Pursuing praxis

Are you ready to be amazed? Stunned? Bumblefied? Shocked into slack-jawed silence?

Ready for it?

I’ve slept less than two hours in the last 55 hours.

And apart from my nose and teeth kinda throbbing (I think that’s from eating), the occasional leg-wobble, and periods of visual misapprehension (I think I see movement when I don’t), I feel pretty damn fine. I explained my ideas about development and xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxs to my labmate with near-full clarity and idea-forming and evaluation capabilities. My short-term, names-of-things memory is a little fried though. And I think wearing contacts would be a mistake.

But I expected my brain to feel like a brick of lead, to have a migraine, or the mental capacity of slime mold, or an irresistible compulsion to sleep. But I don’t. Every time I feel a bit sluggish, I get up and do something, and I’m cruising again. The last time I did this was my freshman year of college, when I had back-to-back papers in biology and theology and went 48+ hours on a 3 hour nap. I pleaded illness to the secretary in the chemistry department and got out of lab, worried I’d light my lab partner on fire or trip and fall into a stack of glassware or put water in the explodabe chemicals waste bin or something equally horrendous. I felt terrible. I didn’t even have to plead my case with the chemistry seceretary. I gave a little sniff and she signed the form. I still remember the sign on her desk: "ARGON. Be back later." hahaha. I love science humor.

Anyway. I’ve got another action-packed night of thinking, typing, and digging through references ahead.

I’m also considering taking this opportunity to adapt to a polyphasic sleep schedule. The cost-benefit analysis is probably the best possible for a would-be polyphasic sleeper. I’ve got next to no schedule. I live alone. No one depends on me. I am effectively self-employed. I love the night. I like naps. I like dreaming. Deep sleep is a total drag. I like being by myself. And I have a #@*%load of work to do; I could really use that extra 5-7 hours of work-time a day.

Hm. I think I’ll take my first nap before my club meeting. Then hopefully I can cruise into the night, all flags flying, and actually submit a draft by 6am tomorrow.

Oh yeah: and only one cup of coffee. Yesterday, I think. I probably wouldn’t be able to type if I’d been fueling up on caffeine at regular intervals. Tried that earlier this year. Having big spikes in circulating caffeine levels is not the most enjoyable of things, especially on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. Blech. Plus it makes me think I smell metal, which is a little grody first thing in the morning.

"Are you not entertained?!?"

To my faithful readers and the recent stampede of page-viewers,

I’m burning the midnight oil like sperm whales had been cloned in 1972 instead of E. coli. No promises on posts till after Nov. 6th. Well, make that the 7th. I’ll be sleeping that day.

5am on a daylight savings day is beautiful and quiet and dark. All the crazies have gone to bed, all the drunks are passed out, the beggars are still snoring, and the students have hours till the alarm goes off. The world, it seems, recedes, and leaves the infrastructure of ideas free and clear for my inspection. The town, and the concrete that meets my feet with every step that I take, are mine. Some say cities, with their man-made rock and right angles and division upon division of space, are unnatural and inhibit the mind. I see the product of minds and marvel at the precision and beauty of two straight lines meeting with maximum resistance, maximum strength, maximum equality, maximum potential and utility. Relations are clear, information exposed. When crows’ caws echo from empty alleyways, my mind is abuzz with the stream of existence.

The fall, just before winter, is my favorite time of year. I like the thinking ahead and steeling for challenge that late fall represents, in combination with the height of a year’s productivity. Celebration in the face of a challenge - overcome. It’s drawing in for warmth, and stepping out for work. For some reason, the primacy of an individual is clearest to me in fall. It’s a solitary season for thinking and doing, reflecting and reaching new heights, hunkering down and taking off. It’s a season for becoming great while nobody’s looking.

And nobody looks, at 5am, when I’m hacking away at the jungle of data, ideas, requirements, latitudes, goals, and the thousands of decisions, identifications and integrations that stands between me and my mountaintop. And my current foray into the jungle is a multi-night expedition, so entertain yourselves while I’m gone. And don’t worry about the wildlife; on this moutain, most of them are already dead ;o).

