Will to Consciousness

The single principle of all that exists: To raise its consciousness. Life is the will to consciousness. Everything one does is an opportunity to a) lower one's consciousness, b) stay in one's consciousness, or c) raise one's consciousness. All problems and their nature are merely a result of the choice of one of the above. Problems may appear insoluble because one is not raising one's consciousness, or the parties involved are stuck in the same consciousness. In the long run, consciousness MUST be raised.

Note 179

If one knows that there is in reality no free will, then liberalism's elevation of the individual is but another form of social control, based on the illusion of free will.

Note 178

God: to search for the structure of all structures, the form in all forms.

Note 176

There is an inherent instability within democracy in one country as centrifugal forces pull it apart.

Therefore seperate nations, institutionally constituted as states at war with each other, is the neccessary complement.

Global or regional cooperation forces countries to break apart.

This drives the push to either conservative conflicts, or progressive conflicts.

Progressive conflicts lead to smaller entities and the expansion of individual freedoms.

Conservative conflicts lead to preservation of existing orders and stability.

Progressive conflicts come at a cost of inherent and prolonged instability and death, because a new basis for a new social contract has to be found, as a foundation for order.

In other words, a modification of the modern conception of state will result, as another intermediate equilibrium that balances the internal values, and the external relations, of order-providing entities.

What is the principal contradiction? Generally, that between the individual and the collective.

In this case, individual identities revolving around markets, and social collectives up to the national level. Collective identities revolving around state and global institutions, including global markets. A reordering of these relationships in a Socially Darwinistic way may be what true war (a state of nature) is about.

Note 175

We are all god, but in a less than perfect structural form.

We confuse teleology with history. Teleology is the perfection of structure at each point in time, not a perfecting of structure across time. So god is the end point of teleology.

Note 174

Structures are like gods. Like gods, they are arbitrary and necessary.

Content is the loss of form in its expression. It is so easy to imagine a different one, like countries without borders. And I would be restructured too, as an extension, a sensemaking of the structures of life. So the gods are not worshipped, but practiced.

They are not an object, but a part of me, in the same way that walls, doorways and arches structure a room. I become the room, and find others too, who have become their rooms, and so can create more rooms.

Are we gods then? No, we are reliant on them, they give us form, and we give them content. In that content we infer our content to fill our form, the empty reflection.

Trilemma of Personal Identity

I am 3 things. A mirror, the one viewing the mirror, and the one whose image is reflected in the mirror.

One can only pick 2. This is the trilemma of personal identity. Is this a false trilemma? Is the world in the mirror the same as the world outside the mirror, which we can't see?

The first two make me an idealist. The first and last make me a materialist. The last two make me a dualist.

Note 173

The fading of the light of day is a reminder of the final return to darkness.

In darkness, nothing matters, so mattering or not mattering does not matter.

This is the union of opposites, the light from darkness, and the darkness in light.

Descartes 2

Descartes saw that the self was the god principle (self-verifying truth) of consciousness. If one took away the self, the contents of consciousness would cease to exist. If one saw the self as illusion, the world would be viewed as illusion. Then consciousness would be empty of self-verifying truths.

Because the "I" exists not as a thing but as a process, the self is a conversion of a process (of consciousness) to a thing by giving form to the process through its relation to the contents of the process.

This attempt to convert a process into a thing generates a paradox. The process can only be identified as thing (the self) within the context of the contents of the process, but the thing thus described cannot encapsulate the process because it lies outside that context.

While one might be tempted to attribute causal and so ontological primacy to the contents, it does not account for what the process is in terms of consciousness itself.

Note 172

Is there a basis for the world state? If the liberals are right, there can be no agreement on fundamental values, so it has to be imposed from above. If the conservatives are right, there are objectively correct values, so there is a basis for bottom-up world state formation on the basis of the discovery of higher truths. The problem is one of countering ignorance.

In other words, for the world state to be possible, the liberal has to acknowledge the lack of universality of liberal values, and the conservative has to acknowledge the duty of universal values. In any case, the duty of both is to reconcile the view of the universality of value embedded in the core of each idea with their practical two-level division/relationship of politics and values that has emerged in a world of nation-states.

This reconciliation may be resolved (on the liberal side) by the dissolution of the politic-value distinction via the world-state or the destruction of the liberal state through libertarianism. In conservatism, it may be resolved via the universal spread of conservative values as the basis for political union or conversely, the protection of purity - the maintanence of purer communities through isolation, status structures, and other social or political methods.

