The Symbols of Justice

Justice is often symbolized by Lady Justice, and her three symbols--a blindfold, a sword, and a balance. The blindfold, a relatively recent edition to the image, represents objectivity before the Law. One criticism of this feature is that it fails to distinguish between the theft committed by a poor mother in order to feed her children, and that of the same amount by someone who is well-to-do, simply for the thrill of it. The sword represents retribution, but to some it stands for revenge. The distinction between retribution and revenge is that former entails reward as well as punishment, thereby exposing the fundamental hatefulness of revenge, and, hence, of the sword. But the more general problem with both the blindfold and the sword is that given the balances, they are superfluous. Still, there is more to Justice than one balancing act. In the American jurisprudential system there are two types of process--Civil and Criminal. The first adjudicates between persons, but the second weighs between the rights of the State and those of a person. Here is perhaps one of the legacies of the first, and maybe definitive, theory of Justice, Plato's, as presented in The Republic. One of the central demonstrations of that work is that in an unjust society, a just man, e. g. Socrates, will appear unjust. For that reason alone, the blindfold and the sword are not merely superfluous, but potentially themselves unjust.

Space-Time

The varying conceptions of Space and Time that have been presented throughout intellectual history all apparently agree that whatever they are, they are given as such. Even Kant treats them as complete structures involved in experiential events. However, they are not ready-made, but are the products of processes, namely, of Spatialization and Temporalization, respectively. The former is a process of opening, in three senses--separating, exposing, and starting. The latter creates successiveness with the retaining by a novel moment of one already given. In the Kantian scheme, these are the processes of externalization and internalization that first produce the distinction between Outer and Inner, the senses of which Space and Time, respectively, are the Forms. They presuppose one another, but are irreducible to one another, and are essentially heterogeneous. One application of that result is to the notion 'Space-Time' that is prominent in contemporary Physics. If what that notion entails are merely concepts of quantified 'Space' and quantified 'Time', then the notion is easily justified by its computational efficiency and theoretical fruitfulness. But, if that the combination is presumed to denote some actual experiential synthesis, the preceding analysis undercuts any such presumption.

Zeno's Paradoxes

One enduring feature of pre-Socratic Philosophy is the group of arguments known as 'Zeno's Paradoxes'. The essence of them runs as follows--an arrow shot towards a target will first cover half the distance to the latter, and then half of the remaining distance, and then half of that remainder, etc. But (1/2)+(1/4)+(1/8), etc. will never add up to 1, meaning that the arrow can never reach the target, a conclusion at odds with the plain fact that it does. Zeno devised this kind of example in order to demonstrate a main doctrine of his colleague Parmenides, that Motion is illusory. It took two millennia for a compelling solution to arrive, as the invention of Calculus, and its Integral function, demonstrates how the arrow finally reaches its destination, thus disproving the thesis that Motion is unreal. In contrast, Bergson drew an entirely different lesson from the Paradox, and challenged its very premise. He inverts the Parmenidean principle, and argues that the example shows only that the intellect can only inadequately cognize Motion, i. e. that all that is demonstrated is that the sequence of static representations will never reach the end, the fallacy being that no static representation is identical to any Motion of any duration. Hence, it is the Intellect, not Motion, that is of an inferior reality. In the spirit of Bergson, another analysis is that 'half the distance to' presupposes something that does not at that point exist--the traversing of the full distance, which is meaningful only retrospectively upon completion--and, hence, is meaningless. Thus, the problem is not so much that the arrow never arrives, but that it can never get started under any description given as a fraction of the completed motion. This confusion is a based on the presupposition of the existence of the Future, a problem discussed in previous postings, and is of psychological and ethical significance beyond that of a mere intellectual puzzle.

Pythagoras

Though Socrates is often credited with being the first Philosopher, he was preceded in similar endeavors by the so-called 'pre-Socratics', including someone that coined the term 'philosopher'='lover of wisdom, whose name is probably the first philosopher that most people have heard of, and, arguably, is the most influential philosopher in history. That would be Pythagoras, whose Pythagorean Theorem is a centerpiece of most secondary school Geometry courses. From what little of his original work survives, it is known that he held that all reality is fundamentally mathematical in nature. Plato's 'Theory of Forms' is one representation of that doctrine, and Aristotle's theory of Moderation in Ethics is an application of the Pythagorean, Mrs., more precisely, concept of the 'Golden Mean'. The modern quantification of Physics likewise represents Nature as fundamentally mathematical, while Pythagoras himself pioneered the mathematization of Music. Since the cognition of these characteristics is possible not through the senses, but via Reason, he is also the founder of Rationalism--even proto-Empiricist Locke conceded that the world beyond the senses consists of quantifiable particles and motions. And, though not usually associated with Rationalism, Numerology likewise treats numbers as the secret language of the world. Indeed, Kabbalism interprets Torah as a numerical code, and casts the universe in a numerical structure, just as Plotinus characterizes God as 'The One'. Now, to some such might provide a clue to the reconciliation of Mathematics/Science and Faith, of current debates. But Biblical Literalists cannot accede to such a reduction of their living God, which would be tantamount to subordinating Jehovah to the Pythagorean divine system of Numbers, which is plainly not monotheistic, just as One is not the only number.

