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Philosophy Forum - Part 5

Here we go again. The subject is ethics this time.

I don't particularly like how this first question is phrased, because it doesn't make the problem plain. Nevertheless, I won't write an article on the bad phrasing. I'll just tackle the problem at hand. - - - - - - - 'According to Hume, reason alone does not move us to act, though our moral opinions do, and he rightly infers from this that reason cannot be the source of our moral opinions.' Discuss. Hume rightly points out that the human capacity for reason is a powerful faculty. We can compare and contrast ideas from things that are similar, to things that do not seem so at first glance. The term relational frame theory wouldn't come about in psychology until hundreds of years after Hume, but it points out the power of this human ability. For instance, how are a pig and a chair related? Most people's first reaction is that they aren't, but then if they think about it for two seconds they come up with something. Such as, both of them have four legs. As the mind starts to turn the possibilities become immense, and you begin to realize that the chair manufacturer probably eats pork, the pork company's accountant sits in a chair, a wooden chair had a life as a tree that ended and so will the pig's, etc. In addition to being able to compare and contrast ideas the human reasoning faculty can find links between ideas, such as causal links. Why did a specific thing occur? Does this cause and effect relationship exist consistently? Can you thus know the future from the past and present situation? Can you manipulate the current circumstances to thus create a certain effect in the future? This ability to find causal links often results in errors of immense proportions, and yet it is key to the unique abilities that humans have among living creatures. And yet, comparing ideas and finding causal links between them does not lead to doing anything. There is not contained within the reasoning faculty itself an impetus to action. Knowing what is and knowing what could be does not mean do. And we do do things. We do not lay still waiting for dehydration to carry us into the afterlife, knowing what is happening and what will happen. We take action, and we take immense action. Thus, there must be something other than reason that drives us to such action. Hume posits that the thing that drives us to action is sentiment, or feeling. The different types of feelings of satisfaction and discomfort that result from innate mechanisms, plus the socialization process that occurs to both adjust those innate mechanisms and to instill more, the tension between self-interest and sympathy, and other such complexities offer a lifetime of experience and contemplation. Our advanced notions of ethics grow out of this interaction of sentiment as the driving force, and reason as a guiding force. - - - - - - - That's... okay. Next I'll work on Kant. I don't like Kant. I think he's a smart guy that worked really hard and ended up building a system of philosophy that doesn't work and is immensely complex and difficult to understand, not because it's so great, but because it's so bad. - - - - - - - 'Critically discuss the connection that Kant makes between morality and freedom.' Kant's views on morality and freedom are complex and difficult to understand. One of the primary distinctions that he makes in morality is between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative has an end connected with a causal means. Essentially it's an if/then statement. For instance, if you want to get stronger then exercise. A categorical imperative is a moral law with no end. For instance, exercise. Given such a moral command you may ask, "Why?" Kant says that there is no answer to that. All rational beings in the universe have universal intuitions about a grand moral law. True freedom is making decisions according to this moral law. If you choose to go against this law then it's neither moral nor is it a free decision. This law is made by rational moral agents freely choosing moral actions that write the law that you must intuitively follow to be both moral and free. If you do this then there might be a kingdom of ends of some type, even though there are no ends or reasons for categorical imperatives, other than that rational beings intuitively know the universal law that they must follow to be moral and free that they also make by making their free and moral choices. People have spent their entire lives trying to untangle such Kantian notions. - - - - - - - In academic philosophy people love Kant. I hate him, as you might have noticed. He seems to be spinning webs of complexity with no end in mind, and to him that would be the correct thing to do. I have gone down similar rabbit holes of complexity. For instance, working on using the ideas of discourse ethics to build a system of thought that would be socially applicable to defeat Marxian concepts. Unfortunately it didn't work. After years of work it ended up a mess, like Kant's work. So I scrapped it. I have no problem with trying and failing, and I have no problem with doing that for an entire lifetime, and I have no problem with people studying that. It's just the lack of recognition of Kant's failure that astounds me. He seems to have ended up with something like a very limited and odd religion that will never be classified as such. These are important problems to confront. But you can easily see why most people do not do so in this way. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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Philosophy Forum - Part 4

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. What is truth? How do we know? Important and difficult questions that will be debated as long as there are humans with the ability to debate them. The two questions that I have to answer today are a subset of this larger topic.

