And Now, For Something Completely Different

For reasons of a pressing personal nature, I refrained yesterday from the political commentary I usually engage in, and I own that the composition of this piece was accomplished by no small labor, for I cannot seem to muster the vituperative instinct that usually flows so readily from my hand.  I had thought, that by unfortunate coincidence of date, that there would be no occasion for me to need to voice my opinion on anything, and I could tend to my own personal sorrows.  I seem to have underestimated both the desperation and the native vitriol of the modern Republican Party.

Yesterday was the eleventh anniversary of the attacks by Al Qaida on the United States.  Not generally given to mawkish observance of events that do not affect me individually, I thought my time better spent engaged in the aforementioned matters.  By mutual composition, both campaigns agreed to suspend their usual activities for memorial observation.  Mitt Romney seems to be the only member of the his Party, though, to get that message.

Before proceeding further in my analysis of the events of the last few news cycles which I have neglected, it would be instructive to observe that the terrorist attacks eleven years ago were not the historical watershed they are generally supposed to be in the public consciousness. Taking nothing away from the horrific loss of life and the attendant grief,  the attacks, in and of themselves, are analogous more to Lockerbie than Pearl Harbor.  I know that this may seem insulting, prima facie, to public sentiment, but a historian should, if he is worthy of the sobriquet, practice his craft as dispassionately as possible.  On December 7, 1941, the United States was attacked by state action, precipitating our entry into, and eventual dispositive action to end, the Second World War.  The Japanese attack was not used as an excuse by the Roosevelt Administration for military adventurism, indeed, the isolationist sentiment of the time would have made such a motivation well nigh impossible.  The attack was the proximate cause of our declaration of war against the Japanese Empire; the widening of our involvement into the European theatre, which to me is more personally significant, was accomplished not by our own accord, but that of Nazi Germany, which declared war on us the next day.

The events of September 11, 2001 naturally aroused a instinctual need for revenge, and more practically, a need to assert the military might of the United States in such a way as to dissuade any other potential miscreant from thinking they could attack the United States with impunity.  That the Bush Administration would mishandle the tragedy, from the intelligence reports preceding the attacks, and after, both militarily and on the world’s diplomatic stage was something that America, in it’s grief, could not have foreseen.   The commencement of hostilities in Afghanistan that swiftly followed was a war of necessity, not of choice, and though the method of its prosecution is worthy of some derision, an attention I will presently pay it, it would be patently foolish to object to the necessary and proper use of America’s military might.  

Unlike the hostilities in Afghanistan, the campaign in Iraq was pure military adventurism, a fulfillment of a neoconservative imperative that was a blunder diplomatically and was detrimental to our national security. It turned Iraq into a terrorist haven, which under the despotic fist of Saddam Hussein was an awful abuser of human rights, but just as surely, it was not the safe haven for terrorist activities directed at the United States it would shortly become.  It is in the light shone by the Iraqi campaign that the events of September 11 merit historical notice from a scholarly, rather than emotional, paradigm.  

It is becoming increasingly apparent that our involvement in Iraq was preordained by the election of George W. Bush and the elevation of his neoconservative national security team.  We learned through a New York Times editorial published yesterday that the Bush Administration systematically ignored the intelligence they were fed leading up to the attacks, seemingly focusing instead on the war with Iraq they had already decided upon (see Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy.)  This informs the historical precedence of September 11; that it was used as an excuse to widen an already costly “war on terror” is unpardonable.  I am not one to engage in the mindless speculation of conspiracy theory, nor am I an author prone to writing counterfactual history, but it does seem remarkably convenient that Bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora, thus giving Bush the loosed boogeyman so necessary to sell widening engagements wherever he so chose.  It is inconceivable that it was unknown to the Bush Administration where he was likely to be found, logically where else could he have gone?  For an administration committed to the eponymous Bush doctrine not to prosecute the war in Pakistan seems to border on giving “aid and comfort.”  

Rather than having a mea culpa moment, and moving on, the Republican hypocritically chose yesterday, which the President was accused of not observing with the proper solemnity, to attack the Obama Administration on the perception of (rightful) secularity in government, “feckless foreign policy,” and sequestration.  Perhaps there were some other things that escaped my notice.  

Fox News attacked the President for not invoking piety in his memorial observations.  It is a charge that is, regrettably, untrue.  In a Presidential Proclamation issued Friday past, the President called for National Day of Prayer and Rememberance.  Obama’s proclamation apparently wasn’t theocratic enough for Fox’s liking; one wonders if they similarly rebuked Bush’s proclamations issued for the same purpose.  The “wall of separation” that Jefferson so eloquently evoked in his letter to the Danbury Baptists is the only viable way for a nation such as ours was envisioned can be, and I would, myself, be inconsistent, if I did not chastize the President for invoking the name of God (and the question “whose God?” succinctly illustrates why such a proclamation has no proper place in our civil government.)    

