information.. its limited use...

[Peter Kropotkin]

we can break down an argument that philosophers
have had by thinking about it this way:

that all human beings are limited in their facilities,
and their thinking.. facilities like our senses...we
have limited senses...and we have a limited intelligence....

we have a limited understanding of events, people, places and idea's.....
our reason can only carry us so far...and no further...there are limits
to reason itself... we are, to put it mildly, a limited thinking,
believing, reasoning beings...but the question becomes this...
how do we ''know'' things that exist beyond or outside of our limited
facilities, thinking, reasoning?

If we are as limited as is claimed, there is no possibility we can have
knowledge of or information about metaphysical things like god,
or immortality....just as our knowledge is limited, our experiences
are also limited... what facility allows us to have information about
metaphysical things? things that exists outside of experience?

it has been said, that we know such metaphysical things, outside of
experience things, by a couple of methods... one is reason, and another
is way "intuition" which is defined as

Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without
the need for conscious reasoning.... a thing that one knows or considers
likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.....

that we have information about the universe, the metaphysical aspect
of the universe by intuition, by our feelings, without the use
of reasoning... this "salto mortale" assumes that our "leap of faith"
has some basis for "leaping" and if there is one thing in life one learns,
pretty quickly, is that a leap of any kind, is by its very nature,
dangerous... and has failure written all around it....but we human
beings leap all the time.. we leap into love and we leap into
a job or a situation with no rhyme or reason... we just leap..
and hope/pray for the best...

if we have limited information, limited by our facilities,
our reasoning, our feelings.. for we cannot, ever, know
all the possible actions and reaction that come from
an action or inaction...we cannot know all the ramifications
of any given action...we simple hope for the best....

we try to limit disaster or failure by linking our choices to
our limited reasons, or limited information about any given situation....
for example, if we were a CEO of a company, and we wanted
to know the "right" thing to do, we might base it on reason or
we might base it on how we think capitalism works, or we might
base our actions on our avowal goal of profits.. and screwing everyone
else in the process... but in any case, all our choices are limited
by our limited means of our thinking, our limited senses,
our limited knowledge of how the future will take this action....
we act but we act within a vast amount of limitations...
that prevent us from knowing all the possibilities our choices
have... we act without knowing what might happen...
"salto mortale"

but given these limitations, how do we ''know" about
such metaphysical questions as in, there is a god,
there is immortality, that we have such a thing as freedom...

these are some of the metaphysical questions that we try to
answer by the use of very limited knowledge, experience, values
and reasoning.....

if we are bound by our limitations, than how do we go past or
beyond those limitations? as noted before, we hold to
intuitions, that leap beyond our knowledge, our experience,
our reasoning... and for some, they hold to divine revelations
offered to us by something that lies outside of our limited
knowledge, reasoning, experience... I am not sure how we can
trust something that is beyond our own limited understanding
of the universe?

the question of existence is the question of how do we move
past or beyond our limitations? How do we go from being limited
in reason, intelligence, senses, knowledge, to having knowledge
that is metaphysical, beyond the physical?

how do we have access to information that lays outside of, or beyond
our limited senses, knowledge, reason?

I say we cannot move past or beyond having information that is not
within our own range of limited information.. of the senses, of reason,
of having knowledge of something.....

outside of a Leap of faith, we cannot move past
range of our limited information...

so how do we know metaphysical information?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one possibility is of knowing the "metaphysical"
things that lay outside of our own senses, reasoning,
experience, and intelligence is by what is called
"a priori" which means we have this knowledge build into
us, before experience and before reasoning and before intelligence,
we have this knowledge already built into our minds/soul/body...

and that leaves us the question of how, how is something already
built into us before experience, before reasoning, before knowledge?
and here is where many say, it is god who built his existence
into us "a priori" but that reasoning leads us into problems like
the question of "How do we know that god exists?"
it is in the bible.. and how do we know the bible is telling the
truth, by the word of god, and how do we know that god is telling
the truth, that is in the bible and back and forth we go...this
is known as Circular reasoning... is a logical fallacy in which the
reasoner begins with what they are trying to prove... whereby
the premise are just in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion,
as a consequence, the argument fails to persuade....