Here are the two questions that I have to tackle. - - - - - - - 'If knowledge is not justified true belief, is it justified true belief that meets also some further condition?' 'Is saying "I believe that p" just an alternative way of saying "p"?' - - - - - - - I'm going to give myself one chance to move through these questions. It's a unique way of trying to tackle an answer. In a way it's a bit conversational. My conversations often end up on similar types of issues, at least at similar foundational levels. And, when the conversation has gotten there I do usually switch from a rapidly exchanging dialogue to a short monologue. The difference with doing it in writing is that I can give myself a moment to come up with a basic plan. For the first question my plan of attack could be to give a simple explanation of what justified true belief means, why it doesn't fully work, what a solution could be, why that also doesn't really work, and a new perspective to take. Without being able to look at references while doing it adds to the challenge greatly, especially when I get to those middle three steps and want to include examples that will be hard for me to remember, but would be easy to look up. Nevertheless, I will work with what I'm carrying in my own mind. For the second question I think there's a simple demarcation between the statements. One is a claim about the world, the other is a claim about knowledge. It's the difference between that which is known and that which knows. I don't really want to do the first question, so I'm going to have a go at that one first. - - - - - - - 'If knowledge is not justified true belief, is it justified true belief that meets also some further condition?' Justified true belief is a claim about what knowledge is. The idea is that knowledge is an intersection of three things: a person with a belief, a belief that is true, and a justifiable reason for the belief. For instance, I can say that my cat Jack is in the living room. I believe that Jack is in the living room, he is actually in the living room, and I believe that because I just saw him there a moment ago. There are various problems with this definition. A person could have a belief, that belief could be true, and they could have a reason for believing it, and yet the reason may be false, even if it may appear to justify it. Do they then not have knowledge? Many people would say that they do not. Others claim that they do. There are two common approaches to trying to solve this problem. One is to add a fourth thing to the three parts that knowledge has been reduced down to. Something like justified true belief plus true-justification. Another option is to simply increase how much justification is necessary. This can work to a certain extent, but I think they continue along an erroneous path. There are different levels of resolution from which we can view problems. From this level I think it's useful to compare this train of thought with the process of science. In science a hypothesis is proposed. It's a conjecture, a guess. A test is made. The test can potentially show that the hypothesis is wrong. If the test doesn't show the hypothesis to be wrong, it's verified; it's true. And yet, this idea of verificationism will lead to greater errors in the future. The hypothesis must be accepted not as verified, but as verified for now, and still open to question and doubt in the future when another test with potentially more sensitivity is devised. Thus, rather than being verified as true, the hypothesis has been not-falsified, and may be treated as true for now. What we know has a context, and part of that context is what is trying to be achieved. More or less accuracy, more or less justification is necessary in different circumstances. The level of knowledge that we need about a thing is different when we are trying to act it out, or if we are representing it in images, or if we are representing it in words. Propositional knowledge in itself is stagnant, but it exists because it is used for something. And if it works, then it was true enough for the given situation. If it does not, then it was inadequate for the situation. Knowledge could then be considered belief that works, or belief that is useable in a given context, or belief that is justified enough to be acted upon as true. For more information along the lines that I've discussed here see Endel Tulving and Jerome Bruner on levels of knowledge, Karl Popper on falsificationism, James Gibson on affordances, and Charles Sanders Peirce on pragmatism and pragmaticism. - - - - - - - Well, I doubt that will be received well in academia. And, it is kind of scattered. My brain attempts to bring a wide variety of information to bear upon a given problem and generate a creative solution. Academia isn't looking for solutions, they are looking for regurgitation. Alas, let's have a go at question number two. - - - - - - - 'Is saying "I believe that p" just an alternative way of saying "p"?' Let's say that two people are having a conversation. Jack points at a painting on the wall and says, "That painting is twelve inches tall." Jill looks at the painting and squints, looks at Jack with a smile, and says, "It's eleven inches." with a small twang of superiority in her voice. In both of these propositions a belief is implied. Jack believes that the painting is twelve inches tall. Jill believes that the painting is eleven inches tall. Neither needed to say that they were expressing their belief, they made declarative statements about the external world. And both of their statements were purely that, declarative statements about the external world. Here's another way that conversation could go. Jack points at a painting on the wall and says, "I believe that painting is twelve inches tall." Jill looks at the painting and squints, looks at Jack with a smile, and says, "I believe it's eleven inches." with a small twang of superiority in her voice. This set of propositions appears to be the same, but expressly stating that there is a belief does change things. Let's take the two statements from Jill and compare them. In the first she says, "It's eleven inches." In the second she says, "I believe it's eleven inches." The first statement is a declarative statement about the external world. The second statement could be taken in that same way, or it could be taken as there being some doubt, and thus there could be the sense of it being an inquisitive statement; as in, "I believe it's eleven inches?" with her voice rising at the end of the statement for the inquisitive tone. We now have a range going from declarative to inquisitive statement about the external world. Expressly stating that something is a belief adds something beyond an air of doubt about the declarative or inquisitive nature of a statement. Let's use Jack's statement as an example. In the first instance he says, "That painting is twelve inches tall." Any simple question will focus on the object, the painting. For instance, "That painting is twelve inches tall." "Why?" "Because whoever made it, made it that tall." But when we use Jack's statement from the second instance things are different, "I believe that painting is twelve inches tall." "Why?" "Because that guy over there told me it was." The focus is not on the external world, the focus isn't on the measurement, it's on the statement that Jack has made about himself, about his belief, about his internal world. In a statement where the belief of the subject is explicitly stated, that belief then becomes a focus. Both the external world and the internal world are having statements made about them. In the second instance Jack is making two statements. One, that the painting is twelve inches tall. Two, that Jack has that as a belief. In the first instance that idea has been left out of the conversation, it has not been brought up for discussion. The object is the focus of discussion in the first instance, both the object and the subject are potential focuses of discussion in the second instance, with a slight emphasis toward a discussion of the subject. This is a significant difference. That which we choose to bring forth in our conversations has the potential to change the trajectory of our discussions, and the trajectory of our thoughts. To articulate that which is implied in a statement changes the statement itself. We wield the power of words with each change we make. - - - - - - - I like the last paragraph in that one. Philosophy, an important subject often ignored. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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Fighting Local Government Corruption - Part 21 of ?

