Further on Marx

It was interesting writing something in my last post about what I see as the obvious limitations and failure of Marx's program from the standpoint of the theoretical historical paradigm it was intended to address. One thing I left out was a small yet very important philosophical distinction made by Marx through association with the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach. 

Marx continued Hegel’s explicit attack on a priori knowledge. The idea that there were first principles in thinking or principles that didn’t correspond to phenomenology was implicitly rejected by Hegel and marked the beginning of the shift into Marx’s analysis of history occurring in stages based on material causes, including types of ownership, wealth and class struggle.

Interestingly, this most important issue, wealth, was left out of Marx’s writing, because wealth was, to the economists of the time, only considered as an entirety, that measured the results of all of mans activities within a nation. It didn’t matter what individuals accrued, since their wealth was part of what their nation owned anyway. Marx was interested in building a large movement, the International, which needed to attract wealthy individuals as members and donors.

Today we have the internationalist view of wealth, where it doesn’t matter where an individual of a nation invests his wealth; he can send it to other countries, as long as he has earned it. This corresponds directly to a continuing wider distribution of the planet's resources, which more and more include wealth, life styles, and education. 

Yet capitalism is as firmly in place as it ever was, with international programs already aimed at restricting consumption, health and population. Countries like Peru get money from the United Nations for not providing electricity directly through grids to their native peoples, for example, while people die in countries like Ethiopia where governments are currently being paid off for not using pesticides. 

What of Marxism?

We all know how fun it is to speak of Marxism: Unlike politics in general, Marxism has great breadth. It is teleological without stating that it is necessary to have external deities, as in religion. It is militant, like countries out to fight battles for great causes. It is salvatory, since it can prescribe an improved order of society, and finally, it is sociological, in that it can be, and is used to explain many customs and events.

Stating that mankind has classes, which are forever doomed to fight, unless a historical resolution takes place at some juncture, what is empirical in Marxism is that it shows up and points to the upheavals which apparently must occur when classes do not anticipate and participate properly in the amelioration of existing evils in a society.

Karl Marx would react and anticipate my last sentence by stating that classes are not people and don’t react with a conscience. According to Marx, classes do not care about the evils done to others, but rather, unlike moral individuals, always act in their own interests. I don’t mean to imply here that men always act in the interests of others, but what I will imply is that men and women whom are aware of their existence as part of a self-conscious race, do tend to side with others on occasion, even if this is only the, “do unto you…,” moral phenomenon in action.

So Marx’s assertion that classes must always act in their own interests, would seem to apply based on empirical principles and carefully collected 18^th and 19^th century data, but only in that sense. In other words, teaching someone to be a Marxist is a lot like teaching someone to be a religious convert: The convert must be led to bridge this divide between individuals-like-himself whom are for-each-other, and classes which are against-each-other-for-themselves. Being able to accomplish this mental maneuver is indeed, a little bit like mastering a religion.

To be fair, Marxism also does assert that there was a precise tendency for people to become more, “for-each-other,” as they are “proletarianized.” The idea of a family moving from an originally well-balanced social habitat to the city to find work, or even to become social refugees and move from one country to another, could be the idea behind this notion. If I work as a peasant, which many people have done in the past, and because of mechanization or some other cause, find it inconvenient to continue my current existence in the country, I may decide to move to a city and find work there. The lifestyle of a poverty-stricken family in that new situation in a strange city may not always be comfortable, but it may tend to bring the individuals closer. Conversely, the proletization of the working individual and family could just be a convenient illusion based on the communal attitudes and ethics of people coming from the country. Whether Marx was right, or deluded in his concept of the, “revolutionary proletarian,” is in this way, something quite in doubt.

Marxism can be seen as an interesting 19^th through 20^th century trend in social and historical science. The possibility of assigning class causes for everything from historical movements and art trends through contemporary signs of progress has always been a favorite pastime of Marxists. 

Wait a second. Even if all of that stuff is true, but what about the interesting points that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made about changing society? Isn’t it important that they predicted Feminism as, “The Community of Women”, and explained that roles in society would be reversed with a Dictatorship of the Proletariat? These ideas bear a careful further look.

