#albdamned | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

albdamnednotphilosophein · 9 years ago

Text

Zero and Nothing

The following is an experiment in writing to convey information to an audience in an intelligible and organic fashion. The idea is to create a dichotomy between what has been read and the reader. I seek nothing more then to establish a conversation and humbly ask for your cooperation. Thank You. -Al B.

Zero and Nothing

To begin, remove all elephants from your vicinity (Gently please!)

Regardless of who you are, what you are, where you are, when you are, why you are or how you are, you can ask a simple question, “are there any elephants around me?” To clarify some of the ambiguity in this question here are some details. By “around” I mean the immediate vicinity to which you are able to absorb a majority of the details. By “elephants” I do mean the large land mammals from Africa and Asia that are known for their empathy and intelligence. And finally, by “me” I mean the self asking the question. For example, if people were listening to this in a conference, they could ask, “Are there any elephants in the room?”

Is it fair then to make the assertion that, “there are no elephants in the room,” based on the answer to the previous question? The next thing to be asked is, “Are you sure?” I am not trying to loop you in any kind of semantically tangential or brilliant legalese. This question is also not meant to be reviewed with an absolute certainty but concerns whether there is enough confidence to put down money on it, if the option were available. If this is the case, the question ultimately becomes, “are you sure there are no elephants in the room?”

If you answered yes to the previous question, I would like to investigate some the ramifications and inconsistencies with this point of view, the first of which is the self. To begin to understand the self, does it not first require method(s) of intake for information? For humans, are these not traditionally called the senses? Think of perceiving within a single room adorned with for plain walls and with zero allowances for outside light’s admission into this room. In the center of this room is a small table with a lit candle. The light from the candle is sufficient to view the entire area of the room. Assuming you are capable, would you be able to see the area around you while the candle is lit?

Once sensed, is this information not processed into memory organized by inferred categories? Otherwise, what is to give the distinction between the sun and the yellow light at a traffic signal? Assuming you can see the room around you while the candle is lit, can you then start inferring about all that data that have been presented to you and organize that data into distinct meaning? Is this meaning most often thought of as language? Then what do you see when the candle burns its way down until the light finally ceases entirely?

If you are being consistent with the previous answer of “there are no elephants in the room,” then this answer must surely be “I see nothing.” Now imagine a person wearing a traditional tuxedo. This person is dressed for a real black tie affair. Now examine the person’s pants. You wouldn’t say, “the person is wearing no pants” but would you instead say something more like, “the person is wearing black pants?” In regards to the room with the brunt out candle, wouldn’t it be correct to say that you are seeing an encompassing darkness? Isn’t another name for this encompassing darkness simply called pitch black?

If light is perceived through the sense of sight, then colors and shades are sensations of some light? Black is also perceived in this way and is able to interact with the other colors in a variety of ways and it also has certain properties. If you were to quantify the experience of black would it be zero photons (units of light) being registered and any other color’s experience would be one or more photons being detected instead?

If your answer to this is yes, would it not be fair to revise the previous statement of, “there are no elephants in the room” to the accurate statement, “there are zero elephants in the room?” Before you get all riled up and accuse me of being a sophist ask yourself, “Is there a difference between the two?” In the realm of propositional logic there exist four kinds of categorical propositions: “All S are P,” “No S are P,” “Some S are P,” and “Some S are not P.” While “there are no elephants in the room,” clearly falls in to the “No S are P,” but does “there are zero elephants in the room,” also fit in the same category?

Black is zero photons being perceived, does it register in the mind the same as other colors? Does it give the mind the ability to recognize and build inferences from it? Is this process the same as with the other colors perceived? If those previous questions were answered with a yes, then isn’t black something? If it is something, is it false that it is nothing? Is it not necessary that when, “Some S are P” is true that, “No S are P” must be false? Therefore, logic demands that if “there are zero (some) elephants in the room” then it is “false that there are no elephants in the room.”

