Ordered Cognitive Liberty
Metaphysical Geometric Unity and a Divine Order
Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash
“Volatility
is anInstrument of Truth.
Regardless of how it is measured,volatilityis the difference between theWorld as we imagine itand theWorld that exists.
We only prosper if werelentlessly search for nothing but the truth, otherwise, thetruth finds us through volatility”…
- Chris Cole
In Cognitive Liberty - Freedom of the Conscious Self (Ego) [LINK] the freedom and sovereignty of an individual’s own consciousness (i.e. conscious self - ego [LINK]), mental processes and cognition was briefly explored.
“Thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow man.
Thou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his own consciousness“…
- Timothy Leary
Cognitive Liberty [LINK] represented an extension of freedom of thought and the notion of the conscious self - ego [LINK].
It was also an area of growing importance given that human meaning is communicated and mediated via semiotic signs [LINK] (refer Charles Sanders Peirce [LINK]) and given the risks poised to Cognitive Liberty by the rapid growth of semiotics sign technologies [LINK] in the 21st Century.
The ever-expanding potential to control, distort, manipulate and shape [LINK] the public’s opinion and personal meaning that is mediated via semiotic signs that are communicated through technologies such as LLMs [LINK], main stream media [LINK], social media algorithms [LINK], websites [LINK] etc.
Furthermore, the transition to the so called “knowledge economy” had already resulted in the increasing semiotic decoupling [LINK] of the conscious self’s abstraction of ideas and beliefs [LINK] from their practical effects & real world consequences [LINK].
Unlike a Farmer embodied in the World who not only has to understand but has to live with the consequences of his decisions & actions, knowledge workers such as an Economist or Software Programmer located in our large metropolitan global cities can be completely decoupled from such a nexus.
It reflected the deconstruction of Peirce’s Semiotic Triadic and Pragmatic Maxim that requires the integration and mediation of three modes of Being ( Peirce) to bring a Sense of Coherence to Man’s understanding and participation in Reality [LINK].
An ever-growing Cartesian Crisis [LINK].
“In the cyber world, there is a constant problem of what anthropologists and psychologists call“context collapse” ”…
[LINK]
[LINK]
This increasing deformation of the truth of reality (refer Voegelin [LINK]) was also being amplified via the endemic embracement of Marxist Theology [LINK] across Western Civilisation [LINK] - noting that Marxism by its very nature is a power-directed system of thought [LINK] and is the antithesis of Christian Theology’s orientation towards truth [LINK] .
[LINK] - Ego-focused trait of narcissism
An education [LINK] and Society [LINK] that was increasingly becoming Post-Truth [LINK].
A Modern Sophism [LINK].
Semiotics signs [LINK] were being manipulated [LINK], Reality subverted [LINK], Truth managed [LINK], education was turning into indoctrination [LINK] and censorship [LINK] & propaganda [LINK] were being applied to shift the perception of Reality of Western Nation’s citizens.
[LINK] - United States Government AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks discusses the emergence of Government Regulation of LLMs including a nascent law of Algorithmic Discrimination that essentially results in a new DEI Layer being incorporated in the Models - a “Woke” form of AI
A New Totalitarianism [LINK] and 21st Century Digital Panapticon [LINK] was emerging as thought must at all times be controlled [LINK], shaped [LINK] and managed [LINK].
Cognitive Liberty and Responsibilities
The central question that emerges from this earlier article [LINK] is whether Cognitive Liberty [LINK] was really a free-lunch?
Or stated differently, can one have Cognitive Liberty [LINK] without Individual responsibilities and obligations?
[LINK] - Cognitive Liberty - Freedom of the Conscious Self (Ego)
“Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalised as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation” ...
