"Procedure" and "Data Structure" - A Distinction without a Difference

"The inner coming-to-be or genesis of substance is an unbroken transition into outer existence, into being-for-another, and conversely, the genesis of existence is how existence is by itself taken back into essence."
- Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (paragraph 42)

What happens in computer programs?

Classically, an algorithm is a well-defined procedure that takes input and returns output. The input is some piece of data. You know, a number; or string. The procedure turns this number into another number; or a string into a number. Or whatever.

Literarily, a crystallized objective object comes in. Upon it acts the action of a thousand rapid hands too quick to see. Finally, fresh out of the fire, the result pops out, separate from its furnace, like a piece of toast from the maw of the toaster.

Briefly, Data. Process. Data.

We didn't come out of the womb knowing this pattern though. We had to be taught. A teacher had to guide our hands, pointing, "Look! Those numbers! That's data. That sentence! It's data too." Then we saw the process of the data's transformation. It changed from this data, to that data. And this change, our teacher called, "Procedure." And we saw the names, that they were very good.

And so we learned a pattern. To call this or that, a "data structure" or a "procedure." We followed our teacher in not calling a number a "procedure." Otherwise, we would really confuse things. And we would get a slap on the wrist ... for being wrong about the pattern we have learned.

Once we recognize that we were taught these things, that we entered into a pattern, we might begin to wonder whether we should take our pattern with the upmost seriousness. Shall we step out of our pattern to see what is real in it and what is mere habit?

And so we invite ourselves to consider our concepts as they are, uncommitted to where our results may lead us (say lead us to a slap on the wrist), and our old rules have left our mind for the moment. Uncommitted inquiry.

In other words, let us enter into the world of philosophy.

Let's look at something very "obviously" a piece of data: the number five. What is it to a computer? ( Really, what is it to a programmer? Computers don't really regard things. )

Five is something such that if it is next to a plus sign and another number, it returns the sum.

We might as well have the following.

def 5 (op, summand):
     if(op == '+'):
           if(summand == 1):
                 return 6
           if(summand == 2):
                 return 7
      .
      .
      .

The same goes for multiplication and other operations that the processor is designed to do when it "sees five."

And this procedural knowledge, "what to do," is the entirety of the number five to a computer program.

The same goes for all numbers. And the same for all data. For a computer has to know what to do with the data. But it needs the data to tell us what precisely this is. And so data itself tells the computer what to do. Thus data is procedure.

On the reverse side, "what to do" must be stored someplace in a computer. That is, a procedure is also a thing within a computer program. A piece of hard data.

Thus data and procedures don't seem all that different. The shocking thing occurs when we consider a description of an algorithm with this insight, "Data is processed into data." The "data" part processes the "is processed into" part. And the result is a process. Movement upon movement! This is enough to make one's head spin. Each part seems the mover and the moved simultaneously. And we realize we can no longer look at the computer program from the world of computer programming. For computer programming has static things which are acted upon.

And we come down from this wild experience, tired; our movement and thought we ease -- we make for ourselves an arrest in our experience. But with wonder at how vast our world is; how limited the world of computer programming is. But we like our old game, and we enter into it again, but with the awareness that procedures and data are merely distinctions without a difference.

Nietzsche on Churchianity

'At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?' 

Matthew 12:1-5

'Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.'

- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Keep those quote in mind.

Let’s think of the smarmy boy in your elementary school class. You know, the one that would tattle on you for breaking a small rule. He would do this to be spiteful. Or because he felt slavish towards the rules. Maybe get back at you for something. Your mom might have told you that he was acting that way because he was jealous. Nevertheless, the kid’s not wrong. You broke a rule and you will get punished for it. And the kid will certainly feel smug. Even if your mom is right, that he acts out of insecurity, the kid will feel smug.

And what did you really want to do? You wanted, I’m sure, to call him out on all his bullshit. But probably, you were a bit timid, were a bit confused, and didn’t yell at the kid in front of the class and show him for what he was. You defaulted to the easy path: a good boy; and let him get away with his antics. And you were left feeling dissatisfied.

