Finding Truth

We will take Nietzsche as our starting point, and then see where we can evolve to from there -- in our goal of finding truth.

'All facts are interpretations.' -- Nietzsche

We have a world both outside of us and inside of us that is impossible to know fully and completely because our senses are imperfect, our logical faculties are imperfect -- and our 'will to truth' is imperfect. In fact, our will to truth is often the biggest problem of all. We simply don't want to know the truth. As Jack Nicholson said in his famous speech (forgive me but I have forgotten the name of the movie with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Jack Nicholson in it, just looked it up -- 'A Few Good Men') -- 'You can't handle the truth!'

When it comes to truth, personal and/or collective narcissism (greed, selfishness, egotism, ambition, anxiety, fear...) often rears its ugly head to hide, suppress, distort, embellish, and/or push people away from the truth.

So the first thing that is absolutely necessary in finding the truth -- is a 'will to truth'. I do not say this lightly. The truth is not always attractive to the squeemish or the faint-harded...indeed, the truth often requires courage and bravery to seriously look for it in the first place.

My definition of truth: 'A strong structural similarity between things and processes as we believe them to be, and things and processes as they really are -- or were.

Unfortunately, that raises the huge Kantian problem -- the 'subject-object split' and the fact that we can't step outside of our own skin, our own senses, our own logical faculties, and our own narcissistic biases -- to 'know for sure how things and processes really are'.

Thus, we are, and man is, stuck in a paradoxical, epistemological 'Catch 22' -- one that man has been 'epistemologically cursed' with since the beginning of man's existence -- and probably to the end.

There is no such thing as 'perfect truth' unless we are talking about 2 plus 2 equals 4, and/or maybe 'The sun rose up this morning' although that for me is an assumption because I never saw it rise this morning. And of course, the sun didn't really 'rise' -- that is all human relativity at work and play.

So we just have to keep pursuing the 'best approximations of truth' that we can possibly get to, on our own, and/or with the help of our fellow human beings who are similarly interested in 'pursuing truth'.

And of course, truth means nothing without 'context'. If we want to talk about truth -- at least in any practical, pragmatic, functional sense -- we have to talk about something happening in some place and time. And then describing the way it happened. How it happened. Why it happened becomes even more interpretive, more problematic, more complicated, and more controversial. What caused her death? What caused the accident? Who was responsible? Who was to blame? What was to blame?

The danger is -- or at least one of the main dangers -- is that we 'box the truth', call it 'the truth' and forget that we are only giving a 'theory of the truth' that may be right, may be wrong, may be partly right and partly wrong, or it may be the 'truth at first' but then 'life changes' and our 'box of truth' does not change with the evolution of a changing life process.

Five 'Truth Dangers' I call respectively:

1. Idols of Theoretical Boxes and Labels (that don't fit the real world and how it works);

2. Idols of Reification (hanging on to an idea or theory that becomes 'dead' as life changes);

3. Idols of Reductionism (Dividing life into 5, 10, or a hundred pieces -- and not putting it back together again);

4. Idols of Abstraction, Association, and Generalization (One or two instances of a life process do not necessarily imply an 'iron clad rule of nature that will never change'; likewise, just because something looks like a duck and swims like a duck does not necessarily mean that it is a duck -- it could be a swan.)

5. Idols of Narcissistic Bias (Too much unethical, narcissistic bias at work and play -- selfishness, jealousy, envy, greed, anxiety, egotism, pride, money... -- to truly want to know the truth, and/or want it to be known.

Four Rules of Thumb For Pursuing The Truth...

1. Observations first, inferences/interpretations second, value judgments third...Don't jump to premature and/or unwarrented conclusions because then the value judgments -- even before any discussion or debate of 'values and ethics' -- are going to be wrong.

2. Skepticism is a good thing -- people are often jumping to fast and wrong interpretations, assumptions, conclusions...Check you assumptions, check society's assumptions, observe, observe, observe, check different sources, check different biases, check, check, check...

3. Life changes -- make sure your 'conceptual representations of life' change too in order to keep up with all of life's changing processes...evolution, mutation, compensation, etc...

4. Make sure your information comes from credible, reliable sources, and know what their line of bias and potential 'conflict of interest' might be relative to 'steering you away from the truth'.

Avoid these epistemological traps and follow these epistemological rules and you will be putting yourself in a good position towards steering yourself towards the epistemological truth.

A strong 'will to truth' -- and the strength, courage, and perseverence to chase it down like a bull terrier, even a pit-bull -- remains your greatest asset.

-- dgbn, Jan. 21st, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...are still in process...

Central Ego Functioning (Part 5): What is a 'Stimulus'? What is a 'Gestalt'?

What is a stimulus?

This is a critically important question.

The first thing we need to recognize is this -- and it is a huge shift in emphasis from where I was as a 'cognitive, one line of emphasis, psychology-philosophy student' in 1979 -- and that is the DGB concept of 'stimulus' today encompasses the idea of 'dual influence-dialectic causality', indeed, often 'multi-dialectic influence and causality'.

The 1980s impressed upon me the ideas of Perls, Freud, Jung -- and Hegel -- all of whom were dualist integrationists and/or dialectical psychologists.

By 1979, I had already been exposed to the 'dualist' ideas of General Semantics: 'The map vs. the territory.' and an 'intensional orientation' (constantly being inside your head0 vs. an 'extensional (scientific, empirical) orientation' geared more towards constantly checking our inside thoughts, words, and assumptions vs. our day to day observations in our 'objective world'.

However, I had not been fully exposed to Hegelian dialectic thinking (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis). And the shift in emphasis to dialectic thinking is what brings you 'Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy-Psychology' in its 2009 version here today.

We are all 'dialectically engaged with our natural, social, and political environment -- and with the people we meet in this environment.

We all give influence -- and take influence -- overtly and/or covertly, consciously and/or subconsciously, intentially and/or unintentionally.

I influence you. You influence me. That is the nature of dialectical -- meaning two-sided -- influence, accountability and causality.

If this essay is not of interest to you, then you hold the option -- the choice -- of walking (or keyboarding) away from the essay -- and doing something else with your time and energy.

The same option -- and choice -- holds for me too. If I am finding the essay too boring, then I hold the option too of walking (or keyboarding) away from it, and/or working harder to make the essay more personally engaging -- and interesting.

The easiest essays to write are the ones where you do not have to 'try hard' to write it.

I have said before in similar or different words that I have more trouble writing a strictly 'Apollonian' essay that only involves the use of my mind-brain than it does to write an essay that involves all of my more 'passionate-emotionally embracing faculties' -- meaning my 'heart' -- as well as my Apollonian faculties.

This brings us to the Gestalt idea of 'figure' and 'background'.

A 'figural stimulus' is one that is right at the forefront of our attention and energy.

A 'background stimulus' is one that stays or fades into the background due to the presence of another, stronger, more figural 'gestalt-stimulus'. The word 'gestalt' is of German origin and similar in meaning to the word 'stimulus'. Thus, I could say that writing this essay is a 'figural gestalt' for me. Or conversely, I could say that, as of this moment, it is no longer a figural gestalt for me, that I have been sitting on this computer for too long now, and need to take a break -- need to go outside and get some fresh air before coming back to finish this essay.

And that is exactly what I will do.

