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the.crooked

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basically this post is a file dump cus I cant send it to myself through email right now.

 

but as always anyone interested can read and respond. This is the basic tune of what my senior's thesis will be about.

 

The questions I have are thus:

 

What is it that we are doing when we speak of language and reality? What is language, its purpose and how we construct it? Does this construction determine our perception of reality,or vice versa? Is it perhaps a positive feedback loop in which our perceptions of reality inform the terms of our language which in turn create modes of perception through which we continue to order the world? What would answers to such questions provide to the problems of subjectivity, indeterminism, emperical reduction and objective rationality? And lastly, is there any way to reconcile these conclusions with our emperical research (physics, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, etc.)? Does the history of discussion on such questions provide and hope for ever finding an answer, or may we believe to be stuck in a never ending continuim of theories which will necessarily be wrong?

 

 

 

To that end, what is it that we define as language? The normal academic attitudes vary from field to field in their specific differences, but I think that it can be agreed upon that the function of language at all is the reduction of our perceptual life to symbol and transmission of that reduction to another agent with the same understanding. Therefor, language can vary from the ontology of natural language all the way to the general structure of mathematics. Numbers are just as descriptive as regular language. In fact one need merely to look to the use of cgi to see the relation of numbers to constructing a reality of sorts and thus containing a sort of experiential meaning.

 

Where does this belief lie? In the analytic tradition, Quine argues that our semantics are necessarily tied to syntax, for in the loss of analyticity and syntheticism we find that to understand the definition of a word a necessary understanding of the term in relation to its extended definiton is required. Not only that, but the specifics of a definition are only given by the term in the context of other terms. That is to say we do not understand words themselves, we understand sentences. In so much as this may be the case, one is inclined to see a necessary connection of an implicit semantics to an explicit syntax. As quine says "the totality of our knwoledge is like a web of sentences whose truth values are determined and are tested by the day to day of our experience." That is to say the way we understand the world is affected by what we experience. Meaning then is necessarily tied to our experiences in life. Again an importan point can be drawn from this. Each person's meaning is different, and necessarily so. If the "totality of our knowledge is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are that of experience," then the specific experiences of a person define the implied semantics of their language. Thus we see an argument for private language arise. However Donald Davidson does much to counteract this strong argument by showing that we need not share every experiential semantic to understand one another's language, but that we need merely callibrate them to a degree such that we believe to understand eachother. Rather, if we share "enough" experiences as relatable to a set of terms, we can believe to converse effectively. Language in these accounts is infinite in its recursive structures and can thus be infinitely pulled out.

 

Numbers also have this constructivist account. Paul Benacerraf contends that numbers (as abstracts) are not objects in the previous Fregean Platonist account. But that they are notations of an abstract entity which we know to be infinite but only experience through an individuated constructive process, counting. This is much like the un-analytic writer Henri Bergson, who sixty years prior to Benacerraf, contended that the very essence of our being is like that of a flow or progression, that while whole and undividuated in its idealization is experienced moment to moment as individuated experiences. Similar no?

Bergson speaks of a unity among these moments that construes them as relatable, where Benaccceraf speaks of a relation among sets, in the case of the natural numbers, the less than relation. One might even argue that the flow of life Bergson speaks of is ordered under the same less than relation with Benacerraf explicates. Rather. to consider the private implications of subjective semantics in line with how one might know to order their experiences in a less than relation, it feeds into the intrsopective individuation Bergson calls upon. That is to say, each person's subjective experience of life is how they know how to order and the experiences of them. At twenty years old I can say the experiences which comprise the totality of my life. At twenty one I will include in that counting, the experience in which I did the same thing the year before.

 

to be continued...

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one has to observe the universe. In order to describe reality. however each observer has a different perception, based upon the view of the individual.

Communication provides us with a link of information that can be shared between individuals up to the masses. The stars give light signals that transmit their location in time and in space. Computer systems transmit energy through the binary code, informing the various components with their reality. The computers reality is made to do the work of your imagination. Atoms, vibrate at different frequencies informing the universe on their location and energy. In the same way individual human being use vibrations to transfer their energy from one to the other. Like every atom, computer, and star, we all have different levels of energy. These differing levels of energy give differing views of the universe.

 

Computers are machines made by man. Man is a machine made by the universe. Both are used to for your imagination.