Winning is often the end of an endeavor, but not always. In politics winning should not be an end in itself, only a step. It is the beginning of the true struggle for which the entire history of humanity has striven.

There is a balance to be struck. The balance between the value of the group and the value of the individual. Often people like to side with the one or the other, because both are simple solutions. But the plain fact is that there is no group without the individual. So too there would be no individual person without society. The two must coexist. The society must value and protect the individual as the core foundation of itself, and the individual must value the cooperation of others in creating a unique and emergent order. Harmony is the aim, the ideal. How to get there is what all of the controversy is about, what it's always about. Great atrocities have been committed in the name of peace, time and time again. The idea that peace is just on the other side of war has been a popular notion, and will remain so, for it can be a partial truth. William Penn wrote 'An Essay on the Present and Future Peace of Europe' in 1693. Section two is labeled 'Of the Means of Peace, which is Justice rather than War.' In the last sentence Penn says, "Peace is maintain'd by Justice, which is a Fruit of Government, as Government, is from Society, and Society from Consent." Peace is on the other side of justice. That is the path that we are trying to find. In the spirit of Plato, government is the ship that society has constructed. I am now at the helm of that ship. The goal is to chart our way through the perilous waters of strife to find a course of justice leading to a land of peace. This life is too short to achieve the aim, but it is long enough to make progress, to steer the ship in the right direction. Dalton has experienced something akin to a revolution in politics. Thus change is both expected and feared, and rightfully so. Radical change in government is destabilizing, and order is fragile. Change should take time, and it must take time if those changes are going to help achieve the harmony that we are seeking over the long term. For instance, let's say that the policies of government are pieces of the ship. If we change all of the pieces at once then we have torn our ship apart and we have no ship. It's a disaster. A much more reasonable approach is to repair and replace things piece by piece. We have such things happening now, such as the sign ordinance. The sign ordinance in Dalton is so restrictive that in my first few weeks in office I heard from a couple of businesses and a couple of churches about their problems with it. In our first meeting the township board passed a motion for the planning commission to review it. That's the start of a process that takes months, which is the start of a process to make Dalton more business friendly, which is a change that takes years. Such a process allows people to debate it amongst themselves, and also within themselves. As Solzhenitsyn says in 'The Gulag Archipelago': "Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains... an unuprooted small corner of evil." Each of us seeking that inner harmony that allows us to uproot those small corners of evil within ourselves, so that we may better see the course of justice, that is the true struggle of humanity. As for disharmony in Dalton, there is much. Some of that owes itself to human nature, and some of it is the natural outcome of the policies of the previous administration. It is my goal to resolve as much of that as possible. To what extent I will be successful yet remains to be seen. There should be a balance between authority and responsibility. If someone is going to be responsible for something, then they should have the authority to change it, and if they have the authority to change it then they are responsible for it. Where that balance lays has been misperceived in the past. For instance, the decision about what will or will not be a zoning ordinance does not lie with the zoning administrator. The sign ordinance is a good example. The supervisor determines who will be on the planning commission. The planning commission puts together the policy recommendation. The township board determines what they will or will not pass. Therefore a lot of authority is in the planning commission, and there too a lot of responsibility. And the township board has more of both authority and responsibility. A last note on disharmony and responsibility. Considering what has happened over the last twenty months, it's no secret that I have both a lot of supporters and a lot of enemies. There have been some small plots against me that have been thwarted, both before and after I've taken office. It's reasonable to expect future plots as well. In anticipation of a recall attempt against me, I want people to know that I will speak in support of my own recall. That seems odd at first, but here's the problem. A recall needs approval by a partisan county board before signatures can be gathered. This allows party politics to dominate the recall process. The state law was changed under Governor Snyder to make it even harder to get a recall approved, which also made it more of a party issue. I agree that it should be hard to recall an elected official. It should certainly not be easy. But it should not be party politics, which is what the current state law makes it. So, if there is a recall attempt against me in the future I will speak in support of the election board passing it. Because the difficult part of a recall should not be getting it approved by politicians, the hard part should be collecting all of the signatures from citizens that you need to recall an elected official. Change has begun in Dalton. Like the turning of a great ship, it takes time, and we would want it no other way. Rough waters and stormy weather are a part of the process of progress. But we have the ability to make an environment where the individual songs of our lives come together in harmony. We have the ability to carve out an area of protection, an eye in the storm of the world that rages around us. All paths are hard, so we must choose our hard. Peace too is hard. And yet we can choose to make peace and to find peace, in the world and within ourselves, and that is a hard worth choosing. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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A Christmas Card Poem

I did an Ancestry DNA test a few years ago and ended up finding an older sister a few states over.

