Basics

Philosophical Epilogue

by

Gernot M. R. Winkler

Introduction

Aristotle (more . .) saw philosophy as the wondering of the human mind about life and the world. This we can still see as true and I also believe with Socrates (more .), that a life without the desire to know would not do justice to our best abilities. However, philosophical aims go further. We seek in philosophy an overall view of our existence, that takes into account everything humans know reliably; a view from which values and recommendations for the conduct of life can be derived. We need to know in order to act wisely and not for our amusement. In Western culture, we place philosophy together with science, as a meta -science, and it is, or ought to be, an essential part of our intellectual background. Therefore, pure science, which seeks to augment our collective knowledge without regard to direct usefulness, is a necessary part of philosophy. The boundary between science and philosophy is changing and subjects that used to be dealt with only in philosophy are now part of science, due to more information and the greatly increased number of people who are scientists today. Science is the detailed examination of parts of the world, while philosophy seeks an overview and an "explanation" of it all. While science is to be factual - i.e., based on observations and experiments that can be checked - philosophy goes beyond this into educated speculation, but ideally only as far as an overall view of reality suggests. Nevertheless, philosophy became the history not only of great and deep ideas, but also of crazy notions and elaborate, but unrealistic, philosophical systems. We have to use judgment for gaining enlightenment about the most basic questions of life. Therefore we remember the old principle that simplicity is the sign of truth (simplex sigillum veri). Albeit, deep insight cannot be gained with very simple ideas! A middle way has to be found, deep and detailed enough in a scientific mode, but avoiding an excess of meaningless complexity.

Thoughts about thinking and information

Reflective thinking, if it is done without the critique of others, can wander too far. Kant called this vernuenfteln, which I interpret as "confusing an issue by thinking beyond a basis of fact". It is an intellectual overreaching with spurious or totally wrong conclusions. We see this almost everywhere, not only in philosophy. It is a natural tendency of an active, intellectually trained mind. The presently so prevalent social activism that is based not on sound thinking, but on intellectual overreaching is the direct consequence, it is difficult to avoid and has cost us dearly in the past (e.g., in the DDT case, some 50 million fatalities). At the very least, an undisciplined, excessive rationalization generates confusion instead of enlightenment [1]. But it can be much more serious when massive hysterical actions are the result of superficial thinking. To explain why this is so, we need to look at the general features in our experience. We see two classes of phenomena, chaotic and repetitive. An example would be the weather: it shows repeating seasonal changes with superimposed chaotic variations from day to day. The notorious el niño (more , ,) is also repeating irregularly and can last several years. It is superimposed on the "normal" climatic changes. But even in this case of repetitive features, reliable prediction is extremely difficult.

The scientific mind uses the observed repeating features to represent his observations if possible with mathematical models. Mathematics is a tool set of notions and concepts that is logically consistent - it is not just a sort of shorthand. When various ways exist in which such models can be constructed, the question arises which is the best, and why. This has puzzled scientists such as Ernst Mach. His criterion selected has been "simplicity". Usually we desire to have greatest accuracy, i.e., smallest residuals (observation - theory). Improvements in this sense can be achieved by making the intellectual model more complicated (e.g., taking more terms in a fitting polynomial). But this brings a conflict with the ideal of simplicity if we adopt Mach's principle of "Economy of Thought". The simplest model was to be seen as the best. Ernst Mach put great importance on simplicity and we believe he was right in doing so. However, we use a different reasoning. Models that are more complicated, necessarily use more assumptions and this is really the critical point. We can certainly assume that more assumptions make the model less dependable, which shifts the importance from simplicity as such to confidence in the result.

There is also a feeling among physicists that the more "symmetrical" a theory is, the more beautiful and "elegant" it is perceived to be, the more valuable it will be. When the highly regarded Kirchhoff (1824-1887) heard these comments, he remarked with some disdain that elegance of the product was supposed to be a matter for tailors, not scientists. - Another ideal among theoreticians is to derive all theories from as few principles as possible. I am convinced that both of these ideals are not only incompatible (one cannot serve two masters), but are detractions from what pure science ought to aim at - as a branch of philosophy: This means that we have to demonstrate that the natural processes happen with necessity. This is the modern Western concept in contrast to the old worldwide beliefs that nature is the result of arbitrary divine acts. Before Newton most people thought that the planets were driven by angels. In the ideal limit, we now seek to show that the ground for being is being necessary. This is to be understood to mean the necessity with which 5 follows 4, or the necessity of the law of Pythagoras, etc. It is the necessity with which the results can be shown to follow a valid mathematical model. The necessity is also the reason why the same "laws" are found to be valid everywhere.

The success of our mathematically supported technology is an excellent indication for this necessity. We would not depend with our lives on the computations of the designers if we did not expect the results by this necessity. The necessity in nature (and in our mental models) exists of its own nature, it has not been ordained and cannot be removed. Nobody can make the Pythagorean theorem invalid, or ordain that 5 should follow 3. The above cited goal of pure science may very well force us to use very complicated mathematical models. But their esthetics (which is purely subjective) cannot be expected to contribute to this necessity (unless it can be shown in a separate demonstration that it does). For more on this existence by necessity see essay #13 (more . .). All this should not mean that beauty cannot be of emotional value and useful in motivating the searching mind. This was stressed by Paul Dirac who believed: "that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations." This can lead us, however, to suspect that beauty is based on a "natural" condition, on a form that would, by being esthetically pleasing, lead the intellect to "organic" simplicity and therefore to a good representation of nature. I am borrowing here from authors such as Schopenhauer who claimed that a beautiful specimen is a pure realization of the platonic idea of the species. This is, or would be, the explanation for ours being so attracted and influenced by beauty. ---

We always meet the question of why is there a world at all? The answer is that the world exists today as the necessary consequence of the conditions that existed yesterday, as we see it happen before our eyes every day. In contrast to this objective understanding which creates in our mind the infinite chain of events backwards and forwards, we can say, now referring to our subjective world, that we want the world to exist - we want it, absolutely, in spite of everything, and our urge to live as seen in every living being is obviously the real driver of this world. This gives us an "internal" connection with the world, an emotional anchor, so to speak (More detail on how one can understand this is in essays 13 and 14).

Regarding the beliefs about this subject (and our emotional "anchors"), we have actually a basic choice of two beliefs! Either, what exists must exist out of its inner necessity, as a necessary consequence of prior conditions, - or it must sometimes have come out of nothing. This second idea is completely nebulous, we have never seen anything like this, it is totally outside our experience of reality and only an outside, a supernatural, Creator could conceivably take such an action. But then, the same question applies also to this hypothetical creator: He could not have created Himself, because non existing things or beings cannot do anything. To exist is the condition for the ability to act, and if nothing exists, no action can take place. Therefore the hypothetical Creator would have to exist necessarily at all times because of His nature - but so must nature, too.

As the simpler hypothesis, we may prefer the idea of an existence of the world out of its inner necessity, which precludes a beginning. The second hypothesis, creation of matter out of nothing by a supernatural creator, requires the assumption of a separate unintelligible, untouchable supernatural world. With this, we gain nothing intellectually, no additional explanation by introducing this except we move the idea of an ever lasting existence from the world to the supernatural Creator and we buy this with the equally unintelligible problem of a creation out of nothing. These are superfluous assumptions which add confusion, At least this is as long as we restrict ourselves to an objective cognition of our world.

However, an exclusive, one-sided rule of objective reason with neglect of our subjective existence creates huge problems for man. The historical reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment has been Romanticism, which was not a blessing - it introduced a morbid weakness in Western culture. The philosophical counterpoint to a pure objectivism is Existentialism (Wm. Barrett, Irrational man), which is a more realistic position. The human species can only hope to advance, if it succeeds to use reason to control its emotions. Nevertheless, for the individual, the experience of social life clearly indicates that many people cannot exist without a personal connection to a Creator who is perceived as a supreme personal Being. It is the source of their faith. For this reason, it is not admissible and very shortsighted to adopt a militant anti religious posture. To rob a person of the source of his faith is not meritorious at all and we have a serious problem that can only be mastered by a clear separation of matters of belief, which are purely subjective, from the objective world. We also know, of course, that antique and oriental societies have existed and flourish without theistic teachings. They developed a high culture without these beliefs, yet they maintained in their various teachings a spiritual connection with our subjective core. Therefore, the assumption of a personal Creator cannot be an absolute social or psychological necessity. In any case, it will always be a serious mistake to try solving problems on emotional grounds without or against the well considered advice from the intellect. Man's problems are rooted in his emotions and the important thing is to learn how to discipline them, even though he cannot live without them. (Essay 11b).