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i tend to think it is less levels of energy but more so a positive feedback of how we input data (the senses) and let it be interpreted (the brain, with consciousness as an emergent property of these processes). Our specific genetics define the starting point of our physical structure, which is then developed in parallel to the input we recieve. That to me accounts for subjectivity in perspective a little more than ambiguous language of energy levels.

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i agree. i think descartes said that. wasn't descartes like the godfather of existentialism. it's been a while i forget.

 

"Descartes believed humans could doubt all existence, but could not will away or doubt the thinking consciousness, whose reality is therefore more certain than any other reality. Existentialism decisively rejects this argument, asserting instead that as conscious beings, humans would always find themselves already in a world, a prior context and a history that is given to consciousness, and that humans cannot think away that world."

 

-from wiki

 

 

fuck.. i hated western civilization..glad im done.

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I THINK THEREFORE I AM IS THE TRUEST PHILOSOPHY I THINK.

 

The cogito, or rather cogito ergo sum, is merely the capstone of Cartesian dualism and the beginning of the mind body problem within the western cannon. It is the history of philosophy since then which has been dealing with the questions laid out be Descarte.

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I prefer Eastern philosophy to Western, but it's interesting to see how certain thinkers (Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Descartes, Kant etc.) have influenced the way we think to such an extent that we take it for granted without even realizing it. Platonic idealism/dualism and how the Western mind tends to think is one example.

 

But the truest Western philosophy, I think, is that which paralells Eastern philosophy. John Donne said it best, "No man is an island."

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The cogito, or rather cogito ergo sum, is merely the capstone of Cartesian dualism and the beginning of the mind body problem within the western cannon. It is the history of philosophy since then which has been dealing with the questions laid out be Descarte.

 

 

yo, everytime i hear/see the word "ergo" it makes me cringe a tad bit. because it reminds me of that old dude from Matrix Revolutions, who claimed to have written the matrix, and was hard to understand because of his thesaurus-like speech. he used "ergo" a lot. it's hardly used in common speech.

 

just like those who say "discourse" instead of "discussion."

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I prefer Eastern philosophy to Western, but it's interesting to see how certain thinkers (Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Descartes, Kant etc.) have influenced the way we think to such an extent that we take it for granted without even realizing it. Platonic idealism/dualism and how the Western mind tends to think is one example.

 

But the truest Western philosophy, I think, is that which paralells Eastern philosophy. John Donne said it best, "No man is an island."

 

 

i guess i prefer western just because of ethnocentric bias -- we're raised learning it and believe it's the best. and because i don't know much about eastern philosophy. i've read some confuscious, some buddhist philosophy, sun tzu military philosophy, and i organize my home according to feng shui. that's about it..

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i guess i prefer western just because of ethnocentric bias -- we're raised learning it and believe it's the best. and because i don't know much about eastern philosophy. i've read some confuscious, some buddhist philosophy, sun tzu military philosophy, and i organize my home according to feng shui. that's about it..

 

yeah, the buddhist / indian stuff is what i'm drawn to, maybe some of the zen teachings too. it seems to me that eastern philosophy and quantum physics are a lot more in line with eachother, whereas newtonian physics paralells western philosophy in some ways (the renaissance thinkers), and newtonian physics is a dead-end when it gets down to the quantum level anyway.

 

another thing, atleast for me, when we're raised on the american dream and than we realize rich people really aren't that happy, beautiful people always think the grass is greener on the other side, etc., it's not that hard for me to see that western philosophy/mindset has it's flaws.

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zen and taoism all the way for me. i have many thoughts about how they parallel the western cannon.

 

 

 

and theo

 

 

cogito ergo sum, is the latin phrase that was written by Descarte. It literally translates as what we commonly understand as "I think, therefore I am." Cogito means I think, ergo=therefore, and sum means I am.

 

Philosophy usually as a sort of economy of writing will refer to a latin phrase when it holds a stronger concept then some sort of english explication.

 

 

one thing to consider about the dichotomy of eastern vs western philosophies is the structure and form of each. Easten seeks simplicity in its form to lead the reader into a state of right knowing, yet western thought employs complexity and dense writing to convey a certain semantics. It is all reaylly interesting to me.

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I find that i prefer western philosophy because it seems to have more logical backing. Western philosophy is really really critical and i like it that all the ltitle flaws in an arugment are brought out and examined, i also really like the whole 'ockham's razor' deal and burdens of proof etc.

 

although i am really drawn to some ideas in buddhist philosophy I don't like it that a lot of it rests upon the fact that you can't know certain things and i don't like how much assumption is made and left uncriticized in most Buddhist teahings, its very illogical.

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