Epicureans, Stoics and the Code

djhm April 6, 2011

In this Post: Even featuring the Tea Party!
The history of philosophy is constantly punctuated with battles between two practically orthogonal ways of thinking. A case of this philosophical dichotomy that was particularly well thought and well fought was that between the Epicureans and the Stoics. This ancient joust of ideas is quite pertinent today. Epicureanism, with its atomism, dualism and extreme nominalism, can be taken as a roughhewn template of the thinking of the modern sciences. Charles Sanders Peirce remarked on this opposition between the Epicureans and the Stoics and noted “Epicureanism was a doctrine extremely like that of John Stuart Mill.” In the twentieth century, English philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Peter Frederick Strawson took up the relay. Judging by the obituaries, Strawson would have to go down as a very successful Epicurean as he was noted for leading a remarkably pleasant and happy life in step with an equally pleasant style of philosophy
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Semiotic Structure of the Four World Religions

djhm April 4, 2011

The previous post outlined the overall structure of the world religions with the diagram shown above (Figure 3) This structure can be studied in more detail.

The Theological Square of Squares

The theological semiotic square provides a way of understanding the four world religions and how they relate to each other. Every religion has its own semiotic square and so there are semiotic squares “within” the semiotic square. Take Hinduism for example. The One in the One-is-One doctrine is the Brahman, the impersonal god that cannot be worshipped directly. The Brahman can be comprehended in the form of a triad of personal gods consisting of Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. This leads to the semiotic square in Figure where Vishnu occupies the same front top slot as did the Christ god and Shiva occupying the same back left slot as Allah. Brahma, who is rarely worshiped takes up the Buddhist slot. Theologians warn that this is an error. The Christ god and Vishnu are quite different as are Shiva and Allah.

The semiotic structure shown in Figure 3 corresponds to a very unconditioned reality, Figure 4 shows four semiotic squares, one for each entry in the first semiotic square. Each such entry corresponds to a qualifying context for the four more qualified structures. Each of these four semiotic squares corresponds to a whole and should be comprehended in isolation as they are mutually exclusive. You can’t be a Christian and a Muslim in the same instant. Each semiotic square is shown with a small accompanying square representing the qualifying context.

With experience with these structures, further reading of the material presented here, practice and some guidance from an instructor, the student should be able to start providing detailed explanations concerning the mythical beliefs and imagery surrounding theological structures. For example, why is Vishnu and his reincarnations such as Krishna all dark skinned and Shiva vivid white? Why does Vishnu have reincarnations and Shiva none? Why does the Christian god have an offspring and Allah none? The Koran in the Islamic trinity is divine substance. The book transcribed by Mohamed is a combination of symbols that only approximate divine substance. Expand. Last of all, why are the principle deities featuring in major religions all male?

Any well versed theology or divinity student should be able to provide some kind of reasonable response to these questions. It is hoped that the material provided by the author will expand the horizons somewhat. The author also hopes that the layman, together with the theoretical physicist might also profit from the experience.

Figure 4 The godhead of each of the four world religions.

Shankara’s Quintuple Dosage

Taken together with the unqualified semiotic square in Figure 3, the overall structure feature a configuration of five squares. Back in medieval times, The Indian Shankara put forward a non-theological version of this structure in his Theory of the Quintuple Dosage based on a theory of five intertwining elements. As a matter of passing interest the diagram can be found in the author’s previous book (Moore, 1992) and elsewhere.

The Real and the Imaginary

In the previous section, we have started exploring elementary cognitive or generic structures and their interplay with reality. The theological semiotic square has provided a way of understanding a holistic view of reality and that are four fundamental “takes” on reality. These four worldview paradigms are mirrored in the four world religions.

Science without subject

In present day scientific circles, it is generally thought that there is only one kind of science worthy of the name. These are the traditional empirical based sciences that we have been referring to as left side sciences. Left side sciences are considered as objective as they study objects under controlled conditions that remove any possible subjective factors. As such, left side science specialises in the domain of objects where any reference or involvement of the subject has been eliminated. The operational paradigm here is science without subject. Such sciences end up in a single opposition between two different kinds of object. The objects involved are the real object and the imaginary object. Left side science is dominated by a duality between the real and the imaginary.

The duality between the real and the imaginary runs right throughout the science and appears in many different and sometimes surprising guises. In the first instance, it appears as the dichotomy between the object of a science and the theory of that object. The object is considered as belonging to the real whilst the theory belongs to abstraction and hence is imaginary. This primary opposition resurfaces in Analytic Philosophy in another guise as the Mind Body problem.

Classical physics provides the most dramatic expression of the Real Imaginary duality. According to the classical physics doctrine, all entities have properties. In physical reality, only entities are deemed to exist, whilst properties, not being entities, are deemed not to exist, In other words, entities are real whilst their properties are imaginary. This is an amazing situation as the only way that classical physics can get to know the real component of reality, the entities, is via perceiving and measuring the attribute. Real world entities can only be known via their imaginary component. This is left side science at its purest and most intriguing. Not only does the science lack a subject, it has to content with a second rate access to real objects. The whole system bathes in the imaginary. There might be two halves to the world, but we can never know more than one half, the imaginary half.

Science with Subject

The opposing paradigm to the Science without Subject doctrine leads naturally to Science with Subject. This is where we find right side science; the paradigm that insists that Subject must be present with Object at all times, and treated on equal terms. It is at this point, right at the beginning of the presentation, that we see the essential difference emerging between left and right side reasoning. The left side cuts the world into imaginary and real chunks, and only retains the chunk that it feels it can know, the imaginary. This left brained beast can only know what it feels. This creature lives in a half world that keeps on fracturing into finer and yet finer distinctions.

