a new understanding of today, time and space.

OK, so we understand that life is a series of problems to be solved…
and we have our tools that are needed to solve those problems…
the tools can be methods, the tools can be categories like
philosophy or religion, the tools can be ideologies like capitalism or democracy…
so we have several different ways to go about solving a problem…
first of all however, we have to figure out if we have a problem…
as has been stated, the first step to any situation is to determine if
there is a problem and then we can decide what tool we need to solve that
problem…

I have stated it before but I shall state it again… I believe that
belief in god, belief in religion is one of the, if not the greatest
obstacle to the betterment of the human race… I believe that
belief in religion has damaged the human race in ways we can’t even
understand…

I believe that religion/god is a problem that needs a solution…
upon what do I base that on?

belief in god/religion has lead people to certainty and the path
to wisdom does not lie in certainty but in doubt…
if we are certain, we don’t seek any other answers…
for example, if Einstein was certain that Newton was in fact right,
there would have been no reason for Einstein to search for a solution to
those problems… why search when you are certain you have the solutions already?

it is only in doubt that we make progress and solve problems…most all advances
in the world, scientifically and philosophical and socially are because of doubt,
not being certain…

so let us doubt…if you are certain the universe is a certain way,
that god exist and the goal of the universe is to die and be reborn
and spend eternity worshipping god in heaven…then no other possibilities
will occur to you, no other options will influence your thinking…why
entertain any other possibilities when you are “certain” that if you follow
the rules of god and you will die and be reborn into an eternal heaven, then
no other choices exist before you… that is the path of human beings, you don’t doubt it…

and therein lies the problem… you are so certain that no other choices occur to you…
your path is set and you cannot change your path without violating your basic core beliefs…
but the path to both individual and the species survival is this path of being able
to adapt to changes in the environment and changing your path… but you can’t change because
of your beliefs…progress, the ability to create solutions to any given problem lies
in the ability to adapt to new solutions and if you are already committed to one path
and one path only, you cannot find any new solutions to a problem…you cannot problem
solve because you are already committed to a certain problem (the only question to
the religious is how does one find salvation and what is the path to salvation… how to
saved is the only question that the religious seeks solutions to) but being saved is not
the only question human beings face and seeking religious solutions to every problem
is not a viable means of solving problems…but in doubt, doubt leads one to seek
alternative solutions beyond the religious solutions to the problems of being human…
the religious seeks religious solutions to every problem… but problems solving requires
one to adapt and understand what tools are needed to solve that particular problem and
quite often the religious solution is not the answer to any given problem…
so for global warming for example, the answer given by the religious is to trust
god… but that solution will only suffice if you actually believe in god or believe
in a religious solution to a scientific and social problem…

religious belief forces one on one and only one path when problem solving
requires individual and societies to seek many different solutions and this
is the problem with religions and religious belief… it only allows religious
solutions to political, scientific, philosophical problems… this is the failure
of religious belief… it only allows one path to a solution when we must
explore several different paths to find a solution to any given problem…
every problem to the religious is a religious problem and in real life
there are many different problems and many different solutions and
those solutions require thinking about problems not just from a religious
standpoint but from a scientific, political, philosophical standpoint…

we must open our eyes to finding solutions wherever a solution is found
be it scientific, religious, political or philosophical or even another
path outside of those listed…

the path to finding solutions is not ideological but practical…
given a certain problem, what possible solutions can be found…
and what methods or tools do we need to find a solution…

Kropotkin

the great failure of philosophy and of society is to search for certainty
when no such thing exists… we have wasted many pages, many years
searching for certainty in knowledge and certainty in morals and certainty
in life when no such thing as certainty exists at all…
once we approach our problem without the question of certainty hanging
about, we can finally begin to make progress in questions that have
bedeviled human beings since the beginning of time…

Lose certainty as a factor in our search for understanding
and accept the fact we cannot be certain of anything…
base our thinking and our philosophy on the fact we cannot be certain
about anything because what exactly can we be certain about?