Senator McCain’s assertion that the President’s foreign policy is the most feckless he has seen since Jimmy Carter is hardly worth comment.  Senator McCain might direct his attention to the immediate past administration, as I did earlier.

Eric Cantor, who facing a surprisingly tough reelection bid has receded from the forefront of Republican bombast chose yesterday, with it’s tinge of military significance, to assert that the President wants to cut military spending, that this is a mistaken policy, and that the Republicans have offered other, viable alternatives.  Congressman Ryan himself is now attempting to disavow his sequestration vote.  People ought to be aware that the Republicans with a combination of neoconservative and Tea Party bravado, would rather cut services to those already marginalized by society than to cut military spending.  The fact that our military spending could be quartered and still leave America as an implacable foe that no one in their right mind would dare engage seems to be of no account to them.

It had been generally agreed, admittedly with occasional potshots, that the anniversary of the attacks should not be a day on which political hay was made.  This sentiment, combined with other unfortunate events, dissuaded me from setting pen till this morning, but though my grief is unabated, if that composition will be so egregiously violated by the Republicans, I will feel no compunction in clicking “Post.”

Who Speaks For Our Time?

One hundred years ago, people had had enough, and wrought changes in the very fabric of society.  Traditions of the past were swept aside in art, in literature, in politics; in everything.  Goodbye Impressionism, hello Cubism and Dada.  Goodbye empire, hello democracy.  Goodbye classical mechanics, hello relativity.  The twentieth century was a time of change, mostly, in the larger scheme, for the better.  Who speaks for the twentieth century?  Picasso and Matisse, Duchamp, Pollock, De Kooning and Rothko; Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Capote and Stein; Eames and Porsche; Strummer and Byrne, Patti Smith, too; Roosevelt and Wilson, the other Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson and yes, even Lenin; Einstein and Schroedinger, Everett, Hawking and Susskind, Sagan and Don Herbert, to name but a few.  

Who speaks for our time?

Objections of a quasi-Positivist

Pronouns have been substituted to protect the innocent.

… A variation of this objection was raised in a dialectical exchange between the author and his oldest friend.  He took exception to the Ontological Argument opining that the finite human mind cannot conceive of the infinite, and therefore cannot conceive of a being “than which none greater can be conceived.”  This, he says, renders the Ontological Argument invalid.  In rebuttal, the author argued that the concept of infinity is indeed within the grasp of the human mind, and although it cannot be precisely defined mathematically, the connotation of the word is easily understood.  It is not necessary to specify how (in each way) the entity postulated is maximally great, because in each of its aspects, such an entity can be assumed to be infinitely great.

             He further refined his argument to state that the maximally great being would also have to be the maximally complex being, insofar as the being responsible for creation would have to be so.  He holds that if the universe is infinitely complex, the creator would have to be even more complex, in order to hold the complexity of creation within His own consciousness.  He further opines that the human mind is incapable of conceiving of such complexity as must be possessed by the creator, thus rendering the major premise of the Ontological Argument false.  In sum, the crux of his objection is that the abstraction of maximal greatness afforded us by language is not sufficient, and that the necessary being’s complexity must be fully described in mentation for the Ontological Argument to be sound, the possibility of which he is unwilling to admit.

While agreeing with his definition of (essentially) Kolmogorov complexity, the author contends that the linguistic abstraction we employ is adequate to describe the conception of the necessary being, as it both denotes and connotes maximal complexity, yet allows the human mind to express the conception, thus satisfying the requisites for a sound argument.

             Moreover, if his adaptation and application of the complexity theory is correct, then the necessary being (being, he contends, necessarily more complex than his creation,) the universe itself, and all its possible parallels, become inconceivable, to wit:

             The universe consists of approximately 10^⁸⁰ atoms, a boggling sum in and of itself.  Quantum theory informs us that each and every one of these atoms can exist simultaneously in an infinite number of states.  This naturally yields an infinite number of permutations, meaning the universe, multiverse, or creation (and indeed, every thing,) is infinitely complex, and, according to him, therefore inconceivable, an assertion demonstrably false.  Thus, we see that an infinitely complex universe is, in fact, conceivable; it follows, then that an infinitely complex creator is also conceivable, reductio ad absurdum. 

        … because some things are simply too complex for the human mind to grasp.  It is a view we reject wholeheartedly…

             If one accepts this assertion, one accepts the contention that nothing is knowable.  The atomic example obviously applies to all material things, and is ultimately dispositive, yet the argument could be made on a larger scale where permutations are finite yet still mindboggling.  How does one propose to understand biology if one holds the position that genetics is too complicated, and that, even if we can understand the underlying phenomena, we cannot then reconstruct that into an understandable whole?  Chemistry and physics present similar problems. 

