A NEW MONETARY SYSTEM for THE ELECTROSPHERE
©LLOYD GILLESPIE
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[INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING MECHANICS]
[TRIPLE ENTRY BANKING MECHANICS]
[INTRODUCTION TO INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING]
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
Date: 12-25-02 21:09
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"All problems using crude money must be overcome to survive the future eco-techno-electrosphere."
"Since the first wave agricultural revolution only required simple single entry banking –– and the second wave industrial revolution invented and required double entry banking –– then the third wave technological revolution [will] invent and [require] "TRIPLE ENTRY BANKING.""
In 1982 I empirically discovered an entirely new capitalist monetary system. This system is in direct evolution with the existing system. It is fully compatible with all known forms of money systems –– past – present – or future. The system is INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING –– TRIPLE ENTRY BANKING – a transactions truth. This new monetary system can be implemented cost free and effectively either unilaterally or globally. It can be instituted on a percentage basis from one percent, to twenty percent –– its most cost effective and productive percentage of operations' basis.
In this short paper, I will explain why I feel a new monetary system is necessary –– what it exactly is –– and how to painlessly implement it. First, I will discuss the present capitalist system to make clear why such a new system is needed. I will frame my discussion on four tenets –– demographics –– jobs and wages –– the present floating exchange rate non-regime –– and the technological revolution.
Many falsely believe the miracle of capitalist markets will cure all our future problems. Let me see if I can change your mind, to show markets of the future may need some new help. The most glaringly obvious problem is one of demographics alone. With the nation five trillion dollars in debt and both political parties fighting for the next spendable penny, when we at present don't yet have a demographic problem –– where do you think the money is coming from to support the retirement of the massive increase of baby-boomers?
This is not only a problem of our nation, but that of all industrial nations and many of the world's lesser nations as well. Japan has been flat on its economic back for five years now. Europe also has flat growth, high unemployment, massive debts, and intolerable rates of taxation. We need say little of the lesser nations as everyone is well aware of their bankrupt conditions. If we are short of the necessary funds now, what nation or group of nations is going to grow enough to resolve the present quagmire –– let alone the future's massive demographic increase of tax burdens? How will they grow? What economic incentives and organizations are presently planned and feasible? Are they capable of meeting future needs? I simply ask you to be the judge.
If nations are to grow their way out of the demographic problems of the future, where are the jobs and wages necessary to do so coming from? At present we are downsizing every economy in the world –– with massive mergers, outsourcing, and layoffs. Wages for forty to fifty percent of the population of America alone have declined over the last twenty years. Yes, it is true some at the top have benefited precipitously –– but at the cost of the bottom? High skilled jobs, such as unions, have shrunk dramatically –– from thirty-six percent of the work force to sixteen percent of the workplace. Are these evidences of true growth in jobs and wages over the last twenty years ––– as many would have us believe? And they fight against an increase in the minimum wage! Where will jobs and wages come from when the computer-robotic-revolution displaces more human workers ––– daily?
I don't mean to sound pessimistic, as I am not. I am only painting a true picture of present capitalism's stature. The system I am proposing –– INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING –– is thoroughly optimistic. So bear with me while I make my points about the present system's problems.
If you think these problems can be easily solved by conventional policy and market performance, you know little of the workings in the foreign exchange markets. These markets exist wherever a foreign exchange takes place –– sort of everywhere and nowhere. They exist everywhere a computer-telephone link is, and nowhere is there any real control. This system is an absolute free-for-all buying, selling, and swapping trillions of dollars and other currencies around the world at the speed of light twenty-four hours a day –– three-sixty-five days a year. The global transactions' figures presently stand somewhere between two-hundred-fifty and two-hundred-seventy-five trillion dollars per year. They are well over a trillion dollars per business day.
In order to understand the above, you must know these markets encompass the Euro-dollar system – the entire foreign exchange system – the forward exchange markets – the entire international banking system – interest, goods, and services arbitrage and hedging – derivatives – swaps – fixed and floating currencies – nations' inflation and tax systems – and all nations' governments and actions –– to mention just a few. The above includes the most intricate and complex of markets in the world. When the courts can't even understand these intricate markets –– how are the policy makers supposed to?
Let me give you a clear example of the above. George Soros has stated "Speculators can short the markets a trillion dollars quicker than governments can print it." He should know as he made one billion dollars on one speculative trade in 1993 against the European Economic Community –– which he documented in his book "SOROS ON SOROS". This is no isolated case, I assure you. Andrew Krieger has also written a book of his speculative exploits titled "THE MONEY BAZAAR – Inside the Trillion-Dollar World of Currency Trading." Both these books are excellent first hand sources of information about speculating against the present easily manipulated floating exchange non-system. Systems of this character must change to survive the ever increasing encrypted computerized future.
If you think the above issues can be brought under policy control – of two warring political parties in our country – I think you have missed the boat. Not only is it almost politically impossible in our own country, but it is even more politically unlikely to succeed globally. Internal tension and gridlock prevents local problem solving, while global tensions of Chinese communism, and Islamic fundamentalism prevents international problem solving. For these reasons, I have designed INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING to be instituted and function properly unilaterally –– with the support and respect of both warring political parties –– and to further be complementary to and compatible with external international processes.
Before explaining the above system, we must explore my fourth tenet –– the technological revolution. Professor of history Paul Kennedy has done the definitive work in this area. I would like to add my vision about the future of technology. I can nowheres near compare to the stature of Mr. Kennedy, but I have a unique perspective –– as I am an international currency and market speculator –– with considerable computer and robotics expertise.
Mr. Kennedy has rightfully shown the nightmare scenario we could be headed for if change is not undertaken. For his part of warning us, he has received the title of "Dr. Doom." Not only is his work not about doom, it is the most accurate possible course of history I have seen. We have a choice to let the future play out terribly ––– or to change it for the better. We had better listen to those who have better ideas than our own.
With all nations being forced by competition to adopt the latest advances in technology –– we are locked in an ever increasing scenario of technological evolution. The forces of markets are pushing us closer to a robotic and databased wage and pricing mechanism future. As the power and agility of robots increase, companies and corporations will be forced by competition to implement this new technology –– thus eliminating more human jobs and wages. Already, Japan is re-importing jobs they earlier outsourced to human labor, to be handled by robots cheaper at home. In other words, even some of the third world's labor is losing to robots –– and we have just begun. Databases, once simply a tool of improving efficiency within companies and corporations, are now being employed to handle massive world pricing mechanisms and on time global delivery systems. Competition in this area will be the most fierce, because it is the most cost effective method to improve profits. This area alone will be where massive layoffs of upper income workers will come from. So ––– while robots lay off the bottom tier –– databases lay off the top tier! And if you don't think this is true –– just check out who is tops on the web ––– Digital and Inktomi – the fastest!
The future will see massive increases in the use of robots to eliminate human labor and wages' costs –– competition requires it. We will see massive increases in the use of giant supercomputer databases and on time global delivery systems to eliminate human labor and wages' costs –– competition requires it. These two technologies alone can do nothing but downsize further the entire global economy ––– eliminating massive human work forces and wages –––– for the bottom line –––––––– profits!!!
There is no turning back. We must go forward with new monetary systems.
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INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING – A NEW MONETARY SYSTEM for THE GLOBAL ELECTROSPHERE©LLOYD GILLESPIE
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"All problems using crude money must be overcome to survive the future eco-techno-electrosphere."
"Anyone who thinks the use of crude money will not be necessary in the future is crazy!"
"The present electronic world is diminishing collective opportunity ––– fast!"
Over the past two centuries we have built a wondrous spectacle for the rest of the world to emulate. We have set the standards high for civil human conduct and happiness. The moral, ethical, and family stance we take should make us proud and respected. The institutions we have erected set the rest of the world at awe. Our scientific and industrial evolution and strength have revolutionized the entire planet –– especially since the end of WWII... So why do we feel so insecure?
The reason is we have reached economic entropy under the present world monetary systems and organizations. The technology revolution is creating real job and wage decreases as population increases. This is why we feel so insecure and helpless. To this point in time there are no serious conventional solutions being put forth. This is why I am offering an unconventional solution to our present economic stalemate.
On the surface "INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING" is not a difficult system to understand. It is simply a system to reorganize the control of the foreign exchange market to function more efficiently through internal mechanisms instead of external –– thus making more productive use of our or all nations' national debts. This system will stabilize exchange and inflation rates internally and externally when instituted. This is the real solution we truly seek –– to once and for all end inflation and disequilibria of the exchange rate mechanism. Only this solution will increase real jobs and wages in the coming eco-tecno-electronic revolution of the twenty-first century.
Why? You may ask will this system work better than the present one? What? You may ask is this system and how does it work? I should warn you, this system should not be confused with external exchange clearing advocated by Plato and Dr. Paul Einzig –– though they are the inventors of the groundwork of this system. Plato first advocated such a system some twenty-four-hundred years ago, and Dr. Paul Einzig (the WWII Finance Minister of England) has written the only book on exchange clearing I believe to be in print (Exchange Control, Macmillan and Co.1934). "INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING" is simply a higher evolution of these two great men's work.
"INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING" is based on a new framework of laws for existing markets to function under more efficiently. These new laws recognize and solve the existing problems through a one-fifth military style "P.X". and a "TRIPLE ENTRY BANKING" system. You must realize we do not have a production or resource problem. We have a monetary problem the above system solves at no cost to any parties involved. You say, "This is the old free lunch impossibility." I say, "The future being fast diminished by technological evolution requires a semi-free lunch." Notice this system is only a one-fifth change of existing structures –– and when further inspected is even no total change in existing assets. The system I am proposing takes from no-one, yet has the ability to operate semi-philanthropically for the benefit of all.
The one-fifth level mentioned above does not require being instituted at the twenty-percent level. The system can safely evolve to the twenty-percent level in small increments per year –– through the guidance of the new social contract laws we pass. At present, most every nation of the world is governed approximately twenty-percent by the external forces of multinational trade and international financial flows. "INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING" simply moves the control of the functioning of the mechanics of these markets from external malfunction to internal function. It does not change any actual control of these real and complex markets. They are still free to function as is even after institution. The real change only takes place internally, where we set government in competition with existing business at the one to twenty-percent over time level. By this I mean a reduction in present nationalization from its some forty-percent level to its new twenty-percent level. To accomplish the above, a national set price "P.X." will be instituted, where one to twenty-percent of everything from dust to diamonds is available to all comers alike –– citizen and entrepreneur alike. This is a government created independent "P.X" market totally separate from all present existing businesses –– yet set in competition with all existing business to create truly competitive and fair markets for all players and citizens alike. This market by the very existence of its instituted mechanics automatically controls all inflation, exchange rates, and prices into fair and equitable balances –– once and for ever!
The above market will be semi-philanthropically subsidized by the new "TRIPLE ENTRY BANKING" system –– which must be instituted along with the "P.X." and "INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING" systems. The functioning of the above markets' instituted mechanics make the semi-philanthropic system possible. The system will function unilaterally or universally. It is best recommended as a universal system –– though there is nothing to prevent its unilateral success as well. The advantage of multilateral acceptance is the cooperation of all nations advancing in unison to lessen world tensions. The philanthropic percentage could be set by agreement among many or all participating nations' equal ratios of GNP expansions.
I often state,"We need a fixed value monetary system. At the present time, we have none. Under floating exchanges, America is simply a powerful ship on an ocean, with no rudder. Old gold, silver, and other known standards will no longer work. They will not work due to the massive increases in communication's speed, the varied endowments of nations' natural resources, and encrypted international speculative opportunities. Therefore, we need a new system. INTERNAL EXCHANGE CLEARING is such a system. It is an entirely new fixed value enhancing - [production standard] - monetary system, to benefit all humankind."
It all comes down to: "If we set up government – all government – in business, in competition with existing private commercial business –– we can unilaterally make unlimited reasonable use of the printing press!"
Let's stop the ridiculous political and class battles and consider the abilities of the above to solve our problems ––– and once again unite us in all our desired goals and destinies.
Thank you,
L.A. Gillespie
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web: http://macromouse.blogspot.com
Monday, October 3, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Capitalism's New Game of Global Change...
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http://unfrozenmind.com/
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The Logic of Experience…!!!
“Carefully watch your thoughts
for they will become your words.
Manage and watch your words
for they will become your actions.
Consider and judge your actions
for they will become your habits.
Acknowledge and watch your habits
for they will become your values.
Understand and embrace your values
for they will become your destiny.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“If you think in straight lines, then you will go round in circles…” U.
Whoever marries the story of design and gaming technology with strategy, learning and leadership will create a series of disruptive services that will pioneer the paradigm shift in the business world... T. Coop
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Europe's Slide to Default...!
by Satyajit Das
July 21, 2011
Executed with Northern European creativity, charm, flexibility and humility and Mediterranean organization, leadership diligence and appetite for hard work, the European rescue plan–"the grand compact"–is failing.
Wrong Medicine
The EU response has relied on two mechanisms – the ECB and the European Financial Stability Fund ("EFSF").
The ECB has financed the beleaguered countries by buying their bonds in the secondary market (around euro 75 billion) and also by financing banks, against collateral of increasingly questionable quality such as Greek government bonds. There are allegations that the ECB and other European central banks have also used the euro-zone payments system to lend money (around euro 300 billion) to the crisis-stricken members. All this while the ECB has publicly been critical of banks, which are "addicted" to and substantially reliant on ECB financing.
The "temporary" EFSF due to terminate in 2013 proved poorly designed. Instead of the touted euro 440 billion, the fund had only the ability to lend around euro 250 billion, due to structural flaws. The EFSF is now to be replaced by the "permanent" European Stability Mechanism ("ESM") which will have lending capacity of euro 500 billion, the originally proposed level.
The euro 500 billion ESM facility too has deep structural flaws. It relies on a similar mechanism to the original EFSF to achieve its AAA rating – a system of separate guarantees and capital. The euro 500 billion fund is theoretically backed by euro 80 billion in cash and euro 620 billion in guarantees from euro-zone members.
The euro 80 billion will only be provided over 5 years starting in 2013. In part, this was a concession to member countries, including Germany, who were reluctant politically to provide the cash except on deferred terms. There is provision for speeding up payments into the funds if required, for example, by the need for additional bailouts. The facility also provides for member countries to provide cash to support the ESM, where its credit rating falls below a specified threshold to reduce the performance risk.
As with the EFSF, the reliance on euro-zone members guaranteeing each other is problematic. Some of the guarantors are themselves are vulnerable with the real and contingent liabilities. For example, every euro 100 billion provided by the ESM increases Italy’s potential liabilities by euro 18 billion, equivalent to 1% of the country’s GDP, and Germany’s potential liability by euro 27 billion, also equivalent to 1% of GDP.
Drawings on the facility may result in a spiral of credit downgrades and cash calls. For weaker guarantors, their financial position may be undermined, potentially encouraging them to withdraw from the ESM itself. For stronger members, it places increased pressure on their support and weakens their credit rating and finances.
The position is made worse by the fact that non-common currency EU members may not be part of the new structure. The UK has indicated that it will not be part of the ESM, depriving the euro-zone members of a significant source of funding and support (around 14% of the EFSF).
The ESM perpetuates existing and introduces new problems. Access to the ESM funding requires unanimous agreement amongst the euro-zone members. The ESM can provide loans only where the country agrees to accept EU/ IMF prescriptions for reformation of public finances and the economy. It will lend to the troubled country or purchase its bonds in the primary market, but not in the secondary market.
Unlike the EFSF arrangement, ESM funding would be senior to existing government debt (a standard feature of IMF rescues and bankruptcy financing, which was surprising excluded in the initial bailout condition). The ESM stipulates that restructuring is a requirement in the "unexpected" instance the government in question is determined to be "insolvent." In addition, from 2013, all future government bonds issued by euro-zone nations will need to include collective action clauses (CACs), designed to make restructuring mandatory under certain conditions.
If the current financing pressures on the troubled economies continue, then the existing support mechanisms may be inadequate. The countries, which have already sought bailouts, may need to seek additional support if commercial financing sources remain unavailable to them. Maturing debt and projected budget deficits for Greece, Ireland and Portugal will require around euro 300 billion in new funding between 2011 and 2013. If Spain needs to resort to the EU Funding mechanism, then the ability to provide additional would be severely strained.
In reality, an EU support mechanism of something in the order of euro 1.5-2.0 trillion would be needed to ensure a credible ability to bailout the embattled economies. Some European finance ministers have already called for an increase in the ESM to euro 1.5 trillion. If Italy was to need a bailout then the amount would be even larger - say euro 3-2.5 trillion. The political support for and economic viability of a facility of this size is unlikely.
At the same time, the terms of the ESM, especially the subordination of existing lenders to bailout funding and the mandatory CACs will increasingly force lenders and investors to avoid funding vulnerable countries. In effect, this will ensure that the peripheral economies becoming increasingly dependent on EU support, triggering the negative spiral described.
Skin in the Game
The EU bailouts have always primarily focused on protecting European banks from the effects of a default by borrowers such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
In total, banks in Germany, France and the UK have exposures of over euro 500 billion to these three countries. If exposure to Spain and Italy is included, the global banking system’s total exposure increases to around euro 2 trillion. The position is complicated by complex cross-lending arrangements. For example, banks in Spain, which may require support, have a euro 70 billion exposure to Portugal and a euro 13 billion exposure to Ireland.
Central to the European debt problems is the credit boom that took place following the introduction of the euro. Prior to monetary union in 1999, interest rates charged on loans to individual countries better reflected risk of loss - from currency movements and ability to repay debt. The introduction of the euro eliminated currency risk. Surprisingly, credit spreads fell sharply, reflecting a lack of differentiation between the credit quality of individual nations.
The mis-pricing of risk was driven by a belief that the entire euro zone was AAA rated because of the "implicit" support of Germany. An additional factor was the fact under Basel 1 and to a lesser extent under Basel 2 banking regulations, lending to sovereign nations attracted favorable capital treatment. The combination of these factors drove lending to the peripheral countries and their banks fuelling large credit booms which are now unwinding.
Much of this debt – in the form of sovereign debt, lending to banks and also structured securities based on mortgage and corporate loans – is held by smaller banks in France and Germany. If Greece, Ireland, Portugal and (ultimately) Spain have to restructure the debt, then these banks will suffer significant losses. It is unclear whether banks, especially in Germany and France, have sufficient capital and reserves, to bear these losses. The IMF’s bi-annual Financial Stability Report has consistently argued that the euro-zone banks have not been recognized losses adequately. The inadequate 2010 stress tests conducted by European central banks and the ECB did not countenance the prospect of a sovereign default in determining bank solvency. There are suggestions that the underlying position of some European banks, especially German Landesbanks, is highly problematic.
