Dec 28, 2022
On some philosophical issues
Make it all one
The wise knows how to generalize the particular (he finds out why they are all the same) and how to solve paradoxes (he reasons correctly).
The wise and the universal man are sometimes the same person.
The most important idea conceived in Europe is the universal man. (The universal man is often religious.)
If you practice a religion, you will discover, as some anticipated it, a world-view; and, if you add to that world-view different knowledges (from philosophy, art and sciences) without contradicting it, you will discover a universal man –a religious universal man. (And, by changing your religion, you can become a different religious universal man.)
Study philosophy at a university
I studied philosophy at University of Bucharest.
By studying philosophy there, I discovered its method, which consists in seeing the unity in diversity. Philosophers used it from antiquity to modernity. It was my most important discovery.
– What brings you to us?, one of the professors asked me during the Masters interview.
– The problem of induction, I answered.
But I did not solve that problem as a student, in my twenties; I will solve it later.
By reversing Plato’s position like Edmund Gettier, what you may discover is an asymmetry: What you say may correspond to facts without having knowledge, never the reverse.[1]
The asymmetry that made me robust to a class of confusions, I found it in epistemology: There is correspondence to facts without knowledge, never the reverse.[2]
The Romanian professor and philosopher Ilie Pârvu does not philosophize without a method; on the contrary –and his method is to see the unity in diversity. And that is wisdom.[3] [4]
Consider the scientific method as a theme; to make variations on it, apply it.
To solve the problem of induction: If you believe that “All swans are white,” and see a black swan, you will discover the truth by falsification: “Not all swans are white.”[5] And, once your belief is falsified, it will be always falsified.[6]
To generalize and to generalize by falsification is not the same thing.[7]
The truths that we discover by falsification[8] are absolute: Just as not all swans are white, given that black swans do exist,[9] not all planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Sun’s rotation, given that retrograde planets do exist.[10]
“Only the moon rotates around the Earth.” That is a truth that we discovered by falsification and is an absolute truth.[11]
As I am reading Richard Feynman, I discovered that once the law of conservation of parity is falsified, it will always be falsified;[12] [13] and that is a solved problem of induction.
To test a unifying principle in physics, you must look not only at the data that do not reject it, but also at data that do –proceed, like a Popperian, by falsification.
Epistemology and cognitive neuroscience are, sometimes, one: To subtract what is false and add what is true, your frontal lobes need to be intact.[14]
Another thing: To solve the mind-body problem by falsification, assume that no brain is not without use and see if those who damage it, damage the mind also.[15]
From antiquity to modernity, philosophers use the same method: They discover the unity in diversity.[16]
How to falsify Immanuel Kant, for whom all causes have effects? By showing that all future causes have no past effects.[17]
I am a liar, but I do not lie all the time, such as now, when I just said that I was a liar.[18]
“All men are liars,” as David, the king of Israel, said. He did not lie when he said that; to lie and to lie all the time is not the same thing.[19] (And that is not only a solved liar’s paradox; but also, a solved problem of induction.)
Rephrasing it: To solve the liar’s paradox, listen to my words:
– I am a liar, I, the liar, said. Given that it is the truth, I do not lie all the time.[20]
Post scriptum: A book that was very useful to me, as a student, is Victor Brochard’s Les sceptiques grecs. I have a commentary to make here: To either trust or distrust a scientific dogma, you must first test it.
Addition: Can we solve the problem of induction without Sir Karl Popper, that is, without falsification?
– Let us assume that we live in a world in which a swan cannot be different than white and we know it. If we see some swans, some white swans, we can generalize that all swans are white.
The universe is uniform on a large scale, as Hélène Courtois has shown; and that is not an unsolved problem of induction.
A return to the problem of induction
(An answer to the European Commission)
Are we justified to infer the universal from the particular? If all the swans we see are white, are we justified to believe that all swans are white? That is the problem of induction. (Many philosophers consider it. –As Nassim Taleb said, the problem of induction is not David Hume’s problem, but Sextus Empiricus’.)
How to solve it?
If a swan cannot be different than white and we know it and, given our question, all the swans that we see are white, then we are justified to infer the truth that all swans are white (induction) (And the truth is absolute.); otherwise, we are not justified –but if we assume that all swans are white and see a single black swan, we will falsify the assumption and also discover the truth that not all swans are white (For Nassim Taleb, we can discover the truth by falsification. –And the truth that we discover by falsification is absolute.); that is Popperian falsification; and once our assumption is falsified, it will always be falsified (induction by falsification). As we can see, they are either all the same or not, but no matter how they are, we can generalize without mistakes.
