Four Philosophies

May 14, 2015 Martin K. Jones 3 Comments

If one could divide all philosophies into four groups, what would those groups be? There doesn’t seem to be a strong consensus on how to do this although several have tried.

My first inclination is to start with the Archic Philosophers, discussed by Robert McKeon and his students Walter Watson and David Dilworth. These would be the Sophists, Plato, Democritus, and Aristotle. Philosophies aren’t usally divided in this way, but pros of doing this is that all four groups emerge from classical Greek thought. One of the main cons is that many would not agree that all philosophies are decendents of these four philosophers, or even combinations of aspects from each.

Another student of McKeon, Robert S. Brumbaugh, thought the process philosophies starting from those of Heraclitus and Anaxagoras (both pre-Socratic) and ranging through Whitehead should be represented instead of the Sophists. Otherwise he choose the same three as McKeon, giving Anaxagorean, Platonic, Democritean, and Aristotelian philosophies. By doing this he can form the double dual of Materialist-Formalist (direction) and Holoscopic-Meroscopic (method).

Anaxagoras: Materialist, Holoscopic
Platonic: Formalist, Holoscopic
Democritean: Materialist, Meroscopic
Aristotelian: Formalist, Meroscopic

Two works older than Brumbaugh’s that divide philosophy into the same four groups are those of Ralph Barton Perry and James Donald Butler. Their division is Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and Realism. I believe that the Realism in these books means Platonic Realism, instead of the more recent Scientific Realism thought of today. Of course Realism has many shadings as seen below.

It might be advantageous to consider Naturalism as a group instead of Realism, since the very concept of the real has so much disagreement. Naturalism does too, but not the extent that Realism does.

Several web sites divide four philosophies of eduction into Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, and Existentialism. To me, Existentialism is similar to the Relativism of the Sophists. But what about Phenomenalism? Is that more like Relativism or Idealism?

There is also the monumental work “The Sociology of Philosophies” by Randall Collins but I haven’t examined it yet. I suspect they are not condensed or simplified into four groups.

So for now I’ve settled on Relativism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and Naturalism.

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

Walter Watson / The Architectonics of Meaning: Foundations of the New Pluralism

David Dilworth / Philosophy in World Perspective: A Comparative Hermeneutic of the Major Theories

Robert S. Brumbaugh / Western Philosophic Systems and Their Cyclic Transformations

Ralph Barton Perry /Present Philosophical Tendencies: a critical survey of naturalism, idealism, pragmatism, and realism together with a synopsis of the philosophy of William James

James Donald Butler /Four Philosophies and Their Practice in Education and Religion

Randall Collins / The Sociology of Philosophies: a global theory of intellectual change

[*8.138, *8.151, *8.152]

alchemy, fourfolds

The Fourfold Democritus

May 4, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

Old Democritus under a tree,
Sittes on a stone with booke on knee;
About him hang there many features,
Of Cattes Dogges, and such-like creatures,
Of which he makes Anatomy,
The seat of black choler to see.
Over his head appears the skye,
And Saturne Lord of Melancholy.

— From Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy

Truth lies at the bottom of a well.

— Democritus

References:

Christoph Luthy / The Fourfold Democritus on the Stage of Early Modern Science
Isis, Vol. 91, No. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 443-479
The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
http://www.jstor.org/stable/237904

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-h/10800-h.htm

Who Was Democritus?

[*9.3]

fourfolds

Into the Woods

April 17, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

How far can you walk into the woods?

Halfway! Because then you start walking back out!

[*8.140]

fourfolds, religion

The Religion of the Future

April 6, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

If religion remade itself for the present and for the future, what should it be like? Robert Mangabeira Unger thinks religion is an important aspect of human existence but doesn’t serve our own needs and those to each other or to the world that we find ourselves in and are so dependent on. In “The Religion of the Future”, he continues the program that he introduced in his previous book “The Self Awakened”.

There are four major existential flaws of human existence: mortality, insatiability, groundlessness, and belittlement. Our mortality is the inevitable end of our struggle within life, although some scientists think it may be overcome someday. Our insatiability does seem to be part of human nature, a yearning for more of life and even life itself, but perhaps it could be quelled with training and resolve. Our groundlessness is due to the incompleteness of our knowledge as to the reasons of our existence and the future that we should pursue.