The Environment

One of the major current political issues is 'The Environment'. In much of the discussion, The Environment is conceived as an object that needs special attention from humans at this time, primarily because of the way that we humans have lately been treating it--polluting it, using it up, etc. The very term itself encourages such a conceptualization--The Environment surrounds us, which entails that it is over against us, and, therefore separate from us. Doctrines in which a human is a spiritual entity deposited in a physical body are the basis of such a subject-object split, and those which designate the human race as guardians of the natural world more subtly reinforce that opposition. One significant exception to these positions is Spinoza's Pantheism, which embeds humans, mind and body, in the system of nature. The lesson from Spinoza is, therefore, that our treatment of the world around us is, at the same time, a treatment of ourselves, of our physical health. Whether or not current Environmentalism is more than a passing fad will depend on how seriously a doctrine like Spinozism is taken.

Writing and Time

In its movement from phonic unit to phonic unit, the act of speaking encourages two conflicting notions of Time: that it is a transition from Moment to Moment that is either discontinuous, or is a flux. But one premise that these two notions share is that Past does not exist, i. e. that a previous Moment disappears in the process of the arrival at the next. In contrast, the act of writing illustrates a different sense of Time--the previous words are preserved in the movement forward, such that every current one is understood as not standing alone, but as the culmination of all that has preceded. Hence, the Past exists, as ingredient in the Present. Furthermore, writing presents a graphic example--the blank space following the latest character--of a contention from a previous posting, that the Future never exists, and that what is always next after the Present is Spatial. These Spatio-Temporal characteristics are not accessible in the act of reading, which is generally a process of representing something that is already given in full. Therein, Time is experienced as the filling out or the unfolding of something that is pre-given, such that Future is in some respect already inscribed in the Present. Spontaneity and creativity are thus inconceivable to the reading mindset, which might explain the fundamental conservativism of religious or legalistic 'Originalists', i. e. those who believe that all that humans need to know is contained in Scriptures, or that what Americans must do is contained in Constitutional or jurisprudential precedent. One indication of this inconceivability is that one main line of criticism of those who do not subscribe to the view that there is 'nothing new under the sun', is that the latter are irresponsible, as if they speakers denying the existence of the Past, not writers who preserve and extend it. And, ironically, 'Creationists' tend to be among those to whom creativity is inconceivable.

Human Nature

'Nature' is profoundly ambiguous in ordinary usage. On the one hand it refers to the often chaotic realm of meterological, zoological, and botanical events, and, on the other, to what is constant in an organism. Aristotle's Physics, from the Greek for 'nature', resolves the dichotomy, by positing that the ultimate principle of Nature is a 'teleological cause', the innate tendency of all motion to seek regularity, the ideal type of motion. In contrast, modern Physics, pioneered by Newton, inverts this hierarchy--while constant motion for him 'inertia', causality, i. e. Force, is defined in terms of acceleration. So, since all 'free' action, is an exercise of Force, where Freedom is a defining feature of higher creatures, such as humans, human Nature is characterized by irregular motion. On the other hand, the basic drive in humans is often said to be the 'survival' instinct. So, since 'staying alive' implies a constant motion, here human Nature is characterized by regular motion. For example, in traditional Evolutionary theory of Nature, evolution, a type of irregular motion, is held to be a means to natural survival, a regular one. In sum, the modern rejection of a teleological notion of Nature has fallen short of a coherent replacement. One clue to reconciling the various concepts is that acceleration and evolution are both types of increase. Consequently, the main obstacle to a harmonizing of Newtonian and Darwinian schemes is the 'survival' thesis of human nature, surely among the most deeply-ingrained and widely accepted of principles. Nevertheless, it fails to stand up to closer scrutiny. For example, the scientific data cited to support Darwinism apply only to the phenomenon of novelty, not to the presumption that once the evolutionary leap is complete, the new species aims to merely live on as such. In fact, the very concept 'continuing to live' is misleadingly indeterminate as to what 'to live' means, e. g. it does not preclude that 'to live'='to grow'. So, if Evolutionism were to jettison the extraneous 'survival' hypothesis, as well as its derivative principles, e. g. 'the survival of the fittest', and then be recast as an end-in-itself, systematization with modern Physics would be more feasible, and a univocal Modern concept of 'human nature' could finally be settled upon.

Evolvement

'Evolvement' is a term that I have coined elsewhere to refer to the formal structure of what is commonly meant by 'evolution', as well as to numerous isomorphic processes. 'Evolvement' is 'an increase in complexity', and 'Complexity' is 'a systematic relation between unity and multiplicity'. For example, a multi-cellular entity is more complex than a uni-cellular one; likewise, a bicycle and a quadrangle are more complex than a unicycle and a triangle, respectively. Evolvement is the process of such an increase in complexity, and it involves two complementary aspects--the introduction of a novel element and the integration of it into the given system. For example, the mere growth of opposing thumbs does not in itself constitute an Evolvement until the entity in question begins to use them, e. g. for holding or grabbing. Evolvement can be found not merely in Darwinian 'evolutionary leaps' but wherever the non-technical expression 'to evolve' is appropriate. Growth and learning are forms of Evolvement, as is the notion 'expanding horizons'. I explore some of the explanatory advantages of the notion elsewhere, including two that are relevant to standard debates within Evolutionary Theory. First, the concept 'survival' can be defined in Evolvemental terms, so an explanation of the relation between evolution and survival, usually presented as extrinsic, can now be formulated systematically. Second, Evolutionists have struggled to explain Ethics, but an Evolvemental theory of Ethics eliminates the awkwardness.

