The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Western-style democracy

Having ended the previous chapter on an optimistic note, I'd like to clarify what I mean by western-style democracy becoming the global gold standard.

Western-style democracy is based on the ideas of freedom, equality, fraternity just as much as it is based on the Ten Commandments, Jesus' rule "love your neighbour as you love yourself", and "live and let live" tolerance. I suggest that all western values actually emanate from the Ten Commandments and Jesus' rule, yet I emphasize freedom and tolerance, because not all countries with a Christian majority have freedom and tolerance. Freedom and tolerance may or may not come with Christianity. In particular, eastern and souther Christian countries haven't implemented freedom and tolerance. There must be something in the west and in the north that makes the majority Christian and also free and tolerant. People are not required to be Christian and yet most of them voluntarily are. This is the mystic ingredient that turns western-style democracy into a global gold standard.

If you take away either Christianity or freedom / tolerance from western democracy, you end up with nothing special. Which is why all attempts at making the world more Christian without freedom / tolerance, and also all attempts at making the world freer and more tolerant without Christianity have failed.

It's time to propagate Christianity with freedom and tolerance, this is what I mean by western-style democracy becoming the global gold standard.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 22

Chapter 22

The brick and mortar of civilisations

The received wisdom is that civilisations rise and fall.

I submit that civilisations rise to the extent they can provide equality, fraternity, internal freedom and external defence, and they decline and/or fall to the extent they can no longer provide them.

Morality is key to every community, as it represents the structure in which equality, fraternity, freedom and defence are implemented. Civilisations rise on the back of morality and decline with it.

Morality brings prosperity. Prosperity brings choice. Choice erodes morality, which erodes prosperity and defence, which is why some civilisations decline and fall. This cycle is not inevitable, some civilisations may respond adequately to moral decline, rise to the challenge and rebound in prosperity and defence.

Will western civilisation endure?

My guess is yes. No other civilisation to date has implemented the Ten Commandments and Jesus' "love your neighbour as you love yourself" rule as thoroughly as western civilisation, which makes it the most sustainable and resilient civilisation in history.

The Tend Commandments and Jesus' rule in combination also make western civilisation the most democratic, equitable and prosperous one on Earth. Therefore, I agree with Francis Fukuyama's prediction that western-style democracy will soon become the global gold standard. It already is the most prosperous and most attractive one in the world. This is why so many people want to immigrate. 

Potential immigrants should be made aware that the prosperity they covet is the result of the Ten Commandments and Jesus' rule, so they cannot reasonably hope to take the prosperity and reject its source. If this message is brought home, western civilisation will likely be able to cope with the current migration wave and emerge stronger, freer, fairer, more prosperous and better defended.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 21

Chapter 21

The basis of morality

All humans need a basis for morality. And that basis needs to be firm.

Some humans claim they don't need any basis for morality, but they are deluded. They take basic values from their parents without acknowledging it, then turn around and say they follow rules that don't come from anywhere. On closer inspection, all humans were brought up in some environment that taught them certain rules using emotions. This is commonly referred to as childhood education. Emotional education leaves you with internalised rules, whether you are aware of the source of your emotional responses or not.

Everyone's morality is based on the rules of an authority figure. It hardly matters if it's Julius Caesar, Napoléon, Stalin, Hitler, Jesus, Mohamed, God directly, or your mother / father / teacher. What matters is if it's firm enough to generate an emotional commitment that causes you to internalise and follow the rules of that authority figure.

In daily life, we seem to know what's right and what's wrong, based on how we were brought up. But when asked to explain why right is right and wrong is wrong, we don't do very well. How would you explain that stealing is wrong if the thief is starving? Then is it wrong to steal, after all? On closer examination, simple moral arguments don't hold up. You need more complex arguments with circumstances. 

Example: it's normally wrong to steal, except when you're stealing or oder not to starve. Can you then only steal food or anything you can turn into food? If you're caught, how can you prove that you're starving and you've honestly done your best not to starve? If you can't prove that you're starving and that you've honestly done your best not to starve, was it wrong for you to steal? You may know from the previous chapters that you can't prove anything to an Ultimate Perfectionist, and legal practitioners tend to be Ultimate Perfectionists, which means that it was wrong for you to steal by definition, regardless of the circumstances. But then this doesn't square with our intuitive sense of justice, does it? Which means we're pretty much stuck when it comes to arguing our intuitive sense of justice to the authorities or in court. It would be so convenient to have some hard-and-fast moral rules to back up our intuitive sense of justice.

What is the basis of morality?

Philosophers have searched and searched throughout history, but they haven't found. Plato suggested that ideas were more real than the physical world, so to him, morality was based on ideas. His student, Aristotle then found that ideas are really in our head, so they can neither be more real nor serve as a firm basis for morality. Lots of people intuited that God may be the source of morality, but none could supply plausible arguments. Kant postulated that a priori notions in our mind were categorical imperatives as to how we should act, but he could only convince himself. He added that all moral rules must be universally applicable, which would require all of us to perform millions of moral calculations per hour in order to be morally conscious, and importantly, none of us should lie. Ever. Which is clearly not the case, so Kant's concept of morality is out of this world. In response to Kant, Schopenhauer suggested (in an essay written for the Royal Danish Society of Philosophy competition) that comiseration could be used as a better basis for morality. No-one in his day approved of the idea (the Royal Danish Society was outraged in 1840 and did not give him the prize, though his was the only entry!), but it's quite popular today. On reflection, however, comiseration is a rather uncertain basis for morality. You can comiserate with a thief regardless of whether they stole in order not to starve or for purposes of unlawful enrichment. Comiseration doesn't square with our moral intuition.

On reflection, is there really a sound basis for morality?

I intuit that morality is based on deeply rooted feelings as a result of our upbringing. We bring our moral intuitions from childhood. Our parents and/or educations taught us a number of rules, with reference to some theoretical basis, but in practice, their morality was also based on childhood emotions. So the practical basis of morality stretches back over the generations and is emotional, rather than cognitive. Which is why we can't really back up our moral intuitions with plausible arguments. That's why some people with a cognitive focus claim they don't have any basis for their morality. They do have a basis, but searching for it in the cognitive domain, they can't find any.

Should there be a firm moral basis then for theoretical discussions?

I suggest the Ten Commandments and Jesus' "love your neighbour as you love yourself" rule. These rules in combination allow you to answer any moral question and argue any moral case. The "love your neighbour" rule includes comiseration, so Schopenhauer should be happy, but it is more constructive than mere comiseration, so positive thinkers should be happy. The "as you love yourself" part of the rule involves conscious analysis and universal applicability, so Kant should be happy too. This combined basis for morality is firm and consistent enough, this is my entry to the Royal Danish Society of Philosophy competition.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 6A

Chapter 6A

Numbers of measurements

You might think that the formula 1+1=2 is evidently true. It's not. You cannot demonstrate that 1+1=2.

Take an object that represents 1. Take another object that also represents 1. Herein lies the problem: no two objects are the same, so there is no such thing as 1 object +1 object in practice. This being the case, you must believe a priori that 1+1=2.

Take a symbol that represents 1, e.g. draw an apple and say that's 1 apple. Now draw another apple and say that's the same symbolic apple representing 1. You actually know that no two symbols are technically the same, yet you regard them as though they were the same. You can regard them as the same for theoretical purposes, but practically they're not the same. It turns out that you can't demonstrate in practice that 1+1=2, but you'd very much like 1+1 to be 2, so you ignore the finicky practical details.

Why do we do that? So we can build houses, bridges and cars, etc. Accepting on a purely theoretical basis that 1+1=2 is very useful and though it cannot be demonstrated in practice, this a priori approximation certainly helps us produce very practical results.

Measurements are a similar problem. Let's say you want to measure the length of an object that you intuit to be about 1 millimeter. How do you do that? You take a measuring tape or a ruler, put it next to the object and check if it visually matches 1mm on your scale. If it matches, you've established that it's about 1mm long.

If we really wanted to measure the length of the object, we should use a more precise instrument like a micrometer or an electron microscope and then... Then what? Can we measure the length of the object to the last atom? We can't. Even if we could, we don't have scales that are precise to the last atom. So we'll never know the actual length of anything, we can only approximate. However, approximation is good enough for practical purposes, which is why we don't sit down next to our object and weep helplessly. In practice, we use rough-and-ready measurements to build makeshift structures that we call technology. Technology lies at the heart of our civilisation.

