The Obfuscation of Intelligence…
Modernity, Post-Modernity and the Tower of Babel
“But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“To be a nominalist consists in the undeveloped state of one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness. The remedy for it consists in allowing ideas of human life to play a greater part in one’s philosophy. Metaphysics is the science of Reality”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought” …
- Roger Scruton
“Logic and metaphysics make no special observations; but they rest upon observations which have been made by common men”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“Logic is the study of the laws of signs so far as these denote things – those laws of signs which determine what things they denote and what they do not”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point”…
– Jean Baudrillard
“The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is only syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content”…
– John Searle
obfuscate
/ˈɒb.fʌs.keɪt/ ˈɑːb.fə.skeɪt
to throw into shadow
confuse
to be evasive, unclear, or confusing
to make something less clear and harder to understand, especially intentionally
There is an emerging global narrative that suggests that we are entering an Age of Intelligence [ LINK ] [ LINK ].
A Fourth Industrial Revolution fuelled by Artificial General Intelligence, Computation and the Primacy of Man that is rapidly being supplanted by the Primacy of Machines.
But is this view an Ontological Philosophical Error and Category Mistake?
“A category mistake, a category error, categorical mistake, or mistake of a category is a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property” …
An obfuscation of intelligence.
“We live in the complete eclipse of traditional ideals, an eclipse that can make one think it is a “sunset”. Since 1945 a new historical period has begun: that of homo progressivus. But is it a question of “rising ideals”, or of “the obscuration of intelligence”?” …
- Augusto del Noce
A chronic and potential civilisation ending ( i.e. a decoupling from Reality) symptom of the Theological, Philosophical and Metaphysical crisis of Modernity and Post-Modernity.
A modern and post-modern ignorance of Saint Thomas Aquinas's Contingent Being of Man and Antonio Rosmini’s Triadic Nature of Man’s Being ( i.e . Ideal Being, Moral Being and Real Being).
Noting that Metaphysics is the Study of Being – the Science of Reality.
A further sign of Western Civilisation’s endemic embracement of the Theology of Marxism.
A secular neo-gnostic surrogate [ LINK ][LINK] for Christianity for the European Educated Class.
“Today an alliance is possible between the bourgeois and the techno-bureaucratic classes, in the oligarchic-dirigist-planning regime which is currently looming over us”…
– Augusto del Noce
The establishment by Modernity of a Progressive Secular Liberal Orthodoxy.
“According to Guenon, the crisis of the Modern World is first of all metaphysical. The negation of authority is not a stage or a consequence of Rationalism; it is rather its precondition, as rejection of a super-human order and of a cognitive faculty higher than individual reason”…
— Augusto del Noce
The notion that Man transcends God (the Nietzschean Death of God) has gradually been extended to Man’s attempts to transcend nature via embracing technology and thereby completely liberating himself from Reality.
“Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible”…
— Jean Baudrillard
The dawn of Trans Humanism, the Übermensch, Scientific Gnosticism, Futurism and Modern Utopianism.
Artificial General Intelligence, Geo-Engineering, Bio-Engineering, Genetic Engineering, Robotics, Cybernetics, Nanotechnology, Synthetic Biology, Autonomous Systems, Quantum Computing, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Space Colonisation, Cryonics, Cloning, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Neurotechnology, Smart Materials etc etc etc.
A Primacy of Man and his Consciousness.
The End of History, the Singularity, the Omega Point, and the dawn of Super Intelligence.
The Triadic Nature of Intelligence and Nominalism & Marxism attempts at its Deconstruction
“The decay of Logic results from an untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not” …
– CS Lewis
“But it is not in Nominalism alone that modern thought has attributed to the Human Mind the miraculous power of originating a category of thought that has no counterpart at all in Heaven or Earth. Already in that strangely influential hodge-podge, the salad of Cartesianism, the doctrine stands out very emphatically that the only force is the force of impact which clearly belongs to the category of Reaction; and even since Newton’s Principia began to affect the general thought of Europe through the sympathetic spirit of Voltaire, there has been a disposition to deny any kind of action, except purely mechanical action”…
- Charles Sanders Peirce
“Nominalism, however, appears in psychology as sensationalism; for nominalism arises from taking the view of reality which regards whatever is in thought as caused by something in sense, and whatever is in sense as caused by something without the mind”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“To be a nominalist consists in the undeveloped state of one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness. The remedy for it consists in allowing ideas of human life to play a greater part in one’s philosophy. Metaphysics is the science of Reality”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
By the beginning of the 21st Century, it was increasingly evident that contemporary Western Philosophy and Metaphysics were at a critical crossroads.