The Middle East

The current general impression of the 'Middle East conflict' is that it is a political struggle between Israel's demand for security vs. the Palestinian people's insistence on having their own homeland, with the United States serving as a bystanding broker. The main question regarding this characterization is if it is based in ignorance, or, in dishonesty. For, as anyone with a passing familiarity with history knows, what is transpiring today is only the latest episode in a religious struggle for control of Israel, the 'Holy Land', and for divine favoritism. And, there are three parties in contention, not merely Judaism and Islam, but also Christianity, whose special stake in the fate of Jerusalem is well-documented, even if papered over in the United States. So, with the fundamental religiosity of the problem exposed, there would seem to be three general solutions on those terms. First, there could be a concession on the part of Christianity and Islam to the historical priority of Judaism's claim to Israel. But this will never happen, not merely because such would destroy the theological essences of the former two, but further, because it fails to recognize the claims of the descendants of Abraham's oldest son, Ishmael, and the claims of the Jewish people who do not identify themselves as subscribers to the Judaistic religion. Second, there could be a renunciation by all three parties to any absolute claims, in an effort to find a mutual accommodation. This would seem to be the current approach taken by some representatives of all the sides, but their capacities to control the recalcitrant factions of each are challenged on a daily basis. Finally, a Solomonic solution would be to ban all religion in Israel, and then hand the territory over to whoever still wants to live there. The chances of that course being followed seem nearly nil, but at least it confronts the issue squarely.

Theories of History

While a History narrates the past events of a people or peoples, a Theory of History finds a general pattern in any such narration. Notions of a Fall or a Cycle are among the most panculturally ancient historical patterns, while slightly more recent Messianism offers a teleological vision of the course of events. While these are highly abstract themes, possibly the first fleshed-out Philosophy of History came from Vico in the early 1700s. Vico saw human History constituted by three main eras--the age of Gods, the age of Heroes, and the age of Men, and then back to that of Gods, etc. Perhaps in response to Vico, a further elaboration of his general idea is the interpretation of it as either an ascent or descent. For, notably, Hegel and Marx, the process of democratization entailed in Vico's third age is an ascent, the internal motor of which is Dialectics. And, today's Progressive Liberalism subscribes to a tempered version of such an ascent, promoting universal justice, but rejecting the Hegelian/Marxist thesis of historical inevitability. In contrast, Nietzsche conceived of the same course of events as a degeneration, into conformism, that, in his time, he diagnosed as being on the verge of Nihilism. One significant variation on Nietzsche's themes came from Heidegger, who saw, as a concomitant to the leveling-out process, the rise of Subjectivism. The conflict between the ascending and descending theories of human history has been a significant ingredient in recent American politics. For, just as current Liberalism is an expression of the former attitude, neo-Conservativism, even if not always explicitly, adheres to the latter: one of its main influences, Leo Strauss, was a student of Heidegger's who applied the scheme of the latter to the history of Political Science, specifically, with results that have frequently found expression in neo-Con rhetoric. Also finding expression there, even if not deliberately so, are echoes of Vico--nostalgia for an age of Gods, and self-designated Heroism.

Global Consciousness

'Global consciousness' is becoming a familiar expression that describes the growing general awareness of the interconnectedness of all events on Planet Earth. As a formal concept, it poses a challenge to some traditional notions of Mind, in terms of which the consciousness of globality is either impossible or, at best, artificial. These are notions of Consciousness based on a visual model, and the problem therein is obvious from pictures of the planet from outer space--that the whole earth cannot be seen all at once, so, whatever awareness that we might have of it is at best a construction. Of course, the visual perception of any object, terrestrial, or otherwise, is limited to the presentation of facets only. So, is an immediate consciousness of any globe at all possible? One common example demonstrates that there can be such a thing as an immediate comprehensive awareness--the full grasping by a hand of some object, which Whitehead anticipates with his prehensile model of consciousness. A more subtle example is one's constant awareness of one's inner body. Characteristic of this kind of consciousness is that it is de-centered, everywhere-at-once, and, hence, inaccessible to subsequent analysis, which fragments it and interjects a focal point. Such a consciousness is the product of the organism's neural network, the analog of which on a planetary scale is the Internet web. The large-scale consequences of the new technology are only beginning to occur, e. g. accelerating political and economic internationalization, global environmental awareness, etc., and so, too, are those of the globalization of personal consciousnesses, in what may be a profound epochal transformation of the human race, possibly an evolutionary leap.

The Golden Rule

The centerpiece of Morality in the tradition of Western Civilization is the 'Golden Rule': 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. But whether or not it accomplishes what it means to is unclear. Its main intent is seemingly to serve as a corrective to selfish behavior, and in many circumstances it does successfully awaken someone to consideration for others. However, in others it can be counterproductive, as, for example, in the case of a loner, for whom 'as you would have them do unto you' translates into not getting involved with someone else's problems. Furthermore, even when, as prescribed by the principle, one is responsive to another, the results can be less than admirable, as, for example, in the case of an excessive hedonist, who will thereby over-indulge someone else. These examples expose, not an unforeseen abuse, nor an imprecision in the wording, of the Rule, but a fundamental flaw in the notion itself. For, while putting oneself in the place of another might be a necessary condition of Moral conduct, it is not a sufficient one, i. e. doing something for someone else is not the same as doing some good for them. The shortcoming can be said to lie, as Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, have all observed, in the distinction between lower and higher selves, which each have, in their own way, attempted to accommodate into their principles, in order to guarantee that action for the sake of someone else is truly beneficial to them. The criterion of the Golden Rule, 'as you would have them do unto you', entails no such guarantee, and, ultimately, can be as selfish as the behavior that it purports to correct.

