You might say to someone, "I like the color orange."
Maybe you want to tell someone that you like orange, but it doesn't necessarily come up in conversation.
We all know what happens next: you can tell your friends, and then they tell that person. Maybe you'll post it on facebook or myspace. Maybe you'll wear an orange shirt.
Maybe you don't want to tell everyone, but you really like orange and you think it's a color that everyone should know about, or that your shirt is a color that people might like. The consequence of this is wearing an orange shirt around.
Maybe you paint your room orange and have books about the color.
Maybe every time you think about orange in some way, it makes an indentation in the palm of your hand where thousands of peoples' color-lines have happened before.
Maybe in a four week span of when you were born, people like that general color. For myself, I was born a day before the American Holiday Thanksgiving. Being surrounded with a festivity associated with orange could be a huge reason, that I am unaware of, for me liking orange.
Maybe your uncle was the Duke of Orange, or you empathize with the Duke of Orange because your favorite character always wrote them together.
Maybe your name is O'Brien or Otto, and you think O's should get together.
Maybe your mom ate an orange before she read you a bedtime story.
Maybe your first boyfriend broke up with you and you were crying; but when someone handed you an orange, you felt better.
Maybe you are like Haile Gebressalassie, the elite runner, who, when he was growing up had to run tens of miles in order to get back and forth from school. He had to carry his books in his arms, and his stride is noticeably different because of this. Maybe you carried an orange every day when you were younger because you loved oranges so much and someone says, "Hey, that person must really love oranges. I can tell from her walk."
These are all ways of reading people and deciphering them. When I was starting on my astrology kick a few years ago, I noticed that friends of mine were not doing astrology. That's because astrology is guessing, what Kant might call "groping in the dark" compared to real and more easily attainable bio data. When I say bio data, I'm referencing an Industrial Organizational psychology class that I took, which says that hundreds and hundreds of questions about who a person is, from that person, is an effective way of garngering knowledge of that person.
So what my intelligent friends were saying, and what the I-O Psychologists have closely correlated if not proven, are remarkably similar.
There's also a problem of what people want you to know about them, what you want to know about them, and what each of the other is teleologically trying to put together. When you're trying to frame the Hurricane, you're not trying to find out whether he likes daisies. But more importantly, it skews the whole process. Unfortunately too many of us have motivations and past experiences when we meet new people.
So for example, I'm not going to try to find out as much as possible about a woman's zodiac if she is just a random woman from Kalamazoo; it wouldn't make any sense or have any motivation to it. Usually when I do this stuff, it's in order to tell a story about my friends.
Basically, we can tell if a person likes oranges from when they tell us that they like oranges. But bio data works inductively; that is by probability. The probability of an occurrence happening in the future is directly related to that event happening in the past. So when Craig eats a banana once, to some extent he sets himself up to do it again. Think about it: if Craig eats a banana everyday of his life up until now, and we need to make the best possible prediction for tomorrow, I think we could venture an educated guess that he's going to eat the banana tomorrow.
In flexing all of this unweildy science, pseudo science, and biography as one, I came up with a helpful maxim. I found, "The trait is the action." So when someone says they like oranges, you can take that facade for what it is worth. When someone eats an orange in front of you , that is them liking the orange. I think this unites a whole bunch of these theories. Palmistry, for example, could recognize calluses on the palms from weightlifting. Well, the calluses had to come from somewhere. And so the trait is the action (in this case callus-making; from weightlifting).
(In fact, and facadesaside fans will look this up, facadesaside has discussed the pros and cons of the inductive method in a couple of earlier entries)
Recap
Good methods of judging people's actions:
Past actions
Empirical Science
Repetitions
Routines
Bio data, such as questions to the person
when a person tells you straight up
when a person does an action that turn into a bigger action
Bad ways:
Less Empirical
Less well rooted
motivated or biased (teleological) recognition and creation of personality from outer-standpoint
Fate or superstition
Some good ways:
Grades
Politenesses
What they tell you about themselves
Some bad ways:
Astrology
Palmistry
Tarot Cards
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?
Something will happen.
What I like about punk rock songs is that if you don't like the song, just wait a minute. Then it's over.
I make a commitment to songs. I just commit to them. When does emotional significance start? I have things to say, people to see, things to do.
Now I've read Kant's introduction a whole lot, and I'm about to do it again. With the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant was trying to answer the question, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?"
Full skepticism goes something like, "I must withhold judgment until I am absolutely certain."
I like Kant's thesis question because it leap frogs over this stuff and gets right to the meat and potatoes.
Synthetic is the opposite of analytic. Analytic is by definition, or that which is given by definition. So we know what color a red ball is by analysis.
Here's an analytic joke,
"What color is George Washington's White Horse?"
It's not a trick question. The color is white. This should help you remember what analytic means.
Synthetic is something that is not given in the definition. Kant uses good examples of this and bad examples. An example of a synthetic statement would be "all bodies are extended." This is because there is no amount of analysis that could lead us to the necessary implications of these terms. Kant thinks that stuff like "7+5 = 12" is synthetic in addition to bodies.
