Forcing Logic is Irrelevant - But Humans Do it Anyway!

It seems rather illogical to force logic to prove something, for if someone starts out with erroneous assumptions and builds upon false premise how can they ever guarantee they've arrived at the best possible decision, or correct answer? The reality is they can't, but humans do this all the time. Most often this occurs when someone is trying to prove themselves correct, and so they set out to do just that, and they build their logic tree, or put forth axioms, rules, and statements, that they assume to be correct.

But just because someone assumes that an axiom, rule, or statement is correct doesn't mean it fits in all circumstances, and trying to force logic in this way is irrelevant, not only to the process itself, but to the inconsistency of logical time efficiency. After all, why waste time using false assumptions to try to solve a problem that is relevant? You wouldn't do that, because if you really want to solve the problem, using logic that is, you must do so using factual or correct rules, statements, or axioms.

Now then, that does not mean that you cannot create a situation or an imaginary space, and try to solve an imaginary solution within that imaginary space. However if you are borrowing rules and statements from outside that imaginary space to solve the problem within it, which you will most likely have to do unless you reinvent all the axioms each time, then you have already broken a rule of logic in some regards.

Because it is illogical to solve a problem using rules borrowed from another sector, industry, human endeavor, or scientific realm. That doesn't mean that humans don't do it, they do it all the time. After all where else can they borrow the rules from, because if they create rules out of thin air, they have to prove that those rules are correct, but to do so they have to use other rules, but where they come from in the beginning?

Who created the first rule? And how we know the person that created the first rule, which all other rules are built upon, knew what they were doing? And who is the prime mover, the individual that set it all in motion? It seems no matter how we answer these questions, or how far back we take it to justify or verify the rules that we use when solving logical problems, at some point we are Forcing Logic, and we merely complicate that when we borrow rules from places we shouldn't.

Even though logicitions know this, they are human, and they will do it anyway. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 22,700 articles was a lot of work - because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off..

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Bacterial Wisdom As Template for Artificial Free Will

If any genuine "free will" exists, it is at the level of the "I-ness" of a system, the decision making routine, that it comes into play. Before we dive into the technicalities of this issue, let's first try to brainstorm on what can be understood by "free will". Although intuitively we "know" what "free will" is, just as we know what consciousness is,it is extremely hard to define it in words. Let's try to build an ontology "free will" by reciting its features and by drawing the borders of this concept from the notions of what it is not.

I followed a very interesting discussion on the issue of free will and whether it is needed in AI, which I will neither repeat nor summarise here, but a number of striking concepts of which I will use in this essay. I do not claim to have come up with those concepts myself nor do I claim to be an expert on the issue, but I believe that I can add some interesting concepts to the discussion deriving from Ben Jacob's "Bacterial Wisdom", "Global Brains" and "Societies-of-Minds". I will also propose to incorporate an artificial functional mimic of "Free Will" in a Webmind such as the AWWWARENet (Artificial World Wide Web Awareness Resource Engine Net).

A number of concepts stood out above the noise of the aforementioned discussion, which I'll mention here as features (and non-features) of the "free will ontology":

"Choice, override, randomness, unpredictability, (non)determination, chaotic, (non)causality and evolution".

Indeed, for a "Will" or decision-taking routine to be "free", it must be able to override those possible decisions, which are "causality-determined". In Goertzel?s Webmind the discriminating faculty is the AttentionBroker routine). In the AWWWARENet, the AttentionBroker presents its conclusions, what course of action is to be taken as being the most rational, as having the highest probability of success, to the I.I.I (Identity,Initiative and Illusion generating routine). In as far as the system has an "override" function, the system appears to be endowed with a faculty of "choice" to an outside observer of the system.

The need for a random-picking faculty arises, when the AttentionBroker present the I.I.I-routine with more than one equally likely options i.e. options with identical priorities.

The issue becomes more poignant, when due to a scarcity of resources or time imposed resource constraints not all options can be carried out simultaneously or worse are mutually exclusive i.e. some must be sacrificed at the expense of others.

Which one to choose if they have all equally preferable numerical outcomes of a resultant vector of the pros and cons and the only differences are to be found on a qualitative level?

It goes without saying, that the advantage-disadvantage summing includes attributing preferential weighting of long term advantages over short term disadvantages.

A rational/causal decision for the system will try to optimise the chances for survival of the system in the long term; short term repairable damage can then be tolerated as a temporary sacrifice.

When we look at the only observable example we have of "free will", i.e. ourselves, (at least we believe we're endowed with such a faculty - and we need an example of free will, if we ever want to try to simulate or mimic it in an artificial environment), indeed we sometimes override rational reflections, which warrant a safe outcome and take prima facie irrational intuitive decisions based on a "gut-feeling". Often our animal instincts and/or emotions are capable of overriding a potential well-reflected decision based on a summation of the pros and cons. Goertzel sees these as natural impediments to human superintelligence in his book "The Hidden Pattern".

