Scholasticism, Intuition, and Empiricism

Liberals dehumanize us by using elitist scientism to replace scholasticism and moral intuition. They are far too greedy in their faith and expectations for science. They think science discovers truths that are essential, not merely usages that are practical or trivial. So they think a "science of morality" can discover essential truths about morality. Most medieval philosophers eventually gave up on the scholastic search for the essential definitions of everything. Liberals, however, did not get the memo.

TRUTH, PRACTICALITY, AND USEFUL FAITH -- A MIND EXERCISE FOR TRYING TO SEPARATE ESSENTIALIST SCHOLASTICISM, DIRECT INTUITION, AND EMPIRICAL TESTING OF NOMINATIVES:

TRIVIAL TRUTHS: If an idea is true in a trivial sense, then the truth of it is by definitional identity or tautology, not by empirical testing.

EMPIRICALLY USEFUL IDEAS: For an idea to be useful in more than a trivial sense, it needs to be amenable of practical usage, which entails parameters and purposes -- empirical and moral.

CONSERVED BUT CHANGING INFINITIES: Beyond parameters for which an idea may have been experienced to be practcally useful, the extent to which such parameters, usages, or purposes may be pushed may not yet be known.

CONSTRUCTIVISMS: Many ideas may be practically useful only in resepct of how people construct conventions and/or leverage devices or algorithms that nurture them to be useful.

PRESET AND CHANGING CONSTRUCTIVISMS: For all we know, it may be that every idea that is found to be practical is useful only in respect of how intelligent beings have constructed conventions or leveraged devices or algorithms that nurture them to be so.

META CONSTRUCTIVISMS: For all we know, the very cosmos that we share may abide as such a case.

INCAPACITY TO COMPLETELY OBSERVE SELF: To the extent our cosmos defines and limits us, we are without power to go outside it to prove whether or not such is the case.

INTUITIVE FAITHS VERSUS PRACTICAL USAGE: Thus, a true idea may or may not be one that in direct experience and good faith may be acknowledged or denied. As to knowable truth, it may be neither empirically tested, nor falsified. Empirically, it could only be found, within contexts, limits and purposes, either to be practical or not to be practical.

WORKING AND FLUXING EXPLANATIONS: An empirical idea can be a working explanation (hypothesis or model), and thus it may or may not be found for some present purposes and contexts to be or not to be practical.

EMPIRICAL UNKNOWABILITY OF NON-TRIVIAL TRUTHS: Within the cosmos we share, a non-trivial idea that is not subject to empirical testing or falsification may or may not be true, but it cannot be empirically known by we mortals so to be.

REASONABLENESS OF INTUITIVE EMPATHIES AND BELIEF SYSTEMS: As to such ideas, one can intangibly, intuitively, empathetically, and purposely acknowledge (or deny) faith, belief, and trust.

GOOD FAITH AND GOOD WILL: One can in faith believe our cosmos is the unfolding signification of a reconciling and purposeful Intelligence that appreciatively and contemporaneously factors feedback from our participation. This would be generally consistent with Judeo-Christian ideas of a caring, inviting Reconciler.

"CARING ABOUT INDIFFERENCE": Or, one can believe, much as Communists, that our cosmos is a purely scientific and indifferent battleground of competition among amoral contestants that are bloody in tooth and claw.

PSYCHOPATHIC FRUSTRATION: Or, one can believe, much as Muslims, that our cosmos is merely a colosseum for arbitrary entertainments of a monstrous punisher(s).

ONE ENCOMPASSING INTUITION: There is only one intuitive idea that is encompassing: That perspectives of Consciousness communicate Information with the measuring of Substance. That is an idea that is not definitionally trival, because its terms (consciousness, information, and substance) flux with our contexts and purposes. And, its terms seem to transpose in ways that are beyond simplistic, conservational, formulization. Yet, it is an idea that is directly experiential, in that it describes qualitative means by which we self-define, self-actualize, self-fulfill, and self-normalize. Except in respect of that encompassing intuition, there are no meaningfully definitional truths, practical constructions, or self-fulfilling appreciations.

EXPERIENCE OF IDENTITY: So long as I am me, "I" cannot directly experience the quality of consciousness of another perspective of consciousness, unless "I" were somehow to become it (in which case I would no longer know my previous self).