Artist: Offspring Lyrics
Album: Orange County soundtrack
Song: Defy You Lyrics

You may push me around
But you cannot win
You may throw me down
But I’ll rise again
The more you say
The more I defy you
So get out of my face

You cannot stop us
You cannot bring us down
Never give up
We go on and on
You’ll never break us
Never bring us down
We are alive!

All my will
All my strength
Rip it out
Start again

The wind blows
I’ll lean into the wind
My angle grows
I’ll use it to win
The more you say
The more I defy you
So get out of my way

Can you leave it all behind?
Can you leave it all behind?
Cause you can’t go back
You can’t go back

I was recently criticized for being dogmatic, or at least for studying and agreeing, more or less, with a particular philosophy (at least to the degree that I am knowledgable about it), which entails a fairly narrow set of positions on all the conventional ‘issues’ of the day. That an unwillingness to entertain other viewpoints implies an unwillingness to think or think well (which is what the smear ‘dogma’ is meant to suggest, it seems).

First, I was quite riled. Dogma is an ugly word (among many ugly words) after all. Then, I thought about what dogma means, and where it likely came from, and how that applies (accurately or inaccurately) to the enterprise of philosophy. And what exactly is philosophy good for anyway? For me, if it was simply a hobby with which to impress my friends, or acquire a large vocabulary, or feel esoteric, then I wouldn’t have any time for it at all. I mean, really have no time for it. I’m that busy. But - philosophy really is that important, and that important to me. In a slightly different context, I replied thus:

Dogmatism is an interesting word, and it gets a lot of play these days. What is meant by it? And what is meant by ‘philosophic enterprise’? A lot of people have made a lot of claims over the years on both these terms. To the degree that such claims are precisely contradictory with each other, we can suspect a lack of clarity, or misuse, or misinterpretation of the term - which then immediately implies that we aim for clarity, that there is (or could be) a proper use (more or less broadly specified), and that there are interpretations that are more correct than others, such that at times we could designate one as the most correct known to date. And if this broad turn of reason (which does not specify outcome) is not possible in an inquiry, then no distinctions can be made - for, given a collection of items or ideas, on what basis are they even to be identified as separate, if regular similarities and differences are not noted and parsed by the mind, first perceptually, then automatically, then self-consciously? Similarities and differences are the basis of identification, then distinction, then evaluation, and then ordering. This seems to me a key part of a philosophic enterprise, though not its total.

If making careful and accurate distinctions is the badge of the philosopher, then all philosophers are snobs at heart. Why labor on, seeking clarity by distinctions (by one route or another), if one mash of ideas was as good as the next? We labor on because we care, and we care because we think something about philosophy or its ideas is important. At least, I do not suspect anyone here of dealing in cocktail party conversation or cheap parlor tricks. So the question becomes - why? Why do you care so much? What is at stake? And why is *that* important?

And the answer to that question is the reason I am not bothered by characterizations of philosophy - mine or in general - as an inquiry with normative goals and normative results. If a philosophy - or its philosophers - shied away from these, or barred them as possibilities or goals, it would be defaulting on its very purpose, and prove its unfitness for existence. To the degree that a philosophy has succeeded in its inquries, and those inquries are properly situated in scope, purpose and integration, it is entitled to be prescriptive, and should be. Of course, the bar is very, very high, and most philosophies and thinkers fail or default and start issuing "shoulds" long before they’ve surpassed the bar. But past quality of participants doesn’t change the nature of the enterprise. Nor should we think the enterprise is broken, or rigged. Rather, it’s the most worthy one of all.

To the extent that this is true, and to the extent that the word ‘dogmatism’ is meant in this sense, I have no problems with it, in principle. In addition, looked at this way, philosophy by its very goals becomes bounded, in the sense that it’s not just ‘anything goes.’ It too has rules, the rules deriving from its purpose.

—

Of course, I didn’t say what I consider the purpose of philosophy to be, or why it is important, both of which are very fundamental, and drive … all the applied aspects of my philosophy. But - I’m working up to that. That is the topic for a whole nother post. To be continued….

