Chapter 70: Unfolding Philosophy Using the Fifth Dimension and Adding Additional Context to the Concept of Philosophy
By Darryl Penney
Abstract: philosophy has been struggling for 3,000 years because it often does not have enough context to marry with the concepts of philosophy, for example, Plato’s problem of a lack of an absolute of justice is a property of our probability universe, and cannot be adequately grasped from top-down examination, and so the fifth dimension is used to place a ‘floor’ under the theories of the well-known philosophers, throughout history, by using a bottom-up technique to enhance their work so that only the understanding is increased, without unduly changing the concepts.
‘Perhaps the right answer to the question: “What is philosophy?” is that philosophy is what Wittgenstein calls a family resemblance concept. If we look at a variety of different philosophers, we will find overlapping similarities, but there need not be any common, defining feature that makes them all philosophers.’ (p 6) On the contrary, I believe that there is a deeper level that defines the features that makes them all philosophers and yet won’t change the status of philosophy because philosophy has evolved in a top-down manner and I believe that (a bottom-up) ‘floor’ can be easily inserted. The reason is, that (literally) everything is defined by the dimensions of the universe that we live in and they require concept and context and the definition is saying just that – that philosophy has not adequate context! In other words, I intend adding extra context between the philosophers’ concepts by using the fifth dimension.
On a personal note, philosophy is a ‘closed book’ to me, but I can still ‘unfold’ it by treating philosophers as concepts and applying the mathematics of concepts to them and this is made possible by the excellent analyses in the book ‘The Great Philosophers: the lives and ideas of history’s greatest thinkers’ by Stephen Law. ‘Unfolding’ is the investigation of the context and concepts and fitting the concepts (philosophers) into an array and mapping their contexts onto a fixed/unchanging basis that no one can dispute, that are the dimensions of our (probability of existence) universe.
From chapter 69, the fifth dimension is a complicated dimension that contains within it, the definition of the mathematics of concepts because concepts (a, b) are measurement, and context is (a+b=1) and that shows that the entanglement/context and measurement/concept must always be present, together (duality). Further, the equation (a+b)=1 shows that there are no unique solutions (absolutes) except for the speed of light and (the logic component of gravity leading to the) conservation of energy/Consciousness, and we found that we had to assign an absolute to concepts for them to be measurable and useful.
The equation (a+b)=1=(a+c) is obviously (mathematically) true for the measurement of the speed of light a, and observers b and c, or the same observer at different times, speeds etc., but this is the statement of the Michelson-Morley experiment and the obvious answer, that b=c, is the answer that the experiment found that resolves the apparent enigma that the speed of light is the same to observers moving relatively to each other. The realization is that the speed of light is an absolute and that forces our universe to relativise the observers b and c. and proves that our universe is a probability (of existence) space and that (a+b)=1 applies.
The dimensions define our universe with the total dimensions being: x, y, z, time passing, (a+b+c+…..)=1 and future time, and the above equation is for a simple two-point space and can be written more accurately as (a +/and b)=1 to show the physical/logical attributes. The equation has yielded valuable insights, in particular, the proof of the existence of the mathematics of concepts, that context and concept are intimately related, that no absolutes exist (Plato’s problem except light/gravity), that an absolute must be set for the equation to have a particular solution (that (set-absoute +/and b)=1 has a solution) and the need to set an absolute will be used time and time again. In fact, these requirements should be taken as a major part of the mathematics of concepts and leads into its inherant iterative nature.
‘According to Plato, those objects that we seem to see around us – chairs and tables, trees and mountains, ants and planets – are not what is ultimately real. They are mere shadows or reflections of the truly real objects – the forms.’ (p 23) We have created a (world O) set of units that we use for our convenience, but they may not apply to the probability universe (P) and in particular, we acknowledge many types of energy, such as potential, kinetic, chemical etc., but to simplify, I will call the conservation of energy to be a context and the concepts are the energy terms (potential, kinetic, chemical etc). These energy terms that we think to be different are the same in certain respects, such as gravity (logic, Theory of Everything). The units of speed and force (world O) evolved with us in the predator/prey situation over evolutionary time and we evolved a reality out of the probability of existence and that reality was to help us survive and see things ‘better’, but as Plato said world O and P have to be viewed through different paradigms.