facts… facts change all the time… values… values change all the time…
scientific truths… they change all the time… religious certainty… that is the road
to failure…

our universe is a chaotic, uncertain, unpredictable universe
with no certainty anywhere…we must begin all our thinking
with this notion that there is no certainty of anything…
and go from there…

begin with uncertainty and philosophize and think from there…

Kropotkin

this is a topic I have been thinking about for quite a while now…

We in America have this vision that our activities lead to
the ultimate goal which is the house with a white picket fence,
a two car garage with a yard in back, two children and a dog and a cat…
that is the American dream…a lovely place in the suburbs where the sun shines
all day and the grass is mowed every Saturday morning…

however several questions come into mind while thinking about this American fantasy…
what if… what if this is just another false dream while the reality of our lives is something else?

to understand our love affair with private property… we find the philosopher for whom
the idea of private property was his ideal and that ideal was passed unto the middle class of
both the UK and the US…John Locke… his defense of property has passed into our
collective conscience and drive the middle and lower class to this day…

as we recall from a prior post, the founding fathers felt that there were inalienable
rights, among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness… and these rights,
for the founding fathers, existed before government and was the reason for the creation of
government…now for the founding fathers “inalienable rights” were derived from Locke
who put property as the key feature that existed before the government and was the reason
for the creation of government, now the founding fathers took from Locke the idea that
the holding of property was the basis of freedom… you were free if you held property,
that was guaranteed to be held sacred from the government… for Locke, the main purpose
of government was to secured for the landowner his right to keep his property…
the only purpose of government was to maintain the landowner property as the landowner
property…to Locke this was the very definition of freedom… and the
founding fathers keep this purpose for government as the way to maintain private
property for landowners… to maintain it from other people attempting to take it and to
maintain it from the government taking his land… in large part, this is why the founding fathers
wanted a limited government… if you allow a strong government, it might be tempted to
take your land…you could almost make the argument the entire point of government for
the founding fathers was to protect property for the landowner…
the phase they used was life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…
with liberty being the holding of property and the pursuit of happiness
being the pursuit of property/land…

We have to this day kept this idea of property… but we do allow
another understanding of land… we have private property but
we also have public land… land that is held for all the people, by all the people…
we have parks both in cities and public parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone…
so we have expanded our concept of land to include public ownership of land…
we also have public domain ideas whereas the government can take private land for
public use… so we feel that at times the public need for private land out ways
the private need for the land…

we have expanded Locke’s idea to include the right of government to take land
that is necessary for the public good even though it damages the idea of private property…
situations and circumstances may require us to expand our idea’s of private and public
property…so it is under this idea that we examine the idea of property…

the notion of private property makes a whole lot more sense back in the day,
when 5 million people occupied the United States and we had an entire
continent to expand to… but the idea of the frontier disappeared when it was
decided that we no longer had a frontier and that date was in 1894…
(the government actually made this decision that there was no more frontier
in 1894, it became a legal fact)…
we no longer have the land that the founding father had to expand and explore…
and this is a crucial fact…given we have over 300 million citizens, we no longer have
the land needed to offer every single citizen the opportunity to hold private property…
the reality has changed and we must change with it…

but let us hold off on the practical realities of today and try something else…
let us explore this idea that the goal, purpose of human beings is to hold land/
property…we must understand that we exist in a different reality then generations
before us existed in… we are an age of limited resources and limited land…
we can no longer offer an ideal of private property… a house with a white picket fence
is no longer feasible given the realities of our time…

but this leads us to a even more basic idea… the idea that having property is
even a goal worth pursuing…or even that given history, that the idea
of private property was worth pursuing…
an brief look at history shows us that land is land and the creatures that
exist on the land had no sense of private property… even human beings
didn’t have a sense of private property until fairly recently in our history…
hunter/gatherers didn’t have private property… they simple moved with the
food… if the herd of deer moved, they moved with the deer to maintain the food
supply… land was simply not the resource as we think of it… it was just there…
feeding all creatures great and small…human beings have existed for
over a million years and it has only been in the last 10,000 years that we
have begun to understand private property as we do today…
the founding of cities and the creation of our agriculture society
begins that idea of private property…
so it is a relatively recent thought that brings us this idea of private property…
most of human history doesn’t have this idea…

