Sophism, philosophy, or science?

It doesn’t matter whether you call it sophism, philosophy, or science: you always have smoothtalkers and con artists that infiltrate. We used to allow for part of it, but we simply have to stand up and say: “No!” There are two guiding principles in terms of sophism that apply that we need to stick to: reason and experiment.

Reason focuses on induction, deduction, and reduction to the absurd. Induction means that you need to prove there’s a recursive step that reduces to itself, and you can also trace it to a proven base step. Deduction means that you need to show, given certain assumptions and rules, this leads to certain conclusions, given specific subject and circumstance. Reduction to the absurd means that you show your argument holds, because the opposite may never hold. Avoid:

Experiments lead to results: verification or contradiction. When you don’t get the expected or hoped for result, sophistically, this is still a result. It either doesn’t work that way at all or only within a limited scope, meaning that a different context applies.

Also, in order to prove something you need to be able to define it. If you can’t define it, if it isn’t clear what it is, then your search commences with defining it. When asked to prove something that has never been defined, ask what it is they mean for you to prove, not just in name, but also in terms of what it is.

For instance, magic, when undefined can’t be proven or disproven. When you define it as “Something out of nothing!” than you can disprove it.

Nobility, reason, and an integral view of reality?

People that go against reason, acting without evidence or against evidence, that don’t search for evidence and prohibit the search for evidence, lack an integral view of reality.

Those that have an integral view of reality, non-statistically researching and investigating every case, strive for people to live their lives freely, healthily, safely, according to their own abilities, also providing them with the means to flourish. This means providing food, education, and when desired by those that seek to compete, the basic means to start their own liberal business. (Start small, build it up as desired.)

People with an integral view of reality used to be deemed noble, which has nothing to do with heritage. Their parents weren’t necessarily noble, nor can we guarantee the children of noble people are. Those with the analytical skills to prove facts handled the analysis with the help of those noble people that were methodical and practical enough to help gather evidence. Only with closing evidence of guilt would judgment than be passed.

This basic principal of nobility we should in a current-day context examine in the light of having an integral view of reality, which is a basic necessity for people to handle their job responsibly. Those that do strive to live according to the law and are always willing to trust those that have an integral view of reality, that themselves to some extent lack an integral not view but understanding of reality, should be deemed friends and of equal standing.