What is Socialism, What is Communism, dialectics

Right now there seems to be a huge amount of obfuscation and misinformation about this. I imagine it is fuelled by party politics and socialist is equated with Labour in the UK and Democratic Social Justice Warriors in the US. This is like being a fan of football in general versus supporting a team. Socialism is a lot more than just supporting a team, it is a theory with a history just like football itself.

I have never read Marxism, but I read his predecessor Hegel who I consider superior. The key thing to grasp is Dialectics. Dialectics is nothing to do with Socialism. It has its roots in Ancient Greece, is present in Chinese Daoism (yin-yang) and in Indian thought too. In a sentence it is the unity of opposites, which sounds absurd at first glance.

IN non-dialectic (dualistic) logic you have things that are true and things that are false. This coiled thing in the shadows is either a snake or it is not. The defendant is either guilty are they are innocent. The man in the film is either a good guy or they are a bad guy. The dice is either a six or it is not. It is a simple world divided into black and white.

Quantum physics says the world isn't like this. The dice can be both 1 and 6 at the same time, the cat can be both alive and dead. This is not dialectics however.

In the film Heat (which I haven't seen) you have the Good guy (De Niro) and a Bad buy (Pacino). I imagine the reason for the famous scene is that actually they are identical people. They are both tenacious, smart and out to win. It is less a cop and a gangster and more a boxing match. De Niro has good qualities, but so does Pacino. De Niro has bad qualities and so does Pacino. But to be real dialectics De Niro's good qualities should be there because of Pacino Bad qualities and vice versa. Not having seen the film I cannot comment. But suppose Pacino had made a vow to avenge the death of his brother who was killed ruthlessly by De Niro. De Niro may have been a cop, the good guy, but his lack of compassion led Pacino into a situation where he had to take revenge (assuming revenge and honour are ever a good thing). The result is that look one way De Niro is good and Pacino the gangster, look the other De Niro is ruthless and Pachino the devoted brother. And the more they struggle the more they get intertwined, the more the coffee and cream mix until they are inseparable. But if either side quits the whole things disintegrates into nothing. This is dialectics. But coffee never blends with cream in dialectics it is always opposites pushing against each other. A simpler example might just be a suspension bridge where the weight on both sides of the tower keep it balances. If either side fails the whole thing fails. Opposite forces in equilibrium, while opposites, there is no winner, no right one and if either fails the whole thing fails. A famous examples is light and darkness. No light then there is no shadow, but no darkness then how can you switch the light on. Light is married to Darkness they are inseparable. Indeed looking at darkness you can almost see the light they are so interdependent. I once had an absorbance trace where I entered into a ring of light from an over head lamp. I forgot about the darkness that must have been there to make it into a ring. But when I suddenly became aware of the ring shape of the light my mind stepped over a threshold and absorbed into the infinite darkness, which was however fully illuminated. Impossible to describe unless you experience it (Jhana 6 - there are books on it). This is ultimate profound dialectics.

So what has Dialectics to do with Socialism. Most socialism is based upon a Historical theory which describes the progress of mankind from primitive to advanced and the process is dialectics. It is a beautiful theory, because it employs dialectics, and gives great insight into history. In Hegel the key highlight is the transition from Master/Slave to Absolute which in Marxism is the transition from Capitalist to Communist. Dialectics ends at this point in both versions. I personally don't believe that Dialectics ever ends. Following Buddhism Dialectics never ends because it never started, it is an illusion caused by ignorance. Unlike Hegelianism I believe the Absolute is always available, and the path is not a prescribed as it is in these Systems. Never-the-less the broad ideas are of great interest. Master/Slave is the transition of mind from Kings and Servants where Kings are entitled and Servants look up to their master to Servants taking that freedom they saw in their Master for themselves. This fits the historical events of the C18th revolutions where the mass no longer tolerated having a superior class and took freedom for themselves which we call Capitalism.

Capitalism however has its flaws and the freedom of the revolutions was soon seen to be limited. Wealth grew as once humble servants moved to cities to make a life for themselves, taking up home in houses built by factory owners and increasing their wages. But there was a down side because it meant a whole class giving up their traditional lifestyles and lands and becoming dependent on the factory owners. Redundancy became a constant fear. Once you lost your job you had nothing and you couldn't return to farming because your land was all sold up and machines were now farming it. Economics was against people also as capitalist classes knew how to keep wages down and increase their profits. Poverty rather than going away became worse.