I posted on Richard Dawkins’ new book a couple days ago, though I hadn’t read it, and still haven’t, and still don’t plan to. John Wilkins has started it though, and as a philosopher of science and thinker-at-large, he understandably has a few words on the subject, notably on Dawkins’ treatment of the concept of God, and definitions of agnosticism and atheism.

All in all, I appreciate, and am glad to read, John’s post, although I disagree with several important points in it. But really, I’d rather disagree with someone who has a commitment to enthusiastic and well-grounded thinking and living, than simply associating with someone who rotely agrees with me but doesn’t know why. Because really, rote knowledge isn’t knowledge at all, it’s just training or programming. Change the context just one little bit, and the plodding rote-man will be out to sea, without any hope of a map to land. An active thinker, though he may be wrong on many counts, retains the ability to navigate from any position, and the possibility of acquiring the all-weather compass (of good concepts, good approach, good philosophy) remains open to him.

Of course, it’s possible to disagree with a kindred spirit on so many points that gratifying or productive interaction becomes impossible. At which point I think it’s better to wish him best of luck and proceed on our independent merry ways, than to associate with someone out of habit or duty or laziness or fear of change. That’s an insult to both parties, and regardless of my valuation of the other person, I value myself and my time too highly to permanantly put up with a spiritual dead-weight. In the end, it boils down to priorities, ordering of priorities, and magnitude of priorities, as always.

But I digress…

Of course, in any topic where the discussion gallops into the territory of epistemology and metaphysics, I have extreme difficulty keeping my trap shut, even though I’m still in the process of learning myself. But, I honestly think I’m far more right than wrong at this point, and in any case, the practice does me worlds of good. I’ve noticed that I write far better when I’m responding to the specific claims of someone, rather than trying to pull my generalizations out of thin air. So, permit me to quote my comment on John’s post - and proceed to alienate and offend upwards of 90% of people I know. Such is the cost - the traded value - of intellectual integrity, and I don’t say that sniffily or snobbily. I mean it with all sincerety, because it’s the root of honesty, and the result of full rationality - and that, in my view, is the string by which an individual’s life and happiness hang, and so it goes for all people everywhere. There is an aweful lot at stake, and two rational, honest people who disagree are a far safer combination than two irrational people, regardless of their agreement.

[Update, 10/27/06: The comments thread on John’s post has soured me on the whole discussion. I spose that’s the risk and result of a popular blog: what starts off as a managable collection of disagreements and points of interest, spirals out into the hinterlands of philosophy and the morass of views that just lead nowhere. Welll, by "nowhere" I mean a mental place where no thoughts are possible. Kind of like shipwrecking on an island of cannibals. If this is the mess I’d have to put up with, and cordially tolerate in order to eventually refute, if I were to do academic philosophy - then I’ll have none of it. Bickering scientists are immensely more sensible and integrated between the ears. The conceptual cancer of academic philosophy hasn’t touched their healthy minds.  

But, to task now: 

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Pardon an amateur’s interjection here, Davis, but if one can’t be certain that God does not exist, it puts atheists in a mighty risky metaphysical position - one which opens the door to Pascal’s wager, and enabling the half-hearted theism of millions or billions worldwide. If atheism claims that the non-existence of God is uncertain knowledge, then anyone claiming to possess a method for (some kind of) certainty has an edge, logical, philosophical, valid or not - and in a world of poorly or uneducated billions, it’s no-contest between unevaluated certainty and unevaluated uncertainty when the whole of existence is at stake. (I say unevaluated to suggest that most theists do not or cannot bother themselves with the nature of certainty). Is this the best humanity can hope for, given the nature of things, and the nature of philosophy and logic and knowledge? I don’t think so.

To me, the whole question of the existence of supernatural-anythings boils down to a question of concept validity. We have loads of concepts, and among more mundane concepts, we recognize valid ones and invalid ones. Bunnies vs. Easter bunnies, chemistry vs. alchemy. Is the same possible for less mundane concepts? Yes. It’s all a question of standards for knowledge. And these standards are prior to the more specific questions and topics of science, so I’d agree with John (and others) who say that you can’t refute God on the basis of science. Quantum theory or evolution or materials science will never, in principle, touch the concept of God, though they can be co-opted willy-nilly once the God decision has been made.