- Jean Piaget
The human self-governance dichotomy & tension that brings together cognitive liberty & personal responsibilities integrated through transcendental meaning (e.g. truth, justice (ethics), beauty (aesthetics) - normative sciences) [LINK] can be expressed as follows:
Being - Outward Conscious Self Orientation to Open Inquiry and the pursuit of Truth - Without an outward orientation towards Open Inquiry and Truth seeking grounded in the Conscious Self’s relationship with Being (i.e. in contrast to Subjectivism - Post-Truth) such a World would be shaped by the will to power, relativism, anarchy, injustice and chaos;
Knowing - Inward Conscious Self Orientation to Fallibilism, Epistemological Humility and the possibility of Error - Without developing a reflexive inward orientation and attitude of epistemological humility and recognising the inherent fallibilism of the Human Condition, the process of truth seeking and Cognitive Liberty would be curtailed. Instead, we would be susceptible to Ideology &/or the manipulation of our understanding of Reality. For example, Truth being managed, controlled, manipulated and imposed through human force by powerful interests ( e.g. censorship, surveillance, propaganda, indoctrination, ostracisation etc ) - noting Marxism is a power-directed system of thought; and
Meaning - Integration Conscious Self Orientation through meaning and Peirce’s Phenomenological Categories of the Whole that bring together a Sense of Coherence [LINK] and Order to Human Being’s understanding and participation in Reality.The mediation of Conscious Self and Being via Semiotic Signs [LINK].
“The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world”…
— C. S. Lewis
[LINK] - Why Truth matters in Podcasting
The arrival of Modernity in Western Civilisation had already seen the attempted liberation of Man from:
God (e.g. Nietzsche - God is Dead);
Nature (e.g. Geo - Bio - Genetic Engineering ); and
Himself (e.g. Trans Humanism [LINK] - Übermensch: Universal Values [LINK]),
but as outlined in The Illusion of Liberation - Modern Man’s Attempted Revolt Against God, Nature, and Himself [LINK] such attempts will ultimately prove futile and have already paradoxically result in a New Totalitarianism [LINK] as a Marxist Socially Constructed Reality [LINK] would be required to be imposed by force including inter-alia via censorship, surveillance, indoctrination, propaganda, digital & physical control and ostracisation.
[LINK] - The Illusion of Liberation - Modern Man’s Attempted Revolt Against God, Nature, and Himself
Secondly, the legitimacy [LINK] of Cognitive Liberty is not a matter of social or tribal consensus but one of human survival (i.e. a survival instinct) [LINK]).
Our ideas have consequences and bad ideas can have catastrophic consequences.
The notion that Man socially constructs Reality is a Modern and Post-Modern Sophism [LINK].
“We can ignore reality, butwe cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality”…
― Ayn Rand
Instead, Man participates in Reality through the act of Being via his ideas, beliefs, habits and actions that are mediated through meaning.
Conscious Man’s ideas and beliefs ultimately must have an alignment with the nature of Being if Man is to continue to exist (i.e. act of Being) [LINK].
“Both ignorance and the old metaphysics tend to produce these undesirable nervous effects of reversed orderand so non-survival evaluation.If we use the nervous system in a way which is against its survival structure, we must expect non-survival.Human history is short, but already we have astonishing records of extinction”…
— Alfred Korzybski
[LINK] - Metaphysical Geometric Unity - Being, Knowing and Meaning
Edmund Burke and Ordered Liberty
“Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality”…
— Edmund Burke
18th Century Anglo-Irish politician, journalist and philosopher - Edmund Burke - who is widely regarded as the founder of the social and cultural philosophy of conservatism had reached similar conclusions some ~250 years earlier.
“Edmund Burke’s greatest service to liberty was to remind the world thatfreedom is anchored in a transcendent moral order and that for liberty to flourish, social and personal order and morality must exist, and radical innovations must be shunned”…
- Edmund Burke: Ordered Liberty - The Imaginative Conservative
[LINK]
Liberty was not a free lunch and carried with it individual responsibilities for self-governance and moral duties.
Burke had recognised a Transcendent Moral Order [LINK].
