WORK ON TRUTH AND PHILOSOPHICAL IRRATIONALITY VIS. ABSOLUTISM At first I will investigate the major cases, that involve simple negation of themes. Then I will investigate more exceptional cases, which involves paradoxes, metaphysical or otherwise. Since I have previously reported a solution to all paradoxes, these complex cases are actually more trivial than the primary negations. I. OPPOSITES Causeless Cause The question of essentialism is foremost on the minds of many philosophers as to how to solve life’s biggest problems. A causeless cause might have the effect of producing a closed-door approach to life’s solutions, e.g. a better answer would only arrive through additional complexification, or additional (double) negation. Some of this runs the risk of being semantic, so the causeless cause maintains a kind of primacy. It poses a solution with a similar status to free will. How is it possible? Well, imagine a spirit or disembodied mind. If such a mind is not materially determined, then it appears that it has a choice in the sense of having originated some principle which was not originated by matter. Therefore, if there is anything immaterial, then some things might be immaterially determined, and some things might exist by such a choice. The position is stronger if the immaterial thing is actually an entity. But under a relative view, it is possible to imagine, although not absolutely, that such immaterial things ARE entities. If the chain of causation leads to things which are less and less real in our own terms, then it is clear that if irrationality implicates free will, then free will is implied by the series of categories. At some point no longer relevant to material reality, a choice could be made, which clearly ultimately concerns such material reality, so far as the material reality is real, and so far as the immaterial realities are real, effected by the further thing that is even less material. The same argument could be used to support free will based on the quasi-materialism or quasi-immaterialism of thought processes. For example, Cartesian dualism might support a view which is not as material as the mind-brain model, e.g. because thoughts are such exceptional conditions that they do not immediately concern material reality. Their effects, in other words, are not always existent on the material datum, but instead on an immaterial one. Whereas the mind-brain model person argues that thoughts are located, an exceptionist might argue that this is not necessarily the case. As soon as we can attribute a drug to the properties experienced by a person, we can also ascribe exceptional properties which might not be material in any negotiated sense. Nietzsche famously said that a ‘cause is the sum of its effects’. This kind of famous expression summarizes the difficulty in grasping irrational causation. Effects are not precisely what an object IS. The older problem emerges, which is that one thing is not the thing that follows afterwards---not precisely---or if it were, there might be an infinite number of things, each less caused than the larger versions of the things, until at some point all that is left is time or essence, and nothing else. How does essence determine itself if what it is is so much itself that it is not essentially caused by anything? Nietzsche’s solution is to blame the present on the future, which may be true if every object has a sense of desire. As appealing as that is, the prevailing view is that not every object has a sense of desire, at least not in the sense of having control over it. If people are sometimes ambivalent towards objects which do not have desire, the result is obvious: a world in which objects are not the sum of their effects, because some of the potential effects refuse to be influenced (whether the theory is either love or strategy). If an object were its own god, it could claim that it caused everything affiliated with it. But that does nothing to explain the stream of time, in which such ‘objects’ must become continually a new god of a new sum of effects. It is more reasonable to say that objects are gods of what they are. But it might just as easily be that they are not gods, when they do not get what they want. It is still more complicated to describe godhood that could have the properties of gods as some thing independent from the matter of objects. In that sense, we have quotations like Nietzsche’s attempting to explain a relation between material and immaterial objects. Evidently what Nietzsche meant was that irrationality --- in some sense defines the object. The irrationality of a thing is it’s soul, because if it were rational it would be unified with everything else--- it would be God. But to Nietzsche God is dead, so the rationality of objects is also its soul, and consequently it is the sane part of an object that is insane. In this sense, it is paradox which is the soul of an object. That is easy to say if we think paradoxes are unsolvable, and that the network of paradoxes explains how things are weaker or stronger. But in fact, paradoxes can be solved. So, the complication of irrational rationality reduces to a form of functionalism. A more essential question is the question of the causeless cause, which appears to say that whatever causes a given thing is either material or else immaterial, and that the concern is either being or time. At this point, someone might conclude that time is the immaterial thing, because time is space-time. Elevated to the level of space-time, one become concerned with abstractions which may explain how matter is determined, unless time is a limit function which is itself determined. But a broader concern is the existence of irrationals and absolutes, which suggest essentially that the problem of matter is a limit on its extension and its function. The concern of the causeless cause is then a matter of perfection and complexity, which I have called ‘perflexity’. Absolute Relativity as a Variable [call this a negation] Accepting relativity is dismissible on the absolute level. Therefore accepting absoluteness requires that there is no absolute relativity universally. But does absoluteness dismiss the existence of absolute relativity as a variable? I think it doesn’t. And my reasoning is that absolute relativity need not be universal to have relevance to a system. How would such a form of relativity function? Well, it need only be accepted that it has relevance to some things. It is, so to speak, something to take into account. It is similar both to moral nihilism and to applicationist views of systematizing. One way to formulate this is as a form of exceptionism which accepts that some outliers may be very strong