20050901 

1 In Search of a Method

I begin with a theorem of investigation. This concerns the conception and question of choice. Our theorem position may be stated as follows:

If there is any real "primary" choice in life, it can only be the choice to be born or not. Do humans choose to be born, or not? They do not. There is no choice.
The primmediate (to be explained) component in this theorematic study (as totem, i.e. "gift") is the conception and position of datum (Latin, plural data). For what would be the point or purpose of a research – with line-in reference to "data choice" – when the very proposition of a pure, uncompromised, unchosen datum is left in the lurch? If a human (researcher) has no primary choice, then secondary and tertiary, i.e. proximate choice elude him too. Furthermore, what significance might this theorem hold for the application of the scientific method? For if everything, i.e. all phenomena go and come in an unchosen manner, then everything is pure and 'freely received' data. But then how would the researcher grasp, collect, or gather such a datum as purely given phenomena? Furthermore, how would this impact on the notion of assemblage? For assemblage implies design and purpose – indeed, taxonomy. Upon reflection, we predict the following: Only by arriving to this present departure may a research agent be fully enabled to respect the primacy of the scientific method.

Novel theories sometimes come to light through the redefinition and/or redescription of terms and concepts that have actually never been clearly defined. To a large extent the present study is mandated by a group of "three independent and clear-cut conceptual isolates." These inner three hypothetical conceptions are as follows: (i) the "choicelessness" of man, (ii) "data" as given (opposed to "taken"), and (iii) "the reformulation of the scientific method." These three coefficients furthermore demarcate a single hypothetical set of horizontal determinants by which two other hypothetical construals are both contextualized and bridged. These additional two construals are (a) a fundamentally "open universe" (envisioned as particled or particulated with data), and (b) the "No Choice Theorem," disclosed for the first time ever we assert.

Now despite the initial sounds of it, the study we propose will not take place within the ambits of the Physical Sciences, but will plainly be sheltered in the sanctum of Philosophy – albeit, more precisely, the Philosophy of Science, where it will naturally utilize the closely linked disciplines of ontology and epistemology.

1.1. Characterization of Three Foundational Coefficient Isolates
The basal methodological premise of this study is buoyed on three intellectual considerations, each of them incisive, well defined, and unique. First and chief among them is man's essential choiceless nature. This fact is a product of the "no choice theorem." Secondly is the redefinition of datum as a "freely given" coefficient. Thirdly is the innovative redescription of 'the scientific method,' per se, with attentive iteration of its avowed constraints and foundational primacy within the scope of philosophical inquiry. In this way, our initial two participatory coefficients – the 'researcher/perceiver' and the 'datum/subject – will be shown to comply in uncomplicated manner with the scientific protocol's two cardinal demands; those being, that 'the scientist/observer be a passive receptor of freely given data.' It would thus be appropriate here at the outset to register the three key coefficient isolates that both characterize and establish the present study's fundamental set up. We reiterate the three as
(A) choicelessness, (B) data (as "given"), and (C) the two core constraints of the scientific method per se.
It is furthermore essential at this initiatory stage to perform a second parallel maneuver as to offer transparency to our forthcoming study. This involves a simple three-step process entailing

(1) the disclosure of man as a "choiceless" being; (2) the redefinition of data as "given"; and (3) the matching of isolates A and B with C; C being the scientific method's two cardinal constraints, which are:
(a) receptivity on the part of the observer vis-à-vis (b) unrestrainedness with regard to the datum.
We will now perform the three-step conveyance. This will act to comport the initial coefficient isolates – choicelessness and gift (or givenness) – into a single integrative working whole within the parameters of the third birelational coefficient as glyphed by the scientific method's two core insistences or imperatives. This performance will both simultaneously and seamlessly match them – (A) and (B) – with the two chief constraints of the scientific protocol (a) and (b) above. In this way choicelessness will match up with observational passivity, while simultaneously data will find co-instantiation in the unrestrained nature of the gift or givenness in-itself.