Our civilisation relies on an a priori use of numbers and measurements.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 20

Chapter 20

The source of morality

There are conflicting theories about the source of morality. People of faith say God is the source of morality. Atheists say morality doesn't have a source, it's just common decency, the source of which is unknown or not to be investigated. Philosophers point to God, "a priori ideas", evolution or comiseration as potential sources. Psychologists have established that morality is deeply rooted in the human psyche, but they have not identified a source for it.

Does morality have a single source that we can ascertain? Let's first see whether the question is relevant and valid.

Some people claim they are not moral because of some factor, they're moral because they want to be moral. These people represent a tiny minority in society. Everyone else claims to be moral for some reason or other, whether it's God, law-abidance or humanism. The question regarding the source of morality is thus a relevant and valid one for the vast majority of people.

The fact that there isn't a single source we could agree on seems like a problem, but the solution is that most people need a source, ANY source for morality. Morality has to have a reference, i.e. I'm moral because of some factor I call... (insert the name of your source here).

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 19

Chapter 19
The nature of morality

Morality is a set of rules that tells you what's right to do under what circumstances.

Morality manifests itself in a desire to do what's right and in an emotional response to the perceived rightness or wrongness of actions, including our own.

There may be no such thing as universal right and wrong, but in our intuitive sense of morality, it certainly looks like there was. We all act as though there was universal right and wrong. We can't help it, it's in our DNA.

Example: people who consciously try to do what's right are seen as righteous. Some others disapprove of righteousness, which makes them... well, righteous. There's no escaping one form of righteousness or another. All humans respond righteously to the perceived rightness or wrongness of actions.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Education

Education is the single most important source of talented leaders, meritocracy starts in family and continues at school.

Schools teach basic to advanced knowledge on technical matters, literature, history and art, but they don't teach their context. It's like driving schools teaching you to replace spark plugs, air filters and engine oil, but not teaching you what an engine does and how it does it. Drivers fixing cars they know nothing about is not a good idea. Graduates shaping public life without knowing what it's all about and how it works is not a good idea either.

Schools completely ignore what's key to politics. They don't provide pupils with an understanding of what we know and how we can know it, or why we are moral and whether we should behave morally at all.

As a consequence, people don't have the first idea, they can't tell right knowledge from wrong, valid argument from invalid, right action from wrong. Those who "know" intuitively can't argue in favour of what they believe to be right, so they can't stand up for it. How knowledge and morality work is beyond not only the average citizen, but also people at the top. Those who know something in this field did not learn it at school and will not share it with fellow citizens.

In short: this is why politics sucks. Schools should teach people what we may or may not know and why, also why we tend to behave morally, whether we have a good reason for being moral, and what holds civilisations together.

The next few chapters will look at the brick and mortar of society: morality.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 17

Chapter 17
Social order and meritocracy

Any community needs order to prosper. Any order must have some firm basis and an effective enforcement mechanism. The firmer the basis, the weaker the enforcement mechanism and vice versa.

Strong social order is more likely to stifle merit. A weak social order may promote merit, but threatens with disruption and collapse. Meritocracy is a careful balancing act between those two extremes.

There are two key criteria for a meritocracy to function. 1. The social structure must be flexible enough to grant talented people power and office. 2. The citizens must be flexible enough to recognise talent and allow talented people to lead them.

Both criteria are hard to meet. In the north-west, talent can generally find its way to the top. In the south and east, structure is more important than talent, and more often than not, talented people fall by the wayside. As for allowing talent to lead you, people in the north-west accept talented leadership. Whereas in the south and east, the family / clan / tribe you come from is more important than your individual merit. Which explains why north-western democracies are getting closer and closer to meritocracy and why southern and eastern countries are stuck with outdated, rigid, undemocratic leadership.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Social justice

Most people think they know what social justice means, but they are at a loss when asked to be more specific.

There is general agreement about the need for equal opportunities, but there’s also general agreement that truly equal opportunities don’t exist anywhere. Princes and paupers could go to the same university in theory, but in practice they very rarely do, for a number of reasons that are clear to most people. Also, doctors’s kids stand a much better chance of becoming doctors than other kids, and there’s not much anybody can do about that. Musician’s kids are usually better at music, business people’s kids are more likely to make it in business, etc. The equal opportunities concept is more hype than reality, yet it seems to be better to half-believe the hype than to not not believe it at all.

There is general agreement that poverty should be minimised, but there’s also general agreement that wages should be proportionate to performance, and there is no agreement on the poverty threshold. Are you poor if you can’t afford to go to the movies and a restaurant once a week? There’s general disagreement about that.

There’s general agreement that people should not be exploited, but there’s general disagreement about the specifics. Is 25 percent annual interest charged for a whole month because you’re one day late with your credit card payment exploitation? Is 1 percent annual interest on your deposit exploitation? If yes, are you allowed to change the system? People tend to disagree about that.

The notion of social justice is intuitive, humans are not much better judges of it than are chimpanzees depending on the number of bananas they get. Yet, “social injustice” is used as though it represented firm grounds for social reform and action. It would be better to admit that there is no such thing as social justice, but everyone should receive enough bananas. People who work hard should keep most of their bananas, while people who don’t work at all should receive significantly fewer bananas. This seems to me the closest approximation of social justice.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Social contract

No-one has been able to demonstrate that society is based on some implicit agreement (a.k.a. a Social Contract) or that society is controlled by an oppressive central power that the individual must be freed from. It’s impossible to demonstrate either, probably because real societies show a mixture of both aspects. A large part of the population tends to agree on a number of fundamental issues, and they base their government on that understanding. Also, a large part of the population will always disagree with the central power, whatever it’s based on.

The difference between less advanced societies and more advanced ones is that less advanced societies use a lot of force against those who disagree, while more advanced societies have more sophisticated ways of handling disagreement. In kingdoms, caliphates and the like it’s a crime to disagree with the ruler or to go against conventions, regardless of whether your deviance is harmful and whether you turn out to be right in the long run. In democracies dissidence and deviance are crimes only when they damage other people, and the individual gets a lot of incentives to play along with others, as opposed brutal punishment for being different. However, no society ever allows people to do whatever they please, regardless of the consequences.

Example: in a liberal democracy, you are free to campaign for gay marriage, you can walk naked in the street, but you can’t call a government office and say you’ve planted a bomb as a hoax. They won’t be amused and you’ll go to jail, even though your deviance didn’t hurt anyone. Also, you won’t be arrested for conspiring to rob a bank unless you act. You’re innocent until found guilty. However, you’ll be arrested for conspiring to murder the president even if you don’t act, and you’re assumed guilty until you “prove” your innocence. Thirdly, you can’t actively disagree with speed limits, tax laws or no-discrimination hiring laws, otherwise you’ll be punished severely. Even though it’s impossible to show that not paying your taxes damages anyone, that exceeding the speed limit hurt anyone unless you caused an accident, and that you hurt anyone by hiring whoever you want to hire. Even the most liberal of democracies is inconsistent in many ways.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Common sense

Common sense (Greek: koine aisthesis, Latin: sensus communis) means shared perception. It’s a stretch to call shared perception “reason”. We don’t have a good definition for reason, the intuitive definition is “if you think what I think, you’re reasonable, if you disagree with me, you’re unreasonable”. Clearly, that’s not good enough, but we don’t have any better.

Discussions take place at three levels: 1. Common Sense; 2. Cross-Referenced Common Sense; 3. No Common Sense.

1. Common Sense (CS) - I take it for granted that you know what I mean when I say “table”, “chair”, “sit”, “live”, “die”, “suffer”, “happy”, “understand”, “know”, etc. The benefit of this level is that you can make your point very quickly. The disadvantage is that you’ll only agree with those who agree with you anyway. This is the level for feel-good discussions amongst like-minded people. It’s useless for sorting out disagreements.

2. Cross-Referenced Common Sense (CRCS) - I take it for granted that if I give you additional information, you’ll agree with me about the meaning of words and concepts. You may not accept “table” to mean “you know what I mean”, but you’ll accept my definition as “three- or four-legged utensil people sit around when they eat, talk, etc.”. This is the level for sorting out minor disagreements between more or less like-minded people.