Are such override decisions examples of "genuine free will" or are they merely the result of a summation on a meta-level, e.g. where an outcome of the "Emotome" is weighed against an outcome of the "Cognotome"? If the latter is the case, these decisions certainly do not qualify as "free will"but are the result of yet another algorithm. Nevertheless, programmed with sufficient control over the "advice" deriving from the "Emotome", a superintelligent AI system, which is aware of the routines of the "Emotome" and "Cognotome", the system will still face situations where it has to choose between equally good (or bad) strategies.

In such cases the system could be programmed to pick one at random. But such a random-picking routine cannot really be equated with "genuine free will".

When we say that we intuitively choose the solution which "feels best", perhaps we're subconsciously performing a search through a space of known similar solutions and we pick the one with the highest degree of similarity of the situational parameters in the solution space or the one with the shortest route to a successful outcome. We might be devising a heuristic. An AI system could be programmed in such a manner, but again such an algorithm does not qualify as genuine free will.

In reality our presumed "free will" is much more limited than we might a priori believe. Tricks played by so-called "mentalists" have shown, that subconsciously registered clues from the most recent peripheral perceptions steer us toward decisions, which we believe to be genuine free will based decisions.

By eliminating all descriptions which are not the product of genuine free will, we may come to a description of free will. Let's continue the brainstorming exercise in order to ground a pattern of free will from a number of examples.

Let's start with an extreme example of "choice", which should not be influenced by "peripheral perceptions". In the film "Sophie's choice" there is a scene where Sophie (played by Meryl Streep) is forced to choose one of her children, the other will be killed. Not choosing will result in both children being killed. A parent who loves his children alike and refrains from favouritism might have the following thoughts:

It is better if one of my children survives than none.As these sadistic monsters kill people anyway, there is no good reason to give in to this non-choice as they will very probably kill both children in the end anyway.If I do choose one of them, I may buy some time for one of them generating a chance for escape and survival.If I do choose one of them I commit a sin: It is immoral to make this decision forced upon by blackmail; One should never give in to that, I'd rather safe my ass in the after world.If I do not choose one of them I commit a sin: It is immoral to condemn both death.I should choose the most helpless one/the one with the best survival chances.

Thoughts 1,3 and 6 belong to the realm of Necessity (N) and Energy (E) and aim for the "least damage" result. Thoughts 2,4 and 5 belong to the realm of Morality (M). Is the choice being made again the result of a summation vector of N,E and M? Is one's choice faculty predestined by the idiosyncratic resultant N,E,M vector?

Is "gut feeling" and "feeling like it" a form of aligning your decision as much as possible to your N,E,M vector or is there a way to escape from algorithmic pattern based calculation considerations?

Don't we sometimes make choices, which are non-rational or even counter-intuitive, the motive being recalcitrance? Is a "what the heck, I'll just pick one" not the carrying out of a pure random picking algorithm?

Scientists, artists, musicians and other creative persons sometimes have breakthrough insights, moments of pure bliss, where they simply "see" the solution to a complex problem; where a sudden "inspiration" overrides the paradigmatic pathways and fixed action patterns of the basal ganglia.

Such utterly original ideas coming from moments of bliss, especially when coupled to a choice may approach the most, what we intuitively assume to be "free will".

Another example of apparent free will based choices is when we deliberately and consciously do the opposite: Willingly go against one's morality, by indulging in this or that bad habit, even if our Emotome and Cognotome tell us differently: The often heard expression is then "The flesh is weak". When this relates to e.g. possibilities of extramarital sexual intercourse, for many people the overriding force of our animal instincts should not be underestimated. The animal part of the brain then imposes a kind of artificial Necessity on the decision-taking routine, if the mating signal has been given by an attractive candidate of the opposite sex.

Only a combination of Energy (E) and morality (M) (e.g. I don?t want to hurt my present partner and my children and/or my religion considers this as a sin etc.) may then override such instincts. Again here a summation of both instinctive tendencies and the outcome of the Emotome? Cognotome will then determine the action to be taken. Not so much free will after all?

A third example of apparent free will and choice with an unpredictable outcome can be found in the realm of "Global brains" such as bacterial colonies, beehives and anthills. A priori, as long as resources are sufficient the system thrives by maintaining conservative habits i.e. by maintaining the paradigm.

Those individuals in the Global Brain, who have the role of Ben Jacob's "conformity enforcers" and "inner judges" will assure that the system can thrive as long as the status quo parameters apply. However, once resources become scarce a need will arise to probe different strategies so as to ensure the survival chances of the species. Those individuals in the colony having the role of "diversity generators" are indispensable to probe alternative strategies. These diversity generators must be able to boldly go where no one had gone before; they must be daring and blithely dive into the abyss the unknown.

