Being, Feeling, and Doing Better 1

Are you serious about improving the quality of your life?

Not only is being, feeling, and doing better possible, it's possible for you.  Furthermore, nobody else can do it for you; it's solely up to you.

Perhaps because they don't really think it's possible, many people aren't serious about being, feeling, and doing better.  They just muddle through growing old, getting sick, and dying without ever enjoying any lasting fulfillment.

That's not necessary.

If you'll absorb the content from just 1 of each of the 7 installments in this series every day for the next week, you'll not only have an improved understanding of what it is to live wisely or well but also you'll have specific recommendations for how to do it.

These are the critical questions to ask yourself and answer well:  "Who am I?  What am I?"

Notice something odd already:  there's the you who is asking those questions and the you who is the subject of the inquiries!  Are there somehow two of you?  Are you split from yourself?

There's a lot of unnecessary confusion and unclarity about the answers to these and related questions.

The practical consequence is that many people suffer unnecessarily. The goal is to help you reduce obstacles to living better as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Doing that successfully will automatically improve the quality of your life.

There are two steps, namely, theory and practice.  First, understand what to do (and why) and, second, do it.

It'd be a mistake to rush through the theory to get to the practical recommendations.  Why?  If you begin to practice, there will be times when you get stuck for various reasons and it's important to have a solid, clear understanding to get you going again.

If you patiently understand the theory, the practices will work better for you.  That's why doing just one installment daily is a good idea.  Absorb the training quickly without rushing.

Understanding what to do and why to do it come before doing it.  This initial part is theoretical and the recommendations about doing come at the end.

At least part of the initial difficulty is that the relevant words are not used in the same way.  That's not your fault.

Clear thinking (conceptualizing, understanding) requires that we define our terms. Not doing that practically guarantees that words will generate even more confusion and unclarity.

Therefore, though it’s unpopular to do so, permit me to try to indicate how I’m using the foundational words. If you're patient, your reward will be less confusion, improved understanding, and better practicing.

There is no standard terminology. Since I’ve developed what I hope is a consistent, helpful terminology over the years, my tendency is to use it. However, nothing important depends upon which words are used. What’s important is conceptual clarity and distinctness.

A concept is a principle of classification. We use concepts to think, to do conceptual work. That work is sorting (discriminating, categorizing, classifying, organizing).

For example, we may sort barnyard animals into chickens and non-chickens. The result is a judgment (thought, statement, proposition) such as “that is a chicken” or “it’s false that that is a chicken.” Judgments are true or false.

Let's agree on some clear foundational terminology.

Although it’s an uncommon practice outside philosophy, the best procedure is to begin with the most fundamental concepts, which are frequently left undefined and unclarified, and work systematically from there. Doing so results in a conceptual hierarchy in which concepts are ordered as more or less general or specific.

For example, being crimson is more specific than being red, being red is more specific than being colored, and being colored is more specific than being qualitied. Alternatively, being qualitied is more general than being colored. being colored is more general than being red, and being red is more general than being crimson.

Judgment A is more fundamental than judgment B if and only if the conceptual content of B logically depends upon the conceptual content of A.

freactal image

This may seem too abstract and uninteresting until we notice how, in practice, it can be very important. For example, you should have an interest in the best answer to the question, “What is a wise human being?

It's logically impossible to answer the question, “What is a wise human being?” without depending upon the answer to the question, “What is a human being?” Furthermore, it's logically impossible to answer the question, “What is a human being?” without depending upon the answer to the question, “What is a being?

How much confusion have you encountered about claims regarding how to be wise or the best way to live by people who lack not only a clear account of human nature but also a clear account of what it is to be real?

Typically, our interest is in forms (objects, individuals, things, beings). Whenever we single out a form, there’s already a distinction between it and its background. To single something out is to focus or attend to it whether it’s a form of sensation (e.g., hunger), perception (e.g., that tree over there), imagination (e.g., the green blob in my dream last night that seemed about to ingest me), or conception (e.g., the number [not numeral] four).

A pure form is simply any form considered in abstraction from everything else.

We are able to single out forms because they have qualities (properties, characteristics) that we can use to separate them from other forms. A quality is something that two or more forms may share or have in common. For example, since those two pieces of paper on the table are both rectangular, rectangularity is a quality.

There's no such thing as a form without qualities.  A form just is a unified bundle of qualities.

Any form is either an entity (existent, real form) or a nonentity. The table before me now is an entity, whereas the green blob from last night’s dream is a nonentity. Why? What’s the difference?

The table is multiply “singleoutable” and the blob isn’t. I’m able both to see and touch this table. If you were here, you, too, could single it out. That’s not so with respect to the blob. Merely remembering something is not singling it out again; instead, it’s simply recalling singling it out previously. So, although I’m able to recall that dream or imaginary object now, I’m unable to single it out again.  Also, you're unable to single it out. That’s why, when I awoke, the fear I had of being ingested by the green blob vanished.