‘A categorical imperative, by contrast, does not say, “If you want to achieve P, do A”. It simply says “do A’. According to Kant, genuinely moral principles have this categorical character. Our moral duty is: don’t steal, period. Its not: don’t steal if you don’t want to get caught. So genuinely moral imperatives tell us what we should do irrespective of what outcome or consequences we might desire.” (p 104)
Further, ‘According to Kant, we can establish what our moral duty is by testing our maxims against one basic categorical imperative: Act only according to maxims which you can will also be universal laws. In other words, for an action to be moral, the underlying principle on which you act must be universalizational: it must be a maxim that everyone can adopt. (p 104) Note that “always lie”, fails the test of universalizability. By contrast, “Always tell the truth” passes the test. This is a maxim on which we can all act.’ (p 105) Note that absolutes are being set.
‘This brings us to Kant’s second key moral principle: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in yourself or in another, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.’ (p 105) Now, I will skip to ‘a third worry raised about Kant’s moral philosophy … Kant is clear that, if we act solely out of, say, a feeling of compassion, we are not acting morally. But is this true? Suppose a hospital patient has two visitors. Each visitor arrives every day, bringing flowers, fruit and gifts. Each does their best to lift the patient’s spirits. One of the visitors, Sally, visits out of sympathy for the patient. … The other visitor, Sue, has a rather different motive. … simply because she thinks it is her moral duty to do so. She believes reason dictates that she should behave in this way – so that is what she does.’ (p 107)
‘Yet Kant would insist that Sally is acting wholly amorally…. In Kant’s view, only Sue does the right thing for the right reason. Again, this is counter-intuitive, to say the least’. (p 107) On the contrary, the statement only appears counter-intuitive because we have assumed that compassion is good, and have taken too few concepts into the discussion (lack of context). The context of compassion is, I believe, an addiction that we have retained because we never had the opportunity to use it, nor lose it, simply because Survival of the Fittest is a system that weeds out the unfit! This problem is two-fold, firstly, the context is not wide enough, and secondly, the lack of experimentation that compassion is good.
The mathematics of concepts is part of the fifth dimension and deals with concepts and measurement, but whilst it is easiest to sit in an armchair and ponder Aristotle, as Bacon points out, we could run expensive social experiments, but I believe that we can use a social experiment that has been running for 3,000 million years and the results are there for the taking. I am referring to a biocomputer (evolution) and I believe that it is mathematically a Truth because of the iteration. In other words, I am saying, in the light of the paragraph above, that philosophy should use the mathematics of concepts and social-experimenting/measuring using (say) the biocomputer as a concept. To compare, science/technology uses mathematics and experimentation/measuring and has been successful.
According to the Theory of Everything/Consciousness (context, and the Law of Conservation of Energy is the concept), evolution of ‘players’ (us) are ‘playing out logical decisions’ in a probability of existence space for 3,000 million years and we evolved under Survival of the Fittest where the weakest/unsuitable were eaten. Evolution is a measurement (iteration) and forms a biocomputer of decisions that we can use. When farming started, we used Survival of the Best (mathematics) and mathematics (a special case of the mathematics of concepts) has led us to Armageddon with over-population, over-use of resources, global warming etc.
We are destroying our world because compassion is something that we have lived with for only 10,000 years and we do not realize how it is affecting us genetically, morally, politically etc. One simple example is that in politics, those that benefit from the state vote in elections, but the proverb (a simple solution of the mathematics of concepts) ‘forbids’ anyone that benefits from the vote, from voting. This contextual proof is mathematical and easy to understand, but for a philosophical proof we need to determine an absolute (Plato’s problem) and for that we need the (ultimate) absolute to be Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts). If a ‘proof’ is required, the Survival of the Best (mathematics) that we have used for 10,000 years has led us to Armageddon.
