Stuff I Learned Yesterday

Or discovered, rather. Or in many cases confirmed. You may not exactly remember that fire is the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame, and heat, but no one forgets being burned.

As it pertains to the vertical, one can learn a great deal without ever discovering anything. Come to think of it, this applies to every reality transcending matter: even a lifetime of learning may or may not result in the discovery of truth.

For example, the most learned feminist will, by definition, never discover human nature. Except in an inverse manner, in that the feminist must have an implicit awareness of human nature in order to be in rebellion against it.

By the way, in order for this psychodrama of rebellion to be successful, you and I must be enlisted into it. Truth requires the adherence of no one in order to be true, but the fragile lies of the left require everyone to be on board. Dissent provokes an unconscious reminder to their own denied truth, which is precisely why it "triggers" them.  

"White fragility"? The very concept is proof of the fragility of the leftist hivemind.  

If something triggers you, it is because of an unresolved unconscious emotional issue. The triggering puts you at a crossroads: introspection or acting out. Woke culture is the institutionalization of the latter. What they call activism the clinical psychologist calls acting-out. 

Anyway, I've been reading Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality (see sidebar), and a good working definition of reality is what is and what is capable of being discovered; it is not imagined, or projected, or conceptualized (except to the extent that concepts function as points of reference that are fungible to reality). Or in the words of the Aphorist, 

Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment.

The First Bank of Thomism always has sufficient funds to cover checks drawn on it, even the biggest, e.g., God. 

True, God is infinite while the funds are finite. But here God is analogous to the concept of money itself, as opposed to any particular sum. In other words, money -- i.e., value -- is backed by God. No God, no value, period. Rather, you just make it up -- as in the way a feminist "values" womanhood. Where the mere prostitute sells her womanhood for cash, the gender studies professor sells it for cash and tenure. 

To extend the banking analogy, the proofs of God allow us to open the account. They are more than adequate to function as collateral. We know in an indirect way that they are true, since we derive so much value from them and write so many checks. These checks would all bounce if not for the God reserve. 

Not only do they not bounce, they fund an explosion of wealth and productivity, very much like the bank that lends money to fund more investment and construction. This is precisely how the God account functions. Ultimately it built western civilization, from art to science to liberal democracy. Nor -- as anyone can see -- can our civilization perdure without this backing (which is again the backing of reality).

Back to the stuff I discovered yesterday about reality. For example, this:

when the soul knows necessary and universal principles, it becomes, in some real fashion, all intelligible reality. This truth presupposes the immateriality of the intellective faculty.  

"A lot to unpack" there, as they say. The first sentence specifies not whether but when we know necessary and universal principles.  

Wait -- is that debate over? Well, either it is or it isn't; if it is over, it is because we have plenty of God in the bank. If it isn't, it is because there is Nothing in the bank, in which case two things: 1) the debate is not over, and 2) can never be over. But this reduces to: there is nothing to debate; or to a debate about nothing,  AKA postmodernity.

The second part of the first sentence claims that the intellect is in some sense "all of intelligible reality." This looks like a rather large claim, but here again, it is either true or not true, simple as. 

Here's a thought: on what can all intelligent men agree, by virtue of being intelligent? 

Well? I suppose it depends on what we mean by "intelligence." 

Yes, Petey? It means that in knowing any truth, the intellect must in principle be capable of knowing any and all truth. For what is truth? Correct: intelligible being. And what is intelligence? Correct: the potential to know intelligible being. And who can put a limit to the intellect? The intellect? Yes, but only arbitrarily. 

Man is the microcosm. As such, he has essentially unlimited funds in a local branch of the Macrocosmic Savings & Loan. 

I would go even further and say that the Macrocosm is backed by the infinite funds of the nonlocal Metacosm, somewhat like vine to branch to fruit. Our knowledge is the fruit, but fruit doesn't just grow on trees, unless we're talking about an upside-down tree with its roots aloft and branches herebelow.

Necessary and Universal.  What are those? Oh, little things like the principle of non-contradiction, or of identity: that things either are or are not. In short, all knowledge reduces to the question of being: does this exist? Is this the case? Then it is true. 

Note that all philosophies derived from Kant enclose us in our own subjectivity. Thus, even if they were true, we could never know it. Existence detached from being is like a tree with no roots. No fruit for you!

This is why the left is equal parts cynicism and credulity. Cynicism is too easy. Think of the sneer on Bill Maher's ugly face, forever. Credulity is much too difficult. Have you seen a Jen Psaki press conference? Imagine being as dumb as her, and then realize that the press must be even dumber. The credulity of the press is ordered to the incredible Biden administration, which is in turn ordered to....

Yes, the left is overdrawn again. And yes, they're printing money as fast as they can. But inflation isn't just a monetary problem. Rather, it must be the reflection of an intellectual and ultimately spiritual problem -- a loss of contact with reality and real value.  

Put it this way: the left is usually bankrupt in every way except monetarily. The return of stagflation means they've run out of other people's money again.   

Stuff I Learned Yesterday

Or discovered, rather. Or in many cases confirmed. You may not exactly remember that fire is the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame, and heat, but no one forgets being burned.

As it pertains to the vertical, one can learn a great deal without ever discovering anything. Come to think of it, this applies to every reality transcending matter: even a lifetime of learning may or may not result in the discovery of truth.

For example, the most learned feminist will, by definition, never discover human nature. Except in an inverse manner, in that the feminist must have an implicit awareness of human nature in order to be in rebellion against it.

By the way, in order for this psychodrama of rebellion to be successful, you and I must be enlisted into it. Truth requires the adherence of no one in order to be true, but the fragile lies of the left require everyone to be on board. Dissent provokes an unconscious reminder to their own denied truth, which is precisely why it "triggers" them.  

"White fragility"? The very concept is proof of the fragility of the leftist hivemind.  

If something triggers you, it is because of an unresolved unconscious emotional issue. The triggering puts you at a crossroads: introspection or acting out. Woke culture is the institutionalization of the latter. What they call activism the clinical psychologist calls acting-out. 

Anyway, I've been reading Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality (see sidebar), and a good working definition of reality is what is and what is capable of being discovered; it is not imagined, or projected, or conceptualized (except to the extent that concepts function as points of reference that are fungible to reality). Or in the words of the Aphorist, 

Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment.

The First Bank of Thomism always has sufficient funds to cover checks drawn on it, even the biggest, e.g., God. 

True, God is infinite while the funds are finite. But here God is analogous to the concept of money itself, as opposed to any particular sum. In other words, money -- i.e., value -- is backed by God. No God, no value, period. Rather, you just make it up -- as in the way a feminist "values" womanhood. Where the mere prostitute sells her womanhood for cash, the gender studies professor sells it for cash and tenure. 

To extend the banking analogy, the proofs of God allow us to open the account. They are more than adequate to function as collateral. We know in an indirect way that they are true, since we derive so much value from them and write so many checks. These checks would all bounce if not for the God reserve. 

Not only do they not bounce, they fund an explosion of wealth and productivity, very much like the bank that lends money to fund more investment and construction. This is precisely how the God account functions. Ultimately it built western civilization, from art to science to liberal democracy. Nor -- as anyone can see -- can our civilization perdure without this backing (which is again the backing of reality).

Back to the stuff I discovered yesterday about reality. For example, this:

when the soul knows necessary and universal principles, it becomes, in some real fashion, all intelligible reality. This truth presupposes the immateriality of the intellective faculty.  

"A lot to unpack" there, as they say. The first sentence specifies not whether but when we know necessary and universal principles.  

