When I learned I had a worldview, my world didn't change, but my understanding of myself, other human beings, society, and where I am in history and what that means changed enormously. I learned something very useful and important about the way I perceive things and gain knowledge; I learned about things I didn't know I knew.
Knowing about worldviews has nothing essential to do with whether I am a child of God, a true believer or not. Understanding what a worldview is, however, can bring vital clarity, not only to what I believe, but how I believe what I believe. And what difference does that make? I think of it this way: God created me to be a creature who knows, learns, makes important life-determining choices. I am a creature whom God will hold accountable for how I interpret the world and myself in it. The more believers understand the intellectual and psychological apparatus with which we believe and what difference it makes, the better off we are, because understanding confirms what we believe, our perspectives on life and human experience. When I understand how a worldview functions in the process of people making sense of their worlds and making choices for living their lives, I realize how people can come to a seemingly straightforward issue such as abortion and end with opposite opinions. The beliefs embedded in one's worldview about when a truly human existence begins will have determined one's perspective.
So what is a worldview? It is one way of naming the "grid" for thinking and believing that God built into every human being. It is a set of basic beliefs--about God, the world, human beings, history, death, knowing, as well as much more mundane things--that make up what a person assumes to be true. Out of one's worldview, a person evaluates, makes decisions, and makes meaning and sense of his or her life. James Sire, whose book The Universe Next Door (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1976) is one of the most helpful on the subject of worldviews, defines a worldview as a basic set of beliefs and "concepts that work together to provide a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action." (p. 16) Another definition of the concept of a worldview comes from James Olthuis, a professor at the Toronto Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada:
A worldview (or vision of life) is a framework or set of fundamental beliefs through which we view the world and our calling and future in it. The vision may be so internalized that it goes largely unquestioned; it may be greatly refined through cultural-historical development; it may not be explicitly developed into a systematic conception of life; it may not be theoretically deepened into a philosophy; it may not even be codified into credal form. Nevertheless, this vision is a channel for the ultimate beliefs which give direction and meaning to life. It is the integrative and interpretive framework by which order and disorder are judged, the standard by which reality is managed and pursued. It is the set of hinges on which all our everyday thinking and doing turns. Although a [worldview] is held only by individuals, it is communal in scope and structure. Since a worldview gives the terms of reference by which the world and our place in it can be structured and illumined, a worldview binds it adherents together into a community.
When Jesus told his followers to reflect on the "lilies of the field"--was he not calling them to ponder his metaphor in order to glean the truth he was giving them? If believers in Christ are called to think about themselves, the world, God, and what the true nature of God's promises are in the Gospel, then understanding the concept of a worldview and how a worldview operates in our thinking and believing is an extremely useful bit of understanding. At certain points, knowledge of worldviews can help me not only understand the world and how others think about the world, it can help me understand and be more objective about my own ways of looking at things--to discern the "taken-for-granteds" in my own way of looking at myself and the world which often come from my culture, not the Bible.
There are people who like to think and people who don't--with lots of folks somewhere between. Learning about what a worldview is and how it works will undoubtedly be more interesting to some than others. But having a worldview is not open to choice. Every person has one--acknowledged or not. The question might be posed, then, Do I want to understand my own worldview and how it works? Consider a fictitious scenario (one which resembles hundreds of true incidents on university campuses) where knowledge of worldviews and how they work help a young Christian university student:
Sally, a freshman majoring in English literature, sits in class the first week only to discover that her professor is aggressively hostile to Christianity and anyone who takes the Bible seriously. She has come from a good Christian family with a solid pre-college public education. She loves literature and writing and is excited about being able to study great English literature. Though frightened, confused, and intimidated by her professor's hostility to her faith, she decides to persevere, hoping that she will find a way to survive the class.
Wishing to find help in her academic dilemma, some friends advise her to attend a short course being offered to help Christian students in the secular university. Sally learns about the difficulties of being Christian in a secular university, but she also is given the opportunity to learn about the concept of a worldview and how worldviews work, even in the perspectives of her hostile professor! A new framework for thinking opens for her. She learns in what ways her professor's worldview differs from her own. She learns how to identify the basic beliefs (presuppositions) underlying her professor's way of looking at and thinking about the world and reality.
This knowledge of how a worldview works, along with basic information about how to identify people's worldview beliefs, assures Sally of the validity and explanatory power of her own Christian worldview. She feels less intimidated by her professor and the secular university environment because she understands the assumptions "hidden" in his worldview. She can see now how poorly her professor's worldview explains the way the world really works and how human beings really live in that world. In other words, Sally can see and understand much more clearly how her professor's secular "theories-of-choice" emerge from his worldview beliefs.
In worldview training, one learns that everyone has a worldview structured around a few basic questions about reality. Every worldview will attempt at some level to answer the following basic questions that I have paraphrased from James Sire's list in The Universe Next Door (p. 18):
* What is the source and nature of "primary" reality? In some worldviews primary reality is God or spirit. In others it is matter and energy.
* What is a human being? How do we define the true nature, meaning, and destiny of humankind?
* On what basis do we establish morality and ethics? How does a person or society decide what is right and wrong, and on what grounds is ethics determined?
* On what basis do we believe what we know is true? How does a person know? How do we justify or verify our knowledge and our process of knowing what we think we know?
* What is death? What is the meaning and significance of death? Is there an afterlife of any kind or does man merely return to the basic material elements of which he is obviously made?
The answers to these and many other worldview questions indicate what basic worldview or parts of different worldviews a person holds. In The Universe Next Door, James Sire walks the reader through several different worldviews: Theism (his term for historic, biblical Christianity), Deism, Naturalism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Eastern Pantheistic Monism, and The New Age.
Today's "culture wars" are, in fact, "worldview wars." Whether in the student's classroom, the neighborhood school board meeting, or the office hallway, dialogues and debates over abortion, gay and lesbian issues, or how the federal budget should be balanced are ultimately grounded in a person's worldview. And because we get our worldviews mostly by absorbing them from our parents, family, and larger surrounding culture, today's generation, unfortunately, is being grounded in whatever worldview dominates the arts and media of popular culture. Television's sitcoms and MTV are doing much of our worldview construction.
The believer's task in believing the gospel involves striving to discern good from evil. But in a complex, sophisticated, visually mediated culture barraging its receivers with intimidating and seductive worldly perspectives, this task can be difficult indeed. The believer's challenge is to build a worldview based in the truth found in the Scriptures. But that project begins by first understanding that we all have worldviews, whether we realize it or not.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
From Conceptpoor to Experiencerich
Mental events are representations
Mental events are representations of physical events. Our minds construct representations of events and objects in the world and in our bodies based on input received through the senses. For example, your mind constructs the sound of a ringing bell when the clapper strikes the side of the bell. This disturbance is encoded in sound waves that strike your ears. Your ears convert these sound waves into neural patterns that encode the original physical event in different form. Your mind constructs the sound you hear from this neural pattern, locating it at the point of the original disturbance.
We are conceptpoor
One consequence of the view that mental events are representations of physical events is that it's possible to see that we are "concept poor". To be concept poor (or "conceptpoor") is to lack adequate concepts to describe experience. To be conceptpoor with respect to experiences of a certain type is to lack adequate concepts to describe experiences of that type.
Color
The representations your mind forms are extremely complex and varied. Think of color words, for example. Think of all the different shades of color which have the same name: "green". We do distinguish shades of green by referring to them as "light green" or "dark green", but there's no generally accepted set of words to describe the many shades of green. We are conceptpoor in our color language in that we have only one widely accepted word, 'green', to describe a wide range of color experiences.
One result of being conceptpoor in relation to colors is that we tend not to notice differences in shades of colors. Because we call these colors all green, we see them as the same color, not noticing the tremendous variety in shades. The same argument applies to other colors such as red and blue. The Eskimos have nine different words for different colors (shades) of snow; we should try to be this discriminating in our own language.
Our language does contain color words to pick out color shades; for example, 'sky blue', 'pea green', 'maroon', 'ivory', 'lemon yellow', 'crimson', 'copper', 'livid pink', 'scarlet', 'rose', and 'apple green'. But these shade words do not form a complete or systematic set. Nevertheless, becoming aware of existing shade words is a good way to improve color awareness.
Emotion and feeling
The idea that we are conceptpoor can be generalized to other areas of experience as well. We have one word, 'love', to describe a whole range of emotional experiences. Yet there are many types of love and the experience varies greatly from one type to another. There's a big difference, for example, between love for one's parents and romantic love. Likewise, there are many types of fear and anger. Our emotions represent another area in which we are conceptpoor and our language blurs important distinctions in experience.
In the area of feeling, we use the word 'friend' to describe many different people we have different feelings for. There are work friends, play friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, hobby friends, animal friends, best friends, worst friends, casual friends, distant friends, college friends, computer friends, racquetball friends, dinner friends, phone friends, political friends, etc. Yet we describe them all as "friends" without noticing differences in friend types, and without noticing the shades of differences in our feelings for different friends.
Taste
Taste is another area in which we are conceptpoor. We have a few basic words such as 'salty', 'sweet', 'cold', and 'hot'. Yet there are many differences in how foods taste. Because we have the idea of sweetness in our minds, we tend just to think of something as tasting "sweet" without noticing differences in sweet tastes. Experience here forms a continuum, just as in the case of color. Taste, then, is another area in which we are conceptpoor.
We are Experiencepoor
Because we are conceptpoor, we are "experiencepoor". One way to be experiencepoor is to fail to notice the details of experience. We tend not to notice details of experience for which there's no name or ready description. And the details of experience are harder to remember if we don't remember their name or description. It's hard to remember what shade of green a tree is if you just remember that it's green rather than that it's apple green, since you probably call up a mental image of a generic shade of green.
This philosophical insight has a practical application. Ask yourself:
Do I fail to notice the details of my experiences because I lack adequate concepts to describe them?
Am I experiencepoor because I am conceptpoor?
Seek out new experiences and become experiencerich
One way to be experiencerich is to be aware of the details of your experiences. You can become experiencerich by becoming more discriminating in areas of experience in which our language doesn't provide tools to discriminate. Start being aware of the difference shades of green, red, blue, and other colors. Start noticing different variations in sweet and sour tastes, and in hot and cold foods. Reflect on the variety in your emotional experience, and on the differences in your feelings for different friends.
You can also enrich your life by seeking out new experiences. Your mind forms representations of bodily and physical events based on its input, so different input yields different representations. Try stimulating your tastebuds with new inputs: try foods you've never tried before just to see what they taste like. Try to meet new people and do things you've never even thought of doing!
Of course, the fact that an experience is a new experience may not be sufficient reason to justify having it if there are stronger reasons not to have the experience. Some new experiences are unpleasant or even painful. But seeking out new experiences makes you more discriminating within particular areas of experience, and within a broader range of experience.
By having new experiences you acquire new points of view of the world and thereby increase your knowledge and understanding of yourself and of the world around you. For example, try taking a different route to work or school. Or, try a new restaurant, try food you've never had, or start a conversation with someone you say "Hello" to but never converse with.
By taking new points of view you become aware of details and aspects of the world you didn't notice before, or you see the same thing in a new way. Seeking out new experiences also gives you a wider range in types of experience, making you more experiencerich in this sense as well.
One basic principle of experience is:
You can't know what an experience is like unless you've had the experience.
The reason for this is that there's no reliable method for inferring from our physiology or our brain state to the nature of our subjective experience. So you won't know what squid or mussels taste like until you try them, and you won't know what it's like to fall in love until you do.
If you follow these suggestions, you will have a richer and a more interesting and varied life. And you may wish to add this principle to your philosophy of life:
Seek out new experiences for their own sake, unless there is a stronger reason not to have a particular new experience.
Create new words to describe your experiences
Once you become more aware of the details of your experiences, you may want a method for remembering these details and for describing them to others. In some cases you may not be able to find the words to express yourself. In these cases, you might try creating new words to describe your experiences. For example, you might describe something that's hot (spicy) and sweet as "hotsweet". An example of a hotsweet taste is the taste of hot mustard with honey.
We use words to express points of view. The points of view we can express are limited by the words available to us. And if there is no way to express a point of view, we tend not to notice that it's a possible point of view. Hence, our language limits our experience.
Our language grows out of our experience. A word becomes part of a language when it is used by enough people to become accepted as a word by speakers of the language. But we need not wait for words to evolve; we can also propose new words which represent new points of view. These words will become part of the language if the points of view they are used to express are sufficiently significant that enough speakers of the language choose to express themselves using these words.
Mental events are representations of physical events. Our minds construct representations of events and objects in the world and in our bodies based on input received through the senses. For example, your mind constructs the sound of a ringing bell when the clapper strikes the side of the bell. This disturbance is encoded in sound waves that strike your ears. Your ears convert these sound waves into neural patterns that encode the original physical event in different form. Your mind constructs the sound you hear from this neural pattern, locating it at the point of the original disturbance.
We are conceptpoor
One consequence of the view that mental events are representations of physical events is that it's possible to see that we are "concept poor". To be concept poor (or "conceptpoor") is to lack adequate concepts to describe experience. To be conceptpoor with respect to experiences of a certain type is to lack adequate concepts to describe experiences of that type.
Color
The representations your mind forms are extremely complex and varied. Think of color words, for example. Think of all the different shades of color which have the same name: "green". We do distinguish shades of green by referring to them as "light green" or "dark green", but there's no generally accepted set of words to describe the many shades of green. We are conceptpoor in our color language in that we have only one widely accepted word, 'green', to describe a wide range of color experiences.
One result of being conceptpoor in relation to colors is that we tend not to notice differences in shades of colors. Because we call these colors all green, we see them as the same color, not noticing the tremendous variety in shades. The same argument applies to other colors such as red and blue. The Eskimos have nine different words for different colors (shades) of snow; we should try to be this discriminating in our own language.
Our language does contain color words to pick out color shades; for example, 'sky blue', 'pea green', 'maroon', 'ivory', 'lemon yellow', 'crimson', 'copper', 'livid pink', 'scarlet', 'rose', and 'apple green'. But these shade words do not form a complete or systematic set. Nevertheless, becoming aware of existing shade words is a good way to improve color awareness.
Emotion and feeling
The idea that we are conceptpoor can be generalized to other areas of experience as well. We have one word, 'love', to describe a whole range of emotional experiences. Yet there are many types of love and the experience varies greatly from one type to another. There's a big difference, for example, between love for one's parents and romantic love. Likewise, there are many types of fear and anger. Our emotions represent another area in which we are conceptpoor and our language blurs important distinctions in experience.
In the area of feeling, we use the word 'friend' to describe many different people we have different feelings for. There are work friends, play friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, hobby friends, animal friends, best friends, worst friends, casual friends, distant friends, college friends, computer friends, racquetball friends, dinner friends, phone friends, political friends, etc. Yet we describe them all as "friends" without noticing differences in friend types, and without noticing the shades of differences in our feelings for different friends.
Taste
Taste is another area in which we are conceptpoor. We have a few basic words such as 'salty', 'sweet', 'cold', and 'hot'. Yet there are many differences in how foods taste. Because we have the idea of sweetness in our minds, we tend just to think of something as tasting "sweet" without noticing differences in sweet tastes. Experience here forms a continuum, just as in the case of color. Taste, then, is another area in which we are conceptpoor.
We are Experiencepoor
Because we are conceptpoor, we are "experiencepoor". One way to be experiencepoor is to fail to notice the details of experience. We tend not to notice details of experience for which there's no name or ready description. And the details of experience are harder to remember if we don't remember their name or description. It's hard to remember what shade of green a tree is if you just remember that it's green rather than that it's apple green, since you probably call up a mental image of a generic shade of green.
This philosophical insight has a practical application. Ask yourself:
Do I fail to notice the details of my experiences because I lack adequate concepts to describe them?
Am I experiencepoor because I am conceptpoor?
Seek out new experiences and become experiencerich
One way to be experiencerich is to be aware of the details of your experiences. You can become experiencerich by becoming more discriminating in areas of experience in which our language doesn't provide tools to discriminate. Start being aware of the difference shades of green, red, blue, and other colors. Start noticing different variations in sweet and sour tastes, and in hot and cold foods. Reflect on the variety in your emotional experience, and on the differences in your feelings for different friends.