Note 171

Morality is defined by the absence of the object which it is for. If it were not absent, it would be a particular interest, and cease to be morality. Therefore, the condition of the Good is the absence of the object, be it God, a divine law, the nation, the common good, the collective utility function, that is the source and end of the act.

The corollary to the moral and meaningful is therefore the necessity of absent and hidden objects, and the two are constitutively bound to each other. The imagined nature of some of these objects is not a hinderance, but an important aid. The more real it becomes, the less it ceases to express moral necessity, and the more it then works through institutions and self-interest, namely the desire for social approbation.

For example, the growing size and strength of states is accompanied by a weakening of nationalism as an abstract good (in favour of globally-minded liberalism) and its growth as one promoted through state institutions and social norms. This explains the paradox of Democrats seeking a larger state and Republicans a smaller one.

Core Civilisational Principles

Or, how to read world history - it can't explain anything or everything, but it is important.

West: Exploration, discovery, conquest
China: Stability, material accumulation
India: Liberation, Moksha
Islam: Adherence to Divine Law

Note 170

Current teleologists are both right and wrong. The world is pragmatically moving toward individual rationality, but to do so only in order to transcend it. The economic mode corresponding to this is post-scarcity. This is not collectivism or communism, but the ability to see the individual for what he/she is.

Identities, Interests and Institutions

Corporate identities play the role of translating expectations into institutional forms. It is evoked when interests demand solidification. Identities are institutionalized interests, as a process.

They are a process by which interests are defined, and by which institutions are defined in relation to these interests, and by which the identities are defined in relation to the institutions, which embody these interests. This paradox of self-definition by way of interests and institutions renders it, by necessity, a process.

Identity is therefore best seen as process through which expectations about interests and power structures mutually construct and reinforce each other over time.

Note 169

Matching content with form is difficult, maybe the most difficult thing. To do so is to bring about the higher order essence of a thing. In some cultures, this may often be taken as expressions of divinity, which can express itself in plural forms. Social definitions of higher and lower are irrelevant or subordinate to this essential art.

Note 168

Philosophy is essentially the activity of tracing the circle from the point at which you begin.

A lot of philosophy starts from a naive point of view, so the circle that is traced essentially tells us what we already know.

Our point of view is hardly significant, it is just one form of diagonality. Who know how many kinds there are?

Note 167

Meaning seeks its own completion, without limit. Therein its meaninglessness.

Note 166

Juxtapose substantivism and relationalism. Both are true; and both melt away.

Asian post-liberalism

Asians have substantial second-mover advantages when it comes to liberalism. Their job then is to wrestle with liberalism (divorced from the Western historical experience), understand its impossibility within its own historical context, and bring about post-liberalism. The first stage is not even reached. Has this task even been recognized?

Note 165

Truth has always been sundered upon itself; form does not match content; and process (teleological and otherwise) is the groping for accomodation across a gap that is pragmatically bridged.

Note 164

If inbuilt contradictions increase the antifragility of a system, the demand for logical coherence is pragmatically incoherent.

The Problem with Pragmatism

The problem of pragmatism is that it is self-referencing. So despite its attempt at coherence, it does not really tell us anything new. That is, unlike truth, negation is not its basis.

Realism, Liberalism and the World State

Conflicts are almost always over ideas, or ideas about interests (or what interests are). They are never about biologically-given interests. And ideas, unlike things, have dialectical development.

***

The liberals of today are the ape-ancestors of liberals of the future.

They are running up against the incoherence of liberalism in a global world with politics.

Liberalism will have to incorporate the universal aspects of rights and discard the culturally and historically-specific aspects of rights to incorporate all cultural possibilities, and so to become what it is.

The liberalism of today is unable to do this. Therefore the irreversible concept it introduces will be eventually reworked into something that suits the possibility it introduces.

The site of this re-working may not be the nation-state, and in fact, is rather unlikely to be the nation state, which principally serves to characterize and restrict the movement and exchange of people in spatial terms.


***

Well, of course there is nothing wrong in being a conservative, but conservatives have always been the idiots of history.

Lesson from Sassure

Not knowing: nihilism is not the negation of knowing but its possibility. The possibility of negation is the possibility of being insofar as it is relational. Knowing is double negation. Philosophy is the negation of that double negation. In other words, its task is to jump across three abysses, to look across three negations, from being to knowing to the possibility of knowing, and to turn it into a single one that can be crossed.

Note 163

Why the philosophic life? The duty to know in the face of unknowability. Therefore, Strauss - to understand Socrates.

World state

He who invented natural law invented the world state.

