Ethics: The Food of Reason and The Shit of Religion

I am currently reading Ethics by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.  Reading it has lead me to one conclusion: Judaic, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Zen and Hindu religious texts are so bogged down in metaphorical interpretation they defeat the purpose for which they are created.

Aristotle’s writing is clear, unambiguous and the terminology is well defined.  He clearly states that mature adults benefit more from the study of ethics than those in their adolescence or post adolescence simply because life experience is necessary to provide the foundation for its appreciation.

Aristotle is lucid.  I read his work in a few hours.  I did not need to read any of the commentary provided by the translators or editors.  In fact, I found the commentary a useless distraction.  If a translation requires commentary, the translation has not acheived it’s goal, the translators have been dogmatic.

Aristotle’s greatest achievement is declaring that no one is chosen by anyone.  Existence chooses us and from that point we choose to be who and what we are.

We choose our rights and responsibilities in our social and environmental context.  And in that choice lies goodness and happiness.

“Do to others as you would have others do to you” is not a call for love or hate, but a call for moderation in all things.

Moderation is not a call for mediocrity, but excellence and perfection.  To achieve the state where nothing need be added and nothing need be taken away.

This is one thing: Reciprocitism.

The origin of the word “recipe”.

A balance between self-acceptance and self-rejection.  Induction and Deduction.

I highly recommend reading Ethics over any religious text.  The food of Reason prevails over the shit of Religion.

The Brain: ZenUniverse 5.0

Link:

• The Brain: ZenUniverse 4.o
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 3.o
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 2.0
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 1.0

The Brain: ZenUniverse 4.0

“Tao can Tao not Tao”

Lao Tzu

I have been looking at the Platonic Solids and thinking about how they correlate to the five senses. I thought about the left and right hemispheres of the brain and realized that each of the Platonic Solids should be truncated to represent the right hemisphere. Now I had ten solids to work with. I worked backward from this and recognized I had to create a separate left right pairing of each of the senses to represent the brain correctly five on the left and five on the right. I have to create pairs of senses, trios of senses, quartets of senses and a quintet of senses. This is because these are ways we learn. We learn most when our senses are learning as a quintet.  This is why complete immersion in the environment we are to learn about is so effective.

This is a major revision of all my previous work.  However, I feel it provides a much more robust sensory model.

“To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton’s legendary statement was the premise of my new design.  I saw there were five Platonic Solids and as a reaction they would produce the five Truncated Platonic Solids.  This would influence all the components of the Solids.

Radeo

Dadeo

Radeons.  They are radical emissions.  These are based on the number of polytopes in the Platonic Solids.  These are your right  origins.

Tradeo

Ideons.  They are Ideal emissions which are temporal radical emissions.  These are based on the number of polytopes in Truncated Platonic Solids.  This is your left percetual spatial origin.

Audeo

Audeons.  They are audal patterns.  These are based on the shape of the faces of the Platonic Solids.  This is your right temporal plane.

Mudeo

Mudeons.  They are musical patterns which are temporal audal patterns.  These are based on the shape of the Truncated Platonic Solid truncation faces.  These are your left temporal planes.

Nadeo

Nadeons.  They are nasal intensities.  These are based on the angles of the Platonic Solids faces.  These are your right parietal arcs.

Gudeo

Gudions. They are gustal intensities which are temporal nasal intensities.  These are based on the angles of the Truncated Platonic Solid truncation faces.  These are your left parietal arcs.

Tadeo

Mates are Tadeons.  They tactal points.  These are the number of intersectin edges for each Platonic Solid’s polytope.

Modeo

ReMates are Bodeons.  They are Basal points which are temporal tactal points.  These are the number of intersecting edges for each Truncated Platonic Solid’s polytopes.

Pyradeo

The pyramids contain the space of the radeons combined with the audeons.  Obtuse triangular pyramid, Right square pyramid, Right triangular pyramid, Right pentagonal pyramid, Acute triangular pyramid.

Ideo

Imadeons.  They are imadical solids.  These are a cound of the number of faces on the Regular Solids.

Video

Videons they are visical solids which are temporal imagical solids.  This is the the count of the number of truncation faces on the surface of the Truncated Platonic Solids.

