Epistemology and Language

Contextualism probably should not be transformed into empirical realism (an oxymoron). Words ought to be used for pragmatic purposes rather than for theoretical juxtapositions and relationships as if they were mathematical entities of Platonic realist states. Skepticism is great. Everyone in the 20th century offered refutations of Descartes it seemed, for one reason or another. Descartes' method was a correct tool for the day to get people thinking about the nature of things and it worked quite well. It still is useful.

Skepticism vs Certainty in language and the correspondence to word and objects. With Pierce one might use language trielectically to attempt to discover new things and it potentially could be productive; at least for an A.I. constructing with tremendous power a vast number of theoretical propositions about the unknown.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/contextu/#SH6c

I have been influenced quite a lot by the linguistic philosophy of W.V.O. Quine, Saul Kripke, P.F. Strawson and others. Word and Object by Quine and Individuals by Strawson consider subjective epistemology vs empiricism. Quine  wrote The Two Dogmas of Empiricism that invalidated the empiricist outlook  convincingly. The boundary between intentional and extensional thought and words are never concisely delineated as empiricists prefer. Words and knowledge about 'external objects' are made from thought too.  One cannot just speak about external objects as if were not also defined  with the mind. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle regarding the observer effect on quantum states is consistent with the ambiguous linguistic paradigm for epistemology.

Quine's 'Ontological Relativity and Other Essays' describe language lexicon-Universes existing each within their own ontology. Each lexicon or ontology is self-standing and the terms are not imbued with an element of Platonic realism about them. To a certain extent words and word phrases in some epistemological debates chase around lexical meanings and agreements. A goldfinch or any other perceptible bird-as-an-object is what it is regardless of what it is perceived One may use Sartre's terms well here about objects in-themselves, for-themselves and for-others. Two philosophers perceiving an elephant each might believe it either a goldfinch or a woodpecker variously, and be wrong about the object in-itself though in agreement that they are correct..

Language truth values in corresponding words to objects have functional accuracy value rather than truth for-itself. A truth theory such as correspondence theory wherein accurate and commonly associated word relations to objects determine the truth of propositions about actual objects perceived, has pragmatic communication value instead of transcendent accuracy. Who wants to name an iceberg the Rub al Khali desert? That is only right considering the paradigm of humanity existing within a quantum Higgs field wherein Adam was given to assign names to everything for-himself.

Hitchcock’s The Rear Window- An Example of Trieletical Abduction

C.S. Pierce’s abduction is a consequence of pragmaticism. Pierce’s wrote about trielectical thinking. That is something like an internal three-part thought process Wankel engine. It is obviously a little better than dialecticism. Jeff (James Stewart) could look out his rear window, input sense data and make inferences about the material observed. Reasoning about present and absent common human behavior and the behavior of the salesman and his invalid wife who were observed through their distant rear windows Jeff abducted a theory of murder. How did Jeff observe facts and have a conversation with himself (and others) to elicit a nominative thought process to abducted a tentative conclusion?

Deductive reasoning should generate a conclusion supported strictly by the premises; each of which must be valid. Inductive reasoning allows new items to be created from various premises without as much technical rigor or validity. Abductive reasoning is a third way of tying various abstract observations or facts together that precipitate inferences about various premises that may or may not be related in such a way as to form a valid theory. It is interesting that Pierce’s third way is a third method of practical logic in parallel to his three-part way of subjective cogitation about percepts and reason. I like Pierce’s work yet I feel it is not correct today as a model for neurological processing of thought. Contemporary advances in neuroscience have made a different model than a trielectical system. Abductive reasoning could emanate from the subconscious however, formed from a myriad of sources of data stored in memory.

Jeff’s nurse, a woman of practical knowledge, immediately agrees with Jeff’s suspicion. Jeff's girl;friend, a wealthy society woman, is quite skeptical and tries to persuade Jeff that his opinion is a diseased one, until she sees the salesman packing up a large trunk with rope, herself. At the moment she changed her mind completely to be in complete agreement with Jeff. Perhaps witnessing a part of Jeff’s narrative at a further point of the story line such that it would be in complete agreement was the clincher that made her flip flop. It might alternatively have bee the meaning of seeking a packing trunk to her. She may have found it subconsciously troubling in meaning as Jeff one day too might pack a trunk and move somewhere far away in the world to pursue his photo-journalism profession she is not part of.

