<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">From 0f35a25aeda5c8d0d740ccc0badc557cc9dcfc0a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: grr &lt;grr@lo2.org&gt;
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 16:45:24 -0400
Subject: break out chapters for philosophy section

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+\chapter{Introduction}
+
+
+This essay is the third in a series on the rationale of my career. It 
+summarizes the results of my activities, the consistent outlook on a whole 
+range of questions which I have developed. The first essay, 
+\essaytitle{On Social Recognition}, noted that the official social philosophy of practically every 
+regime in the world says that the individual has a duty to serve society to the 
+best of his abilities. Social recognition is supposed to be the reward which 
+indicates that the individual is indeed serving society. Now it happens that 
+the most important tasks the individual can undertake are tasks (intellectual, 
+political, and otherwise) posed by society. However, when the individual 
+undertakes such tasks, society's actual response is almost always persecution 
+(Galileo) or indifference (Mendel). Thus, the doctrine that the'individual has 
+a duty to serve society is a hypocritical fraud. I reject every social 
+philosophy which contains this doctrine. The rational individual will obtain 
+the means of subsistence by the most efficient swindle he can find. Beyond 
+this, he will undertake the most important tasks posed by society for his 
+own private gratification. He will not attempt to benefit society, or to gain 
+the recognition which would necessarily result if society were to utilize his 
+achievements. 
+
+The second essay, \essaytitle{Creep}, discussed the practices of isolating oneself; 
+carefully controlling one's intake of ideas and influences from outside; and 
+playing as a child does. I originally saw these practices as the effects of 
+certain personality problems. However, it now seems that they are actually 
+needed for the intellectual approach which I have developed. They may be 
+desirable in themselves, rather than being mere effects of personality 
+problems. 
+
+I chose fundamental philosophy as my primary subject of investigation. 
+Society presses me to accept all sorts of beliefs. At one time it would have 
+pressed me to believe that the earth was flat; then it reversed itself and 
+demanded that I believe the earth is round. The majority of Americans still 
+consider it "necessary" to believe in God; but the Soviet government has 
+managed to function for decades with an atheistic philosophy. Thus, which 
+beliefs should I accept? My analysis is presented in writings entitled 
+\essaytitle{Philosophy Proper}, \essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs}, and 
+\essaytitle{Philosophical Aspects of Walking Through Walls}. 
+The question of whether a given belief is valid 
+depends on the issue of whether there is a realm beyond my "immediate 
+experience." Does the Empire State Building continue to exist even when I 
+am not looking at it? If such a question can be asked, there must indeed be 
+a realm beyond my experience, because otherwise the phrase 'a realm 
+beyond my experience' could not have any meaning. (Russell's theory of 
+descriptions does not apply in this case.) But if the assertion that there is a 
+realm beyond my experience is true merely because it is meaningful, it 
+cannot be substantive; it must be a definitional trick. In general, beliefs 
+depend on the assertion of the existence of a realm beyond my experience, 
+an assertion which is nonsubstantive. Thus, beliefs are nonsubstantive or 
+meaningless; they are definitional tricks. Psychologically, when I believe that 
+the Empire State Building exists even though I am not looking at it, I 
+imagine the Empire State Building, and I have the attitude toward this 
+mental picture that it is a perception rather than a mental picture. The 
+attitude involved is a self-deceiving psychological trick which corresponds to 
+the definitional trick in the belief assertion. The conclusion is that all beliefs 
+are inconsistent or self-deceiving. It would be beside the point to doubt 
+beliefs, because whatever their connotations may be, logically beliefs are 
+nonsense, and their negations are nonsense also. 
+
+The important consequence of my philosophy is the rejection of truth 
+as an intellectual modality. I conclude that an intellectual activity's claim to 
+have objective value should not depend on whether it is true; and also that 
+an activity may perfectly weil employ false statements and still have 
+objective value. I have developed activities which use mental capabilities that 
+are excluded by a truth-oriented approach: descriptions of imaginary 
+phenomena, the deliberate adoption of false expectations, the thinking of 
+contradictions, and meanings which are reversed by the reader's mental 
+reactions; as well as illusions, the deliberate suspension of normal beliefs, and 
+phrases whose meaning is stipulated to be the associations they evoke. It 
+must be clear that these activities are not in any way whatever a return to 
+pre-scientific trrationalism. My philosophy demolishes astrology even more 
+than it does astronomy. The irrationalist is out to deceive you; he wants you 
+to believe that his superstitions are truths. My activities, on the other hand, 
+explicitly state that they are using non-true material. My intent is not to get 
+you to believe that superstitions are truths, but to exploit non-true material 
+for rational purposes. 
