter states a number of basic

philosophical assumptions in everyday
language. It presumes only the
assumptions required to read and write
English with understanding and tries to add
to this those assumptions which I use when
trying to think about linguistic, logical,
 ethical, and metaphysical questions, that
are generally chosen so as to be minimally
adequate and clear.

The type of philosophy I hold myself I call

natural philosophy, and is rational, logical,
analytical, scientific and atheistic, and the
assumptions I use and introduce are geared
to this. 

However, since real philosophy is not

merely a matter of wishful thinking - that
would make true what you desire to be true,
and false what you desire to be false, and
thus generally abolish all need for thinking -
and since the type of philosophy I propound
is minimalistic in most ways, and inspired
by Ockham's Razor which counsels us to
make no assumptions that are not logically
needed, and since all philosophizing is
based on assumptions anyway, the present
list at least has the merits of facing
questions that are not usually faced, and of
answering them in everyday English, and as
clearly as I can without presuming in the
reader any special convictions or knowledge
beyond those involved in the speaking and
writing of English.

Hence what this chapter intends to show is

what sorts of assumptions are required to
start philosophy. There is nothing final
about what one starts with, for every
assumption may be withdrawn, qualified or
altered on the basis of experience or later
judgments. 

In order to help you read and survey this

there is a file Sections that contains links to
all titled sections in this chapter, by title.

Sections

Introduction On On regularities
On Philosophy abstraction On changes
Why On truth On causation
philosophy is On On
    important falsehood subjunctives
On ideology On On science
The problem possibility On the world
of the On On persons
    starting necessity On human
point On rules beings
On basic On On types of
questions methods men
 On a general On On the
assumption observation capacities of
On ethics On things the human
On what there On mind
is properties On psychology
On how we On On history
know relations On
On models On systems agreements
and   On and
   simulations substances disagreements
On the On reality On feelings
relation On nature On values
between On time On emotions
   knowledge On space On culture
and reality On the On civilization
On the given structure of On
On language the world fundamental
On reasoning (levels) fallacies
On On
argumentation structures
On On facts
assumptions  
On definitions

 
1. On philosophy

By a philosophy I shall understand a

systematic, conscious, reasoned, linguistic
attempt to answer the following
fundamental questions:

1.      What is there?

2.      What should one do?
3.      How does one know?

These questions are fundamental in the

sense that every adult human being must
somehow answer them, if only by tacitly
consenting to some existing philosophy in
some form.

They correspond respectively to ontology,

ethics and epistemology. The older
definition "What are truth, beauty and
goodness" is also not bad. In the given
statement esthetics is left out that is
included here, and the older def leaves out
epistemology.

So one can alternatively say: "What are

truth, beauty, goodness and knowledge?"
and the reason I don't is that the answers to
these questions tend to be criterions rather
than theories (that give rise to such
criterions).
 There are other sensible characterizations
of philosophy, like Whitehead's, but I shall
not consider them. Sections

 
2. Why philosophy is important

Philosophy is important because

it is concerned with problems
and questions that must be
answered somehow by any
human being, if only by tacitly
conforming to those
philosophical ideas one has
received during one's
education.

In the end, it are philosophical ideas that

divide or unite people, and philosophical
ideas that shape one's life and inform one's
judgments. Ordinary people are as a rule
not much concerned with philosophical
problems because they believe they know
the answers, namely those provided by
their political or religious leaders, or their
favorite TV-programs. Sections

 
3.  On ideology

1.      An ideology is a system of

beliefs concerning what the world is
like
         and what it should be like.
2.      All people have at least one
ideology.
3.      People need an ideology to
orient themselves, because human
         instincts are insufficient to orient
themselves in human ways.

The basic point involved is that individual

people and groups of people guide
themselves by their ideologies and self-
image, which is the central part of the
ideology: Everybody acts and lives in terms
of "I am a so-and-so in such-and-such a
world where people like me ought to (not)
do this-and- that", and it is this specification
that is usually maintained even if it is
embroidered i.e. changed superficially.

Ideologies and self-images once acquired

(self-image around age 6; ideology around
age 12, to pick approximations that may
vary: In general, in childhood the self-image
is basically fixed and in puberty the
ideology) are maintained or else one
experiences a conversion or mental
breakdown. Sections
 
4. The problem of the starting point
 
One fundamental philosophical difficulty is
that of one's starting point. This arises for
any philosophy, because in philosophy, or
at least when trying to articulate some
answers to the above fundamental
questions, any statement whatsoever,
whatever its supposed obvious truth or
value, may be doubted or denied.

It has been doubted or denied by

philosophers (for many different reasons
that do not matter here) that there is an
independent reality; that colors exist; that
there are things in any solid sense; that
there is anything at all that is a thing; that
all men have immortal souls; that all men
are machines; that nothing is certain; that
only death is certain; that everything that
does happen must happen; that everything
that happens might not have happened;
that all knowledge is an illusion; that all
knowledge is certain; that all knowledge is
tentative; that all morals are divine
instructions; that all morals are relative;
that every moral rule is rationally
incomprehensible and equivalent to a
scream of anger or cry of distress; that
mathematics is the only true and validable
knowledge; that mathematics and logic are
merely games without any truth or falsity;
and so forth.

Within this welter of philosophical

confusions, contradictions, unclarities and
uncertainties, there happily is one thing
nearly everyone agrees about:

These discussions do take place in some

common world populated by people, who
have been educated in some society, and
share many experiences and a language to
discuss their problems, appraisals, and
conclusions in, and perhaps to write long
and learned books that imply that, really
and truly, there are no such things as
books.

One may eventually come to the conclusion

that the common world people seem to
inhabit is manufactured on the basis of
false assumptions, and in some respects is
illusory, but in order to argue that
conclusion to others one must at least start
by again taking for granted hypothetically
the sort of assumptions that lead people to
postulate a world of things and people in
which one may sensibly discuss the
problem in what sense and why some of the
assumptions that other people use to
 explain their experiences by would be
correct or mistaken.

This means that I start with more or less

accepting the world as I find it (and as
others find it) when one starts thinking
about one's experiences: 

An independently existing world of 3-

dimensional things and people, that have
enduring and non-enduring properties and
relations, and about which people know a
lot, at least in the sense that they have a
number of beliefs produced in a certain
("scientific") way that, when acted upon,
considerably more often than not lead to
expected and desired consequences.