It is of utmost importance, that these individuals are endowed with a great deal of free will, because they MUST take decisions, which go against common-sense. They must expose themselves to great dangers and have a huge chance of compromising their own survival in sacrifice for the greater good. The diversity generators must almost have a borderline personality: they must take absurd, random intuitive or counter-intuitive decisions. Whereas the vast majority of the diversity generators (I.e. the mutants in an evolutionary system) are not successful, a few of them are and bring the species anew chance for survival; a new way to exploit resources or new resources all-together The selection of the most promising strategy follows the evangelical adage "To he who hath it shall be given, from he who hath not, it shall be taken away". The outcome of sending out in parallel a multiplicity of diversity generating sentinels and pioneers is unpredictable.

The Global Brain system as a whole, if it is successful in the end then appears to have chosen and invented a solution, which for an observer from the outside appears to derive from a blissful insight, a truly intelligent, intuitive utterly original free will decision.

What the outside observer does not know from this prima facie observation is that the Global Brain has massively probed a multitude of solutions the vast majority of which have failed. He outcome appears to be free will, but is the result of a competition, a screening struggle for the most promising strategy. Perhaps our brains function in a similar way, such that when we seek a solution to a problem, we subconsciously launch a multitude of strategies in parallel. These strategies compete and only the most promising strategy is promoted to the level of consciousness, by exceeding a certain threshold after having been voted upwards in a Reddit-like system.

Perhaps this is the best way to mimic free will in an AI system: to allow multiple different strategies to evolve in parallel in a simulation and/or "real"environment and have the "intergroup tournament" establish which strategy is the most successful one. The up or down voting during the intergroup tournament screening is then carried out by online individuals and/or aLife agents, which can be considered as Ben Jacob's "resource shifters".

So "apparent free will" may emerge from making a vast amount of wrong, unsuccessful decisions/strategies and keeping the few promising successful ones.

The "making of mistakes" is both inherent and indispensable to this system as it relies on massive parallel probing: The system will learn the most from its mistakes and prune away non-promising strategies. It will not venture in those directions again. Thus by means of this massively parallel probing in simulation environments, the Global Brain builds its own heuristics.

Analogously in our lives there is nothing wrong about making mistakes as long as we learn there from. It is my experience, that making mistakes is more instructive and has a longer lasting impact than courses of action, which I happened to perform correctly, without knowing why. Thus this world, where we can make mistakes (a religious person would use the term "sin") is in fact the best of all possible worlds in the terms of Voltaire's "Candide", as it permits us to evolve consciously.

So for me the answer to the question "What is free will and is it needed for AI" is the following (and I do not claim to have come up with this definition all by myself; I combined some concepts of the aforementioned discussion and added the element of Ben Jacob's thesis thereto):

Free will can be characterised by a decision making process, which overrides rational and/or emotional/instinctive heuristics and which establishes a new heuristic on the basis of the seven step algorithm of Intelligence, whenever the system is under resource restrictions and has to deal with a choice having less than certain knowledge at its disposal. That algorithm means involving the elements of Ben Jacob's "Bacterial Wisdom" in the following manner:

Probing a diversity generating antithesis as a result of a stimulus from the inadequacy of the status quo thesis (e.g. a lack of resources), pattern abstraction, emergence of multiple alternative strategies, intergroup tournaments and distinction probing resulting in either niching or preferably symbiosis.

The most promising strategies ideally result in symbiosis, a unification of features toward which the system will strive. It will try to resonate with its new environment and thereby adapt to it.

As to the necessity for AI casu quo a webmind, it can be said that if the system is put under pressure due to scarcity of resources, it is indispensable it has a way to venture into the unknown to discover new resources.

Yet the system as a whole cannot venture into the unknown by making a big leap; that is simply too risky. A Webmind apparently disposing of free will is therefore ideally a Society-of-Minds, wherein the different individuals have been attributed the roles of conformity enforcers, inner judges, resource shifters and diversity generators, so that the system as a whole can safely sacrifice diversity generators on a massive scale, without compromising the integrity of the whole in order to find new promising strategies, heuristics and/or resources. Among the diversity generators it can be envisaged that there are different groups or ensembles each having a different degree of freedom to explore: there can be a gradual increase from rather conservative combinations of existing strategies that a diversity generator can propose until absurd wild combinations of unrelated strategies. Conservative diversity generators will still look for certain degrees of resemblances between existing strategies and combine parts of these linearly, when more freedom is allowed non-linear combinations can be used and the most free systems can have access to random combinations on the verge of the absurd. The diversity generators themselves are still algorithm bound, but a successful one will be seen by the outside world as having had a great deal of free will.

Evolution of colony based organisms and cell aggregates within an organism works in a similar way: think of the hypermutation process of the immune system.

Similarly we as human beings may fulfil the roles of the different types of individuals of a Society-of-Minds. The universe is probing for new solutions in order to propagate its seven-step intelligence algorithm and it also uses us to achieve that goal. From there to conclude that we live in a simulation is then almost mere semantics.