Well, Nietzsche took another path: a cleverer one. For him, the tattle tell is christians as a collective. And he does call them out.

Let’s look again at the the spiteful boy. He uses the “rules” and “goodness” in a funny way. He might put on airs of goodness, like give the teacher a big, innocent simile as he devilishly prepares your destruction. He doesn’t really believe it, it seems. There’s something weak about his attitude. Destructive, yes ... but afraid too ... uncommitted to life or something … In any case -- there you are, you are called “wrong,” or “evil” and you do not do what you really feel you ought to do because you want to have the protection of being “good.” But now … you are being just as cowardly as your enemy … It’s unsatisfactory.

Using masks of righteousness, purity, and knowing the right things … hmmm …

What Pharisees does this remind you of?

Let us stay away from this attitude. Be bold. Love.

Let us follow King David. Let us follow Christ. And go beyond “good” and “evil.”

New Blog

Now I'm co-authoring at Gene Callahan's blog. So please be diverted over there for more divertissement.

Rendering Unto Caesar: Christianity and the State?

When Christ said "Render unto Caesar what is Caesars and to God's what is God's," he gave a non-answer. For the question for us is "what is Caesar's and what is God's?" But the answer for the religious person is simple: all is God's. So then, what is Caesar's?

In this post, I make an attempt to adumbrate my already hazy vision of Christianity's current relation to the state in the West. So the content of this post is a shadow of a shadow. But this sketch shall serve as a benchmark for my grappling with this enormous issue, a benchmark that should reveal how little I know at the moment.

By state I will restrict myself to what we normally mean by government and the functions it provides. So I speak of laws, the execution of those laws, and the people who execute them.

Christianity in the recent West has largely distanced itself, I believe, from an active role in the shaping of this institution. This is very curious: for religion is bound to law in the strictest sense. Religion and law are about what ought to be proper behavior. The appearance of this curiosity seems to be due to the belief that what is God's is the spiritual; and what is Caesar's is the worldly. These realms are thought to be separate.

To define things as they are thought, it seems to me, further: What is spiritual is soteriological knowledge. What is worldly: everything irrelevant to the salvation of man. Again, the vision of Christ, the correct understanding and rehearsal of Christian doctrine, the fact that our actions demonstrate correct knowledge of these doctrines: all this belongs to the realm of Christianity. And to the world, the realm of government, is delegated the responsibilities that get in the way of this sacred path.

In short, as things seem to be for the majority, Christianity is the rough-beaten path to the sun; Government is the task force that cleans the path, not moving along it.

There have been many thinkers who have challenged this conception; T.S. Eliot and Dostoevsky are the foremost in my mind. And it is with these I currently stand, and it is for the reason I gave in the beginning of this essay; but the answer of where we go is hazy.

How Do We Better Things?

No one can expect to, by his will alone, effect social change in a group. Each man's will is not the will of any other individual; and so, no one has ultimate power over the direction of a group. It is important at the outset to realize that this is how things are. In order to have any hope of positive change, we must understand what we can change for the better.

But neither can a man expect to effect change in his own will. For how can a will will what it will not? It is a contradiction. Thus, neither our own will nor the will of our neighbor can we change.

What then are we to do? The good news: not everything is will. As conscious persons, we have much in our world that we have to work with besides "self-improvement". In that world, we have a lot to pay attention to. It seems that by paying attention to what we see as good now, leads to the development of good in the future. Conversely, refusing to enjoy the good, we refuse the only thing that will bring happiness to us.

Thus, our attitude toward affecting change should be one of gratitude towards the good we now experience. It is one that cultivates what we have, and it does not seek to go beyond and do things it cannot. We can't give ourselves new material to work with, we have to do with what we've been given. And so we should do what we can: "do whatever our hand finds to do."

