Not Yet...

Folks, I am still on heavy doses of pain killer drugs, so I won't be posting for awhile. Physical Therapy begins this week, and I hope to be done with all this in two to three weeks. I will be back, it is just taking longer to get off the drugs than I thought. See you soon.

I Will Be Gone...

...until the first week of July, maybe longer. I will be receiving a total knee replacement, which I am assured is a great thing, once you get beyond the recovery period. So, once I am into the recovery enough that I can post again, I will be back. Adios until then,

Stan

How Green is Your Refrigerator?

Going “Green” is massively politically correct. In fact Obama Motors will be producing greenie-mobiles, regardless of what the consumers really want. The idea of political correctness is intellectually indefensible in the first place, and in the second place it frequently goes against the laws of nature, not to mention logic and economics.

A beautiful case in point is the highly-hyped Sainsbury’s grocery store being built in Gloucester, UK. Amongst the standard environmental improvements being incorporated in the new store are a couple of knee-slappers.

First is the placing of kinetic-energy plates in the street to capture the energy of passing automobiles, which is then converted into electricity which will power cash registers. According to PhysOrg.com, the kinetic plates do not affect the gas mileage of the passing vehicles.

This is a completely bogus approach to energy “savings”. It is actually an energy theft from the autos, albeit at a very small rate per auto. But it is still a theft of energy, which then undergoes another lossy transformation from mechanical to electrical energy. It is like a bank stealing 3 cents from every customer, at thousands of customers, but losing 2 cents along the way to inefficiency. It is both intellectually and morally dishonest. And the ineffeciency inherent in the theft-conversion scheme results in a net increase in the overall usage of the hated fossil fuel that powers the automobiles and therefore an increase in pollution, etc.

But that’s not all, of course. The designers of the store also plan on ”retrieving cold air from refrigerators to keep the checkout area cool.” Every high school physics student knows that this will increase the energy bills, not decrease them.

Pulling cold air from the refrigerator will cause warm air to back-fill it, and cause the refrigerator to run full time attempting to keep its internal temperature low; this will shorten the life of the compression elements and will be inefficient energy-wise. Worse, it will likely result in spoiled food in the fridge, too, because of the room temperature air that is continually flowing into the refrigerator.

Heat pumps and air conditioning units are designed to do the job of cooling environmental air, and very efficiently these days, especially earth contact units. Using a refrigerator in the place of an air conditioner is, well, it is just ignorant. Politically correct, but extremely ignorant. Besides, it’s the UK, why would they need A/C anyway?

If equipment heat is the problem, then a simple fan exhaust system might do the job at a huge reduction in both installation cost and operating cost. What this job really needed was not PC “designers”, it needed a good engineer.

If You Don’t Value Truth, Then What DO You Value?

In the previous posts the idea that relativism can be rational, true and absolute is explored, along with the need for truth as an incorrigible absolute, if logic is to exist. Now the question is asked, if you deny absolutes and incorrigibles such as truth, then for you, what exists as a basis for your thought?

For example, Bertrand Russell said, in his Atheistic speech, "Why I am Not A Christian",

“We must require evidence for a thing if it is to be believed”.

For Russell, this was a law of the universe, one upon which to base one’s thought process and worldview. In other words, it is an incorrigible absolute. And further, it is an imperative: a moral statement, and as such no evidence is provided to sustain the truth of the statement, it is to be believed based on the moral force of its intuited truth. And further still, there is no empirical test that could possibly be devised that would produce evidence in support of this statement.

So Russell’s statement is intuited, imperative, moral, without any evidence needed or empirical support. So, evidence is said to be "required", yet evidence is not provided for Russell’s truth statement. This is self-refuting, yet it is commonly used as a law for Materialism

And even further still, Russell does not provide any definition of “evidence”, where it is to be found, How it is to be recognized, and how it is to be measured.