now why this idea? by this I mean, think about it…
the concept of private property is really an artificial one…
how are we able to even tell which land is my land and which land
is your land? we have entire elaborate system to judge where my land
begins and your land ends…and we have fought wars, both private and public
to clear up this issue of where does my land begin and where does your land
end…wars fought over land has killed millions of people, almost as many
people who have died in religious wars…

but this land we fight over… we can’t even tell where one land begins and another ends…
drive over the border between say, Canada and the US… if you don’t know exactly which land is
which, you can’t even tell the difference between Canadian land and US land…
but we have one line being American and one line being Canadian and we can’t even tell
which is which… you’re being American and you’re being Canadian exists because
of an artificial border where you can’t even tell which land is which and private property
is the exact same thing… we fight wars and go to court and brawl over land in which
we can’t even tell which land is our land without appeals to surveyors and governments
and the court system…

this appeal of private property being our god given right and being the reason
for and the existence of government no longer stands…
we can no longer use of private property as being the basis of
our “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as we no longer
have the resources of land to promise everyone a chance
to afford buying land…

take a room… make it a moderate size room… put 5 people in that room…
then divide that room into parts where 2 people “own” 90 % of that room
and the other 3 share 10% of the room…upon which basis would you
divide that room into 90% and 10%? this is our modern world in a nutshell…
we have a small number of people owning a large share of land and upon
what basis do we allow this? Either they Inherited it or they bought it…
so those without money aren’t allow access to the land in any case…
so we have land divided up and we can’t even justify our reasoning for
this divided up the land… upon which basis would you divide up land
for the purpose of ownership of land? what logical reasons could you
use to justify ownership of land?

look at land and ask yourself, why does this land here belong to him
and that land belong to her and that land belong to them when the land
in question looks exactly the same? the owning of land, private property
is not a logical issue, it is an emotional issue… we feel justified to own land
based on emotional reasons, not on any logical or justified reasons…

we know that people and cultures in the past existed without recourse to the use
of private property… so this notion of private property being inherent in people
does not work… the ownership of private property is an artificial idea and any artificial
idea can be change or modified in whatever way deemed necessary given the changing
conditions … we have arrived at the point where we must, because of changing
conditions, change our ideas about owning private property…

Kropotkin

if you kicked out the pursuit of happiness, the ownership of private property,
as a motive for existence, then you kick out capitalism as a driving
force for our modern world… the final aim for capitalism, often unspoken,
is that capitalism allows the “common” man the ability to buy land, private property,
and we if disallow the ownership of land as being a prime factor in the modern world,
we have no use for capitalism, as it is a failed system we shouldn’t anyway…
so if we have removed capitalism from being the economic system of choice, what
does that leave us with?

Kropotkin

in thinking back about the various viewpoints, I have presented…
it seems clear that so much about how we view life and its possibilities
are artificial… not based in any inherited or justified explanation for their
'existence…private property is not justified nor is capitalism nor
the idea of mine and yours and god is not justified by any rational or logical
means… they are emotional rationalization for belief in god and private property
and ownership of goods, but not any logical or rational justification for the belief
in god or private property or the ownership of goods…

most if not every single thing we “believe” has no logical or rational justification
but has an emotional rationalization… most everything we believe to be true
is artificial like our belief in private property which has no justification
outside of a emotional one, this is mine, shouts the 3 year old and we believe
in private property with all the logic of a three year old shouting, mine, mine, mine…

how can we hang our hat on our beliefs if our beliefs are artificial beliefs
that change with every change in the wind… we have no certainty in our beliefs because
they are artificial and a creation of our emotional understanding of the world, not in our logical or
rational belief in the world…

our beliefs, our understanding of the world is no better then a 3 year old who desires but
doesn’t know WHY they desire… SO, where does this leave us?

