PWIP XXXIV

Any sense appears able to perceive patterns, for a pattern can be any sequence or repetition of actions or objects. In that way all senses can be used to conclude something like numbers, given sufficient mechanical capacities that go further than mere observation. The senses can differentiate between absence and something, or 0 and 1. The counting numbers are abstractions of the multiplicity of objects, which one can come to merely from 0 and 1 being two objects and so on, though such an intellectual feat may require high intelligence to come to with minimal prior knowledge. Aside from the abstract form of multiplicity, which is the natural numbers, there is the abstract ideal shapes. The abstraction of raw data, typically rigid objects, to apparent ideal forms, i.e. the mathematical expression of physical objects, appears to require even more knowledge and understanding, which may only be achieved through feedback on already achieved understandings.

The seemingly faint background mental processes are one’s means of functioning in a manner more sophisticated than mere sensory observation. Perhaps one can call such a thing the active observer. The senses with no subjectivity are perhaps passive observers, i.e. reactions and imitations of external environments. An organism at rest doesn’t decide what it is or will sense beyond how it is positioned in the world. A change in position of the observer by the observer is an active observation. As observation is likely layered, the local external environment can only be perceived by the passive observer, which is a mere receiver and reactor to the state of the external environment. Taking what the observer receives and providing feedback or manipulating it is a part of the internal environment, or virtual world, of the organism and is an active observation. The ability to change position in the environment intentionally appears to require the observer hold the external environment as constant in the memory, then it must plot or plan a destination, updating from the passive observer while following the path generated by the active observer to reach the destination. As the passive observation must remain active, the active observation likely remains in the background of the passive observation interface.

The senses appear to be one’s only connection to reality. Even if objects exist in the same space as the perceiver in reality, it is as good as nothing if it can not impress upon some sense. The abstract abilities of an organisms, i.e. the actions of the active observer, appears in a sense to be concealed information in the environment when considering the external environment as a purely physical process, i.e. as a moving set of points. The knowledge in the self is less than that in the environment because the self is locally present, whereas the environment is omnipresent. Sensations as reactions to some external object appear to be an interaction between two objects. Thus, to be may be to be perceivable, even if not perceived. There are higher functions to sensation that one may find in brains and AI. The set of higher functions appear to be larger than the set of sensations. Simple to more complex brains and AI sense something, assuming they are active. Aside from sensations they may have the ability to recall, apprehend/understand, identify, imagine, decide, judge, conceptualize, categorize, attend, reason, calculate, use language, evaluate, classify, problem solve, ideate, associate, rationalize/irrationalize, plan, erroneously think, act, control self, adapt, attach, valuate, learn, inquire, empathize, prioritize, generalize, interpret, manipulate, etc. all of which are context, i.e. space and time, dependent. These may all be subsumed under cognition.

It is difficult to determine which process of cognition is most vital. Memory seems to be used most often. But only artificial intelligence can recreate exact replicas of visual and audio content. Natural intelligence likely uses the imagination to recreate a memory, which isn’t the exact experience. For the memory to be related to an actual event, one likely needs to use some kind of reasoning that uses the notion or process of consistency. The complete explicit expression of all the various forms of brain configurations and what they do may explain the large variety in story telling.

Psychology and epistemology are very closely related, though epistemology contains more content than the psychology. As pure materialism, ontology/existence would be what science has determined is nature. It would perhaps be the body to Descartes’ body and mind duality. There is a question as to whether the body is the final form of one’s being, or whether the body perceives the actual world or a deception? Science, of course, assents to the question begging truth of the body actually existing in the world, yet denies a simplification of the various processes and phenomena in the world. It intersects, but is different from, the view of the world from one’s own perspective; which is psychology. By rejecting the notion of the brain having complete knowledge one can push the limits of one’s understanding. Such is achievable in the virtual space of one’s mind. We can perhaps look at the spectrum of intelligence as the simple brain, the human brain and A.I. Understanding is perhaps a coherence between the virtual world of the mind and the physical world of the body.

PWIP XXXIII

The senses align well with the model of reality. Dogma typically begins with knowledge, but philosophy starts with ignorance. One can imagine the search for knowledge as one being in a room. One’s experience of the room would depend on which sense one uses to search it. Ontology seems related to the sense of smell. This is founded on the animal’s ability to sense objects that are not in sight. The smell of an object is perhaps more telling of the object’s composition than its image. The olfactory system, however, only ever gets the hint of the object, not the object itself, unless the object is a smell. Sight is more related to epistemology. It maybe the second most concrete sense, second to touch, and can obtain a pinpoint perception of what is in the immediate vicinity. Such is dependent on light, similar to how the olfactory sense is based on particles in the air. An image of an object seems to allow for quicker discovery of what the room would hold, assuming there is a source of light. Of course, the experience of pleasure and pain, which is a tactile sense, brings one to ethics. Though pure touch seems binary, e.g. hot or cold, hard or soft, it appears to be the most significant sense. The conscious mind is aware of the animal’s condition through emotions, which appear tactile in nature. Taste seems more closely related to one’s aesthetic self, as it merely communicates what one finds most appealing, not what is most efficient. It is also more closely connected with one’s intimate self, as animals are more willing to touch an object, than to taste it; or rather they touch more objects than they may put on their tongues. Thus ethics would be more closely related with the sense of touch and psychology with the sense of taste. Sight and smell appear to be extended senses, as they can perceive objects a distance away from the body. The last extended sense is the sense of hearing. The audio sense is more spherical than vision, which is rather linear. Hearing is rather communal, as it relates to sociology, since at least half of human communication is audio. Like smell, sound is rather abstract, but unlike smell, it is also rather brief. Ultimately all perceptions seem to be hints from which to reason about the world, rather than explicit expressions of the overall process. It is quite difficult to believe truth is somehow outside of experience, and not buried somewhere within.

