how to solve the underlying problem with political philosophy

so my last blog entry proposed a solution for analytics to tackle political philosophy and reclaim the territory that has been seized by continentals and disseminated throughout american social science departments in the past half-century or so. ultimately, i proposed a holistic approach through which normative claims about the future could be determined, and then upon establishing that range, a variety of possible solutions could be volunteered. now, earlier i discussed elitism as a problem that philosophy must overcome in order to regain its relevance in a productive manner outside of sheer intellectual circles. however, my proposition assumed something that cannot be taught and that lies outside of the conventional approach of analytic philosophy: judgment. the problem is that since judgment cannot be validated rationally, empirically, or conceptually beforehand, analytics view judgment as an inherent "trivial truth" of their system (meaning something taken for granted that is subjective but not to a degree large enough to affect larger, objective entities -- "common sense" would be another notion viewed the same way as judgment) and nothing more; they essentially minimize the subjective aspect of it as much as possible. continentals, on the other hand, love espousing their opinions, often without properly substantiated support, and because they believe in creating their own reality and truths, this often leads to them believing their opinions to be inherently correct without caring about possible flaws that could be exposed through external criticism. in fact, some of them don't care if their ideas contradict each other as they change their opinions over time, for they view this as part of the process of philosophy and questioning things. this renders the notion of judgment as pointless. furthermore, they often frame their opinions in ways that cannot be proven or disproven, as they are "intellectual blank checks" of sorts, so even if they were to conform to a normal reality, the notion of judgment would not be pertinent to their ideas. in social science theory, the notion of employing a lens to conduct and evaluate research is consistent with the continental perspective of there not being an objective truth per se. social science does attempt to justify and support its positions with rigorous inquiry, however, instead of just ranting opinions based on interpretations of other philosophers.

so judgment is one major obstacle -- in order for analytics to cover political philosophy, they must embrace a broader, more subjective notion of judgment as being valid for dealing with that topic. this is a matter that can be dealt with internally by analytics and is simply a matter of them deciding to loosen their approach, for there is nothing else impeding their path from doing so. however, the second major obstacle is one that is a problem external to philosophy: economics. in viewing our society as existing around a core political economy, it is evident that one cannot address politics without addressing economics. it is here that the problem lies in the social sciences, not within analytic philosophy. from what i can tell, it appears that there is an antagonistic relationship between economics and "social sciences" -- mainly geography, anthropology, and sociology. economists appear to be very applied, concerned only with the short-term and number crunching (hence why you basically can't publish in any major economic journal without having a degree in math), and doing so by making a host of assumptions and ignoring contributions that other disciplines have to offer. "social sciences" do a better job in terms of employing a more holistic approach, but they deal mainly with theory and typically critique capitalism through a marxist lens. perhaps they do this because marx is an enemy of capitalism and they feel he offers a unique perspective, or it is possible that marx has a "theory of everything" encompassing not just economics but politics, philosophy, history, etc. -- if one were to use marx solely as an economic lens, while no one can deny marx's contributions to economics, why not use perspectives from other great economic minds like adam smith or keynes? now, it is true that social scientists do employ lenses from keynes and other economists, but i still feel that if one were to use economists based on the success of their past and present implementability, that marx is disproportionally represented as an economist as used by "social scientists" as someone like keynes would be used by the majority and marx would be used by a minority. that shouldn't come as a surprise though, given that "social scientists" do not put as much stock in normative claims as i do and actually place more value on theoretical ideas. also, there is always the position that "communism" of the 20th century was not true marxism. however, holding capitalism to the same theoretical standard, it can be argued quite easily that the current world political economy is not true capitalism (just ask your neighborhood libertarian if he/she believes that america is truly capitalist and 90% of them would say, "no!"), so employing a marxist critique of it is to be using theory to evaluate an implemented system, i.e., something done in practice. so to me, it is only fair for marxists to critique capitalism philosophically unless they can provide an all-encompassing, overarching economic plan that is better than the current system (something which i have asked for repeatedly and has yet to be answered satisfactorily). one thing marxists do is to claim that marxism will prevail in practice after the downfall of current "capitalism", and that the downfall of "capitalism" is necessary for true marxism to emerge; until then, we can only take baby steps in assisting the downfall of "capitalism" and in attempting to curb its harmful effects (both by helping needy/oppressed people and by slowing its destruction of the environment, although some strict marxists might not agree with the latter as marx was for man conquering nature). however, the idea of marxism prevailing after capitalism has two problems. for one, it assumes that a kind of utopia will emerge for the first time in human history, which i think is a severe misjudgment of "human tendency" -- just because we finally reach a stage wherein every person in the world has his/her basic human rights fulfilled doesn't mean that people will suddenly become any less corrupt or exploitative in nature. the assumption of a utopia emerging is based on another assumption that we are currently in a capitalist stage, which inevitably will be followed by socialism and then a utopia, but as i've mentioned before, "capitalism" as our current political economy does not necessary equate to true capitalism as defined by some economists or as how marx envisioned it could evolve. thus, if we haven't ever entered a fully capitalist stage, then marx's historical inevitability is stuck at an impasse as it doesn't account for what will happen if we reach a stage of so called "quasi-capitalism". second, it doesn't have an explicit plan for what kind of political economy will emerge -- it could be socialism, communism, anarchism, or some other system. it inherently rules out capitalism though, because ultimately it is futile to be a marxist if you believe that capitalism will continue on forever. now, while capitalism "as we know it" might end, meaning the definition of capitalism altering space, the use of natural resources, the continuance of colonialism in new forms, etc., might finally come to an end, it does not mean that capitalism will be dead. marx himself stated that, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." thus, even marx recognized the inherent inequality in people's innate abilities. now, this might seem like a claim with fairly negligible implications, such as that a 240 lb. man is deserving of twice as much food as a 120 lb. woman (assuming that amount of food is directly correlated with a person's weight, and i don't think that's exactly the case, but assume it is simply for the general notion implied by the example). however, unless one can concretely define what a person's abilities and needs are, then there will always be contention regarding properly appropriating resources to different people, and it is precisely this grey area that capitalism thrives in. furthermore, if we can't properly define a person's abilities then we can't concretely define the value of labor invested in producing each commodity, which in turn creates another grey area that capitalism seeks to exploit for profit. and given my beliefs about "human tendency" tending to favor the self over altruism roughly 80/20, it seems much more likely that people will squabble over this grey area and a power structure will emerge in which the inequality that exists is greater than that which is inherent in people's abilities and needs (assuming that we could objectively measure those). also, the nature of competition among groups -- along the lines of nations -- will cause non-capitalist systems to collapse out of jealousy if this new version of capitalism is more effective and efficient at producing goods than non-capitalist systems are, and based on history, it seems highly unlikely that non-captialist systems will be more effective and efficient than capitalism. so marxism is in essence a closed loop regarding "human tendency" -- not only does it assume that people will not attempt to exploit each other in grey areas, but it also assumes that this will occur unilaterally, for all it takes is one group to turn capitalist and be more effective and efficient economically to cause the other groups to eventually follow capitalism. thus, in order for the exploitation in the grey areas to not be sustainable, marxism must work as a superior economic system such that capitalism will be unsuccessful once its historical stage has passed. however, imo, with the help of technology providing essentially limitless growth regarding production even as we run out of space to annihilate and resources to devour, capitalism will still be able to not only survive in a redefined form, but due to "human tendency", will continue to be a more effective and efficient economic system than marxism, thus preventing marxism from prevailing. as long as there is room for growth and a means for exploitation (i.e., "grey areas"), the economic system will be a type of capitalism instead of marxism even if this form of capitalism in other areas bears little to no resemblance to 20th/early-21st century capitalism and manages to fulfill the bare minimum of human needs and rights as demanded by so-called "progressives". thus, the end of poverty does not necessarily mean the end of inequality and exploitation.

