Jupiviv writes: "So you think that Kelly is wrong to say that you think your views are right - yes or no? / If you followed your philosophy to its conclusion, then it wouldn't be possible to do or say anything, since anything we say or do would be a "rigid position." / Philosophy is actually very much like pure mathematics, since it involves the use of deductive logic. Even the sciences (including the soft sciences) involve the use of deductive logic at a core level. Even the arts involve the use of logic. Any great work of art is also highly logical to some degree, especially music."
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Please consider the following:
From
Systems philosophy, Wikipedia page:
Systems philosophy is the study of the development of systems, with an emphasis on design and root cause analysis. Systems philosophy is a form of systems thinking.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founder of systems science, categorized three domains of systemics: the philosophy of systems, the theory of systems, and the technology of systems. This was later modified by Béla H. Bánáthy of the Primer Group to a fourfold model, the philosophy, the science, the methodology and the action of systemics. The philosophy and the science of systems constitute the knowledge of systems; the methodology and the application constitute the action of systems.
According to systems philosophy, there are no "systems" in nature. The universe, the world and nature have no ability to describe themselves. That which is, is. With respect to nature, conceptual systems are merely models that humans create in an attempt to understand the environment in which they live. The system model is used because it more accurately describes the observations.
Because systems are models created only for understanding, the most fundamental property of any system is that a system has an arbitrary boundary. Humans create the boundaries to suit their own purposes of analysis, discussion and understanding. This is true of every conceptual model that was devised through which humans try to understand the universe.
Arbitrary does not mean random or meaningless. Arbitrary merely means without previous dependency. We assume that the Universe is objective, but our experience is tempered by our subjective understanding. We see what we look at.
Systems are further expressed by listing the elements relationships, wholes, and rules associated with that system. Again, this is an arbitrary exercise true of all models humans create.
What are system elements? Elements might be tangible or intangible, real or imaginary. Conceptually, elements are merely terms and definitions. For example, in the system or model of measurement, the arbitrary terms of height, width, and length describe the three dimensions of physical space. Additional elements of that system describe those three fundamental elements: inches, feet, meters, kilometers, etc. However, those elements are meaningless without definitions. Definitions are necessary for all terms, whether or not those terms represent tangible or intangible elements. Definitions and terms are added as necessary to help understand any model.
Relationships are ontologically different from elements, just as the meaning of these words differ from the letters making it up, an element is a thing, a relationship is what a thing is doing. The relationship constrains the system into having at least two elements. Often the relationship has an emergent property, and in most cases these elements and relationships emerge as a whole.
A systemic whole is directly related to the relationships of elements, in that our experience of such a relationship is as a whole. One of the significant characteristics of a system of this type is that there are properties of the whole that cannot be found in the elements. Meaning, for example, is not found in the properties of these letters you are reading.
A rule is anything describing how the elements are related or behave dynamically. Rules describe how a system functions. Rules describe how system elements interact, and those original arbitrary boundaries establish finite limits of how the rules affect the elements. Inches and feet, or meters and kilometers, are elements of the system of measurement, but the relationship of those elements are rules. There are twelve inches in a foot, 1,000 meters in a kilometer, etc.
A system with no elements and no rules—boundaries only—is called a null system.
Change any boundary, element, or rule in any system and a completely new system appears. Observations made in one system might, or might not, hold true for a different system.
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I am not a 'philosopher' in the sense that you use the term, and possibly the way that the term is used here universally. I see logic and reasoning as an essential part of life---my life, our lives---but I do not see 'mathematical reasoning', Aristotelian logic, as a method that leads to a comprehensive or holistic
understanding of life. Because one will reason about a group of elements, and cannot reason from the position of the 'whole', one is 'playing a game' with a limited group of ideas, elements and concepts, and one should not be confused about the limitations of one's abilities or the 'ultimate truth' of ones projections (on the basis of a limited mental structure). I would suggest that this points to an essential and ever-repeating human problem: the role of intellect in 'grasping', not a local group of facts ('truths'), but the entirety of the meaning of one's existence. 'Meaning' stands outside of any group of facts, as I see it. In no sense does this mean that one should 'abandon reason', but it is my understanding, based in my own experience, that mathematical reasoning, in the face of the grandest existential questions, can become not a helper but a hinderer.
"Philosophy is actually very much like pure mathematics, since it involves the use of deductive logic."
No doubt about that. And there was likely a time, a moment in history, in the evolution of thinking, where it was assumed that since 'mathematics was the musical language in which the creation was sung', it must also follow that there should/must exist a similar 'philosophy', dependent in language, that would reveal or explain an utterly 'true world'. I don't think there is any doubt---except perhaps on the backwater of the GF---that it just doesn't quite work that way. All throughout history, from the Occidental to the Indus River culture to the Chinese, there have been comprehensive efforts to 'reason out' a complete, existential (that is to say religious) position on the basis of the elements in a given system. In modernity, we have seen all the old systems become shattered because, with our material sciences, we have undermined the 'platforms of certainty' that produced and upheld 'ontological certainty'. Now, with this modernity, we are in an 'ontological fix' because we have the most advanced analytical tool for 'grasping' material truths, but no way to piece any of those 'truths' together into a functional, believable, 'ontological whole'.
We lack a
mysticism (if you will) that would allow this. In this sense we (you and me and all of us) are in a post-modern quandary where---and I will use Kelly and the QRS as an emblem of this 'problem'---we live in an inner reality of knowledge of our extreme and dangerous uncertainty, in which even the existence and stability of our very selves is doubted and undermined, but desperately seeking and clammoring for a solid ground on which to stand, and to Exist. The 'problem' of the QRS is essentially a post-modern problem, in perhaps a similar way that Chesterton expressed it about Huxley and modernism generally.
The problem as I see it---again Kelly might be an emblem here---is that in its desperation to discover and even conquer an unassailable position within a dangerous sea of uncertainty and 'post-modern angst', the mind contrives, even against the 'body' itself, a group of insistances that it 'inflicts' upon itself. It forces 'the body' to live in a sort of
prison-camp that dries up the body (the Self in cohabitation with the physical structure that houses it) and almost parasitically feeds off the body's physical energy. This is an example of the way a (destructive) mental system has acute effects on the self, the body and the living of life, and is 'pathological' in my book. Again, I would describe the QRS position, and certainly Kelly's position (as a female disciple and practitioner of the QRS 'doctrines', as their little experiement on 'Woman'), as extremely post-modernistic and as an example of extremism, missapprehension.
I am also aware that the closer one comes to defining a sensible critique of QRS position and derived positions, the more the rhetorical engines and intellectual contraptions that support it---literally uphold it---will be brought to bear. As I said, if an element of The System, a brick within it, is disturbed, there is danger for the whole System.
And all this your heard from a
Talking Ass...
[Kelly, consider
this...
Real 'ontological angst'.]
