Weinstein Axiomatic Self

A coherent architecture for modeling reality
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-0983-0234-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 252 Seiten

This book is about self discovery, self awareness, and self definition. It is about seeing the whole of reality and clearly seeing what, where, and that you are, and what contribute to reality. It is about what can and cannot be known, in what degree of certainty or faith. This book is about self determination, self confidence, and self support. It delineates your powers and responsibilities in such areas as morality and social contracts, and describes the trade-offs inherent in the human condition, such as the trade-off between freedom and insecurity, bonding and being bound. This book is about knowing yourself and more.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weinstein, Joseph

Leseproben

Chapter 3 That You Are,
Where You Are… From a subjective perspective I assert that you, at the center of your consciousness, are axiomatic, and necessary, non-contingent, uncaused in that context, which is your first/proximal perspective. I have used some apologetics terms for a ring of familiarity for folks interested in that topic, and I may expand those later. There are however, some approaches to reality that prefer to discount, denigrate, or actually deny the individual self. Some of these offer ‘lack of evidence proofs’ for their position, rightly saying that for instance, you are not your mind, you are not your memory, body etc, and asking what are you are, if not any of those those things. I will answer. First, Where You Are. To a first, and feeble-logic projection, the objective-and-sympathetic view is that ‘you’ are ‘in your brain’, associated with your body etc, but when pressed to actually define the active/receptive actor at the center of subjectivity, objective science cannot even define it, most harshly explaining it away as imaginary and an illusion, a ‘side effect of biochemical reactions’ etc. There were also the embarrassingly weak-and-missing-the-point Decartes ‘in the pineal gland’ stuff. But just as a movie’s meaning will never be explained by the chemistry and physics of film, the objective scientist is bootless to directly address the subjective as such, as it lives, as it is. Western objective science rightly limits itself to what is, purified/isolated from any subjectivity. But this is not to say subjectivity is not real, just that it complicates the subject being pursued. It could be said that between subjectivity and objectivity, physics just took the easier problem space. So, where you are really? Now please, for a moment, imagine a simple geometric cube in your mind. Those light grey lines for the edges, in front of your unpopulated darker background... Rotate it around a bit, like an idle examination of a rubix cube, then have it rest stationary for now... Now arbitrarily deem it to be of a specific dimension, such as a one-foot cube, an inch, a mile, any linear unit you like or invent. Now, geometrically from a careful measurement of the apparently differing angles and differing lengths due to perspective, you can now mathematically and exactly *calculate where you are*, the viewer in this experience, at your *point of view*, relative to that cube, looking at it. The first attribute of you in subjective space is locality. You are at the center, you occupy your point of view. This locating/relativity is strictly in subjective space. It says nothing and can mean nothing about anything in that hypothetical and utterly separate other space, the space of the moon and stars, the physical universe. But you’re there, in your subjective space-time. For a bonus effect, instead of rotating this imaginary cube of yours in your mind, assay/consider it to be fixed in place, while you take it upon yourself to do the moving, taking you and your point of view up and over, and back under the cube till you return to your original place. Relatively, geometrically there should be do difference, yet I’ll wager the latter exercise was more troublesome, even queasy-making. There is something of gravity at you. But you cannot look at your own real, current self at your point of view, you must infer it, yourself. To view something requires separation, perspective, and you cannot distance yourself from your operant self. You cannot simultaneously see it and be it. You can certainly and easily model a disembodied viewer observing an imagined cube, for instant, and do the calculations, for fun. But the real you is creating/observing the model. You are not currently at that location relative to the one-cubit cube. Now, imagine you are in a lightless, windowless vault, with only a flashlight to find the tools and means to make your escape. The one tool you will never illuminate is the flashlight itself! You must infer its location by following the projected cone of light back to its focus/origin. Consider your conscious living attention like that beam from a flashlight, that you train on