0722  What the scientist misses is that speaking in the way of natural philosophy turns out to be crucial for thinking.  The typical person talks about material, efficient, formal and final causes.  The scientist labors to account for such talk with truncated material and efficient causes (that is, material and efficient causes shorn of any metaphysical attributes).

0723 For example, the Torches of Freedom campaign is designed to induce women to start smoking (hidden agenda).  Several gals step out of the crowd during the Easter parade and light up cigarettes in front of photographers, who happen to be there to capture the moment in pictures. What a newsworthy event!  Matter touches base with the presence of a cigarette.  Form associates to what the cigarette is supposed to do.

The scrappy player may talk about a variety of causes.  Where does she get that cigarette (material)?  How is she at the Easter parade (efficient)?  Why is she here at the Easter parade instead of hotel that allows smoking (final)?  I did not think that a cultivated person would light up a cigarette in this type of crowd.  It’s like drinking in public (formal).

0724 These typical comments_2a may be sampled_1b and analyzed_2b in order to produce a valuation_2b that a cigarette company_3c might pay for.  The truncated material cause_2b is that this woman can afford to do whatever she wants to do.  The truncated efficient cause_2b is that smoking is liberation.  These causes explain the Easter parade event, splashed across newspapers the next day.

Plus, these causes are more real than anything that the scrappy player can infer from reports and narratives.  After all, no one reveals the truth.  The Easter parade event is staged.

0725 Yes, it seems that the experts in psychometrics are missing something about how speaking is tied to thinking.  What does the elucidation of Aristotle’s four causes do?  Talk about Aristotle’s four causes places a thing or event₂, an actuality₂, manifesting as matter [substance] form₂, into a category-based nested form.

0726 Understanding consists in a completed category-based nested form.

This point is foundational in Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024), by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Parts of this work are available in Razie Mah’s blog for April through June, 2024.

0727 So, what does this imply?

It implies that the scrappy player_a is open to understanding and that the expert_b is not.

The scrappy player’s understanding opens a cognitive space to immaterial causalities (formal and final).

Expert modeling constricts its cognitive space to material and physical causalities (material and efficient, divorced from formal and final).

If I associate immaterial causalities with the spiritual world and material causalities with the um… material world, then I arrive at an adjustment of the ongoing sequence of figures.

This adjustment keys into a figure in chapter 10 of Stiles’s book.

0728 This figure is not a precise reproduction.  However, it is suggestive.

The scrappy player_a may be a theologian, a natural philosopher, or someone trying to figure out what on earth is going on.  The scrappy player is interested in understanding.  Understanding entails all four of Aristotle’s causes.  So, it seems like the scrappy player wants to know the big picture, as well as the details.  Big picture items, such as final and formal causes, informs the scrappy player of directions and designs.

The expert cannot be a theologian or a natural philosopher, because the psychometric sciences are devoted to figuring out valuation in a world bounded by the intersection of capitalism and socialism.  Capitalism and socialism are all about our material world.  Both “-ism” claims to be fact-based, data-driven and scientific.

0729 The scrappy player_a and the expert_b levels are fundamentally disjointed.  The spiritual world cannot be objectified as the material world.

This is not the same as a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena.

Or is it?

0730 The uncertainty is telling because the expert claims to know what the scrappy player does not know.

So I ask, “If the scrappy player knows what the expert knows, then would the scrappy player be an expert?”

No, because the expert follows the positivist intellect’s rule that metaphysics is not allowed.  And, that is not the same as being trained in the performance of specialized tasks, which is what the scrappy player calls, “expertise”.

0731 Final causes (intentions) and formal causes (designs) are metaphysical.  So, the expert concentrates on the material world and is happy explaining how what people say about final and formal causation is scientifically accounted for by truncated material and efficient causes.  “Truncated” means “divorced from final and formal causalities”.

0732 Meanwhile, the scrappy player wants to “get ahead” by becoming an expert in performing material and instrumental tasks, so he enters the realm of expertise by taking courses and getting credentialed.  But, that is not what expert_b level is all about.  The expert_b level is devoted to producing models of observations and measurements of what people say in order to ascertain a mysterious, yet materialist, value_2b, standing at the intersection of capitalism and socialism.

0733 What is even more confusing is that the valuations_2b produced by postmodern expertise_3b have material and instrumental ends_1c that offer opportunities_1c for the one of scientism_3c to make an empirio-normative judgment_2c, which often enough, is an operation sheepskin type of event_2c.

In other words, the empirio-normative judgment_2c is actionable.  The judgment unfolds into a nested form and constitutes an event that engages what people think_2a and what people say_2a.  And off we go again.

0734 Sign-relations, like category-based nested forms, are necessarily metaphysical, as well as physical.  The interventional sign-relation that is triggered with the execution of an empirio-normative judgment plays a significant role in the operation of the post-truth interscope.  For example, it explains why events (SO_i), scripted by operation sheepskin to engage our reason_3a,1a (SI_i), seem to involve a hidden agenda (SV_i).

0735 Indeed, the scrappy player_3a,1a (SI_i) tunes into the interventional sign-relation when he realizes that everything that the corporate media is talking about (SO_i) seems to have a hidden agenda (SV_i).

Of course, the trick is that any hidden agenda (SV_i) only manifests as an interventional sign-object (SO_i).  The interventional sign-vehicle (SV_i) cannot be witnessed  So, the feeling that there is a hidden agenda (what I think_2a) cannot be objectified by what people are talking about (what I say_2a) for more than one reason.  One is the dyadic structure of Kant’s slogan.  Two is the nature of the interventional sign-relation, which is not apparent to experts_3b.  Three is the distinction between noumenon and phenomena replaying itself as a distinction between the content and perspective levels of the post-truth interscope.

