n-Financial Theology: The Ideal, Ideologies and Technical Realisations

1. The Ideal. The ideal comes from nowhere in particular, that is, in a completely isomorphic universe, we assume that no matter how peculiarly particular the circumstances, all those circumstances including the observer of the observed are governed by the same set of laws, which we call altogether, the Law only for convenience since we would certainly meet our end before enumerating all the manifestations of particulars for any arbitrary given conditions within the observable universe. We cannot even begin to imagine that there is something beyond this conceptualisation without appealing to a theology based on inconsistency and the apoira (awe) of the utter incomprehensibility of the particular. It is at this edge that the Individual is ultimately protected not by the natural forces which condemn him or her to a non-infinite interval, but extended beyond the claim of any physics that such Individual exists and SHOULD exist against any and all claims to the contrary. This assertion of personal existence cannot be justified in principle by physics, and is as Aristotle would have probably agreed an object of "practical knowledge"' ie how we are to conduct ourselves as individuals grounded in the IDEALS of virtuous conduct. The anthropologists may tell us that the conduct and behaviours of humans is so varied that there is no one set of beliefs or conventions that are prevalent throughout humanity. Again, this is an argument of ideology and does not resolve into contradiction or throw the burden of proof against those who would assert the existence of the individual as a matter of the ideal. The arguments against the "should" accuse its proponents of arbitrary determination and therefore, "unscientific" in the sense of vaguely formulated or unrealisable. But again, these arguments do not negate the assertion of individual existence. Whatever arguments we have against the Ideal are at different levels of manifestation: (1) the ideological and (2) the technical realisation of the ideal.

2. The Ideological. The ideology is simply "a matter of interpretation." The weaker the premises, the more EXPRESSIVE and INCLUSIVE the interpretation. The ideology is a matter of preference, expression, multiple forms. In many ways, it is of many views. But these many views do not negate the Ideal. They enhance it by providing contextual explanations. It is a basic philosophical error to confuse the Ideal with Ideology. VERY LITTLE IS AT STAKE to choose one ideology over another. It is the realisation of the Ideal which is of utmost importance since it is the realisation-of-truth beyond any ideological consistency that reaches into the Ideal.

3. Technical Realisations. The technical realisation of any particular Ideal is not essential to the existence of the Ideal since the ultimate realisation of Ideals may include their unconscious evolution. No technical realisation is sufficient or necessary to meet the Ideal. qua Ideal. But here is where the fun starts: many languages, many logics, algebras and geometries--all qua Ideal.

n-Financial Theology: Morphisms from Aristotle's Canon -- How to Deal with the Ultimate Epistemologies

1. "n-" stands for "natural" and "many an arbitrary way." So when we say "n-Financial" we mean a natural finance and a finance that has many different forms.

2. Understanding Any Particular Thing Requires Universal Predicates. As Aristitle taught us in his Prior Analytics, expanded in his Posterior Analytics and Categories, with a show of how powerful these sorts of fundamental arguments are in his Sophistical Refutations, any description of a thing that is aligned to a science and therefore, a complete understanding of its causes, will have universal predicates. This is how Aristotle solves his master's (Plato's) conundrum regarding how knowledge is possible amongst human beings. The act of knowledge is an actualisation of the potential 'universal predication' embedded within our specification of how anything we can observe actually works. The particular object of reality has necessary and essential characteristics that are obviously part and parcel of universals. The syllogism for Aristotle is an especially well-crafted 3-lined argument that starts with a description of a particular object predicated by a universal, by clever symmetry, leads to conclusions which are also universally predicated and not anticipated as a tautology of the premises. Modern logicians have argued that logic in a deep and big sense is just an ever-expanding tautology, but this is only in its most trivial sense. If one studies Category Theory, one begins to realise that the relation of identity extracted from tautology and re-engineered onto a system of arrow (morphisms) becomes awfully non-trivial because it is in the assertion of identity-in-morphisms systems that we begin to capture the structure of dynamics. Or, as Whitehead says in his Part V of a Final Interpretation, "the eternity of the ever-changing moving moment." In more modern Law and Finance discourse, this means capturing the form of risk in the system of trades. This could be at the bilaterally symmetric level tinged with Hohfeldian legal symmetries, or it can be at the rotational symmetric level, infinite amounts of fiat currency, debt, credit, on-balance and off-balance sheet financial contracts become aggregated and re-aggregated into affine patterns of interlocking legal memes which on the one hand are the grounds for hyper-evolution of product cycles and on the other hand, butterfly sensitive systemic contagion. This world of law and finance aims at financial stability and with each attempt to grow or brake, it overshoots inevitably towards hard default.

Lex Qua Mathesis Universalis

1.  Aristotle's Rhetorical canon (inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, et pronunctio), Descartes' Discours Sur la Methode, and Leibniz'  mathesis universalis, urge us to learn power languages or codes, and thus to lever right principle into right action.  But maybe the best we can do is merely reformulate in a more consistent manner and in a pleasingly beautiful form, grammatical rules, like Panini's integration of Sanskrit grammar setting out a whole new programme for a language culture.  This is the most that social science or human science can do--alter cultures.  The protons remain the same forever, it's the social patterning that is changeable as the winds.