1.2. Step One: Choicelessness
Step one does not intend to delineate a theory, but rather establish a fact. To accomplish this we will need to disclose an original theorem described for the first time ever we reassert. This theorem will illuminate the irreducibility of the conception and question of human choice. Built on a paucity of concisely worded axioms, we tentatively name it "the no choice theorem." It is stated thus:
If there is any real "primary" choice in life, it can only be the choice to be born or not. Do humans choose to be born, or not? They do not. There is no choice.
As simple as that we have theorematically established that humans are essentially devoid of choice. The theorem has discharged its first recorded function. With its theorematic function fully served, step one is complete.

1.3. Step Two: The Essential "Given" Nature of Datum
It is necessary at this stage to redefine "data" as an English term, the original sense of which has never been clearly understood. We will briefly but elegantly trace its meaning from the remote Indo-European root dō- and illustrate interesting linguistic details that are not widely known. For example, we point to the Sanskrit cognate datta, which conveys clear meanings of "given" and "generosity." Etymologically, "data" is derived from the Latin plural of datum (neut. p.p. dare, "give"). We may also observe its Latin link to donum, "gift," with an obvious connection to "donation." The Greek word dosis (English "dose") from didonai as "something given" is also germane. This simple inquiry helps to elucidate the true or original sense of data as 'a given dimension, a generous gift.' Hence we have effectively redefined data. Step two is complete.
From this point forward we will need to describe how the first two components of our triadic arrangement converge and conflate within the parameters of the third component. This will happen in a consistent and natural manner with all three parts commensurately assuming and thereby promoting a flawless functionality in due respect to the newly engendered or synthesized whole.

1.4. Step Three: Complying with the Scientific Method's Constraints
This is the third and final step. It sees the graceful arrival and installation of "unchoosing data" (extracted above) within the cocoon of the scientific structure. This maneuver will be performed in a manner that straight away contents the birelational constraints of the scientific core. Thus is our intrinsically choiceless man conjoined to a singularly gifted datum, as both, together, get neatly ordained to the scientific method in accordance to its own sweet terms and stipulations. Stated slightly differently, the inborn conditions of the first two steps pre-satisfy the scientific protocol's core methodological insistence that, vis-à-vis its coextensive passive receiver, a datum be a given with no strings attached. Step three has been articulated; it is complete.

1.5. Summary
In laying out the basal methodological premise of this study we have shown that novel theories sometimes come to light through the redefinition and/or rediscription of terms and concepts that have actually never been clearly defined. We have furthermore explained that the present study is buoyed and directed by a group of three intellectual considerations, generally described as three independent and clear cut conceptual isolates, each of which are incisive, well defined and unique. More specific still, the three intellectual considerations of our study are: (i) man's essential choiceless nature, (ii) the redefinition of datum as "given," and (iii) the redescription of the scientific method as based on its two avowed methodological constraints on the one hand, and on the foundational primacy within the broad ambit of philosophical inquiry on the other.
And yet as singularly emergent and describable as they are within our present environment, the three coefficients nonetheless exhibit interesting countervalent traits of coherence in a process of natural coefficency. Now inaugurated, as it were, by the no choice theorem, this affinity is deepened by the redefined datum, i.e. as "a given" (as opposed to "a taken"), and further by the reconsideration of the two prime constraints of the scientific method per se. By reexplaining man as essentially "choiceless" and redefining datum as a given "component," the scientific method is now suffused with a new redirected sense and dynamic.

1.6. Further Tests and Elaborations
In the course of the tests and elaborations to come, we intend to show how a radical restringing of the scientific protocol initiates critical, trangressive shift in the scientific method's operative tensions. We further predict that a rearticulation of the scientific method along such lines will significantly undercut the epistemological, ontological, and transcendental buttressings of the sanctum of philosophy as we presently know it.
Another point worth registering is this. The no choice theorem is not itself an operative coefficient; it only arrives us to the fact of choicelessness, i.e. the choiceless fact. The fact of choicelessness is merely derived and/or proved from and/or by the no choice theorem. It is a product of the "no choice theorem" in and only of itself. In our present investigation, man's essential choiceless nature is the most important product; second is datum (as something "freely given"); third is the innovative redescription of the scientific method per se.

