3. Finite and Relative

This page is still very much under construction, and there are two Videos pending . . .

Thesis’s:

In the mean time this is a synopsis of what it will discuss:

A. The conundrums of the quest of modern western philosophy (founded by Descartes),

B. The success of the modern scientific method,

c. The metaphysics implied by quantum physics and the big bang,

Discussions A.B. & C. will lead us to the conclusion that this reality is likely finite and relative regarding its nature and all its qualities and quantities, as opposed to infinite and absolute.

This means that epistemologically the world is knowable, often with asymptotically increasing degrees of confidence, but certain knowledge cannot exist, and it is pathological to search for it.

Additionally realistic logic is not ultimately linear; rather induction (generalization) and deduction (specification) logic have a dialectical circular relationship. As our understanding of the world improves due to new data the “circle” grows bigger. The best we can hope for when we are trying to ascertain the truth is not some sort of liner deductive certain argument (as the post Socratic Greeks and particularly Descartes and his 500 years of followers had hoped), but rather an ultimately circular argument that at some point in the circle consistently is in harmony with what we think we have found to be true about the rest of the entire universe. The desire to “prove” the reality of a thing with linear reasoning may simply be arising from a pathological human psychological need for certainty.

A corollary subject that is related to this page would be how the precise definitions of infinity in mathematics relate to a finite and relative reality. In short, I would say that mathematics is the best tool humanity has developed to describe nature, as in the laws of physics, but mathematics remains a human tool. It fails when it’s absolute and infinite descriptions are too rigidly applied to approximate nature. Here are some interesting videos that others have made on mathematical infinity:

Beautiful TED talk on Cantor’s infinite sets - here.

Hilbert’s infinite hotel paradox – here

Mathematical properties of infinity – here.

7/15/12 eventual Finite & Relative page preliminary Outline:

* Explain how the Rose Mandala is unique in recommending the acceptance of the lwas physics as the foundational starting point for a meta-ethical system because: A. Of the understanding that there are ‘degrees’ of reality,’ accepting the gift of reality i’e. the universe and the laws of physics are the most real parts. B. the laws of physics are reality. C. Consequently Reality is greater, far greater, then humanity, and reverence should reflect that. <<Work on this

* Explain how Induction versus certainty is the core of the ontological ‘problem’

* Explain How: finite & relative & everything is a matter of degree A. still make knowledge possible, and B. removes the paradoxes.

* Paradox of Universals is removed by ‘bundling’ use example of solids being thicker ‘bundles’ of atoms than are. And a book being differentiated ‘bundle’ wise from the table it is on via bundling arising from inductive hypotheses . .

*Respond to: nominalism, realism, objectivism.

* Talk about degrees of existence of: the universe, everyday objects like a person or a tree, concepts & ‘universals,’ quantum particles, numbers & geometric forms, colors, laws of physics.

* talk about my differences with traditional bundling ?Hume?.

* talk about quantitative nature of reality and quantitative nature of inductive bundling.

We need MORE PICTURES!

Further notes on: Finite and Relative versus Infinite and Absolute ~ A New Ontology

I believe and hope that the philosophy espoused on the pages of this blog can resolve many of the most destructive debates of our time. The core conception of the philosophy is diagrammed on the Rose Mandala. The circular nature of the mandala, the ‘objective’ ethical primacy of accepting this physical reality, and the respective nesting of scientific disciplines from universal physics through earthly biology to human evolved psychology to human sociology to the self, and the dialectical nature of the subjective / objective sides of the Mandala all flow from an implicit metaphysical ontology and epistemology. It is the purpose of this page to make that ontology and epistemology more explicit, and to validate why it may be true that the Rose Mandala is at the core of the most reasonable and realistic world view philosophy yet developed. Prelude note – If you find this page to be interesting, and you are curious as to how modern philosophy arrived has reached the point where these ideas must be discussed and understood by as broad a spectrum of humanity as possible go to this blog’s page on Descartes.

Warning - All of these great issue pages attempt to condense complex discussions into a very small space. Thesis’s are used to indicates that each idea is a starting point for a larger discussion, but that each discussion can also be condensed into a fairly simple argument. However this page condenses vast subjects probably more than any of the others. Be warned that each thesis below could probably be expanded into a large volume of discussion.