My mother, father, and I have taken different approaches to giving her and her family gifts. I've sent books, of course, and so did my mother. But, they didn't get an enthusiastic reception. And books are about 90 percent of my gift-giving. Then my mother took my idea of giving out events as gifts and started applying it. I like doing that because I then go to the event with them. I make sure that I get one I'll like, so no matter what happens the gift is at least appreciated by one person. Lol. Being a few states away it's a bit different in this case, but events are still fun gifts. Last year my mother sent them family tickets to a movie theater near them in Nebraska. That worked out well. Now that theater is out of business. My mother looked around for something else. She almost got paintball passes, but they only got you in the door and a family would end up having to spend hundreds of dollars more for rental equipment. Plus, it's a weird year with not knowing what's open and what's closed. I ended up sending a double pack of the Wizard Card Game, which is quite fun. In the end mom decided that the only real solution was to send plain old money. Mom asked me if I wanted to sign the card, and I decided to write a poem. She was a bit surprised at how quickly I could grab a pen and pad and compose such verse, so full of mirth. Here's what I created. - - - - - - - 'Tis in our intention,to give a gift of joy. Yet it has come to our attention,when searching for such a ploy,that normal activity has fallen into dereliction,for the world alike of girl and boy. Thus accept our token of affection,and buy your own toy. - - - - - - - It's an excellent poem for a gift card with money, and fits perfectly for this year. If only Hallmark knew what they were missing. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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Philosophy Forum - Part 3

Philosophy applies to life. And life adds perspective to philosophy. Often these two things end up disconnected.

Here's the question for this essay. - - - - - - - What is the sorites paradox? Is there any satisfying way to resolve it? - - - - - - - And here are the few notes that I wrote down. - - - - - - - tree stumpsaffordancessoritesblight - - - - - - - My general idea was that I wanted to make the answer to this practical. An actual application in the world. I thought about talking about grinding tree stumps, and I thought about going with the political issue of blight. In the end I went with sand. - - - - - - - There is a difference between things being general, ambiguous, and vague. If I say "Cats are cute." I'm talking about all cats, or more reasonably, most cats. It's a general statement. The class of objects known as cats usually has the quality of being cute from my perspective. If I say "Your cat is cute." and you have five cats, then you're probably not sure which one I'm talking about. My statement is ambiguous. It could be any of the five. The concept of vagueness is different than either generality or ambiguousness. Where is the dividing line between tall and short? When does the spectrum running from red to pink change from red to pink? When you're crossing a threshold, when are you in? The original sorites paradox is about a heap of sand. You have a heap of sand. You remove one grain. You still have a heap of sand. You remove another grain, you still have a heap of sand. Eventually you have only one grain of sand left. One grain of sand isn't a heap. When did the heap turn into a non-heap? Let's look at some approaches we can take. We can give a percentage to the truth value of a statement. This approach of many-valued logic can get as detailed and specific as we want. Or, as we approach this borderline that we're dealing with we can say that the overlapping area has a glut of truth-values. Or, we can say that there is a gap in the truth-values. Or, we can add the opposite to the statement in question and thus it must be true because it contains both options. The thing is, the sorites paradox is a practical problem that humans have been solving since before it was articulated in ancient Greece. Sand mining is a large industry, it's not just a theory. They don't measure sand in heaps. In the United States it's done in cubic yards. Let's say I want to make a sandbox in my yard. It's three dollars and twenty-five cents per yard near where I live in West Michigan. If I want the sand to be one foot deep, and the area to be ten feet by ten feet, then I need 3.7 cubic yards of sand. That's as accurate as the calculator goes for this sand company. So the actual unit of measurement is tenths of cubic yards. If they give me 3.7 cubic yards of sand, plus or minus seven grains, I don't care and they don't care. If I get 3.6 yards, they shorted me a bit. If I get 3.8 yards, then they're having a little waste on their end. But the numbers from 3.7 to 3.8 don't matter to either party because it's within an acceptable tolerance. Thus, we end up with an amount that is too little for one party, an amount that is too much for one party, and a range of tolerance in-between that is acceptable to both parties. Outside of this range that's completely acceptable to both parties we have another gradient. Let's say they do give me 3.6 yards of sand, and I can tell because my area measurements are exact and the height is about a third of an inch short. Maybe the difference is enough for me to be slightly annoyed, but that's it. Maybe if it's a half of an inch I tell a few neighbors about it being a little short. Maybe if it's an inch short I call the company and tell them. There are these different levels that are tipping points on each side. At a certain level of waste the company is going to review the process, the personnel, and the equipment. There's tolerance to a certain level, and that level is decided by people individually or as a group depending on the situation. Going beyond certain tolerances cause both certain perceptual and behavioral thresholds to be crossed. Below these thresholds things aren't noticed or aren't acted upon. That's how the sorites paradox is solved by people every day all over the world. - - - - - - - That ended up shorter than I intended, 677 words. Between two essays I could use up to 3,500 words. My last essay was 1,261 words. The total between the two essays is 1,938 words, so just a little over half of my possible word count. Nevertheless, I think I made my point. I'm not sure that's an acceptable answer in academia, because I just made the case that we can solve this difficult philosophical problem by looking at how non-academics solve the problem all the time. You can see how life leads to philosophy. In this case thinking about piles of sand. Then, philosophy and life headed in different directions. Yet, they can never be fully disconnected. In the end they belong together, informing each other, driving each other. Becoming more than either would be without the other. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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Philosophy Forum - Part 2

I have two essays on logic to write today. And we're going to see one of the reasons that I don't particularly like academia right away.

