I came upon an idea, gradually, a while ago. Excited, I gave it a name and made mention of said name without going into the nature of the idea. It is as follows.
The debates between different religions and philosophies have raged violently since the dawn of such ideas, and will continue to do so for the remainder of humanity's existence. There are innumerable points of contention, innumerable arguments supporting each, and innumerable individuals who have dedicated themselves in one way or another to defending one. This is a good thing; if the ideas embraced by humanity are many and conflicting it creates an environment within which thought can flourish and ideological paradigms, caught in the tumult, can be cleansed of fallacies and made "stable", or resistant to the wear and tear to which they are subjected.
And yet it's far from perfect. The battles rage on, the oldest and bitterest among them seeming now incapable of making "progress" save by the wretched means of war or separation. What's going on? Why do these systems of thought remain so separate?
One possibility is that stable systems of thought can exist and stabilize separately from one another, structured differently and incompatible in fundamental ways. Indeed, one would have to be very closed-minded to think it's impossible for wisdom to exist in any single [major] school of thought. I'm irreligious and I've read the words of highly enlightened philosophers both with and without faith in a personal God. It's not unreasonable to suggest that a difference in base assumptions could produce entirely different rational structures. However, I'm inclined to have my doubts that it's the primary cause of our predicament. I'll explain why in due time.
Another is that the process of ideological evolution is being subdued. That individuals are shielded somehow from open discussion of their ideas or taught not to question them. This I see as a strong culprit, manifest almost entirely in the phenomenon of like-minded individuals forming groups based upon ideas. They form a consensus and strong personal bonds, intertwining their respective paradigms until (often) it becomes difficult and unappealing to move away toward new ones that go against the collective. This is characteristic of religious communities (and organized atheism), political parties and all number of other social groups of which I and (I expect) the vast majority of other human beings are regular participants.
This second cause I see as a monstrosity from which humanity must free itself; many people are discomforted at confronting new ideas, removing the old, and having to reconstruct paradigms which have had gaping holes put into their bases, demolishing any idea which is no longer supported. Many human beings prefer the security--not only ideological, but physical and emotional--which is to be found in groups. But I see great costs incurred by this, of which ideological stagnation is one.
A third culprit, and most relevant here, is that two ideologies may develop with similar rational structures and separate semantic makeup. That they have the same ideas and express them differently. I've come to suspect (and experienced firsthand) that many conflicts between individuals and groups seem to appear an unresolvable difference in assumptions when they are in fact simply a difference in the meanings those individuals assign to various terms. Sometimes this is realized; often it is not. Two men speak the same words in different languages and believe themselves to be arguing!
The cause behind the stagnation apparent in society are, in my opinion, a product of these last two phenomena. The reason I don't include the first is my conviction that the most basic assumptions people uphold don't differ much from person to person. In brief, I think that these are few and intuitive in nature, and any other ideas which go unquestioned as these do are so for specific reasons. Rather than going further in explaining myself there I'll simply ask this: Are you comfortable with the idea that two separate truths can come to be and will never mesh? That once these stabilize humanity will be forever in the grip of an unmoving and fruitless battle, or shattered into groups forever unable to communicate with one another? This first problem is a fundamentally unresolvable one, and so regardless of its existence or nonexistence I see no need to address it. I do not believe it to be a matter, and this assumption is reflected in the ideas to come.
Now, having narrowed our suspicions down to two demons--groupthink and semantic disunity--we must find solutions. And my solutions to these (for now) are simple--they are solutions for me and me exclusively, rather than revolutionary changes to the social system. [Those come later, bwahahahah!] To defend myself from the stagnation of groupthink I must disallow myself from being a member of any collective in the sense that I accept their ideas. Contrarily, to retain the benefit of a chaotic ideological system I must immerse myself in people who uphold different systems of thought--the more alien, the better, with the stipulation that rational exchange must be possible.
The solution to the demon of semantics meshes well with this first solution, and amplifies my ability to develop my own paradigm by promoting a better understanding of others. This solution is to identify common threads amongst what appear to be vastly different ideologies. At present, to seek the various philosophical holes which most ideologies address, and what they are filled with. What the hole and the piece seated in it are called. Looking for nearly equivalent objects, separated as they seem only by trifling connections and their all-important names.