3. No Common Sense (NCS) - I don’t take anything for granted, I play the Ultimate Perfectionist when it comes to definitions. If you try to define table by cross-referencing it with “sit around”, I’ll ask you to define “sit” and “around”. When you cross-reference these terms, I’ll ask you to define the new terms you used as cross-reference. This goes on and on till the end of time. Nothing is definable at this level, and nothing can be agreed. (If you read maths books, you’ll find that the basic notions can’t be defined, they must be accepted on a “you-know-what-I-mean” basis. It’s the same with language.)

Notice that “mentalists” trying to control argumentation switch levels back and forth. They refer to Common Sense when it benefits them, and play the Ultimate Perfectionist when that serves their purpose. This usually occurs in social and political debates, such as on gay marriage. A mentalist will appeal to your Common Sense in saying “everyone has the right to pursue happiness as they see fit”, but when you say gay sex is unnatural, they’ll become the Ultimate Perfectionist and demand that you provide a flawless definition of “unnatural”. At this No Common Sense level, you can’t define anything, and so the mentalist declares victory. If you ask the mentalist to provide a flawless definition for “right”, “happiness”, “pursue” and “fit”, they won’t be able to do that, and then you can declare victory. It’s a good technique to expose mentalists when they switch levels. You can either stay at the same level or you can switch to the level of the mentalist and announce what’s happening.

Don’t be surprised to find that at the CS and CRCS levels you’ll only agree with people who agree with you anyway, and that at the NCS level you won’t agree about anything. That’s the nature of discussions.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 13

Chapter 13

God, morality, laws and human rights

You can't combine these four aspects in any argumentation. I'll show you why.

If God exists, God created the Universe and life by definition, and God gave us rules of behaviour. It follows that God is the source of morality and a small set of human rights: the right to life and the right to be loved like people love themselves. In other words, everyone is entitled to equitable treatment. But that's it.

Christians are not bound by man-made laws or man-declared human rights. There is no divine rule on paying taxes, especially not one on paying tricky progressive taxes. Man-made rules should only be obeyed to the point they are reasonable and do not contradict divine rules. (No gay marriage.)

Thus a model containing God will not tell people to abide by man-made laws or to pay each and every kind of tax.

A model without God, on the other hand, will not tell people to follow divine moral rules. It will tell them to respect a broad array of human rights, to follow all laws and to pay all taxes, but it will fail to explain why. If there is no God, why should anyone obey any rules, other than for fear of imprisonment? A model without God will leave a community without morality and motivation in any area of life. How can you explain that human rights, equality and justice are necessary? They are clearly NOT necessary in any sense. If man is created in God's image, then human rights are necessitated by that likeness. If man is the random product of matter, why should there be any moral rules or rights? Frankly, for no specific reason.

Worse, the individual can choose to keep a number of rules on a voluntary basis, but that surely doesn't warrant punishment for those who don't volunteer to abide by the arbitrary rules. Using a model without God, there is no crime at all, and no punishment can ever be justified. Implementing such a model with any degree of consistency would result in havoc and general mayhem.

The only reason civilisation is not falling apart is that most people have common sense and accept that there has to be a solid basis for morality and rules, which is impossible without God.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Tolerating paradoxes

It appears that we are unable to explain how the Universe and everything in it, including life and us humans, came to exist. If it was all created by God, then we can't explain how God came to exist. If it wasn't created by God, then we can't explain how matter came to exist and how non-living stuff came to life. Either way, we don't have a fully consistent model regarding our origins. A handy satement for such cases is that one should learn to tolerate paradoxes. Indeed, should one?

Generally no, one should not tolerate paradoxes. A paradox is a contradictory situation where logic doesn't seem to yield a useful result. Most of life's paradoxes are pseudo-contradictions and we should not learn to tolerate them: we should learn to analyse and solve them instead.

We should not learn to live with poverty, hunger, suffering, injustice, inequality and unfairness in the world. A lot of excuses are advanced for these thorny problems, and people tend to give up the fight against them after a while. This is not right, you should never learn to tolerate these unacceptable pseudo-contradictory problems. Example: bleeding-heart philantropists send food to people starving in Africa, whose leaders mysteriously turn that food into arms to fight the neighbouring countries. While it may appear paradoxical that you send food to stop people dying and you end up causing even more people to die, it is not a genuine paradox. Actually, it is foolish to help corrupt dictators as opposed to their people. You have to make sure food reaches those in need. That solves the thorny-looking pseudo-paradox. You must never accept helplessness in the face of such problems.

It's a different story when it comes to the ultimate questions of life. We don't have an ultimately consistent model for the origins of the Universe and of life. One option is to accept God as Creator and live with one paradox (i.e. we don't know how God came to be). This is a weak paradox, since we are not even supposed to know how mysterious God came to be, so not knowing it is sort of OK. The other option is that we accept matter as the eternal source of our reality, which leaves us with two paradoxes plus one (i.e. we don't know how matter came to be, we have no idea how some matter could turn into life, and we don't know that matter would ever turn into life). This is a strong series of paradoxes, made worse by the fact that matter is supposed to be readily available for examination and modelling, whereas God is not. Putting matter in the centre of our model and then having some many contradictory assumptions about it is just not OK. So-called materialists have a four-way paradox on their hand.

How do we know whether a paradox is genuine or not? By doing our best to solve it. If we can solve it, it's a pseudo-paradox. If we can't solve it and know exactly why we can't, it's a genuine paradox. We know the creation paradox is a genuine one, because we have established a model that tells us exactly why we can't solve it.

In short, one should learn to tolerate paradoxes that are shown to be unsolveable, but one should not tolerate paradoxes that can be solved through the use of reason.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 11

Chapter 11

The essence of the God debate

A lot of seemingly good arguments are wasted in the debate concerning God, yet there is no outcome. I propose a new approach to the issue. What lies at the heart of the God debate is the following earthly experience: nothing comes from nothing, and all life comes from some form of life. That's what we see and touch around us.

If you say God created everything but God never came to exist, God just is, you're saying something came from nothing, but at least you're saying life came from some other form of life. You go against earthly experience on one out of two points. If you say the universe consists of eternal material that never came to be, it just is, you're saying that something came from nothing, and also that life came from non-life. You go against earthly experience on two out of two points.

In addition, the ability to create is among God's attributes, but it's not one of matter's attributes, thus so-called materialists have a compounded problem.

It appears that you have to defy ordinary life experince on at least one count. Is that better than defying it on two counts? Borth reason and common sense are based on earthly experience (i.e. sensory data, gleaned primarily through seeing and touching things), and the irony is that perfect reason cannot be achieved in the God debate. You can only choose between being unreasonable on one point or on both.

More on that in the chapter on morality.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Higher purpose and meaning in life

The need for finding a higher purpose and meaning in life is at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but is there a higher purpose and/or meaning in life? If yes, what are they? If no, how do we know?

Why do we keep asking why? Good question. You must have heard a lot of 2-6-year-olds asking their parents about the reasons for all kinds of things. - Mommy, what's that? - That's a dog? - What's it doing? - Walking, dear. - Why? - Er, because it likes to walk. - Where? And why?... It goes on and on and on, till the parent gives up and says "I don't know".

Children appearently upload their relational database by asking thousands of questions about the correlations between various data. They develop a complex web of understanding about objects, animals and people in the world. We did, too, when we were young. This complex model of the world enables us humans to shape it to our advantage.

Many questions remain unanswered, most notably: where do we come from, who are we, what are we here for, where are we going? These are the key ones for philosophers. If we had good enough answers to them, we would have written them down and you could read them in books. We have some tentative answers, but they've never looked good enough to enough people, so we keep on asking the same age-old questions.

Do we need actual answers to all our why questions? Probably not. The parent in the example above could tell the child the dog is walking to a shop to buy some dog food. (Why?) Because it has too much unused credit on his credit card. (Why?) Because it won the dog food lottery. (Why?) Because it's the lottery company director's dog. (Why?) Because the lottery company director needed a dog she could give all her dog food to. (Why?) To get it to like walking. You've come full circle, which is likely to put an end to the quesions.

Maybe that's what we are all looking for: a circular answer to make us stop asking any further. Or maybe not. Let's look at two prominent examples.

- Where do we come from?

- God created us, we are God's creatures.