In sum, the scrappy player_3a,1a associates to a noumenon and the one of scientism_3c is inextricably dependent on materialist analysis_2b of phenomena_1b by the psychometric sciences_3b.

0736 So here is a picture of the final adjustment for a segment that starts on point 0708 and applies to chapter ten, titled “Planet Vulnerable”.

0737 Does the passage from “What is the content-level actuality?” to “What about domination?” constitute a journey into the unnerving logic of the interscope for the post-truth condition?

The journey starts with a denial and confirmation of the post-truth condition, itself.

The non-compliant scrappy player denies (or ignores) the condition.

The compliant person on the content level conforms to (or embraces) the condition.

0738 If I confront the denier and the confirmer with a simple question, “What is a thing?”, then the denier, who is like a natural philosopher or a theologian, begins with a classical ancient Greek division that is today, discredited.

How so?

Today, no scientist observes and measures matter.  No scientist worries about form.  Neither of these real elements can be mathematically or mechanically modeled.  They are not phenomena.  They are belong to the noumenon.

0739 For those who deny the post-truth condition, Aristotle’s premodern hylomorphe, captures the esse_ce (substantiating matter) and essence (substantiated form) of Peirce’s postmodern category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  For nomenclature, the contiguity is placed in brackets.  For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, matter and form are real elements.  [Substance] labels the contiguity.  So, the hylomorphe is matter [substance] form.

0740 If I confront the denier and the confirmer with the question, “How do we approach a thing?”, then the answers differ.

The denier admits that he is interested in the noumenon.  Indeed, he will go so far as to say that the gestalt recognition of a noumenon is one of humanity’s adaptations.  Aristotle identifies our capacity to instantly recognize both presence (matter) and form (shape) because that is what we evolved to do.

The confirmer insists that scientists are only really interested in phenomena, the observable and measurable facets of their noumenon.  So, noumena are really only useful for book-keeping.  A noumenon certifies that observed and measured phenomena correspond to the same item, itself.  So, what corresponds to the item, itself?  It depends on the type of science.  For natural scientists, noumena are natural things and processes.  For social sciences, noumena are human things and processes.  For the psychometric sciences, noumena are ones who deny the post-truth interscope.

Ha.  Just kidding.

0741 Or, am I serious?

Are the ones who deny the post-truth interscope the subjects of psychometric inquiry?

0742 The process of engaging the (now “scientifically” discredited, but conclusions are complicated because of associations with Peirce’s secondness) classical Greek structure called the “hylomorphe” produces discussion concerning material, efficient, formal and final causes.  The engagement goes with what the denier thinks.

What the denier says may be monitored as phenomena that support observations and measurements for models that account for why the denier is speaking in terms of Aristotle’s four causes.

0743 Consistent with the mystery of the psychometric sciences_2b, these models will evaluate the denier’s speech in terms of capitalist ideation, such as the willingness to pay a high price for information that the client regards as “true”, and in terms of social ideation, such as persistent neglect of the community of experts addressing the nature of things in the post-truth condition.

0744 Yet, there will be something missing in the psychometric valuation_2b of the denier’s locutions_2a.

If Aristotle’s hylomorphe₂ does indeed correspond the realm of actuality₂ as characterized by Peirce’s category of secondness, and if Peirce identifies a class of purely relational structures, whereby thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness (or normal context₃ brings actuality₂ into relation with possibility₁), and if this currently unanticipated class of triadic relations is real enough to serve as the actuality that is independent of the adapting speciesunderlying the human niche, and if scientists cannot observe and measure triadic relations, then the denier accesses a legitimate knowledge domain that cannot be modeled by capitalist or socialist critical theory.

Now, that is one long convoluted sentence.

0745 Consequently, the figure in chapter 10 of Stiles’s book, titled “Domains of Knowledge”, describes the emergence of a legitimate domain of knowledge that belongs to the scrappy player_a level (pertaining to the denier of the post-truth condition, the one who thinks that “success_2a” means “getting ahead_2a” and the subject of the psychometric sciences).

Furthermore, that legitimate domain of post-post-truth knowledge may be described using ancient terminology, so that Kant’s slogan is mockingly parodied by a post-postmodern formulation that ridicules capitalist and socialist expertise.

What is the slogan of the denier?

The spiritual world [cannot be objectified as] the material world.

On one hand, Kant is vindicated by this parody, this mockery, that is intimated in the very need to posit the noumenon in the first place.

0746 On the other hand, this slogan forces all those confirming the post-truth condition to prepare ways for the execution of a defensive empirio-normative judgment.

Defensive?

Well, the best defense is a good offense.

0747 Here is a picture of the empirio-normative judgment_2c, that is necessitated_1c by the fact that the scrappy player_3a,1amay be on the verge of ideating a legitimate domain of knowledge that cannot be reduced_1b to the scientific paradigms_2bof experts_3b on capitalism and socialism.

The scrappy players_2a who deny the post-truth condition must be observed and measured_1b then modeled_2b in such a fashion that the scrappy player_3a,1a will be overwhelmed and will capitulate to the various normative narratives_2c that are funded by the ones of scientism_3c.

0748 Necessity characterizes the opportunity_1c.  Yet, the one of scientism_3c is not disturbed.

After all, this is the Fourth Battle of The Enlightenment Gods (1989 to present) and no other enlightenment god is left standing.

Here is a diagram of the corresponding empirio-normative judgment_2c.