‘Is’, ‘Am’ and ‘Should’ Modalities

Posted by Guest Blogger on Thursday, 01 July 2010 22:52.

by PF

This is the first part of a primer on PFian perspectivism and theory of mind. Thanks to Rod who provided the impetus to clarify these ideas.

Modality is a fancy word for mood, and it aims to describe the emotional constellation that is attached to specific things. A verb can have different modalities: ‘could’ and ‘should’ and ‘would’ each represent a different mood-relation of the actor to the action. Not limited entirely to emotion, modality also bleeds over into probabilistic concepts: how likely is something? For us, modalities can be seen as representing states of the human nervous system as it reasons - minds frozen in a moment of time. Was he contemplating the future and what is possible? Then he ‘could’ dance the flamenco. Was he contemplating his duties and obligations to others? Then he ‘should’ dance the flamenco. etc. etc. Incidentally modality is also a musical term, and the different scales it refers to also bring forth or convey different moods.

Man’s intellectual efforts are roughly divisible into three ‘modalities’: ‘is’, ‘am’ and ‘should’. These correspond to the state of his mind as he completes whatever mental task he is working at. Most importantly they describe the mood-relation (emotional tenor?), probabilistic aspect, and the method of verification which the process is subject to. The probabilistic aspect is how much imaginative conjecture is required by the thought process.

There are two methods of verification which human beings have access to, and the modalities divide among them. What has become the default position is social verification. This is the verification which takes place in our minds when our symbol system appreciates a consonance between its read-out and observed reality, thus ‘verifying’ the truth content of whatever symbol set is being looked at. At first glance it seems surprising to call this verification method ‘social verification’, but not when one considers that the mind evolved essentially as a social phenomenon and remains that way in spite of its internalization within the individual. In other words, the thought process as it first evolved, was naturally a ‘distributed system’, in terms of control theory. People learned things, and verbally became able to compare notes. The man who is able to synthesize perspectives inside his own mind, and thus carry out this process internally, is performing in his own mind what would have heretofore been the work of all our ancestors sitting together around a fire.

Because our thinking process is meant to be distributed, the thinking individual - something which I think we might see as emerging from this last 10,000 acceleration - recreates in his mind the distributed truth search of the group. His natural tendency is to search for a preterhuman perspective on human affairs, that somehow views the actions of our private lives as being of great consequence. Funnily enough, this corresponds exactly to what would be the ‘default position’ of the group in ancient times as dictated by its survival needs: it would possess a perspective/reality map that was far wider and more complex than any carried by individuals, and it would be intensely conscious of and focused on the individual’s private action as being of great consequence. Interesting, that the invention of gods fulfills both these requirements. In my opinion, the invention of gods exists to fulfill the need of our hardware. How else to explain the absurd positing, again and again across human time and space, of an all-powerful being who supposedly created the universe and was nevertheless intensely interested in who you just had sex with? The ‘God’ perspective is an artifact of the evolution of our thinking hardware. In other words, it is natural for our hardware to search for the perspective of the group, which was the original container of knowledge and repository of accurate reality-maps.

For this reason the search for the ‘God’ perspective, or the Group perspective, controls what thinking is and the channels it is allowed to move through. We are trying to find out what is ‘right’, so we can find out what we ‘should’ do. Again this constant refrain points to the origin of thinking in group-based consensus building. This is why morality and the categorical imperative pop up everywhere in our thought processes, one simply has to learn to listen to them. A man on a blog suggests that a certain music group is only listened to by those with unrefined taste - and we already know, he is recommending us to ascend to his level and appreciate his music, because it will do us good. Almost every ‘is’ is assessed by humans, given a simple valuation, and thereafter becomes a ‘should’. For this reason ‘is’ and ‘should’ modalities are imperceptibly linked as part of the thought process, and any assessment of reality is riddled with directives. Part of maturing is learning to keep your ears shut to the plethora of directives spat out by every human thought process - halt die Ohren steif!, as the Germans would say.

The ‘am’ modality is mostly neglected and unknown, but is the only source of truths which go deeper than our symbol system. This voice in the head that speaks to you through childhood, has a hypnotic effect. It takes the focus habitually away from the rest of our ‘process’, by virtue of its interestingness and more importantly its constant social reinforcement. This means that we no longer inhabit the space internally where ‘am’ modality is possible. The ‘am’ modality is verified experientially in a moment where the individual experiences all his internal processes at the same time, and for us evolved human beings, we know of it only as the ecstasy of mystics. This may have been a default state for prior beings and may be for animals.