We can make two mistakes here: One is to believe that they are not all the same when they are all the same, and the other is to believe that they are all the same when they are not all the same. (Those who study errors may be familiar with them.)
As in this case, proceed in all the circumstances.
The problem of induction is solved.
Other cases from science.
Just as not all swans are white, given that black swans do exist (Nassim Taleb.), not all planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Sun’s rotation, given that retrograde planets do exist (As I discovered in a scientific paper.). Once you falsify it, it will always be falsified; induction by falsification.
As I am reading Richard Feynman, I discovered that once the law of conservation of parity is falsified, it will always be falsified (Beta decay.) (When beta decay falsified the law of conservation of parity, as Richard Feynman reminded us, it became evident that sir Karl Popper is right.); that is a solved problem of induction.
By reading Frank Wilczek, I discovered that to know why all photons are the same, we must consider their origin –it is the same; that is a solved problem of induction.
The universe is uniform on a large scale, as Hélène Courtois has shown; that is not an unsolved problem of induction.
In conclusion, how to solve the problem of induction is no longer a mystery, and scientific research is essential to solve it.
Renaissance returns
The Renaissance man survived Renaissance and can make it return.
The Renaissance man
The Renaissance man, who is a universal man, survived Renaissance and can make it return…The idea of the Renaissance man.
By the Lindy effect: The idea of the Renaissance man is in the middle of its life and will survive as much as it has survived so far.
Who is a universal man? He who makes a whole of various types of knowledge.
Who is a religious universal man? He who makes a whole of various types of knowledge without contradicting his religion. (And, by changing his faith, he can become a different religious universal man.) (The birth of the religious universal man is, usually, associated with the Renaissance, but he is older than that.)
Intellectual life in Europe
From antiquity to modernity, intellectual life in Europe has in common, among other things, the problem of induction. What is its solution? To pass from the particular to the universal, justify your induction. (And different inductions have different justifications.)
Another thing: Like a universal man, do not just solve the problem of induction; make a whole of various types of knowledge.
Likewise, with the liar’s paradox. (A liar who confesses that he is a liar does not contradict himself.) Like a universal man, do not just solve it; make a whole from various types of knowledge.
How to solve the problem of induction
Are we justified to infer the universal from the particular? If all the swans we see are white, are we justified to believe that all swans are white? That is the problem of induction. (Many philosophers consider it. –As Nassim Taleb said, the problem of induction is not David Hume’s problem, but Sextus Empiricus’.)
How to solve it?
If a swan cannot be different than white and we know it and, given our question, all the swans that we see are white, then we are justified to infer the truth that all swans are white (induction) (And the truth is absolute.); otherwise, we are not justified –but if we assume that all swans are white and see a single black swan, we will falsify the assumption and also discover the truth that not all swans are white (For Nassim Taleb, we can discover the truth by falsification. –And the truth that we discover by falsification is absolute.); that is Popperian falsification; and once our assumption is falsified, it will always be falsified (induction by falsification). As we can see, they are either all the same or not, but no matter how they are, we can generalize without mistakes.
We can make two mistakes here: One is to believe that they are not all the same when they are all the same, and the other is to believe that they are all the same when they are not all the same. (Those who study errors may be familiar with them.)
As in this case, proceed in all the circumstances.
The problem of induction is solved.
Other cases from science
Just as not all swans are white, given that black swans do exist (Nassim Taleb.), not all planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Sun’s rotation, given that retrograde planets do exist (As I discovered in a scientific paper.). Once you falsify it, it will always be falsified; induction by falsification.
As I read Richard Feynman, I discovered that once the law of conservation of parity is falsified, it will always be falsified (Beta decay.) (When beta decay falsified the law of conservation of parity, as Richard Feynman reminded us, it became evident that sir Karl Popper was right.); that is a solved problem of induction.
By reading Frank Wilczek, I discovered that to know why all photons are the same, we must consider their origin –it is the same; that is a solved problem of induction.
The universe is uniform on a large scale, as Hélène Courtois has shown; that is not an unsolved problem of induction.
(Not only falsification, as Sir Karl Popper proposed, but also induction, as some believed before Popper and others still believe after him, is a scientific method.)
And three cases from Judaism
There is a justified induction in The Book of Genesis: As a man dies, all will, given that no one can eat the fruits of the tree of life anymore –the first man and woman sinned against God.
Another justified induction in The Tanach, that is, the Hebrew Bible: For the Ecclesiastes, as one thing is vanity, all things are vanities; what justifies his induction is this: He searched out by wisdom everything that exists under the sky.