Now let that settle in your mind

The conclusion of zero’s somethingness is something that can bring about a great deal of dissonance when compared to the rest of our body of knowledge. To resolve this dissonance into harmony would it be shrewd then to look at the nature of zero and the way we perceive any kind of thing? And to follow up with that thought, since we need to use our senses to examine the nature of any kind of thing would it not make sense to start off understanding the ways of our perception first? This brings us to the most plain and difficult question, what is perception?

While the overall process becomes vastly complex with many sub-processes to it, is it possible to think of perception as simply having a particular kind of awareness? Thinking of perception as a kind of awareness necessitates either we have always been aware of the perception or that a method of awareness detection is being realized. Does the idea of perpetual perception match your experiences of perception? If it is not the case that we have perpetual perception and we do perceive, is it then false that we have no perception detectors?

The detectors of perception, as mentioned before, have traditionally been called the senses. Do humans, unless they have a specific reason to do otherwise, sense in five general kinds of perception? And are these senses are sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch? While it is easy to think of a particular part of the body as being the source of the perception (ex: eyes for sight or ears for sound), isn’t fair to say that the perception detectors actually run all the way to a central process and in fact are appendages of this central process?

Can these appendages then be viewed as the ways of intake for the central process? Incoming detection enters the central process and is shaped and molded by the process’ structure. The result of this process is inferred meaning of what has been detected. For example: A group of yellow has been detected, it is evenly grouped with a cessation of yellow at an equal distance away from the center of the mass of yellow. Is this the sun or a yellow traffic signal? Isn’t it fortunate then that you have a wealth of other stimuli to sort out the differences between two yellow circles? While the immensity of the data is hard to describe concisely, the central process is capable of making similar and dissimilar distinctions between the various outputs. This is because the processed input shapes the central process while being processed. Since the detector appendages are simply receiving different kind of impressions to process, the central process is only dealing with one kind of substance, impressions. How else could one process, process different kind of things?

If this is the case, how does falsehood arise? It seems almost self-evident that falsehood is in the world, isn’t it? Optical illusions, magic, and fashion all scream falsehood but where does it come from? After all, all of the data are either sensation or the organization of sensation, can falsehood be found in either of these? For a long time man has been critical of his senses. From the time of the ancient Greeks up to modern times, we have relied on reason over the senses to find truth. However, wouldn’t it be fair to examine the sense detector’s reliability again? When they are functioning, they are receiving information at a rate equal or greater to zero. Where is the false information here?

While this makes theoretical sense you can be led to think, “What about the raving madman lost in hallucination?” If the sense data are to be held as true, could we put equal faith in the processed inference? Isn’t that inference the very problem of the madman? A person lost in these kinds of delusion could be schizophrenic, but ultimately there was a reason for the sensation to occur. This would mean all the sensation detected is true. For this not to be the case, ask yourself if there was a time you ever experienced a false sensation while not it being a false inference?

If this is the case then is all the information humans sense true and does falsehood then arises from inferences? This realization then pulls us to the question, “If the composite of some true sensation is the totality of information processed, how then can we come to an impression of falsehood?” Remember that there is a true reason for everything sensed. However, there are more then two things that are green and more then two things taste sweet. This requires us to rely on the total wealth of the experience to determine what we are dealing with, would it not?

This experience could be thought of as the seeming of the conjunction of the five senses. Is it fair to then say that we do not actually have direct interaction with an experience but with its seeming? This seeming then can be thought of as proceeding through time, if this is the case does the seeming not begin like a filament of experience? Examination of this filament could give an “impression” of patterns. This “impression” could be then compared to other filament’s patterns or the same filament at another point of it. Is this how we build analogies?

