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We need instruments

Imagine you have a table.

Imagine you have on your table an old watch. Like this one.

Fig. 1. Old Watch

Imagine this watch is working badly, and you know how to fix it.

But if so, you need some special instruments to do it up.

Glasses, screwdriver, tweezers, toolbox, … like that.

Fig.2. Glasses

Fig.3. Screwdriver

Fig.4. Tweezers

Fig.5. Toolbox

Now. Imagine you have on your table the world of human beings, like that.

Fig.6. The Globe

It works badly and you know how to fix it.

But what instruments do you need for that?

I recommend you four mental instruments to begin with.

Recognize-and-name-it operation (RNO) = glasses.

Distinguish-and-separate-it operation (DSO) = screwdriver.

Enumerate-and-sort-it operation (ENS) = tweezers.

Put-in-lines operation (PLO) = toolbox.

From now, I will say:

«apply ONE» instead of «recognize and name it»,

«apply TWO» instead of «distinguish and separate it»,

«apply THREE» instead of «enumerate and sort it»,

«apply FOUR» instead of «put it in lines».

First look at the problems

Imagine ALL the problems of ALL human beings.

Now apply ONE and recognize in the middle a Self Area.

When you are in the area, you feel comfortable or not, happy or not, but you have no logics, no rules, nothing.

In this area, you are The Self.

Now apply TWO: see, out of the area there is outer world that presses on you, torture you, and restrain you.

But between Self And Outer world there is a narrow ring of compromise.

Fig.7. Self against World

Now we will analyze the ring.

Apply ONE: problems without parameters of specific person are controlled by philosophy.

Apply ONE again: problems with parameters of specific person are controlled by psychology.

These two areas are poles of the ring.

I like to place philosophy at the top (at North Pole) and psychology at the bottom (at South Pole). If so, we have two gaps between North and South: one on the West and one on the East.

It is clear that when we go from psychology to philosophy, we have to eliminate personal data from the problem. We have two options how to do it.

We can eliminate personal data immediately and go through history and sociology.

Or we can hold them as long as possible and, in this case, go through child development and educational systems.

THREE and FOUR operations were applied there.

And here is the result.

Fig.8. West path and East path.

Second look at the problems

In fact, philosophy is in charge of all these different things. And I mean to say something new about all of them.

Look at the table. There are three columns in it. Left columns faces at science and deals with knowledge of different kinds. Right column faces at art and deals with values. The column in the middle deals with worldviews.

Left column contains epistemology, methodology, logics, and law. Right column contains axiology, ethics, aesthetics, and moral. The column in the middle contains ontology, myth, religion, and ideology.

Fig.9. Knowledge, worldview, values

When moving from bottom up you see that position of neutral observer is gradually transformed into position of active actor who less and less looks around, but more and more presses on things to make them fit the pattern.

Philosophy is supposed to be neutral, so we put it at the South. Now, view from the South is philosophical.

But how can we name the view from the North? I failed to find good name in the language and invented a new one: regulatorics. This is a view of someone who wants to transform the world.

Add the 12 areas in this chapter to the 7 areas from the previous one and get complete syllabus of the Human Being Theory.

Why philosophy still in the game?

Between science and philosophy

Suppose you have found some very new idea and you want to tel it to your colleague. But the idea is so radically new that you partner does not understand you. What should you do?

Probably you should pack your idea into right form? This way leads to logics. Probably you should tell your partner how did you get to this great idea. This way leads to methodology. Probably you should tell your friend where any new ideas come from. This way leads to epistemology. Probably you should tell your friend how this world works. This way leads to ontology.

But for really new idea all this does not help.

Unexpected result: next generation of readers will consider you as a serious philosopher.

Fig.14. Philosophers

When we have a model

Suppose you live your regular life.

Suppose in some moment of your precious life you feel, that something goes wrong.

You feel it must be fixed. But how?

This moment of your life, this point of the space-and-time-and-person, this point and its neighborhood, I call them a problem. The problem is a part of physical world.

Fig.15. Physical world

Fig.16. Knowledge

Suppose we could describe the problem in some detailed and consistent way. I call this description a model.

The model exists in a mental world. There is a good detailed mapping between problem and model. This triplet of «problem, model, and mapping» I call it knowledge. Is it a true knowledge? Or is it a false knowledge? We do not know yet. Anyway, we try to solve our problem using the model.

Fig.17. Practical solution

First, we investigate the model and find some theoretical solution.

Second, we map this solution into the physical world and get the practical solution. Practical solution tells us what to do.

So, third, we do it, we implement the practical solution.

And fourth, we look around an decide is the problem solved now or it is not yet.

Suppose we many times came to the (almost) same problem and always solved it with the same model successfully. If so, we can say that this knowledge is true. If sometimes it works but sometimes it does not, we call it false knowledge.

When we have no model

One step back.

Suppose we have a problem but the life is not easy now and we cannot find a good model. What should we do?

As in the swampy bog, we jump from one dry place to another. Sometimes we have a choice and time to think and choose where to jump, left or, may be, right.

Fig.18. Values

When we think some images came to our mind, one image for the left turn, another image for the right turn. We can compare these images, choose the best one and make the jump toward the better future. If so, the images we compare, I call them values.

How many worlds do you know?

What do we know about mental world?

First, there is an eternal part of the mental world, like PI number. I call it mathematical reality. We do not build mathematical objects – we discover them like stars in the sky.

Second, there are pure mental objects, which we build. They live while we support them. Words of languages, heroes of legends, music and dance. I call it virtual reality.

Fig.19. Thinking: Worlds

And third, there are objects of physical reality that help as to control both virtual and mathematical reality. I call them symbolic reality.

By definition, physical object is a symbolic object if it points to something else for somebody who understand the pointing and this somebody exists now (or existed in the past).

Fig.20. Symbols refer to other things

By the way, physical reality consists of events, not objects. You can put word event instead of object in the last definition.

Why values are so stable

Four kinds of pointers

There are four kinds of pointers in the symbolic reality. I place them into culture but they exist in «brains» and «no name area» too.

First kind of symbols point to the one specific event in physical reality. I call it fact.

Second kind of symbols points to the class of similar events. I call it generalization.

Third kind of symbols point to the mathematical world, to one specific element of specific model. I call it concept.

Fourth kind of symbols point to the virtual world. I call it idea. Idea in turn can point to everything including facts, generalizations, concepts, idea and other symbol.

This is our understanding of

epistemology,

ontology,

axiology.

Fig.22. Facts, generalizations, concepts, meanings

Fig.23. Inside philosophy

Myth, Religion, Science

What is the difference between myth, religion and science? To answer this question I collected evidences.

1) Is there canonical texts?

2) Are there professionals?

3) What about authorship?

See answers in the table.

Fig.24. Canon, professionals, authorship

I suppose that these different features are outer manifestation of specific inner activity.

I suppose that the most valuable information in society circulates inside special hierarchies. There are three kinds of positions in such hierarchies: authors, translators, and consumers.

Fig.25. Authors, translators, and consumers

There are no professionals in the myth circulating.

There are no authors in religion (that’s why they need God as a Creator),

but there are authors in science.

It means that myth and religion (for some reason) do not use some parts of the hierarchy.

Fig.26. Myth, religion, science

Disclaimer. Pair «knowledge vs. faith» makes us to distinguish between consumers of science and consumers of religion. And this is bad idea.

Do not compare consumers of different kinds. They are very similar. Compare science, religion and myth as a systems.

Fig.27. Inside philosophy