Kropotkin

if as I have explained that desire for property isn’t innate or we are born with…
then what explains our desire for private property?

just as we created the need for god over the millions years of our existence as
a need for some sort of protection from the forces which threaten to harm us,
we have the need for property as a need to protect us from forces that threaten
to harm us…and as we discover other factors which allows us to justify property…
the need for property justify our political and economic status…capitalism is justified
for its example of gaining property and for no other reason…certainly not for any
supposed improvement of the human condition…
the owning of property might also create some sort of immunity from the daily threats of nature
and man and government but it doesn’t…
in other words, the creation of private property is simply a solution to a problem and as
private property no longer solves that problem, private property is no longer a viable solution…

in fact, I would suggest that private property at this stage of our development creates more
problems then it solves and that is the key… we must change and adapt to our stage of
development and that means we must no longer fixate on old solutions for new problems…
we must adapt and change to the changing environment… which today means
we have billions of people more then the earth can support and we have an economic system
that accelerates that idea that we have more people then resources… we have pollution
and global warming along with a unsustainable population growth… the answer is not
private property given the issues facing us and indeed private property increases our
current problems and thus is not a viable solution…
we must think in terms of sustainable growth and sustainable understanding of the
world… we can no longer afford private property in this day and age…

we must find new solutions to new problems and that means
we no longer find reliance on old ideas like god and private property…
we must solve new problems with new idea’s…

and what new idea’s do you offer?

Kropotkin

Morality: quite a concept that has occupied thinkers and philosophers
and theologians for centuries and I for one will not even begin to
explore this idea with one post, so I won’t pretend I have even
begun to understand morality after thousands of years of
thinking and trying to understanding the concept…

I just offer this one bit as an idea but nothing more…

the key for me is to put morality in larger terms then is generally done…
you have to place morality in terms of society and in terms of time and space,
not just in terms of individual actions…

you have a fictional character like Gordon Gekko who brought into focus this
idea that “Greed is good”. We tend to isolate morality into individual components, individual acts
or actions, whereas morality is extended into society, into space and time…

the entire theory of “Greed is good” is based on the old theory that we think of as
Adam Smith but the theory was actually in play 50 or 75 years before Smith wrote his book…
Bernard de Mandeville for example… the theory goes like this…
private vices creates public good… that is Gordon Gekko’s point in that greed is good,
private vices creates a public good… but they never explain why or the mechanism behind
the reason “private vices creates public good” they leave that part unsaid, but Adam Smith,
in his book, the Wealth of Nations" states that the “invisible hand of god” creates this public good…
BTW, smith only used the term the “invisible hand of god” 5 times in his rather larger book…
and Smith never explains HOW the “invisible hand of god” creates this public good out of private vices…
so let us explore this question of how private vices creates public good…

I steal money… how does this private vice create a public good?
I assault an old women… so how does this private vice create a public good?
I rape a child and how does this private vice create a public good?
all these private vices create is disorder and chaos within a society, not
public good…
so Gekko is referring to a very specific type of greed… monetary greed…
and monetary greed usable only in a economic sense… I pursue money and you pursue
money and somehow that is suppose to create a public good?
think of a family…and each family member pursued their private vices
and what would happen in that family? disorder and chaos and instability would
be the result of each family member pursuing their own private vices…
what if we allowed our private vices to dictate our actions… this path leads
to chaos and disorder…