Would it continue to build on the hard-fought wisdom of +2,000 years of accumulated and refined intellectual thought that culminated in medieval scholastics such as Saint Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus attempting to integrate Christian Theology with Ancient Greek Philosophy?
In other words, the development of a framework of Reality that combined the Metaphysical with the Physical and the Eternal with the Temporal or stated differently, further developing our understanding of the relationship between Man & God and Man & the Natural World.
Or would it continue with the ideological project of Modernity & Post-Modernity?
“In the first decades of the twentieth century both Mussolini in his revolutionary stage and Gramsci spoke of socialism as the “religon destined to kill Christianity””…
— Augusto del Noce
A stance that reflected Man taking a hard fork in his understanding of Reality.
“For Hegel, freedom was not just a psychological phenomenon but the essence of what was distinctively human. In this sense, freedom and nature are diametrically opposed. Freedom does not mean the freedom to live in nature or according to nature; rather, freedom begins only where nature ends. Human freedom emerges only when man is able to transcend his natural, animal existence and to create a new self for himself. The emblematic starting point for this process of self-creation is the struggle to the death for pure prestige”…
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
The embracement of modern ideas whereby these Triadic relationships were increasingly being abandoned.
A reorientation towards a Reality anchored in its creation by Conscious Man.
Not only in shaping human beliefs but also as the basis for Man’s actions in the Material World.
A perspective where Man constructs, shapes and transforms Reality.
A Sociologism whereby knowledge and morality become social phenomena.
In this new Modern version of reality, the sophism is inverted and becomes metaphysics which is increasingly abandoned.
“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history” …
- George Orwell
The emergence of two alternative theories of Semiotics and their Philosophical and Metaphysical implications
To distinguish between these 2 alternative views as to the nature of Reality the emerging discipline of Semiotics can provide new tools and frameworks of Inquiry.
By attempting to answer the key question:
What is the nature of human's innate capacity to bring an intelligibility to a dynamic complex world?
we can better understand the nature of intelligence and discern between these 2 alternatives.
In Semiotic Sign Machines the semiotic paradigms that had emerged in the 19th & early 20th Century – European Structuralism and a Peircean Semiotic Triadic – were briefly discussed.
These semiotic paradigms provided alternative theoretical frameworks from which we can explore the nature of Intelligence and Reality.
Semiotics – European Structuralists
“To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is a strong reflexive quality to this process. People make sense of things by seeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe. In other words, people discover their own inventions. This is why sensemaking can be understood as invention and interpretations understood as discovery. These are complementary ideas. If sensemaking is viewed as an act of invention, then it is also possible to argue that the artifacts it produces include language games and texts”…
— Karl Weick
“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality”…
— David Bohm
Was intelligibility simply an arbitrary Human construct ( e.g. European Structuralist) whereby there is no inherent connection between the Semiotic Signs and an independent Reality?
In Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s European Structuralist paradigm, the meaning of a sign cannot be determined in isolation or positively from other signs.
A dyadic relationship of interdependent components (Signifiant & Signifie) constitutes a sign.
The Signifiant is the physical form of the sign — word, sound or image etc…and the Signifie is the abstract mental concept and image evoked.
For example, the concept of a fish with eyes, scales, fins etc…
[ Also refer Rene Magritte’s Semiotic Painting — https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-Semiotic-Painting-Magrittes-point-was-to-remind-viewers-that-his-representation-oil_fig3_228188379 ]
However, the sign can only be understood in the context of other signs and their negations.
Meaning arising from the relations of signs in the system.
For example, for Man to understand the colour “red” it is futile to attempt to understand the colour in isolation from the rest. It is via showing other contrary colours that an understanding emerges
From Saussaure’s perspective, language was viewed as an organisation of signs and can be both Subjects and Objects.