Contrary to the fractured atomistic half worldview of the left side, right side science specialises in always seeing the world in the form of wholes. The wholes are reminiscent of Leibnitz’s monads “without windows.” Each offers a holistic view of the universe. Both the left and right side paradigms agree that their world is split into two, the imaginary on the left, and the real on the right. This is where the two paradigms part ways and enter into two different worlds. The left side takes refuge in the left side, satisfied with the half world of abstraction. The right side paradigm must also make its home on the right side. However, unlike its tunnel vision sibling, it is conscious of a bigger world and its domain of influence extends over the whole world. It is even conscious of its sibling and acknowledges left side deftness in dealings requiring finer, crystalline aspects of reality. On the other hand, the left side is prone to believe that it is an only child, and often behaves accordingly. This is particularly notable for left side science.

The critical step to obtaining a holistic view is to introduce a second cut, orthogonal to the first. The first cut determined the dichotomy between impersonal subject on the right and its corresponding object on the left. The second cut determines the personal subject at the front and its corresponding object at the back. Instead of two takes on reality, the paradigm provides four takes. We have returned to the semiotic square structure. Just as for the left side, the concept of the real and the imaginary emerge. This time the real becomes associated, not with the impersonal subject, but with the confluence of the impersonal subject with the personal. This corresponds to the front, right hand corner of the semiotic square. Now, the left side paradigm declares that the real can only be known via the imaginary side, via attributes, abstract theory and so forth. The right side paradigm has its own take on this matter.

The real world is no longer that thing out there seen from the God’s eye view from nowhere. The real becomes relativised to the personal subject. The real becomes the identity of the personal subject with its reality, the impersonal subject. This becomes an expression of Shankara’s principle of non-duality expressing the formula the One is One. The impersonal reality and the reality of the personal become indistinguishable. This is real, all else is illusion, Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta declared. For consistency, we prefer the term imaginary rather than illusion.

Then suddenly, we hit the goldmine. Left side, after cutting itself off from the real has to content itself with knowing the real via empirical attributes flowing from god know where and what. The right side paradigm does not need to go out there rummaging through the dustbin for leftover attributes in order to understand the real. The right side already has three attributes in immediate possession. This can be seen from the semiotic square produced by the two fundamental oppositions. Relative to the personal, real subject in the front right hand side of the square, there are three other boxes left over that provide an opportunity to get to know the allusive One is One entity. These three boxes can be thought of as three attributes of the real. They can also be thought of as imaginary. Thus, in summary, left side knowledge exhibits essentially a one kind of fundamental dichotomy, that between Body and Mind, the real and the imaginary, the concrete and the abstract. Knowledge of Body, the real, the concrete is via empirical attributes. One the other hand, right side knowledge exhibits a fourfold structure where the real appears as relative to the subject and there are three a priori generic attributes, applicable to any determined subject.

The generic structure thus involves the real entity with three imaginary entities. This four-fold structure we interpret as the epistemological brain. In a moment of foolhardiness, we also interpret the biological brain to be organised along these same generic principles. Moreover, the right side of this structure is capable of comprehending the whole structure in these terms. The left side is anchored in an atomistic view of reality and is incapable of such an overview. The left side, be it epistemological or biological, by its very nature cannot be conscious of the whole.

Real and Imaginary Numbers

Many years ago, the author’s first glimmer of understanding came from some quite elementary mathematics. The details can be found in the Appendix. Very briefly, it concerns the nature of number. Students are taught that there are two kinds of number, real numbers and imaginary numbers. Imaginary numbers are necessary in order to provide a tractable number for the square root of negative numbers. Numbers made up of a real and an imaginary part are called complex numbers. Most students, even engineers and scientists, go through their studies only knowing about complex numbers and that there is only one kind of imaginary number. This is left side mathematics at work.

In a later post, the right side slant will be presented, free of any metaphysics. In this case, you get hyper-complex numberswith one real and three kinds of imaginary number.

Both the left side and the right side version of real and imaginary numbers should be included in a balanced education.

Key Phrases: Semiotic square, genetic code, generic code, DNA, start codon, left right hemispheres, the divided brain, epistemology, anti-mathematics, masculine, feminine, gender differentiation, Generic Science, Semiotic structure

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Science is a Belief System

djhm April 4, 2011

I’m talking about left and right hemispheres. Sometimes it’s not sure whether I’m talking about the biological brain, the mind, or the epistemological divide between the empirical sciences and the “other” way of thinking. I’ve given up making the distinction. I’d rather be hung for a tiger than a sheep. Well, the whole Cosmos is split into left and right sides and the cleavage line goes right down the middle of the author’s skull. I must point out that the same situation applies to you as well. No one is spared in being chopped in half. In the post after this one, we see that even God is split in two.