This single error in logic serves as a case study in Philosophical Materialism. It is fairly clear that Russell meant “physical, empirical evidence”. And it is also clear that he had not thought through the self-refutation contained in his declaration of the moral law.

What Is Truth?
It is always necessary to define the terms in use if confusion is to be avoided down the line. So let’s define truth now, in terms of its characteristics.

Truth is an absolute concept, and is an exclusive, discriminatory thing. There is truth, and there is not-truth: falseness; that’s all there is, epistemologically: just the two categories with no in-betweens, no partial truths. And these two entities, truth and not-truth, are mutually exclusive. There is no not-truth in truth. This means that truth is highly discriminatory, discriminating ruthlessly against non-truth. Truth is exclusively truth.

Tolerating falseness as a value is valuing not-truth, and therefore is false.

Truth has one form and is absolute; not-truth can take a great many forms and is unrestricted by any absolutes other than being absolutely not-true.

Truth is totally independent of outside influences; it doesn’t recognize or respond to our opinion of it, how we malign it or abuse it, or even deny it. Truth cannot be eliminated or destroyed. It is. In other words, it is also ontologically incorrigible, as well as epistemologically incorrigible.

Truth must exist if we are to be logical and rational; if there is no truth, then logic is impossible, having no solid base. If that is the case, then our thoughts have no value whatsoever. We consistently presume otherwise.

So Bertrand Russell must have valued truth, since he used the concept as the basis for his declaration of the necessity of evidence as the basis for belief in a thing.

But what about this evidence? We need to define that too, a challenge that Russell ignored.

Types of Evidence
There are two types of evidence for a thing, (a) objective and (b) subjective.

Objective evidence is evidence of the material world, which can be shared with other observers, measured, re-measured and so on. This is the universe of empirical discovery. Empiricism admits up-front that it is capable only of objective measurements of those things with physical, material characteristics that can be demonstrated in a physical, material experimental fashion. So empiricism is voluntarily materialistic, restricting what it will deal with to material entities. Additionally material evidence is never without the possibility of being overturned by future empirical findings: it is never incorrigible[1].

Subjective evidence is inferentially derived from internal, intuited mental explorations. This is the case of Russell’s ruling on the necessity of evidence. Intuited truths are not testable empirically, because they are not material in and of themselves, even though they might refer to material things, as Russell’s declaration does. Because they are not hampered with a physical, material existence, it is possible for subjective evidence to be incorrigibly valid.

Subjective evidence of this type includes the First Principles of Logic and Rational Thought; mathematics; language. These are intuited and can be represented second-hand by symbols for use in assisting thought and communication of thought. This subjective evidence exists in a non-material reality, where meaning exists but materiality does not.

There can also be false subjective evidence, such as imagined, deluded, anti-rational, and deceptive. Frequently the real incorrigible intuited evidence is charged with being one of these false types. But this can be tested by examining the rational, logical basis underlying the charge.

Going back to the original issue, what is it that one values, if one does not value the absolute, incorrigible truth? Devaluing truth eliminates the subjective evidence that is needed for rational thinking. It opens thought to an uncontrolled baseless anarchy of meaningless fluctuations. But there are other consequences too.

By eliminating absolutes, character values and cultural values float adrift. In fact, the term “values” hardly applies, since there is no differentiation in “value” between competing theories of behavior, ethics and morality: they are all relative and may be chosen as convenient. Gone are such valued permanent character traits as responsibility, honesty, truthfulness, reliability, trustworthiness, persistence.

But oddly and illogically (what else) new absolutes are put in place of the rejected absolutes: tolerance-of-everything, and equality reduction of all outcomes (the new “justice” for victims). These become the New Rights, which dominate when juxtaposed with the diminished old rights: Tolerance over free speech; equal outcomes over equal opportunities.

Tolerance-of-everything produces this Daughter Right: the right not to be offended; it’s a hate crime to offend through thought or deed. Tolerance-of-everything conflicts directly with liberty. Intolerance of intolerance is self-refuting.