Stateo Ateo Summary

1. GREEN: EYE: OCCIPITAL LOBE: visual center of the brain
2. YELLOW: EAR: TEMPORAL LOBE: sensory center of hearing in the brain.
3. SKY: NOSE: BRAINSTEM: control of reflexes and such essential internal mechanisms as respiration and heartbeat.
4. BLUE: TONGUE: PARIETAL LOBE: Complex sensory information from the body is processed in the parietal lobe, which also controls the ability to understand language.
5. ORANGE: BODY: CEREBELLUM: regulation and coordination of complex voluntary muscular movement as well as the maintenance of posture and balance.
6. RED: MIND: FRONTAL LOBE: control of skilled motor activity, including speech, mood and the ability to think.

Link:

• The Brain: ZenUniverse 5.o

• The Brain: ZenUniverse 3.o
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 2.0
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 1.0

The Brain: ZenUniverse 2.0

“Tao can Tao not Tao”

Lao Tzu

If you have seen ZenUniverse 1.o and liked it.  You will be pleased to know that I have made some major enhancements to this concept.  We will still have the Six Solids, but we will expand considerably on the classifications.

In this version I will incorporate my work describing the six areas of human endeavor:

1. Astrics
2. Physics
3. Archics
4. Chemics
5. Bionics
6. Datics

Then I will correlate them with the Brain’s major regions.

The ordering of everything is very deliberate.

I am not going to belabor you with commentary.

Simply scroll up and down through the tables and think about the correlations and the model of the brain at the end of this post.

So, without further adieu:

Zen Astrics

These are the kinds of theories that can exist.

You might notice the number of sides for each seems large.

What has been overlooked is solids have an outside, midside and inside.

Zen Physics

These are the kinds of space that can exist.

Zen Archics

These are the kinds of arts that can exist.

Zen Chemics

These are the kinds of natures that can exist.

Zen Bionics

These are the kinds of skills that can exist.

Zen Datics

These are the kinds of numeracy and literacy.

Zen Brain

Each of the above areas of endeavor correlate with the representation of the brain in the fundamental table below.

1. GREEN: EYE: OCCIPITAL LOBE: visual center of the brain
2. YELLOW: EAR: TEMPORAL LOBE: sensory center of hearing in the brain.
3. SKY: NOSE: BRAINSTEM: control of reflexes and such essential internal mechanisms as respiration and heartbeat.
4. BLUE: TONGUE: PARIETAL LOBE: Complex sensory information from the body is processed in the parietal lobe, which also controls the ability to understand language.
5. RED: JAW: FRONTAL LOBE: control of skilled motor activity, including speech, mood and the ability to think.
6. ORANGE: BODY: CEREBELLUM: regulation and coordination of complex voluntary muscular movement as well as the maintenance of posture and balance.

Summary

Hope there was food for thought.

Links:

• The Brain: ZenUniverse 4.o
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 3.0
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 1.0

The Brain: ZenUniverse 1.0

“Tao can Tao not Tao”

Lao Tzu

Since reading the work of Clare W. Graves of Spiral Dynamics fame, reflecting on the work of all the people mentioned in my Blogroll as well as my recent foray into Zen I attempted to review and revise my work on the assortment of frameworks I had come up with. As I was making revisions it dawned on me that nature had done all the work already.

“Outside this office, Business as Usual;

Inside this office, Thunder and Lightning.”

Colonel John Boyd

I decided to take another angle of attack.  I realized I was dealing with entities, hierarchies, attributes and relationships and one thing Boyd overlooked, results, in two dimensions not one.  You may remember this graphic:

I realized I would have to take the Boyd Pyramid a bit more seriously.  And I have.  I compared Boyd’s work to Einstein’s, saw the correlations and what I think is a flaw.

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”

Albert Einstein

ZenEntity

The first thing I want to address is a misconception regarding solids.  It was one Plato made as well as R. Buckminster Fuller.  There are not five stable solids.  There are six.