+
+The other initial subject of investigation I chose was art. The art which 
+claims to have cognitive value is already demolished by my philosophical 
+results. However, art at its most distinctive does not need to claim cognitive 
+value; its value is claimed to be entertainmental or amusemental. What about 
+art whose justification is simply that people like it? Consider things which 
+are just liked, or whose value is purely subjective. I point out that each 
+individual already has experiences, prior to art, whose value is purely 
+subjective. (Call these experiences "brend.") The difference between brend 
+and art is that in art, the thing valued is separated from the valuing of it and 
+turned into an object which is urged on other people. Individuals tend to 
+overlook their brend, and they do so because of the same factors which 
+perpetuate art. These factors include the relation between the socialization 
+of the individual and the need for an escape from work. The conditioning 
+which causes one to venerate "great art" is also a conditioning to dismiss 
+one's own brend. If one can become aware of one's brend without the 
+distortion produced by this conditioning, one finds that one's brend is 
+superior to any art, because it has a level of personalization and originality 
+which completely transcends art. 
+
+Thus, I reject art as an intellectual or cultural modality. In rejecting 
+truth, I advocated in its place intellectual activities which have an objective 
+value independent of truth. In rejecting art, I do not propose that it be 
+replaced with any objective activity at all. Rather, I advocate that the 
+individual become aware of his just-likings for what they are, and allow them 
+to come out. If I succeed in getting the individual to recognize his own 
+just-likings, then I will have given him infinitely more than any artist ever 
+can. 
+
+We are not finished with art, however. Ever since art began to 
+disintegrate as an institution, modern art has become more and more of a 
+repository for activities which represent pure waste, but which counterfeit 
+innovation and objective value. A two-way process is involved here. On the 
+one hand, the modern artist, faced with the increasing gratuitousness of his 
+profession, desperately incorporates superficial references to science in his 
+products in the hope of intimidating his audience. On the other hand, art 
+itself has become an institution which invests waste with legitimacy and even 
+prestige; and it offers instant rewards to people who wish to play the game. 
+What is innovation in modern art? You take a poem by Shelly, cut it up into 
+little pieces, shake the pieces up in a box, then draw them out and write 
+down whatever is on them in the order in which they are drawn. If you call 
+the result a "modern poem," people will suddenly be awed by it, whereas 
+they would not have been awed otherwise. This sort of innovation is utterly 
+mechanical and superficial. When artists incorporate scientific references in 
+their products, the process is similarly a mechanical, superficial 
+amalgamation of routine artistic material with current gadgets. 
+
+Now there may be some confusion as to what the difference is between 
+the products which result from this attempt to "save" art, and activities in 
+the intellectual modality which I favor. There may be a tendency to confuse 
+activities which are neither science nor art, but have objective value, with art 
+products which are claimed to be "scientific" and therefore objectively 
+valuable. To dispel this confusion, the following questions may be asked 
+about art products. 
+\begin{enumerate}
+\item If the product were not called art, would it immediately be seen to be 
+worthless? Does the product rely on artistic institutions to "carry" it? 
+
+\item Suppose that the artist claims that his product embodies major scientific 
+discoveries, as in the case of a ballet dancer who claims to be working in the 
+field of antigravity ballet. If the dancer really has an antigravity device, 
+why can it only work in a ballet theater? Why can it 
+only be used to make dancers jump higher? Why do you have to be able to 
+perform "Swan Lake" in order to do antigravity experiments? 
+\end{enumerate}
+To use a phrase from medical research, I contend that a real scientist would seek to 
+isolate the active principle---not to obscure it with non-functional mumbo-jumbo. 
+
+Both of these sets of questions make the same point, from somewhat 
+different perspectives. Given an individual with a product to offer, does he 
+actively seek out the lady art reporters, the public relations contracts, the 
+museum officials, or does he actively dissociate himself from them? Does he 
+seek artistic legitimation of his product, or does he reject it? The objective 
+activities which I have developed stand on their own feet. They are not art, 
+and to construe them as art would make it impossible to comprehend them. 
+
+A definition of the intellectual modality which I favor is now in order. 
+Until now, this modality has involved the construction of ideas such that the 
+very possibility of thinking these ideas is a significant phenomenon. In other 
+words, the modality has consisted of the invention of mental abilities. The 
+ideas involve physical language, that is, language which occurs in beliefs 
+about the physical world. Such language is philosophically meaningless, but 
+it has connotations provided by the psychological trick involved in believing. 
+The connotations are what are utilized; factual truth is irrelevant. Then, the 
+ideas cannot be reduced to the mechanical manipulation of marks or 
+counters---unlike ordinary mathematics. Also, logical truth, which happens to 
+be discredited by my philosophical results, is irrelevant to the ideas. 
+
+But the defining requirement of the modality is that each activity in it 
+must have objective value. The activity must provide one with something 
+which is useful irrespective of whether one likes it; that is, which is useful 
+independently of whether it produces emotional gratification. 
