Epistemic status: fluff

Tagged in: navel‍-​gazing

If something is to be done, it’s to be done immediately.  If something is to be proven, it’s truth is already inherent in the axioms themselves.

I’m writing this post largely for myself, but I don’t exactly hold this blog to a high enough standard for that to deter my posting of it.

When I’m especially depressed, I’ll sometimes invest effort into formalizing and axiomatizing motivation and volition.  It never goes anywhere, of course, as that is the nature of depression, but there is nothing for it.

Similarly, when I’m in a somewhat productive, motivated mood‍ ‍‍—‍ relative to my average, of course‍ ‍‍—‍ I’ll sometimes try to dissect the source of my motivation, in the hopes of rekindling it when it inevitably runs dry and I sink into more depression.

One motif that has entrenched itself in my reflections gives us the titles of this post; the notion of an axiom of action.  The antecedent of the idea is firstly the observation that a perfectly empty philosophical consciousness can never be argued into action.  If you are to demonstrate the necessity or desirability of some course of action, you may first try to demonstrate that the course of event it entails it is good, or pleasurable, or whatever else.  But then, you would have to demonstrate that when a course of events is good or pleasurable, it should be hastened.  But then, you would have to demonstrate that when a course of events should be hastened, you should enact it and …, well, repeat ad nauseam.

I found it tempting, in the composition of the above paragraph, to instead say “But then, you would have to demonstrate that when a course of events is good or pleasurable, you go forth and enact it”.  And this is the thrust of my argument.  Efficacy must be prefigured into the dynamics of a consciousness.  It could not be added after the fact.

This post was composed at the whim of such an axiom.  It could be said that this blog would have a much steadier stream of posts were I to take such an idea seriously, and so this post is a reminder to myself to blog more actively.