And so Socialism was born. The reaction to the poverty that emerged from Capitalism. From the Hegelian and Marxist theories people expected a Communist revolution to overthrow the wealthy capitalists just as the C18th revolutions had overthrown the Kings and Aristocrats. But it never came. Russia and China being very late to the party tried to skip straight from Feudalism to Communism missing out Capitalism but the theory never said this was possible, and they ended up going toward Capitalism anyway. But despite all the propaganda that was touted around, both Russia and China did successfully liberate their people from the oppression of the aristocratic system just as England tried in the C17th and France in the C18th. Even America had to overthrow its Aristocratic rulers in an Independence struggle. And many other countries followed suit in a wave of revolution from Imperial Aristocratic rule after the war. A problem for the British is that while most of the world has now been liberated from Feudalism and Imperial rule there is the possible fact that the British still remain governed by a ruling aristocracy. Perhaps here in UK, the mother of Socialism, we still haven't made it to Capitalism!

So Socialism is a complex mix of ideas, including a view of history and social change and human evolution. It is a reaction to the poverty and injustice of Capitalism and Industrial Revolution and not a single political movement that sets out to oppose other movements dualistically. It does at its heart have dialectics anyway, so that for its own perspective it sees humans intertwined in an historical struggle of progress. What a far cry this is from the dualistic view that is common at the moment which sees Socialism as the Red Corner in a boxing match with other systems. I've always felt this view is a hang over of the cold war where the US Pentagon hatched a propaganda campaign to justify its hostility to competing post war powers.

Is Socialism still relevant as the world progressively becomes richer, poverty is reducing and happiness indexes increasing. Is there a need for any criticism of Capitalism? Isn't everything okay?/ And was Marx wrong that actually there is nothing after Capitalism?

In two words who knows. But such an argument could have been had at any point in history. After we discovered fire we could have just sat back and been happy. There remain big problems with Capitalism that cannot go away because Capitalism is flawed. Whether we work to fix those problems, or not is up to us. Marx and Hegel say that History will inevitably move toward perfection. I'm less deterministic. But I do think that things never stay the same for long, and change will happen.

The key problem with Capitalism is that no matter how wealthy we become, no matter how cheap things become and no matter how efficient our machines are some people will be owners and some people will not. And under the rules of Capitalism is you are an owner then you can rent things to those who are not owners. This means that under Capitalism some people who do not have, will be paying money to those people who do have. This is the same aristocratic system of entitlement by some over others that we fought to end. Nothing has actually changed. If we are happy with things now, then why were we not happy under Feudalism giving 50% of our produce to the land owner? Capitalism is in its heart is unequal and flawed and simply cannot survive indefinitely. The only way we can tolerate this is by apathy. Obviously those who benefit from the system will encourage apathy, which is what I believe books like "End of History" by Francis Fukuyama are really motivated by. If we really seek progress, and we adopt the thinking of Socialism, we will be looking toward a future where all humans are respected by a system which does not from the outset create division and inequality. This is not to say that we each get given 1 potato and a cup or water each morning by a central state as some satirists like to suggest, but it does mean that we do not apathetically accept a system like this where those with plenty to excess can exploit those who have only a little.

I'm not one for bloody revolutions. This is why I like Hegel more than Marx and why I prefer Buddhism to both. Revolution happen in the mind, not on the battle field. People have always been fighting (since the farming revolution anyway) but it is what they have been fighting about that has changed, and not everything they fight about is hatched in battles. Battles are for show, but the battle for ideas is quiet and far more wide reaching and powerful. Leave the battles to the duellists (dualists)... unlike Hegel and Marx I do not think History is written in blood. Lasting history is written in pubs, and over dinner tables and cups of tea (or coffee if you are Georgian or American). So the challenge still exists to solve the problems in Capitalism that were first noted in the late 1700s and which remain largely unresolved...

