GARINUS MORONIS:
Dear Jud, If I were a normal person I would disavow the first letter I wrote. But I am far from being a normal person. My ‘hidden’ thesis was *Real life is totally insane, through and through, and the purely fantasy life of brutally detached philosophy my only refuge and solice.* There. Let us take it seriously. However, what does serious mean? In philosophy, I personally think it means considering any hypothesis with detachment even if it is highly unacceptable socially, EVEN THE SOCIETY OF PHILOSOPHERS! My specific point here though, right now, is that such statements necessarily bring into question the structures of language, logic, and science. That my mind is far too weak to adequately with such gigantic subjects is a given. But there always has to be a starting point. And the starting point necessarily is, I know that I do not know – EXCEPT the issues are important and must be addressed and will either be addressed in ignorance, blind passion, and knee jerk prejudice or they are addressed as what they necessarily must BE, that is, issues of the nature, actual use, and necessary structure of language. Spinoza is an ideal representative of such a thesis both pragmatically and philosophically. He is objectively detached from everybody in real life because, in an age of death for having independent thought, he is always thinking, *How much of what I really believe can I say and how clearly can I say it?* We do not know what he really thought about anything EVEN at those times he seems to be making a straightforward statement because, if you look closely, you can always find a escape hatch by which he can disavow extreme opinions. For one thing, though we know the orthodox synagogue drastically rejected him, we do not know why and can only speculate purely based upon what happened afterward. We do know for certain he himself did not initiate the rejection upon his own, seem to be mildly surprised at their reaction, but instead of fighting it, merely said, That is fine if that is the way they want to be*, then took on a Christian first name without ever becoming a Christian in a society that often highly rewarded people for going over to the ‘right’ religion. Strangely enough, officially, the establishment seemed quite content with that – as if a dangerous disease had been neutralized and it was best to leave things at that. So, Spinoza may be regarded as a dangerous disease. How? Language, logic, science. So, the problem of Spinoza actually boils down to *a* problem of language – you cannot tell the truth – to THE problem of language, What is language? The methods of secrecy actually bring into prominence the major aspects/problems of language. Primarily, in Spinoza, what should strike you is that you know a deliberately created persona is always writing. I am sure this is partly the reason a number of his writings were never finished and only published after his death even when, sometimes, they were relatively inoffensive. Who is the perfect persona to him? Euclid. No one knows who Spinoza is.

Geometry in Spinoza’s age was still considered the epitome of knowledge therefore science. However, that was rapidly changing with the advance of physics. Going from pure mathematics and logic to a real experimental method is actually quite a jump. But the English philosophers Sir Stuart Hampsire and Jonathan Bennett, teacher and pupil, both analytical language philosophers, both seem to say Spinoza was right in the middle of the transition. Spinoza’s geometry causes problems for philosophical readers today – but geometry is socially and theologically acceptable. Descartes, described by several scholars as a devout Catholic, wanted, purportedly, to set religion up on a scientific basis of experimental method. He got Hell for it even in the Netherlands where he lived because he thought France would be unhealthy for him. I think it a true statement that Spinoza was much more drastically radical than Descartes. But the question remains, Exactly how so? However, the only authorities he officially got in trouble with was just his synagogue.

I first ran into Jonathan Bennett when I tried to read his book on Kant’s analytic, the most famous and supposedly most important part of the CRITQUE OF PURE REASON. I stopped reading his book – and also Kant – when he seemed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the analytic was by and large just a big mistake and misuse of language. I may reassess that judgment now because, though Kant seemed originally to me to be making fairly sound statement wherein Bennett proved otherwise, Spinoza in the ETHICS seems to makes to abound in making totally absurd statements, occasionally enlightened with little chapters of glowing clarity and down to earth reasonableness so profoundly to the point that one wonders why the issue is even an issue anymore since Spinoza totally answered it ---- and Bennett takes the obviously absurd statements quite seriously, though still with analytical precision, and proves not only is our view of Spinoza skewed but our whole view of reality, through language, is skewed. Language, as I think Wittgenstein proved, does not make any sense whatsoever as it is thrown at us as children as an abortion of a ‘whole’ only in the sense of social, ethical, and political force, and literally shoved down our throats. Does anyone disagree with this statement? That does not mean you have to agree to anything else I have said. However, if you do agree, a necessary deduction from that would be ‘real’ life is totally insane, through and through.

JUD EVANS:
You? Abnormal? You must be joking! That is precisely why Richard Sansom and I and others love you so much. For although the difference you manifest is of a unique variety - a sensitive intellection of great depth which often amazes with fire-work displays of great profundity, for me you're *not being normal* does not mean being abnormal.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Part, maybe all, of the problem is that there is no *normal* in reality. In *practical reality* for *practical purposes*, which usually means one’s personal and hidden agenda, One constantly switches from one language game to another without acknowledgement as if one were still speaking the same language whereas the truth of the matter is, unless you are aware of and understand the changed context, you are being self-deceived by what you want to hear which is taken advantage of by who you are talking to who intends to get you to agree to0 something that in your mind is something completely different. This double and triple talk has become the standard of practical reality everywhere. Reality has become George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM really gone mad. We have long gone beyond *All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.* For instance, reading about Steig Larsson’s Sweden that I thought was the most liberal society is in fact more openly racist that any other country in the world that I know of where there are plentiful laws against such things.

