This publication is the third part of the series, the beginning of which is here . If you are not familiar with the beginning of the story, then you may not understand at all what this text does here.

The situation is, in fact, ambiguous. On the one hand, this chapter is an absolutely necessary element of the construction of an information philosophy, but on the other hand, the stated material has no direct relation to information technologies. If you are not sure what exactly now is the mood to plunge into the outlandish and viscous topic of philosophical justifications, it is possible to scroll further. Then, when reading the following chapters (when they are posted), if you suddenly find out what this “situational-dependent rationale” is, with which I do terrible things, you can return to this chapter.

Chapter 3. Foundations

In an amicable way, it was necessary to begin a story with a reason. Without them, the previous reasoning turned out to be slightly suspended in the void. But if I started with a reason, then the reader, most likely, would not be obvious why such a strange creepiness is needed, and as a result this most important material would remain unassimilated.

What are bases, and why are they needed?

Philosophical foundations are a tool to evaluate statements for their reliability and, therefore, applicability when the cost of a mistake is too high.

Everything that we can assert can be clearly divided into three classes of statements (for details and justification, see Ludwig Wittgenstein in The Logical and Philosophical Treatise):

1. Tautologies are statements that are always true regardless of any circumstances. The peculiarity of tautologies is that their area of ​​absolute truthfulness is tightly closed to their own domain of definition. For example, the statement “rain will go or will not go” is always true, but it doesn’t tell us anything about whether to expect rain today. Tautologies are not necessarily useless. For example, all logic and all mathematics are in their essence tautologies, but when you add non-tautological statements to them, they become valuable working tools.
   
   
2. Self - contradictions are statements that are always false, regardless of any circumstances. They also cannot be used to determine whether it will rain or not.
   
   
3. Facts are statements that are true and false. If (that is, when) the fact is true, and we know it, we can use it productively, especially if we correctly flavor it with some useful tautology such as logic or mathematics. If (that is, when) the fact is false, but we consider it to be true, we incur losses.

The situation is quite dramatic. We can indulge ourselves with pure tautologies, reveling in their truth, but there will be no benefit to us from this, except for self-gratification. We can entertain the public by self-contradiction, but we will not get any useful information from them. All our useful knowledge about anything is facts that, in principle, do not possess the property of being absolutely reliable.

It turns out that all our useful knowledge is unreliable, and all our reliable knowledge is useless in itself, and it becomes useful only when we add something unreliable to it? Yes, it turns out that way. This state of affairs does not suit us at all, if only because the statement that all our useful knowledge is unreliable is in itself tautological, and any productive use of it happens only when we add to it the “applying” fact. And adding a fact gives the statement that useful knowledge is unreliable, a property of fact. That is, the ability to be true and false.

If we formulate the task as “to find a way to identify a situation in which a statement about the impossibility of useful knowledge to be reliable” is false, then this will be the task of searching for philosophical grounds.

The most popular ways to get a reason:

1. Reaching consensus. If everyone agrees that the water is wet and the earth is flat, then we consider this to be reliable facts. A sort of shameless exploitation of human conformism, especially "effective" in combination with violence.
   
   
2. Finding a reputable source. This approach can be particularly clearly illustrated by the example of “book” religions - Judaism (Torah and other books, the truth of which is not disputed), Christianity (Bible), Islam (Quran), and others like them, including communism (works of the classics of Marxism- Leninism). The weakness of this approach is that the more facts are accepted into the bases, the less total reliability is obtained as a result, and then there is an urgent need for interpreters, whose activities inflate and weaken the bases even more. Accumulated contradictions, as a rule, have to be resolved through violence.
   
   
3. Finding a compact primary fact. The experience of such gaining is particularly well described by Rene Descartes in his Discourse on the Method .... Bravely plunging into total skepticism, Descartes discovered that the only indisputable fact that he has is “I think, therefore I exist.” Building a huge and majestic construction of reliable knowledge on this seemingly ridiculous foundation was an extremely delicate, complex and tedious task, but, admittedly, world science coped well with it. What is interesting, without the use of violence to achieve consensus.

