Yet There Is Method In It

According to the NY Times, researchers have shown monkeys and humans have similar behavior in rationalizing past choices. There is an interesting point about amnesiacs and how this behavior seems to be subconscious in all of us.

Suddenly they had a new perspective. If they had chosen the electric sandwich press over the toaster, they raised its rating and downgraded the toaster. They convinced themselves they had made by far the right choice.

In a recent announcement, the UK government are to increase the compulsory school leaving age to 18. This is another example of the state saying “we know best”. If it really was a good idea, people would want to do it without compulsion! (This is my new principle of light government.)

A while back, you asked:

“Do not all schools (as they are) represent a value system? This is what I had argued before. Whether that value system is expressed in a faith ethos, in its uniform rules, rules of discipline, are they not then defending a system of values?”
“In essence as all schools and indeed all institutions are arbiters and promoters and defenders of peculiar social values why dont we just do away with the lot of them?”

Yes education has an implied value system – one that is not wholly indoctrination and not wholly development of the individual – but something in between.

The possibility of abolishing universal education is an interesting one. It is one of my only concerns of libertarianism. If home or community funded and administered education could function, it would be an option to universal education. I would be interested in a massively decentralized but state funded education system – could it work?

I also have been thinking about existentialism and the state. Are they compatible or necessarily incompatible? Is it some version of libertarianism? A future project would be to list the requirements of an existential compatible government and then check if the requirements are not contradictory.

Anti Citizen One

On that note: there are already enough weird laws on the books!

Many philosophical and religious movements have divided the world between our thoughts and the external world of the senses. The world of logic and there fore thought was considered pure while the senses where thought to lie. This was expressed famously by Descartes and his idea of dualism.

But this has an earlier precedent of shamanic religions and founders of religions having direct access to spirits. The unseen world was thought to cause good harvests, fertility and victory in war. In these religious systems, the shaman has direct access to the metaphysical world. In the observed world, the spirits where invisible because our senses are not capable of seeing them (at least outside certain rituals inducing trace like states).

With the rise of various monotheistic religions, the world of divine beings and insight into the metaphysical world is promised to the good believer. For example the Christian teaching that good people shall go to heaven.

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” Matthew 5:8. “Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self; the heavenly by the love of God.” St. Augustine.

These views are still propagated by a strict interpretation of Catholicism and most evangelical movements.

Modernist and progressive religious belief has rather less emphasis on metaphysical causes impacting on our physical world. God is not normally considered to have taken a direct hand in our lives but people believe he is standing on the sidelines watching over us. This thought of the metaphysical world is a comfort to many people but the metaphysical world is not directly accessible.

“Happy are they that have not seen, and yet believe.” John 20:29 “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” 1 Corinthians 1:27

Now the metaphysical world can be considered in the context of post-modernism and anti-realism. Idealists, in particular, hold that only our thoughts have reality and a mind independent reality is an illusion. There is no concept in anti-realism that actually causes anything in the physical world – since the physical world is an illusion or just part of our personal interpretation. I would ask, what does anti-realism, as an explanation, actually explain? If there is no rains to summon, no paradise waiting or no God to comfort us (at least according to the axiom of anti-realism: there is no world of the senses), then this idea is redundant. Or to put more directly, if Anti Realism – effectively saying “nothing is externally true” – has any truth (and there fore it is externally true), it is self refuting. (If Anti Realism is only subjectively true, then again, it is not universally true. But I already said that in a previous post.)

Since I do not agree with Anti-realism, what remains? The world of our lying senses? No – because the “true” world of thought was a myth the whole time!

Major disclaimer: the skeleton of this argument is a rehash of Nietzsche chapter called ‘How the “True World” Finally Became A Fable‘ but I did bring it up to date and add examples.

Anti Citizen One

PS. I am now thinking this is an unoriginal argument for several reasons but perhaps interesting in context. I was considering Descartes thoughts on dream worlds and the unreliability of the senses – but is not our own thoughts also distorted in dreams? For example, doubting things in dreams that we would consider true normally? Doubt is there fore unreliable. Conclusion: there is no dualism. I don’t think I read that idea anywhere… (but still someone else probably said it first!)