It is probably worth addressing one of the great Pentagon pieces of misinformation: Socialism's body count. In particular Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. The first thing to note is that civil wars and revolutions tend to be bloody regardless the politics. Probably the bloodiest revolution in history was the English Civil War where 1 in 6 people lost their lives. This was long before even Capitalism had been thought of let alone Socialism. And Iraq is a recent example of how civil wars, even moving toward democratic capitalism, are costly: 1 in 18 died in that war. If Stalin, Mao and Hitler are to blamed for their body counts then so must George Bush for Iraq, the various presidents behind Vietnam and Oliver Cromwell who presided over the biggest body count of all. Obviously China and Russia are massive countries and you don't compare death per death, but rather the chance of dying during the crisis. And then there is Hitler. The fact that the Allies waged a war of total destruction against Germany always seems to be forgotten. I think Germany could have been running the most successful democratic capitalist country at the time and the body count would have been exactly the same given total national destruction. This is the elephant in the room of those war statistics. The allies refuse to acknowledge the impact of the 1942-45 invasion period and the millions it killed. Now this is not to say that the Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's killing fields, French Reign of Terror, Stalin's 2 years reign or terror were not complete disasters, but it is to say that they were not much to do with Socialism and a lot more to do with revolutions and civil wars.

18/10/2018 update

In the account above I completely ignore aufhebung. Where the East and West diverge is in the meaning of contradiction. In the East it is suffering: the dualistic divided mind is in a state of instability and suffering, but like the West this state of suffering keeps the mind searching endlessly for salvation. That perfect peace comes with Enlightenment and Liberation from dual conditional existence (either this or that, self and other) and is a return to the centre of the wheel upon which mundane existence and suffering turns. In common with the West the soul is endlessly restless until it finds peace. However in Hegel and Marx this struggle becomes a powerful and violent force that drives progress and history, taking individuals and mankind from primitive to greater and greater states until opposites are all overcome and a grand Absolute is achieved that subsumes all that has previously been troublesome and in conflict. In Hegelian and Marxist Dialectic this struggle between conflicting ideas resolves in aufhebung and the dramatic reconstruction of the rules of the game into a new world where the previous problem is now in harmony: the dawn of a new era which can be, and is, on a personal and global level... altho personal vs global is itself an ancient dialectic in need of resolution. So while the West almost justifies its violent and bloody history as a path that leads to perfection, in the East suffering is of no value and does not lead to any path except in so far as to motivate the suffering ignorant soul away from self-satisfaction. True we cannot rest until we are enlightened, but the goal is the ending of suffering rather than soldiering through the suffering as tho it is laying down a stairway to heaven. To return to the post question directly: Socialism includes all this enquiry and is a continual path, it is far from the straw-man that is popularly burned by masses who are brainwashed by an elite to believe that they already exist in utopia and whose minds are dulled by such mental opium.

Anatomy of a song - how the Divine enters the world

This incredibly simple folk tune illustrates something about the human mind that is central to art and communication: context.

In its simplest form removing the dropping scales embellishments the melody is just a fifth interval followed by a sixth interval. This is animated by a waltz skipping from the main beat onto two beats each bar and holding the last note of each phrase for a bar. How beautifully simple is that. But in this form it is also 1 dimensional and gets boring.

To add more character the flat bars are filled by a second phrase which runs down the scale from the fifth to the dominant. This second phrase works against the rising phrase to create a contrasting dynamic in the tune. But it also enables a piece of genius which takes the creation up to a critical sublime third level. All art should reach this level to liberate the audience. The "higher place" a dancer once described it to me as.

The pattern in the first 4 bars sets up an expectation and a context: fifth, scale down, sixth, hold but the repeat in the second part goes fifth, scale down, sixth, slow scale down. What happens is that the expectation is for a slow simple bar, but instead it gets the scale down phrase played simply. What is extra ordinary is that the scale down completely changes its character under these conditions and feels like a third phrase when in fact it is just a repetition of the scale down phrase. The sublime character comes from the magic way in which it changes it "spirit" or "character" simply from its role in the melody.

When art animates components in a well formed structure they gain an enhanced meaning, they gain life, they are embodied with a magical spirit that seems to come from somewhere outside. This is exactly as the ancient Greeks saw theatre, a religious experience where the heavenly realms brought mythological characters to real life upon the stage. So it is in all art that a shamanic possession appears to occur to characters that takes them beyond the mundane into the supra mundane. That setting of the down-scale in the closing 2 bars of the song does exactly this to just a sequence of four notes. Anything can be animated by the gods, and all arts, indeed all of life, is built upon this magic.