Wait -- is that debate over? Well, either it is or it isn't; if it is over, it is because we have plenty of God in the bank. If it isn't, it is because there is Nothing in the bank, in which case two things: 1) the debate is not over, and 2) can never be over. But this reduces to: there is nothing to debate; or to a debate about nothing,  AKA postmodernity.

The second part of the first sentence claims that the intellect is in some sense "all of intelligible reality." This looks like a rather large claim, but here again, it is either true or not true, simple as. 

Here's a thought: on what can all intelligent men agree, by virtue of being intelligent? 

Well? I suppose it depends on what we mean by "intelligence." 

Yes, Petey? It means that in knowing any truth, the intellect must in principle be capable of knowing any and all truth. For what is truth? Correct: intelligible being. And what is intelligence? Correct: the potential to know intelligible being. And who can put a limit to the intellect? The intellect? Yes, but only arbitrarily. 

Man is the microcosm. As such, he has essentially unlimited funds in a local branch of the Macrocosmic Savings & Loan. 

I would go even further and say that the Macrocosm is backed by the infinite funds of the nonlocal Metacosm, somewhat like vine to branch to fruit. Our knowledge is the fruit, but fruit doesn't just grow on trees, unless we're talking about an upside-down tree with its roots aloft and branches herebelow.

Necessary and Universal.  What are those? Oh, little things like the principle of non-contradiction, or of identity: that things either are or are not. In short, all knowledge reduces to the question of being: does this exist? Is this the case? Then it is true. 

Note that all philosophies derived from Kant enclose us in our own subjectivity. Thus, even if they were true, we could never know it. Existence detached from being is like a tree with no roots. No fruit for you!

This is why the left is equal parts cynicism and credulity. Cynicism is too easy. Think of the sneer on Bill Maher's ugly face, forever. Credulity is much too difficult. Have you seen a Jen Psaki press conference? Imagine being as dumb as her, and then realize that the press must be even dumber. The credulity of the press is ordered to the incredible Biden administration, which is in turn ordered to....

Yes, the left is overdrawn again. And yes, they're printing money as fast as they can. But inflation isn't just a monetary problem. Rather, it must be the reflection of an intellectual and ultimately spiritual problem -- a loss of contact with reality and real value.  

Put it this way: the left is usually bankrupt in every way except monetarily. The return of stagflation means they've run out of other people's money again.   

Zing! Went the Strings of My Head

The most subversive book in our time would be a collection of old proverbs. --Davila

In that case, the last thing I want to do is subvert our decaying system and its degenerate elites, so here are some new proverbs:

Critical race theorist: someone who not only can't specify the null hypothesis of Critical Race Theory, but has no idea what you're talking about. 

The white man's burden: if we don't play the role of Satan, their whole universe collapses. 

In the analysis of social problems, all roads lead to IQ differences, but the roads have been barricaded. 

Man is free because he his rational. Unless he is only rational. 

Everything bears witness to God. At least under cross-examination. 

Safe spaces. Because the truth hurts.

The cosmic area rug is a tapestry woven of mystery and intelligibility. Which reduces to a mysterious Intelligence. 

We are created from nothing, and a vestige of this nothingness persists like a retrovirus. Ideologies are born when this nothingness mates with stupidity.  

Ideology encloses mystery in intelligibility, thereby eclipsing Intelligence.

Awareness of necessity is the first freedom. The Absolute is necessary being. This realization is eternity clothed in finitude.  

If God weren't perfect there would be no imperfection. 

In the vertical hierarchy, the last of a higher kind touches the first of a lower. The meeting point of natural selection and supernatural election. 

What is the "glue" that binds the hierarchy? There is a truth above and a grace below. The rest is on you. 

A border of the hierarchy appears as a horizon. The ship of thought disappears beneath it unless you shift dimensions from plane to sphere. Material brain and immaterial soul. 

Or, part and whole. The soul is ordered to the latter, which is why endless adventure is the proper end of our adventuring. 

The purpose of the Incarnation is our salvation. From what? From sin. Now, man is equal parts intellect, will, and sentiment. What is intellectual sin, and how does the Incarnation rectify it? What is the intellectual problem to which he is the solution? Ask Adam but watch the serpent. 

Gross abuse of a corpse is a felony in all 50 states. It must not be a federal crime, so that's how Biden's handlers get away with it.

Those buzz-killing Puritans landed here in 1620. Four centuries of prudery and meddling has reduced them to their essence: wokeness. The left is puritanism with the humor.  

Zing! Went the Strings of My Head

The most subversive book in our time would be a collection of old proverbs. --Davila

In that case, the last thing I want to do is subvert our decaying system and its degenerate elites, so here are some new proverbs:

Critical race theorist: someone who not only can't specify the null hypothesis of Critical Race Theory, but has no idea what you're talking about. 

The white man's burden: if we don't play the role of Satan, their whole universe collapses. 

In the analysis of social problems, all roads lead to IQ differences, but the roads have been barricaded. 

Man is free because he his rational. Unless he is only rational. 

Everything bears witness to God. At least under cross-examination. 

Safe spaces. Because the truth hurts.

The cosmic area rug is a tapestry woven of mystery and intelligibility. Which reduces to a mysterious Intelligence. 

We are created from nothing, and a vestige of this nothingness persists like a retrovirus. Ideologies are born when this nothingness mates with stupidity.  

Ideology encloses mystery in intelligibility, thereby eclipsing Intelligence.

Awareness of necessity is the first freedom. The Absolute is necessary being. This realization is eternity clothed in finitude.  

If God weren't perfect there would be no imperfection. 

In the vertical hierarchy, the last of a higher kind touches the first of a lower. The meeting point of natural selection and supernatural election. 

What is the "glue" that binds the hierarchy? There is a truth above and a grace below. The rest is on you. 

A border of the hierarchy appears as a horizon. The ship of thought disappears beneath it unless you shift dimensions from plane to sphere. Material brain and immaterial soul. 

Or, part and whole. The soul is ordered to the latter, which is why endless adventure is the proper end of our adventuring. 

The purpose of the Incarnation is our salvation. From what? From sin. Now, man is equal parts intellect, will, and sentiment. What is intellectual sin, and how does the Incarnation rectify it? What is the intellectual problem to which he is the solution? Ask Adam but watch the serpent. 

Gross abuse of a corpse is a felony in all 50 states. It must not be a federal crime, so that's how Biden's handlers get away with it.

Those buzz-killing Puritans landed here in 1620. Four centuries of prudery and meddling has reduced them to their essence: wokeness. The left is puritanism with the humor.  

Fresh New Sayings

Just some random thoughts that aspire to be aphorisms. If I had more time I could make them more concentrated and pointy.

Two things interest me: universality and certitude. Make that one thing.

There are limits to knowledge. Which is not to say there is no knowledge of the Limitless. 

If reality is what exists independently of the mind, then we are sealed in ignorance. Conversely, if reality can be known, it is because the immaterial knowing subject is no less real than what it knows.

Sight is to touch as reason is to faith. Do you hear me? 

Science is not equipped to answer the question of how science is possible. Limited to strictly scientific categories, neither science nor scientist are possible, and certainly not important. 

Cynicism its the tribute narcissism pays to credulity.  

Between intellect and reality is ether nothing or everything. 

The most certain truths completely escape language, for example, experience. Boredom is the incapacity to be shocked by its presence.

The intellect sheds light on reality, as reality transmits light to the intellect. Thankfully, God sheds darkness on the intellect, without which we could never know what can't be known. Faith allows us to see into this darkness, or at least bump into things.

Certitude and truth are two sides of the same reality. When certitude is joined with falsehood, it is polite to yell fire in the hole! 