Systems.
An important question is whether what we investigate can be understood as a system with subsystems (parts). Of course, we can consider practically everything as a system, from the atomic nucleus up to galaxies. But giving it a fancy name is not enough as such to improve understanding. A human individual is both, a system and part of a larger system, his society. How is he to be seen? Is he somebody on his own or is he the total product of his environment? Is he an open system, or is the connection with the environment only sporadic? For individualists, the individual is the important thing, while society is seen more as an aggregate of other systems that are our environment. The opposite relationship exists for the collectivist. For him, society is the important system at the expense of the individuals. More extreme would be a stomach which is nothing outside a working body. We are dealing with two extreme views: the reductionists who attempt to explain the performance of the system through the action of the smallest parts, as opposed to the believers in holism who see things as a system that has a behavior which cannot be explained in a reductionist way. In science generally, a reductionist tendency has been far more successful, but we must admit that it cannot exhaust a complicated system because, as Aristotle said, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The inability to understand such complicated systems has its roots in the incompleteness of our information about the subsystems. Complex systems cannot be well understood with reductionist methods also because the complexity may become too much for a detailed analysis. In a gas, e.g., it is hopeless to follow the individual molecules. In this case the system must be investigated with systemic techniques with probabilities and statistics playing a major role. Thermodynamics is such a systemic theory in physics, as opposed to celestial mechanics where we seek to account for each force in detail.

Thinking about the world as a system was applied to societies by, among others, Giambattista Vico (1668 - 1744), Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923), Ludwig von Bertalanffy (196 T8). The most controversial and ingenious work of them is Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Decline of the West) by Oswald Spengler (1922). His idea of considering certain historical events in different cultures as "contemporary" is enlightening - in other words, he claims that each culture goes necessarily through the same process during its development and decay. This understands cultures as an organism like process. On the other hand, Spengler is also a prime example for the confusion into which thinking inevitably falls if the distinction of the objective from the subjective is ignored. In the subjective domain, we follow rules and accept "proofs" that can be completely different from what is valid in the objective domain (see below). No wonder that Spengler's use of the term "race" is confusing and wrong. He should have used what he really meant, e.g., "fitness". Furthermore, he indulges in vernuenfteln - two heavy volumes full with detailed discussions about subtle and tenuous connections, if not pure fantasies. He does not understand the essence of science and his comments about mathematics, space, etc., are almost ridiculous. As an example, he criticizes scientists for leaving out subjective elements because he does not appreciate the need for objectivity. Nevertheless the work, with all reservations, is a literary masterpiece; it is highly thought provoking and, by looking at the world from a very different side, we gain deep insights. But of course, the work has nothing to do with history as a science - it is highly speculative philosophy. The later, related work, Arnold Toynbee's Study of History is, I believe, more realistic. Toynbee uses Spengler's main idea in a general way, but elaborates quite differently by identifying many more cultures than Spengler's eight. He also rejects Spengler's determinism even though, objective statistics of history point to a quasi necessity and seem to support Spengler. I found Toynbee edifying and without Spengler's Germanic idiosyncrasies. --

Judging severely the ingenious work of very erudite men who were half as old as I am now is perhaps unfair. But, is it realistic? I think it is because we are necessarily looking at the world with our individual past as background. It is enlightening if we are able to see a system functioning as a whole, while not forgetting the actions of the parts individually, because we must remember and look for the basic action which resides in the elementary parts. This brings us from the macro view to the micro world. At the present state of knowledge we seek the most basic source of all action in the world in its smallest parts, the elementary particles. It is the reason why so much effort is going into research with gigantic particle accelerators. The publicity department of CERN, the location of the largest of these machines, has said quite naively that they are trying to find the secret of the Cosmos. By saying such a thing we reveal a world view in which it is assumed as a matter of course, that basic action is everywhere the same, which is why we can find the same laws everywhere. Of course, the action of a subsystem is always more or less modified by the system of which it is part (such as our heart which must beat faster if we run), but it is not caused by the whole which is merely a collection of parts which influence and control each other.

The opposite view, i.e., an extreme holism that seeks explanations by making the whole the origin of all action is in my view irrational, if not unnatural, even perverse; while an extreme reductionism, as a rule, is impossible to carry through. The mind is not sufficiently capable. Take as an example a sentence. Its parts, the words, can assume an unusual operational meaning in the context of the whole sentence, but a sentence with words without a meaning of their own would be totally meaningless. The system requires interaction of the parts for the systemic phenomena to occur. This internal interaction is physical or an exchange of information. If it is prevented or greatly reduced by isolating the parts from each other, the parts can behave only according to their own properties; while conversely, with intense interaction, the systemic aspects become the main thing (we feel we are more important and meaningful than most of our individual organs which we are willing to exchange).

For this reason, I think that any concept of a Universe that is acting as a whole must be taken with greatest reservation because interaction between the galaxies is minimized by the vast distances and enormous time delays. The actual Universe is not only almost empty, it is also almost completely de-coupled in its major constituents. However, the science of Cosmology ignores this at present and is defined by leading scholars as the study of a Universe that is acting as a whole. I have serious doubts how appropriate this can be. Moreover, there are countless closed systems contained in it without, for considerable time, any interaction with the outside (e.g., the photons in propagation. For a little more of this see Talk . .). In other words, I would be more cautious and think of the Universe as the total of everything that exists, but without the assumption that it can act as a whole, or that we can ever have any effective connection with the remote parts near the event horizon. The degree of actual separation of the parts from each other is undoubtedly a crucial question and we know almost nothing about it. What we have are mathematical models that have only tenuous connections with our actual knowledge. Incidentally, the concept of the Universe as the total of everything that exists, precludes a beginning.

We must be cautioned about a belief that is taken as almost self-evident: that by going into the small, things will be simpler. The belief is an effect of perspective because by going into the small or the very large, we obtain less information. The parts of a system may then appear to be simpler to some extent, but this is misleading and is the reason why the system is not exhausted by dissecting it. There is no simplicity in the small, as there is no simplicity in the large other than smoothing (averaging). A more realistic hypothesis would be that things are infinitely complex and we can reach some abstract and therefore simple representation of nature only to a limited extent, i.e., never completely and perfectly. "At large", e.g., the cosmos is not isotropic or simple (see essay #8). By giving names to our repeating experiences, we reify them in the sense that we assume they have an existence of themselves, but this really not justified and becomes a frequent problem. Of course, there is a Reality, but it is not what the naive, uncritical views, assume. Poetically speaking, it is the Reality behind the dream, not the dream itself. This is why Calderon wrote "La vida es sueño", and Shakespeare has his persons say (Tempest IV, 1) "We are such stuff as dreams are made of, And our little life is rounded with a sleep".

What is a Law?
Anyway, for learning and prediction, our mind can only use what repeats somehow, or which shows some relationship with otherwise known features. We may call these repeating features "systematic" or "lawful" and model them mathematically. On the other hand, if we try to make sense out of the chaotic features and project unimportant details into the future, we will fail because these details have most likely only local and short time importance and will not repeat, except perhaps randomly. This is exactly the reason why intellectual overreaching is so dangerous. It produces vacuous conclusions from experiences that are not "typical". It is the nemesis of prediction professionals who are likely to put their main effort in getting more raw information, while they could fail to separate properly the typical from the accidental (for which more information will be useful). Those who lack intellectual discipline have the additional problem that their pet ideas and ideological preferences seduce them to give weight to unimportant details. Therefore, we must study how to recognize the important and probably lasting, but ignore the unimportant features - and do this regardless of our feelings about these! It seems, that the vast majority of "predictions" that turned out to have been wrong, were made by people who failed to discern correctly the typical, decisive effects from the random, short term "disturbances". A different view point concerns the detection of patterns. This is a general, comprehensive idea. The human mind is much more capable to see patterns than a computer where this is very difficult to achieve. But the basic principle is the same, the recognition of repeating features. A single occurrence is not a pattern. The pitfalls in pattern detection by a mind are that we can see patterns which evaporate with more data.