I take an action such as assaulting an old woman… private vices…
that action does not exist in isolation and separate from other actions…
it exist in time and space… that action however private exists within
the time and then extends into time and in space and extends into space…
so I assault an old woman… she lives on and is damaged in my assault
that damaged is carried into time… it takes time to heal…
that damaged extends into space as that action physically happens in space…
we carry that damage about us into the future and because that old woman
doesn’t exist in isolation, her damage is noted by others and that damage is carried
further into time and space… like a rock in a pond, the ripples extend far outside of ’
the actual place of the stone dropping into the water…and the assault of the old woman
extends far outside of the place and time of the assault…I can’t see an argument to be made
that would justify or allow for that old woman to be assaulted without damaging the public good…

we allow private vices to somehow create public good in the economic sphere but
we expressly forbid that in the public actions of individuals… but the economic and
the political are tied together, they are married in America today… but how can you
have private vices create public good in the economic but not in the political?
there is no argument made today by anybody that private vices will somehow create
a public good in the day to day actions of people in life outside of the economic…
individual morals extend into the public world in both time and space…
an individual action, like that rock dropped into a pond, extends into space and time…
we don’t act individually, apart from everyone else, separate from time and space…
we exist in society, we exist in both time and space and our actions affect many others
individually and within a societal sense…

capitalism as defined today, does not bring about stability, it does not bring about
public good, there is no “invisible hand of god” that somehow brings about public
good while committing private vices…capitalism is not sustainable…and we
have to tie capitalism into a moral sense because each and every single part of our life,
individually and collectively, is connected together and if we must act morally politically,
we must act morally economically because they are connected, the political and the economic…

morals must touch and act in all parts of our life or it doesn’t matter in any part of our life…
morality is an all or nothing type of action…either it influences every part or it doesn’t
influence any part of it…

Kropotkin

ok, in my two last post, I wrote about private property and about morality…
is there a connection between the two?

Kropotkin

Imagine yourself in a immensely large room… a room that is hundreds of miles long
and wide and high… this is a puzzle… what is the room and why are you there in this room?
imagine that there are objects in this room… so how do you work out this puzzle
of why you are in this room and what do the objects in this room have to do with you,
if these object have anything to do at all with you…you just don’t know…

so what are these objects? you see what we would call tree’s and plants and grass…
what is your relationship to these tree’s and plants and grass? you don’t know but how would
you go about finding out? what method would you use to discover what are the objects in this
room and what you are doing in this room?

this case of being in a room is exactly our situation… we are in an immensely
room, planet earth, and we have to understand what is in the room and what
we are doing in this room…we are trying to understand our place and the room
we live in… we also know that things exist outside of our room, how do we go about
trying to understand those things? we are living in a puzzle… what is our place in the room
and what are the objects in this room and do the objects in the room have anything to do with us
or are they separate, different from us and that leads us to the question about us… what do we
mean us, what is this object called us… life is a problem searching for an answer…
the problem is understanding the puzzle we live in…can you answer the problem that
exists before us while living inside of the problem? we are part of the puzzle, part of the
problem that lies before us, who are we? this is our challenge… and how do we solve this
challenge?

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
ok, in my two last post, I wrote about private property and about morality…
is there a connection between the two?

K: so what problem does private property solve and what problem does morality solve?
that is the basic point of idea’s, ideologies, methods… they are means to solving problems…

we can connect private property and morality because they each are a solution to
a problem… in fact, they might be different solutions to the same problem… or maybe
not…we don’t know…solving problems, that is the human quest…

Kropotkin

Most evils are the kind of thing where someone simply needs to stop forcing the world around them to supply things to their egocentric hungers.

“stop being an idiot and a shit head”.
(not you)

Some simple thing like that is enough.
Many life-forms are parasitic.
They exist at the loss of others.
The higher up the food chain you go,
the more is stolen with giving less back.

You see, evil is a habit.
An ancient habit.

It wont go away because humans try to fight it with more humanity.
Humanity has an evil element to it.
They fight fire with fire, hate with hate, etc.