Progressive wisdom begins with fear of the mob. 

Being becomes knowledge that knowledge may return to being. 

Believing the truth surpasses knowledge of its countless models. 

Doing good presupposes seeing things as there are. Seeing things as they aren't is Satan's portal.  

The left makes things so complicated. Why not just outlaw irony, perspective, and common sense?

As all reasonable people know, man is free because he is rational. If he isn't rational then he isn't free, and if he isn't free he isn't rational. Tell me again: how is it that man lacks free will?

Science is the discovery of necessity. It can't prove the existence of freedom because it presupposes it.

Sending every young adult to college will not raise IQ one iota, but that's not the point. Rather, it will contribute mightily to our collective stupidity.  

Anti-gun legislation is weaponized defenselessness.  

The most important things are not means to an end, but for their own sake. There's a name for useless people trying desperately to make themselves useful: Democrats. 

Fresh New Sayings

Just some random thoughts that aspire to be aphorisms. If I had more time I could make them more concentrated and pointy.

Two things interest me: universality and certitude. Make that one thing.

There are limits to knowledge. Which is not to say there is no knowledge of the Limitless. 

If reality is what exists independently of the mind, then we are sealed in ignorance. Conversely, if reality can be known, it is because the immaterial knowing subject is no less real than what it knows.

Sight is to touch as reason is to faith. Do you hear me? 

Science is not equipped to answer the question of how science is possible. Limited to strictly scientific categories, neither science nor scientist are possible, and certainly not important. 

Cynicism its the tribute narcissism pays to credulity.  

Between intellect and reality is ether nothing or everything. 

The most certain truths completely escape language, for example, experience. Boredom is the incapacity to be shocked by its presence.

The intellect sheds light on reality, as reality transmits light to the intellect. Thankfully, God sheds darkness on the intellect, without which we could never know what can't be known. Faith allows us to see into this darkness, or at least bump into things.

Certitude and truth are two sides of the same reality. When certitude is joined with falsehood, it is polite to yell fire in the hole! 

Progressive wisdom begins with fear of the mob. 

Being becomes knowledge that knowledge may return to being. 

Believing the truth surpasses knowledge of its countless models. 

Doing good presupposes seeing things as there are. Seeing things as they aren't is Satan's portal.  

The left makes things so complicated. Why not just outlaw irony, perspective, and common sense?

As all reasonable people know, man is free because he is rational. If he isn't rational then he isn't free, and if he isn't free he isn't rational. Tell me again: how is it that man lacks free will?

Science is the discovery of necessity. It can't prove the existence of freedom because it presupposes it.

Sending every young adult to college will not raise IQ one iota, but that's not the point. Rather, it will contribute mightily to our collective stupidity.  

Anti-gun legislation is weaponized defenselessness.  

The most important things are not means to an end, but for their own sake. There's a name for useless people trying desperately to make themselves useful: Democrats. 

Freeform Aphorizing

Theology for Dummies, AKA atheism.

Wokeness is the ruling class high on estrogen.  

Some people think they are able to manage their lives without the state -- like a host in no need of parasites. 

The desire to reimagine the police is a consequence of imagining them. In other words, delusions are cured by more of them.

For the left, it's an easy choice between St. George and Uncle Tim. Nothing triggers them like a black person who doesn't speak like a retarded child or behave like a raging psychopath.

If less than 6% of the population commits more than 50% of crime, we need to reimagine statistics. 

Disparate impact will not be eliminated until there is equality of outcome between the gifted and stupid.

Standards are barriers to equality. In order to equalize slam dunks we need to either lower the basket or eliminate it entirely. 

Equity is achievable, but only with more inequality between citizens and elites.

You know you're privileged when your insanity not only costs you nothing but assures a lucrative career in journalism, academia, or politics.  

Imaginary oppression is license to oppress. In Christianity, the holy one was an innocent victim. For the left, the victim is the innocent and holy one. 

Social justice is just the left's appeal to your heart on behalf of its fist.

We are guided by continuous feedback from reality. The left used to just ignore the messages, now they shoot the messenger.

Progressive attacks on free speech are an autoimmune disorder of the soul.

Wisdom puts limits on mere knowledge. Without it we are limited by the arbitrary limits of our own ideology.

Ideology is reality enclosed in thought. Reality is the transformation of uncontainable being to thought and knowledge.

The primordial revelation consists of: 1) the intelligible object, 2) the intelligent subject, and 3) the flow between them. Which presumes an even more primordial link between intelligences, or between Subject and subjects. 

Is comes from nature, ought from God, must from the state. State compulsion to do what we oughtn't, or to pretend nature is what it isn't, is justification for revolution. 

In the absence of freedom there is no meaning. Doctrines that deny free will aren't even meaningless. 

Freeform Aphorizing

Theology for Dummies, AKA atheism.

Wokeness is the ruling class high on estrogen.  

Some people think they are able to manage their lives without the state -- like a host in no need of parasites. 

The desire to reimagine the police is a consequence of imagining them. In other words, delusions are cured by more of them.

For the left, it's an easy choice between St. George and Uncle Tim. Nothing triggers them like a black person who doesn't speak like a retarded child or behave like a raging psychopath.

If less than 6% of the population commits more than 50% of crime, we need to reimagine statistics. 

Disparate impact will not be eliminated until there is equality of outcome between the gifted and stupid.

Standards are barriers to equality. In order to equalize slam dunks we need to either lower the basket or eliminate it entirely. 

Equity is achievable, but only with more inequality between citizens and elites.

You know you're privileged when your insanity not only costs you nothing but assures a lucrative career in journalism, academia, or politics.  

Imaginary oppression is license to oppress. In Christianity, the holy one was an innocent victim. For the left, the victim is the innocent and holy one. 

Social justice is just the left's appeal to your heart on behalf of its fist.

We are guided by continuous feedback from reality. The left used to just ignore the messages, now they shoot the messenger.

Progressive attacks on free speech are an autoimmune disorder of the soul.

Wisdom puts limits on mere knowledge. Without it we are limited by the arbitrary limits of our own ideology.

Ideology is reality enclosed in thought. Reality is the transformation of uncontainable being to thought and knowledge.

The primordial revelation consists of: 1) the intelligible object, 2) the intelligent subject, and 3) the flow between them. Which presumes an even more primordial link between intelligences, or between Subject and subjects. 

Is comes from nature, ought from God, must from the state. State compulsion to do what we oughtn't, or to pretend nature is what it isn't, is justification for revolution. 

In the absence of freedom there is no meaning. Doctrines that deny free will aren't even meaningless. 

More Pompous Pronouncements

It's a truism that people are conservative about what they know best. Which is why people who know nothing are the ideal liberals.

Systemic racism. What, like the minimum wage? 

Neither causality nor purpose are intelligible without the element of chance, AKA  holy happenstance; without it, what is, is.

Surprise must be a primordial category, contained eminently in God. Without it, creation is a machine and art an algorithm. Determinism is absolute boredom. 

For a child, an immutable parent would constitute the ultimate nightmare. It is a living death.

The message of the internally related Trinity: don't absolutize the Absolute.

Logic is circular. But there are larger and smaller circles, not to mention a sphere.

Traces of spirit etched in time. Metahistory and history.

Knowledge is the conquest of ignorance, wisdom its restoration.

Let's start with what we don't know. It's the first step to sanity.

Tradition is an ensemble of successful adaptations and solutions to problems we no longer remember precisely because they were successful. Which is why solutions proposed by the left are predicated on not understanding the problem. 

Intelligence is the power without which humans are deprived access to whole worlds, including the most interesting material ones.

Political correctness is a declaration of war by omniscience on curiosity.   

Virtue signaling alerts us to toxic narcissism and dangerous psychopathy. Understood this way, the snake's  rattle is a courtesy.

A wise man said that without God, even truth is an idol. Which is why the first commandment precedes the second and third. No God, no truth, all vanity.

To be the man you gotta beat The Man. Or god and God, in the case of the left. 

 

More Pompous Pronouncements

It's a truism that people are conservative about what they know best. Which is why people who know nothing are the ideal liberals.

Systemic racism. What, like the minimum wage? 

Neither causality nor purpose are intelligible without the element of chance, AKA  holy happenstance; without it, what is, is.

Surprise must be a primordial category, contained eminently in God. Without it, creation is a machine and art an algorithm. Determinism is absolute boredom. 

For a child, an immutable parent would constitute the ultimate nightmare. It is a living death.

The message of the internally related Trinity: don't absolutize the Absolute.

Logic is circular. But there are larger and smaller circles, not to mention a sphere.

Traces of spirit etched in time. Metahistory and history.

Knowledge is the conquest of ignorance, wisdom its restoration.

Let's start with what we don't know. It's the first step to sanity.

Tradition is an ensemble of successful adaptations and solutions to problems we no longer remember precisely because they were successful. Which is why solutions proposed by the left are predicated on not understanding the problem. 

Intelligence is the power without which humans are deprived access to whole worlds, including the most interesting material ones.

Political correctness is a declaration of war by omniscience on curiosity.   

Virtue signaling alerts us to toxic narcissism and dangerous psychopathy. Understood this way, the snake's  rattle is a courtesy.

A wise man said that without God, even truth is an idol. Which is why the first commandment precedes the second and third. No God, no truth, all vanity.

To be the man you gotta beat The Man. Or god and God, in the case of the left. 

 

More Brain Droppings

Just some more aphorisms I've been toying with...

Race, class, and gender are shorthand for the reduction of essence to existence, subject to subjection, bee to hive.

"Social justice" was invented to enable losers and criminals to launder their envy, hatred, and destructiveness.

The left declares war on the very hierarchy that is the cause and consequence of liberty and equality.

Progressivism: a lawsuit against the real on behalf of the perfect.

Crimes of the left are purified of their criminality by the angels of good intention.

In the left's war on civilization, language is a battlefield: words are the POWs, concepts the wounded, and souls the dead. 

In order justify its greed for power, it is prudent for the state to attempt the impossible. Its inevitable failure justifies the seizure of more power.

Liberation and social justice, AKA chaos and theft.

Direct assaults on liberty are more difficult than attacks on the order that renders it possible.

White liberals will never forgive black conservatives for having no need of them.

The left is always clamoring for an honest conversation about race. In order to smoke out and denounce the honest.

There's no White Privilege like the privilege of pretending it exists in order to gain more of it.

Progressivism: time become demonic.

Denying the existence of evil is naive, but comprehensive schemes to abolish it are diabolical.

I have a theory called Climate Stasis. It's also always wrong.

Does God require narrativity because history exists, or vice versa?

The left isn't abandoning colorblindness because it failed but because it succeeded.

Even in dreams we are "in" a world. Just watch the news.

There exists an eminent contingency in God: his creativity.  

To say time is an illusion is to say there is no essential distinction between concrete facts and abstract possibilities, or in other words, nothing is possible. 

More Brain Droppings

Just some more aphorisms I've been toying with...

Race, class, and gender are shorthand for the reduction of essence to existence, subject to subjection, bee to hive.

"Social justice" was invented to enable losers and criminals to launder their envy, hatred, and destructiveness.

The left declares war on the very hierarchy that is the cause and consequence of liberty and equality.

Progressivism: a lawsuit against the real on behalf of the perfect.

Crimes of the left are purified of their criminality by the angels of good intention.

In the left's war on civilization, language is a battlefield: words are the POWs, concepts the wounded, and souls the dead. 

In order justify its greed for power, it is prudent for the state to attempt the impossible. Its inevitable failure justifies the seizure of more power.

Liberation and social justice, AKA chaos and theft.

Direct assaults on liberty are more difficult than attacks on the order that renders it possible.

White liberals will never forgive black conservatives for having no need of them.

The left is always clamoring for an honest conversation about race. In order to smoke out and denounce the honest.

There's no White Privilege like the privilege of pretending it exists in order to gain more of it.

Progressivism: time become demonic.

Denying the existence of evil is naive, but comprehensive schemes to abolish it are diabolical.

I have a theory called Climate Stasis. It's also always wrong.

Does God require narrativity because history exists, or vice versa?

The left isn't abandoning colorblindness because it failed but because it succeeded.

Even in dreams we are "in" a world. Just watch the news.

There exists an eminent contingency in God: his creativity.  

To say time is an illusion is to say there is no essential distinction between concrete facts and abstract possibilities, or in other words, nothing is possible. 

The Wisdom of a Fool

Lately I feel like I have nothing much to add to the argument, or at least nothing I haven't said before. I do, however, have a bunch of aphorisms, such as 

Faking intelligence is easy. Pretending to be witty is impossible. 

It's no one's fault if you reject free will.

Biden's spending plan: ripping off the future and passing the savings along to you!

Social Justice is envy with a PhD. 

Climate models may not be perfect, but at least they're more accurate than the climate.

Progressivism is natural selection in reverse: rewarding failure to adapt.

Civil rights activism, the grift that keeps grifting.

White privilege: the right to have a low IQ without blaming another race.

History will not be kind to those who anthropomorphize history. Nor are those who think history has sides on the right side of history. 

If we can put a man on the moon, then surely we can come up with a better cliché.

It only looks like the left wants to normalize pathology. The real goal is to pathologize normality.  

Gentlemen, you can't defend the Constitution here! This is the Supreme Court!

Bruce Jenner for governor: The Man Who Would be Queen.  

Happiness is pretty simple for a leftist: something to blame, someone to hate, and someplace to wreck.   

Socialism only killed 100 million people in the 20th century because the wrong people were in charge. With more effective leaders, they would have surpassed 200 million.

The most disordered among us are ordered by the perception of oppression. Without the projected structure of perceived racism, they'd have no structure at all.

Theories that can neither predict nor be falsified are maps to utopia.

If a woman has the right not to be sexually harassed, what is the corresponding responsibility? 

I'm old enough to remember when black was a race and not just an ideology.

Only liberals mean what they say. Everyone else is secretly motivated by their worst instincts.

The left isn't totally opposed to free speech; rather, they just want to ensure that it remains safe, legal, and rare.

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; for the rest, politics and journalism.

Blaming greed for income inequality is like blaming gravity for my failure to make the NBA.

The Green New Deal will create full employment by giving everyone a job pulling their neighbor's rickshaw.

Joe Biden is only incompetent to control his own affairs and family, not you and yours.

We need to eliminate scores to give more people access to athletic success.

If raising taxes makes you charitable, then supporting the military makes me a hero. 

Behead those who say Islam is violent! And loot those who say blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime!

Free college = nationalizing the means of unproductivity.

Paranoia was given to socialists to explain their failure.

The Wisdom of a Fool

Lately I feel like I have nothing much to add to the argument, or at least nothing I haven't said before. I do, however, have a bunch of aphorisms, such as 

Faking intelligence is easy. Pretending to be witty is impossible. 

It's no one's fault if you reject free will.

Biden's spending plan: ripping off the future and passing the savings along to you!

Social Justice is envy with a PhD. 

Climate models may not be perfect, but at least they're more accurate than the climate.

