There is not much point to this point, but hey ho – everyone loves quotes!
“Religions are affairs of the rabble, I have need of washing my hands after contact with religious people.” – Nietzsche
“To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.”
“Some day a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” – Travis Bickle
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” – Edgar Allan Poe
http://home.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de/junker/ws12/carroll.pdf
Could this not be solved by adding:
D: If A and B and C are true and you accept them, you must accept Z and this statement.
Or would this in turn have to be verified by an infinite number of statements?
Recently, I’ve had too much time on my hands. Using the just intonation ratios, I have come up with a rank of the most consonant -> most dissonant intervals.
(click on the image for a larger picture)
I hope you composers out there find this handy!
A fantastic aid for starting to learn about philosophers.
People who seek to promote equality usually do it in precisely the wrong way. Take, for example, the hard-line feminists who are really just sexists in a lazy disguise. In fact, ‘feminism’ is fundamentally flawed – it claims to want equality, but its tagline is usually ‘equality for women’. Why not ‘gender equality’? Focusing on women is not the way to go about it, as you are blinkered by focusing on one goal. However, with the general goal of gender equality, you can see the wider issues instead of focusing on just one gender. Equality is universal, it is not ‘equality for ____’.
The issue of racism is also important. In fact, the very word ‘racism’ is flawed because it highlights differences. Instead of focusing on differences, you should just not care. I don’t care what ethnicity someone is! Why should it matter?
I don’t think we should get so angry about past racist attacks; this just perpetuates the notion of racism when we should instead be moving forward and working to eliminate it. Living in the past helps no-one.
Newspapers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail do nothing to help feelings of xenophobia. ‘Islamist’ and ‘terrorist’ are thrown around as if they are synonyms. ‘Terrorist’ now means ‘religiously motivated’. It’s even the same in the Guardian – when the paedophile ring was recently uncovered, the religion of the criminals was mentioned as if it was important. Why? Why do I care about the religion of these people? Why does it matter?
I think the idea of ‘not caring’ should be promoted. ‘Black’ and ‘white’ need not be used to describe people. I can see from the photo, thanks very much, and anyway I don’t really give a damn. I also don’t care about the person’s religion. So don’t mention it, please. No wonder the EDL and BNP exist.
We should focus on eliminating the source of racism and xenophobia rather than celebrating certain ethnic backgrounds/religions. Even celebration of diversity highlights differences rather than equality. I think targeting racists and making them not care about ethnicity is much more important.
Here’s something just for fun:
“Viewed on a sufficiently large scale, the properties of the universe are the same for all observers”
Why is this?
The universe is isotropic. It looks pretty much the same whichever direction we look at it. Unless we assume that we are in the centre of the universe, and that the galaxies form concentric rings around is, this must mean that the universe is homogeneous.
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Imagine the universe as a homogeneous gas; galaxies are equivalent to particles. Instead of interacting via electrostatics, galaxies interact with each other using gravity. Gravity is really the only important force on that scale.
—–
Measuring distance and movement in space
Let’s divide space into a grid with co-ordinates, with the points always falling on the same galaxies.
Galaxies move coherently, frozen on the grid (rather than moving in random directions). The co-ordinates are not defined by distance.
How do you figure out the distance?
Dab = a(t)Δxab
Where D is the distance moved and a is the scale parameter.
So, how do you figure out the velocity at which the galaxies are moving apart?
Vab = a’ Δxab
Where a’ = da/dt
The Hubble Constant H(t): Vab/Dab = a’/a : the Δx cancels out; it doesn’t matter which two galaxies we’re talking about.
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I hope you’re a tiny bit less in the dark about cosmology after reading this – if you want a better explanation, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-medYaqVak He explains it really well, and basically the first 20 minutes or so is what I’ve gone over here.
The Four Causes are a simple concept to grasp. The Causes are:
Material: what the object is made of
Formal: the shape/structure the object needs to be
Final: the purpose of the object
Efficient: the actions of the agent creating the object
For example, if the object you are looking at is a house, its causes were:
Material -> bricks, wood, mortar, slates, plaster
Formal -> the architect’s plans
Final -> a place to live in
Efficient -> the construction workers: builders, electricians, plumbers etc.
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I think this system works well. If I want to figure out what caused an object to exist, I’ll look at it like this:
The existence of my bracelet, for example, was caused by someone who put it together. This person had a purpose and structure for the object in mind; while they were making it they knew it was going to be a bracelet – otherwise it wouldn’t have ended up being a bracelet at all. Also, to make this bracelet the person had to have all the materials necessary; in this case, coloured threads.
Without these four factors, the creation of the bracelet would never have been possible. In order to be made, it needs a creator and materials to be created with. In order to be functional, it needs a purpose and a structure to serve that purpose. All of these go hand in hand, and together make the bracelet I’m wearing now.
NOTE: I have written this without reading any works on epistemology – wish me luck!
——
Exploring the Meaning of Truth
What is the definition of truth?
True = useful assumption or assertion?
True = verifiable?
In order to read this text, you have to assume that the letters on this page are real and mean something, and are not just little blips in your brain’s perception of what you call ‘reality’. If these letters are not real and/or do not mean anything, what does that make you? Some irrational, delusional blob of what can barely be called consciousness, without even a place in reality?
Do you choose to treat things as ‘true’ and yet they are just useful assumptions? Does your treating of aspects of the universe as ‘true’ make them true if the results of treating them as true accord with whey would do if they were, indeed, true? Are there universal truths anyway, with no question about it?
Is it true that these letters are real and that they are letters at all? Or is it just a useful assumption to make?
