Claim: Patience is a virtue.

By “virtue,” I mean that character trait which gives one more power and freedom to attain some goal which directly contributes to the flourishing human life. I do not mean that which is loved by God or any other entity. Virtue is useful.

Patience comes in at least two distinct varieties, and these varieties are so distinct that it is accurate to say that they are not the same thing at all. They merely share a name.

First is the patience of waiting for a certain time period to end. This is perhaps what we normally mean when we use the term patience. For most of us, our first exercises of patience involve waiting for our parents to finish some task. For example, when my mother would take me grocery shopping and I needed to follow her without causing problems for about an hour. If I lost my patience, I would start whining or start running around the store. If I remained patient, I would remain quietly by my mother’s side and let her accomplish her task. But this is not necessarily a virtue. I may have been too tired or bribed into staying quiet, in which case I was merely following the path of least resistance. I may have been playing a game in my head, or perhaps on a handheld device, and kept myself distracted. This form of patience is demonstrated in the famous experiment where children must stop themselves from eating a marshmallow for a duration in order to get a second marshmallow, as in this video.  As an adult, we probably exercise patience most often in one of two ways. First, while we are waiting in lines at a business. Second, when we are trying to deal with someone who is stubborn or angry.

However, these forms of patience are of a different sort than the one I would like to discuss briefly here. This second form of patience has to do with keeping one’s mind free of distractions. It is perhaps only important when one is trying use one’s mind on an important task that does not compel one’s emotions.  In this form of patience, one must keep one’s mind concentrated on a single thing without the advantage of emotional compulsion.  In these situations, numerous other thoughts are likely to intrude upon one consciousness, and if the drives pull one away from the intended subject, then one will not be able to do the necessary mental work to accomplish the intended task.  I am tempted to call this form the “internal patience,” but I don’t want to be so hasty as to assume there are no external components to this patience or no internal components to the former sort. Therefore, I will call this “Patience-B,” and the earlier sort “patience-a.”

It is related to “focus” but there is a subtle difference.  In many activities in which I sit for extended periods of time and keep my mind occupied, my mind is emotionally compelled toward thinking about a subject. There is no struggle to stay on task. Indeed, “focus” in this sense is just a benign form of obsession. The emotional drive is in harmony with the intended goal that is determined by one’s rationally determined goals.

The difference between the “Patience B” and “focus” is the harmony or disharmony of one’s emotional drives and one’s rationally determined goals. But one cannot usually “will” their emotions to align with their goals, and so “focus” is not a matter of one’s free will. Focus is a more stable mental stance than Patience B, but we cannot simply choose which stance to be in. Therefore, to get the most out of one’s mental potential, it is necessary to develop strategies for dealing with Patience B.
With many mental tasks, once Patience B has been exercised sufficiently, the subject matter becomes more interesting and compelling as one gains mastery of it. A habit is developed, and the emotional drive associated with the subject becomes a stronger and more compelling drive. After some time, then, the texture of drives gradually turns from Patience B to focus.

If I have accurately described Patience B, then the challenge is to keep one weak emotional drive as the strongest emotional drive present in one’s mind. There are then two basic strategies: increase the strength of the designated weak drive, or decrease/remove the strength of the non-designated drives. Likely, a successful strategy will involve a combination of the two basic strategies. If you are reading this, I would be interested in knowing what sorts of strategies are possibly effective.

I have been thinking about joining a church for some time. I’m an atheist, so this seems like a strange thing. However, I do believe it is important to get involved in some community activity, which is something I have not really done since living in Chicago outside of my school communities.

The Unitarian denomination is compatible with my beliefs, and there is one church close to where I live. Unitarianism began in Eastern Europe about 500 years ago with the mission of pursuing the Truth and living a life in accordance with that pursuit. However, there is no central doctrine about what that Truth is. Notably, Unitarians often emphasize the humanity of Jesus. In other words, that Jesus should not be seen as a God, but as an excellent human being. Obviously, the Bible is not read literally but as the work of various human beings from different times and places writing to their contemporaries.

My biggest challenge will merely be getting to bed early enough on Saturday night to be awake and ready Sunday mornings.

I ran across the following Ortega y Gasset quote today. I don’t know anything about Gasset, but I liked this quote a lot.

“The most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are; without imposing on themselves any effort toward perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves… As one advances in life, one realizes more and more that the majority of men–and women–are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. The few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated…These are the select men, the noble ones, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving.”

I have to admit, it rings true to me.

I feel the need for a grounding experience. Through the chaos and stress of the semester, with the infectious ideas of a hundred philosophers taking successive residence in my mind, my idea of myself is blurred and forgotten.  To teach well, these philosophers must live in my blood. But each one that takes up residence is someone with whom I will empathize for a few days or weeks. And when they leave, my mind is somewhat altered. My notion of myself is modified by the philosophy I was teaching. “I” am still here; I am operating, in some capacity, in the way I always operate. But the finer details of my own perspective are blurred and forgotten.

My mind, my mental machine, is now in need of maintenance.

A person who is free has an understanding of their own ideas and goals. She operates strictly according to the mental machine. She keeps a solid focus on her life’s goal, and although she cannot  perfectly understand how to achieve it, her mind has a system that is exploring, hypothesizing, testing, taking notes, and vigorously moving forward. A person who is free has an understanding of her beliefs, the power of her beliefs over her decisions, her passions, and her past.

A person who is not free acts reactively in relation to her thoughts and feelings. In her attempt to feel free, she is a slave to her passions and first impulses.

The irony, of course, is that the person who recognizes the rules by which she is bound is the person capable of attaining freedom. The person who denies that there are rules is the person least capable of attaining freedom. If this sounds strange, consider the engineer and scientific laws. The engineer has a goal: a physical problem that must be solved. The engineer is wants to manipulate the physical world in such a way that solves the problem. But that manipulation is impossible without knowing the rules by which the physical laws operate. The manipulation becomes more possible the more the physical laws are understood.  The engineer who believes that a goal can be accomplished by mere willing is prevented from accomplishing the goal.  The engineer that knows the laws possesses more freedom in the manipulation. But this is not a special feature of an engineer. This is a general feature for any mind that intends to accomplish a purposeful goal. Ie., it is also a feature for any human being in relation to their own mind.

Who am I?

First-Order Ruling Ideas: I am my ideas. My ruling ideas are, first, that I aim to understand as much as possible, and second, that understanding consists not in the holding of individual facts, but the greatest degree of accuracy possible in the relationships between propositions. I also believe that these are the most meaningful ideas I can hold for myself, that they define my essence, and that my lifelong happiness requires that I pursue that aim expressed in the first idea, while dedicated to the notion that all legitimate understanding is described in the second idea.  (For an explanation of what I mean by these terms, see below.)

These ruling ideas are my only recognized convictions. By “conviction,” I mean that kind of belief that is held to be true without doubt. If reasons, evidence, or the pull of emotions are presented to me in such a way that might compel me to abandon these ruling ideas, I will dismiss the reason, evidence and emotional tug, and stick to my conviction.

I am fairly certain that I hold other convictions as well. However, I wish I did not. Convictions are often formed whenever a mind has an emotional connection for an idea, and that idea is not exercised, challenged, or remembered for a long period of time. Convictions are often unearthed when a mind finds itself getting exceptionally irritated by the comments of others, although many irritating situations also .

Convictions often lie in the crevices of larger and more obvious ideas, where they do not go noticed. In other words, sometimes it seems very plain why something is irritating to a mind. When a person is insulted, they are often offended and irritated by the offender. When presented with a person with differing political, ethical, or religious views, a person can become irritated. We think, “I am irritated because this person doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong,” or, “this person is aggravating for believing x.” But this cannot be true. When a patient but masterful teacher encounters the obviously incorrect views of a student, the teacher responds not with frustration, but by identifying the source of the student’s error and correcting it. This is a joyful experience for both sides. But when the teacher cannot identify the source of the error, but is convinced she is correct, she gets irritated because she does not possess the knowledge of why she is correct. If her view was not a conviction, she would respond with curiosity, “Ah! I guess I don’t know!” And assuming she is not tied to the further conviction that she must appear to be wise, she will joyfully recognize a component of her thoughts that can be improved.

Assuming that all minds are idea-machines, then any actually erroneous view can be repaired with the presentation of the correct idea-set. Idea-sets include more than mere “matter of fact” propositions. Emotions, paradigm affects, precise definitions of words, biases (and the negation of biases), are all components of an idea-set.

Second-Order Ruling Ideas:

My second order ruling ideas include:

1. That in the absorption of new ideas, we often do so reactively; those ideas which are accepted as accurate are often accepted as accurate by referencing them to the other ideas in one’s mind. However, insofar as the other ideas in one’s mind are inevitably somewhat inaccurate, the determinant of what is counted as an accurate idea is a broken and unreliable determinant.

2. From 1, we can be certain that everyone of our beliefs is a suspect for falsehood. Any belief that appears as a conviction is almost certainly in error.

3. When ideas are not exercised, they never interact with world in any capacity. Although ideas can never interact with pure truth directly, the world does provide an objective standard. Therefore, those ideas that are not exercised are the most likely ideas to be in error.

4. From 3, it follows that if I desire to acquire and expand my understanding, I would strive to test my ideas against both the world and the ideas of other people (which may be in error, but provides a possible test of accuracy).

5. The better one understands and defines one’s own ideas, the more accurately and productively can they be tested.

6. That I ought to arrange my life in such a way that enables those goals derived from my first order ideas. This means that if there are actions that enable me to experiment with my ideas in a certain way, that I ought to strive never to make a commitment that prohibits me from those actions. If there are thoughts that enable me to experiment with my ideas in a certain way, that I ought to strive never to make a commitment that would cause those thoughts to be a violation. At the same time, commitments are necessary in all productive modes of life, and some actions will be prohibited. Therefore, I must endeavor to calculate with caution which commitments I take up, and which to avoid.

7.That I take great pleasure and satisfaction in teaching. Teaching philosophy in the community college is perhaps the most perfect profession for studying working and malfunctioning ideas, and for testing ideas. My ideas of my ideas of understanding are put to the test: insofar as my students improve in the structure of their own thoughts, my ideas of my ideas of understanding are shown to be somewhat accurate.

8. That I take great pleasure in expressing and sharing my ideas, that I engage in careful critiques of others’ ideas, and that I am open to being intelligently criticized myself, as these are all modes of thought that allow me to identify error, repair, and finally absorb or forge new ideas.

9.In regards to having an intimate partner, it is most ideal to have a partner that agrees with me in these things, but  who is also sufficiently intelligent and interested to critique my ideas productively, and where I am sufficiently intelligent and interested to critique her ideas productively, so that we serve not only as a source of enjoyment and support for one another, but also a catalyst for the most vital form of growth.

10. That if that sort of intimate partner cannot be found (or persuaded) that it is second best to stay unattached and to focus my strongest personal relationships on a circle of excellent and diverse friends (although this is still important with a partner, obviously).

11. That I always ought to be open to new experiences, particularly new fine arts, new cultures, new economic conditions, new political, and new ethical beliefs, for these are most likely to challenge my current beliefs and stimulate reflection, speculation, and testing.

12. That I ought to take care of my body by eating well and exercising, for my brain is the necessary physical condition for thought, and the brain is intrinsically tied to my body. Furthermore, judging from my life experiences in relation to the various states that my body has been in so far, I recognize that a healthy body does remove significant resistances, internal and external, that may prevent new experiences. That is, independent of its direct affect on the brain, a healthy body reduces pains and increases a great number of pleasures. A healthy body allows me more access to exploration, notably geographic and sexual.

Some general notes that apply to my descriptions and all minds:

1. By “fact,” I understand a proposition that describes a state of affairs, but that exists without connections in the mind. By knowledge through causes, I understand a collection of propositions, each of which describes a state of affairs, but that exist in causal relationships with other propositions.