K: we fight fire with fire, an eye for an eye and how exactly have we
ended evil? Evil cannot be fought as an fire with fire, hate with hate and
an eye for an eye, because all that does is to continue the evil, the hate,
the path to end evil, to end hate is not with more evil, not with more hate,
not under the guise of an eye for an eye for all that does is leave people
blind…true humanity is not fighting evil with evil or hate with hate,
true humanity is fight those things with the higher human traits…
love, compassion, charity, truth, not the lower human traits, the ones
we share with animals, traits like hate and anger and evil…
we must rise to our human traits, not lower ourselves to our animal traits, our lower traits…

the path to a better future lies not with evil or hate or anger, but with love, understanding,
compassion… the higher human traits…

Kropotkin

I think you are saying what i would say but in different words.

K: quite possible, quite possible…

Kropotkin

We are trying to solve a problem… that is both a statement and a question for us today…
but what problem are we trying to solve? As philosophy deals with values, what is our
question about values today? what values are important to us and what values do we need today?
What methodology, what methods are we to use to discover the values we need today?
We have some boundaries, some limits forced upon us today… We know that we cannot
create a system because no system can encompass all the facts we need to make a conclusion…
all systems are incomplete by their very nature and so we cannot create a system… that
is a limit we have, that other generations didn’t have…We cannot trust reason to be complete…
we must have other aspects of humanness to help us complete our task of finding
out what values do we today need… the other aspect of humanness we need is our
emotional, irrational, feelings… for we have to listen to both side of our human nature
to be successful… we need reason to control passion and we need passion to inform reason…

perhaps we have failed to understand such values as justice and freedom because
we have only applied reason to them, when a mix of reason and passion/emotional
aspects can truly understand such ideals as justice… we feel justice is an important
value, we feel this emotionally and then we have reason which provides us the reasons for
this… so we understand the value of justice more completely by using more then just reason…
we are reason and passion… we must act with both to become more human…
and one way is to discover what values we must live by and one method we use is
both reason and passion…

the trick is to understand what is the mix of reason and passion we use…
like anytime we use a mix of fluids we mix them in some ration, 60 to 40
or 70 to 30… what is our mix of reason to passion… 50 to 50 or 80 to 20…
different situations require a different mixing… some situation require total passion
and some situations require total reasoning…and some situations require a mix…

so how do we find the values we need?

Kropotkin

We exists in this system…not of our making…
we are as been stated… thrown into this world…
this system exist not because of its excellence but
because of our failure, our laziness to change the system…
we fear the unknown and so we put up with a system that dehumanizes us
and damages us…
we tolerate the known devil in fear of the unknown devil…

so we accept the premise without question, that human beings
agenda is to spend our lives pursing the basic necessities of life…
we pursue money as a means of procuring goods like food and clothing and shelter…
this is our existence… we work and thus gain money, then we use that money
to buy our necessities…
we work 40 years, 5 days a week, at 8 hours a day…
in fact, the vast majority of our lives is spent in working
and we don’t question this…is my point of existence to spend it working?
spending 40 year earning a pittance and the vast majority of my effort goes to
rewarding someone else… the “owners” of the business gets the vast majority
of my effort…is this the point of human existence? to spend a lifetime benefitting
someone else? just so we can get the minimum necessary for maintaining existence?

and when I am no longer relevant, I am simply tossed out like yesterdays garbage…
with no resources to purchase those goods that allow my existence to go on…
do we really think that our existence is about the making of money?
what a sad and lonely existence…one might claim our existence is about
raising families or finding happiness but the need to make money drowns out
all other concerns… like a noise that is so loud it leaves only that noise
existing… nothing else can compete with that noise and that is the search
for money… a noise that drives out all other sounds…

one might claim we have no other choice but a system about choice
like capitalism cannot claim not to have any other choice…but capitalism…
a true system of choice offers us other choices and other options, but
not capitalism… it is the only choice we have and what a terrible choice it is…
spending 40 year of our lives in competition with other trying to gain money…
a competition that serves no one except those who own companies and they make their
money on your effort, your time…