Need to be Objective.
Fear of the unknown and terror are further inducements to undisciplined reasoning as, e.g., when a strange sound during the night is interpreted as the moaning of a ghost instead of looking for a failing machinery. Many myths, world views, and superstitions, are invented by the fertile human imagination because it was the easiest to do. However, as valuable our imagination is as an important ability of the disciplined intellect, free wheeling fantasies must be avoided. We must remain connected, and check, with reality at every step on the way. It is most important to be objective, and both, philosophy and science, must deal only with what we can accept as being true for anybody, and not true just for here and now, by hearsay, or only for one individual [2]. For this purpose, we understand objective to mean that we try to look at an object or event as if we would not exist. In other words, the observing subject has to remove himself mentally from the observation. We know today that this is an ideal and there are limits for this objectivity, not only in quantum mechanics where it was first realized. It is not always possible or even desirable, to separate object from subject completely. In human interactions, the best group decisions can be reached when, after in depth discussion among the partners, they begin to act as one super individual. Or in personal life, the best friendships and matings are those where the partners become almost one individual. But these are exceptions to the rule that the separation of oneself from the isssue under consideration, is of greatest importance. This is especially necessary in disputes, in the defense of positions we take. Persons who cannot do that, who use offensive remarks, show that they have no valid arguments and cannot be objective.

On the other hand, only a person who is willing to be as objective as possible, which often means a necessary act of self-denial, will gain real intellectual freedom. Only by refusing to accept hearsay and empty claims, or even current slogans, we can maintain intellectual independence. We accept only the facts and apply our intellect to them as best as we can, We can gain a much wider and more valid vision of the world if we can avoid being hemmed in by ready made abstract ideas, fashionable at the time, and by the popular concepts. This way, we can reach real intellectual superiority with better chances to look into possible ramifications and into the future. It is helpful in our quest for intellectual freedom to consider the media as producing gigantic clouds of chaff that prevent clear vision. No wonder that most of what we hear and read is nonsense or a platitude. Nevertheless, even in chaff we may find genuine information, but we cannot accept anything without independent and credible verification.

Can Facts be Suppressed?
Information that is in conflict with reality, i.e., if it would be invalidated by observation or experiments, can be, and is often, protected for a while by suppressing correcting information or by making more observations impossible. True information is very unlikely supported by censoring false information and it will emerge eventually as valid. For this reason, attempts to suppress information can be taken as a good indication that some invalid information is being protected. We can see such attempts of suppression everywhere, even in "free" societies. It is particularly odious if it happens in science, by "scientists". We experience right now such a situation in Cosmology and also in Climatology where professional journals simply will not publish papers that are not in conformance with what they call "established" science. It is true, of course, that there are limits to what a journal can be expected to publish. Crack pots will always try to gain publicity with some crazy article. These ought not to be published. It may also not be easy in all cases to distinguish a bona fide scientific paper from the production of a charlatan and judgment is required. But we can use the above principle to become suspicious by attempts to suppress information even if it is clear on which side we have to lean to be safe (accept the risk of poor quality). The controversy in Cosmology is illuminated by the open letter to the scientific community (see here .). The list of the signers is quite revealing and demonstrates the need to strike a compromise between efforts to achieve complete openness and assured high quality. Which is more important and must take precedence? -- Openness. Questions such as this require for their rational solution that we have firm ideas about values. These can only come from a sound philosophical position. Another example for public controversy is the global warming issue. A letter by 100 scientists to the Secretary General of the UN is here : (. . letter . .), and another is (. here.), and much data with references (here), but these last two cannot now be accessed, (but see here). Of course, eventually nature will reveal the truth very clearly, but in the meantime, it is very difficult to gain an objective opinion unless one uses common sense to deflate the flood of confusing information. Usually the most telling facts are the attempts to silence the critics.

History is our teacher.
Anyway, all experience is potentially valuable and for this reason, we ought not to ignore the past, but must value what reveals itself as true over time. However, our culture is opposed to this, and almost automatically, the new is preferred (in contrast to regions where the old is kept to a degree which makes improvements impossible). We meet now many people, even academic teachers, who belittle the past as unimportant, to be irrelevant and disregarded. While this may be somewhat understandable in countries with a terrible past, it is surprising in the West. Students are urged to be tuned in to the latest, and to forget the past. But in all likelihood, this tunes them in to ephemeral fashions and not to experience which, for recognizing it's value, requires the experience of the past. Margaret Mead’s (more . .) notorious editorial The Generation Gap (11 April 1969, Science) is a prime example for this folly. How mistaken can one be? The value of anything can be judged only from its effects after some time and, without knowing his past, man can never hope to understand his own nature. To shorten the attention span of the species by telling the young to forget the past, has effects not unlike dementia in the individual. A disregard of history returns us to barbaric times because by breaking off our connection with our roots, we are losing all potential benefits of earlier experience and do irreparable harm to humanity as a whole. George Santayana’s famous word about the ignorance of the past which one is condemned to repeat if one ignores it, is eminently true (Santayana). That this disregard has been viewed by a noted anthropologist as something good, is a scandalous prime example for the syndrome of Expert Fallacy [3].

Thought that is based on stories, on musings in specific terms about the happenings in our own circle of relations, is of little use beyond the particular incident. For reaching a higher level, we must see the general pattern behind the specific events, and must not remain stuck with individual happenings. People who only relate specific information, but do not see a general problem, are not thinking philosophically. This is a pity because they will also not be good at learning new things which depends on connecting the new with the general aspects of the already known. But, there is a further effect. As soon as one can remember the wide background, he has also widened his views from his own little person to the general human situation. Bad luck is then less painful and less disheartening when recognized as something that happens naturally to many people. For this reason, the popular religions attempt to explain things in our life in the form of a story that purports to explain the world as a "whole" including its origin and fate. They phrase their teachings in this way, with few general principles in order to remain understandable for "general audiences". It seems this is effective for those who remain in obedience to the doctrines even without deeper explanations. This is a very great benefit as long as the effect is the gaining and preserving of personal faith. Unfortunately, the real danger of all such beliefs is a tendency to slip into fanaticism, which we must oppose, of course.

On the other hand, it leaves many believers ignorant about the real meaning of their beliefs which would require their interpretation on the basis of principles. Sensing that there must be more, or if they are disturbed by an unexplained clash of their beliefs with experience and science, their doubts turn them often to secular sources to augment their ideas. But this may not help them. I am not aware of a philosophical teaching that is sufficiently, i.e. accurately, known in the public and could claim to be realistic and truly enlightening. What we more likely meet are elaborate, even fantastic, pieces of large systems, possibly with misunderstandings in parts that are derived from narrow views of science. An extreme case are Hegel's writings with his pathetic misuse of terms and odd concepts about natural processes. I think what goes as philosophy, as I see it discussed in the public, is for the purpose as I envision it, and with exceptions that I do not know, an almost unavoidable failure. Of course, as a general statement, this is unfair because Philosophy is not supposed to have a practical purpose. Objectivity is almost impossible if thinking is tainted by tangible purposes. So, philosophy has no purpose? Being able to think philosophically, and to have some idea about the major insights of our wise predecessors is certainly the greatest intellectual enjoyment we can have, but the benefits of philosophy are fringe benefits, not directly predictable in a specific case. They cannot be planned. The most important benefit I experienced from trying to think objectively was a better understanding about how to live. This happens by enlarging our perspectives which reduces our own importance. Furthermore, we should remember, as already Socrates cautioned us, wisdom which has to be bought, is most likely not wisdom. Hence, in a world as involved in money as ours, we can believe that many, perhaps most, critical actions are being taken without a sound background.

Which Philosophy is "Current"?

What I decry, therefore, is the absence of a popular philosophy that is available to the public mind to repair the confusion that is so widespread. It is a pity, that this ideal of being popular and valid at the same time is almost an oxymoron: true insight is not easy and therefore, cannot be made popular. At least, I confess to be unable to do it. I see a dilemma in efforts to shorten, for making things more understandable, as opposed to making them more accurate by giving more details. The great physicist Bohr has mentioned this as the primary problem in making quantum mechanics easier to understand. Popularity can only be achieved by misrepresenting the subject and this, Bohr was not willing to do. To find an acceptable compromise requires a special talent. (See the essay on Truth .. .).