To act upon these two proposed solutions is to gain an odd assortment of friends and acquaintances. To be what I call a Free Agent. Separate from all groups and yet connected with as many as possible. Learning and gaining a greater perspective on the striking similarities between them. And the potential for unity here is something I've perceived--albeit at the back of my mind--for a long time, watching people argue and separate. Watching the futility unfold.
As practice goes, I've spent my summer seeking out such groups, although I've only now crystallized the ideas you see written here. (Writing is wonderful for this!) My two primary in-groups are a Bible fellowship and Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. I've also attempted to get into contact with a local Buddhist group (which has disintegrated) and visited the School of Metaphysics. I intend to cease using labels (eg 'agnostic') to describe my ideology directly. Rather, I prefer my own term 'Free Agent' which is without an implied collective and without the baggage other words carry.
I've employed the semantic bridging technique to wonderful effect. To see the ideas and labels I like to use see the (rather lightly written) 'Dictionary of Important Stuff' I posted recently. I've made mappings with sufficient success that when speaking to a Christian friend she remarked that I spoke like a Christian. The conversation in question had been about the Trinity, and through it I discovered how closely its members mapped to ideas in my own paradigm. The Father is equivalent to what I term God--the process underlying all, and the ever-receding but never-vanishing limn betwixt known and unknown. The Son seems to reasonably represent what I term the Ego--the conscious, communicating, rational mind. (That might be a bit of a stretch but consider 'Jesus the Logos' in the words of Christian Philosophy. And, I'm making the relation indirectly. Not equivalent ideas but closely related.) The Holy Spirit, of particular interest, maps well to what I term Intuition--a reasoning thing which manifests itself as a second voice, and in the stuff of dreams; a source of feelings and basic, unquestioned ideas which gives me a moral and rational basis for reasoning. Also, a thing with which contact can be lost, to be regained only through conviction.
The same ideas port neatly to the taste I've gotten of the SOM's ideology. (Though, it apparently caters to people of various faiths, acting as an extension to their systems of belief.) Intuition and dreams are held in high regard and use semantics akin to mine. Mention is also made of the 'cosmos' and 'collective unconscious' which map reasonably, again, to the God of which I speak.
They can also stand in the face of the modern scientific paradigm, again something which is often combined with other systems of beliefs. My God is in the Higgs Boson, and beyond the visible universe. It is Dark Matter. It is any processes we have yet to discover. My Ego is the conscious mind or Freud's Ego. My Intuition is the unconscious or Freud's Super-Ego. (The Body would be equivalent to Freud's Id.)
I'll take the scientific paradigm to be representative of Atheism. But consider how peculiar it must be to use a term such as God in their context. No matter! I see no sin in changing my words to fit, though at my last opportunity I made a point of explaining my take on the idea. (Incidentally, my usage of the word God is not an innovation of my own; it appears to have been used by Einstein and I've seen it proposed elsewhere, in the writings of individuals.)
The only great differences left are connections taken on faith. Christianity connects the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together as a singular God. Science places God in a position starkly separate from the Ego and Intuition, which are housed in the physical mind. Other faiths make themselves clear on all sorts of other connections drawn. But some are recurrent. The peculiar link between Intuition and Ego, the wide schism between the Ego (an individual in Christianity's case, not Jesus) and God (The Father) and the dualistic or triadic nature of Body, Ego and Intuition or Body and Mind. (This last is starkly evident in philosophies from the ancient to the modern.)
The ideas I've used to describe semantic bridging are a small subset with which I've been toying. With luck I'll have more chances in the future to explore apparent ideological universals. When such time comes I should be able to give clearer examples in support of this idea.
I hope I've made clear how I intend to operate as a philosopher. I hope my position is understandable and my decision as well. Honestly, I hope to see at least minor improvements upon the situation of the social system--specifically, to see other people such as yourself taking a greater interest in relating to alien ideas and enjoying a more reserved sense of membership in any groups you participate in.