Here's another joke to spice stuff up:
"I know what a heavenly body is."
"What's that?"
"When you enter the room, baby."
So there's are synthetic versus analytic distinction.
A priori to Kant means without experience. A posteriori, its twin, means with experience. That's absolutely all there is to knowing these guys.
I fell into the trap of confusion because a priori and its sister are latin. Can you guess from your prior knowledge where a priori ends up in common english? Ah, I thought that was the case.
But this is a trap because Kant doesn't think that a priori concepts are really before experience so much as they happen at the same time as experience ( I might be completely wrong here).
What I like about punk rock songs is that if you don't like the song, just wait a minute. Then it's over.
I make a commitment to songs. I just commit to them. When does emotional significance start? I have things to say, people to see, things to do.
Now I've read Kant's introduction a whole lot, and I'm about to do it again. With the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant was trying to answer the question, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?"
Full skepticism goes something like, "I must withhold judgment until I am absolutely certain."
I like Kant's thesis question because it leap frogs over this stuff and gets right to the meat and potatoes.
Synthetic is the opposite of analytic. Analytic is by definition, or that which is given by definition. So we know what color a red ball is by analysis.
Here's an analytic joke,
"What color is George Washington's White Horse?"
It's not a trick question. The color is white. This should help you remember what analytic means.
Synthetic is something that is not given in the definition. Kant uses good examples of this and bad examples. An example of a synthetic statement would be "all bodies are extended." This is because there is no amount of analysis that could lead us to the necessary implications of these terms. Kant thinks that stuff like "7+5 = 12" is synthetic in addition to bodies.
Here's another joke to spice stuff up:
"I know what a heavenly body is."
"What's that?"
"When you enter the room, baby."
So there's are synthetic versus analytic distinction.
A priori to Kant means without experience. A posteriori, its twin, means with experience. That's absolutely all there is to knowing these guys.
I fell into the trap of confusion because a priori and its sister are latin. Can you guess from your prior knowledge where a priori ends up in common english? Ah, I thought that was the case.
But this is a trap because Kant doesn't think that a priori concepts are really before experience so much as they happen at the same time as experience ( I might be completely wrong here).
Can you think of a thought that you haven't had?
I asked, "Can you think of a thought that you haven't had?"
Jimmy said, "Sure, this experience is a thought that I haven't had before. The realization of this moment is a thought that I have never had before. I'm sure that there is a Gödelian self-referential proof that works here, too. I could probably think of some others."
[uhn-ri-kwahy-tid] 
Show IPA –adjective
Again, from dictionary.com.
[ok-yuh-pey-shuh
n] Show IPA
Jimmy said, "Sure, this experience is a thought that I haven't had before. The realization of this moment is a thought that I have never had before. I'm sure that there is a Gödelian self-referential proof that works here, too. I could probably think of some others."
un⋅re⋅quit⋅ed
[uhn-ri-kwahy-tid] Show IPA –adjective | 1. | not returned or reciprocated: unrequited love. |
| 2. | not avenged or retaliated: an unrequited wrong. |
| 3. | not repaid or satisfied. |
Again, from dictionary.com.
oc⋅cu⋅pa⋅tion
[ok-yuh-pey-shuhn] Show IPA –noun
| 1. | a person's usual or principal work or business, esp. as a means of earning a living; vocation: Her occupation was dentistry. |
| 2. | any activity in which a person is engaged. |
| 3. | possession, settlement, or use of land or property. |
| 4. | the act of occupying. |
| 5. | the state of being occupied. |
| 6. | the seizure and control of an area by military forces, esp. foreign territory. |
| 7. | the term of control of a territory by foreign military forces: Danish resistance during the German occupation. |
| 8. | tenure or the holding of an office or official function: during his occupation of the vice presidency. |
All right, turn it up now
Inane means that there is no meaning to it, or behind it.
Let's hit the dictionary and tell the folks what they've won:
[i-neyn] Show IPA
So all of the sudden, we make things need significance. It seems as though we need significance somewhere. This is where good people hit religion, often. That's not such a bad juxtaposition, that's not a bad alignment. There is nothing too too wrong with religion as an ideal, I think. Religion is fine by itself. The problem is that religion is not supposed to be by itself almost by its nature. How could you take a set of ethical laws and then abstain from using them?
This is inane. This whole life is inane.
Existentialism is a philosophical school (literally belief in existence). They believed in created meaning.
existentialism
Sartre's phrase that I remember, and I don't even remember where I remember this from, but it's "We're damned to be free." Which is close to this dictionary.com definition.
This is a pretty cheap introduction to Existentialism, but here is a beautiful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke to take your mind off of it:
The First Elegy
If I cried out, who
in the hierarchies of angels
would hear me?
And if one of them should suddenly
take me to his heart,
I would perish in the power of his being.
For beauty if but the beginning of terror.
We can barely endure it
and are awed
when it declines to destroy us.