The seven-step algorithm of intelligence is a twofold dialectic process: The thesis (1), antithesis(2), pattern-abstraction (3) leading to emergence (4). From opposition (antithesis as regards a thesis) comes creativity (pattern abstraction) resulting in redefinition (emergence).

Free will -at least an apparent form thereof- is indispensable in this system to create the diversity generators. Whereas the conformity enforcers and inner judges who maintain the status quo are endowed with fairly little or almost no free will (and thereby maintain a form of inertia of the system), the resource shifters and even more the diversity generators are endowed with a great deal of free will so as to ensure leaps into the unknown. Absurd and unpredictable mutations, which are carried out on a massive scale result in intelligent decisions by pruning away the mistakes via a survival of the fittest protocol.

The free will of the most extreme diversity generators is then in fact a form of counter-intuitive absurdity; a borderline leaping into the abyss of the unknown just-for-the-kick-of-it. The diversity generators must be endowed with a certain amount of "mental insanity"so as to ensure the sanity of the system as a whole, of which they form part.

So it can be concluded that the free will of the orchestrating quasi-conscious faculty in such a webmind, is limited to the generation of submodules e.g. in the form of smaller sized copies of itself endowed with lesser resources, which submodules perform the ungrateful task of probing the unknown, whereas another greater part of the system is controlled and maintained by the conformity enforcers and inner judges in the form of a Life agents. Note that the faculty to generate apparent free will for its submodules does not necessarily entail genuine free will of the higher meta-levels as well: those are still governed by weighing and summation algorithms and choosing the best option, if needed using random picking when results are identical. Due to the selection of the best solution from the submodules the system as a whole displays "apparent free will", but the webmind has no such true faculty.

Antonin Tuynman was born on 22-02-1971 in Amsterdam. He studied Chemistry at the University in Amsterdam (MSc 1995, PhD 1999). Presently he works as a patent examiner at the European Patent Office in the field of clinical diagnostics. He has also passed the papers of the European Qualifying Examination for patent attorneys. Antonin has a developed a strong interest in futurism and the Singularity theory of Kurzweil. In his blog Awwwareness, http://tuynmix.blogspot.com/ Antonin proposes Artificial Intelligence concepts which may lead to the emergence of internet as a conscious entity.

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Different Rules, Different Schools - All Are To Be Loved

Perceptions of life experience vary vastly. Interpersonal traps are afoot by underestimating the power, and personally-held truths implicit, of differing traditions, values sets and histories. What's seen at the pointy end are assumptions made according to the wrong rules...

These 'failure to communicate' experiences evolve through a lack of recognition for the myriad schooling of life.

The gospel of God is the tolerance of all these schools - as we're personally concerned. Broad statement but it's true. It's the Christian way, despite what some extremists say.

Proof of the inherent godliness of this construct is the uniqueness of experience. Each one sees what looks like the same thing but through different eyes. If God wanted us all thinking similarly he'd have limited our range for understanding and perception.

Preaching FOR and Never Against

Instead of preaching against one school's ethos, we preach for ours, and we do it in that charismatic fashion called "love," an alluring 'magic' potion that works (in some way) every time. That's why God's inherent Love - it works as truth in and through the fabric of life. Always has done, always will do.

When we tell people their way is wrong - whether by politics, religion, spirituality or philosophy for living - we're really telling them we don't love them. This might seem like an over-simplification. It isn't.

People are easier to hurt than we think. It might be thought that in challenging people's paradigms they're not being attacked - for the issue is tackled, not the person - but the human mind and heart sees difference and therefore it's a threat. There are millions of different manifestations of this. The point is it's negative.

"Division," Not Divisiveness

When Jesus spoke of "division" in Luke 12:51 he meant the Gospel would divide, bringing peace to the ones embracing it, but persecution also for the significant spiritual difference created between even family members. Jesus never meant that believers are to be divisive in their methods, throwing down others' beliefs.

Division is a consequence of the Gospel, not the method for preaching it.

Preaching for the allure of Jesus' gospel in and through tolerance is the objective of the Christian life. Let's understand this doesn't have anything to do with preaching in the vocal sense. It's our manner, disposition, body language and favour to all humankind that sets people most apart as Jesus' kin - not what we say.

Respect for All Rules and Schools

When it's considered that everyone has come to the formation of themselves through deliberate and intentional processes for learning, having done their best to negotiate life, it's hard to not respect them. Just surviving life is a major accomplishment for many.

Of all assumptions to make-"all have engaged in 'good' learning"-the above is safe because it induces no harm. Of all generalisations to make-"all people"-the above is safe. It causes no harm to anyone. It honours their context. We can honour things without agreeing with them, because we're noting the importance of it to them; we choose love (of them) over fear (which is tackling the differences our beliefs can't stomach).