In June 2011, Moody’s changed its outlook on 13 mid-sized and smaller Italian banks to negative and warned it could downgrade the long-term debt ratings of 16 others. This followed its announcement that it had put Italy’s sovereign debt on review for possible downgrade. Italian banks were less affected by the financial crisis due to conservative lending culture and high levels of domestic retail deposits. Despite these strengths, concerns about possible contagion from the peripheral countries and the problems of Italy itself in bailing out these countries are now increasingly problematic.
Default or restructuring of European debt, in all probability, will require State involvement in recapitalizing these institutions. In essence, attention will switch from bailouts of sovereign nations to bailing out affected national banks.
ECB Hurt Money
Default or restructuring would also affect the ECB, which holds around euro 50 billion of Greek debt alone. The ECB’s total exposure to Greece, including lending to Greek banks and loans against Greek government bonds, is much higher – euro 130-140 billion.
If Greece defaults, then the ECB could suffer losses as high as euro 65-70 billion (say 50% of the amount advanced). The losses would almost certainly require recapitalization of the ECB itself by euro-zone members. As of 1 January 2011, the ECB had paid up capital of euro 5.2 billion (due to be increased progressively to euro 10.8 billion). The ECB is owned by the 17 euro-zone central banks with the combined capital of around Euro 80 billion.
The ECB’s position on whether peripheral countries like Greece should be allowed to default increasingly appears to be complicated by its own vulnerable financial position. When Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, an Italian board member, stated that a Greek debt restructuring would be "suicide" he may have been referring to the ECB. Statements about Anglo-Saxon "vested interests" seeking the restructuring of Greek debt are now matched by the ECB’s "self interest" in avoiding the same.
The effect on wider money markets of defaults is unpredictable. Depending on the quantum of losses and the recapitalization requirements, the event could create concerns about affected euro-zone banks, providing a channel for contagion in financial market. This could destabilize markets, transmitting the shock through high cost and reduced availability of financing, in a manner similar to what happened after the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Grand Confusions
The deeply flawed European strategy entailed providing financing to meet maturing debt and budget deficits at a time when markets were not open to the borrower or, at least, at reasonable rates. The EU/ ECB/ IMF funding would reduce borrowing costs to alleviate the pressure on public finances. The "temporary" measures would provide the country with the opportunity to reform its public finances and economy to make its debt burden more manageable. In time, the measures would allow the borrower to regain the confidence of commercial lenders and regain access to markets. As a corollary, banks would be able to build up reserves and capital against the possibility of some modest write-off as a result of some "minor" restructuring of debt, in the unlikely event that this was required.
Unfortunately, the premise that it was a "liquidity" rather than a "solvency" problem was incorrect. Breaking ranks, with other European central banks, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, stated uncategorically that in his view it was an issue of solvency.
In reality, markets understood that the EU bailouts were a "get-out-of-jail" pass for poor lending decisions. There was no way that any of these nations would ever be able to service or repay current and projected levels of borrowing. The EU facility provided a means for the distressed nations to repay maturing debt and finance their deficits. In effect, the EU and official bodies have replaced commercial lenders as debt providers.
The bailout plan did not lower the nation’s interest costs or their access to markets. Interest rates on borrowing for Greece and Ireland are higher now than at the time of their bailouts. Despite the likelihood of EU support, Portugal’s cost of funds is unsustainably high. Spain and other countries, such Italy and Belgium, seen as vulnerable by investors have seen their borrowing costs rise inexorably.
The bailouts have made its less not more likely that these countries will regain access to markets in the near future. As existing debts mature, the funding provided official sources, the EU, ECB and IMF, is increasing. As these countries need additional financing, the absence of private financing will increase this proportion even further, leaving them to bear the bulk of losses in any restructuring.
The lack of confidence reflects the failure of the rehabilitation plans and the continued unsustainability of the debt levels of these countries. The lack of economic growth and deteriorating public finances is not likely to reverse soon. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, gross public debt in the most troubled economies will continue to increase as continued budget deficits will require financing. Greece’s debt to GDP is likely to stabilize at around 160-180% around 2014/ 2015. Ireland, Portugal and Spain’s debt to GDP will reach 125-140%, 100-115% and 85-100% over the same period. Italy and Belgium already have debt to GDP ratios above 100%, but their budget deficits are lower and they are less dependent of foreign investors. Italy, burdened with very high levels of debt and low growth, has recently been placed on "negative" credit watch by rating agencies.
Even at subsidized interest rates, the debt burden for Greece, Ireland and Portugal looks unsustainable, rendering the countries insolvent. Spain’s position is better, but problems in the country’s banking sector as the property boom unwinds would strain its finances significantly. If Italy's cost of financing continues to rise then its debt servicing burden too may prove unsustainable. Slower than forecast global growth would place even greater pressure on all these countries.
These concerns about solvency will drive the lack of access to private financing, especially post 2013 because of the subordination provision and the mandatory inclusion of CACs. The failure of the grand compact will increase pressure to ultimately restructure debt in some form at some stage.
Backsliding
In the near term, the EU and euro-zone members seem likely to persist with the failed strategy. Portugal’s bailout package will be financed by the EU, EFSF and IMF. Further funding needs will be accommodated as they emerge from the existing facilities as much as possible, until these are exhausted. The ECB will continue to support the bailout plans. German insistence on commercial lenders sharing some of the burden has wavered. Instead fuzzy ideas of a "voluntary" commitment of existing lenders to re-finance existing, maturing debt will gain traction.
Over time, the palpable failure of the bailout strategy–extend and pretend–will progressively be revealed. Pressure will emerge to improve the term of the bailout package.
Already, Greece has received reductions in interest rates on bailout funding and some extension in the terms of the financing. The need to provide additional funding to Greece of around euro 120 billion is already under discussion. In all probability, some deal will be done to provide the funds, against Greek promises that cannot and will not be met. There will be more and more of the same, in a desperate effort to avoid default or restructuring.
In the end, default or restructuring will become inevitable. Initially, minor changes, such as lowering coupons and extending maturities, perhaps as part of debt swaps, will be sought to manage the problem. Ultimately, a major restructuring, involving a significant write off of outstanding debt is likely. This is the case for Greece and perhaps the other peripheral countries.
Such defaults would be the first by a developed country since 1948. As most of the debt is issued under local law, a swift restructuring is feasible by the agreement of a simple majority or super majority (say 2/3rds of lenders). Based on history, a loss of around 30-70% of the face value of obligations is expected. The longer the time taken over the process, the greater the likely losses to holders of the obligations. The reason being that unless the debt burden is reduced early, continuing high servicing costs and deficits will continue to increase the level of write off necessitated to restore solvency.
A Matter of Political Classes
European decision making increasingly echoes Shakepeare’s Richard II’s lament: "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." The EU and major euro-zone members, notably Germany and France, lack the political courage or will to tackle the problem. The absence of an "easy" and "painless" solution means that career politicians and euro-crats see no benefit in advocating the complex and messy process of default and restructuring.
European leaders dissemble that the debt crisis was the result of traders and financial markets. Anders Borg, Sweden’s finance minister spoke of "wolf-pack markets". José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s Prime Minister, blamed "cynical hedge funds", "cocky credit-ratings agencies" and "neoconservative capitalism." Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou accused traders of visiting "psychological terror" on his country. Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the single market, accused financial institutions of "making money on the back of the unhappiness of the people." Mr. Zapatero also found fault with a duplicitous Anglo-Saxon press. In short, it seems anybody but the Europeans are to blame. Cognitive dissonance looms large.
Increasingly, the trajectory of the crisis is driven by political considerations. The denouement to the European debt crisis, probably some way off, will come via by the "street" or the ballot box.
In the afflicted nations, public protests and disturbances are increasing as the populace rejects greater austerity. Populist politicians, willing to reject the need for further "sacrifice" and repudiate the country’s debt, hover in the wings. The argument that the country will be an international "financial pariah" doesn’t carry much weight when you are already one with no one likely to lend you money any time soon. It also has less weight when you don’t have a job and the country is on the brink of social breakdown.
For the countries that must provide the bulk of the bailout money, there is angst that the increased level of financing required by the problem borrowers has turned the EU into a "transfer union." Karl Otto Pöhl, the former head of the Bundesbank, stated that: "The foundation of the euro has fundamentally changed as a result of the decision by euro-zone governments to transform themselves into a transfer union. That is a violation of every rule. In the treaties governing the functioning of the European Union, it explicitly states that no country is liable for the debts of any other. But what we are doing right now, is exactly that. Added to this is the fact that, against all its vows, and against an explicit ban within its own constitution, the European Central Bank (ECB) has become involved in financing states."
The lack of decisive and timely action has allowed smaller political parties to gain momentum. Parties like Finland’s True Finns and France’s Far Right, rejuvenated under the leadership of Marine le Pen, have gained electorally on a policy platform of a mix of rejecting bailouts, nationalism, anti-immigration and other sundry forms of xenophobia.
Discontented and angry voters in Germany and other saving nations at some stage may also decide to call time on the fruitless and self-defeating support for the overly indebted euro-zone members.
Having falsely linked the problem of over indebted states with the canards of the continuation of the euro and the survival of the euro-zone itself, Europe is increasingly drifting towards an inevitable, disastrous and destabilizing debt crisis. Rather than amputating a gangrenous limb, European leaders risk poisoning the entire body fatally – weakening the financial positions of the stronger euro-zone members and their economies, which are paying for the bailout and will suffer the losses when the inevitable defaults come.
July 21, 2011
Executed with Northern European creativity, charm, flexibility and humility and Mediterranean organization, leadership diligence and appetite for hard work, the European rescue plan–"the grand compact"–is failing.
Wrong Medicine
The EU response has relied on two mechanisms – the ECB and the European Financial Stability Fund ("EFSF").
The ECB has financed the beleaguered countries by buying their bonds in the secondary market (around euro 75 billion) and also by financing banks, against collateral of increasingly questionable quality such as Greek government bonds. There are allegations that the ECB and other European central banks have also used the euro-zone payments system to lend money (around euro 300 billion) to the crisis-stricken members. All this while the ECB has publicly been critical of banks, which are "addicted" to and substantially reliant on ECB financing.
The "temporary" EFSF due to terminate in 2013 proved poorly designed. Instead of the touted euro 440 billion, the fund had only the ability to lend around euro 250 billion, due to structural flaws. The EFSF is now to be replaced by the "permanent" European Stability Mechanism ("ESM") which will have lending capacity of euro 500 billion, the originally proposed level.
The euro 500 billion ESM facility too has deep structural flaws. It relies on a similar mechanism to the original EFSF to achieve its AAA rating – a system of separate guarantees and capital. The euro 500 billion fund is theoretically backed by euro 80 billion in cash and euro 620 billion in guarantees from euro-zone members.
The euro 80 billion will only be provided over 5 years starting in 2013. In part, this was a concession to member countries, including Germany, who were reluctant politically to provide the cash except on deferred terms. There is provision for speeding up payments into the funds if required, for example, by the need for additional bailouts. The facility also provides for member countries to provide cash to support the ESM, where its credit rating falls below a specified threshold to reduce the performance risk.
As with the EFSF, the reliance on euro-zone members guaranteeing each other is problematic. Some of the guarantors are themselves are vulnerable with the real and contingent liabilities. For example, every euro 100 billion provided by the ESM increases Italy’s potential liabilities by euro 18 billion, equivalent to 1% of the country’s GDP, and Germany’s potential liability by euro 27 billion, also equivalent to 1% of GDP.
Drawings on the facility may result in a spiral of credit downgrades and cash calls. For weaker guarantors, their financial position may be undermined, potentially encouraging them to withdraw from the ESM itself. For stronger members, it places increased pressure on their support and weakens their credit rating and finances.
The position is made worse by the fact that non-common currency EU members may not be part of the new structure. The UK has indicated that it will not be part of the ESM, depriving the euro-zone members of a significant source of funding and support (around 14% of the EFSF).
The ESM perpetuates existing and introduces new problems. Access to the ESM funding requires unanimous agreement amongst the euro-zone members. The ESM can provide loans only where the country agrees to accept EU/ IMF prescriptions for reformation of public finances and the economy. It will lend to the troubled country or purchase its bonds in the primary market, but not in the secondary market.
Unlike the EFSF arrangement, ESM funding would be senior to existing government debt (a standard feature of IMF rescues and bankruptcy financing, which was surprising excluded in the initial bailout condition). The ESM stipulates that restructuring is a requirement in the "unexpected" instance the government in question is determined to be "insolvent." In addition, from 2013, all future government bonds issued by euro-zone nations will need to include collective action clauses (CACs), designed to make restructuring mandatory under certain conditions.
If the current financing pressures on the troubled economies continue, then the existing support mechanisms may be inadequate. The countries, which have already sought bailouts, may need to seek additional support if commercial financing sources remain unavailable to them. Maturing debt and projected budget deficits for Greece, Ireland and Portugal will require around euro 300 billion in new funding between 2011 and 2013. If Spain needs to resort to the EU Funding mechanism, then the ability to provide additional would be severely strained.
In reality, an EU support mechanism of something in the order of euro 1.5-2.0 trillion would be needed to ensure a credible ability to bailout the embattled economies. Some European finance ministers have already called for an increase in the ESM to euro 1.5 trillion. If Italy was to need a bailout then the amount would be even larger - say euro 3-2.5 trillion. The political support for and economic viability of a facility of this size is unlikely.
At the same time, the terms of the ESM, especially the subordination of existing lenders to bailout funding and the mandatory CACs will increasingly force lenders and investors to avoid funding vulnerable countries. In effect, this will ensure that the peripheral economies becoming increasingly dependent on EU support, triggering the negative spiral described.
Skin in the Game
The EU bailouts have always primarily focused on protecting European banks from the effects of a default by borrowers such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
In total, banks in Germany, France and the UK have exposures of over euro 500 billion to these three countries. If exposure to Spain and Italy is included, the global banking system’s total exposure increases to around euro 2 trillion. The position is complicated by complex cross-lending arrangements. For example, banks in Spain, which may require support, have a euro 70 billion exposure to Portugal and a euro 13 billion exposure to Ireland.
Central to the European debt problems is the credit boom that took place following the introduction of the euro. Prior to monetary union in 1999, interest rates charged on loans to individual countries better reflected risk of loss - from currency movements and ability to repay debt. The introduction of the euro eliminated currency risk. Surprisingly, credit spreads fell sharply, reflecting a lack of differentiation between the credit quality of individual nations.
The mis-pricing of risk was driven by a belief that the entire euro zone was AAA rated because of the "implicit" support of Germany. An additional factor was the fact under Basel 1 and to a lesser extent under Basel 2 banking regulations, lending to sovereign nations attracted favorable capital treatment. The combination of these factors drove lending to the peripheral countries and their banks fuelling large credit booms which are now unwinding.
Much of this debt – in the form of sovereign debt, lending to banks and also structured securities based on mortgage and corporate loans – is held by smaller banks in France and Germany. If Greece, Ireland, Portugal and (ultimately) Spain have to restructure the debt, then these banks will suffer significant losses. It is unclear whether banks, especially in Germany and France, have sufficient capital and reserves, to bear these losses. The IMF’s bi-annual Financial Stability Report has consistently argued that the euro-zone banks have not been recognized losses adequately. The inadequate 2010 stress tests conducted by European central banks and the ECB did not countenance the prospect of a sovereign default in determining bank solvency. There are suggestions that the underlying position of some European banks, especially German Landesbanks, is highly problematic.
In June 2011, Moody’s changed its outlook on 13 mid-sized and smaller Italian banks to negative and warned it could downgrade the long-term debt ratings of 16 others. This followed its announcement that it had put Italy’s sovereign debt on review for possible downgrade. Italian banks were less affected by the financial crisis due to conservative lending culture and high levels of domestic retail deposits. Despite these strengths, concerns about possible contagion from the peripheral countries and the problems of Italy itself in bailing out these countries are now increasingly problematic.
Default or restructuring of European debt, in all probability, will require State involvement in recapitalizing these institutions. In essence, attention will switch from bailouts of sovereign nations to bailing out affected national banks.
ECB Hurt Money
Default or restructuring would also affect the ECB, which holds around euro 50 billion of Greek debt alone. The ECB’s total exposure to Greece, including lending to Greek banks and loans against Greek government bonds, is much higher – euro 130-140 billion.
If Greece defaults, then the ECB could suffer losses as high as euro 65-70 billion (say 50% of the amount advanced). The losses would almost certainly require recapitalization of the ECB itself by euro-zone members. As of 1 January 2011, the ECB had paid up capital of euro 5.2 billion (due to be increased progressively to euro 10.8 billion). The ECB is owned by the 17 euro-zone central banks with the combined capital of around Euro 80 billion.
The ECB’s position on whether peripheral countries like Greece should be allowed to default increasingly appears to be complicated by its own vulnerable financial position. When Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, an Italian board member, stated that a Greek debt restructuring would be "suicide" he may have been referring to the ECB. Statements about Anglo-Saxon "vested interests" seeking the restructuring of Greek debt are now matched by the ECB’s "self interest" in avoiding the same.
The effect on wider money markets of defaults is unpredictable. Depending on the quantum of losses and the recapitalization requirements, the event could create concerns about affected euro-zone banks, providing a channel for contagion in financial market. This could destabilize markets, transmitting the shock through high cost and reduced availability of financing, in a manner similar to what happened after the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Grand Confusions
The deeply flawed European strategy entailed providing financing to meet maturing debt and budget deficits at a time when markets were not open to the borrower or, at least, at reasonable rates. The EU/ ECB/ IMF funding would reduce borrowing costs to alleviate the pressure on public finances. The "temporary" measures would provide the country with the opportunity to reform its public finances and economy to make its debt burden more manageable. In time, the measures would allow the borrower to regain the confidence of commercial lenders and regain access to markets. As a corollary, banks would be able to build up reserves and capital against the possibility of some modest write-off as a result of some "minor" restructuring of debt, in the unlikely event that this was required.
Unfortunately, the premise that it was a "liquidity" rather than a "solvency" problem was incorrect. Breaking ranks, with other European central banks, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, stated uncategorically that in his view it was an issue of solvency.
In reality, markets understood that the EU bailouts were a "get-out-of-jail" pass for poor lending decisions. There was no way that any of these nations would ever be able to service or repay current and projected levels of borrowing. The EU facility provided a means for the distressed nations to repay maturing debt and finance their deficits. In effect, the EU and official bodies have replaced commercial lenders as debt providers.
The bailout plan did not lower the nation’s interest costs or their access to markets. Interest rates on borrowing for Greece and Ireland are higher now than at the time of their bailouts. Despite the likelihood of EU support, Portugal’s cost of funds is unsustainably high. Spain and other countries, such Italy and Belgium, seen as vulnerable by investors have seen their borrowing costs rise inexorably.
