Levels… With Steps… Like Ancient Egypt

An analytic proposition is one in which the conclusion is contained in the premises. We “analyze,” drill down, divide.

A bachelor is an unmarried male…
Smith is bachelor.
Therefore, Smith is unmarried.

Here, the conclusion is less than the sum of the premises. The premises set has more information in it than the conclusion.

A synthetic statement is quite the contrary: the conclusion is “synthesized” from the premises. We put together, harmonize, combine. The conclusion is bigger than any premise.

I’d like to go out to eat tomorrow.
But it’s going to snow.
So, driving may be dangerous.
But we planned this trip a few days ago.
Therefore, we’ll probably go despite the weather.

The conclusion is reached by weighing a bunch of reasons and picking the right decision. It’s almost as if analysis pertains to knowledge, while synthesis, to understanding.

A posteriori refers to sensing; a priori, to reflecting; this is about how we get the premises. Analytic / synthetic is about how we get the conclusions.

“2 + 2= 4″ is an a priori statement, but it is neither analytic nor synthetic but self-evident.

“I’m sitting” is an a posteriori statement and is close to being self-evident, as well. But it can be called analytic. Given the premises “I feel myself sitting” and “My feelings reflect reality,” the conclusion follows.

“Goldbach’s conjecture is true” is an analytic a priori proposition.

“What is colored is extended.” This one is tricky. In order to know colors and extentions, one needs personal experience with these things. On the other hand, one need not experience all colored and extended things in order to be able to say that ∀x [x is colored -> x is extended], even necessarily so. So, this proposition has both a posteriori and a priori aspects. The conclusion is arrived at not from the universal to particular, but the reverse, so this proposition is synthetic. It is synthetic a priori, also like “What is red all over is not green all over”; “All bachelors are unhappy” (not necessarily true); etc.

Update. On second thought, how do we arrive to the conclusion that what is colored is extended? Something like the following:

Every colored thing I’ve seen in my life had a surface. (a posteriori)
I can’t conceive or imagine any colored thing without a concomitant surface. (a priori)
Therefore, every colored thing in the actual universe or even in all possible worlds has a surface. (synthesis)
But a surface by definition is something that is extended in 2- or 3-dimensional space. (a priori)
Therefore, every colored thing is extended. (analytic)

So, this proposition has also both synthetic and analytic aspects.

I’ve thought of an objection to my argument in the previous post. The following is based on what I have in my book.

We may distinguish between two sorts of human desires. First, there is what I want myself to do. Second is how I want other people to behave. This has to do with my pressure on those other people, the incentives I set up for them in my capacity as a legislator or voter.

Thus, let Smith want to go to Cuba. He thinks it would be a fun trip. He is dying to go to Cuba. However, Smith happens to be politically correct. He is a conservative hater and wants to stop other folks from traveling to Cuba. Unfortunately, he can’t satisfy both desires. For the only way to keep others out of Cuba is to pass a law that will prevent everyone, both Smith and others, from going there. Smith cannot exclude himself from the law. Either everyone is bound, including Smith; or everyone is unbound, also including Smith.

Again, Smith’s ideology is that of small government. And so is that of many of his countrymen. They want to prevent people from plundering each other via the machinery of state. Unfortunately, Smith and others would very much like to plunder society themselves, whenever they find it easy to lay their hands on other people’s property. These two desires pull in different directions, such that the final outcome is neither laissez-faire nor war of all against all but a welfare state.

If we restrict the meaning of the term “culture” to Smith’s designs on other people’s behavior, not what he himself wants, but how he shapes the behavior of others, then it makes sense to say that “individual behavior is influenced by culture.”

Goleman argues that life was hard in the distant past, but “with the coming of agriculture and even the most rudimentary human societies, the odds for survival began to change dramatically.” (8) You see, agriculture sort of “came” and perhaps, settled in comfortably among humans. People, certain specific individuals, Smith and Jones, did not invent agriculture; other people, seeing their success, did not copy and improve upon initial practices; no, agriculture “came.” This sort of breathless reification or making abstract things seem concrete, really rubs me the wrong way. Or this: “These biological propensities to act are shaped further by our life experiences and our culture.” Sounds innocuous. But it is a pseudo-explanation. For what is culture? It is the sum total of human lifestyles. But why lifestyles are what they are is precisely the question we were asking in the first place. “Lifestyles are shaped by lifestyles” is hardly a satisfying explanation.