But you can refute God with what underlies science - that is, with standards of knowledge. The standards then determine what is a valid concept, and what isn’t, no matter how abstract or grandiose it claims to be. So, for example, if Nature is existence regarded as a system of interconnected entities governed by law, that is, acting and interacting in accordance with their identities - then the supernatural is a form of existence beyond existence - one or more things beyond entity-hood - a something beyond identity.

How then, would you know it? You can’t. All knowledge is ultimately derived from perceived reality (developmentally and logically), and the regularities perceived or discovered in it, in which entities convey their identities. Any concept that invalidates that which is perceptually self-evident (i.e. I am conscious; existence *is*), is itself invalid. If we give it validity, out of generosity or laziness or ignorance, then we have severed the tie between consciousness and reality, the single tie that makes consciousness possible and powerful (although, philosophically, this is highly secondary to the previous sentence). Any jump of imagination or conceptualization beyond what is correct is certainly possible - but imagination is by itself no basis for knowledge, obviously.

I used to have an extremely strong and clear concept of God (and many other souls, since I was Catholic). Strength of vision is not, as Descartes would have it, proof or certainty or a statement about reality beyond your meninges.

So: I think certainty IS possible - within a specified context. (I hold a-contextual certainty to also be an invalid concept). And here I’m specifying as context all my perceptual experiences, and those of all other people whose knowledge and perspectives are available to me. This great summation of concretes we can extend to infinity, like an integral - the sum of all human experience, from zero to infinity (infinity being an epistemological concept, not a metaphysical statement).

Within this context, which is the widest possible context and the basis for all concepts and all knowledge, the very concept of God (or ghosts or gremlins or goblins) is in contradiction to the nature of reality; the concept "God" is defined in opposition to the nature of reality - in opposition to existence and identity. God is "beyond nature," "beyond knowing," "beyond existence." I.e. if there is such a thing (which is impossible), you can’t know it - you can’t form the concept, because you’re data-less, and you always will be. And if it’s not true - if God is knowable, he’s knowable by virtue of certain means, i.e. by some kind of identity, and identity is only possible to things which exist, and things which exist are part of nature, and behave in accordance with their identity - nothing that exists can flout the laws of existence. Such a being (for it would no longer qualify for the concept of "God") would be yet another thing amenable to study, in principle, even if the logistics don’t pan out.

So if God is knowable, he’s not all-that. And if he’s all-that, he’s not knowable. This is the hallmark of an invalid concept, and not the dark alleyways of esoteric "truth" pushed by wizents in-the-know, be they saints, buddahs, philosophers, or the loony with the Jesus sandwich board spouting gibberish on the corner of Telegraph Ave. (You know the one). By studying ALL that is available to us, we’ll never get to a valid concept of God. You’ve always got to fudge the data, drop context, reverse cause and effect to arrive at the concept of God. That’s fine for the movies, but if you seek knowledge with traction on the world (sign me up!), the concept of God is self-inflicted black ice, to greater or lesser severity. And if a concept is bad - by honest error or malicious perfidy - it has no business making proclamations about the nature of reality.

Thus I am, for one, an atheist who is certain that God does not exist.

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Related posts:

Axioms of metaphysics                Why Intelligent Design isn’t about evolution 

On atheism 

Here’s a spectacular article, actually from Yahoo news. It’s a synthesis of research on the exemplars in our society, and what characterizes them, as compared with your Average Joe. Why are Tiger Woods and Warren Buffett SO great? Innate ability? Sheer work? Priviledge? Luck?

Mostly work, and a certain mindset for constant improvement, which is common to the Greats across sports, business, research, you name it. The fields differ, the attitude and approach are the same.

Of course, the next interesting question is - where do they get their attitude? Are they born with it? Learn it? Choose it? Develop it? Or coast with it?

Well, the article doesn’t get into that, but I’ve got some half-formed thoughts on the subject, and the short answer is: focus. The longer answer is a bit more complicated, and bogged down with details, so I’ll leave that aside now. 