Note 162

Every intelligibility is a negation, and a negation of its intelligible negation. Every duality is a singularity as a condition of its duality. We forget this obvious fact too often.

Because truth is relational, the conditions of truth must be given outside truth itself. That is, they must by definition be unintelligible, or Real, in order to be ordered. A discovery is by definition an ignorance, or an inevitability whose terms cannot be reached.

(Qua Callon)

Note 161

The self is the means through which agency is expressed in terms of identity. The mode of acting coheres with the mode of being in relation to the external world through the self. The self belongs not to the self, but to the structure of relation of modalities. Agency remains unknown.

Note 160

A truth as a justification of a fact, and a fact as a justification of a necessity, and a necessity as the justification of free will and its negation. Applied truth is a function of suffering.

***

Reflexivity is the mutual constitution of two nothingnesses.

***

Khan: Logic is positional. Language is directional. There is no position without direction.

***

Jung: Life in its purest form, the interaction of archetypes.

Note 159

Rationality is teleology, in the same way that atheism is religion. Specific utility theories are different sub-denominations that work in different circumstances.

***

Combining irreconcilible principles of might and right is a problem of politics. One branch is order, and within order, one branch is law. Another are norms.

We do not know what norms are. Therefore, all the so-called theories about norms are descriptive.

***

Morality calls out for an ontology which we lack.

***

The ontology of mind remains unknown.

Note 158

Qua Berger, there are only 2 self-legitimating things: truth and right. The authority of institutions rest on them.

Legitimacy is the security of both in a set of relations to each other. Outcomes combine both.

###
Is this true? Legitimation is self-division.

Note 157

What is art? It is the isomorphic simulation of the soul finding its completion.

Note 156

In the end, we do not choose our fates. Our fates choose us. So do we not have agency? No: the fates have agency over the present. The future chooses the present. The opposing logics of cause and reason intersect within the paradox of time. Time is the coincidence of cause and reason.

Laws of cause and reason are given outside of time. But they are applied through each other in time, which just is their application.

Abstraction is the transcendence of cause and reason. It is negation without basis. Therein it is the basis for everything.

Note 155

3 kinds of real:
1) Projection
2) Cause
3) Thing-in-itself

Facts are not out there in the world. Facts are projections of the mind of things out there in the world to guide the mind in referring to patterns out there in the world. The correpondence is a positing of equivalence between the projection and the phenomena we observe. You cannot derive this equivalence from observation or deduction. Its not verifiable. This is not guided by derivation but by rules which are pragmatic.

Note 154

Civilisation as the intersection of past material as well as ideational technology and the concepts of agency defining the future.

Social concepts are given meaning through their orientation to conceptions of agency in the present in relation to the boundaries of past and future.

In this way the public and the personal conceptions of conditions of agency blend into each other through the construction of identities and institutions.

Note 153

What is an identity? It is a function of the systemic totality of things, which enables the particular pragmatic frames within which individual things acquire meaning. This is conditioned by principles of materiality, and principles of system-consciousness. Practice (forms of life) are the product of their interaction. Functionality is the motivating factor, at least in social forms of identity. (It is embedded in some way in other genres of thinking, perhaps as a condition for thinking itself.)

Human nature is a particular functional requirement in the system, due to human agency as the limiting factor and the value of work, so the evolution of society has often been traced to the use of principles and incentives that condition this. However, the role of consciousness in discovering new ways of identifying systems, increases the permutations within particular functional parameters. Here, materiality and resolution interact, but distribution of power resources tends to generate an equilibrium, which is constantly shifted from the role of new ideas and conditions about the role and nature of human agency.

Note 152

In the applied sense, a positive and negative freedom is embodied in a freedom.

Philosophical Investigations Note 8

Things are the intersection of systems, defined in terms of the ways they relate to each other.

So is meaning, a second-order relation of things (embodying the relation of systems of thought).

Descartes 1

Descartes was misguided. The world is simulation. Then why something not nothing? Existence is relative. So must the self exist? Only in relation to that which it exists in relation to. The self and the world only exist in relation to each other.

Note 151

What is culture? It is essentially a relation of one set of properties of a reflexive system to another.

Note 150

On history:

1. The search for political, social order and equality
2. The search for cultural perfectibility
3. The search for human perfectibility

The end of history reconciles the possibility of obtaining all 3 that covers the scope of the diversity of political, human and social objectives. The spirit of an era gives direction to, and shapes its institutional forms and objectives, as well as the hermeneutics of the interactions that make up the functioning of a myriad of social systems, within the context of a present and evolving pattern of material relationships. The role of incorporation of additional elements adds an open-endedness, and an additional layer of adaptive complexity, to this evolving system.