Unger considers belittlement to be a repairable flaw, unlike the other three. Belittlement may be different because we could learn to not reduce each others dreams and goals, but it may also be part of human nature to raise ourselves up by belittling others. We are social beings, but we are also confrontational and competitive. Even if we can learn, what is to stop the world itself from belittling us by placing physical limits on our actions and resources, or constraints on our abilities and plans?

These four flaws make us craven, clueless, needy, and terrified. Could a revolution of religion make us face up to our flaws in a mature and dignified way? Unger seems to think so and lays out his ideas. Four important principles that this religion must serve are apostasy, higher cooperation, plurality, and deep freedom. Four needful virtues that this religion must promote are self-transformation, connection, purification, and divinization.

The major religions of the past have the themes of overcoming the world, struggling with the world, and humanizing the world. What would the theme of the religion of the future be? Accepting the world? Embracing the world? Loving the world? Many religions avoid or even despise the world because it is only a means to an end, instead of an end in itself. We are indeed part of the world and must learn to accept, embrace, and love it as well as ourselves.

From the book description:

How can we live in such a way that we die only once? How can we organize a society that gives us a better chance to be fully alive? How can we reinvent religion so that it liberates us instead of consoling us?

These questions stand at the center of Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s The Religion of the Future. Both a book about religion and a religious work in its own right, it proposes the content of a religion that can survive faith in a transcendent God and in life after death. According to this religion–the religion of the future–human beings can be more human by becoming more godlike, not just later, in another life or another time, but right now, on Earth and in their own lives.

Unger begins by facing the irreparable flaws in the human condition: our mortality, groundlessness, and insatiability. He goes on to discuss the conflicting approaches to existence that have dominated the last 2,500 years of the history of religion. Turning next to the religious revolution that we now require, he explores the political ideal of this revolution, an idea of deep freedom. And he develops its moral vision, focused on a refusal to squander life.

The Religion of the Future advances Unger’s philosophical program: a philosophy for which history is open, the new can happen, and belittlement need not be our fate.

References:

Roberto Unger / The Religion of the Future

Click to access religion.pdf

The Four Qualities

April 3, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

By convention sweet and by convention bitter,
By convention hot, by convention cold,
By convention color; but in reality atoms and void.

— Democritus

The ancient and archaic system of medicine called Humorism still has associations with modern psychological investigations via analogies with the Four Temperaments. Mentioned more for completeness, the four qualities of Humorism (Hotness, Coldness, Dryness, Wetness) may be considered linked to other fourfolds presented here such as the Four Seasons, the Four Elements, and as I mentioned the Four Temperaments.

These are called the four qualities because four relations between the Four Elements generate them, out of the six possible. Dryness is the relationship between Fire and Earth, Hotness is between Air and Fire, Wetness is between Water and Air, and Coldness is between Earth and Water. Alternatively, one can say Air has the qualities of being Hot and Wet, Fire is Hot and Dry, Water is Cold and Wet, and Earth is Cold and Dry.

As such these relations can be considered lying between the poles of the Four Elements. Along with the elements they may form a double square star, or two squares within a regular octagon. I’m not sure if this figure has a special name: in the anime “Inuyasha: the Final Act”, “Kagome” was this double square figure as well as the name of a major character. However “Kagome” actually seems to mean a different symbol: a star formed by two triangles within a regular hexagon. We don’t talk much about triads here.

There is also a children’s game called “Kagome Kagome”, where one child is centered within a ring of others, circling and chanting a song. The central child is only released if she can guess who is behind her when the chant stops. No peeking! Perhaps this position is reserved for reality or metaphysics in our representations.

These two axes can also be thought to encircle typical earth-type organisms within their habitable zones of humidity and temperature: neither too cold nor too hot, neither too dry nor too wet. This is known as a “Goldilocks effect”, after “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. Also, the desirable middle between extremes is often called the “Golden Mean”, or the “Happy Medium”.

If humidity is considered to be a Cosine wave, and temperature is considered a Sine wave, then the Four Seasons can be located where x = 0 (Spring), π/2 (Summer), π (Fall), and 3π/2 (Winter). Q.E.D.!