Progressivism is natural selection in reverse: rewarding failure to adapt.

Civil rights activism, the grift that keeps grifting.

White privilege: the right to have a low IQ without blaming another race.

History will not be kind to those who anthropomorphize history. Nor are those who think history has sides on the right side of history. 

If we can put a man on the moon, then surely we can come up with a better cliché.

It only looks like the left wants to normalize pathology. The real goal is to pathologize normality.  

Gentlemen, you can't defend the Constitution here! This is the Supreme Court!

Bruce Jenner for governor: The Man Who Would be Queen.  

Happiness is pretty simple for a leftist: something to blame, someone to hate, and someplace to wreck.   

Socialism only killed 100 million people in the 20th century because the wrong people were in charge. With more effective leaders, they would have surpassed 200 million.

The most disordered among us are ordered by the perception of oppression. Without the projected structure of perceived racism, they'd have no structure at all.

Theories that can neither predict nor be falsified are maps to utopia.

If a woman has the right not to be sexually harassed, what is the corresponding responsibility? 

I'm old enough to remember when black was a race and not just an ideology.

Only liberals mean what they say. Everyone else is secretly motivated by their worst instincts.

The left isn't totally opposed to free speech; rather, they just want to ensure that it remains safe, legal, and rare.

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; for the rest, politics and journalism.

Blaming greed for income inequality is like blaming gravity for my failure to make the NBA.

The Green New Deal will create full employment by giving everyone a job pulling their neighbor's rickshaw.

Joe Biden is only incompetent to control his own affairs and family, not you and yours.

We need to eliminate scores to give more people access to athletic success.

If raising taxes makes you charitable, then supporting the military makes me a hero. 

Behead those who say Islam is violent! And loot those who say blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime!

Free college = nationalizing the means of unproductivity.

Paranoia was given to socialists to explain their failure.

Racism, Antiracism, and Anti-Antiracism

The following represents a preliminary attempt to wrap my mind around a very large subject.

Lately I've been reading a book on evolutionary psychology called Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition, by Kevin MacDonald (see sidebar). Like anyone else who honestly considers the evidence of racial differences that are more than skin deep, the author is smeared as a hatethinker. Such heretics call themselves "race realists," while progressives call them Nazis. I suppose I would call myself as moderate race realist, which is still more than sufficient for banishment to the hate community.  

Granted, it's a touchy subject for a number of reasons, but it needn't be. Compare it to something a little less controversial, sexual differences. Despite the insane propagandizing of the left, normal people not only understand that men and women are fundamentally different, but prefer it that way. 

The sexes evolved through different evolutionary pathways, but are obviously complementary, one specializing in strength, competition, and abstract intelligence, the other in nurturing, intersubjectivity, and emotional intelligence, with obvious overlap in between. Why is this a problem?  

It's a problem because it clashes with progressive theology, the first principle of which is Thy Slate Shall be Blank, or Else! If we are born a blank slate, then the state can push us around like so many bags of wet cement in order to bring about utopia. 

At the same time, the evidence of evolutionary psychology implies that human nature isn't necessarily a simple and straightforward concept. For if the races are different, which is the real human? 

Here again, I don’t see this as a big problem, for just as human nature is fully instantiated in both men and women, so too is it present in all human beings of any race. Essence cannot be actualized in the absence of a form that simultaneously expresses and constrains it. 

Ah, but here’s an interesting catch, for where did this concept of a transcendent human nature come from? We don’t see it in Africa, or Asia, or India. Here at One Cosmos we regard it as a Christian idea, but for a strict evolutionist this begs the question and puts the cultural cart before the genetic horse.  

Suffice it it to say, I’ve been pondering this question for several weeks, and I believe I’ve arrived at a satisfactory resolution. Those who have read the book of the same name will recall that I tackled this subject in my own freewheeling and somewhat naive way in Chapter 3, Psychogenesis: the Presence of Mind.    

I say "naive" for two reasons, first because I didn't understand back then that evolutionary psychology was such an offense against the one true faith of progressive Blank Slatism, and second, because I actually succumbed to a bit of B.S. of my own, since I... how to put it... overemphasized the discontinuous leap into universal human freedom, while underemphasizing the particularized genetic continuity.  

Because of the latter, it is as if human nature is present in different musical keys, or perhaps like pure light passing through a prism and coming out different colors. Thus, human nature is simultaneously no race and all races. It reminds me of the pseudo-controversy of Jesus' race. The fact that he was of Middle Eastern descent is entirely accidental to his incarnation as and of human nature as such, which no mere race can ever exhaust, otherwise we could ourselves be perfect men. 

The fact that no man can be perfect tells you a great deal, for it means that he has an essence he can never reach but is perpetually striving toward. 

The other aspect of my resolution to this problem involves the difference between belief and discovery. For example, we don't dismiss the universal truth of the theory of relativity because it was discovered by a Jew. Just as there is no such thing as "Jewish physics," I would say there is no such thing as "Christian personhood," even though Christians are responsible for discovering personhood (with all its cosmic and meta-cosmic implications).

Conversely, evolutionary psychologists regard any and all religious belief as constrained and determined by genes -- as if there is a gene for "belief," with no possibility that the belief might actually conform to transcendent truth. Obviously, biologism doesn't allow for transcendent truth, even though -- like all ideologies -- it makes an exception for the affirmation of its own truth.

On the practical/political side of the equation, the only possible solution would be a passionate embrace of the objective principles animating western civilization (rooted in genuine discoveries about human personhood), and an insistence that anyone coming into this country understand and live by them. But the left embodies the opposite: a passionate rejection of those timeless truths, accompanied by a cynical strategy of killing them via the democide of open borders. 

Let's end with an observation by Schuon, in order to deflect attention from myself:

Races exist and we cannot ignore them, less than ever now that the time of closed [genetic] universes has come to an end....

If racism is something to be rejected, so is an antiracism which errs in the opposite direction.... the fact that races are not separated in completely watertight compartments in no way means that pure races are not to be found as well as mixed ethnic groupings. Such an opinion has no meaning for the simple reason that all men have the same origin and that humanity as a whole -- often wrongly referred to as the human race -- constitutes one single species.

Or this:

the existence of Christ or of the Vedantic doctrine adds nothing to the value of a white man with a base nature any more than the barbarism of certain Africans tribes takes anything away from a black man of saintly soul...

foreign races have something complementary in relation to ourselves without there being in principle any 'lack' in us or in them either. 

And about progressives who deny the provenance of progress?

Now, there are few things so absurd as the anti-Westernism of those who are themselves westernized.

Racism, Antiracism, and Anti-Antiracism

The following represents a preliminary attempt to wrap my mind around a very large subject.

Lately I've been reading a book on evolutionary psychology called Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition, by Kevin MacDonald (see sidebar). Like anyone else who honestly considers the evidence of racial differences that are more than skin deep, the author is smeared as a hatethinker. Such heretics call themselves "race realists," while progressives call them Nazis. I suppose I would call myself as moderate race realist, which is still more than sufficient for banishment to the hate community.  

Granted, it's a touchy subject for a number of reasons, but it needn't be. Compare it to something a little less controversial, sexual differences. Despite the insane propagandizing of the left, normal people not only understand that men and women are fundamentally different, but prefer it that way. 

The sexes evolved through different evolutionary pathways, but are obviously complementary, one specializing in strength, competition, and abstract intelligence, the other in nurturing, intersubjectivity, and emotional intelligence, with obvious overlap in between. Why is this a problem?  

It's a problem because it clashes with progressive theology, the first principle of which is Thy Slate Shall be Blank, or Else! If we are born a blank slate, then the state can push us around like so many bags of wet cement in order to bring about utopia. 