JUD EVANS:

I lack the detachment necessary to accomplish this unless it involves philosophical questions of morals or ethics which bore the arse off me. At the moment most universities are constipated with such questions - simply for the reason that it ethics remains one of the few areas of interest left of a philosophical nature (as evidenced by the voluminous pages devoted to such matters in women's magazines) which means that nonplussed doctors can assuage their guilt before they turn off the life-support machines or conduct abortions etc if they can appeal to the *authority* of academia.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Morality has largely become a matter of *What can I be sued for?* If it seems I cannot be sued, I can do it but only if I get paid for it. But one has to be careful. One can be sued as much for not doing something as well as for doing something. You can be sued if someone says *I need . . .* and you do not give it to them even if they will not pay you. Therefore even the greedy get bitten. Everybody gets bitten because everyone suffers from the consequences one way or another. This applies to the good and the bad, that is, if you can discover the distinction. I certainly do not know who I am.

JUD EVANS:
For me the study of language is as much a question of human biology as the study of haematology neurology or arthritis - it concerns how the human holism works and interfaces with its environment. The technicalities of the deep versus the surface levels of language (and I say *versus* because I believe there is a conflict) is fascinating domain and constitutes one on the last unknowns for explorers of the human landscape (rather like the more remote jungles of New Guinea constitute the last frontier for traditional exploration.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Very good! Now throw in the politics and economics of scientific research, that is, what gets called attention to and what does not, in other words one sided studies completely obliterating the existence of possible alternatives – highly *unproductive* - then, yes, you are ion a dark and deep jungle with people sometimes really hunting you.

JUD EVANS:
One can try to read between the lines in order to descry what drove him, what his social life included but our modern *lines* are different to the lines which afford hermeneutic access to the nooks and crannies of Hollandaise man circa 1650.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Spinoza takes the geometric method seriously. One can start from what seems a perfectly outrageous and nearly incomprehensible statement, and yet deduce very sensible conclusions to it certifiable by experience. The original *axiom* does not propose words as in normal language but as letters, unknowns like *X* to be filled in later with known quantities. Essentially Spinoza reverses the normal, practical course of language switching from variable language, made obvious in the direct incomprehensibility of the axiom, to strict language when each term is relatively defined initially *in-between* incomprehensibility and clear logic, and then into clear statements understandable, supposedly, on their own except you know their incomprehensible source. If the axiom is written out as a mathematical formula it seems to make perfect mathematical sense but still cannot be easily translated back into *plain* language, except, again, we know *plain* language does not exist specifically between strangers to whom the ETHICS is presented.

JUD EVANS:
Spinoza comes across to me as a gentle person - a loner - and Descartes more outgoing.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Spinoza did have a bad experience with spies, but luckily they just went to their rabbi, not the Christian authorities. This may have given some ground to his excommunication, but they were sneaks and therefore unreliable and what they reported does not seem explicitly stated in his excommunication decree. Descartes, despite several people saying he was a
*devout Catholic*, still seems ambivalent to me because why seek a scientific ground to religion if nobody wants it?

JUD EVANS: I believe that the deep level is the level which better assesses the nature of the real things that we move amongst. It is language that f - - - s up the picture - hence the need for remedial (inner) predication. We can smile and say the things expected of another whilst inside the predicates we supply to really describe what we feel about him are negative and dismissive.

GARINUS MORONIS:
*That we move amongst* is key to understanding Spinoza. As with Descartes only thought and extension are realities, but Descartes seems to have definitively divided the two ontologically whereas Spinoza definitely defines even God as spatial. I will not get into that can of worms, but on the other hand, even Descartes said the soul resided in the pineal gland, and it seems to me logically if one says a numerically one soul resides in a physical space, it cannot be *supernatural*, which would imply without any spatiality and therefore separation in any sense whatsoever. In fact the whole notion of a supernatural soul as an entity separate from God as supernatural becomes nonsense which Spinoza definitely confronts by saying A] mind per se is rational, all rationality is exactly alike, all minds as minds – not emotions – are therefore exactly alike, therefore B] God is rationality and each man’s mind, in so far as it is rational, is God. The spatiality of God, then, becomes absolutely necessary instead of a complication. But then any ontological separation of thought and extension become nonsense.

GARINUS MORONIS:

Language, as I think Wittgenstein proved, does not make any sense whatsoever as it is thrown at us as children as an abortion of a ‘whole’ only in

the sense of social, ethical, and political force, and literally shoved down our throats. Does anyone disagree with this statement? That does not mean you have to agree to anything else I have said. However, if you do agree, a necessary deduction from that would be ‘real’ life is totally insane, through and through.