now, returning to economics and "social sciences", between the two, it appears that they offer no coherent progressive solution: economists simply care about predicting what will happen (not necessarily caring about *why* things will happen as long as their answer/prediction holds true), making normative claims and suggesting that alternatives to these claims, which always contain some aspects that are not satisfactory for "progressives", would cause economic circumstances to be even worse for people; "social scientists", on the other hand, are interested in assessing capitalism in the following ways: 1) understanding capitalism from a holistic perspective, both in terms of what it entails beyond solely economics and in terms of its history (both its past and its future), 2) critiquing problems with capitalism, and 3) offering alternative solutions to capitalism's problems. so, not only do economists and "social scientists" often have totally different interests and priorities in studying economics, but they are at a crossroads when it comes to offering solutions to problems. economists predict that the economy will go a certain way and assume there will be a certain number of accompanying problems with it but that we can't do anything about them, while "social scientists" protest that we cannot accept those accompanying problems and that there must be a better way to solve those problems, yet they can only offer piecemeal solutions at best and do not present an immediate, overarching plan for how to rectify national and global economic problems by replacing the system approved by economists with their own new version of a political economy. analytics, while avoiding economics in general, if forced to choose a position, i imagine, would tend to favor economists because they seek objective truth using quantitative data instead of seeing things from perspectives using other forms of evidence and because they trust the status quo more than ideology given its history and given that you can't prove ideology satisfactorily at most levels, let alone down to the cognitive level. there is debate within economist circles as to what constitutes normative claims about the near future of the economy and what means need to be undertaken to reach that point, which is why you have conservative and liberal economists (although seldom radical ones). i should also point out that because economists don't necessarily care about understanding capitalism holistically from a long-term perspective, many of them place their own political and/or personal agenda in their economic research, so instead of looking to do what is best for the most people over the long haul, they instead attempt to keep the rich people as rich as possible without collapsing the economy in the short-term, thus skewing their normative claims. two things are evident from this: 1) there is indeed a range of possible future economic outcomes from which we can work towards achieving, not just one predetermined position that we have no control over, and 2) because economists view things in the short-term (especially the ones who care about using capitalism as an excuse to optimize wealth for the rich), their predictions have complete disregard for "minor" problems that can accrue and result in something catastrophic later on down the line, e.g., global warming.

so what is a philosopher to do when faced with this dilemma? well, for one, i think i can safely say that we can ignore conservative economists or at least view them at best as critiquing possible problems of liberal economists' plans without embracing the entire plans of conservative economists. so the goal is to determine a range in which our economy can function, and then choose the option that helps address the immediate problems of capitalism, e.g., in essence "redistributing" the wealth so as to ensure a basic, humane standard of living for as many impoverished people as possible and helping to reduce class disparity. now, we would like to address the long-term effects of capitalism as well, but if attempting to reach those goals causes an economic collapse in the short-term, then it is simply unfeasible to undertake such an effort, as not only will it cripple our economy in the short-term, but even in the long-term it probably will not pan out as hoped for. this is something that i don't think many "social scientists" "get" -- there is an inherently limited spectrum within which our economy can be flexible due to behaviors by people that are rooted in "human tendency", which as a genes-environment interaction can ultimately be reduced down to the cognitive level, and this exists as an objective truth; it is "out there" in reality independent of whatever lens a "social scientist" may employ. so the bottom line is this: if even the most liberally realizable plan for our economy in the coming decades does not result in the social change and long-term environmental effects that concern "social scientists", my answer is, "deal with it!" eventually, at some point, i think it is possible for every man, woman, and child in the world to be treated with human rights as outlined by the united nations, but until that day is possible, advocating that such takes place now without proposing an all-encompassing, implementable plan is simply fantasy, and an irresponsible one at that. what would be useful is if economists listened to the suggestions of "social scientists", both in refining their short-term predictions and in preparing for the long-term, and trying to make the long-term normative predictions compatible with some of the "utopian" goals (at least the reasonable ones) sanctioned by "social scientists" at present.

so, now that economics and the notion of judgment have been addressed, we have a domain within which political philosophy can function. as such, any political claims that fall outside of the accepted range of economics can be dismissed as unfeasible ideology. within the range, there are certain to be many details to be worked out, and there is no doubt that a slew of ideas regarding ethics, justice, and so on will be debated, and in all likelihood no single set position will be deemed to be the only correct one. but one thing is certain: by limiting political philosophy to being based on a specific range for our political economy, a strong element of pragmatism will be the underlying theme, as "reality" will be play a major role in determining our destiny. of course, this goes against the very spirit of liberalism and radicalism, which views us and our surroundings as agents of change and which believes that ultimately the power for change resides inside of us, not in something "external". the problem with this perspective is that we are part of the "external" as living results of the totality of gene-environment interactions. so once again, my view of political philosophy differs from those of typical radicals in that ultimately we differ on some very fundamental philosophical beliefs: 1) i believe in an "objective, external reality", 2) i acknowledge the power that this reality exerts on us, 3) we have inherent limitations due to our "human tendency", and 4) i accept those limitations and attempt to work with them to optimize things as best as possible for the most people, i.e., the greatest good for the greatest number of people. opposition to #1 is still a prevailing belief in much philosophy and "social science" that i believe hinders those disciplines' ability to pursue the truth. #2 is typically viewed as a two-way street by continentals and "social scientists" whereas for the most part (getting into the details of this would be quite lengthy and i don't wish to do so here), i believe it to be a one-way street. #3 is the most anti-liberal of my beliefs because it makes essentialist claims that result in the belief, in practice, leaning more towards the status quo than to an extremist/radical position; it is based on judgment, although i believe i have arrived at the correct conclusion based on my personal experiences and my education, both formal and informal. thus, i believe there to be limitations on what humans are capable of regarding political/economic systems, and because i can't *prove* my belief per se but my belief nevertheless denotes some sort of inherent structure or system regarding people that exists despite the fact that we cannot access it to a degree that would constitute it as a form of proof, my belief about people -- "human tendency" -- is inherently conservative because the liberal belief would be to view people as limitless since there is no proof per se that people are inherently inflexible regarding political/economic systems. the problem i have with people who claim that we can't speculate on "human nature" (which i have revised to be "human tendency") because it is too complicated and there is not enough evidence to make an accurate determination of it, and therefore making a judgment on "human nature" is wrong and possibly even dangerous is that you are already inherently making judgments about "human tendency" through all of your behaviors and interactions with people (and your behaviors not involving others), and so in forming political beliefs, you are indirectly creating an essentialized, abstract system about the way humans do and should behave, which is an extension of "human tendency" and the ultimate intellectual decision in that, while political judgments are not more intellectual than judgments through other lenses, e.g. psychological, cultural, historical, etc., political judgments do entail the most power a person can exert over others exclusively through intellectualism. thus, political judgments, of all intellectual beliefs, require the utmost responsibility. so, #2 and #3 (and to some extent, #1), reflect my belief that there exists a reality that exerts power over people, and people passively interpret it. people are not complete robots -- particularly those who are intelligent and can gain positions of power to exert their beliefs over people, and in the process, change our surroundings and thus alter reality -- but i believe that this flexibility is rather limited, which is why i believe that reality exerts power over us as mainly a one-way street (although there is *some* power going back the opposite way) and that there are normative claims to be made about the future (with the range reflecting our ability to change things; if we were robots, then the normative claim would be a precise point in the future instead of being a range, but because the range is rather limited in comparison with all theoretically imaginable scenarios of human behavior, i still view the range as being much closer to a normative point than being reflective of a wide range of possible outcomes able to be realized by human agency). marx declared that, "philosophers have previously tried to explain the world, our task is to change it," but i have explained why his position is incorrect in a previous blog entry (see "in defense of realism" for my take on marx's epistemology) and, in defending realism, why i pretty much believe that philosophy's position is to explain the world (as philosophy did from the ancients through the moderns), although it also can and, imo, should be an agent for change within defined boundaries. while #4 is an extension of #3 and thus makes me a pragmatist when it comes to politics and economics instead of a radical, ideologue, idealist, etc.

why philosophy will never move forward until...

i would like to elaborate on a vision for a new kind of philosophy at some point, but since that is a very long, exhausting, and comprehensive task, i will start by addressing the simplest and most important, yet most overlooked obstacle preventing philosophy from moving beyond its present analytic-continental divide. while philosophy may often be criticized for being elitist (which it is, and i'll clarify this later on), the defining trait of philosophy over its entire history, regardless or era or school, has been its quest for knowledge. people often say that knowledge is power, and even though philosophy, especially before marx and his criticisms of philosophy for being too passive in its approach, did not explicitly empower its followers due to knowledge, meaning that its followers did not necessarily use the knowledge gained from philosophy for leverage in exerting social or political power, it nevertheless made its followers *feel* empowered. even as philosophy splintered and disintegrated after the ancients and moderns during the 19th and 20th centuries, all of those movements made their followers feel empowered in some way. instead of believing in a universal harmony of sorts, these movements made their followers feel empowered via rebellion, whether it be political (marx), religious (nietzsche), or intellectual (continental/postmodernist). even analytic philosophy, as apolitical and objective as it claims to be, is inherently empowering in that it claims to follow the path of science and thus is a superior way of interpreting the world. instead of feeling inferiority in areas that it cannot cover due to its style and approach, it is elitist by putting its objects of study on a pedestal and dismissing other areas as being unworthy of study because they cannot be studied with the analytic style and approach. the one path attempting to reconcile the two -- contemporary pragmatism -- is empowering, just in a watered-down sense, compromised sense, meaning that while it does make compromises and thus "surrenders" certain aspects of certain areas, it still believes that we are working towards something meaningful and can have hope for the future without having to make huge sacrifices and encounter huge setbacks before attaining a new level of progress. the underlying problem with all forms of philosophy is that they start with elitist intentions and goals and work, using whatever means they have at their disposal, towards fulfilling these intentions and goals. the roots of these elitist intentions and goals are as follows: in ancient and modern (as in modern philosophy, not modern as in contemporary) times, philosophers believed that reality was compatible with their intentions and goals, e.g., using philosophy to prove god's existence, etc. when philosophy splintered and disintegrated, it did so by rejecting present reality but allowing philosophers to create their own reality, and sometimes, by forcing their own reality on "reality", causing "reality" to change to something more desirable. analytics returned to conventional notions of reality, but no longer laid claim to being able to explain it all the way that ancients and moderns believed they could do. as such, philosophy remains at an impasse: continentals believe in creating their own reality, analytics believe reality exists but cannot be accessed to the degree we need to in order to make claims about certain areas, and pragmatists believe we should act like reality exists but ultimately admit that people create their own realities to some degree -- pragmatism is in practice closer to continental than analytic, being more like a more practical version of continental while acknowledging some of the achievements of analytic without feeling the need to further explore them.

