Formulas and Variables

Formulas and Variables

Samuel Bird

People and voices fluttered about the room, but my attention was fixed on her. As she spoke, those she spoke to seemed to be uplifted by her words and grace. Her smile was contagious and the way people maintained the smile she shared demonstrated there was no cure. A child with long wavy locks ran to her as she scooped him up in her arms and cradled him. Her nurturing and gentle nature was met with the sheer force of nature she was. She would walk up to the tallest and most domineering-looking of people and her gentleness would not be bothered with fear. I waited as she fluttered from one conversation to another, hoping I would be next. Finally, her eyes met mine. There was beauty in their vibrant objectivity, but that care she looked at me with was greater beauty to my subject. At that moment those eyes met me, before a mask of social expectations could be adorned, there was only how she saw me. And how did she see me? There was a glee in her eyes that seemed to validate my entire being. This is when I knew it was a dream. While it was possible a girl could be so magnificent in the world, why would she care for me so, if it wasn't in my mind? 

My dreams had become vibrant and rich. I figured out some things that I could cut out from consumption that made my dreams and freeing escape into a world without permanency, full of beauty and processing of what transpired in my waking hours. This impermanence meant that when something or someone as wonderful as she came along, the moment would come that I would have to join the living. She stood before me with that same smile that couldn’t be a lie. Those vibrant eyes let out light from a rich soul. Though a stranger with no name to me, she was familiar. I could have spotted that glimmer across a lake and knew where it came from. She greeted me, all of me. She seemed to speak to more than just social frivolity, but the depth of soul kept hidden. I left enough of my mind to join the conversation, but the primary part of my mental faculties was reserved to take in this moment. She began asking questions, to continue to pull me from myself and look into my soul. I went along with the needed answers until at once my own thoughts burst forth from me. 

“You are beautiful!” I said with no segway. “Your being entire is a thing to marvel. You have this gravity about you that pulls souls in orbit. You make me wonder if those more delicate of human needs do, in fact, exist in the world.” “What would those be?” She said with a smile that hung on every word I said. “The good, the true, the valuable, the beautiful and the real. You make me think that perhaps they could be.” She smiled in her great wisdom. “You should know of all people that such an assumption cannot be based.” I jumped with excitement at this questioning statement. Earlier in my dream, I had scribbled on tattered paper a grounding to these needs of the human spirit not found in the world. I pulled it from my pocket and read it to her. “If we can assume the valuable within ourselves, then we will see it instantiated in the world around us.” She cocked her head in curiosity. “So, if we think we have these human needs, then we do?” I looked at her fondly as I said: “I have assumed these values, and I have found them here in you.” Her smiling lips faded into opening eyelids and I was met with the morning. As I have many times in this dream, I missed her. However, this time, I did take something with me. 

I don’t see the world as static facts, but as constantly shifting variables. Numbers, symbols, and letters flowing past my meditative mind looking at the concept. Wanting to see the instance of this happening, I think of mountains slowly crashing to the earth, rivers winding their way through stone, or entire species coming into being and then ceasing. Human thought is then not an attempt to find the great specific facts and build a formula in respect to them, but to see the categories of changing facts and relate them to each other. This relation to eachother is vital to what I do. I don’t think we see the world as it is or ourselves as we are, but rather we see the world as we are and ourselves as the world is. I see the world from this view as a constant dynamic fluctuation of variables and operators. This is where it gets difficult. 

We can witness facts of the world, and have a good enough idea of them, but how do or should they relate? This is my idea of an operator. In mathematics, these operators demonstrate addition, subtraction, and the like. In deductive symbolic logic, they symbolize disjuncts, conjuncts, and conditionals. Let us look at the last one. A conditional is a deductive assumption that assumes causation within itself. It says if we have a given antecedent, then we will have a caused consequent. In my dreamt example, I said if I assumed these values, then they would be found in the world. The assumption of the values was sufficient to give me the values found. However, the values being found were necessary from those values existing in oneself. From this, we can make an argument that is valid. This means that the conclusion will be true if the individual parts are. However, it is another epistemological question if each part is true. Given this conditional of assumed values and found instances, there are two basic directions we could go. The first is to affirm the antecedent and the second is to deny the consequent. We would then do it like so. If I assume value, then I will find it instantiated in the world. I do assume value. Therefore, I do find value in the world. This rudimentary argument structure is called Modus Ponens and can be complied with other arguments for more complex ideas. It works because we have our conditional. Then we say the needed input took place, therefore the output would follow. There is another direction we can go, but we will look at that later. 