             If one doubts the human mind’s ability of conception, that also casts a priori knowledge very much in doubt (which, we suppose, was his actual intention.)  We understand him to mean that the word is not enough, yet the word suffices for conception.  To expect an explanation of an irreducible mathematical concept, and an explanation in full detail (and in this case, that means infinite detail) of its application, seems both unreasonable and unnecessary. 

             He raised the question of Popperian falsifiability applied to the Ontological Argument, but this again demonstrates, to our thinking, a misapplication of scientific methodology.  At the risk of repetition, the logic which defines the philosophical agency of the Ontological argument is prior to any philosophy of science.  Moreover, in the more practical realm of experimental technique, what test would he propose to demonstrate the existence of an extra-scientific entity?  And how does one propose to refute a tautology?  The disparate natures of science and philosophy have been discussed in this work ad nauseam, and there seems little need to comment on the topic here other than to refer the reader to what we have written elsewhere.  

             While his arguments against Anselm are, in our opinion, the most robust that we have encountered, they must fail because, as we have noted, words have meanings and those meanings must be accepted for logic to work.  (At the time of this writing, we are also preparing a paper on this very topic.)  Attacking denotation is tantamount to attacking logic, and as we have previously noted, logic is the foundation upon which all other human endeavor is based. 

             As we will allude to again shortly, it is impossible to prove the contradictory nature of an entity that is either contingent or necessary.  The best one can hope to do, if he is of such a mindset, is to attack the premises of the author’s argument, though it should be noted that even if successful, such an effort would not disprove the existence of God, but only demonstrate the unsound nature of one man’s argument for His existence.  We trust that our good readers will have already ascertained the futility of such an effort, as even those objections raised by the keenest mind among the author’s peerage have failed to dislodge his argument from the province of plausibility.

             … He further contends, as a corollary to his complexity thesis, that God’s existence is probabilistically unlikely because He is more complex than other, contingent, entities that we know do not exist.  The example he cites is the unicorn.  This corollary is untenable because it confuses logical necessity with mathematical probability.  Moreover, it is not necessarily the case that, all other things being equal, an entity less likely to exist does not exist simply because a more probable entity does not exist.  As an illustration of this point, imagine a species of bacteria that does not, in actuality, exist.  Following his argumentation, human beings should not exist, as they are more complex than this imagined bacteria, which in this example takes the place of his unicorn.  This rather effectively demonstrates the flaw in this line of reasoning. 

             God, as we have defined Him, echoing Anselm, must exist.  The objections he raised concerning the limits of the human minds ability have already been addressed.  Logic being prior to mathematics, and therefore, statistics, objections based on probability are meaningless.

Re: the FB Post immediately below

Now lots of people are going off the deep end because of the discovery of a new particle.

The last time I checked, the strongest language that was being used was that it “bore a remarkable similarity to what we would expect the Higgs Boson to be.”  Or something like that.  Though possibly a great leap forward in out understanding of physics, this discovery has had the unfortunate effect of unleashes cries of “see, we told you so!” from hoardes of atheists.

Unfortunately, many, if not most, atheists have no reason for believing what they do.  Yet they criticize (rightly) their evangelical counterparts for precisely the same transgression.  

I dealt with the arguments being raised these last few days with little more than a foot note, yet I can see that I underestimated the intransigence (or perhaps ignorance) of those who would say that a scientific discovery can disprove the existence of a necessary being.

I suppose I should begin with a challenge to the skeptics.  Please, disprove the premise “God exists.”  (The word God, being rather loaded, is probably not the best term to use, yet is is more readily understood than “necessary being.”)  You can’t.

That said, for all those who would assert that they can now be certain of how the universe came to be (and if you say that you really have a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method,) I should explain that the implication “God created the universe” is not contained within the premise “God exists,” so even if irrefutable evidence of such an assertion were found, it could not be used as an effective argument against the existence of a necessary being.  When confronted with the impossible task of disproving the existence of such a being, and provided with a proof of His tautological existence, the rational man accepts the latter.

None of my work should be construed as an endorsement of religion, which is not much more than a malignacy growing on the consciousness of humanity.  I strive only to explicate the truth, as I see it, and part of that truth is that fundamental atheism is certainly as dishonest as fundamentalist religion.

…

see, I kept my promise <3

Replies

Now that I am starting to receive some traffic, it would seem prudent to advise my audience that replies can be posted at www.facebook.com/REBPipes

Fun and Games, Redux

I’m reposting this from a couple of posts I made on Facebook last week, by popular demand.  (ok… one person asked.  But she’s kind of a big deal.)  