my solution is as follows. continentals have literally sabotaged areas of social and political philosophy due to analytics' unwillingness to address those areas since they fall outside of the areas in which they can employ their style and approach. following the tradition of philosophy's elitism, continentals have continued to force their radical agenda while assuming that it can be compatible with "human tendency", and that there is no standard for testing the validity of their claims to truth because there are no universal truths, but rather, we are all making our own truths because we are all creating our own reality. this is something that must immediately be addressed, as continental philosophy's denial of reality makes it impossible for them to be held accountable for their espoused beliefs and causes normative claims to be viewed as a target of our criticisms of current political systems and an enemy of creating the truth we want to believe in instead of being an objective barometer by which we can work towards achieving realizable change, even if this means compromising some of our ideals in the process. pragmatist richard rorty came to similar conclusions about continentals, "In the last fifteen years of his life, Rorty continued to publish voluminously, including four volumes of philosophical papers, Achieving Our Country (1998), a political manifesto partly based on readings of Dewey and Walt Whitman in which he defended the idea of a progressive, pragmatic left against what he feels are defeatist, anti-liberal, anti-humanist positions espoused by the critical left and continental school, personified by figures like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault." of course, it should come as no surprise that, "Although Rorty was a hardened liberal, his political and moral philosophies have been attacked from the Left, some of whom believe them to be insufficient frameworks for social justice." but returning to my solution, i believe that the following must occur in order for philosophy to once again play a meaning role in the world (and in the process, refuting the notion that "philosophy is dead"):

1) analytics must abandon pretensions about what domains their methods can cover, and realize that social and political philosophy are areas that demand immediate attention, regardless of "sufficient" method or not.

2) since analytics believe in an objective, external reality, there can be assumed to be an approximated range of truth within which social and political goals can be realized

3) this range must be thoroughly addressed using all possible data and perspectives, from climate change to cognitive psychology to social theory, and ultimately be determined through an exhaustive approach agreed upon by consensus among leading analytic philosophers along with experts in all fields pertinent to political systems (political scientists, geographers, environmental scientists, energy experts, public policy makers, politicians, economists, psychologists, etc.). it should include many forms of rigorous investigation (and hopefully keen judgment as well in order to synthesize a coherent plan from such a wide array of information and approach from so many different disciplines).

4) it is more than likely that this determined range will not be satisfactory for mankind for at least the next 50 years. thus, for the first time in its history, philosophy will claim a truth that is not empowering, but rather is *explicitly* humbling (humbling due to startling conclusions about reality, not about an inundation of knowledge or lack of ability to acquire certain knowledge). this can be contested by claims that the holocaust created a reality too horrific for philosophers to justify, but the holocaust in-and-of-itself did not constitute a philosophical movement. rather, philosophy led up to the holocaust (in the context of its time, this philosophy could be interpreted as being "empowering" to a certain group of people), the holocaust happened, and then philosophers were left to philosophize about things in its aftermath. but because as an event it was rather sudden and ended up being "defeated" by other people, people took it as something to learn from and move on from. by claiming a protracted event (e.g., climate change over many decades or even centuries instead of a few years) and by having it get worse before it gets better (similar to like in sports how they say that sometimes you have to lose first in order to learn how to win) in all likelihood (thus, climate change will not end up being "defeated" by people, but will be a scenario of people collectively having defeated themselves), claiming a truth that is not empowering would for the first time result in an entire movement of philosophy that would be labeled as "misanthropic".

now, it should be obvious why this change has yet to occur. not only would analytics have to violate their own conventional style and approach, but the ends would turn out to be "misanthropic", and what discipline would want that label attached to them? however, the perception that this is "misanthropic" is incorrect, as in fact in actuality undertaking such an approach would likely result in more beneficial outcomes than undertaking an "idealistic" approach from continentals. the idea that people cannot differentiate between perceived "misanthropy" and real misanthropy is a testament to the stupidity of our species, and a detriment to our existence and the lives of future generations. perhaps investigating what "human nature" is would shed more light on this, but once again, that would cause analytics to have to go outside of their comfort zone and make determinations that would likely be severely criticized and rejected by the majority of people due to their ill-perceived implications, not due to a lack of rigorous investigation and approach. but yes, i am advocating that philosophy must take itself off of its pedestal, go against its tradition, and become "misanthropic" in order to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people because these means that the ends justify the means. after all, what could be more empowering than keeping people who would otherwise die, alive? unfortunately, i have the feeling that just like philosophy failed to prevent the holocaust before it happened, philosophy will fail to adjust and plan according for the future to best optimize realizable change to help the greatest number of people in the wake of global problems of the 21st century. but philosophy is just an extension of people, so ultimately, philosophy is not to blame, but rather, it is people and our very own "nature"; the failure of philosophy to change its ways is indicative of people fearing to be perceived as "misanthropic". thus, maybe it can be said that it is "human tendency" for people to choose to not be perceived as "misanthropic" even if it is detrimental to the species rather than be perceived as "misanthropic" even if in reality you are helping other people. or, perhaps people are just inherently optimistic about certain things that they cannot satisfactorily prove one way or another. or, it's possible that people cannot bear to stand the thought of having to endure an entire lifetime of degeneration for our species before it collectively as a whole improves because people can only think within the span of their generation or their lifetime, at best. or, maybe it has something to do with the anglo culture in which analytic philosophy is predominant (and on the flip side, something with european culture which prevents continental philosophy from changing its ways -- an issue that i didn't address because in my opinion, for a number of reasons i won't get into here, continentals are even less capable than analytic of changing their ways when it comes to social and political philosophy). or finally, perhaps it is the wealth of first world nations that allows for the avoidance of social and political philosophy (analytic) or the idealization of it (continental) that preoccupies us, preventing us from focusing on practical matters in the future as we are either distracted by other areas of interest or are too wrapped up in creating our own realities and idealizing the future. whatever it is, there is a reason why philosophy has not gone in the direction i have suggested above and it is unfortunate that such is the case, but i suppose that is part of life.

philosophy of science

after doing some research on philosophy of science and reflecting on my own experiences with science, i decided that instead of choosing one established position over another or synthesizing a few different positions, it was best for me to start with some basic tenets and see what evolved from there. however, i must say that i agree with popper's fundamental notion of falsifiability constituting what is scientific (as opposed to what is not; just because something is not scientific does not necessarily mean that it is not meaningful, however), and that my tenets are based on promoting that principle in a variety of ways. in creating the tenets, an interesting trend emerged: what happened was that the tenets, while each being distinctly independent from the others, were still interrelated, and thus i had created a system wherein if any of the fundamental tenets were not upheld, then this affected another tenets and further distanced that approach, beyond just not fulfilling that one tenet, from what i considered in my system to be true science. so without further ado, i will state these 6 central tenets:

science to me is these things: 1) experimentally reproducible, 2) at bare minimum, strong correlation resulting in predictive power, but preferably perfect causality to establish universal truths/laws 3) ability to clearly and accurately explain the relationship between cause and effect, 4) aim at establishing universal truths (although knowing that one can never perfectly attain them, that is nevertheless the goal), 5) being fundamentally reducible to mathematical concepts so that it can be translated to another identical scenario with different metaphysics and still maintain its methodological integrity (although the results may be different), 6) building a knowledge base, albeit not necessarily linearly, that can be viewed as "progress".