Goleman writes about his feeling fear during a sudden snowstorm that prompted him to stop and wait it out:

The caution fear forced on me that day may have saved my life. Like a rabbit frozen in terror at the hint of a passing fox — or a protomammal hiding from a marauding dinosaur — I was overtaken by an internal state that compelled me to stop, pay attention and take heed of a coming danger. (6)

Notice first how evolutionists are believers in mythical creatures, like “protomammals.” No one has ever seen a protomammal, nor even explained exactly what sort of thing a protomammal is, but such things had to have existed, because evolution, it is occurred, proceeded via “numerous, successive, slight modifications.” But it did occur, obviously. Hence, there must have been plenty of protomammals, and in fact, proto-everything around in the past.

Second, let a sophisticated robot drive the car. The robot senses a snowstorm and stops. You might say, it “feared” an accident. Even here, there is no feeling, no teleological causation. Goleman makes it appear that the point of fear is to be a subjective intermediary between objective danger and objective action. The “purpose” of feeling that evolution has implanted into us is to keep us safe. But from the evolutionary point of view, why have this go-between? It’s a waste of resources. A robot for which there is a direct physical link between storm and stopping seems far more efficient and simple and would have an evolutionary advantage over humans.

Now let the robot successfully avoid all problems on the road and get to its destination. Goleman may have felt happy at that point. The robot would not feel anything; it’s a machine. Our author can no longer even say that the subjective happiness is for the sake of anything objective, such as survival and reproduction. This is because happiness is the final end of all human endeavors. All objective human action is entirely for the sake of subjective happiness. How could evolution of matter — atoms, molecules, chemical elements — have resulted into the elevation of happiness to the ultimate relative given?

With anger blood flows to the hands, making it easier to grasp a weapon or strike at a foe; heart rate increases, and a rush of hormones such as adrenaline generates a pulse of energy strong enough for vigorous action. (6)

I am sure this is a real connection. But anger both is a different referrent and has a different meaning than “blood flows.” Anger is not “really” a rush of hormones. It is a spiritual phenomenon unique to higher animals and in its specific form to humans. It is a subjective private feeling not objective public action. Nor does anger mean in common speech “rush of hormones.” It means “antagonism, outrage,” etc. Its general cause is injustice, an equally non-material item. I suppose that for Goleman, love, too, is “overrated; biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate,” to quote from the movie Devil’s Advocate. He does not disappoint:

Love, tender feelings, and sexual satisfaction entail parasympathetic arousal — the physiological opposite of the “fight-or-flight” mobilization shared by fear and anger. The parasympathetic pattern, dubbed the “relaxation response,” is a bodywide set of reactions that generates a general state of calm and contentment, facilitating cooperation.

Love, too, then, is for the sake of survival and reproduction. It is an intermediate emotion that compels actions beneficial to the organism. What a strange artifice. But of course, it compels nothing. Goleman explicitly recounts his emotions. He was not pushed by them ineluctably but considered them to be inputs to his mind that had to be contemplated and weighed along with every other like input, such as perhaps the fact that he was going to be late. Stopping was a choice, a conscious decision. Goleman allowed his fear to influence him.

It is a property of matter than if a particle occupies a part of space, then no other particle or parcel of matter can occupy the same space. But love involves “mutual indwelling,” an intertwinement of wills, of values scales. It seems that love is not material.

So, I’m reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, and just 9 pages in, I can’t stop laughing. Must everyone pay latria and give sacrifices to evolutionism? Here’s an example:

Over millions of years of evolution, the brain has grown from the bottom up, with its higher centers developing as elaborations of lower, more ancient parts. (The growth of the brain in the human embryo roughly retraces this evolutionary course.) (9)

But it is possible and easy enough now to observe the development of an embryo. The alleged evolutionary process has never been and cannot be observed. In fact, the former is used as evidence for the latter. “Look at the intermediate stages between an embryo and an adult,” it is argued. “Now look at the variety of animal species. Each more highly endowed species is quite like an intermediate stage between bacteria and humans. Hence, it stands to reason that bacteria evolved into humans, while also leaving these numerous intermediate species around. Just as an embryo evolves into a man in 20 years, so bacteria evolved into men in 2 billion years. Isn’t it obvious?” Well, no, it’s no obvious. It’s exactly this sorts of reasoning that make evolutionary biology a pseudo-science.

