Introductory essay:
Heuristic Government and Economic Policy
Prefatory Comments on the Nature of the Material(*9)
[Skip 'underlying science' to the basic thrust of this essay?]
An Abstract of Somewhat Larger Scope(*a)
Democracy -the 'best' form of government?
Human Nature and
Continuing Human Existence
The Inevitabilities of Human Deliberative CapabilityICAPE (Salt Lake City) / AAAS (Boise, Idaho) - June 2007
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We cannot know either what we might become or what might become of us without knowing how we have come to be what we are -a matter only of science and nothing else. |
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EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS Because of origins as 'a warm-blooded, primitively cerebrating vertebrate', man cannot have 'divined' the eventual evolution of his uniquely human 'deliberative capability' and its consequences. What has developed consequently -evolved, is that man has learned how to 'facilitate' his existence -'technological advances', before discovering the consequences of such 'facilitation out of ignorance' -that, in particular, he would some day -and inevitably, come to regret how he had both lessened the duration and worsened the very nature of his existence on earth through war, waste and the corruption of 'pre-sapiens natural dynamics' -overpopulation, pollution, global warming and econiche die-offs -worsening human existence.
ECONOMICS |
the greater part of history, these mechanisms were more or less satisfactory in the sense that
it was not intellectually yet possible to foresee problematic consequences arising from underlying physiological dynamics.
Economics and economic theory, in this respect, have evolved as less concerned with such consequences than with 'invisible hand's, 'economic growth' and abstract market properties more or less 'ignorantly conjured into existence and
importance'. Critically missing in this then is any reference to man's expressly physiological nature -and to that aforementioned 'deliberative capability' in particular -to the inevitability, in other words, of his increasingly deliberated and 'scientifically meliorated' influence on what is a closed-earth system in favor of 'life-form best longevity' -dirigiste heurism.
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[Skip underlying science to the basic thrust of this essay?]
It is a fact of human developmental progress that despite essentially simple evolutionary origins as 'a warm-blooded cerebrating vertebrate', man has become an organism of profound complexity in conjunction with all other organisms of the planet and the resource/environment whole. Understanding much of the related science and knowing much about our 'philosophical inclinations and dispositions' then -religion, politics et cetera, three items stick out as crucial to 'the nature of continuing human existence on this planet':
1 - What is the physiological -and therein, intellectual'- nature of the human organism for what it identifies as 'of ineluctable importance and role in determining the nature of continuing human existence'?
2 - What is the nature of man's interaction with his planet-whole resource/environment today for how currently existing generations play into that 'nature of foreseeable human existence'? -perhaps, no more than two to three generations into 2040-50?
3 - Given the intrinsically heuristic nature of human existence, what best way is there -at this time, for 'optimizing the nature of human existence' into that time?
I - 'Deliberative Capability'
and The Nature Of The Organism
Deliberative capability(*3) is exactly such a purely physiological property -but one, essentially, without such limitation, thus beginning with whatever 'first prohominid seed' of this capability, evolving
man became 'successively more capable of assimilating and intellectualizing (eventually) successively higher-order relationships out of the various properties and organisms of his configuration-space' -mathematics and 'the arts', the outer edge
thus far.
Hominid evolution reflects, in that sense, an intellectualizing machine that goes successively by itself.
-And the asymptotic peculiarity of this machine then, is that the more that it 'discovers and intellectualizes the nature of itself and its configuration-space', the more it 'prefers that space uncorrupted for successive discovery and intellectualization' -and works to that end too -as, for example, 'How did this whatever become the whatever it is?' -and, heuristically, 'I wonder what happens if I do this to that?'.
The nature and uniqueness of this property with respect to any of all other properties of this and all life-forms, consequently, identifies the evolving hominid as potentially capable -circumstances permitting, of making 'natural
evolutionary process' itself successively subordinate to 'evolving discovery and intellectualization' -genetic modification, an example.
Because of the heuristically evolutionary nature of this 'successively higher-order intellectualization' however, there is no way of determining how this property plays into this 'discovery and subordination of the world about it' except as
a function of how well this still intellectually evolving human life-form understands this complexly relational phenomenon.