- Why?

- So we can have a good time on earth.

- Why?

- So we can be happy ever after when we return to God.

- Why?

- Because we want to be happy at all times.

- Why?

- Because God created us that way.

- Why?

- Because.

Notice that there is no answer to the last question. Also, you could ask if God wants us to be happy, why doesn't he keep us by his side. We'd surely be happier there than here on Earth. There is no answer to that question either. The reason is "because". God in his infinite wisdom is supposed to know what's best for us. Because. While that doesn't answer all our questions, it explains why we yearn for a higher purpose and meaning in life.

- Where do we come from?

- From tiny particles that temporarily got together to form us.

- Why?

- So we can have a good time on earth.

- Why?

- Because we want to be happy for some reason.

- Why?

- Because.

Notice that the answers stop even earlier in this case. We admit that we just don't have the answers. We can't even explain why we yearn for a higher purpose and meaning in life. The fact remains though that we do yearn for a higher purpose and meaning in life. (A potential explanation is that we have a community module in our brain that seeks what's best for the community at a higher level, and we describe this "voice from above" as God's will. Also, our intuitive concept of rationality suggests that it's better to do something for a reason than for no special reason, so we always seek a reason to motivate our actions. More on that in the chapter on morality.)

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 9

Chapter 9
Language and communication

Every language is a more or less Shared Framework of Reference for those who speak it. It never is fully shared, because a language is passed on by parents to their children without any formal opt-in mechanism. Without opting in explicitly, any speaker of a language can disagree with any word or rule of that language at any time. Language is a loosely agreed framework of reference.

Without language, our communication would be hampered a great deal, which in turn, would hurt our cooperation and prosperity.

We tend to take language for granted, but is it? I argue that it isn't. It's a Shared Framework of Reference in crisis, threatend by disfunction and disappearance. The modern world's material prosperity is eroding Shared Frameworks of Reference, and language is no exception.

Indeed, if the individual is entitled to their own beliefs about anything, they are free to believe that "table" means what some others may call a "chair" or "dog" or "tomorrow". If many individuals travel down this road, language will break down and no longer facilitate communication. Is there a way to prevent this? There are at least two straightforward ways: 1. survival stress (i.e. basic needs threated); 2. accepting the need for Shared Frameworks of Reference (i.e. reasonable behaviour).

Communication also relies on Shared Frameworks of Reference, such as language, gestures, mimics and values. Without such Frameworks, the sender of a message could have no idea whether the message was received and understood more or less as intended, or what the response is supposed to mean. Example: just as an iPhone needs an agreed protocol in order to communicate with another device, humans can't pass messages back and forth without Shared Frameworks of Reference.

It is possible to disrupt Shared Frameworks of Reference in minor ways, such as in art. The key criterion of art is that it does not merely cater for our Shared Frameworks of Reference (a.k.a. clichés or stereotypes). A work of art that satisfies all our conventional ideas is kitsch. Genuine art challenges to a degree in order to set you thinking and thereby to broaden your horizon. If it challenges too many conventions, it causes a scandal, i.e. a major disruption in our Shared Frameworks of Reference. Also, value discussions and political debates challenge Shared Frameworks of Reference, and they do so for a purpose. If all works well, new or updated Shared Frameworks of Reference arise as a result.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A Shared Framework of Reference

It turns out from the previous chapter that in order to assess anything and thus make reasonable statements about it, we need a Framework of Reference. Morover, it needs to be a Shared Framework of Reference.

In order to assess someone's true and justified beliefs, we have to have a Shared Framework of Reference, in which we know what we mean by words like "true", "justified" and "belief".

The irony is that if we had such a Framework, we would not need this seemingly scientific discussion, because in that Framework we'd also know whether the holographic image of sheep projected in a field enables you to have a "true and justified belief". The very fact that we're having discussions like that demonstrates that we don't have a Shared Framework of Reference, which immediately renders the discussion deficient in substance. In other words, "problems" like true and justified belief about hidden sheep in a field are unsolvable and point to the larger problem that we don't have enough Shared Frameworks of Reference in the modern world.

How can we negotiate a Shared Framework of Reference? By raising "problems" like hidden sheep in a field. These "problems" should not be raised per se but in order to find solution enabled by a Shared Framework of Reference. We need to find at least something we happen to agree about. Whereas in antiquity, small close-knit communities would share a lot of views about the world but would not share many views with neighbouring communities, these days, larger and looser communities struggle to share any views at all, which hurts their cohesion, cooperation and prosperity.

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a great tool with which to haggle a Shared Framework of Reference. All humans need food, shelter and security, most humans need intimacy and sex too. When these are available, higher needs kick in, all the way to self-fulfilment and the quest for a higher purpose and meaning in life. The modern world has both intensified and frustrated the latter group of needs, people tend to pursue individual goals based on individual beliefs that are shared only as an exception.

The way to haggle a Shared Framework of Reference is to refer to basic needs to test of the other person agrees. If they do, you can move up the hierarchy until you start to disagree. You can have a few rounds of exchange at that level to clarify what you actually agree on, and use that Shared Framework of Reference going forward.

Again, haggling a Shared Framework of Reference important so that you can have a meaningful discussion about anything, including true and justified beliefs about hidden sheep in a field, good governance, environmental protection, the eradication of poverty, fairness and equity in the world.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 7

Chapter 7

True and justified belief

Gábor Forrai arguably wrote the most comprehensive modern book about knowledge (Contemporary Views on Knowledge). In it, he lists every possible model of knowledge, with arguments for and against each. It turns out that for every argument in favour of knowing something, there is an equally valid counter-argument. On balance, we don't ever have true and justified beliefs, or at least we can't demonstrate that they are true and justified beliefs.

Example: you are standing at the edge of a field and you see a group of whitish wooly, distincly sheep-looking animals. You surmise that they are sheep. You supposedly have a true and justified belief if they are sheep, your eyesight is good enough, and you correctly spot the tell-tale signs that distinguish sheep from other animals. So far so good. Now, suppose someone dressed dogs in sheep hide just to trick you. In this case your eyesight may be correct, you may spot the sheep-specific hide, so you may be justified in thinking that they are sheep, yet you don't have a true belief, because they're actually dogs. Suppose someone dressed sheep in dog hide and something's telling you they're actually sheep, but you can't really say what makes you think so. In that case, you have a true, but unjustified belief. Let's say it's getting dark, you can barely make out the contours of some animals in the field, you suppose they are sheep, and your guess turns out to be correct. In this case again, you have a true but unjustified belief. Now, someone hid the sheep in the field and is projecting a perfectly life-like holographic image of some other sheep and you fall for the trick. You think they are sheep and you can also list the sheep-specific features that make you think so. Do you have a true and justified belief?

Hang on a minute, you might say, can we talk about true and justified belief without defining what these terms mean? You are right, there is an implicit problem here. We have an intuitive idea about what is "true", what is "justified" and what is "belief" for everyday purposes, but we have no ultimate idea of what these are in the ultimate scheme of things (if any). Elevating common-sense knowledge to a seemingly scientific level and then resorting to the everyday common-sense meaning of words (i.e. you know what I'm talking about, don't you?) is a contradiction in terms. In our everyday common-sense world we sort of believe we know things as they sort of truly are and we sort of believe our sort of true sort of knowledge is sort of justified, but that's as good as it gets. Also, how can we assess whether a belief is true and/or justified without someone who has the perfect knowledge of things as they are? Since no being within our reach has this kind of knowledge, any assessment of "truth" and "justification" is impossible.

In conclusion, we don't have ultimately true and justified beliefs about anything. Is that a problem? Yes, if you're looking for ultimate knowledge or pretend to have it. It's not a problem if you're ready to admit that "true", "justified" and "belief" are just poorly understood, vague and unscientific everyday terms.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 6

Chapter 6
Sensory data

If it comes as a surprise that science is as full of holes as Swiss cheese, it is much less of a surprise that our sensory data is flawed. We know that since early childhood.

When we put part of a stick in water, it suddenly appears to be broken, a phenomenon caused by the refraction of light in water. When we touch hot iron, initially it appears to be cold, and by the time we realise it's hot, we already have blisters on our skin at best. Our senses are imperfect. In fact, they are grossly imperfect. They seem to be fine-tuned for survival, rather than for understanding reality as it is.