References:

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_%28philosophy%29

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

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

[*8.36, *8.107, *9.6]

fourfolds

Little, Big

April 1, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

— J. R. R. Tolkien

Another riddle, perhaps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little,_Big

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

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

[*8.43, *8.130]

fourfolds, Psychology

The Fundamental Four of Sandeep Gautam

March 22, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

I was excited to recently find the long running blogs of Sandeep Gautam. The one I’ve looked at so far (“The Mouse Trap”) is mainly about psychology and neurology, but he seems to have a penchant for fourfolds, and some of the entries in “The Mouse Trap” talk about the same topics as my blog. He has also developed many interesting models of psychological and mental organization.

Guatam is a software developer and psychology enthusiast, from his short bio on his Psychology Today blog “The Fundamental Four”. He also has a multitude of other blogs (where does he find the time?), gives TED talks, and is just about everywhere on social media. Entries on “The Mouse Trap” are appearing less frequently these days, but it has been going since 2006.

Above is a diagram of the four fundamental evolutionary problems of humans as per psychologist Theodore Millon (and each also associated with a duality): survival or existence (pain/pleasure), adaptation (passive/active), replication (self/other), and abstraction (broad/narrow). Gautam’s Fundamental Four are the four basic drives to overcome these problems, a “lens” through which he sees psychology: food/foe (survival), flourishing/fun (adaptation), family/friends (replication), and focus/frame (abstraction). (I hope he doesn’t mind if I added “frame” to “focus”.)

I was not familiar with either Millon’s or Gautam’s work until now. I was thinking about updating my article on Aristotle’s Four Causes, and I chanced upon Gautam’s post on the subject because of images from it. I was soon very intrigued, because I see similarities in many of his formulations and mine! Also please compare these fourfolds to the Relational Models Theory.

Some of the more interesting blog entries of “The Mouse Trap”:

http://the-mouse-trap.com/2011/11/19/the-four-mechanisms-of-evolution/
(See my Theory of Evolution)

The Four Fundamental Causes

2 factor theories of personality

http://the-mouse-trap.com/2011/01/07/i-could-have-avoided-writing-this-blogpost-but-i-was-fated-to-be-a-blogger/
(See my Reasons Things Happen)

Six world hypotheses or how we explain eyerything and anything

The ABCD of Psychology and Happiness

Emotions and personailty : take 3

Links:

http://the-mouse-trap.com

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fundamental-four

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fundamental-four/201112/your-fundamental-four-journey

[*8.146, *8.147]

fourfolds

Snakes and Ladders

March 19, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54

Consider the children’s game of “Snakes and Ladders”.

The object of the game is to traverse a sequence of locations on a game board, numbered from one (the beginning) to some maximum goal (the end), with the numbers increasing from the bottom of the board to the top. The player usually competes with other players to win the goal first, because otherwise why do it. Ladders join lower numbers at their base with higher numbers at their top. Snakes join higher numbers at their head with lower numbers at their tail.

The players take turns and each move forward a number of locations determined with a roll of a die. If a player lands on the bottom of a ladder, she can immediately climb to the top of it, skipping the locations in between. However if she lands on the head of a snake, she must slide down the snake to its tail, essentially losing her recent gains of several turns.

The game progresses by chance, and indeed the winner is completely chosen by luck. There are no choices that players can make to increase their chance of winning the game, and so it is completely random. It is evidently an ancient game and older versions often portrayed the ladders as virtues and the snakes as vices. What can this game teach us about morality and life in general?

Unfortunately the player cannot gain knowledge or experience along their journey to help them. There is no way to increase one’s chance to land on a ladder’s bottom or decrease one’s chance to land on a snake’s head. The game is on the other end of the spectrum from a choice driven game such as tic-tac-toe, or even chess. I’m also reminded of the card game “War”, which is another random game played by children. Such completely random games equalize chances of winning among different ages, I imagine.

From Wikipedia: The game (Snakes and Ladders) is a central metaphor of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The narrator describes the game as follows:

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you hope to climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate. But it’s more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother.