You can also enrich your life by seeking out new experiences. Your mind forms representations of bodily and physical events based on its input, so different input yields different representations. Try stimulating your tastebuds with new inputs: try foods you've never tried before just to see what they taste like. Try to meet new people and do things you've never even thought of doing!
Of course, the fact that an experience is a new experience may not be sufficient reason to justify having it if there are stronger reasons not to have the experience. Some new experiences are unpleasant or even painful. But seeking out new experiences makes you more discriminating within particular areas of experience, and within a broader range of experience.
By having new experiences you acquire new points of view of the world and thereby increase your knowledge and understanding of yourself and of the world around you. For example, try taking a different route to work or school. Or, try a new restaurant, try food you've never had, or start a conversation with someone you say "Hello" to but never converse with.
By taking new points of view you become aware of details and aspects of the world you didn't notice before, or you see the same thing in a new way. Seeking out new experiences also gives you a wider range in types of experience, making you more experiencerich in this sense as well.
One basic principle of experience is:
You can't know what an experience is like unless you've had the experience.
The reason for this is that there's no reliable method for inferring from our physiology or our brain state to the nature of our subjective experience. So you won't know what squid or mussels taste like until you try them, and you won't know what it's like to fall in love until you do.
If you follow these suggestions, you will have a richer and a more interesting and varied life. And you may wish to add this principle to your philosophy of life:
Seek out new experiences for their own sake, unless there is a stronger reason not to have a particular new experience.
Create new words to describe your experiences
Once you become more aware of the details of your experiences, you may want a method for remembering these details and for describing them to others. In some cases you may not be able to find the words to express yourself. In these cases, you might try creating new words to describe your experiences. For example, you might describe something that's hot (spicy) and sweet as "hotsweet". An example of a hotsweet taste is the taste of hot mustard with honey.
We use words to express points of view. The points of view we can express are limited by the words available to us. And if there is no way to express a point of view, we tend not to notice that it's a possible point of view. Hence, our language limits our experience.
Our language grows out of our experience. A word becomes part of a language when it is used by enough people to become accepted as a word by speakers of the language. But we need not wait for words to evolve; we can also propose new words which represent new points of view. These words will become part of the language if the points of view they are used to express are sufficiently significant that enough speakers of the language choose to express themselves using these words.
A Circular Geometry of Flow
In a recent article,1 I argued that a new geometry of flow is needed. In this article, I expand on this argument. I begin by describing the flawed foundations of Euclidean and Cartesian geometry. I then present the axioms of a new Circular Geometry. Finally, I discuss the implications of this geometry for flow measurement.2
The Flawed Foundations of Euclidean-Cartesian Geometry
Traditional geometry rests on two main pillars: the Euclidean axioms that create the conceptual underpinning of geometry, and the Cartesian coordinate system that provides an x and y axis (and z axis, in 3-dimensional geometry) in terms of which points can be located. Unfortunately, both systems have fatal flaws.
One flaw in Euclidean geometry consists in the Euclidean conception of the point, and the relation between points and lines. In Euclidean geometry, a line is made up of infinitely many points, each of which has zero area. No matter how many times zeros are added together, however, a positive value never results. And adding infinity into the equation doesn't change anything, since zero times infinity is still zero. While many attempts have been made to explain away this anomaly, it still remains unexplained and unexplainable.
There is also a flaw in the Cartesian coordinate system. While the straight-line framework of the Cartesian coordinate system works well for analyzing the areas of squares and rectangles, it is less successful as a frame of reference for curved and circular areas. Finding the area of a circle requires the use of pi, which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Since the formula for circular area, pi * (r * r), involves the area of a square, (r * r), this formula actually involves calculating how many squares will fit into a circle. Since a square peg does not fit into a round hole, it should not be surprising that no definite number of squares will fit inside a circle. In fact, the number is pi, a nonrepeating, irrational number that mathematicians to this day cannot fully define.
Why Pi?
The need for pi arises because square or rectangular area and circular area are incommensurable. This means they cannot both be analyzed from the same perspective, or point of view. Instead, it is necessary to adopt a frame of reference that is appropriate to circular area to adequately describe and analyze circular area.
It is time to eliminate the flawed elements of Euclidean-Cartesian geometry. The belief that a line is composed of infinitely many points with no area is simply incoherent, and should be abandoned. Likewise, the idea that it is possible to accurately represent circular or even curved area in terms of the straight-line frame of reference supplied by the Cartesian coordinate system should also be discarded.
A New Circular Geometry
Instead of analyzing circular area in terms of square inches, I propose to analyze it in terms of round inches. If we start with the primitive of the round inch in place of the square inch, it is possible to represent circular area in terms of how many round inches fit into a circle. It is then possible to eliminate pi from the equation, and substitute in its place a different formula that has no need of pi. I am proposing to call this new geometry Circular Geometry.
Like EuclidÃs geometry, Circular Geometry can be formulated as a series of axioms and definitions. These axioms are formulated in the following section. Within Circular Geometry, terms such as 'point' and 'line' receive a different interpretation from the traditional one. To account for this, in this discussion, terms such as 'Point' that have a corresponding meaning in traditional geometry are capitalized to reflect their use in the sense specified by Circular Geometry. 3
The Axioms of Circular Geometry
1. A Point is the smallest allowable unit of measurement within a system of measurement.
2. Every Point has area.
3. A Point is a circular figure that is considered to be indivisible for the measurement being made.
4. A Line is the path of a Point in motion.
5. Every Line has width. The width of a Line is the diameter of the Point being used for a particular measurement.
6. Every measurement involving Points and Lines is relative to a system of measurement in which the reference of the terms 'Point' and 'Line' is fixed for the purposes of that measurement. The reference of 'Point' determines the degree of precision used in the measurement.
7. In the Coordinate System of Circular Geometry, there is an X axis consisting of unit Circles laid end to end in an east to west direction, each with a value of one round inch. Likewise, there is a Y axis consisting of unit Circles laid end to end in a north to south direction, each with a value of one round inch. The Point of intersection of these Circles creates the integers 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.4
8. To find the area of a Circle, which is the number of round inches in the Circle, use the formula 4 * r * r, where r is the radius of a Circle. Alternatively, use d * d, where d is the diameter of the Circle.
9. A Point lies on the Line, not in the Line. Finitely many Points lie on any given Line.
10. A Circle is a continuous closed geometric figure that is the path generated by rotating a Point around a fixed Point of the same size until it intersects its starting position.5
11. Every Circle has an inside Diameter (ID) and an outside Diameter (OD). The inside Diameter being and ends at the inside edge of the Circle. The outside Diameter begins and ends at the outside edge of the Circle. The inside area is calculated by taking d to be the Inside Diameter in the formula d * d. The outside area includes the Circle boundary, and is calculated by taking d as the outside Diameter in the formula d * d.
12. A Plane is the path generated by moving a Line through Space. Just as a Line has width, a Plane has a depth equal to the width of the Line.
The Coordinate System of Circular Geometry is shown in Figure 1. Rather than amplifying on Circular Geometry in this article, I will discuss the implications of Circular Geometry for flow measurement. Does this new Circular Geometry have any implications for flow measurement? I believe that the answer is a resounding "Yes!" Here are three areas in which Circular Geometry has the possibility of improving flow calculations.
The Fundamental Unit of Flow Measurement
The first area has to do with the fundamental units of flow measurement. The fluid dynamics section of a college physics text describes two approaches to measuring flow6:
"One way of describing the motion of a fluid is to divide it into infinitesimal volume elements, which we may call fluid particles, and to follow the motion of each of these particles. This is a formidable task. We could give coordinates x, y, z to each such fluid particle and then specify these as functions of the time t and the initial position of the particle x0, y0, and z0. This procedure is a direct generalization of the concepts of particle mechanics developed by Joseph Louis Lagrange."
A second approach was taken by Leonhard Euler, which Halliday and Resnick describe as follows:
"In it we give up the attempt to specify the history of each fluid particle and instead specify the density and velocity of the fluid at each point in space at each instant of time. This is the method we shall follow here. We describe the motion of the fluid by specifying the density r(x, y, z, t) and the velocity v(x, y, z, t) at the point (x, y, z) at the time t. We focus attention on what is happening at a particular point in space at a particular time, rather than on what is happening to a particular fluid particle. Any quantity used in describing the state of the fluid, for example, the pressure p, will have a definite value at each point in space and at each instant of time. Although this description of fluid motion focuses attention on a point in space rather than on a fluid particle, we cannot avoid following the fluid particles themselves, at least for short time intervals dt. For it is the particles, after all, and not the space points, to which the laws of mechanics apply."
In Circular Geometry, flow is not measured in infinitesimal volume elements, but in small "flow units" (Points) whose size would vary (or could vary) with the fluid being measured. These "flow units" would be defined in terms of Circular area, rather than square area. It is like the particle approach, except that the volume elements are not infinitesimal, but instead are finite and definable. Then the amount or quantity of flow is given in terms of how many of the finite flow elements travel past a given location in time. A parallel intuition would be to measure flow in drops e.g., to say "This fluid is flowing at 1,596 drops per minute." A conversion could also be created from drops (or Points) to gallons or liters.
More specifically, the "flow units" I am proposing are the Points of the Circular Geometry laid out in the above axioms. These Points could either be defined in terms of volume or of mass. Fluid flow through a pipe is then described in terms of how many of these "flow units" or Points pass a given location in a period of time.
The Flawed Foundations of Euclidean-Cartesian Geometry
Traditional geometry rests on two main pillars: the Euclidean axioms that create the conceptual underpinning of geometry, and the Cartesian coordinate system that provides an x and y axis (and z axis, in 3-dimensional geometry) in terms of which points can be located. Unfortunately, both systems have fatal flaws.
One flaw in Euclidean geometry consists in the Euclidean conception of the point, and the relation between points and lines. In Euclidean geometry, a line is made up of infinitely many points, each of which has zero area. No matter how many times zeros are added together, however, a positive value never results. And adding infinity into the equation doesn't change anything, since zero times infinity is still zero. While many attempts have been made to explain away this anomaly, it still remains unexplained and unexplainable.
There is also a flaw in the Cartesian coordinate system. While the straight-line framework of the Cartesian coordinate system works well for analyzing the areas of squares and rectangles, it is less successful as a frame of reference for curved and circular areas. Finding the area of a circle requires the use of pi, which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Since the formula for circular area, pi * (r * r), involves the area of a square, (r * r), this formula actually involves calculating how many squares will fit into a circle. Since a square peg does not fit into a round hole, it should not be surprising that no definite number of squares will fit inside a circle. In fact, the number is pi, a nonrepeating, irrational number that mathematicians to this day cannot fully define.
Why Pi?
The need for pi arises because square or rectangular area and circular area are incommensurable. This means they cannot both be analyzed from the same perspective, or point of view. Instead, it is necessary to adopt a frame of reference that is appropriate to circular area to adequately describe and analyze circular area.
It is time to eliminate the flawed elements of Euclidean-Cartesian geometry. The belief that a line is composed of infinitely many points with no area is simply incoherent, and should be abandoned. Likewise, the idea that it is possible to accurately represent circular or even curved area in terms of the straight-line frame of reference supplied by the Cartesian coordinate system should also be discarded.
A New Circular Geometry
Instead of analyzing circular area in terms of square inches, I propose to analyze it in terms of round inches. If we start with the primitive of the round inch in place of the square inch, it is possible to represent circular area in terms of how many round inches fit into a circle. It is then possible to eliminate pi from the equation, and substitute in its place a different formula that has no need of pi. I am proposing to call this new geometry Circular Geometry.
Like EuclidÃs geometry, Circular Geometry can be formulated as a series of axioms and definitions. These axioms are formulated in the following section. Within Circular Geometry, terms such as 'point' and 'line' receive a different interpretation from the traditional one. To account for this, in this discussion, terms such as 'Point' that have a corresponding meaning in traditional geometry are capitalized to reflect their use in the sense specified by Circular Geometry. 3
The Axioms of Circular Geometry
1. A Point is the smallest allowable unit of measurement within a system of measurement.
2. Every Point has area.
3. A Point is a circular figure that is considered to be indivisible for the measurement being made.
4. A Line is the path of a Point in motion.
5. Every Line has width. The width of a Line is the diameter of the Point being used for a particular measurement.
6. Every measurement involving Points and Lines is relative to a system of measurement in which the reference of the terms 'Point' and 'Line' is fixed for the purposes of that measurement. The reference of 'Point' determines the degree of precision used in the measurement.
7. In the Coordinate System of Circular Geometry, there is an X axis consisting of unit Circles laid end to end in an east to west direction, each with a value of one round inch. Likewise, there is a Y axis consisting of unit Circles laid end to end in a north to south direction, each with a value of one round inch. The Point of intersection of these Circles creates the integers 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.4
8. To find the area of a Circle, which is the number of round inches in the Circle, use the formula 4 * r * r, where r is the radius of a Circle. Alternatively, use d * d, where d is the diameter of the Circle.
9. A Point lies on the Line, not in the Line. Finitely many Points lie on any given Line.
10. A Circle is a continuous closed geometric figure that is the path generated by rotating a Point around a fixed Point of the same size until it intersects its starting position.5
11. Every Circle has an inside Diameter (ID) and an outside Diameter (OD). The inside Diameter being and ends at the inside edge of the Circle. The outside Diameter begins and ends at the outside edge of the Circle. The inside area is calculated by taking d to be the Inside Diameter in the formula d * d. The outside area includes the Circle boundary, and is calculated by taking d as the outside Diameter in the formula d * d.
12. A Plane is the path generated by moving a Line through Space. Just as a Line has width, a Plane has a depth equal to the width of the Line.
The Coordinate System of Circular Geometry is shown in Figure 1. Rather than amplifying on Circular Geometry in this article, I will discuss the implications of Circular Geometry for flow measurement. Does this new Circular Geometry have any implications for flow measurement? I believe that the answer is a resounding "Yes!" Here are three areas in which Circular Geometry has the possibility of improving flow calculations.
The Fundamental Unit of Flow Measurement
The first area has to do with the fundamental units of flow measurement. The fluid dynamics section of a college physics text describes two approaches to measuring flow6:
"One way of describing the motion of a fluid is to divide it into infinitesimal volume elements, which we may call fluid particles, and to follow the motion of each of these particles. This is a formidable task. We could give coordinates x, y, z to each such fluid particle and then specify these as functions of the time t and the initial position of the particle x0, y0, and z0. This procedure is a direct generalization of the concepts of particle mechanics developed by Joseph Louis Lagrange."
A second approach was taken by Leonhard Euler, which Halliday and Resnick describe as follows:
"In it we give up the attempt to specify the history of each fluid particle and instead specify the density and velocity of the fluid at each point in space at each instant of time. This is the method we shall follow here. We describe the motion of the fluid by specifying the density r(x, y, z, t) and the velocity v(x, y, z, t) at the point (x, y, z) at the time t. We focus attention on what is happening at a particular point in space at a particular time, rather than on what is happening to a particular fluid particle. Any quantity used in describing the state of the fluid, for example, the pressure p, will have a definite value at each point in space and at each instant of time. Although this description of fluid motion focuses attention on a point in space rather than on a fluid particle, we cannot avoid following the fluid particles themselves, at least for short time intervals dt. For it is the particles, after all, and not the space points, to which the laws of mechanics apply."
In Circular Geometry, flow is not measured in infinitesimal volume elements, but in small "flow units" (Points) whose size would vary (or could vary) with the fluid being measured. These "flow units" would be defined in terms of Circular area, rather than square area. It is like the particle approach, except that the volume elements are not infinitesimal, but instead are finite and definable. Then the amount or quantity of flow is given in terms of how many of the finite flow elements travel past a given location in time. A parallel intuition would be to measure flow in drops e.g., to say "This fluid is flowing at 1,596 drops per minute." A conversion could also be created from drops (or Points) to gallons or liters.