Nevertheless, it is possible to clear the mind, as long as we keep close to the facts of our concrete life experiences; i.e., we must avoid the vernuenfteln. This we can do if we can bring ourselves to forget dubious opinions which a superficial cultural environment keeps instilling in us. We must simply try to keep intellectually sober and be very critical. This is as important, as it is difficult. An excellent way to start, and a great entrance into the philosophy that I mean would be reading and thinking about a few of the Platonic Dialogues (see Plato). Well, you may say, don't we have anything more recent ? Why going back to this old stuff (ca 380 BC) which cannot possibly be relevant today? Beware! This opinion is the first of the mistakes we have to unlearn. The Dialogues are as interesting today as ever. They are just not in fashion. However, people are still very much the same as they have always been, and they have largely the same problems as they had 24 centuries ago [4], which by itself is a most important lesson. Doubters can read Tacitus (d. 120 AD). His appalling stories about historical events sound surprisingly familiar, except for the names and details!

After Plato, a logical worthwhile next step would be to read the Politics of Aristotle. Talking about political matters and not having followed a few of Aristotle's thoughts, I think, is unwise. To be sure we remember what this subject is: politics (more ,) is the art, supported by science, how to organize and regulate communities of people. The way the word is used today by the media is terribly misleading. They may be talking about personalities, scandals, intrigues, - undesirable, even unethical disturbances, but this is not the art of politics. In chemistry, it would be hopeless to synthesize or just to investigate a new compound in a dirty environment. But what cleanliness is in chemistry, are high moral standards in society. Improvements of our life are not possible if the actors allow themselves anything. Today, it does not seem to be widely known which actions are really immoral, and thinking about this problem would be a most useful activity of the mind (see Ethics).

For advancing beyond Plato and Aristotle, and for coming up to date, we take a position that keeps us aware of science and the modern world. It is a Scientific Humanism that harks back to classical humanism [5]. But, whatever we chose, and this depends on our sentiment, we cannot overemphasize the importance of being critical and independent in thought - if we have the strength to face the facts. As our final witness we can only rely on Nature. This is Naturalism in which we understand the total of what exists (not what we should do, which is the problem of ethics) as objective Nature which we can investigate because we see objective effects. Of course, there may be an infinity of things of which we cannot see any effect or get any objective information. We cannot, for this reason, assign them an objective existence or use them to support beliefs. To worry about such hypothetical things, or worse, to talk about them is very unwise, to say the least.

As example for a present philosopher (which is now a large group) who has published books on current themes (with which I probably disagree on many points), I suggest Simon Blackburn. He is well known, widely respected, and I read several of his papers. One could say, he is a true representative of today's academic philosophy. While having sound judgment on many issues, he is, however, surprisingly confused and superficial on issues where he is not aware how much he is in the intellectual fog that the mass media create in most minds. His sentiment is laudable, but his essay on Kant is, for a professional philosopher, a terribly poor show: 3400 words, apparently all hearsay and no original thought. It is understandable. The trouble for our academics is the need to publish, thought or not. It is the same problem as we see it in the media. It is the source of Information Pollution (More .), perhaps the most troublesome kind because it is not being recognized. Therefore, a critical, even skeptical mind is more important than ever. (However, skepticism can easily become excessive, too!).

Going back to Blackburn's essay on Kant. Kant is one of the most difficult authors, not only because of his style and choice of terms. Yet his influence has been enormous. Therefore, I think that an appreciation of Kant remains a touchstone for any thinker. Unfortunately, Kant's text is easily misunderstood unless one can read him in the original German and even in this case, it is not easy reading because of his antiquated style and a few confusing inconsistencies (such as his use of Reason vs. Intellect). While he is genuinely deep (especially in his master piece, the Critique of Pure Reason), but very hard to understand, Heidegger is mysterious and vague on top of his difficult German. After digesting a number of new words, unknown in German before Heidegger and only vaguely defined, one realizes that he keeps talking about the modern problem of exclusive use of abstractions that estrange us from our own existence because abstractions without support from intuition leave out a great deal. I have mentioned this in the discussion about intelligence in Essay #3. The worst case again, is Hegel who has ingenious ideas, but they are buried in volumes of nonsensical sentences where he tries to overcome his own confusion by being incomprehensible (his excursions into science are ridiculous). A good part of modern philosophy is still burdened by Hegel's "intellectual legacy". It is wise not to waste time on such authors. We can be awed by the mysteries of the world without indulging in fantasies.

Different are those authors who are sophisticated, even erudite and reasonably clear, but lack the idea for what really is at the center of our questions about the puzzle of existence. My prime example is Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein) . With all respect and sympathy for his fine sentiment, he is in my view confused and he seems to feel this himself. He is counted as one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, but I cannot recommend him because the result would be confusion, more likely than not. The great Bertrand Russell did recognize the ingenious parts in Wittgenstein's writings and held him in high esteem. I suspect that for my frame of mind, he is getting into vernuenfteln and what I am missing most is a firm naturalistic ground in his ideas. He does not appreciate the importance of a clear separation of the subjective from the objective domains which is, as I believe, essential to avoid fuzzy thinking.

A very clear modern author, excellent representative of Existentialism, and highly recommended is William Barrett (Irrational man), even though, I cannot share much of his philosophical position. This is due, I suspect, to my own firm naturalistic sentiment which refuses thinking that is not based ultimately on clear objective experience. While Existentialism plays the role of a necessary correction and addition, it is not sufficient, at least for me, to lead by itself to a satisfactory total view of existence. (Disinfection is often necessary, but it cannot play the role of food). A feeling to fall into Nothingness (if we lost the root of out faith) is a great threat we face, indeed; but it is not the greatest for man, which is a loss of our civilization and a return into barabaric primitivity. By recognizing this, I gained a different outlook.

What can we know?

The mind has but two sources of information: The first and main source is what we experience in the world around us, including reliable (i. e., cross checked) testimony from witnesses; this is opposed to the second source, our own intimate inner experience of ourselves with emotions and desires. Nothing else is available except treacherous daydreaming, hallucinations, regurgitation of the thinking of others, and artistic expressions which may aim at beauty or sensation, but do not value realism. Some of the poetry that I enjoyed was highly philosophical, yet we should not count it as a primary source of information because it requires too much interpretation.

Our first source can eventually lead to an objective picture of the world (as it exists as such, without us - however by using the elements of human cognition, it leads only to an inter subjective "objectivity"), the second is the subjective domain where we find the center of ourselves as we experience it in our emotions, desires, lust and pain. In the first domain, if we want to be objective, we are concerned exclusively with the relations and phenomena between the objects; - we are in the subjective sphere, when we are only concerned with ourselves and matters as they relate to us. This difference is most consequential. Of course, there is only one world, but we perceive it in two very different ways, with very different emotional engagement, and clarity of thinking requires to keep the two spheres separate and distinct.

When we explain things, we relate them to some element of the objective world with which we are familiar. This means that our explanations are limited to the attributes and qualities of the known things in the real world. This is all we have as elements for understanding. With everything we can do in our analysis, we remain within the objective world. We cannot go beyond, but must explain one thing in terms of another, which we believe to know better. How serious a limitation this is for us, becomes obvious if we try to understand the most advanced problems of modern science. A prime example is the idea of matter. What is it?

We seem to be unable to comprehend what this stuff actually is, the material of which everything including ourselves consists. Considering what matter can do, up to the possibility of self-awareness through the awareness of the animals, especially man, - matter is deeply mysterious. It contains the real deep secret of the world, right before our eyes. Ignorance of even "educated" people lets them treat matter as existing as a matter of course, or with contempt (just useless refuse) when we ought to see in any little pebble a miracle with an infinite history and cause for deep wonder. And much more so with every little living being, the little bugs, everything. We should know and be aware that the smallest parts of matter are molecules, and these consist of atoms. Atoms consist of elementary particles and these elementary particles are packets of energy because when two particles collide, they can annihilate each other in a flash of gamma radiation. Now, this does not tell us very much because what is energy? (More !). We know that we have to pay for it, that we get it when we burn coal or oil, and that we will not have enough in the future unless we are very smart. But what is Energy? Energy is what we expend when we are doing physical work, or run, or when we need to lift a heavy piece. Energy is also contained in force fields in "empty" space, such as the electromagnetic field, or the field between the nucleons, and it can radiate as electromagnetic radiation. Furthermore, Energy has (and is the source of) inertia! A most surprising thing about Energy is that the basic theorem about the Conservation of Energy can be derived in mechanics solely from the assumption of homogeneity of time [6]. (The conservation of Impulse follows from the homogeneity of space).