Looking for simple expression of SRH

I'm sure Taski has been here but recently looking at what I think are the two major proofs by contradiction isn't it built on something much simpler? Turing proves that a computation that sets out to determine whether computations in general halt cannot determine whether it itself halts. Or more precisely he generates a "spanner" in the works which does the opposite of what this function expects. Likewise Godel does the same thing using a function that declares the provability of statements, and a spanner that states that a certain statement is not provable, namely itself. All quite sophisticated logic. But consider this most simple version of the liar paradox:

If we suppose it is possible to list all possible functions (here we go the start of an Diagonalisation proof) and so give them a number that can be used to refer to them, then if f(x) is a function then #f(x) means the function at row f in the list.

A function Is0(x) is defined like this:

int Is0(x) {
if (#x(x) == 0) return 1;
if (#x(x) != 0) return 0;
}

What is the result of Is0(#Is0)? In other words does Is0(#Is0) == 0?

If it does equal 0 then it would return 1 and if it doesn't then it would return 0. We have a contradiction... however Turing steps in because it is infinitely recursive and would loop forever as indeed does the "I am a liar" statement. It never resolves to a fixed truth value and keeps looping forever. Is0(x) is thus provably a partial function and Is0(#Is0) is undefined: it doesn't halt. As SRH suggests the domain of total functions and numerical output is not enough once you get self reference and the meta domain of non-halting functions is opened up according to the +1 or Hamlet principle.

So then Turing makes a meta statement not about the numerical output but about the function operation itself... whether it halts or not. Godel does the same making a statement whether there is a string of statements that generates the statement.

Like Cantor infinitely exploding the types of infinity, doesn't diagonalisation suggest that the domain of computable functions also expands so that there are levels of Non-Halting function.. I believe that would mean an infinite ascent of Oracle machines.

Private Language

Home & Away today "What's up. Nothing. That doesn't sound like nothing, talk to me."

With language we can either tell people how we feel and think or we don't. Which means that other people are aware of this private space when we chose to remain silent.

Before language we had no way of suggesting this other world, there was no way to remain silent, it was non existent. People just did what they did.

So when language arose the possibility of being silent created the sense of a private world that was known only to us, but we didn't have to express it to others. This "private world" is the mirror image of the public quality that language has. Importantly however before language this private world did not exist.

So today a lot of thought goes into the sense of private individuality. Our existence which is unknown to other people. The private "me time" that is not available to others. Before language this was not a separate world, as we only ever occupied this world, and we interacted with other people in this world and they interacted with us in this world. We didn't have a second world of language to "speak to me" in.

Wittgenstein and Structuralists rather put it the other way around. We begin with language, and show that a private world cannot exist. But we can stretch the logic temporarily across an imaginary history and wonder what the advent of language brought to the party. Structuralists are right there is no "private world", but it is rather that language brought a "public world" which seems to entailed a "private world" split, and before language there was just one world which wasn't divided.

In Spirituality "silence" is central. People spend time being silent, stopping their thoughts, relating to the world in a simple non-linguistic way. Not reporting, not telling, not writing, just being way. But also in silence we do meditations on "all beings" and examine our experience in depth to discover a truth that is the same for all Buddhas but which is also our own. Kierkegaard would like this: a private truth that is the same for all i.e. which is universal.  So interestingly language opens the door to the spiritual world but raising awareness of silence. Perhaps I speculate it is not the silence of refusing to speak, but rather the silence that was there before language.

From Garden of Eden in Iraq to the Golden Emperor in China I suspect that much of our earliest myth actually recalls the time before the great technologies of farming and language. As Nietzsche I believe read into Genesis, the story is about the transition from animal to man, from the Dionysian to the Apollonian, from the silent to the rational. There is a substrate of the world that is neither spoken nor silent, neither public nor private, neither group nor individual, neither collectivist nor individualist, neither lawful nor beyond law, an undifferentiated original space on which all this was built.

Are contradictions the result of SRH?

Google Chrome stores its bookmarks in a json file with the hash key at the start. Does this hash include itself. Well obviously not, otherwise we'd be looking a very long time to find the hash that hashes the bookmark file that contains itself.

Self reference adds some very strict conditions on things. And we can see that these conditions lead very easily to contradictions: or where not concerned with True/False more broadly "schisms" where something is not what is should be. In the rules of chrome bookmark json files the hash "should" be the hash of the bookmarks.