Here is a note about the essays. - - - - - - - Remember when answering that one of the key things you're aiming to do in an assessment essay is to demonstrate your understanding, so more fundamental than trying to make difficult arguments is honing your ability to clearly lay out the debate. - - - - - - - I understand the value of this approach. Most things that people are trying to solve they can just look up the answer to if they would work on researching more, or it's unsolvable and they would realize that by researching more. Nevertheless, I like to struggle with solving the problems themselves. To succeed in academia is a rather straightforward endeavor. You take the information that they're giving you, and then you repeat it back to them. I just have a dislike for parroting information like that. I only do it for a   fairly short period of time before I branch off on my own. I can have a combined total of up to 3,500 words in the two essays. Here's the first question. - - - - - - - P. F. Strawson criticises Russell's theory of descriptions both in cases of too few and too many referents. What are his reasons, and is he right? - - - - - - - I've read a little Bertrand Russell because he's a famous philosopher. I liked his book 'A History of Western Philosophy'. But, a lot of his work is about turning everything into math. I find that both tedious and to be an endeavor that's destined to fail. It does remind me of Pythagoras, who I find interesting, but other than that I am not particularly interested in Russell. Strawson on the other hand I find quite interesting, but I haven't read much from him. In the past I think I came across some summaries of his ideas, and that's all. As I was reading through material to understand both sides of this argument I made a few notes from my own thoughts. Different directions that I might go while writing. - - - - - - - for there to be a reference, there must be a referrer with intention and a referent intended or it's nonsense a sentence cannot refer, there must be a subject and therefore also a context including a personality with a complex and dynamic system which holds a referent       semantic triangle / square 3 levels of knowledge, Jerome Bruner, Endel Tulving words as tools, affordances, James Gibson - - - - - - - There are a lot of interesting things in those notes. Unfortunately I ended up not including the last two items because it would have been an immense expansion in a direction that would have resulted in doubling the length of the essay. Here's how it came out. - - - - - - - Russell's theory of descriptions is part of his effort to take mathematical principles and apply them to language. Strawson makes the case that math is a limited language, and therefore cannot contain something greater than itself, such as ordinary language. Let's play a game with chairs. Jack and Jill are standing in a room. Jack says to Jill, "The chair has a book on it." Jill looks around, scrunches up her face, and replies "Umm, what are you talking about?" For when she looks around she sees no chair. Russell would say that Jack's statement "The chair has a book on it." is false, because there is no chair. Strawson would say that the statement is neither true nor false, because there is no chair. There are two things happening in this statement. There is a subject that is being identified, the chair. That is the referent, the thing that is being referred to. Then there is what is being said about the chair, the predicate, the thing that is being attributed to the chair, which is that that it has a book on it. Let's look at some other ways this type of situation could go. Jack and Jill are standing in a room. Jack says, "The chair has a book on it." Jill looks at the old wooden chair with its back against the brick wall, a worn copy of 'The Courage to Be' by Paul Tillich laying there. The chair exists, there is one that is unique, there is a book on it. This statement is true, Jack, Jill, Russell, and Strawson would agree. Jack and Jill are standing in a room. Jack says, "The chair has a book on it." Jill looks at the old wooden chair with its back against the brick wall, a worn copy of 'The Courage to Be' by Paul Tillich lays on the floor. The chair exists, there is one that is unique, there is a book, but it's not on the chair. This statement is false, Jill, Russell, and Strawson would agree. So, it's not all cases that Russell and Strawson disagree on, it's just select sets of problems. One is the case that we've already mentioned, when there isn't a shared referent. The other is when there isn't a clear referent because there is potentially more than one. Jack and Jill are standing in a room. Jack says, "The chair has a book on it." Jill looks around the room and says, "Umm, I guess so." For when she looks around she sees two chairs, each with a book resting on the seat. Which chair Jack is referring to is ambiguous, and whether such a statement is true or false and to what extent can also be debated. But, let us move on and see if we can discover something more fundamental about human communication. To say that there is a thing being referred to there must first be a consciousness that is doing the referring. In referring, this consciousness has an intention. This referrer, this consciousness that is doing the referring, has a personality, which is part of the context. Both the personality and the context are complex and dynamic systems. And, in order for there to be communication there must be another conscious personality that receives the reference and interprets it. There's a lot happening before we get to identifying and attributing in the sentence itself. Let's see how it might go in the case of no referent being present, i.e. when there is no chair in the room. Jack and Jill are standing in a room. Neither speaks. Jack is looking at the carpet, down and to the left, his right hand in a fist gently pressed into his left palm, deep in thought. Jill stands with her hands entwined behind her back, staring at the wall. Jack blinks, raises his head and says, "The chair has a book on it." That's an objective perspective of the situation. It's like we're an invisible entity floating in the room and observing what's going on. Things change if we take an omniscient perspective and are able to discern the thoughts of the characters. Jack is looking at the carpet, down and to the left, his right hand in a fist gently pressed into his left palm, deep in thought. 'I can't believe I didn't see this before. People are going to notice, word is going to spread, and it's going to go bad. That is, unless I can come up with a simple solution that fixes it in less than two minutes.' Jill stands with her hands entwined behind her back, staring at the wall. 'Hopefully Jack holds it together for this meeting.' she thinks. Jack blinks, raises his head and says, "The chair has a book on it." Let's take it further and see if we can get an even better view of it. A complex and dynamic personality operating in and through a corporeal body known as Jack had arrived early. Jill, his agent, hadn't made it yet. Since he had some extra time he started looking through the manuscript one last time before the presentation with the publishers. On page seven he noticed a problem. A woman that would have sat down in a chair when she could have, didn't. Jack thought about leaving, going home to work on the problem. A mystery novel relied on details, one thing being out of place could ruin the entire story. Just then Jill walked through the door and joined him in the little waiting room with no chairs. Before she could say anything Jack said, "I found a mistake." Jill rolled her eyes as she took a deep breath, Jack was always finding a mistake. He never wanted to actually publish anything, just continually rewrite. She didn't even want to hear what the so-called problem was. "I'm sure it will be fine." she said. Jack slid his manuscript back into his carrying case, set it on the floor, and both of them stared off in different directions. Jacked looked at the carpet, down and to the left, his right hand in a fist gently pressed into his left palm, deep in thought. 'I can't believe I didn't see this before. People are going to notice, word is going to spread, and it's going to go bad. That is, unless I can come up with a simple solution that fixes it in less than two minutes.' Jill stands with her hands entwined behind her back, staring at the wall. 'Hopefully Jack holds it together for this meeting.' she thinks. Jack blinks, raises his head and says, "The chair has a book on it." Jill's worst nightmare, he's going crazy a minute before the meeting. "What?" she says. Jack holds out his hands like it's the most obvious thing, "The reason the woman doesn't sit down... the problem with the book," he says in a rising voice, frustrated that she's not getting it, "I can fix it!" Jill closes her eyes and takes another deep breath, maybe this will go okay. She opens her eyes and smiles at him, "Great!" she says. And the meeting room doors open. Now answer me this, is "The chair has a book on it." true or false? To work it out in logic formulas is incredibly difficult, to the point of being impossible. Life is more than logic, and our complex, dynamic, and emergent languages struggle with the task of dealing with life in its entirety rather than just in the limited set of cases that logic can handle. - - - - - - - That's a total of 1,261 words. It seems like the start to making a larger point rather than a complete essay in itself, yet I'm going to go with it. I close with a strong statement against Russell, which also relates to my opening. I think my examples make my point. Overall I'm going to call it decent, and I do like the examples. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[jam2289]