05:20 | |

 

2 The No Choioce Theorem (as heuristic totem)

2.1 The Theorematic Statement/Proof

The "no choice theorem" was disclosed above in regard to the conception and question of choice. My theorem position was stated as thus:

If there is any real "primary" choice in life, it can only be the choice to be born or not. Do humans choose to be born, or not? They do not. There is no choice.
Thus in a graceful and uncomplicated manner the no choice theorem established man's essential choiceless nature in its first applicative operation. The elegance and order of the coming presentation should be seen as marks of the no choice theorem's nuanced clarity, directness, and expediency.

2.2 Procedurally Isolating Two Conflated Probes

Yet upon reflection our theorematic inquisitor will be nudged somewhat slightly, but significantly, to the extent that we would now need to isolate and separate two internally conflated probes; demonstratively, that humans have and/or utilize [the] choice [to be born]. These represent the [to be] separate(d) questions of (i.) 'having or not having choice,' on the one hand, and (ii.) 'the utilization or functional activation of that choice,' on the other. But the question as to whether you, on an individual or person possess this choice is a thoroughly demonstrable imprimmediate query. And so the hyperthetic theorematic declaration stands: you do not choose [birth]; i.e., even if you did retain the capacity; but which anyhow is not the case, as birth is not the casual consequence of choice, but a [primmediately, i.e. freely] given [datum] (i.e. data, cf. Sanskrit datta)].

2.3 Denial of Decision and Karman

The no choice theorem denies not only choice, but its correlative decision. However, denial of choice does not deny birth, neither the existence of individuality, the person(ality). The no choice theorem only denies birth as a matter or act of personal (or impersonal) "choice." The no choice theorem dashes the faintest, most residual inklings of karman, either in its "moral retributive" sense, or in the sense of "willful doing" or "decisive action." No choice directly affirms "no decision."

2.4 Non Choice Data and the Scientific Method

The primmediate (coinage tersely explained below) component in this theorematic study as heuristic totem, i.e. an "instructive gift," is the basic reconception and positioning of data (Latin, plural of datum). For what would be the point or purpose of a research – with line-in reference to "data choice" – when the very proposition of a pure, uncompromised, unchosen datum is left in the lurch? If a human (researcher) has no primary choice, then secondary and tertiary, i.e. proximate choice elude him too. What significance does this theorem hold for the application of the scientific method? If everything, i.e. all phenomenons go and come in an unchosen manner, then everything is pure and freely received data. But then how would the researcher grasp, collect, or gather such a datum of purely given phenomena? Furthermore, how would this impact on the notion of assemblage? For assemblage implies a design and a purpose – a taxonomy. Further still, how would we deal with incursionary notions of corrupted and cross-contaminated data, and with forced – i.e. hurriedly gathered, analyzed, and interpreted – data? Only by arriving to this present departure may a research agent fully be enabled to respect the primacy of the scientific method.

2.5 A Hypothetical Post-Test Set Up

Having rigorously subjected the no choice theorem to intensive and extensive chance arrangement testing, I will set out on a narrative of exploration and documentation that will be vividly self-reflexive and self-aware, and whose tools and procedures will stand in need of persistent renewal and revaluation. My strategy will maintain a heightened clarity and a provocative relationship with the very methodologies it brings to play, adopting my concepts, terms, and tropes as open sets of minimalist props with a tendency towards a critical defamiliarization. And these in hand I will track the pursuit of keeping up data with a critically suspicious "hermeneutic of materials" in specific reference to a layeredness and deep multiformity of textuality that unreservedly de-self-centers both its audience and its avowed purpose. The hypothetical notion here laterally encased is that we speak of the universe as [particles of] "datum," as "object(s)," (as rèpa), and ultimately "she" with respect to śakti. We therefore speak it in terms of "transcendence."

