Use what you learn - By: Eliza Veretilo

Use what you learn

                              

                               Life is a lesson. We fall and get up, and when we do get up, we are awarded with a lesson. Every day we learn something new. So this life thing is a constant learning process in which we expand our circle of experience. Don’t agree? Well, you are entitled to it, but much evidence points to it. Our vocabulary inclines to take us from one premise to another in a succession that builds up from what was previously said thus our language and its structure are designed for instruction, for teaching and learning, sharing and listening. Our institutions are the same, we begin at school and parents want their children ‘to learn’. We then go to college, university, and there are learning courses everywhere. In my opinion this idea is somehow flawed. We assume that we learn in the first part of our life and in the second part we use that knowledge. I believe both processes are constantly going on whether we want it or not, simultaneously; but we don’t have such a big element of control. Control is gained with awareness. Planet Earth seems like a big training ground sometimes, of our chosen subjects and of life. Surviving is thus a learning activity, to hopefully, stop making the same mistakes.

                               We learn to thrive in this Universe, with its laws. The extent of our rational analysis still doesn’t change certain laws of nature, such as cause and effect, it can merely understand them. We are responsible for the consequences that stem from our actions and thus we are rational and can become more conscientious of what we do. This is why I propose that people should use all these lessons gathered in life, practically. We think we do, but do we really? We are so keen to learn from other people’s experiences, for example when we hear someone has done something terrible we say ‘Oh but I would never do that!’  Unfortunately, all our education and gathering of experiences still has not sank in deep enough; we don’t usually act on what we know.

                               My proposal is quite simple. Regardless of the economic system, the government and the weather, we could have a much better life if we lived it with awareness. If we took what we constantly learn and used it, instead of turning a blind eye on it or become lazy with our ideals. We would save ourselves and the world much loss and suffering. For example: if you think it’s unethical that when tuna are fished some dolphins get trapped in the nets, well then buy line fished tuna instead. In this world, unfortunately our money has a voice and a vote, so that is a place to apply our principles. This is a small example, but it can be applied to any aspect of life. If we do a little self evaluation, we will find that we do things that we know we know better than doing them. We can change this, by using what we have learnt and keep learning, expanding our world. Both, in how we live our practically and how we live our emotional life and most importantly, on how we treat others. Saying this, using what we have learnt doesn’t mean charity, I believe that one person living an aware life, and acting upon what they believe and have learnt, will have a lifestyle that prevents poverty in the first place. Thus a person living a life well lived is worth more than ten who live a completely upside down life, perpetuator of chaos, and then give money to charity.

                               Constantly adults tell children to apply the lesson they have taught them into their life. We say ‘didn’t you learn that at school’ we say ‘haven’t I taught you that before’ we say ‘you should know better’. But when was the last time we looked at ourselves and said the same things and actually lived by them? We constantly learn new skills; we learn how to use a new phone or how to take a bus to a new place, but our life lessons... do we apply them? Why being aware of what we do? Why are we rational? Because only awareness can reconcile chaos. Thus I say: Use what you learn.

By: Eliza Veretilo

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 33

Let the cries of 'love' die and live - By St.Zagarus

Let the cries of 'love' die and live

I -

Philosophers are supposed to challenge everything. Not just what they know to be false, to build their esteem upon the ruins of the cardboard castles they kick down - but also what they know to be true. Yet if we took philosophers at their word we would be left with only so many hypocrites and cowards, their motives well hidden behind a smoke screen of 'objectivity' (the search for truth removed from any human, or individual bias), when in fact they know precisely where not to look, in case they face contradiction.

  Let us then dive into love, often spoken of which such bittersweet warmth, yet here so cold, as if the words were made of icicles - runes of chill!

Love, nothing could pull us further away from truth. The first love is that of a parent, a love we now call essential. For to be loved is to be able to love - or so say the psychologists! We need love now, all of us children of europe - we have been too far pulled in to christian morality to ever turn back (see the prophet-philosopher Nietzsche for more of this). This need for the parent to love the child they would like to think was universal for our species - this is not so. What of the tribe who raises their children in darkened huts without human company?

