I’ve been reading Brand Blanshard’s book The Nature of Thought (1939) recently. A treatise of over a thousand pages, the length itself is already out of fashion; few people nowadays write for an audience with that long of an attention span. The subject matter too is out of fashion. It’s about the introspective psychology of “thought,” with Blanshard defining that term in the context of the book as what’s either true or false. For example, sensation is neither true nor false—at least that’s true insofar as we define that term in the same way as Blanshard, which is one of the standards definitions and probably the most useful one. But perception is different. The sensation of a speck moving in the sky just is what it is, but the perception of the speck as an airplane is either true or false.

In modern logic, it’s standard to define the term “proposition” as what’s either true or false. The modern logician focuses on the words: “A speck moving in the sky” is neither true nor false, which means that it’s not a proposition, but “the speck moving in the sky is an airplane” is different; it’s a proposition. Introspective psychology being out of fashion, the modern logician’s analysis stops there. It doesn’t point out that the former is sensation and the latter is perception.

What’s the subjective experience of believing that something is true? That’s a question that David Hume (1711-1776) asked. What his answer was and whether it was right is beside the point; he at least asked the question and tried to answer it. For Hume (and the rest of the British empiricists, which included the 19th-century phenomenalist holdout in logic John Stuart Mill), there was no distinction between the kind of introspectionist work in Blanshard’s The Nature of Thought, which was the introspective psychology of propositional thought, and what’s salvageable in anti-introspectionist modern logic, which is about propositional thought reflected in words and other symbols (with what the mind is doing in interpreting the words and other symbols being left unanalyzed, how dangerous that is notwithstanding).

Ultimately, we must integrate British empiricism with modern logic. We must analyze sensation and perception, the subjective experience of believing that something is true, etc., which is the foundation (epistemologically speaking), before analyzing propositional thought reflected in words and other symbols, which builds on that foundation.

The Protestant Reformation led to the Enlightenment, which had a lot of advantages but also had the disadvantage of “science” increasingly replacing religion over the following centuries—not science, which is the facts and only the facts, but “science,” which is a certain kind of religion masquerading as science. That is, the Protestant Reformation, which challenged the traditional religious authorities, led to the Enlightenment, which in turn led to scientism. Ultimately, the best answer to the Protestant-Reformation-Enlightenment question isn’t atheistic science. Why? Because atheistic science is impossible in the long term; atheistic science is the death of religion, and from the meaninglessness of atheism is born the next religion.

The best answer to the Protestant-Reformation-Enlightenment question is to purify science of religion, purify religion of science, and then make religion and science like the left and right sides of the brain: semi-autonomous, but communicatively connected.

Modern science is in part a degenerate manifestation of physicalism. Traditional optics has as its epistemological foundation introspection into the subjective experience of light; the congenitally blind, who lack that kind of subjective experience, wouldn’t be able to understand. But modern optics, being physicalist, doesn’t rely on introspection, doesn’t rely on subjective experience. For modern optics, like modern science in general, the different sensory modalities are interchangeable. The congenitally blind, despite not being able to see the physical world, even in their mind’s eye, can nevertheless understand it. They can touch it, for instance.

There’s nothing degenerate about that, of course, the degeneracy coming only later: when it got popular, especially in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, not only to think of physical science as the only legitimate kind of science but also to make a religion out of it.

How does my autobiography, that is the story of my life, relate to the story of the World Wars? When I find myself with the inspiration to write about history, it’s usually either about myself, which is a zoomed-in perspective, or about the World Wars, which is a zoomed-out perspective. I have the confidence, perhaps specifically the individualistic confidence, to do foundational work and system building; a lot of people who came of age either during the First World War or earlier had that kind of confidence, and most people nowadays no longer have that kind of confidence. I do foundational work and system building (e.g., phenomenalist logic and linguistics), and when I go from my lone intellectual mode to a social-intellectual mode, with the goal being to get other people on board, I find that most people nowadays lack the foundational-work-system-building ambition; they’re too short-term practical.

The story of my life relates to the story of the World Wars in that the World Wars were part of the most recent boom in confidence. In the aftermath of the World Wars, which was in part the corresponding bust, foundational work and system building went out of fashion. If I want to understand why my work is old-fashioned, then I must look to the World Wars; I must make sense of that boom and bust.