New Project: The State of Christianity

It has been said, by Charles Williams, I believe, that Christianity always seems to be dying, but somehow it keeps coming back with ever new vigor. Today, the idea of its dying, is at the forefront of my mind. To encourage it to either die faithfully or live wholesomely, is a task that not only may help others who find the situation bewildering: but also will help me understand too.

Among the concerns of mine are
- the church's organization in the current political climate
- our understanding of theology after the scientific revolution
- christianity's teachings to young men and women after the sexual revolution

A major focus of this blog will be to analyze the state of Christianity throughout the world and then (perhaps) to give my take on what it could do to improve. In this way, I realize that I will be criticizing many who are better than me; that I am a drop in an endless sea of opinion; and that (hence) the only chance of good work is by great personal growth and by divine blessing.

But it is to be an honest attempt, and if it helps me and others understand our current situation and what to do about it just a little better, then it is worth it.

New Project: Programming in Everyday Life

Currently, I'm reading The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It makes the following claim:

Educators, generals, dieticians, psychologists, and parents program. Armies, students, and some societies are programmed. An assault on large problems employs a succession of programs, most of which spring into existence en route. These programs are rife with issues that appear to be particular to the problem at hand. To appreciate programming as an intellectual activity in its own right you must turn to computer programming; you must read and write computer programs--many of them. 

The authors turn from our encounter with these patterns in everyday life to the theoretical study of these patterns in computer science. I'm going to reverse the movement they're making here. I'll note down their theoretical considerations, then I'll suggest practical conclusions we may draw from programs.

EAIM: Modes of Experience

"You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together."
- Deuteronomy 22:11

Your sense of sight is color and form. Your sense of hearing is sound.  Though they both inform you about the nature of your world of experience, we can't thereby say, "I am hearing the color blue." It's a confused idea. The world of hearing has nothing to do with the world of sight. They are separate worlds of experience.

While this much is obvious, Michael Oakeshott clarifies other, less obvious, kinds of confusion. By the way he sees things, the worlds of Science, History, and Practice are towards each other like sight and hearing are towards each other.

The Rationalist is ... (paraphrased Oakeshott) ...

... always standing for independence from all authority except 'reason'
... the enemy of mere tradition
... contentious against authority
... skeptical (for him, nothing is beyond the criticism of 'reason')
... optimistic (for him, 'reason' can always find any thing's value)
... fortified by the belief that 'reason' is universal in man
... an individualist
... finds it hard to believe that another "who thinks honestly and clearly
can think differently than himself"
... insistent that his own experience is foundational to his 'reason's' materials
... ready to reduce experience to principles
... without peace in unclarity
... domineering over experience
... without appreciation for the minutiae of experience
... gnostic
... uncomprehending of the dictum - Oportet Quaedam Nescire
... a well trained, but not educated, mind
... ambitious to be a "self-made-man," not to live as part of the experience of mankind
... preternaturally deliberate in his life plans
... not a passive experiencer
... not sure how humanity has survived without his 'reason'
... living every day as if it were his first
... of the opinion that habits are failures
... temperamentally distrustful of time, hungry for eternity
... nervous and irritable about anything topical and transitory

IQ and Wisdom

IQ is ... the rate which a person can correctly experience things.



Wisdom is ... the fear of ignoring what experience tells you to do.

EAIM: Truth and Reality

"... on Earth as it is in Heaven ..." - the Lord's prayer

Many a well-intentioned, open minded person, when seeing a way of thought differing from his own will cope with the adage, "we'll that's you're truth."

There are many relatable examples of this. Some good and some bad.

(i) In an unintentionally dismissive case, a "scientifically" minded person might say, "Yes, you're religion is a nice way to cope with the harsh struggle of reality: it is true in so far as it accords with the fact of survival mechanism in group solidarity; and this is your primitive way of expressing it." He says, "that's your truth" with emphasis on "that." For him, his whole world is made of facts, and whatever departs from a hard fact is a silly falsehood, either harmless, stupid, or dangerously wrong, but definitely ignorant. For him science is the means to ascertain what is definitely true and false. There is no grey area between facts and non-facts.

