"Post hoc ergo propter hoc"

After this, therefore because of this. Post hoc fallicy. Sometimes, the direction of cause and effect can be determined by looking at the timing of events, post hoc fallacy is

the error of reasoning that a first event causes a second event because the first event occurred before the second.

If one were to look at December shopping, they might say because of all the shopping Christmas happens. However we know that not to be true.

Just looking at the timing of events often doesn't help to unravel cause and effect.

Stock markets might react prior to, in anticipation of economic expansion - technology lowered price

Positive can be tested
Normative cannot

Although the past does not exist, we can certainly agree that the present is the effect of all events that occured in the past, all events that occured in the past come

together to establish present, the detail of that, of all circumstances coming together to create, every single little detail of every and all circumstances that exist in the

present.

1. Philosophy

Philosophy: the study of ultimate reality and meaning.

The term philosophy derives from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom.

Philosophy asks the questions:

• What is existing?
• What is knowing?
• What is good?

Human Answers

Most humans justify their answers to philosophy's questions using one of four methods.

• Faith is belief based on revelation and exempt from doubt.
• Mysticism is belief based on private and direct experience of ultimate reality.
• Skepticism is belief that is always subject to doubt and justified through objective verification.
• Cynicism is the absence of belief. (Further notes on Cynicism)

1.1. Philosophy / Metaphysics

Metaphysics: the study of ultimate reality.

Metaphysics (Greek words meta = after/beyond and physics = nature) is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of "first principles" and "being" (ontology).

1. Ontology: the study of being.
2. Theology: the study of universal being and knowing.

Reality is everything that exists. Reality consists ultimately of matter and energy and their fundamentally lawlike and unwilled relations in space-time.

Theories of Reality

The primary distinction in theories of reality is between Nature and Spirit.

• Nature is the aspects of the universe governed by lawlike and nonvolitional regularity.
• Spirit is anything mysteriously volitional or otherwise not governed by lawlike regularity.

Human theories of reality differ primarily according to how they analyze Spirit.

• Supernaturalism is the thesis that the fundamental laws of physics make irreducible reference to, or were created by, some agency's volition.
  • Theism is the thesis that the universe is affected by supernatural agency.
    • Polytheism is the thesis that the universe is affected by supernatural agencies.
    • Monotheism is the thesis that the universe is affected by a single supernatural agent, God.
  • Pantheism is the thesis that the universe constitutes a supernatural agency.
  • Deism is the thesis that a supernatural agency created the universe and lets its laws operate without interference.
• Naturalism is the thesis that reality exists and operates without supernatural intervention and according to lawlike regularities that can be understood through empirical investigation and without special intuition.
  • Atheism is the thesis that supernatural agency does not exist.
  • Agnosticism is the thesis that one does not or cannot know whether supernatural agency exists.

A circumstance is a set of terms and their fixed properties and relations that as a whole can be distinguished from other such sets and identified with itself. A change is a relation between an ordered pair of distinguishable circumstances and is defined by the two circumstances that it relates. An effect is a change that can be attributed. A cause is that to which an effect can be attributed in whole or in part. An influence is that to which an effect can be only partly attributed. Attribution is a fundamental concept that underlies the notions of both ontological causality and logical properties.

A necessary cause is one which can be inferred from the effect. A sufficient cause is one from which the corresponding effect can be inferred.  To determine is to be the necessary and sufficient cause for. Possibility is the property of not being contradicted by any inference. Logical possibility is the property of not contradicting the laws of logic. Physical possibility is the property of not contradicting the laws of nature.

The universe is the maximal set of circumstances that includes this statement and no subset of which is causally unrelated to the remainder. To exist is to have a causal relationship with the rest of the universe.  An entity is any term that exists. Two circumstances are causally unrelated if neither could ever influence the other.