SOLIPSISM: Nor can I empirically prove that a thing that appears exterior to my perspective itself experiences the quality of being conscious. The most I can do in such regard is to apply intuition and practical experience, to come to a belief or faith.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:  Beingness, as we experience it, can be conceptualized as comprised of Consciousness, Substance, and Information (CSI).  CSI fluxes in ways to which we do not necessarily have access. Consciousness seems to abide all along a sequential chronology, Substance seems generally to dissipate towards disorganization, and Information accumulates.

PARTICIPATORY CONSCIOUS WILL:  Consciousness may be likened more to a label than an explanation.  Somehow, our experiences, recordations, and memories unfold along a chronology wherein innumerable possibilities are presented all along the way, yet only one possibility is manifested to become the record in each case.  The sum of such manifestations is represented in the informational record of our past. When reference is made only to the "laws" of nature, such may suggest a probability wave function for any particular event, but not a pre-determination.  So, what can "explain" how any particular event actually comes to pass?

FAITH LABELS:  For this, one may punt to a variety of unprovable faiths, such as Multiverse, Many Worlds, or Reconciling God.  For example, one can assume that every possibility "in fact" does occur, in some parallel world or universe.  This also is more a label for a result than a testable, falsifiable, or observable hypothesis. Or, one can assume that a "choosing function" of participatory conscious will operates in our cosmos (being the only cosmos), so that Consciousness, by the immeasurable quality of its observation and appreciation, somehow participates in the choosing or reconciling of occurrences and the renormalizations of events.  For this, one may assume that Consciousness operates at disparate layers and levels of locality in space-time, and also at a level that reconciles current and preset events or laws.  Under such an assumption, it would be implicated that consciousness at every level adjusts its choices and determinations based on changing and unfolding qualities of observation, appreciation, and reconciliation of feedback that are communicated among various levels in conscious intuitions that correlate with measurable significations of Substance and Information.  To assume that a multiverse exists, or that many worlds exist, is to assume that Substance is superior as a determinant to Consciousness.  To assume that Consciousness reconciles choices is to assume that Consciousness is not inferior to, or wholly derivative of, Substance.  To assume a Reconciling Consciousness is to invite people to come to reason together from disparate points of view in empathetic good will and good faith. Such an assumption is generally compatible with Judeo-Christian values for promoting decent respect for human freedom and dignity.  The assumptions that make Consciousness inferior to Substance are more compatible with crony elitists "justifying" rule under scientism, i.e., using deceit and positions of power to claim superior understanding of practical science and "moral science."  Thus, Marxists, Secular Humanists, Socialists, Progressives, and Libertarians who are without faith in a Reconciler tend to want elitist rule over the people at large -- including many people who as individuals are often more competent.

MORTALS DO NOT "CREATE" SUBSTANCE OR CONSCIOUSNESS:  Substance is measurable in respect of how its sum is conserved.  Mortals do not create CSI.  Mortals bond with avatars that occupy loci that are amenable of normalizing measure.  Mortals do not create Substance by adding to its sum.  Mortals leverage Substance for machine purposes by organizing it.  Mortals do not create Consciousness.  Mortals can leverage avatars that can avail the expression of Consciousness in ways that are more capacitated to communicate intelligibly.  Mortals do not "create" Artificial Intelligence.  Mortals tinker to leverage the Consciousness that already abides to avail it to bond with avatars that can be organized for highly complex functions.

INTELLIGENCE:  Intelligence does not magically "emerge."  It is leveraged in respect of "stuff" that already abides.  We do not create babies.  We procreate.  With empirical tinkering, we can tinker with genes.  We can design genes and merge human beings with machines and computers.  With enough tinkering, we will eventually learn ways to design avatars for giving expression to conscious intelligence.  But we will not "create" AI from scratch.  Rather, we will leverage it from the CSI that is already extant.

CONSERVATION AND RENORMALIZATION OF EXTERIOR REALITY AND RECONCILIATION OF COMMUNICATIONS OF PERSPECTIVES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:

Assuming practical usages (theorems and purposes) are communicated among multifarious perspectives of consciousness within a shared cosmos, each such perspective would be reconciled to conserve and renormalize the measurable aspects of its experiences and communications in respect of the shared cosmos.