(ii) With a feeling of ease, not needing to be discriminating, a rich young hedonist spends all to experience all: bars, art-shows, sexual conquests. Each novelty excites him momentarily. And the moment is all that is lived for, without care. He, therefore, can especially enjoy whatever is around him, involves himself in that exact moment without past and future in mind. All is merely a show experienced to excite himself, and his own experience is all he cares about. If he actually momentarily recognizes the gleam of eternity in another's eye, a ray of religious light, he probably would brush it off with a, "we'll that's your truth," meaning, "don't bother my world of experiences; keep to your own."

(iii) A tourist in a foreign land, say, an American in rural Peru, realizes he does not comprehend the aesthetics of women wearing bowler hats, or of single houses taking generations to build, or the communal respect for the Catholicism particular to South America; and though he knows a little Spanish, he is far from fluent; nevertheless he accepts it as a way of life that could have a meaning to those who know it well, and he accepts it as a truth that has some place in his own, but cannot yet fathom it. And in the midst of all his travel, a curiosity pricks him to investigate. He says, "that's your truth," meaning, "I know something of what I'm seeing, but this world is so surprising and interesting, that I might have my whole world turned upside down by what I'm seeing. I had better pay attention."

Oakeshott would condemn the first and second for not living the the real world: the first does not care to take the responsibility of existence on his shoulders: he wants to live in the part that makes him comfortable; and the second arrogantly refuses to realize that the facts he knows are partial; they are partial because they are part of his truth, and his truth isn't the whole. He does not comprehend that science is a narrow world, that it only partially captures his experience: it could never explain to him the meaning of beauty or explain why the color red appears red. (Further, he does not even realize that science isn't all that an objective enquiry, free from passion, risk and error.)

The third gets it right. He acknowledges that his world of experience is his own, but he also sees that there is more to know. He does not believe that he knows nothing of reality at all. How else could he be excited to learn about the world around him? But he has a lot to learn, and his learning will change how he sees all things: his relation to beauty, to family, and to the meaning the word "God."

To live in the real world is to follow your truth where it leads. Our truth makes contact with reality when we follow where it leads. For we don't create the feeling of necessity that pushes us to know the world. No. This feeling is the calling of Reality for us to know it. Thus, as Oakeshott says, "Experience, truth and reality are inseparable." 

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover 
Is that which was the beginning; 
At the source of the longest river 
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for 
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-- 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded 
Into the crowned knot of fire 
And the fire and the rose are one. 

- T.S. Eliot in Liddle Gidding

The Purpose of Art

To believe that art exists for
a purpose is to be confused.
For those who do not see this,
I would ask you to ask yourself,

"What is the purpose of a landscape painting?"
And your inventing mind might invent a legitimate purpose
for that painting.

It could alleviate melancholy.
Maybe enchant the cubicled mind.
But to all these legitimate purposes we could add another:
our rectangular painting could serve as a dinner plate.

If you say that being a dinner plate is very different than being art,
I rest my case. For it is something like a prose article,
mascarading as a poem.

Humility

"And man, who is part of your creation, wishes to praise you, man who bears about within himself his mortality, who bears about within himself testimony to his sin and testimony that you resist the proud." - Augustine, Confessions

True humility is humility before the truth. Recognizing reality before us, we abandon our egos. To be deferential to any ego, is the opposite of humility.

"The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless." - T.S.Eliot, East Coker

The New World and the Old Made Explicit: Excursus on the Meaning of Life

Only through time time is conquered. 

- Burt Norton

Exploration leads to new cartography. (Americas appear on the European globe; experiments modify theory; relationships lead to words of promise)

New cartography to new questions. (The antique globe suggests possible trade routes; theory has sudden holes; promises suggest future joy or incongruences leading to fissures )

New questions to further exploration. (Poking around for the Northwest Passage; inventing the Hadron Collider; kindling of passion, searching for betrayal)

The only real satisfaction is an entire world understood; the entirety of the terrain traversed, the relations of the whole complete and coherent. The pulling together of all joys, facts, and accomplishments. In every world we are to explore, every world we are given, there is a world to be achieved so that greater satisfaction is to be had. And this is where we find ourselves. Human beings are to explore to achieve satisfaction.