More specifically, the "flow units" I am proposing are the Points of the Circular Geometry laid out in the above axioms. These Points could either be defined in terms of volume or of mass. Fluid flow through a pipe is then described in terms of how many of these "flow units" or Points pass a given location in a period of time.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Teaching Hatha Yoga: The Philosophy of Abundance
Is abundance just a disguised word for “money?” Can money be used for a good cause? Do you wonder why some Master Yoga Teachers, Gurus, and Swamis frown on the idea of Yoga teachers “talking up” the concept of practicing Yoga for abundance?
The reason is quite simple: Most people think of material wealth first. Why? This is an example of survival instinct, and money is a part of survival; but there are many more types of abundance for Yoga students to learn beside money.
Physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional abundance are worthy of note, but the desire for a better life, by acquiring material wealth, is hard to put out of your mind. Let’s look at each aspect of abundance from a Hatha Yoga student’s point of view.
Physical abundance could be seen as physical prowess. This is why Hatha Yoga has become so popular outside of India. When a new student becomes proficient in Hatha Yoga, he or she feels better almost immediately; sometimes to the point of ego bolstering and this is not a direction for Yoga teaching to take.
The physical senses are our most primal and can be realized without any difficulty. Your friends, family, and coworkers may even notice the changes that are happening to your body due to Hatha Yoga practice.
Mental abundance can easily be seen as intelligence. However, a person’s intelligence cannot be demonstrated, unless it is successfully projected and proven through the use of good communication skills. Union by knowledge, which we know as Jnana Yoga, will also require much more work than most people would initially think, and communication is a necessary skill required in order to share knowledge.
Sadly, spiritual abundance is becoming rare in some cultures. The spiritual connection to God cannot be seen, but can be felt. Unfortunately, we try to measure the spiritual world with scientific instruments from our physical world.
How can you measure prayer or the benefits of prayer? How does science explain miracles? Science often remains baffled or claims miracles do not exist. Science is useful, but has created the “virtual world” for a generation who may end up lost in computer games, obesity, poor health, and unconstructive use of time. However, we know the virtual world exists because we can see it.
Emotional abundance is most often taken for granted. Our family and friends provide security, but we wish for more material wealth. When death or illness knocks at our door, all the money in the world may not be enough.
If you have emotional abundance, you are truly rich. When you have material wealth, emotional abundance may be very hard to find because you do not know who your friends really are. Money attracts people, but those people might not have friendship in mind. Many of the financially wealthy are givers, and there will always be someone who wants to take advantage of it.
Now, you see that abundance is many things, but the most valuable treasures in life can be attained by the financially poor. If, or when, you mention abundance in a Yoga class, start with the most important forms of abundance first. If you find yourself with too much material abundance, give the excess to a worthy cause
Yoga Philosophy for Beginners
Are you searching for much more from your Yoga class than just a workout? What deeper concepts should you learn in your Yoga practice? How can philosophy, taught by a Yoga teacher, change the quality of your life today?
There are so many Yoga philosophy concepts, but here are three that will help you shed many burdens in life. Yoga teachers vary on how much Yogic philosophy they will teach within a typical class. The cause of this may be the type of Yoga class, the perceived popularity, or the Yoga teacher’s choice.
In my Restorative Yoga classes, I teach much more Yogic philosophy than I do in a Vinyasa Yoga class. The same can be said for the amount of meditation time within my North Providence Restorative Yoga classes.
If you are wondering why - here is the answer: My Vinyasa Yoga students are usually younger and could really care less about Yogic philosophy or any other philosophy. They just want to work hard, so we work on mind and body only.
Am I selling out? You can be the judge, but these Yoga students will change with time, and will eventually want to see more of what Yoga has to offer. They are not in a big rush to learn any other form of Yoga, beyond the physically challenging styles - which is fine, because I need to get my exercise, too.
The following are three basic Yogic philosophy principles that will change your life, for the best, today. Try them, and you will make your life happy, simple, and less stressful. Make the change today, or tomorrow morning, for your overall health.
Loving kindness toward yourself, and others, starts from the moment you wake up. Stop criticizing yourself and others. Take positive action and you will see big changes. This is very hard to do, but try not to make negative comments about those who do not live up to your standards. If you can help by being a good example, that’s fine, but do not make it an issue, or a point of contention.
Never beat yourself up with criticism. If you have done wrong, make an effort to change and find solutions, but do not dwell on past mistakes. It will not be to your benefit to meditate on guilt.
Forgiveness is important for your survival and the quality of your own life. You have to let go and forgive others, for your own good. A grudge is a “prison sentence.” Let it go and you become free to do more important things. If you do not let it go, your overall health will suffer, as a result.
Being content with what you have is also known as Santosha. This will stop you from driving yourself crazy - when you are constantly competing with everyone around you. If a friend just bought a new house, feel good for him or her. Do not worry about what you do not have. Be happy about what you do have.
This applies to the physical aspect of Yoga, as well. If you see another student easily perform difficult asanas, be happy for him or her, but be proud of your own accomplishments. For example: You may have improved balance, learned a Pranayama technique to reduce stress, be eating a better diet, or feel the many benefits of meditation.
The Slight Edge Philosophy
The slight edge philosophy is the idea of performing either simple disciplines or simple errors in judgments that will either build or destroy your business. The simple disciplines are what you want to get accustom to. I promise you that if you follow simple disciplines you will be able to double, triple, or even quadruple your income with in the next twelve months.
It is not difficult at all to build a massively successful MLM business if you follow the simple disciplines, such as, making your phone calls every day, following up with people consistently, going to all the business briefings, even if you have seen them a hundred times, doing your 15 minutes of personal development a day, or doing your exposures every day. You already know what you have to do to be successful in the business, you just have to do it.
It's easy to do all the things that I've just mentioned. All you have to do to make an exposure is go up to someone and tell them about what you're doing.
Is it really that difficult to open your mouth? It's easy,
but it's also easy not to do, and that is the trap that so many people fall into when they are in this business. They fall into the trap of performing simple errors in judgment, rather than performing the simple daily disciplines that are going to create them a more preferable compounded effect.
I mean, think about it. Let's take smoking for example. You smoke a cigarette today; It's just one cigarette, right? Correct! That one cigarette isn't going to give you cancer, but once you get in the habit of doing it on a daily basis, you probably will get cancer, because of the compounded effect that all started with that one cigarette. That simple error of judgment compounded over a series of years, is what mattered. It's the small things that don't seem to make a difference today that are the things that make a huge difference in the future.
There are no one liners that are going to get people into your business, what you have to grasp are philosophies, empowering philosophies, because your philosophies will drive your actions, and your actions determine you results, and your results determine your lifestyle. Therefore, I suggest you adopt this Slight Edge Philosophy and think about it on a daily basis.
The problem is that most people stop performing the simple disciplines before the compound effect kicks in.
So, the choice is yours, there are Two path's you can take!!!
Good Luck
It is not difficult at all to build a massively successful MLM business if you follow the simple disciplines, such as, making your phone calls every day, following up with people consistently, going to all the business briefings, even if you have seen them a hundred times, doing your 15 minutes of personal development a day, or doing your exposures every day. You already know what you have to do to be successful in the business, you just have to do it.
It's easy to do all the things that I've just mentioned. All you have to do to make an exposure is go up to someone and tell them about what you're doing.
Is it really that difficult to open your mouth? It's easy,
but it's also easy not to do, and that is the trap that so many people fall into when they are in this business. They fall into the trap of performing simple errors in judgment, rather than performing the simple daily disciplines that are going to create them a more preferable compounded effect.
I mean, think about it. Let's take smoking for example. You smoke a cigarette today; It's just one cigarette, right? Correct! That one cigarette isn't going to give you cancer, but once you get in the habit of doing it on a daily basis, you probably will get cancer, because of the compounded effect that all started with that one cigarette. That simple error of judgment compounded over a series of years, is what mattered. It's the small things that don't seem to make a difference today that are the things that make a huge difference in the future.
There are no one liners that are going to get people into your business, what you have to grasp are philosophies, empowering philosophies, because your philosophies will drive your actions, and your actions determine you results, and your results determine your lifestyle. Therefore, I suggest you adopt this Slight Edge Philosophy and think about it on a daily basis.
The problem is that most people stop performing the simple disciplines before the compound effect kicks in.
So, the choice is yours, there are Two path's you can take!!!
Good Luck
Ab Training Philosophy
Do you have the right fat loss philosophy for six-pack abs?
For most people it seems like the hardest thing in the world to accomplish. Yet people from all over the world spend thousands of dollars on the latest gimmicks for developing that elusive six-pack. Personal trainers can’t keep up with the number of requests from newbies looking for quick fixes to fat loss and develop a ripped midsection.
We hope you can handle the truth about achieving a fat-free ripped midsection. It doesn't matter how many sit-ups or crunches you rep out, or what new machine you see on a home shopping channel; if you don't reduce your body fat percentage you will never see those ab muscles that have been on the missing list since high school. For eye-catching, rock hard abdominals, you need to get rid of the fat covering them.
The fallacy of spot reduction
You want more bluntness. Despite the marketing approach of some of these home shopping channels, you can’t spot reduce. By this we mean just training the areas you want to shrink – especially the abs - and expect to see a whole new midsection. Achieving a toned six-pack waist is a lot more involved. The body takes fat from all over the body, not just any one area. And it does this at its own pace.
Ignore the Gimmicks!
We live in a quick-fix society. If a pill can’t solve it a machine can. Unfortunately this rarely works and it certainly doesn’t produce results when it comes to ab training. Most of those gadgets you see on TV are a waste of your hard-earned money. They are designed with one purpose in mind – to make the manufacturers rich. They’ll do virtually nothing for fat loss and shrinking your midsection. No piece of equipment will give you rock hard abdominals and the ripped midsection that you crave. So go ahead. Hang upside down for just “three easy installments off $39.99.” While the blood is rushing to your head, your money is rushing to the manufacturer’s bank account. And you’ll still have a fat waist!
Weight training - The real key for firming up your abs and losing body fat
Now that we’ve made you aware that the only way to bring out your abs is to get rid of the body fat that’s covering them you are probably thinking, "OK now what’s next?” Well first you need to understand that a small waist doesn't necessarily mean that you have a well-toned midsection. Your abdominals are muscles just like your chest, back, or arm muscles. Granted they don’t have the same growth potential as these more familiar muscles, but they’re muscles just the same. This means that to strengthen and tone them you’ll need to perform various types of resistance exercises.
Crunches every day but your waist is still growing?
Many people still think that if they perform a few crunches every day their abdominals will magically turn into a six-pack, regardless of what they’re eating. Not a chance! How can you expect to reveal rock hard abdominals if you are consuming foods that are increasing the fat layer above them? We know this sounds harsh but if you want to have a waistline that looks like you put in some effort achieving it, then this is exactly what you’ll have to do – put in some effort. If you are constantly eating junk food while slightly increasing the size of your abdominal muscles, then yes, you may actually make your waistline bigger. Your goal is to remove body fat while at the same time build the muscles in the abdominal region. This is the key to fat loss and developing an eye-catching midsection.
For most people it seems like the hardest thing in the world to accomplish. Yet people from all over the world spend thousands of dollars on the latest gimmicks for developing that elusive six-pack. Personal trainers can’t keep up with the number of requests from newbies looking for quick fixes to fat loss and develop a ripped midsection.
We hope you can handle the truth about achieving a fat-free ripped midsection. It doesn't matter how many sit-ups or crunches you rep out, or what new machine you see on a home shopping channel; if you don't reduce your body fat percentage you will never see those ab muscles that have been on the missing list since high school. For eye-catching, rock hard abdominals, you need to get rid of the fat covering them.
The fallacy of spot reduction
You want more bluntness. Despite the marketing approach of some of these home shopping channels, you can’t spot reduce. By this we mean just training the areas you want to shrink – especially the abs - and expect to see a whole new midsection. Achieving a toned six-pack waist is a lot more involved. The body takes fat from all over the body, not just any one area. And it does this at its own pace.
Ignore the Gimmicks!
We live in a quick-fix society. If a pill can’t solve it a machine can. Unfortunately this rarely works and it certainly doesn’t produce results when it comes to ab training. Most of those gadgets you see on TV are a waste of your hard-earned money. They are designed with one purpose in mind – to make the manufacturers rich. They’ll do virtually nothing for fat loss and shrinking your midsection. No piece of equipment will give you rock hard abdominals and the ripped midsection that you crave. So go ahead. Hang upside down for just “three easy installments off $39.99.” While the blood is rushing to your head, your money is rushing to the manufacturer’s bank account. And you’ll still have a fat waist!
Weight training - The real key for firming up your abs and losing body fat
Now that we’ve made you aware that the only way to bring out your abs is to get rid of the body fat that’s covering them you are probably thinking, "OK now what’s next?” Well first you need to understand that a small waist doesn't necessarily mean that you have a well-toned midsection. Your abdominals are muscles just like your chest, back, or arm muscles. Granted they don’t have the same growth potential as these more familiar muscles, but they’re muscles just the same. This means that to strengthen and tone them you’ll need to perform various types of resistance exercises.
Crunches every day but your waist is still growing?
Many people still think that if they perform a few crunches every day their abdominals will magically turn into a six-pack, regardless of what they’re eating. Not a chance! How can you expect to reveal rock hard abdominals if you are consuming foods that are increasing the fat layer above them? We know this sounds harsh but if you want to have a waistline that looks like you put in some effort achieving it, then this is exactly what you’ll have to do – put in some effort. If you are constantly eating junk food while slightly increasing the size of your abdominal muscles, then yes, you may actually make your waistline bigger. Your goal is to remove body fat while at the same time build the muscles in the abdominal region. This is the key to fat loss and developing an eye-catching midsection.
An Article Writing Philosophy - Do You Have One
Thousands of articles about writing articles are bouncing all over the internet and the printed media at any given time. Most of these articles are tips and advice, a few are about grammar and clarity and yet others are about subject matter and how to find it. A philosophy for writing articles is none of the above.
Simply put an article writing philosophy is not about how you write but why. Although it is acceptable to write articles for publicity or hits to your website it is not the strongest motive. Then there are those who write by researching the most sought after keywords on the net and write articles that lead people to those words, thus to their sites. This also qualifies as a reason to write but only in the most strained sense of the word.
Writers are somewhat like preachers, they have a soap box called the printed page and they have a message just like the minister, even if the subject matter is not homiletically inclined. As a young preacher I overheard someone say that “young preachers just have to say something, but older preachers may actually have something to say.” The first step in developing a writing philosophy is to ask your self this question…do I have something to say?
Professional people can quickly answer yes to the question of whether they have something to say. Years of study, training and experience put them ahead of others and all they may lack is just a bit of priming to know how to convey their knowledge by the written word. For those who are not professionals the next question should be “how do you see.” Some people are naturally endowed with a good eye. They don’t need to be politicians to have a good grasp of politics. They can predict, criticize, evaluate and comment on the whole sphere with great clarity and in some cases may affect the outcome of politics in some way. They weigh in so to speak on the subject. In case you think that isn’t so check out the vast opportunities for op-eds (opinion editorials) on the internet today. Thousands of political right and left wing sites are looking for people with good political vision. In this “of the people” society John Q Public is still sought for his view of political figures and things done in the political theatre.
Having a good “minds eye” applies to any field of interest whatsoever. Technicians put together complex electronic and telemetering devices in spacecraft but some people are weighing the result of all that space hardware on people, the environment or the future of man and their insight may be just as needed as the tiniest circuit board any techie can produce.
The motivation for writing an article may only be to provide information; at other times it may be to provide inspiration. Even anger could qualify as a good motive if you are particularly incensed over some injustice or bad behavior. It may sound all to rudimentary or perhaps old fashioned to say that if you are seeking a higher good to be done through your writing then you will always succeed. Sound corny? Think again. No one will ever reject an article that attempts to right a wrong, lift people up or provide a little light and comfort in a troubled world. If that is your motive then that is your philosophy. Good writing.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Yoga Philosophy for Beginners
Are you searching for much more from your Yoga class than just a workout? What deeper concepts should you learn in your Yoga practice? How can philosophy, taught by a Yoga teacher, change the quality of your life today?