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Isaac Asimov

Following up on Dr. Asimov’s words, a message to everyone who thinks that waving a Gadsden Flag (did you know that’s what it’s called?) while wearing a tricorn hat and spouting inanities is really patriotic:

Can you identify the following people and concepts? 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke
William Marbury
John Stuart Mill
Ludwig von Mises
Thomas Jefferson
Charles Louis de Secondat
Murray Rothbard
John Maynard Keynes
Adam Smith 
Alfred Rosenberg
Albert Nock
Jesus Christ
Arius
Athanasius
John Nelson Darby

harm principle
social contract
commerce clause
instrument of debt
store of wealth
taxing power
separation of powers
establishment clause
nihilism
Objectivism
libertarianism
conservatism
classical liberalism
socialism
communism
Ultilitarianism
xenophobia
Wealth of Nations

If you can’t give a textbook identification of the significance of each and every one of the preceding terms, would you please shut the hell up and read something other than a Cliffs Notes version of Atlas Shrugged while ignoring the fact the Rand was an athiest (and for the most naive of reasons?)

Mental Masturbation For College Credit

Eileen,  

The following, I hope, will put my rather strenuous objections to some of the arguments being made on the forum today into context.  

[3]

Based as it is on rationalism, we expect our work to be rejected by those who subscribe to the currently trendy postmodern paradigm.  It could be argued that nihilism is a subset of postmodernism, or at least an anachronistic logical outgrowth of it, insofar as it embraces the idea of subjective reality.  If reality is subjective, and thus subject to interpretation by each individual, then nothing truly has any meaning.  Clearly such a paradigm is useless in discussing the nature of God, whom we will demonstrate to be an objectively real entity existing external of our own consciousness. 

            There is a psychological need, we opine, for an objective view of reality.  Things being perceived to be unreal, or at least mutable on a whim, tends to rob the psyche of grounding, of a sense of security, leaving only anxiety and uncertainty, and ultimately,to a loss of personal identity separate from the new, superimposed culturally defined norm.  This cannot be anything but anathema to the individual, or we should say, individualist, a matter we will discuss at length in our treatment of ethics.  This leads to an unnatural skepticism which renders real scholarship impossible, for no truth can be ascertained. 

             To be brutally honest, our own opinion of postmodern thought is that it is not much more than, to use a colorful idiom, mental masturbation.  The worst aspect of the whole mess is that postmodern thinkers actually regard themselves as thinkers. Postmodernism essentially postulates the truth that there is no truth, an obvious contradiction.  If these “thinkers” are so intelligent, why have they not renounced their suppositions in light of their basis in a logical impossibility?  Intelligence presumes the ability to integrate knowledge, however personally distasteful, into the repository of one’s mind.  To deny the manifestly true simply because it is inconvenient and negates preconceived notions is irrational.  (We will demonstrate that the previous statement applies equally well to both our present topic and the typical reaction of Christians to our work.)

We would assert that the task of a thinker is, at its core, to determine what is true. Within the realm of subjectivism, this is, by definition, impossible, hence our objection to the appellation.  Many subjectivist movements have taken a lighter tone, and in this way may be regarded as less intellectually offensive, for they have no pretense to anything but hedonism. (See note 4.)  Such lighter movements, the Beats and the Hippies, for example, make for an interesting study, and although we might not completely agree with their perception of reality (and ignoring that that perception was often modified by the introduction of psychotropic substances, see note 85) it is interesting to note that most such movements have arrived at a system of practical ethics  that mirrors our own (which will be elaborated upon in a forthcoming work.) Hence, while they may be intellectually light, in practical terms, they are quite heavy. (And this is apart from their importance in cultural and art history.) 

For my one fan…

who will, doubtless, eventually grow tired of me. :P

…Atheistic existentialism creates its own quandaries with its supposition that the meaning of life can be individually, which is to say, subjectively, defined.  Absent an external, objective meaning to human existence, the entire proposition of equality becomes ridiculous.  Freedom of being is not true freedom, as it is not based on an objectively established equality. 

 A political declaration of the equality of man, however admirable, is more or less meaningless because it is not within the province of man to assign value to life by political rehabilitation.  If equality does not emanate from the very fact of human existence then it does not exist, for no political entity exists or can be conceived of that can alter the fundamental characteristics of the human condition.  The force of law is constrained to the sphere of human society, where we are here speaking of a more profound metaphysical equality.  That, the feeble power man commands cannot affect.

In this light, Sartre’s contention that we are “condemned to be free” is demonstrated to be absurd.  There can be no freedom without equality, and there can be no equality within the confines of an atheistic existentialist paradigm.  Superficially, the thought that man is not bound by the regnancy of God may seem freeing; carefully examined, its mendacious nature is revealed.  (This is in regard to God’s role in imbuing life with meaning and thus creating equality among men.  Man’s duty to God, once having defined and identified him, will be dealt with elsewhere in the body of our present work.)  Even if one adopts an atheism, our contention that “existence precedes essence” and “man is condemned to be free” constitute a contradiction holds.  In an atheistic paradigm, prior equality can still be demonstrated through the commonality of human nature. Thus it is true, either theistically or humanistically, that essence at least coincides with existence.  If we suppose that this is not the case, we are faced with the same conundrum as before: without an essence, man has no claim to equality, and without equality, no claim to freedom.  Therefore, even constrained by Sartre’s atheism, his work is essentially absurd.  Inasmuch as his work can be seen as a philosophy of disillusionment, we aim, in some measure, to answer his shot across the bow of humanity’s esteem.