Our eyes have an instinctive shutter mechanism that kicks in before we know it to save our sight from flying objects. We also have peripheral vision with motion detection to see predators before they stalk us. We smell excrement very acutely, because it's unsafe to eat, but we can't smell poisonous plants or tell who's who by their urine, because that appearently isn't key to our survival. Our hearing is far less sensitive than that of most animals, and our sense of touch is rather blunt unless we're blind. We are well-equipped for the particular natural environment in which we used to live before civilisation, but only with a view to staying alive, and not for purposes of exploring the Universe.

We believe our eyes and hands most, which is why scientific models need to be visual and tangible to make sense to us. Atoms only make sense when they're magnified to human scale, planets only when they're shrunk to hand-size. Then we see what they're all about. Or so we think. The survival factors are hard-wired in our brain, i.e. we are conditioned to believing our senses and to considering their data extremely firm and certain. If we did not do so, we would probably not be around to reflect on our situation.

We sense reality like most mammals, but we're also capable of intellectually criticising what we sense and seek a more profound understanding of the world around us. We're hard-wired to have a very specific - and grossly inaccurate - model of the world, but we can also transcend that level temporarily and pretend that what we see and touch is not necessarily the ultimate reality. We know that an iron ball is just a fluffy cloud of atoms and that colours are actually different wavelengths of reflected light, yet we keep away from swinging iron balls and we gaze at rainbows in awe. We are in turn instinctive and reflective or reflective and instinctive. That's a key part of the human condition.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The limitations of science

Aristotle correctly stated that the starting rules of science cannot be proved in themselves. It follows from this that any scientific knowledge we glean is guesswork, as opposed to exactly proved step-by-step data.

Physics, for example, shows several gaps. There is no particular reason why particle physics should have different rules than macrophysics. Yet physicists assert that small objects behave quite differently from large objects. Electrons move differently from nano particles, which move differently from human-sized objects, which move differently from planets and galaxies... It's as though they inhabited different worlds.

The gravity model is flawed. According to Newton's laws, planets could not stay in orbit, they should fly off into space. The dodgy excuse that some misterious dark matter keeps them in position is nothing but a wild card in the absence of plausible knowledge. We know nothing about this imperceptible dark matter, so chances are that dark matter doesn't exist. Physicists made it up to fill a gap in their model.

The Big Bang model is flawed too. If all matter started to drift away from an exploding singularity, its expansion should slow down, come to a halt and then start drifting back toward that singularity. This is not what we see happening. Galaxies are drifting apart at an increasing pace, which contradicts the Big Bang theory. So physicists came up with another wild card, dark energy. Dark matter supposedly pulls stuff together, while dark energy causes it to expand ever faster... These two contradictory wild cards represent the biggest yarn in the history of science. Physicists should come out and simply admit that there are more holes in their model than in a ton of Swiss cheese.

For those not well-versed in the history of science, wild cards are sometimes used to fill gaps in our knowledge, but only one at a time. Flogiston, for instance, was supposed to explain the phenomenon of burning, until it turned out that burning is oxidisation. There is no such thing as Flogiston. Ether was used for a while to explain how waves propage in space. Space was supposed to be full of Ether. Needless to say, there is no such substance as Ether either. But Flogiston and Ether were not used at the same time in the same model, because two wild cards just don't work. When you have more than one in your model, you no longer have a model. So it is remarkable that there are two wild cards in our model of the Universe, and no-one complains about that. To me it shows that humanity has developed a blind faith in science and will take any yarn from established scientists without batting an eyelid. My guess is it won't be long before dark matter and dark energy turn out to be bogus, and the current physical model collapses.

This is not to suggest that science is wrong and we should explain the world using the Bible. I'm merely saying that while science is the best way to find out as much as we can about the world, we should think reasonably and check every model carefully. Science is one of the new powers, so we need checks and balances to harness it for our benefit.

Mathematics is also full of holes. We know that numbers don't exist in the outside world, as they are in our head. Yet maths books talk about prime numbers, real numbers, irrational numbers, etc. as existing multitudes, like trees in a huge forest that you can go out and explore. This is still based on Plato's flawed concept of ideas. If ideas are the products of our mind, then numbers are nothing like trees in a forest. They are possible outcomes of computations that have yet to be performed. Numbers exist only as outcomes of operations and should not be described as though they had a life of their own.

The ancient Greeks divided numbers till the result was an integer and then stopped with the remainder. For example, 5 horses divided among 3 people yields 1 horse each plus a remainder to 2 horses. Unless you want to slice up those two horses, further division makes no sense. Some things, like pizza, can be carved up, so it makes sense to subdivide them. That depends on the context, and the ancient Greeks understood this well. While it seems an advancement to divide 5 horses by 3 and get a result of 1+2/3 horses, the user should be warned that 2/3 of a horse does not have a specific meaning. Worse, when you express 1+2/3 horses as 1.666 horses (an infinite decimal fraction), you ignore that there is no such thing as 0.666 horse and also that 2/3 into 0.666 is an ill-advised conversion. Since 10 is indivisible by 3, you should not convert thirds into tenths, unless you have a very good reason for doing so.

If you think about it, a 1/3 is not so much a number as an operation in progress. You are merely describing the process of taking 1 and trying to divide it into 3 parts, which you can't, of course. 1/3 is a process description and not a number. It can be used as a ratio, when you have 999 cans of beer and you can actually divide that by 3. So 1/3 is a process description for ratios within larger quantities where division is possible.

Most "infitite" decimal fractions can be expressed as finite natural fractions: 1.1666... looks much simpler as 7/6 or 1+1/6. There are notable exceptions when a proportion cannot be expressed either as a decimal or as a natural fraction, such as the ratio between the  hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle and the two other sides. There is no such fraction. Or the ratio between the diameter and the perimeter of a circle (pi). There is no such fraction either. The reason is that geometric calculations work seamlessly only with straight lines and right angles. The hypotenuse is not at a right angle, and a circle is not a straight line. If you check the method for calculating pi, you will find that it is about squaring the circle. No wonder that you get an infinite result: you can't square a circle after all, but you knew that, didn't you? To call the result a "number" is a stretch. These hypothetical proportions can only be approximated, and they are, for practical purposes.

Another loophole is division by zero. It is not done. There is no other number that you can only multiply with but can't divide with. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for not dividing by zero, other than that you don't get a sensible result. So what? If you don't like the result of division by 2, you won't divide by 2? That's nonsense. It is more reasonable, perhaps, to say that zero is not a genuine number, which is why it behaves asymmetrically. Zero is more like the concept of nothingness, which is just as odd as this "number".

For centuries, mathematicians believed that numbers were real-world objects and that the world could be expressed as a series of mathematical formulas. That nature somehow spoke a language, that of mathematics. They no longer have a reason to think so, yet the idea persists. If you want a simple example to demonstrate that "nature" does not speak mathematics, take the calendar. There are about 29.53 days in a moon month (from full moon to full moon). Try and divide 29.53 days into weeks. You can't. Not even into days, as there is no such thing as 0.53 days. A year is about 365.25 days, which you can't divide into days, weeks or months. Our Gregorian calendar is a good (though complicated) approximation, but it still is off a day every 3000+ years. If you consider that a day is defined by Earth's rotation around its axis, a week is an arbitrary number of days from Mesopothamian culture and the Bible, a moon month is defined by Earth's shadow on the Moon, and a year is based on Earth's orbit around the Sun, you may ask why the proportions of the movement of Earth, Moon and Sun should be integers. Why, indeed? If the Universe spoke mathematics, these proportions should be expressible in nice soothing integers. There should be so many days and weeks in a moon month, and so many moon months, weeks and days in a year. Appearently, there aren't. It is my intuition that if there is a higher order in the Universe, it's not as simple as Earthly mathematics.

These are just a handful of examples to show that science is limited in ways we don't like to think about. It appears that science is for practical purposes, for building roads that don't was away, bridges that don't topple, houses that don't collapse - not two often anyway. But to look to science for an ultimate understanding of reality is way too tall an order.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The paradoxes of knowledge

We make huge efforts to know more when we know we won't ever know all. The more we know, the clearer the limitations of our method of inquiry.

