Fragments

 Fragments

This post is basically just for writing down half baked thoughts for later elaboration.

Affect & Emotion

  • There is a useful distinction between affects and emotions. The two are related, but distinct.
  • Affects are more like the raw functional components of the psyche. They are the raw qualia that make up our motivations. Examples include the feelings of sadness, anger, fear on the negative side, and contentment, excitement, joy on the positive side.
  • Emotions on the other hand depend on the existence of affects, and are defined by being an organisation of affects. What does this mean? It is best demonstrated by example - we will take love for this purpose. The concept of love describes a pattern of affect, not an affect - we can feel sadness, anger, fear, contentment, excitement, and joy as part of being in love, but such things are not identical to nor unique to love. As a result, emotions in this definition cannot simply be classed necessarily as positive or negative, as they can be constituted by patterns of both positive and negative affects. For instance, a person in love feels happiness when their partner is around and reciprocates their love, but feels miserable if they are gone or do not reciprocate. Due to the involvement of pattern and organisation of the 'raw material' of affect, emotions make use of a higher order intelligence. Other examples of emotion might be jealousy, vengeance, hate, respect, hope.
  • Desire and Aversion are of the type of emotions, as they too organise patterns of affect and motivation.
  • The 'patterning' of emotion can layer repeatedly, so that where emotion organise affects, emotions may also organise other emotions. It is in this way that a normal psyche achieves its relative wholeness, and the great complexity of human psychology, motivation, thought, behaviour, and morality is generated.

Categories

  • Categories are necessary for thought and (therefore) speech. There is no definition without contrast; indeed, this is what definition is.
  • Each category consists of a 'separating' and a 'binding'. Each category's separation aspect says what it is not, what is to be excluded when the category is invoked - in short, it's how the referent is to be distinguished from other things. Its binding aspect 'sticks' its aspects or members together, to be considered as a whole. For example: The category of 'dog' distinguishes individuals from cats (separation), but also binds various traits together (tail, fur, tendency to bark, etc.), as well as its members - individual dogs (binding).
    • The term 'category' seems to generally aspectualise separation over binding. This is in line with the symbolism of 'down' which is invoked by 'cate-' (katá) in Greek. Although this prefix may have been used more in the sense of 'against' originally, I still find it may be beneficial to create an oppose term, Anagory, to aspectualise the binding, as well as derived terms; anagorise, anagorical and so on. Thus we would say that we categorise a dog apart from a cat, as they are distinct, but we anagorise a dog as a mammal because to do so is to 'bind' it with other things (cats included!).
  • That which is separated and bound in categories is either qualia or other categories. Indeed; most of the categories we actually use on a day to day basis are composed of other categories; notions composed of other notions. However, if one breaks down categories enough times, one eventually 'hits the wall' of raw qualia.
  • All categories that do not refer to raw qualia are compressed predictions. In other words, the notion of 'dog' is a theory of the co-occurrence of the traits of dogness - the fur, the tendency to bark, and so on. In other words still, this is to say that the category of 'dog' is tantamount to my ability to predict what I will see if I hear a bark from around the corner and then go and check.
    • There is an implicit assumption floating around that categories that have clear necessary and sufficient conditions are the only 'real' ones, in some 'objective' sense, or elsewise the ambiguity is used to suggest that the category is empty of any content, arbitrary, or inconsistent. Categories with such clean necessary and sufficient conditions may be called rigorous categories for the sake of discussion. Correspondingly, the alternative may be called loose categories.
    • Rigorous categories are as such rigorous predictions; they permit high certainty predictions from and to their aspects, and one knows exactly what to expect when they are referred to as well. However, to give a monopoly only to these is to give a monopoly only to predictions that are absolutely certain. Firstly, this is problematic simply for practical reasons; absolute certainty is not possible or desirable as a baseline in almost any context. However, more pertinent is the fact that certainty simply is not a binary choice. It is not simply that things are either believable or not, but how believable they are. Such erasure of degree in the realm of certainty is never provided a justification, but simply assumed.
    • Such loose categories are there as useful as non-absolute predictions - which is to say, they are just fine for the purposes knowledge fulfils. Our attitude toward them should be the same as toward less than absolutely certain beliefs, which is to modulate our behaviour accordingly.

Knowledge & Wisdom

  • There is what is real, and what is unreal.
  • To seek to grasp what is real and unreal is to form a belief.
  • When a belief takes what is real to be real, or what is unreal to be unreal, it is true.
  • When a belief takes what is real to be unreal, or what is unreal to be real, it is false.
  • A belief that asserts a reality is simply called a belief. However, a belief that asserts an unreality is a disbelief.
  • When a belief is true, we call it knowledge. When a belief is false we call it delusion. Simple lack of true belief is called ignorance.
  • When intelligence turns upon itself to maximise knowledge and minimise delusion, this is called rationality. To fail as a result of a lack of this is called irrationality.
  • Community formed around the practice of rationality is called academia.
  • An institution formed for the purposes of academia is called a university.
  • An institution formed for the purposes of transmitting knowledge, with less focus on rationality, is called a school.
  • There is what is good, and what is bad.
  • To seek to grasp what is good and bad is to form a value.
  • When a value takes what is good to be good, and what is bad to be bad, it is +???.
  • When a value takes what is good to be not good, and what is bad to be not bad, it is -???.
  • When a value is +??? we call it wisdom. When a value is -??? we call it folly. Simple lack of +??? value is called ignorance.
  • When intelligence turns upon itself to maximise wisdom and minimise folly, this is called spirituality. To fail as a result of this is called unspirituality.
  • Community formed around the practice of spirituality is called religion.
  • An institution formed for the purposes of religion is called a monastery.
  • An institution formed for the purposes of transmitting wisdom, with less focus on spirituality, is called a temple.

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