JUD EVANS:
Actually I am a closet Whorfian-Lorenzian - for me language not only influences thought; language determines thought - but not in the areas upon which Whorf concentrated. I believe with Antonio that we are influenced to think in the way others wish us to think via semantico-linguistic behavioral imprinting— initially a form parental imprinting- i. e. in the way THEY think - from an early age, though the baton of brainwashing is taken up by the members of society in general as we develop - and it is a language that sticks until the end of our days. For me this is what *IS* is and its ramifications is all about, and it is this which acts as the subject of my own form of consolatio philosophiae as I while away the hours that are left to me.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Actually, I see no conflict. My expression is more crude than yours.

GEORGES METANOMSKI:
Hi Gary, Pleasure to hear from you, accrued by your issue which I was always eager for discussing, but there are so few and far between with whom one can discuss. Spinoza's Ethics being misnamed "axiomatic", I give in Appendix the proper definition of Axiom and Dogma.

GARINUS MORONIS:
Geometry in Spinoza’s age was still considered the epitome of knowledge therefore science. However, that was rapidly changing with the advance of physics. Going from pure mathematics and logic to a real experimental method is actually quite a jump.

GEORGES METANOMSKI:
Sorry, but I find you here completely wrong. There is physics of kitchen almanacs, and that of Einstein, Planck and Dirac. The latter considers geometry not only as its own epitome, but as its deepest foundation. At the outset, geometry was an empiric art of earth measuring, thus, as Einstein says, a "natural" science, the first version of physics. For the cutting edge of contemporary physics, geometry, under alias of "SPACE", is the founding bedrock of cosmos. And, although it contradicts the whole established bandwagon, Einstein's view of geometry as a natural science, as well as founding the rest of maths in geometry, makes mathematics a natural, really axiomatic science - a physical language of physics.

As for the "real experimental method": Applied physics and technology perform, indeed, swarms of experiments.

GARINUS MORONIS:
I am not sure how this applies to Spinoza’s approach. For one thing, his project was purportedly totally abstract, which, however, might be – and this may be due to my ignorance, but, in appreciation of your making me think about it, I now think that maybe, after the struggle of getting through the near incomprehensible – incomprehensible to *normal* language postulates and such, then Spinoza steps out like a dues ex machine and gives a clear logical application of thought to everyday experience, explicitly distinguishing his thoughts from the thoughts of *common people* who believe in an infinite all powerful God who can freely at His own whim interfere with finite historical events. Spinoza, in his initial approach, seems to stay completely clear of actual experience and then plops out an undeniable application of abstract logic to real life as if in a commando raid. There is strategy here, but it is the writer’s strategy, not the reader’s. This reader is simply overwhelmed. Though Spinoza constantly repeats his statements and references, this is never the repeatability of scientific experiment which is pure experience which, however, is initiated by a purely theoretical hypothesis sometimes as incomprehensible as Spinoza’s postulates BUT, unlike him, having a clear historical and physical, that is, time and space, demonstration that is REPEATABLE something woefully lacking in the new *environmental sciences*.

GEORGES METANOMSKI:
Fundamental physics stems, however, from very few empiric experiments and is mainly based on mental experiments and abstract reflection - always axiomatic, thus factually falsifiable.

Whole Relativity reposes on a single MM experiment. Einstein never performed it and created Special Relativity as a mental construct based upon documentation of the MM experiment. His top achievement, the General Relativity does not stem from ANY EMPIRIC experiment and has been derived by a MENTAL experiment of Rotating Disk, which BTW any layman can understand, as involved maths are restricted to S=2*pi*R. It determines the SPACE (hyperbolic geometry) of the cosmos as equivalence of inertial Field. Additiomal Axiom of Gravity/Inertia equivalence extends it over Gravity and parabolic geometry.

http://findgeorges.com/CORE/G_GENERAL_RELATIVITY/g2_derivation_steps_1_and_2.html

I like the man Spinoza, but that falls into the province of history, sociology and psychology. As philosopher I find him the best - albeit negative - example of confusing Axiom with Dogma. From the first definition, none of the statements of his Ethics is factually falsifiable, which makes it a glaringly dogmatic system.

GARINUS MORONIS:
I actually agree with everything you says, that is, what I understand of it. And what you say about * a glaringly dogmatic system* is perfectly expressed. But I think he is perfectly aware of that, maybe even taking a page from his theological enemies. *IF YOU SAY SOMETHING FORCIBLY ENOUGH IT IS TRUE* and his is the *force* of you must spend time and mental effort figuring out what he is saying – if in fact you ever do.

GEORGES METANOMSKI:

He is sometimes classified within the Enlightenment, but in fact, amidst the emerging rational axiomatic of Galileo, Descartes and Newton, Spinoza appears as the last, outstanding rampart of the preceding dogmatism.