I was tempted to end the last paragraph with ‘“QED” (quod erat demonstrandum: which was the thing to be proved)’ because ‘Spinoza’s Ethics, is not, as the title might suggest, just about ethics. It develops an entire theory concerning the nature of reality. One of the most striking things about the book is its structure, which mirrors that of a geometrical proof – indeed, the full title of the book is Ethics Demonstrated in a Geometrical Manner.’ (p 78) ‘Spinoza rejects Decartes’s dualism of substances. He insists that there is only one substance. That substance is the spatio-temporal world. Of course, the world appears to us to be composed of many discrete and separable items or substances: houses, tables, humans, ants, and so on. But appearances are deceptive. What we consider to be separate things are, in truth, not separate entities or substances in their own right, but, like ripples on a lake, mere temporary undulations in the one great substance.’ (p 78)
This is very like (chapters 66, 68 and 69) the Theory of Everything, where the Big Bang is a naturally occurring logic creation that starts with logic speed (infinite), creating inflation until energy is ‘split’ and slows to light speed and matter condenses, electric charge and angular momentum ‘split’. The Everything is physics, chemistry, biology, consciousness leading to Survival of the Fittest, Survival of the Best (mathematics) and in the future, Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts). The concept side is Conservation of Energy and the (associated) context is the Theory of Everything/Consciousness. This is important because concept/context can be derived from the dimensions, whereas other comparisons such as ice, water, steam, mass, energy, positive, negative are all states of energy/logic.
However, the ‘spatio-temporal world’ quoted above, is space-time that is four dimensions and as derived above, the fifth dimension is CEM (mathematics of concepts/entanglement (a+b=1)/measurement (a, b) where a and b are measurements/observers in a simple probability space). Further, the sixth dimension (world O) is future-time that leads to the very important concept of ‘forward planning’. From chapter 69, ‘the dimensions define the universe and everything in it (principally) by, (a+/and b)=1 that shows the mathematics of concepts and the need for concept, context and absolute, as derived above, and if this seems strange, it is because the derivatives are not obviously related until viewed through the Logic/Quantum/Gravity description of the universe’, and from chapter 67: ‘the Theory of Everything/Consciousness could be considered the scenery/back-drop/players to the “play” in the theatre of space-time.’ This shows the interrelatedness of the dimensions and the necessity to consider them all, at all times, and in doing this, leads to the Solution to Everything to denote that (literally) everything is defined by the dimensions, including the solutions.’
I needed to justify to myself that what I thought that I saw, was, in fact there, and that philosophy could benefit from placing a bottom-up ‘floor’ under the philosophers, and now the rest of the chapter expands the above to the later philosophers. The definition of philosophy says that it is a family resemblance concept (top-down) and I have used the dimensions of the universe to derive the Theory of Everything/Consciousness (bottom-up) and I am ‘marrying’ the two paradigms. Plato’s absolute and ‘shadows’, Spinoza’s spatio-temporal world expanded to five/six dimensions and Kant’s belief that Sally’s compassion is wrong, fit with the bottom-up view. Remember that I know very little philosophy and am selecting the philosophers that illustrate my ideas.
‘Hegel is a philosopher of history. Few other philosophers have had much interest in developing such a philosophy, so why does Hegel consider it important? … Hegel’s key idea is that history is never static, but always moving forward in a particular direction. This constant change is driven by an engine – the ‘dialectical process’. … Geist is the ultimate reality. It is not the mind of an individual – such as your particular human mind, or mine. Nor is it the sum of such individual minds. Rather, it is a sort of overarching mind of which everything that exists is a manifestation.’ (p 113) This sounds very similar to the Theory of Everything/Consciousness where consciousness is defined as repetition of physics, chemistry, biology, Survival of the Best etc. Further, ‘Geist arrives at what Hegel calls absolute knowledge.’ (p 114) as we will have when we attain the Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts).
‘Perhaps the easiest route into Schopenhauer’s philosophy is to begin with Kant, whose philosophy Schopenhauer develops. … As, according to Kant the noumenal world is a world without time or space, it seems to follow, therefore, that it is a world lacking particular things. … for Schopenhauer, the noumenal world is not the remote cause of our experiences, but the ‘inside’ of the world as it appears to us. … So, for Schopenhauser, at its deepest level the world is a sort of vast, undifferentiated cosmic will – a kind of ceaseless striving for life and existence. … Even an inanimate rock is a manifestation of will. … When we look around us, we see appalling suffering and torment caused by the ceaseless striving of man and, of course, nature.’ (p 116)
From this paragraph, firstly, Schopenhauser is talking about the fifth dimension that could be thought of as the scenery, players and conversation without the space-time of the theatre. Secondly, the noumenal world is inside us and is the product of our mind. Thirdly, the cosmic will is the Theory of Everything/Consciousness where even a rock has a consciousness because it has a logic associated with its physical form that makes it repeat its straight line motion. Fourthly, there is appalling suffering because evolution is an iteration of growing/food/breeding and is ‘powered’ by ‘determination and pain evolving a reality out of the probability of existence’. We have the chance to change this by the application of Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts) using the mind/brain and organization. It must come with the application of the mathematics of concepts because mathematics has led to Armageddon.