Is there any outside evidence showing us that there is a god?
not that I can tell... but that is in part, maybe due to my own limited
senses, reasoning, logic or information...but there is no way, outside
of ''salto mortale" that we can overcome our own limitations to
reach knowledge that a god actually exists...

as a first principle, we can hold to this insight that
we human beings have limited knowledge, limited information,
limited senses and limited logic to use to understand the world....
we cannot, ever, be able to understand the entire picture of
the world, its idea's, its inhabitants, or their relationships between
any two such things as the world.... we are limited in all aspects
of existence... and that is the beginning of understanding....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

which leads us to one of the great problems of
philosophy... that of the objective vs the subjective...
but given the very nature of our limited understanding
of well, everything, I don't see how we can be objective
about anything... if we have limited understanding,
limited knowledge, limited senses, than how do we hold
to an "objective" viewpoint? to be objective requires us to
have a complete and comprehensive viewpoint...
to see everything within the field of question... and we
cannot, cannot by definition, ever come up with a
complete and comprehensive viewpoint if we are limited
in our senses, limited in our intelligence, limited in our
understanding, we simple cannot gather enough facts to
make a ''objective'' judgement about something...
something will get left out, that is true no matter how much
time we spend gathering information or facts.. we will miss
enough to make an "objective' viewpoint impossible...

we are bound by our limitations to a ''subjective"
understanding.. of ourselves, of the universe, of
the metaphysical... we will never have enough information of
something, to be objective about it......
all human actions have some level of a "leap of faith"..
we simple can't get enough information about something
to make a logical, rational decision.... all human actions
have a sense of "salto mortale" build into them.....
and this uncertainty is the bedrock of being human...
we are not driven by what we know or we can be certain
about, because we are limited as to what we can know
or be certain about, but we are driven by our uncertainty
because that is all we have.. our limitations create and are
driven by uncertainty... we just don't know.. that is the real/true
motto of existence... we just don't know....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us look at the limitations that we have as
human beings in regard to ethics/morals....

the basis of morality/ethics has been, in one way or another,
god/religion said so...ethics/morality have a metaphysical
aspect to it....any reference to god or religion, is a metaphysical
reference.. because of our limited ability to go beyond
our own physical self... because we have such limited
senses, logic, thought, intellect, knowledge....we cannot,
however hard we try, we cannot go beyond those senses,
logic, intellect, knowledge or thought...being human means
we are force to think, feel, identify, know via the body,
via the physical and for us, this physical is limited...
so how are we to know that god has given us metaphysical
revelation? If we are body and god is spirit, how does he communicate
his being to us, if we are of such limited abilities?
this is a variation of Descartes problem.. the mind/body problem
in which how does the immaterial mind connect to the material body?
and how are orders and beliefs passed from mind to body? and this
is exactly the same problem with god, immaterial and human beings,
material.... do we communicate via the Pineal gland, as Descartes
thought? or is some other, unknown method allowing communication
between the spirit of god and our human form?

I see no way how we limited human beings overcome our extreme
limitations of being physical as we are of limited thought, feelings, intellect,
information, knowledge.... how do we get from being so limited to
understanding god? a spirit? and if god is as above us as we are above
ants, then how do we communicate with god or ants for that matter?
as we are incomprehensible to ants and they to us, how do we communicate
to god?

well god is good, we don't actually know that because we are unable, due
to our limitations, to grasp what god is and what he is and what he says.....
we simple cannot begin to work out what god is... as he is spirit and
we are not.. we are simple, physical beings unable to go beyond
the physical nature of being human...we are unable to go beyond
our parameters, our programming by evolution....

if we say anything about the nature or possibilities of god, we
are going way past anything human beings can know about god...
we are limited... and must remain limited until such time as
we can escape our physical bodies....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so, how do we know or understand morality/ethics given
how limited we are, us physical beings who are unable to
escape being physical? we have limitations, of logic, of senses,
of intellect, of knowledge.. give our limitations of being
physical, how can we know anything beyond our bodies?

and that includes ethics/moral.....we must judge ethics/morals
based on the fact that we have such physical limitations....
we are forced to understand ethics/morals within the context
of our limitations...so how do we understand moral/ethics given
our physical limitations?

we cannot have a universal morals/ethics.... because that
goes beyond our own physical bodies...our own knowledge
or intellect....universal means everything... and we cannot,
no matter how hard we try, go beyond our limited selves...