GARINIS MORONIS:
Spinoza is definitely not *enlightenment* and you are spot on in putting him in complete opposition to the other three. But I honestly do not think his real intent was dogmatic, however much in truth he used and abused dogma, but rather telling a complex mystery story which you are suppose to figure out – may much like Fermat’s theorem that Larsson’s THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE plays with and made me indulge in mathematical fantasies.

For the *girl*, although she knew the solution had finally been found in 1993, she wanted to figure it out for herself as I want to figure out Spinoza for myself. But I truly appreciate help from my friends. Your putting Spinoza in the perspective of church dogmatics has definitely helped me. Your definitions below are great! And your recognition that an axiom can seem arbitrary very gratifying. I like your term *bottom factual theorem* as it beautifully employs physical gesture to make an intellectual point. * Unlike Axioms, dogmas are not falsifiable,* gives me insight into Spinoza’s intellectual strategy. But he makes it very clear he does NOT believe in transcendental truth. However, this is not exactly crystal clear in the ETHICS. His *debates* with others, the *common opinion* is one sided, yes, but so well done it astonishes me. Jonathan Bennett implies Spinoza wants you to *debate* on your own what he says and come to your own conclusions – which would be the only rational justification of what he is doing. It is a matter of perspective and Spinoza was a lensmaker.

APPENDIX
Axiom and Dogma.

Axiom. Full-fledged model structure supporting both, necessary deduction and fuzzy factual induction will be called "axiomatic" and its top arbitrary presumptions - "Axioms". Axioms and thence deduced Theory are falsifiable and refutable by inconclusive induction from factual experiences.

Dogma. A Theory lacking bottom factual Theorems and thus unable to support the falsifiable induction will be called "Dogmatic". and its top arbitrary presumptions - "Dogma". Unlike Axioms, Dogma are not falsifiable, cannot be refuted and repose in unshakable faith in transcendental "Truth".


I define "Rationality" as the axiomatic, debatable, uncertain, inductively falsifiable Weltanschauung and "Science" as particularly rigorous and precise instance of Rationality.

"Dogmatism", at extreme "Fundamentalism", is a Weltanschauung founded in unshakable faith in some transcendental absolutely certain and irrefutable Dogma. Contesting the Dogma is blasphemy, which must not be discussed, but battled and punished, in the fundamentalist extreme by the death of the contester.

At the outset, "Axiom" was defined as "self-evident truth", always taken as granted, without proof, which for us defines "Dogma". So was considered during thousand years the Axiom of Euclides, till it got factually falsified and replaced by Riemann and Lobatschevski in the General Relativity.

It's surprising to see most if not all concurrent dictionaries stick to the anti-diluvian version of "self-evident truth", confusing Axiom with Dogma.

A STUDY OF SPINOZA’S ETHICS, page 32-3"
*Spinoza was a pantheist, in that he identified God with the whole of reality. Thus he agreed with the atheist that reality cannot be divided into a portion which is God and one which is not. Although pantheist and atheist may seem to be poles apart, with one saying that everything is God and the other that nothing is, in the absence of an effective contrast between God and not-God we should not be quickly confident that there is any substantive disagreement at all ". . . If Spinoza and the atheist each pointed [at everyday surrounding reality, world physical context] while saying, respectively, *That is all God* and *None of that is God*, they would point at the very same world ". . . It has become clear that Spinoza was, in Wolfson’s happy phrase, *no mystic, no idealist of the kind to whom everything that kicks and knocks and resists is unreal* ". . . To credit God with *will* and *intellect* in anything like the normal senses of these terms would be as great a mistake as expecting Sirius [the Dog-star] to bark. [*They could be no more alike than the celestial constellation of the Dog and the dog that barks. * Part I, proposition 17, scholium, Shirley trans, page 61 of Elwes trans by Dover publications] " . . . IT IS A NUISANCE THAT English has pronouns which are always used for people and not freely for anything else . . . Isn’t that sufficient to atheize Spinoza’s use of the name *God*? It was commonly thought to be so in his own day. LIEBNITZ: *He was truly an atheist, that is, he did not acknowledge any Providence which distributes good fortune and bad according to what is just* . . . " His thinking is firmly grounded in the cinviction that there is nothing fundamentally special about mankind as compared with chimpanzees and earthworms and cabbages and rivers; for Spinoza, man is just a part of Nature . . . What I call his ‘naturalism’ is the stronger thesis that what happens in any human being is fully explicable through the same laws that explain everything else. . . . "