What is Signified (Signifie) refers to the mental structure of the sign and not the external object.
Ideas that were also outlined in the Geometric Mind which explored the high-dimensional relationships of mental concepts and relationships by the Human Mind. The Spatial Structures of Thought and Meaning Space.
Saussaure’s ideas highlight how the Conscious Self–Ego’s ( World of ideas & abstract thoughts) meaning and understanding of Reality is mediated through Signs.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” …
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logigo-philosphicus, 1922
The Synthesis of Idealism and Materialism.
A World of Forms ( human beliefs, ideas and values) and a World of Relationships of Signs.
Reality is constructed through socially transmitted and communicated Semiotic Signs.
Under this scenario, intelligence is grounded in the Primacy of Man.
A power-directed system of thought where man imposes his beliefs on the World and then discovers his own inventions.
“Hegel thought he was defending the Spirit, but caught himself in the most infinite errors ever seen, and incalculably harmed the cause of the spirit”…
— Giuseppe Capograssi
In this version of Reality, Man creates, transforms and manipulates the nature of Reality.
“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used “to tell” at all” …
-Umberto Eco
In this Human centred reality, Semiotic Signs may or may not represent truth claims and knowledge (Note: this is in contrast with Peirce’s Semiotic Triadic and Peirce’s normative principle for reason – the Pragmatic Maxim which couples abstraction, meaning and embodiment).
“In my research on the tech-industrial complex, I’ve documented how today’s digital giants weren’t simply co-opted by power structures — many were potentially designed from their inception as tools for mass surveillance and social control”…
— Josh Stylman
[LINK]
Reality can be imposed through the manipulation of Semiotic Signs, force (e.g. censorship, propaganda, surveillance, control of educational, media & social media, large language models (LLMs) etc. ) and/or via ideological, social & political conformity.
“Totalitarianism is not mere dictatorship. It is, rather, a new historical phenomenon that evolves when political values become the supreme consideration, in the light of which all other values must be judged” …
-Augusto del Noce
Knowledge is no longer interconnected and instead is fragmented, temporal and contingent.
“in 1952, F.A. Hayek wrote what became The Counter-Revolution of Science. The idea is that in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new conception of science was born, which reversed a previous understanding. Science was not a process of discovery by research but a codified end state known and understood only by an elite. This elite would impose its view on everyone else. Hayek called this “the abuse of reason” because genuine reason defers to uncertainty and discovery while scientism as an ideology is arrogant and imagines it knows what is unknown” …
– The Intellectual Roots of Techno- Primitivism, Jeffrey A Tucker
[ LINK ]
Scientific Gnosticism becomes the shaky foundation for this subjective knowledge and enforced reality which becomes a power-directed system of thought.
Semiotics – Peircian Triadic
“European civilisation rose on the principle of a world of universal and eternal truths, in which all men participate – on the principle of the Logos, in other words” …
-Augusto del Noce
“Plato was the philosophical founder of Europe” ..
-Augusto del Noce
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”…
– John 1:1
Alternatively, does that intelligibility represent the Logos?
“So we must start from this dual nature of intelligence as something both biological and logical” …
– Jean Piaget
A Reality where God (the Creator ) is the ultimate source of illumination of Meaning.
A Reality that reflects the coupling of a Mental World with a Material World via an infinite possibility of Signs that provide intelligibility and meaning.
“The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs” …
– Charles Sanders Peirce
Under this scenario, intelligence is grounded in the Triadic relationship between Human consciousness (Observer), the Object created by God (Observed) and Sign.
“The great discovery of Greek philosophy and the foundation of its lasting truth is that of evidence, understood not as force that constrains but as light that illuminates” …
-Augusto del Noce
Humans through recognising the contingent being of man, open inquiry and epistemological humility, the triadic of reason (the pursuit of objective truth) & the concept of having the capacity to align human beliefs ( Contingent Being of Man ) with a higher order independent Reality ( Necessary Being of God).
A Correspondence Theory of Truth where Truth is the correspondence of the Contingent Being of Man’s Subjective Beliefs to an independent higher-order objective Reality that reflects the Necessary Being of God.