so ethics/morals has to reside within our own limited understanding
of the world...and within that limit, we can then work out various
ethical/moral theories... that of revenge, that is an ethical/moral
theory that goes way earlier than the bible... and we have forgiveness,
which too begins before the bible... and we have an eye for an eye,
morals.. which too began before the bible...the legal/moral system
we have today, is quite complicated compared to moral/ethical
systems in the ancient world... where punishment is swift and certain...
even the ethical/moral system of the 16/17 century was simply to
punish virtually everything by capital punishment... for example,
to be a pickpocket meant death, the English were known for
this...if we remove any aspect of a ethical/moral system which
is metaphysical, what do we have left?

and that is the question.... what is left if we remove all aspects
of metaphysics in moral/ethical systems?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if we are limited in what we can know or think or feel
or believe, we are not in a position to fully know anything...
all we can know is parts of something...we can't know all of something..
no matter how much information we attempt to gain generally or
about a specific matter, we can never learn everything we need to
know about it.. if we try to learn everything an put it into a set,
like a mathematical set, we can't ever put all the number to
complete a set into one set...

let us try this... let us put into a set, all the prime numbers...
and no matter how many numbers we put into this set of prime numbers,
we will miss some... some prime numbers will not be able to get into
our set of prime numbers...it will be incomplete, no matter how hard
we try...and this is due to both the nature of prime numbers,
we cannot collect all prime numbers into a set.. and the second
reason is due to our limitations... our mental, intellectual,
numerical limitations of our mind and body...we cannot use a
limited facility like our minds to record an unlimited number of
things... at best, we can know parts of something, never the whole thing....
this is the very nature or definition of human existence...we can only
''know" a limited amount of information.. due to our limitations,
in senses, in intelligence, in our thought process... we have a limited
amount of information, of knowledge and that is the best we can ever do....

so given we can only know so much, we are limited by our very
nature to only know so much, does it make sense to make
knowledge our primary goal? to say, Knowledge is power, is
only partly true because we can only know part of any knowledge,
never the whole aspect of that knowledge...and what does that
say about the human goals of gaining knowledge, or of becoming
a sage or wise, or even a Socrates? Didn't Socrates himself say,
''I know, I know nothing".. that is why he was the wisest man in Athens...

if we accept Socrates at face value... then what is the point of gaining
knowledge if we can, at best, only know some or part of that knowledge...
at no point can we ever know all of the knowledge needed to "know" a subject....
and what is missing from our storage of knowledge of any given subject?
it may be a substantial amount of knowledge we might be missing, but
because we don't know what we don't know, we can't ever be sure how
much we don't know about any given subject...every single subject
that human beings explore, is just a part of that subject.. and we can't
ever know how much we don't know about a particular subject...

or to say it another way, to say I am an expert on something is to
say, I know slightly more than you do, but neither one of us actually
knows how much we don't know about a particular subject...
pick a subject and no matter how much you know, or think you know,
you still have an incomplete understanding of that subject..
you just can't know everything there is to know about any given
subject...

so, let us stop and think about this for a moment....
no matter how hard I try, my knowledge of any given subject will
be only part of that subject, never all the information about that
particular subject...and what does that tell me?

if I have, no matter how hard I try, only partial information
about any given subject, I can't ever know everything that
there is to know about a subject...my information will always
be incomplete...partial.. not whole....

it makes us question our drive to gain knowledge if all we can gain
is only a partial amount of information, never all the information we
need or want....

it may make us rethink our drive to gain knowledge at all cost,
knowing that knowledge is only going to be partial knowledge...
can I live with knowing no matter how hard I try, I will never
be able to know everything about a subject? Partial knowledge
is the best I can ever hope for....can I live with that?