NONE OF MY FORMULATIONS OF Spinoza’s naturalism quite captures it, however, for they all fit Liebnitz’s theory of man too, yet I would not call his thory naturalistic . . . It starts with people instead of the other end " . . . Spinoza says that pride and despondency are bad from the standpoint of human advantage, but adds a warning that that standpoint is a parochial one. Spinoza: *I consider men’s affects and properties just like other natural things.* . . . Anyone will rejoice in the outer appearance of a live butterfly, but even the innards of a dead and dissected one may engender wonder and delight as one learns how the organism functions - the complex orderly processes which constitute the life of a butterfly . . . Spinoza wants us to see that we might study the aetiology of pride and despondency - or of cruelty, cowardice, vanity, stupidity, or whatever - and find wonder and delight in the intricacy and inevitability of the mechanisms that are involved . . . " Other philosophers such as Hobbes or Hume have tried to carry through a naturalistic account of humanity; but Spinoza may be unique in how thoroughly he abides by his commitment to naturalism, refusing to slip back into treating humans as special in some basic way. Unique, that is, until our century . . . " Spinoza keeps his feet on the ground despite his pansychism: he travels overland the hard way, and we can learn a lot by following his steps . . . . " I DO say that Spinoza’s total naturalistic programme fails at both ends and in the middle; as though he undertook to build a sturdy mansion all out of wood, and achieved only a rickety shack using bricks [sic] as well as wood. But his attempt was a work of genius; and a thorough candic study of it can be wonderly instructive. The failures have at least as much to teach as the successes, if one attends not only to WHERE Spinoza fails but why.* #### #### #### GARONIS MORONIS: The reason I bring this up is not only to be honest about Spinoza but to be honest about ourselves. When we use words like *nature* or
*universe* or *reality* or *being* or *determinism* or *materialism* or *laws of nature* or any words that encompass *everything* like *physics* or *science* or
*mathematics* or [are there any other nominations?], we are using comprehensive words of things we cannot physically *comprehend*, that is, have a eye view surrounding the entire subject. Comprehensive words, then, are God synonymed words to be explicitly factual about the matter. They cannot be bag words of
*things* where you put similar items into one bag because A] you cannot surroundingly comprehend any one thing, and B] the concept of bag as purely abstract has no physical basis and therefore becomes a God word. The real problem is anthropomorphism. Even saying *this rock in my hand* anthropomorphizes. Why? Because you give it an identity that does not exist in physical experience. This is the same problem as the confusion of Sirius with the barking dog. This stone in my hand does not have its own identity but the experience has a place in my divine purpose for *things*. I do not expect either Sirius nor the universe to bark.

RICHARD SANSOM: A bit more on axioms and Spinoza. In thinking more about what axioms are or should be, I remembered a section in an essay I am writing on a recent [and thoroughly disliked and dangerous Supreme Court ruling] that deals with what I consider two essential ingredients in judging cases: Fairness and Common Sense. About Common Sense I said: This phrase is thrown around and most assume they know what it means. Something is commonsensical if it is reasonably intelligent, is long practiced with success, is not harmful, is not overly complex, enjoys historical consensus, is practical and is culturally acceptable.

GARONIS MORONIS: Good.

RICHARD SANSOM:

While this does not apply entirely to axioms, it does in part. When thinking of the example I gave in my recent post, mentioning the natural number axioms of Dedikind-Peano, I am certain that these axioms were not born as an ah-ha revelation, but grew out of the experience in how the mind treats with numbers.

GARONIS MORONIS: Sorry, I am having difficulty locating this letter. When was it written? Though I agree with your general thrust here, plenty of things including *number axioms* have been born from *ah-ha revelation*. In fact, considering the natural and necessary spontaneity of using language, in merely automatically responding to another, there is so much *ah-ha revelation* no one even considers its existence – that is, unless one has a Freudian slip and comes to an abrupt stop wondering why did I say that? Original solutions to mathematical problems that are not already really self-evident from the progress of mathematical thought which even a computer could come up with if properly programmed either just pop into one’s head or come from the *blind* exploration of *What if I did this?* or *What happens if I put these two things together even though they do not belong together?* or simply and probably most productive of all *What if I take this silly anomaly seriously?* like Cantor’s theorems. They have to be tested by experience, but usually when they pop into one’s heads – this also applies to reading a book and coming across Cantor for the first time and realizing something makes sense that in a proper world should not make sense – [How many people have thrown mathematics books in the trash on reading about Cantor and saying, *Bah humbug, this is silly nonsense, playing with words*?] – we are either intrigued by their strangeness that seems somehow meaningful [though not at the moment fully so] or they just seem *right* for a completely unknown reason. They also are Freudian slips, two minds in one person talking to each other that normally do not do so because each person learns language and mathematics in a different context from every other person, and each immediately creates two languages at least based on what I SHOULD believe and what I think I really do believe because no one fully agrees with their teachers ever. And then there are the pornographic languages and languages of violence that one even tries to hide away from oneself, that is, your * hidden synaptic activities*.

RICHARD SANSOM: Certain things were observed to happen with natural numbers [even though those things were the result of hidden synaptic activities] and those things were corralled and put into succinct form.