The bailouts have made its less not more likely that these countries will regain access to markets in the near future. As existing debts mature, the funding provided official sources, the EU, ECB and IMF, is increasing. As these countries need additional financing, the absence of private financing will increase this proportion even further, leaving them to bear the bulk of losses in any restructuring.
The lack of confidence reflects the failure of the rehabilitation plans and the continued unsustainability of the debt levels of these countries. The lack of economic growth and deteriorating public finances is not likely to reverse soon. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, gross public debt in the most troubled economies will continue to increase as continued budget deficits will require financing. Greece’s debt to GDP is likely to stabilize at around 160-180% around 2014/ 2015. Ireland, Portugal and Spain’s debt to GDP will reach 125-140%, 100-115% and 85-100% over the same period. Italy and Belgium already have debt to GDP ratios above 100%, but their budget deficits are lower and they are less dependent of foreign investors. Italy, burdened with very high levels of debt and low growth, has recently been placed on "negative" credit watch by rating agencies.
Even at subsidized interest rates, the debt burden for Greece, Ireland and Portugal looks unsustainable, rendering the countries insolvent. Spain’s position is better, but problems in the country’s banking sector as the property boom unwinds would strain its finances significantly. If Italy's cost of financing continues to rise then its debt servicing burden too may prove unsustainable. Slower than forecast global growth would place even greater pressure on all these countries.
These concerns about solvency will drive the lack of access to private financing, especially post 2013 because of the subordination provision and the mandatory inclusion of CACs. The failure of the grand compact will increase pressure to ultimately restructure debt in some form at some stage.
Backsliding
In the near term, the EU and euro-zone members seem likely to persist with the failed strategy. Portugal’s bailout package will be financed by the EU, EFSF and IMF. Further funding needs will be accommodated as they emerge from the existing facilities as much as possible, until these are exhausted. The ECB will continue to support the bailout plans. German insistence on commercial lenders sharing some of the burden has wavered. Instead fuzzy ideas of a "voluntary" commitment of existing lenders to re-finance existing, maturing debt will gain traction.
Over time, the palpable failure of the bailout strategy–extend and pretend–will progressively be revealed. Pressure will emerge to improve the term of the bailout package.
Already, Greece has received reductions in interest rates on bailout funding and some extension in the terms of the financing. The need to provide additional funding to Greece of around euro 120 billion is already under discussion. In all probability, some deal will be done to provide the funds, against Greek promises that cannot and will not be met. There will be more and more of the same, in a desperate effort to avoid default or restructuring.
In the end, default or restructuring will become inevitable. Initially, minor changes, such as lowering coupons and extending maturities, perhaps as part of debt swaps, will be sought to manage the problem. Ultimately, a major restructuring, involving a significant write off of outstanding debt is likely. This is the case for Greece and perhaps the other peripheral countries.
Such defaults would be the first by a developed country since 1948. As most of the debt is issued under local law, a swift restructuring is feasible by the agreement of a simple majority or super majority (say 2/3rds of lenders). Based on history, a loss of around 30-70% of the face value of obligations is expected. The longer the time taken over the process, the greater the likely losses to holders of the obligations. The reason being that unless the debt burden is reduced early, continuing high servicing costs and deficits will continue to increase the level of write off necessitated to restore solvency.
A Matter of Political Classes
European decision making increasingly echoes Shakepeare’s Richard II’s lament: "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." The EU and major euro-zone members, notably Germany and France, lack the political courage or will to tackle the problem. The absence of an "easy" and "painless" solution means that career politicians and euro-crats see no benefit in advocating the complex and messy process of default and restructuring.
European leaders dissemble that the debt crisis was the result of traders and financial markets. Anders Borg, Sweden’s finance minister spoke of "wolf-pack markets". José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s Prime Minister, blamed "cynical hedge funds", "cocky credit-ratings agencies" and "neoconservative capitalism." Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou accused traders of visiting "psychological terror" on his country. Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the single market, accused financial institutions of "making money on the back of the unhappiness of the people." Mr. Zapatero also found fault with a duplicitous Anglo-Saxon press. In short, it seems anybody but the Europeans are to blame. Cognitive dissonance looms large.
Increasingly, the trajectory of the crisis is driven by political considerations. The denouement to the European debt crisis, probably some way off, will come via by the "street" or the ballot box.
In the afflicted nations, public protests and disturbances are increasing as the populace rejects greater austerity. Populist politicians, willing to reject the need for further "sacrifice" and repudiate the country’s debt, hover in the wings. The argument that the country will be an international "financial pariah" doesn’t carry much weight when you are already one with no one likely to lend you money any time soon. It also has less weight when you don’t have a job and the country is on the brink of social breakdown.
For the countries that must provide the bulk of the bailout money, there is angst that the increased level of financing required by the problem borrowers has turned the EU into a "transfer union." Karl Otto Pöhl, the former head of the Bundesbank, stated that: "The foundation of the euro has fundamentally changed as a result of the decision by euro-zone governments to transform themselves into a transfer union. That is a violation of every rule. In the treaties governing the functioning of the European Union, it explicitly states that no country is liable for the debts of any other. But what we are doing right now, is exactly that. Added to this is the fact that, against all its vows, and against an explicit ban within its own constitution, the European Central Bank (ECB) has become involved in financing states."
The lack of decisive and timely action has allowed smaller political parties to gain momentum. Parties like Finland’s True Finns and France’s Far Right, rejuvenated under the leadership of Marine le Pen, have gained electorally on a policy platform of a mix of rejecting bailouts, nationalism, anti-immigration and other sundry forms of xenophobia.
Discontented and angry voters in Germany and other saving nations at some stage may also decide to call time on the fruitless and self-defeating support for the overly indebted euro-zone members.
Having falsely linked the problem of over indebted states with the canards of the continuation of the euro and the survival of the euro-zone itself, Europe is increasingly drifting towards an inevitable, disastrous and destabilizing debt crisis. Rather than amputating a gangrenous limb, European leaders risk poisoning the entire body fatally – weakening the financial positions of the stronger euro-zone members and their economies, which are paying for the bailout and will suffer the losses when the inevitable defaults come.
Monday, August 1, 2011
The Complex “Epistemology of Logic” & The Simple “Intentionality of Fucus…”
(This may offer some help Tim. I wrote it for a general audience of philosophers…)
How does one even begin to describe the mechanics of self-logic__that’s a logic, looking at itself, to understand itself…? Is it even possible, without running straight into the many epistemological, teleological and ontological unsolved historical problems, of others’__thus far attempts__at trying to explain this concept, or its mechanics…? I know of no sound eclectic, polymathic philosopher or logician who did not try their best to clearly explain the epistemology of logic and rationality involved, but I still must come up short, of giving them full credit for their efforts__as I still see far too much left un-explained. Why has it been so difficult, to delve deep enough into the logic-psyche of perception, to truly understand it…? Does not intelligence equate to a__or the__knowledge of logic and psyche, within perception__or is this truly an incommensurability concept of the complex mechanics of logic and psychology__at the very core of our ‘heacceitic/supervenient/one-many’ understanding, of the total functioning mechanics…? Would an esthetics of intelligence better serve our foundations of understanding of this most complex a concept__and where does our simple intentionality of focus, fit in…? These are just a few of the questions I’m starting out with, to see if just possibly, I can achieve any better understanding, than all the great logicians’, estheticians’ and philosophers’ attempts__before me. Let’s see how I do…
The initial philosophical argument mainly goes back to pre-suppositional background stances, and primarily as to whether we put more faith and credit in meta-physics, psychology or logic__at least in my opinion. This would really be our primary intentional focus of mind and thought, and there are hundreds of historical examples to choose from here, or to create our own view, anew. These ideas really came fully to the front burner, back toward the end of the 19th century, with the positions taken by Frege, Brentano and Peirce__then Husserl, Wittgenstein and others, in the early 20th century. My position about their positions is; they all missed the mark of hitting the target directly, and the entire world has been awash in confusion and conflation of and about these necessary philosophical ideas’ solutions__unnecessarily so__ever since…
Yes, it does make it rather difficult to explain one’s pre-suppositional, or preferred intentional stance by way of any one of the three offered focus points__metaphysics, psychology or logic__but, no matter which one’s pre-suppositional or preferred intentional stance is, you’ll end facing the same exact dilemma of explanation__which usually ends in a Socratic ‘aporia’__so what’s to be done to clear this matter up__a bit…? Let’s deliberately start out in logic, to show the difficulty of understanding just how logic ‘Herself’ can see and explain its own mechanics, to itself. If logic looks at straight logic, all the way back into the core of the self-processing mind__what does it find…? All one needs do is ask; “How does logic process itself…?”__to immediately see how difficult this problem is. So, instead of fumbling around here with logic, let’s take the logic concept to its core__or shell, however you want it__which imo, would be no more than natural perception, in its most primary state__pure neutral innocent perception, which contains logic and her twin, rationality__as our dialectic ‘self-questioning-answering-twins’, except one is usually primary and the other secondary, but semiotics throughout history has shown them to be able to exchange positions, i.e., inter-exchange as the needs arise as to ascriptions of other essence agents’ needs to each other, to such reason, rationalities and or logics, etc, dynamics and mechanics. The reason perception is being described as a neutral innocent agency, is the simple fact one’s brain/mind absolutely requires at least one open agent to act as fully neutral__thus acting as a bridge to transfer all agent and agency signals__and since perception is known to be thoroughly neutral to outside nature entering the gates of perception, unaided by any other of our agents or agency__it’s fully known to be neutral__even if it may have other extended capacities, that may be mentioned later…
It now seems, we may have a pure enough agent/agency to start with, to house the other bio-neuro-agents necessary, to set up the dynamics of transducible inter-acting thought mechanics__if just a bit of imagination is used to build a model of the brain/mind. It seems philosophers and such, have simply not investigated deep enough inside neutral perception’s potential to be the house of all the brain’s necessary thought mechanics, where a multitude of ‘bio-neuro-agents’ are set up by our pre-natural states of physiological mechanics, to function as a simple reflective mirrors' system, memory storing and understanding/seeing device__we simply peer into with perception’s reason and logic__or even psychology and metaphysics, if desired to do so__It’s simply all milti-levels of seeing. But, what makes the giant differences between our metaphysical ground states of focus, vs our psychological and logical ground states of focus…?
Let’s just watch what really happens when we take a ground focus state of logic to look at a bunch of trees, on the side of a hill, overlooking a lake__What do we see if we simply casually look, without clearly focusing in on any one object…? We simply process the information as a general universal vision, which if you really think about it__is not logic at all__even though you may be a logician, as I am. In this scenario, my or your mind has really turned from processing the images logically, to processing them psychologically__yet, we’ll almost always insist it’s processing on our logical focus, as being the truest focus, as that’s our preferred, pre-self-programmed, pre-suppositional primary focus and stance. The same will be true if I reverse the order to that of the psychological pre-suppositional processing__yet ask the psychological focus to intentionally concentrate on a particular object__say a frog sitting on a rock__at the water’s edge. The psychological mind will turn logical on the passage of its preferred psychological pre-suppositional stance, to that of the logical focus, without you or me even recognizing it, and still, we’ll usually swear we are making a psychological observation, even though in fact__the nature of the beast of the mind has self-changed its very mechanics, under our very noses, without any of us even noticing__unless you happen to be one who is already fully aware of nature’s given mechanics, multi-variably self-operating within our brains and minds…
Now, watch what happens with the metaphysical__as it turns out to be the most universal focus stance to operate with, of all three__whether the logical or psychological minds have ever considered it or not__It has the natural power of ‘multi-variably-focusing’. The metaphysical has the advantage of resting neutrally in Nature’s own fundamental stance, if I can even word it like this, without offending some of the metaphysicians, logicians and psychologists. When pre-suppositionally positioning one’s focus knowingly and preferedly in the metaphysical stance__one has the easy choice of using either of the other two necessary positions of a general and universal psychological focus, or a particular and specific logical focus, yet still comfortably being able to return to its ground base of ‘multi-varible-metaphysics’__or the ground state of haecceity and supervenience__Nature’s own natural fundamental neutral processing state. So__Iff we wake up, we really do have a choice here__and it’s not one of any religious sort, but a simple choice of recognizing Ockham’s Razor’s ‘indiscernibility principle’ of the easiest possible ‘one/many’ processing path. We can foolishly fight the world of Nature’s reality, by insisting on being pre-suppositionally logical or psychological__or truly realize we can take the neutral stance and focus, on our ground point state of natural ‘one/many’ metaphysics__and thus allow our minds to ‘freely-flow’ from their natural ground states of their ‘multi-variable-focusing’ nature__Where we don’t have to control the states of our focus__where intentionality comes naturally, from our childhood memory states__before we foolishly chose either of the overly and unnecessarily hard paths of logic or psychology__as our overly-primary preferred mechanics of viewing this very natural and ‘uncomplicated’ world…
Metaphysics, over the centuries, may have got a bad rap and rep__but, it’s really a lot easier to accept what needs to be in the core of our understanding__the ‘one/many’ central concept__of our mind’s processing, than to unnecessarily fight the necessarily happening mechanics, of Nature’s natural systems__freely given to us, as a ‘best-fitting inference system mechanics’__Possible… I also wouldn’t want you to think this is real easy to understand, either__as it is not. I still think it takes the thorough understanding of sem(e)iotics’ very complex mechanics, of dynamic agent and agency interactions__along with a good dose of symbolic and graph logic__to fully understand the above, and according to one’s education and thought’s evolutionary state, what one may simply understand from the above’s more simple explanation…
The more complex I make this, the less it’ll be understood__so I’ll stop here… I’d simply suggest a good study of the web’s many pdf’s on epistemology and sem(e)iology, especially those by Charles Sanders Peirce and Bernard Bolzano, and any of the professionally done secondary literature of/on both__as it’s easier to understand, and quite thorough, if done by those authors who respect these great mens’ works…
“We should all know the full intentionality of our focus…” me
Addendum to the above:
I don’t quite know why it is so hard to state the above facts deep enough to achieve clarity, but I do know that every time I’ve tried to do just that__it’s been the most difficult job I’ve ever attempted, and I felt I haven’t accomplished the job I set out to do any better this time__so here’s an attempt to extend it to more meaning and clarity__if possible. First off, ‘Epistemology’, as I’m using it is to be known as ‘The science of the limits of logical knowledge, and its mechanics of mental processings’, and I’d like to recognize the fact I forgot to mention above that I was addressing normal logic/thought, of proto-logic/first logic, as that logic existing before we attempt any organization of normal logic into any type of formal logic. Also, the other proto-logic of ‘Modal Logic’ should be recognized as existing in this same area of thinking about this most fundamental level of logic. One never realizes how difficult this is, and the massive job Aristotle certainly had, to create the first formal logic ever produced. Yes, there existed a ‘formal modal logic’ before Aristotle, and that had been debated and argued extensively long before Aristotle, as to its three states of ‘possibility, impossibility and necessity’__and Aristotle included and extended the ideas of this also, but the deeper area of normal thinking to a fully formalized thinking of symbolic and syllogistic logic, was only first completed by Aristotle__the truest father of fully formal logic. I am simply trying to retrace this trail/train of thought through the ancient to modern paths, of how it must be understood__to function as the ‘formal logic’ it does(yet understood in more layman terms and ideas), or possibly extend it into a new ‘Best-Fitting hypothetical inference logic mechanics and proof system’__or really, a better and more complete explanation of ‘Abduction’__‘The true science and logic of hypothesis…’
Just to let you know further how difficult chasing out logical thought, within the mind, truly is__I started this quest intently, clear back in the summer of 1972__and have been working on the best way of wording it ever since. It seems I can word it in my mind, as clear as a bell, but when it comes to writing clearly about it, the mind has a mind of its own, and takes me off course, even before I even start. It seems the reason is the mind just needs to convert logical thinking to psychological and metaphysical thinking, back and forth in such fast succession__that it’s near impossible for my thinking to pin it down to the natural set path it’s taking, inside me lil’ ol’ punkin. I know I can use the formal symbolic logic and semiotics to explain it better, but my goal is to explain it with simple and natural language, any 5th grade student can understand__and therein lies the problem. Each time I try to nail down a simple thought and or logic path, it changes to another definition of mechanics, right before my eyes. It’s like when I attempt to follow the universal group focus or vision of anything I may choose, to its specific particular focus of vision and description__still trying to maintain the thought path__it blurs into a non-descriptive indiscernible non-image, before I can even latch onto the mechanical processes taking place, deep within my mind. Now, I know this is the deep epistemological mechanics taking place at this level__but, I still question the fact of why I can’t keep track of what I know to be the essence agents, agency and mechanics the sem(e)iotic mechanics must choose from, to complete the concept to concept process__through all its disjuncts and conjuncts. And this means I’m fully aware of the eclectic mechanics taking place between the will having to choose its many different judgment and decision mechanics levels, as per say__empiricism, rationality, memory states of both subjective and objective storage event states, present working memory and direct perception states of subjective and objective events and objects, ascripted emotional judgments, formal rational judgments, all the many thousands of inference images, experiences, experiments and ideas from the outside and inside worlds of reality and natural memory, teleological ideas, ontological ideas, mereological ideas, disjunctions and conjunctions of all these many possible states of normal forms into formal forms, etc., on and on__But, my question has always been; “Why can’t I follow this total path mechanics, if I know it all exists…?”