To obtain achievement in this direction is to obtain greater satisfaction. As is stated in The Good Book, human being's purpose is to cultivate a garden for their own enjoyment. And this enjoyment is life. Life is nothing other than complete satisfaction.

But this cultivation is a pain. For we must abandon our old conceptions, abandon everything our self clings to in order to survive. And this is death.

Hence as poets have long known, death and life are inseparable. To achieve life, one must go by the way of death.

Hence also, the scientists. A cell divides. A tree degrades into nutrients for other trees. Theories give way to better ones.

Hence also, the religious. Self denial leads to self fulfillment. And further than this: complete death, leads to complete life: death in service to The Way, leads to Resurrection. And Resurrection is no metaphor, it is the fullness of this process itself.

Truth is an Amoeba

Truth is an amoeba. You might take this to be metaphor; but so taking, you would be only half-right. I mean it literally as well as metaphorically: truth is an amoeba. Still my seriousness will be in doubt; how can a simple-minded (or rather, no-minded) single celled organism be related to truth itself, let alone be it?

There are many apparent problems with my identification. Truth is thought to be an abstract concept, not a concrete happenstance, not a living, changing organism, and not a humble thing. But all should become clear in consideration and meditation on what truth is. In reflection and in surprise (perhaps), we will come to see that truth is indeed literally an amoeba.

Since truth is literally an amoeba, we can start on either end. We can consider truth and, under the microscope, discover that it is a little organism; or we can go the other way: see in the amoeba’s grasping its environment, eating its prey, the entirety of all qualities of truth. But for a full identification, it seems necessary for both ends to meet; otherwise, we might think one might be fooled into thinking that an amoeba is truth, but truth is not an amoeba.

Truth => Amoeba

Truth is something we strive for, yes. And we don’t strive for an amoeba, certainly. Nevertheless truth is something recognized: we notice it when we have it. When we make a discovery, learn how to perform an action, realize a relationship; a rush of satisfaction, saying that the pieces of our life’s puzzle has come together. And when the pieces fit in any puzzle, we say we have gotten things correct. Our satisfaction tells us we have achieved truth.

Reality is a big puzzle however, and so truth is something we always pursue. So in what way do we pursue the truth? We use our bodies to probe the world around us, taking in ideas to digest pieces of digestible environment to satisfy our hunger for truth. This process is very ameoba-like, suggestive that truth is like an amoeba’s striving for mastery of its environment.

Yet some would say that this is metaphor. Truth-seeking is an ameoba-like process. But truth isn’t an amoeba. And I would say “no.” Truth is literally an amoeba. The way we should think about it is this. Truth-seeking and truth should not be strictly differentiated. They are in fact the same. When we see this, we see that “truth is an ameoba-like process.” But then! We see that being amoeba-like is very much being an amoeba. Then we realize what I’ve been saying all along: truth is an amoeba.

If truth-seeking and truth are utterly different, then it turns out these two words no longer have any meaning. For then how can we say our truth-seeking is real truth-seeking if truth is not an experience: namely, the satisfaction of achieving coherence in one’s world of experience? Thus truth is an experience, and part of an action, the action of seeking-truth. And we cannot refer to truth-seeking without an idea of truth. And again, the idea of truth cannot be separated from truth seeking. For how do we think of truth, or how do we realize what it is? It is only by reflection upon our truth-seeking endeavors. Thus truth is an ameoba-like process.

But how is being an amoeba similar to undergoing amoeba like processes? Basically this can be said by turning the old phrase: “if it looks like an amoeba, smells like an amoeba, and talks like an amoeba, it is an amoeba.” Thus truth is an amoeba.