Things that are apprehended in the ‘am’ modality have a comprehensive and non-distributed meaning, which nevertheless may not be translatable into social discourse. Things apprehended in the ‘is’ and ‘should’ modalities have partial and distributed meanings. In terms of ‘am’-modality verification, social verification modalities are inherently wrong, because they are not amenable to experiential verification. It would be more appropriate to say they are superficial.

Perspectivism will demolish (i.e. relativize) the entirety of ‘is’ and ‘should’ modality-based thought by bringing in contravening perspectives. It turns out that the only way to prevent these critiques is to own an ‘am’ modality, as least theoretically. In other words, thought systems cannot be anchored to endogenous absolute truths springing from the mind or from observed reality, since these are chimaeric artifacts of the way we think about the end-goals of the knowledge search. To avoid being criticized into nothingness, thought systems have to be anchored to an organic being, since these alone can experience ‘am’ modality. In other words our thought-world has to map to ‘am’ modalities for it not to be continually falsified by the churning of the perspectival mill. What is perceived as a weakness - the vulnerability of ‘is’ and ‘should’ modality-based thinking - becomes a strength, insofar as the collapse of access to these modalities forces accession to a tentative ‘am’ modality. In other words, you breathe the more freely for not bearing the burden of many ises and shoulds.

Tags: The Ontology Project

Comments:

Posted by PF on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:31 | #

thanks for posting.

please add a byline: by PF. Also the paragraph-formatting after ‘recreates in his mind’ in para #3 sentence #1 needs to be fixed. The german phrase “halt die Ohren steif!” at the end of para #5 looks better capitalized.

Posted by PF on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:32 | #

capitalized.

oops! italicized I mean.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:50 | #

OK, done that. Also created a new category for this and previous essays on the ontological nationalism issue. I will move more of the previous posts into the new category over the next day or two.

Posted by PF on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:57 | #

good to have everything in one place.

Posted by jamesUK on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:31 | #

Majority Rights not going to do a posty on the current revelations in regards to the Karadicz trail?

Do you want me to recap what has happened so far?

Bosnian Muslims stage false flag terrorist against there own people to justify bombing of Bosnian Serbs.

Karadzic Says Video Proves Markale Massacre Was Staged

http://slobodan-milosevic.org/news/kt051110.htm

b]Markale Market Massacre Video

Karadzic asked the witness questions about the Markale Market Massacres. The first question he asked was whether the witness was claiming the massacres were a Serbian act.

Harland answered saying, “There were two incidents at Markale, and on the first Markale massacre there were no conclusive empirical proof either way but some circumstantial evidence that pointed to the Serbs.

“The second Markale, there was an investigates which empirically demonstrated to the UNPROFOR commander that the shell was fired by the Serb, but this was disputed by one of our big artillery experts, Colonel Demurenko, who—so again, it was not undisputed, but it indicated that it was probably the Serbs.”

Karadzic only dealt with the first Markale attack in his cross-examination. He put two documents to the witness. The first document was a report (exhibit D179) written by the UN Secretary-General dated February 16, 1994. The report said: “The distance of origin of fire clearly overlaps each side of the confrontation line by 2,000 meters. Both parties are known to have 120-millimetre mortars and bombs to go along with them. There is insufficient physical evidence to prove that one party or the other fired the mortar bomb. The mortar bomb in question could, therefore, have been fired by either side.”

The second document was Harland’s own report on the incident (exhibit P827) it said, “The circumstances surrounding the massacre at the Sarajevo marketplace on 5th of February, 1994, remain unclear. UNPROFOR has conducted a second and more thorough investigation into the incident. The result of the investigation, however, remains that it is not possible to determine from which side of the confrontation line the bomb was fired.”

The most dramatic part of he hearing came when Karadzic showed clips of what he purported to be unedited video of the massacre site. The Tribunal refused to admit the video into evidence, but the clips he showed in court can be seen on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=___I3vGpmAQ

Karadzic said the video proved that the scene of the massacre had been fabricated.

The video showed a man holding an artificial leg at the market prior to the explosion. Karadzic said, “This is before the explosion. This is an artificial leg before the explosion that would need to be planted” He urged Harland to look at “the stalls and the stands [in the market] there is nothing on them. There are no people. There are no products. There is no explanation for the over 200 who were affected by the explosion. They have nothing to do at such a market.”