GARONIS MORONIS: But in one sense they do not *happen* like a meteor in the sky or two cars colliding in the street. These things have a different objectivity, though not a different materialism, from thinking which is always a consideration of different partners, and therefore like a parliament session is guided by rules that are used and abused by each MP in their own way the end result is both guided, formed *subjectively* and objectively like the selection of balls in a lottery machine so that in the end those acts in another sense have the same objectivity as the meteor and the car crash. The only difference is *intent*, but intent is something basically run by hidden forces that, however, can only dialectically function together only if the objective language available to all parties of the self takes sole responsibility. If this is not done, one is locked up in an asylum and forced to take medication. However, the second situation throws a fierce and intense light on the actual working of the brain. And then, of course, we have been trained from childhood to regard the meteor path and the car collision as also *formed* and *guided* by previous events or the hand of God.

RICHARD SANSOM: They are a kind of common sense, but are not either provable or falsifiable. They bring formal

rigor to the process of thinking about the operations of natural numbers, and can be, if needed, used as guidelines for such operations.

GARONIS MORONIS: I am uncomfortable with the notion of *natural numbers* since they are *natural* only in the sense that they are material whereas as material
*thought* we are held to using those numbers *responsibly*, that is, either
*according to agreement* or *morally* whereas no one would say a meteor path in the sky is anyone’s responsibility.

RICHARD SANSOM: Propositions that may follow from such axioms are, however, falsifiable, but are falsifiable in the sense that they do or do not consistently adhere to the axioms, or they are found to be at odds with something in the world.

GARONIS MORONIS: I touch this logical development of false statements to find new truths in JOHNATHAN BENNETT'S A STUDY OF SPINOZA'S ETHICS.

RICHARD SANSOM: So called axioms that are either not commonsensical or are prima facie clearly in error are not axioms. In looking at Spinozas first set of axioms in his Concerning God, it seems that they are his ontology, gleaned from what he has discovered about the world and the opinions of others and of course the scriptures and other religious sources. If any one axiom can be challenged, does that not throw his entire belief system in doubt as to its consistency and value? And I do not mean challengeable in error relative to modern thinking and things like cognitive science, etc; I mean challengeable in his own time. Such challenges were put forth in much of the correspondence and I find many of his responses to be weak or so prolix as to be suspect.

GARONIS MORONIS: What you say is true and can only be understood that Spinoza meant it to be that way just because they are so obviously inappropriate. But then in the clearer expositions that seem to state his real views they seem to be quite straight forward and common-sensical. He does state he has a complete system and that it is true, but complete and true to whom? You know very well it could not be obviously complete and true to the average reader because then he could be convicted and executed by the law. Yet, on the other hand, he does lay out a path for you with obviously incorrect axioms to work out on your own what the real truth might be. BUT THEN – that truth would be ONLY yours and your responsibility, not his, and then your head would be on the block!

RICHARD SANSOM: previously

In thinking more about what axioms are or should be, I remembered a section in an essay I am writing on a recent [and thoroughly disliked and dangerous Supreme Court ruling] that deals with what I consider two essential ingredients in judging cases: Fairness and Common Sense. About Common Sense I said: This phrase is thrown around and most assume they know what it means. Something is commonsensical if it is reasonably intelligent, is long practiced with success, is not harmful, is not overly complex, enjoys historical consensus, is practical and is culturally acceptable.

GARONIS MORONIS: Good.

RICHARD SANSOM:

While this does not apply entirely to axioms, it does in part. When thinking of the example I gave in my recent post, mentioning the natural number axioms of Dedikind-Peano, I am certain that these axioms were not born as an ah-ha revelation, but grew out of the experience in how the mind treats with numbers.

GARONIS MORONIS:

Sorry, I am having difficulty locating this letter. When was it written? Though I agree with your general thrust here, plenty of things including *number axioms* have been born from *ah-ha revelation*.

RICHARD SANSOM:

Yes, I believe some things have arrived with seeming spontaneity, but I have the feeling that some [or much] “background” work was being done. Things do not just fall into the brain like manna, or like we have been told spiritual revelations do. I believe that what we call “hunches” for example, occur after the brain has played around with some notion sub rosa for a while. I believe Godel’s undecidability idea came from having been immersed in number theory for many years and having a hunch that axiomatic systems are flawed in some way.

GARONIS MORONIS:

In fact, considering the natural and necessary spontaneity of using language, in merely automatically responding to another, there is so much *ah-ha revelation* no one even considers its existence – that is, unless one has a Freudian slip and comes to an abrupt stop wondering why did I say that? Original solutions to mathematical problems that are not already really self-evident from the progress of mathematical thought which even a computer could come up with if properly programmed either just pop into one’s head or come from the *blind* exploration of *What if I did this?* or *What happens if I put these two things together even though they do not belong together?* or simply and probably most productive of all *What if I take this silly anomaly seriously?* like Cantor’s theorems.

RICHARD SANSOM:

I believe that the mind is a problem solving system – like it or not. It evolved strictly and only to keep the human organism alive and reproducing. To do that it had to solve problems – and still does that. One technique for those solutions is trying out stuff, as you suggest. However, I seriously doubt that anything “pops” into one’s mind out of the blue. Some memory/experience made the “pop” happen. [Gary, I have never referred anyone to my essays etc. in Jud’s big site, however the section in the TWTWI paper deals with this problem solving aspect of the brain.]