Before moving on, I will not deny myself the pleasure of demonstrating that Cartesian "I think, therefore I am," for all its obvious truth, is not a tautology, but a fact that may be false. Suppose I made a device that tracks if I'm still alive or not. As soon as he recognizes that I am finally dead, he will send me my email address book with the following content: “Hello, dear friends! I regret to inform you that I <have substituted the date and time> have died, and from now on I definitely do not think and do not exist. With respect and wishes for a long life, A.M. ” The existing technology is already enough to make such a device. If everything went the way I would have arranged, then when my final would come, my correspondents would receive a letter from me (precisely from me, because the device is just a means of deferred delivery), which contains my statement that I do not think and do not exist. And in this particular case, this statement would be true. In the circumstance that I, by my action (the manufacture of the instrument), reach out to a future that I cannot reach to myself in a living form — there is nothing strange in it. To reach out to something in space (for example, through a telephone) or in time is the most common thing for us. Thus, “I think, therefore I exist” is precisely a fact that can be both true and false. But this fact is always true when it is declared by the subject in its own "here and now."

Much to our regret, from the “Cartesian I think, I exist” not all that we need to substantiate the provisions of the philosophy of information can be derived. Some things can be deduced (for example, the concept of an information spacesuit and the arguments accompanying this concept about the limitations of our own world), but this is not enough for us. Even the “signal-context” construction cannot be derived from “thinking, existing” since the very fact of thinking includes the reality of all contexts existing inside thinking. Forcing out contexts beyond the brackets of reasoning (into “thinking”) leads to the fact that the entire information phenomenon has to be carried into a signal, and there it is hopelessly re-identified. This, by the way, suggests some thoughts about why the question of searching for the material foundations of consciousness has become an unsolvable task for the existing scientific paradigm. In addition, the statement “not only I think”, which is necessary at least to consider the act of communication, cannot be derived from “I think, I exist”. We have no choice but to replace the usual and cozy “I think, I exist” to invent another principle of searching for the bases of reliable knowledge.

As a simple test to test the reliability of the grounds, you can use the so-called "crazy argument." I call the “crazy argument” the assumption that everything that happens around me: my whole life, all the events, everything with whom I communicate is all the fruit of my most severe mental disorder, and in fact I am nothing but completely kooky indescribable creature, screwed with straps to the bed in a psychiatric hospital in a completely different way than I can imagine, arranged by the universe. If the rationale does not stop working even with such a monstrous assumption, it is reliable. Cartesian "I think, I exist" maintains this "crazy argument", and, consequently, any theory directly based on it can withstand it. In search of an alternative method of justification, we just need to achieve the same result.

Situational-dependent grounds

The main idea that I will use to derive the foundations of the philosophy of information will be to abandon the search for Absolute Truths. Instead, it is proposed to build on the problem being solved and each time display sets of bases, the reliability of which will be purely local, solely within the framework of the problem being solved. This approach is nothing more than the implementation of an instrumental approach to philosophizing, applied to the problem of finding grounds. It is necessary to pay for this pleasure by the fact that as grounds we will receive not one single product perfect in all respects, which is worth perpetuating on the tablets, but a tool that allows to get products according to needs, the perfection of which will also take place, but it will always be perfect. purely local. Using the usual analogy, we refuse to search for the perfect fixing tool, and in a situation where we have screws, we will be able to justify the suitability of a screwdriver, and if there are nails, a hammer will become a suitable tool.

Imagine that you in the supermarket scored products, and now stand in line at the cashier. While there is an opportunity, one can philosophize about the illusiveness of what is happening. For example, about the fact that both the supermarket, and the girl at the checkout, and the purchased products - all this is nothing more than a combination of signals that come to our brain through the visual, auditory and other nerves. You can also speculate that money is only a convention, and from the point of view of the true structure of the universe are rare nonsense. But the queue is coming, and instead of abstract reasoning about the illusiveness of money, the question “Did I not forget my wallet at home?” Becomes much more relevant. When we are inside the sale and purchase situation , the general question “Does money exist?” Receives an unequivocal answer “unequivocally yes” and is replaced with a more specific question “do they exist in a pocket or at home?”. So, inside the situation of buying and selling, we can always add to our true “fact, I think, exist” the fact that “money exists”, which is equally indisputable in this particular moment. Of course, we can continue our metaphysical research and, ignoring the salesperson’s questioning look, do not go inside the sale and purchase situation, as a result of which we go home without food.