Marx and Engels predicted, based on anthropological research and the abandonment of religious scruples, that women would attain a new level of status and freedom in society. Doubtless some of that has been realized today, if partially due to technology and shifting values such as family role-playing being considered less important in developed countries. Marxism, however, proves that it has a its own persistent influence – the Second Sex having been written in post-war France, for example, where the influence of Marxist parties was quite wide.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat predicts that an absolute dictatorship is necessary, replacing democracy in order to accomplish the continuing worthwhile goals of civilization, once the capitalist class is no longer in power. This has been widely debated, with many sincere Marxists falling on the side of “social democracy”, against this idea, even before the “cults of personality” emerged in the 1930s. In my opinion, while the cult of personality is never something desirable, the use of democracy as a palliative has also become commonplace, with individuals calling for “more democracy,” while at the same time pining for, “someone to come in and put things right”. 

On Politics

The dyad of political acts and the dyad of social identity 

Out of my discussions with others, I began to realize that politics has an entirely individual component, which is a joining and a separation, based on social identity and the emotional dyad of loving and loathing. This dyad is, of course, related to preference or affinity we have towards something.  

A normally healthy individual is more or less always in touch with the things he loves and loathes, however these emotions may become displaced through a fixation. One common fixation is known as infatuation, such as when a potential lover is transformed into the meaning and purpose of one’s life, this is often associated with immaturity; however something similar can occur in older individuals. The will to infatuation, that is, the desire to make a particular feeling of love a permanent fixture in one’s mind, is very much conditioned by society, and may not be natural to individuals at all.

The opposite effect, that of loathing or hatred can follow the same course: Any individual possessed by hatred of an enemy can become fixated on his or her negative relationship with that enemy, and attempt to reorganize their life and their thinking around that relationship into a more or less permanent mindset. 

Obviously, if one determines that there is the appearance or of an infatuation or permanent loathing of an individual, thing, or group, a thoughtful person could take a step back and reanalyze one’s relationship, perhaps alleviating oneself of these most extreme and fixed forms of thought. Arguably this sort of social fixation could have something to do with how flexible thought comes about, in the individual’s need to reassess and reevaluate the contents of his own thoughts. 

Suppression of Curiosity

A lack of natural inquisitiveness in human behavior is usually the result of arrogance or fear. In the case where the individual becomes arrogant, it will be apparent that he or she enjoys dismissing the points of views they haven’t already agreed with, or else they become prepossessing, believing that almost any assumptions that they make are probably correct.

Persons whom have been bullied intellectually typically respond to new information in forms like, “I need to ask someone about it,” and, “You’re only saying what is true for you.” In other words, strong disbelief, or distrust of new information is likely to become a personality trait of a person who is mentally non-acquisitive.

There is a certain amount of this limitation which can be said to come about entirely, ‘naturally’, or at least, ‘socially’, such as in how a particularly family culture reacts to new information, and how that culture affects newer members of the family during their developmental stages.

The Role of Government

Governments are agencies which administrate and control societies and groups. The basic level of government is Mom and Dad. Most families work together, even when the children are very young, as a hierarchy in which the youngest children are expected to possess few skills and know very little, but require a lot of direction and guidance from authority. One could even say that this concept of authority present in families (since it is, after all, the most familiar) extends into our educational system and gradually, by extension, to all of society. This is not to say that family is the strictest component of authoritarianism extant or possible, it is merely a weak example of the same sort of organizational principle which is generally characteristic of government.

Within the concept of governance - state governance, group governance, etc. – there are many different varieties and levels of coercion at play. For the purposes of clarity, I consider coercion and freedom to be a dyad worthy of their own discussion.

A government is an organic entity capable of growth and evolution: This is another topic I would defer.

Cults

Similar to the family, the cult can be seen as a primitive societal model. While the family appears entirely natural, with its birthrights, legal and financial interdependence, and genetic relationships, the cult is artificial, the creation of an individual, a group or family, which maintains its control through one or more institutions, and may or may not constitute the government of a state.