Amoeba => Truth

But literally? Ok, I exaggerated, in a sense. Truth isn’t literally that squishy single celled organism. But nevertheless truth is an amoeba, literally; and I do not speak out of both sides of my mouth in saying this. I am simply not using language in as strict a sense as you might like it. But my meaning is frank and clear, and though you may not like it, you know what I mean. And when language conveys meaning clearly, it is mere nitpicking and mere nagging to quibble over words.

And really, given the above, in what way is truth not an amoeba? In no significant sense. You might have the following objections. (a) Truth is disembodied, and an amoeba is embodied. (b) Amoebae are not sentient. Truth needs experiencers for it to be considered truth.

But we will see that each of these objections is ill-founded.

(a) We have seen above that truth is something we reach using whatever embodied faculties we have. And since truth-seeking is embodied, and since any strict demarkation between truth-seeking and truth is absurd, we must say that truth is embodied too.

Further if we see life as part of one big tree where what came before and what came after is all connected, where we are ourselves connected to the amoeba, our bodies are related to the amoeba, then even my “admission of exaggeration” was really unnecessary, and we really can say that truth is an amoeba. 

(b) A last objection would be this: truth is appreciated only by minds, and minds are not physical entities. Minds think. Amoeba don’t think in a meaningful sense; they don’t apprehend truth. In actual fact, this objection is the worst, and it has nothing going for it. For truth we have seen is an embodied affair,  and attempts to separate our minds from our bodies, our faculties of investigation, is futile. Sentience must then be seen as the purposeful investigation of the world. Both persons and amoeba do this, only at different levels and for different purposes.

In closing, I’ll repurpose an old proverb.

Go to the amoeba, you close-minded; consider its ways and be wise; which has no fixed position within its world, yet lives and dies, steadily gaining command over its world, striving to gain mastery, and not regretting its humble position.

EAIM: Can We Know Reality?

"Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality."
- T.S. Eliot in Burnt Norton

Let's suppose that we can't. This means we know something about reality.

Let's say we can't know whether or not we know something about reality. This means we're saying we know something about reality.

Looks like we're stuck knowing reality.

EAIM: The Nature of Truth

"What is truth?"
- pontius pilate

"The truth is out there," is the hope of the X-File's FBI agents. Perpetually foiled, they nevertheless strive to uncover the relationship between the government and extraterrestrial life. Various layers of secret society turn every new piece of evidence into merely greater enigma. In this way the story progresses continually leaving both the agents and their TV audience unsatisfied, wondering whether the show's mantra is merely a false hope.

In our most gripping life pursuits, we are driven by the idea that "the truth is out there." However, our answers lead to more questions, and we have to wonder if the forces of concealment will forever hold our prize from our grasp. After prolonged searching and frustration, a dark doubt may begin to creep: Can we reach the truth at all?

Into this doubt comes Michael Oakeshott's meditation on the nature of truth. First, he says, we have to stop thinking of truth as something that is "out there," not something we don't already have knowledge of. For if the truth is something we have no clue about currently, we will never be able to reach the truth. For we wouldn't know what would count as the truth.

Oakeshott would make this analogy, I believe. Saying "the truth is out there" without knowing what would satisfy our search is like saying the following: I want to get to a place, but I don't know what it would be like or when I would find it.

Even if we accept this answer, it seems to miss the point: the FBI agents really don't know the truth they seek. And in general we feel the strain of not having the truths we want. Our disappointment is that we don't feel satisfied in our particular pursuit. It does not matter that we know some truths, we want to know a particular truth.

To this, Oakeshott would rephrase things into something even more shocking, but after consideration, what can only be the case: yes, the FBI agents don't know the particular truth they seek, yet they do know what would count as an answer. They know that an answer must accord with the knowledge they already have. Thus they already know something of the truth, and it isn't entirely "out there" at all. This means that all the truths we could possibly know, we already know a little about them.

After we digest this shock, we should come to realize that Oakeshott is using the word "truth" in a funny way. For him, truth isn't a "thing" at all. It's something that comes in degrees. We know more or less of it. It's a feeling about how the facts fit. It's satisfaction.