Leap of Science

One of the recent episodes in the debate between Creationists and Evolutionists has been the argument of the former that the infinite creativity of God better explains the complexity of nature than does Evolutionary Theory. Regardless of whether or not the claim is true, it does acknowledge that a fundamental criterion of the soundness of a theory is its explanatory power, and that the superiority of a theory with respect to another consists in its greater explanatory power. As the two sides continue to fight it out over developments that transpired at least millennia ago, a much more recent event presents a more accessible gauge of their relative strengths. Less than 40 years ago a terrestrial creature walked on the moon, certainly an unprecedented accomplishment in human history, if not unimaginable almost completely hitherto. Now, what do the prevailing theologies have to say about this? Apparently, not much: no mention in their scriptures, no accommodation in their doctrines, except for, possibly, the sublunary 'there is nothing new under the sun'. The conclusion to be drawn then is that according to the Religion side of these contemporary debates, the moon landing is as significant as a man twiddling his thumbs. In contrast, Evolutionary theory offers as a possible precedent the emergence eons ago of marine creatures onto land, which suggests that the extra-terrestrial activities of the past 50 years might be the beginning of the kind of protracted leap that it has at best only been able to represent imaginatively, "one giant leap for mankind", as Neil Armstrong himself put it. Only time will tell whether or not this is perhaps the most profound event in human history, but those who adhere to the position that human nature has been fixed from its outset have been conspicuously unilluminating on the matter.

Self-Consciousness

In its ordinary usage, 'self-conscious' usually describes an attitude of concern about one's appearance to others. In contrast, the formal Philosophical notion 'self-consciousness' denotes an entirely interior experience. In this case, the refined version fails to dissipate or to absorb to itself the informal one. Aristotle had established it, under the rubric of 'thought thinking itself'', as the perfection of rationality, i. e. a self-contained infinite process, that is therefore the highest form of human activity. Descartes revived the quest for it, in his isolation of the 'I think', but his apparent success was subsequently undermined by Locke and Hume, who show that what he secures is no more than a momentary empty abstraction, and Kant, who demonstrates formally that substantive consciousness of self is impossible without a consciousness of some outer object. The vanity of the project is perhaps most conclusively presented by Sartre, who shows how internal self-consciousness dissolves into an infinity of reflecting nothingnesses. On the other hand, fresh analyses in the past century have revealed the soundness of the everyday version. While Wittgenstein is often given the credit, the real pioneer of this line of thinking was George Mead, who contends that consciousness is fundamentally linguistic--the learning of language is the development of communication skills, and the latter, e. g. by a child, entails the interiorizing of those speaking to it, e. g. parents, so 'c0nsciousness' is the taking of the presumed perspective of those with whom one is communicating. Hence, according to this theory, consciousness is a socializing phenomena, and 'self'-consciousness is, precisely as the ordinary usage has it, an internal objectification of how others presumably see one. However, as compelling as this theory is, it falls short in one respect. The human organism plainly has an internal monitoring system of all its activities, and all its activities are, in one respect, or another, interactions with its environment. Hence, thinkers who have argued that the consciousness of some object always entails the consciousness of that consciousness, and, thus, self-consciousness, are correct, but have it backwards. Since the organism is naturally self-monitoring, self-consciousness is fundamental, and since all of its activities are either directly or indirectly outwardly directed, self-consciousness is at the same time a consciousness of at least something in its environment. Given the plausability of Mead's opposing analysis, a typical philosophical mistake at this juncture is to try to reduce one theory to the other. Instead, that we are subject to both internal and external scrutiny and demands, to be true to ourselves and to be considerate of others, presents an ethical, not a theoretical problem, solvable not by abstract systematization, but concretely, by trying to balance conflicting substantive practical claims, in action that is a comprehensive as possible.

Forgetting The Past

Typical of the status of Philosophy in America these days is the general appreciation of the saying, 'Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it': pithy, vaguely familiar, and seemingly profound, a suitable candidate for a Thought For The Day item in newspapers or on bulletin boards. Hence, a telling assessment of that status can be inferred from understanding how misplaced that appreciation is. First, it is likely that many who have heard or even uttered the phrase do not know that its source is George Santayana, or that he was was such a lively writer that he wrote prolifically, not only Philosophy, but fiction as well. So, second, it is likely that many are unaware that this expression is not only one of the most superficial sentences in his oeuvre, but one that they are most usually mis-applying. It is often taken as a meditation on the cycles of History, e. g. the recent economic downturn is a repetition of that of the Depression Era, an effect of forgetting how a period of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism led to the latter. However, where the phrase actually appears is in a modest discussion of Education, in which Santayana is merely trying to point out that a school lesson not learned the first time will have to be repeated. In contrast, perhaps his most provocative assertions regarding the nature of the past come elsewhere, as part of a theory that holds that memory is fundamentally fictitious, and, to fully understand that requires more than a pithy appropriation of his complex system of human existence. But it is not so much that Philosophy is ill-suited as a bite-sized snack for thought that the general American public seems to demand. Two very terse phrases that are exemplary of the main ideas of their authors, 'Religion is the opiate of the masses', and 'God is dead', are also reminders of one of the fundamental missions of Philosophy, to challenge, as Socrates fatally did, the prevailing mythology of a culture. Today's public would prefer to romanticize the past than to apply such lessons, especially that can be accomplished in only a few minutes out of a busy daily schedule. Those who sugarcoat the past are trying to make it more palatable.