It seems the mechanical process is just so fast at switching between the most fundamental states of logic, psychology and metaphysics(self-chosen as representative mental states) into a more uniform state of isomorphic mechanics of states, the mind is, or at least seems to be, simply incapable of following its own state changing mechanics__thoroughly enough__to capture its full integral path from first visions and thoughts, into final states of either group thoughts, if starting from the particular and passing to the Universal, or to particular specific final logic states, if starting from the group Universal thoughts, and processing to the specific logical states. What I’m trying to see into is; “Is it possible that nature’s natural inference state, may be interfering with all the state paths I am following, and entering her own state changing path mechanics, I can not normally see…?” We certainly know our eyes and perception take in the external world around us, totally passively, if we but do not interfere, by our intentionality of focus__so this same process, must by necessity, be happening all the time, we are also at the same time__internally processing our own private thoughts__therefore; ‘Nature, all by herself, must by necessity of inference flow mechanics, be changing the disjuncts and conjuncts of concepts integral paths, within the mind, as I’m looking at it…’ There is no reason we’d be able to see this ‘Natural Inference Mechanics’, because we don’t normally see it happening__that is as to its exact integral path mechanics, unless we re-represent it within our reflective perceptual working memory states, where our will can manipulate it__But, that initial ‘Natural Inference Mechanics’, would be taking place before our ‘Will and Judgments’ even became involved__and herein__"I’ve just this second realized”__is the lil’ ol’ ‘trickster demon’ that’s actually fooling our mind mechanics, at its most primary path state intersection__though it’s not really a ‘trickster demon’__but merely nature's natural mental biological-neuro-states’ necessary mechanics’ paths__to enable the mind to be fed any information__in the first place__to even have begun to work on, as all first inferred information must have a free-path circuit, to simply store such necessary primary information in the brain’s memory, without being self-judgment or decision acted upon, or we’d all get far too easily lost in any of our simplest motive actions in the real world__Nature requires a ‘free-path mechanics’, just as much as we require, at the least, a ‘partially free will’. The secret seems to be no more than ‘Inference Path Necessity of Nature’s Natural Mechanics…’ Simply put; “We can’t stop the natural path integral mechanics of Nature, influencing our personal will, judgment, decision and action mechanics__completely__so, we actually process all information in conjunction with Nature…” Thus, such a co-processing mechanics of images and thoughts, would absolutely necessitate a co-processing determined 'free-path' and indetermined ‘partially’ 'free-will…'
Now, maybe later, I can fully retrace all my thoughts from fundamental nature’s own inference mechanics, to my own natural to formal logical mechanics…
I’ll get back to this later in another post, as this discovery has over-flooded my mind, at this point__I need some thought space…
How does one even begin to describe the mechanics of self-logic__that’s a logic, looking at itself, to understand itself…? Is it even possible, without running straight into the many epistemological, teleological and ontological unsolved historical problems, of others’__thus far attempts__at trying to explain this concept, or its mechanics…? I know of no sound eclectic, polymathic philosopher or logician who did not try their best to clearly explain the epistemology of logic and rationality involved, but I still must come up short, of giving them full credit for their efforts__as I still see far too much left un-explained. Why has it been so difficult, to delve deep enough into the logic-psyche of perception, to truly understand it…? Does not intelligence equate to a__or the__knowledge of logic and psyche, within perception__or is this truly an incommensurability concept of the complex mechanics of logic and psychology__at the very core of our ‘heacceitic/supervenient/one-many’ understanding, of the total functioning mechanics…? Would an esthetics of intelligence better serve our foundations of understanding of this most complex a concept__and where does our simple intentionality of focus, fit in…? These are just a few of the questions I’m starting out with, to see if just possibly, I can achieve any better understanding, than all the great logicians’, estheticians’ and philosophers’ attempts__before me. Let’s see how I do…
The initial philosophical argument mainly goes back to pre-suppositional background stances, and primarily as to whether we put more faith and credit in meta-physics, psychology or logic__at least in my opinion. This would really be our primary intentional focus of mind and thought, and there are hundreds of historical examples to choose from here, or to create our own view, anew. These ideas really came fully to the front burner, back toward the end of the 19th century, with the positions taken by Frege, Brentano and Peirce__then Husserl, Wittgenstein and others, in the early 20th century. My position about their positions is; they all missed the mark of hitting the target directly, and the entire world has been awash in confusion and conflation of and about these necessary philosophical ideas’ solutions__unnecessarily so__ever since…
Yes, it does make it rather difficult to explain one’s pre-suppositional, or preferred intentional stance by way of any one of the three offered focus points__metaphysics, psychology or logic__but, no matter which one’s pre-suppositional or preferred intentional stance is, you’ll end facing the same exact dilemma of explanation__which usually ends in a Socratic ‘aporia’__so what’s to be done to clear this matter up__a bit…? Let’s deliberately start out in logic, to show the difficulty of understanding just how logic ‘Herself’ can see and explain its own mechanics, to itself. If logic looks at straight logic, all the way back into the core of the self-processing mind__what does it find…? All one needs do is ask; “How does logic process itself…?”__to immediately see how difficult this problem is. So, instead of fumbling around here with logic, let’s take the logic concept to its core__or shell, however you want it__which imo, would be no more than natural perception, in its most primary state__pure neutral innocent perception, which contains logic and her twin, rationality__as our dialectic ‘self-questioning-answering-twins’, except one is usually primary and the other secondary, but semiotics throughout history has shown them to be able to exchange positions, i.e., inter-exchange as the needs arise as to ascriptions of other essence agents’ needs to each other, to such reason, rationalities and or logics, etc, dynamics and mechanics. The reason perception is being described as a neutral innocent agency, is the simple fact one’s brain/mind absolutely requires at least one open agent to act as fully neutral__thus acting as a bridge to transfer all agent and agency signals__and since perception is known to be thoroughly neutral to outside nature entering the gates of perception, unaided by any other of our agents or agency__it’s fully known to be neutral__even if it may have other extended capacities, that may be mentioned later…
It now seems, we may have a pure enough agent/agency to start with, to house the other bio-neuro-agents necessary, to set up the dynamics of transducible inter-acting thought mechanics__if just a bit of imagination is used to build a model of the brain/mind. It seems philosophers and such, have simply not investigated deep enough inside neutral perception’s potential to be the house of all the brain’s necessary thought mechanics, where a multitude of ‘bio-neuro-agents’ are set up by our pre-natural states of physiological mechanics, to function as a simple reflective mirrors' system, memory storing and understanding/seeing device__we simply peer into with perception’s reason and logic__or even psychology and metaphysics, if desired to do so__It’s simply all milti-levels of seeing. But, what makes the giant differences between our metaphysical ground states of focus, vs our psychological and logical ground states of focus…?
Let’s just watch what really happens when we take a ground focus state of logic to look at a bunch of trees, on the side of a hill, overlooking a lake__What do we see if we simply casually look, without clearly focusing in on any one object…? We simply process the information as a general universal vision, which if you really think about it__is not logic at all__even though you may be a logician, as I am. In this scenario, my or your mind has really turned from processing the images logically, to processing them psychologically__yet, we’ll almost always insist it’s processing on our logical focus, as being the truest focus, as that’s our preferred, pre-self-programmed, pre-suppositional primary focus and stance. The same will be true if I reverse the order to that of the psychological pre-suppositional processing__yet ask the psychological focus to intentionally concentrate on a particular object__say a frog sitting on a rock__at the water’s edge. The psychological mind will turn logical on the passage of its preferred psychological pre-suppositional stance, to that of the logical focus, without you or me even recognizing it, and still, we’ll usually swear we are making a psychological observation, even though in fact__the nature of the beast of the mind has self-changed its very mechanics, under our very noses, without any of us even noticing__unless you happen to be one who is already fully aware of nature’s given mechanics, multi-variably self-operating within our brains and minds…
Now, watch what happens with the metaphysical__as it turns out to be the most universal focus stance to operate with, of all three__whether the logical or psychological minds have ever considered it or not__It has the natural power of ‘multi-variably-focusing’. The metaphysical has the advantage of resting neutrally in Nature’s own fundamental stance, if I can even word it like this, without offending some of the metaphysicians, logicians and psychologists. When pre-suppositionally positioning one’s focus knowingly and preferedly in the metaphysical stance__one has the easy choice of using either of the other two necessary positions of a general and universal psychological focus, or a particular and specific logical focus, yet still comfortably being able to return to its ground base of ‘multi-varible-metaphysics’__or the ground state of haecceity and supervenience__Nature’s own natural fundamental neutral processing state. So__Iff we wake up, we really do have a choice here__and it’s not one of any religious sort, but a simple choice of recognizing Ockham’s Razor’s ‘indiscernibility principle’ of the easiest possible ‘one/many’ processing path. We can foolishly fight the world of Nature’s reality, by insisting on being pre-suppositionally logical or psychological__or truly realize we can take the neutral stance and focus, on our ground point state of natural ‘one/many’ metaphysics__and thus allow our minds to ‘freely-flow’ from their natural ground states of their ‘multi-variable-focusing’ nature__Where we don’t have to control the states of our focus__where intentionality comes naturally, from our childhood memory states__before we foolishly chose either of the overly and unnecessarily hard paths of logic or psychology__as our overly-primary preferred mechanics of viewing this very natural and ‘uncomplicated’ world…
Metaphysics, over the centuries, may have got a bad rap and rep__but, it’s really a lot easier to accept what needs to be in the core of our understanding__the ‘one/many’ central concept__of our mind’s processing, than to unnecessarily fight the necessarily happening mechanics, of Nature’s natural systems__freely given to us, as a ‘best-fitting inference system mechanics’__Possible… I also wouldn’t want you to think this is real easy to understand, either__as it is not. I still think it takes the thorough understanding of sem(e)iotics’ very complex mechanics, of dynamic agent and agency interactions__along with a good dose of symbolic and graph logic__to fully understand the above, and according to one’s education and thought’s evolutionary state, what one may simply understand from the above’s more simple explanation…
The more complex I make this, the less it’ll be understood__so I’ll stop here… I’d simply suggest a good study of the web’s many pdf’s on epistemology and sem(e)iology, especially those by Charles Sanders Peirce and Bernard Bolzano, and any of the professionally done secondary literature of/on both__as it’s easier to understand, and quite thorough, if done by those authors who respect these great mens’ works…
“We should all know the full intentionality of our focus…” me
Addendum to the above:
I don’t quite know why it is so hard to state the above facts deep enough to achieve clarity, but I do know that every time I’ve tried to do just that__it’s been the most difficult job I’ve ever attempted, and I felt I haven’t accomplished the job I set out to do any better this time__so here’s an attempt to extend it to more meaning and clarity__if possible. First off, ‘Epistemology’, as I’m using it is to be known as ‘The science of the limits of logical knowledge, and its mechanics of mental processings’, and I’d like to recognize the fact I forgot to mention above that I was addressing normal logic/thought, of proto-logic/first logic, as that logic existing before we attempt any organization of normal logic into any type of formal logic. Also, the other proto-logic of ‘Modal Logic’ should be recognized as existing in this same area of thinking about this most fundamental level of logic. One never realizes how difficult this is, and the massive job Aristotle certainly had, to create the first formal logic ever produced. Yes, there existed a ‘formal modal logic’ before Aristotle, and that had been debated and argued extensively long before Aristotle, as to its three states of ‘possibility, impossibility and necessity’__and Aristotle included and extended the ideas of this also, but the deeper area of normal thinking to a fully formalized thinking of symbolic and syllogistic logic, was only first completed by Aristotle__the truest father of fully formal logic. I am simply trying to retrace this trail/train of thought through the ancient to modern paths, of how it must be understood__to function as the ‘formal logic’ it does(yet understood in more layman terms and ideas), or possibly extend it into a new ‘Best-Fitting hypothetical inference logic mechanics and proof system’__or really, a better and more complete explanation of ‘Abduction’__‘The true science and logic of hypothesis…’
Just to let you know further how difficult chasing out logical thought, within the mind, truly is__I started this quest intently, clear back in the summer of 1972__and have been working on the best way of wording it ever since. It seems I can word it in my mind, as clear as a bell, but when it comes to writing clearly about it, the mind has a mind of its own, and takes me off course, even before I even start. It seems the reason is the mind just needs to convert logical thinking to psychological and metaphysical thinking, back and forth in such fast succession__that it’s near impossible for my thinking to pin it down to the natural set path it’s taking, inside me lil’ ol’ punkin. I know I can use the formal symbolic logic and semiotics to explain it better, but my goal is to explain it with simple and natural language, any 5th grade student can understand__and therein lies the problem. Each time I try to nail down a simple thought and or logic path, it changes to another definition of mechanics, right before my eyes. It’s like when I attempt to follow the universal group focus or vision of anything I may choose, to its specific particular focus of vision and description__still trying to maintain the thought path__it blurs into a non-descriptive indiscernible non-image, before I can even latch onto the mechanical processes taking place, deep within my mind. Now, I know this is the deep epistemological mechanics taking place at this level__but, I still question the fact of why I can’t keep track of what I know to be the essence agents, agency and mechanics the sem(e)iotic mechanics must choose from, to complete the concept to concept process__through all its disjuncts and conjuncts. And this means I’m fully aware of the eclectic mechanics taking place between the will having to choose its many different judgment and decision mechanics levels, as per say__empiricism, rationality, memory states of both subjective and objective storage event states, present working memory and direct perception states of subjective and objective events and objects, ascripted emotional judgments, formal rational judgments, all the many thousands of inference images, experiences, experiments and ideas from the outside and inside worlds of reality and natural memory, teleological ideas, ontological ideas, mereological ideas, disjunctions and conjunctions of all these many possible states of normal forms into formal forms, etc., on and on__But, my question has always been; “Why can’t I follow this total path mechanics, if I know it all exists…?”
It seems the mechanical process is just so fast at switching between the most fundamental states of logic, psychology and metaphysics(self-chosen as representative mental states) into a more uniform state of isomorphic mechanics of states, the mind is, or at least seems to be, simply incapable of following its own state changing mechanics__thoroughly enough__to capture its full integral path from first visions and thoughts, into final states of either group thoughts, if starting from the particular and passing to the Universal, or to particular specific final logic states, if starting from the group Universal thoughts, and processing to the specific logical states. What I’m trying to see into is; “Is it possible that nature’s natural inference state, may be interfering with all the state paths I am following, and entering her own state changing path mechanics, I can not normally see…?” We certainly know our eyes and perception take in the external world around us, totally passively, if we but do not interfere, by our intentionality of focus__so this same process, must by necessity, be happening all the time, we are also at the same time__internally processing our own private thoughts__therefore; ‘Nature, all by herself, must by necessity of inference flow mechanics, be changing the disjuncts and conjuncts of concepts integral paths, within the mind, as I’m looking at it…’ There is no reason we’d be able to see this ‘Natural Inference Mechanics’, because we don’t normally see it happening__that is as to its exact integral path mechanics, unless we re-represent it within our reflective perceptual working memory states, where our will can manipulate it__But, that initial ‘Natural Inference Mechanics’, would be taking place before our ‘Will and Judgments’ even became involved__and herein__"I’ve just this second realized”__is the lil’ ol’ ‘trickster demon’ that’s actually fooling our mind mechanics, at its most primary path state intersection__though it’s not really a ‘trickster demon’__but merely nature's natural mental biological-neuro-states’ necessary mechanics’ paths__to enable the mind to be fed any information__in the first place__to even have begun to work on, as all first inferred information must have a free-path circuit, to simply store such necessary primary information in the brain’s memory, without being self-judgment or decision acted upon, or we’d all get far too easily lost in any of our simplest motive actions in the real world__Nature requires a ‘free-path mechanics’, just as much as we require, at the least, a ‘partially free will’. The secret seems to be no more than ‘Inference Path Necessity of Nature’s Natural Mechanics…’ Simply put; “We can’t stop the natural path integral mechanics of Nature, influencing our personal will, judgment, decision and action mechanics__completely__so, we actually process all information in conjunction with Nature…” Thus, such a co-processing mechanics of images and thoughts, would absolutely necessitate a co-processing determined 'free-path' and indetermined ‘partially’ 'free-will…'
Now, maybe later, I can fully retrace all my thoughts from fundamental nature’s own inference mechanics, to my own natural to formal logical mechanics…
I’ll get back to this later in another post, as this discovery has over-flooded my mind, at this point__I need some thought space…
Friday, July 15, 2011
How Does The ‘Tabula Rasa’ See & Know Itself…?
What am I if I wipe the slate of my mind totally clean of content__not it’s mechanics and what it’s really bio-neurally made of(don’t wish to make Descartes’ mistake), but to a state of purely zero information content…?(except of course, memory) Let’s take a hypothetical look at such a pure state possibility… I think it can easily stand in for the theorizing we often attempt, at removing historical information from our minds, to speculatively see the much more wild, native and ancient states of man and community__yet imo, this method of the ‘tabula rasa model/blank slate model’ offers the same means, while staying in the state changes of ones present life__which may just offer a far more direct method… It may even offer a clearer and truer state of speculation and possible hypothesis building, of mental actions and evolution__hopefully allowing a new slant on an old story…
If a pure fundamental state of mind exists, then what does initial or 1st state thought consist of, and where is its proto-source/s…? I think this is the question we must answer, to answer to history’s quest both in philosophy and psychology, the two most investigated areas of this equation. The late 19th century saw the greatest flury of activity by not only the newly forming field of professional psychologists, but the long standing logicians, as well. The battlefields were being drawn all across the European, as well as the American continents. Of course many will easily recognize this as the old battles of and between rational thought and empirical thought, more well known as the study of epistemology, and often extended to include some aspects of teleology, ontology and mereology, and for such facts, this expose will bear fruit from all four, as I intend to show an eclectic ‘a priori’ and ‘a posteriori’ logic, protecting its slightly weaker sibling__psychology, and this same psychology protecting its stronger sibling__logic, from becoming too full of itself…
Now, some may say that’s a bold statement__but, it’s already been articulated over a 50 year period, in the later 19th century, and the first part of the 20th century, by and within the formal and private writings, and professional letters of Charles Sanders Peirce__to many of the world’s most famous then living personages, of his era… I am simply stating that Peirce actually discovered the entire inference mechanics path of our total thought processes, back then__but, I’m not certain if he actually realized it or not, though it is clearly stated when anyone tasks themselves to take in all his and others’ ideas and papers, over the period of his life, especially when viewed from today’s much extended secondary investigations__with our much extended scientific capacities and abilities into classical, quantum and relative mechanics__not even counting today’s much extended logics and maths, but in all fairness, CM, QM and RM certainly depend on these new extensions of and within the modern logics and maths, of these complex physical systems…
Anyway, not to go any deeper than necessary, for our fundamental inference path mechanics__much of the modern logical and mathematical complexity can be ignored__as I intend to describe our inquiry trail much easier, with our simple natural logic, or the ‘logica utens’, as Peirce wrote about it. Yes, the ‘logica utens’ does contain our ‘a priori’ mathematical abilities, and this can be reduced to our simple ratio-logic, for its most fundamental path mechanics' necessities, to be put forward in this paper. Now, don’t all you psychology leaning readers run off at this stage, as no inference enters the brain/mind__without 1st passing directly through our psychological/empirical senses, by way of our physical senses of sight to intuition/perception/intuition, ‘a priori/a posteriori’ rational intellect, subjective/objective judgment, will and finally leaving at the gates of mental or physical action__either by being stored in memory for later retrieval, or said thought activating our muscles into new physical actions, of either play or work. My job will be to discern how and where these 1st perceptions and proto-thoughts are determined, to become psychological or logical judgments__and exactly how and from where all initial information enters the brain/mind states of such psychological and logical processes__but, my job is made much easier by having discovered all of these inference paths in Peirce’s already written massive correspondence and writings…
Of course, what the above paragraph is addressing are the hardest problems in philosophy__not yet solved, whether that be ‘total inference mechanics’_‘foundations of psychology, logic or both’_‘free will’_‘epistemology, teleology, psychology or all three, possibly plus ontology and mereology’_and ‘just how much is empiricism directly involved in rationality and why?’ These questions will only be settled by a new ‘meta-semiotic methodology’ of this science being directly applied to these difficult philosophical questions, debates and ever so serious arguments__no matter where and what media these dialogues, dialectics and conversations take place, and in. We just seem to love to argue over the seeming incommensurabilities of these, otherwise simple superveniences__But, where do the boundaries lie, and how can we understand these, seemingly so, complex aporias__anew…? Is it possible to develop an open eclective normativity of such views, expressed through a simpler ground of general common sense…?