We is really I. We are lots and lots of I's, yet we are compelled to make we-claims. Everything one ever says should in theory remain one's personal view, yet in some mystical way, certain views become authoritative as though whole teams of researchers shared the same brain. For example, if many people conclude that 2+2=4, that's still a minority view and also impossible to prove. Yet it becomes authoritative - for no particular reason if you think about it. There is no way to prove that one object is actually one object and not a unique and unclassifiable bunch of atoms. There is no way to prove that another object is the "same" object as the previous one. Then we actually know that one object and a different object are not two objects, yet we boldly assert that 2 unproved objects plus another 2 unproved objects make 4 proved objects. This is irrational, on reflection we know it to be irrational, and yet it is an authoritative view. You may flunk in maths if you dare to disagree with it. In reality, the number concept is only in our heads, it doesn't have any form of existence in the outside world. Hence it is impossible to prove anything about maths.

Common sense (latin: sensus communis) originally means shared sensory experience, yet it is used to suggest that whoever does not have common sense is irrational or out of their mind. In the original sense, someone who does not share a sensory experience simply perceives the world differently, which is no big deal. Common sense should not be used to denote rational thinking. Rational thinking presupposes shared sensory experience, but is not limited to it, it also refers to the way one processes the sensory information. The problem is, of course, that if the sensory information is not the same, we have no way of assessing if it was processed "rationally" or not.

If Descartes was more or less right, one can only intuit that one thinks and therefore is, which is not a very firm position from the point of view of knowledge. The trouble is that there doesn't seem to be a firmer position than that, so that's as firm as one's knowledge ever gets. Yet we make claims about the world that suggest a lot firmer knowledge than that. We are simply not entitled to make such claims.

It appears that Aristotle was right about the first rules of science: they cannot be proved one at a time, they must be accepted in a package, which is irrational, if you think about it. Plato's critical thinking asserts that anything not proved in itself should be regarded as invalid and should not be accepted. According to Plato, there is no valid scientific knowledge, yet we pretend to have valid scientific knowledge of a lot of things. In reality, we don't have such knowledge of anything.

Take motion, for example: no law of mechanics can be proved in itself. There is no straight line in the world that an object could follow, and we know that. Yet we accept flawed visual demonstration as proof. In order to know the path of an object, we should have a perfect understanding of all other objects in the universe, which we don't have, and yet we claim to know the paths of certain objects in motion.

Induction (generalising from a limited number of cases) is a logical fallacy. Let's say, we have watched a thousand apples fall from the tree. Does it follow that ALL apples fall downwards from the tree, and that no apple will ever fall upwards from a tree? No, it doesn't follow, and we know that. Yet we regard induction as valid in certain cases while we regard it as a stereotype or unjustified bias in other cases.

Can you ever prove that a measurement was accurate? You can't, because "proof" relies on sensory data that we know to be inaccurate. We don't even know if the scale is correct, because we don't check it regularly against the standard. Even if we did and found that ten times out of ten our scale seems to match the standard, that does not prove that it will match an eleventh time - unless we assume that the world does not change. But we know that to be untrue, so we are implicitely aware that no measurement can ever be considered exact. In practice, we approximate and guess a lot. We use sensory data to "verify" measurements and we use measurements to "verify" sensory data, which is circular reasoning, a logical fallacy.

This circular reasoning and uncertainty pervades the universe. If we accept the Big Bang theory, we must also accept that it may have been preceded by other Big Bangs that we cannot know anything about, as all previous data have been destroyed. Also, if our Universe is a self-contained bubble and if there may be other similar bubbles around with their own particular featues and laws, then we can not know anything about them. In fact, our Universe in that case is not actually a Uni...verse, because it's only part of the whole. Yet we seem to be convinced that soon we'll have unlocked virtually all the secrets of the Universe. On reflection, we know this to be very far from the best available information.

Kant intuited that space, time and causality are arbitrary categories in our mind. We are compelled to see the world this way, though reality probably doesn't have such categories. This is confirmed by our latest understanding of the spacetime continuum. Any causality is based on a purely arbitrary slicing of spacetime. Now, if we actually believed that, we could not hold evolution to be plausible, as it relies on a strict interpretation of who begat whom. If it turns out that DNA doesn't have a single evolutionary direction, but children optionally may have preceeded the parents, this will render the data corroborating adaptation as part of the struggle for survival null and void, and the model will collapse. The fact that we believe the evolutionary model to be more than just our arbitrary perception, thinking it is a representation of how things really are, demonstrates that we have a profoundly confused understanding of the implications of our latest knowledge.

Summary: we have no way of knowing anything firmly, yet we behave as though there was a way. This is oddly contradictory. The best we can do is face up to this paradox. It appears that we humans are skilled at putting structure into an essentially unstructured world to change it to our advantage. Everything we pretend to know is all about this skill and not about reality.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The nature of reality

Are there two kinds of realities or is there just one? Is there a perceptible physical world and an imperceptible but mentally explorable metaphysical world?

I intuit that there is only a perceptible physical world around us and there is God, an imperceptible personal force that encompasses our physical reality and that we don't have permanent sensory access to. What classical philosophy refers to as metaphysics is inside our head and is part of our perceptible physical world. The title of this book uses metaphysics in this sense.

The assertion that God is personal means that the God-part of reality cannot be detected, explored, measured or even conceptualised, because God is an ever-moving, ever-changing reality that interacts with us all the time but that we cannot interact with at will. Our two-way communication with God is controlled most of the time by God. Using William of Ockham's intellectual parsimony rule, we should seek the most economical explanations to phenomena, i.e. intentianally leave God out of our practical models of reality. Not because that's necessarily the "truth", but because that's the most practical solution to the problems we seek to solve. We want to make Earth a better place and we don't want to enlist God as a physical team member to do the job for us.

This means that we treat the subject of God with respect and reverence, but we don't think God should perform our daily chores. We deal with God in our model of reality only to the extent that God impacts on our daily life. In other words, we don't seek to know or phychoanalyse God personally, and only explore the God-phenomenon as an integral part of our life on Earth. This basically restricts God's presence in our model to morality, where God or something God-like turns out to be indispensible.

Though I personally believe in God, for the purposes of philosophical discourse I do not assert that God (doesn't) exist. I only assert that the assuption of a God-like entity lies at the heart of our morality and should be explored only as a core component thereof. For our purposes, God is like Harry Potter wearing the cloak of invisibility: we won't chase invisible Harry around the world hoping to find out all about him this way, instead, we limit our study to the points where he comes in contact with our visible reality. Even there, we accept that we can't really tell if our visible objects changed because of invisible Harry or for some other reason. We are simply not in a position to even conclude that invisible Harry exists, at best we can only intuit it or make an educated guess about his existence.

As for the physical world, the best way to explore it is science, rather than faith. As for morality, the best way to describe it is also science, and not faith. As for God, the best way to approximately understand God is faith through studying revealed (or supposedly revealed) religious texts seriously, in the absence of anything else to rely on. Where revealed information contradicts our scientific data about the physical world, science should take precedence. Where revelead moral rules contradict our scientific rules of conduct... Wait a minute: there are no scientific rules of conduct, hence no contradiction is possible there. Moral rules can only be declared authoritatively. God either exists and revealed supreme moral rules to us, or we need a God-like figure and accept its authority in order to prosper as a community.

In short: we study the physical world and human behaviour through science, but we respect revealed moral rules and limit our study to the role they play in our behaviour and our world. We do not dedicate scientific efforts to the study of God, because we realise that an imperceptible and ever-changing personal force cannot be studied methodically.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The biggest flops in the history of philosophy

Whereas ordinary people do not hesistate to rely on their intution when responding to the challenges of everyday life, philosophers often find it beneath their dignity to do so. They boldly try to transcend the "ordinary" ways of responding to challenges and flop big time.

Socrates non-plussed all his comtemporaries with his piercingly accurate questions, only to be sentenced to death for debauching young boys, i.e. homosexual paedophilia, and a host of other less serious crimes.

A student of Socrates', Plato convinced himself that ideas were truer and nobler than the physical perception of things. It never occurred to him that ideas cannot possibly dwell outside the mind. He left a legacy of dreaming idealism that is as stubborn as it is blatantly inaccurate.