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Stimuli control the direction of our lives -- and yet not in a deterministic sense.

I am not a believer in any kind of 'stimulus-response' model that does not include the 'black box' in the middle of the model which is 'the organism', the 'animal', the 'man or woman', and in particular, the 'mind-brain-heart' of the man or woman who is not only reacting positively or negatively to any particular stimulus, but who is also creating new stimuli as well.

The act of 'pro-active creationism' is not the same as 'conditional, reactive behavioral determinism', and the behaviorists in their seeming wish to suppress and oversimplify certain imperative internal, invisible -- cognitive-emotional factors -- God forbid, that the behaviorists should lose hold of their ever so prescious title as 'empirical scientists' --
succumb to, and become victimized by scientific reductionism. If you cannot see or 'measure' something, then it is not there. That was the classic behaviorist's (read B.F. Skinner) 'scientific position' on 'thoughts', 'ideas', 'concepts', 'values', 'beliefs', 'dreams', 'goals', 'priorities' and the like when I was going to University in 1979 but alas, that was 30 years ago, and I have not followed the evolution of the Behaviorists' philosophical position.

Somehow, I don't think it has changed much, although admittedly the Professor I had who marked my Honors Thesis was an 'Integrative Cognitive-Behaviorist'.

Bravo! Bravo! Dr. Donald Meichenbaum. A conscious -- or subconscious -- post-Hegelian integrative 'Cognitive-Behavioral Psychologist' before I even knew who Hegel was, and before I even knew what 'thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis' meant.

The synthesis of Cognitive Therapy and Behaviorism is an example of what I now call 'Dialectical Evolution'. I am a strong proponent of Dialectic -- and Multi-Dialectic -- Evolution. It happens subconsciously even when men and women are not conscious of trying to make it happen, but for the most part, it happens more happily and healthily when people are practising this form of evolution consciously, not subconsciously -- and diplomatically, not violently.

The Gaza Strip, Iraq, Afghanastan, and Pakistan...may all have 'happy' futures at some point in time, if some working type of homeostatic balance is ever arrived at...
but in the mean time, as Israel and the Hamas continue to send rockets and bombs into each other's home land, each trying to the best of their ability to exercise their own respective 'Will to Power Over Their Enemy', nobody wins, everybody loses, friends and family die, and everyone else in the world is put through Hell...

That's what I call 'negative stimulus' -- and 'Negative Dialectic Evolution' -- or 'Dialectic Regression'.

That is where I will leave things tonight.

I think I have adequately described what I mean by 'stimulus'.

It is interesting how the last part of this essay flowed much faster than the first part.

Perhaps I moved to some more interesting, motivating, gestalts.

There is a lesson here that I learned from Gestalt Therapy back in the 1980s but which I easily lose track of from time to time, and have to continue to remind myself of:

Stay with your 'figural gestalts' as they are your top energizers, your top motivators.

Don't get lost in, and become a slave to, your 'background gestalts' which are low energizers and low motivators. They will drive you into an early 'existential grave'.

As my Gestalt teachers used to say to me:

'Get out of your head and come to your senses.'



-- dgbn, Jan. 11th, 2008

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

Are still in process...

My Honours Thesis, 'Evaluation and Health', 1979, Revisited 29 Years Later

(Sept. 6th, 2008)

Below is a presentation of my honors thesis, written in 1979 for my degree in psychology at the University of Waterloo. It was written for one of my professors, a cognitive-behavioral psychologist, who shared my interest at the time of the research I had already been exposed to, and started to do from high school, in the area of General Semantics. At the time, I wanted to take my studies in General Semantics to a higher level, integrating it with my studies in cognitive therapy and psychotherapy in general on one side of things, and with my studies in humanism (Erich Fromm mainly), which was just starting to lead me in the direction of existentialism -- and humanistic-existentialism, on the other side of things.

At this point in time, I had not yet been seriously exposed to Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy, nor Alfred Adler and Adlerian Psychology, nor Freud and Psychoanalysis, nor Carl Jungand Jungian Psychology, nor Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis, nor Friedrich Nietzsche -- nor the primary integrator of all these great psychologist-philosophers -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

What you have in Evaluation and Health is the beginnings of Hegel's Hotel and DGB Philosophy as I started my evolutionary process of moving from being a unilateral philosopher to a dialectical one.

A 'dialectic philosopher' by the definition of DGB Philosophy is a person who embraces both the concept and the phenomenon of opposite polarities-perspectives-lifestyles because he or she sees an opportunity for new, integrative learning and humanistic-existential evolution in these polar differences -- and the opportunity for negotiating differential unity, harmony, and homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance by working both extreme ends of the polarity-continuum towards the middle where people ideally can live together with each other, or in close proximity to each other, without trying to kill each other and/or destroy each other's polar opinions.

Dialectic-democratic philosophy-politics is integrative philosophy-politics; it aims not to be divisive, 'either-or' politics although, to be sure, there will be times when DGB Philosophy takes a hard stand against those who are not deemed to be in support of what it takes to get to a 'dialectic-democratic-homeostatic-middle-ground civil balance position'.

DGB Philosophy, in general, is closer to the politics of Obama, Biden, and the Democratic Party in America; however, having said this, DGB Philosophy has some Republicanism-Conservatism-Capitalism in it; just not as much as Bush, McCain, Palin, Romney, Guiliani, Huckabee...In this regard, DGB Philosophy sees the opportunity for an open democratic-dialectic debate and dialogue between the strengths and weaknesses of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

DGB Philosophy -- in the terminology of American Politics -- might be better described as 'The Democratic-Republican Dialectic Party'

Alternatively, in Canada, DGB Philosophy might be described as 'The Conservative-Liberal Dialectic-Democratic Party'.

Again, DGB Philosophy looks towards embellishing and integrating the strengths of each and every Philosphical-Political Party.

DGB Philosophy believes in 'Humanistic-Existential Capitalism' as opposed to 'Narcissistic-I'm-Only-In-It-For-Me Capitalism'.

DGB Philosophy ideally looks for a working integration between the rich, the middle class, and the poor, as well as between Capitalists and Socialists, and between employers and employees. DGB Philosophy is always looking for 'win-win, dialectic-democratic conflict resolutions and problem solutions'.

DGB Philosophy integrates many of the Capitalist Criticisms of Karl Marx and Erich Fromm with the Capitalist Idealism of Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and Nathaniel Branden.

This paper below -- 'Evaluation and Health' begins to show the 'two-sided, opposite-polarity' influence and political-economic criticisms of Karl Marx and Erich Fromm (mainly Erich Fromm) on the one side vs. the aforementioned Capitalist Idealism of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden.

'To live purposefully, you need to pay attention to outcomes. You need to notice whether your actions are producing the results you expected-whether they are bringing you closer to your goal. Perhaps you have a well-formulated purpose, a well thought out action-plan, and a pattern of action consistent with your intentions, but the problem is that the action-plan isnt the right one, and you need to go back to the drawing-board. The only way to discover this is by paying attention to outcomes. As someone observed, doing more of what doesnt work, doesnt work.'

— Nathaniel Branden


DGB Philosophy is a philosophy that is comprised of a 'post-Hegelian, humanistic-existential-multi-bi-partisan, integrative, philosophy-psychology-economics-law-business-science-arts-sports-entertainment-idealistic-realistic-enlightenment-romantic-constructive-deconstructive-modern-post-modern-pragmatic-rational-empirical-narcissistic-altruistic-ethical ideology.