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve re-read Peirce’s scientific methodological ideas, after reading others’ ideas, just to get my head screwed back on right__I’d be a millionaire by now. Just finished reading Joseph Esposito’s, Christopher Hookway’s, Irving Anellis’ and Mathias Girel’s excellent papers on these battles I speak of above, back in those days and up to today__and what a joy it’s been after reading hundreds of other really bad scholars in between, while leaning on a few good Peirceans just for life-preservers__such as Susan Haack, T.L. Short and Karl-Otto Apel__but, most were of the Frege' school which just about completely lacks a necessary modal logic and any reasonable and sensible distinctions between mathematics and logic__per say__which happens to be, imo, absolutely necessary for such philosophy to make any true and sound sense, so is there any unknown reason__that analytic philosophy__is off on such a silly linguistic witch-hunt…? They badly need re-introduction to simple language, images and analogies, etc__I do so humbly fear… And yes, I’m just giving smug personal opinions here, but Frege did give a great contribution to philosophy and logic, by distinguishing the necessity of separating psychological content from logical content, to do proper formal logic__Then__but, that is no longer feasible or necessary, in our over-conflated and confused semantic-web-world. We’ve long ago graduated from the fear of psychology destroying our logic__iff we’ve understood Peirce entirely, so I’ll try to keep my prejudices in check__but, really my problem is about one logic school of thought against another logic school of thought__Peirce vs. Frege__The older vs. the younger__and Peirce, by far imo, had the wiser supervisors of his education__plus the added advantage of being a real and true scientist__which gave him the advantage of a thoroughly real-world grounded logic…
Let me add in here, a few comments I wrote a few years back, that just may add a little clarity to what I’ve written above:
How Does A Brain See Itself, Without A Mind...?
Btw, excellent note you wrote to me... The title may seem strange, but seriously ask yourself; 'Do we need a mind, if we have a brain...?' If everything in the brain exists within the neural biological perception network, and I do mean everything, every essence agent tool we use, and every aspect of possible essence__Then what's mind but an extra, completely unnecessary word, to confuse us...? Can brain see mind...? No...! How does brain know mind exists...? It doesn't...! Is mind necessary for anything, beyond the capacities of our brains...? No__Not that I can find...! Is mind just pure imagination...? Is mind as a conceptual system necessary...? Is mind what we refer to as Intellect...? Is mind the conceptual system, absolutely separate from brain...? Imo, brain sees itself, without a mind, through perception...! Does perception see concepts...? Yes...! Does perception see feelings...? Yes...! Does perception see intellect...? Yes...! If all functions are performed by brain, perception and all their physical essence agents and tools, then what's mind do...? Nothing I can find, as it's not necessary__so far, to any of my investigations...! So maybe, iff we stop confusing and conflating brain and mind, brain with mind, mind with brain, etc., on and on__Just maybe, we could make some real sense of physical and mental intelligences...! Intelligence is nothing but the physical processes of the meat-ball sitting on our shoulders, processing meat, rocks and em-waves, etc...! Intelligence finds no minds or consciousnesses to process...! Intelligence finds only the physical world__externally and internally__all else is imaginal space exaggerations...! What is imaginal space...? Perception's ability to see beyond the finite, into oblivion(any physical mirror book system can do this)__Necessary for theory to see the possible ideal, and non-ideal, futures, for our very rational survival as a species...! What is rationality...? Perceptions fundamental a priori arithmetic ability to process lesser and greater magnitudes and multitudes, and their mathematical cousins__Best orders...!
Do we have mental intelligences...? Do we have physical intelligences...? Which is true...? Are they both true, or is just one true...? Is it necessary to have a mental fluidic continuum we can not physically define or see...? How could such a non-physical continuum field exist...? It couldn't...! It can't...! It doesn't...! There's only one real physical continuum, filled with real physical em-wave-matter, non-viscous, fluidic particles...! Oh, we can distinguish between the internal and external continuums, but they're really made of the exact same materials__em-rads, etc...! The only essence agent tool that makes them distinguishable is the brain's neural perception network...! So, what we mistake for the mental, is actually the brain's perception, mirroring the brain's physical visions, from one perception/essence agent tool to another, i.e., from external vision, to direct perception(internal vision), to memory storage, to judgments, to ascripted emotions, and back to perception, and finally to will and actions, etc...! The brain, perception and all her essence agents do it all__No mind required...! So what's the big deal about mind...? It's just an extra word we've tagged onto the brain's neural perceptual system__nothing more...!
The physical brain is processing nothing but physical systems__externally viewed, and internally viewed__by perception and brain...! What's the puzzle...? Relativity...? No...! That's just a minor, less than .5%, correction to standard classical physics...! The puzzle is arguing about mind and brain...! Throw out the useless words mind, and consciousness, and you can begin to understand the very simple brain of intuitions and logic...!
The missing link is not understanding word conflations and confusions...! Mind is simply perception...!
The Fallible Human Mind/Ego/Soul of Logic...
Again, you offer no definition of this, otherwise, mythical logic. You know, it seems everyone wants to assume their own perfection and completeness of understanding of ideas, when in fact all ideas and minds are truly incomplete___being itself___is incomplete___yet most speak from an ego as if it possessed complete omega knowledge and wisdom___I think this point quite important. Let's just say that possibly, the mind at omega point may be able to achieve such complete intelligence, how, and I stress how, would one develop the dialogue and language necessary to reach the world's diversity of minds? Is it even possible? I think the key would be in accepting, with humility, the absolute incompleteness of one's own being's knowledge, and the definitions of what is considered knowledge and or wisdom, to different groups. Now, we know from this site, that metaphysics and science are on opposing sides, quite often, not even counting the vast differences of spiritists, emotionalists and consciousnessists. Is there a solution to these mind/ego/soul differences...?
Now, I know there is a solution to these differences, but I don't know a way of getting the truths across to varying global points of views. All I can do is state my views, from the science side of philosophy and physics. Let me just point out that when anyone uses logic, it has different rules of use for all the opposing world points of view. It was Husserl who first recognized the different rules between scientific and psychological logics___he showed where they had opposite sets of rules. Others have shown also that music and comedy opperate on totally opposite logic functions than science, and of course, we well know the differences between spiritists and scientists, etc... Now, what exactly are these differences...? The scientist will say logic must function according to the established rules and laws of the historical use of philosophic and physical logic, as established by Aristotle on, i.e., A is A, A is B, and B is not not B, and the excluded middle, etc.. Since Aristotle, we have further increased the branches of logic to some 137 categories and 9 classes, functioning on varrying agreements and dis-agreements with the founding rules. On the other side of the fence are the psycholigists, metaphysicists, spiritists, emotionalists and consciousnessists, etc. who insist on a further undefined set of private language logics, as first described by Wittgenstien___and he also stated, it doesn't exist. Now, we really have quite a mix of mush to make sense of___where do we start...?
Let me again just state science's position. In order for logic to function toward facts and factually provable truths, only real object ideas can be inferred into the otherwise fallible human logic, due to the fact that if opinion is allowed to be inferred into logic, all that is possible for logic to return is opinion. This does not mean the scientist can not use theory to find fact. It only means that the final logic must only have real objects' ideas inferred into logic to return absolute facts, and nor is it possible for any subjective realities to be inferred into logic, with an outcome of absolute facts___subjective inferrences will always return nothing but unprovable opinions…(except of course, as pertains to our feelings of the heart, then even that's still highly debatable)
The human mind/ego/soul is too fallible, as most will use their ego, polluted by the infinity problem of soul capacity, to pollute the mind's final positions___this is just as often true of science, as of religion, etc. So, herein lies the problem, as I see it___The human mind/ego/soul itself___being___is too fallible to be trusted, without verifiable objective facts of observation, to back up logic, to create any absolute facts of any realities…
Now, for a moment, just look at the other side. Let's take the most violating of science and logic___religion. They most all believe in an infallible soul, yet the soul can be exaggerated to any powers of delusions, especially the more emotional it becomes. These exaggerations, when added to the mind, only enhance the mythical power of the ego, and do not add to any true logic. These are absolutely subjective states of opinions, when inferred into logic, and can only produce more opinions. This isn't to say that opinions can not become facts, as they often do, but not until purified by the realities of the absolutely objective world.(opinions themselves don't actually become facts__we simply exchange our opinions for facts) This isn't to say emotions aren't real and can't be studied, as they are scientifically cognitively studied all the time, but it's through a massive historical database of objective observational case studies, which I may add, are usually ignored by the opinionists, lacking these and other scientific logical objective facts…
True logic only works factually true with absolute objective objects' ideas inferred in, first___always___period... Any other type of logic, is polluted by, quite often, false opinion... This has been the trouble and reason that metaphysics has been truly unable to enhance the study of being beyond its feeble state of incompleteness___being is absolutely scientifically incomplete... We must get off our big egos and recognize this fact...
Now, what is it we are truly looking at, as pertains to our selves, seeing themselves, as the pure ‘tabula rasa’ state…?
Are we physical…? Yes… Are we mental…? Yes…? Is our mental, physical…? Iff viewed from the known perspective of em-waves being physical__yes… Do we have scientific experiments of thought being physical em-waves…? Yes, we certainly do, with all the new and powerful magnetic field experiments being performed in labs all around the world__where different areas of thought can be enhanced and retarded by simple proximity applications of such powerful magnetic fields. And further, new memory experiments are also showing PKM Zeta’s abilities to enhance and retard, or even erase long-term memories. So, we actually do have real world experiments relating brain states to neuro-biological body states, for the first era in history__which in my opinion, clearly repudiates the mind-body duality. If so, then the epistemological and scientific question becomes__'How do we know the brain starts out as a pure state ‘tabula rasa’__and is only filled in by information from the external world’s database, the internal memory, and the objective epistemology of the neuro-bio-epistemic brain-body connections…?’ And stronger still; ‘How do we know the epistmic agent, ‘tabula rasa’ acquires its own free-will choices…?’
The ‘Tabula Rasa’s’ Free-Will Mechanics__How…?
Simply put; “It’s mathematically impossible for the ‘tabula rasa’ not to exist as the proto-state of brain/mind, and self-acquire its own necessary free-will…” First, were the proto-state of brain/mind to exist as a fixed state of pre-existing programming and knowledge in an innate neuro-bio-state agency__How would such an agency state, change and update itself, from such a fixed innate state to a changing and changed state…? How would such fixed innate states explain our simple and complex changing personalities, talents and creativities, especially the actor’s choice, to assume any personality available upon self-command__to exist and function…? How would a pre-set will update its survival needs, on the fly__which we know it certainly does__to meet all of life’s many multitudes of changing challenges…? How would a fixed brain/mind pick one of millions of data-bits entering its inference engine, every month__without becoming over-whelmed into outright schizophrenia__had it no free-will to pick and choose…? These, and many thousands of similar questions can only be answered by a thoroughly dynamic system, capable of constant and eternal updating, of the data-bits entering its inference engine__and in no way could such a fixed proto-pre-set mechanics achieve such massive dynamics, as that of a constantly up-datable fundamental ‘tabula rasa’ having its absolutely necessary ‘free-will…’ If you think it could or can, then you are working with an entirely different information base than I am, and yet, I’ve truly studied them all__so, good luck explaining a ‘non-tabula rasa’ and a ‘non-free-will’__Without the help of great magic… Btw, all ‘non-tabula rasa’ thinking has simply turned the historical knowledge on its head, by 'stealing' this long history’s hard work, and simply offering its false ‘counterfactual’ information, while necessarily using the very data of history’s opposite discoveries, as it false informations__in other words, turning truth on its head, as a lie, and calling it__its own new truth__Blaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…!!!
Here’s the five hurdles you’ll have to overcome:
1. Strong Determinism is a complete self-contradiction of its own self-necessity and self-consistencies__It uses the language mechanics of free-will choices, to attempt proofs against free-will, i.e., tis counterfactual, question begging, or the snake swallowing its own tail, or/and the conclusion is deriving far more from the statement mechanics’ premise/s than is present, to possibly deduct from it/them, i.e., tis a false deduction logic…
2. Strong Determinism is an infinite regress to a logical impossibility__It bases its arguments on cause and effect, yet when its cause and effect is chased to its true deductive foundations in absolute fundamental motion mechanics, there’s absolutely no fundamental prime mover mechanics known, to found such fallacious circular logic on, therefore__tis a pretentious logic, and impossible of absolutely true groundings…
3. Free-will is a perfect Q.M. engine__It’s indiscernible as to absolute foundation, except as to its general motion and simple choices, through highly possible frequency mechanics__Its foundation is indeterminism, randomness and/or uncertainty, etc., at base__We simply don’t yet know how it fully mechanically works, but are absolutely certain it works, as intuitive choice is a fact of human decision and judgment function, and also creativity__which can not be disproved, except by determinism's illogical feeble attempts by using this same free-will intuitive choice function, which certainly is no proof, but is its logical opposite, and such counterfactuals are dis-allowed in logic… A never equals not A…
4. Strong Determinism can never be intelligent, as it falsely attempts to eliminate the intelligence of its own necessary free-will choices, to be intelligent__and such attempts are highly offensive to all sound intelligence, without the determinist even recognizing the offensiveness of his statements, being identical to calling intelligent free-will’ers__highly stupid, especially when the sound logical proofs are on the free-will’ers side__Not the side of the determinists’ illusions and delusions of false scientific grandeur…
5. The Necessary Free-Will, to Be Subjectively and Objectively Intelligent, Exists__and oppositely__To advocate strong or absolute determinism, is to (unknowingly-implyingly) call everyone else who doesn’t agree__Stupid…! Strong determinism produces all its own logical self-contradictions__from its negative infinite regresses to nothing but pure ego, since its own logic kicks its own legs out from under it__Splat…!!!
If a pure fundamental state of mind exists, then what does initial or 1st state thought consist of, and where is its proto-source/s…? I think this is the question we must answer, to answer to history’s quest both in philosophy and psychology, the two most investigated areas of this equation. The late 19th century saw the greatest flury of activity by not only the newly forming field of professional psychologists, but the long standing logicians, as well. The battlefields were being drawn all across the European, as well as the American continents. Of course many will easily recognize this as the old battles of and between rational thought and empirical thought, more well known as the study of epistemology, and often extended to include some aspects of teleology, ontology and mereology, and for such facts, this expose will bear fruit from all four, as I intend to show an eclectic ‘a priori’ and ‘a posteriori’ logic, protecting its slightly weaker sibling__psychology, and this same psychology protecting its stronger sibling__logic, from becoming too full of itself…
Now, some may say that’s a bold statement__but, it’s already been articulated over a 50 year period, in the later 19th century, and the first part of the 20th century, by and within the formal and private writings, and professional letters of Charles Sanders Peirce__to many of the world’s most famous then living personages, of his era… I am simply stating that Peirce actually discovered the entire inference mechanics path of our total thought processes, back then__but, I’m not certain if he actually realized it or not, though it is clearly stated when anyone tasks themselves to take in all his and others’ ideas and papers, over the period of his life, especially when viewed from today’s much extended secondary investigations__with our much extended scientific capacities and abilities into classical, quantum and relative mechanics__not even counting today’s much extended logics and maths, but in all fairness, CM, QM and RM certainly depend on these new extensions of and within the modern logics and maths, of these complex physical systems…
Anyway, not to go any deeper than necessary, for our fundamental inference path mechanics__much of the modern logical and mathematical complexity can be ignored__as I intend to describe our inquiry trail much easier, with our simple natural logic, or the ‘logica utens’, as Peirce wrote about it. Yes, the ‘logica utens’ does contain our ‘a priori’ mathematical abilities, and this can be reduced to our simple ratio-logic, for its most fundamental path mechanics' necessities, to be put forward in this paper. Now, don’t all you psychology leaning readers run off at this stage, as no inference enters the brain/mind__without 1st passing directly through our psychological/empirical senses, by way of our physical senses of sight to intuition/perception/intuition, ‘a priori/a posteriori’ rational intellect, subjective/objective judgment, will and finally leaving at the gates of mental or physical action__either by being stored in memory for later retrieval, or said thought activating our muscles into new physical actions, of either play or work. My job will be to discern how and where these 1st perceptions and proto-thoughts are determined, to become psychological or logical judgments__and exactly how and from where all initial information enters the brain/mind states of such psychological and logical processes__but, my job is made much easier by having discovered all of these inference paths in Peirce’s already written massive correspondence and writings…
Of course, what the above paragraph is addressing are the hardest problems in philosophy__not yet solved, whether that be ‘total inference mechanics’_‘foundations of psychology, logic or both’_‘free will’_‘epistemology, teleology, psychology or all three, possibly plus ontology and mereology’_and ‘just how much is empiricism directly involved in rationality and why?’ These questions will only be settled by a new ‘meta-semiotic methodology’ of this science being directly applied to these difficult philosophical questions, debates and ever so serious arguments__no matter where and what media these dialogues, dialectics and conversations take place, and in. We just seem to love to argue over the seeming incommensurabilities of these, otherwise simple superveniences__But, where do the boundaries lie, and how can we understand these, seemingly so, complex aporias__anew…? Is it possible to develop an open eclective normativity of such views, expressed through a simpler ground of general common sense…?
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve re-read Peirce’s scientific methodological ideas, after reading others’ ideas, just to get my head screwed back on right__I’d be a millionaire by now. Just finished reading Joseph Esposito’s, Christopher Hookway’s, Irving Anellis’ and Mathias Girel’s excellent papers on these battles I speak of above, back in those days and up to today__and what a joy it’s been after reading hundreds of other really bad scholars in between, while leaning on a few good Peirceans just for life-preservers__such as Susan Haack, T.L. Short and Karl-Otto Apel__but, most were of the Frege' school which just about completely lacks a necessary modal logic and any reasonable and sensible distinctions between mathematics and logic__per say__which happens to be, imo, absolutely necessary for such philosophy to make any true and sound sense, so is there any unknown reason__that analytic philosophy__is off on such a silly linguistic witch-hunt…? They badly need re-introduction to simple language, images and analogies, etc__I do so humbly fear… And yes, I’m just giving smug personal opinions here, but Frege did give a great contribution to philosophy and logic, by distinguishing the necessity of separating psychological content from logical content, to do proper formal logic__Then__but, that is no longer feasible or necessary, in our over-conflated and confused semantic-web-world. We’ve long ago graduated from the fear of psychology destroying our logic__iff we’ve understood Peirce entirely, so I’ll try to keep my prejudices in check__but, really my problem is about one logic school of thought against another logic school of thought__Peirce vs. Frege__The older vs. the younger__and Peirce, by far imo, had the wiser supervisors of his education__plus the added advantage of being a real and true scientist__which gave him the advantage of a thoroughly real-world grounded logic…
Let me add in here, a few comments I wrote a few years back, that just may add a little clarity to what I’ve written above:
How Does A Brain See Itself, Without A Mind...?