Responsible Speech

Most Americans subscribe to the principle of Freedom of Speech, and many believe that Freedom entails Responsibility. And yet, the entailed notion of Responsible Speech seems to have occurred to hardly anybody. An understanding of what that notion might entail can begin with an appreciation of the persistence, even these days, around the world of political or religious dissent being suppressed, for it is this kind of speech that America's Founding Father's regarded as essential to a healthy Democracy, and, hence, as deserving of clearly articulated protective measures. John Stuart Mill expanded on this attitude by pointing out that any divergent opinion contains a core of truth, and, so is of potential value to the general good. These references to 'truth' and 'general good' suggest some of what constitutes responsible speech. First, there should be a respect for facts. Second, any expression of an opinion should be preceded by adequate deliberation. Third, one's own incorrectness and the correctness of an opponent should always be acknowledged and accepted. Fourth, no opinion should be taken as unimpeachably final. Finally, public speech should be about public matters, about objective concerns, not a mere venting of personal spleen. Plainly, most of what passes for 'public discourse' in America these days--trash-talk, disingenuous spin-doctoring, ad hominem attacks--hardly qualifies as responsible speech. As a one-time unsuccessful presidential candidate once put it, 'the rot starts at the head'. In other words, the inculcation of a general commitment to responsible speech will have to start with exemplary political leadership.

Super

The term 'superman' was popularized by the comic strip character of that name, with later television and film versions. In the process, it also likely propagated usage of the prefix 'super'. The latter means 'above', and despite its ancillary linguistic function, can be ideologically revelatory. For example, in American culture, what is 'above man' is a being with extraordinary strength that can defy the law of gravity. In other words, it is an image that expresses aspirations with respect to physicality. In contrast, the original coiner of the term 'superman', in German, was Nietzsche, for whom it connoted an entirely different ideal. His version was a being who loved life so much that they would want to live the same, in every detail, life over and over again, eternally. The superiority of this entity to humans is psychological, not physical, entailing Nietzsche's diagnosis of the merely human of his culture as having degenerated into an escapism incapable of bearing the full awareness of the life that one has lived. Furthermore, this diagnosis indicts the Theological tradition of this culture as a primary cause of the disease, with its promotion of an 'afterlife' that is a 'better place' than earthly existence. So, the second significant aspect of his term 'superman' is its contrast with 'supernatural'. The literal meaning of the latter, in contrast with the current connotations of 'ghostly', 'occult', 'eerie', etc., is 'above nature', hence meaning, more accurately, 'non-natural'. In the Theological tradition that Nietzsche was challenging, 'supernatural' referred first and foremost to the realm of the Christian God, so he intended 'superman' to be not confused with 'supernatural', to constitute an ideal for humans to aspire to that did not entail an escape from the vicissitudes of the natural world, to serve as a new mythology that would replace the one that, if not already dead, was in its twilight.

Privatizing Public Space

A familiar experience is coming inside from wintry weather, in which one hand had been gloved and the other exposed, and placing each hand in the same water, with one feeling lukewarm, and the other, scalding hot. Such an example has led some philosophers to conclude that the Hot and Warm are not physical properties of the water, but ideas in the mind of the experiencer. Protesting that a thermometer reports the presence in the water of one or the other quality is ineffective, because all that it registers is the movement of mercury. Berkeley was the first to generalize this result to all experiential qualitites, a doctrine called 'Phenomenalism', from which he drew the conclusion that the life of each of us is a private spiritual journey. Phenomenalism has always had a great appeal to someone who would prefer to see themselves as more than a physical creature sharing space with other such animals, and, a good argument can be made that Neo-Conservatives and George Bush subscribe to such a world-view. However, a fundamental flaw in the original example is telling writ large. A plain explanation of why the two hands feel different qualities in the same water is that what they feel is a function of their previous state, i. e. the water temperature will feel different ways to two hands that entered the situation in different conditions, so that of course water that is a lot warmer than a cold hand will feel hot to it, but not to one that might be only mildly cooler than it. The lesson is that how objective properties are experienced is relative to the prior state of the experiencer. For sure, the Hot is experienced privately, but that does not warrant the detachment of the experience from the objective physical world that includes both hand and water. Likewise, a factory might be private property, but the pollution that its smokestack spews into the air is quite public, and a 'God-instructed' killing is still a killing.

Living in the Moment

'Live in the moment!' is a principle which can be constructive under certain circumstances, but as a more general maxim can be inappropriate. It usually means 'Pay attention to what is happening here and now!', so when it is addressed to someone who is daydreaming, lost in memory, or planning some later activity, it is a useful corrective to an ignoring of what is presently at hand. However, applying it literally on all occasions produces fragmentary superficial responsiveness: living from moment to moment, taking things only at their face value. For, as is, the Now is unconnected to other Nows, and the Here to others Heres. Most likely, what the prescribers of the phrase intend is to live constantly in the Here and Now. But the problem is more than merely linguistic. Someone who, walking along in a daydream, then suddenly finding themselves at the edge of river, needs to know more than what is immediately at hand in order to establish what to do next. For example, whether or not they know how to swim, and how clean and deep the water is, are both relevant to what can happen next, and neither are determinable from the immediate Here and Now alone. What is substantively erroneous in the maxim is that a Moment is always more than a mere Instant--the Now is the continuation of the Then, and the Here is of a piece with Elsewhere. Remembering who one is, and taking into account as much of environing conditions as possible, are necessary to creatively living in the Moment, which is, otherwise, only shadow-play.