In my modest opinion as a non expert, with the little that we know about the most fundamental part of science, energy could also be understood as a "stress" in the basic force field of "empty" space. This puts the origin of everything into "empty" space, which is not a good explanation, but we know next to nothing about it and it is just a conjecture suggested by the physics of light and particles. Higgs seems to have had this general idea about it as basis for his theory (more .). As can be expected, this area is blessed with speculations and arguments, commensurate with the actual paucity of what we do know.

In any case, all this is a very strange finding. The core of reality is not "material" as we could assume. It appears not as a thing, it is not palpable, and to describe it, we must use highly abstract thinking. This can remind us of the Cartesian dualistic system - in which Descartes distinguished radically between mind, the essence of which is thinking, and matter, the essence of which is extension in three dimensions. In this sense, thought could only recognize other thought as the essence of things - which was essentially Berkeley's idealism which denied matter altogether. (see René Descartes, and Berkeley). However today, in Naturalism, we consider Energy as the basic constituent of matter - and what is the mind? It is not a substance but a process in the physical system of the brain (more detail is in essays 12, 13, & 14). The difficult question for Theoretical Physics is why the elementary particles, these packets of energy of extreme density (in the order of 10E14 g/ccm) of which the nucleons and elementary particles can be assumed to consist, are packets that move only at "final" speed and do not radiate away as light?

We are led to suggest with Heisenberg that the key must be in certain numerical conditions that limit the packets to oscillations of the (e.g., electromagnetic) force fields with distinct energy levels, and configurations. This would amount to a kind of Pythagoreanism, the idea that the numbers, their relations, and geometry are the basic determining facts of everything. But, again, we ought to realize that the optimism of some experts as described in the papers is premature. We have considerable information that is sufficient for remarkable, for truly astonishing engineering feats, but in actual fundamental physics, we must remain modest. That we are close to really understand the grounds of existence is an inappropriate notion. On the contrary, it is my impression that we are coming close to revolutionary changes of paradigms, comparable to the replacement of the phlogiston theory of heat.

Issues, such as the nature of matter (where we hope to solve the puzzle of existence), have caused, and are still causing, a tremendous debate among theoretical physicists around the meaning of Quantum Mechanics which is the branch of physics that deals with atoms and particles. That we have these problems of understanding when we leave our familiar world is not surprising in view of the limitation just discussed, - limitations we meet in any totally new area where we lack concepts and language (metaphors) to deal with the new. Nature is not obliged to conform to our ideas! We have to adjust ours to nature. Furthermore, we must deal with three major limitations of the human mind:

a) The mind produces a one dimensional experience (a succession of vague “images”). The world is four dimensional. While we concentrate on one thing, an infinity of events takes place - everywhere! We experience only a minuscule section of reality. Our enterprising intellect is trying on this tiny basis to obtain a valid picture of what is going on. Of course, it is defective in many ways.

b) A second and very serious problem is the link of our old brain (at the top of the spine) with the cerebrum. This makes our judgment, not only vulnerable, but subject to the dictate of our emotions. Functionally, we can say, that the intellect is an obedient servant of the Ego. What the Ego does not like, the intellect cannot change other than by presenting things in a different light. But this must be permitted by the Ego! (see the discussion on intelligence in How to . . ). This colors the relative weight we give to the various factors of a problem, in an uncontrolled way. This vulnerability of reason to our biases is particularly important for practical ideas about the social environment. I believe, most are not realistic and are dominated by fashionable group think.

Most problematic is the influence of our oldest instincts (from what we have in common in the old parts of the brain with the reptiles). This must be the material origin for the most despicable human actions. We all have inherited a primitive evil core which civilization has papered over and can somehow control, at least as long as we can resist a "liberating" group influence which is capable to release the worst of human nature. The admission of this problem is most important because it should influence our penal and educational practices which have become too unrealistic under the influence of J. J. Rousseau and fellow idealists. To appreciate what is meant here, and the magnitude of the problem, I urge to read the discussion on Littell's book (Littell .). With this preparation we can envision the problem in the following way.

A cooperative free society of alligators would be impossible. To do this with people in freedom is very difficult; but it is possible and has been achieved frequently due to our ability to learn and understand, albeit not for very long time. Of course, if individual freedom is dropped as a luxury which man cannot afford, a society can still exist, but at the high price of treating man as an animal. Freedom allows man to use his best abilities, with necessary provisions. These provisions have been assumed as a matter of course by the founders, but with time, the corrupting influence of material wealth has obscured the requirement of a personal culture. In any environment of material well being we have too many distractions and we must first be brought in the right frame of mind and habit! This is the core of the teaching of Hsün-tzu, one of the old Confucian Chinese philosophers (see Hsün-tzu). He has a very important message for us - a message that can help to correct the corruptive influence of the romantic movement with its excess of humanitarianism as result of the high minded work of Cesare Beccaria (and the reaction to WWII). While Hsün-tzu is realistic, Beccaria is noble, but in our modern world, we have to accept reality before ideals, a world where it is folly to deal with people as if they were unjustly suffering angels. Or, can we remain unmoved by Littell's story? Or is it humane to keep over 2 million Americans in jail, many for decades? If we have the least doubt about this, we must learn more about how important our early environment and training is, as evident from the work of Stanley Milgram. Again, the message we must remember is that man is genetically the product of a hard and unforgiving nature. We must keep this in mind when we deal with ourselves. Excessive softness with beings who can under certain circumstances turn into barbaric monsters allows unbelievable disasters to happen.

At the same time, we must remember that man has very high, beautiful, admirable abilities, including self-sacrifice in the service for others; abilities which ought to be conceived as always existing as dormant. They have to be cultivated in freedom. They can be expected to flourish if the appearance of evil is kept under control. Based on my experience over a full long life, I think that the number of very great, admirable persons (most of whom will never be known for their sacrifices, silent sufferings and personal greatness), is at least as great (and I hope it is much greater) than the number of these miserable, evil characters who are responsible for much of the suffering of zillions of innocents. An excessively materialistic mind will search for a physical cause ("nature or nurture") of this difference. Is it in the genes, or is it in the environment? I urge the reader, not to be seduced by such simplistic ideas which can grasp only one half of what happens (the objective part of our world). The materialistic bias is the great error in our public mind. It is a damaging error because the difference in human action is entirely to be seen in the free decision of the individual. It can always go this way, or that. Whatever it is, we must credit the person for his decision. The result is always his achievement, or his despicable, evil deed. Of course, we can give him motives to act one way or another, but the decision is his. If we do not understand this, we cannot, or only much too poorly, deal with people. (Essays #3 and #12).

Now, to avoid the fate of all those who are telling an unpopular truth - I repeat once more that it is the excess of humanitarianism that is so harmful. We must not advocate a return to the practices against which Beccaria argued so effectively. It is only that the correction in our penal system and education went too far and we have to find an acceptable ground as explained in essays 5, 9 & 11. An ideal society allows a maximum of liberty for its members, but they must have been conditioned to benefit from it without cracking up. And they must be held responsible for what they do. We are far from this ideal (a discussion of cracking up is in Art . .).

c) A third limitation in our mind is that we can only compare very few items in the mind at any one time. We must return to each factor over and over again. Only the one that is momentarily present, has a high weight and becomes important. A way to help us is to assign to each item a numerical factor that is easier to recall than the whole thing that is to be valued.

We have also a peculiar weakness in our reasoning, or more accurately, a lack of imagination, that has been pointed out by the late Fred Hoyle, the eminent British astrophysicist: Our inability to include what is so far unknown within the range of the possible is responsible for uncounted wrong decisions. Later, the people will say: But who could have foreseen this? This problem, a deficiency of proactive imagination, I would like to name Hoyle's lemma.