Btw, excellent note you wrote to me... The title may seem strange, but seriously ask yourself; 'Do we need a mind, if we have a brain...?' If everything in the brain exists within the neural biological perception network, and I do mean everything, every essence agent tool we use, and every aspect of possible essence__Then what's mind but an extra, completely unnecessary word, to confuse us...? Can brain see mind...? No...! How does brain know mind exists...? It doesn't...! Is mind necessary for anything, beyond the capacities of our brains...? No__Not that I can find...! Is mind just pure imagination...? Is mind as a conceptual system necessary...? Is mind what we refer to as Intellect...? Is mind the conceptual system, absolutely separate from brain...? Imo, brain sees itself, without a mind, through perception...! Does perception see concepts...? Yes...! Does perception see feelings...? Yes...! Does perception see intellect...? Yes...! If all functions are performed by brain, perception and all their physical essence agents and tools, then what's mind do...? Nothing I can find, as it's not necessary__so far, to any of my investigations...! So maybe, iff we stop confusing and conflating brain and mind, brain with mind, mind with brain, etc., on and on__Just maybe, we could make some real sense of physical and mental intelligences...! Intelligence is nothing but the physical processes of the meat-ball sitting on our shoulders, processing meat, rocks and em-waves, etc...! Intelligence finds no minds or consciousnesses to process...! Intelligence finds only the physical world__externally and internally__all else is imaginal space exaggerations...! What is imaginal space...? Perception's ability to see beyond the finite, into oblivion(any physical mirror book system can do this)__Necessary for theory to see the possible ideal, and non-ideal, futures, for our very rational survival as a species...! What is rationality...? Perceptions fundamental a priori arithmetic ability to process lesser and greater magnitudes and multitudes, and their mathematical cousins__Best orders...!
Do we have mental intelligences...? Do we have physical intelligences...? Which is true...? Are they both true, or is just one true...? Is it necessary to have a mental fluidic continuum we can not physically define or see...? How could such a non-physical continuum field exist...? It couldn't...! It can't...! It doesn't...! There's only one real physical continuum, filled with real physical em-wave-matter, non-viscous, fluidic particles...! Oh, we can distinguish between the internal and external continuums, but they're really made of the exact same materials__em-rads, etc...! The only essence agent tool that makes them distinguishable is the brain's neural perception network...! So, what we mistake for the mental, is actually the brain's perception, mirroring the brain's physical visions, from one perception/essence agent tool to another, i.e., from external vision, to direct perception(internal vision), to memory storage, to judgments, to ascripted emotions, and back to perception, and finally to will and actions, etc...! The brain, perception and all her essence agents do it all__No mind required...! So what's the big deal about mind...? It's just an extra word we've tagged onto the brain's neural perceptual system__nothing more...!
The physical brain is processing nothing but physical systems__externally viewed, and internally viewed__by perception and brain...! What's the puzzle...? Relativity...? No...! That's just a minor, less than .5%, correction to standard classical physics...! The puzzle is arguing about mind and brain...! Throw out the useless words mind, and consciousness, and you can begin to understand the very simple brain of intuitions and logic...!
The missing link is not understanding word conflations and confusions...! Mind is simply perception...!
The Fallible Human Mind/Ego/Soul of Logic...
Again, you offer no definition of this, otherwise, mythical logic. You know, it seems everyone wants to assume their own perfection and completeness of understanding of ideas, when in fact all ideas and minds are truly incomplete___being itself___is incomplete___yet most speak from an ego as if it possessed complete omega knowledge and wisdom___I think this point quite important. Let's just say that possibly, the mind at omega point may be able to achieve such complete intelligence, how, and I stress how, would one develop the dialogue and language necessary to reach the world's diversity of minds? Is it even possible? I think the key would be in accepting, with humility, the absolute incompleteness of one's own being's knowledge, and the definitions of what is considered knowledge and or wisdom, to different groups. Now, we know from this site, that metaphysics and science are on opposing sides, quite often, not even counting the vast differences of spiritists, emotionalists and consciousnessists. Is there a solution to these mind/ego/soul differences...?
Now, I know there is a solution to these differences, but I don't know a way of getting the truths across to varying global points of views. All I can do is state my views, from the science side of philosophy and physics. Let me just point out that when anyone uses logic, it has different rules of use for all the opposing world points of view. It was Husserl who first recognized the different rules between scientific and psychological logics___he showed where they had opposite sets of rules. Others have shown also that music and comedy opperate on totally opposite logic functions than science, and of course, we well know the differences between spiritists and scientists, etc... Now, what exactly are these differences...? The scientist will say logic must function according to the established rules and laws of the historical use of philosophic and physical logic, as established by Aristotle on, i.e., A is A, A is B, and B is not not B, and the excluded middle, etc.. Since Aristotle, we have further increased the branches of logic to some 137 categories and 9 classes, functioning on varrying agreements and dis-agreements with the founding rules. On the other side of the fence are the psycholigists, metaphysicists, spiritists, emotionalists and consciousnessists, etc. who insist on a further undefined set of private language logics, as first described by Wittgenstien___and he also stated, it doesn't exist. Now, we really have quite a mix of mush to make sense of___where do we start...?
Let me again just state science's position. In order for logic to function toward facts and factually provable truths, only real object ideas can be inferred into the otherwise fallible human logic, due to the fact that if opinion is allowed to be inferred into logic, all that is possible for logic to return is opinion. This does not mean the scientist can not use theory to find fact. It only means that the final logic must only have real objects' ideas inferred into logic to return absolute facts, and nor is it possible for any subjective realities to be inferred into logic, with an outcome of absolute facts___subjective inferrences will always return nothing but unprovable opinions…(except of course, as pertains to our feelings of the heart, then even that's still highly debatable)
The human mind/ego/soul is too fallible, as most will use their ego, polluted by the infinity problem of soul capacity, to pollute the mind's final positions___this is just as often true of science, as of religion, etc. So, herein lies the problem, as I see it___The human mind/ego/soul itself___being___is too fallible to be trusted, without verifiable objective facts of observation, to back up logic, to create any absolute facts of any realities…
Now, for a moment, just look at the other side. Let's take the most violating of science and logic___religion. They most all believe in an infallible soul, yet the soul can be exaggerated to any powers of delusions, especially the more emotional it becomes. These exaggerations, when added to the mind, only enhance the mythical power of the ego, and do not add to any true logic. These are absolutely subjective states of opinions, when inferred into logic, and can only produce more opinions. This isn't to say that opinions can not become facts, as they often do, but not until purified by the realities of the absolutely objective world.(opinions themselves don't actually become facts__we simply exchange our opinions for facts) This isn't to say emotions aren't real and can't be studied, as they are scientifically cognitively studied all the time, but it's through a massive historical database of objective observational case studies, which I may add, are usually ignored by the opinionists, lacking these and other scientific logical objective facts…
True logic only works factually true with absolute objective objects' ideas inferred in, first___always___period... Any other type of logic, is polluted by, quite often, false opinion... This has been the trouble and reason that metaphysics has been truly unable to enhance the study of being beyond its feeble state of incompleteness___being is absolutely scientifically incomplete... We must get off our big egos and recognize this fact...
Now, what is it we are truly looking at, as pertains to our selves, seeing themselves, as the pure ‘tabula rasa’ state…?
Are we physical…? Yes… Are we mental…? Yes…? Is our mental, physical…? Iff viewed from the known perspective of em-waves being physical__yes… Do we have scientific experiments of thought being physical em-waves…? Yes, we certainly do, with all the new and powerful magnetic field experiments being performed in labs all around the world__where different areas of thought can be enhanced and retarded by simple proximity applications of such powerful magnetic fields. And further, new memory experiments are also showing PKM Zeta’s abilities to enhance and retard, or even erase long-term memories. So, we actually do have real world experiments relating brain states to neuro-biological body states, for the first era in history__which in my opinion, clearly repudiates the mind-body duality. If so, then the epistemological and scientific question becomes__'How do we know the brain starts out as a pure state ‘tabula rasa’__and is only filled in by information from the external world’s database, the internal memory, and the objective epistemology of the neuro-bio-epistemic brain-body connections…?’ And stronger still; ‘How do we know the epistmic agent, ‘tabula rasa’ acquires its own free-will choices…?’
The ‘Tabula Rasa’s’ Free-Will Mechanics__How…?
Simply put; “It’s mathematically impossible for the ‘tabula rasa’ not to exist as the proto-state of brain/mind, and self-acquire its own necessary free-will…” First, were the proto-state of brain/mind to exist as a fixed state of pre-existing programming and knowledge in an innate neuro-bio-state agency__How would such an agency state, change and update itself, from such a fixed innate state to a changing and changed state…? How would such fixed innate states explain our simple and complex changing personalities, talents and creativities, especially the actor’s choice, to assume any personality available upon self-command__to exist and function…? How would a pre-set will update its survival needs, on the fly__which we know it certainly does__to meet all of life’s many multitudes of changing challenges…? How would a fixed brain/mind pick one of millions of data-bits entering its inference engine, every month__without becoming over-whelmed into outright schizophrenia__had it no free-will to pick and choose…? These, and many thousands of similar questions can only be answered by a thoroughly dynamic system, capable of constant and eternal updating, of the data-bits entering its inference engine__and in no way could such a fixed proto-pre-set mechanics achieve such massive dynamics, as that of a constantly up-datable fundamental ‘tabula rasa’ having its absolutely necessary ‘free-will…’ If you think it could or can, then you are working with an entirely different information base than I am, and yet, I’ve truly studied them all__so, good luck explaining a ‘non-tabula rasa’ and a ‘non-free-will’__Without the help of great magic… Btw, all ‘non-tabula rasa’ thinking has simply turned the historical knowledge on its head, by 'stealing' this long history’s hard work, and simply offering its false ‘counterfactual’ information, while necessarily using the very data of history’s opposite discoveries, as it false informations__in other words, turning truth on its head, as a lie, and calling it__its own new truth__Blaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…!!!
Here’s the five hurdles you’ll have to overcome:
1. Strong Determinism is a complete self-contradiction of its own self-necessity and self-consistencies__It uses the language mechanics of free-will choices, to attempt proofs against free-will, i.e., tis counterfactual, question begging, or the snake swallowing its own tail, or/and the conclusion is deriving far more from the statement mechanics’ premise/s than is present, to possibly deduct from it/them, i.e., tis a false deduction logic…
2. Strong Determinism is an infinite regress to a logical impossibility__It bases its arguments on cause and effect, yet when its cause and effect is chased to its true deductive foundations in absolute fundamental motion mechanics, there’s absolutely no fundamental prime mover mechanics known, to found such fallacious circular logic on, therefore__tis a pretentious logic, and impossible of absolutely true groundings…
3. Free-will is a perfect Q.M. engine__It’s indiscernible as to absolute foundation, except as to its general motion and simple choices, through highly possible frequency mechanics__Its foundation is indeterminism, randomness and/or uncertainty, etc., at base__We simply don’t yet know how it fully mechanically works, but are absolutely certain it works, as intuitive choice is a fact of human decision and judgment function, and also creativity__which can not be disproved, except by determinism's illogical feeble attempts by using this same free-will intuitive choice function, which certainly is no proof, but is its logical opposite, and such counterfactuals are dis-allowed in logic… A never equals not A…
4. Strong Determinism can never be intelligent, as it falsely attempts to eliminate the intelligence of its own necessary free-will choices, to be intelligent__and such attempts are highly offensive to all sound intelligence, without the determinist even recognizing the offensiveness of his statements, being identical to calling intelligent free-will’ers__highly stupid, especially when the sound logical proofs are on the free-will’ers side__Not the side of the determinists’ illusions and delusions of false scientific grandeur…
5. The Necessary Free-Will, to Be Subjectively and Objectively Intelligent, Exists__and oppositely__To advocate strong or absolute determinism, is to (unknowingly-implyingly) call everyone else who doesn’t agree__Stupid…! Strong determinism produces all its own logical self-contradictions__from its negative infinite regresses to nothing but pure ego, since its own logic kicks its own legs out from under it__Splat…!!!
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
HOW PEIRCEAN WAS THE “FREGEAN” REVOLUTION IN LOGIC?
(I strongly advise all logicians, analytic philosophers and linguists to please read this:)
Irving H. Anellis
Abstract. The historiography of logic conceives of a Fregean revolution in which modern mathematical logic (also called symbolic logic) has replaced Aristotelian logic. The preeminent expositors of this conception are Jean van Heijenoort (1912–1986) and Do-nald Angus Gillies. The innovations and characteristics that comprise mathematical logic and distinguish it from Aristotelian logic, according to this conception, created ex nihlo by Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) in his Begriffsschrift of 1879, and with Bertrand Rus-sell (1872–1970) as its chief This position likewise understands the algebraic logic of Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), George Boole (1815–1864), Charles Sanders Peirce (1838–1914), and Ernst Schröder (1841–1902) as belonging to the Aristotelian tradi-tion. The “Booleans” are understood, from this vantage point, to merely have rewritten Aristotelian syllogistic in algebraic guise.
The most detailed listing and elaboration of Frege’s innovations, and the characteristics that distinguish mathematical logic from Aristotelian logic, were set forth by van Heijenoort. I consider each of the elements of van Heijenoort’s list and note the extent to which Peirce had also developed each of these aspects of logic. I also consider the extent to which Peirce and Frege were aware of, and may have influenced, one another’s logical writings.
Irving H. Anellis
Abstract. The historiography of logic conceives of a Fregean revolution in which modern mathematical logic (also called symbolic logic) has replaced Aristotelian logic. The preeminent expositors of this conception are Jean van Heijenoort (1912–1986) and Do-nald Angus Gillies. The innovations and characteristics that comprise mathematical logic and distinguish it from Aristotelian logic, according to this conception, created ex nihlo by Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) in his Begriffsschrift of 1879, and with Bertrand Rus-sell (1872–1970) as its chief This position likewise understands the algebraic logic of Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), George Boole (1815–1864), Charles Sanders Peirce (1838–1914), and Ernst Schröder (1841–1902) as belonging to the Aristotelian tradi-tion. The “Booleans” are understood, from this vantage point, to merely have rewritten Aristotelian syllogistic in algebraic guise.
The most detailed listing and elaboration of Frege’s innovations, and the characteristics that distinguish mathematical logic from Aristotelian logic, were set forth by van Heijenoort. I consider each of the elements of van Heijenoort’s list and note the extent to which Peirce had also developed each of these aspects of logic. I also consider the extent to which Peirce and Frege were aware of, and may have influenced, one another’s logical writings.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
A Journey__Finding Myself__My Total Self…
As a child, my eyes fell upon a world of beauty and conflict__the awesome beauty of nature and even man’s doings, yet at the same time, saw the immense conflicts between man and man, man and woman, woman and woman. I remember early on asking myself; “Why was the world of nature so exquisitely perfect, and yet the world of man so fraught with problems…?”__as I clearly saw these human problems within the very house I lived in, where four generations of family members tried to blend, and often failed to come to terms with one another. Even though I full well realized nature had to kill to live, as did man and woman, I saw far more civility and comity among the animals, than did I among the humans. Animals were much kinder to one another, at least of the same kind, and even of different kinds, when the farmer taught them to behave__as they stayed behaved and kind, once taught__that is, iff taught by a kind, knowing and caring enough farmer. I saw no animals forming armies to kill other animal armies of the same kind, or even innocent others unnecessarily so, or seeming to have the bitter personal battles over belongings, turf and space__as did our human crowd, and my close family, relatives and friends. This drastic difference of natural beauty and conflict puzzled me immensely, and would come to take up most of my life’s search for the reasons why…
Now, maybe I didn’t have the average family, as did many others__I did have a family of immense diversity__from the lowliest uneducated farmers and housewives, to the highest educated businessmen, gentlemen, engineers, mathematicians and politicians. The main farm I was raised on even had its own black-smith shop, complete with forge and foundry, to make all the tools, machinery and implements needed for our farm, and many others around the area. Gramps was the educated patriarch of the family, with more than a few college educated children, grand-children and great-grand-children college educated and not. Even some of the in-laws were highly educated, and of course some not at all, as there were also uneducated farmers and housewives amongst them. Now, as you may well imagine, this was quite an eclectic bunch of drastically different personality people, all trying to assimilate to some form of family function. Of course not all mentioned lived on this single farm, but were all often visiting members of gramps’ and great-gramps’ families__as gramps and great gramps were of unrelated families, yet of the same contemporary generation, since gramps married the maid of his family business enterprises, who was the young daughter of great-grand-dad__as gramps' wife had died giving birth to her 11th child. Grammy was the only person able to reach gramps, and bring him out of his depression, of losing his childhood sweetheart wife in childbirth, after a long hard year of deep mourning. Anyway, I mention this as it seems quite important for shaping gramps into the great humanitarian he became, after the death of his first wife__where he would go on to not only build major business enterprises, in several diverse fields, but also to take the time to become a very effective politician, and to educate most every family member, to, or at least near, his level of knowledge proficiency__as only he had the patience to do so__which also included my mother, father, sisters, brother and myself__along with the majority of the greater family members, also…
As my father was the wild-card_the black-sheep_of this massive extended family, he had to be the rebel, and quit school in the 8th grade__but couldn’t escape being educated by all the close influences around him, and actually took to self-educating himself, all through the years of his life, to keep up with his highly educated mathematically and medically inclined wife, and finally end as a full-fledged inventor and engineer__himself. In fact, of all the highly educated family members, only gramps and dad, would I grant the level of knowledge proficiency being achieved, above that of all the other college educated family members__even of the several other PhD’s in our family__so this always gave me a unique perspective about academics and common sense, in general. I always saw common sense and kindness trumping academics__as the number one necessary influence of an educated life__as I never met two wiser men than my grandfather and my father__one having a Ph.D. education, and his and his second wife’s son, my father, having an 8th grade education, and one day of high-school, whose mother was originally the 1st family’s maid, until she married gramps, 30 years her senior…
Now, many would say; “Well no wonder you witnessed so much family conflict…”__but that wouldn’t be true either, as I saw this same family conflict in every other family I ever got to know, well enough to know and see it. We weren’t special in the human conflict department of families, by any means. We were actually quite in the lesser end of the family conflict arena, as near as I could tell__but it was still far more than my young mind cared for, when I was such a tender aged child__as seeing my younger sister in tears, more times than I care to remember, was not a pretty picture to me__and this was over woman to woman conflict, or I should say, mother to daughter conflict__while I was treated like a King__Why…? This would take many years for my young mind to solve, as it would all the many other family, relatives, friends and acquaintance conflicts I witnessed, at these young ages, and as time would tell, all the rest of my life. “Why were humans so cruel to each other?__I just had to know…!”__While the wild animals, and even the insects, were so kind and even extremely co-operative, as I witnessed with ant and bee colonies__as compared to human collectives…
I don’t know, but maybe I had a starting advantage on others in understanding this deep personal conflict between like and diverse groups of human beings. Gramps, mother, father, friends and others always taught me as much as they knew, that is as I asked about anyway, and I had early on developed the innate curiosity to ask many questions of anyone I knew and met, who always seemed to answer my quests__and of course this had started with my two grandfathers, one educated and one not__but both willing to share all he knew with my young soul. And this same privilege extended to most all my other relatives and friends__then extended into school with certain other students, whose parents had taught them far beyond what that particular education system was offering__But, none of this help offered the deep interest and quest in personal humanity I shared with my deep investigating self. Every time I entered these deepest of areas quests with others, it always seemed to short out into some personal answer they had learned, and not discovered for themselves__as my feelings always rejected their answers as not being that deeper or deepest answer I was always seeking__and this didn’t seem to matter how educated or not, they were, and some of the closest to my ideas, actually came from many throughout my life, that were not educated, as their kindness had granted them a personal perspective into their own quite deep inner sanctums. Still, from the earliest ages to my ripe age of 66, I’ve yet to meet or read anyone with that all deepest of questions’ answers I’ve sought since childhood__at least to my satisfaction__and don’t kid yourself, as I’ve met and talked to many thousands throughout my life, and thoroughly read many thousands more__from the earliest Chinese, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Indians, etc., on and on__to the most present of logical, mathematical, scientific, philosophical and humanist of pre-modern and modern of thinkers possible for one mind to take in, in one lifetime__as it’s been a constant quest for me, all my life…
So, let me get to the meat of the matter; “How does thought, think about thinking…?” “Am I only ‘thought’ thinking about my own thinking…?” “Am I the thought-gap in my thinking, between other thoughts…?” “If I may be only the thought-gap, then am I nothing but space…?” “If I am nothing but space, am I nothing more than a field-continuum space…?” “If I am a continuum field-space, then am I a micro-field space, within the greater continuum field-space…?” “Am I nothing more than a field within a field, acting within and with the bio-agents of my body, interacting with its own bio-neuronal agency of some greater field-network of more inter-connected nerve synapses, called brain to mind interactions…?” “And, since Einstein stated ‘All is field, everywhere’, am I a non-deterministic quantum state evolved into a ball of free-will uniformity, shedding my randomness through self-control, in the path from my fundamental quantum states of randomness, to final uniformity as finished human product, from its initial rock sources…?” Am I, as Charles Sanders Peirce stated; “Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself", that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism." Now, can this highly complex paragraph by Peirce answer some of my above questions…? I am going to state that; “Iff you take the time to fully contemplate, exactly what Peirce is here stating, you can answer the question; ‘What is thought, thinking about thinking, with…?" If you may have read these three; Kant, Heisenberg or Heidegger__you may have come across similar statements about how our ‘intuition space’, or what I have referred to as the gap being the field-continuum, you may notice the almost exact similarities of these three thinkers with that of Peirce__where they also mention ideas about space__or intuitive space, as the same…
Now, the question becomes; “How can I make this plainer to you, so you may see it is the very answer to the fundamental problem of people treating people unjustly and unkindly__and only it is__as originally asked in the beginning of this story…?”__As per this question; “Why was the world of nature so exquisitely perfect, and yet the world of man so fraught with problems…?” This may be quite a task__a huge task__as it involves the entire history in ‘Inference Mechanics’, from the earliest of thinkers, to the most modern__trying to solve the epistemic gaps in our vast knowledge systems, which is actually no more than the gaps between our concepts, interacting with, within and between each and another… I do not intend to make it any more complex than it’s already been explained by Peirce’s complexity, and C. I. Lewis’ much more easily understood simplicity and clarity method, of stating the same as Peirce, with different language and ideation__yet I’ll try to fill in the missing pieces to make it even more plain, clear and simple__as it’s nothing more than the ‘missing mind mechanics’, that have made us all act bad__when its truths could have allowed us to act good, had we but known it’s truths’ mechanics of ‘modal feelings and emotions’, to our physical actions’ much more ordered and better 'Possibilities...'
