Identity of the Knower and the Known: The 'I'

The question is often asked, "What is the 'I'?"

The "I" is the identity of the human consciousness, called the "knower", as it distinguishes itself from that which not part of its identity.  It comes down to something called the "ego-centric predicament":

"The epistemological predicament of a knowing mind which, confined to the circle of its own ideas, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to escape to a knowledge of an external world..." http://www.ditext.com/runes/e.html 

When it escapes to the knowledge of that external world, what is left is the identity of the knower, and the knower calls itself "I".

 This is concomitant to the "subject-object problem", [1] [2] which arises from the premise that the world consists of objects, things which are observed through perception and become the "known". Consciousness is defined by its awareness of these objects; a consciousness with no awareness of objects cannot be said to be consciousness at all since consciousness is consciousness "of something". The "subject" of knowledge is the individual knower considered as an act of awareness of an "object". 

Thus, the contents of consciousness come to be known to the consciousness as different from the objects themselves. The subject is not the apple nor any other thing of which it is conscious: that is the object. The subject is the knower.

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What is a Belief System?

In any belief system, "system" is the operative word. A "system" must be functionally integrated in its metaphysics, its epistemology, its ethics, etc. This makes it into what is called "justified true belief". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justified_t… A system that is not functionally integrated will contain contradictions.
 
Justified true belief is also called the "tripartite" theory: "The theory states that if we believe something, have a justification for believing it, and it is true, then our belief is knowledge." [emphasis added] http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/tripartite…

The part about a belief being "true" is also called the Correspondence Theory of Truth, which Aristotle and most other philosophers after him accepted as the proper standard for justified belief. Basically it says "p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact". http://www.iep.utm.edu/truth/#H3 

But to be free of contradictions in any belief system--whether about going to the library, or about whether God exists or about what kind of God he/she is--it cannot be open to having holes punched it by other theories. Of course you can decide those other theories are wrong; but what if you see the logic and realize you have holes? You can close them up by listening to the criticism.

Hole-punching theories are called "defeasors". To have a "system" that is free of contradictions, you must be able to defeat the defeasors. This is called an "undefeated justified true belief." http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~jnagel/333h…

Only when you believe your own system to be undefeasable can you have complete confidence in its integrity and its veracity.

Are there any such undefeated belief systems? Only the ones you believe in. Buddhists punch holes in Objectivism; Objectivists punch holes in Christianity; Christianity punches holes in monism; determinism punches non-determinism which is not necessarily the same as the belief in free-will; non-reductive theories punch holes in reductive theories; etc.

All of them are examples of belief systems. But they are based on what is known by the knower in the sense that the knower "knows P"; and we all "know" different things. This doesn't make all of them wrong. To the extent that they can be justified they are true.

But to the extent that you can defeat them with your own argument, they are not "justified".

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Objective Moral Standards

The first time the word "objective" was apparently used was "1610s, originally in the philosophical sense of 'considered in relation to its object'".

Objective moral truths are in relation to the object, rather than subjective in relation to pragmatic or other types of ends.

The object which such objective truths are in relation to is the standard that makes morality necessary: the life of Man both as species and as individual. This is set according to what Aristotle called "Man qua Man", or to put it another way, what is it about man that makes morals necessary?

It cannot be simply the preservation of the species--Hitler was doing that by preserving what he believed were Aryans. What Aristotle, Aquinas, Wm. of Occam, Averroes, and other rational thinkers could not conceive of didn't become a concrete idea until Jefferson and others like Madison and Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine read the works of Locke and Rousseau.

Locke, along with Rousseau, described a civilization in which government is "by the consent of the governed." This led to the American realization that there was such a thing as "individual sovereignty." This was logical, since to give consent to a government to do for you what is best not to do vigilante style, and what is best for "the general welfare", and what leaves you the most time on your hands for such things as living---to give consent you must first have that which you are giving away.

"Locke's theory of natural rights was, indeed, the theory of natural rights to which the Declaration would refer..."Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

It is individual sovereignty, until the 18th century only a vague idea in the minds of freethinkers and libertarians, that is the source of the need for moral standards. "Objective truths" are those that correspond to man's nature as the rational animal: he must be given the freedom to utilize that rationality as nature has given it to him.

But more than that, it is that each man must be protected from force and coercion that would prevent him from utilizing that gift of individual sovereignty that nature gave him.

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Obama, Jindal, Federal Interference and the Tenth Amendment

Bobby Jindal is wrong. The Governor of Louisiana has been properly criticizing the Federal government for not allowing Louisiana to follow its own plans to protect its own waters and its own shore lines from the mess created by BP's oil spill.

"The Coast Guard told us yesterday – after weeks of reviewing our plan that they approved a single segment of just two miles to see if the sand boom works. This is another example of too little too late. We expressed this frustration to the President..." wrote Jindal on his official website. 

Jindal is wrong for allowing the Federal government to stand in the way of Louisiana, who will be the big loser, if Obama doesn't lose bigger politically speaking. But even political losses pale in comparison to what Louisiana is losing in natural resources, fish, wildlife, wetlands, and the industry of everyone in Louisiana; when the fishing industry comes to a halt, the Louisiana economy will begin to tank. Already the tourism industry including local restaurants that rely solely on tourism during the summer months is almost non-existent.

No, Bobby Jindal is wrong for not telling the Federal government to screw itself, and do what Louisiana knows it has to do. This would not only be the right thing for Louisiana, and for Jindal politically, because he would come out looking like David against Goliath. He would come out smelling like a rose, while the Obama administration would stink like the oil-drenched waters that could eventually ride the current all the way up the Eastern Seaboard after ruining the Florida coast, industries, and tourism.

But Jindal will come out smelling like a rose in the 2012 Presidential race, in which he is certain to be one of the front-runners. All the Republicans will smell better than Obama on the environmental front (let alone on the issues of Iran, the Afghan Presidential election and the Presidency itself, and jobs, jobs, jobs.)

This issue of the Obama administration telling the States what they can and cannot do to protect themselves, including investigating Arizona's new illegal-immigrant law, brings the Tenth Amendment issue closer to the showdown between Federal power and State's rights in the 21st Century.

Jindal might not win the Republican nomination, but he and the other Republicans will have a lot of ammunition to use against Obama and his policy wonks come election time, including this fall during the Congressional elections.

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