Programming Languages and Ontology

A rather whimsical idea struck me: are ontological systems reducible in some way to programming languages? In particular, there are four main types of programming languages: procedural, object-oriented, functional, and declarative. Each takes a different paradigm. And they are all Turing-equivalent.

A procedural language is pretty straightforward: just type in your commands in order. If you've programmed in C or Basic (including on your graphing calculator), you know what a procedural language is. Do x, do y, do z. This is like a narrative mode of accounting for the world, running straight through the information in a linear fashion.

An object-oriented language, like C++ or Java, focuses more on objects. One packages the structures which one is using in a particular way: there is a class with certain functions, and one instantiates objects of this class. This is a substance ontology, of an Aristotelian sort at that.

A functional language, like Lisp (the greatest language ever), by contrast focuses entirely on functions. This is a process ontology. Everything is a function (in good style), and functions simply call functions to get things done.

A declarative language, like Prolog, is relational. It is a logical system, concerning with the interrelations between the terms. It basically just is formal logic as a computer program.

But, in the end, all of these are Turing-equivalent. What does that mean? It means that they all do the same stuff, even though they go about it in different ways.

So what could be an implication of this? If ontologies are computable, if they cut up the world in ways similar to a computer program, then all of the wrestling back and forth over these particular options is over practicality and elegance, not over which one actually describes reality, since if one does then any does. This wouldn't mean that either reality or our minds are in themselves computable, but merely that once we introduce individuation and differentiation into the world, once we have started to cut it up, the world-pieces can be put together as narratival, as substantial, as processual, or as relational equally well.

But isn't starting from world-pieces (or bits of zeros and ones) already an ontology? Perhaps, but one imposed to have anything to say; this is our boot-straps by which we pull ourselves up. Communication requires some digitalization, which we hope approximates analogue reality. The pieces, though, do not come with relations already ingrained. We add those. But the pieces are amenable to the relations; the relations aren't merely imposed, but the pieces are potentially related in the various ways. Practical concerns aren't simply a construction of reality, but a revelation of it.

An Imperfect Elitism

What's wrong with elitism? It seems to me that elitism is simply the statement that some people are better than others. Now, surely we take some people to be better than others on a relative level; person A is stronger than person B, B is more knowledgable with regard to medicine than A, and so on. And some ends we consider to be more important than others: it doesn't matter whether Charles Manson was really a great artist, he is still inferior as a human being to Gandhi. And if I had to choose between these two whose life was more valuable, I would not hesitate in my choice, so it seems odd to me to say that all humans have been created equal in value. For those who may bring God into the picture, saying that God holds everyone equal, I will point to those whom God has completely separated from all means of salvation as well as basic human needs; you may as well convince me of square Euclidean circles than that God loves people equally, perhaps barring some form of universalism. So I do not understand why we reject out of hand the idea that some people are simply better, other than from a misplaced democratic affection which wills that since we want everyone to be equal, they all are already.*

Now, I am not saying that this is the happiest situation, that we should embrace the fact that there is a human elite and rejoice in it. Feel free to wish that all people were equal, and work to make this true. Just do not mistake it for a present reality.

But that brings up a problem. Formerly, we would wish for the elite to have a prodominent voice in society, whether they be philosopher-kings, aristocratic gentlemen, academics, or whatnot. In turn, we have had similar situations in terms of cultures; culture A sees itself as superior to culture B, and proceeds to colonize. That has yet to work out. It seems to me that there are two fundamental problems. First, we don't know exactly who the elite are. In a society run by culture or education, others outside of power structures have been known to poke fun at those in charge, at their emptiness and book-knowledge. And how does one cull the best people for an aristocracy without lapsing into oligarchy? Concerning intercultural relations, we are still trying to get down the basics of understanding each others' cultures; how can we judge between them? What values are truly important, and who instantiates them? How do we avoid simply picking random differences and playing them as trumps, such as skin-color?

Second, even if we were to properly pick out the elite in the given situation, would they be elite enough? We can think of siblings playing, where the older sibling convinces the younger to do something really stupid. The older sibling most likely is truly more experienced, intelligent, etc. than the younger, but just enough so to get them in trouble. So just because one group is better than another, this does not automatically mean that the better group can legitimately lead the worse, let alone force their decisions.