At the same time, the evidence of evolutionary psychology implies that human nature isn't necessarily a simple and straightforward concept. For if the races are different, which is the real human? 

Here again, I don’t see this as a big problem, for just as human nature is fully instantiated in both men and women, so too is it present in all human beings of any race. Essence cannot be actualized in the absence of a form that simultaneously expresses and constrains it. 

Ah, but here’s an interesting catch, for where did this concept of a transcendent human nature come from? We don’t see it in Africa, or Asia, or India. Here at One Cosmos we regard it as a Christian idea, but for a strict evolutionist this begs the question and puts the cultural cart before the genetic horse.  

Suffice it it to say, I’ve been pondering this question for several weeks, and I believe I’ve arrived at a satisfactory resolution. Those who have read the book of the same name will recall that I tackled this subject in my own freewheeling and somewhat naive way in Chapter 3, Psychogenesis: the Presence of Mind.    

I say "naive" for two reasons, first because I didn't understand back then that evolutionary psychology was such an offense against the one true faith of progressive Blank Slatism, and second, because I actually succumbed to a bit of B.S. of my own, since I... how to put it... overemphasized the discontinuous leap into universal human freedom, while underemphasizing the particularized genetic continuity.  

Because of the latter, it is as if human nature is present in different musical keys, or perhaps like pure light passing through a prism and coming out different colors. Thus, human nature is simultaneously no race and all races. It reminds me of the pseudo-controversy of Jesus' race. The fact that he was of Middle Eastern descent is entirely accidental to his incarnation as and of human nature as such, which no mere race can ever exhaust, otherwise we could ourselves be perfect men. 

The fact that no man can be perfect tells you a great deal, for it means that he has an essence he can never reach but is perpetually striving toward. 

The other aspect of my resolution to this problem involves the difference between belief and discovery. For example, we don't dismiss the universal truth of the theory of relativity because it was discovered by a Jew. Just as there is no such thing as "Jewish physics," I would say there is no such thing as "Christian personhood," even though Christians are responsible for discovering personhood (with all its cosmic and meta-cosmic implications).

Conversely, evolutionary psychologists regard any and all religious belief as constrained and determined by genes -- as if there is a gene for "belief," with no possibility that the belief might actually conform to transcendent truth. Obviously, biologism doesn't allow for transcendent truth, even though -- like all ideologies -- it makes an exception for the affirmation of its own truth.

On the practical/political side of the equation, the only possible solution would be a passionate embrace of the objective principles animating western civilization (rooted in genuine discoveries about human personhood), and an insistence that anyone coming into this country understand and live by them. But the left embodies the opposite: a passionate rejection of those timeless truths, accompanied by a cynical strategy of killing them via the democide of open borders. 

Let's end with an observation by Schuon, in order to deflect attention from myself:

Races exist and we cannot ignore them, less than ever now that the time of closed [genetic] universes has come to an end....

If racism is something to be rejected, so is an antiracism which errs in the opposite direction.... the fact that races are not separated in completely watertight compartments in no way means that pure races are not to be found as well as mixed ethnic groupings. Such an opinion has no meaning for the simple reason that all men have the same origin and that humanity as a whole -- often wrongly referred to as the human race -- constitutes one single species.

Or this:

the existence of Christ or of the Vedantic doctrine adds nothing to the value of a white man with a base nature any more than the barbarism of certain Africans tribes takes anything away from a black man of saintly soul...

foreign races have something complementary in relation to ourselves without there being in principle any 'lack' in us or in them either. 

And about progressives who deny the provenance of progress?

Now, there are few things so absurd as the anti-Westernism of those who are themselves westernized.

Waiting for the Thunderbolt

Ever had that feeling that you've said everything there is to say? I get it every six months or so. You could say I'm waiting for the next thunderbolt. I'm also anticipating another thunderbolt -- this one exterior -- that collapses the deranged Empire of Wokeness. For what cannot  continue will not continue.

I've decided to reinstate the Now Reading list to the sidebar, because readers have a right to know what I'm inhaling. As you can see, it's a diverse and contradictory list, from traditionalism to evolutionary psychology to demonic influences to alt-right hate thinkers. My job is to somehow reconcile them all, which isn't that easy. Some would say it's frankly impossible, but I am committed to making diversity work.

For example, the alt-right tends to be indifferent or hostile to Christianity. I sympathize with their view, as I would certainly choose moderate atheism before, say, the radical National Council of Churches, or any other form of leftist Christianity -- which is just mental illness or demon possession masquerading as Christianity.

The other problem I'm seeing with the alt-right is the rejection of universalism. It's a mirror image of the left's absurd relativism, which devolves to tribe vs. tribe, and ultimately to power. Realpolitik types will say that we are naive, since politics always reduces to the will to power anyway. All the fancy rhetoric just covers naked self-interest.  

Well, even if universalism was discovered by white Europeans, it's still universal. In other words, it makes no sense to me to attribute abstract universalism to racial particularism, just as it makes no sense to say that modern physics is a Jewish thing. If there are no universals then we are screwed. I don't care which race discovered them. 

Yes, western civilization is probably doomed in the long run -- human nature being what it is -- but we certainly won't pull out of our suicidal death spiral by rejecting the universalism of the founders, rather, by reaffirming it. If I reject the identity politics of the left, it's because it is barbaric and regressive, not because of my own tribal loyalty. 

Moreover, half my tribe is composed of lunatics, idiots, craven conformists, the power hungry,  and the demon-possessed. Obviously, I have much more in common with Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas than with Joe Biden or Rachel Maddow. 

I'm not naive about racial differences. I just think we should hold all races to the same universal standards and let the chips fall where they may. If the entire NBA is black, or the entire Berkeley math department is Asian, I couldn't care less. 

I guess the deepest analysis goes to the very nature of intelligence, which is, among other things, the capacity for discerning principles. If it's merely a function of biology, then to hell with it. Sure, a German Shepherd is smarter than a Great Dane, but neither can ever transcend dogginess and know the absolute.

Intelligence is obviously bound up with natural selection, but to reduce it to such is both self-defeating and ultimately absurd. We could say that intelligence is accidentally genetic but essentially transcendent, on pain of being able to say nothing about it that isn't reducible to reproductive interest, or "selfish genes." If that's the case, then Europeans are wrong and Muslim immigrants are correct, because the latter have more children.

If we are to prevail it can't be just because we are more intelligent, but because we understand what intelligence essentially is; and

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and of our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing. Among all the intelligences of this world the human spirit alone is capable of objectivity, and this implies -- or proves -- that what confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish, and what makes it wholly what it is, is the Absolute alone (Schuon).

Moreover, to be intelligent is to know reality and to thereby be more real:

Intelligence is the perception of a reality, and a fortiori the perception of the Real as such. It is ipso facto discernment between the Real and the unreal -- or the less real... 

Intelligence gives rise not only to discernment, but also to the awareness of our superiority in relation to those who do not know how to discern.... we cannot help being aware of something that exists and is perceptible to us thanks to our intelligence, precisely....

But the same intelligence that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations. This means that an essential function of intelligence is self-knowledge: hence the knowledge -- positive or negative according to the aspects in view -- of our own nature (ibid.). 

Now, leftism is predicated on the denial of human nature, so it is intrinsically stupid, irrespective of race. 

Waiting for the Thunderbolt

Ever had that feeling that you've said everything there is to say? I get it every six months or so. You could say I'm waiting for the next thunderbolt. I'm also anticipating another thunderbolt -- this one exterior -- that collapses the deranged Empire of Wokeness. For what cannot  continue will not continue.