Liberty was really an Ordered Liberty [LINK].
[LINK] - Divergence - Hobbes and Locke
A perspective similar to John Locke [LINK] - refer Divergence - Hobbes and Locke [LINK] — where God’s Divine Will is manifested in both Moral Duties and Natural Rights.
[LINK] - Edmund Burke: Ordered Liberty - The Imaginative Conservative
Ordered Liberty [ LINK] requires a Society to recognise a Divine Order of Things .[LINK]
[LINK] - Metaphysics and a Divine Order
An understanding of Reality that shifts from materialistic forces - Cause & Effect, Determinism, and Reductionism [LINK] - the three core Axioms of the Scientific Revolution[LINK] - to higher-order emergent transcendent metaphysical principles and objective values (i.e. a revival in Realism - Normative Sciences: Truth, Beauty (Aesthetics) and Justice (Ethics)) anchored in the Ontology of Being (Aristotle’s Categories), the Epistemology of Knowing (Kant’s Categories) and the Phenomenology of Meaning (Peirce Categories) [LINK].
One that recognises the true nature of intelligibility [LINK] and the entangled relationships between the Metaphysical & Physical, the Temporal & Eternal, the Finite & Infinite and Abstraction & our embodied Being in the World.
One that also recognises that a Serious Education requires God [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] to bring a Sense of Coherence [LINK] and Order [LINK] to Human Being’s understanding and participation in Reality.
[LINK] - 1983 Templeton Prize Acceptance Address - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In the early decades of the 21st Century if Western Civilisation is to address:
the growing critique [LINK] of the three waves of Modernity [LINK];
the relativism & subjectivity of Post-Modernism [LINK]; and
restoring the Sacred including the pursuit of Objective Truth [LINK] and a Divine Order [LINK] matters more than ever.
Human Being’s Cognitive Liberty [LINK] to choose between a future of order or chaos [LINK].
“Tragedy occurs when man
, through pride (or even through stupidity as in the case of Ajax)enters into conflict with the divine order, personified by a God or incarnated in Society. And the more justified his revolt and the more necessary this order, the greater the tragedy that stems from the conflict” …
– Excerpt from Albert Camus, On the Future of Tragedy
[ LINK ]
[LINK] - Why Objective Truth still matters
Postscript:
The following is an attempt to extend Edmund Burke’s quote (refer above) and concept of Ordered Liberty from the Physical to an Ordered Cognitive Liberty that reflects the Metaphysical.
“Cognitive Liberty does not exist in the absence of the pursuit of Truth, Epistemological Humility, Fallibilism and Open Inquiry.
Cognitive Liberty is to the Metaphysical what Liberty is to the Physical.
It is through the Metaphysical triangulation of Being (Ontological), Knowing (Epistemological) and Meaning (Phenomenological) that the Conscious Self brings a Sense of Coherence to their participation in the Divine Order of Reality”…
— The Complexity Void
[LINK] - Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry: Fallibilism and Indeterminacy
The extension of Burke’s idea of Ordered Liberty (Physical) to Ordered Cognitive Liberty (Metaphysical) reflects the relationship between the Conscious Self to Being and a shift from a Cartesian Age of Reason to a Peircian Age of Meaning [LINK] (refer next paragraph).
It also reflects the axiomatic human qualities required for Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry [LINK].
Note: Presence reflects Human Being’s participation in Being through the act of Being (existing). Difference reflects the Cognitive Liberty [LINK] of the Conscious-Self. Rather than a Substance Dualism (i.e. Descartes) these ideas reflect a Property Dualism that can be interpreted through the prism of Liebniz’s Law. They also integrate the Ancient Indian Philosophy (Nyaya and Vaisheshika) concepts of Negation (an ontological concept anchored in a duality - absence and presence) and Inherence (the mechanism by which parts come together as a whole that recognises the differences between parts & wholes and substances and qualities. Inherence cannot be reduced).