In short, every new and old ideology or philosophy generally contains some philosophical strength that makes this strength worthy of being integrated into a larger philosophical union, harmony, and whole.

At the same time, this same one-sided perspective that defines a particular philosophy 'contains the seeds of its own self-destruction' (Hegel) when implemented to a one-sided extreme. Thus, the evolutionary value and indeed necessity of integrating other, polar or differential, one-sided philosophies into a larger, more all-encompassing, philosophical stew.

Another 'dialectic split' that 'Evaluation and Health' walked partly into the middle of but also partly avoided was the 'famous Cartesian-Kantian subjective-objective split'.

My epistemological gurus back in 1979 were Korzybski, Hayakawa, Rand, and Branden.

Ayn Rand's epistemology evolved to become known as 'Objectivism'. Again, in taking the dialectic route, DGB Epistemology would differentially be called either 'DGB Subjective-Objectivism' and/or 'DGB Rational-Empiricism'.

In Evaluation and Health there is no mention of the term-concept of 'narcissism' or 'narcissistic bias'. That would come later when I started to read Freud more seriously, and then Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Evaluation and Health was a mainly 'Enlightenment' style philosophy paper, written from the neck up, without much if any 'Romantic Philosophy' in it, and little if any talk discussion on sexuality which later would become connected to and integrated with my use of the concept-term of narcissism.

There would be little to no talk about 'Freudian defense and/or learning mechanisms such as: transference, projection, introjection, identification, identification with the aggressor...and the influence of memories on learning structures, processes, associations, and resulting evaluations or judgments. These were all at least partly foreshadowed in this paper, with my realizing by the end of it, that I had significant more research to do, although not by a long shot realizing just how much further this research would take me.

Of course, entering The Gestalt Institute and The Adlerian Institute in 1980 opened up a whole new world for me, and the first thing I attempted to do -- partly successfully and partly unsuccessfully -- was to integrate Gestalt Therapy with Adlerian Psychology around their dialectically conflicting philosphical positions of 'unity in the personality' vs 'multiple bi-polariities in the personality'.

I sided mainly with Perls and Gestalt Therapy on this issue as I tried the best I could at that time to resolve the Gestalt-Adlerian differences in my paper, 'Conflict in The Personality'. However, at the same time, I was most impressed with the Adlerian concept of 'lifestyle' and the interconnection between this concept and their 'interpretation of conscious early memories'. My wheels were starting to turn in terms of future potential integrations not only between Gestalt Therapy and Adlerian Psychology, but also between these and Psychoanalysis -- Traumacy and Seduction Theory, Classic Freudian, Life and Death Instinct Theory, Jungian Psychology, Post-Freudian, Neo-Freudian, Kleinian, Fairbainian, Kohutian, Transactional Analysis...all grist for the future DGB Psychology-Philosophy Gristmill...

However, it would not be until the 2000s before I reached the conflict resolution I was fully looking for on this Gestalt-Adlerian issue of 'unity vs. polarity and conflict in the personality'. My conflict resolution on this matter finally took the form of: 'dialectical negotiation and integration to the point of win-win conflict resolutions in the form of differential unity, wholism, homeostatic balance, and harmony'.

But again, that was much later to come.

However, Evaluation and Health was my first major philosophical starting-point for what was much later to come in the form of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy.

In particular, Evaluation and Health provides a good introductory study of General Semantics through these two classic General Semantic books: Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 1933; H.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 1941, 1949). The General Semantics of Korzybski and Hayakawa provide the main philosophical grounding for DGB Epistemology and much of DGB Dialectic Philosophy as a whole. Wrote Hayakawa,

"The original version of this book, Language in Action, published in 1941, was in many respects a response to the dangers of propaganda, especially as exemplified in Adolf Hitler's success in persuading millions to share his maniacal and destructive views. It was the writer's conviction then, as it remains now, that everyone needs to have a habitually critical attitude towards language — his own as well as that of others — both for the sake of his personal well-being and for his adequate functioning as a citizen. Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow-citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue."

See my article on the American Politics blogsite called, Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. The Republican Party. It should be finished by lunch tomorrow, Sunday September 7th, 2008.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I now introduce to you to the beginning of my 1979 Honors Thesis -- Evaluation and Health. I expect to have it typed out in its entirety by the third or fourth week of September, 2008, as long as not too many interrupting essays -- like the 'DGB Philosophy vs. The Republican Party' essay -- come into stronger focus.

-- dgb, September 6th, 2008.
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Evaluation and Health: Then (1979) and Now (2008), Part 1: Introduction

The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness.

-- Erich Fromm


Introduction


The issue of values and evaluation represents a crucial problem in regard to man's life. On the one hand, man is free to evaluate and respond to the situations he is confronted with in his day-to-day life as he or she pleases, but on the other hand, man is not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations and responses on his or her life and well-being.

A person's evaluations then, can be said to be 'effective' or 'functional' to the extent that they are life-serving -- that is, they work towards protecting and/or enhancing the person's health and happiness. Conversely, a person's evaluations can be said to be 'ineffective' and 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are life-negating -- that is, they work towards sabotaging the person's health and happiness.

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Editorial Commments, dgb, 2008

In 1979, I was 24 years old. My main influence in the top two paragraphs was Nathaniel Branden and his book, 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem'. Nathaniel Branden was working very closely with Ayn Rand at the time, herself an avid Capitalist writer-philosopher in the Adam Smith mold. I had read Rand's famous book, 'The Fountainhead', 1943which I was smitten by, and breezed through in short order, so I was not unfamiliar with Ayn Rand. On top of both of these factors, my dad was an 'Adam Smith-Ayn Rand Capitalist' and he had introduced me to The Fountainhead -- so none of this stuff I was reading in The Psychology of Self-Esteem was really new to me; it was simply building on a philosophy that I already largely believed in -- Nathaniel Branden was writing to a sold believer in me, he was singing to the choir.

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The Psychology of Self-Esteem*


This major psychological work presents a brilliant new concept of human nature, of mental health and illness, and of the conditions necessary for the achievement of mental well-being. Nathaniel Branden breaks radically with the mainstream of contemporary psychology, challenging and rejecting the basic premises of both psychoanalysis and behaviorism. his book is a revolutionary contribution to man's understanding of himself.

From the introduction to The Psychology of Self-Esteem

The central theme of this book is the role of self-esteem in man's life: the need of self-esteem, the nature of that need, the conditions of its fulfillment, the consequences of its frustration — and the impact of man's self-esteem (or lack of it) on his values, responses, and goals.

Virtually all psychologists recognize that man experiences a need of self-esteem. But what they have not identified is the nature of self-esteem, the reasons why man needs it, and the conditions he must satisfy if he is to achieve it.

Virtually all psychologists recognize, if only vaguely, that there is a relationship between the degree of a man's self-esteem and the degree of his mental health. But they have not identified the nature of that relationship, nor the causes of it.

Virtually all psychologists recognize, if only dimly, that there is some relationship between the nature and degree of a man's self-esteem and his motivation, i.e. his behavior in the spheres of work, love, and human relationships. But they have not explained why, nor identified the principles involved. Such are the issues with which this book deals.