2.6 Non-Choice Data as Revalatory Gift, as Primmedization

The major corollary of the no choice theorem is that birth (as existence) is essentially a datum, essentially a "gift." Hence your birth, your "personal experience" is also your essential or primmeditate datum, your primmediate gift – indeed, your essential or "primmediate" self. Yet 'primmediate' referring here more to "pure [as in life experience]," still, beyond the 'pure' is the "free" or "open [life experience]," referenced heretofore as the Primmediate, or Primmediatization.

With the chanced-upon-nature of these working first principles – as with the overall nature of my rule-ensemble – the "secular theological" narrative has its convenient borrowing power. For in spite of its being confessionally placed, its descriptions of precise phenomenological rediscriptions amalgamate well with my current direction and further reflect the valid concern for – and apparent lack of – a valid metamethodology. Such a logical progression is hugely desirable, if not inevitable, even if distinction would need to be made in contouring the scopes (and periscopes) of a metaphilosophic-methodological primmediacy. This would naturally cut across disciplinary sanctums and spawn fresh flows of revelatory phenomena. It would furthermore return us to the question of restraint, with particular regard to the scientific method, and whether we 'philosophers' are permitted to harvest and assemble them.

But surely we are speaking here of a sort of "revelation" with specific regard to a purity of data, and which – properly speaking – must be given freely, i.e. primmediately. And yet by delicate late-Wittgensteinian contrast, the question would inevitably come to this: What can be revealed that is not concealed? (1953: no. 435).

2.7 The Hypertheticization of Purpose/Application

With the application of this no choice theorem as investigative source, the question of purpose boasts resolute primacy. I would therefore intend several academic subplots that reinvestigate the obfuscated nature of purpose as motive and reason in scholarly activity. I thereby suggest that the invisible, hence 'unexamined' procedure of hypotheticization in the academic protocol is deficiently and delinquently asymmetrical in its brazen neglect of the counterbalancing hypertheticization. If made more conceptually balanced, thus symmetric, vis-à-vis the synthesis-antithesis coupling, what would the ramifications hold for an allegedly "proof-based" scientific paradigm in particular regard to the sanctum of philosophy?

2.8 Indo-European Cultural Comparativistic Scrutinizations (Applications and Demonstrations of the No Choice Theorem and its Consequences for Data Accrual)

I will carry my hyperthetical applications through to an Indo-European cultural comparativistic scrutiny of the (sind(h)ic episteme of dharma. I will then reconcile this with the early nous of the Persian-born Anaxagoras, with Aristotle's nous poetikos, and with the Unmoved Mover as god as brahman as quasi historical Buddha himself.

2.9 Datum as a Moment of Perceptive Choice: Tracing the Universal Epistemic Error

I will explore the theorem's special implications and resonance within the (s)ind(h)ic, especially Bauddhic metanarrative, and against which it rakes particularly hard with regard to the dispensation's tacitly assumption that one would never choose birth if choice were ever the final option.

In sustained demonstration of this praxial no choice data-based reformulation of the scientific method I will trace a vital epistemological tendril as it re-self-generates, extends, and disperses its salient metagenealogical dynamic amid the following ten milieux: (i.) Bauddha sati, (ii.) Patañjali's īśvara, together with (iii.) kaivālya and its associated state of (iv.) kaivālya-mukti, but contrasted with (v.) Sāmkhya's īśvara-variation and (vi.) its consequent retreatment in Īśvarakrsna; (vii.) Advaitic śakshin and (viii.) the later fourteenth century Sāmkhya revival, which assumed a strong theistic character, (ix.) the eventual baroque blend of Sāmkhya and Yoga where the former provided a metaphysical basis and the later an ascetic research technology; and finally (x.) Kant's custom fitted "extra layer" to account for the transcendental unity of apperception.