II -

Love thyself - What is there to love of the actual physical body - at worst a grotesque bag of flesh, at best a neutral beauty no more sightly than a moon or a grove, granted extra emphasis by the vanity that we too are possessed of one. Or perhaps the soul is worthy of love, that corrupt thing easily swayed, that lies to itself and those around it habitually, such that meeting an honest one is enough to make us feel like we live a charmed life! How have we allowed the soul to grow warm when there is nothing colder than it, being as it is a mere mirror with which nature may see itself.

Love thy neighbour? Where do we gain the warrant to trample on anothers individual rights to be left alone, or ignored, or generally not considered very much!

Love thy nation - so often uttered by 'hard nosed realists' - yes the same ones who adhere to invisible boundaries of law and culture, beneath their vainly fluttering flags.

Love thy god - a personal connection, a father for those hopelessly in need for the perfect parent, how desperate! A pitious grasping out into a cold cosmos in search for something all powerful and inhuman, yet human!

Love thy cola - when a capitalist is onto something, we know how easily such a thing can manipulate people - love this liquid, love this combination of metal and plastic, love this motorized car!

Love thy ruler - the captain, the duke, the charismatic general, the high-priest, the witch-doctor, himself void of character and desperate for the mass adoration of his little lovers.

And perhaps the ultimate vanity, the grandest insult to a concept that may otherwise had held some power - unconditional love. The love of dog for master, debasing even for a canine! In a human it is worse to the factor of ten times - what more is it then the need for a perfect port in which to lay anchor, a hopeless reflection of ones own need for perfection-on-earth, a desire to escape ones solitude to find solace in another person, as a foetus does a womb. Yet what a vanity it is, for who deserves to be loved without condition - no one!  And mark this - if one expects the same in return, to try and mould the other into a lover unconditional, then what utter vanity and further self-seeking, what doubled-over wretchedness!

III -

An old mood passes, replaced with the new. Can any philosopher ever escape their emotion, for the true crystal plane of reason?

  Love is incredible, irresistable. If has softened the hearts of the warrior age and brought about our expectations to protect all people - at least to a basic, realistic degree. Love of one another is all we have to cling to. Beyond each other, we can also love ideas (being moved by them in the same way as any other passion), art, music, our crafts - we can love all of these immaterial things.

  You can try and resist love - you will fail. The cold-heart melts or else it fights a constant battle against itself - even if the coldness wins, that tortured character still asks 'what would it have meant to have loved?' and this question will spin through their memory until they perish once and for all.

  The words said against love were just that; words, an interesting flight of thoughts. The great haters with their great venom were unloved, and rather than move toward the healing heat, they retreated further into the shadows by renouncing that which they never dared to grasp themselves.

By St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 33

A question from the Hat O'Wisdom - By Daniel

A question from the Hat O'Wisdom -

Is an idea more 'real' than the material?

It would be quite easy to answer this question from an existentialist point-of-view and, truth be told, that was to be the source of my initial answer. However, upon further consideration, I do not think that the question can be 'brushed aside' quite so easily.

I am of the opinion that an idea, having been created at a subconscious or conscious level, can be more real to an individual than the material. I think anything that is created by an individual will always have strong connections to its maker, be the connections tangible or intangible/material or immaterial. Such connections will make an idea real by instilling, within its creator, associated emotions and sensations. If the material is defined by signals sent to and interpreted by the brain, then signals containing idea-associated emotions and sensations can be just as real as the material. The question of being more real than the material, I believe, is entirely dependent upon the individual's need, or want, to maintain their emotive associations to their idea. For example: if a poverty-striken child has an idea that they believe could transform their poverty into financial wealth, then it is quite possible that the hope they associate with their idea could be of such a magnitude to make it, for them, more real than the material and possibly more real than their present. Similarly, a playwright creating a new script will mentally visualise their idea and obsess over it before it takes any material form: it is quite possible that, at this moment, the playwright's idea is far more 'real' to them than the physical/material staging of their play.

The area of intellectual copyright law has an interesting view on this topic. It is stated in UK law that an intellectual work is protected by copyright once it is recorded in a tangible form. However, this is merely to prove ownership of the creation, there is nothing to say that the idea/creation is not real before it is recorded.

By Daniel

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 33

Merry christmas

Merry Christmas from all of us at the Philosophy Takeaway

Axioms or circularity - By Martin Prior

Axioms or circularity

When I was at primary school I had a special dictionary for schools and I wanted to find the meaning of a word A.  Well the dictionary told me it meant B.  But what did B mean?  Well the dictionary said that B meant A.  So I asked my parents and they were most irritated and clearly felt I should show more initiative.  Deadlock.

In an earlier Issue I argued that the purpose of life is love but that the purpose of love is life, so that anyone seeking the purpose of life would simply go round in circles:

 

Well, this won’t do for argumentation, and we have heard the accusation that certain arguments are circular.  Thus some people will say that abortion is murder.  So how do you define murder?  Oh, to include abortion.  We are in fact on a better path if we say that life is sacred, since as long as you can define life - i.e. what is the meaning of ‘life’ as opposed to what is the meaning of life – then you are on firmer ground, but nobody can argue with you.

So in logic, one builds on axioms, things we take as given.  In fact I myself spent 20 years of my life working as a statistician.  And within the various argumentations of statistics, one thing is left undefined, and that is probability itself.  Or at least that was the case nearly 50 years ago when I first studied statistics.  Such undefined  items are known as ‘primitives’.

We may note that relatable to axioms are theorems: propositions that may be proved from axioms (and/or existing theorems) .  Now if I have a formula containing expressions such as  (a+b), ab, (a Ù b), etc, we have a principle of uniform substitutability.  Because all of these operators are commutative, we can replace them with their ‘back-to-front’, i.e. commute them.  We may do this in a system which has an axiom or theorem of the form  (a.b) = (b.a), but we must do so consistently.

Another rule is that if we know (i) that A is always true, and (ii) A implies B, then B must always be true.  This is the rule of Detachment (or in Latin Modus Ponens).  Some logicians do without this rule.

Now all logicians agree that when proving things, one must build up axioms from ‘primitives’ and definitions.  One usually has two primitives, such as ‘not’ and ‘or’.  This was the starting point of Bertrand Russell and P.H. Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica.  Mordechaj Wajsberg on the other hand, produced several systems including one in which implication and falsity were taken as primitive.

But let us tabulate all this:

Tarski, Bernays, and Wajsberg, ‘basis 1’, 1937

Note that axioms may be built up depending on how many variables or separate propositions they involve: if an axiom involves one variable, generally you cannot say anything about a proposition with two variables, etc. 

But maybe we have a circularity here as well: for logic you have to turn to philosophy for its axioms and ‘primitives’.  Look at that primitive falsehood!  But philosophy cannot proceed without being logical!

By Martin Prior

References

Hackstaff, L.H. (1966)  Systems of Formal Logic. D. Reidel Publishing, 1966.

Wajsberg, Mordechaj (1937-9) “Metalogische Beiträge”  In: Wiadomości Matematyczne Volumes 43 (1937) and 47 (1939), translated by McCall and (partly) P. Woodruff  in Contributions to Metalogic (1967).

Whitehead, Alfred North and Bertrand Russell (1910)  Principia Mathematica.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 33

Art - By Eliza Veretilo

Art - By Eliza Veretilo


The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32

Life as an Individual: The Morality of Independence. - By Glenn Bullivant

Life as an Individual: The Morality of Independence.

Capitalists abuse the world. Capitalists are evil men of greed. Capitalists destroy the prospects of the workers. These are some broad statements which may be found in any left-wing school of thought and, perhaps, they can be found in the minds of many members of the population. But I’m not so sure of their validity. If the capitalists of the modern age ever stop to think, whenever they take a break from their daily task of grinding the faces of the poor, may quickly realise that quickly realise that the world hates them and their kind. They may reasonable decide “Enough! I have all the money I could ever want. The people of the world accuse me of abusing them for profits. I’ll end their misery and my own misery too. I’ll close my businesses and go off to enjoy my life. I’ll go on strike.”

This is the main theme of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, a writer and philosopher who spelt out the moral basis of capitalism in her novels, essays and lectures. In Atlas Shrugged the capitalists of the world tire of their businesses being over-taxed in the name of a common good, and, as a result, go on strike. They bore the weight of the world on their shoulders like Atlas and they shrug, abandoning the world and allowing it to seize up through a lack of economic activity. John Galt, the leader of the strike in the novel, tells the world plainly that after being called evil abusers of humanity the capitalists and closed their businesses. The world is left with no capitalism to fill wage packets or to power the industry that produces food. There’s no longer any tax for the government to claim and redistribute. After the capitalists have gone the world in Atlas Shrugged is left filled with unemployed workers on the brink of starvation. But, as John Galt says, the so-called capitalist abuse of the world has ended.

The principles at work here are not to be underestimated. Without capitalists and capitalism, we’ll soon find a large government taxing and borrowing for every small element of our lives. Freedom will undoubtedly diminish and will continue to do so for as long as any government expands it’s way into the lives of free, rational, intelligent honest individuals. The one moral way to live independently with liberty, according to Ayn Rand, is to live with one’s own self-interest as a primary concern without ever allowing anyone to tread on your life or to ever allow the lives of others to tread on you. One lives independently, as a true individual.

One may cry out at this point: what about love? Yes we love. Yes we marry. Yes we sacrifice ourselves to our loved ones. But we only do so because the people we love make us happy. Selfishly we can enjoy and value the company of others because there are certain people in our lives who satisfy our needs, both intellectually and emotionally. To spend thousands of pounds on saving the life of a partner is not a sacrifice. Without that partner the world will quickly become a duller and less happy place. It is an act of self-interest to sacrifice ourselves for the people we love.

To act as an individual is a concept stating that one person has the capability to operate without receiving or giving help to others, and without receiving any instruction (whether by regulation or rule of law)on how to act. Individualism is the philosophy that a world of individuals should be promoted as an utilitarian good for all (utilitarianism being, of course, the belief that any action should promote that greatest good for the greatest number of people), rather than the collectivist philosophy which states that the good for all is defined and worked towards by a government, a government which also defines what a good society might be. Capitalism benefits all people of all classes. This is especially the case with those who, by some lacking in education, ability or purpose, suffer at the hands of market forces and are thus directed into a new line in life. An individual has the ability to function independently by the power of their own mind. In all people the mind has the rational and intelligent ability to decide that individual’s actions. Some will set high goals with a realistic means of achieve their highest dreams of what a life they could forge for themselves, dreams which could be quite meagre to the rest of us. Others will abandon their goals and their means to indolence and apathy. But there’s always the rational ability for an individual to think.

Ayn Rand wrote extensively on how the philosophy of individualism works in all of our lives. So far we’ve only taken a brief glance at the matters which surround an individual’s experience of the world. It is only by acting as individuals in a rational and intelligent way, that we in a free country can truly draw real “value for money” from our one life on this planet. The alternative is to surrender our time, efforts, energies, minds and independence to abstract ideas about a common good.

Capitalism does make a minority of people rich. These are the same people who provide the world with jobs, services, industry and wage packets. The whole world benefits by their efforts. Anybody, in capitalism, may work hard to achieve his goals whatever they might be. Big or small. Artistic or technical. Inspired or modest. We’re free to pursue them. Do not misunderstand me, I was born to a working-class family in Lancashire. My parents didn’t have much mean, but they lived according their means and according to their abilities. They never asked for help from the government or for help from the wealthy. Everything in their lives was achieved by their own independent and honest efforts. There was never any sacrifice to others or any sacrifice from others. They lived their lives.

Try it now. Try being independent. Try being an individual. Try to live by your own efforts. Insist on your right to your own life. Do not cannibalise the lives of others by demanding sacrifices from them. Do not degrade your own efforts by sacrificing yourself to others. Stand tall by your own mind and whatever it may achieve. Try it now. If you like, you can pronounce John Galt’s oath: “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

By Glenn Bullivant

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32

Art by Eliza Veretilo

Art by Eliza Veretilo


The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 33

Katie philosophizes... - By Katie Fox

I've gone in a circle of ideas, starting out with the pursuit of happiness and the quest for enlightenment. Questioning if what comes natural is closer to the meaning of life (the pursuit of happiness) or if it's closer to having to see past or through everything (enlightenment). Then again, many people feel they need to have a legacy in order to be fulfilled. If you were to mean something more than everyone else, but everyone wants to be "somebody", then what more would you be than an inspiration to the rest of us? 

  
I think inspiration comes from a person leading by example in a particular field, with the wisdom to know what to do next, the skill to have the know-how, and the virtue to do it. The actions from that character can remind us that we all have it in us to get what we want out of life if we do the searching. Or maybe it is voiced to us by the person. In order for that person to be inspired to get what he or she wants and to inspire others to do so, they may need to pull their soul out of the layers of their experiences (usually in desperation) to discover the purpose of their walk of life. 

Once they have that, they can be that inspiring character that I described if they remain strong enough to keep everything out of the way. Inspiration is important for us to grow, but some people don't have that in mind when they're out for fame and fortune. The people who see that as their main pursuit in life may be missing the point, but our chances depend on our time. With enough money, those people may have all the time in the world to become complete.

But it's obvious to me that what we live for is to experience the spiritual connection that makes us feel complete. There's just a few different paths we choose to make that happen. It's a mystery which one is "right", or if there even is one right way about it...

Katie Fox

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32

Art - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

Art - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32

Why are we isolated? - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

Why are we isolated?

What a world of paradoxes we inhabit! Even an obvious truth is not so obvious, when you consider that its opposite is also true. Take for instance the anonymity of cities. Never have we been surrounded by so many people and yet felt so alone. Without knowing the business of strangers whistling past us every second, it becomes impossible to know that person as anything more than a fleeting instance in your experience. Perhaps by retreating into some vague idea of shared humanity you can imagine the humanity into people, but what is this if not a great generalization, spreading ones own interpretation across the complex set of motives and desires and fears that make up our so complex species! No, we are alone. The opportunity to be anonymous allows us near-absolute freedom to morph into any shape we dare, leaving no shared point of reference between oneself and the person sitting opposite on the tube. The notion of a shared set of values is skewered in a thousand different places by the thousand thrusts of new influences. Droplets of culture are everywhere to be picked and chosen at will and then combined into an unfitting patchwork of confusion.

  To repeat: The absurdity of it! To be never more surrounded by so many people and yet to never more feel so isolated, detached to the point where detachment itself is normal, if not necessary, to the process of existing in this world.

 

When the individual is in a state of isolation it becomes a case of me and them. One is besieged on all sides by the bulk masses 'living their comfortable ignorance' and becomes a romantic hero of the individual ego. However, the perversity of this situation is obvious; everyone is besieged by everyone else, and everyone's uniqueness is defined against everyone else's 'sameness', and everyone has discovered something that everyone else has not, and everyone else is obviously being led like a mule to the carrot, hence their inability to experience the truth as I do.

  Is the individual, however, better capable of grasping the truth than the massive? Inside ones own mind an inner voice can be trained to say 'Am I enlightened? Am I deluding myself?' with every profound discovery, and every outside influence can be run through a filter of doubt. Yet this leaves us with what philosophers would call a 'skeptic' in its most ancient sense of the word - someone doubting the very possibility of attaining knowledge at all. With this doubt we know how to avoid 'falsehood' and the seductive world of appearances, but we have no positive answers to the challenge of truth.

  The problem with individual truth is twofold: First that the individual is built on the efforts of a long and painful history, which has allowed them to stand atop the mountain of knowledge and development that made them possible. Secondly, if truth is up to an individual it can be moulded into any shape they wish to mould it into. Without some clever spark telling us why the sky appears blue, we can create any explanation we wish to explain it, without the possibility of letting anyone else get into our own little private world. Truth is confirmed by its expression into the public realm.

 

Yet just because an individual can delude themselves let us not glorify the answers given to us by the 'lumber of the land'. It is precisely the stupid danger of crowds and hive minds that encourage the individual to become a bastion of truth, removed from the 'vulgar stream of humanity'. Retreating into the shell of ones individuality is to escape the seduction of belonging to the herd - but this is not a desirable place to end ones journey (or is it?).

  This contrast between individual and group can be supported by the following claim. A group is not merely a collection of individuals, but rather lots of individuals plus another collective entity, an authority over those individuals. Although having said this, the individual is still never entirely removable from everything around them (if something could escape the influence of reality it would never again be able to reconnect with it). The line between outside and inside is thus like a blend of colour; where one begins and another ends is indistinguishable. Yet for the sake of clarity I call individual that frail part of us which decides, or spurs into action, which is conscious, aware, alive.

What appears evident is this: There has always been some force playing upon us, draining us of our fullness and then offering it back to us in a neat parcel. Religion is the obvious, if not outdated, example of this procedure: You are damned by our sacred texts, but do not wallow, for you can also be redeemed by those same texts! The modern version of this: You are worthless without acquiring such and such material item, but do not wallow, for you can also be redeemed by acquiring it! No wonder the individuals feel so isolated from one another (and yet guilty for feeling so), when the entirety of their fullness depends on the following confusing paradox: You must be an individual, separate from everyone else, but the way you become this unique individual is by doing what we say!

  In such an environment, such a squat and perverse state of confusion is inevitable and unavoidable. The truly powerful individuals are those who design the trends for the rest to follow; they will glorify individual will and truth as far as themselves, then kick away the ladder and look down upon the sleeping mass as little more than necks from which to draw blood. Alternatively they will reach a golden hand down to a few of the lesser orders in an attempt to raise them up to an aristocratic plane!

What isolates us? A human-made emptiness that is filled by acquisition (and if our endless desire is not artificially created, it is at least greatly encouraged); a shallow need for instant uniqueness and individuality obtained without intelligent effort. We are made special by something that is, after all, not special at all – but mundane, and hideous-on-the-inside, and mechanical, and controlled, and force-fed, and everywhere, and false.

 

Yet do not be so keen to prime your proud cannons of criticism against our bulk herd! This chase for material nothingness is so far removed from greed that any moral criticism of the people within it is to drastically miss the point; one treats the patient of an illness, rather than scolding them – and we are all ill.

The paradox I shall finish with is thus: Individuality must be discovered by the individual. However, to so much as mention this is to fail in ones task, for to tell someone not to let others tell them what to think is to tell others what they should not think. And so I finish this writing with a shrug of indifference, and hope you disregard the entire thing.

By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32

X, the philosophy of X and the ethics of X - By Martin Prior

X, the philosophy of X and the ethics of X

An interesting question relates to the dichotomy of X versus the philosophy of X, and that is: where does ethics stand?  It is indeed part of philosophy, and indeed overlaps with formal logic.  But one cannot really say that for example, the philosophy of language and the ethics of language are the same thing.

Let us first of al draw of table of  -ologies, whether or not of that name-form:

-ology	philosophy thereof	ethics of players	ethics of -ologists
Religion	philosophy of religion,  religious philosophy (same?)	religious ethics
Language	philosophy of language	ethics of language	philological ethics
Archaeology	philosophy of archaeology	!	archaeological ethics
Anthropology	philosophy of anthropology	social ethics	anthropological ethics
Politics	political philosophy	political ethics
Economics	economic philosophy	economic ethics
Sociology	philosophy of sociology	social ethics	sociological ethics

Now clearly there is difference between economic philosophy and economic ethics.  According to Wikipedia on ‘Philosophy and Economics’:

Philosophy and economics (also philosophy of economics) may refer to the branch of philosophy that studies issues relating to economics or, alternatively, to the branch of economics that studies its own foundations and status as a moral science.

And in relation to non-orthodox economics at least:

.

The philosophy of economics defines itself as including the questioning of foundations or assumptions of economics. …

But in the same article, we read the following in connection with economic ethics:

The ethics of economic systems deals with the issues such as how it is right (just, fair) to keep or distribute economic goods. Economic systems as a product of collective activity allow examination of their ethical consequences for all of their participants. Ethics and economics relates[sic] ethical studies to welfare economics.

I have indeed spelt out what may well be obvious.  Note that with the –ologies, the ethics relates to the investigators, but with the “icses” the ethics relates more to the players, as do language and religion.  But in each case, there is also the ethics of investigators, though I haven’t listed them; and indeed the ethics of players, however named, though obviously this does not apply to archaeology – nor of course non-contemporary history.

In this article I shall argue that ethics can be built on axioms, reflecting the various aspects of society.  This parallels the axioms of propositional calculus – very similar to those of algebra - where the precise form will vary:

(1) one variable: p≡p&p, (2) two variables [known as commutativity]: (p&q) ≡ (q&p), 

(3)  three variables [known as associativity]: ((p&q)& r) ≡ (p&(q&r)) ….

Unless a system has axioms it will be circular, just like life and love discussed in an earlier paper.

My first ordering represents the build-up of complexity:  person, person-person, person-environment, person-person-environment, present person-future person-environment.  That is probably the order in which a child might acquire ethics, the first representing me-me-me.

There is an important exception to this build-up – universalisation: what would happen if everyone did it?  But this does not allow for variability, for example gays.

My second ordering attempts to recognise the authorities’ incorporation of ethical values: I. person-environment (e.g. religion), II. person-person (including ‘freedom from’), III. person-person-environment (for the left, socialism, for the right, the market), IV. person (‘freedom to’), V. relating to the future environment.

a ‘maroon’ socialist	a cultural analysis of exploitation
I (person-environment): (Semi-)taming the environment, self-fulfilment, etc	I (person-environment): Technology and skills; religion
II (person-person): Co-operation, freedom-from, sharing of knowledge, etc	II (person-person): Fear, ignorance
III (person-person-environment): Socialism (cf. for neo-liberals: buyer-seller-environment?)	III (person-person-environment): Abuse of superior power (cf. for neo-liberals: government-individual-environment?)
IV (person):  Freedom(-to)	IV (person-person):  Culture
V. (present persons-future persons- environment) Green	V. (present persons-future persons- environment) Technology, possibly leading to pollution?

So how does socialism, as a person-person-environment ethic, fit into the above?  To my mind, socialism is a relationship between society (inner) and the environment (outer).  There are several steps, firstly creating a semi-tamed environment, and then a ‘tamed environment’.  Note that the maroon is associated with culture, and pink with skills, technology and not least scientific socialism.  Here we may regard socialism as aggregating three features, person-person (culture), person-environment (tamed and semi-tamed) and skills, also person-environment.  The process is effective if it achieves appropriate personal relations within the limitations of the environment.

As suggested in the table, the neo-liberal alternative to III might be buyer-seller-environment, where the limitations of the environment are governed by the sellers’ willingness to sell so much for such-and-such a price.  According to Raymond Plant in the Neo-liberal State, neo-liberals are much more concerned about freedom-from than with freedom-to.  Some day I might show that neo-liberalism is wrong in two senses: firstly as flawed and self-destructive, and secondly the evil resulting from the suffering on the way to destruction, apart from anything else.

So what should these axioms be?  I think I am clear about socialism (III), as sharing equally the burdens imposed by the limitations of the natural environment, and freedom-to (IV) means freedom to do as one wishes provided no-one else ‘suffers’, though this needs closer examination: it certainly goes against the universalisation approach. 

Item II, person-person, might spell out the requisites for a mutual relationship, i.e. information and knowledge, though ignorance or confidentiality might apply say for the prosecution-defence relationship.  The Golden Rule – to do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is certainly a candidate for person-person, but it seems to work better for don’t’s rather than do’s, and that purely on a personal level.  Some of us who are anti-gay might positively ‘have’ other people gay-bash them if they were gay. 

And I and V might be conflated to represent a dynamic socialism or socialism across time.  And because we give future generations knowledge, they will be richer than us, and we should share equally with them, hence economic growth, but not too much.  And here of course we get the good, bad and ugly in the ethics of economic growth.

By Martin Prior

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32

Constitution Signing

On the 12/12/12 we signed our constitution. Once it has been sent off and approved, a copy will be held on here for all to see.