Assertive Declarations of Conclusions
I am focusing around the conclusions we can reach, based on reason and the evidence.
I’m doing this is a “top down” way, so, hopefully, it is easier to see the point I’m trying to make.
Some people will think that stating the conclusion ahead of the evidence indicates that the conclusion is being asserted dogmatically, and we then go looking for supporting evidence. This is not at all what I am doing.
We can first look at the evidence: going to school and university, learning about science and history and so on, reading lots of books, discussing the issues with lots of people, listening to lots of lectures and presentations. We can then reach conclusions based on that evidence.
If we are to document all this, to persuade others to reach the same conclusions, then we need to list all the relevant evidence. This is a huge exercise, because humans have gathered heaps of evidence, and we need to assemble what’s relevant. I’ve started, and it looks like it will be an ongoing task.
But many are familiar with this evidence, and won’t want to wade through stuff they already know.
Others may have come to the same conclusions buy don’t care about my detailed evidence for them.
It’s also easy to get lost, and not know what point is being made.
So I’m presenting the “conclusions” before the reasons and the evidence, because:
Structured Conclusions
It’s hard to summarise all of human knowledge (that’s worth having) in a few sentences.
I’ve tried to do it in 8 very long sentences, with heaps of phrases, summarising what I see as the essential learnings of Philosophy, Science, History, Religion, Art, Personal Practice and Politics. I’ve called this the “Diamond” level. It reminds me of my “diamond” credit card (which is apparently better than a platinum, gold, silver or bronze card, so the credit company tells me).
But each of these areas can be broken down into separate topics. I’ve summarised these as 42 one liners (not funny one-liners, but hopefully stating the essence of our knowledge). I’ve called this the “Platinum” level. These may be useful hints or reminders, or they may be useless, We’ll see.
We can of course add an unlimited amount of additional detail to each of these 42 one liners. I expanded them out to 4 lines each, and called these the “Gold” level.
The conclusions that support the “Gold” level summaries are stated at the “Silver” level.
The conclusions that support the “Silver” level summaries are stated at the “Bronze” level.
I don’t want to fuss about this too much. It’s just a way of working out what’s really important, at the highest level, then working what supports those high level conclusions, then working your way down to the real evidence based level that is the day to day substance of science and history and all the other endeavours.
Different levels of summary are shown indifferent colours.
● 7 long statements – one for each part of knowledge: Philosophy, Science, History, Religion, Art, Personal Practice and Politics;
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42 statements
that break down these 7 parts into more detail, that are:
● Very short – Twitter sizes;
● Medium length;
● Longer;
● Heaps of statements that break these 42 areas down even further;
Languages
I am
developing this in English, then plan to translate the pages into other
languages.
I’m hope planning to creating these translations is not just an ego trip. It would be silly to try to define “global beliefs” and only get feedback from the English speakers. I especially invite non-English speaking people to provide comments, because being restricted to the English literature, I will have missed out on many other perspectives. Let me know what you think.
I am using Babelfish for the translations. The machine translations are the best I can do at the moment – I don’t have any funding to manually translate or even manually check the machine translations. Let me know if you can help with translations.
Terminology and Phrasing
I’m
trying to use simple words and simple phrasing for these pages. I am also assuming many readers don’t have
much background knowledge of many of the subjects. I’m doing this so that it can be understood
(for example) by a high school student looking for answers. Many people don’t have the background knowledge
because they have not had the time, or the resources, or enough years in their
life, to learn it all.
I’m also trying to outline the results of modern research, in, for example, cosmology, biochemistry, neuroscience, economic development, biblical studies, bioethics and political studies. So even though it is (hopefully) simply stated, it is (hopefully) not simplistic.
Technical Construction
I am developing the original pages as Microsoft Word documents, so that I can perhaps later assemble these into a book. Then I convert each document into a web page, and add the required header and footer graphics and links.
Main Points and Details
In many books on philosophy and science it’s hard to work out what is the main point. I’m trying to state the main point clearly up front, then state the reasons to believe it. Some people don’t want to work through all the details – they might already know the details; they might be boring; the details might be too difficult. So I’m trying to arrange it so that you can skip the next level of detail if you want to.
So as well as the main text, I am adding additional information in coloured boxes, so that you can skip these parts if you wish. Each type of extra information has its own type of box. Below I’ve shown what each type of box will be, which is followed by an example of each type.
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Questions and concerns that motivate the discussion. |
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Links to the literature – sources, references, bibliography and so on. Stories with some
light relief, jokes, anecdotes, relevant to the point. Evidence and examples of the current point. Explicitly stating the implications of the current point. Alternative explanations that may be valid. False explanations that we know are wrong. |
Reasonable conclusions that we can come to.
Examples of these boxes
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Why do we have a section that explains the language and presentation style? |
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Links to the Literature Nearly all of the ideas and information presented here comes from other people. This is how the human race progresses. I’ve tried to cite my main sources. The mistakes in interpretation are of course all my own! I do claim a few insights for myself, but these are mostly restricted to explaining how some religions don’t give us the answers they think they do. I also think I see the whole picture better than many others do, which is hard – but not impossible - to explain. Even there, the core ideas originate from other philosophers. Oh well. Humility is a virtue – isn’t it? |
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A bit of light relief: There is a Buddhist story about one of the Zen masters that goes something like this: A student monk asks the Zen Master, “What is it like to achieve enlightenment?” In Buddhist mythology this is the highest mental state, which may take decades or many lifetimes to achieve. I paraphrase a bit because I can’t remember the actual words (and they would have been in Japanese anyway). The Master replied: “Before Enlightenment, I worked in the fields and shovelled shit; after Enlightenment, I worked in the fields and shovelled shit.” |
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We need to show the evidence for our beliefs, particularly those based on science or history. Examples also help understanding. The Zen Master example may not be the best one, but at least I’m trying. |
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It’s not enough just to say
something and hope that everyone understands the implications. People can draw different conclusions from
the same facts. Here, I try to link it
all together explicitly, so that what I mean is easier to understand and so
there is less room for misunderstandings.
I discuss later what the Zen
master referred to above may have meant.
I put it here as a kind of joke because it shows that even if you
finally do understand “it all” you still probably need to go about your daily
activities, and it may not really change your outward behaviour much. But it could make a profound
difference to your life. |
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Contrary Views There are often many ways of
looking at things and some of the others cannot be simply explained away as
being wrong, because they are not bad, and they are consistent with the
evidence. We need to acknowledge these
and explore them, modifying our understanding, until we resolve any
differences. I’m impressed with the Buddhist
way of looking at the world, and I’m trying to reconcile it to modern
life. So is the Dalai Lama!! He is more famous than I am, but I’m not
sure he has the answers I need. |
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False Alternatives There are many alternative explanations offered which can easily get confusing. We need to understand enough to be able to work out which ones are wrong, which can be shown to be false, because they are inconsistent with the evidence, or self-contradictory, or simply bad. Even though I’m impressed with Buddhism, reincarnation does seem to be inconsistent with the evidence, so I don’t believe in it. The apparent evidence for it needs to be explained another way – I’ll discuss this later. |
Conclusion: I reckon that putting some of the less important details in coloured boxes can make it easier to follow the main thought process.