It also means that I start with a conviction

or explicit assumption that there are facts,
in some sense; that there are other people,
whose experiences are like mine and can be
reconstructed and understood by analogy
to mine; that human beings possess a lot of
knowledge about the world, and that much
of this finds its expression in the sciences;
and that some of the important
philosophical problems concern science and
the power it confers on humans: why has
science so much more practical success
than non-science, as testified by
technology, and how is science, and more
broadly, rational thinking and reasonable
acting, to be applied by naked apes with a
bodily and emotional constitution fit for
survival by murder that is naturally adapted
to beastly circumstances, and a
technological box of Pandora, that
embodies the destructive and constructive
potential of some 50.000 years of thinking
and experimenting by the best individual
minds, and that enables the most stupid of
a few generations in the future a power and
influence that the most brilliant a few
generations in the past could neither
imagine nor comprehend. Sections
 
5. On basic questions

1. As everything can be questioned,

the basic questions concern language
and logic.
2. Any answer to any question
involves assumptions.

These are two basic insights about

reasoning, and therefore about philosophy.
The reason for the first point is that all our
questioning, whatever the subject-matter,
either is in language already or can be put
in language, as is true of any answer to
 them, and that all argument, whatever the
subject-matter, involves logic.

These points also are relevant to

skepticism, here taken in the sense of
philosophical theories that claim that
human beings cannot come to know
anything, because a skepticism that
supposes itself to be arguable is
inconsistent, and one that is not arguable is
not a philosophy. (This is not directed
against what may be called methodical
skepticism, that may be summarized as a
counsel to be prudent with one's inferences
and assumptions, but against what may be
called contentual skepticism, that
dogmatically insists there is no knowledge
and there cannot be any, as if all possibility
of knowledge were restricted to the
knowledge one cannot know anything but
knowing one knows not.)

The second point also undermines a

common ploy in philosophical argument,
which runs "But to conclude B you
presuppose A!", with the tacit premise that
presuppositions are improper. The fact is
that without any presupposition no
conclusion whatsoever is arguable, and that
what matters is not the assumptions one
makes, but the support they have in fact. (It
is not suggested that the idea of factual
support for an assumption is a simple, clear
and unambiguous idea at present, but it is
suggested that all sane people have some
adequate intuitions concerning it, such as
that an assumption is not factually
supported if in contradiction with the facts,
and better supported than before if it
entails a fact that was not inferred or not
explained without the assumption.) Sections
 
6. On a general assumption:

1. That by argumentation problems

may be clarified and solved, questions
answered and conclusions and
assumptions found.
2. That all reasoning starts from
assumptions.

If argument is needed, these

are the assumptions that are
needed to argue and reason
and whose validity is based on
extensive experience with
natural language. Sections
 

7. On ethics:
 1. An ethic is a systematic
set of beliefs about what
people in a given society
should and should not do.
2. A moral is a systematic
set of beliefs about what
people in a given group
should and should not do.
3. Most people's ethics are
morals: Their humane
impulses are restricted to
members of their own group.
4. There is a fundamental
set of ethical postulates,
that depends on (i) the
natural capacities of human
beings (ii) the necessary
requirements to maintain a
human society.

Morals are much more limited and

partial than ethics as a rule,
though most men pretend to act
ethically and in fact act morally at
best (because they don't guide
themselves by their own ideas,
but follow the group's mores, and
the group's mores are maintained
by punishment and reward by
others, whereas ethics depend on
oneself to maintain).

The third point is a simple lesson

from history, including the fact
that this is not invariably so but
tendentially so.

The fourth point is important

because it is widely denied,
basically for moral and ideological
reasons: To maintain any kind of
human society certain acts and
institutions are required, and what
is required depends on what
people really are and may and
may not be. (Thus it may be said
that e.g. the ideals of democracy
and communism are based on
assumptions respectively about
the human capacities for
intelligent social interest and on
human benevolence and altruism
that are not very realistic,
whatever their value as ideals to
orient and direct the design of
human societies.)  Sections
 
8. On what there is:

1. There is an independently existing

reality, in which
 2. there are things, which have
3. varying and unvarying properties
and relations, and
4. there are persons, who have beliefs
and desires, and who can express
their beliefs and desires by language.

Note that one should not try to be too

precise or complete here. The point is to
articulate the key postulates involved in the
everyday world and experience people
widely assume or seem to assume.  

But some further clarifications of what is

meant are necessary:

         a reality is simply a collection of

entities of any kind about which one
thinks and to which one's terms and
statements refer if true, and fail to
refer if false;

         a thing is some unique entity with

boundaries, a location in reality and
properties and relations;

         a property is some non-unique

entity that characterizes unique
things;

         a relation is some non-unique thing

that characterizes tuples of things;

         persons are things, and beliefs

and desires are some of their
(mental) properties. It is possible to
introduce more mental properties by
assumption (e.g. willing, deciding,
judging, feeling, inferring a.s.o.) but it
seems best at least initially to restrict
primitive attitudes to the two basic
ones relating to representing and to
choosing, perhaps supplemented by
trying to cause, asserting, and feeling.
Sections
 
9. On how we know:

By making, finding and testing

assumptions that represent adequate
ideas about some independently
existing subject-matter.

Here the "independently existing subject-

matter" is what the assumptions state ideas
about, and ideas are adequate to whatever
reality they are about if they do represent
them well enough for our purposes, and
better than all known alternatives.
 Note that self-knowledge is more
complicated: It involves reference to some
subject-matter that is not independently
existing in the same sense as the rest of the
world. Sections
 
10. On models and simulations:

1. We know and understand by

making - mentally or otherwise -
models and simulations of the things
we seek to know.

This is to be understood also as the ideal:

We know and come to know through
making adequate models, but often our
knowledge is not or only to a limited extent
a model, and mainly inferential (as when we
prove something by deriving a contradiction
from its denial, or by deriving it from a
thesis we know and accept as true, without
understanding it properly, as to what it does
represent precisely).   Sections
 
11. On the relation between knowledge and
reality:

1. To know something is to have an

adequate (mental) map or model of it.
2. A map or model is adequate (for
given purposes P) iff it truly
represents the features of the thing
mapped that are required to realize P.

Here the basic points are the metaphor of

the map and the notion of adequacy. The
importance of the notion of adequacy is
that we do not need completely and literally
true ideas to understand and be effective in
the world we think about: We need
adequate ideas, but often the amount of
adequacy required to satisfy our purposes is
small (and for nearly all ordinary tasks we
can do we have only very superficial ideas
of the reasons why things work as we know
they do).   Sections
 
12. On the given:

1. Things are given to people from

sensation and from memory and from
fantasy. If and when given these are
undeniably given as they are, though
whatever is given may be judged.