If the science of psychology is to achieve an accurate portrait of man, it must, I submit, question and challenge many of the deepest premises prevalent in the field today — must break away from the anti-biological, anti-intellectual, automaton view of human nature that dominates contemporary theory. Neither the view of man as an instinct-manipulated puppet (psychoanalysis), nor the view of him as a stimulus-response machine (behaviorism), bears any resemblance to man the biological entity whom it is the task of psychology to study: the organism uniquely characterized by the power of conceptual thought, propositional speech, explicit reasoning and self-awareness.

This work serves as the theoretical foundation for much of Branden's later writings.

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The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and its royalties and movie rights brought her fame and financial security. The book's title is a reference to Rand's statement that "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress".

The Fountainhead's protagonist, Howard Roark, is a young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. He refuses to pander to the prevailing "architect by committee" taste in building design. Roark is a singular force that takes a stand against the establishment, and in his own unique way, prevails. The manuscript was rejected by twelve publishers before a young editor, Archibald Ogden, at the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house wired to the head office, "If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you." Despite generally negative early reviews from the contemporary media, the book gained a following by word of mouth and sold hundreds of thousands of copies, along with garnering critical acclaim over time.[citation needed] The Fountainhead was made into a Hollywood film in 1949, with Gary Cooper in the lead role of Howard Roark, and with a screenplay by Ayn Rand herself.

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More Editorial Comments, dgb, 2008

Having said what I just said in my editorial comments above, Erich Fromm had also become one of my 'philosopher-heros' back in the mid to 1970s. And Erich Fromm was a known post-Marxian humanistic philosopher. So without knowing it at the time, this was perhaps my first academic introduction to what we might call a 'dialectical split' -- two obviously very intelligent sets of men and women believing in two totally opposite philosophical points of view -- Capitalism vs. Socialism. I was left trying to walk down the middle and sort out the strengths and weaknesses of each respective philosophical system -- and then decide where this left me and my own particular philosophical viewpoint.

A second and a third dialectical split were also starting to crop up in my work with or without my awareness. The second was the dialectical split between 'freedom and determinism'. You can catch Branden talking about this dialectical -- and philosophical -- split in his introduction where he sees his own 'Psychology of Self-Esteem' approaching man's life and his philosophy from an entirely different angle than two of his philosophical-psychological competitors: 1. Psychoanalysis (and its theory of 'instinctual determinism'; and 2. Behaviorism (and its theory of 'external, social-conditioning determinism'). In contrast, Branden -- following partly in both Adam Smith's and Ayn Rand's philosophical footsteps, laid out a 'cognitive-free-will' philosophy-psychology of man.

So did/do I, in what was/is to come in 'Evaluation and Health', although today, I incorporate a strong Freudian and post-Freudian influence into my philosophical-pscyhological thinking.

At issue in Evaluation and Health -- although buried in my lack of knowledge and awareness at the time -- was the famous 'Kantian subjective-objective dialectical split' How do we know that what we believe to be true -- is true? This is the 50 million dollar epistemological question of the last 225 years in Western philosophy, going back to the epistemology of Emmanuel Kant in 'The Critique of Pure Reason', 1781, and longer even than that if you want to go back to the epistemology of John Locke, The Conduct of Understanding (published posthumously in 1706, John Locke, 1632-1704), and before that to Sir Francis Bacon, The Four Idols, 1620, or still even further back to William of Ockham, famous for 'Ockham's Razor'...

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Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".

This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.

Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as an heuristic maxim (rule of thumb) that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity, often or especially in scientific theories.

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Final Editorial Comment, dgb, 2008

At stake in the famous 'subjective-objective' split is not only the epistemological issue of 'truth' and 'fact', but also the ethical-moral issue of 'value'.

How do you know or judge which is better: Capitalism or Socialism; religion or science, evolution or creation theory, conservatism or liberalism, Republicanism or Democratism, the Kantian moral imperative, or the Nietzschean Dionysian existential imperative?

Do we live every day as if it is our last -- or would that make our life too 'wild', too 'Dionysian', 'too existentially extreme', not properly factoring in the feelings of our loved ones? Is a life of 'existential balance' the better way to go, the better way to be?

'To be or not to be.' -- Shakespeare wrote that.

'How should I be. How do I want to be. How do I want to behave each and every day. Am I living the life I want to live? Or am I living a 'shadow' of the life I want to live.? God, can you divide my mind and my body into two different people -- call one the 'Apollonian David Bain, and the other the 'Dionysian David Bain' -- and I will live one life according to Kant's moral imperative, and the other life according to Nietzsche's Dionysian existential extremism -- and we can meet again after this life is over, in either Heaven and/or in Hell -- and take up the argument again. Then I will be able to make perhaps a better judgment based on my dual, dialectical experience.

Apollo and Dionysus went for a walk. They argued with each other, had a fight with each other, defied each other, defiled each other, both were strong -- but only one came back.' Who came back for you? Apollo or Dionysus? Or both partly beaten up but one, the smiling victor, the other, the grudging loser, still beating you up from the shadows? Who's the grudging loser -- Apollo raging righteously at you with guilt-trips from his corner in your personality? Or Dionysus and Nietzsche second-guessing you for not having 'made a move', or fully experienced a potential encounter, for in effect, having turned your back on life?

These are the types of questions that challenge me now...

These are the types of questions whose answers define usin our life, from moment to moment, day to day. They determine our personal history.

You are what you choose.

But, of course, that is me at 53, not 24. At 24, I was simply racing ahead on my Cognitive-Epistemological-Enlightenment horse -- with just a hint of what was to dialectically and existentially to come.

Let's see how things evolved....

-- dgb, Sept. 13th, 2008, modified Sept. 15th, 2008, Jan. 24th, 2009.

Parmenides Poison Revisited: 'Who Says The Sophistry and The Trojan Horse Are Dead and Buried In Mythological Greece?'

There are some philosophers in the history of Western philosophy -- reputable philosophers -- who seem to have had virtually no other purpose in their philosophy and in the history of philosophy than to mess other philosophies and philosophers up! Call these philosophers the 'mind-benders'.

The 'Sophists' come most quickly to mind -- ancient Greece's version of the modern day lawyer -- great at debate, great at rhetoric, but philosophical mercenaries, willing and able to take any philosophical position and argue it with equal vigor and passion.

Within this school of philosophy, it is not the philosophical position itself that matters; it is winning a philosophical debate with superior argumentation, logic and rhetoric that matters.

Here the main philosophical point of view is not that 'Knowledge is power.' But rather that, 'Rhetoric is power.' We have also heard the expression, 'Money is power.' A connection can be made here: In the modern legal world, more money buys superior rhetoric ( a better lawyer) which in turn wins power (getting the type of judgment you are looking for)!

By association of philosophical position, today's modern day lawyer is basically the equivalent of Ancient Greece's Sophist -- no arguing the superiority of their rhetoric, just sometimes their integrity and the fact that you can never be sure that what they are trying to sell you is truthful knowledge -- or the illusion of truthful knowledge all wrapped up in a nice package and bow in order to seduce you and manipulate you into thinking you are gettng something 'good' and 'right'.

Until you open the package. Here the association can be made not only with today lawyers but also with today's marketers and advertisors. Again, just because you are getting a very 'sexy' package, doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to like what you get inside the package. The package might be full of worms - or the equivalent.