Equal outcomes requires the leveling of wealth, which in turn requires the theft of wealth from those who have it and redistributing it to those who don’t. But those who don’t have it now will squander what they are given, requiring more wealth to be removed from the now-poor populace; it’s a never-ending spiral downward to complete impoverishment of the entire population (except of course those in charge of the redistribution).

The new absolutes are part of an “absolute-free” doctrine, and this alone puts the doctrine into self-refutation. The idea that absolutes don’t exist, are not important, and everything is relative is not merely flawed, it is false, blatantly irrevocably, and incorrigibly. It is not “absolutely true that absolute truth does not exist”, another self-refutation.

This all resolves to personal valuations. A person may choose to be tough minded and discriminatory, valuing truth over falseness, agendas and irrationality. Or a person may choose to be open-minded and anti-discriminatory: valuing diversity over truth; valuing tolerance of any and everything over liberty; valuing variable falseness over absolutes such as truth.

Are there any in-betweens? Being in-between is just as irrational as pure falseness. This means that there are really only the two choices: choosing absolute truth as the basis for you worldview; or choosing whatever. Which do you choose?


[1] Except for being incorrigibly unincorrigible: Godel’s discovery and Russell’s lament.

Is There Truth and How Could I Know? An Essay

Occasionally I run into Relativists who insist that nothing is constant, the world is in a continual state of flux, and therefore there is no Truth; certainly not absolute truth – nothing is absolute. What was thought to be true 50 years ago now seems quaint and erroneous. Not only is this the case for the progress of science and technology, it is also the case for our culture and its view of values and morality. In fact, nothing in the physical universe is the same, moment to moment, as particles move, are created and destroyed, masses move, and energy is deployed.

This idea of change over truth is so ingrained that it is used as an axiom, a basis for an entire panoply of beliefs. This axiom is a statement of complete variability, randomness and instability. “Whatever we think now will seem quaint and obsolete in the future; we cannot predict what will be 'truth' in the future”. This, then, justifies the idea that there can be no absolutes and that those who claim otherwise are irrational, or at least misguided, at best. At worst they are dangerously deluded, needing to be isolated for the good of all.

The previous two posts deal with rational thought and logic, and the need for a solid, permanent foundation on which to build ones ideas, a foundation known as the First Principles. I have made the case for the absolute need for consistency in order to produce coherence and stability in thought. Because without consistency and coherence there is absolutely no stable logic in our statements: it would all be untethered and irrational.

While there is much of our thought process that is merely functional daily activity oriented thinking, our worldviews are definitely in need of a rational, logical foundation. What could be worse, we might think, than an irrational worldview? Empirical science requires consistency in its axioms, or researchers would be wasting their time taking data in an inconsistent universe. Empirical science also requires that its axioms be valid, at least in the boundaries of the field that is being investigated. So some of the axioms of science incorporate the known variability of the universe, such as entropy, for example. But mostly empirical science depends on the invariability of physical laws across time and space, within our universe.

But not our worldviews; they have become relative and variable, without absolutes and morphing to fit the culture at the moment. If our worldviews are fluctuating, truth-free and value-free, accommodating the momentary convenience and not the eternal decencies, then why bother to have one? This is precisely the issue with Relativism: it engenders intellectual anarchy, which is the definition of irrationality. And intellectual anarchy engenders moral anarchy.

Enlightenment values seem to favor such an anarchy, certainly over the hated absolutism which the Enlightenment pretends to have overthrown. It allows the imagination of a discomfited proletariat where in reality there is no proletariat, much less a discomfited one. It allows the imagination of personal and class and racial superiorities based only on subjective proclivities. It allows the rationalized manufacture of axioms that are convenient, but not true, and the use of those axioms in a worldview. Relativism and its accompanying intellectual anarchy are dangerous.

