About Limitation Philosophy
The Paradigm of Limitation Philosophy
The Arch-Concept of Cosmological Reality
The Personality and Being of God is Limitless. The
personality and being of human beings is not limitless.
This is the Limitation Paradigm.
All Limitation Philosophy follows from its logic.
General Concepts of Limitation Philosophy
We Reach for Paradigms but Only Ever Get Heuristics
In almost all communications best practice is to use everyday words in
their ordinary meaning. However, in Limitation Philosophy the words
Paradigm and Heuristic acquire extraordinary meaning and require
special definition. In the everyday use of these two terms there is a
degree of interchangeability but the two are not considered
synonymous.
The ordinary meaning of paradigm implies a set of rules for how a
model of reality works. There is an axiomatic aspect to it and an
absolutist one as well. Heuristic is similar but less absolute. Guidelines
and rules of thumb are heuristic, in contrast with the more rigid,
absolutist term, law, which is considered paradigmatic. Everyday use of
these words often depends on their context and how they are used to
determine their meaning in a sentence.
In Limitation Philosophy the word Paradigm is always absolute,
invariable and without exception of any kind. Paradigm exists in the
Personality and Being of the Deity and the universal process.
Paradigms exist mostly in infinite and eternal reality.
Language paradigms can be expressed in concise paradigmatic
sentences and discussed using language but everyday language often
speaks using absolutist terms when speaking of situations where
exceptions abound. This is exaggerated in some speakers but it creeps
into all language usage. This unintentional form of absolutism is just
part of the less than precise nature of language.
One aspect of the Language Heuristic is that, in ordinary talk one
makes a statement and ignores exceptions to avoid confusion. Ordinary
language is imprecise, precise language is impossible because all
language is heuristic. The phrase, all language is heuristic, is a prime
example of a paradigmatic statement conforming to Limitation
Philosophies special definition of the word paradigm which includes
language paradigms as a special category.
In Limitation Philosophy, Paradigm never generates error. This leads
one to ask, what about language paradigms? How can they be framed in
the Language Heuristic and not contain error? The short answer is that
they do contain some error and break just as the syllogism does in
formal logic due to the heuristic nature of language.
The Special Definition of Heuristic
We are limited beings. Our knowledge is partial, and because we are
often frustrated in our desires and determinations we are prone to
anger and other negative emotions. In addition to the limited nature of
our being, our existence, that is, the world we live within is local and
temporal. Heuristics are the rules and methods we employ to get by in
the human situation. We wish for paradigms but settle for what the
situation requires for us to get by. We reach for paradigms but only ever
get heuristics, because we are local, temporal, limited beings.
Paradigms operate in the eternal and infinite universe of Limitless
God. We are mistaken to look for something so pure in our local and
temporal world. To us the ocean tides are paradigmatic. Even their
variations in strength are predictable by careful calculation. However,
there was a time when this earth of ours did not exist and though it
may be a long time from now to us there will be a future era when it
will have passed away. The ‘scientific laws’ we look to when the tides
are calculated are not as invariable as they appear to us but do serve as
accurate guides for our use. For us, apparently perfect guides, such as
scientific laws and other heuristic models, enable us to navigate our
local temporal lives as limited beings. By employing heuristic models,
choices are often made without stopping to make conscious calculation.
The framework of life experience models are but one type of heuristic.
Unlike the very limiting and excluding definition of Paradigm,
Limitation Philosophies definition and use of the word heuristic is very
broad and amorphous. Language is by nature heuristic, but the
language heuristic is too far-reaching and varied to ever define or
explain in anything approaching a complete sense. Other very large,
worldwide, heuristics can be encapsulated in very plain language. In
the next section I will do this with the Ordinary Religious Heuristic.
Cognitive biases are another aspect of heuristics. These are effective
strategies for behavior that we deploy to succeed and get by in life that
also have unfortunate downsides. Behavioral psychologists and
Sociologists like to point out the humorous aspects of these downsides,
sometimes using anecdotes from their own experience.*
Because we are limited beings, almost all of our choices are made
employing one form of heuristic or another and whether we are
operating by intuition or calculation few if any of our choices are
without a downside. One valuable benefit of analyzing the heuristic
aspect of a choice is discovery of the downside which is often ignored
when the choice is made.
