65
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_8
Chapter 8
Paradoxical Frontiers
8.1 Intra-Fallacy
A lasting paradox courts any number of intra-fallacies, as the computational facility
of our own brains must resort to physics and arcane mathematical tangents for
explanations; but physics and the mind are not conversationally compatible, the
interconnects being removed from each object of respective attention, thus undermining the possibility, for example, of the creation of a garden, the writing of a
letter, or the exercise of free will in the analysis of a fallacy. How do we therefore
proceed? How do we do anything?
Neither data nor explanations, as a species of knowledge, have ever actually had
much sway over substantive human behavior. Consider the fall-out from such a
condition? Causality as fickle as all causes and consequences; information volatile,
ephemeral, no more staying power than any other spontaneous eruptions of neurons.
We know nothing, and explanations only accent our dependence on nothingness.
Yet, at the same time, one could argue predestination, whether for Greek tragedian
players, or all those in today’s whorls of natural selection, unclear as to the genetic
or narrative relationship between individuals, populations, and species. Between
concept and behavior; consciousness and the conscience.
Spinoza’s Ethics made rapturously clear the analytical breakdown of any one
thing, given the supremacy of the love, and intuitive certainty, of God, in the philosopher’s universe. For Spinoza, every course of reason invites a near infinity of
options (read: explanations). It might be convenient to have laid a brackish pond or
the Hundred Years’ War into the hands of an alleged Creator. Our computing powers, even with all of the terabytes of additional boosts, are out of range, out of our
depths, within no position to have even the most fundamental conversation with a
humble shrub.
1
This is why Henry David Thoreau’s prolific Diaries now read with
1 The Chief Works Of Benedict De Spinoza, Vol., II, De Intellectus Emendatione – Ethica, Revised
Edition, Bohn’s Philosophical Library, Translated From The Latin With An Introduction by R. H.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_8
Chapter 8
Paradoxical Frontiers
8.1 Intra-Fallacy
A lasting paradox courts any number of intra-fallacies, as the computational facility
of our own brains must resort to physics and arcane mathematical tangents for
explanations; but physics and the mind are not conversationally compatible, the
interconnects being removed from each object of respective attention, thus undermining the possibility, for example, of the creation of a garden, the writing of a
letter, or the exercise of free will in the analysis of a fallacy. How do we therefore
proceed? How do we do anything?
Neither data nor explanations, as a species of knowledge, have ever actually had
much sway over substantive human behavior. Consider the fall-out from such a
condition? Causality as fickle as all causes and consequences; information volatile,
ephemeral, no more staying power than any other spontaneous eruptions of neurons.
We know nothing, and explanations only accent our dependence on nothingness.
Yet, at the same time, one could argue predestination, whether for Greek tragedian
players, or all those in today’s whorls of natural selection, unclear as to the genetic
or narrative relationship between individuals, populations, and species. Between
concept and behavior; consciousness and the conscience.
Spinoza’s Ethics made rapturously clear the analytical breakdown of any one
thing, given the supremacy of the love, and intuitive certainty, of God, in the philosopher’s universe. For Spinoza, every course of reason invites a near infinity of
options (read: explanations). It might be convenient to have laid a brackish pond or
the Hundred Years’ War into the hands of an alleged Creator. Our computing powers, even with all of the terabytes of additional boosts, are out of range, out of our
depths, within no position to have even the most fundamental conversation with a
humble shrub.
1
This is why Henry David Thoreau’s prolific Diaries now read with
1 The Chief Works Of Benedict De Spinoza, Vol., II, De Intellectus Emendatione – Ethica, Revised
Edition, Bohn’s Philosophical Library, Translated From The Latin With An Introduction by R. H.