headaches and concussions!
from the dawn of time, humans walked with this itching desire to define things. in those distant days the words they had were something like: frog, hamburger, sex. but after some time, that was not enough.
you see, as we started to paint walls, and hit objects with long, blunt clubs everyone starts asking questions about the things they observed. what is a frog? is a chickenburger intrinsically a hamburger? will i have sex when i want it?
you see, the word in itself did not satisfy that need anymore. there was great dispair and frustration. that is, until the concept of definition came to be. our forefathers got it into their thick skulls that words could be followed by other words, that explain what it was : a frog is an an amphibious vertebrate animal that lives in or in proximity to certain bodies of freshwater. the frog IS defined by these aspects. we may delve deeper and pick apart these aspects (bodies of fresh water? amphibians? ) and define them further and then the defnitions we created may allow us to add more and more definitions to our heart's content. until there is nothing theoretically, that we haven't defined about frogs and what it is frogness, and froghood, and how to distinguish it from hamburgerness.
these massive fields of knowledge, overlapping at times with other fields allow us greater comfort and provide us with many practical advantages.
with logical tools, we reasoned our way to understand much of the world, and soon developed the scientific method of inquiry to give us even more precise definitions.
but some things are far from easy to define. emotions, for example are hard to define objectively. suppose i define the word DISGUST as 'the emotion you feel when you see a frog placed between two buns , with cheese, tomatos, lettuce and mustard.' i may also add 'a man eating this frogburger will commit an act which causes others to feel disgust. '
but will that statment be a sufficient definition of the word? how about all the other examples of disgusting things? (like certain recent world events..) are they not disgusting? if they are, are they equitable to the frogburger? how about a frogburger with mayonnaise?!?
'hold on! wait!' you may say, 'what's so wrong with mayonnaise? '
i shall express, at this momoment, my visceral hatred of the French egg-based condiment, and show both of us how our tastes diverge, and how i confuse hatred with disgust.
the truth is, that frogburger, shall be an EXAMPLE but not a definition. there may even be exceptions for this example; there are those who will happily take a sizzling, bony frogburger with fries AND mayonnaise, even if it shall be generally agreed to be repulsive.
my example of both definition and example show the fundamental difficulty of defining things and making inhetent connections between conventions which are debatable.
at some point in history, when our skull bones grew thinner, and we started that whole 'agriculture and civilization jazz', some people decided to give their habit of musing a more proffessionally-respectable name, styling themselves as philosophers. for entertainment and concern of the public, they began to organize and systemize the knowledge they had, with the hope of gleaming more knowledge from the practice.
some of these giants quickly became aware of the difficulty of definition and decided to quit, and get into another field of work. others chose to keep at it and to storm headfirst the seemingly impenetrable wall that separated the world as it is, and the world that we can express in words. many died, dashing their fragile craniums against the unyeilding walls, to the cheers of the crowds who looked for these violent events with relish.
others decided to rethink their approach to systemic thought and showbiz. ' why break your head running into the wall, when you could bypass it?' they said. of course , this was a break from the traditional definition of philosophy, as a bloody spectator sport.
these malingers decided that to hold the house of knowledge up rather than let it fall into uncertainty, we must found it on self-evident concepts. concept that shalk not be followed by a definition. they reasoned that while perhaps one day, what is lacking in exact definition will be reasoned through, it was not yet acheived and the heads are still painful from trying. leave off conceptions like justice, peace, life, death, happiness and disgust to a later date. you may use these concepts, knowing you can not define them, but throw them about as if you do. to cast bigger structures.
you don't need to know how they make the saussages.
this was no wild act of thought, just a leap of faith. we assume that happiness is impossible to define, but can see that all people desire it. we assume the justice is not definable, but can see when it's lacking. and so we build upon this unsteady, dodgy ground. what we erect is no palace of learning. but it is sturdy enough to hold a roof over our heads.
here are a few statments that i hope may show just how poorly founded and debatable self evident concepts are.
chickenburgers with mayonnaise bring happiness. and all men shall have a right to the pursuit of chickenburgers with mayonnaise.
the justice we may hope for is founded on universally evident morality , and so waterparks are proof of the decent and justice of a society.
all life is sacred, which is why gun laws should all be retired, for they hinder the abillity of individuals to protect themselves and others.
it's better to incarcerate all nose-pickers than to release one innocent person.
as we can see, every one of these statments contains something that you may agree with (or not) only that none of these assertions are wholly in the right, or that the implication is totally insane.
that is the problem with self evident assertions. much or some that is implied by them is doomed to failure, confusion or insanity.
better put on your hard hats...