There are so many Yoga philosophy concepts, but here are three that will help you shed many burdens in life. Yoga teachers vary on how much Yogic philosophy they will teach within a typical class. The cause of this may be the type of Yoga class, the perceived popularity, or the Yoga teacher’s choice.
In my Restorative Yoga classes, I teach much more Yogic philosophy than I do in a Vinyasa Yoga class. The same can be said for the amount of meditation time within my North Providence Restorative Yoga classes.
If you are wondering why - here is the answer: My Vinyasa Yoga students are usually younger and could really care less about Yogic philosophy or any other philosophy. They just want to work hard, so we work on mind and body only.
Am I selling out? You can be the judge, but these Yoga students will change with time, and will eventually want to see more of what Yoga has to offer. They are not in a big rush to learn any other form of Yoga, beyond the physically challenging styles - which is fine, because I need to get my exercise, too.
The following are three basic Yogic philosophy principles that will change your life, for the best, today. Try them, and you will make your life happy, simple, and less stressful. Make the change today, or tomorrow morning, for your overall health.
Loving kindness toward yourself, and others, starts from the moment you wake up. Stop criticizing yourself and others. Take positive action and you will see big changes. This is very hard to do, but try not to make negative comments about those who do not live up to your standards. If you can help by being a good example, that’s fine, but do not make it an issue, or a point of contention.
Never beat yourself up with criticism. If you have done wrong, make an effort to change and find solutions, but do not dwell on past mistakes. It will not be to your benefit to meditate on guilt.
Forgiveness is important for your survival and the quality of your own life. You have to let go and forgive others, for your own good. A grudge is a “prison sentence.” Let it go and you become free to do more important things. If you do not let it go, your overall health will suffer, as a result.
Being content with what you have is also known as Santosha. This will stop you from driving yourself crazy - when you are constantly competing with everyone around you. If a friend just bought a new house, feel good for him or her. Do not worry about what you do not have. Be happy about what you do have.
This applies to the physical aspect of Yoga, as well. If you see another student easily perform difficult asanas, be happy for him or her, but be proud of your own accomplishments. For example: You may have improved balance, learned a Pranayama technique to reduce stress, be eating a better diet, or feel the many benefits of meditation.
Make these three Yogic concepts a part of your daily life, and you will enjoy life’s many treasures.
There are so many Yoga philosophy concepts, but here are three that will help you shed many burdens in life. Yoga teachers vary on how much Yogic philosophy they will teach within a typical class. The cause of this may be the type of Yoga class, the perceived popularity, or the Yoga teacher’s choice.
In my Restorative Yoga classes, I teach much more Yogic philosophy than I do in a Vinyasa Yoga class. The same can be said for the amount of meditation time within my North Providence Restorative Yoga classes.
If you are wondering why - here is the answer: My Vinyasa Yoga students are usually younger and could really care less about Yogic philosophy or any other philosophy. They just want to work hard, so we work on mind and body only.
Am I selling out? You can be the judge, but these Yoga students will change with time, and will eventually want to see more of what Yoga has to offer. They are not in a big rush to learn any other form of Yoga, beyond the physically challenging styles - which is fine, because I need to get my exercise, too.
The following are three basic Yogic philosophy principles that will change your life, for the best, today. Try them, and you will make your life happy, simple, and less stressful. Make the change today, or tomorrow morning, for your overall health.
Loving kindness toward yourself, and others, starts from the moment you wake up. Stop criticizing yourself and others. Take positive action and you will see big changes. This is very hard to do, but try not to make negative comments about those who do not live up to your standards. If you can help by being a good example, that’s fine, but do not make it an issue, or a point of contention.
Never beat yourself up with criticism. If you have done wrong, make an effort to change and find solutions, but do not dwell on past mistakes. It will not be to your benefit to meditate on guilt.
Forgiveness is important for your survival and the quality of your own life. You have to let go and forgive others, for your own good. A grudge is a “prison sentence.” Let it go and you become free to do more important things. If you do not let it go, your overall health will suffer, as a result.
Being content with what you have is also known as Santosha. This will stop you from driving yourself crazy - when you are constantly competing with everyone around you. If a friend just bought a new house, feel good for him or her. Do not worry about what you do not have. Be happy about what you do have.
This applies to the physical aspect of Yoga, as well. If you see another student easily perform difficult asanas, be happy for him or her, but be proud of your own accomplishments. For example: You may have improved balance, learned a Pranayama technique to reduce stress, be eating a better diet, or feel the many benefits of meditation.
Make these three Yogic concepts a part of your daily life, and you will enjoy life’s many treasures.
The Philosophy Of The Long-Term Achievers
Historical data relating to the appreciation of real estate property values throughout the years has always been very comforting. In fact, housing has appreciated consistently an average of 7.5 percent per year over the past 30 years in Canada [source: Canadian real Estate Association], and an average of 7 percent per year in the United States over the same span of time [source: National Association of Realtors]. Which goes a long way to prove how sound real estate is as a wealth-generating vehicle, notwithstanding the several ups and downs the industry has gone through in both countries.
The economic explanation of this brilliant and consistent track record is relatively simple. Housing supply is produced using land, labor, and various inputs such as electricity and building materials, with the quantity of new supply determined by the cost of these inputs, the price of the existing stock of houses, and the technology of production. As real estate is a fixed and durable commodity and the land underneath is practically indestructible, real estate markets are modeled as a stock-over-flow market. About 98 percent of supply consists of the stock of existing houses, while about 2 percent consists of the flow of new development.
What drives the accumulation of wealth in real estate is the perpetual search for more surplus-value, that is the amount of the increase in the value of capital upon investment, i.e. the yield regardless of source or form. This is by no means unique only to real estate, as stock markets spin around the same principle as well. The difference, however, consists in the fact that real estate markets employ one economic variable that is entirely missing from stock markets: labor.
Real estate requires a constant supply of labor force, which can conserve and add value to inputs and capital assets, and thus create a higher value. The rationale behind this is that labor adds value by satisfying demand through production, since when people acquire income they tend to invest it, and the more people that acquire income the more people that tend to invest it. Therefore, there is a correlation between capital and employment in real estate or, if you will, between income and labor. An increase in levels of consumption sets forth an increase in prices caused by a corresponding increase in demand, in itself generated by a commensurate increase in the income-employment factor.
It follows, therefore, that real estate growth and appreciation of real capital assets are derived by the equilibrium of capital and investment with labor and employment, which is a characteristic unique to real estate. Which, then, explains the consistent track record of real estate as a wealth-generating venue. And which, moreover, further explains why ‘bubbles' are to be found only in the heads of the ‘bubbleologists' - that is all those who spend countless nights thinking about the next economic Apocalypse - but certainly not in real estate.
With all this in mind, one of the oft-touted clichés of real estate investing is that greed is the driving force that causes investors to jump into the market during times of real capital appreciation and expansion, and that fear is what drives the same investors to jump overboard during times of price deflation and decline. Personally I have never quite subscribed to this line of thought.
To be sure, when we experienced the recent 15 percent per year capital assets appreciation, I invariably stumbled across someone who wished the appreciation was 20 percent. So I guess that can be called ‘greediness'. And conversely, there is no question about the fact that the greatest fear of real estate market participants is to lose money, so there is a huge temptation to abandon the market when there is trouble ahead. But I believe that over time we have all become more sophisticated than this, and that investors have moved beyond the foregoing relatively simple explanation of greed and fear.
Market dips do not cause the panic that once did, not even among all those first-time Buyers or investors who have never experienced a market downturn. In fact, more and more people see periods of price decline as times of opportunity. And conversely, when the feeling is that real estate markets are very close to peak out or that are otherwise dangerously high, investors increasingly display the tendency to temper their expectations and prepare themselves psychologically for the eventual market pullback.
Therefore instead of greed and fear I believe it would be more proper to talk about hope and regret. As our expectations of good rates of return increase as the market increases, so do our hopes that capital appreciation will be even better than anticipated. When real estate begins to lose steam, as it is the case today in many areas, it is regret the feeling we experience when we lose money, even if it is money that we lose only ‘on paper' since we do not intend to sell. Econometric research, in fact, has long established that consumers put the value of a dollar ‘lost' at least twice as high as the value of a dollar ‘gained'. Put differently, any investor would have to earn two dollars to compensate for the psychological drawback of each dollar lost.
To experience regret is not the same as being disappointed. The difference stands in the degree of quantity of the loss perceived by investors. For instance, if a Buyer hoped to make a 15 percent return out of the sale of a real capital asset and only makes 10 percent, he will be disappointed but not regretful. If, on the other hand, the same Buyer will only make 5 percent - or no return at all - he will be regretful.
What separates long-term achievers from the rest of the crowd is the psychological capability to not let market cycles dictate their investment decisions. More particularly, in the ebb and flow of real estate, those who are most successful maintain their strategy throughout market cycles. This is, in ultimate analysis, what distinguishes investors from speculators.
The role of speculators in a free market economy is to absorb risk and add very little liquidity to the market place. In fact, more often than not, speculators will reduce market liquidity by inflating prices - the principal effect of speculation. Investors, on the other hand, play an entirely different role. In theoretical Economics the term ‘investment' refers to the purchase and holding of capital goods, which are not instantaneously consumed - i.e. sold for profit - but, rather, used at a later date. In short-term speculation, the measured risk of the acquisition is considerably higher and, in ultimate analysis, no better option than the leveraged capital appreciation through investment holding.
The economic explanation of this brilliant and consistent track record is relatively simple. Housing supply is produced using land, labor, and various inputs such as electricity and building materials, with the quantity of new supply determined by the cost of these inputs, the price of the existing stock of houses, and the technology of production. As real estate is a fixed and durable commodity and the land underneath is practically indestructible, real estate markets are modeled as a stock-over-flow market. About 98 percent of supply consists of the stock of existing houses, while about 2 percent consists of the flow of new development.
What drives the accumulation of wealth in real estate is the perpetual search for more surplus-value, that is the amount of the increase in the value of capital upon investment, i.e. the yield regardless of source or form. This is by no means unique only to real estate, as stock markets spin around the same principle as well. The difference, however, consists in the fact that real estate markets employ one economic variable that is entirely missing from stock markets: labor.
Real estate requires a constant supply of labor force, which can conserve and add value to inputs and capital assets, and thus create a higher value. The rationale behind this is that labor adds value by satisfying demand through production, since when people acquire income they tend to invest it, and the more people that acquire income the more people that tend to invest it. Therefore, there is a correlation between capital and employment in real estate or, if you will, between income and labor. An increase in levels of consumption sets forth an increase in prices caused by a corresponding increase in demand, in itself generated by a commensurate increase in the income-employment factor.
It follows, therefore, that real estate growth and appreciation of real capital assets are derived by the equilibrium of capital and investment with labor and employment, which is a characteristic unique to real estate. Which, then, explains the consistent track record of real estate as a wealth-generating venue. And which, moreover, further explains why ‘bubbles' are to be found only in the heads of the ‘bubbleologists' - that is all those who spend countless nights thinking about the next economic Apocalypse - but certainly not in real estate.
With all this in mind, one of the oft-touted clichés of real estate investing is that greed is the driving force that causes investors to jump into the market during times of real capital appreciation and expansion, and that fear is what drives the same investors to jump overboard during times of price deflation and decline. Personally I have never quite subscribed to this line of thought.
To be sure, when we experienced the recent 15 percent per year capital assets appreciation, I invariably stumbled across someone who wished the appreciation was 20 percent. So I guess that can be called ‘greediness'. And conversely, there is no question about the fact that the greatest fear of real estate market participants is to lose money, so there is a huge temptation to abandon the market when there is trouble ahead. But I believe that over time we have all become more sophisticated than this, and that investors have moved beyond the foregoing relatively simple explanation of greed and fear.
Market dips do not cause the panic that once did, not even among all those first-time Buyers or investors who have never experienced a market downturn. In fact, more and more people see periods of price decline as times of opportunity. And conversely, when the feeling is that real estate markets are very close to peak out or that are otherwise dangerously high, investors increasingly display the tendency to temper their expectations and prepare themselves psychologically for the eventual market pullback.
Therefore instead of greed and fear I believe it would be more proper to talk about hope and regret. As our expectations of good rates of return increase as the market increases, so do our hopes that capital appreciation will be even better than anticipated. When real estate begins to lose steam, as it is the case today in many areas, it is regret the feeling we experience when we lose money, even if it is money that we lose only ‘on paper' since we do not intend to sell. Econometric research, in fact, has long established that consumers put the value of a dollar ‘lost' at least twice as high as the value of a dollar ‘gained'. Put differently, any investor would have to earn two dollars to compensate for the psychological drawback of each dollar lost.
To experience regret is not the same as being disappointed. The difference stands in the degree of quantity of the loss perceived by investors. For instance, if a Buyer hoped to make a 15 percent return out of the sale of a real capital asset and only makes 10 percent, he will be disappointed but not regretful. If, on the other hand, the same Buyer will only make 5 percent - or no return at all - he will be regretful.
What separates long-term achievers from the rest of the crowd is the psychological capability to not let market cycles dictate their investment decisions. More particularly, in the ebb and flow of real estate, those who are most successful maintain their strategy throughout market cycles. This is, in ultimate analysis, what distinguishes investors from speculators.
The role of speculators in a free market economy is to absorb risk and add very little liquidity to the market place. In fact, more often than not, speculators will reduce market liquidity by inflating prices - the principal effect of speculation. Investors, on the other hand, play an entirely different role. In theoretical Economics the term ‘investment' refers to the purchase and holding of capital goods, which are not instantaneously consumed - i.e. sold for profit - but, rather, used at a later date. In short-term speculation, the measured risk of the acquisition is considerably higher and, in ultimate analysis, no better option than the leveraged capital appreciation through investment holding.
Multiple Homes Decoration Guide - The Tenant Philosophy
Finding the time to decorate your own home can be quite a task. The concept of home decor and its place in each room in the house can be very overwhelming to normal thought processes. Imagine for a moment that you are a homeowner and own multiple homes. Finding the time to do two or more homes is probably impossible if you are doing it by yourself. What will make your job easier is taking into account the personality of the tenant that lives in each of your rentals.
Let's consider furniture for a moment. Furniture is one of the most important aspects of the decor of your home. An example of this would be that you want an outdoor bench to sit and relax upon when you sit out on your patio or in your garden to enjoy the outdoors. If you're tenant was the rugged type, you might use large rocks and rough textured furniture to match the large and rough exterior of your tenant. However, if you're tenant is very calm and nature oriented, you might want to put a more Japanese style in the backyard to cater more to the personality of this tenant.
For indoor decor, it depends upon the shape of the room, the color of the room, which room it is, and finally the personality of the person that is living in each home. If you are going to redecorate the bathroom, you would use the same philosophy as you did with the exterior decor. If the tenant were a computer programmer, most of the bathroom decor might be a modern or metallic appearance. If the tenant were rough and rugged, all wood fixtures would probably be apropos.
No matter which room of the house that you decided to redecorate, by taking the tenant into consideration, you will probably end up with a longtime tenant and you will have variety in each of the homes that you own. By using this multiple homes decoration guide, it is easy to understand not only how to decorate your home, but the reasoning behind it as well.
2007 Trends in Military Strategy and Philosophy
Much has been written on human warfare. There are countless volumes of memoirs, insight and knowledge, which has been passed down. There are the classics such as Carl von Clauswitz “On War” and Sun Tzu “The Art of War” and even more recently “Guerilla Warfare” by Colonel Boyd. And yet none of these address the new paradigm of the future of robotic warfare to the degree that these new technologies are taking us in the near future. An entirely new standard for philosophical consideration must be addressed along with new strategies to use such technologies, as efficiently as possible to win.
Wars in the Future will be fought robotically and fundamentally differently. In fact it may look more like Futuristic Science Fiction Movie than anything we are use to watching along the lines of World War II movies or General Patton flicks as the Allied Forces battle the evils of NAZI Germany. The last major wars using conventional style war machines may have already been fought and although there will no doubt be battles, skirmishes and smaller wars fought that way in the future you will not see many first world nations fighting using these methods.