‘The consensus theory of truth. What do we actually mean by truth and reality? These questions lie close to the heart of philosophy. … Peirce defines truth in the following way: what those who investigate a matter will all eventually agree on.’ (p 130) This contrasts with Kant’s ‘”always telling the truth” passes the test. This is a maxim on which we can all act.’ (p 105) Looking at these two quotations suggests that the concept of ‘truth’ is not simple, so let’s set up these two concepts as attractors and clearly we need more information.
Above, I mentioned the mathematics of concepts as being obvious from the dimensions, and so it is when you know what you are looking for, and it took a lot of work to find the initial concept. Initially, I used Truth, in the form of an operator and applied it to chaos to derive the three Laws of Life that, I believe, mirror the Trinity and the Trinity was set up to show the three ‘faces’ of God. God the Father (componentization (a logic machine such as an atom or evolution), mathematical iteration, time passing, etc.), the Holy Spirit (state of mind, exercise and nutrition) and God the Son (family teaching, love etc.), bearing in mind that the three laws are inter-related and only the major factors have been quoted because of the iteration of the mathematics of concepts.
Further, it was commonly acknowledged by Aristotle and the Church that ‘the ultimate end to which everything is, finally, directed, according to Aristotle, is man – “nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man”’ (p 44) and the hunter/gatherer’s reverence (of living/gathering space) was down-played to such an extent that the Holy Spirit was ‘lost’ and we are in the (environmental) predicament that we are today. So, I am going to list the Truth in descending order: (1) an all-knowing God, (2) mathematics, (3) a God of Truth, (4) the operator Truth (mathematical iteration), (5) the mathematics of concepts and so on.
An all-knowing God is defined, mathematics is defined to be exact, a God of Truth has a place if you desire a god, the operator Truth is less important (presumably), the mathematics of concepts uses those concepts and contexts that we consider/measure etc. Truth requires knowledge and our universe is based on the fifth dimension (a+b)=1 (CEM: mathematics of concepts/entanglement/measurement) and that is all about knowledge/measurement and what is not measured does not exist (to us).
Peirce’s thinking is that ‘he’s not defining “truth” in terms of agreement or consensus after all, but in terms of correspondence with how things stand in this mind-independent reality’. (p 131) The mathematics of concepts produces agreement because anyone can add more attractors and the context will show bias and bias will produce ridicule unless the offending concept/attractor is withdrawn.
Secondly, ‘as Peirce puts it: My social theory of reality, namely, that the real is the idea in which the community settles down. … One tension in Peirce’s thinking is that … it is no longer clear how it can force us to agree about it. How can it force us to agree, if it’s not there to force us until we agree?’ (p 131) To digress, ‘Bacon was instrumental in developing the modern, experimental scientific method. … The scholastics’ approach made scientific enquiry largely an armchair enterprise. They spent the majority of their time pondering the works of Aristotle and constructing syllogistic arguments, and put little effort into actually observing the world around them.’ (p 57)
I am not accusing Peirce of this, but to draw a distinction from the fifth dimension, Peirce has a ‘theory of reality’, but I believe that we could go to a deeper level and prove a reality by looking at evolution because evolution is a Truth through iteration of countless generations of organisms. In fact, Peirce’s theory of reality is the same, to a certain extent as the reality that I will prove, when ‘the community settles down’, and if we take a community of fish in an aquarium, they will live happily together. However in a real community there will be predators and the prey will only escape because of skills that the successful have.