+
+We can now consider the following principle. "spontaneously and 
+without any prompting to sweep human culture aside and to carry out 
+elaborate, completely self-justifying activities." Relative to the social context 
+of the individual's activities, this principle is absurd. We have no reason to 
+respect the eccentric hobbyist, or the person who engages in arbitrary 
+antisocial acts. If an action is to have more than merely personal significance, 
+it must have a social justification, as is explained in On Social Recognition. 
+In the light of The Flaws Underlying Beliefs and the brend theory, however, 
+the principle mentioned above does become valid when it is interpreted 
+correctly, because it becomes necessary to invent ends as well as means. The 
+activity must provide an objective value, but this value will no longer be 
+standardized. 
+
+The modality I favor is best exemplified by \essaytitle{Energy Cube Organism},
+\essaytitle{Concept Art}, and the \essaytitle{Perception-Dissociator Model}. 
+\essaytitle{Energy Cube Organism} is a perfect example of ideas such that the very 
+possibility of thinking them is a significant phenomenon. It is also a perfect example of an 
+activity which is useful irrespective of whether it provides emotional 
+gratification. It combines the description of imaginary physical phenomena 
+with the thinking of contradictions. It led to \essaytitle{Studies in Constructed 
+Memories}, which in turn led to \essaytitle{The Logic of Admissible Contradictions}.
+With this last writing, it becomes obvious that the activity has applications 
+outside itself. 
+
+\essaytitle{Concept Art}\footnote{published in An Anthology ed. LaMonte Young, 1963}
+uses linguistic expressions which are changed by the reader's mental 
+reactions. It led to \essaytitle{Post-Formalism in Constructed Memories}, and this led 
+in turn to \essaytitle{Subjective Propositional Vibration}.
+
+The \essaytitle{Perception-Dissociator Model}\footnote{published in I-KON, Vol. 1, No. 5} 
+was intended to exploit the realization that humans are the most 
+advanced machines (or technology) that we have. I wanted to build a model 
+of a machine out of humans, using a minimum of non-human props. Further, 
+the machine modelled was to have capabilities which are physically 
+impossible according to present-day science. I still think that the task as I 
+have defined it is an excellent one; but the model does not yet completely 
+accomplish the objective. The present model uses the deliberate suspension 
+of normal beliefs to produce its effects. 
+
+\essaytitle{Post-Formalism in Constructed Memories} and \essaytitle{Studies in 
+Constructed Memories} together make up \booktitle{Mathematical Studies} (1966). In 
+this monograph, the emphasis was on extending the idea of mathematics as 
+formalistic games to games involving subjectivity and contradiction. In two 
+subsequent monographs, the material was developed so as to bring out its 
+potential applications in conjunction with science. 
+\essaytitle{Subjective Propositional Vibration} investigates the logical 
+possibilities of expressions which are changed by the reader's mental responses.
+\essaytitle{The Logic of Admissible Contradictions} starts with the experiences 
+of the logically impossible which 
+we have when we suffer certain perceptual illusions. These illusions enable us 
+to imagine certain logical impossibilities just as clearly as we imagine the 
+logically possible. The monograph models the content of these illusions to 
+obtain a system of logic in which some (but not all) contradictions are 
+"admissible." The theory investigates the implications of admitting some 
+contradictions for the admissibility of other contradictions. A theory of 
+many-valued numbers is also presented. 
+
+The \essaytitle{Perception-Dissociator Model} led to 
+\essaytitle{The Perception-Dissociation of Physics.} Again, here is an essay whose 
+significance lies in the very possibility of thinking the ideas at all. The essay 
+defines a change in the pattern of experience which would make it 
+impossibie for physicists to "construct the object from experience." Finally, 
+\essaytitle{Mock Risk Games} is the activity which involves the deliberate adoption of 
+false expectations. It is on the borderline of the intellectual modality which I 
+favor, because it seems to me to have objective value, and yet has not 
+generated a series of applications as the other activities have. 
+
+To summarize my general outlook, truth and art are discredited. They 
+are replaced by an intellectual modality consisting of non-true activities 
+having objective value, together with cach individual's brend. Consider the 
+individual who wishes to go into my intellectual modality. What is the 
+significance to him of the academic world, professional occupations, and the 
+business of scholarships, fellowships, and grants? From the perspective of 
+the most socially important tasks, these institutions have always rewarded 
+the wrong things, as I argued in \essaytitle{On Social Recognition}. But in addition, the 
+institutions as now organized are obstacles specifically to my intellectual 
+modality. In fact, society in general has the effect of a vast conspiracy to 
+prevent one from achieving the kind of consequential intellectual play which 
+I advocate. The categories of thought which are obligatory in the official
+intellectual world and the media are categories in which my outlook cannot 
+be conceived. And here is where the creep practices mentioned at the 
+beginning of this essay become important. Isolation from society is 
+presumably not inherent in my intelectual modality; but under present 
+social conditions isolation is a prerequisite for its existence. 
+
-- 
cgit v1.2.3

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