So I learn from this post to relax the SRH a bit. The issue of self-reference is just the unique nature of the constraints that it adds: I need to understand this. But also that it is not a matter of True/False only but "schisms" in the rules of any system that includes itself, or a feature of itself.

Tho note that hash doesn't not enforce total self-reference: hash collisions means that we can find a solution to the google chrome bookmark self included hash problem. If hashs had a one-to-one relationship with what they hash we can arrive a problem with no solution: e.g. "I am a lie" where "I" completely encompasses the sentence so no refuge to escape the constraints.

Racial Identity

I was thinking back to seeing a Palestinian and an Israeli meet at a copy of the famous Israel West-bank barrier that was set up in London. It was a furious exchange and I remember the Israeli shouting to the Palestinian had he ever tried living in Israel under the threat there. It doesn't matter who was right or wrong, there was a lot of grief here to get around first, and it moved me to tears.

But this morning I was thinking what I would say argumentatively now that I have seen the Israelis moving in very dishonest ways over the whole Israel thing.

I would ask of the Israeli, where were your parents born. For the Palestinian there is a good chance they were indeed born in the region, so it is not a level playing field here (and I suspect the Israelis know this). We know they were not born in Israel cos it didn't exist then. So perhaps they were born in America. Now even better if the person at the wall was born in US too because we can say that they are American. What greater identity do you need than you are American. I for example am born in Nottingham and I consider myself English... even while having descendants from Scotland, Belgium, Poland, and Spain. What is an English anyway given that we are a mix of Celt (from Spain), Celt from UK, Roman, Saxon, French, Danish and many others. So why is this Israeli making so big a deal over Israel. Can't you just say: if Israel is so horrible then return to your mother country America (assuming they were born in America)?

But what if they were born in Israel. My friend was born in America but moved to UK and considers themselves an English now because their family is from England. Could not the Israeli whose parents were not born in Israel really consider themselves something else?

But then I know people from Malaysia who consider themselves Chinese, and people from England who consider themselves Indian even while in both cases it was several generations ago that a diaspora came from these countries. In their minds I guess there is a longing for this "homeland" that cements their identity, even while it is long gone. It is not exactly like I have a longing for Poland give my ancestor came from their over a century ago.

But there is something deeper. People who see themselves as "Chinese" look like Chinese. It is more than a country it is a look. Isn't it weird to call how people "look" after a "place" they are completely different things. It is like calling a plate made by a process "china" cos that is where the technique originated. It is not actually "China" there is nothing chinese about a bone-china plate: it can be made with locally sourced bone and clay and be made completely in another place. Just like Wedgewood made its copies of Japanese "willow pattern" inspired by Japan but nothing Japanese about it. So a "Chinese" person who was born and lives in England has no part of them that is Chinese. Every atom is from England. But perhaps they have inherited something from their parents. Sad fact is most Chinese in the West become "Chinesified" by being sent to Chinese school by their parents. It is an intention to make them Chinese rather than something that happens. Most Chinese if fact have lost any Chinese identity - they can barely speak the language let alone read it, and they have almost no knowledge of customs and rules. Any more than most English know anything any more about the Jewish custom of Christmas (Jesus was Jew). Anyone can learn Chinese, and be "Chinesified". But perhaps the point is the intention to hold onto this "identity." Who else but a "Chinese" would want their children "Chinesified." Well their are plenty of Sinophiles in the West who are better Chinese than most of the Chinese.

But i won't completely discredit identity. There are small details of culture that cannot be taught and come from being born of people who originated in China no matter how much they have adopted local customs. I bet somewhere in me is still legacy of my Polish roots... and then there is DNA. Well we are 50% related to the banana, and 95% related to Chimpanzees so this is something to ignore. All humans are essentially the same biologically.

So how is the Jew any different? Well there is just one difference: unlike the Chinese, Indian, African whose "homelands" still sort of exist (altho very changed in the last century) for the Jew the "homeland" is a myth that has been handed down over the millennia about escaping slavery in Egypt and being delivered to a "promised land." I find it extraordinary how many times that mythology is presented again and again in Jewish history. But then it happened for ultimate real with the Nazis, and the British actually did deliver them a "homeland." for real. So now the Jews have what the Chinese, Indians and Africans have always taken for granted: a real homeland. But as I hope I have begun to show it is a myth for all of them, just as I can't walk into Poland and claim it as a "homeland." Ultimately what makes a place yours is that you are born there, or your descendants or their descendants... but it grows weaker and more tenuous as you step into the mists of time.