Note 149

Meaning is the structure of relations of meanings. “Context” is just a way of foregrounding this concept as we apply meanings in relation to each other via propositions.

Note 148

Any real solution to dualism must transcend dualism, and show us the way to what lies beyond it. This applies to both epistemic and ontological questions.

Note 147

What defines power? Depends on your objective. What defines objective? Systems, which give rise to goals and meaning.

Systems create dynamics that drive adaptation, whether convergence or divergence; they create strong self-perpetuating institutional forms.

Power is essentially systemic. It is an advantage due to certain properties within a given system. This positional advantage is cashed out as power in various forms. Partial analysis is a useful heuristic but misleading if taken literally.

Philosophical Investigations Note 7

Those who can describe who they are are either simplistic, deluded or lying.

Those who can’t have serious split personality issues.

Therefore, I can describe who I am, and I cannot describe who I am.

Because meaning is context dependent, it cannot encompass structure.

Therefore the picture theory of meaning is false.

Note 146

Systems of thought may share reference points and patterns in the way its concepts refer to other concepts and things, that can be translated to other systems of thought- and others which may not be so translatable. This is not because they are cognitively incommensurable but because the significance of the component relationship or idea can only be grasped in terms of the broader implications it has for the system of thought to which it relates, which therefore conditions it’s meaning. In that sense, the way concepts refer to common phenomena, are an anchor point for referencing across systems.

This has nothing to do with the broader point about the ontological reality of the reference, but the epistemic one about the role that the reference plays in our language games when we posit systems of thought.

This is not pre-determined by the theory, but by how we choose to understand it, as a description of a plural reality, or a description of a single reality. If we are agnostic to this and see it as an interpretation of experienced reality, there is no reason why one account can not replace another, unless it is defined (problematicized) differently.

Note 145

What is the teleology of things? A cause, value, identity nexus. Intellection is a part of this process, so it is inherently conservative.

Systems are a composite of things, and an interaction of micro-teleologies. Incorporation is part of a process of changes in teleological aims, preserved through individual identities and social forms, as the developmental process (combining dialectics, technological re-parameterization; and emergent choices) alters the teleological structure over time.

Note 144

The world lies in the coexistence of opposites. The paradox is the knot that ties the idea to reality.

Is a system of binaries, like a binary code, a fact about the world, or a condition of our thought? Or a condition of the process of framing? Are any of these questions meaningfully answerable?

Note 143

Knowledge is a synthesis of question and answer.

Underlying facts (patterns that give rise to all possible answers to all possible questions) form the basis of validity.

Does this mean that questions form the patterns of underlying facts? Not necessarily.

But in the social sciences, reflexivity poses additional problems.

Grammar is a posing of problems.

This limits our access to underlying facts to a certain viewpoint.

Underlying facts is something we infer. Or we can do away with validity altogether.

It depends on our frame of mind.

Note 142

The world of complete markets is a world of standardization, where the relationship to our environment and its aspect that make us human are lost. All our activities are therein proscribed, and money is but access to restriction. Such is, in embryo, the middle class and the sterility of its outlook.

Note 141: On Truth

Philosophy - a rationalization of the unknowable in terms that are unknown.

What we call truth are properly speaking patterns of regularity - we get no privileged access to what we don’t already have.

It remains impossible to know how much we know, for that would already presuppose that we knew what truth in relation to itself is, which is precisely what we don’t know.

We cannot know what truth-in-itself is (or speak coherently about it) but what truth is to us must be given perspectivally. But the presumption of our ability to approach objective truth is dependent on the consistency of truth in relation to itself (which is the best we can do) with truth in relation to us.

This has nothing to do with truth-in-itself.

Weber Notes 2

“It is certain that the integrity of personality flows from the existence of values to which it’s own life is related. And if on occasion these values were located exclusively within the sphere of its own individuality, then self-realisation with respect to just those interests for which it claims validity as values is the idea to which personality relates itself.” -Max Weber

***
Interests directed at external validity; validity defined as interest: that is how the personality relates itself to itself; as valuing thing to self-interested thing.

Note 140

Existence is a framework within which one thing relates to another. It is a pragmatic concept. Applied to experience, it is a framework by which the contents are related to each other.

Note 139

Truth and duality coexist. Truth is what we call our ideas; consistency is what we get in the world. So it is meaningless to say what is true in the world. But there are standards of truth in what we think of it; given by the world. This makes our statements about our thoughts about the world true or false - it does not make our statements about the world true or false. The language games that translate the former into the latter may take different forms.