Dreaming and baseless doctrines are useless if they have no connection with the real world and are totally arbitrary. Science, on the other hand, has been extremely successful with the collection of objective knowledge. It allows us to control our environment to a remarkable extent, including our own well-being. Science has also given us a world picture that is awesome in the amount of information that is available and in the overall idea of the physical Universe. I perceive this background as infinite in space and time. It is certainly inexhaustible even in a small part of our environment.

However, science is not enough. As long as we restrict ourselves to scientific information, we cannot relate to our core, the Self. For wise decisions, we must clearly see our situation in the objective world - which science cannot do because we have deliberately excluded ourselves from science in order to be objective! We definitely need a world view that is more comprehensive. For this, we must include in our theories our subjective core (with its emotions and desires) as the only other element in the world that we know. Ghosts do not count, they exist only in our imagination. But now, if we include the subjective domain, we have abandoned objectivity! While we now no longer are doing science, our ideas can lead to a valid comprehensive philosophical view of the world. As I have shown in my essays (13 & 14), it allows us to see ourselves as an integral part of the Universe. From this we can derive important conclusion, e.g., a value system and a system of ethics that is not very different, but as one can easily demonstrate, is better adapted to the requirements of our world than dogmatic conventional ethics.

What else can we say? It is important to be clear about our position in this world at large. Try to take a look at your life as a whole. Do this repeatedly. Objectively, we find ourselves as members of an advanced animal species with a brain that is much more capable to think in abstract terms than any other animal brain - and we can communicate with each other! This is a clear fact. Several other species are highly intelligent, but have not formed societies, if we except the insect societies which function because these animals are guided directly by their instincts, smell and other sensations, but not reflectively by using abstract intelligence. However, their abilities are much more astonishing than we may think (E. O. Wilson). E. g., ants seem to be aware of their distance from the nest by counting steps. There is also some communication ability and socializing in other species, especially elephants and cetaceans. The human communication has gained immensely by the invention of print and modern telecommunications.

These means enabled the species man to dominate the earth, for which we have therefore acquired some responsibility. However, instant communication also brings dangers. Fast communications all over the world would actually require a strictly limited access for specially authorized persons in order to prevent the spread of dangerous rumors with resulting mass terror and hysteria. Simple pranks can produce riots with innocent victims. We have seen a minor case where a wrong news item in America caused a riot with fatalities in Afghanistan. Up to now, the benefits of completely free worldwide communication by far outweigh the dangers, but it can be feared that this may not remain so. The global population of thinking and acting minds can be compared with a Plasma that exhibits systematic and chaotic effects. The systematic effects arise just as in a plasma because the elements (ions, persons) are sensitive to the same global effects (fields, news), but local action arises from the random thermal noise, or the personal decisions respectively. However, this is a realistic model only regarding the large scale phenomena. In the details the huge memory in each person can produce all kinds of systemic effect, e.g., policies have often the opposite effect from the intended, due to unintended side effects. A list of such paradoxes is in note 13 of essay 12.

All animals including man reside on a relatively small planet in our solar system. If in a clear night in the country we can look up at the sky, we are looking out into endless space with uncounted other suns and other planets. We must let this view sink into our awareness, so that we can sense the almost total insignificance of our own little world with everything in it, including ourselves. Our life, even if it lasts one hundred years, even the life of our species, is but a blink in cosmic time which counts in billions of years. And yet, this extremely brief existence of ours can bring the gift of awareness of the immense Universe. It is very difficult to envision the enormous distances in cosmic space. A way to do it, and to train the mind, is to use steps of different scales as I indicated in Scale Models . These vast distances, and conversely in the micro world, the extremely small size of the atomic nuclei in respect to the volume of the molecules, let us realize the most surprising fact that the Universe is actually practically empty! If we look at extremely large volumes (diameter > 1 GLy), the average density of matter becomes less than 10 to the -30 g/cm3 (One atomic mass unit is 1.66 g. E-24. --- For more, see talk. .,, note 5 of "Cosmic . . "). In other words, almost all of the Universe is empty space. Or conversely, matter is an extremely rare occurrence. It is understandable that theorists who need more for their theories, simply stipulate the existence of "dark" matter, which we have not seen and of which we know absolutely nothing except that it would act by its gravity.

Yet apart from such theories, of which there are quite a few and mostly ad hoc, we find ourselves here, in crowded cities with countless problems, pains, and few pleasures. The question is inescapable: Again, and again, how did we get into this? All we can say with our present knowledge, we are here, because of the desire of our ancestors who wanted life. Objectively, this is the sex drive. But this drive is only one aspect of the fundamental processes that operate with the objective necessity that governs everything [7]. The necessity in the natural processes (of which we are a minuscule part) is obvious in the success of our engineering enterprises. Things happen with absolute necessity as the consequence of the situation and what happened a moment before. Of course, we cannot resolve what happens into its elementary steps and it must appear that the incomprehensible complexity of everything creates a world of pure accidents. But this is only an appearance because we cannot follow the details all the way. Our brain (and information collection and processing) is too limited for the treatment of individual molecules). In cases where we can see sufficient details, it becomes clear that things happen because of necessities that we can envision as mathematical, logical, or statistical necessities. (More discussion about this point is in Essay 13 Plan etc.).

The essential point is to recognize that the Universe is running by its inner necessities. It is a tremendously deep tragedy for a perceptive mind to realize that our world cannot be the "best", but must be a necessary world. It is understandable that people who penetrate to the stupendous situation of this merciless necessity, also saw the necessity of giving those who cannot stand this bare objective truth, some explanation which brings everything back to the action of another mind, with purposes, emotions, and the possibility of grace. If we are to suffer, to be tormented, we can find intolerable the idea that a deaf machine, designed by nobody, does it to us automatically by seducing us with the trap of desire. This leaves us totally alone in the vast machinery of the Universe. Our desperate mind has a crying need for explanation and instruction, which is the origin of the various religions - except Buddhism which originated as wisdom and not as a belief religion, as its founder has himself most clearly expressed. The great contribution of the major religions, if they could only keep free from fanaticism, is that they teach man that he is not the supreme being in the Universe, but helpless and needs to keep control. We find ourselves here and living, aware of the world. What is one to do in this situation? Just follow our natural inclinations? Stop thinking or become a cynic? I believe it is best, if we can, to take a positive attitude - in a spirit of humility and modesty, if we can manage to maintain the power of self-control.

Is our life not a terrific opportunity to use our awareness as best we can? Use the talents that we have received from nature? Thanks to our (speaking for the species) so expensively acquired ability to communicate and learn, our life can be infinitely more meaningful than the dull awareness of even an intelligent animal that is entirely limited to his own awareness. We need only to keep control of ourselves and need to keep a positive spirit. Unless, of course, suffering for any cause makes all awareness a pain instead of an interesting adventure. In this case, death can become a welcome friend. If you recoil from this, you have already forgotten your religion and you may want to read essay #14 (Questions).

The Mind

Abstract reasoning is useful even for simple things, and our power of imagination is fantastic. This, and the spectacular successes of our collective efforts, in science, medicine, and technology, have elevated our self image to such highs that we have persistently tried to deny our true nature. As we can observe from our actions, this amounts to a fatal self deception. What distinguishes us from the other animals is not our basic nature but the fact that we have better memory, can learn better from experience, and can live in a society in a vastly more sophisticated way than, e.g., the ants, because we speak to each other and can gain immensely from others, even from the far past. This human ability for collective work, regardless of the physical presence of the coworkers, is the explanation for the tremendous advance our species has achieved in the very brief time of a few millennia, most of it in the last four centuries, because the individual mind, even of rare mental "giants", is very, very much less capable than we like to believe! (A convincing example, the discovery of inertia, was discussed in essay #1). I cannot stress this sufficiently to picture our true situation as we find ourselves as members of a modern society. We are simply too stupid for our situation in this extremely complex society. The only thing that really counts now is our ability for self control. "Intelligence" as we understand it with the human limitations, is nothing compared with the need for morality.