#1 is necessary for epistemology to hold true (see my previous post entitled "what in the world does social science actually study" for an explanation and example). #2 is a matter of a degree of scientific authenticity. #3 is to demonstrate the functioning of a scientific theory. #4 is necessary to convert philosophy to science. #5 is necessary for science to function as a universal "language". #6 is a reflection of the relationship between philosophy and science, and it should be noted that while it is generally perceived that science gradually replaces philosophy, advances in science also add to or enhance philosophical problems. #2 and #4 are related in that without universal truths, philosophy is never completely replaced by science ("completely" being a relative term in that ultimately everything can be reduced to metaphysical from physical at some point, and universal laws are just laws that seem to be valid 100% of the time but in truth are just asymptotic of that value). cognitive psychology fits #2 even though it has less of a correlation than material science because it is a reasonable attempt to establish universal laws at a certain level, and is an outgrowth of and the predecessor to a more scientific neurological understanding of the same principles. thus, cognitive psychology is the first step towards achieving universal truths and turning philosophy into science, so technically in a strict sense i would classify it as an "almost science". no other non-natural (natural being chem/physics/bio) science can claim to be doing this. furthermore, physics has its own areas of incomplete explanations, and bio has areas, particularly in non-lab settings, where correlations mirror those of cognitive psych.

it should be noted that social science, in not being based off of universal truths (unlike, say, meteorology) or pursuing universal truths scientifically [#2 -- from now on, the appearance of numbers in brackets is used to denote that the mentioned example does not fit the requirement of the numbered tenet] is not scientific either in means (meteorology) or in ends (cog psych) (in a looser definition of science where science is either means or ends, then meteorology and cognitive psychology would be science, but in a stricter definition where science must be both means and ends, then i would classify meteorology and cognitive psychology as being "almost science"). by not replacing philosophy [#4], it expands our knowledge base but does not solidify it (social psych is an example of everything mentioned in the previous sentence; social psych will be used from now on as an example that is in some cases more scientific than the rest of conventional social science and in some cases is on the same level, so it provides a good measuring stick for comparison with social science). also, by not establishing true causality [#3], it cannot scientifically explain all aspects of its theory. furthermore, by not being experimentally reproducible [#1], it compromises its epistemology and it either changes the premises of experiments or makes them contextually driven to the point that it is impossible to draw stable philosophical implications from them, let alone scientific ones [#4, but worse than social psych]. by not being able to draw stable philosophical implications from the experiments, social science is not only against the idea of science following the notion of progress [#6 -- due to #4, social psych and social science both at the same level], but is against the idea of social science complementing philosophy [#4 -- social psych and social science both at the same level]. by relying on qualitative evidence [#5], social science is unable to test for causality [#2] for qualitative evidence that will be able to be quantitatively accounted for in the future, and is philosophically interpreting evidence for the rest of the data [#4] instead of framing it in a scientific theory. as such, social science does not contribute anything to science (not even in the soc psych sense because of lack of #1) or philosophy (technically, it contributes to philosophy in the way of a *particular* situation, but not a *universal* scenario), but instead uses methods and ideas from both for its own situational purposes.

of course, theoretical science like the origin of the universe is an exception. however, i view social scientists as investigators/detectives instead of scientists even though some (but not all) of what they do is based on scientific principles. so social scientists have a legitimate purpose -- after all, don't we regard investigators and detectives as truth-seekers in some sense, although a different sense from scientists? i would view things like nutrition, or even meteorology to not be science per se, but "almost science" according to the standards i have set. for psych, i would say that things that ultimately extend into the social sphere are not science per se, but that cognitive psych is "almost science" because it establishes strong enough correlations and can ultimately be reduced to neurological/biological processes (and it will be reduced in the coming years, in which case the majority of it will exist as true science instead of "almost science". on the other hand social psych will not be reduced to even the cognitive level, let alone the neurological one).

what is culture?

since this is such a complicated question, let's think first about possible definitions of culture, since it is one of the most ambiguously defined words in existence. first, there is the general idea of culture, as in something universally possessed by all human social groups in the world. then, there are particular cultures, which possess things unique to the culture of a certain social group not found in other social groups. so here a major question arises: are the things unique to particular cultures extensions of something universally possessed by all social groups, or are these unique things representative of something possessed exclusively by a particular culture? i tend to believe it's the former, and my definition of culture later on will prove to be compatible with this belief. in any case, i think we need a tangible starting point instead of continuing from a theoretical perspective. let's think about how we would go about studying culture in a basic sense. we could study our own culture, but since this might prove difficult for any number of reasons, i think it would be best to study another culture so we can naturally establish cross-cultural comparisons and thus address both the idea of culture in general and particular cultures. so one would go to a location and see culture represented by language, artifacts, behaviors, etc. one would then find commonalities in these areas, thus categorizing and grouping what his/her investigation uncovers so as to create an organizational system of how each unique/individual cultural "event" (an "event" being something belonging to each area, such as a conversation belonging to language, an object belonging to artifacts, a physical gesture belonging to behaviors, and so on) -- there being millions upon millions for us to investigate in reality and in theory an infinite number of possibilities -- can be classified and its relevance with respect to other classified "events" be determined. so, in short, when studying culture one is looking for similarities and differences in relationships among "events", with the similarities and differences allowing for classifications under "same" and "different". if culture were a completely simple and non-evolving system, then one would look only for "same" and "different" "events". however, since culture is not a simple system, we can't look only at "same" and "different" "events", but we have to view culture as operating by an underlying rule system; this rule system -- at least in theory, as our ability to implement this idea in practice dictates to what extent we can authentically remain true to this principle -- accounts for the internal mechanisms -- e.g., the diversity amongst individuals within that culture that cause culture to be an ongoing, dynamic process rather than a static one -- that are responsible for cultural evolution. so instead of classifying "events" as "same" and "different", in following this rule system, we can study culture over time by predicting "expected" "events", i.e., "events" predicted by the rule system using evidence from the past and present. the only problem with this is that culture is also not a closed system, so "unexpected" events (caused by the environment, e.g., a massive natural disaster previously never experienced) as well as encounters with people from other cultures, resulting in cross-cultural "events", influence a culture externally. internal "events" -- things ultimately caused by people inside a culture (language, artifacts, behaviors, etc.) -- occur, and people within the culture are forced to either accept or reject them. so culture is subject to change and evolution, with the change defining culture as much as its static commonalities. now, to make matters clearer, i would like to establish that "events" like language and artifacts are the result of human behavior even though in-and-of-themselves they are not behaviors. however, from now on, unless noted otherwise, behavior will be used in the broadest sense, encompassing both behaviors and behavioral results. thus, "events" = behaviors. from this, it follows that culture is expressed (not defined by, but expressed) through commonly-accepted behaviors: "same" behaviors, behaviors within the expected set of infinity (thus inherently being accepted due to being expected), and behaviors within the unexpected set of infinity (not accepted simply at face value, and thus requiring consideration before being accepted in either raw or amended form). there are also behaviors in the unexpected set of infinity that are not accepted and thus not a part of that culture, having been rejected from being adopted by or integrated into it. but returning to the idea of the inherent rule system, i began by making the rule system applicable only to things within a certain culture. however, in studying all cultures, or the concept of culture in general, the rule system must be all-encompassing across cultures, characterizing each culture in a way that makes compatible the rules of each culture with each other so that 1) we can have a general concept of culture (not just *a* culture), and 2) cross-cultural "events" can be predicted with the same accuracy as "events" within a culture. with #2, the all-encompassing rule system eliminates the idea of "events" being "unexpected", as all "events" using this system fall within the set of "expected". i should point out a major difference between the two rule systems: the rule system specific to a certain culture is experienced by the people in that culture. for example, consider "behaviors within the unexpected set of infinity". these behaviors, in theory, reveal a different sort of underlying interaction than "behaviors within the expected set of infinity", and accordingly, people in the culture react differently to behaviors in one set as opposed to the other. so, the rule system operates abstractly and differently, but the difference is also experienced in reality by people who operate according to the rule system. as such, people in a culture can know the inherent rule system of their culture to some degree in theory (in practice, this does not occur because people are unable to separate their personal schema from their cultural influences). on the other hand, with the "universal" rule system, it operates abstractly but not differently because every behavior is expected, so when a person in a culture experiences behavior unexpected to him/her, the person does not know why this is so and cannot establish a connection between his/her reaction/experience and the underlying rule system of his/her culture and his/her culture's relationships to other cultures.

so i have outlined how culture is expressed. but we still have left the main question unanswered: what is culture? well, in short, culture is everything in a literal sense, best viewed in my opinion from the perspective of the following categories: mind/brain, body, and environment. mind/brain corresponds to people's thoughts, while body corresponds to people's behaviors. perhaps it is best to first make a distinction between "culture" and "everything". this can be done by showing the relationships among the different categories, but it might be even easier if we start from the very beginning, as in pre-cultural states. at first, everything people do is in an effort to survive. however, in the process, a few things occur. for one, consciousness develops over the course of evolution at some point, and this eventually results in humans developing language. once language is established, people have a method for conceiving and communicating things in the abstract. now, before this point, it is unclear whether humans were capable of establishing correlations in their behavior and noticing which behaviors yielded the best results in situations, or whether humans operated solely from basal instinct. regardless, by the point of language development, people had the tools necessary for establishing relationships among things that were conducive to their survival. in doing so, people were not perfect scientists -- they did not perfectly establish the variables nor a method capable of assessing the importance of those variables at the outset -- and accordingly, they attributed and included many things that were unrelated -- thus, extraneous things -- to the things pertinent for a certain purpose to be fulfilled. for example, suppose a person died when swimming in the ocean during rain. as such, people in the culture thought that there was a connection between the rain and the person's death, so it became a belief in that culture that anyone who swam in the ocean during rain would die -- this demonstrates a cultural belief system, and one can compare it to a belief system based on science and see the difference between the two. so, out of this process of refining their beliefs about how their environment operated, people established culture in creating a set of commonly agreed upon beliefs that resulted in, for the most part, commonly expected behaviors. the unexpected behaviors, which happened only on occasion, were dealt with through whatever system the culture had in place at that time for interpreting behaviors, and through this process the behaviors were determined to either be acceptable or unacceptable. this process is also what constituted "internal" cultural evolution; "external" cultural evolution might be something environmentally introduced to the culture that had never been seen or imagined before, such as a volcano erupting, or an encounter with people from a different culture. remember, we are viewing things in this paragraph from the view of the development of culture in general and, as an example, what happened within a certain culture, so terms like "unexpected", which were eliminated from the perspective of an all-encompassing rule system, are still relevant here because in viewing things from within a culture, we are only operating from the perspective of a rule system within a culture. we'll continue this mindset until further notice.