My goals:

1. Integrate Austrian economics with British empiricism. That is, put Mises and Hayek on a Humean foundation
2. Use British-empiricist Austrian economics as a model science for linguistics
3. Integrate logic and linguistics
4. Ultimately:
   • My foundational work would be phenomenalist…
   • My system building would go from phenomenalist economics to phenomenalist logic and linguistics (with mathematics as a model for how to make notation for logic)…
   • Before going onto the more experimental fields of health etc
5. Tell the story of my life insofar as it’s relevant to why I have those goals, which again are out of fashion, zooming out throughout that micro story to the macro story of the World Wars insofar as they’ve relevant to why most people don’t have goals like that anymore. I can’t only do the work; I must (a) motivate myself to do the work, (b) motivate others to get on board, and (c) explain the mechanisms of demotivation so as to counteract those mechanisms. I must put the work in autobiographical and historical context.

I’m also interested not only in doing the kind of foundational work and system building that I agree with, disproving along the way the most popular and influential rival schools of thought, but also in explaining why those rival schools of thought got popular and influential. For example, physicalism unmoored from phenomenalism, which is what the late logical positivists argued for, is a rival school of thought. There’s constructing my phenomenalist system (with physicalism moored to it) and proving it, and there’s deconstructing their physicalist system (unmoored from phenomenalism) and disproving it. After that construction and then deconstruction, that is after those positive and then negative projects, there’s the transition from disembodied to embodied ideas; there are the ideas themselves, mine that I agree with and theirs that I disagree with, and then there’s why I came up with what I came up with and why they did something different.

In refuting physicalism unmoored from phenomenalism, I’m interested not only in explaining why the disembodied idea is wrong but also in embodying the idea in the people. Why did that idea come about, sociologically speaking?

To consolidate, my goals are to:

1. Do a certain kind of project (with phenomenalist logic and linguistics being an example)
2. Explain why a lot of people used to be on board with that kind of project but no longer are (whether they were right or wrong in their contributions)
3. Refute the most popular and influential rival schools of thought (which are mostly old schools of thought because most people are no longer working on anything relevant)
4. Explain why those rival schools of thought came about

That is:

1. Zoom into the ideas, positive-constructively
2. Zoom out to the people (autobiographically and historically as relates to motivation)
3. Zoom into the ideas, negative-deconstructively
4. Zoom out to the people again (historically as relates to error)

In my late teens, I suddenly started buying a lot of books, thousands of dollars worth of books in fact. I eventually sold most of them, keeping the ones especially in the traditions of Austrian economics (with Ludwig von Mises being at the center for me) and British empiricism (with David Hume being at the center). What distinguished, then, for me, Austrian economics and British empiricism, from everything else? What distinguished Mises and Hume from everybody else? My interest at that time was in designing an artificial language, which no school of thought in linguistics helped me do, at least no school of thought in linguistics that I knew about. When I started reading Mises and Hume, I immediately understood that:

1. Misesian economics was the best model science for linguistics.
2. Humean philosophy was the best foundation for Misesian economics (the empiricist-rationalist controversy notwithstanding) and in turn for “Misesian” linguistics.

What distinguished Mises and Hume from everybody else was:

1. How deep their foundational work was
2. How well their systems fit together (with my goal being to put Misesian economics on a Humean foundation and then build “Misesian” linguistics on that foundation)

With Mises and Hume as my inspiration, I threw myself into foundational work and system building. It was only later that I learned how hostile the present age is to that kind of ambition. I’ve found myself out of place.

My reaction has been not only to swim against the current of the present age but also to ask why the current is flowing in the direction that it is: against foundational work and system building.

My understanding, which is admittedly nascent, is that there was a boom in Western confidence in the late-19th and early-20th centuries and a bust in the mid-to-late-20th century (after the 1960s), which correlated, interestingly, with the rise and fall of cigarettes. It was starting in the 1880s that cigarettes were first successfully industrialized—a man named “James Bonsack” patented the first cigarette-rolling machine in 1881, supposedly—and it was starting in the 1960s that cigarettes were first successfully stigmatized. Confidence boomed and busted, that is, in correlation with the rise and fall of cigarettes.

The boom and bust in confidence also correlated with the World Wars, which were ultimately catastrophic. Nationalistic pride and ambition led to war, and then the war led to catastrophe; humility “rescued” the winners and losers alike.

The boom in confidence led to foundational work and system building, often with the goal being to make society anew, and then the bust led to the opposite.

In modern science, even the congenitally blind can understand optics and even the congenitally deaf can understand acoustics—nothing is more characteristic of modern science than those peculiar facts. Whether you see something, hear it, or perceive it in any other way, what you’re perceiving is the same. In modern science, optics isn’t about the subjective experience of light, which is introspectable (unless you’ve been blind since birth, presumably), and acoustics isn’t about the subjective experience of sound, which is also introspectable (unless you’ve been deaf since birth). Instead, modern optics is the objective study of the physical phenomenon of light, which needn’t be seen to be understood, and modern acoustics is the objective study of the physical phenomenon of sound, which needn’t be heard to be understood.