Traditional Sciences form a Belief System
The left hemisphere bathes in abstract reality. This great bubble of floating rationality works from propositions, which have truth-values. As such, each proposition expresses a belief. The left side subject believes in propositions, which have ‘true’ truth-values, and disbelieves propositions, which are deemed to have false truth-values. A considerable source of angst for the left hemisphere is figuring out what propositions to believe in and which to disbelieve. The source of angst comes from the fact that the whole rational apparatus is suspended mid-air in a world of abstraction. This abstract bubble of rationality has no logically expressible relationship to the non-abstract world, whatever that might be. Like Descartes contemplating his own thinking, this miserable isolated left hemisphere eventually arrives at its core belief: it is true that I exist because I’m thinking about it. Of course, this Cartesian proposition is only a belief. Like all the uni-directional propositions that populate the left hemisphere, by its very uni-directional nature the proposition has a truth-value which only may be true and equally may be false. The only critical faculty available to left side reasoning is the demand for internal logical coherence of its belief system.

The end result is that left side thinking can be very sharp for detecting the most subtle logical irregularities, contradictions and variances from the current prevailing belief system. This is the strong point of left side reasoning. The weak point is that the resulting belief system can creep so far away from common sense that it becomes quite whacky, fundamentalist religious belief system and political belief systems can even become very dangerous and destructive. Modern sciences, exploiting the analytical clarity of left side, try to avoid creeping into insanity by peer review and attempting informal common sense interpretations of empirical data.

The corpus of knowledge making up present day sciences makes up a gigantic belief system. Karl Popper cottoned on to this fact by providing his well-known criterion for a belief system. A belief system is one where no proposition in the system is absolutely and definitively true. For Popper, a belief system was one where every proposition that is provisionally true but may be “falsifiable”. For this to be possible, all propositions must enjoy the rational status of possessing a truth value: hence, providing the possibility of being either true or false.

Karl Popper effectively declared that modern science, according to his falsifiability criterion, was fundamentally a belief system. He then went on to use the criterion in the reverse sense: If any pretender to scientific knowledge was not a belief system then it was “unscientific.”

For traditional science, the minimal requirement for an assertion be acceptable as scientific is that it be either believable or unbelievable. This requires that the assertion can be stated as a proposition possessing a truth value thus allowing a believable object of belief (true truth-value) or disbelief (false truth-value). Left side science is intimately wedded to a certain brand of logic which assumes the Law of the Excluded Middle. There is no middle way. Propositions are believed either true or false, in science. There is no “cannot be determined” or “not applicable here” clause in the logic of the empirical sciences. If a proposition should indeed offer such “third option” possibilities then it cannot be an object of belief or disbelief and so would not be accepted as being potentially scientific. The validity of an empirical science proposition must be black or white, there are no greys.
Traditional science is based on abstraction. A fundamental characteristic of abstract reasoning is that it does not demand that objects exist or not. This is seen as its power. A favourite topic for abstract reasoning is the proposition “God exists.” Is the proposition true or false? The same question can be asked about unicorns and gravitons. Do they exist? According to the Law of the Excluded Middle, the answer must be true or false. The basic assumption of abstract reasoning is that existence is an attribute. Something existing or not existing is like something having mass or being massless. Existence is a mere attribute that some things have at a particular point in time. Unicorns will never have existence because they are fictional. Unicorns do not exist and never will exist. Socrates also does not exist, but for a different reason: he is dead. The Judeo-Christian god is an entity which possesses this existence attribute. God exists. In the form of his son, he even once existed in the flesh. What is more, he can return in the flesh at any time. The Judeo-Christian god is distinct from any other god by its existence attribute. Grace to this attribute, the citizen is faced with a stark choice. The citizen, being an abstract thinker, must respect the Law of the Excluded Middle. He can believe that god exists and so enter into the communion of believers. Alternatively, he can believe the contrary: God does not exist, he declares. He thus enters into the club of the Atheists. Theist or atheist? That is the question. It is in this way that the god fearing believer and the god hating atheist join hands in a common goal. They are all people that believe that the god question is a reasonable question with a clear and precise answer. They are all creatures driven by belief. Of course there might be a third option, that of the agnostic. However, the agnostic must climb to even more illustrious heights and start musing over whether the Law of the Excluded Middle is valid or not, and why.

Not all people are creatures of belief. This is the case for Allah and the Hindu gods. In the case of the secular Islamic world, for example, there are no atheists as there are in the secular Judeo-Christian world. No one, not even the most devout Muslim, believes in Allah and so no one can disbelieve in Allah. Allah is not an object of belief as Allah is beyond the true and the false. With Allah belief is inconsequential, what matters is faith. Allah is determined by the faith of the individual. If you hold such faith then Allah is your god. If you are secular, not only do you have no god, you have no concept of god. There is no debate. There cannot be any debate between the faithful and the infidel, just a different state of being based on faith or the lack of it. The difference between belief and faith can be difficult for Westerners to comprehend.

There is a big difference between belief and faith. For example, someone can believe in fairies but it is difficult to imagine having faith in fairies. In Christianity, belief comes first and faith second. It is quite possible for a Christian to have a crisis in faith and even lose the faith. Nevertheless, the Christian will still believe in God.

The Christian god is qualifiable by a proposition that satisfies the Law of the Excluded Middle. The proposition “God exists” thus can be considered as a scientific hypothesis. This is where Popper steps in and adds an extra requirement for a proposition to be acceptable as a scientific hypothesis, the proposition must be falsifiable. The general consensus amongst both Judeo-Christian theists and atheists alike is that the proposition “God exists” is not falsifiable. There is no scientific experiment that could possibly refute the proposition. Thus, by Popper’s criterion, the question of whether god exists or not cannot be covered by science. Once again, the theists and atheists usually concur on this conclusion, something which underlines the unanimity of theists and atheists in Judeo-Christian culture. Theists and atheists mutually agree on everything except the particular truth value of a proposition.