***
Time just is the process of determinacy interacting with indeterminacy. Laws are determinate; but states of the world are not. So multiple equilibriums are possible.

***
Language games translate properties into meanings that relate to each other. For example, truth and consistency. In doing so, they define the justification (pragmatism), reference and use of the subject.

Weber Notes 1

“As rational action in the the economic and political sphere follows its own law like autonomy, so every other rational action in the world remains inseparably linked to worldly conditions that are alien to brotherliness.” - Max Weber

***

Society as technology to navigate, discover and develop structures and processes around lawlike autonomies in physical, economic, political, social, and teleological domains.

Note 138

The maya is the concept of truth itself: truthfulness springs from illusion. Form violates the essence of truth.

Therefore nothing is knowable.

Note 137

Two sources of growth: improved rate of circulation of transactions and money (demand-driven); or improved processes and products (higher circulation of activity or new activities which translates into higher capital circulation and hence drives growth).

Note 136

Competition is mimetic. Units compete for dominance over groups; groups compete for mimetic dominance. Institutions exist to establish, concretize memes into standards, within a context of existing standards.

Power as such in relation to power as an instrument of mimetic competition is as short run to a long run phenomenon.

Note 135

In any complex system, it is not one factor, but a set of factors, that drive a change in question. However, the set of factors that can drive change depend on the interrelationship between that set of factors and other factor conditions, or, an existing systemic state, making changes path-dependent in actual situations. It is assumed constances in those relations that allow for theory.

Note 134

Things belong to a cause-values-identity nexus.

***

The notion of the properties and object of the self is built on the usefulness of the combination of psychological features and the social structures (profiling, incentives and restrictions) that accompany these features.

Note 133

Space and time are just languages for interpreting signals, that is, a form of sensory grammar.

Culture

Culture as framing of natural problems as social problems.

Social values as a necessary condition of doing so - and culture as a seat of contention of values as social values.

Teleology as prioritization of values and culture as contest - every gesture is an expression of contention. So every non-significant gesture renders the culture sterile.

Political Pragmatism as Philosophy

Political pragmatism as philosophy calls for the flourishing of the greatest number of individuals in the context of the value structure of that society- made in recognition of facts of society- and is neutral about systems of governance.

It distinguishes between value structure and power structure of a society- pragmatism is conservatism about value structure not power structure.

Note 132

If you know what you’re doing, your goal should be to maximise return for a given acceptable amount of risk.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, your goal should be to minimise risk for a given acceptable return.

Note 131

Understanding is in essence the understanding of categories, that is, how they fit together or envelop one another.

***

What determines the primacy of systems? Is that a meaningful question?

Note 130

When do properties become things? When they become causal agents in systems of relations, and are used as propositional subjects. They are epistemically, not ontologically significant.

Philosophical Investigations Note 6

Subject/object distinctions are not a function of form but of clarity over the parameters of a language game for a certain use.

***
Solidification of qualities as things as a means of establishing relationships among qualities via rules of grammar to anchor and direct language games.

Philosophical Investigations Note 5

Normal is established in the context of the strange, and the strange in the normal.

Properties can only be established within a context. What about colours, like blue or red? Yes - these are descriptors established within a colour context - colours only make sense when related to each other.

What about things? As subjects, they extend beyond the frame -they are what the frame is about. As the intelligible object, they are understood by their properties - defined by their context. The method identifies the concept by contextualizing it, as Wittgenstein notes.

But the concept lies beyond the meaning. Only if the concept lies beyond the use can use be made of it.

Note 129

Two kinds of strategy: forward strategy and backward strategy.

Forward strategy is defined as the application of the principles of momentum and improvisation: to assess the present situation and capacities, in order to determine feasible outcomes and the routes to achieve one’s ends, working from and within the current context.

Backward strategy begins from a set of preferred outcomes based on one’s values and preferences. It then defines the means to achieve these ends, in a variety of situational contexts.

At the risk of confusion, we might call the former “short-run” strategy, and the latter “long-run” strategy.

The cultivation of capacity for both and the ability to suit the combination of both ways of thinking to the opportunities and constraints of each situation is called adaptive strategy.

Note 128

Generally, in any social interaction, the most important language game is the one that one has with oneself.

A thought is the death of an idea.

Viewed in this light, what is said are residues of truth that have evolved beyond it, and as a characterisation of the relationships of the past, must be viewed as an act of finality.