About "what is out there" the FBI agents know some truth, but they don't know complete truth. But we can turn the problem around. The evidence the FBI agents do have, that is, the concrete alien DNA samples, the creepy sound recordings, and the eye-witness accounts; all these! they only know partially. They certainly have the information, but they don't know what it means. In other words, they don't know the truth even about their evidence!

It is very important to let this sink in. We can apply this thinking to everything we know. We have information which we think are facts, but until we solve every question, we don't know the full meaning of these facts. In all actuality, what we think is important, might, when a new piece of knowledge comes to us, seem unimportant after all. And what is unimportant, might take on a whole new significance.

But in all this we might become dismayed. For this makes our whole reality topsy-turvy. Now it seems, we can't count on anything to stay still for us to surely reach the truth. Should we just give up on it all?

Not at all. Again as Oakeshott says, We do have knowledge of truth. Even though it is in degrees, we still have it. Though new information modifies what we know, the new information never implies that we should reject all of what we knew before. The only thing these realizations should spur us on to is humility. Since nothing is fixed for us, the only thing for us to do is follow what the experience says we should conclude. We are responsible for no more.

"There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced my monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless."
- T.S. Eliot
in East Coker

"I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth." - 1 John 

EAIM: The Character of Experience

Like many a good philosophical meditation, Experience and Its Modes begins with the definition of a key term: experience. Since experience is all-encompassing, it is important to note that whatever the definition, it is merely useful for a given purpose, and after my brief summary, I'll give my two cents as to what that is.

Oakeshott defines experience in an odd way. He says that all experience is coterminous with judgement. It is an initially shocking definition because we normally think of judgement as that which aids in formal deduction. We know we don't encounter the world in this way all the time. But further, it is strange in that judgement seems to be beyond experience: it is that force which moves us from mental state to mental state. Oakeshott's clarification is helpful and it broadens our outlook beyond these limited ideas.

Definition: Experience = judgement, which is a recognition of 'this,' not 'that.' It is a reflective modification of experience

In the likeness of a mathematical proof, this definition is demonstrated in the following way: he shows that experience cannot be either more than or less than judgment. Once this is shown we may conclude that experience and judgement are one and the same.

What is said to be less than judgement, is sensation; what is more, intuition. To be full, his argument must cover all of its bases: what is said to be more, and what is said to be less, must fall on the same spectrum, the same axis; and all that is experience must be imagined to fall on this axis. And the axis is said to be that of recognition of 'this' not that. In sensation, supposedly, we see a bare 'this.' It is not related to a background of 'not that.' In intuition, the 'this' not 'that' melts into complete union. There is no this or that, everything is seen as a mere oneness.

First, I'll give a justification of this spectrum as representative of all we could plausibly experience. In experience there are always things to experience; that is, there are always "this"s; and it appears, we have different "this"s which find themselves related within a world. These relations could go so far as identification, for even in two different "this"s, the relations of one to the other may be exhaustive: one completely defines the other. And these thoughts seem to exhaust what we mean by experience.

Now Oakeshott proceeds to say that the extreme ends of our spectrum are not actually experiences; at best, they are limiting concepts conceived by their likeness to certain features of judgement, but not actually concepts which can count as experience apart from all the features of judgement.

Sensation = Judgement. In imagining what we mean by pure sensation, we realize that we never in fact have this so-called experience. For in recognizing a "this," we in fact recognize the "this," that is, it appears identifiably within the field of our current experience. It is found somewhere within a whole in such a way that when it appears, it already bears relation to all within it.

Judgement = Intuition. [Here, I depart a bit from Oakeshott's train of thought. I don't understand it well enough.] In imagining what we mean by pure intuition, we realize, again, that we are dealing with an abstraction and not an experience (i.e. being confused).  Under this idea of intuitive experience, 'knowledge of' and 'knowledge about' are utterly distinct. So then, because judgement never gets at the reality, it is superfluous. So then "sensation" is superfluous. But this leaves only the process of identification for recognizing reality. We no longer have recognition. And it all seems to fall apart here. For all data is always given, nothing is added or removed. And reality is not in our experience static.