However, things aren’t as simple as that. Some atheists have felt threatened by theists who have started to pedal a fundamentalist view of creation. To restore the balance against the inroads that the Creationists are having into the education system, the atheists have resurrected some nineteenth century science to act as an alternative beacon of inspiration for our youth. They call this alternative to Creationism, Darwinism. The atheists peddle the Darwinist message that every human being on this planet is the end result of a long series of random genetic mutations leading to what we are today. By selling Darwin tee shirts over the web and promoting this inspirational message across the media, the atheists hope to win the day.

The battle between the Creationists and the New Darwinists seems to be essentially peculiar to the US. What is of concern in this section is the scientific status of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Firstly, one should note that the basic epistemological basis of the Theory of Evolution was due to the Epicureans of ancient Greek and so preceded Darwin by several thousand years. Despite a similarity of their world scientific outlook, the Epicureans differed from the New Darwinians by their views on how to enjoy life. The New Darwinian advocates getting meaningful pleasure out of life by getting excited about new pictures posted on the Hubble telescope web-site. The Epicureans took a different tack. Rather than pleasure being a mere by-product of certain kinds of scientific pursuit, they turned the pursuit of pleasure into the central object of science itself. They argued that one of the worst obstacles to leading a happy pleasurable life was fear of the gods. This lead to the Epicureans taking the theological position that the gods were distant from humans and totally uninterested in human affairs. Of particular interest was their scientific outlook. The Epicureans, although not empirically minded, held a similar philosophical outlook to traditional sciences. They were strict materialists, atomists and determinists. The whole world was in the vice of a strict determinism of cause and effect. But, like modern physics, there was an exception to this draconian determinism. Epicure called it the Swerve. Atoms moved and interacted with each other in a totally deterministic way but every now and then an atom would execute an imperceptible, totally random “swerve”. Epicure exploited this notion to develop his Swerve Theory of the universe. At the beginning of the cosmic cycle, the world is non-structured: All atoms were falling down in straight vertical lines, according to Epicure. After an immensely long time, because of the accumulated random swerves of the otherwise deterministic atoms, the universe micro swerved into the way it is today,

Amazingly, this picture is no different in principle to that of modern science. The random beginnings were a bit different but the micro swerving into the world of today is the same belief. Since Epicure’s time Swerve Theory has come a long way. The random swerves of atoms has been confirmed and even quantified. Nowadays the Epicurean Swerve Theory is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and is explained in the Wave Equation.

Swerve Theory has been applied to the biological realm where it manifests itself as genetic mutations. Just as collections of atoms micro-swerved to produce the first single celled living creature, further random swerving eventually lead to the animals that we have become today. It’s all a product of Epicurean Swerve Theory.

Darwinism also adds in the survival of the fitness paradigm as an embellishment of Epicurean Swerve Theory. It is thus claimed that genetic swerving is not a completely random process as some swerves are more successful as others and hence are directed by success. The successful swerves then go to propagate other successful swerves. The end result is that only the fittest survive. In fact, the survival of the fitness paradigm is a huge red herring. It’s about as meaningful as saying that the survivors of a car crash are the fittest compared to those that perished. The paradigm is a simple tautology. Who survive are the fittest, who are the fittest are the survivors. The semantics are the same, only the labels change. All up, the survival of the fitness paradigm adds nothing to elementary Epicurean Swerve Theory. To name the survivors as being the fittest is just a change of terminology. We are all the “fittest,” we are all the last men standing; we are all the survivors of a trillion times a trillion Epicurean Swerves. And that is the way we came to be the way we are today, believe it or not, says the Theory.

It would seem that Epicurean Swerve Theory and its modern biological successor in Darwinism are capable of being expressed in terms of a theory that people can believe or disbelieve. Thus the theory could be taken as a traditional scientific hypothesis. However, there is no way to possibly refute the hypothesis. That things change deterministically with a random component, this is hard to refute. This is what Karl Popper himself eventually recognised. By his falsification criteria, Darwinism was unscientific! Popper initially accepted this conclusion and only later tried to worm his way out of it. Refuting that we didn’t just drift to where we are today and thus refute Darwinism is a task that even Popper can’t convincingly achieve.

Where Darwinism wins prestige is the notion that the theory explains something. It explains evolution. However, it only has descriptive not explanatory powers. It describes evolution. As we know, the evolutionary process goes in the face of what is predicted by the second law of thermodynamics where there should be a drift to increased entropy, an ineluctable drift towards thermodynamic death. However, this drift is deterministic as there is no Epicurean Swerve or Heisenberg Uncertainty in classical thermodynamic theory. In the evolving world we live in, the opposite seems to be the case. Evolution leads to an apparent decrease in entropy, a steady rise in diversity rather than a steady fall. Darwinism describes this phenomenon, but does not explain it.

We are now coming to the end of this section with the basic understanding that science is based upon falsifiable belief. As for religion, it is either based on non-falsifiable belief or faith, which is impervious to belief. In the third slot is Darwinism. It appears that Darwinism is somewhere in the domain of the Epicurean Swerve theory. Alternatively it can be taken as a non-falsifiable belief that things, particularly living things, evolve and so are in the same boat as the religions. The New Darwinians seem to prefer the latter option ad see it as a viable religion substitute, but still a religion nevertheless.

It is now time to carry out another exercise in semiotic analysis. This time we will end up with a system based on belief on the left side and a system based on something else on the right. The right side system is based on faith. This will be an exercise in theology. See the next post.