Perhaps this is a means to the Unity to which so much effort is dedicated. Perhaps [and certainly] this already exists, maybe even with prevalence, in the things I've heard called 'interfaith' and the like. But perhaps aside, I reap from it benefits of my own--increased perspective to feed my undying curiosity, increased understanding to back my faith in humanity, and a position which will with hope make my position an acceptable one to all, that I might seek kinship unfettered.
I call myself Free Agent.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Dictionary of Important Stuff
Editor's note: If you have no sense of whimsy, or no appreciation of philosophy, I suggest you leave before FORTY-TWO OCCAM'S RAZOR BOOGAHBOOGAHBOOGAH!
Okay. They're gone. Good.
Note also that these definitions are the meanings I choose to attach to words. I am not suggesting you use the same ones. I do encourage you to find some word befitting each if you do not yet possess one, however. If you lack meaningless words, you may find some in the appendix.
Note also that this is clearly not in alphabetical order. If that matters. It doesn't.
---
GOD:
A man sees before him a black box with a crank. He turns the handle and music springs forth. This machine is mystically endowed with the capacity to make music! Another man steps forward, doubting him, and pries open the box. The two see then it is not the box but the things inside which seem to produce the music. These strange pieces are disassembled further still and analyzed that the parts they form can be understood. Eventually the pieces can be analyzed no more. Their function, it seems, is simple and obvious. But there is yet a reason they work as they do. Countless ignored questions such as why the metal behaves as it does, or resonates its sweet tones only when struck just so. Even as more and more is discovered, countless questions remain. An infinite mystery. A world of understanding yet-to-be, and endless.
Note: Many people use God to name their exclusive source of absolute truth and/or moral bases. I give mine a different name. See: INTUITION.
THE WORLD:
All that is and all that be. Except, of course, me. Anything that I can perceive, I can only perceive. Therefore perception would appear to be a singular conduit to all entities within some realm. This realm I call the world.
---
SCIENCE:
See: GOD. The attempt to explain things by observing them, at times with the deluded reasoning that we can contrive a unified explanation for everything while making no assumptions whatsoever to base it upon. The limit of questions will always be a barrier which is somewhere between divine, magical, or mundane. The last of these is most satisfactory; all are characterized by answering "why?" with "because." Since science only observes the objects of its study it can at best make predictions of how they will behave. This is very useful when lower levels of abstraction can be examined to explain phenomena occurring at higher levels but, again, there's always a limit of questions. Even if we're pushing it further and further back.
MAGIC:
This is the word we use to describe things Science has yet to understand. Science, the egotistical and loud fellow he is, makes a point of saying it does not exist and that he therefore knows everything. Alternately we can interpret magic as being everything science can never explain. Everything functions upon a set of rules, however, and if we're searching for said rules then we are scientists and all things are science. And no things are magic, leaving it a useless word. Therefore I like the former definition because it's awesome. The Higgs Boson is magic.
---
EGO:
An entity which is stuck with the horrible curse of never being satisfied with what it has. It is the protagonist of my story and yours, and daily quests to the conclusion of its endless quest which ends with death. But don't fret! If that quest ended the story would be a lot less interesting. If our protagonist surmounted the mountain of perfection he would have nowhere to go but down. Or he could just rot up there. Whatever. In actuality that mountain will always turn out to be an observation point at the base of a bigger mountain, or so I suspect. But don't tell science, or he'll get another one of his hissy-fits and no one likes that.
INTUITION:
If you believe intuition exists or can do anything special, you're crazy. If you actually talk to it you're really far gone. The nutcases say it's some kind of rational facility in the mind which due to its lack of metacognition can perform much more advanced problem-solving and thought, but for the same reason cannot explain how it solves its problems. As any crazy person will tell you, it can be manifested as a voice if one takes care to get into a proper mindset and avoid putting words in its mouth. (This is apparently harder than it sounds) After all, if it's just saying what you want it to say then you won't be a very good crazy person. You'll be talking to yourself but you won't be officially crazy. A crazy guy suggested trying to achieve a strong theta brainwave without falling asleep, or trying to lucid dream. But he was crazy and I disregarded him. Also the crazy people say intuition compels us to justify certain irrational beliefs, such as the ethical value of human beings or the need to eat. They say that these motivational assumptions and some logical ones (such as that the text you're reading actually exists) are built-in as a means of developing a basis for rational thought in both the conscious and intuitive minds.