          Sartre’s denial of human nature as a motivation for action, predicating all action instead on rational thought is both false to fact and problematic in ways we will deal with at length in our discussion of the psychological need for invented religion.  To think, as Sartre did, that there is no creator, automatically supposes that we are no more and no less than animals.  It is unreasonable to then assert that we are not motivated by animalistic instinct, no matter how much of a predilection for rational thought society conditions us with (and this last is, in and of itself, contentious, as we see politicians discard reason for the comforts provided by the ostracism fostered by the natural tendencies we inherit through evolutionary psychology.  It is also obvious in the daily conduct of the lives of those Washington called the herd, who are motivated to action through primal urges to fulfill carnal desires.  Sartre’s vision of a supremely rational humanity, however desirable that imagined reality would be, does not account for the patent nature of human behavior.  Even the most intelligent and reasonable among us occasionally succumb to wanton desires, as these are programmed into our very nature, for the rather mundane reason of ensuring the propagation of the species through a propensity to fecundity.)  The sublimation of base instinct is a feat that few, if any, can accomplish.

Especially For Eileen

Since I was, on another venue, discoursing about what should be really valued, I thought I would post another excerpt in the hopes that it might clarify my views more thoroughly than can be done in the comment box on Facebook.  

On a side note, it be really great if I could figure out how to uncenter this.

A FORMULATION PROVING THE OBJECTIVE NATURE OF REALITY

            Solipsism, perhaps most famously espoused by Rene Descartes, is a doctrine of doubt that anything other than one’s own mind is certain to exist.  It is a formulation particularly unsatisfying to the author, who shares, with many others, a psychological need for certainty.  Though this work does not propose, except in the most incidental fashion, to treat of psychology, we would suppose that this is related to being in possession of an internal locus of control.  Those so possessed are rarely fatalistic, and we would think, likely to cast a jaundiced eye at the notion that our perception of reality is mutable at the whim of another.  Thus it may be understood that, for this author, it is first necessary to address the permanence and objective nature of reality before addressing its Author, for if reality is inconstant, it is doubtful that any knowledge of Truth we arrive at would have anything but an ephemeral relevance; hardly worth the effort.  More broadly, were objectivity questionable, it is doubtful that anything meaningful could exist, again a condition most unsatisfactory.  Therefore we here set ourselves briefly to the task of demonstrating the constant, objective nature of reality, and firm in that, and that the logic that we hold so dear is therefore relevant, we will proceed to rationally demonstrate the existence and nature of the necessary being. 

            We can reason that a solipsistic doctrine is faulty thusly: as we encounter new ideas, not of our own minds origination, we can assume that they are the products of other minds, distinct from our own.  While this would still allow for a Cartesian Evil Genius, it must be noted that for such an entity to invent the entire library of human knowledge, and, moreover, present the universe to each of our minds (not yet admitting that any others exist) in a consistent way, would require such immense faculty as to be safely called omnipotence.  (Here we are referring to objective presence, and not subjective sentiment.  The author naturally perceives his home in a sentimental fashion alien to his guest, yet the objective reality of the edifice is perceived identically by both.  As humans are possessed of an emotional nature, it is only natural that every man perceives his environs sentimentally differently, but if he perceives them physically different from his fellows, it is suggestive of a disturbance.)  Since omnipotence confers necessity, and only one necessary being can exist (a premise which will be demonstrated later) the only way that we can affirm solipsism is to admit that the necessary being, that being God, is also Descartes’ Evil Genius.  This is not a very satisfying rationale, for why would God create a mind, or minds, and trick them into perceiving a physical body and their surroundings, familiar and distant, when it would require much less effort to simply supply one and allow man to develop his world?  Even with the observation that this would constitute no real effort on God’s part, the objective reality of things external to the mind is still seemingly a better explanation of reality as we perceive it than the machinations of the Evil Genius.  

            Albert Einstein famously asked Neils Bohr if he really believed the moon wasn’t there when no one was looking.  Without wading into the abstrusities of quantum mechanics, it is generally admitted that while an object can exist or not exist in multiple states simultaneously, its nature is fixed by observation.  This observation need not be the active observation of human curiosity, but any interaction between an object and any external influence.  Thus it is easy to see why we do not observe quantum uncertainty in the macroscopic world of our everyday lives: quantum fixation defines reality.  Insofar as all things are constantly observed, they are constantly fixed, and therefore exist in the macrocosm exactly as we perceive them.         