There is no such thing as mental energy; the “psychic” energy belongs to the will not the intellect. One cannot, for example, solve a problem by telling himself: “Think faster!” Just as the 1st-grade body moves, so the 2nd-grade soul aspires. It seeks happiness, a transformation of an undesirable state of affairs to a more satisfactory one. It is the will that enjoys the fruits of such an action. And it is the will that impels one to construct plans for the attainment of ends and execute those plans.

The will, then, has energy. It wants things it does not yet have and enjoy. It thrusts a person into action, more or less intensely, more or less vigorously for the sake of future expected utility. The strength of the desire determines how single-mindedly a person will fight for his goals.

When the body stops moving, the person dies physically; when the soul stops aspiring, the person dies spiritually. No wonder, sloth is a mortal sin.

Let us examine: “It is not the great men that make the age. It is the age that makes great men.” Why? “A favorable environment is essential for the fruition of genius. … the environment must be highly favorable. … The spirit of the age operates eclectically in the production of great men. From the considerable mass of potential material it selects here and there those few who happen to be best attuned to their times. Very slight modifications of this prevailing social atmosphere suffice to alter entirely the selection of individuals.”

With that Mises, too, seems to concur, in part. Libertarians “do not share the naive opinion that any system of social organization can directly succeed in encouraging philosophical or scientific thinking, in producing masterpieces of art and literature and in rendering the masses more enlightened. They realize that all that society can achieve in these fields is to provide an environment which does not put insurmountable obstacles in the way of the genius and makes the common man free enough from material concerns to become interested in things other than mere breadwinning.” (Human Action, 155)

Further, success on the market consists in rendering superior service to the consumers, provision of what the public most urgently wants, regardless of what “objective” talents a person has. Smith may be a great painter, but if the public, whether common men or the elites, is unappreciative of his genius, Smith may end up a customer service agent or a car salesman.

On the one hand, it is part of the endowment of a genius to make his way through many difficult obstacles. On the other hand, all changes are felt on the margin, and there will always be plenty of weaker geniuses who are crushed by life who, given a more favorable environment, would have flourished and benefited both themselves and society.

In any event, what is the “environment”? The prevailing status quo. But it was not status quo just a generation ago. Who created it? Well, the geniuses of the previous generation, those people to whom the suggestible public willingly listened. The status quo constricts, but it is precisely geniuses who change it. In the battle of ideas the public is the prize given to the victors. The common people are the spoils of war between ideas and ideologies. But, as Mises points out, “There never lived at the same time more than a score of men whose work contributed anything essential to economics.” (873) Same with every other field. When faced with a hostile environment, it is the task of a genius to overcome the odds.

It is argued that the human soul, i.e., character, degenerates as a person grows older. E.g., “old age is generally selfish, since the altruistic feelings of generosity have lost their motive strength. … An old man tends to be ‘on his dignity,’ while ceasing to be genuinely dignified. The former pride has transmuted into vanity. … Timidity… conformity to custom… jealousy… weaker and shallower emotions,” etc.

How interesting. Theological reasoning would suggest that the body deteriorates with age, but the soul should keep improving. For the point of life seems to lie in soul-making, a goal which ought to be attainable even in the face of worsening of physical health and death.

But this seems to fly in the face of common sense. Mental powers, too, go along with the body. Memory loss is an obvious first example. But if it is the case that “the enfeebled frame cannot support the warm and ardent sentiments of youth,” then is the soul undone or un-made with age? What then is the point of life if “old age brings a general deterioration of character”? Is it in one’s own interests to die young?

Let me suggest that if an old person enjoys reflecting on his life, is content contemplating his achievements and the good he has done, and occasionally sharing his wisdom by teaching others, then this is sufficient if not to soul-make then at least to soul-preserve from the influence of any bodily damage, including senility.

Many human events are determined by human objects or agents and these agents’ internal and external constitutions: ends, means, powers. What are these objects themselves determined by? Well, they were created in the past. Creation entails uniting essence and existence. Moreover, every essence has a “constructor.” It begins to exist in an orderly fashion. There are “instructions” in every ideal essence specifying its initial parameters, structure, etc. When it is “initialized,” its precise form is constructed and comes to be.

The deterministic chains for these, then, are similar not to “functional” billiard balls striking each other but to “object-oriented” creation, updating, and destruction of causal agents in the world.

We might say that each thing, object, from an electron to a human being, has a locus of hot, boiling, swirling autonomous power deep within it to cause events.