2. A proposition does not necessarily describe a state of affairs accurately. In fact, as I will note below, I believe that with most states of affairs, truly accurate propositions are impossible. This is only true with very simple relationships, such as those in well-defined, artificed games. The rules of chess, for example, can be understood perfectly accurately. But in the vast majority of states of affairs, perfect understanding of both the state of affairs and relationships are impossible. However, degrees of accuracy exist, and high degrees of accuracy are worth striving toward. The psychology and play-style of your chess opponent cannot with perfect accuracy, but high degrees of understanding are possible; and the psychology of your chess opponent is a real component of the complete picture of a chess game.

3. Our minds are never presented with the world itself. Rather, we are presented with representations. These representations only inaccurately represent the world itself. The ways in which a representation can err are perhaps infinite, and perhaps limited. These sources of error include, at the most basic level, the notion that our visual representation of physical objects is dependent most directly on those light waves that are rejected by the object. But the full affect of these errors can be much more powerful and unknown to the mind. These sources of error also include things like Francis Bacon’s four “Idols of Thought,” and Nietzsche’s “Four Great Errors.” (from Novum Organum andTwilight of the Idols, respectively).  They include the effects of William Whewell’s notion of a “consilience of inductions” and Freud’s unconscious drives. They include more ordinary things as well, such as a person’s present mood. Some beliefs are affected to greater or lesser degrees by different perversions: my belief that Barack Obama is the current president of the united states, or even that he is a better president than George W. Bush, do not alter with my mood. My beliefs about the hope for our nation’s future, on the other hand, are greatly affected.

4. That by “ideas,” I do NOT mean only those of academic relevance, but even moreso those ideas that have to do with a the most excellent conduct and satisfaction of life (and this includes those ideas related to my emotional responses and actions in respect to the pressures of life).

I don’t want kids, but this is persuasive.

Happy 375th Birthday to Spinoza, and Happy 150th Anniversary to “The Origin of Species.”

For those reading, it may be a couple weeks before anything is updated. There is an especially large number of papers to grade and social events to attend to in the coming weeks. This drains me. But who knows? A stress-induced insomia was responsible for the recent Darwin and philosophy posts, and were otherwise spontaneous. It may strike again.

The reading list below is a work in progress, and if anyone has recommendations, please make a post. The winter break is looking a little grim, as I am scheduled to teach a condensed Ethics course. I assume this will take up all of my time, and almost completely eliminate my break. But it may fall through, as winter intern classes tend to have very low enrollments.

Aristotle’s Politics

Virginia Held, Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory (From Philosophy and Phenomenological Research)

michaels,  shape of the signifier

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, The Raft Is Not The Shore

W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk

Benjamin, Fanon, Brecht, Artaud

For the record, the two previous posts, this one, and probably a few more are works in progress. I will be jumping around and updating them as I have time to write and as inspiration carries me.  Again, I am discussing this ultimately to discuss the “multiple idea-streams” discussed in the Core Principles post of November 3.

In this post, I will eventually include some text from The Origin, but I know the topic well enough to write some important things immediately.

Background (In BRIEF)

As a bit of background, “Evolution” was not Darwin’s idea. Aristotle proposed a form of evolutionary theory, as did the Q’uran. Erasmus Darwin, Darwin’s grandfather, assumed some evolutionary principles in a poem. Darwin was aware of all of these (perhaps not the Q’uran). Evolution is the hypothesis that organisms did not exist in their present form since their first appearance on Earth. There are a lot of ways that you could interpret this. Some early evolutionists believed that there were a large number of first creations, and that those “types” changed over time. Hence, perhaps God created a primitive form of elephant, and although that elephant does not exist in the world today, and modern elephants did not exist in the world in the past, the primitive elephant changed over time into the modern day elephant.

This is contrary to Darwin’s notion of “common ancestry,” which is distinct but compatible to natural selection. Common ancestry holds that all organisms, from bacteria to mushrooms, oak trees and grasshoppers, cobras and humans, all ultimately had the same ancestor, which was some clump of proteins that could not even be considered a cell by today’s common standards. In fact, it could barely be called living.