Curiosity seems to break down almost completely in cult members. The typical pattern of cult member thinking is that he or she has found a particular source of truth that outweighs all others, and that following that truth, or the source of it, will cause themselves to become successful, and possibly superior to other individuals who do not have access to their source.

In order for cultism to work well, ordinary mental acquisitiveness has to be turned off. Either the person who is normally mentally acquisitive is warned that his ‘questioning’ is counter-productive, or led to understood that in order for indoctrination to proceed, questioning will not be tolerated. This can be understood and promoted as ‘protocol’, or fairness to others. Another technique which is commonly used is that only the leader is allowed to ask questions.

Cultism is an elemental form of politics. It describes for people a way that society ought to be, or how its members ought to be, including how they should act, and thus fulfills one of the main roles of politics. The “source”, or leader, is the primary holder of power in the organization. Other groups may be established, either from cadre recruited from the second categories of indoctrinates, or as even as a professional soldier class.

Other levels of Indoctrination

I would like to look at whether the roles and forces at work in cults may be the same or similar to those at play in normal social politics. Having identified that cults are multi-level, and indicated how the ideals of the cult are used to promote a hierarchy among believers, does normal politics seem to try to accomplish the same bifurcation in some way? Can we even speak of individuals of a free society as indoctrinated?

The Role of Religion

A part of politics that always utilizes mental and emotional issues to control the playing field is religion. Whenever religion is a part of politics, we can see its bifurcating influence on society, whether in judging the, “morality” of some, or the righteousness of leaders and causes.  This historical influence of religion on politics can be seen to be very similar to the distinct operations of cults among their own members.   
            
In a totally free society, politics would be available to anyone. However, individuals and societies today cannot really be described as totally free in any country, with various tendencies outlawed. Why is it that in ordinary countries in which freedoms are advertised, that certain acts are not free, such as travel to foreign countries, and the “morality” of some tendencies is judged insufficient to allow their political existence or freedom of speech? Obviously some great fear must inhabit the basic fundamental conscience of all politics, not just the politics of tyranny.

It is important to note that all politics has a dual nature: While first, and foremost, politics is, by definition, a concern, “of the people” (which is, after all, only a ‘general’ definition describing a ‘general’ sense of understanding), politics is first and foremost, all of the exact concerns about the creation, use, maintenance, manipulation and destruction of all power in society.

How Individuals confront Political Situations

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term meaning the tendency for an individual’s mind to register discomfort with conflicting information about the World. Everyone has it now and then; it is not just something that happens to people whom disagree with you. It occurs in everyday situations of compromise within a family, where one person is asked to sacrifice principles in order to maintain a consensus, for example, and it also commonly occurs in political situations where compromise has been sought among politicians. One knows that the compromise violates principles of his political party, yet one or more trusted political figures has signaled his agreement with the violation.

Anyone holding his political beliefs seriously may experience cognitive dissonance until he is able to reconcile the new situation into his political belief system. In this way our political belief system is a lot like an extension of our personal belief system. We understand that politics may be very important to us, perhaps even important to our survival, therefore we are likely to place a similar level of importance and feeling into the political issues we see confronting us as we do to the issues confronting our personal relationships, for example. For some, politics may even be a fully integrated part of their world view, although for others, the importance of politics rises and falls along with the amount of 'noise' it generates in their lives. 

Oligarchy vs. Democracy

This last discussion illustrates one of the keys to how oligarchies survive. In a low-noise political environment, most people care little for politics, so Oligarchy may seem fully logical and coherent with the world view of most individuals in that society since it excludes them from having direct control.

One could say that Democracy both creates and demands a high level of awareness and participation, which makes life more exciting and informative. People are always concerned about politics because they know they have some input and play a role in the process, even though they may have questions and doubts about why it is such a small one.