I've decided to reinstate the Now Reading list to the sidebar, because readers have a right to know what I'm inhaling. As you can see, it's a diverse and contradictory list, from traditionalism to evolutionary psychology to demonic influences to alt-right hate thinkers. My job is to somehow reconcile them all, which isn't that easy. Some would say it's frankly impossible, but I am committed to making diversity work.

For example, the alt-right tends to be indifferent or hostile to Christianity. I sympathize with their view, as I would certainly choose moderate atheism before, say, the radical National Council of Churches, or any other form of leftist Christianity -- which is just mental illness or demon possession masquerading as Christianity.

The other problem I'm seeing with the alt-right is the rejection of universalism. It's a mirror image of the left's absurd relativism, which devolves to tribe vs. tribe, and ultimately to power. Realpolitik types will say that we are naive, since politics always reduces to the will to power anyway. All the fancy rhetoric just covers naked self-interest.  

Well, even if universalism was discovered by white Europeans, it's still universal. In other words, it makes no sense to me to attribute abstract universalism to racial particularism, just as it makes no sense to say that modern physics is a Jewish thing. If there are no universals then we are screwed. I don't care which race discovered them. 

Yes, western civilization is probably doomed in the long run -- human nature being what it is -- but we certainly won't pull out of our suicidal death spiral by rejecting the universalism of the founders, rather, by reaffirming it. If I reject the identity politics of the left, it's because it is barbaric and regressive, not because of my own tribal loyalty. 

Moreover, half my tribe is composed of lunatics, idiots, craven conformists, the power hungry,  and the demon-possessed. Obviously, I have much more in common with Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas than with Joe Biden or Rachel Maddow. 

I'm not naive about racial differences. I just think we should hold all races to the same universal standards and let the chips fall where they may. If the entire NBA is black, or the entire Berkeley math department is Asian, I couldn't care less. 

I guess the deepest analysis goes to the very nature of intelligence, which is, among other things, the capacity for discerning principles. If it's merely a function of biology, then to hell with it. Sure, a German Shepherd is smarter than a Great Dane, but neither can ever transcend dogginess and know the absolute.

Intelligence is obviously bound up with natural selection, but to reduce it to such is both self-defeating and ultimately absurd. We could say that intelligence is accidentally genetic but essentially transcendent, on pain of being able to say nothing about it that isn't reducible to reproductive interest, or "selfish genes." If that's the case, then Europeans are wrong and Muslim immigrants are correct, because the latter have more children.

If we are to prevail it can't be just because we are more intelligent, but because we understand what intelligence essentially is; and

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and of our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing. Among all the intelligences of this world the human spirit alone is capable of objectivity, and this implies -- or proves -- that what confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish, and what makes it wholly what it is, is the Absolute alone (Schuon).

Moreover, to be intelligent is to know reality and to thereby be more real:

Intelligence is the perception of a reality, and a fortiori the perception of the Real as such. It is ipso facto discernment between the Real and the unreal -- or the less real... 

Intelligence gives rise not only to discernment, but also to the awareness of our superiority in relation to those who do not know how to discern.... we cannot help being aware of something that exists and is perceptible to us thanks to our intelligence, precisely....

But the same intelligence that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations. This means that an essential function of intelligence is self-knowledge: hence the knowledge -- positive or negative according to the aspects in view -- of our own nature (ibid.). 

Now, leftism is predicated on the denial of human nature, so it is intrinsically stupid, irrespective of race. 

Biology & Meta-Biology, Bobology & Meta-Bobology

Gödel's theorems mean that no matter how complete the formal system, it will always leave a semantic residue: semantics cannot be reduced to syntax, meaning to grammar, reality to mathematics, quality to quantity, etc. This seems intuitively obvious, but it's nice to have logic on one's side. 

The bottom line is that man will never arrive at a theory of everything, but will be perfecting it until perishing from global warming in a few years. 

At the moment, I'm cross-referencing our favorite logician, Gödel, with our favorite biologist, Robert Rosen. 

As Gödel was a "meta-logician," I suppose we could say that Rosen was a meta-biologist, although he would no doubt object to the characterization, since it might imply an element of woo-woo or oogily-boogily. 

Rather, he believed that he was the one pursuing hard science, while pulling no metaphysical punches. It's the reductionists who are the softheads. Rosen was a real scientist, proof of which is found in the fact that I don't understand half of what he says. I do, however, get the big picture.

Indeed, the big picture is the meta-picture, precisely. I won't say it's the only thing that interests me. Then again, it does seem to be my default setting, and indeed the default setting of any philosopher properly so-called. Now, to even call oneself a "philosopher" strikes me as unbearably pompous, for what is philosophy but error on a grandiose scale, with no hope of arbitrating between this doozy and that whopper?

If I actually believed that, I would despair, for it would mean that the bOb is pointless in a double sense, or nihilism squared. It would of course mean that life -- anyone's life -- is utterly meaningless. But it would also mean that my life in particular is not even meaningless, what with its meta-preoccupation with universal truths. 

The moment I began studying psychology, I couldn't help thinking about metapsychology, i.e., the larger system of which one's psychological theories must be a part -- both the truths entailed in one's psychology, and the axiomatic truths it presupposes. 

Moreover, without consciously realizing it, I was always on the lookout for logical and meta-logical inconsistencies in this or that system or paradigm. In general, the only way to harmonize such inconsistencies is with recourse to a higher truth in a vertical spectrum. Once you do this, you realize that, for example, mind cannot be a material process for the same reason that physics cannot describe reality. Again, there is always a semantic residue in such attempts at reducing one level to another.

For Rosen the duality of quantity and quality is not the same as that between hard and soft science, respectively. Rather, it rests on "presuppositions about the nature of material reality and on how we obtain knowledge about it." The duality between syntactics and semantics goes to "what is true by virtue of form alone, independent of any external referents, and what is not."

Which raises an interesting question: can formal truth be true in anything other than a trivial sense? In other words, is mathematics true only within its own system, or does it disclose real truth about the actual world? If one says Yes to the latter, this has enormous metaphysical (because meta-mathematical and trans-human) consequences.

The reductionist is guided by the conviction that "Qualitative is nothing but poor quantitative." Given this presupposition, "everything we call a quality or a percept is expressible in terms of numerical magnitudes, without loss or distortion.... therefore, every quality can be quantitated, and hence, measured or computed." Thus, "Everything else we call science is ultimately a special case of physics."

Put that way, it sounds almost like a straw man. And yet, it must be the metaphysical underpinning of science, so long as science is "true." If reductionism is not the case, then what is the foundation of the world? Not in some airy-fairy way, but precisely? What are the ultimate truths that must be and cannot not be, in order for mundane science to be true (at least as far as it goes)?

Now, some people couldn't care less about such questions: "most practicing mathematicians, like most practical (empirical) scientists, go on about their business, indifferent to such matters, convinced to the depths of their soul about the reliability of what they do." 

Wait a minute -- depths? Soul? How did these contaminants get into the lab?! I suppose we can say that wherever the reductionist goes, he goes there too and spoils it.

In Hilbert's formalistic school of thought, semantics can "always be effectively replaced by more syntactic rules." That is to say, "any external referent, and any quality thereof, could be pulled into a purely syntactic system." 

But a syntactic system is "a finite set of meaningless symbols" guided by a finite set of rules for combining them. Such a system is necessarily consistent, but is it complete? Yes, if you and I are machines. But if we were machines, could we ever know it? If math is just about more math, where's the inscape hatch? And if math is about the world, what is the world about? 