Philosophy Forum - Part 1

Philosophy is inescapable. It is ignorable, which is what most people do with it. There are parts that I find quite interesting, enjoyable, and useful. Technical logic is not exactly one of the areas that excite me, but it can be useful, and is important. Maybe the most important thing about it is understanding the difficulty of the problems, and the complexity that underlies the set of problems.

In this course on logic there were two sets of six questions posed. The idea is to give a short answer to one from each set. The first set has to do with descriptions. I chose question number four. Here is the question and my answer. - - - - - - - 4. Suppose I say "When I use the term "The King of France", I'm just talking about my idea of the King of France." How well does this account for the way we speak?   In view of the idea that we speak to communicate, having a purely subjective referent obstructs the primary purpose of speech. However, that is not the whole story. Branching away from the original purpose of communication, we use highly developed language to think. Across time in both thinking and communication the meaning of referents change to adjust for other changes in a dynamic and evolving system of individual and cultural thought. After the statement in this example it would be reasonable to expect the speaker to then clarify the way in which he is using the term "The King of France." Thereby the shared referent is restored and the individuals are able to achieve a level of correlated thinking and regain the ability to communicate with a shared reference. I conclude that the statement does account for the way we speak in some instances. - - - - - - - In the second set of questions I chose number two. These questions had to do with the concept of vagueness. - - - - - - - 2. What is the difference between the way 'vague' is used in ordinary language and vagueness as discussed in philosophy? In philosophy vague is a technical term with a precise definition, a concept with borderline cases, where it is hard to tell when one thing becomes another. For instance, what measurement is the dividing line between short and tall? In ordinary use vague is less precise. It is often used to show that there has been a noticed lapse in communication, an uncertainty about what something means or what is to be done. This is usually resolved by providing more information, which points us to greater insights into the problem. As an example, the color spectrum is what it is. Yet, people do perceive it differently. And, beyond that, different cultures denote the difference between colors at slightly varying points. Where in the spectrum does red become pink? When thinking through a problem that is trying to be solved this concept can be held stable or varied in an effort at a solution. In communication a shared referent is needed otherwise confusion results. At times a more precise differentiating point may be needed, at other times more vagueness may not pose a problem in itself. To resolve a miscommunication it is sometimes possible to reference back to the specific percept in question. In the case of color, the color that is being represented by a word for communication can be pointed at. This sharing of a direct referent provides more information, much in the same way that vagueness is often responded to in ordinary use. - - - - - - - As you can see, I specifically picked questions that have to do with ordinary language. Our ordinary language is this organic monster that has emerged over time in the immensely complex struggles of thinking and communicating that mankind has engaged in since the beginning of our existence. There is value there. The connection between philosophy and the living of life is often cut. I think there is worth in trying to bridge the gap and bring philosophy into the view of people that would normally ignore it. And there is also use in bringing the pragmatic way in which people think and communicate in ordinary language and life to philosophy. ________________________________________________ Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[jam2289]