Here the basic points are

(i) that there is something given to us in

experience, and, moreover (ii) it is given in
a certain mental mode: As sensation,
memory, or fantasy, where "fantasy"
 comprises our beliefs and desires, including
the beliefs and desires one knows but
rejects.

So I claim our normal experience is given to

us, and is given to us as sensation, memory
or fantasy: We normally know whether what
we experience is sense-experience of the
external world or our body, or is memory, or
is neither sense-experience nor memory,
and so fantasy (which tends to be divided in
those we believe or might believe and those
we do not believe, and those we desire and
those we do not desire).

It is also worthwhile to notice that one

reason for hallucinations is that these
distinctions break down, for perfectly good
physical reasons (like the intake of a lot of
alcohol in a short period), and that, even
though all human experience is strictly
private and personal, the experience of all
more or less sane humans seems to be
similar in many respects (as is also
supported by many spontaneous human
reactions and psychological experiments,
and by the arts (and cooking etc.), that
seek to please many people, and often
suceed).

And to me it is an interesting and important

fact about humans that I can make sense of
and appreciate the ideas and art of humans
that were raised in completely different
cultures a very long time ago, even to the
extent that their ideas and values and art
may seem to me to be more sensible or
beautiful than what humans raised in my
time and culture have to offer. Insofar as
this is not completely based on self-
deception, the reason must be that there
are givens and invariants which are either
the same or very much alike in all - sound
and sane - human beings.   Sections
 
13. On language:

1. Statements represent ideas

2. Ideas represent entities in an
independently existing domain
3. Language is minimally adequate
and repairable.

Here the main points are

Statements do NOT represent

facts directly: Whenever we
use a language the statements
represent ideas, and the ideas
represent or fail to represent
some reality. NB that this
 entails that claims like "a
statement is true iff it says
what is the case" are quite
seriously misleading.

The proper analysis should be: "a

statement is true iff what it
says represents what is the
case" and "what it says" is an
idea. Note also that the natural
formalization is T(s) iff d(i(s))
<> 0 iff the denotation of the
idea the statement conveys is
not the empty set.

"an independently existing

domain" may be any set of any
kind of entities, as long as the
set does not depend for its
existence on the language
used to refer to it. This
excludes self-reference, at
least initially, but that is as it
should be, at least initially.

Being "adequate and repairable" amounts

to something like

1. users of the language can use it to

represent ideas in such a way that
other users understand what facts are
meant, and can decide whether
indeed in reality there are or are not
such facts; and
2. if users of the language find it
cannot adequately represent certain
ideas they do have, they can extend
or alter the language (by adding new
terms or rules, or altering or deleting
old terms or rules), and can do so
successfully, i.e. the revised language
will be capable to represent the new
ideas adequately.

This last assumption claims a lot, but it has

a lot of inductive confirmation and can be
illustrated quite clearly in the case of a
simple language, by introducing new
terminology and rules. And in fact this
assumption is at the basis of language
itself: We do use parts of speech with
independent reference and combine them
to statements with other independent
references, all according to rules, and both
the references and the combinations are
arbitrary in the sense of depending on our
decisions and wishes and of those we
communicate with.

What does seem to be presupposed is (i) a

notion of language, terms, rules and
 meaning, combined with (ii) the idea that all
that may be done with these entities
depends on our own assumptions, which we
may freely add to or retract, and qualify,
improve and extend as we see fit.   Sections
 
14. On reasoning

There are three basic kinds of reasoning:

1. Abduction: To find assumptions

from which given conclusions follow
2. Deduction: To find conclusions from
given assumptions
3. Induction: To confirm or infirm
assumptions by showing their
conclusions do (not) conform to the
observable facts.

Normally in reasoning all three kinds are

involved: We explain supposed facts by
abductions; check the abduced
assumptions by deducing the facts they
were to explain; and test the assumptions
arrived at inductively by deducing
consequences we bring to bear on the
assumptions by Bayesian reasoning. 
Sections 
 
15. On argumentation

1. To argue is to infer conclusions from

given facts and assumptions. It
proceeds by rules of reasoning that
are either implicit in the language
used, or explicitly stated as rules.

Note that what we know and believe we

know and believe by argument, except what
we know or believe instinctively, intuitively,
or imitatively, and that people do argue
with themselves to come to conclusions.

Note also that most people tend to use the

ideological fallacy as soon as perceived
possible conclusions appear to conflict with
their ideology or self-image - that is, they
rend to reason that something is so iff they
desire it to be so.  Sections
 
16. On assumptions

1. An assumption is an idea that is

supposed to be true.
2. It is not necessary that an
assumption is believed to be true.
3. There are several kinds of
assumptions:

axioms : Assumptions that are

known to be true.
 postulates : Assumptions that
are believed to be true.
hypotheses : Assumptions that
are believed to be probably
true.
guesses : Assumptions of any
kind
supposals : Assumptions made
to start an argument

Hence the minimal assumption is a

supposition. In ad absurdum arguments one
seeks to find a contradiction for a
supposition, so as to prove its denial. 
 Sections
 
17. On definitions

1. A definition is an assumption to the

effect that two expressions may be
substituted for each other in certain
contexts.
2. Most arguments depend crucially
on definitions.

This is the best definition of definition,

which, accordingly, has the more precise
form "In context C and language L the
terms D and E are inter-changeable".

The test of a definition is whether in all

appropriate contexts all pairs of statements
which differ only in having D where the
other has E have the same truth-value. (If
fishes are by definition cold-blooded, and
whales are by definition fishes, there are
problems as soon as one finds that as a
matter of fact whales are warm-blooded.) 
 Sections
 
18. On abstraction

There are two kinds of abstraction:

1. To abstract a thing, property or

relation from a collection of things,
properties and relations is to select
that thing, property and relation and
to disregard the rest.
2. To assume that a given thing,
property or relation is a kind of some
thing, property or relation, that has
some of the properties the given
thing, property or relation has.

That is: In the first case one disregards the

context and in the second one imposes a
(usually) not given context. The second
case is more complicated, and depends on
classificatory assumptions of the first
 kind. Sections
 
19. On truth

1. An idea is true in some reality R iff

what the idea represents is in R.
2. The basic notion of truth is that of
ideas correctly representing
independent external facts.

This conforms to the classical

correspondence definition of truth: A
statement is true if what it says is so and
false otherwise. The important thing is that
truth requires a domain of reference for
statements to be evaluated as true or false,
and the simplest case is when that domain
is independent of the statements and the
person doing the evaluating.