As the camera panned over the wounded and dead in the aftermath of the explosion Karadzic said, “And now after the explosion there is the leg that was ‘blown off’. This is the leg that we saw a little bit earlier.” As the camera panned over one of the bodies Karadzic asserted, “This is a dummy, Mr. Harland. It’s a mannequin used for shop windows.” Another clip showed a man moving a body on a plastic sheet and Karadzic said, “He’s preparing the scene where the investigators are supposed to come.”

Karadzic claimed that bodies had been brought in from elsewhere. As the video played he said, “you can see them dragging this body which was held somewhere for a very long time. The arm is stiff” implying that rigor mortis had set in. Karadzic asserted, “These are bodies from the front.”

After Harland watched the video he said, “All I can say is that I spoke to our medical doctor and our military commander, and none of them came up with any of this weirdness that you are now offering us.” He said, “There was no suggestion from anybody who visited the site that ‘the whole thing was rigged.’ Also, there seems to be a contradiction. Either you say that it didn’t happen and it was rigged, or that the Muslims did it to themselves, but it seems strange that you’re simultaneously maintaining both things there. It’s logically not compatible.”

Actually, the logic is air-tight. If the Muslims prepared the scene with dead bodies and mannequins ahead of the explosion they would also have to be the ones who fired the fatal shell, otherwise how would they know that a shell was going to hit the market? They would have had no way to know ahead of time that the Serbs were going to fire a shell, so they would have had to be the ones who fired it themselves.

Karadzic also played another video (exhibit D180) where David Owen is seen ascribing responsibility for the Markale Massacre to the Muslims.

Posted by PF on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:36 | #

I wrote:

Perspectivism will demolish (i.e. relativize) the entirety of ‘is’ and ‘should’ modality-based thought by bringing in contravening perspectives. It turns out that the only way to prevent these critiques is to own an ‘am’ modality, as least theoretically. In other words, thought systems cannot be anchored to endogenous absolute truths springing from the mind or from observed reality, since these are chimaeric artifacts of the way we think about the end-goals of the knowledge search. To avoid being criticized into nothingness, thought systems have to be anchored to an organic being, since these alone can experience ‘am’ modality. In other words our thought-world has to map to ‘am’ modalities for it not to be continually falsified by the churning of the perspectival mill. What is perceived as a weakness - the vulnerability of ‘is’ and ‘should’ modality-based thinking - becomes a strength, insofar as the collapse of access to these modalities forces accession to a tentative ‘am’ modality. In other words, you breathe the more freely for not bearing the burden of many ises and shoulds.

Supporting evidence for these conclusions will be explained in painstaking detail with examples in upcoming posts.

Posted by Lentini on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:20 | #

As always I count on you, PF, to write at length about ideas I can only intuit and stammer in my idiocy. At first I was disappointed that you didn’t, perhaps, go deep enough into the concept of modality as it concerns “our thing”, but on rereading, you’ve anyway given voice to the essential: am vs. should. I’m puzzled by your alignment of is with the latter, however; formal linguistic modality would give it broader and more fruitful range in analyzing White Nationalist rhetoric: not only deontic (“should”) and realis (“am”, stretching it a little), but, far more important to your analysis, epistemic (“will (be)”). For it is the imperative “it will be so-and-so” that sustains people in uncertainty.

Posted by Lentini on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:27 | #

I suppose my question is, to what does “is” refer semantically—how would a speaker express your “is modality”? would it refer to the speaker’s belief that the state of affairs “is” this, thus reducing the world (the “state of affairs”!) to an easily-managed glyph, to use your word? Sorry to sound obtuse, man.

Posted by Lentini on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:34 | #

With the understanding that “it will be so-and-so” is purely passive: not Nietzsche’s “So will ich es!” but the comforting anticipation into which the speaker settles to relieve himnself of the anxiety brought on by uncertainty.

Posted by Jimmy Marr on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:46 | #

What this article is advocating is very similar to my understanding of the goals of Zen Buddhism whether practiced through Zazen or Koan study.

I think Koan study offers the best analogy because it literally undertakes “the collapse of access to these modalities and forces accession to a tentative ‘am’ modality”.

In Zen Buddhist terms, this is “enlightenment”, “satori”, or “kensho”. If and when this happens to a European, he will naturally become a nationalist, because he will come to the mental “self-realization” of his physical being.