Great Movies About Writers and Writing

A few years ago I went looking for a movie list to both inspire and instruct me about writing and being a writer. There are such lists, but there are no good lists. Over the last couple of years I've made my own list. And, it's good.

These ten are perfectly on point, grade A awesomeness. There are a dozen others that almost made the list, but didn't.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

Charles Dickens wrote 'A Christmas Carol' in six weeks to release it for Christmas, because he was broke, even though he was famous. Also, no one would publish his weird ghost story, so he self-published it. That was 1843. I'm not a huge Dickens fan, but this little book is genius, and I liked seeing the story behind it. Dickens talked about how his characters were more real to him than real people. It's hard to show that kind of creative writing process in pictures or film, and they do it superbly in this show.

Mary Shelley

Both of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley's parents were famous writers. And, her husband was a famous writer. Mary herself was a prodigy. She wrote 'Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus' when she was nineteen-years-old, because of a game about telling a scary story with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori. It does not seem like a story written by a teenage girl. And I'm not talking about it being scary. It's much deeper than that. The story has wisdom in it. Plus, from a technical side the story is well done. It uses an epistolary frame story, meaning that it opens with letters and then tells a story inside of a story. The movie really shows why such a young woman could write something so dark, so technical, and so full of wisdom about the human existence.

Kazantzakis

'Zorba the Greek' is a great book. I didn't know much else about Nikos Kazantzakis before watching this movie. He lived quite the interesting life. This movie is in Greek, but it's worth it. Plus, I like the way the Greek language sounds. I was talking to my mother and my three-year-old niece about this movie, and on the first try my niece perfectly said the name Kazantzakis. She said it like she knew him, it was hilarious. The story of him overcoming so many obstacles over a long writing career is worth knowing.

Bright Star

John Keats is one of my two favorite poets, the other being Ovid. Keats is one of the most famous poets in the English language, and he died when he was twenty-five-years-old. That's amazing! I hadn't even started writing when I was twenty-five. The movie revolves around a love story. It's both heartwarming, and heartbreaking. A feel-good tragedy of sorts. I've watched it several times.

Goodbye Christopher Robin

From World War One to Winnie-the-Pooh. The playwright A. A. Milne wasn't the same after the war and couldn't go back to writing what he used to. So, he worked on kid's books for his son. And, they became quite popular. Winnie-the-Pooh is illegal in China because he looks like Emperor Xi, but it's popular the rest of the world over. This movie digs into the difficult and important subject of trying to redeem the suffering of life through art.

Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien also fought in WW1. This movie is largely about Tolkien before the war. He was a linguistic genius, but more interesting than that is watching this take on his group of friends in school. Later in his life he formed the writing group The Inklings at Oxford University with C. S. Lewis and others. It's amazing to think that he had two such unique groups over his life. I've been a part of writing and public speaking groups and it's been wonderful, but his were different. This movie shows that dynamic well.

Rebel in the Rye

The same actor that plays Tolkien also plays J. D. Salinger. Nicholas Hoult must like portraying great writers. Salinger was an odd guy, as artists and geniuses tend to be. 'The Catcher in the Rye' is still immensely popular. After Salinger wrote it he became more and more of a recluse. It seems that the motivation to write this book helped him survive World War Two, and helped him recover after the war. This movie is gritty and it really dives into the struggle of actually writing, of doubting yourself, and of learning the necessary skills.

Miss Potter

Most of the writers on this list were poor, Beatrix Potter was not. She mostly had to struggle against social issues to get her stories about Peter Rabbit in print. Now it's one of the best-selling book series in history. The movie shows a type of defiance, as every single one of these movies does, but it's different because it's an upper-class type of defiance; where fear of failure is not so much a fear of not being able to afford things as it is a fear of ostracism and disapproval. Something we all have to deal with. It was an enjoyable show.