Note the central importance in this

definition of truth of the idea or meaning of
a statement (and term), which is what it
says or stands for irrespective of truth,
which is required first to understand
statements before one can judge them to
be true, false or undecided.

The more complex case is when the domain

does depend on the statements (self-
referring statements) or on the person
evaluating (self-reference) (as in "I believe
that I believe that this statement says
something about me and itself").   Sections
 
20. On falsehood

1. An idea is false in some reality R iff

what the idea represents is not in R.
2. It makes sense to distinguish
falsehood and non-truth: Non-truths
are simply not so; falsehoods arise
when the things the idea is about do
exist, but are not qualified in the way
the idea has it.
3. Also, falsehood and non-truth must
be distinguished from nonsense and
related notions: An idea is nonsense iff
what the idea represents is not
possible on the basis of the system of
assumptions in the context of which
the idea figures.

This is like the definition of truth, but (2)

and (3) assert that falsehood is not mere
non-truth, because statements that are not
true may be nonsense for various reasons,
ungrammatical, incomprehensible, or
(im)probable or (im)plausible etc. to some
degree.
 Note how falsehood and nonsense are
defined, and that both truth and falsehood
are properties of ideas, and only
derivatively of the statements which state
those ideas.   Sections
 
21. On possibility

1. An idea is possibly true if it is not

nonsense and not false and not
inconsistent with the system of
assumptions in the context of which
the idea figures.

This is the simplest sensible definition of

possibility, and if taken extensionally is a -
possible - case. Thus for all I know it is
possible that there are dolphins that like
music. Note this is not the standard modal
notion involving possible worlds, which I
think is usually either unclear or very odd or
both.   Sections
 
22. On necessity

1. An idea is necessarily true if it is

not nonsense and its denial is
inconsistent with the system of
assumptions in the context of which
the idea figures.

See under possibility and note that factual

necessity is something else. I'd say that it
consists in invariable regularity, and that
contingency consists either in coincidence
of earlier independent chains of events or
else is real, if it exists (as in sub-atomic
particles): something may happen or not,
and there is no factual ground whatsoever
for it to happen or not to happen, although
the proportion and frequency of happenings
may have a factual ground.

Again either notion of necessity is not the

standard modal notion involving possible
worlds.   Sections
 
23. On rules

1. A rule is an idea or statement to the

effect that in given circumstances one
may or must do a certain thing.
2. There are two kinds of rules:
Permissive rules and obligatory rules.

Note that inference rules combine

permission and necessity: If "From A1,..,An,
C follows" is a rule of inference one may but
need not use it to infer C from A1,..,An but
whether one does or not, C does follow from
A1,..,An whether one actually infers C or
 not.    Sections
 
24. On methods

1. Whatever we know, we know

because it has been produced by a
certain method. It is the method that
guarantees and produces the
knowledge.
2. A method is a way of doing
something, and is given by rules that
stipulate what one may do in given
circumstances.
3. Methods are judged by their
internal consistency and success or
failure.

It is important to stress that knowledge is

methodically acquired and methodically
identified and recognized as knowledge,
and that generally the methods by which
one finds or tests knowledge are more
important than the knowledge they
produce.

The best distinction between science and

non-science is not in terms of knowledge
but in terms of methods: scientific
knowledge is any belief produced by
logically correct reasoning and methodical
experimentation.   Sections
 
25. On observation

Observations are experiences guided

by a method of acquiring experiences
in a certain way.

That is: Observations are not mere

experiences but methodically acquired
experiences.   Sections
 
26. On things

1. Things are bounded, located

substances: They are located in
space; have a boundary; and consist
of matter, i.e. something that
excludes other matter of the same
and of similar kind to be on the same
place and which is mass-like, i.e. its
parts have the same characteristic
properties as itself.
2. All substances (= matter) and all
things have characteristic properties.
3. All things are unique.
4. All things have some properties
that characterize them in the sense
that in order to be a thing of that kind,
it is required to have those properties.
5. All things have some feature(s) that
are not properties, i.e. the thing may
 lack the feature(s) without ceasing to
be a thing of the kind it is.
6. Things come in kinds, and kinds of
things are defined in terms of
properties and substances.
7. Things are known by and
characterized by their effects on other
things, in given conditions.

Here there are many important points, but I

shall restrict myself to what seems to need
comment the most:

Things interdepend with space and

with properties and are made
up of substance(s) c.q. matter,
and are characterized by being
bounded and taking place (to
the exclusion of other things)
and being unique.

Matter is mass-like: When you

divide it (up to a point) its
parts have the same properties
(apart from size and weight
a.s.o.) as itself.

Note here that things are made of

matter, but are rarely mere
lumps of matter: Normally a
thing is a complex structure
with several parts, containing
diverse substances.

A thing per se (Ding an sich) is a

mere abstract: We know things
by what they do to other
things and to us. NB that it is a
fallacy to restrict these effects
to observable ones: Things
are theoretical constructs
anyhow, so they may well have
lots of effects we are not aware
of or are not equipped to
experience directly.  Sections
 
27. On properties:

1. Properties are had by things and

cannot occur without the things they
are property of.
2. Properties are not unique.

Here only the essential points are made.

However, you may well ask: What IS a
property? Probably the best short answer is:
That by virtue of which a thing has certain
effects on other things, of which the
property is the cause, or a necessary (and
analytically separable) part of the cause.
 Two difficulties about properties and
relations in general are

a. There are very many of them, and

they come in all sorts of kinds: One
does need some categorical schema,
i.e. a network of relations between
basic properties and things, that also
classifies all kinds of things, properties
and relations, at least provisionally,
and

b. There are some purported

properties and relations that either
are not real or are odd (in ways more
typical real properties are not). Three
examples are:
- properties depending (in part) on
linguistic features
- indexical and coordinative properties
- properties that only seem to be there
(hallucinations, colors etc.) but in fact
are projected by our CNS.   Sections
 
28. On relations:

As for properties.

Of course, with this difference that relations

hold of tuples, not unique things. Note also
that all or most properties are in fact
relations: When we say "snow is white" this
is short for "the reflected light of snow that
is visible to humans appears white" or "the
color-effect of snow on the human visual
system is white" or something similar.

In general, when we attribute a property we

have abstracted it from some - system of -
relation(s), and all relations involve some
sort and principle ordering.   Sections
 
29. On systems:

1. A system is a set of interrelated

things, where the relations are real,
that have some of the features of a
thing (is located; possesses properties
and attributes; known by their
effects).
2. Systems need not be unique.
3. Systems are not mass-like (i.e. their
parts do not have the same features
as the system they are part of).