A student of Plato's, Aristotle realised that his master had got the wrong end of the stick and devoted his career to the study of the perceived physical world. He had the engenuous insight that the fundamental rules of science cannot be proved on their own but need to be accepted in a package. He was a prolific writer. In fact, we owe most of what we know about science, knowledge and logic to Aristotle. Yet, inconsistently with some of his own conclusions, he firmly believed that gaining ultimate knowledge about things as they are was possible.

Spinoza intuited that the nature of physical reality was the same as that of metaphysical reality (i.e. reality beyond the physical realm). Though this belief was very much in line with the religious thinking of his age, he never made a career as a philosopher, he polished expensive optical systems for a living. Ironically, his optics helped scientists to conclude that there actually is no such thing as metaphysics in the outside world.

Descartes coined the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am" as an aside in one of his sentences, but insisted that the metaphysical world was separate from the physical, without any passage to connect them.

Kant correctly established that the term "metaphysical" can only refer to the structure of our brain, i.e. how we are compelled to make sense of the world in terms of space, time and causality. But then inconsistently, he stumbled on to try and outline a metaphysical "foundation" for morality, only to arrive at an ethic focussed solely on intention motivating an act and completely ignoring its outcome.

Schopenhauer correctly established that there is no firm foundation to morality, but he intuited that sympathy with fellow humans was as solid a foundation as you could ever find. He caused a scandal and never got recognition for this partial insight.

Since Kant, no philosopher has ever attempted to establish a complete philosophical system, which is a flop in itself. Mine is a first-after-Kant attempt at establishing a complete and consistent framework for all human thinking, knowledge and morality.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Paradoxes of Philosophy

Philosophy is the art of thinking, but thinking is not an art, it's at least not meant to be. Art is not thinking and thinking is not art. Then what is philosophy ultimately? We don't know. Thinking for thinking's sake? Hopefully not, but we can't be sure.

True knowledge in the Kantian sense of knowing things as they are is unattainable, yet we do our best to attain it. If we know it can't be had, why do we bother trying? We can't help it, I guess.

I claim that good-enough knowledge is achievable, but neither I nor anyone else can precisely define "good-enough". I can only provide a good-enough definition of what is "good enough", which seems invalid or at best valid-enough, i.e. as good as it gets. That's embarassing, isn't it?

Understanding the world and our place in it requires a rational approach, or so we think... intuitively. Now, intuition is not rational. Our best definition of rationality is intuitive, and we don't even have a definition of intuition. If all our thinking is really grounded in intuition, how can we tell the difference between what's rational and what's intuitive? We actually call part of our intuition as such and refer to another part of it as rationality. Why call part of our intuition rationality? For no particular reason, I'm afraid.

Is philosophy the broadest possible framework in which to understand the world? Probably. How do we know? Well, we don't know. Yet I intuit that philosophy is the broadest possible framework in which to make sense of the world.

Philosophy can also make some sense of intuition and emotions. I can think about feeling and I can feel thinking, but how do I know I'm not mistaken when I mix these two distinct realms? Does thinking about feeling lead to a truer understanding of emotions than feeling the emotions themselves? Some might say yes, some might say no. Is hearing sights more accurate than seeing sounds? Or is seeing sights and hearing sounds more revealing?

If I don't have hard and fast answers to the questions above, what good is my philosophy? You'll find out in the following chapters. Philosophy is more about asking the right questions than about providing the right answers. If so, are there any sensible statements in philosophy? If not, isn't that a problem from a practical point of view?

Maybe, that's why most people who are successful in real life don't philosophise and most philosophers don't succeed in real life. Is it possible to combine philosophy with real-life success though? I intuit that it is.

The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality

The Concise Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality
       The Pivotal Paradoxes that Constitute the Human Condition

Introduction

This book is about the pivotal paradoxes of human existence as we know them in the 21st century.

If there was a coherent rational system about the world and our place in it, we could explore and describe it. Our experience is that all our attempts to identify such an arrangement fail, and we now know enough about our methodology to know that it is impossible to know things as they are.

We can be absolutely certain that true knowledge is unattainable, yet we can explore the frontiers of knowledge and know enough to succeed and prosper in life. Knowledge is thus both beyond and within our reach. The human condition can be best described as a series of paradoxes, and this is one of them.

This book is about metaphysics in the Kantian sense: it is a description of how our mind works, a reflection of the way we are compelled to think.

Traditionally, philosophers fail in life and people who succeed in life fail in philosophy. For philosophy doesn't care about life, and life doesn't care about philosophy. What it there was a philosophy with which you could succeed in life? This is what I attempt to describe in my book.

The Fountain of Philosophy

This is a book I'm planning to write. In the following posts I'll outline each chapter. If you (dis)agree with the content, drop a comment.

The Fountain of Philosophy will explain how thinking works, how we intuit what is corrent/incorrect thinking, how we use thinking to our evolutionary advantage, how we paper over the imperfections and incongruences in our thinking, and how we haggle over political issues in the mistaken belief that there are "right" arguments on our side and "wrong" arguments on the opponents' side.

The book will also set out how civilisations are built on rightous people's ad hoc ideas, how those ideas turn into tradition and how tradition boosts welfare in a civilisation.

Chapter 1

• What Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume and Kant might write in light of all we know today.
• What computing, programming and relational databases teach us about the way we think and organise information.

Chapter 2

• Why things are unknowable and how they can still be explored sufficiently for our practical purposes.
• A number of paradoxes (from Descartes through maths to all Cretans are liers to demonstrate that true knowledge is ultimately unattainable.
• How we should learn to live with paradoxes and tolerate some forms of it while rejecting other forms.

Chapter 3

• What moral rules are, what their function is, and how we leap over the gap between statements and behavioural rules.
• How emotions and intuitions govern our intellect.

Chapter 4

• How we argue using undefined terms, appeal to non-existent common sense, use ex cathedra statements and circular arguments.
• There is no such thing as valid and invalid argumentation, but there are more valid and less valid procedures in comparison with each other.

Chapter 5

• How civilisations are established, how they flourish and how they die.
• How traditions keep civilisations in good shape.
• How traditions can always be challenged and how they can be defended.

Chapter 6

• How religion helps keep civilisations together.
• How religions can be benchmarked against each other.
• How every religion can be challenged and how it can be defended.

Chapter 7

• How you can succeed with this blueprint of human thinking.
• Why and how you should spread this form of enlightenment in the world.

Chapter 8
Freedom, democracy and Justice in the world

Chapter 9
The wealth of nations and citizens

tbc.

Speak Out Non-violently for the Christians Massacred in the World

The world is back where it was in 1943, except it's not Christians, Jews, resistance members and class enemies that are being killed, but Islam minorities and Christians. The latter are being massacred with the systematic barbarity of Hitler and Stalin combined.

The Christians' Holocaust is unfolding before our very eyes, with daily updates on the latest outrageous murders. We're about to get used to what you can't get used to – so let's not get used to it! It's easy to save persecuted Christians: a lot of us should simply declare the message that Jesus the Jewish Messiah gave the world the only teaching that leads to peace and prosperity, so let us follow Him.

Everyone agrees that firm action should have been taken in 1943 to save lives. Many acted, in fact, but not many enough. This became clear only 20-30 years after the fact, and has weighed heavily on our conscience ever since. Let's learn the lesson. The Christians' Holocaust is taking place today, so we have to end it today, not 20 years after the fact.

In recent weeks, before, during and after Easter, I have read thousands of pious and highly spiritual lines by Christian bloggers, but not one line about saving the Christians who being murdered right now. I commend this thought to all well-meaning people: "And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace." And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these things. (Luke 14, 3-6) Lest we should also be unable to answer when the time comes. Let us act today.

It's enough for a thousand bloggers to write in unison that Jesus is the key to peace and prosperity in the world, and that people at war should convert to Christianity and implement the teachings of Jesus the Jewish Messiah. This appeal works if you believe in it and spread the message with dedication. Let's join our forces to move mountains. Together, relying on the power of words only, we can change the world. God does not forsake his, but just as He did not spread the gospel for the apostles, He won't spread it for us either. This is our responsibility and we'll get all the help we need while working toward this goal. "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you..." (Luke 24, 46-49)

Many people ask me why there is suffering in the world. Among other reasons, because we don't keep God's rules, which are designed to make us happy, so on Earth as in Heaven. I am not setting up a new theological model when I say, appealing to common sense, that the more we strive to love fellow humans as we love ourselves, the more just we'll make the world and the more we reduce the risk that the injustice going around the world should come to us and our loved ones. Breaking God's rules is like littering. The more people litter in the world, the more likely it becomes that you'll stumble upon litter wherever you go. If you don't want to stumble upon litter, don't litter and encourage others to keep the public rules for everybody's sake. Spread the rules of Jesus that lead to public happiness for the benefit of mankind, and you'll not only save Christians, but you'll also be happier here on Earth.

