: A PHILOSOPHY OF REALITY, KNOWLEDGE, AND MORALITY
: by Forrest Cameranesi
: PREFACE
: This essay is written to explain to myself the fundamental essence of
: reality, the limits of knowledge, and principles by which to live, as best
: as I can determine them for myself. It is therefore written entirely in
: the first person - "I" rather than "we",
: "people", "humans", etc. I do not wholly expect that
: my perception and reasoning on such things will neccesarily match yours,
: if anyone is reading this, for reasons that I will soon explain.
: Nevertheless if you find this helpful in any way, you are welcome. Any
: feedback in any form from any one is welcomed as well.
: I am aware that many philosophers past have thought of and written about many
: of the concepts that follow, but I did not reach these conclusions by
: knowingly building upon their works. In most cases I have not even read
: their works, and I could not, by memory, attribute any given concept to
: any given philosopher. All that follows is based on things that I have
: seen, heard, or felt, and my own internal reasoning. Therefore I offer no
: bibliography or accrediting to others.
: THE BASIS OF REALITY
: The reality that I know is, in essence, a set of ideas, beliefs, or
: information in my mind. That is the only sort of reality which it is
: possible for me to know, and therefore from my sensitive experience I
: might say it is the only reality that can be, though I know from cognitive
: reason that other realities must exist. I have at my disposal two tools
: with which to build this reality: perception and logic.
: With my perception, I see, hear, taste, smell, feel, and emote. If I had no
: logic to connect these perceptions, there could be no causation or
: explanation for it and no desire for causation or explanation, and all
: that I sensed would be taken on faith and exist simply as what I sensed.
: This would be a purely sensitive reality.
: With my logic, I build rules internally consistant with all that I know. If I
: had no perception to sense with, there could be nothing against which to
: test the rules and no need to test them, and all that I thought would be
: based on reason and exists simply as what I thought. This would be a
: purely cognitive reality.
: THE CONTINUUM OF REALITIES
: The reality that I know is built with a combination of these two tools.
: "Actual Reality" is whatever is most logically consistent with
: all that is sensed. I do not always find myself knowing Actual Reality.
: The reality that I know is a continually changing thing which finds itself
: on a continuum between Cognitive Reality and Sensitive Reality.
: I find myself closer to Cognitive Reality when I am contemplating theoretical
: physics, doing math, or engaged in other purely rational activities. I
: find myself closer to Sensitive Reality when I am dreaming, listening to
: music, or engaged in other purely experiential activities. I am closest to
: Actual Reality when I am rationally evaluating and connecting my
: experiences, such as when I am practicing martial arts, navigating a
: strange city, or designing an arts or crafts project. Yet at none of these
: times am I actually knowing a purely Cognitive or Sensitive reality - even
: when contemplating theoretical physics, I still sense things around me,
: and even when dreaming, I make an attempt to construct a reasonable
: narrative from my experiences.
: I am not assigning absolute moral values to Cognitive, Sensitive, or Actual
: Reality. I will say that it is generally good to mostly know a reality
: closer to Actual Reality, but that knowing a full range of realities
: across the continuum is important as well. The reasons for this, and the
: definitions behind my use of the terms "moral" and
: "good", will be explained by the end of this essay.
: THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE VIA EXPERIENCE AND REASON
: Both methods of gaining ideas, beliefs, or information, which I refer to
: collectively as knowledge, face immediate and hard limits.
: The limit on reason is that, lacking knowledge from experience, logic must be
: based on assumption, and the default value of any assumed assertation must
: be false. This is because one cannot simultaneously hold all assertations
: to be true, as many assertations will directly contradict one another.
: Therefore, without experience from which to base reason, all premises used
: must be assumed false, and any conclusions reached by any such unfounded
: reason cannot be proven true. In short, I must assume the negative until
: proven positive.
: The limit on experience is that no being can experience everything, and thus
: without logical inferrence one cannot hope to build an accurate reality.
: The reason why no being can experience everything could be put simply: the
: information of an experience must be able to fit within the mind of the
: being experiencing it, therefore any being capable of experiencing
: 'everything' must be informationally larger (or put another way, more
: complex) than 'everything', which defies the very concept of 'everything',
: which must by definition encompass (and therefore be at least as
: informationally large, or complex as) every being as well. The result of
: this limit is that, while I need only search a certain subset of
: 'everything' before I eventually find evidence of a true positive
: assertion, I cannot ever finish searching for evidence of a true negative
: assertion. (Of course if an assertion is false I can never find evidence
: of it). In short, I cannot prove a negative, only a positive.