now, a few additional points i want to make about culture before we reach a crossroads of sorts. for one, in my previous post entitled "what is humanity?", i discussed the role of conceivability and communication primarily, although not purely, as a linguistic function that allowed us to access our pure humanity, analyze conflicts between animal nature and humanity, and express conflicts between animal nature and humanity in domains that were culturally established, e.g. math, psychology, art, religion, etc. so in this sense, the means for our humanity are culturally-specific, although the ends aren't necessarily so. second, i want to point out that culture inherently entails normative and anti-normative behaviors, but that all of these behaviors are still consistent with being a part of that culture. what this means is that while majority behavior constitutes a cultural norm and this can be interpreted as expected behavior by an outside observer, minority behavior is equally as valid, although not as prevalent or powerful within a culture; thus, minority behavior is not unexpected behavior by default. as such, it is correct to actually view the entire range of behavior, both normative and anti-normative, as being expected even though it is not one and the same -- there is an important difference between the two.

now, here is where we arrive at a crossroads of sorts, but first let me touch on a few unrelated points that i feel are still worthy of being mentioned. it starts off with the fact that culture can be viewed as both being and becoming, and can be defined using both: being is the totality of everything constituting that culture up until the present (thus, culture as being is a static summation), and becoming is the inherent rule system within everything that acts as a mechanism for change from the present to a point in the future (thus, culture as becoming is a snapshot in time); thus, the inherent rule system works as an ongoing generative process, and the rule system itself is never static, but instead is always evolving and changing -- the rule system may only appear static at moments to us because that is the way abstraction works in practice, but in theory the abstraction of the rule system reflecting reality is dynamic, or at least has the potential to be at any given moment. also, i should point out that even though culture is expressed through behaviors, the behaviors interact with each other and everything, so everything affects everything and ultimately behaviors in-and-of-themselves are as much constitutions of culture as they are expressions of it -- this sentiment will be touched upon later, although for now let's keep the assumption that behaviors are simply expressions of culture. in order to express something, one must first experience it. so naturally, this leads us to the idea that culture can only be truly experienced by someone within the culture, although one can "experience" it as an outsider. so here is the crossroads: if behaviors express culture and consciousness experiences culture, and people (as gene-environment interactions) and their environment constitute their culture, and descriptions of people and their environment convey culture, what *is* culture? culture is everything. earlier, i asked how one would go about studying culture, but now we have reached a point where it is necessary to ask the question: how can culture be defined? (here i am talking about the concept of culture in general, so the "universal" rule system is now the one being used) i discussed in the opening paragraph that culture is an inherent rule system. now, i will expand upon it by stating that in theory this rule system allows one to predict what a future cultural state will entail from knowing the totality of culture up to the present. from a materialist perspective, culture is everything causing everything to happen, but like in physics, an abstract idea can convey the rule system. thus, an abstract idea extracted from that material of everything is *to know* culture. *to know* culture should be a universal, like thinking about e = mc^2 does not cause the law to be affected, as either thinking or not thinking about it is compatible with what the law predicts. similarly, *to know* means that every form of being both within and outside the culture should be compatible with knowing. however, we soon find that e = mc^2 is not an analogous example because the physical effects of thinking do not cause that law to be affected, whereas the physical effects of thinking do affect one's being, which affects one's behavior and thus affects culture. being is existentialist (not as in the philosophical movement, but as in anti-essentialist), but *to know*, for it to work and be plausible in reality, must be essentialist. thus, *to know* can only work in theory as existentialist, and thus to know and to be are the same. but since no one can ever know everything required to know even in theory (the only way for it to work in theory would there to be an ongoing theory of everything with the universe consisting as a complete ontology), then even in theory we are limited by our being, so people within the culture are on one side of a lens looking out at the rest of the world and have a distorted understanding of their own culture by being in their culture and only a small part of the whole *to know* revealed to them by their limited existence (limited by time and space of their being, which in happening within their culture, is culturally related, but does not make their *to know* any better or worse than the *to know* of people from other cultures -- it just makes their *to know* different). people on the other side of the lens looking at another culture from their own cultural perspective, and have the same limitations as those within the culture except they are "inversed" by being on the other side of the lens. so at first glance, it appears that the only objective view of culture can only be from a god's eye view. but i will now examine this further and conclude that this is not the case.

one criticism i can levy at this is to ask the following question: what if essentialist ideas about culture are functional to an appropriately-deemed extent (thus not being completely comprehensive, but just an attempt at getting most things correct) and that this sort of thinking can be compatible with both people within and outside a culture, e.g. resulting in one of the expected or unexpected but accepted behaviors? for this to work, it has to be culturally acceptable to investigate culture as an inherent rule system that makes essentialist claims. in this sense, culture is simply an unattainable ideal -- wishing that it could either be an essentialist medium that could be studied through an essentialist approach or an existential medium that could be "studied"/experienced through an existential approach -- that we nevertheless work towards by making essentialist claims about an existential medium that we treat as essentialist. thus, one can either be existentialist or essentialist about culture, and if you are essentialist, then you think culture can be studied (although not experienced) objectively, but if you are existentialist, then you don't think culture can be studied at all (i know this will be disputed by contemporary social science, but in claiming to not make essentialist claims and to not use essentialist approaches regarding culture by not using a formal system, they are employing what i would consider to be an informal sort of essentialism, from which essentialist claims can be interpreted and communicated, whereas with pure existentialism, knowledge is specific to the individual at a given place and time and cannot be communicated to others; the successful transmission of information is indicative of some type of essentialism taking place -- while existentialism might be their unrealizable ideal/goal, a realization of this goal would also result in a communication breakdown, so i don't agree that you can "have it both ways", i.e., claiming your work to be one thing based on its failed ideals while having its success rely on the fact that you know its ideals will fail and thus another thing will succeed, yet denying what makes it successful in actuality to be the work's identity. i could elaborate on this further, but i think i should conclude by remarking that if everything is considered to be culturally-mediated, then language, as an aspect subsumed under culture's umbrella that is also culture's best means for communicating what culture is and in being viewed as constant changing fluid interaction (a view espoused by post-structuralists such as derrida, whereas traditional philosophy of language views language as a system constituting some inherent rigidity), then the fluidity of language makes language anti-essentialist, and in reflecting and representing culture, can only do so in an anti-essentialist manner. at least this is the logic that i have observed being used in "postmodernist" anthropological approaches to justify the absence of essentialism; my subscription to analytic philosophy -- although not complete -- is enough for me to believe that language is a rigid system, and therefore using language to describe culture is inherently essentialist, and it is only to a matter of what degree that is open to debate. there is some sticky ground here in that more recent movements in philosophy of language -- ordinary language analysis -- are technically anti-essentialist, but they operate under the assumption that miscommunication using the same language is due to anti-essentialist tendencies, and that once the miscommunication is addressed and clarified, that the language problem is effectively "dissolved". now this does not mean at that point that language has been essentialized per se, only that the level of anti-essentialism has been reduced to a desirable degree. so in ordinary language analysis, a certain amount of anti-essentialism is assumed, but the goal is to reduce it and then circumvent it since it cannot be eliminated. on the other hand, with typical postmodernist anti-essentialist approaches, either anti-essentialism is accepted at whatever level it is assumed to be at, and language and culture operate at that level without changing, or anti-essentialism is accepted as being vague (often inviting views of relativism and subjectivism) and ill-defined, just being defined as the domain of everything that is not essentialist. to make a comparison, the anti-essentialism found in the latter wittgenstein is far different from the anti-essentialism in works by derrida. furthermore, in ordinary language analysis, anti-essentialism is based on assumptions that are extremely complicated and not satisfactorily resolved -- please see "externalism vs internalism" on wikipedia -- and whose justifications, philosophically, are not really any better than the justification for essentialism. the only real reason anti-essentialism, in its ordinary language analysis form, is accepted over logical positivist essentialism is because of "common sense", much like realism is accepted due to "common sense" in spite of the obstacles of skepticism. however, both analytic versions of philosophy of language are compatible with objectivism and universalism, whereas the anti-essentialism espoused by postmodernism is conducive to subjectivism and relativism. so while there may be a philosophical difference, albeit minor, between what i consider to be essentialist approaches and what ordinary language analysis considers to be anti-essentialist, they both result in the same philosophical outcomes about the principles underlying the universe and how they affect our interaction with the universe, whereas the philosophical outcomes of postmodern anti-essentialist approaches are different from the analytic ones. and ultimately, that is the paradigm battleground here when i challenge the typical postmodernist version of anti-essentialism often associated with anthropological definitions of culture, not the rather arbitrary distinction between essentialism and ordinary language analysis's anti-essentialism that at first glance might appear to undermine my position.), only subjectively experienced from within or without. from an essentialist perspective, to know a culture is to predict expected behaviors and treat people in that culture as essentialist (to me, essentialist does not necessarily mean part of an established system, but as part of a functioning schema by the researcher using language, which inherently categorizes and thus essentializes things, ultimately allowing the research to be interpreted by other researchers despite the absence of a formally agreed upon system between the researcher behind the research and his/her peers; the fluidity of language will cause many to claim that the research is inherently subjective in gathering, interpreting, and disseminating the information, and thus they are not employing essentialism, but i'll continue to maintain that unless a complete communication breakdown occurs, some sort of essentialism on some level is occurring -- we can leave the rest of the whole existentialist/essentialist, objective/subjective, etc. debates to philosophy of language at a later time), which is an attempt at an objective approach (whether or not it succeeds at this in practice is a different debate altogether -- i'll address this in a moment). now, one can argue that culture affects our ability to objectively undertake an essentialist approach. however, if people both within and outside a culture agree on a common method and arrive at similar conclusions, then the ability for our essentialist approach to transcend our existential being has been achieved and something approaching objectivity has been reached. to argue that any culture prevents us from objectively studying culture is pointless because as long as one is aware of inherent cultural bias and adjusts accordingly, the variations within a culture are greater than variations among different cultures, so to attack a person's ability to do objective work studying culture is simply an ad hominem. but going back to the original point that to know a culture is to predict expected behaviors (and now we return to the rule system as being specific to a certain culture), one also has to realize that to accept unexpected behaviors is to be in a culture since you have the power of choosing to accept or not to accept the unexpected behavior. but even in that culture, each person can only know whether to accept or not accept unexpected behavior from their own perspective, not for the whole culture (hence why i said earlier that in practice people cannot access their own culture's inherent rule system). as such, someone in a culture can *know* something that someone outside a culture cannot, but that person's *know* is existential, subjective, and extremely limited as far as exerting power in their culture as they are one of many who will ultimately decide the fate of an unexpected behavior. furthermore, form the perspective of the "universal" rule system, this person's *know*, even in theory, does not possess any greater understanding of his/her culture's rule system than any other person either within or outside the culture.