PWIP XXXII

This venn diagram is an attempt at a sufficient model for the apparent reality. Ontology is similar to the universal set, in that it is the set that contains all sets. Contained in the ontology is the set epistemology. Epistemology contains the subset sociology, which contains psychology, which itself contains ethics. Epistemology is perhaps bounded ontology, as it appears to be the set of universal and leading ideas.

The sets can’t really be perceived as separate from one another. If the world is merely the world and nothing else, then epistemology is a stable domain, and ontology extends only to impossibilities. What is and is not appears to exhaust the notion of existence, though not much information about what is is given. Ontology is more difficult to discuss because it is supreme universality. When one uses notions such as all, existence, everything, metaphysics or god one is referring to ontology. However, since such notions alone express little discrete information, they are usually found bounded to some other thing. One appears to enter epistemology at the limit of understanding.

Unlike a typical venn diagram, the lines that delineate the sets from one another are also relevant objects. Philosophy separates ontology and epistemology. Science separates epistemology and sociology, as any single human is perhaps too limited to obtain universal notions without others. Language separates sociology and psychology, as communication is the medium for ideas. And aesthetics delineates psychology and ethics, since emotions conflict with morals. Often one may find that the moral obligation may conflict with one’s positive sensibilities. What is truly good ethically is a mix of scientific efficiency, social justice, and personal desire, social justice being the universal fulfillment of reasonable aesthetic desires.

Psychology is a single point-of-view of ontology. Sociology is a collection of such points-of-view. The path of society appears manifested by the interactions of the collective sense. Perhaps the collective sense is the people and machines that observe the environment and exchange information. Ethics considers the biosphere in its entirety and what it should do, assuming it can intentionally do anything as a unit. If ethics does not exist, then perhaps the next best system to determine collective behavior is economics. The difficulty of survival necessitates complex motions, but not pure chaos; a mix that is difficult for linear thinking beings. The weighted judgment, hierarchy of skill, and distribution of labor and reward are just a few properties needed by the group that are provided by an economic system. Ultimately it is the individual’s interactions with the environment (changing the environment) that determines the outcome (the current configuration of the environment).

Perhaps the most interesting sets are ethics and sociology. Sociology and psychology appear rather concrete, as most individuals believe their selves to be a real existing thing. The belief of self existence comes from the locality of thought and feeling, as well as the physical appearance of the body. The physical appearance is also perceived in others, as well as their effect on the self, which makes them appear concrete. Ethics and epistemology appear abstract as they consider universal notions, rather than only the local appearances. Ethics considers the dynamics between each individual psychology. These dynamics seem to change based on needs, wants, skills, character, and possibility.

A Philosophical Work in Progress VIII

One may be able to claim that the consciousness/mind/manual mode is bounded to the body/subconsciousness/automatic mode of this particular being. But there appears to be a kind of freedom for the body from whatever principle governs matter. For Newton stated that an object in motion or rest will stay as such unless acted upon by an external force, I believe. Biological beings move without any apparent external force acting upon them. This is freedom from physics in a sense, but the body itself makes the limit of that freedom known by use of pain it seems.

The body is not outside of physics. It is the awareness of itself, i.e. a point’s ability to choose when to stop/go and its direction based on some rules perhaps, that frees it from inertia. However, being that a being can not merely stop being a being, the body is constantly being bombarded by forces; it itself is an amalgamation of forces. Thus, in a sense, the body is not free to stop, since stopping is death and decay. So it seems the body seeks solace in the mind which seeks solace in certain aspects of the world. I would perhaps say i seek my own solace in philosophy, but that conscious claim is merely one part of my subconscious.

Perhaps the body intends to keep the mind bounded to this place. Because there’s someplace better, worst, or nothingness beyond existence, one that exist can not be sure. Though the consciousness controls the body, it doesn’t control every part of the body. I can’t directly turn off and on my heartbeat, visual system, audio system etc.; it can only be done indirectly, e.g. through blinking, covering one’s ears, perhaps one can speed up and slow down one’s heartbeat. One can not directly perceive how the brain motion, i.e. neurons, translate into mental actions, at least not in a “the brain is telling the mind everything the body is doing and why it is doing it by means of a social language.” The subconsciousness, i.e. some system that runs in the background of consciousness, seems necessary for the body to function without the apparent feeling of constant labor on the consciousness. But it is not only that I feel no labor from some action, I also feel no control. Consciousness still feels any stress on systems it doesn’t have the power to freely manipulate.