The mistake Plato and R. Buckminster Fuller made was to demonstrate the stability of a triangle composed of three rods to their students while saying that the simplest solid in three dimensional space is the tetrahedron.  He didn’t realize the triangle in his hand was the simplest solid.  The triangle is a two sided three vertex solid that is the simplest enclosure of space.  Our eyes use two of them to locate an object and calculate distance.

Considering the above solid and the Platonic Solids we have six three dimensional closed network structures as illustrated below:

Take note of the stability of each of the solids.  What this means is that the triangulated solids are able to support themselves structurally, while the non-triangulated solids collapse.

What I realized regarding the work of Einstein and other physicists is they did not regard the various phases of matter as important.  However the states of matter are important.  Each state from the triangle up to the icosahedron as illustrated above are higher states of order.  Yet, each state of order is fundamental to the universe in which we live.  And all are simply phases of what I call the “ZenEntity”.

ZenAssociations

I decided after looking at what I had found regarding the solids to reject contemporary empirical conventions and simply address one thing.  We have six fundamental ordered states.  After several billion years of evolution would not all organisms have what they require to function in response to all of the six states in their niche?

My next question was, “How do I represent the phenomena I had encountered as a network?”

In my profession there are data architects, database designers, data modelers, database administrators, data entrists, data analysts, database developers, database programmers database analysts, data warehouse architects, data warehouse analysts, data warehouse developers, Extract-Transform-Load architects, ETL analysts, ETL designers, ETL developers, ETL programmers, Business Intelligence architects, BI analysts, BI designers, BI developers and so on.  However, I was never satisfied with any of these position titles.  So, I coined one myself: data designer.  I was of the opinion no matter how much data was out there, it was finite.  Zero and Infinity were very useful, but they violated the laws of thermodynamics.  I saw seven distinct phases of order in the universe and only saw transitions from one state to another.  I could design according to those states.

This led me to explore how I could represent the six states.  I studied and applied a variety of project lifecycles such as System Development Lifecycle, Extreme Programming and Rapid Application Development, joint application development.  I had learned various enterprise frameworks such as Zachman and TOGAF, modeling techniques like UML, the various generations of programming languages, data structures, network topologies, organizational concepts, rule based systems, event based systems, data based systems, user centered design, goal directed design, location based services, pattern languages, service oriented architecture, hardware architectures and many more.  I studied English, Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, German and French to see how I could develop a consistent taxonomy as well.

Ultimately I concluded that a majority of the people out there working on these problems had abandoned the basics for pet concepts.  They had no idea how many entities there were.  They had no idea how those entities should be related.  So I took it upon myself to identify all the relations that were applicable and came up with the following:

The associations are as follows:

1. Pattribute: a triangle entity
2. Battribute: a one to many relationship describing the association between a triangle and an tetrahedron
3. Attribute: a one to one relationship describing the association between a triangle and a hexahedron
4. Nattribute: a many to one relationship describing the association between a triangle and a octahedron
5. Lattribute: a recursive many to one relationship describing the association between two icosahedrons and one icosahedron
6. Mattribute: a recursive one to one relationship describing the association between two dodecahedrons

As you can see, the network is asymmetrical and allows for Node, Lattice, Tabular, Lattice, Linear; Lattice arrangements.  Note that since all of the entities are simply states of a single “ZenEntity” none of the states are independent from each other in the network.

ZenPhases

Now, that we have established the solids and how they are interconnected we can look at what the actual phases of the ZenEntity are.  Each of these phases are recognized in physics, however I have not come across any discussion of the possibility that they are together a set of fundamental phases.

Usually, we see Space, Time, Energy and Mass described in Einsteinian classical physics.  We also have discussions of Ions, Gases, Liquids and Solids as states of matter.  But we don’t see them together.

1. Energy: a three dimensional coordinate system
2. Time: a connection between one three dimensional coordinate system and two four dimensional coordinate systems
3. Ion: a connection between one three dimensional coordinate system and one six dimensional coordinate system
4. Gas: a connection between two three dimensional coordinate systems and one eight dimensional coordinate system
5. Liquid: a connection between two twelve dimensional coordinate system and one twelve dimensional coordinate system
6. Solid: a connection between two twenty dimensional coordinate systems

Next, we will see how these states are all very important to our sensory systems.