Plato postulated that those things we observe to be real are, in fact, only the shadows of ideal Forms.  If we are wrong, and Platonism is correct, and what we perceive to be reality is but a projection or a shadow of ideal Forms, there would not seem to be a serious impact on our philosophy of religion, for surely God is beyond the realm of Kantian phenomena, and it would seem that Plato is borne out by Susskind, and Susskind by Plato.  (In our discussion of ethics, we will find an analogy of sorts with Plato, that we should mime the Good in the world of shadows, but this is an agreement in conclusion only, and not method.) 

            A comparison can be drawn between the Platonic Theory of Forms and the Jungian theory of archetype.  While the first deals with metaphysics and the second with primal psychology, insofar as both theories propose that there is a certain ideal that is the perfect symbol of a thing, the comparison is apt.  This poses interesting possibilities, for the basis of ceremonial occultism is the evocation of power from such Forms.  To the extent that Plato was influenced by the Pythagorean Mystery School, a plausible link between his thought and the nineteenth century esoteric traditions is unsurprising.  It seems plausible to assert that if Plato and Jung are correct, then by knowledge of the Form and knowledge of the proper method of manipulation of the Form, a change in reality may be effected.  This naturally contradicts the concept of an objective reality, but occultism overtly, we should say, deals with the manipulation of subjective realities.  This may seem an insignificant point dealing with a rather obscure paradigm, but insofar as Plato is seen as the origin of the Western philosophical tradition, it is worthy of more consideration than we can give it here, for it suggests that the purest knowledge is intuitive in nature. In the antirational milieu that was the turn of the last century, such a suggestion is not surprising; it is, however, murderous to the concept of reason, as it is usually defined. 

            Returning to the assumption the Plato is correct, we find that if this is so, and God is therefore the ideal beyond the ideals, that is to say, the ultimate ideal, then is everything else a shadow of Him?  (And, if this is so, in light of the Holographic Principle, would this not suggest a monism in which God projects the shadow, which is the hologram of reality that we call creation, and thus God is the sum of reality; there is no disparity.) 

            If we are included in this set of things, then it might properly be said that man exists in the image of God, but we are the shadow of shadows.  While this might be a very entertaining thought experiment, worthy of spending a rainy day on, it doesn’t tell us anything about the real world.  We are here about arriving at some substantial knowledge, and as much as shadows are insubstantial, they would not seem to be a very good medium with which to paint the portrait of reality. 

            Neither are we satisfied with the idea that reality is some sort of mathematical construct, as cosmologist Max Tegmark advances in the documentary “What is Reality?”: “I think our universe isn’t just described by math, I think it is math.  I think our entire universeis a giant mathematical structure that we are part of.”  We do don’t possess the requisite expertise to presume to dispute such an esteemed scientist, at least on his own terms; yet it seems likely that if everything can be reduced to a mathematical expression, that is not the same thing as being that expression.  It is a similar relationship as we find with things and words.  Sensible things may be described linguistically or mathematically, and certainly more exactly by mathematical means, for as we have said, all the words in the world are occasionally inadequate to the task of description; but they still are, and are not but that description. 

            The beauty of our estimation of reality, we think, lies not only in the philosophical correctness we ascribe to it, but also in its coincidence with how the ordinary man perceives the world.  Were the reader to stop a man on the street and ask him about the Theory of Forms, inquire as to his opinion of solipsism, or require of him a mathematical explanation of reality, he would most likely meet with an indignant response, unless by chance he encountered a philosopher or a physicist, and perhaps even then, that reality is exactly as we perceive it.  It is a logical aphorism that the least complicated solution is most likely to be the correct one, and we are sure this holds true in this case.  Cigars everywhere are relieved to know that in all cases, they are just cigars.  

We would assert that, absent any psychopathology, the mind may be relied upon to arrive at a reasonably correct interpretation of the objective world, naturally somewhat informed by preconceived notions, but fundamentally correct.  This should, in no wise, be construed as an affirmation of the monopoly of empiricism in knowledge formation, for we will shortly demonstrate our confidence in a priori ratiocination.

 Naturally, if one is predisposed to dismiss an empirical epistemology, it is unlikely one can be convinced of the objective reality of those things detected by the senses.  In a similar fashion, a person opposed to knowledge arrived at by a priori methodology is unlikely to accept our contention that a solipsistic doctrine is faulty.  Only by reference to both these epistemological techniques can a full and satisfying knowledge be arrived at, one that acknowledges truths both philosophic and scientific.

 Since the mind is housed within the brain, the objectively real physical manifestation of it, itself contained within the body, it is folly to suppose that mind and body can be completely divorced.  There is no science known to man that can separate the mind from its physical manifestation, and any attempt to separate the physical organ of mental faculty from the rest of the body would immediately result in the demise of both (leaving aside, for now, our reasoning concerning the eternal nature of the soul.)  Thus, on the most practical level, it is demonstrable that the mind and body are, to an extent, integrated, and each is necessary for the others continued existence precisely because of this non-disparate nature.