This does not mean rogue nation-states and third world nations will not attempt to use such methods against larger more technologically advanced nations, just that their resistance and the life span of their fighting forces maybe extremely short lived. In this book we will discuss the principles, which will most likely guide the future of human warfare and the strategies, which must be deployed in order to win. I thank you for joining me in this discussion and perhaps this article is of interest to propel thought.
Wars in the Future will be fought robotically and fundamentally differently. In fact it may look more like Futuristic Science Fiction Movie than anything we are use to watching along the lines of World War II movies or General Patton flicks as the Allied Forces battle the evils of NAZI Germany. The last major wars using conventional style war machines may have already been fought and although there will no doubt be battles, skirmishes and smaller wars fought that way in the future you will not see many first world nations fighting using these methods.
This does not mean rogue nation-states and third world nations will not attempt to use such methods against larger more technologically advanced nations, just that their resistance and the life span of their fighting forces maybe extremely short lived. In this book we will discuss the principles, which will most likely guide the future of human warfare and the strategies, which must be deployed in order to win. I thank you for joining me in this discussion and perhaps this article is of interest to propel thought.
The Slight Edge Philosophy
The slight edge philosophy is the idea of performing either simple disciplines or simple errors in judgments that will either build or destroy your business. The simple disciplines are what you want to get accustom to. I promise you that if you follow simple disciplines you will be able to double, triple, or even quadruple your income with in the next twelve months.
It is not difficult at all to build a massively successful MLM business if you follow the simple disciplines, such as, making your phone calls every day, following up with people consistently, going to all the business briefings, even if you have seen them a hundred times, doing your 15 minutes of personal development a day, or doing your exposures every day. You already know what you have to do to be successful in the business, you just have to do it.
It's easy to do all the things that I've just mentioned. All you have to do to make an exposure is go up to someone and tell them about what you're doing.
Is it really that difficult to open your mouth? It's easy,
but it's also easy not to do, and that is the trap that so many people fall into when they are in this business. They fall into the trap of performing simple errors in judgment, rather than performing the simple daily disciplines that are going to create them a more preferable compounded effect.
I mean, think about it. Let's take smoking for example. You smoke a cigarette today; It's just one cigarette, right? Correct! That one cigarette isn't going to give you cancer, but once you get in the habit of doing it on a daily basis, you probably will get cancer, because of the compounded effect that all started with that one cigarette. That simple error of judgment compounded over a series of years, is what mattered. It's the small things that don't seem to make a difference today that are the things that make a huge difference in the future.
There are no one liners that are going to get people into your business, what you have to grasp are philosophies, empowering philosophies, because your philosophies will drive your actions, and your actions determine you results, and your results determine your lifestyle. Therefore, I suggest you adopt this Slight Edge Philosophy and think about it on a daily basis.
The problem is that most people stop performing the simple disciplines before the compound effect kicks in.
So, the choice is yours, there are Two path's you can take!!!
Good Luck
Ab Training Philosophy
Do you have the right fat loss philosophy for six-pack abs?
For most people it seems like the hardest thing in the world to accomplish. Yet people from all over the world spend thousands of dollars on the latest gimmicks for developing that elusive six-pack. Personal trainers can’t keep up with the number of requests from newbies looking for quick fixes to fat loss and develop a ripped midsection.
We hope you can handle the truth about achieving a fat-free ripped midsection. It doesn't matter how many sit-ups or crunches you rep out, or what new machine you see on a home shopping channel; if you don't reduce your body fat percentage you will never see those ab muscles that have been on the missing list since high school. For eye-catching, rock hard abdominals, you need to get rid of the fat covering them.
The fallacy of spot reduction
You want more bluntness. Despite the marketing approach of some of these home shopping channels, you can’t spot reduce. By this we mean just training the areas you want to shrink – especially the abs - and expect to see a whole new midsection. Achieving a toned six-pack waist is a lot more involved. The body takes fat from all over the body, not just any one area. And it does this at its own pace.
Ignore the Gimmicks!
We live in a quick-fix society. If a pill can’t solve it a machine can. Unfortunately this rarely works and it certainly doesn’t produce results when it comes to ab training. Most of those gadgets you see on TV are a waste of your hard-earned money. They are designed with one purpose in mind – to make the manufacturers rich. They’ll do virtually nothing for fat loss and shrinking your midsection. No piece of equipment will give you rock hard abdominals and the ripped midsection that you crave. So go ahead. Hang upside down for just “three easy installments off $39.99.” While the blood is rushing to your head, your money is rushing to the manufacturer’s bank account. And you’ll still have a fat waist!
Weight training - The real key for firming up your abs and losing body fat
Now that we’ve made you aware that the only way to bring out your abs is to get rid of the body fat that’s covering them you are probably thinking, "OK now what’s next?” Well first you need to understand that a small waist doesn't necessarily mean that you have a well-toned midsection. Your abdominals are muscles just like your chest, back, or arm muscles. Granted they don’t have the same growth potential as these more familiar muscles, but they’re muscles just the same. This means that to strengthen and tone them you’ll need to perform various types of resistance exercises.
Crunches every day but your waist is still growing?
Many people still think that if they perform a few crunches every day their abdominals will magically turn into a six-pack, regardless of what they’re eating. Not a chance! How can you expect to reveal rock hard abdominals if you are consuming foods that are increasing the fat layer above them? We know this sounds harsh but if you want to have a waistline that looks like you put in some effort achieving it, then this is exactly what you’ll have to do – put in some effort. If you are constantly eating junk food while slightly increasing the size of your abdominal muscles, then yes, you may actually make your waistline bigger. Your goal is to remove body fat while at the same time build the muscles in the abdominal region. This is the key to fat loss and developing an eye-catching midsection.
My Quotations
The NSTP theory converts the narrow possibility of truth in the proposition – anything that is logically possible is empirically possible – into a healthy probability.
In Christianity there is divine race; in Hinduism there are divine races.
The Indian president plays politics with his entire family; the American president plays politics with the entire humanity.
If I have any shame it is the shame of being a human.
God is the best insinuator.
I know a great deal about God but I’m not so sure if He exists.
I have known a great deal about God but I know not if He really exists.
When I despair my only refuge is philosophy.
Philosophy is the only refuge of this despaired soul.
I am a philosophic refugee.
Heaven is the place where a lion does not kill a goat to make a living. He merely has those states of consciousness, which make him feel that he has had a goat and that his hunger is quenched. For that's what ultimately matters. And my theory points to a direction that could lead us to such heaven.
In the matter of Truth I am an agnostic.
Regarding Truth I am an agnostic.
I am an agnostic when it comes to Truth.
Technology conditions morality.
My desired audience is not Man, but God. But the tragedy is that I can never surprise my audience.
I wish to live one more life only if it were that of a superhuman.
We are merely states of consciousness, but God is a soul.
God is anomalous and heretic.
War is an abstraction, not a reality. In reality there is no war.
Reality – a mere sequential execution of non-spatial states of consciousness – is never at war.
Reality is never at war.
This world is the best of all possible worlds in the only sense that it is the best of all possible questions.
This world is the best of all possible questions.
The entire history is nothing but a mere fictitious context of my own life.
God is on the side of the one who has understood his question.
Man is a born slave – slave of his desires.
Christianity is a humanitarian’s humbug.
Cries and anger are contrary voices of frustration.
Take the pure love out of pure sex and what shall remain is either a pure humour or pure vulgarity.
To get married is to get divorced from romance.
Marriage is divorce from romance.
Virginity is sexual poverty.
Virginity is poverty in sexuality.
Life is a divine seduction.
Truth is often uncovered by seeming imprudence.
The key to success is discipline; indiscipline the master key.
If discipline is the key to success, indiscipline is the master key.
The key to success is discipline, but indiscipline is the master key.
Man is the strongest as well as the weakest of all animals. He is the strongest for he is the most intelligent one and the weakest for there exist the maximum number of conditions to make him the most miserable one
In Christianity there is divine race; in Hinduism there are divine races.
The Indian president plays politics with his entire family; the American president plays politics with the entire humanity.
If I have any shame it is the shame of being a human.
God is the best insinuator.
I know a great deal about God but I’m not so sure if He exists.
I have known a great deal about God but I know not if He really exists.
When I despair my only refuge is philosophy.
Philosophy is the only refuge of this despaired soul.
I am a philosophic refugee.
Heaven is the place where a lion does not kill a goat to make a living. He merely has those states of consciousness, which make him feel that he has had a goat and that his hunger is quenched. For that's what ultimately matters. And my theory points to a direction that could lead us to such heaven.
In the matter of Truth I am an agnostic.
Regarding Truth I am an agnostic.
I am an agnostic when it comes to Truth.
Technology conditions morality.
My desired audience is not Man, but God. But the tragedy is that I can never surprise my audience.
I wish to live one more life only if it were that of a superhuman.
We are merely states of consciousness, but God is a soul.
God is anomalous and heretic.
War is an abstraction, not a reality. In reality there is no war.
Reality – a mere sequential execution of non-spatial states of consciousness – is never at war.
Reality is never at war.
This world is the best of all possible worlds in the only sense that it is the best of all possible questions.
This world is the best of all possible questions.
The entire history is nothing but a mere fictitious context of my own life.
God is on the side of the one who has understood his question.
Man is a born slave – slave of his desires.
Christianity is a humanitarian’s humbug.
Cries and anger are contrary voices of frustration.
Take the pure love out of pure sex and what shall remain is either a pure humour or pure vulgarity.
To get married is to get divorced from romance.
Marriage is divorce from romance.
Virginity is sexual poverty.
Virginity is poverty in sexuality.
Life is a divine seduction.
Truth is often uncovered by seeming imprudence.
The key to success is discipline; indiscipline the master key.
If discipline is the key to success, indiscipline is the master key.
The key to success is discipline, but indiscipline is the master key.
Man is the strongest as well as the weakest of all animals. He is the strongest for he is the most intelligent one and the weakest for there exist the maximum number of conditions to make him the most miserable one
Philosophy
It is possible to have any external object of my will as mine. In other words, a maxim to this effect--were it to become law - that any object on which the will can be exerted must remain objectively in itself without an owner, as res nullius, is contrary to the principle of right. For an object of any act of my will, is something that it would be physically within my power to use. Now, suppose there were things that by right should absolutely not be in our power, or, in other words, that it would be wrong or inconsistent with the freedom of all, according to universal law, to make use of them. On this supposition, freedom would so far be depriving itself of the use of its voluntary activity, in thus putting useable objects out of all possibility of use. In practical relations, this would be to annihilate them, by making them res nullius, notwithstanding the fact that acts of will in relation to such things would formally harmonize, in the actual use of them, with the external freedom of all according to universal laws. Now the pure practical reason lays down only formal laws as principles to regulate the exercise of the will; and therefore abstracts from the matter of the act of will, as regards the other qualities of the object, which is considered only in so far as it is an object of the activity of the will. Hence the practical reason cannot contain, in reference to such an object, an absolute prohibition of its use, because this would involve a contradiction of external freedom with itself. An object of my free will, however, is one which I have the physical capability of making some use of at will, since its use stands in my power (in potentia). This is to be distinguished from having the object brought under my disposal (in potestatem meam reductum), which supposes not a capability merely, but also a particular act of the free-will.
But in order to consider something merely as an object of my will as such, it is sufficient to be conscious that I have it in my power. It is therefore an assumption a priori of the practical reason to regard and treat every object within the range of my free exercise of will as objectively a possible mine or thine. his postulate may be called "a permissive law" of the practical reason, as giving us a special title which we could not evolve out of the mere conceptions of right generally. And this title constitutes the right to impose upon all others an obligation, not otherwise laid upon them, to abstain from the use of certain objects of our free choice, because we have already taken them into our possession. Reason wills that this shall be recognised as a valid principle, and it does so as practical reason: and it is enabled by means of this postulate a priori to enlarge its range of activity in practice. Any one who would assert the right to a thing as his must be in possession of it as an object. Were he not its actual possessor or owner, he could not be wronged or injured by the use which another might make of it without his consent. For, should anything external to him, and in no way connected with him by right, affect this object, it could not affect himself as a subject, nor do him any wrong, unless he stood in a relation of ownership to it.
2007 Transitions from the Philosophy of 2006
Throughout history mankind has pondered what if scenarios and philosophy. Today perhaps there is less of such thought in many cultures due to the high-paced and high-stress societies, yet in some cases folks live much more comfortably then ever before. In fact even the Kings and Queens of Europe did not have air-conditioning, power or microwave ovens. They did not have telephones, cell phones, GPS or satellite radio and Television. Indeed there was no Internet to instantly look up information and there were not anywhere the number of books available even in the smallest library of today or chain bookstore.
Today people know the answers to many of their questions as common knowledge. For this reason some folks have decided not to think, reason or philosophize but rather look up all the answers, assuming they are readily available. Yet even so, you might be surprised that not all the information you think about or might have questions to is available. In fact the more you think the more things you will find that are not available even on the World Wide Web.
In my many articles I discuss this phenomena and introduce you to philosophical thoughts, which are not mainstream, but rather simple observations taken to a higher level. As you read perhaps you will also develop your talents to think in the abstract. The “Consider This” comment has to do with a request of the reader to think on the subject, perhaps come up with other points of contention or continue the abstract thought thru concept based thinking. Perhaps you might enjoy this exercise to strengthen your brain and expand your mind.
I thank you for reading all my philosophical articles and hope that you might have had such abstract thoughts yourself, so “Consider This; Philosophy of 2007” Thanks again. Perhaps this article is of interest to propel thought in 2007
Edison's Success Philosophy
Get ready for a breakthrough!
Whew… How enthusiastic I am now as I’m going to share with you one of the ‘AHA’ moments in my life.
What I’m going to talk with you about has changed my life forever and helped me achieve massive success.
I will reveal to you the secret of manifestation; how to turn your dreams into reality.
Moreover, this secret is from one of the greatest historical figures ever. This is a profound secret from one of the greatest minds ever known in the human history.
So, are you excited?
Say YES.
Are you ready?
Say YES.
Here we go…
The secret I’m going to reveal to you now is…
EDISON’S SUCCESS PHILOSOPHY
Great! Isn’t it?!
*** Here it is: Success consists of, first, defining the desired invention or product and then, second, experimenting until the correct method is found.
What an awesome, simple and profound philosophy for success!!
Since I knew this philosophy I started to turn more of my dreams into reality.
Edison’s success philosophy consists of two steps:
* The first step is to: Define your desired invention or product.
It is the simple answer to this question: WHAT DO YOU WANT?
You must define exactly your desired goals. Your desired outcome must be crystal clear that if anyone rather than you read or hear it, then he can easily achieve it exactly as you wanted it.
“I want to lose weight”… This is not a clearly defined product, because it can be achieved in millions of ways. One person can lose 1 Kilo while another can lose 10 Kilos and so on. It is neither clear nor specific.
“I want to lose 10 Kilos in three months” … This is a well defined product.
So, before you start taking action to achieve any desired goal, you must first make sure that you clearly know what you want.
The most important thing you must know is the driving force of your life; the reason why you exist. What is your purpose in life? What is your life all about?
You must know it and clearly define it in order to live with meaning, passion and satisfaction. Otherwise, when you achieve a certain goal you will face the shocking question: “What is next?!”…
* The second step in Edison’s Success philosophy is to: experiment until the correct method is found.
This step was a breakthrough for me. Before knowing it, I was wondering why I’d never been able to set a correct and complete plan the first time. Why I had to always change my plan? And if I have to always do that, then why is planning useful?
After discovering this amazing secret, I found the answer.
First, your plan must be very flexible because IT WILL CHANGE. As you move towards your goals you will discover new horizons. Your mind will stretch and your knowledge will increase so you will see better routes and accordingly you will change your plan.
But you wouldn’t be able to start without having the initial plan. Otherwise you would fail because you would be walking blindly without direction.
The first plan will give you the sense of the right track of exploration and discovery. Then you will improve it and even change it as you understand and see more.
So, be ready for failures, obstacles and difficulties and be open to learn the hidden lessons in them. Because each lesson will help you come closer to the correct method.