The idea that there can be logic requires that there be a consistent base of truth available to those who would use that logic in deriving their worldviews. This body of consistent truth is a problem for Relativists, for whom it cannot exist, absolutely: there can be no absolutes in a fluctuating universe. So are there, really, universal, consistent truths?

If there were to be consistent, absolute truths in the universe, how would we know them? For a start, and to make it easy on ourselves, we will question the philosophers, for whom such questions make their careers. I like to go straight to Nietzsche, who denied their truth, thereby revealing their existence, at least intellectually. These principles and others are contained in the previous posting today, here.

We can examine these principles and see immediately that there is nothing there that can be measured, empirically. These principles are not physical, material things; they are metaphysical. So they cannot be validated or invalidated, empirically, using weights and measures or any physical techniques.

Next we can see that they are true, obviously and incorrigibly. They cannot be otherwise, even though they can be denied, obstreperously and without any accompanying validation. But viewed objectively and without prior agenda, they are so intuitively valid that they cannot be reasonably denied. Their truth is incorrigible.

And we can also see that without these intellectual foundations in play as axioms, logic cannot exist as a principled endeavor and rational thought becomes impossible.

So we can know, without material validation, that they are true, inexorably and incorrigibly. And because of this, we can also know that truth exists, that it is non-material (metaphysical) in nature, and that it must be either intuited as are the First Principles, or developed rationally from an intuited base.

Relativists, Materialists and Atheists deny – or at least decry – intuition. Either it doesn’t exist for the Relativist, or it is inherently faulty and subjective. This is in part the Nietzschean argument, which led him to develop Anti-Rationalism. But Anti-Rationalism is once again an absolute-free intellectual anarchy. And if nothing is true, then why bother thinking about anything at all? This produces a self-oriented, declining narcissism, a decay of purpose for being, a devaluation of life and self. (In fact, Nietzsche came to produce a power-based totalitarian philosophy that was needed to overcome the enervation of such intellectual and moral anarchy.)

But Relativists and other Enlightenment fans claim to be rational, not irrational. And they seem to succumb to irrational proofs of their rationality, such as placing the conclusion (agenda) into the premises in order to 'prove' the conclusion/agenda; or rationalizing false or fantasy premises to support a presupposed conclusion. The analysis of Materialist arguments always seems to turn up such fallacious reasoning.

In order to be truly rational and logical, the order must be reversed: it is the process which must be held dear, not the conclusion. The conclusion must roll naturally out of the process, and regardless of one’s opinion of the conclusion, if the process is valid, the premises are valid, and the testing against the First Principles succeeds, then the conclusion – whatever it is – will be valid. If such a conclusion contradicts ones agenda, it is the agenda that must be rejected, not the conclusion.[1]

Further, if there is Truth, if Truth is metaphysical, and if there is support from the process of rationality and the First Principles, then “incorrigibility” follows: it makes no difference what anyone thinks about it, says about it, does about it, it is totally independent in both existence and validity. Non-belief and denial have no effect on incorrigible truth.

Are there other metaphysical truths, incorrigible and independent? If one asks the questions, “Is there a source for this incorrigible truth? And if so what is it?”, a new level of answers becomes apparent. But that is not the subject of this essay.

[1] It is this process that drove me out of my Atheist, Materialist worldview.

Details of the First Principles of Logic and Rational Thought

[Author's note: this is the second of a series of articles that I publish periodically, when the need seems to warrant it.]

The First Principles: The bedrock of Logic and Rational thought

Since Rational thought requires valid logical propositions, and logic is based on the presupposition of universal truth in the form of the First Principles, it is necessary to fully understand what these principles entail and their impact. This section will list and then discuss the basic principles that make Rational thought possible and intelligible.