Note the following layers or levels:

Substance is what things are made

up of;
 Things are made up of parts that
are substances or things;

Systems are made up of things.

The difference between things and systems

is that a thing is always unique, and a
system is not. However, it may make sense
to take things as the smallest systems (in
some sense of "smallest"), with a unique
identification and the required properties to
make them unique.

The reason to say that systems are not

unique is that one needs some way of and
foundation for saying things like "these two
entities are the same kind", for this now
becomes "these two entities are the same
kind of system, i.e. their parts are things of
the same kind, related in the same ways,
with - consequently - the same kinds of
effects in the same kinds of conditions". 
 Sections
 
30. On substances:

1. A substance is a something located

and real the parts of which have the
same features as the substance they
are part of.

This was dealt with above already, under

"On things". The basic point is that
substances - "what things are made of", as
yonder vase is made of glass that was
formed into the shape of a vase - are
mereological wholes in some sense. 
 Sections
 
31. On reality:

1. Reality is the class of all things.

As distinguished from nature, which is

included in it. The term "class" may be
understood here either as in mathematical
set-theory or more naively, but if it is
understood set-theoretically, the term
"class" is used expressly to be understood
as contrasted with "set", the difference
being that sets themselves are always
elements (of sets or classes) but classes are
never elements.   Sections
 
32. On nature:

1. Nature is the set of living things.

As distinguished from reality. I think it is

important to consider life as something
special, and nature as one intricate
 interdependent system, at least where
broad outlines are concerned. I also guess
that biological laws involve more than
physical laws or are a special kind of
physical laws (feed-back, the creation of
order from disorder and chaos).

In this sense the planet earth is special:

Nature is there, and nowhere else, as far as
we know, and if elsewhere different. (That
is: There is a suggestion that Nature is itself
an entity with its own laws to an extent
making itself in a unique way.)

For the term "set" see "On reality". 

Sections
 
33. On time:

1. Physical time is the rate of change

of some feature with reference to the -
number of - changes in some -
standard - feature of some - standard -
thing.
2. Subjective time is the sense of
duration bound up with memory.

That is: Physical time in the ends is

proportion between changes: So and so
many standard changes or events to take
one given event. Note this presumes
regularity of the underlying process, but
that is assumed in general: Immutable laws.
(These also would be the basis for the arrow
of time: Certain changes are followed by
others, but not conversely.) Note that this
does depend on whether the clock can be
reached (seen, effected).

Subjective time is quite different, although

the underlying ground seems the same:
Possibly 7 or more internal clocks that are
used to pace internal processes. Our
experience of time depends on these. 
 Sections
 
34. On space:

1. Physical space is the set of places

where things may be and move to.
2. Subjective space is the sense of
extensiveness bound up with vision
(usually) and with the movements
one's body.

Note that a set of places is not necessarily a

container or container-like. The simplest
representation is as a set of coordinates,
with this difference that places are real, and
coordinates group places or events at them
by associating numbers or names to them
 in some regulated way.   Sections
 
35. On the structure of the world (levels):

1. The world as we experience and

know it comes in levels, and that at
least in two ways:

Things interdepend on and interact

with other things of
approximately the same size,
and the size-classes form
levels. E.g.: atoms, molecules,
cells, organs, organisms,
biotopes, ecologies. Levels
have their own characteristic
kinds of laws, i.e. regularities
characteristic for the things of
that level (and kind).

Things interdepend on and interact

with other things but are also
independent of and do not
interact with yet other things.
Thus they form clusters or
systems.

Note that this amounts to a rather complex

ontological hypothesis, adopted because it
seems to be most adequate to the known
facts:

There are at least the following distinct

kinds of entities:

     things
substances
properties
relations
laws
structures
systems
levels.

In telegram style: Things are individual,

particular and made of substance(s), and
may have parts. There is no thing without
some substance, and no substance (except
possibly space or time) without being some
thing's substance. Things have properties
(as it were relations in potential: Activated if
a relatum is given) and relations, depending
on the substances and the laws. The
relation between things and properties and
relations is as between things and
substances: there is no thing without
properties and relations, and there are no
properties or relations (except possibly of
space and time) without their being some
thing's properties or relations. Laws are
relations between relations and properties,
 and consequently between the things that
carry the properties and relations.
Structures are things that involve a set of
lawful relations between invariably related
things. Systems are sets of structures.
Levels are sets of systems of a certain kind
and size. There are laws proper to systems
and to levels, and laws differ systematically
depending on which level(s) they involve.

Note also that systems and things (i.e. the

simplest kind of structures and systems)
may be independent: Their effects do not
reach each other c.q. are cancelled out.
(There may be even things that e.g. emit
waves in phases that cancel, and would
have been noticed by each if the phases
had been different - a kind of
complementarity.)

Note finally in this context that things may

be epistemologically independent yet
ontologically dependent - pe(Y|X)<>pe(Y)
and pr(Y|X)=pr(Y) - simply because e.g. in
fact Y does depend on X but you know this
already, or in general because pr() depends
on cognitive grounds (what you assume you
know and how these assumptions bear
upon those you don't know, presumptively)
while pe() depends on factual grounds
(what if true in fact changes Y's chances of
also being true, with statistics as best
example of both: Born in such and such
circumstances your income is most typically
Y - whereas you know what your income
is).   Sections
 
36. On structures:

1. A structure is a set of things all

connected by some relation.

This is the minimal definition as it is not

stipulated here that the structure itself is a
thing (bounded and independently movable
etc.) and it is merely suggested that the
related things may carry laws and have
properties of all kinds.   Sections
 
37. On facts:

1. A fact is what is the case in a

domain of - presumed - facts.
2. NB that facts depend on what
domain of facts one presumes:
Presuming Greek mythology, it is a
fact that the god Zeus killed his
parents and had many extra-marital
relations with mortal women.
 See on truth, on falsehood and on
possibility - for there are possible facts, in
the sense that one might desire to catch a
pike in yonder pond, that may or may not
contain a pike for all one knows.

Note also that it makes no sense to speak of

facts when there is no method of deciding
whether a statement states a fact or not.

However, this last remark should not be

read in a neo-positivist way, and there is an
important difference between facts and
truths: a truth is a fact A of a particular
kind, called symbolical, and exemplified by
statements, pictures, maps, diagrams,
photographs, films etc. that informs anyone
capable of understanding the rules of
symbolization that were used that there is
some fact B that is somehow symbolized or
represented by A.  Sections
 
38. On regularities:

1. Natural laws are statements or

ideas that represent - presumed -
factual regularities, i.e. relations or
facts that are - in the presumed
conditions - invariant.