The human being, in other words, is the only organism capable of 'intellectualizing the nature of itself and its configuration space' -and heuristically influencing, thereby, 'that very nature of itself and its continuing existence' by such
discovery and intellectualization.
In hindsight then, at any first existence of this property, it merely 'advantaged' the hominid in the sense that it made him 'the highest-order, warm-blooded primitively cerebrating vertebrate over all other organisms'.
Given, further, the successive nature of this property then (above), we may now observe that the nature of the continuing existence of this human life-form depends entirely upon how it discovers and incorporates that 'potential power of
such discovery and assimilation' -how it discovers, in other words, 'the role of deliberative capability' in the determination of that 'continuing existence' (thus-).
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(*6) Because it is evolutionally -and therefore intellectually, more complex, 'discovering the nature of man' is only initially subordinate to 'any beginning evolution of technology'.
By the very existence of this statement then, it 'advantages' us to discover (insofar as possible) how technology plays into 'the existence of man' as we advance technology and our 'discovery of human nature' -only a matter of time, in other
words, before deliberative capability brings us to oversee and heuristically direct both the evolution and incorporation of technology -dirigiste heurism(*4) therein. |
-Deliberative capability is not only 'a machine that goes by itself', in other words, but a property which works inexorably towards superceding any and all human physiological or other properties.
This aspect of human nature has yet to be even identified, however, in anything of human interaction so far -economics, for example, but 'the advancement of science itself' too.
II - The Situation of 'The Human Life-Form' Today
(-or 'Che sara, sara')
(*5)
The Importance Of Biodiversity
Most people 'rue possible loss of biodiversity', but asked why it is important, they fall upon essentially emotional explanation that has absolutely nothing to do with 'inevitable consequences of deliberative capability and genetic imperative'.
Simply stated, most people have learned to expect a certain continuing predicability of resource/environment dynamics upon which man has depended from 'the beginning' -food, for example, one way or another.
What 'common man' does not know -but evolutionary biologists do, on the other hand, is that as we corrupt natural, pre-sapiens dynamics [eating what he's used to] through overpopulation and existential(*8) excesses, we also permanently degrade that resource/environment of material and information that, driven by genetic imperative and therefore inevitably to be regretted, 'the life-form needs to live as
long as possible'.
The Importance Of Expediency
We are already well into saturating the planet of what it can more or less support of human population and its pressures on natural resources and the environment.
Global warming is now generally accepted a de-facto consequence, and animal extinctions too, for example, continue to be verified.
Worse still then, there is a momentum in this growing population and its 'extracting existentialism from the planet',
and what this momentum tells us is that our various 'economic and other problems' -'sustainable resource use', for example, continue to grow and convolve under us even as we try to understand
them.
(*g) 'Black box theory' tells us that the best way to find out what's going on 'inside the box' -and we are 'inside a box of planetary constraints', is to 'test' it in the simplest ways possible because the more variables there are operating, the harder it is to tease out the internal complexities of 'what inputs affect what outputs and their returns again as inputs' -the importance, therein, of expediency in reducing that momentum in order to understand the whole.
'Least population of least resource/environment corruption' is not something of an 'initial launch' in this sense, but rather what should, perhaps, be 'the major intellectual inclination underlying heuristic government and economic policy'.
(*e) 'A world democracy of variously autonomous and ignorant individuals, peoples and nations'(*h) -although not Garrett Hardin's language, is a situation essentially identified in his
1968 essay, 'The Tragedy of the Commons'.
And too, most peoples and nations today continue to grow into 'variously unequal' resource/environments with 'the pecking-order-based mentality of earliest man for whatever best living he can extract'.
More pointedly and realistically then, such 'world democracy' identifies the de-facto non-existence of two or more nations anywhere capable of collaborating on the resolution of problems facing man today without 'belief system problems of
some kind crucially interfering' -'global warming', for example.
Short of 'bumbling into (e.g.) sustainable resource use', in other words, 'inevitable dirigiste heurism' reduces to 'morphing government/economy into operations research' -the only form of 'government', notably, that has 'state
monitoring' and feedback intrinsic.
-Clearly then, such precedent can be undertaken -and will most likely have to so be, only by such governments as are scientifically knowledgeable and operational enough to do so humanely.