The First Principles can be categorized as follows:

1. The Intuitive Principles.

These principles, while not provable, are known to be valid intuitively.

a. Identity. If it is true, then it is true; if it exists, then it exists.

b. Non-Contradiction. If it is true, then it cannot be false; if it exists, it cannot NOT exist.

c. Excluded Middle. A (singular, unity) concept cannot be somewhat true and somewhat false; a (singular, unity) thing cannot somewhat exist and somewhat not exist.

d. Cause and effect. Every effect has a cause that is both necessary and sufficient.

e. Cogito (Descartes). Because I doubt my own doubt, it is true that I think; because I think (truth), I must exist (fact).

2. The Probabilistic Principles.

These Principles seem to encompass both truth and existence.

a. The Immutability of math throughout the universe.

b. The Immutability of physical law throughout the universe.

c. The mutability of all levels of verifiability (Godel's laws).

3. The Presuppositional Principles.

These principles are declared either as empirical constraints, or as part of a worldview.

a. No form of reality exists that cannot be either observed and measured directly or by the use of instrumentation.

b. No Singularities (temporary violations) exist in the physical laws of the universe.

4. The Principle of Rational Thought; Skepticism; and Rational Deniability

These two principles demonstrate the philosophical tension between the Rational Empiricists and the Anti-Rationalists.

a. No premise should be accepted without evidence.
( This is the Principle of Rational Thought, and the basis for “skepticism”: Hume, Russell, Ayer)

b. Existence of evidence via intuition is denied.
(This is the basis for Anti-Rationalism: Nietzsche)(Notice that deniability is declared true as a rational premise, which premise requires the intuition of its truth; so intuition is denied via the use of intuition, which is a paradoxical process to Rationalists – but not to Anti-Rationalists who deny that paradox exists).

5. The Principles of Evidence

Evidence is demanded by Rationalists and Skeptics. Anti-Rationalists deny all basis for evidence, except (paradoxically) Darwinism; Anti-Rationalists also deny paradox, having denied the First Principles due to their intuitive basis. So the following principles are Rational principles only, and are not necessarily accepted by the Anti-Rationalists.

a. All evidence ultimately devolves to the First Principles and is therefore intuitively based.

b. “Universals” can be assumed valid without proof. These include Mathematics, Logic, and Language (a syllogistic form of logic deriving from the First Principle of Cause and Effect). (Notice that this is an intuited principle).

c. Empirical evidence:

1. Physical; Sensate only: Therefore, measurable.

2. Local (inductive)

3. Repeatable (deductive)

4. Universality cannot be proven so must be assumed (intuited, based upon probability, which can be increased by numerous replications of tests)

5. Validity is probabilistic only (intuited, based upon statistical probability, which can be increased by numerous replications of tests)

6. Assumes the validity of the Presuppositional Principles, # 3 above.

7. Valid Empirical evidence can be falsified, but has not been. (Popper).

Second Level Effects of the First Principles

a. If the First Principles are true, it follows that truth exists.

b. If truth exists, then falseness also exists.

c. If falseness exists, then skepticism is justified.

d. However, if the First Principles are true, then intuition of truth is assumed a valid technique; therefore, skepticism is neither absolute nor is it immune to argument.

e. If the First Principles are NOT true, then any and every argument is not based on rational precepts, and skepticism becomes (1) absolute, and (2) Anti-Rational.

f. If Principle 4a, above, is valid, then ethical considerations can be intuited as First Principles. This is because Principle 4a expresses an “ought” imperative, which is an ethical statement, and which is considered to be valid for the foundation of Naturalism, and thus is considered to be a universal truth. It is intuited, and cannot be proven by itself, by empiricism, by Naturalism, or by Materialism. Thus the basis for Naturalism and Materialism (worldviews) as well as empiricism (a discipline) are based upon an intuited ethical value.

g. Because Naturalism, Materialism and empiricism are all based upon an intuited ethical value, then intuited ethical values exist, and can be valid (true).

h. Because intuited ethical values are seen to exist, then intuition exists, ethics exists, and values exist – outside and beyond the constraints and limits of Naturalism, Materialism and Empiricism; also transcendence is proven to be a valid source of both information and ethical value statements. I.e., Transcendence exists and can be valid.