ZenStates

As well as the phases there is another way to look at the six solids.  This is in the Latinate language of the six states.  The states differ from  the phases in that they deal with the essence or source of each of the states.

The essence of each of the states is as follows:

1. Pattern: Father
2. Battern:  Hold
3. Attern: Give
4. Nattern: Birth
5. Lattern: Milk
6. Mattern: Mother

ZenSensors

Now, I am going to introduce you to some friends of mine.  I call them “Zen Sensors”

As you can see each ZenEntity State has a coresponding human sensory organ:

1. Eye: detect events
2. Ear: detect pressures
3. Nose: detect plasmas
4. Throat: detect molecules
5. Jaw: detect organics
6. Body: detect inorganics

ZenInterrogatives

Next, we have for your viewing pleasure the standard interrogatives and how they correlate:

I found this interesting, because I spent a great deal of time resisting the order of these interrogatives.  Finally, I just went along and found ultimately the order does make perfect sense.  It is an acquired taste.

1. Eye: Who: Identification
2. Ear: What: Objectification
3. Nose: Where: Location
4. Throat: When: Chronation
5. Jaw: Why: Rationation
6. Body: How: Function

If you read enough Anglo-Saxon it makes sense.

ZenHemisphere

Having considered the Entities, Associations, States and Sensory Organs, let us now look at how this relates to a hemisphere of the brain:

The above illustration shows the left hemisphere of the brain and the major regions.  They are color coded to correspond to the fundamental states I have described.  You can also see the corresponding sensory organ as well as the corresponding network structure in the region:

1. GREEN: EYE: OCCIPITAL LOBE: visual center of the brain
2. YELLOW: EAR: TEMPORAL LOBE: sensory center of hearing in the brain.
3. SKY: NOSE: BRAINSTEM: control of reflexes and such essential internal mechanisms as respiration and heartbeat.
4. BLUE: TONGUE: PARIETAL LOBE: Complex sensory information from the body is processed in the parietal lobe, which also controls the ability to understand language.
5. RED:  JAW: FRONTAL LOBE: control of skilled motor activity, including speech, mood and the ability to think.
6. ORANGE: BODY:  CEREBELLUM: regulation and coordination of complex voluntary muscular movement as well as the maintenance of posture and balance.

ZenBrain

Everything is great so far, but there is the fact that there are two hemispheres to the brain and they interact through the Corpus Callosum which I claim is where the self resides.  One of the interesting things about my study of Latin is that I discovered most questions actually required a two part answer.  This answer would be composed of an Archetype and a Type.  After reading Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, My Stroke of Insight and listening to her account of her perceptions while the left hemisphere of her brain was being shut down by an exploded blood vessel, it became apparent to me that the left hemisphere of the brain contained the Types the Latin language required and the right hemisphere of the brain contained the Archetypes.  It was necessary to create a two axis model to accomodate a brain with two hemispheres:

Each of the light colored cells in this table represent a connection between one coordinate system association (row) and another coordinate system association (column).  This accounts for the broad variety of properties we encounter making the states we experience.

There are actually not one or two, but four directions you can take on the above table.    Top to Bottom is right hemisphere deduction.  Bottom to Top is right hemisphere induction. Left to Right is left hemisphere deduction.  Right to Left is left hemisphere induction.

This is a physiological model of human perception that I have arrived at.  Our current definitions of dimensionality are incorrect.  Each state has its own dimensionality, its own associations, its own sense organs, its own region of the brain and the brain two hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum.  If the work of Dr. David Bryson on Physical, Decisional and Perceptual Learning is right, then deduction happens during waking and induction happens during sleeping.

This is not a complete model by any means as it does not deal with scale-free networks.  Or does it?

But to this point, that is the Zen Universe.

Link:

• The Brain: ZenUniverse 4.o
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 3.0
• The Brain: ZenUniverse 2.0

The Zen of Systems and Networks

My own work with Enterprise Frameworks and Networks has led me to come up with the following table.  It describes the Nodes and Links in a Complete System Network.  I am saying that the Nodes representing Goals, People, Time, Locations, Code, Data, Qualities and Quantities can all be represented as Scale-free Networks and that each of these Node Networks require only one datatype.  I am also saying that there are only three types of links in networks: recursive links within a set, multiple links between sets, single links between sets.  I know of no case where this has been attempted in the manner I am attempting to represent it.