[From a strictly engineering point of view, not the least of problems with democracy is its intrinsic time-lag regarding observation, interpretation and 'best-engineered response to developingly meaningful situations'.]
- Bottom line of 'foreseeability at this time of two to three generations' then, is that-
- Population is growing and 'corrupting resource/environment potential critical to continuing human existence' faster than 'inevitable dirigiste heurism' is growing to contain that population and corruption.
III - Heuristic Government and Economic Policy
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Given the intrinsically heuristic nature of human existence, what best way is there -at this time, for 'optimizing that nature'? -realistic, perhaps, for no more than two to three generations into 2040-50? |
Regarding 'who is qualified' then -and for want of any easy way of putting it, the foregoing sections reduce to four principles the acceptance of which -except perhaps, for minor clarification, effectively identify 'individuals least likely to engage in the philosophics of thus-far pecking-order-based government and economics and most likely to get on with the inevitability of dirigiste heurism'.
(*b) Principles of Dirigiste Heurism
1 - There is no way for humans to have learned or to learn anything of 'unambiguous factuality' (statistical probity) except out of ignorance and successively more logical and less ambiguous refinement -i.e. science and (evolving) the complete refutation of 'belief systems' of any kind therein.
2 - Mankind dispersed into an eventual constitution of discrete, ethnic nations, but all government continues (so far) to reflect natural and primary evolution out of (a) origins as 'pecking-order-based vertebrates' and (b) 'ignorantly belief-based authority as source of knowledge and guidance'(*1).
3 - Science continues to show that 'natural overpopulation and economic growth' is degrading ecological and environmental dynamics to varying degrees of irreversibility and 'a certainty of pejorative impact regrettable in hindsight by future generations'.
4 - How continuing degradations of the environment and general ecology affect continuing human existence depends upon how 'heuristic government and economic policy' becomes determined -inevitable in any case, by 'science regarding the nature and course of the human organism'(*2).
[What we have here, in effect, is the framework of a more properly evolving but formally unframeable 'Constitution'.]
- 1 - What is the propriety of 'the American free-enterprise right to design, produce, 'hype' or sell (virtually) anything that makes money'? -more or less without concern for 'how pejoratively it may affect present or
continuing quality of life'?
2 - It is argued that 'population continues to grow', so what is the propriety of 'population growing'?
3 - What is the propriety of 'the right to develop one's land'? -or to sell it to 'developers'? -of (mantra) 'The economy has to grow'?
4 - 'Properly accountable endeavor' aside, what is the propriety of 'wealth and power' to make its life as easy as possible? -slacking-off of a sort through the exertions of others'? -a major part of 'operational mentality' today? -corporate in particular?
5 - What is the propriety of 'Democracy, the best form of government'? -or the propriety of 'one's right to remain ignorant'?
- (*c) As for 'getting something more solid on the scratch pad' then, we might start thinking more in terms of 'validity' in human affairs rather than in terms of the
nebulous and universely used word 'value'.
-For example, and 'heuristically speaking' then-
- 1 - What are 'basic human requirements' as determined by our physiology and continuing intellectual growth?
2 - How might we redefine economic growth in favor of 'sustainable resource use' by including 'corruption of the resource/environment, biodiversity loss and other pejoratives to the continuing life-form'?
3 - What criteria might there be relating what income one needs to the validity of his station in society?
4 - What criteria might there be for 'identifying and diminishing unsustainable population in favor of best sustainable resource use'?
5 - What new occupational capabilities might we be educating ourselves to as we age so as to successively educate youth in favor of the life-form-whole?
6 - How might science today 'best affect government in favor of inevitable dirigiste heurism'?
7 - What government/economy might there be as 'best suited for initiating dirigiste heurism'? -Denmark? Finland? Mongolia? North Korea? Australia? New Zealand? -I don't know.
I close with an observation and a question. Should anyone think that the substance of this essay is 'cold and heartless' -or some such thing, I also point out that both love and art, for example, are easily explained precisely because of our uniquely human 'deliberative capability'.
-And the question: 'Can we find enough true scientists to get this show on the road?'