Let’s look at Peirce’s above statement, and see if we can parse it into a much clearer and simpler understanding. Above I’ve used the term; ‘Inference Mechanics’, as that’s what ‘concept mechanics’ has been named since its inception in antiquity, by most every ancient culture who studied the mind deeply, no matter who or where__and is exactly what Peirce expressed in his above paragraph. I'd also like to here enter another of Peirce's clear statements; "The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason.” Now, by adhering to the original terms, we avoid all the unnecessary confusions and conflations of ideas and ideations pertaining to this simple, yet highly over-complexified subject__in the history of the world. This is simply about perception, and abstracting that perception out of our subjective emotions and intellects, and into our objective emotions and intellects__to achieve rational understanding of our primitive feelings and visions of the real external and real internal worlds__one inanimate and one of animate and innate quality, when viewed with proper categories and concepts. As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve stated both subjective and objective emotions and intellect__as ‘conceptual inference mechanics’, and in order for it to be fully functioning and true, must process both the subjective and objective completely, to finally understand how humanity with humanity, really functions, and or can function, esthetically valid to our deepest wishes, of best ordered states, of highest ordered states of a new and true moral justice, for the highest numbers of Earth’s citizens__possible. That may seem like a tall order, bordering on the sycophantic utopias of ‘laughed at times and ideas’ of the past__but think again__this is new and revolutionary discovery of pure thought mechanics__best represented by Peirce’s discovery of the 3rd branch of logic__‘Abduction’__which allows this deepest of levels of personal and logical thinking...
Oh, I hear many of you screaming already__“That doesn’t work. It’s been tried and proven a failure, already…” No… I’m here to tell you it’s simply the anti-philosophers and thinkers who lack the understanding necessary to understand ‘Abduction’, whose understanding doesn’t understand ‘Modal Logic’__and because they do not understand our fundamental ‘Natural Modal Logic’__they also fail to understand strong ‘Modal Abduction…’ This simply makes these false sycophants and pretenders to knowledge, nothing but ‘anti-modal fools’ of what we’d really consider true, valid and fully quantified modal logical knowledge__in the real world. Sad to say, that these anti-modal sycophants have been ruling the academic roosts of the world’s institutions, over the last 60+ years__and this is the sole reason humanism has been divorced from science and academics__leaving the world with the criminalized secular nonsense destroying, what could otherwise be a new renaissance in humanistic expansionary seeding and growing__with ‘Modal Humanism’ and ‘Abduction’ leading the way into a new era of true human values being re-entered into our sad world’s state of present affairs. It’s long overdue we learn the truth of our ancient philosophies of true and profound, yet simple ‘Inference Mechanics’__and an ‘inference mechanics’ that includes our historically cherished evolutionary human moral-justice values__our real intellectual soul’s foundation in historical habitual objective emotional experience…
You may ask why I’ve mentioned objective emotional experience as our foundational base of values__think about it__Is there something preventing you of recognizing the greater capacity of your basic emotions and feelings of modally acting objectively as well as subjectively_or vice versa…? No, there certainly is not__As a matter of fact, you are only crippling yourself, if you are not using both sides of your full human capacity to process your experiences, and it’s simply the process of recognizing the fact that base feelings and emotions are capable of being processed through our ‘inference mechanics’ both subjectively and objectively. We process subjectively when we want our judgments to feel about our ideas, and we process objectively when we want our judgments to rationalize about our ideas, as many situations of our human experiences necessitate both states at different times__and sometimes both at once__for our lives to have true feeling and meaning, with full understanding of our own and others’ feelings, and also the necessities of ours, others’ and the world’s truly rational actions. I don’t know about you, but I intend to keep processing with both sides of my mind, as I’ve never had any trouble doing so__and only feel sorry for those who try and improperly discriminate science against humanism, as do all too many anti-modal sycophants in this far too crass and mean modern world__They should learn the powers of the new modal humanism springing forth, in our present modally logical pragmatic world, being enhanced and sped forth, by the semantic web and the internet’s many free-wills. I kind of doubt they can hold back the rising tide…
Let’s look at this effective ‘modal inference mechanics’ a bit deeper, especially as ‘abduction’ is explicated within its mechanics. The ‘knowledge gaps’ already mentioned have posed problems for philosophy and its epistemic studies for millennia__this is nothing new, but what is new is the fact within__that ‘modal inference mechanics’ can solve these ‘knowledge gaps’ and actually fill in all of Kant’s ‘thing in itself’ missing pieces. Yes, that’s exactly what I said__solve all the empty problems created by Kant’s ‘ding an sich’ unknowns, as there really are no unknowns__of true general importance to us, as human beings trying to survive this massive world of modern confusion and false conflation. You could say Plato and Aristotle started this ‘ding an sich’ myth with falsely thinking ‘rationality’ needed to be grounded in ‘God’, then others such as Kant and Hegel tried to avoid grounding in the effable ‘God’ by developing ‘ding an sich’ for Kant and ‘notion’ for Hegel__which is really still ‘God’ with a new name. Then of course there’s the idealistic ‘phenomenon’ for some, and the ‘epiphenomenal given’ for still others, or ‘epiphenomenal energy’ for still others__until finally Quantum Mechanics learned a true grounding could be achieved in the real world, and particle-wave physics, in the pure randomness and indeterminacy of its fundamental mechanics understandings, within ‘Statistical Mechanics’ solving for ‘Probability Mechanics’, or even indiscernibles(where measurements are above and or below/exceed our Planck scale capacities to measure), of the ‘absolute fundamental substance’__simply meaning there exists nothing more fundamental than the ‘absolute fundamental’, even if we can’t fully define or measure it__its generality is still the ‘absolute fundamental state of substance’ no matter what it turns out to be finally named__as modal necessity requires it to absolutely, fundamentally exist, as is already proven by R. Barcan’s modal logic necessity formulas and proofs of the `40’s. Anyway, this allows us to have an absolute grounding for science in its true ground of our real World and Universe, when these ‘absolute fundamental substance’ particle-waves combinatorially add up to our Universe’s well known and obviously existing general uniformity__we all see, when we simply look. I’d simply refer the reader to C. I. Lewis’ excellent book; ‘Mind And The World Order’ for further well explained and explicated ideas of the above, as relates back to C. S. Peirce, and to H. R. Fischer’s; ‘Abductive Reasoning as a Way of Worldmaking’ for his excellent explication of Peirce’s ‘Abduction…’
As to putting all this into simple common sense words all can easily understand__”I can think and feel any way I choose about the world__I’m a free-willed human being, but, if I want a better world, I best advise myself, I’d better pay close attention to how I use my personal to intellectual thoughts, ideas, judgments and ideations of my world__if I care to make a better world__as careless thinking can only further destroy our world.” I full well realize my subjective and objective feelings and intellectual mathematics, rationality and logic can all be easily and fully processed through my fundamental ‘inference mechanics’ and that my third branch of logic__‘Abduction’__is simply my ‘Method of Hypothesis’ for science, and my deep personal ‘Re-Thinking of Thoughts’ is the same, for my personal feelings’ world__where I can solve all those seeming oh-so-hard emotional problems, etc., and even many of the hard science problems, if I but open my eyes to all these simple ‘inference mechanics’ uses, and simply understand which modal direction I wish to process my information toward__The psychological emotional, or the logical intellectual__and fully learn not to conflate or confuse the two, as they are simply separate desires. ‘Inference Mechanics’ is nothing more than our ‘Base Knowledge Mechanics’__‘What I Can See, I Can Know’__"And, We Can See All Our Inferences Very Clearly, When We But Look, Even The First Inferences 'The World First Infers'__When We All First Opened Our Eyes And Minds, As Children…"
Finally, don’t let me forget to mention the all so important a/estheticians, or better known as the German humanists, as no logic and science functions properly without their necessary marriage with esthetics__no matter how much others think it does__It does not. From Baumgarten, who’s all importance to Kant’s ‘Third Critique of Judgment’ can’t afford to be left out, as Kant’s ideas would never have gained traction without Baumgarten’s esthetic influences__and the later esthetically influenced German humanists would maybe never have existed without Baumgarten’s original work and influence. Goethe, Schiller, Herbart and Steiner, etc., may have just been minor footnotes in history, if not for Baumgarten’s mastery of the esthetic nature of humanity, being spread wide by Kant’s system__so, when you may start to frown upon the mathematicians, scientists and logicians like Kant, Peirce, Lewis, Barcan and such others, don’t forget it was his massive influence that helped spread the popularity of German a/esthetic humanism, and its major influence on Peirce’s logic, which later influenced Lewis, Barcan and many other moderns__to possibly allow humanity’s return to ‘Humanity’s Humanness…’
And again from Peirce: “Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself", that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism." Imo, this is the most important message to thoroughly know and understand__in all its potential QM implications...
Also: Abduction Link...
(Click to enlarge... Peirce's inference mechanics paragraph, as explained by Lefebvre, in graphic form...)
Now, maybe I didn’t have the average family, as did many others__I did have a family of immense diversity__from the lowliest uneducated farmers and housewives, to the highest educated businessmen, gentlemen, engineers, mathematicians and politicians. The main farm I was raised on even had its own black-smith shop, complete with forge and foundry, to make all the tools, machinery and implements needed for our farm, and many others around the area. Gramps was the educated patriarch of the family, with more than a few college educated children, grand-children and great-grand-children college educated and not. Even some of the in-laws were highly educated, and of course some not at all, as there were also uneducated farmers and housewives amongst them. Now, as you may well imagine, this was quite an eclectic bunch of drastically different personality people, all trying to assimilate to some form of family function. Of course not all mentioned lived on this single farm, but were all often visiting members of gramps’ and great-gramps’ families__as gramps and great gramps were of unrelated families, yet of the same contemporary generation, since gramps married the maid of his family business enterprises, who was the young daughter of great-grand-dad__as gramps' wife had died giving birth to her 11th child. Grammy was the only person able to reach gramps, and bring him out of his depression, of losing his childhood sweetheart wife in childbirth, after a long hard year of deep mourning. Anyway, I mention this as it seems quite important for shaping gramps into the great humanitarian he became, after the death of his first wife__where he would go on to not only build major business enterprises, in several diverse fields, but also to take the time to become a very effective politician, and to educate most every family member, to, or at least near, his level of knowledge proficiency__as only he had the patience to do so__which also included my mother, father, sisters, brother and myself__along with the majority of the greater family members, also…
As my father was the wild-card_the black-sheep_of this massive extended family, he had to be the rebel, and quit school in the 8th grade__but couldn’t escape being educated by all the close influences around him, and actually took to self-educating himself, all through the years of his life, to keep up with his highly educated mathematically and medically inclined wife, and finally end as a full-fledged inventor and engineer__himself. In fact, of all the highly educated family members, only gramps and dad, would I grant the level of knowledge proficiency being achieved, above that of all the other college educated family members__even of the several other PhD’s in our family__so this always gave me a unique perspective about academics and common sense, in general. I always saw common sense and kindness trumping academics__as the number one necessary influence of an educated life__as I never met two wiser men than my grandfather and my father__one having a Ph.D. education, and his and his second wife’s son, my father, having an 8th grade education, and one day of high-school, whose mother was originally the 1st family’s maid, until she married gramps, 30 years her senior…
Now, many would say; “Well no wonder you witnessed so much family conflict…”__but that wouldn’t be true either, as I saw this same family conflict in every other family I ever got to know, well enough to know and see it. We weren’t special in the human conflict department of families, by any means. We were actually quite in the lesser end of the family conflict arena, as near as I could tell__but it was still far more than my young mind cared for, when I was such a tender aged child__as seeing my younger sister in tears, more times than I care to remember, was not a pretty picture to me__and this was over woman to woman conflict, or I should say, mother to daughter conflict__while I was treated like a King__Why…? This would take many years for my young mind to solve, as it would all the many other family, relatives, friends and acquaintance conflicts I witnessed, at these young ages, and as time would tell, all the rest of my life. “Why were humans so cruel to each other?__I just had to know…!”__While the wild animals, and even the insects, were so kind and even extremely co-operative, as I witnessed with ant and bee colonies__as compared to human collectives…
I don’t know, but maybe I had a starting advantage on others in understanding this deep personal conflict between like and diverse groups of human beings. Gramps, mother, father, friends and others always taught me as much as they knew, that is as I asked about anyway, and I had early on developed the innate curiosity to ask many questions of anyone I knew and met, who always seemed to answer my quests__and of course this had started with my two grandfathers, one educated and one not__but both willing to share all he knew with my young soul. And this same privilege extended to most all my other relatives and friends__then extended into school with certain other students, whose parents had taught them far beyond what that particular education system was offering__But, none of this help offered the deep interest and quest in personal humanity I shared with my deep investigating self. Every time I entered these deepest of areas quests with others, it always seemed to short out into some personal answer they had learned, and not discovered for themselves__as my feelings always rejected their answers as not being that deeper or deepest answer I was always seeking__and this didn’t seem to matter how educated or not, they were, and some of the closest to my ideas, actually came from many throughout my life, that were not educated, as their kindness had granted them a personal perspective into their own quite deep inner sanctums. Still, from the earliest ages to my ripe age of 66, I’ve yet to meet or read anyone with that all deepest of questions’ answers I’ve sought since childhood__at least to my satisfaction__and don’t kid yourself, as I’ve met and talked to many thousands throughout my life, and thoroughly read many thousands more__from the earliest Chinese, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Indians, etc., on and on__to the most present of logical, mathematical, scientific, philosophical and humanist of pre-modern and modern of thinkers possible for one mind to take in, in one lifetime__as it’s been a constant quest for me, all my life…
So, let me get to the meat of the matter; “How does thought, think about thinking…?” “Am I only ‘thought’ thinking about my own thinking…?” “Am I the thought-gap in my thinking, between other thoughts…?” “If I may be only the thought-gap, then am I nothing but space…?” “If I am nothing but space, am I nothing more than a field-continuum space…?” “If I am a continuum field-space, then am I a micro-field space, within the greater continuum field-space…?” “Am I nothing more than a field within a field, acting within and with the bio-agents of my body, interacting with its own bio-neuronal agency of some greater field-network of more inter-connected nerve synapses, called brain to mind interactions…?” “And, since Einstein stated ‘All is field, everywhere’, am I a non-deterministic quantum state evolved into a ball of free-will uniformity, shedding my randomness through self-control, in the path from my fundamental quantum states of randomness, to final uniformity as finished human product, from its initial rock sources…?” Am I, as Charles Sanders Peirce stated; “Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself", that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism." Now, can this highly complex paragraph by Peirce answer some of my above questions…? I am going to state that; “Iff you take the time to fully contemplate, exactly what Peirce is here stating, you can answer the question; ‘What is thought, thinking about thinking, with…?" If you may have read these three; Kant, Heisenberg or Heidegger__you may have come across similar statements about how our ‘intuition space’, or what I have referred to as the gap being the field-continuum, you may notice the almost exact similarities of these three thinkers with that of Peirce__where they also mention ideas about space__or intuitive space, as the same…
Now, the question becomes; “How can I make this plainer to you, so you may see it is the very answer to the fundamental problem of people treating people unjustly and unkindly__and only it is__as originally asked in the beginning of this story…?”__As per this question; “Why was the world of nature so exquisitely perfect, and yet the world of man so fraught with problems…?” This may be quite a task__a huge task__as it involves the entire history in ‘Inference Mechanics’, from the earliest of thinkers, to the most modern__trying to solve the epistemic gaps in our vast knowledge systems, which is actually no more than the gaps between our concepts, interacting with, within and between each and another… I do not intend to make it any more complex than it’s already been explained by Peirce’s complexity, and C. I. Lewis’ much more easily understood simplicity and clarity method, of stating the same as Peirce, with different language and ideation__yet I’ll try to fill in the missing pieces to make it even more plain, clear and simple__as it’s nothing more than the ‘missing mind mechanics’, that have made us all act bad__when its truths could have allowed us to act good, had we but known it’s truths’ mechanics of ‘modal feelings and emotions’, to our physical actions’ much more ordered and better 'Possibilities...'