we are a species that solves problems… that is what humans do…
we solve problems… so how do we solve this problem?
of course, so many have been brainwashed as to believe that
capitalism is not the problem that they won’t see capitalism for what it is…
a destroyer of souls… something that crushes us, mentally, physically, psychology,
emotionally…I sometimes think that we in the capitalist system are the
real bearers of the Stockholm syndrome…we are held in bondage, hostage,
and yet, we come to believe in the rightness of the system that holds us
hostage…because we have no other system to offer us a choice…
so solve the problem…

what other possible systems exist that offer us another option to
live out our days… not just in working all our lives… but in
finding out what it means to be human and that means walking away
from capitalism as capitalism damages us humans being in terrible ways…
we must escape and become human beings…

Kropotkin

as I progress with my study of philosophy, I have begun a side trip into
the study of the philosophy of science… this is because so many philosophers
from Descartes to Hume were invested in science and by understanding science
I can better understand their thought… but the interesting thing is as I
study science, I am getting better insight into philosophy… the pursuit of science
mirrors the pursuit of philosophy or the other way around…I see many aspects of philosophy
in the way scientist go about their business… much of the way science does its business is also
the way philosophy does its business… but science has relevance and philosophy doesn’t, why? I am
thinking about Kuhn and what he says about science but what he says has real relevance to
philosophy… in fact, I suspect in his book, you could replace the word science with philosophy and
scientist with philosopher and it wouldn’t change a thing about the book…
the end result would be the same… I find it interesting that by approaching philosophy
from science I am getting very interesting answers to what philosophy is…

Kropotkin

As I study science in an attempt to better understand philosophy…
I come across the notion that science is about facts and philosophy
is about values…

science is descriptive… science tells us is… the sun is 93 million miles from earth…

philosophy is normative… philosophy tells us ought… The failure of the physician to
do a thorough examination of the patient was inexcusable…“was inexcusable” is a value

the problem lies when philosophers try to turn philosophy into a science…
or try to make philosophy more like science… Hegel for example or Hume…

how do I take a concept like justice and make into a fact?

to have true justice in America means we have to treat all people
equally because it is the right thing to do…that is not a statement of fact
because we have added the point that justice is the right thing to do…that
is a value…perhaps justice requires something else, some other value…

when you make a judgement, it becomes a value, thus philosophical…
how do you make a judgment of the fact that the sun is 93 million miles from earth?

now depending on how you ask a question, it can become clear or it can become
quite messy…

philosophers ask value questions but try to hide it as factual questions…

but the real flaw of philosophers lies in the Kant example…
or the Descartes example…

Kant asks: How is synthic a priori knowledge possible?

and Descartes ask from his very warm room: how can we be certain
about our knowledge? what can we do to make knowledge certain?

both used Logical techniques to reach answers but, but
life is not about logic… life is messy and complicated
and about such not logical things like love and death
and alienation and our place in the universe…
we cannot find our answers to messy question with logic…

that is the failure of philosophy… answering messy questions with logical answers
answers discovered in the rocking chair of our warm bedroom without ever going outside…

is the answer to why questions found in questions of fact… the sun is 93 million miles from earth
only tells us that the sun is a certain distance from the earth… it tells us nothing more…

are values found in questions of fact?

are values found in descriptive statements/answers
or in normative statements/answers?

is vs ought…

now Karl Marx once said that it is not enough to understand the world…
one must change the world…to understand the world is… thus is descriptive…
to change the world is normative… ought to change the world

Marx disciples claimed that Marxism is science… thus is… facts about the world…
but Marx actually is trying to change the world, not describe it and thus he is
being normative… values not facts…is Marx correct? yes, but not on
a descriptive level, but on a normative level… it is important to understand
on what level we are talking about…descriptive or normative…

this is one example and other examples do exist

so what do we learn from this and is this knowledge
descriptive or normative?