Interestingly, that makes modern science not only physicalist but also universalist-inclusive. Traditionally, optics excluded the congenitally blind (for they were blind to the subject matter) and acoustics the congenitally deaf. Modern science excludes nobody.

Modern science is also universalist-inclusive in that it insists on its propositions being at least in principle possible for anybody to interpret and figure out whether true. For example, the pickup community on the Internet teaches the theory and practice of game. The most that the mainstream is able to admit, however reluctantly, is that what the pickup community teaches makes perverse sense. That is, what it teaches works in practice (the practice, the mainstream would make sure to point out, being hedonistic, manipulative, and immoral). What the mainstream would not admit is that what the pickup community teaches is scientific, that the theoretical system (about male and female sexual psychology and how seduction works between men and women), whether or not it works in practice, is “true” in the modern-scientific sense of that term.

Why? Because modern science is universalist-inclusive, and the pickup community, which is almost exclusively made up of young heterosexual men, didn’t come up with its insights in a universalist-inclusive way. Just as the congenitally blind must be able to understand optics—that’s one of the promises of physicalism—the homosexual must be able understand the science of how heterosexual men and women attract each other.

Studies are almost useless for understanding how seduction works between men and women, but at least they’re universalist-inclusive. They’re set up such that anybody, whether heterosexual or homosexual, sexually experienced or inexperienced, can at least in principle interpret the propositions and figure out whether they’re true.

The “old logic,” which was abandoned for the most part after John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), was grounded in introspective psychology: the study of subjective experience. By contrast, the “new logic,” Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) being one of the best and most representative examples, is not grounded in introspective psychology. For example, David Hume (1711-1776), who Mill took seriously, asked the introspective-psychology question (paraphrased): “What’s the subjective experience of belief? It’s possible for me to imagine that my paternal grandfather is still alive—to visualize him, say, waking up in the morning and then cooking breakfast—without believing that what I’m imagining is true. It’s also possible for me to imagine the same thing but as if it’s true. What’s the difference between the former and latter subjective experiences, between imagining-believing and imagining-non-believing?” Who still dared to ask that question after Mill?

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) tried to figure out what the mechanism is of gravity, failed, and then published something less ambitious: only a description of the “what” of gravity (as opposed to also an explanation of the “why”). Newton himself was unsatisfied, but the Newtonian revolution got the scientific world used to description without explanation.

Interestingly, Noam Chomsky (1928-) intentionally did for linguistics what Newton unintentionally did for physics. He didn’t even try to figure out what the mechanism is of grammar (which made introspective psychology irrelevant).

The old Internet, the Internet that I grew up on, feels different than the new Internet. Some of the factors:

1. The medium has changed. The intellectual part of the Internet used to be a decentralized, interconnected system of forums and blogs, mostly text-based, which made it analogous to the Republic of Letters. I remember a lot of threads that unfolded in argumentative controversy over the course of days and even weeks (in many cases, mostly among people who were familiar with each other). The new Internet, by contrast, is centralized. Most people most of the time go to Twitter, YouTube, etc. The new Internet is also less text-based. Where long attention span still dominates, namely in podcasts (e.g., the Joe Rogan Experience), there’s an unfortunate concomitant phenomenon: the passivity of listening to somebody who’s talking to so many people at once that there’s little chance that they’ll be able to give you the “time of day.”
2. The demographics have changed. Why has the medium changed? There are probably a lot of factors, but one of those factors is surely that the demographics have changed. (And even if the medium hadn’t changed, the demographic change would have nevertheless lowered the intellectual standards.)

I used to think that the most significant change was related to attention span. People went from the decentralized, interconnected system of forums and blogs, to websites like Twitter. But what about the ascendancy of the Joe Rogan Experience and the like? How many people watched 3-hour interviews, especially about deep questions, in 2000? 2010? 2020?

The most significant change, then, is actually that insofar there’s a long-attention-span milieu of the new Internet, there’s a much stronger incentive to be passive. People listen to 3-hour interviews, yes. But does that lead to debate? Not really.

On the new Internet, there’s a sharp distinction between the producers, who are active in their pursuit of money and power, and the consumers, who are passive.

In reading John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic (1843), it’s become clear to me that a lot of what I’ve found most useful in logic has been less what it’s ultimately trying to do and more what it must do as a means to its end.