This is the basis of the Order of Nature,

then: That there are regularities of fact -
that a fact of this kind is invariably followed
or preceded by a fact of that kind.

Note also that as stated this may comprise

distribution-functions: That X happens may
be undetermined intrinsically, but the
pattern of X-happenings (frequencies,
proportions) may be completely fixed. 
 Sections
 
39. On changes:

1. Two fundamental facts about

experience and Nature is that they
change all the time while also much
remains the same, especially the
patterns and ways of changing.

This is included because ways and means of

changing are in many ways the basic facts
about experience and reality - the
unceasing flux.  Sections
 
40. On causation:  

1. A causes B iff A is a system and B is

a consequence of A's properties.
 "Consequence" here in the sense that there
is a law - immutable regularity - involving
some of A's properties and B. This also
explains the supposed necessity involved in
causality - which is misleading, if B is
caused by a chance-process A, which is
possible by the present definition. (It is
perfectly sensible to say that a gambler's
ruin was caused by his ignorance of
probability-theory and a completely fair and
random roulette-wheel, even though we
may assume, at least for the sake of the
argument, that none could have predicted
any one of the outcomes.)   Sections
 
41. On subjunctives:

1. What would be the case is what

follows from assumptions about what
is the case (if these assumptions are
not the case).

The last part is bracketed to stress that

what would be the case may be the case,
though usually one does not say, then, that
it would be the case but simply that it is the
case. Note that this supposes prior
assumptions.

What might be the case is more

comprehensive: What is not incompatible
with the assumptions about what is the
case.   Sections
 
42. On science:

1. Science is methodically and

rationally warranted knowledge, and
consists of the best explanations
(abductions) for given problematic -
presumed - facts.

Note it is not said science is true, though I

do hold that the best explanation must be
adequate (and so must contain some
factual truth, if not all, which is also the
reason why real science can be used to
design a real technology that satisfies some
of our ends, whereas false, phony or very
young science cannot be used to design
effective technology).

The best explanation does not need to be a

true explanation, and a true explanation
need to be completely true to be adequate
in practice, but the skeptical or relativistic
notion that human beings do not (really,
truly) know things seems to me both false
and misleading.
 A good likeness for the true position is that
human knowledge is like human maps:
incomplete, without all detail, not
completely correct, always in need for being
updated (with the most recent relevant
knowledge and findings), and usually
without present means to decide for each
and every item on the map whether it does
or does not adequately represent what is
really there - but nearly always more
informed and more knowledgeable with a
map than without any.   Sections
 
43. On the world:

1. The world is given to us in at least

five different ways:

a. subjectively: All persons have

their own experiences and
ideas

b. commonsensically: There is a
core of commonsense shared
by all sane persons, and
summed up by a version of
Natural Realism

c. by the arts: In any culture there

is a dramatized version of
many aspects of reality that
serves to map reality

d. by science: In any culture there

is an undramatized version of
many aspects of reality that
serves to map reality

e. socially: In any society there is a

core of - dominant -
assumptions and values about
what reality is; what society is;
and what men are.

Here the point is that there are quite a few

different versions and presentations of
reality, which differ a lot in contents and
source:

subjective experiences differ

not only because different
people have been in different
circumstances, but also
because they have different
capacities (visualizers and non-
visualizers, for example)

the common sense reality is

contrived and theoretical, for it
does presuppose all manner of
non-experienced or non-
 validable constancies and
regularities, but it is required
for society: We need
assumptions that make it a
matter of course to make
appointments, promises and
agreements and contracts

in many ways the high arts -

Shakespeare, Sophocles,
Montaigne, Dante, Balzac,
Hazlitt etc. - give us the best
representation of what men
are, may be, and are capable
of, for it is the most
concentrated, richest,
complicated, and intellectually
balanced and reasoned and
informed version of what men
are, may be and are capable
of. The main reason this is so is
that it need not concern itself
with literal truth, but only with
possibility and plausibility

science as used in society is

common knowledge of things
and procedures to make or get
things (including avoiding and
getting rid of things). Of
course, to be knowledge it
needs to be adequate, though
ordinary knowledge tends to
be mainly instrumental: One
knows how to drive a car but
hardly why it works as it works.

the social ideology may be and

usually make-belief and false.
What is important about it are:
(i) it provides a background of
shared assumptions, values
and methods (ii) it provides a
background of shared norms of
behavior which makes it the
basis of culture and tradition. 
 Sections
 
44. On persons:
1.  Every person has a sense of
self, and this comes in three
guises:
A. as what one is
......................... the self
B. as what one believes one is
........ the ego
C. as one pretends one is
.............. the personality

2.  The self is what one had made

of oneself, and comes from
 one's capacities, and decisions
to - believe to - be a so and so.

3.  Personality and ego depend on

the self.

4.  The self can only be

experienced in part.

5.  The self changes gradually, as

it depends on learning.

That every person (if not insane or very

extra-ordinary) has a sense of self is simply
a matter of everyday experience, in the
sense that one experiences one's self and
others act, talk and behave as if they
experience their selves.

I hold the self is far more comprehensive

that the roles it plays, so to speak: 

What one believes oneself to be is one of

the things the self does - basically,
constructing a theory about itself, and
adopting that, and one's self is created and
built during one's life, and is normally far
larger and comprehensive than one can be
conscious of or show at any particular
moment.

It is important to see that, at least in

ordinary reality, people make themselves to
a considerable extent - as is quite clearly
possible if what they believe they are, is,
like their other beliefs, a theory, which is
continuously revised and updated, and
depends on their own choices and
preferences.

And it is also important to see that one can

only experience part of what one is at any
time, and, moreover, that what one does
experience is always in part effect of and in
part representation of whatever caused the
experience, and never the real thing,
insofar as it is not a simple bodily pain or
pleasure. (And even that is in fact a
message of the kind "your toe requires
attention").

It is also important to see that, in the terms

of this remark, most people mistake their
ego for their self; that every adult who is
not thoroughly insane plays some role
(father, mother, employee, Good Christian
etc.) nearly all the time, and tends to
confuse himself or herself with the roles one
plays; and that very few adults dare to act,
think or feel out of the characters they
familiarly play. (This last fact, which may be
 named the lack of individual character, is
one of the root causes of human history
being by and large a "record of the crimes
and follies of mankind" (Gibbon): Mass-
murdering, genocides etc. are perpetrated
by perfectly ordinary and average people
on perfectly ordinary average people for
perfectly ordinary and average human
weaknesses. If ordinary human beings
would be able to create a just society, they
would have done so long ago.)  Sections
 
45. On human beings:

1. Human beings are animals that can

reason better than other animals
because they can use language.