If you have been following my blog you are aware that I have been struggling for a long time to come up with a framework and a clean terminological set to describe systems.  I think I have come one step closer to that goal today.  The table above describes a Fact composed of eight Nodes (first white row illustrating entities) and the Links (last three white rows illustrating recursive, multiple and singular relationships) for each of the System Networks (Interrogative columns).  One of the interesting aspects of this System Network Model is every Fact is composed of a Unique Set of all eight Nodes.  However, all the Nodes in one Fact do not have to have Links to all the Nodes in another Fact.  Each Node within a Fact is independent regarding its Links.  Therefore you have a single set of System Facts with each Fact containing a single set of Interrogative Nodes each connected by their respective Link Networks.

I have recently been writing with the intent to challenge centrism on any one of these networks and advocate a more integrated view. I still remember dealing with data centrism, event centrism, user centrism, goal centrism, program centrism and schedule centrism over the course of my career. All of them have a role to play. My insight into all of these Nouns being Linked by Verbs in only three ways required me to look at all of the Enterprise Architectures and disengtangle the Nouns, Links and Verbs from the reasoning and representations that extend back beyond computing itself.

The Data Model below is a hybrid of Relational Models and Dimensional Models.  I call this an Associational Model.  It is using Relational Architecture to represent it.  However, I think that an alternate Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) architecture called the Associative Model of Data would be better suited to the task.  I am using relational representation as I am still trying to communicate with a community only familiar with Relational technology.

The first thing to note about this model is Links are represented by Associations.  Associations link two Nouns using a Verb.  What is interesting about this model is every Verb, Association, Noun and Fact is unique.  The vertical connections are Many to Many relationships which allow two vertically adjacent Verbs, Associations or Nouns to have multiple unique relationships between each other.  What this means is there are no integrity problems (duplicate values) as the system network would enforce uniqueness.

The premise of this model is that the Nodes are not dimensions at all.  I am rejecting the traditional concept of dimensionality instead I am saying that there are three dimensions of Links: recursive, multiple and singular.  All we perceive are Facts, Nodes and the Links between them.

So you could come away with the following Zen koan:

entity without entity,

source without source,

path without path,

target without target,

size without size,

dimension without dimension.

Zen: Don’t Think Good or Evil

If you think good and evil,

You become a person of good and evil.

I recently chanced upon a book sale and was able to purchase a book of Zen koans and a book of Haiku poetry for a fair price.  I had read about Zen in the past, but I had not read actual works by Zen masters.

I have completed reading Zen Inspirations: Essential Meditations and Text, by Dr. Miram Levering for the first time.  It includes the complete text of The Gateless Gate a thirteenth century collection of koans, commentary and poetry by Ekai, known as Mumon.  The book also includes The Ten Ox-herding Pictures accompanied by ten poems by the twelfth century Chinese monk K’uo-an Shih-yuan It is definitely not something you read only once.  I enjoyed the Zen masters’ admonitions to read the koan and permit yourself to solve it quickly and without hesitation to discover the enlightenment that comes from honesty.  As I read the koans, I let myself be honest about my inner response and the wisdom of the Zen masters became increasingly amusing.  I think I came to be enlightened many times by their frank honesty about the human condition, the Buddha and the Tao.  I think one admonition by Zen master Mumon, that if you encounter someone filled with the Tao, strike him in the face with all the strength you have, sums up what I have learned.

The Zen koans and Taoism I find agree with the philosophy of science, the philosophy of Karl Popper, skepticism, the evolutionary biology of Charles Darwin, the physics of Werner Heisenberg and the mathematics of Kurt Goedel seamlessly.  Uncertainty remains the only certainty.

There is origin without origin, direction without direction, destination without destination.  Any sense of order is localized and transient.  That is the Tao Te and not the Tao Te, and that is what the adherents to Zen struggle with daily.

I don’t claim understanding or overstanding of this paradox.