And now we come to Parmenides -- perhaps the biggest mind-bender in the history of Western philosophy, made worse by the fact that he strongly influenced Plato's pathological theory of epistemology. Thus, Parmenides pathological epistemology became Plato's pathological epistemology, almost as though through a process of osmosis. 'Plato -- you got seduced and reeled in by the equivalent of a Sophist...Someone who sold you on a nice sexy package -- or a nice lure -- and then reeled you in, hook, line, and sinker.'

We have lots of those types of people today. Yesterday's Sophist is today's Narcissistic Banker, Mortgage Lender, and CEO on Wall Street -- the type of person who sells you on a sub-prime mortgage rate, and then reels you in hook, line, and sinker, with those nasty 'Trojan Horses or Viruses Hidden Deep in The Bowels of The Mortgage Contract' that will come out of their hiding place a year or two later -- and effectively, kill you.

The virus is hidden in the fine print.

The virus is hidden in that sexy website.

Home of The Identification Thief.

21st Century Narcissistic Capitalism Comes All Wrapped Up In A Nice Sexy Package...

But The Integrity is Gone...

Gone in An Illinois Moment...

Everything Has A Bargaining Price...

How Much Is This Illinois Senate Position Worth To You?

It's Up For Auction To The Highest Bidder.

Ain't Democracy Sweet!

President-Elect Obama, you have your work cut out for you.

Don't compromise your integrity.

America is counting on you.

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Who Said The Trojan Horse Is Dead and Buried In The Archives of Mythological Greece?

No, The Trojan Horse is Very Much Alive and Being Used Over and Over Again In America.

And Canada.

Indeed, All Around The World.

Narcissistic Capitalism is full of Sophists -- and Trojan Horses.

The Trojan Horse -- and Virus -- Is The Favorite War-Toy of Sophists.

Watch out for the package!

Cause its What's In The Package That Counts!

What's Inside The Sexy Package Is What Will Kill You If You Are Not Careful

What You Are Opening...

Or How You Are Opening It...

The Worst Of The Sophists...

Operate With Trojan Horses...

Or Operate Inside Trojan Horses...

'America, Watch Out For Trojan Horses...

And Viruses...

They Will Kill You...

Even As They Smile and Wink At You...

America, Beware of The Sexy Package!

It Could Be a Trojan Horse!

Or Contain a Trojan Virus...

That Will Steal From You, or Sabotage You...

Someone From Africa or England Will Tell You, You've Just Won a Hundred Thousand Dollars...

And Tell You Where To Send All Your ID Information...

In Order To Collect Your Winnings.

Who Says That Sophists and Trojan Horses Are Dead and Buried in Mythological Greece?

Sophists and Trojan Horses are A Part of our Heritage,

Just Like The Boston Tea Party...

Sophists Are People Who Will Tax You and Tax You...

And Not Tell You Where Your Tax Money is Going To...

Sophists Are People Who Will Gouge You and Gouge You...

And Call It 'The Free Market' -- 'Don't Regulate The Free Market'...

Cause That Is How The Monopoly Sophists Gouge You...

Sophists Are Bankers Who Will Service Charge You and Service Charge You...

And Hide The Service Charges In Bank Books That You Don't Get Anymore...

In Chequing and Savings Accounts That You Don't Get Any Interest From Anymore...

The Sophist and The Trojan Horse Are Very Much Alive and Living in America.

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Back To Parmenides..


How do we make sense out of Parmenides mind-bending pathological epistemology that is likely to send anyone to a psychiatric ward who tries to believe in it and abide by it?

Actually, you don't even have to believe in anything Parmenides said in order to start to feel your mind-brain make funny contortions. All you have to do is try to follow his logic -- and the logic of 'epistemological idealism' in all of its many different shapes and forms, and you will probably start to feel those funny mind-brain contortions develop.

So my suggestion to you is, if you want to try to follow with me here, then maybe you better get another coffee like I just did...You may need it. I fully confess that in trying to get into and out of this subject matter quickly, I have bumped across a quagmire of epistemological 'snakes and ladders'.

I was partly expecting this but not totally. I have Wikipedia to both thank and curse for the new twists and turns, ups and downs, that we now have to work through as we attempt to trace epistemology down to some of its ancient Greek roots.

Just look up the term-concept of 'idealism' on Wikipedia and you will start to get a feel for what I am talking about. I will start with my own philosophical distinctions and then we will aim to blend these in with some of the academic distinctions.

Firstly, distinctions can be made between 'ethical idealism' (pertaining to ethics -- values, morals, etc.), 'political idealism' (pertaining to politics), 'legal idealism' (pertaining to law) -- and the type of idealism that we are concerned about here -- 'epistemological idealism' (pertaining to knowledge).

That wasn't too bad. But next up, we run into both a semantic problem and a philosophical complication -- but they both are linked and take us to a good place.

Firstly, the semantic problem. I think about 'epistemological idealism' without looking at the philosophical literature and I think of the 'search for truth'. Ideally speaking, the search for knowledge should be the search for truth.

In other words, the knowledge we learn should be backed and supported by substance, clarity, quality, truth, integrity...What we think and say is true needs to be true, what we think and say 'exists' needs to exist -- in order to be 'epistemologically ideal' in this sense of the term-concept 'epistemologically ideal'. And this brings us right into the lap of our next philosophical problem -- the issue of 'ontology'.

Twice now I have been clotheslined by this complicating factor of 'ontology': once when I was writing my essays on Kant and one of readers -- a student of philosophy and obviously Kant -- clotheslined me with this feedback that I was left scratching my head on and trying to sort through the semantic and philosophical difficulties of what he was saying:

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robertc.enriquez@gmail.com said...

Your conclusion out of this problem is correct but you are forgetting two key parts of Kant's philosophy; which was not by the way the destruction of epistemology! Namely, 1. the manifold of perception which we dialectically correspond with 2. the thing in itself. Note here that that we dialectically would correspond with the thing in itself (in German it sounds like dim an zing; pounded into my head by a visiting German professor who lectured on Kant from the original German). Yet, it is much like the pure platonic forms in that we do not directly access it in its "pure form". I would argue that Kant's entire project was to look at epistemology as a point to start to move forward but again; Kant wasn't arguing the epistemology track he was arguing the ontology track. If you want to attack Kant on epistemology then the a priori is where to start not dialectics. I would argue that Hegel would not have even had a project had he not used the dialectics that Kant set up.

My two cents worth.
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I think there are some hidden -- or not hidden -- gems in this feedback. I don't pretend that I am a Kantian expert and I don't pretend that I completely understood/understand what Mr. Enriquez was trying to tell me in his feedback -- but still it partly led me to here. And here, I think, is a better -- and more knowledgeable -- place than I was at when I wrote that Kantian essay back last year sometime. Others, including Mr. Enriquez, are free to disagree of course.

The second time I bumped into this 'ontology' obstacle was when I looked up 'idealism' on Wikipedia. I'm trying to sort out Parmenides epistemology, and lo and behold, there's that cursed word 'ontology' again. Was I pursuing an epistemological problem here or an ontological problem -- or both?

Or both? Voila! You think with a dialectic philosopher's mind-brain and all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, dialectical solutions jump right at you and bite you in the face.

