Montaigne

"Je suis moy-mesmes la matiere de mon livre."
-Michel de Montaigne

It is a warning Montaigne gives to his readers. He is saying that he is himself the subject of his book, and that it is a waste of time for anyone to read it. Yet, his essays were placed on the Catholic index of prohibited books, they are read across the world as timeless observations of a temperant and open mind, and they are by no means a waste in my own governance of my time. Montaigne's essays are an amazing attempt at exploring the mind, and a great example of how a mind can be open to so many things, make so many observations, and seem so timeless. The questions he asked are still asked today, and I despair at the fact that such clear expression can be interpreted in so many ways. I went to a lecture about Sextus Empiricus and Montaigne, and the interpretation of Montaigne was that of a skeptic arguing that Montaigne less than straightforward in his writings against the explicit statement of Montaigne himself. Of course, this isn't anything against the person's interpretation because I myself believe that we all have our own perceptions of anything presented to us, and that it is our own responsibility to make those perceptions agreeable with the greater realm of understanding that surrounds us. Having an argument with some friends of mine, I came to the realization that no matter what amount of reason and logic that I believed I was presenting, they believed that I was just "bullshitting" them and they were being wronged by my assertions. I was frustrated by the outcome, but after reflection, I could not help but feel that it was my own fault that I could not present the argument in a way that seemed rational to them. If it was I that wished to make some assertion, then it was my own responsibility to make that assertion presentable to those around me. It makes one wonder what the mind means to those around me and to someone like Montaigne.

Truth

When discussing Truth, and I capitalize T specifically, we must concern ourselves with the dangers that are involved. Truth is an idea. Truth has no physical existence and because it has no physical existence, it can be argued as to whether it exists at all. I am not arguing this because there is more to existence than what is physically present. The existence of anything outside of physical existence may only be a construct of our own minds, but that does not interfere with the fact that such things exist, and we cannot even be sure that such things are only constructs of our own minds. In this existence that I believe I understand to be living in right now, I cannot claim to know anything simply by the fact that I do not know everything, and can therefore not know what I do not know. That means that what I do not know can be an infinite amount of things and something in that infinite knowledge may be something that makes what I think I know become false. Such an understanding may seem untennable by the fact that it asserts I cannot know anything, but I argue that we can construct a system of awareness that best emulates that knowledge approximate to our present position in reality. I do not believe that Truth is relative. I simply believe that we cannot know what the Truth of anything is without having the ability to know everything, and that is why we must settle for truth. What truth then becomes is the most accurate perception of Truth in relation to our position in reality. I do believe that there is an absolute Truth, but that it can only be known by God. Of course, I must clarify my understanding of God, and this could give a best example of why I personally believe in God. I believe in God as the essence of all things, the infinite. God is in all things but is no thing. Everything that we do is because God wills it, and I can give an example. We go about our day and do what we do, but how much of we do is because we choose to do it, or because the decisions of others, the weather, the present place and time, the choices we have made in the past, and the choices we hope to make in the future? All of these things are a part of the infinite will of God, and we cannot possibly know or be aware of even these small amount of questions and answers that were just presented. So how can we pretend to know the will of God? I argue that the will and righteousness of God is in what happens in life, and that it all happens on an infinite scale that we must account for. The scale of such interactions is humbling, and that is why I wish only to do my best, but to accept what will be the will of God. I argue that Truth is the existence that is God, and that we cannot know it, but we can live in our best approximation to it. Different faiths have different ways of coping with this belief, and others disagree with it. I simply argue that if we are to believe in God then we must also believe that there is no way for us as human beings to truly know God. At this point, it becomes a humbling thing to concede that I cannot do something, but it is also liberating. This is not because I am no longer responsible to my moral ties based upon my belief in punishment from God. I feel liberated because it puts the well-being of my eternal soul in the hands of God, and that as long as I live by that will, what is meant to happen will happen. That also means that I have to accept what will happen, and I can only do my best at that. I hope that I get as close as possible to what is the Truth, but the best I can attain will be truth. This truth is what I will argue we can find. To find truth is the most successful I can be, but that does not mean I will always be successful. I am human, and I can error. I may not be the best every time and may therefore lose sometimes. This is something I must accept and hope that people can be understanding of my faults. I also hope that I can be there and understand others for theirs. Ideally, this would allow for a natural safety net in the world, and we would all live happily, but such simplicity is easily misled. That is why we must live this life in a social contract that is constantly enforced, contested, governed, and adapted. This social contract leads to a much different matter than truth, but also influences the interaction of people and truth. *As an after-thought, I would like to make clear that the talk of God does not assert anything against anyone else's view on God. It was simply to explain a relation between people and an ultimate truth, or Truth, and how God is the only one who can know that. That said, let us all do the best that we can and hope that we can be forgiven for our shortcomings.