The Whole Wide World

Robert E. Howard invented the sword and sorcery genre of fantasy fiction with Conan the Barbarian. And he did it in just a short time, because he killed himself when he was thirty-years-old. The movie does very well at bringing us into that feeling of craziness. It's a wild movie that is well worth watching, but maybe don't watch it if you're feeling depressed. In that case, check out my article 'An Interesting Note on Suicide from Viktor Frankl' instead: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/an-interesting-note-on-suicide-from.html

To Walk Invisible

The three Bronte sisters are considered some of the best novelists in the English language. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne are all interesting. How did three sisters end up being so good at writing and so famous for it in the 1800s? I've read about them building a shared fantasy world when they were kids, and playing by writing stories in it along with their brother. I never really knew much about him, and the show reveals why that is. The movie takes you back and gives you the historical feel of the situation, which I liked. And it's interesting to see a situation where so much talent was developed in a single family.

You'll notice that I didn't number the movies. I've tried to several times, but they're all just so darn good. And to a certain extent it depends on how you feel at the time. The first four are my favorites though.

There are some interesting patterns here. Seven of the movies focus on British writers. Two are Americans. Four of them are about the 1800s. Two are about WW1 and one is about WW2. Seven or eight of the writers start poor. And I'm sure there are many other points waiting to be noticed.

These movies are both inspiring and instructive. They show the struggle that occurs both outside in the world, and inside of the mind and soul, and how they influence and reflect each other. The stories that the writers write are impactful, and so are the stories of their lives.

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Find more at

JeffThinks.com

or

JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[jam2289]

Jeff Invents a New Necktie Knot

A few days ago I was watching the movie 'Gabriel's Inferno'. In one scene Julianne is fixing Gabriel's tie in a car. It annoyed me that the rich, sophisticated, intellectual was both bad at tying a tie, and that it was a simple and bad looking knot. It just seemed incongruent. So, I paused the show.

I grabbed a tie and looked up knots. I learned the notation system, which is pretty simple. I went through the 13 most common knots from the book 'The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie'. I determined that the knots that I think are decent are the: Small, Victoria, 11-3, Nicky, Half-Windsor, Hanover, Plattsburgh, Cavendish, and Balthus.

Then I started playing around. I thought I might be able to invent a new tie knot. That's not an easy task to do. There are mathematical academic articles written by physicists on working out all of the different ways to tie a tie.

The first knot I thought I invented ended up being number 34 in the 'Encyclopedia of Tie Knots'. I also thought I invented the Cavendish knot for a little while before I realized that they were the same. I came up with a few more, some of them pretty wild, and I'm not wholly sure that I like them. But, there is one that is my own, and that I like.

I like the neckties that are fairly symmetrical, like most people. But, a number of years ago I ordered this dress shirt from Asia that was asymmetrical. Near the top of the buttons a piece was folded over to reveal a different color that swept across the front. The shirt was designed to be worn without a tie and I liked the look. The idea of being intentionally asymmetrical gets me an advantage over the mathematical models. And yet, my knot ended up being fairly symmetrical. It's funny how things work out sometimes.

Here's the notation for how to do the 'Jeffrey Knot': Li Co Ri Co Ri Co Ri Li Co T

Here's how to do it in English. You start like normal, with the small end of the tie shorter and the finished side of the tie facing forward. All of the movements will be with the larger end of the tie, which I start with on the right. 1) Put it across the smaller end. 2) Go up through the middle and out to the right with the inside of the tie facing back toward you. 3) Go up through the middle and come back to that same position out to the right. 4) Go up through the middle again. 5) Come across the front of the tie to the left side, with the inside of the tie facing back. 6) Go up through the middle of the tie and tuck it through the loop in the front. Slowly tighten it up, cinch it up, and you're done.

When you're looping around the same spot several times in a row you'll want to keep it somewhat tight because you can't adjust that tension at the end. Having the three loops on that side ends up balancing out the single on the other side. It seems a little odd before you tighten it up, but it comes together nicely. When cinch it up to you're neck it's one of the most balanced feeling knots that I've encountered, which I like. Also, you can't see a hole in the center of the knot, but you can stick your finger through it. I like the empty center even though it can't be seen, it's unique, and maybe even symbolic.

I invented this last Friday. On Saturday morning I was getting ready to head to the Messianic Synagogue. I thought about doing my own knot, but I was short on time and decided to go with the 11-3. The 3 stands for a triple tuck. After you tie it you can pull those sections apart and have three layers of overlapping bands across the front of the tie, which is cool. So, initially, I did that one.

On my drive I realized why it isn't that great of a knot though. The three layers don't have anything to keep them separate, so they have a tendency to slide back together. Thus, when I got to the synagogue I took that out and did a Nicky knot, which is simple and solid. One of the congregation leaders complimented me on my vest and tie, but not because it was a special knot.

The next day I was going to the Greek Orthodox Church and decided to go with my own knot, the Jeffrey Knot. I wanted to see how it would perform in the field. And... it did well. It held well, and looked and felt good the entire time.

I've done a lot of unique things over my life. I'm happy to add inventing a new necktie knot to the list.

________________________________________________

Find more at

JeffThinks.com

or

JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com