We do not harm ourselves or anyone else when the tolerance of inimitable respect flows through our psyches.

Repentance - An Individual Choice

It is up to individuals to repent of their own. As individuals, we can only make our repentance - as we hear God usher it through our spirit - and force nobody else's.

Until God reveals the truth to people - as they're to hear it - how are we to pass judgment? It's between them and God.

Copyright (c) 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Steve Wickham is a Registered Safety Practitioner (BSc, FSIA, RSP[Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min). His blogs are at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/ and http://tribework.blogspot.com/

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Philosophy of Coexistence

Society is the ultimate in human evolution. We live in a cohesive society which provides for all the human needs whether natural or nurtured. Cohesion is the most important factor in coexistence. Philosophy of coexistence is not a matter of debate but one of truth. Few of us really wonder the mechanics of our world and the society we live in. Cohesion and coexistence paved the way for human evolution and eventual domination of the planet. In earlier evolutionary phases of humanity, the acceptance of uniqueness of the individual paved the way for our development and progress. Humans tend to look to the nature for models for inspiration and emulate that is worthy. Usage of tools or body hygiene may have been picked from crows and cats. Use of shelters might have been forced by the nature and its vagaries but selection of domicile would have been influenced by cave dwelling animals. Plumage and cosmetics might be the result of watching the mating rituals of birds though the opposite gender in humans picked up the habit. Whatever the stage that was set and acted upon, humans were adaptable and agreeable to fellow humans. Animal kingdom had its own strict and rigid values that limited the individual development. Humans differed from animals in that basic sense. Animals had to tow the line or become an outcast. Humans accepted singular and distinctive tendencies and assimilated all positive (and some negative) traits into our culture. The basic philosophy of coexistence was established in character.

It is easy to make assumptions and deliberate on the theme. However, 'however' is a constant in human evolution. We progressed from stone-age to rocket science, however the progress had its consequences. We unraveled the secret of DNA and broke through the space barrier. However, we are still fighting maladies like cancer and AIDS. The world has shrunk due to supersonic travel and broadband. However we are yet to accustom ourselves to different beliefs and cultures. Pizza and sushi are ubiquitous, however we are yet to adopt family values or filial duties from the same cultures. Yoga and acupuncture are common practices however we are yet to assimilate collectiveness into our systems. Equality and level playing field is accepted as a fundamental right world over. However, we are yet to abandon caste and class and gender discrimination.

The next in line to the philosophy of coexistence is the medium of exchange. The proverb 'money is the root of all evils' does not stem from greed. Money or currency created isolated pockets of humankind. When the exchange was through barter interaction was unavoidable. Cohesiveness had meaning and only a cohesive society could exist under ideal conditions. When the medium of exchange was invented and put into practice, mankind changed its behavior. It created classes and creeds. Mankind lost its cohesiveness and the philosophy of coexistence took an about turn. It became coexistence between haves and have-nots. The change was inevitable considering the human tendency for change. However, the change became the 'root of all evils'. Discrimination became rampant and humanity was lost or acquired a different meaning. Philosophy of coexistence became that of serfdom and master class. It was not really coexistence but conformity. The world population attuned themselves to distinctive life styles.

The real philosophy of coexistence is the ability to accept different beliefs. Mankind developed the sense of Super Being since time immemorial. The original beliefs were about the unexplainable. Later this was refined to tenets and doctrines. The articulate spread beliefs which were logical and believable in existing circumstances. Arguments and postulations percolated to the commoners through reiterations and repetitions. Charisma and personality played its part in bringing cohesiveness to localized societies. However, this proved to be a detriment to the philosophy of coexistence. Different beliefs found it difficult to accommodate other ways of life. Conflicts occurred among different beliefs. One tried to dominate another and it lead to crusades. Two cultures stand out in this. Sanathan Dharma and Shinto were oriented towards oneness with nature and peaceful coexistence. These dogmas disregarded the human diversity and accepted the universal truth of uniqueness. The philosophy of coexistence is not dependent on give and take but of acceptance.

Author: Gangadharan Variyar
email: gangadharan_venoor@yahoo.co.in

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Humans and The Ever Ending Need to Pit Good Versus Evil Now Have A Problem

It has often been noted that to build a team, any type of team; society, religion, group, or committee you need an enemy, whether human or just an adversity to overcome. Human enemies are beatable, we intrinsically know this. Of course, if you can't find an adversity to triumph over such as a great flood, Tornado, Hurricane, Typhoon, Earthquake, Tsunami, Volcano, or other natural disaster, then you'll need a viable opponent you can conquer, something you can call; Evil!

When it comes to human leaders, well they will often choose various groups, such as wealthy people, or folks of other religions, nations, or some such thing as the bad guy "them" or they. And in doing so, many politicians and leaders inherently know that calling a group's leader "an evil person" works well in rallying the troops for the battle cry, or organizing the people in rising up against a common cause.