In Limitation Philosophy, Paradigm is pure, Heuristics in operation
generate error. Once the choice is made and the behavior sequence
unfolds, the operations, that is the chosen behavior itself will generate
the errors. So, inherent in any Heuristic is the aspect of error
generation.
Socrates had an apparently uncanny ability to find faults in his
interlocutors answers to his questions. Once you accept that all
language is heuristic this ability becomes easy to understand. So long
as all Socrates did was ask questions the only assertive statements
being made were those of the interlocutor. These positive affirming
statements being made using the language heuristic contained within
their truth some form of error. Socrates simply developed a keen eye for
finding that error and pointing it out in the form of a question. By
putting it in question form he made no positive affirming statement of
his own and by doing this the interlocutor could never use Socrates’ own
method against him. One wonders why anyone even talked to him.
Part of the language heuristic is that humans seem to be born with a
godlike self-image that resists seeing their very human limitations.
This godlike self-image perseveres because like every other heuristic,
despite its inherent downsides, we cannot live without it. The
unfortunate truth is that we need that godlike self-image to survive the
dilemmas of limitation. People who hedge and qualify almost
everything they say don’t seem to have anything up on the rest of us.
Some of the riddles of our existence are not only insoluble, perhaps we
are better off not trying to solve them. Not if that solution makes us
hem and haw, qualifying every statement we make with ‘perhaps’ and
pointing out exceptions to our statements that introduce confusion.
Limitation Philosophy accepts the heuristic nature of our limited being.
Having brought up the riddle of our godlike self-image let’s look into
the heuristic we use to ‘see God.’
*For an example of cognitive dissonance in an expert on cognitive dissonance see,
Eliot Aronson’s canoe story, on page 25 of, Mistakes Were Made(but not by me) by
Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson.
The Ordinary Religious Heuristic
A very wide range of systems of religious belief share a set of common
characteristics that shape their beliefs and practices. On the face of
things Christianity and Pantheism are very distinct religious systems.
Prayer, a practice common to most religions might be practiced in both
but the manner and content of prayer in each will be very distinct.
However each of them operate using The Ordinary Religious Heuristic
and so do most other systems of theistic religious belief.
If you look at the beliefs of the major theistic religions there are three
core elements present in some form. Their Deity, deities or whatever
stands in as Deity is anthropomorphic. This Deity has authoritarian
characteristics, the rules of behavior emanate from the Deity. And the
relationship of the Deity to the believer, and perhaps everyone else is
transactional. This structure is explicit in some religious systems and
obscured in others (Pantheism and other unconventional religious
systems put as much distance between themselves and more
conventional systems as possible).
In Christianity there is God, the Father whose personality is exalted
far above ordinary human personality but understood using ‘theory of
mind’ (using ourselves and our own understanding of human behavior
as a reference for understanding others). This idea of our use of ‘theory
of mind’ to understand a Deity extends to the Pantheist. Nature or the
Universe has a mind, albeit on a higher plane than ours, Nature feels
and can become offended and it’s motives are calculated using ‘theory of
mind’ methods. The Pantheist likely sees disasters resulting from
climate change in terminology that echoes divine vengeance. In
Pantheism the anthropomorphism is obscured but the constraints of
narration make that impossible to fully accomplish. The ‘theism’ in
Pantheism comes out in its narrations.
While massive differences define each major religion most if not all of
them operate in human personality by the Ordinary Religious
Heuristic, perhaps this is how they all get categorized as religions.
Consider this conception using the lens of personality structure, that is
mind, heart and will, alongside the three parts of the Ordinary
Religious Heuristic. Our minds anthropomorphize, our hearts recognize
common feeling and our wills use our own various intentions to gauge
those of others, even when the other is a Deity. As humans we frame
any form of intention in human terms. It’s how we understand stories.
Because humans understand things from their own self-perspective the
Ordinary Religious Heuristic operates in our personality like digestion
does in our body. It’s normal human behavior.
As normal human behavior it can be considered within the system one
and system two cognitive model which Daniel Kahneman makes plain
in Thinking, Fast and Slow. The Ordinary Religious Heuristic forms the
basis for intuition, system one, and provides a framework for the
philosophical theorizing of Theology, system two. Religious faith shapes
the believers intuition so that speech and action consistent with the
faith happen without forethought and then defend system one religious
behavior with the complex articulations of system two thinking which
are understandable to fellow humans who are naturally in tune with
the Ordinary Religious Heuristic.