An extinction event occurred in the Cambrian, I believe, due to a reality change from when predators had to bump into a prey to attack it. As size increased, lensed eyes rapidly evolved, along with the mind/brain and (increased) consciousness that allowed targeted attacks and (forward) planned escapes. In other words, a sixth dimension was created in world O. Now, our community is usually/generally going about their business provided that they can stay out of the way of predators until they can breed. In other words, a reality has to be continuous over a space so that the organism is relatively safe, until it can breed, and if that reality is not continuous, magic happens and something unseen eats the organism. That is my definition of reality and is provable through our evolution’s biocomputer of life. A little thought will show that our police and judiciary have a reality, but politics does not, and I believe that politics should use the 3-way method of Plato (chapter 67 and 69) to help bring about the absolute of the Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts).
‘Husserl’s philosophical focus is on the conscious subject. He wants to investigate consciousness. But how should such an investigation proceed? Consciousness awareness, Husserl notes, is always directed towards an object. You are never merely conscious of something: a book, a tree or a headache, for example. Husserl’s original approach to the study of consciousness is to try to investigate it by studying the objects of conscious awareness. He calls this discipline phenomenology.’ (p 145)
The Michelson-Morley experiment shows that if two observers measure an absolute, in this case the speed of light, they will get the same answer irrespective of their relative motions to each other and have been relativised. In other words (a+b)=(a+c) for speed of light a and observers b and c and this is the form of a measurement of a by b in a probability of existence universe. This is the explanation of why ‘Husserl notes, is always directed towards an object’ and this is because, I believe, that every point in a probability space is entangled and measurement defines/determines its existence to a process/mind.
‘An interesting feature of intentional states is that they can be directed towards things that do not exist. Perhaps there is no God. In which case I have been thinking about something that doesn’t exist.’ (p 145) The paragraph above outlines the measurement process, but the quotation above is different because it involves creative thought. Now, from the Theory of Everything, I defined Consciousness to be everything that has the logic of repeatability, whilst consciousness (little c) is the ability of a brain, of a certain size, to create a mind/brain, along with the ability to see or use other senses for hunting, migrating etc. This consciousness, in a rudimentary form evolved a long time ago and it needs a (world O, sixth) dimension of future time to allow us to ‘forward-plan’.
In other words, forward planning is creative thought! Our mind/brain evolved to confabulate by recognising an ambushing predator from a partial ‘portion’ of the predator’s anatomy (colour, shape, smell etc.) and to do that, we needed to be able to remember a general stylised shape/smell/colour for comparison and that is heritable. I believe that the organisms in our biocomputer (iteration/Truth) have, through selection, been able to use measurement/confabulation (a+b)=1 to store/remember and forward plan to create thought possibilities and move away from a predator to prevent them from getting within attack (world O units) distance/speed. Survivability (concept) is the key to the workings of the mind/brain and if we use its ‘powers’ outside of the context of Survival of the Fittest, we must make sure that we use adequate organizational constraints else we end up in a non-reality (a movement from one stable reality to another), as our world now is, heading towards Armageddon.
‘Like Husserl, Heidegger is a phenomenologist – he also offers a descriptive philosophy of experience. However, Heidegger’s version of phenomenology differs markedly from that of Husserl. … Like Husserl, Heidegger believes that consciousness is essentially ‘intentional’ – it is about, or, if you like, directed towards objects.’ (p 164) There seems to be a level of agreement and I want to unfold a question posed by Heidegger, “Why are there things that are rather than nothing?” because it brings in the concept of the ‘multiverse’ that carries on from a probability universe.
For thousands of years it has been assumed that our universe exists and that a Creator was necessary to bring it into existence, however, a probability of existence space has an infinite number of probabilities on the number line between 0 and 1, with certainty of existence occurring at 1. It is also my view that a probability of existence of a Big Bang occurs at any point in any probability space and this does away with the necessity of requiring an infinite number of universes to (actually) exist somewhere. To keep it short, we are the logic engines of decision and evolution is the flow of logical decisions.
The short answer to Heidegger’s question is ‘because we have to be here to ask the question’! This is also a serious answer because logic knows no bounds (Occam’s razor) nor a limit in its speed of action (chapter 69) and our probability space would throw up all combinations of natural constants that can occur at each (theoretical) Big Bang. Notice that the Big Bang is logic that expands infinitely fast (inflation) until energy is formed to give us the universe we see, and the logic component (of gravity) provides the concept part (Conservation of Energy) to match the context part (Theory of Everything).