Of course! Epistemology and ontology have to travel together because they are 'dialectical bi-polarities' -- or 'binary opposites' as Derrida would call them.

The bridge between epistemology and ontology is -- 'truth'.

Let's back up here a bit. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Ontology is the study of 'objects of knowledge' -- it is the study of 'what is real', 'what exists', 'what is being.'

Knowledge pertains to 'concepts' -- to ideas that we carry around in our 'conceptual mind' that is attached to our 'physiological brain'. Thus, it makes full dialectical sense to talk about each and everyone of us having a 'mind-brain' integrated together in such a spectacular dialectic fashion that concepts and brain synapses can live side by side with each other, each supplementing the function of the other.

Physiology, epistemology, ethics, psychology, and philosophy -- all dialectically or 'multi-laterally' united.

Knowledge -- in order to have 'substance' and 'truth' attached to it -- has to have an 'ontological referent' that the knowledge is correctly referring to and attached to.

What good is knowledge that doesn't have an ontological referent attached to it? Knowledge without an ontological referent is not knowledge. It's balderdash. Smoke and mirrors. A mirage. As David Hume would write, take such knowledge and -- 'Commit it to flames!'

Which brings us to Parmenides and 'Parmenides Poison' (my editorial take on his work).

Commit it to flames! Quickly -- before Plato gets a hold of it. Too late. Plato did get a hold of it -- and it ruined Plato's epistemology-ontology just as it ruined Parmenides'.

And since then, these two intertwined epistemologists in the history of Western philosophy -- Parmenides and Plato -- have probably driven thousands and thousands of philosophers and philosophy students close to the 'nut-house' and back. Did Kant and Hegel at least partly fall under their collective spell? It is quite possible. Mr. Enriquez seems to think -- unless I am misinterpreting him -- that there might have been a Platonic influence on Kant's term-concept of 'noumenal world'. Let us see if we can bring some clarity to this issue.

This chair that I am sitting on. Metaphysically (another philosophical snake to talk about at a later date) and assumptively speaking, this chair has an 'ontological existence' in its own right. If I leave the room, assumptively speaking, it is still here in the room that I left. If I come back into the room, unless someone has taken it away, it will still be here when I come back from the other room. If I have a heart attack and die (touch wood that I don't) assumptively speaking, the chair will still be here tomorrow for someone else to sit on and take advantage of its function -- of holding a person who wants to sit down and use this computer.

The chair doesn't need to have either my sensory perception involved and/or my epistemology involved in order for it to have an 'ontological existence in its own right'. Same with everything else in this room. And the same with the birds who are using my birdfeeder outside my living room window. Every object in this room and every plant, animal, and mineral outside my window -- assumptively speaking, using common sense, they all have an ontological existence in their own respective right.

I am not so self-centered as to try to argue that if or when I die, then everything that used to ontologically exist in this room, and everything that used to ontologically exist outside my window -- would then ontologically cease to exist. Maybe for me they would -- but ontology -- assumptively speaking again -- entails an existence of other things in the world beside me that each have an existence in their own respective right beyond the limitations and imperfections of my own sensory perceptions, logic and power of reasoning, and evaluation process.

Ontology -- just 'is'. Now unfortunately, there is another quagmire of snakes here again. A 'Catch 22' -- the age-old 'subjective-objective' paradox that has also driven many a philosopher close to the brink of insanity...A few have gone over...

How can you verify that something exists unless there is someone or something there to verify its existence? Scratch your head on that one. This is presumably about where Kant came up with his term-concept of 'noumenal world' as distinguished from 'phenomenal world'. If you are having trouble finding meaning for these two term-concepts then try my modification of them: 'subjective-phenomenal world' and 'objective-noumenal world'. Kantian scholars may object but here's how I understand these two term-concepts.

I walk across the room to turn down the volume on the radio-cd player. My 50 year old eyes can't find the volume sign. 'Phenomenally and subjectively speaking', the volume sign on the radio-cd player 'does not exist'. But assumptively, noumenally, and objectively, I do know that the volume sign exists. So I curse and I go up to my bedroom to fetch my glasses. I come back to the living room, I look at the radio-cd player, and now all of a sudden, phenomenally and subjectively speaking, perceptually and epistemologically speaking, the volume sign -- does exist! My subjective-phenomenal world meets my objective-noumenal world -- with my glasses acting as the bridge between us. Generalizing, our senses function as the bridge between our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological world and objective-noumenal world.

Obviously, it is equally appropriate to argue that our senses are a major part of our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological world -- and as our senses deteriorate over time, so does the functioning of our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological worlds as a 'map' and 'structural-process representation' of the objective-noumenal-ontological world it is supposed to be representing.

Compris?

We keep losing Parmenides.

What did Parmenides say that was so horrifically wrong? What was 'Parmenides (Epistemological-Ontological) Poison?

He said this: that the sensory-phenomenal world we live in -- is an illusion. Try to get your head around that one.

He said that -- and I am paraphrasing: there is a truer and more perfect world somewhere else. (Where? In our heads? In outer space? In the sky? Is he talking about 'heaven'? Exactly where is the perfect world that he is talking about? Parmenides must have been a rhetorical genius because he fooled a lot of people, a lot of philosophers, including one of the most highly respected philosophers of all -- Plato. He lured Plato into his 'spider's web' or nailed him with his 'spider's poison' -- and the rest is history: specifically, Plato's metaphor of 'The Caves' and his 'Theory of Ideal Forms' -- both full of Parmenidean Poison.)

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Parmenides of Elea (Greek: Παρμενίδης ο Ἐλεάτης, early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, his only known work is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In it, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In the Way of Truth, he explained how reality is one; change is impossible; and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In the Way of Seeming, he explained the world of appearences, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of western philosophy.

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Two more final distinctions: 'Empirical Ontology' vs. 'Metaphysical Ontology'.

If you want to 'empirically (subjectively, phenomenally, perceptively, existentially...) verify' that this chair I am sitting on 'ontologically exists', then you just have to visit my townhouse. Come here, knock on the door, identify yourself, and you can empirically verify that my computer chair that I have sat on for the last 5 hours or so to write this essay -- does indeed 'ontologically exist'. You and I can both point at the chair and 'empirically verify' its ontological existence.

However, if you want to argue that 'God exists' then 'sensory-perceptive-empirical validation' does not work. You are going to have to come up with some other form of 'metaphysical (above physics) argumentation' to support your case. You are arguing a 'metaphysical' case if you want to try to convince me or someone else that 'God ontologically exists'.

The same goes with Parmenides. Like Parmenides did, you will have to come up with some kind of 'metaphysical argumentation' to support his case for the type of 'perfect-Utopian-noumenal world' that he was trying to get us to believe in (it worked with Plato) -- shall we just call it 'heaven'? This was a completely metaphysical world that nobody, including himself, could point to or at, in order to validate its 'empirical-ontological existence'.

Now if you want to argue about the metaphysical existence of God, then I will allow you some latitude and flexibility in your argumentation.

But I grant you no such latitude and flexibility with Parmenides Epistemological and Ontological Poison. This was the true illusion -- the true mirage.

What do you do with epistemological and ontological illusions.

Back to the famous words of David Hume.

'Commit them to flames!

