Some thoughts for Veteran’s Day 11/11/07 and Thanksgiving Day 11/22/07
Limestone graveled mountain road going down about 12 miles into the Copper Canyon area. It leads through the small Tarahumara Indian villages of La Bufa, Cerro Colorado, the gold mining town of Batopilas, the side canyons and sparkling pools of the Rio Batopilas. Also there is a Spanish mission next to a 400 year old “lost Jesuit Cathedral of Satevo”. The view is from higher up in Central Mexico (Chihuahua State) down to the river flowing through the lower canyon area.
3000’ foot drop, elevation at canyon bottom about 1640’
Christmas vacation 2005-2006
How do we deal with a situation when those who ask for our help and whom we trust don’t reciprocate?
Jesus Christ said to Saint Andrew, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains [just one grain, it never becomes more, but lives] by itself alone. But, if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest.”
God said to Moses:
“Go down Man of God, speak for me,set my people free.”
(be faithful to those of us that uphold God’s truth by taking responsibility for not accepting the way things are when those around us do not keep their words*)
sometimes the best way to do this is through our own actions, sometimes we have done all we can and we must give up all our hard work over a long time and walk away from situations and depend on God and the good consciences of all of us.
Indian man, near Creel Mexico in the state of Chihuahua, taking his wife to town along a dirt road.
Elevation about 7668’
bicyling trip Christmas vacation 2005-2006.
The love of Christ and the fear of God is our mindfulness,
Hearing the Word of God and following his or her will is our breathing,
There is a Holy Spirit in our body and our blood, a complete fullness made up of an invisible faithfulness and truthfulness which works with God’s help in harmony, through fellowship and trust, with all believers in his Son Jesus Christ’s good name.
Daily Mindfulness Teaching for the One Human Holy Spirit who is God’s Son, Christ Jesus(a poem written to tie us all in love and trust, for as long as we are true to God and he to us)
Awareness and faithfulness~ are reflections of two truths*.
Truth is a heart that listens** and is faithful and aware,
Along with a mind that believes what is right for all of us.
Goodness~~ is a heart that loves and gives
Beauty is a reflection of what is good
And a mind that is open***.
~ God is a mind that is and knows no limits (is faithful toward our hopes and prayers) yet still is what he or she or it is (aware) until that knowledge blossoms (becomes true) in us.
~~ Jesus Christ is he or she who is the Prince of Peace, heals and saves us all (being what we need him to be in order to do this) and sanctifies the name of God. God has no Son or Daughter but him or her.
* or alternatively, toward two truths. “Jesus said, One person cannot ride two horses at once, nor stretch two bows, nor can a man serve two masters, as he will respect one and despise the other. “ The Gospel of Thomas, verse 47 op. cit. Also he said,
“Do not let your left hand know what your right is doing.” Op. cit. verse 62. So, this said, if we are aware of our own shortfalls in this area and ask God for help. it is possible for the Holy Spirit and thus God in all of us to do all of this for all of our benefit. “Jesus said, If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, ‘Move from here!’ and it will move.” Gospel of Thomas, verse 48, op cit.
** the Holy Spirit is a heart that listens, eyes and ears that see and hear what is good, a mouth that speaks what is true, and strong arms and legs that lift up the fallen, walks with them and leads them in the right direction.
*** To say that it is a reflection means it does not have an independently existing self. Two reflections can be an image (perceptive reflection) and a likeness (conceptual reflection)making up the soul and the spirit of a human being. So, a reflection may or may not be a part of an independently existing object or person. For instance, the heavens and the skies are beautiful. But, so can be a person, a woman for example. As Dr. Immanual Kant has said in his section distinguishing the transcendental logic into a transcendental analytic and a transcendental dialectic… ,”the conceptions of pure reason are not obtained by reflection…but by inference and conclusion.” The Critique of Pure Reason, Great Books # 42 edited by Dr. Mortimer Adler page 112. Another definition of beauty is needed in this case. Consider, “Beauty is controlled grace” a definition due to Leonardo da Vinci. This builds on the term grace which is sometimes defined as “Love that gives”. Also, I believe beauty may be due to an essential symmetry or a basic economy of expression in a humanly constructed definition containing a creative seed of truth or knowledge that can expand on itself growing into a material, psychological entity or living being (yet start over from the beginning or some midpoint along its path and reproduce itself if necessary). Mathematical proofs, a set of physical concepts and axioms or a well written and designed computer program can fall in this category. These three or four examples and definitions of beauty seem to me to fit well together into a shared human linguistic environment and belong to a common semantics or context that I commend unto you as part of a larger set of metaphysical definitions of heavenly terms. See previous blog for more on this.