We sometimes make mistaken existential judgments about forms. For example, we are able to dream about real objects and take them to be unreal. We are able to single out objects that, while they appear real, are not real such as in hallucinations. Being less experienced than adults, children make more existential mistakes than adults.

(We never make mistaken existential judgments about qualities. Why? All qualities are real, whether or not they are exemplified by any forms. If you are inclined to disagree, simply try thinking of any quality that you could not single out again or that someone else could not single out. So, every quality is at least an abstract entity).

‘(To) identify’ is ambiguous. It may mean either ‘to single out’ or it may mean ‘to conceptualize.’ So, the discussion of identity judgments is sometimes ambiguous. Let’s clear up any possible confusion by agreeing to use ‘(to) identify’ only to mean ‘(to) conceptualize.’

There are logically different kinds of judgments such as predicative judgments and identity judgments.

A (singular) predicative judgment has the logical form x is F in which 'x' is a variable or placeholder that ranges over forms and 'F' is a variable that ranges over qualities.  "That shirt is blue" is an example.

 

fractal image

There are two kinds of identity judgments: A material identity judgment has the logical form a is b, whereas a logical identity judgment has the logical form a is a. Here, ‘a’ and ‘b’ are variables that range over forms, whether or not those forms are entities or taken to be entities. Since logical identity judgments appear to do no conceptual work (at least outside logic or philosophy classrooms), let’s set them aside.

To be an entity is to be the subject of a true material identity judgment. What may appear to be two different pure forms are really one entity. In other words, to be an entity is to be the subject of two or more singlings out.

Material identity judgments are, if false, about two pure forms; they are, if true, about one entity that is apprehended from two different perspectives.

For example, if the pen that I am touching is the same as the pen that I am seeing, then there is one real pen. Although there appear to be two pens (namely, the tactile pen and the visual pen), there is in reality only one pen that is simultaneously touched and seen. That’s an example of a true material identity judgment. Notice that it’s clear that there are two pure forms here because, for example, while the tactile pen is colorless the visual pen is colored. Whenever two (or more) pure forms are the same, there’s an entity.

This is not as complicated as it may initially seem. The reason is that, if this account is correct, you are already very familiar with singling out forms and also very familiar with taking some to be entities (in other words, classifying some as the same as other forms) and others to be nonentities.

For example, if the woman you saw in the grocery store yesterday is not the same woman you met at the mixer last month, then, despite what you may initially think, there are two women instead of one. In other words, in this case it would be false that the woman you saw yesterday is the same as the woman you saw last month. Their appearances may be similar, but you would be mistaken if you identified them. That’s an example of a false material identity judgment.

An example of a true material identity judgment would be that the table that you're seeing now is the same as the table that you're touching now. If the tree that you are looking at is the same as the tree that I’m looking at, it’s an entity, in other words, the subject of a true material identity judgment.

Once we realize that what we take to be an entity isn’t one, once we realize that kind of mistaken judgment, we almost always lose interest. Why? We typically value entities and don’t care about nonentities.

Sensation and perception are the most important ways that we single out forms.  We may feel a pain in a knee or see a tree in the yard.  Touching and seeing are the most important ways that we perceive, whereas hearing, smelling, and tasting are secondary.

Notice that I’ve not argued here for any of this. I’ve simply tried to define some important foundational concepts as I use them. I discuss these ideas more in my The Fundamental Ideas and, if you want a more complete discussion and justification, read Panayot Butchvarov’s Being Qua Being.  I'm not so much trying to convince you of anything as I am trying simply to point something out, to encourage you to have an important insight that's discussed in what follows.

Nevertheless, this is significant conceptual work.  Why?

The core of "first philosophy" philosophy is ontology, which is the study of reality, and epistemology, which is the study of the apprehension of reality.  These disciplines touch on the notion of form.  It's not that they are to be studied first; it's that they are logically fundamental.

Philosophy is love of wisdom; to be a philosopher is to be a lover of wisdom. A philosopher is someone serious about being, feeling, and doing better.

Wisdom is living well.  Those who succeed in living well are sages, those who have mastered the art of living wisely.  They are free from unsatisfactoriness (suffering, unease, distress, anxiety, anguish, dread, misery).

For example, they do not suffer emotionally.  I explain later in this sequence how this is possible and even how it's possible to emulate them in that way even without becoming a sage!

Axiology, which is the study of values and valuation, rests conceptually on the foundation of first philosophy. Values are preferences.

The motivation to live better is the motivation to do philosophy.  If you have ever wondered about what it would be like to enjoy being, feeling, and doing better, then you have had the motivation to do philosophy.

So, the purpose of doing first philosophy is to live better.  Sages live wisely or well.

Just absorbing the idea of sagehood is an important takeaway.  Living well is possible.  The lives of sages, successful philosophers, demonstrate that.

This completes the first of the seven installments.  It may require the most difficult conceptual adjustment of all seven.  For that reason, you might be wise to reread it again either today or tomorrow morning (or both).

Next, let’s begin to make use of these ideas to bifurcate reality (what-is).

Dennis E. Bradford, Ph.D.