BODY:
A member of the world which is more relevant but arguably less concrete than the last two things. The three of them, crazy people allege, are formulating aspects of a human being and a really flexible system of semantics that allows you to relate with people from drastically different schools of thought instead of just arguing. Of course, the crazy people are deluded and meaningless argument is the only way to achieve intellectual development at the individual and social levels. Anyway, the body is useful for learning, creating, exploring and interacting with people, and makes a few basic demands with regard to upkeep, including food, water, relief, reproduction and so forth.
Unfortunately, those in search of purpose sometimes are discomforted at thinking very hard and yet also refuse to take orders from men with books. Therefore, they accept the simple solution that bodily requests and the body's social imperatives are they keys to happiness, failing to recognize the other, more satisfying drives that the human being harbors. These become productive members of society, pursuing comfort and regard as they live. Since physiological and social drives wane with age these people find their 'successful' lifestyles very dissatisfying and die unhappy.
---
PURPOSE:
A magical reason to exist that we don't know. Once we find out we will accomplish our task and then become useless and probably stop existing or something. But worry not! We will quest on to please whatever entities have forged us, because clearly no Gods would make humans simply for the purpose of waiting and watching all the interesting things they did. No, even an all-powerful God has goals that can only be served by creating self-directed beings and expecting them to believe in said God with little evidence. It's silly to think the God would imagine Human existence to be its own reason, or to create intelligent beings for the sheer novelty of seeing what they make and discover. Silly to think any existing gods hide themselves mostly or completely for such reasons.
WILL:
Like purpose but a whole lot finickier. People always want something they don't have. If this is not the case, they stop moving. As can be seen in any nursing home those who cease to pursue tangible goals quickly degenerate mentally and physically, and die, whereas those who devote themselves even to silly or fruitless pursuits live on and are happy. (Rest in glory, Margaret Cook.) The word is synonymous with "futility" but a whole lot more upbeat owing to the wonderful connotative aspect of the English language. People will many things at a given time, at at any moment act on whatever they will the most. Long-term desires precipitate shorter ones which act toward the larger goal. So are mountains climbed step by step. As said previously, however, there is no tallest mountain. Only a time limit in which we can explore this big, wide world. Let that be its own reason, or otherwise choose from a list of Purposes. Yuck.
---
REASON
A silly and never-ending (See: WILL) effort to make sense of everything. The typical technique is to seek out patterns in what we call the 'world', and elsewhere, and pick the ones which are not quite regular and not quite random. The ones which seem to work on a set of meaningful rules but aren't completely predictable. Why do we choose these? Regular things are already understood and random ones cannot yet be, as we judge them. Anyway, Reason searches for common threads, patterns, mechanisms and other things, and builds a great web of information to reflect the physical world. As this occurs concepts are shifted from the realm of the unknown (See: GOD) to that of the individual mind. (See: TRUTH) While reason is occasionally useful (See: SCIENCE) it eventually becomes a fruitless pursuit, though that's not so bad. (See: WILL) However, if used exclusively and not co-operatively as a method of understanding it can interfere sometimes with other things that help us get a clearer view of things. (See: INTUTION)
PARADIGM
This is the big and complicated web reason builds. It can also be any subset of that web. The concepts in a paradigm are used to make judgments and further reasoning with regard to the objects they model, be those physical or abstract. Capable of doing all manner of loop-de-loops and triple 360 flipkicks, the structure of the paradigm is a mystery which wierd programmery fellows probably sit alone trying to decode so they can make strong AI. Paradigms, like muscles, develop best under stress, especially when they are confronted with paradigms which are very different to themselves. When this occurs it's good to let the paradigms loose so they can duke it out and become stronger. One killing the other is rarer than is widely believed, and [actually dogfighting analogies are inappropriate because] it's in the interest of your paradigm to engage in this activity.