If you believe that everyone is unjust, Job may falsify you –and once you falsify your belief, you will always falsify it.
How to solve the problem of induction is no longer a known unknown. A solution: You must know all the particulars and see if there is unity in diversity. Another solution: You must know if all the particulars cannot not have something in common. And another solution: Once falsified, always falsified –any given scientific theory; here, Popperian falsifiability solves the problem of induction. (Or any belief.) What you see are different solutions to different problems of induction in different domains (sometimes, the domain is not religious).
When you solve the problem of induction, you know why they are all the same. (As Sextus Empiricus inspired me, if you do not know why they are all the same, do not say that they are all alike.)
Post Scriptum: Solving the problem of induction is progress in reasoning rather than knowledge.
Addition: For many philosophers, such as David Hume, causality is an induction problem. If you solve the problem of induction, causality is known.
Either similar causes produce similar effects all the time or not. In either case, you can generalize. (The former: “There is no smoke without fire.” And the latter: Iatrogenic disease as absolute truth discovered by falsification.)
How to solve the liar’s paradox
The opposite of speaking the truth is not silence, but lying; usually, we do both in the same language.
When a liar whom you know to be a liar says that he is a liar, he tells the truth; and, so, you are reminded of the complete truth about him: He does not lie all the time; another thing: If you consider the liar’s paradox, you have its solution right in front of you.
Even a man who always lies all the time, if he says he is a liar, tells the truth and no longer lies all the time.
“All men are liars,” as David, the king of Israel, said. He did not lie when he said that; to lie and to lie all the time is not the same thing. And that is not only a solved liar’s paradox; but also a solved problem of induction. (The problem of induction and the liar’s paradox are, sometimes, one.)
Rephrasing it: To solve the liar’s paradox, listen to my words:
– I am a liar, I, the liar, said. Given that it is the truth, there is no contradiction: I do not lie all the time.
(Just as, as Nassim Taleb said, the problem of induction is Sextus Empiricus’ problem (not David Hume’s), the origin of the liar’s paradox is David, the king of Israel (not Epimenides of Cnossos).)
The liar’s paradox and the problem of induction are, once solved, opportunities to become a religious universal man.
Solving paradoxes
Solving paradoxes.
“The Meno’s paradox.” You do not know it from a previous life, if you know it.
In Antoine Fuqua’s “Infinite,” the same body of scientific knowledge can be used either for the benefit of our world or to harm it, depending on who has access to it[21] –the evildoers will be killed.[22]
“The Zeno’s paradox.” In a race, the quickest runner can overtake the slowest, even if the former must first reach the point from where the latter started –there is no the infinite number of intervals.
“The Epimenides’ paradox.” When a liar whom you know to be a liar says that he is a liar, he tells the truth; and, so, you are reminded of the complete truth about him: He does not lie all the time; another thing: If you consider the liar’s paradox, you have its solution right in front of you.
Just as, as Nassim Taleb said, the problem of induction is Sextus Empiricus’ problem (not David Hume’s), the origin of the liar’s paradox is David, the king of Israel (not Epimenides of Cnossos).
“All men are liars,” as David, the king of Israel, said. He did not lie when he said that; to lie and to lie all the time is not the same thing. And that is not only a solved liar’s paradox; but also, a solved problem of induction. (The problem of induction and the liar’s paradox are, sometimes, one.)
“The paradox of the stone.” God cannot create a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it, because He is omnipotent; any stone that He creates, He can also lift it.
“The Moore’s paradox.” I cannot not believe it, if I know it.
To solve paradoxes, you must reason correctly.
James Bond stories
One more shot for James Bond
Based upon Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
What would you do if your enemies came to kill you? And how would you keep your conscience clear?
In Paris, France, M., the Head of MI6, is ambushed. As he was walking down a street, he thought he saw a former lover; when he approached her, some men jumped on him and made him enter a car with other men who pointed their guns at him. A successful ambush.
Those who ambushed M. hold him prisoner in a building. And they made him look like a different person –their leader.
M. did not betray his secret service and refused to join them.
M. recognized them by how they changed his appearance and the interrogatory: They were the criminal organization SPECTRE.
The MI6 noticed that M. was missing and began a search for him.
To make any intelligence officer, in this case, James Bond, kill M. instead of the leader of SPECTRE, SPECTRE wanted that intelligence officer to confuse the Head of MI6 with its leader, given that now the former could pass for the latter; SPECTRE would kill M. if the person they sent were not to kill him; another thing: SPECTRE expected the MI6 to fail to rescue M. (they would “rescue” the leader of SPECTRE instead; SPECTRE also made its leader look like M.; the leader of SPECTRE is in a different building) and think otherwise and inform the intelligence officer.