Note 127

One might say that excess of saving over investment and falling interest rates tend to indicate demand constraints and excessive inequality, while excess of consumption over investment along with rising interest rates indicate savings supply constraints and insufficient inequality.

Rising rates are due to high costs of risk or overheating and inflation. One might say that these may be caused by inadequate savings, which may be partially attributed to overconsumption. Multiplier effects of consumption increase the asset base of banks and hence credit provision, which may help address the problem.

Note 126

Empirics: The (infinite?) process of refining educated guesses.

Personal Identity 1

The problem is that the form of correspondence of the correlation between the inside-out perspective of the “I” and the outside-in perspective of the “I” is arbitrary and pragmatic. They are not the same kind of object, and the connection cannot be derived from either perspective, but must be established by empirical experience. This makes it essentially unknowable.

The I is not fully identified with either, and both do not fully capture what I is as a set of phenomena.

The process of identifying the I as a set of phenomena and the I as attribution of self-same identity to that phenomena involves the integration of the phenomena to the contrasting frame through explanation.

For example, the I of the inside-out frame requires some way of differentiating internal from external phenomena, and the only way to do so is to establish that division via an externalist narrative of an object with special features in the world. Similarly, the I of the outside-in frame needs to establish the provenance of the material object via correlation of material observations with internal experiences. The combination of the two gives rise to the externalist narrative established via correlation of internal experience and the material world.

An object in two different frames of reference are thereby conflated with each other in a single language game of daily use.

Philosophical Investigations Note 4: Duck-Rabbit 1

Context is the set of associations which give rise to the content of identity conditions for phenomena. Identity conditions are not a function of the phenomena but of the language game. The phenomena is the cause/trigger of the language game. It causes it, and is the limiting condition. It plays the role of existence – the interface of meaning and non-meaning. (It identifies the language game from nothing).

(Heuristic)
Form of Life
↕
Identity
↕
Phenomena
↕
(Application)
Identity
↕
Associations
↕
Context
↕
Use

Note 125

Anything which is not found within is not truly yours. Identifying with external objects is a form of objectification, which is the start of misguided living.

Note 124

The problem is that there is never proof of a categorical distinction, only a manifestation of it through correlations. Therefore assertions cannot be proved or disproved by evidence. But that also means that nothing more can be said about them.

Inflation 1

There are 2 necessary conditions of inflation: excess credit and insufficient capacity. The former, combined with structural supply bottlenecks to increased investment (project obstacles, insufficient skills) in conditions of deficient aggregate demand, creates asset bubbles. The latter, which sees cyclical short-term bottlenecks to increased inventory production, combined with strong growth in aggregate demand, creates wage and goods price inflation. At root is lack of investment, and inflation is the early-stage recovery period of excess savings over investment, of which central bank policy is the price-taker.

Quote 18

"Looked at from the network point of view, survival depends on routings that provide better use of resources - for example, re-circulation of water and biocarbon in an ecosystem, or an improved multiplier effect for cash flow in an economy. Inside a network community, it is these routings that are favoured. As a consequence, the tags that determine these routings become persistent features of the community. Persistent tags, in turn, become building blocks for for further changes, and consequently, the source of new hierarchical organizations. In this process, the throughput from lower-level niches largely determines the nature of interactions between higher-level niches - persistent lower-level niches with higher throughput have more influence on the overall organization." - John Holland, Complexity

Note 123

It is a mistake to say that emergent phenomena derive from complex adaptive systems, like wetness from H2O molecules. Emergent phenomena come from the interaction between different systems, which creates new frames of reference - even if one system is causally antecedent to another.

Quote 17

Major insight from Dawkins: the noticing of structures is the fundamental nature of knowledge of the world.

“We humans, uniquely among animalkind, have the poet’s gift of metaphor: of noticing when things are like other things and using the relation as a fulcrum for our thoughts and feelings.” - Richard Dawkins

Quote 16

"Several chapters of the most important Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi, allude to "diminishing doing" or "diminishing will" as the key aspect of the sage's success. Taoist philosophy recognizes that the Universe already works harmoniously according to its own ways; as a person exerts their will against or upon the world they disrupt the harmony that already exists. This is not to say that a person should not exert agency and will. Rather, it is how one acts in relation to the natural processes already existent. The how, the Tao of intention and motivation, that is key." - Wikipedia

Game Theory in Politics

Foil to game theory in politics:
1. The commensurability of goods in terms of utility when preferences are context dependent, including interpersonal, inter-good, and inter-situational utility
2. Computational complexity of changing utility function in each round, which is a function of utility over distributed probabilities
3. Uncertainty
4. Is action by definition utility-maximising, or is utility something which is maximized by action? If the former, see 1, if the latter, how do we know that this concept of utility is commensurable with all goods across different contexts?