There are two great variables that my philosophy is built on. It is first, the fact of existence from my thinking. Secondly, it is the fact of the world because there is something other than me to give me impressions. These two variables are related. They can act on each other and change each other’s being. However, what exactly each of these are is outside of our grasp. We can know them best relative to the other, but then how do we know that one? Having two variables is not enough especially since they are unknowable and dynamically shifting. We could then bring in an operator to relate the two. This is Esse Maxim. It is what relates the self to the world. One has facts and the other concepts. One has causation and the other conditionals. One has value and the other instances of where that value could be placed. In addition to acting as a consistently systematic assumption for thought, it also relates the two entities from which all thought transpires or originates from. The world can’t tell us what its facts mean, what state of affairs should be brought about, or even give a system for truth in a world of individual facts. Neither can the mind alone give instances of what should be, can it tell us what facts are, or can it tell us what facts go in the system. We can’t jump from our minds to explore the world. Neither can we jump from the world into our minds. We are left at their meeting place to make sense of what each is by how they impress and dictate the other. This is where my theory on the biconditional relationship between is and ought comes from. We use what we think ought to be to change the world, but we build what we think out to be based on what we learn from the world. All of this is put in its proper place with Esse Maxim. One purely basic assumption of how these two relate makes the separate and distinct facts of self and world culminate in a formula’s conclusion that allows for the needs and wants of the human mind. 

I used to be an avid reader of philosophy articles and hopefully can be again someday. I noticed a pattern. There would be an assumed premise or series of them. From there, they would follow the argument where it must necessarily go. I was generally impressed with their intellectual honesty in doing so. It is clear to me that the human mind can build all the needed systems with a little bit of intellectual elbow grease, but it needs assumptions. My philosophy is then about the assumption management and evaluation that undergirds all else. When we follow these sequences of thoughts down to the bottom, I do not think we find a necessary foundational answer. Rather, we see a void where can be placed an idea that then relates to all other ideas. Don’t think of it as digging until you get base rock for a foundation. Think instead you are floating in a sea with planks from a broken vessel all around. There is no one plank you must start with, but based on your desire to live, you pick what you reasonably evaluate to be the best one. From there you can lashe all the other boards until you have something to hold you up, but there was certainly will involved in which board you picked. Then, I cannot say in the universe we live in what your Esse Maxim ought to be. There are certain things that it clearly can’t be due to their inconsistency between the facts of self and world. However, there is a series of possible Esse Maxims. Then what input do you pick? What output do you will? This gets to a question of the arbitrariness of will, but I personally celebrate it. Then how do these messy and complex variables of self and world relate? Esse Maxim. 

Back to our conditional of assuming value and finding it in the world. The other direction we can go is to say that the output is not the cause. Because the input would necessitate that output, it is then a deductive given that there was no input. I am sorry this is so dry and complex, but it gets to something important. Assuming the truth value of the conditional I told that beautiful girl in my dreams, this gives a powerful message. If we then don’t find value in the world, it is only because we didn’t choose that value in us. In the ugly, meaningless, and amoral world I live in, all of art and politics mourn a world without these essential human needs. We look to the stars and see they don’t care. We look to time and see that it will leave us behind. We look to nature and see its thoughtless cruelty. People will dryly profess that this is simply the world as it is and any other addressing of it is inappropriate. We can look at their system and find that their assumptions do not line up with their conclusions. If they assume a world that is purely material and sensed, they have to then get to entities that are neither material nor sensed. Where then can they say there is no place for the strivings of the human mind and the pinings of the human heart? 

No matter how well we try, we only see the world through ourselves and ourselves through the world. If there is going to be a Kantian construction of all I think and experience into something, would it then be delusional or a failing to do so with some intent? You will find no fact in the world to tell you one way or another, so search yourself in terms of the world. Can you decide on this operator that relates all you are to all that is? You will perhaps find no sure reason that obliges, but in your powerful humanity, you may find something that in the lack of surety takes the opportunity. Then perhaps a look to the stars will prompt a feeling of reverence. Time could be the pages for your written tale of excellence. Nature could be the harbinger of mystery and carry that unknowable part of yourself. In a world without answers, I implore you to have something to scream back at the void. I scream into my own, that you could have any resource to give you the power to engage with your existence. Knowing the variables of the formula, the operator you choose, and watching the outcome is the best I can offer. Then I figure, your life may equal the most it can.