Quickly, before they poison anyone else!

-- dgb, Feb. 19th, 2008, modified and updated December 15th, 2008.

On The Bi-Polar -- Narcissistic and Social -- Nature of Words and Their Meaning

This essay was originally written almost a year ago to the day until I freshly modified, edited, and updated the essay today. -- dgb, Dec. 14th, 2008.

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Words and their meaning can be viewed as dialectic, bi-polar projections and extensions of the human psyche -- and the human individual operating in a social field or social context.

This is no different than any other element of human behavior and culture including philosophy, history, evolution, art, science and medicine, religion, politics and more...

Following in the footsteps of G.W. Hegel, the famous German idealistic dialectic philosopher, and many philosophers less famously before him including Anaxmander, Heraclitus, the Han philosophers, and more -- DGBN Philosophy focuses on one particularly important characteristic of the human psyche -- it's 'dialectic' or 'bi-polar' nature.

Dialectic, bi-polar integration is a key, central facet of every aspect of human -- and non-human -- functioning. When functioning properly, it leads to what biologists and psychologists call 'homeostatic balance'. DGB Philosophy synonyms include 'dialectic balance', 'dialectic-democratic balance', and 'bi-polar balance'.

Philosophical homeostasis -- the principle of the mind and body using 'bi-polar feedback' and 'dialectic idealism' in an integrative, partly conflictual and competitive, partly co-operative and socially sensitive fashion to bring about 'cohesive dialectical unity, wholism, evolution, and balance' -- this is what 'Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy' is all about.

The DGBN network of some 30 plus inter-connected blogsites that I am building here of which this is one -- are all meant to focus on the inter-related life -- and particularly human -- characteristics and concepts of 'bi-polarity', 'dialectical realism', 'dialectical idealism', 'dialectical wholism', 'dialectical evolution', and 'dialectical harmony' as a means of describing both the many problems and the many potential solutions to human disharmony, disagreement and conflict.

'Dialectic' and 'bi-polar' as words with meaning can be viewed as being partly synonymous with each other, but 'dialectic' in the sense that I am using it here is the more abstract of the two words. It has a broader range of meaning(s). 'Bi-polar' in the sense that it is being used here has a more specific meaning. Bi-polar as used here means 'the opposite ends of a polarity spectrum such as 'black and 'white', or 'male and female' -- brought together in harmonious or partly harmonious unity and wholism through a successful utilization of the democratic-dialectic negotiation and integration process.

Hegel was arguably the first philosopher to really make the 'dialectic' -- both as a phenomenon and as a concept -- famous. Connected to the idea of the dialectic was the idea of bi-polarity -- not used by Hegel but the semantic connection is readily apparent.

'Thesis' and 'anti-thesis' -- two opposing sets of ideas or philosophies or characterics on opposite sides of the 'polar spectrum' facing off against each other, coming into interaction with each other, both attracting and conflicting with each other...this is the nature of the bi-polar, dialectical encounter.

'Great tension creates great energy' writes Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, but in order for this energy to become focused and harnessed in its most productive fashion, the two conflicting bi-polarities -- ideologies, passions, goals, energies -- have to meet democratically and dialectically to work towards establishing a common, harmonious direction of movement.

Paradoxically, this is both the ultimate achievement and the ultimate failure of mankind.

We can become better at achieving integrative dialectic success stories while leaving more and more of the 'either/or power and control game' behind us which creates more divisionism, alienation, separation, divorce, and war -- than the successful 'win-win, dialectical integrationism and wholism' that we are looking for primarily here.

Words, in this sense, are just another of many various extensions and applications of this repetitive dialectical phenomenon. Like every other element of life, we as humans can either 'win big' or 'lose big' around the dialectical phenomenon of words -- and their dialectic, bi-polar range and focus of meaning. What do I mean by this?

Words and their meaning are dialectic and bi-polar in nature. More specifically, they have both 'narcissistic (selfish) meanings' on the one hand and 'more general, social meanings' on the other hand.

Further complicating this matter is the fact that not only do I have a set of narcissistic meanings for any particular word that I may draw out of the more general, social pool of meaning that might be found in -- let's say a dictionary or in the broader and/or more specific context of everyday social usage -- but so do you.

It is here that the dialectical, bi-polar nature of words may clash and conflict -- just like on evry other projective playground of the human psyche. The human psyche is dialectic or bi-polar. So too, is the meaning of words.

My interpreted meaning of a word does not have to be hugely or oppositely different than yours for the same word. It just has to be a little bit different -- and that can mean all the difference in the world.

How many thousands of communication breakdowns used to happen -- and still happen -- when two people trying to meet up with each other at a particular time and place don't have a cell phone?

What the cell phone allows for in the arena of communication when and where two people are not in the same time and place -- is 'dialectical feedback'.

This may not seem readily important but it is hugely important when two people are trying to meet up with each other and haven't been totally concrete and exact with each other -- let us say before they leave their respective homes -- in terms of the details of their 'time and place' meeting.

The other day I went to work and forgot my cell phone at home. I shared email details over the internet with my girlfriend in terms of our usual time and meeting place at Yonge and Highway 7 at the VIVA bus terminal at 4:45pm. This may all seem simple and straightforward -- until one person doesn't have a cell phone. And then 'little gremlins' start to get into one person's or the other's head if something doesn't go exactly according to the pre-stated plan. One person is late. And the gremlins start to build. Maybe she wanted me to come down to Yonge and Finch to get her at the subway station. Of course, none of these intersections will mean didley squat to you if you do not know the 'actual territory' -- and their relationship to each other -- that my words are talking about. 5 minutes late. 10 minutes late. 15 minutes late. And now the little gremlins have become huge gremlins in my head. Where is she? Yonge and Finch? Yonge and Steeles? She probably turned around and went home when she couldn't get me on her cell phone...One time on another meeting when I did or didn't have my cell phone, she walked up to The Silver City Movie Theatre and walked inside to get warm after waiting too long in the VIVA bus shelter.

You start to get what I am talking about. None of this would happen with cell phone contact -- where you can get your dialectic feedback -- 'I'm still on the bus honey but will be there in 5 minutes - and thus push the little and big gremlins back into their many hiding places in your head to resurface on another day (when you forget your cell phone again -- or become victimized by a different type of communication breakdown).

If you and I cannot 'get it together' on what a word means -- which may entail some amount of greater or lesser semantic specification, asscociation, distinction, negotiation, and integration -- then we 'have failed dialectically to communicate'.

A communication breakdown is a 'dialectical communication breakdown' meaning that you and I both have different 'narcissistic meanings' relative to what a word means in a particular context -- and we are either unaware or ignorant as to this 'narcissistic difference' or we are 'unwilling to compromise' relative to this narcissistic difference.

We may be stuck in a 'Righteous, Either/Or, Power/Control 'One Word-One Meaning' Game. 'My meaning is right; yours is wrong.' 'No, I'm right; you're wrong. Let's look it up in the dictionary. Of course, even dictionaries have multiple meanings for words. And they just get the main, broad, and socially popular ones. The more concrete meanings and finesse meanings and unorthodox meanings, and newer 'sub-culture' meanings, and individual meanings...are all left out of the dictionary. They are the vast array of individual, narcissistic meanings that lay people and technical people use in similar and different contexts with constantly changing ranges and focuses of meaning -- every day, and indeed, from moment to moment.