I suspect once the Jews have savoured this new found reality of having a material "homeland" time will come when it returns once again to mythology and like all people in this highly mobile world with technology soon to make global travel a thing of just a few hours, and even space travel a reality the whole basing of identity on a place like Israel of China will become a thing of the Past. For now I suppose the Jews need to feel this reality, but one day the myth will begin to fade.

Falsification

In 1st year Biology classes at Uni we were taught about Falsification. The example was creating an experiment to test for the existence of Vultures in Hyde Park London. What hypothesis should we chose "there are" or "there are not" vultures in Hyde Park. I was confused and got it wrong, and I never understood this even after doing Karl Popper.

But did I get it wrong?

The traditional approach is to set the hypothesis "there are no vultures in Hyde Park". Then we do a study and if we find a vulture we have definitely falsified the hypothesis. You definitely can't go around saying there are no vultures, when one was found.

The problem issues from the meaning of not finding a vulture. This can mean 2 things: (1) there actually are none, or (2) you didn't do a bigger enough search. Like the Loch Ness monster, they may exist, but have just been evading detection. How given you didn't find them can you determine which hypothesis is true. So not finding things is not proof they don't exist.

But my confusion stemmed from the idea of a negative hypothesis. Supposing I chose the hypothesis that "there are vultures in Hyde Park" and my lecturer chose the hypothesis "there are no vultures in Hyde Park". We go out and search and return from our studies with no vultures. Neither of us is forced to change our hypothsis. He can go on saying there are no vultures, I can go on saying there are vultures we just didn't find them just like Nessy. And so it goes on.

Eventually the accumulating evidence may force me to say it is very unlikely that there are vultures given that no study has ever found one. And equally my lecturer can go on to say we are almost certain there are non as no study has ever turned on up. But we are just mirror images.

The big day comes when we find a vulture. My lecturer is falsified and must reject his hypothesis as per scientific theory, but I can truthify my hypothesis and can hold it as fact. So where in this is the necessity to falsify? We are just mirror images of each other.

I have only ever concluded that falsification theory forces you to hold the theory that fits the existing state. No vultures have ever been seen in Hyde Park so we start with the hypothesis that conforms to this: there are no vultures. Then the occurrence of one falsifies the current hypothesis.

But since we are talking about vultures, in an ontology of vultures, as far as I'm concerned 28 years after that lecture it doesn't actually matter which hypothesis you chose: the experimental process is identical regardless. And whether you end up being falsified or truthified is just a matter of which side of the fence you stood at the start.

Until today when I have a line of computer .NET library code that isn't conforming to documentation. I am just writing a unittest and want to test a series of options to see if I can get one to works. I will debug test it so it selects the line it fails at. Now I could write a series of tests that see whether my variations work, but it will stop at each line and I won't find the one that works. Better to write tests that agree with the expected unwanted result which is it will fail. Then if any line does pass the code will break and I will see the line that i want. This is falsification in action. I want something that is true, so I test by looking for false results. When it breaks I have what I wanted.

Of course my contrary student self might write a computer test environment that ignores failure and only breaks when it succeeds. In either testing environment you'll get the result you want. Still after all these years not entirely sure, but the Unit Test environment here is definitely inspired by Karl Popper and my lecturer!

Using Falsification for the first time in 28 years is such a momentous moment for me I'll post the test:

Altho I'm still confused. Perhaps Karl Popper is just a red-herring. This is not actually falsification. Yes I am assuming the statement are false, and breaking when a test fails that test.

But translating into Vultures its not clear. What is the hypothesis? I am saying there "are vultures" and the test would break when that is True, and the lecturer is saying "there are no vultures" and would break when that is false. But the test IsFalse() breaks when the statement it is testing is true. So actually "there are vultures" is the statement here. IsFalse("there are vultures") will pass until you find one. So actually despite my celebrations, it seems that actually in this situation I'm Truthifying even while using IsFalse().

Lesson here: when you get confused stick with it - no amount of famous Philosophers or lecturers can help you.