So we appear to be stuck with an imperfect elite. If it were elite enough and recognizable enough, it could run things and this would be best for society. If there were no elite, then everyone could participate in everything equally in a true democracy. As things stand, there are many who really should be silent, but they should not be silenced. Not all voices are equal, but no one is meet to judge among them. To let everyone have a say leads to carnivals on urgent issues like health care, to fully blameworthy behavior on the part of truly ignorant oafs, but is this worse than Mao or Stalin? Is there a solution, other than doing our best to educate people that by default they should shut up on political matters until they have a worthwhile, studied opinion?

What would such a studied opinion be? There is a difference between opining that one is jobless (a claim I'd most likely accept), that one's community is mostly jobless (a claim I'd accept pending a search into how well this one represents her community), and that one knows how to solve the job situation (a claim at which I'd most likely be skeptical for most people having the problem, and at least without some significant insight into general structures of society). Everyone can attain the first, of their own personal experiences. Those of practical wisdom along with community involvement can attain the second. The third is for those with a more theoretical background. Both the second and third need the voices of the first for their data, but that is where the first ends; those who do not learn anything beyond their own situation have no right to politics. The voices of practical and of theoretical reason, in turn, never reduce to each other, since the practical person will does not, as practical, understand the broader relations outside of her context, and the theoretical person, as theoretical, does not know the lived, material conditions.

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* What if even saying that all people are of equal value is misleading, since there simply is no relation of measurement between people at all? What if people are to be accepted, not compared? I'm thinking mainly along more Daoist or Zen lines here, in particular, that our judgements of good and bad have created the problem. I'll have to think more on this one, but it does at least go against my basic suspicions (which come with no guarantee of truth); if nothing else, politics seems to me about relative problems of managing groups of people, and relative problems create relative standards of judgement applicable within the sphere of the problem.

The Role of Creation in Art

About a week ago or so, I had mentioned that apologetics is more like art than like science: it is about applying one's ideas to a given matter, rather than trying to objectively interpret that matter itself. And as was brought up, this is not quite like how artists look at their work; artists can be just as surprised as anyone else by what they come up with. This seems to me to be a legitimate problem; so what is the difference between the scientist and the artist/apologist?

It seems that we cannot really separate out creation and discovery, subjectivity and objectivity. The pure "artist" would be entirely subjective, purely creating without any worry for the object matter. God is the only one who would fit here, and even then we would have to talk about the relation of essences and nature to God's creation. The pure scientist would be entirely objective, purely discovering what is in the world. It seems that this is a legitimate view of the ideal scientist, while the above is not necessarily the ideal artist; many artists want to explore their art and not purely create, it seems to me. Still, I don't have a better word coming to mind right now, so I will talk about the ideal scientist and the ideal artist.

It does seem that artists still fall closer to this ideal than to that of the scientist. Once one decides on a musical motif, or on a particular image or character for a literary work, the rest of the work may very well already be determined. A well-cohering work demands that things fit together in a certain way, after all; the good artist is feeling out the essential structure of such things (or if you don't like talk of essences, then simply "the way something is and its tendencies" or some such equivalent). But despite this determination of a work once certain elements have been chosen, the elements and a general notion of the work would seem to be necessary in the first place. This is applied to the matter in a work closer to that of creation than of discovery, even if everything after is closer to something discovered.

Of course, someone could point out that artists often just come up with their ideas. Some flash of insight arises, and they go to work, but they didn't plan out their insight. True, and perhaps this is moment of genius is what happens in most truly good art even. I at least know that works for which I had a sudden inspiration tend to work out better than ones which more fully plan out, although that is in part my own lack of skill. But even if this is still outside the control of the artist, it comes about in a different way than the application of the idea to the matter. Both may be more or less determined, but they are determined in different ways, and it is this difference between the more ideal/spiritual/mental/etc. arising of the idea, and the working out of its consequences in the matter, in which I am interested.

So, with that said, the artist (along with the apologist) is not merely creating, just as real scientists aren't merely discovering. But it stills seems that placing them at different points of the continuum is reasonable.