For example, if we were examining a section of a filament that possessed a pattern [3,5,7] in it and then comparing it to a pattern of progressing odd numbers [1,3,5,7,9] could you be led to believe that the [3,5,7] section is part of another progression of odd numbers? Now if the there was further investigation of the first filament and you were able to realize additional numbers to the pattern’s set, which are [1,2,3,5,7,11], your previous conclusion of the sameness between the sets was incorrect. In fact this set contains all prime numbers. At this point would all false information be reducible to making a mistake in recognizing patterns?

The only question to this is then how did these mistakes arise? Ultimately, it is a failure to rectify two separate pieces of information held as true. However, where does this failure arise? When examining the two sets, the known and the unknown, the understanding of the known is believed to be fixed while the unknown is becoming fixed through the comparison to the known. However, is it possible to learn new things about a known? Is the boundary of the known less then fixed and easily adjustable when sensation demands it? Would this mean that when inquiring about a known pattern that it will only provide further true information about it? If this is the case, then the “falsehood” derives from the unknown. Treating an unknown like a known allows for a mistaken impression of “falsehood.” While this would also occur if you were treating an unknown as false, could it not be shown to be true later? Therefore, humans perceive some information that is always true, (or the false “no/none” equivalent) and can process undetermined information as if it is determined, with the potential for problems arising from it.

Once grounded in the distinction of what is determined and what is undetermined, you can now apply what has been already acknowledged

At this point you may be still left feeling, “what is the point?” After all, zero elephants in a room has just as much predictive capability as no elephants in a room, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be hasty to dismiss the differences between zero and nothing based on that account alone? Isn’t there more to be known then what will occur? That must lead you to the question, “can the zero tell me something that nothing cannot?

The first thing to examine under this line of thought is to focus on where zero comes from. As discussed before, humans receive “some true information” through the senses and another way viewing it that we receive “no false information” correct? However, do we perceive either “false some information” or “true no information?” A person with a keen mind at this point would state that those two sources of information are less then determined by humans. How then are we able to describe what has been less then determined?

Would it be then required for this to be the case that either we do have information from those categorical propositions or that the “less then determined” propositions are ultimately grounded within a known? If the former is the case, from where does zero arise? Even with true knowledge about all, where would zero go? In the case of some, it is possible to arrange an all made out of some and firmly within all. For example, if you possess a basket of apples containing 10 red apples, could you be led to say, “all these apples are red?” This proposition ultimately is reducible to a type of language where “all these” is quantifiable to 10 apples at a particular moment of time. However, as is and within a closed system, does the “all” begin to seem like a universal?

In order to do this would someone need to simply raise the level of familiarity to the point where any other information is excluded? Doesn’t this closed system still exist solely and completely within the realm of something? If this is the case isn’t the “all” propositional information subject to the rules of the some propositional information (such as also being capable of being viewed as a false no proposition)? Along with the all information, could “some not” propositions also be treated in this way? If this is the case we are left with two expressions of truth but what of zero?

While “some” is often thought of as a grouping of things, in the way we are viewing perceived data would it then be more exact to say, “I see X amount of stimuli?” Wouldn’t this number, if it were more then one, essentially be an aggregate consisting of ones? Would it change the sum total of the aggregate if zero were to be added along with the ones? If this is true then zero has the potential to be a part of every single thing and yet unperceived. Would this then give zero an omnipresent position with all the information we have (which again falls in the true some proposition/false no proposition)?

This would seem troubling for a paper that spends a great deal of its time talking about zero. How can you distinguish something that adds zero value to a sum total of experience? Would adding more of something (and thus making an aggregate of ones) reveal any more of zero or would it be just as less then distinguished? However, examining certain things can still expose zero. How many objects are within a void, (This could be thought of mathematically as an empty set, [ ], which could be contrasted with a set like [0,1,2,3,4])? Defining the words “how” and “many” will clear up any ambiguity over this question. “How,” in this sense is requesting information on a thing’s quality, and the word “many” is specifying the nature of that quality to the thing’s quantity. This being the case, would the answer to the question then be, “there are zero objects in the void?”