2.10 Three Bauddha Models as Data Accrual Strategy in an Open Universe

I will look to process of Bauddha historicization in light of my reformulated protocol and isolate each of its three generic, quasi self-referential classifications as research models vis-à-vis Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna. I will then proceed to extract from each its own relationary approach to gaining favor, i.e. data, from its a priori "open" universe. I will discuss how the school of the theras or five-hundred "elders" accepts a rather dry, spectatorial tact and aims to objectify the greatly analyticised facets of its perceived emotional impinging universe. But with the dawn of bhakti the faith-driven Mahāyāna inherits a boldly unfastened universe that ignites and explodes in all dimensions. Here Mahāyānic science turns phenomenological and launches deep probes in the purity and faith through the essentialized and redescribed vastness of its expanse. I will finally describe how the Tantrayāna yogicly becomes its own alterity through the hyperthetic reach of a corporeal-perceptive instrumentation, and how such extensive retoolings have compelled its researchers to dilate the ontologic vein of eclipse and don, as it were, the body of the universe.

Yet despite sustained attempts in its primitive texts to stratify the heavens, and to specify and catalogue everything knowable, I will show that there remains 'a gaping vagueness at the very top – in fact, there is no top at all' – but a vast expansiveness, immeasurable and ineffable. Thus, I will show, that the Bauddha universe is plainly open-ended in very marked contrast to its cousinly Jaina conception, which likes to represent the cosmos by closed-in diagrams. But more than unbounded by 'all spatial dimensions,' the Bauddha universe is unrestrained by 'time.' And so in vivid contrast to the Shemitic sense of temporal eternity, Bauddha apperception of its spatial dimension is rather one of timelessness and infinity.

2.11 Transcultural mapping of ontological archetypes

I will pose the following questions: Can deeper implications be brought to light through sustained transcultural examination of a growing catalogue of ontological archetypes? Should not the transcultural mapping of ontological archetypes be an essential project of comparative religious and philosophical studies? For this could well hold answers to the cultural formulation of variant conceptions of being-in-the-universal, their influence on social manipulation and formation.

2.12 Sati and Vipassanā as Metaphors for Indra and his Holy Weapon (vajra) vis-à-vis Rgveda 1:103

I will explore the following interpretive case. If Bauddhic sati (perceptive choice) is equated to Indra the Vedic king of the gods, then vipassanā (perceptive dissolution) is the godly weapon that Indra welds. In Bauddha doctrine Gautama teaches that the ancient methodology of vipassanā tears asunder (dissolves, dispels) the veil of ignorance and liberates people from the cycle of birth and death. Well if it bears some truth that sati is Indra, and vipassanā connotes his holy weapon, I will use this weapon to tell a new story; I will demonstrate the way to plumb an old myth and recast it in a manner that subverts dead meaning. And by burying but one of a bewildering number of counter-hermeneutical red herrings and snares that have strewn this ancient research methodology, we may finally bear witness that the "Buddhism" we know it today is essentially a derivative of Brāhmanical lore and that the entirety of its religious and philosophical outlook is but a grand unmitigated plagiarism of more remote Vedic and primordial conceptions. I will then return to sati and vipassanā and address their function as data accrual strategy and once and for all hermeneutically expose this specious twosome as masked marauding metaphors for Rgveda hymn I:103 with all due respect to the hair raising Har·a and his holy blistering jihādic arsenal.

03:24 | |

 

3 Questions of Choice and Theorem

3.1 What is Choice?

I will develop this thematic question in detail in segments to come. For now I merely note the term's etymological data as e.g. from Middle English chois, from Old French, from choisir to choose, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German kiosan, to choose, Latin gustare to taste. Greek yeia. But the real source of "choice would be sought in its Indo-European root [currently unknown] and traced to its Sanskrit root ju·, ju·ate, (-ti) delighting in, attached to, visiting, frequenting; to choose; and studying its numerous inflections, e.g. pp. ju·­a, be pleased or satisfied; be fond of, delight in, enjoy; like to, resolve upon; dhyai, prefer or choose (a certain place), i.e. visit, inhabit. Cf. jo·ayate (-ti) like, love, approve of, choose. (abhi-) like, visit, frequent. (upa-) cheer, gladden. (prati-) cherish, fondle; delight in, be pleased with (acc.). Cf. fondle, caress. Cf. praju·­a, delighted with (loc.), and saµju·­a, visited or inhabited by, filled with, etc.