cases. So, for example, there may be some case, however obscure, however stringent is the important part for an absolutist, in which the conditions of any absoluteness which could be construed as an application, does not hold. In this formulation it is important to consider the difference between language and matters-of-fact. We know matters of fact are more determinative, whereas language may be in some cases more dimensional, or more complex than materials. So the interpretation at this point is that absoluteness attempts to seek some language which is more real than materials, more original, more imperative (I think many have failed to find this, ultimately), whereas relativists attempt to find material examples which are more important than language. Virtual reality is a different case in which it must be accepted that language might be more real. Where the material examples can be found, it can be argued that other cases exist which are equally important, but make different arguments. Therefore, the relativist is arguing no dogmatic position since each might win in some individual case. However, if absolute relativism is a variable, then there is nothing against some specific forms of absolutism dominating in some cases (not universal cases), either as language, or as an application. Therefore, the dire enemy of relativism ironically becomes language, while the dire enemy of absolutism ironically becomes the materials that represent the most absolute things. Through this form of reasoning I have argued elsewhere that what is requisite is a form of relative absoluteness, rather than absolute relativism. Where the topic is still under dispute, the more conservative answer is to admit that absolute relativism is sometimes possible, but is best interpreted as a viewpoint which accepts strong outlier variables. In some cases the outliers may even be dominant---they may be more fashionable, more rhetorical, etc. Where the relativist is stuck is when he or she determines that one or another thing must be wrong----because this determines that, at least from some point of view, certain rhetoric holds. And it is reasonable to think that some things are wrong, if anything could be wrong. So the relativist has to accept a view which already rejects certain facts, or which at least accepts that what is disputed is already an application. At this point, the broad distinction is drawn between moral relativism and anthropological relativism, a distinction in which the moral variety appears to be the more demanding. Paradoxical Paradox This theme was already encountered in my paper called Paroxysm: A Solution to All Paradoxes, which introduces a solution involving taking the opposite of every term in the most essential definition of the problem in the same order. When it is not strictly a paradox, the term ‘solution’ or ‘problem’ should be introduced, to clarify the solution. This solution I find broadly effective, although applying it to certain cases requires some skill and practice. The general result is that paradoxes are not irrational, just sometimes problematic. More functional configurations of the paradoxes exist in terms of the paradoxes’ solutions. Immortal Time Most seem to consider this formulation un-problematic. However, I feel I have reason to doubt the formulation, or to think of it as a paradox. After all, time in the sense of the end of life appears to be a contradiction with the concept of perpetuity. The primary solution I propose to the problem of immortal time is that it is a conditional variable acting upon specific conditionalities. In this formula, death is a by-product of physical rather than spatial limits upon existence. Death in this sense is something like a block tower falling down. If the parts are not destructible, then the life may be assembled again. The high specificity of existence is another potential problem, drawing an air of absurdity upon the existence of time itself, problematically or otherwise. Apparently, the immortal condition is the one which we are supposed to think of unconditionally. But, if it is made up of even more parts, or even more technical parts than the temporal life, then it appears that the immortal life is only saved by its own perfection. Why is the temporal life not saved by its own complexity? For the evils of existence could not exist except as a way of complexifying the underlying efficient / computational paradigm. If the universe is a computer, evil must be a vast exception to the rule, a way of evincing something more complicated. In that case, it appears that time must be a form of computer, unless there is an immortal logic. If computers in the sense of a universal computer are permanent constructs, then the suggestion is that all life is meant to be immortal, and death occurs only by chance, as a kind of strange aberration in a long process of discontinuity. If immortality is not a computer, it is suggested that immortality is the only form of life. Perhaps life’s critics have been over-zealous to find aberrations with humankind, if time is a computer, and the only life is the life of the immortal. But what happens if the person himself is a computer? Then he appears to be somewhat opposed to the immortal. He seems to be someone that desires to undergo a process, such as a cycle of death and re-birth, saving and loading, etc. At the point death is meaningless, death becomes a computation. Time is a perpetuator of laws, sometimes only in a syntactic sense. Existence should really defer to being rather than time. At this point certain physical technicalities are raised (how would we eat, procreate, defecate, etc.), the result being to suggest that the problem of time is an offshoot of a practical solution which has been foisted on those ‘cheap enough’ not to know better. In this sense, life is a progression, even a progression of information. We are not supposed to sit stupidly by as life makes choices for us. It may be that computation is ironically the first step towards immortality, and immortality is ironically the first step towards computation. Deus ex machina may mean more for us than we originally thought. Existence as an Illusion I have considered the statement made by Buddhists, that reality is an illusion, and now I mostly agree with them. Not because I lack material reality, but because absolute semantics is essentially undeniable. II. PARADOXES ‘Paradox : Solution’ Processing problems: obstructed solutions. (make solutions less obstructed). Useful evil: useless goods. (make goods useful). Knowledge problem quantities: ignorance solution qualities. (seek knowledge with qualities). Human folly: inhuman wisdom. Nathan Coppedge, SCSU 4/3/2015, p.