Let’s return to the example of the Constitution of the U. S. A. This constitution hides a time-limited President (a type of Oligarch) within its structure. A U.S. president has many of the same prerogatives Monarch’s have during his time in office. He can direct almost every government agency within the framework of laws, and even enter into wars that are limited in scope and duration. Republicanism considers Oligarchy tolerable as long as it falls into a remedial framework of checks and balances, allowing the Constitutional Oligarchy of the Presidency to be removed periodically and in emergencies so that the Pluralistic nature of the society can be preserved.

Of course, rule by a President is not the only possible form of Oligarchy in a Republic, and when a political party is dominant in Congress, you have the free ability for one tendency to make all laws and change society in limited ways, as mediated by the Constitution and the courts.

The Hidden effect of Plurality

A Plurality is really a kind of special interest. While a Plurality may be as large as a majority political party, it is also consists of those organizations and groups that navigate local and global power structures, including the Media, to achieve their ends.

There are some institutional forms of Oligarchy in the U.S., which are enshrined in the Constitution. However, there are additional non-constitutional ways Oligarchical patterns enter into the government, such as through powerful agencies of Pluralism, such as Lobbies, including Churches, and Lobbies that represent Corporations and foreign powers. By lying under the radar, and controlling Media, Lobbies can deeply influence politics without most individual citizens being aware of them.

War

Earlier in this article, I discussed how our natural ability to question may be truncated or rendered ineffective in various ways. One can see how, through a variety of social and political structures, the ability of individuals to pose the right questions about politics may be affected positively, oftentimes negatively. If one surveys anti-war movements, for example, we see that these often arise from the tendency for governments to plant “false flags”, which are often detected by the culture, resulting in a split society on life and death issues like war. Not just the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, but the poor manners and statements by the American President, and military actions as well, gradually led to more and more people being opposed to the Vietnam War, leading to its oddly inopportune ending.

There is no particular Human tendency that causes nations to fight or avoid fighting in wars. Humans are as likely to start war, given a reason, as they are to pursue a strategy of maintaining peace: It all depends on the information available. The natural enemy of disinformation is the society itself and its natural inquisitiveness.

The Value of Art

Suppose we divide objects and occasions, all the things and events that happen in our lives into two spheres of influence, the practical and the artistic, would that be even possible?

We can start by looking at the practical side of life. Preparing ourselves for work, feeding ourselves, dressing ourselves, the things we own, our house, our car, but already this list is giving us an uncomfortable feeling, since there was a certain amount of art involved in the design of a car or our house which gives wonder to the notion of where art begins and ends.

Even if art is an object, there is clearly an occasion during which the art is created. There is also an occasion during which the art is viewed, or experienced.

One of the most amazing art works I have seen that has been the most meaningful to me is the Lascaux cave paintings. These drawings, however accurate and complex, to me, are not exactly like the art in a museum. It is believed that at least some of them were used in training rituals to show correct strategies to be used in hunting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux#Interpretation_of_images

There are two very apparent aspects to art: One is that it exists in a consumable form. The second is that it can be created. There is a third issue: Is there the possibility that art, or its equivalent, exists that is not only created by humans, but is also inherent in nature? Is there a fundamental deciding difference between what is created by men and what is created by nature, or is it more that natural origins are held as original, or perfect, while all human imitation or reproduction is synthetic or false?

Nature provides humans with two different levels of participation in art, through the sensing and analysis of it, and by creating it. Art is a kind of participation. Serendipitously, our participation in life may be lasting. This is probably true even if our participation is not memorialized. Art is the same way. When we participate in creating art, the artistic result has value – The net value can be said to be what can be derived from experiencing it.

While art itself may be an object, or an event, so may be the experience of it. I go to the museum, look upon a painting, say, or put on a recording or a video to experience an art object. However, art is also an event. There are shows, gallery and museum tours, and concerts, which are events during which many different art objects or at least many different gestures of art will be presented over an interval of time, even if that interval is one we choose.     