Words and their vast array of social, group and individual, narcissistic meanings are like 'jellyfish'. They change their shape and size all the time. If individual people in dialogue with each other don't catch these various changes in shape and size, range and focus -- then in many instances they 'miss the boat with each other'. They miss each other's individual meanings in the 'nuance' of something that was said but not meant. Not interpreted in the same fashion that it was meant.

This happens all the time -- with or without cell phones -- but in general, the less dialectic dialogue there is in 'danger zones of easily or even less easily misinterpreted word meanings', the more likely we are to 'go for a communication flip and fall'. Hard angry, and/or hurt, upset emotional feelings are often the result -- particularly in areas of interpreted and/or intended greater intimacy.

Words are simply symbolic extensions of the dialectic, bi-polar nature of the human psyche -- and two or more individuals in a social context. The meaning of words can collide narcissistically in a social, cultural forum -- intentionally or unintentionally -- when people don't give dialectic feedback to each other relative to ambiguous words, abstract words, any type of word that is ripe for potential miscommunication.

Take the time when the time is important to 'come down the ladder of abstraction' and enter into a dialogue of 'association' and 'distinction' around the particular usage of a word -- and even 'pointing' if the circumstances require it.

If I am teaching English to a roomful of people who don't speak English, then I will probably need a lot of 'pictures' and 'concrete objects' and I will probably do a lot of 'pointing'.

This is not a bad thing. Sometimes it is a very important, absolutely necessary thing.

If you want to share the same meaning.

dgb, December 15h, 2007, modfied, edited, and updated December 14th, 2008, unknowingly and amazingly almost a year ago to the day that I originally wrote this essay. Or maybe that's just me.

-- DGBN, December 14th, 2008.

-- David Gordon Bain.

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism.

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

Are still in process...

Faceoff: DGB Philosophy vs. Hume and Kant: On Hume and 'Causality'; and Kant's 'Subjective A Priori Categories'

One of my readers, Srikala, said...


Kant used to say that Hume's idea that there was only sequence not cause as such suffered from a defect. Kant gets round Humean skepticism by introducing cause as a concept of the understanding. Neither was it the only concept. It was one among several. The concepts of the understanding like the forms of intuition are introduced in the Kantian schema as a priori subjective categories. This would of course naturally bring back the Self. For more, if you like, refer http://www.eloquentbooks.com/Kant.html


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Thank you Srikala for your knowledgeable feedback and your insights into both the philosophical thoughts of Hume and Kant. I'd also like to know your own opinions relative to what both Hume and Kant have said. Because your opinions matter too!

Personally and philosophically, I -- and by extension DGB Philosophy -- stand somewhere between both Hume and Kant: not a full Humean skeptic by any means. I am comfortable using the concept of 'self' or 'Self' and believing that this concept represents a 'real subjective-objective entity' with a 'Will to Self-Empowerment and Self-Fulfillment Acting in A Partly Friendly, Partly Hostile Natural and Social Environment'. I view DGB Philosophy as a 'humanistic-existential philosophy-psychology' in this regard.

However, at the same time, I have a real big problem with at least 3 of Kant's 'subjective a priori categories' -- and either you will have to remind me or I will have to go back and look up exactly how many 'a priori categories' Kant theorized.

But here is the problem I have with this type of categorization. And it brings us back to the same 'subjective-objective dialectic split' that Kant was battling with and trying to overcome. In this regard, as another reader has written me, Kant indeed lead Hegel right into the middle of 'dialectic philosophy'.

But irrespective of both Kant and Hegel (and I am certainly closer in my thinking to Hegel than Kant), I view these 3 a priori subjective categories that Kant was talking about not as such but rather as 'subjective-objective categories' and/or as both 'subjective' and 'objective' categories' where it is the responsibility of man -- from a survival and evolution point of view -- to represent accurately in his mind the same (or the structually similar) categories that also exist outside his mind in the 'real, objective world' -- which as Kant stated we can never 'know' and as I would correct Kant and say we can never 'fully know'. Still, our existence both indivdually and collectively as a human species absolutely depends on our being close enough to 'right' and close enough to 'truth' to continue to be alive -- and not dead. This is my Ayn Rand and my Nathaniel Branden and my Alfred Korzybski and my S.I. Hayakawa and my Bertrand Russell influence coming alive and excited within me -- at the expense of both Hume and Kant. And in the middle of all these philosophical and human influences is 'me' -- the one and only unique 'me'. 'My Self' My 'Will to Self-Empowerment'. My 'Individual Willpower to Philosophically Enlighten the world'. (I say that partly tongue in cheek.). More specifically stated, my 'Individual Self-Willpower to Dialectically -- and Multi-Dialectically -- Enlighten The World'...

Man's continued existence -- both individually and collectively -- absolutely demands that he be closer to 'epistemologically right' than to 'epistemologically wrong', especially in contexts/situations of absolute danger.

Like if I step out into the middle of a busy highway, do you really think that I am only going to believe that the issues of 'time' and 'space' and 'cause' are only subjective figments of my imagination? Or is reality going to have the last word on me if I get my so called a priori categories all messed up and out of wack with what might be best referred to as 'accurate representation' of the 'real, objective world' outside my either accurate or inaccurate representation (or parts of both).

Now relative to 'causes' -- causes may be 'causal generalalizations and interpretations and judgments' that we pick out of a crowd amongst a host of other 'dialectical and multi-dialectical factors' but still 'causal factors' exist not only subjectively in our heads but also realistically outside our minds in the world -- regardless, of what kind of horsebleep that Hume wants to try to throw at us in the name of 'logical and philosophical technicalities'.

To be sure, there are many causal factors and co-factors that may be tied up in a 'death' for instance.

For example, if I was an elephant and not a man, I might have more of a chance of living through a car or a truck hitting me at 60 or 80 or 100kms an hour. We can view a car vs. a truck, a human vs. an elephant, and the speed of the oncoming vehicle as all being 'causally relevant' in the result or consequence of the accident -- specifically, whether I am lying dead on the pavement or whether the elephant shakes his head and walks away from the accident.

But whether you are the legendary David Hume or the legendary Immanuel Kant don't try to tell me that all this 'causal' stuff and all this 'subjective a priori' stuff is all in my 'head'. Because if you do, I will say to you: I have a 'bat' here and a 'pillow'. Which one would you like me to hit you with?


And one more thing. I want to once again point out the very important difference between 'unilateral philosophy' and 'bilateral-dialectic philosophy'.

An informed, intelligent feedback comment and/or question from one of my readers and it allows me to make a better distinction between the differences between Hume, Kant, and DGB Philosophy. It's obviously not the same thing as a full-blown philosophical debate, and yet the one short feedback comment allows both you -- my reader -- and me, the author and creator of DGB Philosophy -- to take DGB Philosophy to another level of 'distinctive understanding' that would not have happened otherwise. You may or may not agree with my philosophical perspective but for all of us there is a 'heightened level of epistemological clarity' after a common sense and/or philosophically informed reader has created a 'dialectical point of resistance' around which DGB Philosophy can state a significant difference in its philosophical -- and epistemological -- boundaries.

In other words, keep bringing on the feedback. I love it! It brings me alive!



-- dgb, Dec. 14th, 2008.