I finally
figured out why true intelligence is missing from our modern world. We all know
the world has experienced many periods of great flourishing of many cultures’
brilliant intelligences, but I’ve been extremely puzzled why nations, that once
were intelligent, lost or lose their intelligence of sensible action, over
time. To figure this out, I’ve extensively studied Peirce’s category logic for
the last 10+ years, without really laying my mind to exactly what was so
important about it, until just recently, when I decided to do a serious
comparative analysis, of the interaction of varying nations’ intelligences,
over historical time. What I discovered really shocked me, as it’s really so
simple to understand, but will take a considerable explanation of a few of
these simple facts…
First, let
me break down intelligence into a few philosophical categories, we can
generally accept as having the capacity to hold most other philosophical
intelligence categories under them. Historically we’ve long known about idealism
and realism or nominalism and realism, as two majors from Plato and Aristotle
to Kant. Since Kant, we’ve had rationalism and empiricism in the modern sense,
generally speaking, as it’s really earlier, but anyway… We’ve further and more
modernly developed six major additions to these older systems; positivism,
logical positivism, Peircean pragmatism, James-Dewey pragmatisms, continental
philosophy and analytic philosophy of the language and linguistic brands. I’m
purposely not listing others such as transcendentalism, existentialism,
nihilism, skepticism, etc., as I feel these can be generally taken up under the
above more widely studied systems, and the points I wish to make more concern
the category mistakes made by most of the main systems mentioned…
Now, since
the early Greeks, mathematics, values, esthetics, ethics and logic played large
roles in all the philosophies for some 2500 years, with these mentioned systems
being categorized near the top of the priority lists, with lesser prioritized
subjects below. Of course the arguments went back and forth between all the
metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, phenomenological, etc., discussions
all through the 2500 year period, but math, values, esthetics, ethics and logic
were all held in high esteem, except of course through the European Dark Ages
era, yet these early Greek sciences and values systems were kept in play by the
Arabic speaking lands, and finally transferred to Europe during the
enlightenment and reformation periods__and greatly admired, I might add. But,
something began to change between philosophy’s values and category systems in
relation to its more scientific studies, as they were in battle with the Church
over the definition of values, and just who was going to control such values,
and herein begins the split between values and the more scientific systems of
knowledge and intelligence, of these periods. But, this isn’t the main part of
my story. It’s only the prelude to what was to take place within Philosophy’s
category systems, in the more modern era…
To put this
as simple as possible, what was in general standard category logic, from the
early Greeks to the positivists, had been the math, esthetic and ethical
values, fully joined to logic, at the head of the major category systems. But,
this all started to change with the first positivist, Compte, where he promoted
math, science and logic above the older and standard Greek values, thus
divorcing esthetic and ethical values from his_‘thought so’_more modern scientific view. Now, at first glance, this
may not seem to harmful, as science has the right to develop its own
independent systems and methodologies, and it’s true, this wouldn’t be much
concern, until one realizes this system takes on an entire cultural identity
through academics, over the years_as younger students are rote-programmed/educated/trained
with this new way of priority categorizing academic knowledge and possible or
impossible intelligence, which also filters out into the general society, over
time. Still, you may say, “…not such a
problem as you make out…” Well, that’s before one realizes the rest of the
story…
Since we
have more information from Peirce and Frege’ onward, let’s see where we go by
dealing with modern logic and psychology, as per the category system of math,
logic, language and linguistics’ priorities, in relation to producing
nominalism or realism, which existed, more or less, before this period. To the
point; Frege’ tried to promote logic and language up the category list, above
mathematics, and also tried excluding metaphysics, psychology and values,
almost completely from his category system_which was followed also by Russell,
Wittgenstein and others, to the present co. of Quine and Chomsky, etc._Thus
turning standard logic, values and knowledge on its head_banging itself into
egoic nominalism_and eliminating any possibility of true intelligence, guided
by community, esthetic and ethical values, in recognition of Greek, Roman, natural,
logical, syllogistic and common law__Which had been the sensible way for
centuries before…
At this
same time, Peirce was working the bugs out of his own system and brand of
pragmatism__Where he found that mathematics was necessary to be stationed at
the original top placement of the category list, as logic, when attempting the
super-fine structures, runs out of explanatory power, and math must take over.
Also, Peirce discovered by studying the scholastic logicians, they’d
concentrated heavily on values being very important to their logic, thus giving
logic its purpose of reasoning, in the first place, not to mention maintaining
the personal and social values, the Church had always failingly tried to
foster, due to its metaphysical nominalist stance, which is no more than taking
belief too far into extremes_but, that’s a story for another book, or more_And
I’ll pass on that... Thus we have the opposite ended systems of the logical
positivism of Frege and co., and the analytic pragmatism of Peirce, with
entirely opposite values and operations, especially when academics filters all
these oppositions into culture at large…
If one
looks carefully at Frege’ and co’s. system of prioritizing logic, language and
linguistics over math and values_and Peirce’s system of prioritizing math,
esthics and ethical values over, through and with logic, language and
linguistics, one can easily see the clash of civilizations’ intelligences, in
an unnecessary battle over priorities_and instead of increasing knowledge, such
a conflated battle simply and naturally decreases knowledge, by destroying the
necessary and proper values of societies, founding and grounding the continuity
of any possible true meaning and learning. Without esthetics and ethics guiding
logic’s proper decisions into the maths and sciences, Frege’ and co’s.,
mistaken category logic priority system simply destroys values and true
intelligence, as there’s no continuity to such a bastardized logic
system__Thus, such a system ends in pure dialectical nominalism, or the worship
of the ego of false logics’, languages’ and linguistics’ idealisms__lacking all
true meaning, to the real world of necessary and proper cultural values,
knowledge and true intelligence… Oh, and btw, James, Dewey and the Continental
philosophers have simply waffled between these two systems of Frege’s
nominalism and Peirce’s realism…
Finally,
analytically comparing our six original chosen modern philosophic systems; imo,
only Pierce’s pragmatic analytic teleological realist system, does not suffer
from the others’ egoic nominalist dialectical redundancy. It’s simply all a matter of prioritizing real
effectuated esthetic and ethical values over logic, language and linguistics to
produce the desired values for all our sciences, experiences and actions. Of
course, this system will need be made widely known and recognized by the
academic community, who already threw away Peirce, long ago__Yet, he’s actually
the only person to have ever lived, who put the entire philosophical system of
true knowledge, science and psychology together properly, which also saves
values, by having logic itself, depend on these very same values, in all its
analytic systems of actionable use. I think academics has a lot of steps to
retrace, to see just what they threw away…
The choice is yours__Values and true intelligence or no values and pseudo-intelligence, for our future…