The only religions exempt from the Ordinary Religious Heuristic are
those with no deities to anthropomorphize, the non-theistic religions
and the theological system made plain in The Logic of Limitless,
because Limitation Philosophy’s premise is that the Deity is not
humanlike with non-authoritarian and non-transactional following from
the conclusions of the original premise. As the culmination of its theme
The Logic of Limitless proves that, as a form of perception, the Ordinary
Religious Heuristic hides reality, the ultimate reality of God and the
nature of the universe of things.
It’s natural and in some ways impossible not to anthropomorphize. We
do it all the time with our pets. I know how I think. I believe I know
how you think, but do I really know how my cat thinks? We tend to
frame any form of intention in human terms. The self-reference of our
own human intention plays a large role in how we understand and
follow stories, especially fictional stories. A Non-Anthropomorphic Deity
cannot be given a dramatic role in a story. Such a Deity can be
discussed by the characters, but the role of any non-human character in
a story requires its intentions to be anthropomorphized.
The True Source of Social Darwinism
Critics of Social Darwinism cite Evolution and Natural Selection as the
origin of Social Darwinist theorizing. They ignore the fact that
genocides and every other moral outrage proposed or carried out by
Social Darwinists were present in wars of religion long before the Social
Darwinists came on the scene.
In Social Darwinism, Nature is made into an anthropomorphized deity
with humanlike intention. In the Social Darwinist narrative, nature has
decided that one group is fit to survive and another is not. Natures
intention stands in for ‘God’s will’ in the Social Darwinist narrative
which is analogous to the narrative of every holy war. Social Darwinists
embrace an unconventional form of theistic religion operating within
the ordinary religious heuristic. Evolution and Natural Selection are a
form of religious belief important to their use of the holy war model.
Having abandoned the holy war model of ages past, Christian
denominations can now point out to Social Darwinists the immorality of
it as ideology and policy. Our world and the people in it today are very
different from the world and people of the Crusades and the Wars of
Religion. There is nothing hypocritical about modern Christians
denouncing Social Darwinist faith and practice.
In Limitation Philosophy, the Deity does not have the humanlike
intentions to “will” a holy war, and the manner in which the earth, life
and human beings ‘come to be,’ by ‘process not intention’ does not
license any subset of any species to destroy others because they are the
favorites of some anthropomorphized pantheistic deity which animates
that process. The humanlike intention to decree ‘survival of the fittest ‘
as a ‘law’ is not part of the Deity described in the cosmology of
Limitation Philosophy. Social groups of limited beings concoct stuff like
Social Darwinism by manipulating the Ordinary Religious Heuristic to
justify doing in groups the kind of things their innate moral sense as
individuals tells them is wrong. Far from being the expression of
paradigmatic natural law, Social Darwinism generates so much moral
error that most social groups see it as just plain wrong.
The way the earth, life and human beings come to be as part of the
universal process is far too enmeshed with the rest of Limitation
Philosophy’s cosmology to be explained in isolation. The best way to
understand it is by a careful reading of The Logic of Limitless.
The cosmology of Limitation Philosophy is more distinct from than
similar to General Darwinism. The risk of associating the cosmology of
Limitation Philosophy with Darwinism is troubling to me. In our
culture, the anthropomorphizing the terms evolution and natural
selection is a deeply ingrained language habit and thinking in terms of
paradigmatic laws like survival of the fittest is mostly what Darwinism
is all about. Darwinism is often used to deny the existence of God while
being spoken of in what my discerning eye sees as very theistic
language. The cosmology is not Darwinism, and the way the language of
Darwinism is spoken is the opposite of Limitation Philosophy.
Same Conception Arrived at from Opposite Directions
A careful reading of The Logic of Limitless is required to understand
the following summary of the separate but ideologically related
philosophical conclusions of Eleazar and Socrates.
The Cosmology of the Limitation Paradigm says there is One Solitary Divine
Being, God, an embodied being of limitless personality (Personality
Structure=Intellect, Emotion and Will, each of these personality aspects
is limitless in a practical demonstrable sense) whose physical aspect is
embodied as the infinite and eternal universe (The limitless quality of
each aspect of personality is based on the foundational realities of the
physical universe and together the abstract reality that is the Limitless
Personality of God emerges from a physical universe of limitless spacetime.)