Every angel is terrifying in that way.
So I hold myself back,
and let my scream for help
be swallowed by sobbing.
Oh, to what, then, can we turn
in our need?
Not to an angel. Not to a person.
Animals, perceptive as they are,
notice that we are not really at home
iin this world of ours. Perhaps there is
a particular tree we see every day on the hillside,
or a street we have walked
or the warped loyalty of a habit
that does not abandon us.
...
Oh, and night, the night, when wind
hurls the universe at our faces.
For whom is night not there?
Longed for and softly disappointing,
it envelops each solitary heart.
Is night easier for lovers, who
can hide from their fate in each other?
Do you still not konw how little endures?
Fling the nothing you are grasping
out into the spaces we breathe.
Maybe the birds
will feel in their flight
how the air has expanded.
Can you see? Springtimes have needed you.
And there are stars expecting you to notice them.
From out of the past, a wave rises to meet you
the way the strains of a violin
come through an open window
just as you walk by.
As if it were all by design.
But are you the one designing it?
Were you not always distracted by yearning,
as though some lover were about to appear?
Let yourself feel it, that yearning.
It connects you with those
who have sung it through the ages,
sung especially of love unrequited.
Shouldn't this oldest of sufferings
finally bear fruit for us?
Is it not time
to free ourselves from the beloved
even as we, trembling, endure the loving?
As the arrow endures the bowstring's tension
so that, released, it travels farther.
For there is nowhere to remain.
Let's hit the dictionary and tell the folks what they've won:
in⋅ane
[i-neyn] Show IPA –adjective
| 1. | lacking sense, significance, or ideas; silly: inane questions. |
| 2. | empty; void. |
–noun
| 3. | something that is empty or void, esp. the void of infinite space. |
So all of the sudden, we make things need significance. It seems as though we need significance somewhere. This is where good people hit religion, often. That's not such a bad juxtaposition, that's not a bad alignment. There is nothing too too wrong with religion as an ideal, I think. Religion is fine by itself. The problem is that religion is not supposed to be by itself almost by its nature. How could you take a set of ethical laws and then abstain from using them?
This is inane. This whole life is inane.
Existentialism is a philosophical school (literally belief in existence). They believed in created meaning.
existentialism
A movement in twentieth-century literature and philosophy, with some forerunners in earlier centuries. Existentialism stresses that people are entirely free and therefore responsible for what they make of themselves. With this responsibility comes a profound anguish or dread. Søren Kierkegaard and Feodor Dostoevsky in the nineteenth century, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Camus in the twentieth century, were existentialist writers.
The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
In other words, they're all about subjective, created meaning. We get this feeling like life is weighing down on us when we have so much freedom. So pessimistic, these philosophers are! On one hand, William James calls determinism, the belief that freedom is nonexistent because of the determined causality of nature; these folks are pessimistic because we have too much freedom.Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[1][2] took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual[3][4] and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point for philosophical thought. Existential philosophy is the "explicit conceptual manifestation of an existential attitude"[5] that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[6][7] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[8][9]
Sartre's phrase that I remember, and I don't even remember where I remember this from, but it's "We're damned to be free." Which is close to this dictionary.com definition.
This is a pretty cheap introduction to Existentialism, but here is a beautiful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke to take your mind off of it:
The First Elegy
If I cried out, who
in the hierarchies of angels
would hear me?
And if one of them should suddenly
take me to his heart,
I would perish in the power of his being.
For beauty if but the beginning of terror.
We can barely endure it
and are awed
when it declines to destroy us.
Every angel is terrifying in that way.
So I hold myself back,
and let my scream for help
be swallowed by sobbing.
Oh, to what, then, can we turn
in our need?
Not to an angel. Not to a person.
Animals, perceptive as they are,
notice that we are not really at home
iin this world of ours. Perhaps there is
a particular tree we see every day on the hillside,
or a street we have walked
or the warped loyalty of a habit
that does not abandon us.
...
Oh, and night, the night, when wind
hurls the universe at our faces.
For whom is night not there?
Longed for and softly disappointing,
it envelops each solitary heart.
Is night easier for lovers, who
can hide from their fate in each other?
Do you still not konw how little endures?
Fling the nothing you are grasping
out into the spaces we breathe.
Maybe the birds
will feel in their flight
how the air has expanded.
Can you see? Springtimes have needed you.
And there are stars expecting you to notice them.
From out of the past, a wave rises to meet you
the way the strains of a violin
come through an open window
just as you walk by.
As if it were all by design.
But are you the one designing it?
Were you not always distracted by yearning,
as though some lover were about to appear?
Let yourself feel it, that yearning.
It connects you with those
who have sung it through the ages,
sung especially of love unrequited.
Shouldn't this oldest of sufferings
finally bear fruit for us?
Is it not time
to free ourselves from the beloved
even as we, trembling, endure the loving?
As the arrow endures the bowstring's tension
so that, released, it travels farther.
For there is nowhere to remain.
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