Imagine that you are participating in a chess tournament. If you really came to participate, and not only to troll those around you with abstruse metaphysics, then the condition of the chess tournament entering the situation will be recognition of the existence of not only your own self, but also the existence of chess and the rules of the game in them. As well as the existence of the tournament and its rules. You may be slowly trying to break the rules (a powerful smartphone with a good chess program immediately raises the level to the master of sports) and maybe it will even get away with it. But this will not in the least annul either the fact of the existence of rules, nor the fact [unsuccessful attempt] of their violation.

The principle of situational-dependent justification lies in the fact that if in some situation we try to talk about it and try to make this speaking meaningful, we can safely include the fact of the situation itself, the fact of being inside it in the set of primary facts , the fact of speaking (thinking) about it and the facts of the existence of those entities, without which this situation is impossible .

It may seem that, by opening the way to situationally dependent primary facts, we are giving the green light to intellectual licentiousness, which will inevitably lead to the possibility of justifying anything. Yes, situationally-dependent primary facts are a dangerous tool, but it becomes dangerous only when illiterately used. There are two simple rules that make using this tool useful and safe:

1. When the primary fact is successfully adopted and very productively used for one situation, it may be tempting to slightly absolutize it and use it in reasoning about other situations. This is not necessary. The primary fact should not go beyond the situation or set of situations for which it is derived. For example, even if a chess tournament has a cash prize fund, the inclusion of the concept of “money” in this situation, which is introduced for sale and purchase situations, is not correct, because in the “cash game” situation, this same money does not play the same the role that is assigned to them in the sale. Even though these are essentially the same paper currency notes. But if there are contractual paid parties in the tournament, then purchase-sale appears in the situation of the tournament, and then talking about “those” money as one of the primary facts becomes relevant.
   
   
2. Do not recognize as primary those facts that, although desirable within the situation, but without which the situation is still possible. For example, I can speak about the date of birth of a person in terms of the signs of the zodiac (for this, I have to take them as primary facts), but this will in no way prevent me as the main working hypothesis to consider all astrology from beginning to end just a literary genre , the essence of which lies in the writing of obscene pseudo-prophetic texts.

Careless handling of any methods of philosophical justification gives a disgusting result. Even the conceptual beauty and ideological purity of the fact “I think, I exist” did not prevent Rene Descartes from immediately introducing some obvious, but very far from solid, assumptions, and as a result to receive a “proof” of the existence of God very far from beauty and purity.

Despite the wealth of situations and, accordingly, the primary facts derived from them, this technique is resistant to the “crazy argument.” Indeed, my existence inside the situation “supermarket, groceries, cash, money” implies the existence of the primary fact “money” regardless of whether I physically have a place in the queue at the cashier of a supermarket, or is it just my sick mind.

The method of philosophical substantiation tied to the idea “inside the situation” is a logical consequence of the instrumental approach to philosophizing, that is, the basis of the method described in the introduction. If the reasoning were undertaken by us to establish absolute truth (“the most general laws of the world order”), then the situational-dependent rationale, of course, would be completely unsuitable. But if our activity is aimed at developing tools suitable for solving specific tasks, then we quite have the right to push aside from the fact of the existence of these tasks, and from the very fact of our need for suitable tools.

Application of situational justifications

Each time, for each specific situation, it is too expensive to derive the bases “from scratch” and build all the chains. Especially given the fact that situations tend to change almost every minute. Therefore, it makes sense to immediately develop a set of techniques that allow you to derive statements that, although they will not claim to be absolute truths (we had to abandon them as soon as we became involved in the situation), but would still be applied quite widely.

Mining Facts

Suppose we find out that for a particular situation a certain fact is primary. From this it follows that if we scatter away from this fact and decide to assume that “nonsense is all, this does not really exist,” then we automatically close the opportunity for ourselves to adequately consider the specific situation for which this fact is primary, as well as all her kind. The next time we dismiss something else, then more, and eventually we come to the fact that the range of issues for which we can have primary facts, pulled into a point, degenerated and actually ceased to exist. And all this is due to the fact that for the primary fact found for one situation, we just found another situation in which this fact can never be primary.