Yes, some evil doers are much better than others. Hitler was an excellent "evil doer" to go after, so too were other notables in history. Amedinejad, Kim Jong Il, Gaddafi and others are, hmm, well, indeed perhaps decent evil bad guys from an American perspective, but will they suffice for the loss of our most villainous evil enemy? After all, the mental images of Osama bin Laden living in a secret cave running Al Qaeda does make a rather interesting spy novel, with potentially decent movie rights to the script.

Unfortunately, he's been taken out (yes, that's a good thing), but now what? You see, we now need a new "evil bad guy" to hate, in order to hold together our societal fabric and build unity. Silly isn't it? But luckily, there are no end to potential things to call evil, and even Congress has asked to re-assign drug cartels as terrorists. Okay, and maybe they are, and that can work for now, but will it work long-term?

Often, there is something I've noted by those who lead by misdirecting hatred and negative energy to others, and that is; it all eventually comes around full-circle. For instance, Osama bin Laden labeled the West, and the US as evil, and looky what happened. Perhaps, our leaders will stop labeling things evil early and often, and rather concentrate on their own mirrors. And this is not to say that Osama bin Laden wasn't an evil thinker, doer, and man, certainly he was all of that and more, but perhaps it's time to reflect on all this looking at it from outside the box.

Maybe we all ought to learn from his mistakes prior to labeling another or a group of humans such things ourselves. Hey, don't shoot the messenger, it's all just philosophy after all - in mankind's struggle to create and conquer evil, and the on-going thirst to understand good versus evil. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 23,100 articles was a lot of work - because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off..

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Governments Have Always Been Mob Rule

Mob rule is the unfortunate state after which governing institutions have lost power - or Anarchy. After the legitimacy of the former governments has been eradicated by whatever populist or terrorist force, some group or groups then take control by pure force. These groups then disseminate rules of their own to the now-obeying populous, create governing rules within their commanding ranks, and execute plans to maintain or gain control over other competing groups. These groups can be of resistance ideologically, territorial rivals, or purely based on obtaining resources. So it seems that in this process of Anarchy-to-mob rule-to-competing groups, we will have come full circle once again. The state has returned, and after the many years that follow this competition amongst small groups for resources and territory the question then becomes: what is the best way to govern or disseminate resources to those that need them? From there, political science takes shape and more sophisticated groups and systems emerge until they fall into Anarchy once again...

So the point in all of the human nature hoopla mentioned above? - We have never gotten out of Mob Rule and never will...

If the definition of mob rule is the intimidation of the majority or a pure democracy by numbers, than is that not what we have now? As the masses being governed by the few, we have the power at any time to essentially rule as we see fit by any means necessary. And in turn, the legitimate political powers rule necessarily by force in order to keep order and protect all under their laws. Force is the key here. If they rule buy force or coercion as all governments must do in order to maintain their power, how are they any different than the small competing groups that form during a mob rule mentioned earlier?

read more at: http://globefront.com/2011/01/governments-have-always-been-mob-rule/

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Phenomenology and the Crisis of Civilization

Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot, which makes us man...
John Donne, The Ecstasy

I

With these dozen or so words the sixteenth century British metaphysical poet, preacher, and elegist, John Donne, foreshadowed the core challenge haunting our late post-modern world, while at roughly the same time a French philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes, was busy laying its oft-heralded foundations. Today we are heirs to the one and, like our forebear Descartes, skeptical of the other.

Our current, hyper-rational post-industrial culture is indebted to Cartesian doubt, along with its skeptical bifurcation of subject and object, mind and body, self and world. But this foundation itself rests upon prior constructions laid down by Aristotle and before him by the Greek Stoics. And even the categories of these ancients germinated in soils hearkening back yet further in human history, to the earliest divisions of labor and specializations that emerged with the burgeoning of urban life and the pre-reflective creation of institutional hierarchies six millennia ago. These several historical layers have left us with a diminished conception of thinking, dominated by Aristotle's syllogistic, and with a diminished conception of community, the post-modern state.

With the enforced separation of an objective, externalized universe, presumably independent of the knowing and contemplating subject, scientific hypothesis formation was able to provide us with an ever-expanding toolbox allowing us to manipulate and finally control that external environment. Such a set of tools would eventually be applied not only to objective nature, so conceived, and to those wild creatures populating the natural world, but to human beings as well. So our control and manipulation would finally extend to the very "soul of those who were by nature our own equals... our fellow men" (Augustine, de Doctrina Christiana).

It was not until early in the twentieth century, with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, another French philosopher, that the wrong turn initiated by Descartes was made clearly evident to trained philosophers. An earnest student of phenomenology and psychology, and with an uncanny commitment to the primacy of perception, Merleau-Ponty was able to disclose the fleshy "intertwining" of the sentient subject and the earthly sensuous, in short, the "body-subject (le corps-sujet), and the world-as-lived-by-the-body. It is this philosophical recollection of the inter-animation of body and world that may assist us in understanding the roots of our current crisis today - the crisis of Western civilization.