Kropotkin

To further understand this normative vs descriptive problem…
is it legitimate to use descriptive language/science to answer normative questions…
Descartes used science to answer philosophical questions and is this legitimate?

the sun is 93 million miles from earth…this is descriptive answer or statement depending.
apples as it were…can we use this information to tell us normative/ought to statements/answers?
oranges… can we use apples to inform us of normative statements of oranges? oranges taste good…
a value statement… can we use descriptive statement from apples to make normative statements
about oranges? apples are red and crunchy says the apple but does that apply to oranges?

this point calls into question the entire history of modern philosophy…
we cannot use oranges to describe apples and we cannot use apples to describe
oranges…

so if we cannot legitimately use descriptive language to understand
normative language, then what is the basis of philosophy?

the answer/question to science cannot answer/ question philosophy…
apples to oranges and now what?

to make science, is questions, answer philosophy, ought to, then we
must make our own interpretation… science says that we are alone in the universe…
fact or a descriptive statement… to reach a normative statement or question, we
would have to make a value judgement about the descriptive statement…
values that aren’t supported by the descriptive statements because they
are two different things and only by a leap of faith or logic can we
then connect a descriptive statement with a normative answer…

how does justice exist
by the sun being 93 million miles from earth?

how do you connect the two statements?

this is what philosophy has done for the modern era…
the sun is 93 million miles from earth thus justice is…

so what can we base philosophy on if you take away the descriptive statements?

so this is really the modern question…

Descartes asked, how can we make knowledge certain?

Kant asked, how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?

Kropotkin asked, if you can’t use science, is statement to answer philosophical questions,
which are value statements, then what can we base philosophy on?

Kropotkin

Don’t have a lot of time today as I have to be at work in an hour…

So last time, I was forced to deny philosophy the ability to use
science as a means of justifying philosophy…
because science is about descriptive statements, the world is…and
philosophy is about normative statements, the world ought to…

what if I am wrong… what shall I do to better understand this situation?

perhaps philosophy is really descriptive?
we can use descriptive words to understand the concept of justice…

Justice in America has several part… we have the judicial system, we have a
police aspect and a punishment aspect… the judicial system works like this…
and all of this is descriptive… its tell us how the justice system is and that is descriptive…
however that is theory, the abstract theory of the American judicial system…
it is very descriptive and completely useless because it doesn’t reach the reality
of the American judicial system… once you make a value judgment about
the American judicial system, you have made a normative statement,
a value judgment …

let us look at the very word philosophy: love of wisdom…
love of wisdom; it is wisdom we are pursuing,…so how do we get wisdom
and what is wisdom?

sometimes in the day to day and little battles we have on ILP, we forget the goal
which is wisdom and what it is and what method do we use to gain wisdom?

and in this we have followed the example of science, we are trying to make
philosophy like science in our attempts to find wisdom… thinking that
science seems to be a fairly rigorous means to gain wisdom… science is not wisdom however,
science is a descriptive method to gain knowledge about the universe and this creature
called a human being…

a descriptive method… this is important to note… science pursues facts, information,
knowledge… but it doesn’t pursues wisdom… what wisdom is, is a value judgment…
he is wise… we have a value judgement here, not a descriptive statement…

so we have plenty of facts about the universe but how do we turn those facts into
wisdom? facts are apples and wisdom are oranges… there is no real way to
use one to inform the other…

so we have to abandon science as a method for philosophy to follow in its pursuit
of wisdom…

method here meaning just that, a method, an example to be followed, a tool,
how does a tool lead us to wisdom? I can gain wisdom by using a tool if I use
a hammer and hit my finger while hammering, and I gain the wisdom of
not ever hammering my finger again… but is that really wisdom?

does that give us real information about wisdom? so
so should philosophy follow such models like history or economics
or anthropology? they to also make value judgements and thus
aren’t really the path for philosophy to follow?

so how do we bring philosophy back to the pursuit of wisdom and what
method would we use to pursue wisdom?

I have an idea but let us first explore this idea better…
however later as I must go to work… a 4 letter word if I have ever heard one…

Kropotkin