GARONIS MORONIS:

They have to be tested by experience, but usually when they pop into one’s heads – this also applies to reading a book and coming across Cantor for the first time and realizing something makes sense that in a proper world should not make sense – [How many people have thrown mathematics books in the trash on reading about Cantor and saying, *Bah humbug, this is silly nonsense, playing with words*?] – we are either intrigued by their strangeness that seems somehow meaningful [though not at the moment fully so] or they just seem *right* for a completely unknown reason.

RICHARD SANSOM:

I agree, but whatever way Cantor is perceived, it is for some reason – not just whimsy. IMO the mind, except for the effects of some pathology, attempts to see things logically and sensibly – at least at first. I am sure that there are those who think that Cantor’s idea of transfinite numbers make sense and there are those who do not understand what he was getting at and will throw up their hands and call it all nonsense as they might with Godel’s as well. But as for something seeming “right” for a completely unknown reason, I agree; but the “reason” is no doubt buried somewhere in the meat of the brain. .

RICHARD SANSOM:

Certain things were observed to happen with natural numbers [even though those things were the result of hidden synaptic activities] and those things were corralled and put into succinct form.

RICHARD SANSOM:

They are a kind of common sense, but are not either provable or falsifiable. They bring formal rigor to the process of thinking about the operations of natural numbers, and can be, if needed, used as guidelines for such operations.

GARONIS MORONIS:

I am uncomfortable with the notion of *natural numbers* since they are *natural* only in the sense that they are material whereas as material
*thought* we are held to using those numbers *responsibly*, that is, either
*according to agreement* or *morally* whereas no one would say a meteor path in the sky is anyone’s responsibility.

RICHARD SANSOM:

I have no problem with “natural numbers.” They are simply counting or ordering numbers and I do not know the origins of the term “natural” as used in this way.

RICHARD SANSOM:

Propositions that may follow from such axioms are, however, falsifiable, but are falsifiable in the sense that they do or do not consistently adhere to the axioms, or they are found to be at odds with something in the world.

GARONIS MORONIS:

I touch this logical development of false statements to find new truths in JOHNATHAN BENNETT'S A STUDY OF SPINOZA'S ETHICS.

RICHARD SANSOM:

So called axioms that are either not commonsensical or are prima facie clearly in error are not axioms. In looking at Spinoza’s first set of axioms in his Concerning God, it seems that they are his ontology, gleaned from what he has discovered about the world and the opinions of others and of course the scriptures and other religious sources. If any one axiom can be challenged, does that not throw his entire belief system in doubt as to its consistency and value? And I do not mean challengeable in error relative to modern thinking and things like cognitive science, etc; I mean challengeable in his own time. Such challenges were put forth in much of the correspondence and I find many of his responses to be weak or so prolix as to be suspect.

GARONIS MORONIS:

What you say is true and can only be understood that Spinoza meant it to be that way just because they are so obviously inappropriate. But then in the clearer expositions that seem to state his real views they seem to be quite straight forward and common-sensical. He does state he has a complete system and that it is true, but complete and true to whom? You know very well it could not be obviously complete and true to the average reader because then he could be convicted and executed by the law. Yet, on the other hand, he does lay out a path for you with obviously incorrect axioms to work out on your own what the real truth might be. BUT THEN – that truth would be ONLY yours and your responsibility, not his, and then your head would be on the block!

RICHARD SANSOM:

Methinks you give Spinoza too much cleverness. In reading his letters one finds an arrogant steak, but I do not find a clever one. An example of his arrogance [or condescension?] is in one of his responses to Oldenburg, wherein he defends his position on the truth or reality of God by saying:

To the first [Oldenberg’s question if Spinoza believed in the reality of God] I answer, that not from every definition does the existence of a thing defined follow, but only (as I showed in a note appended to the three propositions) from the definition or idea of an attribute, that is (as I explained fully in the definition given of God) of a thing conceived through and in itself. The reason for this distinction was pointed out, if mistake not, in the above-mentioned note sufficiently clear at any rate for a philosopher, who is assumed to be aware of the difference between a fiction and a clear distinct idea, and also of the truth of the axiom that every definition or clear and distinct idea is true. When this has been duly noted, I do not see what more is required for the solution of your first question.

That last comment is interesting, considering that billions of words were and continue to be devoted to the problem of the existence of God. Gary, do you believe that Spinoza wrote for the “average reader,” who were no philosophers, but more likely folks with simple ideas about life? I think he wrote for his peers, and assumed that they might occasionally be as smart as he was. His reply to Oldenburg did not keep that friend from going back again and again to more the more or less same inquiry. Spinoza, to his friends as well, is/was not clear. I do not think his obscurity was a protective devise to keep people from being murdered for having Spinoza-thoughts.