Is the void nothing? While it can seem to be that way it is possible to derive information of a natural value, (zero) from it. If it is possible to derive a number from the void is it possible to derive one from the void as well? How many empty sets are here [ ]? This would mean it is possible to derive both numbers, as well as any aggregate, from a void. These numbers can then be built on and used to establish the variety of inferences that make up our life. However, is zero coming from the void then? In both cases the [ ] empty set was analyzed to generate the numbers. While the nature of the void is to be void, it appears to be full of zeros. Is it the case that while trying to capture the void we ended throwing the net back on ourselves (something) instead?

Is it not the case that in order to be void that it must be devoid “of some things?” Then would the void then lay beyond zero, with zero acting as behind adjacent between some and whatever lays beyond? This would finally allow us to give zero the definition as the minimum of some. Think of any situation you can involve some things, the smallest perceivable value is zero and the largest is some far off and less then determined number. Does the minimum and one lay in anything other then the “some” categorical proposition?

This would leave us with one form of true “some” knowledge, which can be view equally true as a false “no” knowledge and zero firmly grounded in something. The first concept that I would like to address now is the principal of non-contradiction. Simply put, “A” cannot be “not A.” On the surface it would make perfect sense and does make sense within the confines of a closed set residing in a “some” proposition. However, does it make sense without being qualified? While “A” (some) is capable of being detected as true, do you have any information, other then zero, in regards to “not A” being true? Is “not A” beyond the realm of true some? By its definitional nature of “not A” isn’t “not A” basically false some? We have zero information on the subject of false some (but only true some); therefore, wouldn’t the statement then be, “A cannot be not A” results with a less then determined truth-value?

Using this practice, could one also examine paradoxes in this way? Let’s try out the classic paradox of the liar. The Liar saying, “This statement is false” is the gist of the paradox. Couldn’t we proceed in the same fashion as the law of non-contradiction? We are examining two truths after all, the truth of the overall statement and the truth of the “false.” This false would be reducible to a less then defined truth value, which in turns converts the entire statement to a less then defined truth value. If a paradox is a collection of seemingly true statements that seem to contradict each other, where is the contradiction when an undefined statement is examined and accepted as it is?

To Conclude

While it is important to realize the differences of zero and nothing, the most profound revelations are to be found in personal uses. If we live our lives without this distinction, we live our lives in a world that we build up a misplaced sense of grounding only to have it pulled out from under us. Our mind plays tricks on us, people deceive us, and the world is out to get us. Furthermore, in this distinction-less world we are able to focus our attention on what we are not with the mistaken perception that we are focusing on ourselves. When this happens, we feel we can eliminate what we are not and then we are free to be what we are. For example, “I do not want to go to school anymore” will tell you zero things about what you want to do. This ultimately still tells us something. And yet people will make actions based on this “don’t want.” Any action stemming from this thinking is ultimately groundless and devoid of reason. None of us wants that, do we?