now, a few more points before concluding this piece. first, the inherent rule system (both kinds) being determinist or indeterminist depends on one's view of the universe, including taking consciousness into account; if the universe is determinist, then the rule system in theory, with a perfect ontology, could predict every future behavior, but if it is indeterminist, then it could not. second, for those who argue that one cannot study culture because of cultural bias, i would like to point out that the limits of knowledge based on evidence (not on our epistemology/ability to process) are just as, if not more obstructing, as our epistemology. so, let's assume that truly "knowing" culture is 100%. if culture, through evidence, only reveals, say, 10%, and our bias causes us to misinterpret cultural evidence by 20%, then ultimately we can only "know" 8% of a culture. but as one can tell from looking at the numbers, 90% of the problem with studying culture is due to the evidence, and 2% is due to bias (this is assuming bias more than negligibly exists, which is something i am opposed to and am merely allowing here for the sake of devil's advocate). thus, i would tell a person worried about cultural bias that the bias isn't the main reason you can't know the culture; the real reason is that there isn't enough evidence to study. perhaps quantifying it isn't the proper thing to do, but i don't know how else i could go about demonstrating the argument. third, i would like to mention that if one doesn't feel that descriptions of culture do much justice towards accurately conveying them, it might be more effective to measure cultural change and rate of change cross-culturally, and then arrive at conclusions regarding the cultures using these results, since they reveal aspects of the inherent rule systems within each culture. in this sense, i believe this is the only way we can truly define what culture is without resorting to having to reduce culture to everything: examine the difference in culture through the change from one state to another, and we will have a better understanding of what culture, and in a broader sense, everything, is by establishing a clearer idea of the nature of the inherent rule system in culture, and in a deeper sense, the universe. this leads me to my final point, the million dollar question: can culture be studied scientifically? certainly, certain aspects of it can be studied scientifically, such as psychology, but they are very compartmentalized and specialized and do not give a more comprehensive picture of culture, only some scattered facts here and there without any real insight into the inner workings of culture -- they show the effects of the system, but don't examine the system itself. certainly a qualitative approach can be somewhat useful, but it too has inherent limitations including objectivity in gathering and assessing evidence and the degree to which causality or correlation can be established. i think my last point about studying cultural change and rate of change cross-culturally is the most scientific and most useful in determining the inherent rule systems of each culture, for it is through the understanding of those that the study of culture can most closely resemble a science. in this sense, i would say that we can't study culture scientifically the way we can physics or chemistry, but certainly can at certain levels via psychology (and eventually neuroscience) and one day, on a comprehensive level, i think we might be able to in a way that somewhat resembles what non-lab natural science does, although this view is probably a little too optimistic, although bits and pieces might someday be realized.

regardless of the feasibility of studying culture as a science or not, the idea of studying culture from a "god's eye view" is more along the lines of how natural science approaches science rather than how social science does. while a god's eye view is a helpful epistemological guideline, it should be noted that taken in its most literal sense, from a god's eye view the abstraction can be reduced infinitesimally small so that the abstraction mirrors reality on a continuous level rather than a discrete one, and thus the abstraction cannot be accessed by anyone but from a god's eye view. (this is the "universal" abstract rule system mentioned at the end of the first paragraph -- ultimately, while the perspective of the cultural-specific rule system can be helpful in explaining how a cultural rule system can account for an infinite number of possibilities, i view the "universal" rule system as being the more correct, complete way to view how culture operates) as such, human approximations of abstraction (and thus of culture) which naturally are discrete will fall short of reaching the desired ideal goal. on a similar note, remember how earlier i discussed how culture is quite literally everything? well, this leaves us with a problem of how to define everything. while the inherent rule system provides a process for defining change of the everything, it does not provide a categorical definition for how to define culture. as such, culture is a theoretical construct that exists only because it is a useful way to view things, not because it exists in-and-of-itself. now, two things to that point. first, i would say that culture is best defined through a geographical lens because it best takes into account the people and their environment when assessing cultural factors; while culture later became defined as a behavioral pattern involving symbols (this definition has since been overtaken by newer, non-essentialist definitions of culture), i would argue that the origins of the definition of culture and the spirit of the term basically viewed culture, as it pertained to certain cultures, as the essence unique to people of a certain environment, and as culture pertained to all humans, the essence unique to all people in the world, i.e., a universal psyche. the second implication of culture not existing in-and-of-itself is that culture's temporal definition is arbitrary -- when did pre-cultural states stop and cultural states begin? was there a transition period between the two? if language is one of the fundamental aspects of culture, and language is dependent on consciousness arises as a result of human evolution, then does the emergence of consciousness constitute the beginning of culture? since ontologically i have defined culture as being intertwined with everything, there are two paths to choose from regarding how we approach this situation: 1) if culture indeed is dependent on consciousness, then before consciousness existed, culture did not exist, or 2) if there is no set definition for when culture began, then everything from the beginning of time can be viewed as related to culture, as the inner workings of the universe defined through the inherent rule system are applicable to the evolution of matter, which eventually evolved into humans and their environment. rather than being forced to choose one over the other, i think it is a matter of context for choosing which one is appropriate. for the purposes of social science, #1 is a more practical perspective, whereas #2 works for a more austere, philosophical/theoretical viewpoint that i believe is closer to "the truth" about culture, but is less useful more defining "the truth" about culture as it relates to us as humans in the world at present. finally, i would like to address the contemporary notion that there is no need for a system of culture. while i agree that a system per se is not needed, that culture as a metaphysical idea and ideal is something that researchers should be working towards, in reality it might be impossible to ever reach a consensus on the definition of culture, so researchers should still view their work as contributing to a knowledge base that, in theory, would one day allow us to make the definitive definition of culture. without this ideal, the idea of culture is fractured with no endpoint. as such, since culture is only defined in the eye of the beholder instead of viewed as something actually existing "out there" in reality or theoretically as something (such as my proposed rule system), culture is simply an epistemological indicator for each researcher depending on how they define it, and is meaningless as a metaphysical idea that can be universally agreed upon. by denying the potential for universal agreement on culture's definition, social scientists have effectively denied culture as something we can study and have replaced it with the idea that it is simply a reflection of ourselves. the latter might make one inclined to believe that the idea of culture is more important now than ever before, that since everything we do is cultural, that culture is the currency by which we conduct our lives. however, i happen to believe the exact opposite; by abandoning culture as an object of study, we have either implicitly given up on studying culture or we believe that the idea of culture -- at least embodied by the spirit of the term as it was conceived in its origins -- is dead. i also believe that it gives us a false sense of knowledge in attempting to define everything, including things that are unknown, as simply being cultural constructs and that it opens the door for relativism, which i think is a philosophically poor way of viewing the universe.