II

We "first-worlders" tend to believe that our sciences and our technologies represent the best human ingenuity has to offer, that they demonstrate our unquestionable historical advancement and justify our global supremacy. We feel that we have overcome the more primitive and undeveloped aspects of the origins of our species, which, not in the least, is demonstrated through our increasing mastery over nature. In his Introduction to Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger challenges this very assumption of the modern temperament.

The fundamental error that underlies [modern sciences, natural and human] is the opinion that the inception...is primitive and backward, clumsy and weak. The opposite is true. The inception is what is most uncanny and mightiest. What follows is not a development but flattening down as mere widening out... a perversion of what is great, into greatness and extension purely in the sense of number and mass. The uncanniest is what it is because it harbors such an inception in which, from over-abundance, everything breaks out at once into what is overwhelming.... (165)

Here Heidegger overturns, as he frequently does, the commonly accepted view of things. This world of ours, the product of modern science, rather than representing a development is really a regression - a truncation, abbreviation, and reduction of the original richness and fullness of existence to mere numerical coefficients, mere extensions in space-time. The world has become emptied out by modern consciousness, reduced in simplest terms to a set of mathematical equations or legalistic syllogisms.

In all his later work, Heidegger was possessed with this state of affairs and with the curious relationship obtaining between thinking, being, and truth. He came to see that the original nature of human dwelling, of our being-in-the-world, was covered over by the not-so-artful constructs of modern consciousness, and that the truth of being lay hidden in our collective forgetfulness. In fact, he came to rely increasingly upon the concept of truth as unconcealment or disclosedness, seeking to articulate the original intertwining of thinking and dwelling - a condition of openness that he termed Gelassenheit. He recovered the concept of truth from its ancient roots in Greek myth, deriving rather circuitously from the word lethe, the river of forgetfulness, one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology. The term lethe in classical Greek literally meant "oblivion," "forgetfulness," or "concealment." The word for "truth" on the other hand, from whence Heidegger rescues our own concept, is aletheia (a???I®????), meaning un-forgetfulness, un-concealment, or disclosedness. The event of truth would be exposing that which had been essentially concealed or hidden and letting it again shine-forth.

It is this condition of forgetfulness that Heidegger wants so desperately to reverse in his final writings; he wants to let-shine-forth what was forgotten and covered-over at the origins of modern thought even prior to Aristotle. It is for this reason that he looks to Greek mythology and to the pre-Socratics to help excavate the ground of this forgetting, and begin to uncover the rich origins of human dwelling, and our primal openness (Gelassenheit) to the mystery of Dasein or Being-there.

III

But it was with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's work that the locus of human dwelling was finally rediscovered philosophically, recovered from the oblivion of Western rationalism, scientism and metaphysics. It was his relentless focus on le corps sujet (the body-subject) that broke open that mysterious chiasm, the foundational "intertwining" of my body with the world-as-lived (my flesh, the flesh of the world), affording the very possibility of sentient experience - of touching and being touched, of seeing and being seen, of hearing and being heard, of smelling and being smelled, of tasting and being tasted (The Visible and the Invisible).

More important yet was his analysis of the problematic of unidirectional time, helping to break the spell of historical consciousness that had been cast like a pall over humanity for nearly six millennia. No longer were we to be chained to the treadmill of clock time's forward march. As he wrote in The Phenomenology of Perception:

We say that time passes or flows by. We speak of the course of time. The water that I see rolling by was made ready a few days ago in the mountains, with the melting glacier... If time is similar to a river, it flows from the past towards the present and the future. The present is the consequence of the past, and the future of the present. But this often repeated metaphor is in reality extremely confused. For, looking at the things themselves, the melting snows and what results from this are not successive events, or rather the very notion of event has no place in the objective world... if I consider the world itself, there is simply one indivisible and changeless being in it... The objective world is too much a plenum for there to be time. (411-412)

"...Too much a plenum for there to be time?" More than a challenging metaphor, this statement appears to be an indictment of Enlightenment hypothesizing and post-Enlightenment reasoning. Perhaps a not so indirect allusion to Descartes and Newton (De Gravitatione), Merleau-Ponty's words here suggest a fundamental overturning of our now commonsense view, while recollecting the pre-reflective nature of human dwelling within the fullness (plenus) of the lived-body-world, what he later calls "the thickness of the pre-objective present, in which we find our bodily being, our social being, and the pre-existence of the world." (421, italics mine)

Merleau-Ponty seemed aware that there is something hidden or forgotten underlying our mundane experience of this reconstituted and modified environment; something linking us to the earth we inhabit and enlivening our presence here - something more primal than the hypotheticals of space and time generated by our scientists and our specialists.