---
MEANING
This is what is created when someone looks at the words in a book, or a sunset, or another person's face, or a trash can. Meaning is a set of ideas formulated by interpreting something, which are then processed by the mind. Arguably meaning is created intuitively before the ego gets its grubby hands on it, and processed intuitively at the same time. The ideas in meaning are compared against pieces of paradigm, whether said paradigm piece is highly temporary or more permanent. They are then either inserted into said paradigm (assimilation), forced into the paradigm which must change to hold them (accommodation) or thrown out as rubbish (the most common case).
TRUTH
All the understanding a person can manage to wring out of this mad world is placed gently (or forcefully) into a paradigm where it becomes what I call truth. I choose this meaning for this word rather than the conventional one (we'll assign it to the term FACT) which means things that are valid in the world and therefore equally so to all human minds. I make this choice because 'fact' can only be guessed at and what manifests in those guesses constitutes one's understanding of life, the universe, and everything. (See: TOWEL DAY) Truth sounds better and is more official and such, so I'd like to use it to describe something I can actually have and use, rather than some useless notion of absolution that humans seem to believe they're moving toward. (See: SCIENCE)
ABSTRACTION
...Is AWESOME. Awesomely confusing. Okay. Consider the common house cat. It's a feline, a mammal, an animal, and an organism. Those are levels of abstraction. We can go the opposite direction too. Miffy is a cat. This cat right here right now is miffy. We can form an abstraction over that--let's call it 'cat at varying levels of specificity'. We can form an abstraction over all such patterns--specificity and generality. We can form a specificity abstraction in a different direction, such as by denoting a cat to be a house pet, and therefore an element of a house. We can abstract in other ways such as by breaking Cat down into its properties (fur, teeth, claws, etc) or making a set (I'm thinking of all the cats I know). We can abstract over anything remotely resembling a pattern and so connect ideas and concepts in our paradigm. We can even abstract over abstraction itself, or over our own thought processes! This is wonderful when trying to bring about the technological singularity.
---
POSSIBLE FUTURE ADDITIONS:
Ethics / Morals
Social System / Individual
Virtue / Vice
THIS IS AN APPENDIX
FNEEBLE, JARGUND, RESTIBLES, NICANTHIAN, OMIDEUM, TESTAROD, FARGENTHIUM, WIRTH
Okay. They're gone. Good.
Note also that these definitions are the meanings I choose to attach to words. I am not suggesting you use the same ones. I do encourage you to find some word befitting each if you do not yet possess one, however. If you lack meaningless words, you may find some in the appendix.
Note also that this is clearly not in alphabetical order. If that matters. It doesn't.
---
GOD:
A man sees before him a black box with a crank. He turns the handle and music springs forth. This machine is mystically endowed with the capacity to make music! Another man steps forward, doubting him, and pries open the box. The two see then it is not the box but the things inside which seem to produce the music. These strange pieces are disassembled further still and analyzed that the parts they form can be understood. Eventually the pieces can be analyzed no more. Their function, it seems, is simple and obvious. But there is yet a reason they work as they do. Countless ignored questions such as why the metal behaves as it does, or resonates its sweet tones only when struck just so. Even as more and more is discovered, countless questions remain. An infinite mystery. A world of understanding yet-to-be, and endless.
Note: Many people use God to name their exclusive source of absolute truth and/or moral bases. I give mine a different name. See: INTUITION.
THE WORLD:
All that is and all that be. Except, of course, me. Anything that I can perceive, I can only perceive. Therefore perception would appear to be a singular conduit to all entities within some realm. This realm I call the world.
---
SCIENCE:
See: GOD. The attempt to explain things by observing them, at times with the deluded reasoning that we can contrive a unified explanation for everything while making no assumptions whatsoever to base it upon. The limit of questions will always be a barrier which is somewhere between divine, magical, or mundane. The last of these is most satisfactory; all are characterized by answering "why?" with "because." Since science only observes the objects of its study it can at best make predictions of how they will behave. This is very useful when lower levels of abstraction can be examined to explain phenomena occurring at higher levels but, again, there's always a limit of questions. Even if we're pushing it further and further back.
