Thoughts

Self-Deception

I start with my subjectivist understanding of everything. That is, my metaphysics is that of a subjectivist, someone who believes that whatever is, is in one's head. The phenomena I attribute to "reality" are seen that way because I am conscious of them. In the end, there is nothing but one's consciousness of things, because without it there would be no things. (This is analogous to the weird Quantum Mechanical view of Schrödinger's cat, that it is neither dead nor alive until we observe it. Of course, then, the problem of entanglement ...) Based on how I organize those phenomena - how my consciousness works - I doubt very much that species other Homo sapiens (abbrev. H. sapiens or human beings) or its close relatives have any consciousness; certainly not one that presents self as distinct from not-self. That there is any reality at all, including the reality of self, relies on consciousness of our experience as evidence. Unfortunately, it is not logical, in any sense of "logical" that I know about, to conclude from my having experiences, including the sense of self and not-self, that any of it is real in the transcendental sense meant by Plato and other realists. To posit reality is always to transcend oneself, which is an act of faith that is neither logical nor illogical. While the belief in reality can be part of consciousness, and reality may imply the existence of consciousness, the connections are merely of possibility, at best probability, but not causality.

This condition of my existence has become more and more insistent as I have grown older. This is to dispute Descartes' conclusion, his existence, in his cogito. What seems indisputable is that something is going on when I am aware of whatever, but it is not clear what it is. It seems reasonable that something must exist before it can have any consequences, if only because our understanding of 'consequences' involves things that exist in some sense. (They might be mathematical things, or things such as mountains, trees and elephants.) I do not know whether that statement is a logical necessity; i.e., whether the meaning of 'consequences' is somehow included in 'exist.' I think such a statement is reasonable because that is the way my brain is programmed. Nonetheless, I believe that affirming the existence of something cannot be treated separately from the supposed roles or manifestations of what is affirmed. The reason for this last belief is that I am only aware of the manifestations, motions of one kind or another, not the underlying substance. In the language of classical philosophy, I am only aware of appearances.

To the extent that I might appreciate what is, I would have a mystical intuition of "is-ness." Such a mystical intuition is the basis of spirituality, the sort of experience religious gurus claim to have. I do not believe mystical intuition can be taught or verified; i.e., it is always private, never public. Thus, those having mystical intuitions induce those conditions in themselves, even if that induction occurs by following a heuristic or other suggestion. No one other than the one having mystical intuitions can verify them, so mysticism is not a path to sure ("objective") knowledge. This leaves any apperception of "is-ness" unsupported. I am reminded of the famously false claims of Carlos Castaneda in his books, starting with The Teachings of Don Juan (1968). His fascinating stories made his books best sellers, but, in the end, I came to regard his teachings as a fantasy. Mysticism brings us no closer to reality, if only because it is only in one's head.

Nonetheless, every conscious being is an unwilling mystic, for the simple reason that everything we experience is in our heads.

Inertia

I do not know why I have been persistently bothered with this word lately. I believe I should be bothered about it, since it represents a central idea in my philosophy of History. Still, it is irrelevant because it is only in my head: no one else is plugged into the talks I have with myself, no matter how loudly I think the words.

Since I think the basic condition of the Universe is described as Chaos, and that everything really did start from nothing, I feel a need to offer some explanation for the observed order of things. After all, if chaos rules, there should be no order at all. This criticism is valid in one sense of "chaos," but invalid as I use the term. If "chaos" means that everything is always random and disconnected everywhere, then there cannot be any order. In that case, the order I observe or feel must be a Grand Delusion, but I keep having those delusions. How to reconcile this conflict?

Perhaps it is only a matter of words. There are different uses of "chaos." In its most popular usage, "chaos" does mean the lack of any order, perceived randomness, and is often connected with distress. That sort of chaos is upsetting for most people when discovered, as it involves loss of control: things are not as one would have them. But even the popular use of the term exposes the psychological nature of chaos. Application of chaos is comparative; it is relative to the structuring of experience one prefers and desires.

I believe it is incorrect to assign any a priori order to the Universe in which I exist, so, in that sense chaos has prevailed from the beginning of time. Whatever order I perceive in the Universe is just my perception. That ordering is always possible because all of my existence encompasses a finite sequence of events, where "event" is, by definition, a discrete piece of space-time. As far as I know, I am not capable of perceiving, grasping or experiencing anything as a continuum because those mechanisms always delimit things as objects or connected globs. "Event" is, therefore, a construct of Mind, an artifact. At the core of "event" is inertia, the idea I have that there is some sort of continuity in the Universe, out of which I picked this thing. Inertia is the notion the thing must have pre-existed my picking it, that it has some timeless quality. If true, inertia is mixed up with time, since it is what connects various instances of space-like entities into one body; i.e., inertia is the basis of history.

Inertia was explicitly recognized by Newton as a fundamental physical law: 'bodies in motion stay in motion ...' Until Quantum Mechanics, that idea was not challenged. But, as presented in the problem of entanglement, illustrated by Schrödinger's cat, we really have no idea what happens to a body in between its appearances. That is, inertia is a construction of Mind; it is how we see things. For this reason, inertia is a metaphysical principle, not at all a Law of physics.

Where this leads is to an explication of the distinction now made between "micro" and "macro" physics. Micro physics is well ordered by the varieties of Quantum physics; i.e., those able to master the quantum language are also able to formulate reasonable expectations in the "macro" world. Thus, modern chemistry, transistors and information technology. On the other hand, ordinary experience works according to Relativistic theories, including the Newtonian special case. Ordinary experience is the realm of macro physics in which the averaging out of quantum events allows meat balls and spaghetti. The world works according to macro physics, if one doesn't think about it too much.

The importance of inertia is that it is tied up with causality because inertia distinguishes things over time. A causes B when we have an A and a B which are purported to appear together in a certain way. It is because of inertia that we have them at all, so inertia is a prerequisite. Inertia is a principle of order which is opposed to Entropy and always destroyed by chaos.

Posted 02/18/2009 07:15:17 AM                Last update: 02/18/2009        Originated: 11/9/2008

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