D. J. H. Moore

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Kant’s Semiotic Square

djhm April 1, 2011

An easy way to construct a semiotic square is with two dichotomies. The hard part is choosing the pertinent fundamental dichotomies. We adapt the convention that the first and primary dichotomy provides the left side, right side dichotomy of the square. The secondary dichotomy provides what we will call the front side, back side of the square. Drawn on a piece of paper the secondary dichotomy will correspond to the two halves defined by a horizontal dividing line of the square.

In previous sections we developed a fundamental semiotic square based on the oppositions between the One and the Multiple. This opposition was applied twice, once as a left right side dichotomy and once for the other axis. In the first case the One involves the impersonal One. The second case involves the personal One. This was repeated in another interpretation as the opposition between subject and object. The first opposition involved the impersonal subject and the objects that it subjectifies. The second opposition involved the personal subject and its corresponding kingdom.

It was argued that the most fundamental of these kinds of dichotomies was based on gender where the masculine expressed the attribute of pure singularity free of any other particularity. The masculine was an entity in its own right. The only particularity possessed by the feminine was that it had this attribute. In other words, the primary opposition was between two entities of different gender. The only specificity of the feminine entity is that it has an attribute. The specificity of the masculine entity was that it is this attribute: One has it, one is it. The first gender opposition is between the impersonal feminine and masculine, the left right dichotomy. The second gender opposition has the personal feminine and masculine for its two poles, the front back dichotomy. The gender construct underlies the fundamental typing mechanism underlying all of the unifying science presented in this work and helps explain the ancient theory of the four “letters” or the four elements. Exploiting this hyper-generic gender construct, a universal typing mechanism can be constructed where any entity whatsoever can be described in terms of such generic types. The four binary combinations of the two gender types provide the alphabet for such a system. In a previous section, we made a preliminary interpretation of the genetic code as being such a typing mechanism. We even tentatively linked the four letters A, U, G, and C of the genetic code with their corresponding four binary gender types MF, FF, FM and MM respectively.

How this material should be taught and at what age the various concepts should be introduced, the author has no firm opinion on such matters. The author has found that even mature can have problems coming to terms with the concepts. Some, the highly trained academic for example, find the ideas threatening.

It’s time now to look at Kant’s version of the semiotic square.

In the Critique (Kant, 1738) and particularly more clearly in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic (Kant, 1783) Kant effectively outlined two superimposed dichotomies. The primary dichotomy was between knowledge founded on a priori judgments and that founded on a posteriori judgments. A priori judgments are based upon reason alone, independently of all sensory experience, whilst a posteriori judgments require real world experience.

In addition to the primary dichotomy between a posteriori and a priori judgments, Kant superimposed a second very important dichotomy. This was the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic judgments. Analytic judgments are where the predicate is wholly contained in the subject. Synthetic judgments are where the subject is completely distinct from the predicate and so must be related to some outside principle.

We can visualise Kant’s secondary dichotomy by complementing the left-right side primary dichotomy with a front-back side secondary dichotomy where the synthetic is on the front side and analytic is at the back side as shown in Figure 15.

Superimposing the two fundamental knowledge dichotomies leads to visualising the overall architecture of knowledge as a kind of semiotic square with left and right side specialisations each with its own analytic “frontal lobes.” In effect, this is Kant’s version of the semiotic square. The artifice provides a way of visualising the epistemological structure of knowledge, the layout of the epistemological brain, so to speak. In our more rash moments, we claim that this also provides a sketch of the architectural and functional layout of the biological brain. In later sections we will investigate the role that this structure plays in the science of spatio-temporality. In the broader picture, our we intend to demonstrate the science behind Kant’s claim that all perception and cognition takes place within a spatio-temporal framework. The first informal, intuitive acquaintance with this framework is via the semiotic square.

This artifice is not presented here as a theory of the brain, but merely as a pedagogic aid to visualisation.

As can be seen from the diagram, we end up with four different kinds of science. Kant homed into the front right side of the diagram, that of synthetic a priori judgments that, in theory, should synthesise new knowledge that was necessarily true. This is the domain where the Kantian question, addressed by this book, is located. How do we produce right hand, front side knowledge?

Figure15 Kant’s two fundamental dichotomies can be superimposed to construct a semiotic square of knowledge. Solving the Kantian question requires knowledge of the right hand front corner kind.

Polysynthetic Knowledge

The knowledge that we seek is based on Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments and is, in effect, doubly synthetic knowledge. Using a term borrowed from linguistics, we will call it polysynthetic knowledge.

In linguistics an important language classification is between analytic and synthetic languages. The difference between the two classifications is not very precise but, in general, analytic languages tend to have simpler words consisting of a smaller average number of morphemes. Also, the grammatical structure of the language is expressed more in terms of syntax based on word order rather than inflexion and affixing and prefixing of grammatical markers on individual words. Overall the analytic language will be synchronic in structure rather than spatio=geometric. Thus the analytic language speaks by the intricate sequential flow of single notes of a melody. On the other hand, the synthetic language expresses its message in terms of dense, rich chords, each articulating a beautifully vivid spatio-geometric image. It does this by using words with a larger number of morphemes per word. Also word order is of less importance or, in some cases, of no importance.

It is interesting to note that proto Indo-European was highly synthetic; this is the reconstructed common mother language of all Indo-European languages including Latin, Sanskrit, Hindi, and most European languages. Since then most Indo-European derivatives, of which English is a good example, have become increasingly analytic with the passage of time.