Indian girl near waterfall on the rushing Cusarare River
Chihuaha District, Sierra Madre mountains in central Mexico
Elevation about 7220’
Hiking and bicyling trip Christmas vacation 2005-2006
This is the first part of an unpublished paper which fell into the earth back in 1974. At that time aprevailing opinion among academic philosophers was that idealism can hurt the innocent and that there was no such thing as a “Concept of a Concept.”
Now, 33 years later it seems, in the light of new discoveries in the philosophy of science and religion to be a good time to share it with others. Its topic for discussion is aimed to try to understand the transcendental idealistic epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) of Immanuel Kant.
“Do not lie to one another…but clothe yourselves with a new self…which is ever in the process of being renewed and remolded into [fuller and more perfect knowledge upon]knowledge after the image (the likeness) of him who created it.” St. Paul Colossians 3
“Let not mercy and kindness forsake you…write them on the tablet on your heart.” Proverbs of King Solomon, chapter 3
“And, God said, Let US[the Elohim Gods as US inside of the Father,the Son, and the Holy Spirit part of God inside of US] create [make] them [mankind] after Our image, after Our likeness, and let them [God in US reflected back as humankind in US] be free [have complete authority over the rest of creation].”
“And Jesus increased in wisdom (in patience, fear and honor of the Lord, peacefulness, trust and obedience and knowledge of him)in stature (depth of personality, character and strength) and years, and in favor with God and man.” Gospel of Luke chapter 3 verse 52
Dr. Reinhold Neibuhr, a liberal realist, has said, “forgiveness is the final form of love.” And,”knowing this is our salvation.” But, suppose you believe that knowing that the final form of love is forgiveness is our salvation. Then you have to believe that this knowledge is not the end. There must be something(knowledge…life) afterward. Faith and hope are an important (in fact) interdependent part of love. In addition to hope faith can be a transforming power of God inside of our souls. All three of these wonderful ideas or concepts exist for us, with God’s help. In a non-temporal transcendental ideal part of the present moment. This being so, then, for those who have faith and hope in it, there must be such a thing as a concept of concept. What is it then?
Concept of a Concept
Part I
First definition of a concept….
–concepts form the meaning of meaningful words;
–concepts, smaller than a judgement, larger than a sense impression are units of thought;
–well-defined relationships between concepts are themselves concepts.
But beyond this, it is possible to list in more detail the most important ways concepts work for us.
With development of appropriate practical backing they:
–Define object precisely, for our future reference and mutual communication;
–Abstract what different recurring experiences have in common, saving us effort in the way we describe things;
–Make us able to imagine things, thinking about what isn’t present;
–Spur problem solving, breaking us out of areas of mental confinement;
–Cue discoveries, the bright ideas we need to stimulate us forward;
–Help us learn how something works, and to remember what we have learned;
–Increase our understanding, making it easier to form still more concepts.
Stating a judgement involves conepts. Also, in making some decisions, we go through a process of trials and errors performed mentally, before reaching a decision. Concepts make this “idea testing” possible.
Even more fundamental than all this, is the way in which concepts develop our first perceptions of the world. Some everyday examples of how concepts do this include:
–the permanancy of concret objects;
–the switchboard of three-dimensional space;
–which way is [up] and right-handedness;
–the rules of logical thought.
II
Here are some objections, straight from Plato’s dialogues, to studying concepts for their own sake:
The first comes from the dialogue of Socrates with Meno:
MENO. But how will you look for something when you don’t in in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don’t know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come up right against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn’t know?