Jeff’s war buddy Detective Tom has a skeptical opinion. Without a body, hard evidence or eye-witnesses of a crime he is unwilling to validate the abduction line of murder that Jeff provides. He explained to Jeff that the law won’t allow a search of the salesman’s apartment without a warrant, and there aren’t sufficient grounds for a judge to issue a warrant. Tom also has counter-abductive premises of the salesman’s innocence; such as the exit of the invalid wife that morning to catch a train and a telegram from her to the salesman saying she had arrived at some distant place. The salesman’s apartment lease was also nearly expired so the timing on moving was reasonable.

Tom would not relinquish his incredulity until hard evidence dropped into his lap when Lisa found the ring of the salesman’s wife . Ye I knew much earlier that the salesman was a murderer recognizing instantly that the little dog that resembled Judy Garland’s little dog Toto, digging in the garden of the perp, smelled something foul buried deep below. An additional abduction I made was that Lisa being such a sweet rich woman could not have been wrong in throwing all her support behind Jeff’s theory. That simply is not the way Hollywood wrote mystery stories in that era.

Lisa at the end takes high risks and proves she is actually a smart, wonderful, brave woman whom Jeff is too lucky to have devoted to him. Unless the script was completely at the extremity of the bell curve and Lisa was actually the killer just toying with Jeff whom she knew was being a voyeur for eight weeks with his broken leg in a cast looking out his rear window, the conclusion had to be that the villainous philandering salesman that got rid of his old, invalid wife in order to secure a newer and better upgrade was guilty.

John Locke's Self-Aware Cogito; Rather Like Descartes'

In book four chapter ten of The Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke makes some good arguments for the existence of God. He also describes the position of the cogito metaphysically, as it were, rather reminiscent of Descartes. To exist is to be aware of existing. Reason leads to God, and that brings me to a point Locke didn't make about the existence of objects and other people.

 

Locke could have written that mathematics that one did not invent oneself are proof of the existence of reason in some sentient being. One could not believe that Euclid, Pythagoras or Einstein's abstract works weren't at least evidence of reasoning going on in some self-aware being and not a natural occurrence by non-sentient mass.

In book four chapter eleven I believe Locke finds sensations and sense data distinct from ideas. Ideas arise from sense data, and sense data from external objects; well, objective sources and non-self sources may be plainer than objects for terminology.

 

Referent objects may be the entire mass-energy of the Universe. Even great office buildings of more than one-hundred stories are simply arrangements of atoms that humans experience as solid because of human physical structure. If people were made of neutrinos they would find the solid building less substantial than vapor. Like the office building, the language and proofs of much of Locke's essays are embedded in the field-criterion Universe of being an element in-the-field given unto self-aware being. That is they work to a relative, circumstantial scale.

On John Locke's Book II-An Essay on Human Understanding-Chpt 13

Locke's Book II-An Essay on Human Understanding-Chpt 13

Locke's thought is quite interesting in this chapter. He is considering René Descartes' ideas to a certain extent and deliberating on why Descartes's Meditations were incorrect. Locke doesn't care fro the idea of extension as a virtual definition of body. Locke also considers the nature of space, and I like that quite a bit for I invented some of the same thoughts myself independently-just a few hundred years later than Locke.

Locke pointed out an argument people make that if space was really nothing there should be nothing between any two objects such that there would be no distance. That idea would apply to distant stars too of course. Locke has many other great ideas yet many of the metaphysical and epistemological sort can be readily recognized as anachronistic in light of quantum theory. I think its possible that epistemology has fully updated the facts that are relevant to the paradigm of Locke in Book two, yet I cannot say what philosophy knows overly well.

Locke makes an interesting comment that Descartes' idea of body as extension has a logic that requires everything to be one- in unity pervasive. Of course current physical cosmology has a singularity that extends to be the entire Universe and everything in it, so in that sense Descartes was right on the money.

Locke make a great point about relativity however in points 8-10 of chapter thirteen. I think it is better than one might find anywhere else. It brings one to the idea of experience however and the complete phenomenal subjectivity of names and things-in-themselves.