At the extreme end of the synthetic scale are situated the polysynthetic languages. Examples of these hyper-synthetic languages seem to be closer to the deeper natural order of things. Examples of polysynthetic languages include languages of North America, Siberia, and Australia.

The polysynthetic nature of Australian Pama-Nyungan languages is illustrated by the example:

“…the words meaning man (ergative) + see (past tense) + you (accusative) + big (ergative) can be placed in any word order whatever; they will be understood to mean ‘(A/The) big man saw you.’” (Heath)

At the other end of the spectrum would be the doubly analytic forms of knowledge located on the front, left side of the Kantian square, a posteriori knowledge expressed in analytic judgments; the analytic as analytic. We will call this polyanalytic knowledge. This classificatory term doesn’t seem to be used in linguistics and so we will refrain from rashly endeavouring to discern polyanalytic language groups. However, we can get a good grasp of what the polyanalytic entails as far as a philosophical classification is concerned. There probably would not be much objection to saying that a good example of a polyanalytic philosophy would be none other than Anglophone oriented analytic philosophy.

If we admit polyanalytic philosophy into the fray then, to be fair, we should also admit its totally opposite number, polysynthetic philosophy, yet to be born. Whilst analytic philosophy delights itself by listening to the tinkle of meanings flowing from natural language, usually English, on the other polysynthetic side, a different language is spoken where single words can be so large and the chords struck so vibrant that the music can last for a lifetime.

Key Phrases: semiotics square, genetic code, generic code, DNA, start codon, left right hemispheres, the divided brain, epistemology, anti-mathematics, masculine, feminine, gender differentiation, Generic Science, Semiotics structure

D. J. H. Moore

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Stoics and Epicureans play Tennis

djhm March 20, 2011

Synopsis

A bunch of sheep shearers abandon their sheep and turn to metaphysics. The CEO dreams of a tennis match between Epicureans and Stoics.

First Classness and Being Stoic

Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit?
– My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, ‘Oh, the great philosopher.’ (Epictetus, 55-135 AD)

The shearing shed was alive with curiosity and excitement. Times had been tough and so the crew had given up the wool trade and had gone off trying their hand in markets more in tune with the twenty first century. Everyone was there, the Ringer, the Jackeroo, the Tracker, the Roustabout, the Sheila who did the books, and of course the CEO.

The CEO gave a short speech introducing the speaker and the overall direction of the company. The company was to go into the business of explaining reality. Apparently the question of what’s real and what is not was of growing concern among the general populace. The speaker was to be Jackeroo, who had been doing some background research on the problem.

Jackeroo started off awkwardly, “The problem is to find the underlying principle governing the universe.”

“What if there isn’t any underlying principle?” asked Ringer dryly.

“If there were no principle then the world would be in total chaos” answered Jackeroo

“To me, the world always looks to be in total chaos anyway,” piped in Roustabout.

Jackeroo was beginning to get mired down into technicalities before he had even started. In desperation to cover all angles Jackeroo blurted out, “The universe is organised on a principle which is not a principle,” and then added as a consolatory but desultory explanation, “It’s a principle, which negates itself.” A look of baffled glazed eyes flashed across faces of the audience.

Well that quietened every one down.” commented Ringer, “A principle that isn’t a principle but negates itself, eh? Well, good luck.”

Jackeroo took a deep breath and, reading from rough notes, launched into his monologue,

“We cannot make much headway without starting to come to grips with a very fundamental concept. Borrowing from Computer Science terminology, we call it First Classness. Glimpses of this concept can also be discerned in String Theory in the guise of some kind of ‘democratic principle.’ Of particular interest will be the notion of First Class systems and those systems which are not First Class, that is to say, systems based on Second Classness. There is no notion of Third or Fourth Classness. First Classness introduces a strictly binary notion; you either make it through the pearly gates of heaven or you don’t.

One system that doesn’t make it through the pearly gates is formal mathematics. Mathematics is fundamentally wallowing in hardwired, incurable Second Classness. This is due to the fact that the only candidates for being First Class entities in mathematics are the axioms. Everything else in any mathematical formalism is qualified and predicated by axioms and hence Second Class. This includes even the entities defined in the axioms as also any theorem which can be deduced from them. This absolutist, undemocratic structure banishes all those entities which are dominated by the emperor axioms to stagnate in a static, dead world of Second Classness. Mathematics is not based on First Classness. Mathematics is a Second Class system.”

At this point the CEO interrupted, “Well that sounds all fine and noble but where’s the business opportunity?”

Jackeroo, starting to get excited, and exclaimed, “There it is! Clearly mathematicians have been flooding the formalisation market with Second Class systems for years. Surely then, there must be some people out there that would snap at the chance to take possession of a totally pure First Class Formalisation System. When offered the choice between a Second Class banana and a First Class banana, which one would, you take? Cursory market research will show that most people will choose the First Class over the Second Class, even if only because it just sounds better”.

This small team of former farmhands were fast transforming themselves into entrepreneurial metaphysicians. They decided that there was a market for this first class product. But it is here that they met a snag. There was a market but they didn’t have a product. Presently the market was being flooded by a product based on Second Classness, notably mathematics and the mathematical sciences. Mathematics is fundamentally riddled through and through with Second Classness. What they needed to put on the market was a formalisation system based uniquely on First Classness. They needed something that was entirely the opposite to mathematics, something that didn’t rely on a priori assumptions like axioms and data and so forth, something that could be built from reason alone. Something like what Kant was talking about.