Let’s look at Peirce’s above statement, and see if we can parse it into a much clearer and simpler understanding. Above I’ve used the term; ‘Inference Mechanics’, as that’s what ‘concept mechanics’ has been named since its inception in antiquity, by most every ancient culture who studied the mind deeply, no matter who or where__and is exactly what Peirce expressed in his above paragraph. I'd also like to here enter another of Peirce's clear statements; "The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason.” Now, by adhering to the original terms, we avoid all the unnecessary confusions and conflations of ideas and ideations pertaining to this simple, yet highly over-complexified subject__in the history of the world. This is simply about perception, and abstracting that perception out of our subjective emotions and intellects, and into our objective emotions and intellects__to achieve rational understanding of our primitive feelings and visions of the real external and real internal worlds__one inanimate and one of animate and innate quality, when viewed with proper categories and concepts. As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve stated both subjective and objective emotions and intellect__as ‘conceptual inference mechanics’, and in order for it to be fully functioning and true, must process both the subjective and objective completely, to finally understand how humanity with humanity, really functions, and or can function, esthetically valid to our deepest wishes, of best ordered states, of highest ordered states of a new and true moral justice, for the highest numbers of Earth’s citizens__possible. That may seem like a tall order, bordering on the sycophantic utopias of ‘laughed at times and ideas’ of the past__but think again__this is new and revolutionary discovery of pure thought mechanics__best represented by Peirce’s discovery of the 3rd branch of logic__‘Abduction’__which allows this deepest of levels of personal and logical thinking...
Oh, I hear many of you screaming already__“That doesn’t work. It’s been tried and proven a failure, already…” No… I’m here to tell you it’s simply the anti-philosophers and thinkers who lack the understanding necessary to understand ‘Abduction’, whose understanding doesn’t understand ‘Modal Logic’__and because they do not understand our fundamental ‘Natural Modal Logic’__they also fail to understand strong ‘Modal Abduction…’ This simply makes these false sycophants and pretenders to knowledge, nothing but ‘anti-modal fools’ of what we’d really consider true, valid and fully quantified modal logical knowledge__in the real world. Sad to say, that these anti-modal sycophants have been ruling the academic roosts of the world’s institutions, over the last 60+ years__and this is the sole reason humanism has been divorced from science and academics__leaving the world with the criminalized secular nonsense destroying, what could otherwise be a new renaissance in humanistic expansionary seeding and growing__with ‘Modal Humanism’ and ‘Abduction’ leading the way into a new era of true human values being re-entered into our sad world’s state of present affairs. It’s long overdue we learn the truth of our ancient philosophies of true and profound, yet simple ‘Inference Mechanics’__and an ‘inference mechanics’ that includes our historically cherished evolutionary human moral-justice values__our real intellectual soul’s foundation in historical habitual objective emotional experience…
You may ask why I’ve mentioned objective emotional experience as our foundational base of values__think about it__Is there something preventing you of recognizing the greater capacity of your basic emotions and feelings of modally acting objectively as well as subjectively_or vice versa…? No, there certainly is not__As a matter of fact, you are only crippling yourself, if you are not using both sides of your full human capacity to process your experiences, and it’s simply the process of recognizing the fact that base feelings and emotions are capable of being processed through our ‘inference mechanics’ both subjectively and objectively. We process subjectively when we want our judgments to feel about our ideas, and we process objectively when we want our judgments to rationalize about our ideas, as many situations of our human experiences necessitate both states at different times__and sometimes both at once__for our lives to have true feeling and meaning, with full understanding of our own and others’ feelings, and also the necessities of ours, others’ and the world’s truly rational actions. I don’t know about you, but I intend to keep processing with both sides of my mind, as I’ve never had any trouble doing so__and only feel sorry for those who try and improperly discriminate science against humanism, as do all too many anti-modal sycophants in this far too crass and mean modern world__They should learn the powers of the new modal humanism springing forth, in our present modally logical pragmatic world, being enhanced and sped forth, by the semantic web and the internet’s many free-wills. I kind of doubt they can hold back the rising tide…
Let’s look at this effective ‘modal inference mechanics’ a bit deeper, especially as ‘abduction’ is explicated within its mechanics. The ‘knowledge gaps’ already mentioned have posed problems for philosophy and its epistemic studies for millennia__this is nothing new, but what is new is the fact within__that ‘modal inference mechanics’ can solve these ‘knowledge gaps’ and actually fill in all of Kant’s ‘thing in itself’ missing pieces. Yes, that’s exactly what I said__solve all the empty problems created by Kant’s ‘ding an sich’ unknowns, as there really are no unknowns__of true general importance to us, as human beings trying to survive this massive world of modern confusion and false conflation. You could say Plato and Aristotle started this ‘ding an sich’ myth with falsely thinking ‘rationality’ needed to be grounded in ‘God’, then others such as Kant and Hegel tried to avoid grounding in the effable ‘God’ by developing ‘ding an sich’ for Kant and ‘notion’ for Hegel__which is really still ‘God’ with a new name. Then of course there’s the idealistic ‘phenomenon’ for some, and the ‘epiphenomenal given’ for still others, or ‘epiphenomenal energy’ for still others__until finally Quantum Mechanics learned a true grounding could be achieved in the real world, and particle-wave physics, in the pure randomness and indeterminacy of its fundamental mechanics understandings, within ‘Statistical Mechanics’ solving for ‘Probability Mechanics’, or even indiscernibles(where measurements are above and or below/exceed our Planck scale capacities to measure), of the ‘absolute fundamental substance’__simply meaning there exists nothing more fundamental than the ‘absolute fundamental’, even if we can’t fully define or measure it__its generality is still the ‘absolute fundamental state of substance’ no matter what it turns out to be finally named__as modal necessity requires it to absolutely, fundamentally exist, as is already proven by R. Barcan’s modal logic necessity formulas and proofs of the `40’s. Anyway, this allows us to have an absolute grounding for science in its true ground of our real World and Universe, when these ‘absolute fundamental substance’ particle-waves combinatorially add up to our Universe’s well known and obviously existing general uniformity__we all see, when we simply look. I’d simply refer the reader to C. I. Lewis’ excellent book; ‘Mind And The World Order’ for further well explained and explicated ideas of the above, as relates back to C. S. Peirce, and to H. R. Fischer’s; ‘Abductive Reasoning as a Way of Worldmaking’ for his excellent explication of Peirce’s ‘Abduction…’
As to putting all this into simple common sense words all can easily understand__”I can think and feel any way I choose about the world__I’m a free-willed human being, but, if I want a better world, I best advise myself, I’d better pay close attention to how I use my personal to intellectual thoughts, ideas, judgments and ideations of my world__if I care to make a better world__as careless thinking can only further destroy our world.” I full well realize my subjective and objective feelings and intellectual mathematics, rationality and logic can all be easily and fully processed through my fundamental ‘inference mechanics’ and that my third branch of logic__‘Abduction’__is simply my ‘Method of Hypothesis’ for science, and my deep personal ‘Re-Thinking of Thoughts’ is the same, for my personal feelings’ world__where I can solve all those seeming oh-so-hard emotional problems, etc., and even many of the hard science problems, if I but open my eyes to all these simple ‘inference mechanics’ uses, and simply understand which modal direction I wish to process my information toward__The psychological emotional, or the logical intellectual__and fully learn not to conflate or confuse the two, as they are simply separate desires. ‘Inference Mechanics’ is nothing more than our ‘Base Knowledge Mechanics’__‘What I Can See, I Can Know’__"And, We Can See All Our Inferences Very Clearly, When We But Look, Even The First Inferences 'The World First Infers'__When We All First Opened Our Eyes And Minds, As Children…"
Finally, don’t let me forget to mention the all so important a/estheticians, or better known as the German humanists, as no logic and science functions properly without their necessary marriage with esthetics__no matter how much others think it does__It does not. From Baumgarten, who’s all importance to Kant’s ‘Third Critique of Judgment’ can’t afford to be left out, as Kant’s ideas would never have gained traction without Baumgarten’s esthetic influences__and the later esthetically influenced German humanists would maybe never have existed without Baumgarten’s original work and influence. Goethe, Schiller, Herbart and Steiner, etc., may have just been minor footnotes in history, if not for Baumgarten’s mastery of the esthetic nature of humanity, being spread wide by Kant’s system__so, when you may start to frown upon the mathematicians, scientists and logicians like Kant, Peirce, Lewis, Barcan and such others, don’t forget it was his massive influence that helped spread the popularity of German a/esthetic humanism, and its major influence on Peirce’s logic, which later influenced Lewis, Barcan and many other moderns__to possibly allow humanity’s return to ‘Humanity’s Humanness…’
And again from Peirce: “Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself", that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism." Imo, this is the most important message to thoroughly know and understand__in all its potential QM implications...
Also: Abduction Link...
(Click to enlarge... Peirce's inference mechanics paragraph, as explained by Lefebvre, in graphic form...)
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Bogeyman Economics...
by Katy Delay
I'm just a buffoon, and I love a little laughter. We all need a little comic relief from time to time, so I like to make light of the economic mess we're in. However, when surly individuals with Ph.D.s and/or lots of government power start making spooky declarations and rattling their chains, I get a little nervous. After all, they could hurt somebody.
Take Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Alan Blinder, for example.
A few months ago, Dr. Bernanke looked Steve Croft straight in the eye and declared his absolute faith that the Federal Reserve can keep our economy stable and, at the same time withdraw the Fed's monetary support as soon as prices rise too much in the U.S.
I guess he thinks prices outside the country can rise as much as they want and it's not our problem. Yet credible researchers argue that U.S. monetary looseness is directly behind the current international rise in dollar-priced commodities. (See this Steve H. Hanke article for a breath of fresh common sense.) And rising food and raw material prices around the world cause misery, poverty, and death. (See this report by the World Bank.)
Then almost in the same sentence Bernanke went on to tell Steve about controlling "market expectations." Now, which is it, Sir? Does withdrawal of monetary support really stop incipient price inflation, or is price inflation merely the result of "market expectations"? Because in the latter case, you must believe that the Fed's words are more important that its actions.
But even Bernanke seems to admit that, sooner or later, the Fed will have to correct the situation; yet I don't see how the Fed can withdraw liquidity without causing a rise in interest rates and a second serious economic dip. So I suspect Bernanke and his colleagues are hoping against hope they can keep liquidity high, convince the markets that price inflation isn't going to happen, and then -- Voila, no price inflation, i.e. an economic miracle. Good luck to you, Doc. When it goes awry, either with price inflation or a second dip, don't say I didn't tell you so.
Then there's our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Timothy Geithner, warning us that the debt ceiling must be raised or America could default. Now, you and I know this is nonsense. (If you're not sure, read this common sense piece from Michael D. Tanner.) But no matter to the all-powerful Mr. Geithner. Recently his main purpose in life has been to scare debt-wary Republicans into believing they're driving the country into default. But, Mr. Geithner, what happens when Congress does raise the ceiling? Obviously, it condones the debt spending. But wait a minute, don't you get it, Sir? We don't want any more debt. How much of "No more!" don't you understand? You may not care if the U.S. retains its credibility, but we do.
Professor Alan Blinder, a Keynesian voodoo-economics professor at Princeton, declares that "if we crash into the debt ceiling ... it's not likely to be pretty. [WSJ commentary.] ... "At some point," says Blinder, "Mr. Geithner could wind up brooding over horrible questions like these: Do we stop issuing checks for Social Security benefits, or for soldiers' pay, or for interest payments to the Chinese government? Such agonizing choices are what make default imaginable."
Sounds like plain old scaremongering to me. This guy is the kind of academic soothsayer who furnishes politicians like Geithner with serious-sounding, credentialed ammunition. Shame on you, Professor. You're lucky you won't have to pay for the mess when U.S. debt explodes off the charts and we can't even pay the interest anymore.
Blinder goes on: "[S]uppose the federal government actually does reduce its expenditures by 40% overnight. That translates to roughly $1.5 trillion at annual rates, or about 10% of GDP. That's an enormous fiscal contraction for any economy to withstand, never mind one in a sluggish recovery with 9% unemployment. Even contemplating such a possibility is evidence of a dark, self-destructive impulse."
So Professor, which is the more self-destructive party: the academics like yourself, along with the politicians and their voters, who have gotten the U.S. into the worst pickle of its history, or those who would try to save us from people like you? No, you can't scare me -- well, wait; actually, you DO scare me. But not for the reasons you think.
American jurisprudence is missing one important element: Political Accountability. American citizens should be able to hold individuals in positions of power accountable for their recommendations and actions, other than just voting them out of office. If people want the power, they should get the liability.
There should be a law that anyone in a position of power who makes policy decisions that later turn out to be wrong should be held responsible and should give up everything they own or will ever earn, in order to pay back a fraction of what is owed to all those who have been harmed.
Drunk bus drivers who cause accidents are fired and penalized, even put in jail. Politicians inebriated by the headiness of power, and academics swollen with their sense of self-importance, can cause billions of losses to defenseless citizens with no fear of reprisal. What do they get when they screw up? A comfortable pension, full retirement benefits, and a book deal.
That's Bogeyman Economics for you.
I'm just a buffoon, and I love a little laughter. We all need a little comic relief from time to time, so I like to make light of the economic mess we're in. However, when surly individuals with Ph.D.s and/or lots of government power start making spooky declarations and rattling their chains, I get a little nervous. After all, they could hurt somebody.
Take Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Alan Blinder, for example.
A few months ago, Dr. Bernanke looked Steve Croft straight in the eye and declared his absolute faith that the Federal Reserve can keep our economy stable and, at the same time withdraw the Fed's monetary support as soon as prices rise too much in the U.S.
I guess he thinks prices outside the country can rise as much as they want and it's not our problem. Yet credible researchers argue that U.S. monetary looseness is directly behind the current international rise in dollar-priced commodities. (See this Steve H. Hanke article for a breath of fresh common sense.) And rising food and raw material prices around the world cause misery, poverty, and death. (See this report by the World Bank.)
Then almost in the same sentence Bernanke went on to tell Steve about controlling "market expectations." Now, which is it, Sir? Does withdrawal of monetary support really stop incipient price inflation, or is price inflation merely the result of "market expectations"? Because in the latter case, you must believe that the Fed's words are more important that its actions.
But even Bernanke seems to admit that, sooner or later, the Fed will have to correct the situation; yet I don't see how the Fed can withdraw liquidity without causing a rise in interest rates and a second serious economic dip. So I suspect Bernanke and his colleagues are hoping against hope they can keep liquidity high, convince the markets that price inflation isn't going to happen, and then -- Voila, no price inflation, i.e. an economic miracle. Good luck to you, Doc. When it goes awry, either with price inflation or a second dip, don't say I didn't tell you so.
Then there's our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Timothy Geithner, warning us that the debt ceiling must be raised or America could default. Now, you and I know this is nonsense. (If you're not sure, read this common sense piece from Michael D. Tanner.) But no matter to the all-powerful Mr. Geithner. Recently his main purpose in life has been to scare debt-wary Republicans into believing they're driving the country into default. But, Mr. Geithner, what happens when Congress does raise the ceiling? Obviously, it condones the debt spending. But wait a minute, don't you get it, Sir? We don't want any more debt. How much of "No more!" don't you understand? You may not care if the U.S. retains its credibility, but we do.
Professor Alan Blinder, a Keynesian voodoo-economics professor at Princeton, declares that "if we crash into the debt ceiling ... it's not likely to be pretty. [WSJ commentary.] ... "At some point," says Blinder, "Mr. Geithner could wind up brooding over horrible questions like these: Do we stop issuing checks for Social Security benefits, or for soldiers' pay, or for interest payments to the Chinese government? Such agonizing choices are what make default imaginable."
Sounds like plain old scaremongering to me. This guy is the kind of academic soothsayer who furnishes politicians like Geithner with serious-sounding, credentialed ammunition. Shame on you, Professor. You're lucky you won't have to pay for the mess when U.S. debt explodes off the charts and we can't even pay the interest anymore.
Blinder goes on: "[S]uppose the federal government actually does reduce its expenditures by 40% overnight. That translates to roughly $1.5 trillion at annual rates, or about 10% of GDP. That's an enormous fiscal contraction for any economy to withstand, never mind one in a sluggish recovery with 9% unemployment. Even contemplating such a possibility is evidence of a dark, self-destructive impulse."
So Professor, which is the more self-destructive party: the academics like yourself, along with the politicians and their voters, who have gotten the U.S. into the worst pickle of its history, or those who would try to save us from people like you? No, you can't scare me -- well, wait; actually, you DO scare me. But not for the reasons you think.
American jurisprudence is missing one important element: Political Accountability. American citizens should be able to hold individuals in positions of power accountable for their recommendations and actions, other than just voting them out of office. If people want the power, they should get the liability.
There should be a law that anyone in a position of power who makes policy decisions that later turn out to be wrong should be held responsible and should give up everything they own or will ever earn, in order to pay back a fraction of what is owed to all those who have been harmed.
Drunk bus drivers who cause accidents are fired and penalized, even put in jail. Politicians inebriated by the headiness of power, and academics swollen with their sense of self-importance, can cause billions of losses to defenseless citizens with no fear of reprisal. What do they get when they screw up? A comfortable pension, full retirement benefits, and a book deal.
That's Bogeyman Economics for you.
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