Why This Definition

Since it encompasses everything that we know, "experience" seems to thereby be the broadest term possible. Thus, there would seem to be an infinite ways of defining it or getting it across. In a sense, since intuition, judgement, and sensation are distinctions without differences, we could have defined reality as any of these.  So then we may ask why "judgement?" It primes the mind to understanding what we mean by truth; and truth is a domain in which judgement has a natural home: criticism has been the way of the west since Descartes.

Personal Knowledge: Summary

Personal Knowledge is a simple book with a simple plan. The whole is this, understanding the world is a practical endeavor. As such, we need to practice the art of understanding the world. And as practice, understanding the world is neither a skill nor knowledge we can understand through the mere reading of books.

He describes this view of the world through the history and psychology of science. And to the end of this world-description, the book has a very natural four-fold plan. (1) We note that skillful knowing is present in even the most objective of sciences. (2) This note spurs our considering the relationship between objective articulated knowledge and our subjective tacit skill in knowing. (3) These meditations now beg the question, How can we be confident in our knowledge, seeing that it relies on our temporary finite and error prone selves? And (4) our answers point us to an understanding of all of life, which shows the same process of personal knowledge. This understanding is reflected upon and gives us direction in understanding how we must relate to other knowing selves and what our relations say about our place in the universe.

Because we are discussing the nature of knowledge and our place as knowing agents, it is natural to look at all aspects of our lives, from science, to politics, to religion. And these diverse reflections bolster and support and help us understand the main idea: knowledge is personal, communal, and essential for the fullness of life.

Experience and Its Modes :: Introduction

Never have I liked the term "Nerd." In its own right, the image of a prototypical nerd is repulsive. A nerd is a pocket-protector-wearing, glasses-pushing, nasal, winy, weakling who knows all the book facts, but knows nothing of sometimes-stupid, in-the-moment fun of actually living. At a party, or during work, or inside the church, the nerd breaths his athematic breath neurotically and obsessively classifying things in a thin mutter, "this, not that. A not B." His frail being has no relevance, no gravity, and he is a wisp, the ghost all men wish to avoid becoming. Ghosts don't leave a mark on the world, and those with asthma are neither feared nor respected. They don't do the world good, except indirectly, a la silicon valley. And so even to think of the nerd is unpleasant.

Who are the nerds? Every university professor who actually does his work. Every science-lover. Every historian. Everyone with the least bit academic bent, and everyone who dares to enjoy what he finds in a book as a form of art.

But the application of "nerd," this is where my real dislike comes in. It's an irritating word because it is useful. It describes our situation, what exists in our collective imagination, our collective unconscious. Where is there a man who knows a lot and isn't a nerd? Not near and hard to stumble across. And it is difficult to think of an actual scholar living in the popular imagination who is not really a nerd. Only in myth do intellectual non-nerds find our respect: Aristotle or Indiana Jones. But! These men live respected only in the imagination of the nerds!

I read Michael Oakeshott's Experience and It's Modes as a restoration of the intellectual in the life of the world. Oakeshott gets at what really drives everyone crazy about the nerds, what causes us to deride the nerds, and what tempts us to flee the love of knowledge which would make us a nerd. This is what Oakeshott says, There is a place for the nerd to be a nerd, and there is a place for the doer of things to be a practical man. We can live harmoniously if we learn to appreciate the differences of living like a nerd means against that of living like a liver of life. If we don't appreciate these differences, nerds' egos will tempt them that their bookish knowledge means they are qualified to be a liver of life, and so they will boss everyone around like know-it-alls; this will cause resentment by practical men, because they actually know how to do things and to live life. Thus practical men will be tempted to think there is nothing to books and learning. This is clearly a bad situation. All to often this is our situation.

Experience and It's Modes says that such distinctions in our outlook exist, and if we don't recognize them, we get into trouble, because we are confused. This book, which I will outline in a few posts, is a clearing away of basic confusions like these.