An event is a change that cannot interestingly be subdivided into constituent changes. Time is the ordering of events according to the potential of some events to causally influence other events. If (as in this universe) causal influence propagates through space only at finite speed, then some events can be far enough apart in space as to be in principle unable to influence each other. In this case time is a partial order on events instead of a total order.

An instant is a point on a linear continuum onto which events have been associated in a particular reference frame according to their order in time. Duration is a measure of the separation between two instants in time determined by counting intervening events of the kind that recur in proportional numbers to each other.  Examples of such events are the swings of a pendulum or the vibrations of an atom.

Eternity is an entire linear continuum of instants. Thus by definition there is between any two instants another instant.  However, it is not necessary that between any two events there is another event.  Nor is it necessary that there be a first event, even if the past is of finite duration.  Just as there is no smallest positive real number, there might be no first event, because there might be no event associated with a first instant (t=0).  Instants are mathematical constructs that do not always have an associated actual event.

The future is, from the perspective of a particular event, the set of all events that the event potentially influences.  The past is, from the perspective of a particular event, the set of all events by which the event is potentially influenced.  The present is, from the perspective of a particular event, the set of all events simultaneous with it.  Simultaneity is a relation enjoyed by two events if and only if they share identical sets of past and future events.

Determinism is the thesis that a sufficient knowledge of any particular set of circumstances could be used to completely infer any subsequent circumstance. Some humans take determinism to be the thesis that the future is already decided, that the present was always going to be the way it is, that statements about probability and possibility are merely statements about one's incomplete knowledge, and that only actual possibility is that which is already inevitable.

Identity is the relation that obtains between two entities (or terms) that are the same instance, i.e., that could never be counted as two.  Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles states that if there is no possible way to distinguish two entities then they really are the same entity.

Space is the seemingly boundless and continuous three-dimensional extent in which all matter is located and all events occur. It seems logically possible that space could be not only boundless (like the surface of a sphere) but infinite (like an infinite plane). It even seems logically possible that space could be locally discontinuous.

1.2. Philosophy / Epistemology

Epistemology: the study of knowledge.

1. Philosophy Of Mind: the study of the faculty for thinking and knowing.
2. Philosophy Of Science: the study of scientific knowledge.

Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge.

Knowledge

Knowledge is justified true belief. Belief in a proposition p is justified if 1) it is developed though a process that reliably yields truth, 2) it is appropriately caused by the fact that p is true, and 3) it would generally not be held if p were false.  The reliability criterion entails that synthetic (i.e. inductive) knowledge is always provisional. The causal and counterfactual criteria entail that whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on inherently imprecise judgments concerning whether the believer is accidentally right. Operationally, a belief is justified if and only if it is convincing and defensible.

Truth

Truth is logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and with other truth. Evidence is any and all perceived circumstances.

The Principle of Parsimony (or Occam's Razor) is that the simpler of two explanations is to be preferred when they are otherwise equivalent.

Humans have proposed several criteria for truth.

• The Correspondence Theory of Truth is that the terms of true propositions map to elements of reality in a way that validates the proposition.
• The Coherence Theory of Truth is that true propositions are those in the system of mutually coherent propositions that is more complete than any rival system.
• The Pragmatic Theory of Truth is that true propositions are those that are most useful to believe and that are thus "fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate".

Meaning

The denotation (or extension) of a term is the set of entities it refers to. The connotation (or intension) of a term is the properties and concept(s) associated with it.

The meaningof a term is the context-sensitive connotation ultimately established by its relevant denotation and use.

The Verifiability Principle holds that a statement is propositionally meaningless (i.e. states no proposition) if it is neither logically decidable nor empirically verifiable. Positivism is a stricter form of Empiricism that asserts the Verifiability Principle.

Theories of Meaning

Humans have proposed three sorts of explanation for meaning:

• The Referential Theory of Meaning is that the meaning of a term is the things in the world it refers to.
• The Conceptual Theory of Meaning is that the meaning of a term is the properties and concepts associated with it.
• The Behavioral Theory of Meaning is that the meaning of a term consists of the behaviors and dispositions associated with it.