Part 1.

review and state in terms of thesis’s >> The ideas on this page relate to the traditional concerns about metaphysics and epistemology that have dominated modern philosophy. I am discussing them here not just because they help resolve many of these concerns, but mainly because they are necessary to discus in order to understand why the Rose Mandala is the most logical and reasonable basis for a human meta-ethical world view. Notice that I said “most logical and reasonable.” Pretty much any time a philosopher argues for a system of ethics they are arguing that their’s are the most reasonable. The ideas that follow argue that ‘reasonable’ is a matter of degree, and ‘logic’ (and by extrapolation mathematics) is simply the human perceptual faculty for perceiving relationships; the other senses, such as sight, are more for perceiving things. And as sight, for example, is imperfect in that we cannot see infrared or ultraviolet (and if we could we would probably generally have a more complete and useful vision of the world), so also our logical statements (and this is woven into the very fabric of our language as well) are imperfect. Ironically, like our site, they are often imperfect because they are too precise and limiting. For instance in the real world ’2+2=4′ is generally too precise. ’2 +2 generally more or less = 4′ would generally be more precise. In the following 2 parts of this page you will see why this is so. Metaphysically, saying that mathematical or logical statements are ‘true’ is relatively meaningless to the degree that they don’t apply to the larger reality. I.e. a logical or mathematical statement is only true or reasonable to the degree it works as a perception of the larger reality beyond the human mind.

Ethically, being ‘reasonable’ does not therefore mean being logical in and of itself. That would be tautological. being as reasonable as you can means being as in harmony or congruence as possible with the largest reality that we have perceived. Hence being reasonable ethically implies a hierarchy where in actuality choosing to be in alignment with the laws of physics is of foundational importance. Hence the Rose Mandala. . .

Part 2.

Pre-Thesis (From this Blog’s Reverence Page) : The knowledge modern science (developed around 500 years ago), and scientitsts, have given humanity is a great blessing becuase it can humble us, and allow us to connect more easily to the greater meaning, which can transcend the cravings of our often out of balance egos. See Reverence

Thesis 1: The successes of modern science indicate that, regarding it’s ultimate validity as a path to knowledge, inductive reason is on an equal footing with deductive reason.

Thesis 2: Inductive reason and deductive reason enjoy a dialectical relationship.

Thesis 3: The “problem of Induction” is not really a problem; rather, a real problem is the canonized obsession by insecure philosophers with making pronouncements that attempt to be absolutely clear and certain. For example, it was pointed out as a concern by Hume, among others, responding to the concerns of Descartes, that inductive conclusions are not ‘certain’ conclusions.’

Thesis 4: Inductive reasoning is primarily a quantitative process. I.e. Induced general principles are more or less sound depending on the quantity (when the ‘special cases are unlimited, or of unknown limit) and or depending on the percent (when the number of special cases is known).

Thesis 5: Therefore, knowledge about what is ‘True, Reasonable and logical’ is not just qualitative, it is also quantitative.

Thesis 6: Therefore, the most reasonable and true things we can know about are likely to be quantitatively large such that they should (at least) apply to the ‘known’ universe as a whole; currently for humanity, relationship-wise that means the universal laws of physics, for instance, are perhaps the most profoundly reasonable things we can say about this physical reality.

Thesis 7: Western culture has dominated human culture for 500 years, and the history of western philosophy has been dominated by deductive reasoning because of the miss-perception that deduced conclusions can be ‘certain’ arising from qualitatively certain foundational premises. Instead specific deduced conclusions arise from general induced principles. The false perception of the primacy of deduction has been a disaster for philosophy, and for modern humanity where the world’s western dominated philosophcal tradition no longer attempts to construct (largely induce) worldviews (which is the chief crucially important useful reason for and function of philosophy). Instead the practice of modern and contemporary philosophy has generally become pathological with such limited and constrained deductive pursuits as ‘critical analysis.’

Thesis 8: Our global economy is an example of how humans are arguably the most social species in the history of life on earth. But a disadvantage of our very social nature is that we have a proclivity to follow strong cultural traditions whether they are reasonable or not. Since philosophy is the endeavor which attempts to create worldviews from which we can know how to act, our herd instinct to follow the cultural traditions of philosophy (and the mandarin authoritarian shepard ’philosophers’ who maintain them) is particularly destructive. . . Consequently free thinking, is deeply important in philosophy, and nowhere more so than in overcoming the tradition’s pathological search for certainty via deductive clarity.

etc.

Part 3: The breakthroughs of Quantum Physics (and the Big Bang theory)

If you are unfamiliar with the ‘strangeness’ of Quantum physics view this video first.

Thesis 1: The reality implied by quantum physics should not have been unexpected, because it was implicit in the reliance on empirical induction that the modern scientific method is based on. In actuality quantum physics is a profound vindication of science’s ability to give humanity knowledge about the natural world.

Why:

Thesis 2: From the success of the scientific method in creating knowledge in modern science using the inductive deductive dialectic we can infer that from the quantitative nature of induction there is a finite quantitative nature to reality, and from the dialect relationship of induction and deduction a relative nature to reality. So science’s success’s should have led us to conclude reality is finite and relative. . .