Epistemological objects are part of a unified field- a monism with component attributes that can be regarded by observers as qualitatively so different that they comprise plural objects. Human beings and human minds exist in a unified field. They may make names and categories about experience within that field, yet every idea about what occurs in it is what is permissible by the non-contingent and non-subjective nature of the field. Space for instance is now known not to be empty (it has virtual particles and other elements of the unified field, or Higgs field that may be an emergent quality of some other kind of field.

Humans may say whatever they like about the field elements and its consistent aspects that reproduce in common experience. Even mathematical relations though are subjective and possible only within criteria the field supports. If Riemannian geometry of a select form is an implicit fact of the Universe then whatever mathematics exist that can be consistent must cohere within that mathematical paradigm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemannian_geometry

The relations and relativity of body, mass and substance in the field that is the field extended and perceptible for human experience is phenomenal. That is the problem of quantum weirdness about it; it is a steady state with consistent values of a field that includes the observer. It is possible to make practical guidebooks of physics about operations within the field. It does not seem realistic to talk about 'real objects' or the reality of things-in-themselves. Humans can interpret the extended field in one way, yet that is probably not the only way it is. Insects may view the Universe in infrared for instance and have an entirely different way of relating to it. If one found space aliens with very different and non-human form they might seem the Universe or field experience in a way dissimilar to that of human experience.

I will reiterate something of Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities in chapter eight. For Locke primary qualities seem to be elements that exist in an object while secondary qualities just produce sensations in the perceiver. Of course the problem exists that all percepts occur subjectively.

 A baseball removed from a freezer may be cold to touch, yet the coldness would not be regarded as a primary quality, yet the state configuration of the atoms of the baseball (imagine a baseball made from Bose-Einstein condensate) would be a primary quality.

For John Locke, secondary qualities depend on primary qualities of an object to produce sensations in 'us'. Locke provides a metaphysical map of the way percepts are transferred through some particulate way into sensations and ideas that are experienced subjectively.

From my point of view the complete complex of compresence (Russell's term) of being a sentient perceiver with self-awareness in a force-energy field that is a Higgs field/Universe where the way force is structured and allocated enables the self-aware experience of sensation within-the-field as part of the field, makes several of Locke's distinctions somewhat ancillary to a philosophical effort of the 18th through 20th centuries to describe the mechanics of perception, sensations and so forth. That paradigm is less than technically correct for the quantum immersion paradigm where even language can be regarded as producing contingent and secondary qualities. The word of God is the sole primary quality (if one follows the call of God). It is reasonable to guess that God enables the Higgs and all possible quantum configurations to be determined himself.

China May Have Been Behind Cuban Beamer Attack on U.S. Embassy Workers

Last years X-Files particle beam, audio attack on U.S. and Canadian Embassy officials in Cuba that caused brain injury may have been caused by Chinese Communist agents or, alternatively, X-tra-terrestrial space aliens. The attack has recurred in China as new reports find that a U.S. embassy worker in Guangzhou, "across the river from Hong Kong", has suffered a similar experience.

Of course it also might be that those U.S. Government workers had been listening to or watching C.N.N. The sharp glare of intelligence intrigue is challenging to see through.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-worker-china-sickened-brain-injury-after-mystery-sound-n876686

Spinoza and the Author of the Pentateuch

  I have a different point of view on the topic of Moses authoring the Pentateuch. Even today the authorship of the Pentateuch is controversial among Christians and atheists. Spinoza could have run into the Papacy as the absolute authority on scripture. I have no problem like that. Today the problem is the popular wise guy atheism of the broadcast media if any.

16th and 17th century Holland was a challenging time for religion. The reformation and Catholic traditions met uneasily. Protestant sects had theological differences too. Spinoza was really out on a limb in being a self-standing, free-thinking theologian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion_in_the_Netherlands

Spinoza was cast out of his Jewish synagogue. People have written that his theological ideas run toward pan-theism, yet he appears to have been Christian too if one can rely on his letters. In either case each way of thinking would be inconsistent with membership in a synagogue I suppose, unless they all become reformed Christians.