If you’ve spent a lot of time in galleries, you know that painting is a form of art that became very important in the last few centuries. Prior to this, the chief source of artists’ incomes was the Church. An educated rich class eventually evolved due to capitalism that could afford to put images by trained artists on its walls. Typically, these were the portraits of family and friends, sometimes engaged in favorite activities. A few paintings were biblical or mythological. Regardless of whether the purpose of the transaction between the owner and the artist was memorialization, or for recognition of the owner’s values and tastes, the notion of art as a type of commodity could finally begin to mature.

From this I think we can conclude that art is something that can be experienced, which memorializes or expresses value to the consumer, regardless of its format or the exact attitude of the consumer. (I understand consumer as an ‘owner’ of art, or someone who has the right to experience the art in question, whether he paid for that right or not.)

Music is a favorite form of art, since it encapsulates the temporal beauty of sonic forms. The process of making music and listening to music is related in the same way as in the visual arts, however the temporal element is held manifest, while in the visual arts, the temporal element may be hidden. We say, “Look at this painting,” in which the temporal element of experience is hidden from view. For many viewers of visual art, time only forces its way into the picture when the viewer is asked to tour an entire museum. Only then does the casual art viewer commit a large amount of time to one artistic venture, only then is the viewer showing the same level of commitment as the artist; the viewer by touring a museum will perhaps spend hours viewing art at his own level of attention and love for detail, thus for this time perhaps, mimicking the love and attention to artistic detail expressed by the painter or sculptor of each individual work.

The process is similar for the composer of sonic, theatrical or cyber art. She must labor, sometimes for months over his creation, and then allow the consumer to experience the entire work in a period appropriate to their expectations, whether 3 minutes for a popular song, up to 1 hour for a symphony, up to 3 hours for a play, film or opera, or 30 to 40 hours for a computer game.  

So while realization and consumption are opposite poles of art, they are entirely related, in that the consumption of art cannot proceed according to expectations without the care of the artist involved in presenting his work and the proper presentation.

More than any other commodity, it is difficult to estimate how the capitalization of art will evolve in the cyber world. Most likely what will evolve over time is that more markets and forms will come available, although piracy and forgery is a continuing concern. Perhaps the great art criminals of the future will be individuals skilled in cyber art. On the other hand, perhaps encryption and identification systems will nullify such attempts. 

The Great Gatsby

I saw The Great Gatsby on the weekend, and I’m quite excited about it. I was glad to hear the director say that living to repeat the past is quite impossible, but I have to admit that Fitzgerald’s suggestion is quite fascinating, even if it seems  wrong-headed. Since time points forward for us except when indexing thoughts and media, we never look into the past, even relativity doesn’t permit that in any direct sense. The past is read-only. Our minds can survey the times that already happened, and we commonly assume that it is unhealthy to dwell in the past excessively.

That’s what the novel is about, at least. It is a fascinating attempt by a character to live out his own religion not so much in a quest for spirituality, but in a quest for something he feels a need for in his life. Since life is very much about needs, this opens the question of in what contexts it becomes important or relevant to recreate the past.

One recreates the past whenever one tries to preserve love. Love only happens in an instant, and the spectacle of couples trying to preserve their custom of alliance with each other is clearly one in which reproduction of the past plays a big part. That is “Great” Gatsby’s great insight: That the moment of memorializing love, in essence attempting to make it eternal, is the reproduction of, and return to the past through repetition.

Response to Foundationalism

Once we recognize there is a reality, we may decide to see if there is a way of being, both with that reality and inside of that reality, a way of being which makes us more powerful, that is, more capable of achieving our own needs and goals. There is a constant interface for human beings inside of Reality and with Reality called Existence.

Existence does not depend on any particular custom epistemology. If I see myself in Reality, I exist, but also, even if I see myself above reality, I still need to posit my existence, otherwise I will not be able to affect that reality in any sure and capable way. However you can see from this that it does not really affect Reality to place ourselves above it, or even outside of it. Reality will continue to affect us in the same way it did before, so opting for the simplest choice, which is to participate as a member of that Reality, is probably the most direct route towards understanding and establishing one’s domain.