That is partly why we apply game theory models by analogy, when the situations are stable and the institutional context, values, preferences and payoff functions do not change too much over rounds.

Social History 1

History consists of multiple competing dynamically shifting equilibria, as motivating forces, whose relative and selected dominance as fact reshapes the conditions within which other equilibria are developed, and so on. Parameter satisfaction levels are based on interests and values, as are the permanence of constraints to the societal features which aim to address them. These parameter values are specified along a continuum, and give rise to other optimal structures and processes, laterally and vertically.

Note 122

Knowledge is a life-process, constantly de-fetishized, led by the hand of truth and evolving the terms of its conditionalities.

Quotes 15

"Suppose then, that you were not that Roman knight, but a freeman. You might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid a throng of gentlemen. "How?", you ask. Simply by distinguishing between good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace. You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend. If there is anything that can make life happy, it is good on its own merits; for it cannot degenerate into evil. Where then, lies the mistake, since all men crave the happy life? It is that they regard the means for producing happiness as happiness itself, and while seeking happiness, they are really fleeing from it. For although the sum and substance of the happy life is unalloyed freedom from care, and though the secret of such freedom is unshaken confidence, yet men gather together that which causes worry, and, while travelling life's treacherous road, not only have burdens to bear, but even draw burdens to themselves; hence they recede farther and farther from the achievement of that which they seek, and the more effort they expend, the more they hinder themselves and are set back. This is what happens when you hurry through a maze; the faster you go, the worse you are entangled." - Seneca

Note 121

The two virtues of governance are adaptiveness and accountability. These may or may not be satisfied by mechanisms of democracy.

Mechanisms of accountability, including democratic ones, cannot be defined out of the context of the social, cultural and institutional legacies and structures within which they operate. There are multiple models and configurations of political management.

But the optimality of the system depends on its ability to identify problems and address them, while providing checks and accountability.

Conditions which determine the tradeoffs and scope of action which society faces change, as do the values and preferences of populations. This creates continual demand for adaptation of ancillary structures and relationships that constitute a political society. The success or failure of key institutions to adapt, mostly conditioned by human agency, drive systemic stress and change, in Plato’s sense of the word.

Quotes 14

"Structurally deficient nominal demand could arise if desired savings exceed desired investment, and forces at work in modern economies may make that imbalance inevitable."

"At the core of macroeconomic instability in modern economies lies the interaction between the limitless capacity of unconstrained private and shadow banking systems to create credit, money and purchasing power, and the inelastic supply and rising demand for locationally specific urban land. Most modern macroeconomics has failed to focus on this interaction. This is in large part because it was uninterested in the empirical reality of what banks actually do." - Adair Turner

Quotes 13

"Exceptional sense in everything, I say. It's the first and principle rule of conduct and speech, especially necessary the greater or higher your position. An ounce of good sense is worth a pound of subtlety. It's a sure path, although often not to praise, even though a reputation for sense is the crowning triumph of fame. It will suffice to please the wise, whose opinion is the touchstone of success." - Gracian

Note 120

The art of life: playing language games without becoming trapped in them. Floating free above the compartments, and yet being within them.

Note 119

Just as there are no means of escaping the iron laws of economics, there are no means of escaping the velvet laws of Society. One is a bondage to the physical; the other a bondage to the mind.

Note 118

An analytic fact describes itself, but cannot stand outside of itself to do so; while a synthetic fact describes something else, but must stand within itself to do so. So a fact is a fly bottle? Are we then relegated to interpretations? An unknowable fact within (a language game within) an unknowable fact?

And so we stand outside that fact and must take ourselves within it.

Note 117

What is a nation? It is a set of institutions that support a way of life for a group of people, which enables cultures and practices to form which become identified with, and reproduce the nation.

What is an institution? It is a set of conventions - codified, habitual, or customary - that defines the social context within which our actions are defined.

What creates institutions? Ends - the combination of necessary and ideal ends at any point in time. Power just is resourcing to achieve these ends.

So the trinity of discourse, institution and process, can be parsed into ends, social meaning, and agency. Each governed by parameters with endogenous and exogenous elements. Together they constitute the form of social life.

The interaction of what is stable and unstable over time creates change. Combinations of leverage factors in context determine what will be stable and what is unstable. There are probably little general rules to follow.