I will provide a quote from wikipedia- “I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh : but with regard to the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which has manifested itself in all things and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise. For without this no one can come to a state of blessedness, inasmuch as it alone teaches, what is true or false, good or evil. And, inasmuch as this wisdom was made especially manifest through Jesus Christ, as I have said, his disciples preached it, in so far as it was revealed to them through him, and thus showed that they could rejoice in that spirit of Christ more than the rest of mankind. The doctrines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon himself human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand; in fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than would a statement, that a circle had taken upon itself the nature of a square. This I think will be sufficient explanation of my opinions concerning the three points mentioned. Whether it will be satisfactory to Christians you will know better than I.

• Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg, November (1675)”

  Let me explain about Moses. I believe he invented the aleph beth as a linguistic syncretism made possible by an Egyptian hieroglyphic literate Prince escaping to Israel with his Hebrew Semitic people. Moses received the stories of Israeli history from the captives in Cairo as well as from other sources. He was a consolidator and led his people to the promised land. Moses foretold that one day a Jewish leader would devote himself to writing down everything Moses did and said. I believe it probable that fellow was King David.

  King David devoted himself to the word of God provided in various documents as a legacy from Moses centuries before. David's son Solomon commissioned that they be formally consolidated and assembled as the Pentateuch. Some scholars believe that a J writer was the first to work on the project, and there were others that followed. The topic has quite a lot to it and few knew about that until the 20th century. After that it became more common knowledge for theologians.

 Spinoza ran into the problem of secular establishments that would repress knowledge. Unions do that too in areas besides scholarship. Corporatists and communes also perp repression when they regard people as products for marketing or alternatively nails that should not stick up and require hammering down. They repress this or that individual inconvenient for their public social narrative. Kierkegaard's method of Socratic irony questioned social zeitgeist and social organization. Skeptics are not the only philosophers to discover faulty thought. Socrates worked on that in his dialogues too of course.

I am sure Thomas Hobbes was a well-intentioned scholar. For me though his Leviathan is far too much. He could have equally been describing the Devil's absolute power in hell. Saddam Hussein was the perfect Hobbsean absolute ruler. Perhaps the west should feel some recalcitrance about ending Hobbes' Leviathan fulfillment figure. For myself I think it's the aftermath that was tragic rather than the demise of Saddam Hussein.

Hume's Existential Historical Analysis (Essay I-III-11)

Hume thought hereditary monarchies have non-violent transitions in comparison to non-hereditary. Yet we know from reading Shakespeare and the history of Byzantium that is not so.

Hume assumes the Roman Republic was a democracy that didn't work as the plebes in cities ran it to ruin. If one reads Livy one learns about the Roman Senate and its power as well as that of the consuls and master of the horse during war. Those were not powerless people. The plebes never came in to their own until they demanded Caesar have power, then they made his emperor. I believe Hume's Roman analysis is very poor. 

 Hume believes that monarchs treat provinces better than democracies. It is strange that he overlooked America in his analysis. King George III was the reason for the rebellion. The U.S. government sometimes has treated its 'provinces' or territories better than the states. Puerto Rico received billions and billions for hurricane relief in 2017-18 for example. I think Hume realized who buttered his bread in the England of his day- the nobles. Maybe they should have been named something else such as power goons level I, II III etc.

 Spanish monarchs allowed slavery in Latin America as did England in what became the U.S.A. Slavery was brought to half the world in fairly modern times thanks to monarchy. About 16 million aboriginal Americans perished during the era of Spanish royal power. it wasn't a pretty time.

  Hume use the term "government after the eastern manner" a couple of times. That might have been a bete noir of the time. Oriental despotism was a cliche. The Chinese imperial court was terribly lax. It was apparently quite authoritarian at times as was I suppose the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan.

  Hume posits various pure forms of government (three forms actually) and describes them as strong or mild versions and considers them in a mildly Aristotelian (the Politics) way, ineffectively. I agree with Hume's method of existential historical analysis yet he needs better though about human social organization. There are an infinite number of possible forms of human social organizations; well, at least as many forms as their are configurations of pieces on a chess board. The goal is to make the pieces work well together, and to assure that all the pieces have equal rights of value though some are more powerful than others. Human for some cause lacked the insights provide by the mathematical concept of Hilbert space permutations applied to political structures and ideal ways of responding to emergent issues, such as is possible today.