So, what is left if we don't pursue knowledge for its own sake
simply because we can't ever gain all the knowledge we want
or need from a particular subject.......

so what is left? perhaps we can change our lives into living
beautifully.. we live our lives aesthetically, not informationally...
to win or lose is not as important as playing the game with beauty
and grace....to play with style... that is more possible given
we can't gain enough information to adequately know a subject, ever....

we can study math till we are a thousand years old and we will still not
know math enough to know what we don't know...
we will know something, but how much more we can learn,
we have no idea....the amount of unknown knowledge might be
greater, much greater than the knowledge we do know....

so we live life beautifully, within aesthetic purposes...
not within the standards of knowledge....
or we might try to live life, ''as a way of life''
and not in terms of what we may or may not know....
the search for existence is the search for finding a ''way of life''
for us... not a search for information....
and to say, knowledge is power, is nonsense, given that we can never
know how much information is missing from our current knowledge....

so, we can believe that a search for information/knowledge, that knowledge
is incomplete, at best, so one way for us to engage, is in a different
search, instead of searching for partial knowledge, is for what it
means to be human..... for that knowledge is also incomplete,
but it is worth searching for that information.... for what it means to be
human allows us to understand what the point of existence for us, both
individually and collectively.....
we might not have all the answers/knowledge, but we might have enough
to know what path or direction we should take....

Kropotkin

[Agent Smith]

"Don't touch me!!" screamed Maryam. "Pardon mademoiselle. The bus is overcrowded and moving, a forgivable accident, yes?" Tom tried to explain. "Hold on tighter to the handrails then!" Maryam was furious.

A few moments later ...

Tom got off the bus. He picked up his bag, the bus began moving, and from inside the bus, "You touched me again, you jerk!" It was Maryam. It had rained, the tarmac was glistening in the light of the street lamps. Tom felt a breeze, in the breeze, a page from a newspaper, being blown to nowhere.

[Peter Kropotkin]

as I have agent smith on ignore, we can go on....

we have "decided" that due to our limitations within ourselves,
we are limited in our intelligence, in our ability to know,
we are limited in knowing all possible sets... the primary
thing to understand about human beings is their limitations,
we can never know the whole, only parts of the whole..
and what exactly does that mean?

we cannot know universals... for to know a universal is to know
all possibilities of that particular universal... and we are too limited
to know that...a universal is to know the whole thing, and we can
only know a part of something.. so we can make a universal statement,

"all human beings will die" a universal.. but in fact, we have no
idea if this is true or not... to ''know'' if all human beings will die,
requires us to actually know all human beings ever and wonder if they
have all died... I can't know that... I can guess or assume, but
it is an assumption on my part, that human beings have died...
as I am limited in knowledge, to not know all history, to know
if all human beings have in fact, died.... does it seem likely that
all human beings have died? Epistemological, I can't know if
all human beings that have ever lived, have also died...

we cannot know any "truth" or facts universally, because
we have no knowledge about all facts, we can only know
some or partial facts.. not all facts...

so, epistemologically, we can only assume that all human beings
have died... we can't know...thus universal truths are not
possible for us.. only partial truths or facts are available to us...
no universal truths or facts....

so what this means for us is that we can't have any type of
universal theories...so, ethically, morally, we can only
have "ad hoc" theories of ethics/morals.... we cannot
create a ''theory of everything" that Einstein spent
the last 30 years of his life trying to develop...

all knowledge that is possible for us is partial, a little piece
of knowledge...not the whole thing....

so, when we think about the theory of gravity, we can only
know part of it, we cannot grasp the entire theory of
gravity... we are too limited to do that...there will
be some part of the theory of gravity that we will miss,
that is what it means to be human... to have partial,
incomplete theories of everything... a limited mind
cannot have a universal theory of anything/everything...

so how are to live given that we can only know a part of
something, never the whole thing?

it means that human existence is partial, incomplete,
and thus the feeling that human beings have of
being partial, incomplete is a real feeling...
psychologically, human beings want to be whole,
we think of ourselves as being incomplete,
partial, not whole....we seek that other that will
complete us... either in the form of other people,
idea's, feelings, thoughts, or images...
it is human nature to try to become whole... and it
is impossible given our limitations....

so the question becomes, how do we live with this idea/feeling
of being partial, never whole? even though we seek being whole
in bars, sex, drugs, groups like AA or in the collective cheering
for the baseball, football basketball teams we enjoy watching....
much of what we do as human beings is an attempt to
overcome our partial nature.. to become whole...
and that is impossible...now what?

what are we to do to overcome this feeling/idea
that all human beings have, of being partial,
incomplete?

Kropotkin

[Agent Smith]

as I have agent smith on ignore, we can go on....
Kropotkin

A thousand apologies.

[Harbal]

as I have agent smith on ignore, we can go on....

Really?

His are the only posts I bother reading. I actually look forward to them.