Your thin voice matters, raise it to save the Christians who are being massacred worldwide. Call on their murderers, those who provide the murderers with moral and financial support, and those passively watching the Christians' Holocaust, to convert to Christianity and follow Jesus the Jewish Messiah. Don't let's relive the 1940s, let us bring peace and prosperity, love and justice to mankind in Jesus' name.

Update: here's a good – though somewhat feeble – petition for a start, please sign it. That's just the beginning.

Before You Get Hooked on Credit Cards

People often call me on the phone and accost me at the airport to try and sell me a credit card. The benefits of this modern banking service are that, allegedly, I can use the bank's money for up to 45 days at no charge, and that I also get a 1-2 percent kickback on my purchases. I trigger surprise and incredulity by repeatedly declining this great opportunity.

I suggest that you also say no to it firmly and courageously. The questions below will help you consider why.

1. In principle, you can use the bank's money for up to 45 days at no charge, but then what's in it for the bank? Is the bank a charitable institution that, for some mysterious reason, gives depositors' money away? So there is such a thing as a free lunch, after all? Or will a credit card, in some tricky way, cost you a lot? If not, how do you suppose the salespeople pushing credit cards ever get paid?

2. In principle, if you use the credit card wisely, you'll only pay the annual fee ? how much is that and how much in terms of loan interest does it come to?

3. Only those people will pay interest on their credit card purchases who don't use the card wisely, i.e. withdraw cash with it or fail to repay the cost of their purchases in a timely manner. How much is that interest? Don't you think around 40 percent is a bit too hefty? In plain language, that's normally called usury and private persons go to jail for engaging in it. Did you know that the bank will make you pay a full month's interest for a single day of delay? How much is 40 percent times 30? That's how much you'll end up paying for a day's delay. Does it seem fair to punish "unwise" credit card users with such exorbitant interests?

4. Suppose you'll always use the credit card wisely and end up paying nothing but the annual fee. Doesn't it concern you how this product impacts on other people's lives? Do you only care about yourself in your community, aren't you the least bit concerned with your fellow-humans?

5. Suppose you regard credit cards as a pedagogical tool: they make people wise at their own expense, they jump-boost people's financial culture. The famous "cup game" does pretty much the same thing and yet, it's not considered a pedagogical tool. So do confidence tricksters and pyramid scheme organisers, then why don't they earn recognition for the life lessons they impart? Are you sure you're doing the right thing by getting involved in this "pedagogical" scheme?

6. Suppose you're an optimist, reasoning that if everyone takes care of their finances wisely, then everyone will benefit. Except for the bank? Can you seriously envisage such a situation? When credit cards stop generating exorbitant interest revenue thanks to unwisely behaving debtors, they'll become untenable and will be terminated, meaning the moral problem will sort itself out. Until that happens, will you sleep well at night? Won't the second thought that you're part of a system that rips off unwise fellow-humans bother you? Will you support a system that you predict will be terminated the moment its participants start behaving reasonably? How much more rational, honest and fair would you be by not getting involved with it to begin with? For your part, this terminates the scheme on Day 0.

7. What exactly does it mean that you can use the bank's money at no charge for up to 45 days? Did you know the bank only pays merchants in 45 days' time, whereas they would normally get paid immediately? So whose money are you actually using? At no charge? Do you buy that?

8. Circular debt, i.e. companies paying each other in 60-90-120 day cycles, is a major problem in the economy. Supermarket chains also pay farmers for their produce using similar cycle times, so farmers often resort to bridging loans to make ends meet. Who from? From the bank that says you can use its money at no charge for up to 45 days. It doesn't actually pay anything for 45 days, so the supermarket doesn't get its revenue and, in turn, it won't pay the farmers, to whom your bank will graciously offer a loan for 45-60-90-120 days, at commercial interest rates, of course. Does this drive prices down or up? At the end of the day, who will pay the full cost of this intentionally slowed-down settlement system? You as end user? You who've become financially cultured, behave wisely, and allegedly use the bank's money at no charge? How is that possible?

9. Normally, when you buy goods, you pay for them right away. In this respect, it doesn't matter whether you pay with gold pieces, bank notes or a debit card, because the merchant receives the purchase price immediately. Why would a bank insert 45 days into this process? Is your credit card a tool for your bank to inject itself to where it doesn't belong and make you pay for it? Do you volunteer to facilitate that? If not, what exactly would you need a credit card for?

10. Did you know that people spend about 15 percent more with a credit card than without one? Are you sure you need to consume 15 percent more? Is this good for you, your loved ones, your society, and the planet? Is it wise to overspend, as opposed to managing your finances responsibly?

11. When the credit crunch hit in 2009, the balance of an American household stood at around US$ -3000, due to credit card purchases. In the panic that ensued, the majority of households could not top up their account within 45 days and had to pay exorbitant interests. Were Americans wise when they made the use of credit cards the rule in retail, or did they wise up when they returned them in large numbers and went back to using debit cards with immediate payment?

12. Is there any argument left in favour of credit cards? Submit it in a comment.

I'm NOT Charlie Hebdo

I'm not fighting religion like Charlie Hebdo. The fight against religion has killed far, far more people than all the religions combined.

I don't believe France is a secular country, like Charlie Hebdo believes. France is based on the values of a silent Christian majority, that's a hard fact.

I don't mean to offend like Charlie Hebdo. I think it's in people's best interest to think coherently, even if that sometimes causes them to question received axioms. Such as the axiom that all religions are equal, i.e. equally bad. What if they are not equal, nor equally bad?

Let's pause to consider that.

In fact, Christianity is the only religion in the world that stands the critical thinking world improvement test. This makes it the best religion in the world and places it over atheism. Atheism doesn't stand the critical thinking world improvement test. Islam doesn't pass that test. Nor does Judaism. Then in what sense would they be equal? Certainly not in the sense of improving the world, where Christianity is in a league of its own.

If Judaists sticking with the old ways after Jesus had been critical thinkers, they would have realised that either Jesus was THEIR Messiah, or there would never be a Messiah for them, ever, so they might as well fish with Jesus or cut bait altogether.

If Muhammad had been a critical thinker 600 years after Jesus, he would have found it counter-productive for humanity's well-being to start a new religion on desert sand, without any foundation - and to use violence, on top of all, to propagate it. That's totally unacceptable for any humane thinker. It means you have to suspend coherent thinking to become a Muslim, which explains the abominable violence that has accompanied "total submission to God" since the outset.

If Jesus had been a critical thinker... well, he was a terrific critical thinker, which is why he did the things he did. And which is why it's in everyone's best interest to try and implement his teaching. Since Jesus passes the critical thinking world improvement test with flying colours, feel free to challange him. Like Charlie Hebdo. Go ahead, make our day. Jesus wins any critical thinking world improvement debate hands down.

Christians don't use violence to spread their good news, good news spreads on its own. You look at prosperous communities in the West and envy them for the prosperity they achieved with Jesus. Challengers don't meet violent ends, because they are trumped by logic, reason and critical thinking. Just like the silent French Christian majority has let Charlie Hebdo do what it did over the years. Things could have gone on that way forever, were it not for those who use violence to force total submission to... well, brutality. Armed radical bullying is a last refuge for those whose ideas don't stand the critical thinking world improvement test or any rational market review. They will fail even with arms, as their concepts are not marketable and don't lead to anything like the peace and prosperity achieved with Jesus.

Charlie Hebdo never stood a chance in a rational debate with the Messiah, and those who brutally murdered Charlie Hebdo staff don't stand even a fighting chance in that debate, theirs is a groundless, merciless, mindless, inherently lost cause. Moreover, their kind of behaviour does not belong in the land of the Messiah's peace and prosperity.

I am NOT Charlie Hebdo, since I know better, but I am NOT a mindless Charlie Hebdo hater either, because I'm confident that reason with Jesus the Messiah will save the day and improve the world.