Therefore, a person’s actions may be considered to be both voluntary and determined. Insofar as they are determined, society lays down laws that guide behavior. We all know that people are influenced by incentives, each person uniquely, of course, but still. We set up these incentives to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The “number” includes law-breakers, so excessive punishments are avoided. Criminals are people, too.

Insofar as human actions are voluntary, each person is morally responsible for his own conduct. Each person is either righteous or a sinner. He tends toward either glory or shame. These terms, too, have straightforward senses. Reprobates are not “people, too.”

Necessity has two meanings and two opposites: 1) voluntary, 2) undetermined.

The first meaning poses 1st-level matter and energy, particles and waves against 2nd-level human willing, thinking, and acting.

The second meaning contrasts determination with randomness.

Thus, voluntary actions may well be determined by one’s values scale, plans, and powers.

And physical causation may well be undetermined via quantum randomness.

As follows from the previous note, not using man-made contraceptives entails a “pro-life” attitude, a state of mind that affirms humanity. It’s a healthy philosophy of life or ideology, as wholesome as libertarianism is compared to evil conservatism and stupid left-liberalism.

When John Paul II mentioned the culture of death with respect to contraceptives, he is to be understood in a sense different from such a culture with respect to abortion. This is because for birth control, children are never conceived in the first place and therefore, cannot die. The Pope was referring to the death of the human race.

Perpetuation of the species is a different thing altogether from individual search for happiness. Sometimes the two are in conflict, and when such is the case, the conflict must be wisely resolved.

It is certainly true that any single person’s decisions regarding his own procreation cannot be held responsible for the fate of the human race. If we are to go extinct, this particular Smith was not the cause of it. Therefore, again, using NFP in married life is a matter of piety, of something given to God according to justice, in God’s capacity as an authority over His most valuable creation, the human race. Smith will not bring about the continuation of our species, but he will at least practice what he preaches.

The Catholic Church sanctions a form of family planning in which the couple has sex only in those times of the month when the woman is naturally infertile. Why?

This reason is that a woman who uses contraceptives does not fully give herself to her husband. She is saying: “You can possess me, but I won’t let you beget a child in me.” She can conceive but refuses to do so.

With the “natural” planning, this technically does not occur. There is either no love and no children, as in when the woman is fertile, or love and children, except it so happens that nature prevents conception.

The problem here is that praxeologically, this may seem to be a distinction without a difference. Does it matter whether conception is checked by the woman’s body alone or body plus a contraceptive pill? In both cases, there is the same intention on the part of the husband and wife, namely, to enjoy sex without the possibility of making a child.

Now God made the woman’s body in a certain way. She is fertile on the 4th and infertile on the 24th. When the couple has sex on the 24th, God is preventing conception, as per His own design. When the woman takes a pill on the 4th, she takes matters into her own hands.

But what’s wrong with that? God has designed humans such that their hair grows. Is it wrong to have a haircut? Life is naturally solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short; what’s wrong with building a civilization? The difference is that getting haircuts is due to an individual’s regard for himself, while sex is bound with individual regard for the species. People are naturally eager to seek their own happiness. Maintaining the human species is something quite different from that. It requires distinct sacrifices of purely individualistic pleasures. Children are “flowers on our graves.” Too much egoistic self-regard, and there may not be a next generation at all. Hence, it seems that procreation cannot be fully under exclusive human control but is something that is in part managed by God.

Hence, humans are not entirely free and autonomous in pursuit of sex and love. They must give their due to God. Using contraceptives entails taking an excessive share of control over procreation.

But what if God had designed humans in such a way that the woman was fertile always? Would not that have spelled the end of natural family planning? Isn’t NFP, therefore, based on an accident, a kind of loophole in the divine laws? And what if our couple wanted to have sex on the 4th not on the 24th? Why should it have to wait, just because of this accidental obstacle? God’s design seems arbitrary and flawed.

Again, the answer lies in a certain conflict between the interest of individuals and the species as a whole; or if you like, between the presently living and those yet unconceived. Sometimes the former should yield to the latter.

We may, if we like, make this more concrete. For example, suppose there is pre-existence of the soul. There is a long line of souls in heaven waiting to be called to incarnate as humans and live this life. Without procreation, their interests, which include our own, if there is such thing as re-incarnation, will be hurt. We should be mindful of the interests not only of this world but of the universe as a whole. The yet unborn have a claim on us.