Foundationalists have identified a problem in Reality. They believe that the skeptical discovery that Reality is deceptive requires one to find a methodological device that will enable them to prove or disprove facts, thus to separate Truth from Illusion. This preoccupation sounds useful, until you realize that each of us already does that in some way, and has been very busy doing it for most of their lives.

It might be useful to create a single machine that could prove or disprove any and all facts, if it were possible. Clearly, the Foundationalist believes that he has found one. Some of the support for Foundationalism comes from the fact that some pretty smart philosophers have tried to engage in foundational thinking, yet I believe that we can’t just justify an activity simply because of a majority, or because of authority: We need to examine whether Foundationalism really lives up to its promise, or is it just a pretentious way of trying to eliminate the fear one experiences when one first realizes that there is a difference between Reality and Mind.

Foundationalism is not rooted in the search for better methods and goals, but rather, in a fear of inadequacy in that respect: If my mind cannot discover a relationship with Reality through a more direct method, as difficult and unrelenting as Reality is, then Foundationalism could provide a way out for me, but that way out will more than likely also be designed to instill and support another meta-belief such as religion, infallability, or even superiority, all of which could be false friends or false ideals to seek if our true goal is knowledge.

How does one deal with Reality without resorting to such a religious, dogmatic, and pretentious mindset? One should first look at Reality. Since we are human animals and active beings, we participate in Reality. We work in it and play in it. Like any other animal, we constantly sense it with our five senses, and we make judgments and decisions based what we sense.  Some decisions are merely based on habit, or reflex, but Humans are especially noted for their ability to make judgments which go beyond the merely directive flow of movement, but which also plan rather well, under a variety of different circumstances, for the future. A review of biological Nature shows this to be true: Bees and ants are good at creating a hive of productive living and caring for their next generation of young: Species of intelligent mammals create small societies that allow shared caring and rearing of their young, cooperative hunting, and even group sex. But Homo sapiens is the only animal (as far as we know) that builds cars, and civilizations, explores the planets. Without our ability to plan the future in a variety of different real contexts, and without our language, we would not be very distinguishable from the other animals. 

Even in Language, we are not completely apart, since we know that each species of animal has its own set of communication skills. The bees know how to imitate directional flight to communicate the existence of intruders and pollen, for example. Lions and even domestic cats use a set of grunts and growls to get their points across. It has been discovered that crows have in excess of 200 calls, each one with a different purpose. Dolphin and whale communication has been analyzed to a degree. But all of the mammals are capable of using gestures to some degree among themselves, such as mating gestures, or gestures aimed at controlling other species and invaders.

Language is quite different for Humans than for these other mammals. We have highly structured languages which use a limited number of phonemes (forty in English) as building blocks. Our speaking is usually organized into statements, and the phonemes overlap as spoken, and literally fly by at the rate of over 10 per second. The sentence you just read requires about 5 seconds to say, and contains 3 statements. We can see from this that statements can happen at the rate of one every one to two seconds, showing that humans are capable delivering their complex communication at an astounding rate. As humans, we not only have a way of sensing which composes our interface with Reality, but we have a way of Speaking, since the other Humans we speak to are also part of our Reality. This opens up the issue of how Humans and higher mammals impact reality: They direct it. Humpback whales, for example, push the krill needed to feed into groups near the surface by scaring them, a technique used by several aquatic carnivores, and then guide the prey into their baleen by surfacing quickly with their mouths agape. Human activities go way beyond that kind of simple explanation, of course, and constitute a myriad of inventive activities and innovations on existing activities, often for the purpose of improving economy or education, but also for purposes of entertainment, a behavior we happen to share with the other primates.