My procedure in transmitting this "no choice theorem" – described for the first time ever, I believe – will be richly dialogical and relational throughout. Yet all the while the following quintessentially reflexive question will be ever at the forefront: "Is any of this really a matter of choice?" I am not concerned with questions related to "free will," determinism, and other such queries, neither with questions of an ethical (good life) nature, nor of morality (right and wrong), or the automaticity that some have stresses with its negative connotations of mindless, hypnotized machines.

3.2 What is a Theorem?

I will investigate the theorem as a heuristic device, testing its aptitude in redressing blind assumptions and reelucidating the time-dimmed scopes of philosophy, logic, epistemology and ontology. I will describe and explain it as deeply principled organism regenerative of natural law and form. I will portray the theorem as vital, penetrative, and of broad application. I will liken it to a flawless jewel, a reflective instrument with highly adaptive and particularized indications that only become evidence with ample reflection and plumbing in accordance with comprehensive study and praxis.

It is built on thread-like distillations of logic sheared of all inessential verbiage. It is an aphoristic teaching, a refined conclusion, a polished end product of thought and observation. But different in that where as a sutra is arrived at, the theorem stands before us.

I will furthermore test the no choice theorem against the following general theorematic criterion: i.e., that a salient and indicative quality of a theorem be the immediacy, simplicity, and ease at which interesting and meaningful corollaries are deduced from its body.

3.3 The No Choice Theorem and Human Self-Conception

As already evinced, the no choice theorem provides a rationale and a cover for pursuing a number of research objectives. I will demonstrate the theorem's relation to human self-conception – to the ontological question of coming into being. The theorem is extremely curious and unique because no one seems to have ever imagined or formed the question, i.e. as to whether or not one chooses to be born. What is more, "choice" itself is a deeply forgone – indeed, unquestioned conclusion.

3.4 Answering Two Initial Critiques

The most frequently levelled critique of the no choice theorem states: "It is not a theorem, but an axiom." Response: The theorem statement is very well formed; it is graciously and elegant. It is not an axiom, but is rather set in a plain and effortless axiomatic framework; a framework of logic and inference. It is furthermore pregnant with heuristic brevity and compactly rests within itself. It needs no shearing of inessential verbiage. It is gemlike and flawless. It therefore withstands the initial critique.

The second most frequency levelled critique is the accusation that "the theorem is absurd." But this criticism bifurcates depending directly on the degree of the relevant detractors' transmigratorial predisposition.

From the starkly non-transmigratorial disposed detractors, the critical trial statement is stated thus: "The position is absurd because you were not there to choose or birth or not." In defence of the theorem, I would merely point out that the criticism only goes to prove the theorem's clarity. But this also goes to edify the critic's dim disparagement with regard to the suggestion that "you" the person, the choosing agent, could not have existed prior to your birth. For this so-called flaw would better be served if it were characterized as "preposterous" rather than absurd.

However from the view of those grounded in the transmigratorio-ontological archetype, the no choice theorem provokes quite a different set of responses. Birth form this position is viewed with more complexity. It may be conceived as either primary (primmediate) or consequential/serial; in a gradually nuanced samsaric, transmigratory rebirth mode, or in the even more subtle metempsychotic sense. In this way the point (or time) of birth is not at all discernible. The "you" that was born may have always existed in a state of (what I would call) "infinite priority" vis-à-vis your present corporealization, your present sense of being-experience. An alternate, extensionary mode of this ontological archetypology would be premised on the notion that "you" were never born (have all along existed). Responding in defense, I would again reply this only further underscores the theorematic fact that you did not choose your birth, due precisely to the verity that you were never born (having have always existed).