Can We Agree On Anything?

To begin any argument, I believe there should be agreements found as to what reality is. Of course, this usually means that an argument must be had to come to said agreement. This is to the advantage of a writer, because in writing, the writer can establish a complete thought without conflict. For the reader, this thought may be resisted at its onset, resisted before fully manifested to the reader, or be completely misunderstood. The last option being a travesty, but of no consequence to the writer. The writer can do nothing about what a reader will think after being confronted by the writing. This, however, is simply a diversion from the actual topic at hand. I suppose it was to comfort me in making arguments with no one to defend. Then again, I do not intend to argue, I simply intend to state an understanding and hope that others might agree. To establish a groundwork for this understanding, we must define things like knowledge, reality, truth, and perception. Knowledge is a very abstract thought to begin with. Knowledge to me can only be accepted under conditions of relativity because all thoughts are on an infinite scale, while our perception is on a finite one. Now I am using terms that I intend to define in the definitions of others, but this is a perfect example of the structuring of knowledge that I think is best for my understanding. One of the strongest statements in my reality is that unless one knows everything, they cannot know anything. This statement simply means that without knowing everything, which is infinite, we cannot establish what we do and do not know with infinite assurance. This is important because we must therefore either change what we call knowledge, or remove the condition of truth from knowledge because we do not know if anything is true unless we know the truth of all things. Epistemology wants to argue that knowledge is true belief plus some other conditions, but I argue that we cannot know the truth of anything without knowing the truth of all things. Truth then becomes of interest because it is the definition of truth that is being attacked. How do we know if anything is true if we do not know that we know anything (not even a definition of knowledge). Truth must have knowledge to be defined, and knowledge must have truth, but I argue that we must remove truth as it is now known, and instead use the conditional of relative accuracy. Otherwise, we can change the definition of truth to mean relative accuracy in the known structure of our perception, but that is very ambiguous and can be easily distorted from reality. Of course, we then have to define reality. A saying that I find relavent is, "Perception is reality." However, I find this to simply be a good starting point. I think for the sake of each individual person's understanding, this is true, but reality is itself something that is actual. I mean, reality is the interactions that take place independent of awareness and that means all things, but the awareness of this immediately becomes perception. Thus the aphorism, "Perception is reality." In this way, knowledge becomes the interactions that we are aware of to the most relavent accuracy to that situation. This definition of knowledge may seem to be heavily dependent up on the logic and reasoning of a person because of the emphasis upon awareness, but it also emphasizes the awareness of interactions independent of the perceiver, which come by way of the senses at the most basic and fundamental level. A perception that is in conflict with reality will show itself to be incongruent, as is seen throughout history. What I purpose is that we find an understanding of this understanding. To find a way to better implement new knowledge in a way that is least pervasive, ever-approaching reality, and able to adapt to future input. It may seem like an idealistic mission statement for some company, but it is simply the most accurate assessment of the concept I am trying to express. That is all I have time for right now.

So I Have This Theory...

A year ago, I took a class called Philosophy of Religion. For the final paper in the class, I wrote a paper that compared Sigmund Freud's Future of An Illusion and Karl Barth's The Word of God and the Word of Man. This paper spawned an idea for me. I began a theory about theory. I argued that Freud's explaination of religion as an illusion and Barth's explaination of religion as an explaination of the infinite are not much different. What gave one explaination the edge was its ability to be adapted to different facets of life, and its ability to avoid confrontation with other elements of life. To expound upon this, one has to discuss the structuring of knowledge and how a theory can maintain its integerity while being assimilated into a person's understanding, or structure of knowledge. Epistemology becomes a large factor in the understanding of this theory at this point, and it becomes the difficult task of defining key terms, and establishing an agreement of what is or is not real, or known. That will have to wait for my next opportunity to blog.