what is humanity?

my previous post dealt with defining what human nature is. i will now address how this differs from the idea of humanity. the chomsky-foucault debate about human nature defines human nature as the following:

"I intend, therefore, not to lose any time and to start off with a central, perennial question: the question of human nature.
All studies of man, from history to linguistics and psychology, are faced with the question of whether, in the last instance, we are the product of all kinds of external factors, or if, in spite of our differences, we have something we could call a common human nature, by which we can recognise each other as human beings."

my previous entry concluded the external factors, or the environment, is intrinsically connected to the development of a person via genes-environment interaction, thus making it impossible for a true human nature to exist in reality. "human nature" exists as a range of possible gene-environment states, but within this range i don't think there is something definitive enough to define all human beings; rather, it demonstrates that we have certain tendencies under certain circumstances that cause the majority of us to behave in a certain manner. furthermore, even within this range, assuming that there was something definitive enough to define all human beings, i made it clear that human nature was really an extension of animal nature, with the only difference being the attachment of consciousness to our being. it is only here, within consciousness and its manifestations, that i believe there is something definitive enough to define all human beings and allow us to recognize each other as human beings, and i term this idea as *humanity*.

at the outset of the debate, chomsky introduces why he believes our capacity for language is a defining trait of what they call "human nature" (different from my version). foucault, on the other hand, believes that "human nature" seems "to have played the role of an epistemological indicator to designate certain types of discourse in relation to or in opposition to theology or biology or history." thus, while chomsky views language as something in common among all humans that can be studied as a metaphysical concept through its own epistemological lens and thus exist as a self-contained, all-explanatory system for "human nature", foucault views "human nature" as some sort of notion we hope to find in objects of study, but that due to the lack of success in finding something concrete over the course of human history, "human nature" simply exists as a lens for obtaining knowledge supposedly pertinent to its notion, but that because that knowledge varies tremendously and has changed in its organization over time, this in turn casts doubt on the existence of "human nature" as a scientific concept or even an ideal construct. in short, chomsky views "human nature", through language, as something that is self-evident and self-perpetuating (in being a scientific idea of sorts, language serves as both an object of study and a system that is part of epistemology), whereas foucault views "human nature", through its role as an epistemological indicator in discourse, as self-refuting and self-defeating, or at best, as a reflection of the lack of congruity in what it is supposed to be as an object of its own study. so, until "human nature" can become evident as a scientific idea or a concrete concept, in which case the discovery would have far reaching effects that we cannot currently conceive and thus might overturn the existing paradigm, the current paradigm remains that "human nature" constitutes failed attempts at trying to define it, so it exists as nothing more than a lens through which the object of study -- the attempted area of defining "human nature" -- actually reflects the role of the investigator -- his/her viewpoint and epistemological intentions and methods being the actual area in which "human nature" is defined. however, the lens differs from person to person, from discipline to discipline, and from era to era, so there is no "human nature" as a concrete process; rather, it exists as a broad wastebasket term of sorts for people's inclinations to want to better understand themselves and their surroundings. my conclusion from this is that ultimately foucault is more correct in his position that "human nature" is not a scientific idea, although for totally different reasons than i outlined in my previous blog post (which explained why *human nature* is actually a flawed concept in theory and is an unattainable ideal). however, chomsky's idea of language being a defining trait of "human nature" is much more useful; his idea of "human nature" would ultimately be compatible with my previous blog entry's definition of "human nature" but not *human nature*. however, instead of trying to make his idea of language simply compatible with my notion of "human nature", which is reducible to animal nature, i would like to make his idea of language one of the hallmarks of what i consider to be humanity, which is constituted mainly by our consciousness and its manifestations.

to me, humanity exists as an ontology of what makes us different from any other species and the struggle between this ontology co-existing with our animal nature, both in our ontology attempting to remain pure from animal nature and, when it is unable to do this, how its conflict with animal nature and subsequent ability to analyze the results and express them as a form of synthesis through any number of manifestations. consciousness constitutes most, if not all of the humanity ontology, and our consciousness could not be fully developed without language acquisition in our early years (as was proven by a case-study of someone who was locked up in a basement without any linguistic human contact for her entire childhood and was unable to really grasp the concept of language once she was exposed to it). so language is required for the development of our consciousness, and once our consciousness is fully developed, language is the primary method (although not the exclusive one) responsible for keeping the domain of our humanity pure -- i.e., doing tasks that are deemed "rational" and abstract -- and providing the ability to analyze the results of conflicts between our humanity and animal nature -- e.g., realizing the mistakes of our actions and attempting to make amends by apologizing and learning from the experience so as to prevent it from happening the future -- and express them as a form of synthesis through manifestations, with art being a notable example. ultimately, language (as well as pure abstraction and art, but let's focus on language here) boils down to two things regarding humanity: 1) conceivability, and 2) communication. conceivability means the ability to conceive ideas in consciousness, ideas of the way things exist in any number of states -- the past, present, and future. conceivability establishes the existence of a person with respect to himself/herself, as interacting with one's own thoughts is a reflexive process. communication is self-explanatory and is necessary to establish the existence of a person with respect to his/her environment through the validation of his/her thoughts being reflective of his/her environment in addition to being reflective of himself/herself, the latter of which happens with conceivability. evidence of our humanity is everywhere: math (pure humanity), psychology (analyzing conflicts between humanity and animal nature), art (expressing conflicts between humanity and animal nature), etc. furthermore, in addition to language, humanity can be expressed through other processes, including music, body movement (dance), visual expression (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.) and so on. and in realms like math, pure abstraction replaces language per se, although one could make the argument that math is a type of language, etc. but in the area of analysis, language is the primary method, although it can be assisted by math (logic, statistics, etc.) and art (metaphor, narrative, etc.). additionally, math and art are only used by some people for the areas of pure humanity and expressing conflicts between humanity and animal nature, whereas language is used to at least some extent by everyone for all three areas. in any case, math and art are still dependent upon consciousness to be employed. now, before we move on, i want to point out that in virtually all cases (i haven't heard of any exceptions), exposure to language during early years of language acquisition occurs with cultural exposure -- one does not acquire language in a linguistic environment that is simultaneously a cultural vacuum. so, it is not as if we learn language exclusively in our early years, only to employ it as a method -- for pure humanity, analysis of conflicts between humanity and animal nature, and expression of conflicts between humanity and animal nature -- and learn about all of the outlets our culture has to offer -- math, psychology, art, religion, etc. -- later in life. in actuality, language acquisition is accompanied by its use as methods for purposes of humanity and established outlets for these methods to be displayed and engaged. as such, one could argue that via language and culture, our world is socially constructed and social constructions are what constitute humanity. i think that my definition of what constitutes humanity and the role of social constructions in constituting our humanity, while not being interchangeable necessarily, ultimately arrive at the same endpoint, it is just that the path they take in getting there and their perspective in going down that particular path are somewhat different.

so, now that i've outlined what constitutes humanity, we can ask ourselves: what is necessary to take away our humanity and what happens in that case? very easy. all one has to do is take away communication in all forms -- pure abstraction, analysis, and expression -- by banning their methods from being used -- math, language, art, religion, etc. upon the complete abolishment of communication, a person is unable to establish his/her existence with respect to his/her environment because his/her thoughts are not validated. thus, a person no longer views himself/herself as interacting with anything, but instead views himself/herself as existing alone and powerless, with the world being nothing more than what he/she is experiencing. thus, a person in essence experiences life as a waking dream. now, initially, a person is still able to communicate with himself/herself internally by conceiving ideas, which establishes the existence of the person with respect to himself/herself. however, after awhile, the linguistic ability of this person degenerates as it in essence is a muscle that is no longer being flexed. as such, a person still has some latent linguistic ability leftover, but not enough for a person to internally process successfully; a person's memory and cognitive processes thus devolve into a state wherein they remain prominent enough for a person to be reminded that he/she was "a person", but not enough for him/her to continue to be "a person", as memories flash in a sporadic manner, as if fighting to "stay alive" within a person's head, but the person is unable to save them and bring them into consciousness in a productive manner, thus leaving the person internally incoherent and unintelligible to himself/herself. at this point, a person is a shell of a person and functionally reduced to an animal, but with enough traces of humanity remaining so as to inhumanely torture the person and drive him/her to insanity as if living in a cage, fracture his/her being into a fragmented state of self-conscious despair and oblivion, or buckle his/her internal structure so as to leave him/her at the complete mercy of external forces, begging to be in any state, dead or alive, different from his/her current one as he/she can only muster a whimper as an indication of existence or resistance. so while one's humanity can be defined by various methods through various means, perhaps it is best defined by what happens when one has his/her humanity stripped from them and he/she is left in any number of possible zombified states. by seeing what is not there -- what is vacant -- we can denote the opposite -- what should be there -- and that that constitutes one's humanity.