Justice

In The Republic, the first work of Political Philosophy, and perhaps his most important one, Plato defines the ideal political entity in terms of Justice, as an organic body in which each member fulfills a function to which they are naturally suited. These days, Justice hardly seems to be a matter of concern in political debates, but, in fact, one aspect of it is implicit in one of the fundamental conflicts of the time. At issue is which type of Justice has priority, retributive or distributive, in the sphere of economics. The former holds that what each citizen should receive is a function of what they worked for, while the latter maintains that equatability should be the overriding basis of what each gets. The contrast between the political Right and Left can be understood along these lines. To a certain extent, this division is implicit in Plato's vision, which combines both consideration for the totality and for each member, with no hint of a recognition of a potential conflict between both aspects, so, no indication of which might have priority for him. One reason why the question may not have even arisen for Plato is that his notion of Justice is determined not in terms of economics at all, not in terms of what someone should or should not receive, but, rather, with respect to who someone is, and what they do best. Even contemporary polictical theorists who acknowledge the influence of The Republic on their thinking tend to forget that the guiding question of the work is 'What is a Just man?'. For example, Conservative William Bennett's recent book listing personal virtues does not even mention Justice. But for Plato, the two dimensions of Justice are the collective, and the personal, which Aristotle subsequently distinguishes as Politics and Ethics, respectively, but for analytic purposes only, not to deny their existential interrelatedness. So, one lesson to be drawn from them is that any dispensation of Justice, retributive or distributive, depends first and foremost on the Justness of the dispenser.

Cyberspace and Consciousness

The expressions 'cyberspace' and 'information highway' are so casually used interchangeably that 'cyber' might easily be taken to mean 'information' in some ancient language. But, in fact, it comes from the Greek for 'steer', as does 'govern'. The etymological confusion seems traceable to the development of 'Cybernetics' decades ago, which aimed to study self-correcting information processing systems. Plainly, the focus of that rubric was originally on the self-correcting, rather than the information processing, dimension of the such systems, so its more recent association with the latter dimension is a slight terminological displacement. In the context of current computer technology, such lack of linguistic precision is hardly significant, but a more instructive application of this analysis might be to the topic of the human Mind. Theories of Mind have generally tried to explain thought processes, and one long tradition attributes that activity to an incorporeal being that is incarnate in the human body. 'Soul', 'Spirit', 'Mind', and 'Consciousness' are some of the names that have been given to that being, which is to be distinguished from the brain. But with the wane in influence over the centuries of Theologies in which incorporeal beings are central, in combination with the rise in sophistication attributed to brain operations, the concept of e. g. Consciousness has been struggling in recent years against charges of being superfluous, i. e. the physical brain is lately being shown to sufficiently account for all the intellectual activities previously attributed to Consciousness or its incorporeal ilk. However, these debates seem to have rarely, and at best implicitly, considered that Consciousness is primarily concerned not with the information-processing, but with the homeostatic, i. e. the self-correcting, functioning of the organism, which leads to fresh reformulations of the relations between Consciousness and the data which become, with respect to it, meaningful information. So, one more way that computer technology can illuminate the human brain that it models, is with respect to its cyber, in the literal sense, character.

Fiction

Most of us have had the experience of watching a movie, and at a point of extreme tension, averting our eyes, because we 'cannot bear to watch' , e. g. some impending violence. What we do not do under those circumstances is remind ourselves that what we are watching is not real, or that we have suspended disbelief when entering the theater. In fact, there are real occasions, e. g. during a sporting event, when we similarly just have to stop watching. This example, which can be generalized to any experience of fiction, in any medium, demonstrates that what transpires in any perception is fundamentally independent of questions of veridicality. Such perception might not be as rudimentary as a mere mechanical reflex, but it is not as complex as conscious reflection, either. Causal theories would seem to be correct, at least to the extent that perception is an effect of a transmission to us, and, in the case of an artistic product, we are being manipulated, as well. For the most part, questions as to the truth of an experience come after the fact, say, when what is presented in other experiences conflicts with the original one. One exception can be inferred from phases of fictitious presentations, in which a piece might be said to 'hit a wrong note'. This is an example of the disruption of the internal coherence of a work, and it is at such moments that the work is taken to be 'unconvincing'. So, whether inter- or intra-experience, fictitious or otherwise, coherence would seem to be a sufficient condition for the attribution of Truth. And, to the extent that we are manipulated by an artist, the aesthetic judgement of the work can attach first and foremost to how our cognitive faculties are so manipulated, which is Kant's point is classifying such judgement as 'reflective'.

Emotion

Emotions have often been categorized and evaluated, but much rarely has Emotion been analyzed. The prototypical effort in that direction came from Spinoza, who believed that the basic human drive of self-preservation aims to continuing the existence of what strengthens it, and to eliminate what weakens it. An 'Emotion' is thus an idea of this aim in specific circumstances, e. g. 'Love' is one's idea of continuing the existence of something that strengthens one, 'Hate' is that of something that weakens, and the other emotions are combinations of these. But as conducive to one's well-being as a condition like Love might be, an Emotion is in itself still a condition of weakness, according to Spinoza. For, it is at best a reactive state, one that is dependent on something external. Sartre develops this point further, by arguing that emotions are fundamentally thwarted actions, namely reactions that are undischarged, e. g. hate is obliteration that is not carried out. Thus, as Nietzsche suggests, the only counter to an emotion is another emotion, e. g. fear of consequences countering hate, but never Reason, which is not a counter to Emotion, but rather merely a condition of harmony amongst emotions. On this analysis, someone who is in perfect harmony within themselves and with their environment is unemotional, while any displayed emotion is an expression of either inner or outer disjointedness. Thus, the glorification of Emotion for its own sake seems not merely misguided, but for therapeutic purposes, potentially harmful.