MAGIC:
This is the word we use to describe things Science has yet to understand. Science, the egotistical and loud fellow he is, makes a point of saying it does not exist and that he therefore knows everything. Alternately we can interpret magic as being everything science can never explain. Everything functions upon a set of rules, however, and if we're searching for said rules then we are scientists and all things are science. And no things are magic, leaving it a useless word. Therefore I like the former definition because it's awesome. The Higgs Boson is magic.
---
EGO:
An entity which is stuck with the horrible curse of never being satisfied with what it has. It is the protagonist of my story and yours, and daily quests to the conclusion of its endless quest which ends with death. But don't fret! If that quest ended the story would be a lot less interesting. If our protagonist surmounted the mountain of perfection he would have nowhere to go but down. Or he could just rot up there. Whatever. In actuality that mountain will always turn out to be an observation point at the base of a bigger mountain, or so I suspect. But don't tell science, or he'll get another one of his hissy-fits and no one likes that.
INTUITION:
If you believe intuition exists or can do anything special, you're crazy. If you actually talk to it you're really far gone. The nutcases say it's some kind of rational facility in the mind which due to its lack of metacognition can perform much more advanced problem-solving and thought, but for the same reason cannot explain how it solves its problems. As any crazy person will tell you, it can be manifested as a voice if one takes care to get into a proper mindset and avoid putting words in its mouth. (This is apparently harder than it sounds) After all, if it's just saying what you want it to say then you won't be a very good crazy person. You'll be talking to yourself but you won't be officially crazy. A crazy guy suggested trying to achieve a strong theta brainwave without falling asleep, or trying to lucid dream. But he was crazy and I disregarded him. Also the crazy people say intuition compels us to justify certain irrational beliefs, such as the ethical value of human beings or the need to eat. They say that these motivational assumptions and some logical ones (such as that the text you're reading actually exists) are built-in as a means of developing a basis for rational thought in both the conscious and intuitive minds.
BODY:
A member of the world which is more relevant but arguably less concrete than the last two things. The three of them, crazy people allege, are formulating aspects of a human being and a really flexible system of semantics that allows you to relate with people from drastically different schools of thought instead of just arguing. Of course, the crazy people are deluded and meaningless argument is the only way to achieve intellectual development at the individual and social levels. Anyway, the body is useful for learning, creating, exploring and interacting with people, and makes a few basic demands with regard to upkeep, including food, water, relief, reproduction and so forth.
Unfortunately, those in search of purpose sometimes are discomforted at thinking very hard and yet also refuse to take orders from men with books. Therefore, they accept the simple solution that bodily requests and the body's social imperatives are they keys to happiness, failing to recognize the other, more satisfying drives that the human being harbors. These become productive members of society, pursuing comfort and regard as they live. Since physiological and social drives wane with age these people find their 'successful' lifestyles very dissatisfying and die unhappy.
---
PURPOSE:
A magical reason to exist that we don't know. Once we find out we will accomplish our task and then become useless and probably stop existing or something. But worry not! We will quest on to please whatever entities have forged us, because clearly no Gods would make humans simply for the purpose of waiting and watching all the interesting things they did. No, even an all-powerful God has goals that can only be served by creating self-directed beings and expecting them to believe in said God with little evidence. It's silly to think the God would imagine Human existence to be its own reason, or to create intelligent beings for the sheer novelty of seeing what they make and discover. Silly to think any existing gods hide themselves mostly or completely for such reasons.
WILL:
Like purpose but a whole lot finickier. People always want something they don't have. If this is not the case, they stop moving. As can be seen in any nursing home those who cease to pursue tangible goals quickly degenerate mentally and physically, and die, whereas those who devote themselves even to silly or fruitless pursuits live on and are happy. (Rest in glory, Margaret Cook.) The word is synonymous with "futility" but a whole lot more upbeat owing to the wonderful connotative aspect of the English language. People will many things at a given time, at at any moment act on whatever they will the most. Long-term desires precipitate shorter ones which act toward the larger goal. So are mountains climbed step by step. As said previously, however, there is no tallest mountain. Only a time limit in which we can explore this big, wide world. Let that be its own reason, or otherwise choose from a list of Purposes. Yuck.