The CEO suddenly rose to his feet, almost delirious with excitement. “And so what we need is…” he yells, but doesn’t have time to finish the sentence as his voice is drowned out by an immense shout from the floor. “We need anti-mathematics!” everyone shouts in unison. And so it came to pass that the case for anti-mathematics was proved; by general acclaim. The shearing shed would never be the same.

The CEO was all fired up by the idea of launching his First Classness super charged anti-mathematics onto the world stage. As the excitement died down, the CEO turned to his Ringer, who was his acting CTO. He asked in a whisper, “What exactly is First Classness?” The Ringer shrugged his shoulders, admitting that he had no idea but maybe the Rouseabout might know as he seemed to know a bit about everything.

In the weeks and months that followed, the CEO asked many wise and learned people the same question. Each time he got the same negative response. The only remotely promising response was from an aging computer scientist who said that First Classness was Good. His eyes glazed and he then entered into an explanation which was totally incomprehensible.

Finally, in desperation, he decided to pose the question to a mysterious Oracle who happened to be passing through town at that time. The Oracle replied enigmatically, “You will find your answer by taking on the complexion of the dead.”

The CEO was rather shaken by this, but after some reflection, he decided that this meant he had to read about the ideas of dead people. He started off by reading about the ideas of very dead people. In fact, he started reading about the ideas of Zeno of Citium, born in 334 BC. Coincidentally, it appears that Zeno also had a similar experience with his Oracle. Zeno, of course, was the founder of Stoicism.

Hellenistic Tennis

After the life of Socrates, Hellenic philosophy started a process of splitting into two poles. The early signs of the process were already becoming apparent with the differences between Aristotle, and Plato his teacher. By the time it came down to the philosophies founded by Zeno of Citium and by Epicure, the separation was complete. The aim of philosophy was to resolve the central problem of man, notably how to achieve happiness. Unlike any of the world religions that came later, both philosophies addressed how to achieve happiness, not in the afterlife, but now in the present. Philosophy became the art of living happily. Both philosophies agreed on the aim but believed that the means to achieving this aim was located on different sides of the tennis court.

Let the game begin.

On the left side of the court are the Epicureans, inspired by the ancient philosopher Democritus. On the right side of the court are their arch enemies, the Stoics inspired by the ancient philosopher Heraclitus. It’s a familiar sight then, with the merry making atomists on one side and the brooding holistic thinkers on the other. In the middle, sitting in the umpire’s seat, are the Sceptics. The Sceptics in their attempt to be absolutely objective have suspended judgment and sit with their backs to the game.

Despite a verbal hand grenade being tossed over the net from time to time, play is slow. The object of the game is the pursuit of happiness.

Epicurean Tennis

The Epicureans have set up a dinner table on their side of the court and are enjoying themselves with pleasant chit chat, pleasant drink and pleasant food. Epicureans love bathing in pleasantness. All their friends are pleasant people who all behave pleasantly at all times. For them happiness is to enjoy oneself. Happiness is synonymous with pleasure. Pleasure however does not mean unrestrained hedonism as the excesses involved inevitably leads to unhappiness which is contradictory to the basic intent. As Epicure himself remarks, “It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life”.

The tension between the Epicureans and the Stoics on the other side is intense. However, despite the deep rivalry, the two schools share a lot in common. Both sides are dogmatic materialists in belief. Both sides are also in agreement that the fundamental aim in life is to live happily. Furthermore, they both unify and justify their doctrines by turning to the science and structure of nature and reality itself. It is at this point they part company. The Epicureans are atomists whilst the Stoics are monists.

Epicure was a great cosmological pastry cook. His strictly materialist creation was a recipe for responding to any question under the sun. The adherent, armed with such a world view, is thus free to lead a life unencumbered by doubt or fear arising from the metaphysical. The task was to be accomplished without recourse to the heavy hand of necessity, so popular in other brands of philosophy. His was to be a world of the laissez faire where even the gods went about their daily business without interfering with human affairs.

A perennial problem for materialists is how to allow a world which admits of beings which somehow behave in a way which is contrary to the absolute mechanical determinism of matter in motion. How can you have free will in such a world? Epicure came up with an innovative response, something that could be very useful on a tennis court moreover. He invented the Swerve. All bodies consisted of matter made up of atoms. The space in between bodies and atoms was filled with the void. Atoms moved about and interacted with each other in a very deterministic manner except now and then there was an exception to the rule. An atom would spontaneously make a tiny imperceptible swerve from its deterministic trajectory. This explains how the universe gradually micro swerved to its present state and the spontaneity of movement in animals and man.

It is interesting to note that Darwin’s theory of evolution introduces the Swerve into the reproductive process of living organisms. Each child organism may differ slightly from its parent or parents explained by a swerve arising from the latent indeterminacy involved in genetic coding arising from combinatorial variation and accidental mutation. Some swerves are successful and the organism lives on to reproduce. The unsuccessful swerves lead to failure of the organism to propagate. Evolution thus becomes the sum total of the successful swerves.

Some writers of recent times working under the banner of Atheism want to push this process further back to a time when the only matter that was, was dead matter. They postulate that somehow dead matter experienced swerves that lead it to leap the bridge from the dead to the living, from the inanimate to the animate. This is all part of the declared war with the stalwarts of Creationist Theory. The Creationists need God to create the world. Like Epicure, the new Atheism only needs the Swerve.