Empiricism, Naturalism and Materialism

Because the “ought imperative” of Principle 4a is the necessary and sufficient principle upon which Naturalism and Materialism are based, it is easily shown that the transcendent nature of the underlying foundation of these concepts produces a contradiction that violates the anti-transcendent worldviews themselves.

In other words, Naturalism and Materialism declare that intuition and other transcendences cannot exist, yet the basis for Naturalism and Materialism is itself necessarily intuitive and transcendent.

So Naturalism and Materialism deny their own foundational validity, and thus are paradoxical (violate the Principle of Non-Contradiction), and so are neither coherent nor valid.

This paradox is fatal, rationally speaking, for Naturalism and Materialism, but not for Empiricism, because Empiricism has voluntarily chosen to limit its range of investigation, and, in theory any way, does not say anything at all about transcendences or about value systems, except that they are out of the range of the testability and verification constraints placed upon Empirical processes. (Empiricism is a process, not a worldview or value system).

In this manner Empiricism retains its validity as a process for obtaining information about physical reality. Naturalism and Materialism are seen to be invalid, non-coherent worldviews, spun off from Empiricism, but no longer identical to it.

The Principles of the First Principles

[Author's note: I sometimes find it useful to repeat some of the basics of logic and rational thought. This is because it is essential to keep in mind that logic doesn't just happen, it requires a conscious effort to produce and test logical thoughts. This article is always available ot the accompanying website, atheism-analyzed.net.]


All rational thought and logic must, of necessity, be based upon something. It cannot be based on chaotic random principles, or there would never be an orderly thought procession. It cannot be based upon variable principles, or the logic would not be consistent. It cannot be based on principles obscured by complexity, or logic could not be understood. Logic must be – and is – based on principles of magnificent consistency, simplicity and clarity. Moreover, they are persistently universal.

Because of the consistency, logic works always and everywhere, within the confines of our universe. Because of the simplicity, logic builds directly from these basic principles without need for a still more basic set of principles to prop it up. And because of the clarity of these principles, logic can be easily understood without the confusion of complexity.

The FIRST PRINCIPLES are those that cannot be reduced any further to more basic concepts. They are fundamental. And they cannot be proven by any more basic principles, because there are none to use in the proof. So they are “seen” to be true by inspection; they are “obviously” true; they are “intuitively” true.

To restate that which was said before, without the fundamental “truths”, logic cannot exist. Logic must be based upon something simple, consistent, and clear. Yet there are those that reject the first principles. Rejecting them would have the effect of eliminating “rational” logic, and replacing it with a non-rational substitute. For example, Nietzsche rejected the first principles and developed an antirational philosophy. But any antirational philosophy must be considered fantasy by true rationalists.

Since rationalism depends entirely upon the validity of logic, it also then depends upon the validity of the first principles. This is especially true of empiricism, which depends on the principle of cause and effect, and the principle of non-contradiction. Were these not valid, empiricism would never have come into being.

So science, at least empirical science, is totally dependent upon the continuing validity and consistency across the universe of the first principles of logic and rational thought.

And so, science is based upon a set of unproven, and unprovable principles, that are known to be true only by intuition. Thus, if science is thought to be valid, then intuition is also assumed to be valid.

Last, if intuition is valid, then transcendence exists – because intuition is transcendent.

An Interesting Argument and Analysis

I have received an interesting critical comment to an older post. I have no way of knowing whether readers can tell when older posts get comments. So I will refer here to the post in question, one titled "Secondary Ruminations". The new commenter issued a challenge which I happily engaged and responded with comments of my own. These involve Materialist philosophers Haugeland, Hellman and Thompson.

It is an interesting exercise, supporting my intial point that materialists wish to prove an agenda, not to find objective truth, and also a secondary point which is that denigration frequently comes to the fore immediately when Materialists are confronted.