The detailed backstory presented in this book (Eleazar’s Backstory)
documents the progression of learning by which Eleazar came to what
he calls, The Conclusions of Monotheism. These philosophical
conclusions were arrived at while he studied for the Zadokite
Priesthood, which he was born into by being descended from Zadok, the
appointed High Priest of David who anointed Solomon to be David’s
successor, (Zadok was a direct descendent of Aaron, brother of Moses).
Eleazar’s teacher, Ezra the scribe, was a theological innovator who
lacked the intellectual courage to follow his innovations and the
aniconic progression of the Judean Faith to their logical conclusions.
Eleazar’s self-exile from Jerusalem/Judea following a dramatic incident
that led to Eleazar being forced to reveal his conclusions is how he
comes to meet Socrates. Eleazar came to his view of the shared
cosmology by intellectual courage implying that timidity and
unwillingness to abandon precedent kept Ezra and the Judeans from
embracing the radical truth of their own monotheism’s logical
conclusions.
In The Logic of Limitless we see how Socrates reasoned a very similar
cosmology by following the apparent non-transactional essence of our
relationship to the universe and whatever Deity or deities there might
be (Socrates accepted theism and Plato never implies anything atheistic
in his thinking. However, ‘I know only that I know nothing’ implies an
agnostic aspect to whatever religious beliefs he espoused). Forming the
Socratic Conclusion, that ‘the gods need nothing from us,’ required a
more social form of intellectual courage than Eleazar’s Conclusions of
Monotheism.
The faith Eleazar was raised in was already well on the way to the
Conclusions. Courage for him was taking the final step and accepting it
required a total break with the Judean’s beloved past. In Athenian
society there was no movement at all towards non-transactional beliefs.
Their entire religious culture rested on transactional religious faith and
practice. The Socratic conclusion, ‘the gods need nothing from us,’ arises
without any religious but the decision to self-govern does put them on
that path. Socrates is pointing out, ‘do we decide or do the gods
speaking through oracles decide for us?’ The Logic of Limitless
dramatizes the path to Socrates being compelled to confront an
assembly of the Athenian democracy and speak this truth (The gods
need nothing from us).
The cosmology from the Socratic approach is much less detailed than
Eleazar’s systematic articulation. From the non-transactional
relationship Socrates reasoned that there is no divine source for law.
This legal theory aspect of his thinking provided motivation to confront
the Athenians, because in their democracy they possessed the ability to
create a heuristic moral framework for governmental regulation and
general morality.
Athenians religion had no precedent in non-transactional religion but
their politics had, without realizing it, taken momentous steps away
from theocratic influence on self-governance. They did not see the gods
as the authors of their democracy. Credit for that was given to Solon,
Ephialtes and their own initiatives. Socrates had the philosophical
courage to see the progression of Athenian political philosophy to its
logical conclusion. In essence he is saying, we have decided to rule
ourselves. To do that fully we have to abandon superstition and the
political influence of priesthoods. Democracy, to truly rule, must be
separate from authoritarian religion (all theistic religious systems have
an authoritarian nature which by nature conflicts with the selfdetermining
governance of any democracy).
From the Socratic approach the Personality and Being of God is far
more difficult to articulate. Large swaths of truth can be deduced, most
of which comes in the negative, such as Socrates’ recognition that the
Greek pantheon of gods were by reason of their less than human
limitation, a collection of lunatics. The general concept of limitless, One
Solitary Non-Anthropomorphic Deity, and other aspects of the
cosmology articulated by Eleazar would be difficult to formulate but the
truth of their radical propositions are apparent to Socrates because they
are in accord with his non-transactional, non-authoritarian
philosophical beliefs.
Despite the abrupt radical nature of the Socratic Conclusion (The gods
need nothing from us), the Athenians are in a better position to adapt it
into their society than the Judeans would have been. For the Judeans,
accepting the Conclusions of Monotheism would have required a change
of government and the dissolution of their theocratic religion. Socrates
calls only for reform (separating religion from the institutions of the
state), and for the further progression of Athenian Democracy to a
greater rationality than it had achieved so far with religion still having
prominent influence over self-governance. He does not call for the end of
religious festival, only that the Athenian democracy stops relying on
vague oracles and end civic obedience to self-serving priesthoods.