---
REASON
A silly and never-ending (See: WILL) effort to make sense of everything. The typical technique is to seek out patterns in what we call the 'world', and elsewhere, and pick the ones which are not quite regular and not quite random. The ones which seem to work on a set of meaningful rules but aren't completely predictable. Why do we choose these? Regular things are already understood and random ones cannot yet be, as we judge them. Anyway, Reason searches for common threads, patterns, mechanisms and other things, and builds a great web of information to reflect the physical world. As this occurs concepts are shifted from the realm of the unknown (See: GOD) to that of the individual mind. (See: TRUTH) While reason is occasionally useful (See: SCIENCE) it eventually becomes a fruitless pursuit, though that's not so bad. (See: WILL) However, if used exclusively and not co-operatively as a method of understanding it can interfere sometimes with other things that help us get a clearer view of things. (See: INTUTION)
PARADIGM
This is the big and complicated web reason builds. It can also be any subset of that web. The concepts in a paradigm are used to make judgments and further reasoning with regard to the objects they model, be those physical or abstract. Capable of doing all manner of loop-de-loops and triple 360 flipkicks, the structure of the paradigm is a mystery which wierd programmery fellows probably sit alone trying to decode so they can make strong AI. Paradigms, like muscles, develop best under stress, especially when they are confronted with paradigms which are very different to themselves. When this occurs it's good to let the paradigms loose so they can duke it out and become stronger. One killing the other is rarer than is widely believed, and [actually dogfighting analogies are inappropriate because] it's in the interest of your paradigm to engage in this activity.
---
MEANING
This is what is created when someone looks at the words in a book, or a sunset, or another person's face, or a trash can. Meaning is a set of ideas formulated by interpreting something, which are then processed by the mind. Arguably meaning is created intuitively before the ego gets its grubby hands on it, and processed intuitively at the same time. The ideas in meaning are compared against pieces of paradigm, whether said paradigm piece is highly temporary or more permanent. They are then either inserted into said paradigm (assimilation), forced into the paradigm which must change to hold them (accommodation) or thrown out as rubbish (the most common case).
TRUTH
All the understanding a person can manage to wring out of this mad world is placed gently (or forcefully) into a paradigm where it becomes what I call truth. I choose this meaning for this word rather than the conventional one (we'll assign it to the term FACT) which means things that are valid in the world and therefore equally so to all human minds. I make this choice because 'fact' can only be guessed at and what manifests in those guesses constitutes one's understanding of life, the universe, and everything. (See: TOWEL DAY) Truth sounds better and is more official and such, so I'd like to use it to describe something I can actually have and use, rather than some useless notion of absolution that humans seem to believe they're moving toward. (See: SCIENCE)
ABSTRACTION
...Is AWESOME. Awesomely confusing. Okay. Consider the common house cat. It's a feline, a mammal, an animal, and an organism. Those are levels of abstraction. We can go the opposite direction too. Miffy is a cat. This cat right here right now is miffy. We can form an abstraction over that--let's call it 'cat at varying levels of specificity'. We can form an abstraction over all such patterns--specificity and generality. We can form a specificity abstraction in a different direction, such as by denoting a cat to be a house pet, and therefore an element of a house. We can abstract in other ways such as by breaking Cat down into its properties (fur, teeth, claws, etc) or making a set (I'm thinking of all the cats I know). We can abstract over anything remotely resembling a pattern and so connect ideas and concepts in our paradigm. We can even abstract over abstraction itself, or over our own thought processes! This is wonderful when trying to bring about the technological singularity.
---
POSSIBLE FUTURE ADDITIONS:
Ethics / Morals
Social System / Individual
Virtue / Vice
THIS IS AN APPENDIX
FNEEBLE, JARGUND, RESTIBLES, NICANTHIAN, OMIDEUM, TESTAROD, FARGENTHIUM, WIRTH
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