In my view, the mind is the physical process of the cerebral neurons as perceived subjectively. In our awareness, we experience a continuing flow of pieces of memories, pictures, and pure imagination, a chaos that is moving around as long as we do not select, direcct, and concentrate on items that engage our Self or, as long as we do not receive urgent external signals that demand an immediate reaction. Differences in mental performance are then the result of a different strength of will to continue the concentration on the issue of momentary interest. Of course, the facility and speed of assembling the pieces is given by the material parameters, the speed of neural action actually going through the synapses, etc. But, again, it is our Self, the core of our being that is largely the master of the cerebral action because it has this power of concentrating the random brain actions. Great minds are great if they can persevere in their concentration, while sloppy minds fail to take active control over the flow if ideas. The action of the mind is essentially correlativ with the ability to memorize, which in relation to the infinite complexity of the world is, albeit most useful for survival, nevertheless very limited.

After all, our mind is produced by a brain that has less than 2 liters of volume and has less than one hundred years to learn everything! This brain is a tremendously complex, but still cosmically a totally insignificant organ. On the other hand, we should be cautioned, but not discouraged by these realizations, and use what we have. From seven decades of experience in many walks of life on two continents, including a review of my own conduct, I must say, that as a rule, we humans do not use the mind to the degree we could. We are too swayed by emotions, pet ideas, wild desires, fashionable notions, group think, hate, love, intellectual laziness, and emotional hang ups. Therefore, I have to say that man is not only not a social animal as Aristotle has claimed, but he is in his core a brute, still living mentally in caves! He is not a rational animal! Only our social life with the intense exchange of information manages the sifting of the true from wild dreams - and this may take a very long time.

Social life necessarily constrains the actions of the brute, which has subtle (and often, regrettably, also not so subtle) psychological effects of which we may not be aware. It represses many innate drives but also provides such a degree of support that most people do not seem to know how much they depend on this support - until it stops for one reason or another. Much the greater is then the disaster if the society, or the state, or a "leader", urge actions that are in tune with the worst instincts of man, as it has happened in mass movements and political catastrophes. One should see by all means Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Warning to the West, or my short discussion on Littell's book (Littell). From this understanding follows that the best leaders are those who do not support the natural drives, do not appeal to emotions, but try to lead people to overcome them with wisdom (e.g. urge savings and restraint). The worst are the demagogues and agitators who seduce the people to fall back into their brutish original, to what they have been before civilization could mellow them. Unfortunately, these pseudo leaders become very popular with their appeal to our primitive side.

If we want to be objective, it is best to perceive a problem not as the result of a stupid or nefarious action on the part of a named person, who is then blamed or hated, but to see the action as the natural result of the situation and the prevailing conditions. These forces act on whatever person is at the point of decision, but by considering him as an impersonal system, it is not a person to be hated. He may be praised, but even this is to be done with caution. If the conditions change, the same person will again act according to the new situation and this may not please us. The important point is to remove emotions from decision making. This mode will enable us to be much more objective than when emotions overcome our judgment. At the same time, however, we keep the actions in our memory, in a separate compartment of our mind, to be able to predict future decisions of this particular individual. If one can manage to compartmentalize the mind in this way, it will be advantageous. Essentially, this will help to separate subjective feelings from objective facts.

Awareness can be a blessing!

All animals must have awareness of their surroundings for moving around. This awareness and the ability to act on it is the essential part and great achievement of animal existence. It is due to the process in a Central Nervous System (CNS). In our case, since we can think about this abstractly, we call this process Mind. Here too, we have extended our collective effort with the contributions from all mankind and have reached an awareness out into the limitless depths of space; we know of the past and speculate about the future. Our superior awareness is simply the result of the vast size of our CNS, compared with the pinhead size of an ant's center (although the collective ability of the ants is impressive). I have always been so impressed by this phenomenon of being aware of the world, by the beauty of nature, the gifts of superior individuals, the love of our next, and the awe of the Universe, that I could not understand why healthy people deliberately would want to change or even suppress their awareness with drugs or alcohol. Is this not utterly foolish? Or is it following a primitive drive to sink back into the original chaos? To throw away the most precious gift?

It reveals a very serious problem for us because having an extremely complex brain brings not only fantastic capabilities, but also a great danger. The processes in this gigantic system of neurons are chaotic in its various parts and go on all the time. Even if we sleep, the brain is not quiet, we are just not aware of it and we have no control over these pieces of fleeting images and sounds. Being awake, we control consciously the pieces of fleeting thoughts and images. By directing our attention, we integrate the processes of the brain to concentrate on the thought of our interest, and enable the memory to keep parts of the process. The system has the ability to prefer and improve frequently used patterns. If the mind is not occupied with survival tasks, or tasks in the pursuit of a goal, which focuses attention, the absence of a controlling goal or purpose will allow an active system (in control theory we speak of a high gain in the loops) to go out of control quite easily. In serious cases it means we will be crazy, allowing ourselves crazy and evil thoughts. Our similarly chaotic modern society is increasingly and dangerously suggestive for this. (I discussed a recent tragic example in the essay on Art).

We create less serious (for the moment) problems for ourselves if we simply indulge in food, in drink, in passive entertainment, in carnal pleasures, even in undisciplined vernuenfteln and immature emotional talk. But please realize that indulging means (at best) that eventually we are wasting our own time, ignoring the fantastic opportunities for everything else we could do, which would use our precious awareness much better and on a higher level without eventual disgust, than what a tolerance of our desires for an occupation with ephemeral pleasures of the body can do. To maintain control is therefore necessary, similar but not limited to what Epicurus , a great teacher, has meant and explained: Live modestly, moderately, "naturally", and inconspicuously, this is his advice. In other words, to get the most out of our share of awareness, our mind must be occupied with worthy goals and purposes and we must avoid those things which can cause us trouble. Which goals should that be? The ideal would be to aim at things which can use our ability to greatest advantage. I have found that in my own case, in the absence of urgent projects, I must not lose the opportunity and my available time is best used for investing in learning, improving skills, reflection, and knowledge. If you feel you are getting bored, you are on the wrong track and wasting your life.

Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia
prima
stultitia caruisse.

Horace, ep. 1.1.41 [8]

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Notes and References

[1] An example for excessive reasoning is the paper by N. S. Sutherland, Is the Brain a Physical System? (in Explanation in the Behavioral Sciences, by R. Borger and F. Cioffi ,editors, Cambridge 1970). On 41 pages (including Critique and Reply), the author manages very cleverly to say the right things except, real insight is displaced by details. What one can demonstrate on one page, is obscured by endless quibbling about nonsensical objections. Of course, the brain is a physical system, what else could it be? Next we might get a long study with the title Are Thunderstorms Physical Systems? After all, Zeus used to be the cause of lightening - is he still doing this? -- The problem is not how to settle long obsolete objections by confused people who did not know what they were talking about, but to explain, or make plausible how this system can produce awareness. In other words, we need to answer the question: What is the Mind? In essays 12, 13, and 14 the problem of the mind (this product of the brain, what is it?) is dealt with from various angles, a subject that Sutherland does not really cover. And of course, this explanation must be based on facts that we really know, reliably know, facts that we can reproduce, and not rely on stories and tradition. Belief systems are part of our culture, but not of philosophy and science. There are too many beliefs, they disagree, and we have no way to decide authoritatively between them other than by asking nature, which is totally silent about these beliefs.

A very different case is the noteworthy Article by Alan Wolfe on the need for Ethics in College Education (Slate). The author makes excellent points. But, what is the conclusion? Have we completely lost our sense of basic values? Is it not beyond doubt that a pragmatic approach (such as I propose in essay 11) is preferable to debate and inaction? The point of principle is that if we do not know what is best, endless debating and arguing will produce nothing, while corrective action is obvious when we look at reality. Nature (here the reality) is master, our intelligence is only a helper. In this case, the need for ethics training or conditioning is obvious. The way to improve the situation is to seek an achievable compromise. The reason why it has not been found is an insufficient will to find it, and talks with arguments continue - with those who are unwilling to give a little, from now on responsible for all the avoidable human misery that will also continue.