Indeed. And, this can be followed up with a second, more specific, objection to studying concepts and though processes: It is held that the study of the method of thought for its own sake is of no use, except when almost superfluous. In otherwords, isn’t it ridiculous to separate the study of thought from the day to day problems which we use if for?
Plato, stated this in his Socratic dialogue Charmides:
SOCRATES. And if a man know only, and has only knowledge of knowledge, and no further knowledge of health and justice, the probability is that he will only know that he knows something, and has a certain knowledge, whether concerning himself or other men.
CRITIAS. True.
SOCRATES. Then, how will this knowledge or science teach him to know what he knows? Say that he knows health; – not wisdom or temperance, but the art of medicine has taught it to him; – and he has learned harmony from the art of music, and building, from the art of building – neither, from wisdom or temperance: and the same of other things.
CRITIAS. That is evident.
Well, we won’t try to hide it: in contrast to these carefully worded sentences, the rest of this section of this book will list instances in which the study of thought processes has value to us – instance in which it has a very real value.
All along it must be kept in mind that steps forward in knowledge proceed awkwardly. The initial coneption of a new discovery always has many details that are wrong. Socrates takes a critical position in those two quotations. But, he later states that for his part the desire to know what is good (not necessarily the actual knowledge itself) is the most important thing. The sum of what we don’t know is so vast — we will never get anywhere without a lot of pure desire to step beyond what we don’t know with what we aren’t sure of. There is no way to obtain knowledge without making mistakes and blunders. There is no roal road to any difficult art or skill.
WE SUMMARIZE: Our progress will depend on how important we conclude that it is to try to do what we aren’t sure of; what we don’t seem capable of; what we haven’t been prepared for; and to what extent the theory that we do construct being built on hard-learned experience, does not outdistance our capability to produce results.
III
Not attempting to formulate any new principles, we will work with familiar ideas, elaborating them, the method can be called the study of concepts through concepts. Lets lay this technique out in part before hand:
…. We trace out the definition of a lessor known concept by recognizing in it the same elements as are present in a better known concept. In literature this method is used in the form of metaphors and similies. In ordinary speech it is the method of analogies.
….Since we are actually hunting concepts, we can bring one out in the open, so to speak, by asking questions about. These questions will expose what dols the concept together.
…. By seeking out those elements in concepts that constantly reoccur, we obtain the most economical description of them.
…. We wait for it (the work) to mature; repeatedly changing its presentation, searching for the best presentation of what [seems] profound; convinced that simple and elegant solutions are the shortest distance between two points. The work will be the product of many months, even years, of stubborn thinking and the subject of pride.
In the dialogue Theatetus, Plato first considers the claim of sense impressions (by themselves) to be knowledge. A rational argument is then given to discount this possibility. It is asked how false judgements are possible under these circumstance. A model is given that compares this to sense impressions not fitting the patterns in wax formed by objects. Then examples of false judgements are given which don’t fit into this paradigm of knowledge.
Then the possibility of true belief being knowledge is considered. First “having” knowledge is compared to holding birds (ideas) in cages in our minds. The cages are the truths of experience which constrain statements we can make about the ideas. In this situation it is argued that it is possible to make false judgements when we depend on these cages to interprete our factual
experience. An example of a lawyer twisting the facts of a case to make the jury come to the wrong conclusion is given.
Finally a definition for knowledge is given which is somewhat better. Knowledge is said to be true belief along with an account or logos. This account justifies our thoughts by making a sound (based on sense impresssions) rational argument about the experiences we have had. In order words we are saying that in some sense knowledge is “assured belief”. Here we see the importance of having a logos about God if we are to hope to be able to know him.
However, the limitation of even this definition of knowledge is explained further on in the dialogue. If an account is a rational logical demonstration (two different methodological approachs to do this will be explained later in this discussion), it must start with certain “unknowable”, “first order facts”. This is because we have already declared knowledge based on objects ( or sense impressions) not be knowledge by themselves. But any argument will then just be a series of rational exercises (tautologies) which come to no new conclusions about these unknowable starting points. The conclusions cannot be new because they cannot
be any more knowable or true than what we started with.