[FOOTNOTES]
*1 - 'Pecking order' remains essentially intact because the only way it can be 'reduced' is by deliberately addressing its natural, evolutionary existence. Such address is yet to exist or be known to have existed anywhere so far. Other than pecking order then, there are no naturally resident dispositions channeling the naturally evolving hierarchizations of human interaction. Procedures and rationales for such interaction have evolved, consequently and so far, out of circumstance and the belief-system respect 'ignorant lessers' had for the leader that demonstrated (example) 'special connection with the fire spirit by knowing how to make fire and keep it going'.
*2 - Science continues to discover how (above) rationales and procedures evolved out of 'ignorance and circumstance' affect ecology and the environment -and, therein, the continuing well-being and viability of man.
There is, however and furthermore, nothing to prevent science (deliberative capability) from continuing its natural supercession of those mechanisms with science-based, naturally heuristic mechanisms based solely upon 'optimizing that
well-being and viability of man as a life-form'.
Glossary
(*4) dirigiste heurism: that form of government which incorporates 'the discovered phenomenology of the configuration space' (science and mathematics) and 'codifies that phenomenon
of discoverability' in such a way (government) as to provide for its own heuristic restructuring as a function of the implicit (genetic imperative) 'best well-being and viability of the organism-whole'.
(*8) existentialism, in this writer's view, is not so much 'a complex, philosophical ideation' as a reification of 'the circumstantial, merely cerebrative modus vivendi of
thus-far humankind', thus -reductively, it is the here-and-now-ness of what life routinely and briefly appears to be -here-and-now-ness of 'me and mine' existence and welfare and NOT some 'nature and course of human evolution and progression' -nothing
deep -'the human condition'.
(*7) [note: qualia, here (quale: singular), are first-order properties]
relational (noun): a second-or-higher-order property which qualifies in a generally comparative way the relationship of a primitive or primary property common to two (or more) 'elements'
of the configuration space: (eg) left-right/up-down/front-back/ness or in/outside-ness of one thing with respect to another; difference/sameness, more/less-ness, absence (vs presence) of material/body physical properties: temperature, chemistry,
pressure, momentum, color, force, speed, sound, taste, smell, texture, dry/wetness et cetera; and at 'higher levels of vertebrate development'; now- then- and next-ness of state, for example, and shape or geometric pattern, and repetition/rhythm
and 'musicality'; temperament as in 'anger', 'attention' and even 'immeasurable degrees of (such as) honesty and fairness' et cetera -and changeability of relationals with time and space as a relational itself as in 'the arts'
eventually and mathematics too.
(*9)
Prefatory Comments on the Nature of the Material
- 'Introducing anything extraneous to the understanding at hand only complicates (?or confuses) that understanding'.
Science-based argument however -a consequence of our uniquely human deliberative capability, clearly identifies all such 'matter of opinion' as generally evolved out of circumstance and the pecking order and neonate ignorance of our evolution', thus everything we 'know' and develop -'philosophy' or 'product', is artifact of the evolution and development of that 'successive intellectualization out of circumstance, pecking order and neonate ignorance'. Knowledge regarding 'human nature' so far, in other words, is 'a matter of opinion' and belief-systems. (-Just try 'googling' the phrase 'human nature' -and/or 'the human condition' too, for that matter, and see what you get.)
These very observations tell us then that rather than 'a matter of opinion', human nature -a consequence of our deliberative capability, is 'our nature to discover what the scientifically physical nature of our being and its configuration space is' -the universe of science and mathematics therein -'belief systems and pecking-order vestigializing out' under that. -And based upon this 'human nature' then, the target of this paper is 'the government and economics of continuing human existence' -well beyond what we think of government and economics today.
(*a)
An Abstract of Somewhat Larger Scope
The very existence of this observation, however and furthermore, also makes it possible to trace it to the uniquely human property of deliberative capability -which, therefore, reflexively and in turn, makes it possible to project
the advancement of knowledge to 'the inevitable vestigialization of that pecking order as generally corruptive to the best continuing existence of the life-form' -a function of time, circumstance, sustainability and genetic imperative.
(-or to put it another way-)
All intellectualizable human expression is a function of evolving knowledge.
'Pecking-order-based natural expression', therefore, has no course but to give way to successively 'more knowledgeable decisions' under successively evolving science.
Interested in moving beyond 'Democracy, the best form of government'?
Let us know -All names kept strictly private.