Well, thanks to both Gödel and common sense, we know that whatever the mind is, it isn't a machine or computer. 

But if reductionism is obviously wrong, does this imply that the opposite approach is the correct one? I don't think so. Rather, I suspect a kind of eternal complementarity between the extremes of empiricism-idealism, subjectivity-objectivity, quality-quantity, etc.  

The ancients began at the other end -- the other end of reductionism -- in that for them

life simply was; it was a given; a first principle, in terms of which other things were to be explained.

To us this may seem naive, but is it any more naive than for a conscious lifeform to declare itself to be absolutely contingent? Whence this absoluteness? How did it sneak into the lab? Must have been smuggled in by Soul and Depth.

We are told that biology reduces to physics. But what if physics is an entailment of metabiology or something? Well, stranger things have happened.  

On the one hand, biologists have convinced themselves that life is somehow the inevitable necessary consequence of underlying physical (inanimate) processes.... But on the other hand, modern biologists are also, most fervently, evolutionists; they believe wholeheartedly that everything about organisms is shaped by essentially historical, accidental factors, which are inherently unpredictable and to which no universal principles can apply.

In short, "they believe that everything important about life is not necessary but contingent." 

That's what you call meta-irony, only without the self-awareness necessary to generate a guffah-HA! experience.

I'm running out of time, so I'll end with this thoughtlet: biology is indeed reducible to physics at one end, while referring to life at the other. But what does it mean to be "about" life? For that is life?

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that what we call life is ultimately rooted in the principle of Life Itself, just as the mind is grounded in the principle of Consciousness Itself, and persons in the principle of Divine Personhood. Above that it goes dark. Which is not to say that we can know nothing about it, only that it exceeds our puny models. Call it the principle of Divine Overflow.

Biology & Meta-Biology, Bobology & Meta-Bobology

Gödel's theorems mean that no matter how complete the formal system, it will always leave a semantic residue: semantics cannot be reduced to syntax, meaning to grammar, reality to mathematics, quality to quantity, etc. This seems intuitively obvious, but it's nice to have logic on one's side. 

The bottom line is that man will never arrive at a theory of everything, but will be perfecting it until perishing from global warming in a few years. 

At the moment, I'm cross-referencing our favorite logician, Gödel, with our favorite biologist, Robert Rosen. 

As Gödel was a "meta-logician," I suppose we could say that Rosen was a meta-biologist, although he would no doubt object to the characterization, since it might imply an element of woo-woo or oogily-boogily. 

Rather, he believed that he was the one pursuing hard science, while pulling no metaphysical punches. It's the reductionists who are the softheads. Rosen was a real scientist, proof of which is found in the fact that I don't understand half of what he says. I do, however, get the big picture.

Indeed, the big picture is the meta-picture, precisely. I won't say it's the only thing that interests me. Then again, it does seem to be my default setting, and indeed the default setting of any philosopher properly so-called. Now, to even call oneself a "philosopher" strikes me as unbearably pompous, for what is philosophy but error on a grandiose scale, with no hope of arbitrating between this doozy and that whopper?

If I actually believed that, I would despair, for it would mean that the bOb is pointless in a double sense, or nihilism squared. It would of course mean that life -- anyone's life -- is utterly meaningless. But it would also mean that my life in particular is not even meaningless, what with its meta-preoccupation with universal truths. 

The moment I began studying psychology, I couldn't help thinking about metapsychology, i.e., the larger system of which one's psychological theories must be a part -- both the truths entailed in one's psychology, and the axiomatic truths it presupposes. 

Moreover, without consciously realizing it, I was always on the lookout for logical and meta-logical inconsistencies in this or that system or paradigm. In general, the only way to harmonize such inconsistencies is with recourse to a higher truth in a vertical spectrum. Once you do this, you realize that, for example, mind cannot be a material process for the same reason that physics cannot describe reality. Again, there is always a semantic residue in such attempts at reducing one level to another.

For Rosen the duality of quantity and quality is not the same as that between hard and soft science, respectively. Rather, it rests on "presuppositions about the nature of material reality and on how we obtain knowledge about it." The duality between syntactics and semantics goes to "what is true by virtue of form alone, independent of any external referents, and what is not."

Which raises an interesting question: can formal truth be true in anything other than a trivial sense? In other words, is mathematics true only within its own system, or does it disclose real truth about the actual world? If one says Yes to the latter, this has enormous metaphysical (because meta-mathematical and trans-human) consequences.

The reductionist is guided by the conviction that "Qualitative is nothing but poor quantitative." Given this presupposition, "everything we call a quality or a percept is expressible in terms of numerical magnitudes, without loss or distortion.... therefore, every quality can be quantitated, and hence, measured or computed." Thus, "Everything else we call science is ultimately a special case of physics."

Put that way, it sounds almost like a straw man. And yet, it must be the metaphysical underpinning of science, so long as science is "true." If reductionism is not the case, then what is the foundation of the world? Not in some airy-fairy way, but precisely? What are the ultimate truths that must be and cannot not be, in order for mundane science to be true (at least as far as it goes)?

Now, some people couldn't care less about such questions: "most practicing mathematicians, like most practical (empirical) scientists, go on about their business, indifferent to such matters, convinced to the depths of their soul about the reliability of what they do." 

Wait a minute -- depths? Soul? How did these contaminants get into the lab?! I suppose we can say that wherever the reductionist goes, he goes there too and spoils it.

In Hilbert's formalistic school of thought, semantics can "always be effectively replaced by more syntactic rules." That is to say, "any external referent, and any quality thereof, could be pulled into a purely syntactic system." 

But a syntactic system is "a finite set of meaningless symbols" guided by a finite set of rules for combining them. Such a system is necessarily consistent, but is it complete? Yes, if you and I are machines. But if we were machines, could we ever know it? If math is just about more math, where's the inscape hatch? And if math is about the world, what is the world about? 

Well, thanks to both Gödel and common sense, we know that whatever the mind is, it isn't a machine or computer. 

But if reductionism is obviously wrong, does this imply that the opposite approach is the correct one? I don't think so. Rather, I suspect a kind of eternal complementarity between the extremes of empiricism-idealism, subjectivity-objectivity, quality-quantity, etc.  

The ancients began at the other end -- the other end of reductionism -- in that for them

life simply was; it was a given; a first principle, in terms of which other things were to be explained.

To us this may seem naive, but is it any more naive than for a conscious lifeform to declare itself to be absolutely contingent? Whence this absoluteness? How did it sneak into the lab? Must have been smuggled in by Soul and Depth.

We are told that biology reduces to physics. But what if physics is an entailment of metabiology or something? Well, stranger things have happened.  

On the one hand, biologists have convinced themselves that life is somehow the inevitable necessary consequence of underlying physical (inanimate) processes.... But on the other hand, modern biologists are also, most fervently, evolutionists; they believe wholeheartedly that everything about organisms is shaped by essentially historical, accidental factors, which are inherently unpredictable and to which no universal principles can apply.

In short, "they believe that everything important about life is not necessary but contingent." 

That's what you call meta-irony, only without the self-awareness necessary to generate a guffah-HA! experience.

I'm running out of time, so I'll end with this thoughtlet: biology is indeed reducible to physics at one end, while referring to life at the other. But what does it mean to be "about" life? For that is life?

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that what we call life is ultimately rooted in the principle of Life Itself, just as the mind is grounded in the principle of Consciousness Itself, and persons in the principle of Divine Personhood. Above that it goes dark. Which is not to say that we can know nothing about it, only that it exceeds our puny models. Call it the principle of Divine Overflow.