Spiritual Exercises and Historical Analysis

We had a couple of really good talks here at Marquette last weekend. Last Friday, Michael Chase (among other things, translator into English of some works by Pierre Hadot) gave us quite the journey. He started with ancient skepticism, and talked about Hadot's views on how ancient philosophy (by which, I mean ancient Greco-Roman philosophy) was about spiritual exercises as much as anything else; it was about a way of life. Next, he talked about Nassim Taleb's modern-day skepticism, which takes the epistemological pieces but declaims the practices as being too hard for actual people.

The most cogent of Taleb's criticisms was that we are hardwired to make certain judgments about the world, and so the skeptic ideal of suspending judgment is illusory. Chase brought in modern accounts of brain plasticity and studies on how mindfulness meditation seems to make certain sections of the brain larger, which allows for increased ability to sit back and observe a situation without judging. Now, as he mentioned in the question-and-answer session, this can be seen to be simply part of the skeptic practice of arguing both sides of the problem. But it does seem to provide evidence for increased ability to suspend judgment after putting in the hard work, nevertheless. And even if perfect suspension of judgment is only an ideal, progress seems to be possible.

Next, Chase showed that there are some key features of modern mindfulness meditation (which is in turn taken largely from Buddhist sources, and generally without recognition of any Western roots). These same key features show up in ancient skepticism, and in ancient philosophy in general. True, people weren't sitting around counting breaths, but that is only a technique. The goal of apatheia, of objective and detached analysis of the world and of increased insight into one's own inner workings, are there (he went into a bit more detail, showing five core points that have been established in mindfulness meditation and identifying each one with practices in ancient philosophy). So ancient skeptical practices, insofar as they intending to advocate a lifestyle and not merely academic discussions, would seem to have had some effect on actual suspension of judgment.

It was nice to here of philosophy as something beyond academic disputations. But what interested me at least as much was that Dr. Chase had given a talk the day before, looking at a neglected commentary of the Neoplatonist Porphyry and digging up references which clarified Porphyry's views on cognition. The detailed historical analysis wasn't something other than what he was talking about in the more exciting talk; as he told me when I asked him afterward, the work of analysis and translation are also spiritual exercises, making him put away himself with his interests and concerns for the time. Interesting way to think of the work that I am doing.

The Difference Metaphysics Makes

I was reading through the Nicomachean Ethics recently, and something struck me: Aristotle has a lot in common with Buddhism. Or rather, it seems that a couple highly important doctrines of Buddhism can be found in Aristotle. But Aristotle and the Buddha end up in such different positions. While this could be due to any number of reasons and any one of many dissimilarities between them, I would like to advance the metaphysics of the human person as a key issue.

To sum up what I see as the similarities, both have an ethics based on the doctrine of the mean, and both have accounts of a non-permanent human soul. These, further, are at the very heart of Buddhism, second only to the notion that all life is suffering (duhkha). The doctrine of the mean at least is also key to Aristotle's ethics, though we may quibble over how important the supervenient soul is to Aristotle's anthropology (I would say that it is important, insofar as forms need to be enmattered for Aristotle, and matter is necessary for all change, so a permanent soul which may or may not exist in matter would go against the grain of Aristotle's physics). So the similarities are as such non-trivial.

But where Buddhism suggests that we therefore seek a way out of this life, Aristotle recommends that we seek to live this life to the fullest; the Buddha points to the suffering of life, while Aristotle looks at the excellence possible. And one difference which seems to me to push them in opposite directions is the fate of the human person. The Buddha believes in reincarnation; no matter how good this life is, you have to live again. And again, and again. For Aristotle, this life is what there is; your mind, your nous, may be immortal, but that doesn't have anything to do with what you consider to relate to your particular personhood.

So if you have to keep on living multiple lives, then what seemed to be excellence in this life may or may not have benefit in the next; the things considered to be "excellences" may actually harm you ultimately. At any rate, they may make one life more bearable, but leave the underlying problem unchanged. For Aristotle, there is no point in pushing things off to the next life. This is what there is, and wisdom concerns how to live this life well.

This also shows that the account of the human person does not necessarily determine what one should do about life. Granted, there are significant differences between the Buddha and Aristotle over the status of the person, but they both seem to agree that you are inseparable from your constituent material parts, which will come apart, and so to this extent you lack an enduring self. Buddhism likes to point out that recognition of this will lead to more compassionate, selfless behavior; but Aristotle champions aristocratic virtues concerned with building up what there is of the self.