If this sounds strange, is the concept of a god easier to imagine? We are here in the particular universe (of the multiverse) that has the physical constants to allow us to exist and we are evolving using the things around us. The short answer will do for the concept but the longer answer to Heidegger’s question can be given, but it is contextual and that is that everything is joined together (entanglement) and for us to be here we have to have the correct physical constants (approximately) and they influence/influenced our evolution.
Our evolution is part of the context (Theory of Everything) and that contains the concept (Solution to Everything) and that is why we are here – because we can, but we must eat what our bodies evolved to eat, and that is fresh food of wide variety (primates consume 150 plus species of leaves, insects, fruit etc). In fact, the second Law of Life requires state of mind, sufficient exercise and proper nutrition and the third law requires that we teach our offspring to survive. These are all part of the (context) of living in harmony (until eaten, reality) that in total, makes up the concept of evolution. Evolution is a compete ‘package’ and ‘playing with it’ has downsides such as the modern degenerative diseases, over-population, Armageddon etc. unless we embrace a better absolute.
The proof comes from the biocomputer of our past that we are carrying on the evolution but, unfortunately, humans have changed from Survival of the Fittest to Survival of the Best (mathematics) which is clearly not working and must use the absolute Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts). The best that I can do at the moment is to try to get the world to consider Plato’s absolute as a stepping-stone before it is too late.
It seems appropriate at this point to consider Karl Popper’s ‘falsification’ ‘in so far as a statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: insofar as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.’ (p 170) Notice that the word ‘falsifiable’ is used in a special sense, ‘in Popper’s view, a properly scientific statement makes a positive claim about how things stand in the world, and so runs the risk of being false’. (p 173) I believe that the second quotation is true, whereas the first is misleading and refers to theories that are ‘unscientific’ and accommodate all possibilities, in particular, theories of Freud and Marx. (p 173) ‘One of the most commonly raised concerns about Popper’s falsificationism is that it requires that we simply accept Hume’s conclusion that no scientific theory is ever confirmed – not even to a small degree.’ (p 175)
The quotation from the last sentence ‘we simply accept Hume’s conclusion that no scientific theory is ever confirmed’ is quite true because from the fifth dimension (a+b)=1 the derivation of the mathematics of concepts is iterative and you can’t be sure what will be found around the next corner. This is in line with ‘Hume’s problem of induction’ and that the example is that black swans are found in Australia (p 172) (likewise Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem (p 200)).
‘Sartre is one of the best-known existentialist philosophers. The existentialists place human freedom at the centre of their philosophy. For Sartre, that we are free is not just a, but the, fundamental truth about human beings. He expresses this point by saying that, for human beings, “existence precedes essence”’ (p 177) From above, not only humans, but everything in the universe exists because it can and is a manifestation of being able to exist and make logical decision, as in the Theory of Everything. ‘An obvious contrast here is with Aquinas … “essence precedes existence” … have a God-given purpose that it is their moral duty not to thwart.” (p 177)
‘Sartre insists that we are free. But how can he be so sure? If human beings are physical objects then they are governed by the same laws of nature that govern all other physical objects. So, then surely they are not free – they merely think they are.’ (p 178) The Theory of Everything is a continuum of our evolution through physical, logical and mental states, and is literally everything that arose out of the Big Bang and everything is restricted to/by physical laws and logical decisions, including us.
Conclusion: the ‘map’ that I placed over philosophy above, fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, and the scientific/mathematical/philosophical part that I introduced, does not disturb the science/mathematics/philosophy, as it stands, but helps with the understanding. I believe that I have explained the context that the philosophers’ concepts reside in, and now we can look for new concepts out of that context. The absolute, mathematics of concepts, the setting of absolutes, context and concepts, conservation of energy (concept), Theory of Everything (context), the Solution of Everything (concept) and the Survival of the Best (mathematics of concepts) as an absolute form a necessary ‘floor’ to certain aspects of philosophy and can only benefit them, if included.
References: all quotations are fully referenced in the body and earlier chapters can be found on http://darrylpenney.com if required, unless being reviewed.