 Now, this clearly only addresses the physical quandry; the mind being of a nature nonphysical, it is necessary that we treat of that as well.  The mind has a certain metaphysical import of a superior nature to that of the body, for the mind is synonymous with consciousness, and consciousness with the soul; therefore all ethical quandries concerning the body originate in the bodies subservience to the mind, insofar as our ethics are predicated upon the soul.  It might even be arguable that the body has no agency except in it’s service to the mind, or as it were, the soul.

 Plato would have Socrates agree with us in his dialogue with Alcibiades.  Inasmuch as he questions Alcibiades to agreement that a man is his soul, and that this soul directs the body, and insofar as what we know to direct the body is consciousness, we can infer parity between the soul and consciousness, and a disparity between this and the body, yet they exist in a symbiotic relationship.  Thus we see that the mind and body are separate entities that cannot be separated.  The most direct proof of this contention is this: the existence of the mind was rather handily proved by Descartes, though his solipsistic doctrine would not admit knowledge of the body.  The existence of the body can reasonably be assumed by the methods employed in our critique of solipsism.  Insofar as the mind and the body cannot be proved by the same method, they must be distinct entities, for were they identical, they could be thus proven. 

Objective Truth

Excerpted from the endnotes of one of my current projects: 

[160]

Who was, let it be known, a dreadful writer, a philosophical hack, and an absolutist.  Her system is fundamentally flawed, as evidenced by the fact that in her earliest years she began the formulation of an epistemological system that ignores the fundamentals of logic, while later claiming that reasoned thinking should be the basis of all action.  To be sure, she was not completely devoid of good ideas; her advocacy for the noninitiation of violence is an example, but on the whole, her ideas are not well founded, abhorrent to any sense of a decent human nature, and have thus been scorned by all except those on the radical right fringe that see legitimizing her as a philosopher as a way to legitimize their own ideas.  

It is therefore necessary here to offer a few insights into our take on the pseudointellectual ramblings of Ayn Rand, as they are once again exerting a profound influence upon the political landscape and the wider society (although it is supposed by some anti-intellectuals that philosophical musings have no practical agency, current events belie this contention.)  The shouts from the audience, during a Republican primary debate this campaign season of “let them die” with regard to the question of affordable health care forebodes the evils inherent in a system modeled upon Randian ideals. 

 Are money and self-interested egoism really “goods” and lives unable to fend for themselves “evils?”  We do not think that the individual should ever be extinguished by larger society, yet neither should the individual pursue his own motives to the detriment of others.  Thus the evils of corporatism, which is the inevitable outcome of the unfettered capitalism Rand espoused, can also be exposed: the love of wealth for its own sake, abstracted from concern about the economic and environmental welfare of others.

             The corrupting influence of financial motivation on any preexisting ethical tendencies  within a man  is sufficiently demonstrated that we are comfortable with the assertion that corporate entities are inherently evil.   Though we are inclined to argue that institutions, in a more abstract sense, are not in and of themselves, deplorable, because they have no agency, and that it is spurious to argue that a program is bad when it is organized for the common good, with no actual knowledge of how it will be employed, this is only applicable to institutions publicly owned: government institutions.   The involvement of a profit motive allows us to cast credible aspersions as to the character of any corporation.  That Rand was not prescient enough to discern the resultant practical sublimation of the individual to corporations by the application of her abstract advocacy must be unnerving to those who would imagine her as a martyred heroine for individualism.

             Rand, certainly in her early formulations, and again in that pendulous tome Atlas Shrugged presumes freedom independent of equality, a fatal error.  (And this was not her earliest.  Her atheism was arrived at through the fallacious syllogism one might expect of a thirteen year old girl. That she never revisited this error of thought demonstrates a foolish arrogance.  (Heller, 30.)) In this sort of philosophic construct, were we to admit its validity, we find a venue for the orgiastic excesses of unfettered Capitalism that trod upon the absolute intrinsic freedom of man, which must needs be based upon a presumption of equality in origin, not based on the ability to snatch it by dint of talent.  How short a leap it is from devaluing the essence of human life, if that life is not productive in a way that Rand would approve of, to insisting on the death of those she feels unfairly subsidized?  Again we see that for all her vitriol against collectivism and totalitarianism, she is not far from Fascism at heart.  What a sad end for a Jewish girl to come to!   A brouch zu dein leiben?  We sympathize with her exultation of competence, a refrain we ourselves are wont to make, but praise for intellectual superiority need not be accompanied by a denigration of the intrinsic value of the lives of the ordinaries.  

 Within Objectivism, there is no room for compromise, and such an unbending philosophy is unsuited for any but the fully realized world she envisioned. Whatever her pretension to that Nietzcheian monstrosity of Das  Ubermensch, with it’s attendant disregard for the value of any other,  the fact remains, as we have demonstrated both from a religious bent  and a secular one, that every individual is equal in their origin.   This being the case, a society based on her ideals is the very antithesis of the compassion that human nature predicates.