Theories of Knowledge

Humans fall into two camps depending on whether they believe synthetic a priori knowledge is possible:

• Rationalism is the thesis that some synthetic propositions can be known from reason alone and independent of any experience.
• Empiricism is the thesis that all synthetic propositions can only be known from experience.

Philosophy Of Mind: the study of the faculty for thinking and knowing.

Philosophy of mind is the philosophical study of the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, and consciousness. These areas give rise to some very difficult problems and questions, and there are many opinions as to their solutions and answers. this lecture series attempts to suggest the scope of the philosophy of mind and indicate some of the important questions, but does not provide answers.

Essence of Mind

A mind is any volitional conscious faculty for perception and cognition.

Cognition

Cognition is the process of learning, reasoning, and knowing. Learning is the processing of experience into an increase in knowledge or behavioral effectiveness. Reasoning is the process of making and evaluating valid inferences.

Perception

Perception is the process of organizing sensation into experience. Sensation is the process of external influence on a monitoring or control system. Experience is any relatively unified and coherent interpretation of related contemporaneous sensations.

Consciousness

Consciousness is awareness of self and environment. Awareness is the direct and central availability of information in a monitoring or control system.

Volition

Volition is the power or act of making decisions about an agent's own actions.  A decision is the causing by a system of events which were not physically determined from outside the system but rather were at least somewhat contingent on the internals of the system, and which were not predictable except perhaps by modeling the internals of the system.

Subjectivity

Objectivity is independence from a point of view or perspective that is inherently private. Subjectivity is dependency on a point of view or perspective that is inherently private. Subjective experience is the private phenomenal aspect of experience, the vivid feeling of what an experience is "like".

Physicalism is the thesis that all facts can be described in physical (and thus non-subjective) terms. Some humans have what they call a "natural belief that collections of cells do not generate minds" and that therefore physicalism must be false.

Qualia are ineffable intrinsic subjective qualities of perception, such as the redness of red, beyond the functional or dispositional properties of perception. Qualia are taken by opponents of physicalism to be a mysterious phenomenon that physicalism cannot explain.

Intentionality

Intentionality is aboutness -- the property of being about, directed at, or suited for.

Mind and Object

Concepts are abstractions induced by minds from instances. Concepts are the products of
the not-fully-understood facility by which a mind induces general properties from instances, and are themselves the not-fully-understood facility by which a mind recognizes those general properties in other similar instances. Ideas are concepts. Universals are kinds or categories of terms that are related according to shared properties. Human theories about universals are of three general kinds:

• Realism is the thesis that universals are essences that have existence independent of any instances.
• Conceptualism is the thesis that universals exist only as mental concepts.
• Nominalism is the thesis that universals are merely names given to groups of similar instances.

Mind and Supermind

These are some of the levels of information-processing ability:

• Sentience is the capacity for sensation.
• Cognition is the process of learning, reasoning, and knowing.
• Consciousness is awareness of self and environment.
• Intelligence is the ability to make, test, and apply inductions about perceptions of self and world.
• Automentation is the ability of a mind to engineer all of its internal and external information storage and processing.

Philosophy Of Science

Philosophy Of Science: the study of scientific knowledge.

Science is the study of regular objective phenomena through empirical induction and logical deduction.  The scientific method consists of observation and measurement, induction of hypotheses and deduction of consequences, experimental or empirical testing of those consequences, reproducibility of results, and competition for agreement in the marketplace of ideas.

Discovery is the learning of a principle or fact that was already in effect. Invention is the creation of a method or mechanism that was not already in operation. A hypothesis is a rigorous explanation that has not already been proven.  'Theory' can mean either a proven or unproven hypothesis.  A Fact is a synthetic proposition that is demonstrably true.  Principles and facts are discovered (not invented) because they were already in effect. Theories are invented (not discovered) because the explaining that they constitute was not already happening, even though the principle they describe might have been.  Thus, Darwin can be said both to have invented the theory of evolution and to have discovered the principle of evolution.