In A System of Logic, Mill starts his analysis with names. For example, there are names like “country,” which are (in their spoken, written, and other forms) associated with indefinite “groups of individuals”—for the lack of a better term—and names like “England,” which are associated with definite “individuals.” What’s the difference, though, between a name and a word? A name is a kind of word. A name is always associated with an indefinite group of individuals, a definite group of individuals, or a definite individual, and a word is associated like that only insofar as it’s a name. For example:

1. “Country” is a name because it’s associated with England, Germany, and every other country (whether past, present, future, or hypothetical).
2. “The Axis” (in the context of the Second World War) is a name because it’s associated with Nazi Germany, Facist Italy, and Imperial Japan.
3. “England” is a name because it’s associated with that country.
4. “The” isn’t a name—at least it’s not a name in and of itself—because it’s not associated with an indefinite group of individuals, a definite group of individuals, or a definite individual. (“The country that I grew up in,” though, which has “the,” is a name.)

Mill also distinguishes between connotative and non-connotative names, “country” being an example of a connotative name because it connotes certain attributes (e.g., sovereignty) and “England” being an example of a non-connotative name. “Country” denotes England because England is sovereign etc., but “England” denotes that country regardless of its sovereignty etc.

After his analysis of names, Mill moves onto ontology, which is the analysis of the most fundamental categories: mind, body, etc. And then after ontology—I’ll forgo summarizing Mill’s ontological system in this essay—Mill moves onto an analysis of propositions (which presupposes names, for propositions are in part made of names): For example, in “snow is white,” the subject, which says what the proposition is about, is “snow,” and the predicate, which says something about what the proposition is about, is “white.” Such propositions, according to Mill, aren’t best analyzed as the category “snow” being included in the category “white things,” but as what’s in the category “snow” being attributed whiteness.

It’s only after analyzing names, ontology, and propositions (which gets at the form and substance of propositions) as a means to an end that Mill gets to what logic is ultimately trying to do: explain what propositions imply what other propositions, well what kinds of propositions imply what other kinds of propositions. I’ve always found the former more useful than the latter, whether in Mill or elsewhere.

In English, there are copular propositions (e.g., “swans are white”), copular-like propositions (e.g., “swans have wings”), and non-copular propositions (e.g., “drugs kill,” “drugs kill people”). What does it mean for swans to be white? If you see a swan, then you’ll see something white: the swan. And what does it mean for drugs to kill? If you see a drug, then you’ll see something that kills: the drug.

One of my goals for the artificial language is to integrate the copular, copular-like, and non-copular propositions. English uses “to be” for the copular, “to have” for the copular-like, and nothing for the non-copular: “Swans are white,” “swans have wings,” and “drugs kill.” In the artificial language, I’ll avoid that asymmetry. I’ll mark the subject, the predicate, and the kind of relationship between the subject and the predicate: the “to be” relationship, which is spatial whole-whole, temporal whole-whole, the “to have” relationship, which is spatial whole-part, temporal whole-whole, and the nothing relationship, which is the spatial whole-whole, temporal whole-part relationship. (Propositions take a subject a put it together with a predicate—that’s what propositions are. The questions are what the subject is, what the predicate is, and what the relationship is between the subject and the predicate.)

“Swans are white” means that if you see a swan, then you’ll see something white: the swan. And “white things are swans” means the opposite: that if you see a white thing, then you’ll see something that’s a swan: the white thing. The former proposition is false but not absurd, and the latter proposition is false and absurd.

English is asymmetrical:

1. “Swans are white,” “white things are swans”
2. “Swans have wings,” “things that have wings are swans”
3. “Drugs kill,” “things that kill are drugs”
4. “Drugs kill people,” “things that kill people are drugs”

In the artificial language, I’ll avoid that asymmetry. I’ll do something like:

1. “Swans are white,” “whites are swan”
2. “Swans have wings,” “wings have swans”
3. “Drugs kill,” “kills drug”
4. “Drugs kill people,” “kills people drug”

What are the semantic differences between “white swan” and “swans are white”? (a) One of the semantic differences is that “white swan” is non-propositional and “swans are white” is propositional. That is, “white swan” is neither true nor false but “swans are white” is the opposite: It’s either true or false. (b) The other semantic difference is that “white swan” asks you to imagine something that’s both white and a swan and “swans are white” tells you that if you see a white, then you’ll see something white: the swan. “White swan,” being non-propositional, doesn’t tell you anything about, say, “black swan,” but “swans are white,” being propositional, tells you that “swans aren’t black.”

That is:

1. “White swan” brings together in your imagination whiteness and swanness.
2. “Swans are white” not only brings together in your imagination whiteness and swanness but also proposes that whiteness and swanness go together.

(It’s important to point out that “swans are white” tells you that with swanness comes whiteness, not the opposite: that with whiteness comes swanness. That is, s < w, not w < s.)

With the double labels ab, ~ab, a~b, and ~a~b:

1. It’s possible to bring together in your imagination ab, ~ab, a~b, or ~a~b.
2. It’s also possible to propose that ab, ~ab, a~b, or ~a~b go together. (That’s what the copula does.)