The MI6 found the two buildings with the help of the cameras on the streets, a satellite and some witnesses. They knew what happened to M., that those who ambushed him went in separate directions, and that they are SPECTRE (they recognized some of its assassins).
But James Bond recognized M. by the scar behind his right ear when he tried to kill “the leader of SPECTRE” from a different building and, instead of killing him, rescued him.
To rescue M., James Bond had to kill all who stood in his way.
“They are SPECTRE…,” said M. to James Bond.
“Yes,” said James Bond.
James Bond informed the MI6, but it was too late for the team they sent to rescue M..
The leader of SPECTRE murdered the team sent to rescue M. soon after the rescue was over and James Bond was informed; SPECTRE surveyed them.
Then, in a few days and outside the city of Paris, the MI6 did to SPECTRE what SPECTRE wanted to do to them (The MI6 ambushed the leader of SPECTRE in Paris (they found him, as they found M.) and took him outside the city and let SPECTRE know where they hold him prisoner) –the MI6 was a smaller group than SPECTRE; thus, in almost a day, the leader of SPECTRE and his assassins were killed.
M. killed the leader of SPECTRE when they came to rescue him. The dead leader of SPECTRE and the last leader of SPECTRE is the same person.
And thus, they were no longer vulnerable to SPECTRE.
Now M. and James Bond are at a party together in Paris.
To have a clear conscience, do to your enemies as they want to do to you.
Post Scriptum: M. also lives as a philosophy professor. He was in Paris because he solved the problem of induction. On the day before he was ambushed, he gave a lecture on it; and he stayed another day to give another talk.
How to solve
the problem of induction
My most significant contribution to philosophy
M.’s notes
Solving the problem of induction.
Are we justified to infer the universal from the particular? If all the swans we see are white, are we justified to believe that all swans are white? That is the problem of induction. (Many philosophers consider it. –As Nassim Taleb said, the problem of induction is not David Hume’s problem, but Sextus Empiricus’.)
How to solve it?
If a swan cannot be different than white and we know it and, given our question, all the swans that we see are white, then we are justified to infer the truth that all swans are white (induction) (And the truth is absolute.); otherwise, we are not justified –but if we assume that all swans are white and see a single black swan, we will falsify the assumption and also discover the truth that not all swans are white (For Nassim Taleb, we can discover the truth by falsification. –And the truth that we discover by falsification is absolute.); that is Popperian falsification; and once our assumption is falsified, it will always be falsified (induction by falsification). As we can see, they are either all the same or not, but no matter how they are, we can generalize without mistakes.
We can make two mistakes here: One is to believe that they are not all the same when they are all the same, and the other is to believe that they are all the same when they are not all the same. (Those who study errors may be familiar with them.)
As in this case, proceed in all the circumstances.
The problem of induction is solved.
Other cases from science.
Just as not all swans are white, given that black swans do exist (Nassim Taleb.), not all planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Sun’s rotation, given that retrograde planets do exist (As I discovered in a scientific paper.). Once you falsify it, it will always be falsified; induction by falsification.
As I am reading Richard Feynman, I discovered that once the law of conservation of parity is falsified, it will always be falsified (Beta decay.) (When beta decay falsified the law of conservation of parity, as Richard Feynman reminded us, it became evident that sir Karl Popper is right.); that is a solved problem of induction.
By reading Frank Wilczek, I discovered that to know why all photons are the same, we must consider their origin –it is the same; that is a solved problem of induction.
The universe is uniform on a large scale, as Hélène Courtois has shown; that is not an unsolved problem of induction.
And three cases from Judaism.
There is a justified induction in The Book of Genesis: As a man dies, all will, given that no one can eat the fruits of the tree of life anymore –the first man and woman sinned against God.
Another justified induction in The Tanach, that is, the Hebrew Bible: For the Ecclesiastes, as one thing is vanity, all things are vanities; what justifies his induction is this: He searched out by wisdom everything that exists under the sky.
If you believe that everyone is unjust, Job may falsify you –and once you falsify your belief, you will always falsify it.
How to solve the problem of induction is no longer a known unknown. A solution: You must know all the particulars and see if there is unity in diversity. Another solution: You must know if all the particulars cannot not have something in common. And another solution: Once falsified, always falsified –any given scientific theory; here, Popperian falsifiability solves the problem of induction. (Or any belief.) What you see are different solutions to different problems of induction in different domains (sometimes, the domain is not religious).
When you solve the problem of induction, you know why they are all the same. (As Sextus Empiricus inspired me, if you do not know why they are all the same, do not say that they are all alike.)