subjects of your interest. There you are, beaming/looking out from the point of origin, that exact point of view. “I exist” The First Axiom Of The Articulate* Consciousness “But do I really exist?” “Who wants to know?” ;) *(For the purposes of asserting this axiom, I assume/require that the consciousness in question has the linguistic ability to articulate an axiom, or actually just make any assertion) The following is a slightly prolix and legalistic exposition, because I penned it originally to withstand and dispense all attacks from an arguer who was very intelligent and yet fervently bound to a philosophy denying the self, ultimately and illogically himself, even as his every protestation belied his non-existence! First, some definitions: a claimer/stater/proposer A claimer/stater/proposer is anyone who can/does make a claim, make a statement. This is a trivial, obvious definition. It is included specifically to illustrate and declare that any other specificity or details about the claimant are moot and irrelevant to the following thesis. This is to forefend any question like “Who is this claimant?” as irrelevant as long as it is a stater, as defined/evidenced. You may comfortably presume/assume them to be a natural human, or if it suits you, your presumed set of proposers could include any more ‘exotic’ disembodied consciousness or talking crystals you may posit or imagine. For the purposes of this argument, all we care about is that he/she/it has the ability to utter a claim. Defining ‘axiom’ “An axiom is an irreducible primary. It doesn’t rest upon anything else in order to be valid, and it cannot be proven by any “more basic” premises. A true axiom can not be refuted because the act of trying to refute it requires that very axiom as a premise. An attempt to contradict an axiom can only end in a contradiction.” (copied gratefully from http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Axiom.html) This is a current, most philosophically rigorous definition, not for instance Euclid’s softer usage, which boiled down to “anything I claim as true that I won’t/can’t discuss/doubt/deny”. The Assertion: “I exist” is an axiom. “I exist” is axiomatically true proposition, whenever proposed, at a minimum for the duration of the utterance, the utterer being self-evidently extant, identified necessarily and sufficiently, even if only to their self, as the proposer. “I exist” doesn’t rest on anything else to be valid, and it requires its being true (the existence of the claimer) just to be claimed, and it cannot be tested/proven by anything more basic, nor can it be contradicted by the claimant. You can’t doubt yourself, because *there you are* in that incongruous attempt, the one doing the doubting. “Do I exist?” “Who wants to know?” ;) You can’t test yourself because you’re the one running the test, and can’t even pretend to escape yourself for any temporary suspension of belief that a test would require. Even the cop in the “Three Stooges” looking for them in a dark cave when he called out “Is there anyone in there?” didn’t buy it when Curly gave an emphatic “No!” ;) Regarding “at a minimum for the duration of the utterance”, that is the temporal bounds of the context in which the axiom is axiomatic. There is no claim or requirement that the proposer will continue to exist for any period beyond the utterance, nor any claim or requirement that the claimant existed for any time before making the claim. While obviously and usually our set of claimers are natural humans who spend most of their time not claiming anything but still exist, any/all particular circumstances of the claimers are irrelevant to the axiom. I was helpfully referred to Quine’s objection regarding axioms, that the singling out of any subset of statements within a theory as axioms/axiomatic is conventional, other statements could be chosen with the same effect, given sufficient implicational rearrangements within the theory. I disagree, and clarify: I am not singling anything out. An ontology, by virtue solely of it’s definition may passively-but-logically connote a set of strong axioms, to be discovered rather than any limited selective anointment/enshrinement. Ie: no ‘convention’ allowed, all axioms, known or yet to be discovered, deemed so by meeting the exacting and neutral standard set by the definition of ‘axiom’. For Quine to use the term ‘conventional’ is to permit a softer definition of ‘axiom’, such as Euclid’s, where some presuppositions are titled ‘axioms’ to cosset them as ‘no-touch-me’ elements for which the author will simply brook no question. More definitions: Tautology - a phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words. I would distinguish this from another definition, which is “an expression which is true in all cases” or “a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form”. The distinction is that these latter definitions would include axioms as tautologies. But as long as there is no pejorative to ‘tautology’, the distinction may be held moot. To exist is vastly more elemental than...