Though the mind contains all the information one has interacted with up till now, the conscious only has access to whatever it needs and can get access to at a given time. The subconscious seems to process the bodies condition and stored information, which is a lot of information given the bodies chemical structure and constant operation, and simplifies it into a consciousness, it seems. The automatic aspect of the mind is perhaps constantly adding and changing data, while the manual mind merely changes and selects data. For no one adds anything new to the world, rather we all bring existing objects together. What a mind chooses to do depends on what it believes is possible in the world, and what it believes depends on how it interprets the information it receives. If the consciousness is a simplification of the subconsciousness, how does the subconsciousness decide what information is most significant? Perhaps the subconsciousness uses hierarchical categorization for notions, which could be a result of placing one’s attractions higher than one’s repulsions.

Philosophy for itself appears to contradict philosophy for the good and virtuous, in that one must possess preferences for the world to be a particular way, which appears to conflict knowing the world qua world. Such may only be the mark of the mind as a mere observer of the world, in contrast to the mind as a particular participant in it; or simply put, one’s perceived philosophical place in existence. For whether the mind is free and thus has the dilemma of what to do with freedom, or it is destine but unable to perceive the future, there seems to be a negative feeling associated with attaching necessity to choose. Ethically a least action principle is perhaps the best option if one does not possess certainty in action, but aesthetically something analogous to minimalism is perhaps the least appealing or interesting, minimalism being whatever nothingness would appear to be.

Pwip XXXI

Ethics doesn’t necessarily coerce one to accept the seemingly necessary conditions of moral living. I imagine the emotional contradictions ethics would maintain as an explicit form would be as followed. It would be positively affected when one is happy to follow the imperative; and negatively affected when one dislikes one’s lot. There is no actual force ethics can apply on the self beyond the physics or beings aware of its existence. And the existence of a true rational moral is determined by domains and the existence of professionals. One may perhaps consider the various relations that manifest themselves in each domain as politics. Various connections generate a number of layers in a hierarchy; and rules aren’t always explicit, much less strategies. And immoral individuals aren’t against taking advantage of the lack of explicity in ethics.

Though metaphysics and ethics are related, and a lack of science can be replaced with a metaphysical knowledge base, their collaboration can lead to harm. The problem is metaphysics (particularly non-scientific metaphysics) is highly speculative, while ethics becomes less nebulous as one interacts with the world and learns one’s own traits. Metaphysics starts at science’s boundary, which could also be the boundary of one’s knowledge; or it is one’s whole view of the world. The ability to be kind and empathetic is an ability of high level brain function, which can be studied by science. The law shouldn’t appeal to metaphysical notions for ethical reasoning, because the nature of metaphysics is curious, and not certain. Ethics may appear metaphysical because it maintains philosophical and dynamic dilemmas that aren’t simple to solve without passing some knowledge threshold.

Many ethical conflicts are based on the subjectivity not wanting to give control to the objective ethics, as true ethics may find the power unjustified and take it. Yet, proof of an ethical principle is no simply matter, as it requires correct reasoning in one’s self and the ability to bring others to that reasoning. A strategy to avoid the objective ethics could be to understand the ethical reasoning and know its correct, yet still reject its rule on psychological grounds, where one may not follow the rule because they lack the motive or ability to deny their own nature which maybe innately unethical. Physics will not stop the body’s actions that obey its laws, its laws intersecting and completely being separate from the laws of ethics.

Typical use of metaphysics in ethics is religion or theology, where individuals apply aesthetic reasoning to existence in general and ethics in particular. Religions have various properties, one is they all seem to possess the essential values for life. The aesthetic reasoning is easier to comprehend than science as a whole. Individuals naturally come to words, books, and a narrative. These things are natural for humans, but metaphysical skepticism and awkwardness appears more philosophically appropriate. Religion presents individuals with explicit ethical rules and ontological truths, completing the individual’s epistemology. Logic seemingly necessitates negation as a part of the completion of its proof, paradoxically achieving completeness through incompleteness. Metaphysical certainty is more difficult than practical certainty because there’s no constant reaffirmation by something like the present moment or the strongest feeling/sense.

The minds relation to the world and the others may manifest different identities, as the addition or negation of an object or individual changes the boundaries of actions. Considering the conditions and limitations of the planet and abilities of others, one may also consider one’s boundaries. Metaphysics is utilized in the absolute past or absolute future, assuming such things exist. The not so far future and the far future appear to have probabilities based on one’s information set. The temporally present world maintains a balance similar to a mathematical equation. But as the expression of anything must come in an aesthetic form, art appears also necessary. It maybe a question as to which expressions are best? But as long as truth can be expressed in the language, the arbitrariness of the language may not matter.