Axiology

Axiology: the study of values.

1. Ethics: the study of how individual persons should affect other persons and other beings.
2. Political Philosophy: the study of how groups of persons should affect persons and other beings.
3. Virtue Philosophy: the study of how individual persons should conduct themselves.
4. Aesthetics: the study of beauty.

Definition of Values

A value is, in Philosophy, a principle or standard for considering something good or bad. Good is being pleasant or fit for a chosen purpose. Bad is being unpleasant or unfit for a chosen purpose. Right is accordance of a decision or outcome with ultimate (and not just proximate) goodness. Wrong is discordance of a decision or outcome with ultimate (and not just proximate) goodness.

Origin of Values

Values derive from intentions and appetites. Appetites are desires arising from capacities for pleasure and pain.  Innate appetites are usually the result of evolutionary pressure for inclusive reproductive fitness.  However, appetites can conflict with each other, with long-term inclusive fitness, and with intentions.  An intention is a desire for a chosen goal.  Happiness is the tendency of a being to have its appetites satisfied and intentions fulfilled.

The ultimate goal of most humans is self-preservation in any of three ways:

• personal survival: continuation of one's body, mind, and "soul"
• genetic survival: continuation of one's family
• memetic survival: continuation of one's memory and creations

An intrinsic value is a value which derives from an intention or appetite that is an end in itself, and is not purely instrumental to other intentions and appetites. An ultimate value is an intrinsic value the pursuit of which is not compromised by the pursuit of any other value.

• Universality is, in Axiology, the principle that to hold a fundamental value is to advocate it being held by all relevantly similar valuers.
• Impartiality is, in Axiology, the principle that a fundamental value cannot favor a particular thing over other relevantly similar things.
• Maximality is, in Axiology, the principle that if a value is fundamental then there being too much of it is impossible.
• Compatibility is, in Axiology, the principle that fundamental values must be relatively compatible with the natural appetites and desires of the valuer.

Humans divide into several schools of thought regarding the justification of values.

• Cognitivism is, in Axiology, the thesis that propositions about values can be objectively true or false.
  • Naturalism is, in Axiology, the thesis that the truth of propositions about values can be derived from facts about nature.
  • Intuitionism is, in Axiology, the thesis that the truth of propositions about values can only be derived from self-evident intuitions.
• Noncognitivism is, in Axiology, the thesis that propositions about values cannot be objectively true or false.
  • Emotivism is, in Axiology, the thesis that propositions about values reduce to emotional expressions of approval and disapproval.
  • Prescriptivism is, in Axiology, the thesis that propositions about values reduce to exhortations and prohibitions.

Asserted Values

Extropy is the amount of a system's intelligence, vitality, and capability for increasing its intelligence, vitality, and capability.

Intelligence. We value not just information and knowledge. We value understanding and wisdom and especially the intelligence that both produces and includes them. Understanding is knowledge that is fundamental, recursive, and reflexive: it is central and irreducible, it supports and implies much other derivative knowledge, and it fixes itself and its knower in the landscape of other knowledge. Wisdom is the understanding of both one's purpose and how best to pursue it.

Value Systems

The major human value systems are:

• Pietism is the thesis that the ultimate value is devotion to supernatural agency.
• Collectivism is the thesis that the ultimate value is the good of persons in groups.
• Individualism is the thesis that the ultimate value is the good of persons as individuals.
  • Eudaimonism is the thesis that ultimate value lies in individual happiness.
    • Utilitarianism is the thesis that the ultimate value is the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
    • Hedonism is the thesis that the ultimate value is pleasure.
    • Asceticism is the thesis that the ultimate value is serenity.
    • Egoism is the thesis that the ultimate value is one's own happiness.
  • Stoicism is the thesis that the ultimate value is virtue.
  • Existentialism is the thesis that ultimate values are created only by individual choices.
• Survivalism is the thesis that the ultimate value is inclusive reproductive fitness.
• Pessimism is the thesis that values are irrelevant.
  • Nihilism is the thesis that everything is irrelevant.
    