Consider the following two statements:

1. "Cinderella fairy made a carriage from a pumpkin"
2. "Cinderella fairy made a carriage from the head of stepmother"

In order to be able to say at least something about these sets of letters, we must accept the existence of Cinderella, fairies, and other highly questionable things as primary facts. On the one hand, we, of course, remember that these are all inventions, but on the other hand we can say for sure that the first statement is true, and the second is false. But how can the fact of the interaction of two non-existent objects be true? Yes, of course, in the world that we call real, the same Cinderella, driving around on a pumpkin carriage, never existed. But is this a sufficient reason to forever deny Cinderella to the existence in the strictest way possible, thereby closing tightly the opportunity to discuss the plot of this very good fairy tale? It is simply unwise. It would be wiser to realize that there are a number of situations (they can be conventionally denoted as “the world of Cinderella tales”) in which the existence of that Cinderella and her friendly fairy is the primary fact, and outside of this world (even in the world of tales about three pigs a) this fact is not even a plausible hypothesis.

The case, of course, is not limited to Cinderella. Under the knife of negation described here, such things as soul, life, thinking, meaning, purpose, freedom, love, and a huge list of things that we could talk about in what correct way would be not only useful, but absolutely vital.

Extraction of primary facts works according to the following algorithm:

1. We consider the situation in which we need to be able to build meaningful statements.
2. We calculate the primary facts that occur in this situation.
3. We learn to operate with these primary facts, without reflecting on the fact that “but in fact, all this does not exist”. There is no single, eternal, and unchanging "matter itself." There are situations in which we fall and within which we must be able to navigate.

And, of course, it is very desirable to be able not to drag in cinderellas, fairies, devils, gods, and even freedom, thinking, goals and meanings there (that is, inside of those situations) where they are not.

A separate, very serious nuance lies in the fact that from the essence of the situation it is possible to extract not only primary reliable facts, but also primary unreliable facts. That is, those who are obliged within the situation to have the logical possibility of being both true and false. Consider, for example, the situation when I try to find out what the weather will be like tomorrow. Specifically, will it rain all day? Primarily reliable (true) facts in this situation will be “tomorrow will surely come” and “some weather will definitely be”. But the primary reliable facts are not quite everything that I have inside the situation in question. My activity in searching for an answer to my question is built around the fact that while I am inside this situation, I do n’t know whether it will rain tomorrow. The existence of a question and the uncertainty of the answer to it are the logically necessary conditions for being inside the search answer situation.

Thus, a set of initially reliable (true or false) facts and a set of initially unreliable facts can be attributed to the situation. By the criterion of "reliability", a clear and unambiguous separation of the sets of facts within a situation passes. The fact inside the situation is present either as a necessary statement or as an open question.

A very interesting case is an open mathematical problem. In general, mathematics is essentially a tautology, in which all statements present are either absolutely true or absolutely false. But there are a number of statements about which we do not know whether they are true or false. For example, now one of such problems is the Riemann hypothesis about the zeros of the zeta function. Due to the tautological nature of mathematics, the answer, of course, is present, and it is one. But he is now unknown. Therefore, the best mathematical minds of the world are fighting over this riddle, looking for this answer. They are satisfied with any of the options - and "yes, true" and "no, false." In the “search for proof” situation, the hypothesis about the zeros of the zeta function is an open question, but as soon as the proof is found, the hypothesis will cease to be a hypothesis, and this statement will either become a proven theorem, or a proven theorem will be its negation.

Search for situations

Suppose, through the operation of extracting facts, we received a certain statement with the obligatory postscript “initially reliable” or “open question”. Now we can start the process in the opposite direction and calculate the situations in which this fact is present. If we have learned to operate with the obtained facts, it means that we have learned to reason adequately in all situations in which this fact is present. Moving from facts to situations, one can even find not just individual situations, but whole classes of situations. As a result, any theory that has a justification through the primary facts found will be reliable inside any situation relating to a class.

It seems to me that the practice of artificially constructing primary facts for finding situations in which these facts are present exactly as given seems rather curious and reasonably useful. , , : «, , » , . , , , , .

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