[2] The crucial condition for everything we do, must be that the information about it be true. For this reason, objective truth must have our highest priority. For what this means, see the essay on Truth. Admittedly, we can face problems. As even Nietzsche warns us, certain truths (here used in a vague meaning for which, I think, we should use a different word) cannot remain pure if we take away all veils. Nevertheless, we must be on our guard because we have professors of philosophy, even confused "scientists", who do not seem to understand that reality is our only basis for deciding questions (even if it can be extremely difficult, or impossible, to find evidence) and that reality, if we let it "speak" freely, is not biased. This confusion of "experts" is a sign for the state of philosophy - confused by a mountain of writings that have, however, an extremely worthwhile core. I think that most is just verbiage, picked up in speed reading (without time for reflection) from the writings of a few authors in fashion.

[3]   In support of the thesis of Expert Fallacy, I collected a list of amazing cases from the Internet. It proves a frequent and most serious limitation of outlook of experts, even of engineers, who are too close to the subject, too specialized, and in addition suffer the action of Hoyle's lemma. They cannot imagine the possible impact from outside their range of awareness and experience. These experts ought to enlarge their outlook with a studium generale during sabbaticals. See Experts .

[4] A further advantage of starting with Plato is that his writings are not in an obvious way connected with modern ideologies. Of course, Platonism itself became somewhat of an ideology, but it never became politically important. Furthermore, his " Republic" is often interpreted as recommending Communism. But this is a mistake. He was only concerned with the prevention of corruption of the governing elite, not with the citizenry. He made this perfectly clear and it is still a problem. We can put aside these doubts and note that his ideas have become, in one way or another, a part of modern Western culture, even if, in the light of modern science and experience, we have to disagree or modify quite a few of them. Moreover, if we continue our reading to Aristotle's Politics, we will find extensive and critical discussions of Plato. My experience with these and other serious authors has been a substantial widening of my intellectual horizon, which was important for my scientific orientation.

[5] We should understand Humanism in its original sense and update our ideas by using current science. (Humanism). The central idea is to bring man to his full development. It includes the classical ideals of reason, the pursuit of knowledge with the arts, moderation, civic responsibility, and bodily development. Other uses of the term humanism should be avoided, they are distortions; the classical version is not based on dogma, does not engender hatred between classes, is not aggressively opposed to religion, and not hostile to some of its ethical goals. It is sympathetic with, but independent of religion. Independence and freedom from metaphysics assure that it will not get into conflict with religious teachings and yet, it can be accepted by everyone. Marxist humanism, as it evolved, is oriented toward the collective and, with its doctrine of class struggle and loss of freedom is an implicit oxymoron. Secular Humanism promotes a militant Atheism which is opposed to the spirit of humanism. It has taken dogmatic aspects of a primitive materialism without sensitivity to the mysterious qualities of nature. One could abstain from Theism while appreciating that it gives faith to the believers. Fanatical excesses, on the other hand, become a threat in society. Therefore, Theism is not a simple subject at all. Neverthelesss, I believe it is a tragic error to oppose it with a primitive, simplistic philosophy that lacks spirituality and cannot serve as a source of faith. However this is seen, we should aim at mutual understanding, which the "Seculars" fail to do. Classical humanism emphasizes the importance of the individual, but rejects “rugged individualism” as a primitive excess that is opposed to its central ideas. Humanism must not be confused with humanitarianism, a difference that was stressed by Irving Babbitt.

To realize his potential, man has to cultivate every part of his nature, including his body. While this humanism has faith in reason, it is firmly grounded in experience. It recognizes the subjective domain as an integral part of life. It knows the seriousness of death as the ultimate limitation for every individual, but it does not go beyond this. There is no reliance on revelation and it should not claim to replace religion. Therefore, it cannot be a Religious Humanism, an offshoot from Unitarianism, which is a religion. Obviously, the term humanism is well liked and many people cannot resist the temptation to use it, justified or not.

Man must respect the facts of his nature. He must learn how to put checks upon his will by being respectful for the wisdom of the ancestors, having respect for the beliefs and values of his fellow beings, and respect for order in social life - a teaching which is virtually identical with the ancient and celebrated teachings of Confucius, and Hsün-tzu, but is the independent outgrowth of Mediterranean antiquity as it was recovered during the Renaissance (Irving Babbitt). We see a difference in the questions as to whether the world has a purpose (or not), in contrast to whether it has significance (or not). We cannot say anything about the first, unless we have specific religious beliefs, or we admit that there is no purpose because the world simply wants to exist due to the basic and unconscious impulse in everything. Undoubtedly there is significance, but what is it? The arch error of materialists is the tacit belief that the world has only physical significance. Unfortunately, many scientists, by falling prey to the fallacy of excessive or exclusive objectivism, arrive at the same opinion, which makes them into materialists. Surprisingly, this is not a realistic position to take for realists because of the insufficient regard for the crucial importance of morality and values in all human (social) action. Not all materialists follow this thinking. Lucretius saw deep meaning in the world. He shows it in his work De Rerum Natura, which is one of the world's greatest poems, on the same level as the Divina Commedia, Paradise Lost, or Goethe's Faust. Lucretius wrote before Christianity came to Europe with cardinal changes in the tone of the culture. He shares with the humanists the conviction that the world and our existence have great significance which it is for us to educe, and that this significance is primarily moral. He tells us in the strongest possible way that this can be attained only through deep and serious study of the nature of things. This is exactly my belief also.

Humanism promotes a core morality as essential for the individual as it is explained, e.g., by Socrates in Plato's Gorgias. Morality is a necessary consequence of pragmatic thinking about the needs of social life. This becomes clear when we age, but it is difficult to explain to the young. For many, the moral proscriptions, as derived as a command from religion, only mean unnecessary restrictions of their freedom. However, we can show that there is an objective basis for moral prescriptions. In any case, the young should be challenged to desire a useful, and thereby a meaningful life. I believe that my essay on Ethics reflects a modern humanistic spirit.

It is a moving experience to look back on the completed life of people we knew, once they have left us forever. By contemplating their fate in its totality, we can comprehend how everything happens out of a deep inner necessity (Ανάγκη, Ananke) - why fate must appear as the inescapable, merciless consequence of our deeds. Unless a total change in character takes place, which is rare indeed, or unless an early death takes the culprit away, the bad action finds a retribution, and the good its compensation through the very same character trait that brought about the deed in the first place. It is merely a matter of time until the occasion arises. But to impress this on a young mind as part of his education and as guidance is difficult and can only be done well with case studies for which history and the reading of good authors provide opportunities. The message can be passed on to the next generation only through education in a culture that respects tradition (without being arrested by it).

However, tradition has lost value in the eyes of many intellectuals and the old liberal education has suffered so much that the meaning of “liberal” has been turned nearly into its opposite. Even non materialists ridicule morality. Nevertheless it is self-evident that a healthy society needs moral education as an essential part of good upbringing. A sense of (civic) morality (e.g., see Ethics), more specific, more attuned to our life (as opposed to life in the Arabian desert), and in several respects beyond what could be gotten through the Bible, used to come through classical education by learning about hundreds of age honored examples to emulate. This was the opposite of the present ideology which aims at immediate utility and produces an education that can barely be distinguished from training. Furthermore, the idea that children can choose and educate themselves is really a preparation for serfdom and it impoverishes the culture. The whole ideology is irrational. Education for freedom in an advanced society cannot be based on free growth, but requires choice, and sensible choice is possible only if the options and their consequences are known. This, however, would require an understanding and education before it is gained.

[6] L. Landau & E.M. Lifshitz (1973), Theoretical Physics (Textbook), Vol. I, Chapter II, § 6.

[7]   How the subjective freedom of our will can coexist within the absolute overall necessity in nature appears to us as a deep mystery - but it does, as I believe to have shown. We can envision this possibility if we remember that we are part of nature and its process. All of our decisions and our whole character are one whole process which we in our analysis separate into parts, the intelligent individuals, which can become semi-independent (for a while) in the process described with detail in essay 12 (Challenges ).

[8] "Virtue is fleeing from Vice, and the first Wisdom is having avoided Folly." (see Horace . .). Aristotle: "What avoids pain, not what is pleasant, is persued by the prudent person". (quod dolore vacat, non quod suave est, persequitur vir prudens, Nic. VII, 12).

Copyright © 2008, Gernot M. R. Winkler       Last Corrections 11-18-2009