Here the points are that humans are

animals (not demi-gods), and that their
superiority to the other animals is due to
language, in the first place, and also - as is
implicit in language - in being a social
animal, that lives in society, and cooperates
with its fellows.   Sections
 
46. On types of men:
1.  There are different types of
men, depending on their
natural capacities, culture and
training.

2.  Between men there are great

differences in natural
capacities, not only as regards
accepted talents like musical
or mathematical abilities but
also as regards capacities to
memorize, visualize, etc. These
differences are at the basis of
the different kinds of mental
worlds different men may
have.

3.  There also seem to be inborn

moral differences: Most men
do not rise above the level of
adopting the mores of their
own group as morals, and of
regarding non-group-members
as inferiors without rights;

4.  and intellectual differences:

percentually very few people
are capable to understand and
work creatively with science or
mathematics at a graduate
level.

This deserves stressing. It also is the kind of

fact that is unpopular in a "democratic
 society", where the majority of people
believe, or pretend they believe, that one
deserves to be discriminated if one remarks
that as a matter of plain fact not all people
are equal in capacity, development,
intelligence, knowledge, facial beauty,
length, strength etc. This is unpopular in
democratic societies because the majority
of human beings know they have no special
talents, and envy the minority of those who
do have them. One consequence is that in
truly democratic societies only average
people get elected to positions of power. 
 Sections
 
47. On the capacities of the human mind:

1. Whatever men may know or be

depends first and foremost on the
capacities of the human mind.

For this is the basic human limitation and

strength. (The Dhammapadda 1.1 says: "All
that we are is the result of what we have
thought. All that we are is founded on our
thoughts and formed on our thoughts.")

Sofar, the best approach to the human mind

is an indirect one: through the study of its
products, especially science, art, and
human history.   Sections
 
48. On psychology:
1.  To know what men are and may
be, it is necessary to know
human history.

2.  Lesson from history: Nearly all

men have been nearly
completely deluded about
nearly everything nearly all the
time.

3.  "Most men are as fit to think as

they are fit to fly." (Swift).

4.  People live by and for their self-

image, which is what they
believe they are and should do
and are entitled to.

Points 1 and 4 reiterate earlier points. The

important facts for the actual course of
history are (2) and (3), and it makes sense
to make an outline of common sense
psychology without illusions based on La
Rochefoucauld, Mandeville, Chamfort,
Lichtenberg, Nietzsche and some other
epigrammatists.   Sections
 
49. On history:
 1. To know what men are and may be,
it is necessary to know human history.
2. Sofar, history was to a large extent
the result of beastly impulses
amplified by human ideas and its
resulting technology.

The second statement is my appreciation to

some extent, though factually correct -
people much rather fuck and fight and sport
than love and think and make art, on
average, in actual fact (that rarely conforms
to the self- images of the actors, which
usually amounts to the thesis that the actor
is at least as good if not better than anyone
else, and willing to prove it by destroying
whoever disagrees).

It is the first point that is important: Human

beings are best known by their acts in
varying circumstances, and not - merely -
by their ideas about themselves at any
given moment in a given society. Besides,
the ideas most men have about most things
tend to be false, uninformed, emotional,
conventional and only interesting for who is
interested in the people who hold them, and
anyway are nearly always partial even if
adequate.   Sections
 
50. On agreements and disagreements:

There are two fundamental kinds of

agreements and disagreements between
people:

1. of beliefs and disbeliefs

2. of likes and dislikes

Agreements and disagreements bring men

together or drive them apart. The basic
points at issue are that (i) values are not
facts, and that (ii) nearly all men make their
ideas of what the facts are depend on what
they like the facts to be while (iii) in the end
nearly al of what each of us can and cannot
do depends on his or her agreements and
disagreements - moral, intellectual,
esthetical etc. - with his or her fellow
human beings.   Sections
 
51. On feelings:

A feeling is a bodily reaction to a

stimulus.

Here the main point is that feelings are

bodily reactions, and not mental, or mental
only. They also are personal, though not
necessarily private: Though we can feel
 only our own feelings, we do seem to feel
many feelings through sympathy: We feel
sad when our fellows act as if they feel sad;
elated when our fellows act as if they are
elated; distressed if etc. and we can
recognize basic feelings like anger, joy, fear
and surprise from facial information.

(But see below for values and emotions). 

 Sections
 
52. On values:

A value is a generalized desire, that is,

it has the form: For all persons p of
type X, it is desirable/I desire that if Y,
then p does Z.

Note that, consequently, values are tied up

with personally felt states but can be
endlessly theoretically elaborated, and also
depend on the facts, namely what persons
can and cannot do, and what does and does
not happen in given contexts as a
consequence of given acts.

Most ethical and moral theorizing tends not

to make sensible distinctions between
values, feelings and emotions, and to be
either subjective or objective. The present
position is subjective insofar as it locates
the source of value in the beliefs and
desires of a person, but objective insofar as
what is desired is or is not compatible with
the facts and human nature.   Sections
 
53. On emotions:

An emotion is a feeling caused by a

value or an expectation or a memory.

Note that even highly complicated

emotions, like being betrayed by a loved
one, tend to have a considerable bodily
component: You may feel angry, surprised,
disappointed etc. and even if you believe
that what you "feel" is best summed up by
a Shakespearean monologue, there will be a
strong and complicated mixture of bodily
feelings connected with it.

Also, there are e.g. with love two kinds, one

intellectual and personal, the other bodily
and sexual, and there is a definite feeling of
joy when beholding a beautiful piece of
reasoning or mathematics, music etc.

The point about emotions is that they

depend on values in the end and thence
mix ideas - beliefs, expectations/predictions
a.s.o. - and feelings. See above under
 values.   Sections
 
55. On culture:  

1. Culture is the set of beliefs, desires

and ways of behavior that is
transmitted by one generation to the
next by education and example.

The beliefs and desires include an ideology,

but tend to comprehend a lot more. The
basic point is that people transmit ideas
and values to others and especially (their)
children, who are more prone to adopt ideas
and values for lack of them or for lack of a
strongly believed foundation for other ideas
or values.

Note that "culture" as defined contains no

value-judgment.   Sections
 
56. On civilization:

1. The degree of civilization in a

society depends on
(i) its dominant beliefs : How rational?
(ii) its dominant desires : How
humane?
(iii) its dominant practice: How artistic
and just?

