For a number of years, very interesting research in cultural studies has been produced by the World Values Survey. This survey measures the slippery notion of value as belonging to four types: Survival, Traditional, Self-Expression, and Secular-Rational.

Individual and social values are quantified, resulting in two pairs of value types that are independent, and for each pair, the two types are dependent and inversely proportional:

Survival values ⇔ Self-expression values
Secular-rational values ⇔ Traditional values

In other words, if survival values are high (say one), self-expression values are low (say zero), and if survival values are low, self-expression values are high. Similarly, secular-rational values are higher if traditional values are lower, etc. So a pair of numbers each between zero and one indicates how an individual or society considers the importance of these values.

These social values are measured and compared in countries around the world, resulting in the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map. This map is a scatter plot that clusters similar countries by value pairs, rather than geography. However, countries close in geography are also often fairly close as “value” neighbors on this cultural chart.

One might try to claim that self-expression values and secular-rational values are more “advanced” than survival and traditional values. As a culture obtains more material wealth they are less dependent on using resources for survival, and so can foster more self-expression. Then perhaps as self-expression grows and so independent thought, less dependence on or even tolerance of traditional values encourages increased secular-rational values. But that would be too easy!

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Values_Survey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart–Welzel_cultural_map_of_the_world

World Values Survey on Twitter:

Tweets by ValuesStudies

[*9.170]

fourfolds, Metaphysics, Physics, Psychology, Space and Time

Atom and Archetype

January 23, 2018 Martin K. Jones 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I ran across this nice review of the book Atom and Archetype: the Pauli-Jung letters 1932-1958. This is a collection of letters exchanged between psychiatrist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli over a course of years. Evidently, Pauli was quite the metaphysician and Jung was intrigued by Einstein’s physics of relative space and time. Together in dialectic they argued and struggled to join together the disparate notions of mind and matter.

What mainly caught my eye was a diagram that I’ve slightly altered and shown above. I’ve mainly just replaced energy with matter-energy for two reasons: first because matter and energy are inter-convertible and second because matter conditions space. This results in similarity to the fourfold diagram for Lucretius that I’ve shown before, consisting of Particles, the Void, Falling, and Swerving.

Further Reading:

Atom, Archetype, and the Invention of Synchronicity: How Iconic Psychiatrist Carl Jung and Nobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli Bridged Mind and Matter

Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli / Atom and Archetype: the Pauli-Jung letters 1932-1958, Princeton University Press; Updated edition (July 21, 2014)

https://www.amazon.com/Atom-Archetype-Pauli-Letters-1932-1958/dp/069116147X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1516537804&sr=1-1&keywords=atom+and+archetype

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/lucretius-on-the-nature-of-things/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/matter-energy-space-and-time/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/wave-particle-duality/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/noethers-theorem/

[*10.60]

alchemy, anime, Esoteric, fourfolds

The Four Mythological Beasts

January 20, 2018 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

Another item for my fourfold menagerie is the four symbolic mythological beasts of China. They are associated with the Four Cardinal Directions and the Four Seasons.

The Vermilion Bird (South, Summer, named Zhūquè or Ling Guang)
The Azure Dragon (East, Spring, named Qīnglóng or Meng Zhang)
The Black Turtle (North, Winter, named Xuánwǔ or Zhi Ming)
The White Tiger (West, Fall, named Báihǔ or Jian Bing)

They are also part of Japanese folklore and I show the Japanese names of these four god beasts to the right, mostly because I am more familiar with them: Suzaku, Seiryu, Genbu, and Byakko.

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Symbols_(China)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFourGods

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Four_Gods

http://readingjapanesehistory.blogspot.com/2010/03/four-gods-protecting-kyoto.html

http://koei.wikia.com/wiki/Four_Gods

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Eight_Mansions

Notes:

It was nice to see the Four Beasts in the opening ceremony at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

[*8.104, *10.64]

epistemology, fourfolds, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Kant’s Synthetic-Analytic Distinction, V3

January 15, 2018 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

One of the oldest and most problematic philosophical questions is the comparison of the a priori–a posteriori distinction with that of the analytic–synthetic distinction. Both are used in epistemology to divide knowledge, or true statements, between the innate and the learned, or the immediate and the earned, so they might even be considered the same. A priori and a posteriori statements are before “experience” and after it, respectively. Analytic statements are true only by their “meaning”, whereas synthetic statements are true only when facts about the world are combined consistently with that meaning.

It seems we have complicated the issue because now we must define and understand “experience” and “meaning”. However, these concepts are not independent because we must experience meaning, and meaning in turn conditions experience. In addition, even the a priori or the analytic are not innate or immediately obvious because deductions and the rules of logic require effort just like inductions do. Otherwise we would have Fitch’s Paradox: all truths are in fact known. What a muddle! So both experience and meaning are necessarily locked into a cooperative spiral dance to improve each other.

In addition, if you search for the two pairs a priori-a posterior and analytic-synthetic, you also find that the pair necessary-contingent is associated with them. Are these three pairs independent of one another and so give rise to eight triplets, or are they dependent in some way and reduce into fewer combinations? In addition, from Wikipedia:

Thus, the relationship between aprioricity, necessity, and analyticity is not easy to discern. However, most philosophers at least seem to agree that while the various distinctions may overlap, the notions are clearly not identical: the a priori/a posteriori distinction is epistemological, the analytic/synthetic distinction is linguistic, and the necessary/contingent distinction is metaphysical.

The web site of Stephen R. Palmquist has a great wealth of material on fourfolds in relation to Kant’s as well as his own philosophy. From my own initial reading of his extensive material I have tried to choose a canonical Kantian fourfold which has the most relevance to my project.

The fourfold shown to the right Dr. Palmquist calls Kant’s “reflective perspectives on experience”. Consisting of the logical, the empirical, the transcendental, and the hypothetical, these facets bear a close analogical likeness to many of the fourfolds presented here.

Logical: Analytic a priori
Transcendental: Synthetic a priori
Hypothetical: Analytic a posteriori
Empirical: Synthetic a posteriori

Dr. Palmquist also has many of his own books available on his web site for the interested reader. I will certainly be returning to his web site in the future for much enjoyable study.

Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic-synthetic_distinction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori