Kropotkin's case of epistemology

[Peter Kropotkin]

I'm reading a book called "understanding German Idealism"
by Will Dudley...

and in the chapter on Schelling, he says this:

''Schelling concurs with Fichte that philosophy must be scientific
and systematic, and that systematic science must begin from
a single first principle, knowledge of which is immediate
and unconditional. All other knowledge must be derive from
this principle, and will therefore be mediated and conditioned
by it''

there is some sort of first principle...and we derive all our knowledge
from that first principle...now recall your philosophical history...
we have, from the very beginning of modern philosophy an
obsession really, with epistemology.. Descartes for example,
spent his time trying to make knowledge secure by reducing
it to one principle and from that principle, we can begin
our philosophizing..... "Cogito, ergo sum" is the starting point
of Descartes...he has, at least according to him, the basis upon
which we can base all our philosophy upon...."I think therefor I am"

that is the first principle, we are to then base all our other philosophy upon....
this is how we began modern philosophy... engaged in epistemology,
the "the theory of knowledge, especially with regards to its methods,
validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what
distinguishes justified belief from opinion.....

and modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant was an engagement with
epistemology... think about Hume.. think about what he wrote about...
that we have no certainty upon which to base our idea's on..
we cannot know if the sun will rise tomorrow because our
understanding of that is based on habit, a cause and effect that
has we have no basis to believe in.. Hume's attack was devastating
because it left us no ground upon which we can base our knowledge on...
Hume's attack was on the very grounds of Epistemology...

and Kant's defense, was a defense of a certain type of epistemology....
and German Idealism, is another variation of epistemology...

so we can see that the heart of philosophy from Descartes to
Hegel and beyond, was working out various epistemological
idea's.... notions about knowledge and how we engage with
that knowledge...

and one may ask, how has philosophy gone wrong over
the last 400 years, here it is, philosophy has been a battle
over epistemological ideas... ideas about knowledge...
and what knowledge we have and is that knowledge justified...
there is modern philosophy in a nutshell... and the basis for
philosophy failure...this ''battle" while philosophical interesting,
has no point for us in regard to other, vital questions...questions
that Nietzsche brough to our attention...

these epistemological questions however fail to answer such questions
such as " how am I to be a moral/ethical person?" "who am I?"
"what am I to do?" "what should I believe in?" "what should I hope for?"

the Greeks thought of philosophy in terms of philosophy as a way of life...
that was the point of philosophy for the Greeks... on what basis should
I live my life on? Thus we have, in ancient Greece, schools,
such as the ones founded by Plato and Aristotle..
philosophy wasn't a question of what is the basis of our knowledge,
but philosophy was about how we should live our lives...
what way of life is best for us to engage with, as we go about our lives...
and we have several ways of life to hold in, Stoicism, Epicureanism,
Platonism, Cynicism, and of course the school of Skepticism...

these ways of life are meant to be the basis of how we engage in
and how we are supposed to live our lives...

and each of these schools had an understanding of the question,
what is a human being? Each of these schools had some
basic principles about what it means to be human... the Greeks
had no school of epistemology.. in fact, I would suggest that
our questions of epistemology would have baffled the Greeks....
they would ask, how do questions of epistemology answer
the questions of how are we to live our lives? can epistemological
questions tell us what it means to be human? can epistemological
questions become way of life answers? how would I use
epistemology to answer the question, how am I to live my life?
can we create a way of life, as we did with the Greek schools like
Stoicism, using epistemological answers?

and given where we are today, I would say no, we cannot use
epistemological questions to formulate any type of a schools
like the Greeks had... epistemology cannot get us to a way of life..
and we ask, as usual, now what?


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

or to say this another way,

questions of existence, are not epistemological in nature...
epistemological questions and answers don't impact
us in regard to the questions of existence...

so what questions do impact us in regard to existence?

Kropotkin

[promethean75]

Something very familiar about these kropistemological questions... like I've seen them before.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Something very familiar about these kropistemological questions... like I've seen them before.

K: thanks, I think?

the idea behind epistemology is basically this, what separates
informed/justified beliefs from mere opinions....

we must have some way to sort out or separate ideas that
are opinions from ideas that we can "justify".....let us take
a recent event, the American presidential election...
the village idiot claims that the last election was "stolen"
unless he has evidence, facts to back up that claim, he
is dealing with opinions, not justified beliefs...
a justified belief would be, the earth is round.. the
earth goes around the sun, the sun is a star...all of these are
justified beliefs...we have evidence for these "facts"
now the evidence might be beyond yours or mine ability
to understand, for example the theory of relativity..
but because we can't work out the math or the evidence, it
doesn't mean it isn't true.. it just means we are unable to understand
it.. that doesn't make it false.. this idea that unless we, ourselves,
understand an idea, it is false.. the common person makes
the false assumption that, because they cannot understand an idea,
that it must somehow be false..

so, how are we to understand the universe, given this idea of
justified beliefs and unjustified beliefs?


if we think about the universe, what is the thing that all thing
within the universe have in common? that one thing, it is atoms...
all matter within the universe has atoms....even things we cannot,
as yet, explain, like gravity, still have atoms at their root...
if we reduce everything to it base element, that base element is
atoms... thus in one sense, Spinoza was right, everything in the
universe is made up of one thing, but Spinoza thought that one thing
was god.. but that because Spinoza was a man of his times...
but we can escape his thoughts because we are of a different times...
so, Spinoza thought the one thing in the universe was god, and
everything in nature was god, Spinoza god was an impersonal god,
and this is why being called a follower of Spinoza, meant one
was an atheist....but we can take a different tack....

we can believe in one thing, one thing that makes up the universe,
and that one thing is atoms...but Kropotkin, how does this explain
what we see in the universe? the problem with most types of these
philosophies is the inability to explain change...if everything is one
thing, atoms, how do we explain changes in the universe?

the law of entropy...the motion of the universe is from disorder
to order and then back to disorder.... when we build a house, for
example, we are turning disorder into order.... and when the house
begins to fall apart, from disorder or entropy, that change is the
change of the atoms of the house going from order to disorder...
all change in the universe can be explained by this idea of
going from disorder to order and back to disorder...

the universe itself is one large oscillation between the forces
that create order and the force that creates disorder...
even we human beings are born, going to order, and as we age,
we become disordered... old age is simply entropy at work...
and everything in the universe has this same pattern.. going
from order to disorder and back again....all change in the
universe is this going from order to disorder and back again...
a star goes supernova, that is disorder and then, with the
help of gravity, we gain order.. the creation of a star and planets
is going from disorder to order and the dissolution of the solar
system comes from entropy....disorder.....

to build, to create to make something is to generate order, to create
order... and when it naturally falls apart, that is disorder or entropy...
we human beings can aid and abet disorder by creating chaos in
our world... when the conservative attacks the institutions of
America, that is an attempt to create disorder and chaos within
America....building institutions is to help create order from chaos,
disorder... and trying to destroy institutions is to create chaos,
disorder...thus the Right-wing attack on such institutions as congress,
the IRS, the various Bureaucracies of our country is aiding
and abeting chaos and disorder.... for such an attack isn't the
act of creation... it is the act of destroying, of creating chaos...

one way to look at people, institutions, events and things is this,
is that person, group, institutions, event, or thing helping to
create order or is it helping to create disorder and chaos?
it is hard work to build and to create... but it is easy, oh
so very easy to destroy and create disorder... for disorder
is the nature state of people, places, institutions, events
and things...

so, are you a creator, a builder or are you a destroyer?
do you try to build order or do you try to destroy
and create disorder, chaos?

that is the fundamental question of who you are... do you build
or do you aid entropy/disorder and chaos?

answer that question and I can tell you your basic fundamental
about how you are politically, socially, philosophically and legally...
the creation of order vs disorder is the question of not only our time,
but of all times...

build or destroy? which is it?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and now we can have some idea, some idea of
what it means to be human... are you an
builder, creator or are you an agent of chaos,
not a "Get Smart" agent, but an agent of disorder
and chaos....

what does it mean to be human? are you a builder or a destroyer?
do you work for order or do you work to create disorder and chaos?
that may be the fundamental divide between people, creators
or destroyers...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and we reach the portion of the program where as
ask ourselves, is change, the act of entropy always
the movement toward disorder?
no, no exactly... as entropy is a essential part of
existence, a part which we material beings cannot escape,
as anything/everything in the universe is moving either
toward order or disorder, is change, any change movement
toward disorder/ chaos as the right/conservatives claim?

tearing down to a rebuild is an act of bringing about order...
we see this in sports teams... either in football or in baseball
or in basketball... we see a team realize that under their
present configuration, they are unable to win a championship...
so, they tear it down... and they rebuild the team to compete...
and within this rebuild lies the move toward order....a teardown
is not a move toward disorder and chaos if, if we intend to rebuild,
to reorder the organization/team...

and so the conservative demands to destroy an institution,
and that is fine and dandy, but do they have a rebuild in mind,
or is it simply an act of destruction? the act of disorder/chaos?

once again, let us look at concrete examples...
the conservative demands, as Grover Norquist demanded,

"My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it small
enough where we can drown it in the bathtub"

Is this demand, a drive toward creation, or disorder?

it is easy enough to see this is an attempt to drive disorder
and chaos... because the more parts a structure has, an institution
has, the more complicated it becomes... the fact is that we could
have smaller government in the past because we had less people...
the smaller the number of parts in any organization, less complicated
an organization can be... a government for 500 people is going to be
less complicated and smaller than a government for 5,000,000 people..
if the organization is too small, it becomes chaotic and disorderly
because it can't handle dealing with the number of people within
a population... in other words, you cannot cope with today's number
of people with the same government that Lincoln had because
we are vastly larger than the United States of the times...
with any structure, it must grow to deal with an increasing amount
of parts within that structure... it must grow and become more
organized to deal with more and more parts... a large number
of people forces government to become larger and more organized...
and if the government fails to become large enough to maintain
organization, then the government will fall, it will fail...complexity
requires, demands greater and greater organization...
the more complex, the larger the organization needs to be to
maintain its order.... that is the drive to order.. to help deal
with greater and greater complexity... the fewer parts to something,
the smaller organization is needed... think of animals... as they are not
as complex as human beings, they don't need a greater organization
to help maintain structure or order... the size of something is
what determines the amount of complexity or structure it
needs to maintain order and stability... so, as we grow,
as a population, from 100 million people to 200 million people
to our present population of 330 million people, the government must,
must grow to help maintain order and stability... a government that fails
to grow, is the act of disorder and chaos...the larger the structure is,
the more energy a structure needs to maintain order and stability...
and this energy is what drive order and stability... less energy means
more chaos and disorder... entropy is basically about the amount of
energy a system has.. the less energy the greater the disorder..
and the greater the energy, the more order and stability a system has....

and think of taxes as a form of energy... if we give an government
organization less money, it has more entropy... entropy is about
the energy a system has... as I grow older, I have less energy,
and that less energy is entropy at work...for the government,
taxes is energy... taxes is exactly like food for a human being...
less taxes in government means less energy which is entropy at
work...

so those who work for less government are in favor of entropy
and disorder and chaos..... so that a government that can handled
200 million people, must change and grow larger to handle 330 million
people.. and without that change, to grow, government becomes
disordered and chaotic.. that is basic entropy at work....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we can now see why today, we have big government,
big business, big pharma, big oil....as there are more moving parts,
a greater and greater number of parts/people, the structures
we use to deal with those numbers must become bigger....
more people means larger and larger structures that
can cope with the needs of more and more people...
if we have 10 people on earth, there is no need on earth for
government, business, taxes, the structures we take for granted...
and if we grow to 15 billion people, than the structures needed
to deal with that number must grow or we face chaos and instability
and disorder...the greater the complex, the structure, the numbers
the more energy we must put into our institutions and government...
to help maintain order and stability...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and given our understanding of the greater number
of people, means we must have a greater and greater
amount of institutions... means our understanding
of government is much clearer... are we agents of
order/stability or are we agents of disorder and chaos?

the government must be, must be larger enough to
sufficiently deal with the number of people...anything less
is disorder and chaos and instability...
growth and the amount of energy given to a system, will
determine if that system survives and grows or simple withers away...
and suddenly Marx's statement about the structures that
simply wither away, now strikes with, with force...
the only way government, society, institutions or structures
can wither away is from lack of growth or energy to deal with
the complexity of that structure...

government can only wither away if we take away its energy to
complete its given tasks...and that means disorder/chaos/instability...
unless we replace that government by some other means which
can handle the complex tasks that government takes care of...

the question of government is basically, how do we deal with
the complex tasks of organizing people...and now we see
such ism's and ideologies in a different light, for example,
anarchism... the anarchist believes that we can organize people
with their own energy, their own power... and a dictator,
he believes that we can only organize people by strict organization
and structure with him in charge...

the question of politics becomes a question of how much
energy/money does it take to maintain and hold a people,
state, institution and a civilization, within order and stability?

order vs chaos becomes the question of politics....
and how do we create order and stability in a state,
or avoid chaos and instability?


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

but if the question of government becomes a question of
order/stability vs disorder/chaos, what does this mean about
current questions of freedom and liberty?

How much freedom can we allow and still maintain order/stability?
I suspect quite a bit, as long as we recognize the goal as
being the need for order and stability.... freedom for and by
itself has no value... freedom must be understood in terms
of the creation of order and stability or disorder and chaos...

and our basic understanding of say, free speech understands
this...you cannot shout fire in a crowded theater... free speech
has its limits because of its threat to order and stability...
but now we ask, what value should have priority,
should we give priority to order and stability or should
we give priority to disorder/chaos?

as usual, this answer is rather "ad hoc" depending on the
situation... the moment decides the action as it does in
most questions of morality and ethics... this is situational
ethics... the situation decides the ethics...
and so the situation decides the question of
do we choose order or do we choose chaos?

at times, the correct answer is chaos and at other times,
the correct answer is order...
so how do we know the right/ correct answer?

we decide by understanding what the goal is....
most of the time, we can guess our methods by
which goal we are trying to reach... what is the goal?
and you will know if you are going for order or chaos...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and Kropotkin, how does your theory of government,
has to do with epistemology?

we know, as a justified belief, that entropy exists..
it is science and we can act upon it.. with a degree of
certainty.... just like we can act upon gravity... or evolution,
both are "theories" but we can be reasonable sure that they
act and exists as proclaimed... I can expect gravity to work
as advertised...I can make plans and prepare accordingly to
how gravity works...if gravity didn't work as advertised, we would
truly live in a universe of chaos and disorder...you can bet your
life on gravity working as it does...and I have done so..
and entropy works with the same efficiency as gravity...
you can depend on entropy working as it always does..
as it always will work.. this is what I mean by
justified belief... entropy works regardless of whether I believe
it or not.. we can trust entropy with our lives..

epistemological, I am about as sure about entropy and gravity,
as I can be about anything in the universe...it is knowledge we
can depend on and rely on....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

now let us think epistemology wise..
we can trust, as much as we can trust, science,
for example, gravity, entropy, evolution, theory of
relativity... we can bet the farm on those theories
working as they are advertised to work...
as theories of knowledge, they are justified beliefs...
and not just opinions....

but what about this?
"Capitalism is the best form of economics, ever"

epistemological, can we trust this statement as being
justified belief, as we do the justified beliefs of gravity?

Ok, so what facts or evidence support this statement?
and therein lies the tale of the tape...you can make, even with
the exact same information, different tales of the statement,
"capitalism is the best form of economics, ever"
within capitalism, we have the highest standard of living, ever...
but that still leaves millions, if not billions of people living in
poverty and in hunger, with substandard living conditions...

and why? One could say, that because of capitalism, we
have hundreds of people living with billions if not trillions
of dollars and that might be a statement of approval of
capitalism... whereas I make that as a statement of
disapproval of capitalism... I would argue that for our country
to be just, we must be equal, not only legally, or politically,
but economically... the very word justice, means equality...
and that isn't just present within the legal system, but
within the political system and the economic system...
we cannot consider ourselves to a "just" society,
until we have equality within all areas of our society/state...

so, by the definition of justice, capitalism is not the best economic
system ever.. and in fact, we can't really make a reasonable argument
to the statement that "capitalism is the best economic system, ever"
there is no evidence or facts that support that statement...

thus the statement, "Capitalism is the best economic system, ever''
is in fact, an opinion, and not a justified belief.....

and we can make a better argument to the political system of
democracy being the best political system over a dictatorship
or monarchy or anarchism...and we can, by making a better argument
for democracy, we can call that a "justified belief" and not an opinion...
epistemological, we can make certain arguments to be justified beliefs
and not just opinions... but as Iam is right to suggest, much of our
arguments are based on our childhood indoctrinations, our education,
our country of birth, our family, and our socioeconomic status...
we turn our childhood indoctrinations into an example of
justified belief instead of the opinions that they really are...

and our growth as human beings requires, demands us to gain
knowledge of who we are, and what is the meaning of being human,
into an examination of our values and beliefs...

or to say this another way, we can gain this knowledge by an
reexamination of values and beliefs, as Nietzsche suggested...

from being indoctrinated beings, of just having opinions to
becoming beings with justified beliefs.....
that can be justified by epistemology methods, and not just
guesses and hopes and dreams....

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

and Kropotkin, how does your theory of government,
has to do with epistemology?

we know, as a justified belief, that entropy exists..
it is science and we can act upon it.. with a degree of
certainty.... just like we can act upon gravity... or evolution,
both are "theories" but we can be reasonable sure that they
act and exists as proclaimed... I can expect gravity to work
as advertised...I can make plans and prepare accordingly to
how gravity works...if gravity didn't work as advertised, we would
truly live in a universe of chaos and disorder...you can bet your
life on gravity working as it does...and I have done so..
and entropy works with the same efficiency as gravity...
you can depend on entropy working as it always does..
as it always will work.. this is what I mean by
justified belief... entropy works regardless of whether I believe
it or not.. we can trust entropy with our lives..
epistemological, I am about as sure about entropy and gravity,
as I can be about anything in the universe...it is knowledge we
can depend on and rely on....

People managed to count on gravity and entropy (effects) long before science came up with the current ways of looking at these phenomena.
I do get that it is something else to make assertions about capitalism, either positive or negative. It's very hard to test hypotheses about capitalism (the way one can isolate factors in many science experiments).

We also need to define capitalism. Many people don't realize that there are facets of modern US capitalism, for example, that need not be present in capitalism. Banks create money when they lend money. IOW they can lend money and then act like they have that money to invest. We don't let individuals do this, but banks we do. We could eliminate that and still have capitalism. We could go back to taking back corporate charters when corporations break the law. That'd still be capitalism. We could modify lobbying, revolving door practices between industry and government oversight. We could limit some practices on Wall st. Or many of them and still have capitalism. Campaign finance could be changes and still have capitalism. There are many other things (that I happen to think are pernicious) which we could remove from
modern practice and still have capitalism.

So, we need to look at what capitalism means. Otherwise we fall into a kind of binary capitalism/socialism schema without clear images of either.

Right now people look at what is happening and if they are on the Left they may well conclude capitalism is bad. But the effects are often those of practices that are not needed for a system to be capitalist. And so it plays into the hands of people who want to maintain power. Because those who want capitalism will be faced with changes they do not like. And neither side may even realize what capitalism does and does not necessarily include.

This is just a very quick off the top of the head look at this issue.