what is human nature?

i recently got into a discussion about human nature, and towards the end of the discussion, after we hadn't made too much progress in spite of the length of my arguments, i realized i had made a lot of relevant points but had not hit the nail on the head. so, afterwards, i dissected my arguments, refined them, and combined them with some new ideas i had. the outcome was the following:

1) usually, when we talk about human nature, we don't realize that we are actually talking about animal nature; in most situations, human nature can be reduced to animal nature. animal nature is fairly straightforward: the primary goal is survival, and then power and pleasure are secondary goals. so what separates human nature from animal nature? the answer is obvious: consciousness. reflexivity -- the ability for us to look in the mirror and say, "that is me" -- is what separates us from almost every other species. reflexivity allows for us to take certain actions that would appear to contradict our animal nature, with suicide being the most obvious example. there are other psychological/psychiatric cases or states that would also qualify as existing in opposition to our animal nature, but for the most part, it seems that consciousness just seems to exacerbate and complicate the secondary goals of power and pleasure, expressing them in the most convoluted, subtle, and/or incomprehensible ways. sometimes this can cause the secondary goals to interfere with the primary goal, but in most immediate situations, people's instinctual drive to survive seems to successfully prevail.

2) "human nature" = genetic predispositions resulting in behavioral tendencies; in a real world sense, it is genetics as manifested within the spectrum of interactions with environment that are culturally "acceptable" (acceptable meaning functionally realizable and also deemed "neutral" during developmental years and only later, at an arbitrary point, be pitted against an environment and viewed in this context as human nature vs environment). the arbitrary point seems to tie in with consciousness -- one doesn't blame a 2 year old for creating a mess because it is part of "human nature", but rather attributes this behavior to a developmental stage at which the person acts like an animal in a raw and vulgar sense. however, when two players from different teams get in a fight during a game and the teammates of each person come out to protect and support their team's player, this is deemed as "human nature". so, asking when "human nature" is established in a person is rather arbitrary, kind of like asking, "at what age do we really become adults?", but i believe the emergence of memory in a person around ages 5-6, and thus a person "knowing" his/her own consciousness in addition to just "experiencing" it is the deciding factor. in reality though, "human nature" never reaches a true point where it emerges in a person the arbitrary point is artificially determined by society. i would say that people would tend to acknowledge that "human nature" is formed more during developmental years, but that doesn't mean that it ever truly stops developing and that we can at some point put a person in a situation and see how his/her "human nature" causes him/her to act. before we continue, i'd like to unify the definitions of human nature in both point #1 and point #2 as the same under the term "human nature", so please take both those definitions into consideration and update your perspective accordingly.

now, i would like to illustrate "human nature" in a theoretical sense. as a starting point, you have to consider the entire genetic diversity of the human race -- isolate these genes in a dark room and have those people live their lives there. although this is a flawed example because there is still sensory perception besides sight, the idea is to eliminate the existence of an environment for genes to interact with. then theoretically, simulate all possible environments in which every possible person (every possible genetic combination) interacts -- this, if broken into infinitesimally small time periods so as to constitute a continuous flow would literally allow for an infinite amount of possibilities -- but for the sake of the example assume that a simulation of this is possible. after simulating this experiment, you should be able to determine a range of conditions for which human survival is plausible from generation to generation. now, you have the most ideal states at one end of the range wherein people's life expectancies are optimized from generation to generation and secondary goals of power and pleasure are also optimized, and at the other end you have people who live barely long enough to reproduce and live feeble and miserable existences. this is the range of human genetic flexibility interacting with environment and can loosely be conceived as "human nature", and represents all of the possible gene-environment interactions that could keep the human species going.

3) human nature in a strict, abstract, absolute sense will be termed here as *human nature*. *human nature* = genetics evidenced through an environment as the result of a prior genetics/environment interaction in which the environment revealed the genetics manifested through the environment's interaction with the genetics without "coloring" the genetics at all. as such, *human nature* is by definition not just a realistic impossibility, but a theoretical impossibility as well because, in short, the synthesis of genes-environment (occurring at point x) causes genes and environment to simultaneously affect each other while producing a gene-environment state that follows (occurring at x + 1 where integers constitute discrete existent states, positive ones meaning time going forward and negative ones meaning time going backward). for *human nature* to actually occur, there would need to be a "backwards" (perhaps "retroactive" is the word i'm looking for?) synthesis of sorts (occurring at point x - 1) wherein the environment did not "color" the genetics but still interacted with it in order to constitute a genes-environment interaction, with the resulting synthesis leading to *human nature* at point x. with pure *human nature* existing at this point, all interactions between person and environment for the rest of that person's life could be traced back to *human nature* and point x and a causality could, in theory, be determined regarding *human nature's* role in every event of that person's life.

so the following is what happens because of the impossibility of *human nature* in an applied context. because it cannot be accessed unless it interacts with an environment, thus becoming "colored" in the process, *human nature* is ultimately located in genes, viewed as potential that will be "tainted" the moment they interact with any environment. once it interacts with the environment, it ceases to be *human nature* in an abstract/potential sense and because "human nature" in a physical/realized (really metaphysical for consciousness, but physical as manifested through behavior) and the totality of the initial genes-environment interaction creates a state of genetic realization via the environment that establishes how this person will interact with future environments.

i will now further elaborate on the idea of *human nature* and attempt to expand on the austere, abstract definition of *human nature* that shows why it can not actually exist as "human nature", and that "human nature" is thus a convenient compromise that is inherently misleading. another problem with *human nature* in that environment always "colors" genetics is that you cannot separate cause and effect even in a single state or infinitesimally small states as they interact and affect each other simultaneously. but "human nature" is assuming that you can establish a "neutral" baseline with genetics/environment interactions up to a point, then drop that person into a situation and assume at that point that *human nature* -- existing as the totality of genes-environment interactions up to that point -- confronts a situation in the environment. but in reality, "human nature" is never a state of being that can be determined for certain periods and pitted against the environment during other periods; "human nature" is always in a state of becoming, thus being unable to be defined. furthermore, this state of becoming cannot be defined -- it could be infinitesimally small or it could be the entire duration of a person's life or some period of time in between those two extremes. as such, it is misleading to simply attribute anything not just to *human nature*, which is by definition an impossibility, but "human nature" as well due to its constant state of becoming and thus having an undetermined ontology. with such precarious denotations, it leaves one to wonder why people so frequently refer to things as being due to "human nature". i believe the reason for this is that "human nature" is actually mistaken for "cross-culturally accepted human behavior" (as both a range and a norm), in which case there exists an error in that "cross-culturally accepted human behavior" (as a range only) is simply a subset of all possible human behavior that allows for society to successfully function; a real world range is simply a subset of a theoretical range, and to assume that the two completely overlap is incorrect. the second glaring mistake is that "human nature" seems to have the connotation that it somehow transcends the genes-environment approach and even consciousness, perhaps due to some inherent human ability to pre-determine the limits of acceptable environments -- an ability possibly attributable to culture -- and in doing so, create a developmental spectrum wherein environments can be considered conducive to having a "neutral" effect on genes and thus circumventing the problem that prevents "human nature" from being *human nature* in reality. a better substitute for "human nature" would be "human tendency", which is really just a more concise but less informative way of saying "cross-culturally accepted human behavior (usually as a norm, although as a range is possible, but is not likely to be the intended definition communicated) when facing possible situations".

so, how can we better phrase our questions and arguments when asking things like, "is human nature compatible with such-and-such?" now, on a rather basal level, we can simply say that human nature has been mistaken for genetics, and that such-and-such is an environment of some sort, so we could change the question to, "are genetics compatible with such-and-such in a manner that the interaction between the two synthesizes a result that is deemed acceptable to us?" now, while technically correct, since "human nature" often entails social situations, for them we would have to expand upon this in order to make to integrate the genetics in a manner that someone could interpret from a social perspective. we can apply this to an example i had earlier proposed in a conversation. ultimately, theoretical simulations of human nature could determine whether people are compatible with marxism. but without the ability to do these theoretical simulations, we are left with the question: with marxism as the environment, is human genetics, through its interactions with this environment, capable of developing people who can act in society to reasonably perpetuate the existence of the human race and protect the well-being of everyone (both in terms of length of life and quality of life) while at the same time being inherently self-sustainable? notice how i not only addressed the genetic and social aspects, but also the original qualities of "human nature" as an extension of animal nature as was discussed at the outset of this piece. thus, we have successfully come full circle in defining what "human nature" is while having learned along the way what *human nature* is (and more importantly, is not).