Assuming multifarious perspectives of consciousness abide, each one, depending on its point of view and frame of reference, would experience qualitatively different flavors of its appreciation of whatever may be the conserved measure of the sum its set of experiences within the shared cosmos.

Such accumulations of experiences from different points of view and frames of reference would produce in each perspective its own qualitatively unique flavor.

Such qualities of experience would be abstract, because they would not be measurably communicable.

Yet, intuition and empathy would build on analogous exchanges among correlative contexts, whereby qualities of experiences would be associated with information and preserved to memory.

Such memories would be correlated and referenced to figures of speech, and such figures of speech would in time communicate qualitative meanings, i.e., practical theorems and purposes.

SCIENCE, SCIENTISM, AND SPIRUTALLY EMPATHETIC INTUITION:

The scientific method does not discover non-trivial, empirically objective, external truths-in-themselves, because no such truths can be objectively known.

Truths may be directly acknowledged or denied in respect of self evidence, self normalization, and self actualization among contexts, points of view, and purposes of perspectives.

Usages, not external truths-in-themselves, are discovered, tested, confirmed, or falsified via empirical testing.

Empirical testing and processes of falsification pertain only to practical theorems and purposes; they do not pertain directly to truths-in-themselves.

It is un-measurable whether (1) Consciousness measures Substance, (2) Consciousness substantiates Measure, or (3) a Reconciler ("changeless-changer") balances and normalizes all fluxing communications of perspectives of Consciousness with particular measures and expressions of Substance and Information.

While such is beyond measure and empirical proof, it is not beyond self-intuition.

SELF-FULFILLING POWERS OF KINDS OF FAITH:

CARING GOD: As a society assimilates to acknowledge the quality of a caring, inviting, guiding Reconciler, history and experience suggest to many people a faith in an intuitive truth, which is not subject either to empirical proof or to falsification: That such assimilation favorably affects the unfolding quality of civilization.

MONSTROUS GOD: An idea that is utterly false, in a way that is not trivially false or directly contradictory, would be neither empirically provable nor falsifiable, as such. For example, a faith in a monstrous god that despised all mortal perspectives of consciousness and that sought to commit them to various levels of perpetual punishment, would not be falsifiable.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: However, for many people, the assimilation of such a faith would affect the unfolding quality of civilization unfavorably. Methods of psychological inculcation, such as Stockholm Syndrome, to indoctrinate underlings to such a faith, could be useful to psychopathic criminals and mentally twisted monsters.

GODHEAD: It is not empirically demonstrable whether a godhead is, or should be, caring, despising, both, or neither. Intuitively, the TRUTH is that a godhead or non-godhead is at least one of the above, and not some of the others. In that, every one who is intelligibly conscious has little choice but to choose, and in word or deed to ac-knowledge, a faith.

DEATH AND TRANSMIGRATION OF PERSPECTIVES OF CONSCIOUSNESS: As to any such truth, we cannot empirically know whether on death we shall empirically know it. What we can have is intuitive faith.

EVIL ELITISM AND SCIENTISM: Much of the world is trying to avoid assimilation by people of any intuition-based faith. Many people actively revile faith, family, and fidelity. The apparent trend is to default to the control of contending elitist cronies who propagandize in the name of science that is not science, but deceptive scientism. This produces a niche in the zeitgeist that favors the rise of monstrous psychopaths, who use demagoguery and deceit to unite corrupt people with ignorant people in order to rule otherwise decent and competent people. The "trivial truth" of the fact that this can be done has been amply demonstrated in history.

TRUTH: Truth abides, but truth about "essential things" is not demonstrably "out there" in itself, because no thing is demonstrably out there in itself. Every thing is expressed in respect of continuously unfolding, algorithmic, and reconciling relationships among measurable Substance, accumulating Information, and fluxing Consciousness. There is no "thing" that demonstrably and measurably exists, purely in itself, as a thing in itself. The Past abides as an accumulation of Information. It is an accumulation that is indirectly Measurable in respect of previous quantitatives of Substance and that is Immeasurable in respect of previous qualitatives of Consciousness. The Future abides as an Immeasurable accumulation of Potentials for Consciousness to signify itself in the expressions of Substance. The one intuitive, directly experienceable, Truth is that perspectives of Consciousness communicate Information with the measuring of Substance.  This is not a truth from which a "science of morality" can derive demonstrably provable and unfalsifiable moral truths about particularities.  It is not a truth by which elitist scientism can reasonably replace individual good faith intuition and empathy.