Edison invented the light bulb after 9999 trials!!! He didn’t consider them as failures. He perceived them as experiments. He didn’t give up saying that it is impossible to achieve this goal. Instead, he continued with his experiments believing that the correct method is on its way.
Be flexible and open to learn and experiment until you find the right way to achieve your goals and dreams.
Now you’ve discovered the success philosophy of one of the greatest names in the history of mankind.
Just put it into action.
Start by defining exactly your purpose in life and then develop a set of goals and plans to fulfill that purpose. This way your life will be focused and meaningful.
Then try a method after the other until you find the correct method to achieve your dreams.
My friend, success is a choice and it all starts with knowing what you want.
Rise above the crowd and strive for ultimate success.
You can make a difference.
I believe in you.
2007 Online Article Writing - Philosophy Concept
If you have something you would like to say to the world or have some expertise to share to help others, then perhaps you have considered online article writing. It is an extremely good way to the word out for a non-profit cause, political stance, religious message and can even be used to help make money online. You see, there are many folks making money on the Internet these days and some are doing very well, however most barely pay the bills. Still those who are borderline broke, often do it as a labor of love and they are indeed quite content covering costs.
This is all well and good and it provides opportunity, challenge and hope for small home-based business folks and up and coming entrepreneurs as well. Everyone who runs an online business knows that they must have Internet Traffic to their websites first and then they must convert those “hits” or folks clicking into their website into sales.
I can tell you that online article writing to get the message out works because after writing over 10,000 articles with a byline at the bottom and a link to our Online Think Tank we noticed our traffic meter pegged for days on end, even in the middle of the night. Then found out that the articles had become syndicated, RSS (Real Simple Syndication), all over the world and in China, Middle East and other nations in Europe, well they are all on different times zones. But of course this would happen, as the World Turns, we should have considered that.
In this venue we should discuss how to get the most out of your article authoring and online article writing, where to submit your articles and secrets to accelerating your online article writing efforts. I appreciate you considering the topics in this article and hope you can get started right away in increasing your online business. Perhaps this article is of interest to propel thought in 2007
An Article Writing Philosophy - Do You Have One
Thousands of articles about writing articles are bouncing all over the internet and the printed media at any given time. Most of these articles are tips and advice, a few are about grammar and clarity and yet others are about subject matter and how to find it. A philosophy for writing articles is none of the above.
Simply put an article writing philosophy is not about how you write but why. Although it is acceptable to write articles for publicity or hits to your website it is not the strongest motive. Then there are those who write by researching the most sought after keywords on the net and write articles that lead people to those words, thus to their sites. This also qualifies as a reason to write but only in the most strained sense of the word.
Writers are somewhat like preachers, they have a soap box called the printed page and they have a message just like the minister, even if the subject matter is not homiletically inclined. As a young preacher I overheard someone say that “young preachers just have to say something, but older preachers may actually have something to say.” The first step in developing a writing philosophy is to ask your self this question…do I have something to say?
Professional people can quickly answer yes to the question of whether they have something to say. Years of study, training and experience put them ahead of others and all they may lack is just a bit of priming to know how to convey their knowledge by the written word. For those who are not professionals the next question should be “how do you see.” Some people are naturally endowed with a good eye. They don’t need to be politicians to have a good grasp of politics. They can predict, criticize, evaluate and comment on the whole sphere with great clarity and in some cases may affect the outcome of politics in some way. They weigh in so to speak on the subject. In case you think that isn’t so check out the vast opportunities for op-eds (opinion editorials) on the internet today. Thousands of political right and left wing sites are looking for people with good political vision. In this “of the people” society John Q Public is still sought for his view of political figures and things done in the political theatre.
Having a good “minds eye” applies to any field of interest whatsoever. Technicians put together complex electronic and telemetering devices in spacecraft but some people are weighing the result of all that space hardware on people, the environment or the future of man and their insight may be just as needed as the tiniest circuit board any techie can produce.
The motivation for writing an article may only be to provide information; at other times it may be to provide inspiration. Even anger could qualify as a good motive if you are particularly incensed over some injustice or bad behavior. It may sound all to rudimentary or perhaps old fashioned to say that if you are seeking a higher good to be done through your writing then you will always succeed. Sound corny? Think again. No one will ever reject an article that attempts to right a wrong, lift people up or provide a little light and comfort in a troubled world. If that is your motive then that is your philosophy. Good writing.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Truth in the Fire: C.S. Lewis and Pursuit of Truth Today
TRUTH AND LOGIC
C. S. Lewis was devoted to the pursuit of truth, and was sure he had captured or been given a great deal of it. His confidence in this respect did not make him arrogant and close-minded, but was, to the contrary, the foundation of his remarkable humility and openness. In his third BBC lecture under the heading, "The Case for Christianity," later published in Mere Christianity, he responds to those who might think he had been too hard on human beings in his previous lecture. There he had pointed out that human beings constantly fail to behave as they expect others to behave. He says to the potential objector: "I am not concerned at present with blame; I am trying to find out the truth. And from that point of view the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not being what it ought to be, has certain consequences."
This is a very characteristic statement for Lewis. He understood pursuit of truth to require devotion to logic as well, and hence to the following out of the consequences of truths discovered. Lewis took logic very seriously as a primary means of securing truth and avoiding falsehood. In the third BBC course of lectures, titled "Christian Behavior," he comments that "We are now getting to the point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different behavior." "Religion," he continues, "involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the right sailing of the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set." (MC p. 58)
The Christian tradition, as well as its alternatives, must--on his view--essentially contain claims about reality which are either true or false. The fundamental task we face is to determine which claims are true and what logically follows from them. Only so can we come to terms with reality and successfully direct our lives into harmonious relationships with it.
In response to anticipated complaints about the difficulty of basic Christian doctrine he remarks further on in his BBC lectures: "Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim is false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult--at least as difficult as modern physics, and for the same reason." (p. 121)
Now Lewis held what has traditionally been called the "correspondence theory of truth." This could properly be called the classical theory of truth, because it was held with little exception up to the 19th Century. He held, in other words, that truth is a matter of a belief or idea (representation, statement) corresponding to reality. In the course of rejecting the view that moral laws are mere social conventions he insists that they are, to the contrary, "Real truths." "If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazi less true," he says to his reader, "there must be something--some Real morality--for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each meant merely 'the town I am imagining in my own head', how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all." (MC p. 11; cp. Abolition of Man, pp. 27-29)
THE CONTEMPORARY DISDAIN OF TRUTH: "POSTMODERNISM"
The case for "Real truth" is, unfortunately, much more complicated and harder to make stand up (or even get a hearing) now than it was when Lewis wrote these words in the early 1940's. Not intrinsically or in itself, of course; for that does not change. But in terms of numerous popular presumptions that have arisen, mistakenly, against "Real truth." Nowadays truth itself, in the sense in which Lewis and most of his contemporaries still thought it to be of central human importance, is in the fire.
To be sure, this is not exactly a new thing. David Hume long ago (mid 18th Century) consigned truth to the flames in the famous passage at the end of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. There he advised us to look through our libraries and ask of each book whether it deals with matters mathematical or sense-perceptible (feelable). If it does not, he said, we should "commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
Truth, of course, is not a matter of quantity, not mathematically describable; and it also is not sense-perceptible or feelable. Truth is not something physical or "naturalistic," as we would now say. And our general intellectual, artistic and academic culture has by this time caught up with Hume in rejecting "Real truth." Two centuries of cultural development were needed for that. Truth, along with goodness and beauty (both of which David Hume manipulated into something feelable or sentimental), are no longer generally thought of as realities independent of human attitudes. And that, of course, is simply what it means to say they are not "objective." Lewis believed they were objective, and spent much of his time explaining and defending their objectivity.
In the face of present attitudes, however, even earnestness about truth--also about goodness and beauty--is definitely uncool. It might be tolerated in a Freshman. But he or she would be expected to wise up quickly, and might pay a stiff price for not doing so. The idea of devoting one's life to truth, goodness or beauty is now quaint if not ridiculous, on the campus as in the corporation. They are not considered to be objective realities against which human life is or can be measured.
That is certainly the message that comes to us from the polymorphous clouds of Postmodernism(s) that hang over all our intellectual, artistic and cultural life now. Christopher Norris, one of the very best writers on these subjects, points out that in Postmodernism's most emphatic representatives, such as Jean Baudrillard and Richard Rorty, "the ideas of truth, validity or right reason simply drop out of the picture." (What's Wrong With Postmodernism, p. 165) There is for them no possibility of achieving "an accurate match between real-world objects or states of affairs and concepts of pure understanding." (p. 167) "The idea that one can criticize existing beliefs from some superior vantage-point of truth, reason or scientific method," Norris continues (168), is considered a self-delusion deriving from the Enlightenment period of Western thought--by now supposedly shown by history to be a delusion.
Of course Baudrillard and Rorty still believe that their own views of truth, validity and reason are true, valid and reasonable. They believe that their own views of how language and thought relate to reality present us with how things really are. (Let them simply state the contrary if they do not.) And I have noticed that the most emphatic of Postmodernists turn coldly modern when discussing their fringe benefits or other matters that make a great difference to their practical life. They also--on many occasions during each day--discover that some of their ideas, beliefs and statements about very ordinary matters do (or do not) match up to the actual condition of what those beliefs and statements are about. They share this with every competent human being. (They thought their keys were on the table, for example, but found that they were wrong.) But a powerful thrust of the Zeitgeist such as Postmodernism is not to be impeded by little details such as these.
A DEVIL'S ADVICE
Lewis clearly saw the early stages of the present situation, though I doubt he could have begun to imagine the attitude toward "Real Truth" maintained now by its contemporary "cultured despisers."
In the fabulous Screwtape's first letter we find him advising his nephew devil, Wormwood, that argument is not the way to keep his, Wormwood's, "patient" from the Enemy's (God's) clutches. "That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier," he says. "At that time," Screwtape continues "humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that," Screwtape points out. "Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about." (Screwtape Letters, p. 7-8)
Instead of argument, which, Screwtape says, "moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground," Wormwood is advised to hold his patient's attention--just as David Hume would have it--to the "stream of immediate sense experiences," and to "Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'." (p. 8) In that stream of sensations, of course, neither truth nor logic is to be found.
ON FACTS AND REALITY
One gathers from all this, I think, a clear and accurate impression of Lewis' outlook on truth and its vital importance for human existence. Now we turn to some reflections--in the spirit if not with the power of this friend of truth--on the contemporary situation of Real truth, as it stands in the flames of current disdain and ridicule. We begin with some clarification of what a fact is, what it is to be real, and then what a truth is.
We all have, as a part of the equipment necessary to enable us to navigate the course of our existence, the ability to discern properties things have and relations things stand in.
A child quickly learns to distinguish milk from coca-cola, and to tell which bag of candy or scoop of ice cream is larger. As time goes on it learns to articulate what goes into such differences, and to distinguish, not just milk from coca-cola, but the different properties--flavor, color, etc.--that enter into such differences as that between milk and coca-cola or dog and cat.
Our education as human beings largely consists in becoming able to identify and interrelate the very large number of properties and relations that are distributed over the various types of entities that make up our self and our world. Such ability is essential to human competence. One could hardly cross the street, much less hold a job of the simplest sort without it. Now we must hold onto these ideas of properties and relations as we continue.
If an entity, regardless of type, has a particular property or relation, its having that property or relation makes up what we here call a fact. This is an extremely common notion, and one that has received much attention from philosophers. (Cp. B. Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 1st Lecture) It is, for example, a fact that I am standing before you now or that you are reading this paragraph.
Reality, then, taken as a whole, is the sum total of facts. And to be real, to exist, is to be a constituent in a fact.
Please bear with me a moment longer on these painfully abstract, but crucial, points.
Any object of thought or discourse that actually has properties or relations exists or is real; and, conversely, any object that exists has some properties and relations. To illustrate, an object--e.g. Pegasus the winged horse of mythology--does not exist, is not real. That means that the relevant properties we associate with him (horseness, wingness, etc.) do not belong to anything in unison. If they did that thing would be Pegasus, and Pegasus would exist.
But now please notice. Being a fact has nothing to do, in general, with being-thought-of or being-mentioned or being-described, or, as the philosopher W. V. O Quine would say, "being in the range of a bound variable." Currently this is widely denied. Many people now take facts and their constituents to be created by consciousness (individual or collective) or by language or culture. Wondrously creative powers are attributed to human thought.
But upon careful reflection it is surely clear that a universe just like ours except devoid of conscious beings and their languages would still be a universe of facts and existents--facts such as the relative sizes and positions of the planets in our solar system, or the structure and habits of gastropods, or the inner structure of carbon atoms. Thought and language, being what they are, have no ability to produce or to restructure the objects which they are about: that is, to "construct" them. Of course thought and language (culture) are themselves facts or realities, and as such they have real consequences in the real world. But that is a very different matter from constructing objects by merely thinking or speaking of them.
There is, I know, a long and influential Constructionist story running from Descartes to Nietzsche and the Logical Positivists. Modern Philosophy is burdened with fundamental errors about the connection between the mind and its world of objects. We cannot detail them here. But it is one of the ironies of contemporary thought that the very thinkers who have the strongest appreciation of the follies of so-called "Representationalism" in Modern Philosophy nonetheless remain Constructionist in their own outlook.
In summary, then: facts are a matter of properties actually belonging to certain things, and facts are not produced by our mere thoughts or judgments of them. Now let us consider the relationship of facts (and truth) to action.
THE INTRANSIGENCE OF FACT AND TRUTH
With respect to human action, facts are totally unforgiving. One might in a preliminary way define reality (or fact) as what you run into when you are wrong. The collision is usually painful. When you assume or believe your car to be well supplied with gasoline when it is not, you may find yourself in great danger or discomfort. This is true even of Baudrillard and Rorty in their real lives.
When you believe in or trust a crooked or incompetent financial advisor to be honest and capable, you may wind up depending upon your relatives or the state and have to kiss your golden years goodbye. How things are does not say: "Oh, well, since you believed there was gas in the tank or that the advice was sound, it shall just be so." All roads do not lead to Rome or anywhere else. Beliefs must come to terms with facts, not facts with beliefs.
A New Yorker cartoon recently showed a man in a business suit being turned away by St. Peter at the gates of heaven. He was saying to St. Peter: "Don't you realize you are criminalizing a policy difference?" But facts make even less allowance for what you believed than God or St. Peter. There is no such thing as a fact that accommodates itself to what is merely believed about it or to how it is thought of. Some facts can be changed, no doubt, but never by belief alone--nor, we should add, by wish or desire alone. Some facts can be changed or abolished by will and action, but many cannot be changed even by these.
Now among the facts and the things that are or exist, there are, precisely, beliefs and statements themselves, with their properties of truth or falsity and their logical relations. Beliefs are states or acts of persons, and statements are linguistic correlates of such states and acts. They are very real and very important. Our lives for the most part run on the rails of our beliefs, going where and only where our beliefs go. This is something that C. S. Lewis often emphasized.
Beliefs are, or at least involve, dispositions or readinesses to act as if something were the case or were a fact. For example, the readiness to act as if there were gas in your tank or as if your financial advisor were reliable, or as if the person setting next to you were an unceasing spiritual being with a glorious destiny in God's great universe.
But, as we have already noted, it is a part of the precarious human condition that acting or being ready to act as if something were so does not guarantee that it is so. We can act as if something were so-and-so when it is not, and when we do we have a more or less unpleasant collision with reality. An entire society, culture or historical epoch can do this and has done so. We get smashed by the car running the stop light or we get AIDs from a supposedly faithful lover. Reality makes no allowance for our beliefs, desires or good intentions. It just says: "Here is how things are. Now you have that to deal with."
We all discover this at an early age, and with it we discover truth and falseness. Our thoughts, beliefs, hopes and expectations, as well as what we and others say, often do (or do not) match up with what those thoughts, beliefs etc. are about. This fact, this "matching up" is truth. It is something quite independent of all theories. No matter what your theories are, you will experience it and identify it as such. This is how we learn to speak of truth, learn the "language game" of truth.