So metaphysical problems concerning the afterlife do have an effect on our actions here and now, perhaps more so than the precise nature of the human being or general ethical theories.

Hölderlin (and Epictetus) Quotes

Just some quotes from recent reading that I found interesting.

The first two quotes are from Höderlin's epistolary novel, Hyperion, in a letter that waxes eloquent about the nature of philosophy and the classical Athenian spirit, as the eponymous writer overlooks the ruins of Athens.

"The man," I resumed, "who has not at least once in his life felt full, pure beauty in himself, when the powers of his being merged like the colors in the rainbow, who has never felt the profound harmony that arises among all things only in hours of exaltation - that man will not even be a philosophical skeptic, his mind is not even capable of tearing down, let alone of building up. For, believe me, the sceptic finds contradiction and imperfection in all that is thought, because he knows the harmony of perfect beauty, which is never thought. The dry bread that human reason well-meaningly offers him, he disdains only because he is secretly feasting at the table of the gods." - Hölderlin, Hyperion

(As a side note, it's probably just because of the odd mix of stuff I've been reading as of late, but I certainly seem to hear similarities between this and Henry of Ghent's view of divine illumination, coming from Augustine. It's all rather Platonic, in any case.)

Reason without beauty of spirit and heart is like an overseer whom the master of the house has set over the servants; he knows as little as they do what will come of all their endless toil, he only shouts: 'Get busy,' and is almost sorry to find the work being accomplished, for in the end he would have nothing more to oversee, and his part would be played. Mere intellect produces no philosophy, for philosophy is more than the limited perception of what is. Mere reason produces no philosophy, for philosophy is more than the blind demand for ever greater progress in the combination and differentiation of some particular material. - Hölderlin, Hyperion

And a pithy quote from Epictetus, on how to study philosophy:

... so never look for your work in one place and your progress in another. - Epictetus, Discourses I.IV.17

Against Logical Consistency

Should I be concerned if someone points out a logical quibble with my statements? Or should I spend inordinate amounts of time establishing the internal coherence of every one of my propositions? It seems to me that if my statements are arising as genuine interpretations of my experience, these issues should not be first and foremost in my mind.

Let's say that I explain to you that I have seen a table which was completely red and completely blue. You, being the logician, simply tell me that I am speaking nonsense and dismiss my claim. Technically, you are correct; but who cares? Assuming that I am not merely making something up, I have expressed reality more meaningfully in my contradictory statement than you in your criticism. Granted, my statement may not be the most felicitous one. I may want to seek a better explanation, both to better understand my own experience (interpretations can always be improved) and to better communicate it to others; perhaps the table is purple, and so a mix of the colors. But it is both a logical contradiction and meaningful.

There may even be instances in which may statement is better than a coherent statement. Perhaps the table is simply covered in so much blue and so much red in such intricate patterns that they seem to completely interpenetrate, though nothing contradictory has happened. My expression that the table is completely blue and completely red better expresses the wonder and amazement at the phenomenon, and better communicates some of its phenomenology, than would the perfectly logical statement which lists the table's attributes.

Mystical experience would seem to be placed in a similar position; if you haven't had the experience, your logical quibbles are almost worthless. Maybe the mystic would be a better communicator bf being more precise and analytical, but she thought that being paradoxical was a perfectly good way of expressing her experience. Start from this point, and try to figure what she is expressing. No one who cares about truth will start from the logical transgression.

It might even be that language has a purely practical function, as a pointer to reality, and that logical consistency is more or less worthless. "But what you are saying is supposed to be true, and so therefore is not false. Otherwise, I couldn't understand what you are saying." What I'm saying isn't meant to be understood; it is meant to be used. Look, and stop analyzing. "But if you contradict the law of non-contradiction, then you affirm it." Only if you have initially presupposed it; I am rising above the dichotomy (which therefore means also using it at times), not taking the other side. I do not agree with the idea that the law must either always hold or never; I must look at the content in any given proclamation, at any given use of a sentence (and not the sentence itself!), and determine what to do from there. Yet again, look at where my words point, and shut up about the words themselves.