Maybe.

Posted by PF on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:00 | #

Lentini wrote:

For it is the imperative “it will be so-and-so” that sustains people in uncertainty.

Interesting - perhaps your concept overlaps with “must”. A ‘must’ modality? Otherwise I don’t understand you.

I suppose my question is, to what does “is” refer semantically—how would a speaker express your “is modality”? would it refer to the speaker’s belief that the state of affairs “is” this, thus reducing the world (the “state of affairs”!) to an easily-managed glyph, to use your word? Sorry to sound obtuse, man.

A speaker expresses my ‘is’ modality by saying something is something. The car is blue, the earth is revolving around the sun, the rain is wet, etc. Its pretty all-encompassing.

‘Shoulds’ are then extracted from worldview that arises from the ‘ises’, for example - I see that eating one cake a day makes a person fat, I say to my friend: you shouldnt eat one cake a day, because it will make you fat. The first clause is ‘should’ modality, deriving from the second which is an ‘is’ modality statement - even though the statement doesnt contain ‘is’. Any statement about the way the world is, is in the ‘is’ modality.

Here we are, sharing knowledge amongst ourselves and expressing thoughts: we will probably be mostly in the domain of ‘is’. But insofar as people are under the sway of imperatives - such as various people who adhere to different moralities-not-based-in-preference, etc. - we still get a heaping helping of ‘should’ modality expressed. I think sophistication in these matters can be judged by how clean the ‘is’ is and how much of a residue of ‘should’ remains clinging - since we know that there ‘is’ no ‘should’, its a function of the hardware. Its like an electric amplifier which adds the oscillation in its power supply - the 60 Hz noise tone - into the signal it is supposed to amplify. In extracting the ‘should’ we are correcting for an artifact of our own symbol system, i.e. correcting for the fact that it arose in an environment where shame/indoctrination/morality programming is used for fitness gain.

With the understanding that “it will be so-and-so” is purely passive: not Nietzsche’s “So will ich es!” but the comforting anticipation into which the speaker settles to relieve himnself of the anxiety brought on by uncertainty.

Interesting… that could also be called complacency. I’m not sure how it relates to these ideas since I haven’t considered it. Where do you observe this modality, any examples?

Posted by PF on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:15 | #

PF wrote:

there ‘is’ no ‘should’

I should have said there is no ‘should’, because ‘is’ is more real than ‘should’.

am > is > should

because our sensory systems - which are the basis for what ‘is’, are more real than our
imaginary world of behavior-choice-algorithms. To visualize this, smack yourself in the face with a hammer; and then try to contemplate how making a provocative imperative part of a thought experiment will be appreciated by a blog audience. The one experience will register experientially more than the other, which is the whispy dream process of how-will-this-be-interpreted-by-other-perspectives.

The hardness of the hammer blow versus the distinct surety that Lentini will appreciate the provocative imperative - a flimsy surety and one I can only experience in my mind - gives a concrete example of the next level of the inequality progression: why there am no ‘is’. Because ‘am’ is more real than ‘is’. Even though we could, with enough thinking, reach relatively sure conclusions about the readers opinions, nothing of this will approximate the reality of the hammer blow to the face.

In that sense our sensory systems agreements trump the calculations of our neocortex, and both are trumped by the feeling of unity experienced in the basal ganglia, solar plexus and spinal column.

This is probably because the ‘reality’ that emerges from our nervous system is disparately impacted by older vs. newer structures, with the older ones contributing more, even as we socially fixate on the most recently emerging 70 cc of frontal lobe that anticipates the response of people to things we’ve written.

Posted by Gudmund on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:44 | #

I should have said there is no ‘should’, because ‘is’ is more real than ‘should’.

Isn’t that the old “empirical v. normative” distinction which Hume spoke of?

Posted by PF on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:24 | #

Gudmund wrote:

Isn’t that the old “empirical v. normative” distinction which Hume spoke of?

That would make sense, but I haven’t read Hume so can’t comment. Do you remember where you came across that one?

Posted by lin Ji on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:45 | #

The Sound of One Hammer Smacking ....

Priceless!

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:45 | #

I like Jimmy Marr’s comment:

If and when this happens to a European, he will naturally become a nationalist, because he will come to the mental “self-realization” of his physical being.

But we do not need to work at the level of the individual to achieve this.