Of course this "match up" is not a mathematically quantifiable fact, nor is it sense-perceptible, or feelable in any sense other than that we are often conscious of it. It is not an "empirical" reality. Thus, as Lewis well knew and emphasized, it does not suit the prejudices of our naturalistic age about what facts must be. (Recall pp. 81 of The Abolition of Man for what Lewis understands by "Natural.")
But then those empiricist/naturalistic prejudices about what kinds of facts and realities there can be are not themselves mathematical or empirical--not verifiable by mathematical calculation or sense perception--and so are self-condemned at best. They do not meet their own requirement of intellectual respectability. They only have current fashions on their side. In addition they are refuted by abundant counter cases: by the reality of various familiar facts that are neither mathematical nor empirical--such as, precisely, the truth or reasonableness of a given idea or belief.
Naturalism, as Lewis repeatedly argued, cannot be a rationally defensible position precisely because it rules out Real truth, and reason based thereon. He agrees with much of the Postmodern critique of Modernity. I doubt he ever read a line of Heidegger, but he had no need to. He understood on his own grounds--the study of human thought and imagination--the ravages of atomism, Scientism, technology, and the Modern loss of rootedness in the "Tao" of absolute value. But he realized, as many of our contemporaries do not, that it was no solution to the disasters of Modernity simply to drop absolute truth, reality and values.
Besides, one cannot actually just drop them. Their presence remains in the thought and life of all who try, such as Nietzsche and Derrida. It is one of the characteristics of most late 19th and 20th Century philosophy that it denies the very conditions which alone make philosophy possible. But then it assumes those very conditions in that it rejects them precisely on the basis of philosophical arguments. Essences and their accompanying claims about what must be the case are inevitable, and the writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, Richard Rorty etc., are fully of them. The result is either the surrender of philosophy as a cognitive enterprise, or the surrender of Real truth claims about language, consciousness and the world, or the continuation of such claims in bad faith. The latter is the course usually chosen, for example by Wittgenstein, Quine and Derrida.
All this puts us in position to see that, while belief is relative--a fact or statement is believed only if someone believes it--truth is not relative. One believes something, one does not truth it or fact it. Again, we can and should experiment with this. Try getting your car to run by believing gas is in your tank. Or by also enlisting others to believe it, or by generating a social movement in favor of it. One million Frenchmen (or Americans, etc.) can be wrong, and adding a million or two more will make no difference--although they may be helpful in getting the government to pay for the consequences of being wrong.
All of this Lewis understood very well. On several occasions his writings turn to stating and defending at lengths anti-empiricist (anti-naturalist) views of truth and reason. His view was that meaning, from which truth and reason derive, "is a relation of a wholly new kind, as remote, as mysterious, as opaque to empirical study, as soul itself." (See "Religion Without Dogma," especially pp. 87-88 of the Socratic Digest, #4; cp. "Is Religion Poetry?" Socratic Digest, #3, p. 33, Chapter 3 of The Abolition of Man, and Chapter 3 of Miracles) The relations of meaning, truth and reason he knew to be totally indifferent to what anyone may think or feel about them. They are objective in the strongest of senses. That just means they cannot vary with what we think or feel about them. And yet, like the Tao itself, they are in general quite comprehensible even though non-empirical. They--relations of meaning, truth and reason--are realities, facts, in the sense we have explained.
At this point a general comment about Empiricism is needed. Empiricism (now usually called "Naturalism") is, roughly stated, the view that reality (facts) and knowledge are limited to the sense-perceptible and what can be logically derived from or, more loosely, based upon the sense-perceptible--for example, sub-particle physics. Empiricism was perhaps historically inevitable. But it has, in many ways, certainly been an unfortunate episode in the career of Western thought, and now lies like a blight upon world culture. It is self-refuting, as already noted, in that it is a claim that cannot be verified empirically. Empiricism is simply a stipulation, not a discovery, of what is to be counted as real and knowable; and from the very beginning, in Hobbes and then in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, it was ideologically driven--driven by certain social needs as understood by its advocates.
All of this remains true of the later formulations of Empiricism, such as classical Positivism (Comte, Mach--really, Nietzsche), Logical Positivism, and Linguistic Analysis. They are all movements of a distinctly missionary and salvationist tone, and are exercises in ideological imperialism. Of course any comprehensive outlook, including "Mere Christianity," runs the risk of becoming merely ideological in the hands of its advocates. But, be that as it may, it remains a stubborn fact that much of significant human interest--including, most importantly, human knowledge (including science and truth) itself--cannot be accounted for in Empiricist/Positivist terms or in terms of the "Natural" world. (See the exhaustive treatment of this point in Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences, etc.) One might be excused for thinking that the course of human thought has now made this clear, but there remain many well-known thinkers who still hope that "science" interpreted naturalistically will eventually answer all questions that can be answered. Perhaps one can only wonder at the strength of their faith.
WHAT TRUTH IS
And now let us go back over some of the ground we have just covered to make explicit the nature of truth. When the object of our belief or statement is as we believe or state it to be, when it "matches up" to that object in the familiar way already indicated by cases, our belief or statement is true. Truth is just this characteristic of "matching up." Otherwise our belief or statement is false. Truth and falsity are, then, objective properties of beliefs and statements--more precisely, of representations and propositions, but this is technical language which we cannot trouble to introduce here. They are objective ways in which beliefs and statements differ and resemble among themselves, just as colors (red, yellow, green) and sizes are objective ways in which apples and other things differ and resemble among themselves.
There are here three major points we must attend to:
(A) In many cases the truth-property (or the falsity) of a belief or statement can be directly confirmed by examining what the belief (or statement) is about and comparing it with the belief. These cases are the ones where, as children, we all learn what truth is.
Once while in a meeting of the Faculty Senate at the USC/LA County hospital, my automobile was stolen. I still believed that it was where I parked it and acted accordingly. When, upon leaving the meeting, I came to the place where I had parked it by the curb, I experienced the shocking incongruity of my belief (that the car was there) with the facts. I believed my car was there, but now saw it was not as I believed. I lived through the incongruity of belief with fact and was strongly conscious of that incongruity. I directly knew, was aware of, that incongruity which is falseness, just as in other cases I have known the congruity ("correspondence") which it truth.
We characteristically say "I don't believe it!" in such cases, because we don't believe it--that is, we don't believe the fact that presents itself to us in place of the one we are in the course of acting as if it were there. It takes a while for our beliefs to adjust to reality. Then we do "believe it," and trudge our way to the police station and report how things are.
A child becomes competent very early at directly determining the truth and falsity of beliefs and statements, just it does with multitudes of other qualities and relations. It frequently knows that what you believe or tell it is true or false, as the case may be, by direct comparison of your beliefs and statements with what they are about--so long, of course, as the subject matter is indeed open to examination and comparison with the beliefs and statements in question.
The child very soon learns what it is to lie, and learns to detect lies by examining the subject matter in comparison with statements made to it. A dignitary such as Pontius Pilate or a university professor can well say, rhetorically, "What is truth?" But that is never accepted as a response from a child being interrogated about vanished cookies, nor will a child accept it as an explanation of a broken promise. They know what truth is very well, even though, as they also know, it is not easy to determine in some cases. --Is it true there is a Santa Claus, for example, or a tooth fairy?
(B). Now what we find truth (or falsity) to be in the cases where we can compare beliefs or statements to what they are about is exactly what truth is in the cases where we do not or cannot directly compare belief or thought with its object. For example, whether a certain candidate won an election, or whether Milton in Paradise Lost really intended to glorify rebellion. That, in a given case, we cannot confirm truth by direct comparison, or that we cannot confirm it at all--for there very well may be beliefs or statements that are true (or false) but (for whatever reason) can never be confirmed by human minds to be such--does not change the nature of truth itself for such cases. The truth of a belief or statement is not created by verification, but discovered by it. Otherwise we could prevent a belief from being true by refusing to verify it. In the cases most difficult to verify, truth remains "correspondence" of the general type we came to know in the verified cases.
For a belief, thought or statement to be true is simply for its subject matter to be as it is represented, or as it is held to be, in that belief, thought or statement. When we confirm that a hitherto unconfirmed belief or statement is true, we do not create the relation (correspondence) it actually has to what it is about, any more that we create the fit of a wrench to a bolt head by placing the wrench on the bolt head, or the fit of a door to a frame by putting the door in the frame. The wrench fits the bolt head (or does not) even if it is never placed upon the bolt head, and the door fits the frame (or does not) even if it is never placed within it. And, similarly, a representation that is true is true even if it is never verified--by direct comparison with its object or otherwise. Truth is not the same thing as verification, nor dependent upon verification, any more than the fit or "correspondence" of the wrench to the bolt head is or is dependent upon the juxtaposition of the wrench upon the bolt head.
(C). Moreover, truth, as we have seen in the case of fact and reality, is totally unyielding in the face of belief, desire, tradition and will. There is no such thing as a belief or statement whose quality of truth or falsity is modified by mere belief or disbelief, desire or aversion, habit or tradition or social practice or professional opinion, or will and intent. We state it once again: belief is relative, as are our perceptions, but truth is not. Truth is a relation, a "correspondence," but not one that depends upon belief or attitude. It is a relation, but it is not "relative". It pertains to the mind in a certain sense--as a property of beliefs and statements--but it is not "subjective" in the sense that it varies with our attitudes about it or would not exist unless those attitudes did.
A book was recently published under the title, Truth Is Not What It Used To Be. But now we can see, I hope, that truth is exactly what it used to be, and will always be so. It is a certain property or relation-like structure, and as such it is not the kind of thing that can change, any more than grey and yellow or sister or brother can--which is a totally different matter than how we choose to use the words "grey," "yellow," "sister," and "brother." When philosophers of the last two centuries have suggested that truth--this relation-like structure of correspondence that we all become acquainted with in our early years--is "really" the logical coherence or practical utility of beliefs or statements, their suggestion is no more worthy of serious consideration than would be a suggestion that yellow is really an odor or that being a sister is the same thing as being a seamstress. Their suggestion was in fact based on the assumption that we cannot compare beliefs and statements with what they are about--an assumption that is refuted by the fact that everyone constantly does it.
Now my hope is that these points will reassure each of us concerning our own individual knowledge of what truth is in its very nature, and permit us not to be deflected from appreciation of its real-life seriousness by the confusions of its current cultured despisers.
C. S. Lewis was devoted to the pursuit of truth, and was sure he had captured or been given a great deal of it. His confidence in this respect did not make him arrogant and close-minded, but was, to the contrary, the foundation of his remarkable humility and openness. In his third BBC lecture under the heading, "The Case for Christianity," later published in Mere Christianity, he responds to those who might think he had been too hard on human beings in his previous lecture. There he had pointed out that human beings constantly fail to behave as they expect others to behave. He says to the potential objector: "I am not concerned at present with blame; I am trying to find out the truth. And from that point of view the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not being what it ought to be, has certain consequences."
This is a very characteristic statement for Lewis. He understood pursuit of truth to require devotion to logic as well, and hence to the following out of the consequences of truths discovered. Lewis took logic very seriously as a primary means of securing truth and avoiding falsehood. In the third BBC course of lectures, titled "Christian Behavior," he comments that "We are now getting to the point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different behavior." "Religion," he continues, "involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the right sailing of the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set." (MC p. 58)
The Christian tradition, as well as its alternatives, must--on his view--essentially contain claims about reality which are either true or false. The fundamental task we face is to determine which claims are true and what logically follows from them. Only so can we come to terms with reality and successfully direct our lives into harmonious relationships with it.
In response to anticipated complaints about the difficulty of basic Christian doctrine he remarks further on in his BBC lectures: "Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim is false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult--at least as difficult as modern physics, and for the same reason." (p. 121)
Now Lewis held what has traditionally been called the "correspondence theory of truth." This could properly be called the classical theory of truth, because it was held with little exception up to the 19th Century. He held, in other words, that truth is a matter of a belief or idea (representation, statement) corresponding to reality. In the course of rejecting the view that moral laws are mere social conventions he insists that they are, to the contrary, "Real truths." "If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazi less true," he says to his reader, "there must be something--some Real morality--for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each meant merely 'the town I am imagining in my own head', how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all." (MC p. 11; cp. Abolition of Man, pp. 27-29)
THE CONTEMPORARY DISDAIN OF TRUTH: "POSTMODERNISM"
The case for "Real truth" is, unfortunately, much more complicated and harder to make stand up (or even get a hearing) now than it was when Lewis wrote these words in the early 1940's. Not intrinsically or in itself, of course; for that does not change. But in terms of numerous popular presumptions that have arisen, mistakenly, against "Real truth." Nowadays truth itself, in the sense in which Lewis and most of his contemporaries still thought it to be of central human importance, is in the fire.
To be sure, this is not exactly a new thing. David Hume long ago (mid 18th Century) consigned truth to the flames in the famous passage at the end of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. There he advised us to look through our libraries and ask of each book whether it deals with matters mathematical or sense-perceptible (feelable). If it does not, he said, we should "commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
Truth, of course, is not a matter of quantity, not mathematically describable; and it also is not sense-perceptible or feelable. Truth is not something physical or "naturalistic," as we would now say. And our general intellectual, artistic and academic culture has by this time caught up with Hume in rejecting "Real truth." Two centuries of cultural development were needed for that. Truth, along with goodness and beauty (both of which David Hume manipulated into something feelable or sentimental), are no longer generally thought of as realities independent of human attitudes. And that, of course, is simply what it means to say they are not "objective." Lewis believed they were objective, and spent much of his time explaining and defending their objectivity.
In the face of present attitudes, however, even earnestness about truth--also about goodness and beauty--is definitely uncool. It might be tolerated in a Freshman. But he or she would be expected to wise up quickly, and might pay a stiff price for not doing so. The idea of devoting one's life to truth, goodness or beauty is now quaint if not ridiculous, on the campus as in the corporation. They are not considered to be objective realities against which human life is or can be measured.
That is certainly the message that comes to us from the polymorphous clouds of Postmodernism(s) that hang over all our intellectual, artistic and cultural life now. Christopher Norris, one of the very best writers on these subjects, points out that in Postmodernism's most emphatic representatives, such as Jean Baudrillard and Richard Rorty, "the ideas of truth, validity or right reason simply drop out of the picture." (What's Wrong With Postmodernism, p. 165) There is for them no possibility of achieving "an accurate match between real-world objects or states of affairs and concepts of pure understanding." (p. 167) "The idea that one can criticize existing beliefs from some superior vantage-point of truth, reason or scientific method," Norris continues (168), is considered a self-delusion deriving from the Enlightenment period of Western thought--by now supposedly shown by history to be a delusion.
Of course Baudrillard and Rorty still believe that their own views of truth, validity and reason are true, valid and reasonable. They believe that their own views of how language and thought relate to reality present us with how things really are. (Let them simply state the contrary if they do not.) And I have noticed that the most emphatic of Postmodernists turn coldly modern when discussing their fringe benefits or other matters that make a great difference to their practical life. They also--on many occasions during each day--discover that some of their ideas, beliefs and statements about very ordinary matters do (or do not) match up to the actual condition of what those beliefs and statements are about. They share this with every competent human being. (They thought their keys were on the table, for example, but found that they were wrong.) But a powerful thrust of the Zeitgeist such as Postmodernism is not to be impeded by little details such as these.
A DEVIL'S ADVICE
Lewis clearly saw the early stages of the present situation, though I doubt he could have begun to imagine the attitude toward "Real Truth" maintained now by its contemporary "cultured despisers."
In the fabulous Screwtape's first letter we find him advising his nephew devil, Wormwood, that argument is not the way to keep his, Wormwood's, "patient" from the Enemy's (God's) clutches. "That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier," he says. "At that time," Screwtape continues "humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that," Screwtape points out. "Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about." (Screwtape Letters, p. 7-8)
Instead of argument, which, Screwtape says, "moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground," Wormwood is advised to hold his patient's attention--just as David Hume would have it--to the "stream of immediate sense experiences," and to "Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'." (p. 8) In that stream of sensations, of course, neither truth nor logic is to be found.