#experimental essay #epistemology #aestethics #albdamned #philosophein

2 notes · View notes

albdamnednotphilosophein · 9 years ago

Text

The Existential Jack Skellington

The main character in the Nightmare Before Christmas is a poster child for existential philosophy. Jack Skellington’s journey throughout the film highlights all of the key and fundamental parts that make up existentialism. All of these parts are presented to the audience in a very approachable and believable experience. This in addition to the various other characters sharing similar experiences, The Nightmare Before Christmas would make an excellent material example of what Existentialism is. In order to make the most out of the least, this essay will review the key elements of Jack’s situation and actions in the film. There will be an explanation of the relevant existential philosophy at work. The story begins with the Halloween celebration in Halloween Town. The ghoulish town folk are dragging around a scarecrow on a cart to the town square. All ready there is a strong existential element, for that scarecrow is actually Jack’s “costume” for the celebration. A scarecrow is basically a lifeless object that scares people. Scaring people in Halloween Town is how everyone feels complete. Jack on the other hand, is experiencing no joy in scaring people and this leads him to doubt. This doubt in turns leads to Jack’s Lament. This Iconic scene has Jack wandering through a cemetery. He isn’t alone in the cemetery but besides first summoning Zero, his dog, he ignores or is unaware of anyone else. This song has a Shakespearian soliloquy feel to it. In it, he first explains how he is the apex of what a person should be. However, this brings him no joy and he desires for something more. This perfectly shows a person going through doubt. Jack has become the idealize form of a person but without satisfaction this position is meaningless. This meaninglessness has him go off on a night walk that turns into a sleep walk. When he woke up he saw something he hasn’t seen before, something new. In front of Jack laid a semi-circle of trees all with a door in front of him. Each of the doors were differently designed to resemble a iconic element of common American holidays. After examining all the doors, Jack grabbed on a doorknob and twisted. It was the door resembling a Christmas tree. As he opened the door he was sucked through the doorway. Inside was a vortex of snowflakes and swirling colors leading him to a place of wonder. As Jack first saw Christmas Town he became obsessed with one single question, “what is this?” He stealthfully went around and examined the new world and procured a great deal of samples of Christmas as well as a snowmobile. Jack takes all of his new stuff back to Halloween Town and presents all of his findings to the town folk. While being fascinated, Jack can see that that the town folk are only trying to relate Christmas to Halloween rather then, as it’s own separate event. All the while the question, “what is this?” has dominated Jack’s mind with never ending vigor. He himself does not fully understand Christmas and he cannot handle that fact. This is Jack’s foray into angst. This angst leads Jack into trying to understand Christmas by any means necessary. He delves into the Christmas storybooks but after a great deal of time he does not make any progress understanding what Christmas really is. Because of this, Jack decides to change his method of understanding. He does this and then takes out a book titled, “Scientific Method” and then proceeds from there. The Experiments are all ghastly, (not in any kind of Halloween Town kind of ghastly) with each one sacrificing a sample of Christmas each time. All of these experiments fail yield and kind of meaning to Jack. This returns Jack to doubt but with an added frustration of being doubts on both “worlds” he has known. It was in this desperation and misery that Jack made a leap of faith, bad faith. He had a vision of himself wearing a Santa outfit and thought that he should be running Christmas this year. This is an act of inauthenticity and is made all the more obvious in that he is idolizing a vision of himself, a vision of a picture of him. This idolization is basically the same as the scarecrow costume from the beginning of the film. The only difference now is that Jack thinks they are different and he actually wants to embrace it. Jack enlists the town folk of Halloween Town to help him make Christmas. During this time the folly of Jack’s plan comes to light. He is just as guilty of not understanding what Christmas is and ends up projecting a very twisted version of Halloween onto Christmas. The end result is a mockery of Christmas. Jack also has three trick-or-treaters kidnap Santa Claus. As Jack goes out on Christmas Eve the humans he interacts with react in a predictable horror. His Christmas is ended when he is literally shot out of the sky. Landing in a cemetery, Jack contemplates his situation and wonders what went wrong. He is immersed with angst at its worse but hasn’t given up. Jack’s Christmas was a failure on every account but Jack is not concerned with that. Jack finally realizes what he wanted to do instead of focusing what he wants to be. What he wanted to do was, to do his best. This is the break from his bad faith and complete realization of what it means to be a being. He accepts the absurd reality for what it is and is still able to make meaning in his life. He also is able to accomplish things he couldn’t or didn’t do before. He vanquished his foe, recognized his one true love and was able be happy. This could not be the end of Jack Skellington, however. After all he was the dead scarecrow at the beginning of the film and at the end of the film he shreds the false identity and embraces himself. It would be more appropriate to say that the film ends with the beginning of his life.

#nightmare before christmas #jack skellington #existentialism #existential crisis #albdamned #philosophein

1 note · View note