Power

If it is true that 'power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely', as a familiar saying goes, then an analysis of the notion of Power should expose its intrinsic malignity. In Physics, Power is defined as Force functioning over a distance for a stretch of time, as a explanation of natural phenomena in general. So, hurling accusations at it in this regard is as misguided as blaming Gravity for an injurious fall. A more ambitious treatment of it is from Nietzsche, in his theory Will to Power, an attempt to extend the notion to organic phenomena. Nietzsche intended this as a rival to Will to Live, as an attempt to explain human motivation at its most fundamental. It proposes that humans aim at mastering, not merely persisting: physical brutality, the sculpting of marble, and self-control are all manifestations of Will to Power. Like the Will to Live, and the Newtonian concept of Power, it is an objective hypothesis, the validity of which depends on its comprehensiveness and coherence. So, blaming it for anything is not only once again pointless, but exposes itself to questions as to what are Power designs of the blamer. In fact, application of 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' to itself only reveals its own internal corruption, namely, if it were absolutely true, and therefore, held absolute sway over people's actions, then, by its own formulation, it would be corrupt. But that is not a problem with Power per se, only with the saying. The real issue here is analogous to blaming a fall on Gravity. Corruption is a function not of 'Power' but of the character of someone in a position of power, someone unequal to the responsibilities that are entailed. For, the converse of inadequate leadership is capability not having access to power.

The Cartesian Tradition

Descartes is often regarded as the father of Modernity, not merely in Philosophy, but in Western culture in general. His famous phrase, 'I think, therefore I am', establishes the experiencing subject as not merely the ultimate arbiter of knowledge, but as the cornerstone of society. Somewhat surprisingly, that expression does not appear in his most prominent work, The Meditations, a staple of college introductory Philosophy courses. His relevant line of thought in that work is that in demonstrating all that can be doubted, the act of doubting itself cannot be doubted, in which case that he exists as a doubter is unshakeable. From there, he further infers that since doubting is a form of thinking, it is unshakeable that he exists as a thinking being. So from The Mediations, at least, 'I doubt, therefore I am' would seem to be the fundamental principle. But the famous phrase does appear verbatim in an earlier work, Discourse on Method, and in French, not Latin, as it is sometimes taken to originally be. Again, it does so as a result of a process of doubting, and, indeed, the 'method' that he presents is explicitly just that--radical doubting. So, while modern Philosophers who seek the foundation of knowledge in the knower are descendants of Descartes, so too are the deniers of Knowledge, i. e. modern sceptics. Yet, neither of these traditions characterises what is truly seminal in his Philosophy. Rationalism, Empiricism, Critique, Dialectics, Phenomenology, Experimentalism, etc. all have in common what Descartes perhaps most fundamentally pioneered--a method.

The Origin of Space

As is the case with Time, Space is a topic that these days is regarded as in the purview of Physics. Dazzling notions such as '11-Dimensional Space' and 'Space-Time' only lend further credence to the expertise of Physicists in this area. But, also as is the case with Time, Physics deals only with mathematicized 'Space', and it is still up to Philosophy to deal with its fundamental nature. And, once again, it is Kant who casts a long shadow over the topic. In the tradition that has had human intelligence as passively representing the world, Space has been taken to be either the objective container of all existing things, or a subjective abstraction from actual relations between objects. In contrast, as part of his revolutionary vision that humans actively construct their world, Kant proposed that what we perceive is the complex product of our cognitive faculties, with Space, functioning as 'the form of outer sense', namely, as the arranging and structuring of incoming sensory information. As innovative and prescient as that notion has proven to be, Kant does not push the insight far enough. For, the very idea of an 'outer sense' presupposes an outerness with respect to the subject, and as obscure as that idea might seem at first glance, the exact same relation is invoked in the contemporary phrase 'outer space'. Just as the latter is taken to be whatever is beyond the perimeter of the earth, with respect to the center of the latter, from wherever one is, Space is whatever is beyond the periphery of one's skin. So, the fundamental dimension of Space is 'outside of', from which the three more familiar dimensions, length, height, and depth, not to mention the eleven of String Theory, are constructed. The main reason that Kant falls short of this realization is that he ties Space to cognition, when, as anyone who has uttered, 'Give me my space!' understands, it is more properly implicated in our motility. That is, the very fact that our bodies are locomotive entails an outsideness to them at any time. So, Space is more accurately defined as 'the form of motility'. And, whereas Physics is generally presumed to be about the physical world, and Philosophy, some metaphysical realm, it is the latter that has its feet on the ground when it comes to the topic of Space.

Aristocracy

Another word that over the centuries has completely and unfortunately strayed from its literal meaning is 'aristocracy'. These days, 'aristocrat' is usually a derogatory reference to a member of a decadent upper-class, a status underscored by its appearance in the punchline of a legendary vulgar joke. Quite to the contrary, 'aristo' comes from Greek for 'best', so 'aristocracy' is 'rule of the best'. Probably the main source of confusion regarding this idea is that it is taken to predetermine which person or persons 'best' refers to. Instead, once it is understood that it is an objective characteristic that is intended, then it becomes obvious that all political philosophies are fundamentally Aristocratic. For, they all aim to define the best social organization possible, differing only with respect to the most effective means to that end--Monarchism, Democracy, etc. For example, Democracy, often misconstrued as a program of 'giving everybody a chance', is actually based on the premise 'Might is Right', with Might being the strength of the majority as established by vote, so, an election is implicitly a determination of the best, i. e. the most Right, of the candidates. What has perhaps been most profoundly lost in the fall from grace of the word 'aristocracy' is the implication that the source of bestness in a political system is not its structure, but the quality of its ruler(s). In other words, the significant meaning of 'aristocracy' is that great leadership transcends type of rule.