ON FACTS AND REALITY
One gathers from all this, I think, a clear and accurate impression of Lewis' outlook on truth and its vital importance for human existence. Now we turn to some reflections--in the spirit if not with the power of this friend of truth--on the contemporary situation of Real truth, as it stands in the flames of current disdain and ridicule. We begin with some clarification of what a fact is, what it is to be real, and then what a truth is.
We all have, as a part of the equipment necessary to enable us to navigate the course of our existence, the ability to discern properties things have and relations things stand in.
A child quickly learns to distinguish milk from coca-cola, and to tell which bag of candy or scoop of ice cream is larger. As time goes on it learns to articulate what goes into such differences, and to distinguish, not just milk from coca-cola, but the different properties--flavor, color, etc.--that enter into such differences as that between milk and coca-cola or dog and cat.
Our education as human beings largely consists in becoming able to identify and interrelate the very large number of properties and relations that are distributed over the various types of entities that make up our self and our world. Such ability is essential to human competence. One could hardly cross the street, much less hold a job of the simplest sort without it. Now we must hold onto these ideas of properties and relations as we continue.
If an entity, regardless of type, has a particular property or relation, its having that property or relation makes up what we here call a fact. This is an extremely common notion, and one that has received much attention from philosophers. (Cp. B. Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 1st Lecture) It is, for example, a fact that I am standing before you now or that you are reading this paragraph.
Reality, then, taken as a whole, is the sum total of facts. And to be real, to exist, is to be a constituent in a fact.
Please bear with me a moment longer on these painfully abstract, but crucial, points.
Any object of thought or discourse that actually has properties or relations exists or is real; and, conversely, any object that exists has some properties and relations. To illustrate, an object--e.g. Pegasus the winged horse of mythology--does not exist, is not real. That means that the relevant properties we associate with him (horseness, wingness, etc.) do not belong to anything in unison. If they did that thing would be Pegasus, and Pegasus would exist.
But now please notice. Being a fact has nothing to do, in general, with being-thought-of or being-mentioned or being-described, or, as the philosopher W. V. O Quine would say, "being in the range of a bound variable." Currently this is widely denied. Many people now take facts and their constituents to be created by consciousness (individual or collective) or by language or culture. Wondrously creative powers are attributed to human thought.
But upon careful reflection it is surely clear that a universe just like ours except devoid of conscious beings and their languages would still be a universe of facts and existents--facts such as the relative sizes and positions of the planets in our solar system, or the structure and habits of gastropods, or the inner structure of carbon atoms. Thought and language, being what they are, have no ability to produce or to restructure the objects which they are about: that is, to "construct" them. Of course thought and language (culture) are themselves facts or realities, and as such they have real consequences in the real world. But that is a very different matter from constructing objects by merely thinking or speaking of them.
There is, I know, a long and influential Constructionist story running from Descartes to Nietzsche and the Logical Positivists. Modern Philosophy is burdened with fundamental errors about the connection between the mind and its world of objects. We cannot detail them here. But it is one of the ironies of contemporary thought that the very thinkers who have the strongest appreciation of the follies of so-called "Representationalism" in Modern Philosophy nonetheless remain Constructionist in their own outlook.
In summary, then: facts are a matter of properties actually belonging to certain things, and facts are not produced by our mere thoughts or judgments of them. Now let us consider the relationship of facts (and truth) to action.
THE INTRANSIGENCE OF FACT AND TRUTH
With respect to human action, facts are totally unforgiving. One might in a preliminary way define reality (or fact) as what you run into when you are wrong. The collision is usually painful. When you assume or believe your car to be well supplied with gasoline when it is not, you may find yourself in great danger or discomfort. This is true even of Baudrillard and Rorty in their real lives.
When you believe in or trust a crooked or incompetent financial advisor to be honest and capable, you may wind up depending upon your relatives or the state and have to kiss your golden years goodbye. How things are does not say: "Oh, well, since you believed there was gas in the tank or that the advice was sound, it shall just be so." All roads do not lead to Rome or anywhere else. Beliefs must come to terms with facts, not facts with beliefs.
A New Yorker cartoon recently showed a man in a business suit being turned away by St. Peter at the gates of heaven. He was saying to St. Peter: "Don't you realize you are criminalizing a policy difference?" But facts make even less allowance for what you believed than God or St. Peter. There is no such thing as a fact that accommodates itself to what is merely believed about it or to how it is thought of. Some facts can be changed, no doubt, but never by belief alone--nor, we should add, by wish or desire alone. Some facts can be changed or abolished by will and action, but many cannot be changed even by these.
Now among the facts and the things that are or exist, there are, precisely, beliefs and statements themselves, with their properties of truth or falsity and their logical relations. Beliefs are states or acts of persons, and statements are linguistic correlates of such states and acts. They are very real and very important. Our lives for the most part run on the rails of our beliefs, going where and only where our beliefs go. This is something that C. S. Lewis often emphasized.
Beliefs are, or at least involve, dispositions or readinesses to act as if something were the case or were a fact. For example, the readiness to act as if there were gas in your tank or as if your financial advisor were reliable, or as if the person setting next to you were an unceasing spiritual being with a glorious destiny in God's great universe.
But, as we have already noted, it is a part of the precarious human condition that acting or being ready to act as if something were so does not guarantee that it is so. We can act as if something were so-and-so when it is not, and when we do we have a more or less unpleasant collision with reality. An entire society, culture or historical epoch can do this and has done so. We get smashed by the car running the stop light or we get AIDs from a supposedly faithful lover. Reality makes no allowance for our beliefs, desires or good intentions. It just says: "Here is how things are. Now you have that to deal with."
We all discover this at an early age, and with it we discover truth and falseness. Our thoughts, beliefs, hopes and expectations, as well as what we and others say, often do (or do not) match up with what those thoughts, beliefs etc. are about. This fact, this "matching up" is truth. It is something quite independent of all theories. No matter what your theories are, you will experience it and identify it as such. This is how we learn to speak of truth, learn the "language game" of truth.
Of course this "match up" is not a mathematically quantifiable fact, nor is it sense-perceptible, or feelable in any sense other than that we are often conscious of it. It is not an "empirical" reality. Thus, as Lewis well knew and emphasized, it does not suit the prejudices of our naturalistic age about what facts must be. (Recall pp. 81 of The Abolition of Man for what Lewis understands by "Natural.")
But then those empiricist/naturalistic prejudices about what kinds of facts and realities there can be are not themselves mathematical or empirical--not verifiable by mathematical calculation or sense perception--and so are self-condemned at best. They do not meet their own requirement of intellectual respectability. They only have current fashions on their side. In addition they are refuted by abundant counter cases: by the reality of various familiar facts that are neither mathematical nor empirical--such as, precisely, the truth or reasonableness of a given idea or belief.
Naturalism, as Lewis repeatedly argued, cannot be a rationally defensible position precisely because it rules out Real truth, and reason based thereon. He agrees with much of the Postmodern critique of Modernity. I doubt he ever read a line of Heidegger, but he had no need to. He understood on his own grounds--the study of human thought and imagination--the ravages of atomism, Scientism, technology, and the Modern loss of rootedness in the "Tao" of absolute value. But he realized, as many of our contemporaries do not, that it was no solution to the disasters of Modernity simply to drop absolute truth, reality and values.
Besides, one cannot actually just drop them. Their presence remains in the thought and life of all who try, such as Nietzsche and Derrida. It is one of the characteristics of most late 19th and 20th Century philosophy that it denies the very conditions which alone make philosophy possible. But then it assumes those very conditions in that it rejects them precisely on the basis of philosophical arguments. Essences and their accompanying claims about what must be the case are inevitable, and the writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, Richard Rorty etc., are fully of them. The result is either the surrender of philosophy as a cognitive enterprise, or the surrender of Real truth claims about language, consciousness and the world, or the continuation of such claims in bad faith. The latter is the course usually chosen, for example by Wittgenstein, Quine and Derrida.
All this puts us in position to see that, while belief is relative--a fact or statement is believed only if someone believes it--truth is not relative. One believes something, one does not truth it or fact it. Again, we can and should experiment with this. Try getting your car to run by believing gas is in your tank. Or by also enlisting others to believe it, or by generating a social movement in favor of it. One million Frenchmen (or Americans, etc.) can be wrong, and adding a million or two more will make no difference--although they may be helpful in getting the government to pay for the consequences of being wrong.
All of this Lewis understood very well. On several occasions his writings turn to stating and defending at lengths anti-empiricist (anti-naturalist) views of truth and reason. His view was that meaning, from which truth and reason derive, "is a relation of a wholly new kind, as remote, as mysterious, as opaque to empirical study, as soul itself." (See "Religion Without Dogma," especially pp. 87-88 of the Socratic Digest, #4; cp. "Is Religion Poetry?" Socratic Digest, #3, p. 33, Chapter 3 of The Abolition of Man, and Chapter 3 of Miracles) The relations of meaning, truth and reason he knew to be totally indifferent to what anyone may think or feel about them. They are objective in the strongest of senses. That just means they cannot vary with what we think or feel about them. And yet, like the Tao itself, they are in general quite comprehensible even though non-empirical. They--relations of meaning, truth and reason--are realities, facts, in the sense we have explained.
At this point a general comment about Empiricism is needed. Empiricism (now usually called "Naturalism") is, roughly stated, the view that reality (facts) and knowledge are limited to the sense-perceptible and what can be logically derived from or, more loosely, based upon the sense-perceptible--for example, sub-particle physics. Empiricism was perhaps historically inevitable. But it has, in many ways, certainly been an unfortunate episode in the career of Western thought, and now lies like a blight upon world culture. It is self-refuting, as already noted, in that it is a claim that cannot be verified empirically. Empiricism is simply a stipulation, not a discovery, of what is to be counted as real and knowable; and from the very beginning, in Hobbes and then in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, it was ideologically driven--driven by certain social needs as understood by its advocates.
All of this remains true of the later formulations of Empiricism, such as classical Positivism (Comte, Mach--really, Nietzsche), Logical Positivism, and Linguistic Analysis. They are all movements of a distinctly missionary and salvationist tone, and are exercises in ideological imperialism. Of course any comprehensive outlook, including "Mere Christianity," runs the risk of becoming merely ideological in the hands of its advocates. But, be that as it may, it remains a stubborn fact that much of significant human interest--including, most importantly, human knowledge (including science and truth) itself--cannot be accounted for in Empiricist/Positivist terms or in terms of the "Natural" world. (See the exhaustive treatment of this point in Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences, etc.) One might be excused for thinking that the course of human thought has now made this clear, but there remain many well-known thinkers who still hope that "science" interpreted naturalistically will eventually answer all questions that can be answered. Perhaps one can only wonder at the strength of their faith.
WHAT TRUTH IS
And now let us go back over some of the ground we have just covered to make explicit the nature of truth. When the object of our belief or statement is as we believe or state it to be, when it "matches up" to that object in the familiar way already indicated by cases, our belief or statement is true. Truth is just this characteristic of "matching up." Otherwise our belief or statement is false. Truth and falsity are, then, objective properties of beliefs and statements--more precisely, of representations and propositions, but this is technical language which we cannot trouble to introduce here. They are objective ways in which beliefs and statements differ and resemble among themselves, just as colors (red, yellow, green) and sizes are objective ways in which apples and other things differ and resemble among themselves.
There are here three major points we must attend to:
(A) In many cases the truth-property (or the falsity) of a belief or statement can be directly confirmed by examining what the belief (or statement) is about and comparing it with the belief. These cases are the ones where, as children, we all learn what truth is.
Once while in a meeting of the Faculty Senate at the USC/LA County hospital, my automobile was stolen. I still believed that it was where I parked it and acted accordingly. When, upon leaving the meeting, I came to the place where I had parked it by the curb, I experienced the shocking incongruity of my belief (that the car was there) with the facts. I believed my car was there, but now saw it was not as I believed. I lived through the incongruity of belief with fact and was strongly conscious of that incongruity. I directly knew, was aware of, that incongruity which is falseness, just as in other cases I have known the congruity ("correspondence") which it truth.
We characteristically say "I don't believe it!" in such cases, because we don't believe it--that is, we don't believe the fact that presents itself to us in place of the one we are in the course of acting as if it were there. It takes a while for our beliefs to adjust to reality. Then we do "believe it," and trudge our way to the police station and report how things are.
A child becomes competent very early at directly determining the truth and falsity of beliefs and statements, just it does with multitudes of other qualities and relations. It frequently knows that what you believe or tell it is true or false, as the case may be, by direct comparison of your beliefs and statements with what they are about--so long, of course, as the subject matter is indeed open to examination and comparison with the beliefs and statements in question.
The child very soon learns what it is to lie, and learns to detect lies by examining the subject matter in comparison with statements made to it. A dignitary such as Pontius Pilate or a university professor can well say, rhetorically, "What is truth?" But that is never accepted as a response from a child being interrogated about vanished cookies, nor will a child accept it as an explanation of a broken promise. They know what truth is very well, even though, as they also know, it is not easy to determine in some cases. --Is it true there is a Santa Claus, for example, or a tooth fairy?
(B). Now what we find truth (or falsity) to be in the cases where we can compare beliefs or statements to what they are about is exactly what truth is in the cases where we do not or cannot directly compare belief or thought with its object. For example, whether a certain candidate won an election, or whether Milton in Paradise Lost really intended to glorify rebellion. That, in a given case, we cannot confirm truth by direct comparison, or that we cannot confirm it at all--for there very well may be beliefs or statements that are true (or false) but (for whatever reason) can never be confirmed by human minds to be such--does not change the nature of truth itself for such cases. The truth of a belief or statement is not created by verification, but discovered by it. Otherwise we could prevent a belief from being true by refusing to verify it. In the cases most difficult to verify, truth remains "correspondence" of the general type we came to know in the verified cases.
For a belief, thought or statement to be true is simply for its subject matter to be as it is represented, or as it is held to be, in that belief, thought or statement. When we confirm that a hitherto unconfirmed belief or statement is true, we do not create the relation (correspondence) it actually has to what it is about, any more that we create the fit of a wrench to a bolt head by placing the wrench on the bolt head, or the fit of a door to a frame by putting the door in the frame. The wrench fits the bolt head (or does not) even if it is never placed upon the bolt head, and the door fits the frame (or does not) even if it is never placed within it. And, similarly, a representation that is true is true even if it is never verified--by direct comparison with its object or otherwise. Truth is not the same thing as verification, nor dependent upon verification, any more than the fit or "correspondence" of the wrench to the bolt head is or is dependent upon the juxtaposition of the wrench upon the bolt head.
(C). Moreover, truth, as we have seen in the case of fact and reality, is totally unyielding in the face of belief, desire, tradition and will. There is no such thing as a belief or statement whose quality of truth or falsity is modified by mere belief or disbelief, desire or aversion, habit or tradition or social practice or professional opinion, or will and intent. We state it once again: belief is relative, as are our perceptions, but truth is not. Truth is a relation, a "correspondence," but not one that depends upon belief or attitude. It is a relation, but it is not "relative". It pertains to the mind in a certain sense--as a property of beliefs and statements--but it is not "subjective" in the sense that it varies with our attitudes about it or would not exist unless those attitudes did.
A book was recently published under the title, Truth Is Not What It Used To Be. But now we can see, I hope, that truth is exactly what it used to be, and will always be so. It is a certain property or relation-like structure, and as such it is not the kind of thing that can change, any more than grey and yellow or sister or brother can--which is a totally different matter than how we choose to use the words "grey," "yellow," "sister," and "brother." When philosophers of the last two centuries have suggested that truth--this relation-like structure of correspondence that we all become acquainted with in our early years--is "really" the logical coherence or practical utility of beliefs or statements, their suggestion is no more worthy of serious consideration than would be a suggestion that yellow is really an odor or that being a sister is the same thing as being a seamstress. Their suggestion was in fact based on the assumption that we cannot compare beliefs and statements with what they are about--an assumption that is refuted by the fact that everyone constantly does it.
Now my hope is that these points will reassure each of us concerning our own individual knowledge of what truth is in its very nature, and permit us not to be deflected from appreciation of its real-life seriousness by the confusions of its current cultured despisers.
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