Note 116

What is the language game for life? There is no language game- how strange!

Philosophy 1

Philosophy belongs to the class of problems in which an affirmative answer is possible by necessity, but in which verification is impossible by definition.

Note 115

Philosophy is the paradox of the necessity of coherence (because there can be no absolute truth) and it's impossibility (because all systems of truth must refer outside themselves). This gap results in the dualism of idea and becoming, which is bridged by pragmatism. The system of ideas empirically refer to becoming to verify its latent assumptions, while becoming is a standalone entity which eludes characterisation, as a condition of its intelligibility. This provide our ideations with their unique quality, and their irresolvable dependence on means of verification that cannot be fully justified.

In short, pragmatism allows us to apply what theory requires without sufficient justification. We are left with coherence and forms of life.

Philosophical Investigations Note 3

"I know how the colour green looks to me": it is one thing to say that our use of language is determined by the coincidence of coherent structures in use, rather than correspondence at the granular level; it is another to say that there is no corresponding truth of the matter, or that to speak of it would be nonsense - even though it may be unverifiable, we would have an idea of what verification could be.

Although this too is problematic, and presupposes that we know what a subjective view entails. Ie, if it is subjective - would it be possible for someone else to gain a representation of it? Presumably that was how language was possible at all.

***
"Private sensations are not objects that we refer to, because referring to them becomes irrelevant if only we experience them." This depends on whether these experiences are necessary for the coherence of what we say so that we understand what another means when they talk about their experiences. We certainly assume correspondence as the best explanation for shared coherence. This inter-subjective space forms the basis of our manner of speaking, both of subjective and 'objective' reality. Structural isomorphism in the way in which we relate the internal to the external is embodied in language. So again - what content is constituent to this structural equivalence?

***
This is not to say that language just is embodied isomorphism. "No private language" claims must be accompanied by the claim that language can only be used for communication, not interpretation or constructing meaning.

Reason

Reason cannot be the ultimate basis of ends- at some point it has to stop. However, reasons are a tool to weigh, cohere and trade-off ends which may be irreconcilable. In doing so, we act with procedural reason- it forms a framework within which our ends are assessed, while simultaneously forming the basis for principles which determine what our ends ought to be. Hence our preferences are transmuted into reasons, in the formation of this framework for action, which is not reducible to utility, although utility may form a basis for reasoned action.

The key is that reason is not definitionally self-interested, but is characterised by an apositional stance, while the application of reason may be motivated by causes outside the framework of reasoned action itself. If ethics is the discussion of reasoned action, then the task of the utilitarian is to justify cause as reason.

Philosophical Investigations Note 2

In what sense are sensations private? Is it an a priori statement? What is being said? In this manner of speaking, the I of the social identity is not the I of the intention. They occupy different language games, and is a way to bifurcate the external/internal world of experience.

This points to the fact that the self is constituted by different functions that are tied together by language and underpinned by observed consistencies.

Sensations are not intentions, as we can be unaware of intentions, and they are descriptions of internal motivational structures.

***
Is it meaningless to say that "every rod has a length"? This presupposes a kind of contextual nominalism, where there is no property of length to which a rod belongs - it just is given as part of what a rod is - hence is tautological. He asks, can one imagine a rod without length?

But this is to ask the wrong question. One should ask: can one imagine length without a rod? For properties contain substance in thought, while substance contains properties in the way we think about the world.

***
Can one play language games with oneself? Why not? Can rules be arbitrary, and in what sense? The functioning of a language game is independent of the correspondence of its rules to an independent truth; rather, its form is a matter of structural isomorphism with the form of life, which is fulfilled within the use of private language.

Tractatus Notes 3: On Truth

The referent of knowledge is an infinite regress. Despite this, it can be useful. However, reality is by definition, pre-conceptual.

The form of verification does not then ground it in absolute truth, but rules of correctness. Truth for me is my relation to these rules, actualized in my conception of how conceptual relates to pre-conceptual truth.

Absolute truth is a contradiction in terms because truth is a quality of relation to something which transcends it. This is to say that there is a pre-conceptual that cannot be defined, as a necessity of truth.

Note 114

A caveat on the use of data or broad narratives for the basis of social action which affect individuals: the facts of the case in any problem are individual, requiring a targeted approach. Broad capacities can be built, but the interrelation of problems are individualised. Power can be defined as the level of control one has over the factors in this game of life, both in terms of internal and the external capacity to have them taken into consideration. The levelling role of the state ideally builds and extends capacity to solve problems.