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.)

In The WEIRDest People in the World (2020), Joseph Henrich argues that over a millennium, the Catholic Church simplified the kinship system of the West from clannishness to the nuclear family. People stopped marrying in a narrow circle, which results in narrow genetic loyalty—clannishness—and started marrying in a wide circle, which results in wide genetic loyalty. Cooperation scaled, and the West, with its big-scale civilization, took over.

Henrich doesn’t argue this, but my understanding is:

1. There have always been clannish holdouts (e.g., royalty, the aristocracy, the Jews, the mafia).
2. The clannish holdouts end up with a lot of power.

What was monarchy but that? That is, what was monarchy but the clannish holdouts controlling the non-clannish? The non-nuclear families controlling the nuclear families?

And what was the aftermath of the World Wars but the end of royalty and the aristocracy?

When introducing the technical side of my work, I used to lead with: “I’m designing an artificial language.” Now I lead with: “I’m designing notation for logic and linguistics à la the best mathematical notation: arithmetical, algebraic, etc.” I used to get bad reactions, and now I get good reactions. Why? I’ve been working on my artificial language, my logico-linguistic notational system, for a long time. I started in my late teens. In changing the term that I lead with from “artificial language,” which makes most people skeptical, to “notation,” which doesn’t, I didn’t change anything about the substance, about what I’ve been working on for so long. I just changed my strategy for explaining what I’m working on.

Why it worked to change the term:

1. It sounds utopian, even schizophrenic, to be serious about designing an “artificial language,” to seriously believe that designing an “artificial language” could revolutionize communication. By contrast, it sounds modest to say that you’re designing “notation.” It sounds scientific.
2. In designing an artificial language, it would be possible to prioritize the phonological and orthographical aesthetics, to prioritize making the artificial language sound and look beautiful. In designing notation, however, (a) there’s no phonology—the term “notation” refers to +, -, and other international written symbols, their countless spoken counterparts throughout the world (e.g., “plus,” “minus”) notwithstanding, for those spoken symbols aren’t notation but natural language—and (b) although it would be possible to prioritize the orthographical aesthetics, people associate the term “notation” not with art but with science. My project has no phonology, and my artistic vision for the orthography is secondary to my scientific vision. Thus, the term “artificial language” is more misleading association-wise, and the term “notation” is less misleading.