Post Scriptum: Solving the problem of induction is progress in reasoning rather than knowledge.
Addition: For many philosophers, such as David Hume, causality is an induction problem. If you solve the problem of induction, causality is known.
Either similar causes produce similar effects all the time or not. In either case, you can generalize. (The former: “There is no smoke without fire.” And the latter: Iatrogenic disease as absolute truth discovered by falsification.)
Final shot for James Bond
Based upon Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
The M. diary
Monday
The opposite of speaking the truth is not silence, but lying; usually, we do both in the same language.
Tuesday
When a liar whom you know to be a liar says that he is a liar, he tells the truth; and, so, you are reminded of the complete truth about him: He does not lie all the time; another thing: If you consider the liar’s paradox, you have its solution right in front of you.
Wednesday
Even a man who always lies all the time, if he says he is a liar, tells the truth and no longer lies all the time.
Thursday
“All men are liars,” as David, the king of Israel, said. He did not lie when he said that; to lie and to lie all the time is not the same thing. And that is not only a solved liar’s paradox; but also a solved problem of induction. (The problem of induction and the liar’s paradox are, sometimes, one.)
Friday
Rephrasing it: To solve the liar’s paradox, listen to my words:
– I am a liar, I, the liar, said. Given that it is the truth, there is no contradiction: I do not lie all the time.
Sunday
James Bond informs that the woman who worked for SPECTRE to ambush me in Paris is dead; she was killed outside Paris with one shot in the head. The man who killed her is Bond.
Monday
SPECTRE; the cost of its path is destruction.
See the cost of its path to avoid evil, like king Solomon.
Tuesday
“The Meno’s paradox.” You do not know it from a previous life if you know it.
Wednesday
“The Zeno’s paradox.” In a race, the quickest runner can overtake the slowest, even if the former must first reach the point from where the latter started –there is no infinite number of intervals.
Thursday
“The paradox of the stone.” God cannot create a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it, because He is omnipotent; any stone that He makes, He can also lift it.
Friday
“The Moore’s paradox.” I cannot not believe it if I know it.
To solve any paradox, you must reason correctly, given its theme.
[1] It was my first lesson in epistemology.
[2] No Plato without Edmund Gettier.
[3] When knowledge progresses: To turn chaos into order, see the unity in diversity, as Ilie Pârvu did in the case of infinity.
[4] Another thing that I learned from Ilie Pârvu is to meet other philosophers; Pârvu met Sir Karl Popper.
[5] Many philosophers consider Sir Karl Popper’s falsification a method to find the truth in science, such as Nassim Taleb.
[6] Use Sir Karl Popper’s falsification to solve the problem of induction.
[7] Once the statement that “All swans are white.” is falsified, it will always be falsified.
Avoid other generalizations when knowledge is absent and the truth cannot be inferred, as Sextus Empiricus did.
[8] As Nassim Taleb inspired.
[9] Nassim Taleb.
[10] Masters interview.
[11] Once the scientific theory that “All celestial bodies rotate around the Earth.” is falsified, it will always be falsified.
For Galileo Galilei, not all celestial bodies rotate around the Earth: the moons of Jupiter; Galilei was the one who falsified it. (Stephen Hawking)
[12] Beta decay.
[13] When beta decay falsified the law of conservation of parity, as Richard Feynman reminded us, it became evidence that sir Karl Popper is right.
[14] That is what I have shown when I studied philosophy.
[15] By either lobotomies as the ones performed by António Edgar Moniz (Daniel Gilbert) or work accidents, like in the case of Phineas Gage (Antonio Damasio), as I discovered, when I was a student.
[16] Their predecessor, the oldest one, is the Jewish sage and king Solomon.
You may discover an asymmetry by reading Solomon: You can discover the unity in diversity without making variations on the same theme, never the reverse.
[17] In other words, we reverse the arrow of time.
[18] That is my solution to what modern logicians call the liar’s paradox.
[19] And that is the solution to what we the moderns call the liar’s paradox.
[20] Another absolute truth.
[21] Similar to the Guglielmo Marconi’s problem.
“Have I done the world good, or have I added a menace?” is Guglielmo Marconi’s problem. Marconi is a known Italian inventor and engineer. The solution to his problem is this: With the same invention is possible to both add a menace and do the world good, depending on the people who use it.
[22] In Antoine Fuqua’s film, your soul is one with your body, it survives your death and can preexist your body and remember what you learned in a previous life –what they call knowing. (Consider Plato’s “Meno.”)
(For me, it is not all true: The soul does not preexist the body.)