Recreation

'Recreation' is one of those words that gets used so casually that attention is rarely paid to what it actually expresses. In the normal usage, it carries the connotation of idle fun. Many have first encountered it in the phrase 'rec room', referring to a place in a home in which might be located a TV, a stereo, a ping-pong table, etc. Now, the abbreviation 'rec', along with the short 'e' pronunciation in even the whole word, contribute to the glossing over of what is actually there: 're-creation'. But even that term has a less than honorable typical employment--to describe a laughably artificial simulation, usually on television, of a serious real event. Still lost, then, is the kind of profundity possible from its literal meaning, as, for example, invoked by John Dewey in his work on Aesthetics. The long tradition of Art appreciation has been centered on the Contemplation of Beauty, on which has been based philosophies in which the highest human state possible is a contemplative one, often a disembodied one, and with respect to which physical practical activity is inferior. Dewey counters with the analysis that meaningful contemplation is more than passive cognitive reception of a piece, but, rather, entails an active re-creation of how the artist produced it, which serves one of his more general cultural projects--to close the gap between dreary productivity and unproductive leisure. For sure, it cannot be expected that an obscure philosophical usage of a term should be on anyone's mind in its everyday employment, but in this particular case, the most familiar connotation of 'recreation' is hardly literally that, and is, rather, closer to 'uncreativeness', describing an aspect of routine life that is no more than an adjunct to business as usual.

Religion and Technology

The ongoing battle between 'Religion' and 'Science' is often treated as a conflict of ideologies, a debate over ideas. But perhaps most damaging to the former has been in the application of the latter, in technological innovation. In the Medieval Era, Theology predominated culturally, in large part due to the general adherence to Ptolemaic cosmology that validated the hierarchical scheme of God, God's representatives on earth, and those ruled by the latter. Two inventions shattered this arrangement. First, the telescope revealed that the earth is not located 'below' the Heavens, which meant that neither God, nor his surrogates, is 'above' the rest of humanity. Hence, the slow, still incomplete, erosion of Monarchism over subsequent centuries. Second, the Gutenberg press facilitated the generalization of scriptures and other religious documents, that had hitherto been in the exclusive possession of theological leaders. Hence, as an immediate consequence, the Protestant revolt from Roman Catholicism, and subsequently, theinfinite recursive generation of heterodoxies that have far distanced contemporary spirituality from its Medieval roots. A more underappreciated third invention in this category is the microscope. The latter has been as much a tool of discovery as the telescope, revealing previously undreamt-of realms of existence, including the origins of many ailments, thereby leading to the almost complete usurpation of Prayer as a treatment of them. Furthermore, by showing how vital operations can be functional at such a minute level, it pioneered the demonstration that complex mental operations can occur in the small space within one's head, rendering the hypothesis of a non-physical Soul no longer necessary, with the memory capacities of today's tiny microchip perhaps the most triumphant expression of that trend. Finally, the more formal notion that a person can be built up out of smaller forms of life substantiates the Evolutionary paradigm of an ascent of biological ascent, that challenges the scriptural account of a Fall. Medieval Theology was the attempt to ground Abrahamic monotheism on ancient, primarily Greek, thought. The rise of technology is further evidence of the instability of that structure.

Four Causes

In his Physics, the original systematic study of the topic, Aristotle introduces, as the ingredients in any occurrence, Four Causes--Material, Efficient, Formal, and Final. For example, in the making of a chair, wood is the Material Cause, hammering and sawing the Efficient, the rectilinear shape that guides the latter, the Formal, and to be sat upon, the Final. For him, the Final Cause is the most important, not only because it seems to bind the other three, but he construes all processes as actualization of potentiality, leading to a terminal resting. In contrast, starting with Newton, Physics formulates, in mathematical laws, the connection between two successive events, in which the first imparts force to the second. Hence, modern Physics focuses so exclusively on Efficient Causality that the qualifier has become superfluous. Final Causality, on the other hand, gets restricted to the sphere of purposeful human action, e. g. Morality, though it does surreptitiously slip back into Physics in the guise of 'frame of reference', i. e. a terminal point with no further efficacy. Meanwhile, Formal Causality disappears for centuries, until the notion Form assumes a central significance in Kant's philosophy, though he never quite characterizes it as Causal. The closest that he comes is in his Aesthetic theory, when he concocts a notion of 'purposeless purposiveness', which on closer examination, is just the imparting of shape to material, as if for some purpose, though only so for its own sake. Many of Kant's followers, e. g. Cassirer, likewise restore Formal Causality to a prominent role, but perhaps the more significant post-Kantian development is the re-emergence, with a vengence, of Material Causality. Marx' Dialectical Materialism, Schopenhauer's Will, Nietzsche's Dionysiac, and Santayana's Matter, are all dynamic forces that qualify as Material Causes. At the same time, such theories tend to characterize Consciousness as an inefficacious epiphenomenon. Perhaps if they were to use the Aristotelian scheme as a guide, they might recast it as a Formal Cause.