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Why there is not much we can really understand?

Why there is not much we can really understand?

Robert Nozick famous second part of his first chapter Metaphysics in his Philosophical Explanations (1981) reads: “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing”. Though Nozick Ethics and Political philosophy are very powerful and compelling today, his Metaphysics stumbles due to times when it was written. It was when logical positivism of Wittgenstein and other philosopher relying on logic and syntax only abhor themselves from semantics. It was a time when Thomas Nagel, Nozick friend, was already very much present, but marginal.

Nevertheless, I like to do thought experiments based on the methodology of the great minds of our past. For that reason, I have “found” and rewritten eleventh chapter of Plato’s Republic. of And for that reason, I praised Dante in Mind Intellect and Wisdom Challenge. 

There definitely is something. Something exists. We need not Nozick to experience reality. But there is an epistemological barrier that prevents us from understanding much of that reality. Let us see the proof.

Thesis 1.

Things and events are as simple at their lowest level of interdependence.

Explanation 1.

Things and events exist on the backdrop/background only; in relation to the backdrop. The simplicity of a thing or an event does not lie in the thing/event itself, but in relation to a backdrop. The background consists of all other things/events, but the one that is measured. A thing or an event cannot choose to what part of the backdrop should it be measured. It is by definition measured to the whole backdrop.

Thesis 2.

The complexity of even the simplest thing or event is so vast that no rational entity can recognize/understand it.

Conclusion 1.

Rationality cannot understand (recognize) even the simplest things and events.

Question 1.

How come then that rational living entities like humans can survive? One can survive only if both its’ identity and its’ environment (backdrop) is recognized. Even if something is not rational and has no self-awareness, it has to differentiate itself from the background, from the environment. This differentiation is one of the necessary proofs of life.

Thesis 3.

All living creatures de facto differentiate their identity from the backdrop; thus de facto “understand” both self-identity and things and events in the environment.

Question 2.

How come then that living creatures de facto “understand” things and events even though complexity behind things and events cannot be understood in principle?

Thesis 4.

A larger part of the human response system to the environment is not rational as evolved in each individual in the form of learned algorithms. Still, it is genetically hardwired in advance for each individual and all of them.

The already known thesis 5.

Genes evolutionarily transmit hardwired heredity while memes evolve rational response system.

Explanation 2.

That memes evolve rational response system (and at the same time that rational response system evolves memes) does not mean that memes are only rational or about rationality. Memes are like irrational numbers. They exist as irrational only because there is rationality that can conceive them.

Thesis 6

The vast complexity of each thing and each event can only be “understood” through micro-adjustments of living creatures over vast periods.

Conclusion 2.

What Buddhism name as “oneness” is nothing but acceptance of the unity of hardwired non-rational (subconscious, limbic) “understanding” of complexity, and rational understanding of things and events. We thus understand the environment (complexity) as much as we do not rationally understand it.

Thesis 7.

Hardwired (genetic) “understanding” is vastly broader in size, influence, robustness and fidelity than rational, memetic.

Thesis 8.

Human management systems rest entirely on memetic management as much as management systems pertain only to western culture. Eastern cultures do not manage. They let it go, as explained in brandlife.

Explanation 3.

Contemporary “Eastern” management systems of China, India and so forth rely on Western management ideology. They strive to find a link to their heritage. It seems that quantum logic might help both to see this link while Western management ideology as much as Eastern rest on pre-Renaissance concepts.

Methodological conclusion 3.

Contemporary quantum science is closer to Thomas Aquinas and Buddha than to Newton.

Climatic Conclusion 4.

All conclusions so far prove that even if humans cause climate change, such change cannot be managed rationally. Limbic systems and all other hardwired systems cannot be managed by any single living entity, but can only be managed (passive expression obligatory!) by evolution.

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