IV

Heidegger understood that the emergence of scientific hypotheses concerning pure extension and temporal duration, and so our commonsense conceptions of space and time, represented abstractions, transformations and perversions of a more primal and overwhelming experience of Being - perhaps what the Pacific Islanders referred to as "mana." For the Islanders, there was apparently no such thing as empty space or simple, objective material extension, as was the documented case among many other pre-urban tribes and hunter-gatherer societies; their world was filled with living, animate, sentient and powerful subjectivities lurking everywhere and residing almost anywhere - in the wind, the water, the stone, or the bush. (We first-worlders called it, condescendingly, animism.) So too, there is good reason to suggest that indigenous tribes had no genuine concept of pure linear duration either, no time, as we have come to know it, flowing from past to future (see Dorothy D. Lee, Freedom and Culture). The natural cyclicality of life breathed around, through, and within them: the rising and setting of the sun, the lunar cycle, seasonal changes, the repetition of ritual archetypal behavior. In Heidegger's terms what happened with the emergence of thought from these auspicious and pregnant beginnings was a "flattening out" of an originally uncanny and overwhelming primal moment.

To this day there are some excellent studies that correctly point to the spread of agriculture and the birth of cities as the principal focus of our changed material relations with the world. Yet even these analyses typically make the underlying and pre-thematic assumption that the perceptions and consciousness of our preliterate, pre-civilized predecessors were roughly identical to our own; that we perceive the same world and experience our place therein as did our "primitive" forebears. But to infer that primal humans reasoned and conceptualized as we do today would be an unsustainable inference (see Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances). Indeed, the opposite assumption is more likely the case; that they reflected quite differently on the plenum and on themselves than we do, and that this was in large measure a result of how differently they perceived and felt themselves within the world. There is certainly nothing in the anthropological, paleontological, or ethnographic record that would contradict such an assumption. In fact, there may be much, both in mythology and ethnography, to recommend it (see Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History, Daniel Everett, Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes).

Specifically, our conceptions of pure extension and duration, of mere materiality and unidirectional time, themselves conceptually linked to a reification and radicalization of an objective and internalized sense of self - removed from the world and observing it from afar - locked us into a specific place in history and to our own unique histories; this is a large part of that difference, and this is largely responsible not only for the emergence of civilization, but for the evolving crisis we now face. It is to this primeval transformation of consciousness that we must look for the inchoate but emergent beginnings of our crisis, even at the misty origins of Western civilization.

V

There appears now to be a fork in the road we are traveling; but since, as we have suggested, the present is all we really have, there is not much sense in talking about having passed the point of no return. So, while the culture itself may appear to be locked in a self-inflicted death spiral, each of us still has a choice. Let's briefly consider the options.

On the one hand, we could simply do nothing at all and allow calendrical time, the relentless march of civilized history, to define us and continue its course unabated. In other words, we can maintain our commitment to this ancient trajectory that was set in motion as far back as Sumer, codified later by Aristotle, and more fully articulated in the Enlightenment and beyond; or we can personally choose to minimize or even terminate our participation in the unfolding spectacle, and find a more compelling way of being-in-the-world.

This brings us to the second option - recollection. We can each personally make an effort to recollect that genetic memory trace, recalling from within the hiddenness and forgetfulness of our own isolated egos the "subtle knot" that grounds our primal intertwining with the world-as-lived-by-the-body. In this way we might experience again that feral openness which first made the earthly sensuous and our own sentience possible.

The bigger challenge is for the collective, and the footprint we have made as a civilization. There have been global reverberations from this change of perception and consciousness that were set in motion so many millennia ago. There has been ecological, social, psychological, and economic fallout. How do we find a footpath back from those hypotheses, both social and natural scientific, that have led us to this point and continue to bind us collectively to this spectacle? It seems to me that Merleau-Ponty's reflections, while necessary for understanding the specific gravity of our situated presence, may not be sufficient for overcoming our current dilemma and slowing down or reversing its momentum or its negative effects. But, perhaps with some effort we can yet find something that will at least reduce this cold tyranny of reason and its brainchildren - the syllogism and the modern state.

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters... State, where the slow suicide of all - is called 'life.' (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The New Idol)

After a ten-year career in academia, Dr. Krolick spent the next twenty years in the executive ranks of several of America's largest international firms. Sandy has spent many years traveling around the world, including parts of Asia, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe. Retiring from business at fifty, he recently returned to the USA with his wife Anna, after teaching for several years in the central Siberian Steppe, at the foot of the Altai mountains in Barnaul, Russia. His latest book, The Recovery of Ecstasy: Notebooks from Siberia, is available at http://www.amazon.com/Recovery-Ecstasy-Notebooks-Siberia/dp/1439227365/?tag=widgetsamazon-20 or visit him @ http://www.kulturcritic.com/.

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