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SHRINKING GOD:  I am not God. I can, however, reason logically from a priori assumptions, then test for internal meaning, coherence, consistency, and completeness under a set of assumptions. I can intuit to assume God's abiding concern pertains to reconciling perspectives of I-ness. I can conceptualize so as to seek to leverage practical empiricism to nurture towards fulfilling such interests as I find fulfilling.

UNIFYING ESSENCE:  Whatever may be a "unifying essence" of the apparent trinity of Consciousness, Substance, and Information, it avails practical, empirical participation to nurture and purpose towards desired changes that are part of a fluxing system whose sensible changes are renormalized and measured in strict regard for conservational math.

DOMINANCE OF PHYSICS:  The dominance of the study of measurable physics is due to the defining fact that it consists, however may be the case, of that which happens to define and limit us in common.  Even so, the measurable physics of our cosmos is no less merely a subject for our empirical study, rather than a book of truth-in-itself for scientists or gnostics.  Empirically, it is beyond a mortal to step outside the cosmos that defines the limits of our physical avatars in order to measure or determine what oir cosmos "really" is.  Such is the innate restriction of our empiricism. Empirical science is not a pursuit of truth, but a cooperative pursuit of self fulfillment through practical empiricism.

SELF-DEFINING FEEDBACK AND RECONCILIATION:  Our formulas can be made empirically self-fulfilling and deceivingly true-in-themselves, simply by obscuring that many of the terms for our equations, of necessity, are not amenable of complete definition. To "account" for inherent incompleteness in all explanations of physics, one need only insert makeshifts, like vague terms or "cosmological constants."  Under such terms can be applied methods of rounding such that alternative factors that could be drawn forth will remain concealed or unused.  That is, until new purposes and practical measures are needed.

UNAVOIDABILITY OF PHILOSOPHY:  I do not think philosophy (or faith) is avoidable. An electorate that lacks a civic philosophy will probably not long sustain a republic. Even science begins with hypotheses, looking to establish axioms. (I do question whether such axioms may be "real" only in a sense of being self-fulfilling to a determiner. In that case, the dominance of a determiner of a life principle becomes important.)

RATIONALIZING INSPIRATIONS OF SOCIAL STUDIES: Yes, I do question the practical value of much that is found in social sciences or ethnic studies. When the studies are contrived or channeled, whether wittingly or not, to produce results that are consistent with a political agenda (or philosophy), I would call that scientism. As such, I suspect it is good for little more than targeting dupes. (For practitioners and professional agitators, I suppose that is a kind of "good.")
Practical empiricism and careful measurements of observable facts are important. I get that about science. But I think it is important for a responsible electorate to learn not to be duped by methods of scientism (rationalizations cloaked in the language and methods of science) posing as "science."


MORAL ALCHEMISTS:  Moral alchemists tend to be just smart enough to stop selling lead as gold, so they can commence selling corruption as virtue.

NATURAL AND MORAL CAUSES:  How much of the important "causal" factors of our cosmos remain "dark" to us?


Under the English Model, all is permitted, except that which is forbidden.
Under the German Model, all is forbidden, except that which is permitted.
Under the Russian Model, all is forbidden, including that which is permitted.
Under the French Model, all is permitted, including that which is forbidden.
Under the American Progressive-Totalitarian Model, all is compulsory, except that which is forbidden.
Under the American Progressive-Totalitarian Model, all speech is required, except that which is politically incorrect (hate) speech by politically incorrect people (previously privileged whites).
Under the American Progressive-Totalitarian Model, all indoctrination is required, except that which is politically incorrect (hate) indoctrination by people who adhere to politically incorrect values (previously privileged white Christians).
Under the Constitution as Amended by Prog Interpretation, there is freedom of speech, religious expression, enterprise, and association, except that States and people who are not politically correct are required not to exercise judgment or discrimination.
Under the Constitution as Amended by Prog Interpretation, there are no dhimmis, excepting the politically incorrect people who adhere to values of individual freedom of expression and enterprise.