• Deontologism is the thesis that ultimate value derives from rational imperative.
• Altruism is the thesis that the ultimate value is the happiness of others.
• Extropianism is the thesis that the ultimate value is extropy.

Ethics

Ethics: the study of how individual persons should affect other persons and other beings.

Extropian Ethics

A being is any entity possessing life, sentience, or intelligent volition, and are the only entities that have rights. There are two classes of beings: persons and organisms. A person is any intelligent being with significant volitional control over how it affects other beings.

Political Philosophy

• Anarchism is the political system holding that the state should not exist because coercion is never permissible.
• Libertarianism is the political system holding that the state exists only to minimize coercion.
• Welfare Statism is the political system holding that the state should protect civil liberties, regulate unequal private economic association, and provide social insurance.
• Socialism is the political system holding that the state should protect civil liberties, regulate unequal private economic association, provide social insurance, and monopolize certain industries and resources.
• Communism is the political system holding that the state should monopolize all capital.

Virtue Philosophy

Virtue is any tendency or capacity to choose or behave in a way that is good.

• Wisdom is the highest virtue.
• Fortitude is the capacity to overcome fear and endure misfortune.
• Temperance is the moderation of the appetites.
• Fairness is the practice of justice and the equitable reciprocation of cooperation.
• Kindness is sympathy and helpfulness.

Vice

Vice is any tendency to choose or behave in a way that is bad.

Choosing Human Values

Love is strong affection and devotion. Romantic love is deep and intimate affection and devotion involving sensual passion, reproductive desire, and mutual unity of interest. Each human should seek a mate with whom he or she has mutual sensual attraction, shared values, and compatible temperament. Humans should seek a mate by applying a balance of these three criteria, and by balancing short-term pleasure and convenience against long-term happiness. Romantic love is worth making efforts and taking risks, and finding it thus requires wisdom and fortitude. If circumstances preclude finding it, then living happily without it also requires wisdom and fortitude.

Family. Humans should honor the memories of their ancestors. Humans should respect and repay the devotion of their parents. Human siblings and cousins should provide each other fellowship and aid. Humans should have as many children as they can provide with a materially and emotionally sound upbringing. Humans should instill in their children personal virtues and extropian and human values.

Fellowship is the enjoyment of human company through the sharing of ideas, humor, competition, industry, or fun.

Industry is economic, intellectual, or artistic production. Humans should practice industry to provide for their material well-being and to satisfy their appetite for learning and feeling useful. Humans should throughout their lives try to improve their understanding of the foundations and frontiers of human knowledge. Humans should choose careers that balance their personal interests and temperament with occupations of high or increasing economic productivity.

Misfortune is any harm one experiences, other than injustice, that can be seen as beyond one's control. Some of the dimensions of misfortune are:

An illusory paradise is an artificial or virtual environment which one believes is real and which is actively and intelligently optimized for one's happiness.

Fairness. Fairness is the most obligatory virtue, for two reasons.  First, much of fairness consists in practicing justice, which is itself obligatory.  Second, fairness derives directly from the meta-ethical values of universality and impartiality, as is reflected in the Golden Rule. For this reason, fairness is like wisdom a maximal virtue: it is impossible to be too wise or too fair.

Kindness. Kindness is the most sublime of the virtues. Kindness includes being in a good mood and assuming in others the best motive that is consistent with available evidence.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics: the study of beauty.

Beauty is the quality of being pleasing to apprehend with the senses or contemplate with the mind.

Authenticity is the property that obtains when appearance reliably indicates essence, and when the responsible person (if any) has no intent to dissemble.