Thesis 3: The history of Physics, the Queen of the hard sciences, has been a pursuit of a unifying single ‘theory of everything.’ The first, and perhaps still the most profound, breakthrough in this process was Newton’s universal theory of gravitational force, in which the force of gravity throughout the universe could be accurately described with a single beautifully elegant and precise dynamic mathematical equation: where F is the force of attraction, G is the universal gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the two masses being attracted, and r is the radius between them. Sometime later Maxwell went on to produce similar dynamic electromagnetic force equations. And at about the same time The equations of thermodynamics were developed. In the early 20th century Einstein improved upon Newton when he developed the theory of relativity, and he and others made further improvements when they developed the theory of Quantum physics. With the Theory of quantum physics it was possible to mathematically accurately describe the other two observed forces in nature: the nuclear strong and weak forces Since the 1950s there has been an ongoing effort to tie all the theories together into a single unified force, or ‘field,’ theory. The chief contender thus far has been String Theory.

Thesis 4: the mathematical theories of physics, and theories about reality generally, are relational. In short the physical world is a noun or, thing, and scientific theories consist of relational equations, ‘verbs,’ that describe the relationships between nouns, or things.

Thesis 5: Humans cannot cognitively comprehend the world without nouns and verbs (things and relationships), so it is natural that physics, for instance, should be a discipline where we induce theories to try to describe the most precise and accurate state-able relationships or verbs of the world: such as , or E=MC2.

Thesis 6: Nouns, or things, are individuated from the larger world. Their reality arises from their internal structure. Likewise verbs, or relationships, connect the world and there realty arises from the external connections they create.

Thesis 7: If induction is truly a valid mode of making assumptions about reality then the uncertain, non- absolute, finite, quantitatively open nature of induction means that reality in some profound sense is also finite and relative.

Thesis 8: Since we know the world via things and relationships (nouns and verbs), and we know that ‘thing-ness’ is internal, and relationships are external, and the successes of science indicate the validity of induction, then scientists should expect that as science studies the very large all things and relationships will merge into one most real thing (the universe of the Big bang), and as they reductivelly study nature eventually the quantitative reality value of very small things will fade into quantitatively more real relationships (the world described by the equations of quantum physics).

Thesis 9: On the quantum level relations such as the equations of quantum physics or the relational conditions of an experimental apparatus become more real, literally, then the quantitatively tiny ‘things’ of the quantum world, such as electrons or photons.

Thesis 10: The discovery’s of quantum physics and the big bang are indications that the scientific method has been marvelously successful at pushing the limits of human knowledge to the limits of either this physical reality and / or of human consciousnesses ability to know the world using nouns and verbs. Scientific knowledge therefore should be accoreded very high (and probably the highest) status in any reverential treatment of this reality and one’s life in it.

Concluding ‘Thesis’s':

A: Fuzzy logic and the fuzzy principal, of Professor David Kosco, that everything is a matter of degree is true, mostly, and it probably should be seen as the dominate logic that applies to nature.

B: The metaphysical and epidemiological views briefly laid out in the thesis’s above posit the fundamental validity of knowledge acquired in an ever expanding universe encompassing and defining circular and dialectical process. It follows that as humans try to discover why and how we should act in the world we would likely need to aquire such wisdom in a comparable fashion. Since the views above are actually common sense one would expect at least some of humanity’s cultures to have already realized this. The North American plains Indians are one such culture, as is shown by their medicine wheel, and the Rose Mandala incorporates the medicine wheel and shows us the path we in the modern world follow round as our Knowledge and wisdom grows.

C: The new (metaphysics and epistemology of finite and relative as opposed to infinite and absolute)’s response the the traditional philosophical ‘Problem of Universals’ responding to Nominal-ism, Realism, and Objectivist epistemology. and an interesting post from another blogger, Agonblog. This problem seems related to another problem with my theory: it accounts for ‘things,’ such as my cell phone, and ‘relationships’ such a my cell phone relating to the table it rests on via Newton’s gravitational equation. But is or are the color red, energy, humanity, space, the number 2, or myriad other concepts things?, or relationships? The answer is contextual: Generally speaking a phenomena such as ‘red’ has a relational reality value when used as a ‘universal’ such as, “cherries are red,” or “red is a color.” Or Red has reality as a thing if it applies to a specific object such as the red light coming off of this tomato. Either way that more or less could classify the metaphysic being articulated here as realist, rather than nominalist.

From home page post (notice it doesn’t explain why ‘logic’ is mentioned) >> On Epistemology and Logic > What if the ’reality’ that we all share is finite and relative? -As opposed to infinite, or absolute. And what if understanding that idea, really understanding it, leads to an awareness that this reality is profoundly knowable, and that most of the paradoxes that have plagued modern philosophy are unreal, and that a path is now open to a unifying worldview that is no more prone to dogmatism than the world view of modern science?