: The net effect of these two limits on knowledge-gathering is that I cannot
: reasonably back an assertion of faith (though I may be able to infer the
: probable truth through experience), but that I cannot experientially
: disprove any such assertion either (though I may be able to deduce a
: contradictory assertion from experience). Therefore in Actual Reality,
: with logic and experience given equal merit, agnosticism (admitting the
: lack of knowledge) is the only answer to questions of pure faith or reason
: (such as, for example, the existance of God), until such questions have
: experiential evidence fit into valid logic to answer them.
: THE AGNOSTIC BASIS OF MORALITY IN ACTUAL REALITY
: For the remainder of this essay I am going to assume the premise, based on my
: experiences and the logical conclusions thereby derived, that there exist
: other beings similar to myself, possessing the above outlined tools and
: limits with regard to reality and knowledge. I will refer to them as
: people. I make the additional assumption that like me they possess what is
: commonly called "will", which is namely a desire for a
: particular reality to be known. I will also be limiting all further
: discussion to terms of Actual Reality, because as stated above and
: explained below, it is generally more good.
: The basis of most moral codes is founded either in pure faith ("I was
: told this, therefore it is") or in pure reason ("I think this,
: therefore it is"). These moral codes function well in the minds
: people who know mostly Sensitive or Cognitive realities, but not well for
: those people who know Actual Reality, because their basis' ignore half of
: the tools used to form a knowledge of Actual Reality. Therefore I will now
: discuss an agnostic basis for morality based not on any unfounded faith or
: reason, but on the very definition of the word itself.
: "Moral" can generally be taken as synonymous for "good",
: in the sense of the word "good" that is used to describe an
: action as right or desirable. Therefore a moral code is a set of
: guidelines to limit actions to those which are good. I have just given a
: qualitive definition for "good" already - that which is
: desirable - but a functional definition must be quantative as well.
: A functional quantative definition is "an action which makes more people
: more happy for more time is more good," where "happiness"
: is "knowing the satisfaction of desire." (The term 'knowing' is
: important here because if a person has desires satisfied but is not made
: aware of those desires and thus their satisfaction, that person will not
: be happy). Good has already been defined as that which is desirable,
: therefore happiness (the satisfaction of desires) is good, and more
: happiness, in more people, more often, is more good.
: The three individual quantities of the above definition are individual
: happiness, the duration of that happiness, and number of individuals.
: Obviously the quantity of happiness is directly proportional to the amount
: of good, and the other two are also clearly direcly proportional via the
: application of simple arithmatic. The consequences of the second two
: quantities, however, are important: the 'number of people' quantity
: dictates that one person's actions to further their own happiness at the
: greater expense of others cannot be considered "good"; and the
: 'duration of happiness' quantity dictates that the end reality of an
: action does not justify the means of an action, as all moments, including
: the means, are considered end realities of equal value.
: QUANTITATIVE QUALITIES OF GOAL REALITIES TO ORIENT GOOD ACTIONS TOWARD
: Actions are taken to execute the will of a person, where will was previously
: defined as the desire to know a particular reality. Therefore actions aim
: to create a particular reality for a person to know. It should then be
: possible to list qualities of such realities that will be created by
: actions which are good, by the above definition. I will list three such
: important qualities.
: The first quality is 'knowledge'. A reality in which people know more is a
: reality in which more means to make people happy will be known, more
: people will be known as people (as opposed to considering some beings
: which are actually people as non-persons), and more ways to make happiness
: endure. To use analogy, knowledge is being able to see more targets, aim
: better, and hit them longer.
: The second quality is 'variety'. A reality with more variety is more likely
: to have something to make someone happy sometime. To use the above
: analogy, variety is like firing more shots at more targets at once.
: The third quality is 'balance'. A reality in which things are more balanced
: is statistically more likely to please more people, as most parts of any
: random set are commonly near the middle of that set. To use the above
: analogy, balance is like firing through the middle of a cloud of targets,
: where most of them are.
: CONCLUSION
: As promised, here is now my rationalization for why mostly knowing Actual
: Reality is generally good, but knowing realities closer to Cognitive
: Reality and Sensitive Reality is also very important. This conclusion
: serves not only to bring this essay around full circle but also to
: illustrate an example of the principles laid out above in determining an
: action - namely, the knowing of a particular reality.
: The reason for the first premise, that mostly knowing Actual Reality is
: generally good, is that balance, as stated above, is good, and Actual
: Reality is a balance between Cognitive Reality and Sensitive Reality. The
: reasons for the second premise, that knowing realities closer to Cognitive
: Reality and Sensitive Reality are also very important, are that other
: realities add variety, which is also good, and that knowing other
: realities obviously increases a person's knowledge, which is also good.
: Not all people should always know exactly Actual Reality. Some people may
: always lean toward more Sensitive or Cognitive realities, or swing between
: them for different periods of time. However, most people should usually
: know a reality close to Actual Reality.
Jeez, Fobo. I mean like DUDE! thats all... long and shit.