Even if the unconceived cannot be said to exist, we the living may desire a large communion of saints. Not 10 people but 10 billion people. But in that case it pays Smith not to have children but benefit for free from Jones’ children. But everybody thinks this way. This is a case of positive externalities unrealized. Children are underproduced. One possibility is to have the state subsidize large families. But we live, or want to, in a free society. It is immoral to tax childless people for the sake of those with children. Further, under such conditions, children will be viewed as a means to government hand-outs rather than loved for their own sakes. Hence, the Church’s moral suasion seems like the best possible solution.

In short, going no further then NFP is a concession to God’s will regarding the well-being of the species. And that is the point of the Catholic Church’s injunctions.

The Church has worried about sex for 3 reasons. First, there is a matter of health and moderation. People should enjoy sex but within right reason, in order not to get STDs or not to exhaust themselves or not to demean themselves by centering their lives on obtaining sex. Second, the sensual pleasure of sex is a stepping stone to the intellectual joy of love, and unless sex produces love, it is positively harmful to the soul. Third, in order to foster family planning and avoid unwanted and bastard children.

For (1), the Church is concerned with basic virtue. For (2), with union of human beings through love. For (3), with making sure that children — who, too, have an eternal life and are important — are loved and cared for. I think it is both proper and laudable for the Church to seek to influence human behavior regarding these things.

Suppose you are told: Love God more than anything. Now you love your family. But you are not sure what this thing called God is. If you hear this admonition, you can interpret it in two ways: one, you need to figure out God and learn to love Him even more than wife and children; two, you ought to start hating your wife and children, because only thusly will the commandment be fulfilled when you do not love God at all.

That is, if you are indifferent to God, then you will love him more than anything, only if you hate everything. Of course, this interpretation is crazy, but this is one sense in which love for God is measured by love for people: the former must exceed the latter. This is how we must understand Lk 14:26: as a striking metaphor.

There is another sense: no one can truly love God if he fails to love his fellow men sufficiently.

When we put the two together, we arrive at Mt 22:34-40.

On one’s deathbed, a man should be prepared to give up everything he has in this world. The moment his heart stops, he loses everything, including his very body. If, at this moment, he does not have God, then it seems that he ends up with nothing.

So, here is a basic life pattern according to this understanding. A person acquires temporal goods in the first half of his life, and disburses them in the second. He should, indeed, die broke, but not by spending everything on himself but helping young people grow up. The middle to old age is the age in which one ought to busy himself with making the world a better place for his own and everyone else’s children.

Belief in some form of life after death is prior to any religion. It is almost innate in humans. Moreover, it is necessary for religion. Of what use is friendship with God or service to God or being loved by God in this life, if these things terminate in a most pitiful manner upon death?

Homeschooling on the one hand is a bit odd, because it is a conscious act to avoid taking advantage of division of labor. The parents are rarely experts in those subjects that evoke the interest of the child. It seems more reasonable to send a kid to a school or at least hire tutors. There are also social gains, insofar as one teacher can handle a large group, whereas there is one parent-teacher per only a few kids at home.

The phenomenon of homeschooling is, in fact, a desperate reaction against the awfulness of government schools. Public schools are so bad to both the intellect and morals that people, not being rich enough to afford private schools or tutoring, resort to withholding kids from those hellholes.

Homeschooling, precisely for reasons of its inefficiency, is a vigorous condemnation of the present compulsive state schooling regime.

The power of good ideas is weak, indeed; the power of bad ideas is far stronger; but fortunately, the power of no-ideas-whatsoever (especially from the conservatives) is practically omnipotent.

Consider a system, such as a painting or a car engine. A painting consists of a large number of colored lines and points. If you look at it very closely, all you’ll see are these things. But look at it from afar, and you’ll see the painting as a whole and may be struck by its beauty. You will no longer notice the individual components of the painting. The variety of component parts is complemented by a unity of the whole. Just as the unity can be of form, so it can be of function. A car engine is also built out of numerous parts. Each part alone is non-functional, but put them together, and again look at it from afar, and you see something that works marvelously by moving the car.

An electron is simple as an elementary point particle. Its inner complexity and unity are zero. God is both infinitely complex and perfectly unified. When beholding God, one cannot comprehend him due to this complexity and infinity of “parts” (possible worlds?) but the parts fit together so seamlessly as to produce one thing, in which it is impossible to detect any distinctions.

Whether you look at God from near or afar, you see both the infinite complexity and simple unity.