3.5 Scientific Method and Scepticism

When the Greek philosopher Anaxarchus together with his protégé Pyrrho of Elis travelled to India in 326 BC in the train of Alexander's overland invasion, they mixed with the odd appearing gymnosophists or "naked philosophers, plus a whole menagerie of other ascetics known locally as yogins. These arguably earliest account of direct Indian influence on the Mediterranean World leaves us with one of the History of Philosophy's hoariest conundrums. Why upon Anaxarchus and Pyrrho's return did they found the first Greek school of Scepticism, and not a school of meditative mysticism as one might expect? Could it be that the visiting scholars mainly mixed with Indian materialists or members of an early Bauddha cult? Early accounts of Pyrrho's life describe him as 'always being in the same disposition.' It seems he liked setting off on journeys without letting anybody know where he was going, happy just to wander in cognito. But desert places were his favourite locations, where he rarely showed himself to other people. In fact, Pyrrho is described as a silent ascetic and among his friends he was revered as a saint along the lines of an arahant.

Further, if the roots of scepticism can be traced to South Asia, what are the ramifications with regard to the origin and intended sense of a scepticism, as well as to its primacy and functional demeanour within the workings of the scientific method?

02:35 | |

 

4 Appendid Notes

Notes A

1. A datum is not an object and cannot be objectified, as the datum is given (to) and not sought (by) the passive cognizer. The datum cannot be the object of the cognizer, rather (or only) the cognizer/researcher is the subject of the datum.

2. Do in fact, the theorematical (construals?) that cohere to the thinking around the no choice theorem (the question of primary human choice, etc.) lie beneath the structure of normal philosophical inquiry?

3. Why does it [the theorem] emerge as an issue of supreme philosophical puzzlement?

4. What evidence can we appeal to in order to justify our belief/claims or dismissal of the notion of primary human choice?

5. Apodictic: "beyond the shadows of all possible doubts" (S Tagore "Modes of Inquiry: Philosophy" 2/4).

6. "The normativity (relativity) of preference structures" (ibid, 6/1)

7. Is the infinitely layered and mutating philosophical space not just a "soft all-absorbing wall?"

8. Re. the absurdity or preposterousness of asking if you chose your birth or not. But no more so than asking if a person could choose her death. Still, the two questions are categorically different. Choosing death would rather be the choice to carry out an action that would result in your death (to pull the trigger, leap from the bridge, or take the lethal dose, etc). One would simply be making a "non-primary" choice in proximate or causal relation to the termination of ones existentiality.

9. The primacy of birth is very different. Otherwise, you would need to rephrase your question.

10. "To be born" is characteristically different than – and not the inverse of – "to be dead," "to (be) die." No, these are not supported by the same logic structures. Birth is primary (primmediate): death is wholly other. Death is terminative and so is the question (or would be also).

Notes B

1. A theorem is a formal statement of "self-evident truth."

2. Datum is by nature pure. The question of its relative or functional contamination (impurity) only emerges in correlation to the receiver, the researcher who transgresses protocol (in so far as that is possible) and/or, better said, contaminates his relation to the datum. Datum is by nature unimpeachable.

3. Datum is therefore in and of itself inherently pure and incorruptible. It is thus rendered not so much impure as simply disallowable or 'invalidated' by the "choiceful" agent.

4. Our researches are of nature, phenomena, and data.

5. That which is worthy of investigation offers its own research methodology. We cannot seek methods or tools outside of that. Thus in a natural self-hermetical mode the method conforms to its object of study.

6. Our procedure is not so much an assemblage (i.e. an induction), but much more a process of deduction or elimination, i.e. the detection and removal of the unnecessary, which releases us to move forward freely, to continuate. It is largely based on the recognition of innate facets.