In contrast with culture (as defined)

civilization does involve value- judgments.
The criterions I use are as old as the
Greeks.

Beliefs, desires and practices are dominant

depending on the proportion and social
power of the number of people and groups
that live accordingly.   Sections
 
57. On fundamental fallacies:

Here are some fundamental fallacies human

beings are prone to:

1. Reification: To assume that things

do in fact have the properties one's
ideas or expressions for them have.
2. Misplaced concreteness: To assume
that the only kind of things there are
are unique, local, bounded things.
3. Wishful thinking a.k.a the
ideological fallacy
4. Intentional obscurity.
5. False egalitarianism.
6. False esotericism.

Here are some brief comments and

explications of these fallacies - of which
there are many more listed in good
introductions to logic. The ones I list and
briefly discussed here are often missed:

Reification: As I state it, this is due to the

human inclination to attribute the structure
or properties of language or grammar
automatically and blindly to reality, and the
human proclivity to belief one's own beliefs
and desires rather than face the facts and
feelngs they really concern. Literally
"reification" means "making things out of",
so perhaps I use an inept term, since what I
mean is rather that human beings often
mistakingly presume things are in reality as
they are in their human discourse about it. 

Misplaced concreteness: There is a strong

tendency in the human breast to believe
that absolutely everything is an instance of
a concrete kind of thing, and as if all there
is in reality is one level of basically unsorted
particulars. I think this is too simple-
minded, and cannot do justice to the very
sophisticated and layered structures of
things we see about us, that involve
particulars, universals, relations, and
properties of many kinds of many levels
interacting in many ways.

Wishful thinking: The basic human fallacy

all men are very prone to is wishful
thinking : or the ideological fallacy:To
think that  things are in reality much like
one desires them to be, according to one's
personal or social ideology of how things
ought to be and appear. 

This fallacy is very close to the human heart

- "video meliora proboque; deteriora
sequor": Ovid - because it accords so very
well with human acting and practice, which
requires that we use our own desires as
inspiration to our actions. It is a fallacy,
because while it is true that action requires
our own desires as inspiration, it is false
that judgment requires our own desires as
criterions. (The basic psychological difficulty
is that judgments also depend for their
making on desires, and that it is much
easier to desire that things are as one
desires them to be than to desire that one
judges rationally and reasonably, and tries
to follow the nature of things rather than
one's own prejudices.)

Indeed, if we are to think rationally and

consciously, this means that we are
constantly willing to test our own
presumptions and assumptions logically
and empirically by their consequences, and
to learn and know as much as we can. 
The normal human course is different:
Ordinary human beings try to avoid thinking
rationally and consciously, and rather follow
leaders, local prejudice, personal
convenience and ease, and pleasant
patterns of wishful thinking (that usually
come down to: "Our leaders are great and
good people; our society is the greatest and
best society; our religion the finest religion;
our morals the greatest and justest human
agreements - and so all we ordinary men
and women need to do is conform, adjust,
and follow our leaders while satisfying our
own human needs in the loyal, accepted,
ordinary ways".

Intentional obscurity: Very much of

academic philosophy (and theology) is
based on assumptions and conclusions that
seem intentionally obscure, prejudiced, of a
common place nature, biased, partial or
selective, or merely simplifying slogans and
propaganda. 

This is even more true of all the popular

media - TV, papers, weeklies - spread
around, that tends to be strongly and
voluntarily based on some local political or
religious prejudice presented as if it is the
epitome of human reason and civilization
itself.

The only way to avoid this is to think for

oneself; to know the real scientific, human
and historical sources of science, ethics,
philosophy and politics; to have a clear
mind honed by logic, mathematics and
methodology, and to refuse to be personally
bamboozled by fallacies or flattering
illusions and delusions.

But the great majority of ordinary men

normally much rather do not think, and act
as if they are loyal  conformists of whatever
leader or system is in power, and the great
majority will always find that the powers
that be hand out convenient simple-minded
coloured versions of what the local Joe
Sixpack is supposed to think and feel and
pretend to be regarded as a decent average
One of Us. And nearly all Joe Sixpacks, none
to bright to start with, are much pleased
and quite proud of being One of Us, and of
following Our Leaders, and of doing their
biddings, all from a proud feeling of
patriotic duty and conformist loyalty - on
the killing fields, in the slaughter houses,
and in the  concentration camps, as in the
soccer stadiums and in sporting events.
False egalitarianism: One of the favorite
fallacies of democracies and pretended
democrats is to declare and insist that
"everybody is equal" - which usually,
willfully or not, confuses the desirable legal
equality of unequal individuals with the
undesirable and false imposition of
personal equality that each and every
individual is just as good and as full of merit
as each and any other individual.

In actual fact personal equality is a lie not

even the democratic masses that insist so
much on it because they know they
themselves are neither intellectually, nor
morally nor artistically worth much, truly
believe - for all believe themselves or their
families or leaders and loved ones to be
better people than many others (and
occasionally indeed may be right about this
in some point).

So in actual fact this is a very popular lie or

delusion, because it enables the very great
majority to pretend that they are each and
all just as good and worthy and meritorous
as the greatest and most gifted or most
courageous individuals of humankind, which
feels pleasant to most, apparently because
social mammals like to be Number One, and
if they cannot be so in fact at least love the
illusion that they are as good as Number
One - while licking his feet and spitting at
his enemies, and fighting his fights for him,
and dying wholly unmemorized on the
killing fields the leaders of mankind so often
design for their own personal ends, by
misleading their loyal followers into killing
and dying for them.

False esotericism: All academics and

intellectuals, and all men and women, are
very prone to mistaking hollow but rare and
obscure terminology - especially if it also
has a moral ring to it - with insight,
understanding and explanation.

In fact, whatever can be explained and

understood by human beings is capable of
being explained in plain language and
ordinary terms by any human being of
sufficient knowledge and intelligence to any
other human being of sufficient knowledge
and intelligence.

But in fact it is also very difficult to find the

right words on the right moments and put
them in the right sequences, and in fact it is
very easy to make those things difficult and
obscure that one does not truly understand
oneself.
 One excellent model of how to counter this
human tendency to fallacy is mathematical
thought, e.g. as explained by Blaise Pascal
("L'esprit de geometrie" and "L'art de
penser"); one excellent example of how
easy it is to commit this fallacy is Blaise
Pascal himself (who let his very fine mind
be abused for religious and theological
controversy, and added his own esoteric
obscurities while doing so).   Sections
 

Colofon: Last draft version 30.03.2004 

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