This triadic structure through the process of discovery and the normative principle of the pragmatic maxim and abduction ( i.e. new relationships of meaning) enables Man to gradually begin to develop a deeper understanding of the World.
However, given the Contingent Being of Man, this understanding and meaning is grounded in context and experience and the practical workings of signs rather than through some absolute knowing.
In other words, it is a partial and contingent understanding reflecting our limited experiences and bounded rationality.
“The metaphysical logos is no more to us than the metaphysical soul or the metaphysical matter. To the absolute Idea or Logos, the dependent or relative word corresponds” …
– Charles Sanders Peirce
Furthermore, these triadic relationships can inform Man as to how to act in the world through the development of habits, the embodiment of eternal laws, divine truths and faith ( i.e. a belief in the Necessary Being of God).
In this case, all knowledge is interconnected and includes both immanent temporal and transcendent eternal knowledge.
It leads to the development of Normative sciences which are distinct from Descriptive Sciences.
They include Logic ( pursuit of Truth), Beauty ( principles of natural & artistic beauty) and Ethics ( the morality of what is right & wrong and good & bad in human actions) and go beyond merely describing how things are but rather prescribe ideals or standards that ought to be followed.
The Pathway Forward for Western Civilisation – Dialectical Materialism of Hegel & Marx or renewal in Faith and the Thomism Triadic that builds on the ideas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Rosmini, Peirce, and Del Noce?
“European civilisation rose on the principle of a world of universal and eternal truths, in which all men participate — on the principle of the Logos, in other words”…
— Augusto del Noce
The Semiotic Triadic, Pragmatic Maxim and the addition of Abduction to the nature of Reason ( alongside Aristotle's Deductive Reasoning and Sir Francis Bacon's Inductive Reason ) bridges the Cartesian Dualism and the schism that had opened up between our Minds and our Body.
Building on the ideas of John Duns Scotus, Peirce’s work sets the platform for a renewal in Realism and the notion of an independent objective Reality beyond the subjective Consciousness of Man.
Various forms of Gnosticism have been prevalent throughout the course of Civilisation’s philosophical history, however Gnosticism in the context of Modernity was entirely different.
It was increasingly being liberated from the ancient sophist’s world of ideas and transformed by the modern sophists into a world of action via the Theology of Marxism.
“The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought, whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility – based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men – is in danger whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion” …
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
It reflected a new form of Gnosticism which was scientific in nature and orientated towards the creation of a new world order via transforming the physical World through the combination of science ( or was it increasingly scientism? ) and technology.
“Scientism… according to which the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge, is not linked to the spirit of freedom but the spirit of oppression”…
- Augusto del Noce
This modern form of Gnosticism was also increasingly global and endemic.
Almost universally embraced by the Scientific Clerisy, Globalist Elite and Secular Liberal Orthodoxy.
Marxism and the notion of Man as God – Man manipulates, creates, shapes and transforms Reality – had not only become the neo-gnostic substitute for Christianity by the European educated class.
“By explaining culture as a by-product of material forces, Marx endorses the Enlightenment view, that material forces are the only forces there are. The old culture, with its gods and traditions and authorities, is made to seem like a web of illusions – ‘the opiate of the people’, which quietens their distress” …
– Roger Scruton
When Charles Sanders Peirce’s ideas anchored in Semiotics are combined with Antonio Rosminis's ideas relating to the Triadic of Being and 20th Century Philosopher Augusto del Noce’s critique of Marxism, Atheism and Modernity the stage is set for a renewal in faith , the resurrection in the belief and role of God and the renewal in the Thomism Triadic frameworks to understand the nature of Reality.
“A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud” …
- George Orwell
The alternative is the ongoing decoupling of reality, a post-truth world & education, a will to power, a new totalitarianism and the ongoing self-destruction of Western Civilisation.
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought” …
– Roger Scruton
A continuation of the project of Modernity to build the Tower of Babel.
“Throughout Finnegans Wake, Joyce specifies the Tower of Babel as the Tower of Sleep, that is, the tower of the witless assumptions, or what Bacon calls the rein of the idols”…
– Marshall McCluhan