Socrates believed that myths ought to continue to inform Athenian
Society even as they recognized that their gods never really ruled them
no matter how much they wished that was the case.
The goal of Socrates in The Logic of Limitless is political reform, not
religious innovation but the elimination of religious influence from the
Athenian democracy would have been framed by Athenian religious
authorities as religious heresy of the highest order.
A Modern Theogony
Limitation Philosophy teaches us that only God is limitless and that
we humans are all by nature limited. Personality limitation is what
matters not how we compare to other human beings. None of us are
omniscient. Our minds operate with incomplete knowledge. None of us
are omnipotent. Our goals and desires are often frustrated and these
frustrations make negative emotions of some sort inevitable. Relative
differences in limitation amongst us are slight in comparison to the
Limitless Being of the Deity and this rough equality makes the quality,
limited, the operative thing, not how well or badly we stack up against
another human being is some area of our lives. God, being limitless,
operates with complete knowledge, is never frustrated and whatever
the nature of divine emotion, anger and the other negative emotions
that arise from a frustrated will are not part of it.
This rough equality then extends to differences amongst us. For
example a person who is considered taller than just about everyone else
is about two feet taller than the statistical average. In terms of
measured lengths available here on earth two feet is not much of a
difference and compared to the distance to the sun or moon two mere
feet is nothing. Differences significant to us as individual persons are
not very great in an overall cosmological sense. We are roughly equal.
However, this equality is not in any way absolute. This is very
unfortunate because we humans see everything in reference to
ourselves. For example, up is above in relation to where I am situated,
behind is based on a things relation to myself and some other object,
etcetera. This self-reference aspect of perception colors how we compare
ourselves to one another. When I say ‘he is tall,’ we all understand that
I mean in relation to myself in some way. Under the influence of our
self-referencing personalities the concept of rough equality disappears
into the subconscious where it can be ignored by the conscious
personality.
Self-referencing is vital to our individual survival. My hunger matters
to me. My needs matter to me and cannot be ignored if I am to survive.
Good for me becomes a basis of right and wrong in the most practical
meaning of those terms. My needs are met. Good I live. My needs are
not met. Bad I die. All moral rationale begins from this baseline but is
never kept so simple because we are raised into families and
communities. The confusing social dimensions of morality begin long
before the conscious calculations of adult rationalism become possible.
Human children master many heuristic cognitive habits during their
social learning process that enable intuition long before ever stopping to
think about something for the first time.
Several forms of moral confusion are inevitable due to the
impossibility of ever perfectly balancing our individual needs with the
social demands of community. Due to our personality’s continuous selfreferencing
activity righteousness develops into an individual obsession,
but we fail to see it as a harmful obsession because everyone suffers
from it in very similar ways. One’s own self-righteousness is often
impossible to see until it has become extreme by the very forgiving
standards of a righteousness obsessed society.
We all have somehow developed into people who see ourselves as right
far more often than we are wrong and have accomplished this in a world
where right and wrong are shades of the same color. On top of that
irrationality and in part because of it, we see ourselves as righteously
limitless, that is motivated only by good, while others can be expected to
behave badly much of the time. Without ever noticing the conceit of it,
by seeing ourselves as often right and seldom wrong a godlike selfimage
becomes part of our normal social development. This is hidden
from us because everyone else has a godlike self-image too. The strange
reality of this escapes our conscious awareness but the knowledge of
rough equality that lives in our subconscious haunts our conscious self
like an evil ghost.
Because our godlike self-image is created by delusion our personalities
find the reality of rough equality troubling. People are very adept at
manipulating reality but certain aspects of rough equality make that
aspect of reality difficult to manipulate to individual advantage. One
aspect is that if I am equal to everyone else but there are far more of
them than there are of me, well, I’m outnumbered and by a very large
number. Another is, aware of my own partiality as a judge in my own
moral court I fear an objective judge might rule against me, perhaps
just to balance things out. The sum of rough equalities haunting is this,
being roughly equal makes me feel generally inferior. Thus, the reality
of rough equality creates fear and feelings of inferiority. I am equal to
everyone else and this makes me feel inferior.
Limitation Philosophy calls this the equality complex. The reality of
rough equality creates subconscious feelings of inferiority that cause me
to develop a godlike self-image obsessed with superiority, especially
moral superiority.
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