7. The Pythagorean Theorem states: "in any right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse"; i.e. (3x3) + (4x4) = (5x5); or 9 + 16 = 25.

8. Right triangle: where one of the interior angles equals 90 degrees, and the "hypotenuse" as the longest side, and opposite the 90 degree angle.

9. "The fundamental theorem of philosophy."

10. Gödel's theorem.

11. Kant's theorem, that time and space are 'necessary forms of thought' (Critique of Pure Reason 1787).

Notes C

1. The no choice theorem has been twenty years in coming to me. Five years after its initial, inceptive 'Hobsonian' maneuver it was obliquely mooted through the following poser: "If you had choice, would you have chosen to be born?"

2. The question "if you had choice, would you have chosen to be born?" has one key implication here; that possessing choice may be a quality of a being superior to that of 'this human being world.' Two more interesting inferences may be drawn here:

a) That the choosing of birth (in)to this life would be a kind of "choosing down," if you will; i.e. the choice of an inferior or lower grade life, the abdication of choice.

b) Or conversely, that the faculty of choice may still be in the offing – a future fortuna to those of this world.

3. A theorem is a formal rule. The no choice theorem establishes the "formal rule" of our choiceless existence as we can know it in this life. The no choice theorem also poses (or implies) the conceivable situation where one may choose not to be born. What could be the conceivable nature of that pre-born or unborn state?

4. The sweeping dismissal of choice altogether has perhaps diverted some valuable attention from the interesting question of the plausibility of choosing no birth.

5. One more interesting question: What could the fortuna of choice possibly mean?

6. The "privileging of choice, birth, "

Notes D

1. Re. "choosing to be born, or not." Having no choice to be born is not the same as choosing not to be born. The no choice theorem, if true, establishes that "choice" as we know it is a myth; that there is no such animal. Might phrase number three of the conditional set-up statement be more accurately phrased therefore? Perhaps it could be formed as such: do humans 'have the choice' to be born, or not? [They do not. There is no choice.]

2. No indication here needs be offered as to how the choice function might be defined. It is enough for our immediate needs to simply mandate or postulate its existence.

3. That is, no indication is offered as to how the 'choice function' would even be defined; its existence is simply mandated. Another point here that needs clarification is a phrase (no. 2) of the conditional set-up statement, which also partially comprises the theorem. It is the phrase: "choosing to be born , or not." Note then that 'choosing to be born, or not' is not the same as 'choosing not to be born' (see???). For it could be (mis)construed as posing the possibility that one could choose non-birth, i.e. as the choice to not choose to be born. Thus, the phrase (no. 2) would more accurately be phrased, 'do humans have the choice to be born, or not? However this is may also be construed as being redundant, as having no choice precludes the possibility of the optional choice of either choosing or not choosing. Yet clarity returns when reminded that it is real, i.e. "primary" choice that the conditional set-up statement effectively lays bare. In other words, primary choice – if conceivable at all – would have to be the choice to cause or initiate ones own birth.

4. Maybe the no choice theorem is more than a theorem.

5. What makes, for example, the Pythagorean theorem "a theorem," per se. is to a large degree the interesting, clear-cut, well-formed and valuable corollaries that readily derive from its body.

6. What are the interesting spin offs from the Pythagorean theorem?

Notes E (phrasal ideas/terms)

1. Formal statements… Stated formally, the theorem says: ...

2. To get a feeling for the statement, we will start with an example...

3. ...violates the standard way mathematical theorems are encapsulated. [(since) there is no apparent (standard) manner in which philosophical – or let us say, non-mathematical – theorems are encapsulated.

4. Rearranging that equation, it is clear that: ...

5. Theorems are statements for which the fact is that a proof exists, without any 'label' depending on the proof.

6. They may be applied without knowledge of the proof; and indeed if that's not the case the statement is faulty [from "existence theorem"].

7. 'modulus of continuity' meaning that the existential content of the assertion of continuity is a promise that can always be kept.

8. integration / differentiation.

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