 Christian morality can be abstracted from Christian theology.  It is eminently possible to revile Christianity and embrace the ethic of love thy neighbor; it is rather simpleminded to think that the rejection of Christ as a divinity must needs be accompanied by a rejection of Christ as teacher.  To be sure, Christianity, and religion as a whole, has a numbing effect, as Marx observed, on humanity, but this is not an evil ascribable to God, or even the construct of religion, but to men whom have sought advantages through the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and the credulous and naïve nature of most men.   This treatise is proof that religious thought and individual intellectualism are indeed compatable.   

 Rand’s stark portrayal of the dichotomy between the individual and society isn’t the basis of a system of ethics, as she believed she was enunciating, for anyone but a sociopath, and is a pernicious mendacity hiding in the shadows on the Right.  We do not presume to argue that it is not occasionally necessary for the individual to inveigh against larger society; this author routinely does, but this opposition need not take the form, in a free society, of antisocial disregard for anyone but oneself.  Inasmuch as no man is an island, he must live in society and by the rules enacted for the greater good of society.  Though there is much criticism that can be heaped upon Utilitarianism, particularly that the hedonistic calculus can be used to justify horrific acts, we would accept axiomatically that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”

             As we equate the soul to consciousness, are we then to suppose that the relative value of an individual soul is predicated on his intelligence, self-realization, and ego? Clearly the answer is, for us, no.  Leaning heavily on Nietzche, himself mentally touched,  seems an almost unpardonable philosophic sin.  While this author emphatically agrees that some people are clearly in possession of superior abilities, and he would number himself among them, the thought that superiority abrogates any responsibility to others is anathema to his position.  Rather, superior intellect imparts a responsibility to lead the unlettered away from self destructive economic, political and societal behaviors.  To regard the populace as lambs for the slaughter to sacrifice to the ego of one man echos the sentiments of the totalitarian regimes Rand professed to despise.

             Rand suffers from the unfortunate tendency among conservatives (a political characterization that, admittedly, she might object to) to demonize her intellectual opponents with the most damning pejorative of the day.  In the era she was active, that was to condemn a person as a Communist, without regard to Party affiliation, concern for what economic precepts actually define Communism and distinguish it from other leftist or collectivist economic constructs, or even objective truth.  Due to her psychological insecurities, which we will presently treat, she was unable to countenance differences of opinion in any other than a binary fashion.

             For a self styled philosopher who held that “the real root of evil on Earth” was “the irrational” (Burns, 100,) she was of a most unreasonable temperment.  Ultimately, it is difficult to take her seriously as a philosopher not only because her system is flawed,  but because of her tempestuous abuse of anyone she deemed ideologically impure, i.e., those who did not immediately defer to what she perceived to be her own manifest genius (Burns, 154.) She failed to realize that unwavering devotion to any idea stifles  intellectual growth of both the individual and society, and there is a case to be made that for all her talk of reason (nevermind the fact that she routinely made assertions without justifications and would denounce ideas well justified with just such assertions) she stood as an opponent to intellectual progress, and for all her advocacy of individualism, she could not brook the idea of any individual’s thought being valid if it contradicted her own.

             Oddly enough, Rand’s slavishly devoted followers are largely of the intellectual populist sort.   No credible philosopher or literary critic gives her much credence, yet her personality cultists are absolutely convinced that her ideas are every bit as valid, nay, more so, than others recognized, if for nothing else, than for not being the products of hacks.  If there were a more general knowledge of the cultish nature of the ironically named “Collective,” it is doubtful that Rand would still command such a following.  Now, as in the beginning, however, her followers are just that: anything but individualist, indiscriminate and intellectually bereft.  Like any other cult, they threatened excommunication and lawsuits, and given Rand’s denial of the intrinsic value of all human life, one wonders if apostates might not have been killed, if only the Collective, cowards that they were, with no courage in their conviction, could get away with it.  It very much makes one think of all the followers in Europe who had not the first inkling of what Fascism stood for, or Communism, for that matter, but became followers anyway, merely because of a dynamically delivered speech devoid of any valid or sound content.

               It is telling that such ideas appealed to her, as it has been this authors personal experience that those so convinced of their own  superior nature are suffering from a deep seated inferiority.   Certainly her own biography supports such a contention.  Even assuming an actual intellectual superiority, it seems clear that many of her ideas had their origin in her alienation from her peers, for which she  was unwilling or unable to find any blame within herself.  Alienation is a subject with which this author as an intimate knowledge.  Where he differs from Rand is in his ability for self assessment, and when  necessary self deprecation, an ability that has allowed him to conclude that his societal difficulties are as much to blame on his inability to understand the concerns of the “ordinaries” as their  inability to understand his.  To extrapolate from this alienation that  they are therefore of a lesser quality, in their origin, than the author, or Rand, is contrary to our previous demonstrations.