Notes:

Actually, it reveals the fourness of things. The snake tails and ladder tops are different in kind from the snake heads and ladder bases, because landing on the former the player doesn’t change position. She can instead contemplate possibly backsliding and revisiting this location via snake or the experiences of having taken the long way instead of just climbing to this location via ladder.

A more modern version could replace the snakes and ladders with one entity, perhaps wormholes, which would deliver one instantly to the opposite end, either forward or backward. The name could be revised to “Shortcuts and Backtracks”, perhaps. Or maybe it would be too confusing.

References:

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%28card_game%29

[*8.144, *9.102]

fourfolds, linear logic, logic

J.-Y. Girard’s Transcendental Syntax, V2

March 11, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

Meaning is use.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

The latest two preprints by logician J.-Y. Girard continue his program for transcendental syntax, divided into deterministic and nondeterministic. He defines transcendental syntax as the study of the conditions of the possibility of language: to begin by discovering the preliminary suppositions in the creating of a logical sentence such as a proposition or deduction.

What are the presuppositions for using propositions? Girard claims the main one is the balance between the creation and the use of words, which is at the heart of meaning. But the notion that a proposition has a meaning that is well defined is prejudice, albeit one that allows us identify the terms of a sentence and thus to perform deductions.

Girard wants instead to find inner explanations of logical rules: explanations based on syntax instead of a semantics that correlates to a mandated “reality”. To emphasize this, he gives the term Derealism as another expression for transcendental syntax. Logical rules should have a normative aspect because of their utility, so his project appears to be one of pragmatism. Others have said that Linear Logic is the logic of the radical anti-realist.

Girard divides all of logical activity into four blocks that weave together: the Constat, the Performance (please forgive my shortening on the diagram above), L’usine (factory), and L’usage (use). These four blocks are partitioned by Kant’s analytic-synthetic and a priori-a posteriori distinctions. The analytic is said to have “no meaning”, that is, “locative”. The synthetic is said to have “meaning”, that is, “spiritual”. The a priori is said to be “implicit”, and the a posteriori is said to be “explicit”.
Can we find all the explanations we need to create logic internally? If so, perhaps it is only because of how the brain works, like how John Bolender posits that social relations described by the Relational Models Theory are created out of symmetry breaking structures of our nervous systems, which are in turn generated by our DNA. A realist would certainly say that our understanding of logical rules is enabled but also limited by our brains, whereas an idealist would say that our minds could “transcend” those limits. But it seems pragmatic to say that the mind is what the brain does.

I believe a closer analogy for the fourfold of Transcendental Syntax is to Hjelmslev’s Net than to Kant’s Analytic-Synthetic Distinction. If so, then Performance and L’usage are Content (Implicit), whereas Constat and L’usine are Expression (Explicit). Performance and Constat are Substance (Locative), and L’usine and L’usage are Form (Spiritual). Hjelmslev was a linguist that developed a theory of language as consisting of only internal rules.

Or even to analogy with Aristotle’s Four Causes, which is how I’ve arranged the first diagram: the Constat is the Material cause, the Performance is the Efficient cause, L’usine is the Formal cause, and L’usage is the Final cause. Material and Efficient causes are often considered mere matter in motion, which could be Locative, or meaningless (physical). Formal and Final could be Spiritual, or meaningful, as patterns of matter and motion, respectively.

Notes:

How can we know that a given named term is the same as another one in a different part of our formula? Rather than using names, or linking them through semantics or a well-defined meaning, we can tie terms together by their locations in our sentences and deductions.

References:

J.-Y. Girard / Transcendental syntax 1: deterministic case (January 2015 Preprint)

J.-Y. Girard / Transcendental syntax 2: non deterministic case (February 2015 Preprint)

https://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/Accueil.html

V. Michele Abrusci, Paolo Pistone / On Transcendental Syntax: a Kantian Program for Logic?

https://www.academia.edu/10495057/On_Trascendental_syntax_a_Kantian_program_for_logic

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

[*8.122, *8.123]

fourfolds, hermeneutics, logic

The Rational Structure of Inquiring Systems

February 26, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

What are the components of consciousness? In the dissertation of L. Kurt Engelhart we see a fourfold used to analyze the texts and bodies of work of both scientists and philosophers, a hermeneutical tool if you will. This tool is also styled by concepts of “systems theory”, and requires the exposition of the aspects of Content, Control, Process, and Purpose of the authors. These match closely the Four Causes of Aristotle, which are the causes of made things or the explanations of how and why they came about: material, efficient, formal, and final. In fact, this close association was one of the main reasons I dove into the world of fourfolds. Texts are made things, after all.