Let’s see how verifiable these ‘truths’ are.
1. You can see these letters. You perceive them.
2. You are applying meaning to them as you have learned throughout your life, and they do seem to mean something and be coherent.
3. You can get another person to verify that these letters are here and do indeed mean something.
4. You can perceive the other person with your senses of sight, touch and hearing (or even taste if you so wish).
5. You could verify with brain scanning equipment that your brain, and the other person’s brain, ‘lit up’ in the appropriate places to suggest that language processing is occurring and you are responding to visual stimuli.
6. However, it is not verifiable that the universe is real in the sense that it is a physical construction to which we respond using our senses. The universe could well be a figment of my – or your – imagination; our brain is itself manufacturing electrical impulses which we use as our perception of ‘reality’. The universe you perceive could be the product of a few dozen electrodes being prodded into your pickled brain in a laboratory. We could all be generated by the one brain.
Therefore, is the status of ‘reality’ which we give the universe more of a useful assertion that a ‘truth’? Does it matter if the results are the same?
VERIFICATION LEADING TO TRUTH
Currently, I am looking at a wall. I can verify that it is in fact there by touching it. I can verify it further by getting another person to look at it and touch it, and communicate to me what they are experiencing. I can verify the existence of the other person by touching them and getting another person to touch them, and at the same time I am verifying the existence of the third person by touching them. I can verify the existence of brain activity by using MRI/EEG scans. I could further verify the existence of my surroundings by using all manners of electronic probes.
Etc.
The more I can verify something and the more verifiable perceptions an action or object can produce, the more likely it is to be ‘true’ and the less likely it is to be ‘false’ as the counter-verifications reduce in number.
As the verifications of an object/action’s existence tend to infinity, the counter-verifications tend to zero.
Hence, by way of infinite regress, the more the verifications tend to infinity the more ‘true’ they become – the original object which needed verification in the first place is increasingly more likely to be ‘true’ or ‘factual’, or if you prefer, less likely to be ‘false’.
Does something only become real if and when we perceive it (along the lines of Schrödinger’s cat)?
Perception of stimuli by the senses is more verifiable than the actual existence of the universe as a physical thing. Does this mean that our perception of the universe is more ‘real’ or ‘true’ than the existence of the universe itself?
If there are an infinite number of elementary particles, one inside another akin to Russian dolls, does this mean that they are infinitely large? This seems like a bizarre concept because an object like a pen is obviously finite and contained. However, since it is infinitely dividable, where does one draw the line? What is the definition of infinitely large? Relative to what is it infinite?
First I will examine the nature of the infinitely small, if indeed such a thing can exist. When you hear a person say that an object is ‘infinitely small’, they are probably referring to a proton or something similar. What immediately springs to my mind is that the object is in no way infinite; it is just very small.
Perhaps something that is ‘infinitely small’ is surrounded by infinite space. This seems counter-intuitive – if the universe is infinite, as it seems, then everything is infinitely small. Size doesn’t matter when compared to the universe, as there is no boundary or form with which you can compare an object when comparing it to the universe.
Maybe ‘infinitely small’ is the particle you get when you divide an object infinitely. However, as soon as you call the particle ‘infinitely small’ you are wrong, because there is yet another, and another, smaller particle which you could hypothetically divide it into.
Therefore, using the words ‘infinitely’ and ‘small’ together to describe something is always wrong, as something infinite can never be small. Small means finite.
We often hear physicists claim that the universe is infinite. Does this mean that the universe is infinitely large? Not necessarily- sometimes the universe is imagined with its very space curved so you will, if you carry on in one direction for a suitable amount of time, end up where you started; much like if you set off walking around the Earth in a straight line you will eventually end up where you began.
All that this means is that the universe has no real boundary. It will curve in on itself so as to stop you reaching its edge. This doesn’t mean it is infinitely large.
Numbers are a problem. Apparently they are infinite. Yet √-1 apparently doesn’t even exist. It is not consistent with number theory, and yet it is an essential part of mathematics. How does this even work?
A weird suggestion entirely of my own formulation (and which is probably entirely flawed; nevertheless interesting) is that, much in the way that mathematicians can imagine hypothetical dimensions of space and how they interact with one another, there could be a dimension of numbers which, like the universe, curves in on itself at some point and you count and count and count and then you find yourself with all the complex numbers, √-1, and then you find all of the extremely large negative numbers, and then you count your way back to where you started.
Pure guesswork, but I like it. Perhaps I will come back after reading a maths textbook and shake my head disapprovingly at such naïve postulates…
I don’t really care!
| Segment | Type of knowledge | Type of object |
| DE | Philosophical understanding | Ideas (Forms), especially the Idea of the Good |
| CD | Mathematical reasoning, including theoretical science | Abstract mathematical objects, e.g. numbers, lines, curves |
| BC | Beliefs about physical things, including empirical science | Physical objects |
| AB | Opinions, illusions | Shadows and reflections of physical objects |
Since Plato holds segment DE in the highest esteem, this suggests that, in Plato’s reasoning, a scientific theory becomes less true, less real, once it has been proven. This does not make any logical sense, since surely a theory that has been proven is much more refined and sophisticated than one which has not. A proven theory has evidence in the real world to back it up. Is Plato suggesting that the very formulation of a theory makes it real and perfect; and since the world is imperfect and material, the theory does not have to have evidence to back it up; the world might be so imperfect as to miss out that theory as a basis for its physics? That the theory is correct even though the universe does not act that way; the theory does not need empirical evidence because the universe is less perfect than the theory it should back up?
This Statement Is Not True 