So Humans sense, they direct, and they speak. How do they know they should do this? I would say that Reality pressures them to. Without all of the composites of human life, there would be little that we could accomplish, even for our own survival. The question of Mind or Thought becomes one of necessity, then. Do we need to think in a certain manner in order to accomplish survival, or accomplish some other higher goal? The answer is that we each have probably already possessed habits of thought which have benefited us by allowing us to survive as long as we have, and which have allowed us to accomplish those things which we have already accomplished. The logical consequence of that, then, is that if we want survival to continue, and the accomplishments to be more or less similar, we should probably continue on the same. That seems like it might be a trap, though, since we may not agree that where we have come to is where we need to be, and that what we have accomplished so far is not necessarily the only kind of thing we are capable of: We don’t want to limit ourselves if we don’t have to. Believing that we should limit ourselves might establish greater humility, but it would not necessarily allow for all such things as humans are famous for, such as innovation.

So what is the foundation for humans sensing, directing and speaking? It is thinking, of course, at least that’s the missing ingredient, and here’s where the problem lies. Since we need to decide things for different purposes, that involves quite a lot of thinking –and not just the kind of thinking that allows us to talk fast. It is this great amount of thinking we do that convinces us that thought and the self, the doer of the thinking, is primary and all else is secondary and less important. This is really not true at all; it’s the illusion, and our self or thinking part is not the Reality we would like to wish away in order to assume our god-like mantle of dominion over all that Reality, thank you, if you don’t mind. Unless we subscribe to another dogma that states for us that Reality is subservient to our thinking, we have nothing more to do here with thinking than to let it take its course.

At least to Homo sapiens, if not to other species, thinking is real, in the same way that sensing is real, directing is real, and speaking is real. We think many things, but mostly we get very little wrong when we are thinking. In this sense, thinking has been called, “The sixth sense”.

Where we can get things wrong is usually in action, such as when we get 14 wrong in a math test because we didn’t study, or we didn’t get something right at work, because we didn’t test or verify our results properly. Or maybe we said something stupid and hurt someone’s feelings. Such events may occur for many reasons, however, they  may occur because of habits of listening, such as our being moved by hearing comedians or actors ape these statements, and can be due to our own subconscious desires as well. We can’t eliminate all of them, because our environment is constantly forcing these kinds of errors upon us as burlesque, and because our being the kinds of animals we are requires both true and false information.

It’s easy and natural to communicate true information. There are rarely any strictures against it. When these strictures do occur, such as when you are in the position of being, “the bearer of bad news”, they are almost unavoidable. One perhaps looks around for someone to delegate. False information, such as, “When you die, you will go to sleep, and wake up in heaven,” is not always in the form of bad news, or incorrigible on its surface: It may simply be a statement that is impossible to test.  Other statements test the limits of reality and are thus falsifiable: If I say, “It will rain tomorrow,” and it does not rain, I have made a false statement, yet that says nothing about my ability to think, it may simply reflect an unforeseen change  in the climate. What about a pernicious lie? If I said, it rained in Arkansas yesterday, knowing full well it did not, will that ruin anyone’s day today? The lie is pernicious enough, but does it really have consequences other than breaking a commandment and ruining our chances to become the TV weatherman? Did we cast doubt on anyone else’s veracity? Not if no one cared about the weather in Arkansas. The only thing we may have accomplished then, is to prove ourselves a lover of spurious knowledge, while at the same time putting ourselves in a position to be falsified. So the outcome of a lie is either the harm it causes, or else it is this moment of falsification that places the pernicious liar himself in jeopardy. The fact that the problems faced by the pernicious liar mirror, at least in form, those confronted by the compulsive truth-teller is nothing less than ironic.

If we don’t intend it to, will our thinking necessarily fall into error? Obviously if the senses cannot be relied on, we can make mistakes sometimes. Thinking, though, follows patterns; it relates to specific real situations and contexts of involvement. Generally speaking, we have some experience with these patterns and can reproduce them when they are needed. The danger here is that we will apply the wrong pattern in a given context, but that danger is not great, and regardless, our experience will likely save us from making that same mistake again in the future.

Foundationalism is this kind of mistake. By being a Foundationalist, and establishing a pattern of thought we believe to be universally applicable, and since one pattern of thought can never substitute for all the patterns we assimilate over a lifetime of thinking, with Foundationalism we can create a context for errors which is potentially infinite, and may last for lifetimes.