Natural Selection is Darwin’s most important contribution. It does not state that organisms change, but how they change. It is a mechanism, describing the well-known and accepted conditions of nature, and then showing how those conditions necessarily leads us to the more radical and controversial natural selection. In itself, natural selection does not prove common ancestry, although it provides a way for common ancestry to exist (Darwin’s Origin is a massive and wide ranging book. After he establishes Natural Selection, he goes through a vast array of other topics to argue that natural selection is not only an existing mechanism, but one with truly wide-ranging implications). I will explain how natural selection works below.

Natural Selection was not the first mechanism, either. Famously, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had already proposed a mechanism, which was “willing.” An organism is capable of slightly changing its form through the power of will, and those changes are then adopted by the offspring. The paradigmatic example is that of the giraffe. Fossil records show that more primitive giraffes had much shorter necks and legs that modern giraffes. In order to get leaves from tall trees, a primitive, short-necked giraffe would strive to stretch its neck and legs. As a result, the offspring would have slightly longer legs and neck.

Darwin thought this was a silly idea. Plants, for example, do not will. And neither Darwin or Lamarck were animists (the belief that all things have a will).

How Natural Selection Works

The three most important notions of Natural Selection are things that are completely ordinary and non-controversial.

1. Given a number of offspring that were born of the same parents, there will be some variation amongst the traits of those offspring (in simpler terms, you are biologically different from your brothers and sisters).

2. Traits, both physical and instinctual, are passed from parent to child. (You acquire your traits from the traits of your parents).

3. Far more offspring will be born than will survive to maturity and have children (people sometimes forget that this is a very true statement: in our contemporary culture, most children who are born survive to child-bearing age, and it is considered a travesty when they do not. But our contemporary culture presents a relatively new and isolated phenomenon. In nature, and in much of the present, human world, the vast majority of organisms die before they have children).

Following added November 5, 10:35pm CST:

On top of these three simple facts, there is also an very important conceptual shift that needs to be considered. It is close to the third condition, but less mathematical and more severe. In short, Nature is not about chipmunks and song birds playing amongst the calm birch tree and moss. Rather, it is a place of eternal struggle and strife:

“In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind–never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount. The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.” (Origin of Species, Chapter III: The Struggle for Life)

I am going to run a short series on Darwinian concepts that I believe are most important to my philosophy. I am applying mechanical principles that Darwin saw amongst species to idea-streams (discussed in the previous post under the notes of #1). Although I have work to do, my hypothesis is that these mechanical principles can be applied to ideas because the causes for the mechanisms amongst species has to do with the form of specimen creation and survival, and not the content of the living organism. This form of specimen creation and survival is, I hypothesize, present in the conditions of a turbulent, thinking mind (with some conditions).

The following section is from Chapter 2 of On the Origin of Species, titled “Variation Under Nature”. I believe it to be one of the most underrated and most important conceptual revisions in appreciating and understanding Darwin’s mechanism. This morning, my aim is to transcribe the section, and when I have time later, I will make some commentary on it:

“Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between species and sub-species–that is, the forms which in the opinion of some naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at the rank of species; or, again, between sub-species and well-marked varieties, or between lesser varieties and individual differences. These differences blend into each other in an insensible series; and a series impresses the mind with the idea of an actual passage.

Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to the systematist, as of high importance for us, as being the first step towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording in works on natural history. And I look at varieties which are in any degree more distinct and permanent, as steps leading to more strongly marked and more permanent varieties; and at these latter, as leading to sub-species, and to species. The passage from one stage of difference to another and higher stage may be, in some cases, due merely to the long-continued action of different physical conditions in two different regions; but I have not much faith in this view; and I attribute the passage of a variety, from a state in which it differs very slightly from its parent to one in which it differs more, to the action of natural selection in accumulating (as will hereafter be more fully explained) differences of structure in certain definite directions. Hence I believe a well-marked variety may be justly called an incipient species; but whether this belief be justifiable must be judged of by the general weight of the several facts and views given throughout this work.

…(paragraph on population skipped)

From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience’s sake.”