Swerve theories have taken different forms across the ages to express that allusive difference between strictly mechanical deterministic behaviour and the observed spontaneity of the animate. One non-materialist approach proposed by Bergson postulates an elan vital, an underlying “current of creative energy operating on matter directed to the production of free acts.” And so the Epicurean Swerve becomes powered by an elan vital. But, as Julian Huxley dryly remarks, the elan vital is about as illuminating as describing a locomotive as being powered by an elan locamotif.

Epicure’s cosmology starts off with a universe of atoms all moving vertically downwards in straight lines. The idea of the predominance of an absolute vertical up and down axis in the Cosmos might seem curious, but is easier to grapple with if one considers that the world may have been flatter in Epicure’s neighbourhood. His Swerve was necessary to explain how the predominately vertical state of affairs could possibly end up in the complex structured world around us. The world became the way it is by trillions upon trillions of micro swerving atoms. In addition, the Swerve was to be the genesis for explaining non-mechanistic animal and human behaviour. Nowadays modern science has replaced the indeterminacy immanent in the Epicure Swerve with the fundamental uncertainty which reigns in Quantum Physics. This is summed up in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, a fundamental tenant of Quantum Theory.

In the Uncertainty Principle we find the most fundamental expression of the Epicurean theory of the Swerve.

Stoic Tennis

While the Epicureans quietly party on the left side of the court, the Sceptics find their particular brand of happiness in their customary fashion by always sitting on the fence. In that way they experience the comforting satisfactory glow of never going down the wrong path, which is their way to a particular kind of happiness,

On the right side of the court we find an entirely different ambiance. Towards the far corner a Stoic called Leon has been captured by the enemy and is being tortured on the rack. The Torturer, a tattooed, seedy looking creature, leers down at Leon and taunts, “I bet you’re not feeling so good now.” “Perfectly good thank you,” replies Leon, “Quite happy.” “Happy?” exclaims the Torturer. “How can you be happy being tortured on the rack?” “I’m always happy as this must have been meant to be. Things might appear to be going badly for me, but that is only how it appears when, in reality, things are going perfectly well. Things couldn’t be better, in fact.” The Torturer was a bit taken aback and countered by boasting, ”You know, I can take your life on this rack.” “Yes, you can take my life,” declared Leon, “but you can’t take my soul: if taking my life profits you, then take it.” This was too much for the Torturer. He gave an almighty twist to the rack and watched to see how the Stoic reacted to real pain. Sweat broke out on the Leon’s brow as he quietly muttered between his teeth, “My friend…” “I’m not your friend, I’m your torturer!” came back the snarl. “I know” said the Stoic “but Dion, that person standing right behind you is my friend.” The Torturer spun around to come face to face with an Athenian soldier in the process of pulling out his sword. He gave a blood curdling scream and ran off.

Dion cut Leon loose from the rack, rubbed down his poor twisted limbs, and the two of them rambled off. “It was lucky that I just chanced to be passing by” commented Dion. “That was not chance.” replied Leon, “It was fated.” Leon was starting to clear his head and muttered, “What appears as chance is caused, but beyond our comprehension.”
They kept walking until they came to the home of Chrysippus where they stood, hesitating at the open front door. They could see Chrysippus in the kitchen inside, warming himself in front of the stove. Chrysippus beckoned to them “Come in; don’t be afraid: there are gods even here.” As they walked inside Chrysippus laughed out loud, “I’ve always wanted the chance to say that. Those were not my words but those of the ancient Heraclitus.”

They sat down at the table and Chrysippus served up a plate of dried figs, his favourite. They started talking and Dion was curious to know how the Stoics related to the gods. Chrysippus explained that men were on the same levels as the gods. There was no friend behind the scenes. Zeus was a friend to men, as men were friends to Zeus. Chrysippus then went on to explain the universe and how it was governed. Dion, who had always been curious about Stoicism, asked Chrysippus a question which had been bothering him for ages. “Chrysippus my dear friend,” asked Dion, “what is virtue.”

Chrysippus paused and said that virtue was the cornerstone of Stoic philosophy
and demanded careful explanation. He drew in a breath and started his small
lecture on the subject: “From Parmenides we learn that the only real truth is founded in
that which exists in the eternal present. Nothing else exists, neither in the past nor in the future.
Existence is limited to the pure Oneness of the present. Everything might appear to change,
but that is only in appearance. In reality nothing changes. That is the truth.
The ultimate knowledge is knowledge of this truth, according to Parmenides.
Heraclitus taught that such knowledge could only be understood in terms of pairs
of opposites. He described the oneness of the world as ever-living fire saying:..

This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was and will be: an ever-living fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.

The ever-living side of the world is Nature; the fire side of the world is Zeus, the only immortal of the gods. Zeus and Nature are two sides of the one reality, expressions of the masculine and the feminine which is the Gender Principle. The Gender Principle expresses the opposition between the singularity of subject – the masculine – and the expansiveness of what
accompanies subject – Nature, the feminine.

Oppositions even have oppositions. In opposition to the Gender Principle is the opposition of the Active Principle and the Passive Principle. The Active Principle and the Passive Principle are the personal expressions of the masculine and the feminine principles. The masculine and the feminine principles are the impersonal expressions of the Active and Passive Principles. This is how everything can be expressed in terms of oppositions. Gender is impersonal Active-Passive and the Active-Passive is personal Gender. As every Stoic knows, these two oppositions explain the four letters.”
Dion interrupted, “Chrysippus, are these the four virtues?”

… (book extract)

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