Making is so fundamental to what we do, that humans have been called “Homo Faber”, man the maker. We make tools, stories, culture, and even our concept of self. What if I turned this tool onto my own work, the writings and images found here? Perhaps that will be the project of another analyst, if my efforts warrant. What if I applied this tool to Engelhart’s project? That would be interesting indeed.

Another fourfold Engelhart presents is that of the domains of conscious experience, or the self itself as system. This fourfold consists of the Real, the Actual, the Ideal, and the Literal, but my version is in disagreement with Engelhart’s as to the classification of integrative and differentiative for the Ideal and the Literal. My assignments match the conjunctive and disjunctive properties of the operators of Linear Logic. Also left out is the Universal and how it supersedes the Actual as we make a complete turn. I like my version because it is similar to Richard McKeon’s Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions. Also T. S. Eliot’s Falls the Shadow.

Of course this is just a brief gloss of the rich ideas presented in Engelhart’s work. Another of his key concepts is that of wholeness, which I have completely omitted. I hope to return and write a better review at a later time. I’m glad to see that Engelhart’s dissertation is now available as a Kindle book for the low, low price of $1. It is much easier to read in this format! From the Amazon Book Description:

This study describes, as a single systemic model of inquiry, the context common to conscious experience of the phenomenon of inquiry. Data are the published texts of selected contemporary writers relevant to the question. The problem is to define a common systemic structure of inquiry in a context of consciousness. Research verifies that a specific structure is common to these writers and that their respective views are converging on this same structure.

Identifying a common structure involves reducing the textual descriptions of the writers to their systemically relevant essentials. Defining the essential elements and describing a reduction method depends heavily on theory of metaphor and metaphorical evolution. A history of the metaphorical structure relevant to inquiry is described and this structure is used as a basis for finding structure in the selected texts. Texts researched include evolutionary biology, sociology, psychology (phenomenology), and philosophy. This work replicates that done by Talcott Parsons in experimentally describing a voluntaristic theory of action. A wholistic theory of inquiry is described using the same systemic scheme.

The metaphysical approaches to inquiry of realism and idealism have converged on a common theoretical structure for describing inquiry. Commonalities emphasize systemic structure comprising the elements of function: purpose, process, content, and control. It has been necessary to distinguish between affectual and instrumental purposes, and between organic and mechanical function. The ontological essentiality of the structure reveals a necessary logical relationship between function, systemicity, wholeness, and rationality in human understanding. Continuing research in philosophy is crucial to expanding our understanding of the ontological and epistemological structural essentials of consciousness.

Human inquiry during the last century has specialized in the material realm of realism, objective description, and mechanical explanation. A wholistic theory of inquiry does not discount the contributions of realism-based science or idealism-based philosophy, but expands the horizons of each to include the other. Where mathematics provides essential tools for mechanical explanation, organic explanation still lacks abstract structural tools for describing conscious organic, including human, behavior. The intent of a wholistic theory of inquiry is to provide conceptual tools that support disciplined inquiry into conscious behavior.

References and Links:

L. Kurt Engelhart / Wholeness and the Rational Structure of Inquiring Systems: A Dissertation

http://lkengelhartassoc.org/

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

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

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

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

Notes:

I removed some text about the “Book of Nature”, because it needed more work. This mentioned the systems theory adage “the purpose of a system”, which can also tie into “meaning as use”. I also missed seeing an obvious thought that inquiry is making.

[*2.188, *3.104, *8.134]

Equivalent Exchange

Four Philosophies

The Fourfold Democritus

Into the Woods

The Religion of the Future

The Four Qualities

Little, Big

The Fundamental Four of Sandeep Gautam

Snakes and Ladders

J.-Y. Girard’s Transcendental Syntax, V2

The Rational Structure of Inquiring Systems

Every Fourth Thing

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Every Fourth Thing