It wasn’t until Immanuel Kant that human philosophy explained how it was possible to have synthetic a priori truths. It we assume we humans have certain abilities (what Jesus called talents) in our minds Then, by postulating the truth of these God given abilities the truth of these postulates themselves can
be determined and influenced by the way we perceive reality. The objects that Plato called unknowable in themselves are this way because we don’t have access to studying their true nature. This is because they are in a sense outside of us. But our postulates about what is inside our selves are accessible through our subjective intuitive and common sense minds. So these talents can be good
starting points along with our experience about the World they can help form knowledge when we have a logos (or account of the connection between what has happened to us and what situation we started with). They then form an innate nature common to all of humankind.
IV
THE MIND AS A SWITCHING YARD—-PASCAL “ONE MUST
SUBSTITUTE DEFINITION FOR THE DEFINED.”
Names are associated with objects; so are their meaning. But an objects’s name can be one the tip of the tongue when a corresponding meaning isn’t: how else do we know sounds when we hear them, or other things when we see them. The answer is that our mind automatically deals with things by sorting them into pre-established groups. We have, in our mind, a switching yard. If we want to know what a song or anything else is, we must ask ourselves question about the mental defintion of it. It will be helpful to discuss the nature of this mental switching yard, in order to understand how to ask these questions.
Suppose that pieces of information start off in the mind like freight cars start at the high point in a railroad switching yard:
— They coast down the hill; switches guide each one into its proper siding. There the cars wait, with others of the same destination to be sent to form a train [ see classification type expert system which is defined below];
— Each time we send a “new” object rolling down the hill, new switches are added, and the network becomes better at sorting out information;
— As we look at a scene of things in front of us, the mind couples thought onto the corresponding parts of the scene — and all of a sudden, what isn’t a blur, is a series of meaningful images moving through the mind [ see backward oriented reasoning as defined below].
In a freightyard the starting points of the cars is on a hill. But, before getting to the bottom of the tracks the cars may reach resting places. To get out of these resting places often requires some extra help [see genetic algorithm as defined below]. This is the case if there are substantial depressions in the ground: or it may be that only a little push is needed; if they, (the thoughts) are stuck on a rise in the ground level.
As images come through the mind to be sorted into concepts, they too reach resting places. These are resting places in the switchboard of the mind, speaking figuratively. If the route doesn’t take us the full distance (does not give us enough understanding), there may be valleys; and in this case the help of other concepts needs to be introduced (more new switches added- things we haven’t classified yet). There may be rises. In this case we just need to reflect on the situation. We must conciously give the cars a little push in our mind.
It is possible to push this metaphor too far. But it does provide the means to understand the quotation at the beginning of the section. The quotation in French is “Substitutuer mentalement les definition a’la place des definis”. this means “Substitute mentally the defining facts for the defining terms”.
Faced with a problem, not sure how to solve it, there is a reason for much of the uncertainity that occurs. We often fail to spell out the meaning of the ideas involved in the problem. This is when we should go back [see examples below] to the definitions of the ideas that we have in our minds:
— Since the switching patterns branch out as they get more specific; our questions go from the general to the particular, the identification process quickly sorts one thing out of myriads of possiblities;
— The “unknowns” in the problem are interpreted in terms of the conditions and data that are given; new connections are formed mentally; we see things clearer and in a concious sense;
— By varying the conditions of the problem, the mind searches for a related problem that it has solved before; the general idea of a solution emerges; patiently, the problem solver waits until all the troubling points are dealt with, to insure that all the information is accounted for.
Second definition of a concept—-
A concept is a rule that may be used to decide if a object falls in a certain group. It is an abstract way of grouping thoughts. It deals with the information associated with the object of thought by asking questions about it. This may be a simple process like the way we classify concrete objects by the “marks” of sense impressions: such as physical size or texture (this process is instinctual in simplier animals). Or it may be a more complicated process using a lot of other concepts.