The Symphony of the Mind - a letter to my sons

THE ARGUMENT

The argument began in September, 1963, during my very first lesson in geometry as instructed by a math teacher named Stephen Chandler at The Mercersburg Academy. He introduced Euclid by the postulate: “There exists a point.” Without hesitating, I asked him: “Why?” That query was a first taste of the conundrum that posed as my formal education.

Euclid, as least as taught by Stephen Chandler, sets the standard for reducing philosophy to a single proposition. By the way, my only formal instruction in classical philosophy, in particular Socratic logic, was provided by Alden Mosshammer, also at The Mercersburg Academy. His course was comprehensive enough that it included Buddhism upon which I wrote a term paper in early 1966. While I was at Cornell University, I participated in an applied philosophy course regarding the conservation of natural resources.

To answer my own question of “why?,” I argue that all multi-propositional philosophies can be reduced by using the P-T-R nutcracker on each of philosophy’s propositions to reach the point of pure human reason. By disentangling the loops through reiterative regression, one can discover the original organizing impulse; thus, solving the Gordian Knot riddle.

The rules applicable to such an analysis are:

1. Every thought is a loop composed of varying combinations of P, T & R.
2. Statements are always loops, not freestanding absolutes that many people take them to be.
3. Every component of a loop is a loop itself.

The primary cusp distribution may be 1/3, 1/3 & 1/3 but I believe that the distribution is skewed towards T and away from R. The predominate channel of communication between persons is the T - P channel or wavelength. The investigation of nature is R, but the communications between scientists are not necessarily so.

The mind processes perceptions simultaneously in three modes; reality is composed of those same elements and reality exists, as well, in three modes. The accuracy of perception is determined by how closely aligned the subjective P-T-R is with behavior of the external phenomena. All statements, written or oral, are transmitted simultaneously via three channels; all statements are received simultaneously in three channels. However, the corresponding channels are not necessarily in tune or are otherwise misaligned with each other because, once a message is received, the Mobius loops process the message with the Mobius loops’ own coding.

UNIFICATION THEORY

A primer explicating the vectors that shape our lives should coherently weave together the roots of psychology, philosophy, politics, law, economics and policy. A philosophy needs to be comprehensive; otherwise, a purported philosophy is simply a collection, perhaps an encyclopedia, of many beliefs. A unified philosophy is a philosophy for all seasons of life. Elemental analysis is a Euclidean geometry of the mind premised on postulates and developed through logic toward a comprehensive and unified model of the mind. Unification theory is not confined to reductionism such as I am arguing. An alternative approach to unification is the “glass bead game” which involves the manipulations of symbols such that parallels or equivalencies are deduced. See Herman Hesse’s Das Glasperlenspiel (1943).

The concept of a unified mind is a conundrum that needs to be parsed to be understood. Broadly speaking, unification theory is based on the two premises that, one, the mind accesses, or is at least capable of accessing, its full range of information and, two, that human minds follow the same developmental rules regardless of race or culture.

An error that I made for much of my life was believing that the mind could compile information not only logically but also rationally. That proposition has failed me time and time again. The failure lies in the mind. For notwithstanding that it is unified, the mind communicates within itself via some form of statement. On the premise that these communications are in the form of statements, then it is inevitable that the mind will misunderstand, misinterpret or otherwise fail at the task of rationally compiling information. The same sort of errors that occur in interpersonal communications occur in intrapersonal communications. Such failures in the internal communications is one of the sources for errors in misinterpreting what can otherwise be in a physical sense clearly observed.

Elemental analysis is a form of reductionism in contrast to an all embracing encyclopedic (mapping) vision of reality. Reductionism is found in many forms, some quite useful such as chemistry but other quite misleading and even malevolent such as Der Fuhrer principle espoused in the Third Reich. Can a reductionist concept be merged into an all embracing vision of reality? The Buddhist concept of OM is one such candidate. Abraham Maslow argued, at least implicitly, that well-integrated persons live positive (i.e., “good”) lives. See the discussion of peak experiences and self-actualization in, inter alia, Toward a Psychology of Being (1962, 1968). For a countervailing argument that well-integrated persons are not necessarily good and that evil is not necessarily expunged from the psyche by self-actualization, see Winston L. King’s “Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the Samurai Psyche” (1993). Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) was a classic blunder induced by doctrine rather than national interest. Japan’s national interest could have been well served by a less doctrinaire approach to diplomacy and negotiation. Policy and philosophy are obverse sides of the same coin of belief. Policy is a continuation of argument by other means (ala Carl von Clausewitz’ dictum that war is the continuation of politics by different means; see Vom Kriege [1832]). Difficulties in making the peace arise when a counter party retains an attachment to an originating conflict event or misunderstanding.

DIRECT OBSERVATION

Naturalists, a term much broader than field biologists, are direct observers of natural phenomena. Naturalists should not be confused with naturists who have their own practice of direct observation. I tend to use the term naturalist in preference to scientist because scientists seem to focus on narrow tranches of inquiry. Naturalists try to grasp nature in its grandest form but in doing so are susceptible to committing errors in interpretation. Mathematicians are logicians and complement the naturalists in creating meaningful models.

Although science is a synonym for knowledge, I also tend to use the term naturalist rather than scientist because I prefer to restrict the term scientist for a practitioner of the scientific method that is rigorously confined to controlled experiments. Science, as defined by the scientific method of controlled experiments, is a very narrow tranche of the practice of “science” as that term is colloquially used. Once a scientist is doing something outside of controlled experiments, elements of policy intrude and may even dominate that practice.

The enhancement or subjective interpretation of photographs and other direct observation converts evidence into statements. You may want to review the history of the discussions of the photographic evidence regarding the deflection of light by the Sun as purportedly confirming Einsteinian relativity by Arthur Eddington during the May 29, 1919, solar eclipse. The starting point would be F. W. Dyson, A. S. Eddington and C. Davidson, A determination of the deflection of light by the Sun’s gravitational field, from observations made at the total eclipse of 29 May 1919,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 220A: 291-333 (1920). Images, whether items exhibited in a museum, a photograph, a set of photographs, a cinema, become symbols when an observer perceives an internal dynamic within himself vis-a-vis those images. That internal dynamic is ruled by the laws of P-T-R.

Observing nature directly means to look at natural phenomena as original propositions, almost as if through an infant’s eyes, and not as reflections or simple-minded reaffirmations of statements made by some other observer, writer or commentator. Query: Is it possible to directly observe the mind in the manner of the great natural scientists, such as Galileo and Darwin, who have directly observed nature? The naturalists looked outward, but the task at hand is to look inward.

Direct observation is the act of observing phenomena and using the phenomena to acquire an understanding of the thing observed in contrast to having a set of beliefs by which to categorize the assorted wool gathered in the course of one’s life. In the direct observation of nature, the great natural scientists made note of the wrinkles, creases and joints in the face of nature, looking for, if you will, inconsistencies in the word of God. Having noted the telling details, the great natural scientists developed analytical models that went far beyond simple equivalency. These scientists worked their models rather than deviate from the models’ internal logics.

There is a scene in the movie The Big Short (screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay based upon the book by Michael Lewis; 05/11/2015 buff revision pp. 23, 23A & 24) inside a yeshiva where the mother of a 10 year old boy is discussing her son with the rabbi:

Rabbi:

…Mark…is the...