LOGICAL AND LIGUISTIC PROBLEMS from LINGUISTIC BEHAVIOUR by Jonathan Bennett, Hackett, 1990, IN LIGHT OF RICHARD’S LETTER number 1

RICHARD: I believe some things have arrived with seeming spontaneity, but I have the feeling that some [or much] “background” work was being done. Things do not just fall into the brain like manna, or like we have been told spiritual revelations do. I believe that what we call “hunches” for example, occur after the brain has played around with some notion sub rosa for a while. I believe Godel’s undecidability idea came from having been immersed in number theory for many years and having a hunch that axiomatic systems are flawed in some way. I believe that the mind is a problem solving system. It evolved strictly and only to keep the human organism alive and reproducing. To do that it had to solve problems – and still does that. One technique for those solutions is trying out stuff, as you suggest. However, I seriously doubt that anything “pops” into one’s mind out of the blue. Some memory/experience made the “pop” happen.

GARONIS MORANIS: There are two points of view a person must have by A] the nature of the material organism, and B] the language of the individual material organism. The second comes first as the God’s eye point of view which is the very nature of language as it is abstracted since we are intended by our teachers to learn with their intent that there can be common communication and all the words and grammar easily understood. Since language really cannot exist by itself as abstraction, it can only exist in each separate material person within their unique physical point of view and perspective. This means the material context therefore becomes the *first*, primary determinate of language since that is the only way it in fact can be learned and can exist. However, this creates a split in the matter of the brain where language is learned in one section of the cerebrum, but the *individual person* is a creation of the united brain, two often very opposed entities even though the first is within the second. But the authority of the first, the language part of the cerebrum, is established objectively from outside by society and law, whereas the second, the whole brain, is most powerfully driven by emotion and pleasure/pain that bends objective language subtly into many private, secret forms.

GARONIS MORANIS continued: Now both aspects are necessarily determined by physical evolution as problem solving or a failure at problem solving, the efficient use of language getting good results and the bad use of language getting the organism to be extinct. So, yes, there is much *background work* done in both linguistic aspects through physical evolution over millions of years. However, since there are two aspects of language, crudely the public and the private which can also at the same time be the proper and the improper and the open and the deliberately hidden [but by the public aspect of language or the private aspect of language?], into one aspect or the other things can and obviously do pop into one aspect of language from the other seemingly out of the blue, but since such revelations are linguistically understandable either publicly or privately most of the time, not always in some cases, they must have been *worked out* in one language with some reasoning before popping into the other aspect of language. The revelation aspect would seem semi-conscious in the language that is suddenly surprised but long understood in the other aspect of language. This would explain both
*EUREKA!* and Freudian slips. That language in so-called consciousness [which is essentially always *public* but can again be divided into aspects of *public* to everybody, public only to a few people, public only to oneself, and finally not even acknowledged by oneself even though it can be and is expressible in language] can make such slips and sudden revelations proves there are at least two primary divisions in the nature of language. Yes, memory of experience does make it happen, but in which possible physical context of many possible contexts even within the self?

GARONIS MORANIS: relating to BENNETT: [ix] *Language* is *essentially a matter of systematic communicative behavior* which Bennett studies with *three major emphases*. [xi] *If we human beings are to command a whole, clear view of ourselves and our place in the scheme of things, we need to understand those aspects of our nature that we share with many other kinds of animal and those that are unique to ourselves, and to hold the two sets of aspects together in an integrated picture. The biggest obstacle to our doing this is language, which is so conspicuously unique to our species that it impedes our view of anything else that is special about us, and yet is so pervasive and familiar that it tends to drop out of sight. To see the place of language in the human condition we must get it in focus – standing back from it and from ourselves just far enough to see how it relates to the rest of us . . . H. P. [Paul] Grice explained the concept of meaning in psychological terms , analyzing *By making that gesture, Joe means that he is hungry* in terms of what Joe intends to achieve by making the gesture. Once we are straight about how meaning fits into the picture, , there is no large obstacle to bring in language as well; for language is basically a systematic vehicle of meaning, and the concept of meaning is one we understand. ¶ All that remains, if Grice is right, is to ground the concept of intention or the parent concept of desire in our deeper natures. Many philosophers today are trying to explain concepts such as that of *want* in terms of biology. So we may have a link from biology to psychology, another from that to meaning, and a third from that to language* [the *three major emphases*?].

GARONIS MORANIS relating to BENNETT: This shows that there are different aspects of language, the need to understand language as a whole, and the need * to ground the concept of intention or the parent concept of desire in our deeper natures.* Language truly is primarily problem solving but on a private level to begin with – Joe wants to get food, and language comes in when Joe wants to get food from you, the individual perception of Joe’s gesture which, however, is not automatically understood since it could also mean *You look good enough to eat*. But with that you have a complete change in social contexts so you need to check the meaning of what Joe wants. How many people are present when the gesture is made? If just the two of you, you might have a real reason to be concerned. It also demonstrates the difference between public language and private language since, if you are alone with Joe, he does not care if you understand his gesture properly at all since you will be food if you misinterpret. There are probably other and better things to relate but I am running out of time.