On a distantly related note, I watched Binswanger’s lecture called "Bridging the Is-Ought Gap." On the one hand, he didn’t say anything I hadn’t really heard before, at least not fundamentally. On the other hand… I think I suck at reading. Like, hearing a train of thought, and exploring it verbally from several angles, and hearing it several times, totally changes how I think about something. In that sense, the lecture was absolutely brilliant. I’m going to watch it again, hopefully this weekend. 

My life is filled with sequential, miniature revolutions - certainly weekly, and sometimes daily. "Boggled" has become a natural state for me. I’d bemoan what this implies about my current state of understanding - except that takes away from the leaps forward these revolutions represent, which are the solution to that bemoanful state.

In many ways, I hope it never stops, although mostly I hope I get to where I want to go, intellectually. Because I know once I’m there, I’ll have set a half dozen more goals, and I’ll still feel like I’ve just started my journey. I don’t ever want to coast; action is life.  

Thanks to Michael for finding this one.

Ok, I fixed the code. Now you can meet Patches.
 

Oh, this is awesome.

Mellow like Lady, smarter and better behaved than Tippy, but with an extra, say, 600 pounds. Patches obviously loves going for rides.

Columbus, by Joaquin Miller

Thanks to Sean for posting this. And, as he said, A special thanks to Powell History for the this fine piece.

Post-publication addition:

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Europeans…the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question. Here’s a 90 second visual tutorial of Middle East rulers for the last 5000 years.

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Capitalism Day - the holidays are upon us. It’s almost November!!

Mom’s promised to help me out with a pirate costume for Halloween. Apparently she made one for Dad ages ago, and it’s just sitting in some drawer or closet! I’m so stoked. I haven’t done Halloween in years. I’ve got a fellow pirate-nut in lab, and we’re going gangbusters this year. In fact, she out-nuts me in terms of dedication, research and execution. Pics coming soon. Be prepared to be inspired.

A new take on the musical fountain thanks to Sony.

The role of development, senesence, and behavior in the phenotype of miniature carnivores: God save the Queen

Band of the moment: KMDFM. I’m going to a show at the Mezzanine in SF this weekend. Check the "Sample music" under the listing - it’s friggin amazing.

Cordair Gallery, ad banners, the DBBA, Next Hope Consulting - demos of Chris’s web design ability - and he’s going to help me with this clunker of a blog!

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and vocal atheist, has a new book out. In terms of his science, I’m not a fan. No one I know is. His mechanistic ideas regarding selection and genes are not robust. But he’s a very popular writer, which has its plusses and minuses, as far as promoting science goes. I do appreciate his efforts on pointing out the many logical and social ills of religion though, and I gather that’s what his new book is about, though I don’t plan on reading it. (Toooooooo much else to do!) He did an NPR interview yesterday (my impatience with NPR notwithstanding), and the extended version has been posted. Warning: I haven’t read or listened to it yet, so no guarantees on how this squares with my own views. But I thought I’d post them so I might eventually get around to it myself. He was also on the Colbert Report. I’ll post on these after I’ve viewed them. I hope I’m not radically disappointed.
 

So, SVP was lovely. Ottawa is a very beautiful city - plus I’m partial to cities on grand but not huge-and-muddy rivers, like Prague on the Vltava, Boston on the Charles, NYC on the Hudson. The conference was good; I made several contacts I needed to, and saw some cool talks. Jenny McG and I hung out with Megalosaur Roger from the UK, who saw my logic talk a couple months back while he was in town. Cool guy, though I definitely have trouble seeing through that whole British-persona thing. Anyway. A lot of talk, a lot of coffee and drinks, and far too many stories about things about people I didn’t need to know. Some very, very funny though. But that’s all I’ll say about that.

My trip on %*#@ing Delta was another matter, but no need to discuss that either. I still love traveling, although I had an eerie flash of fiction-recollection while I was arguing, dumbstruck, against the staggering ineptitude and un-thinking of several Delta employees - a flashback to the pre-Taggart-tunnel scene in AS. Just… no one home, everyone doing the run-around cuz it’s their job, too afraid to not blame Federal Regulations, to actually identify the immediate cause of the problem… But anyway. I do like Vogue magazine. And ear-plugs. And brainstorming on blank paper. Makes a five-hour flight go much faster.

I’ve decided to start a semi-regular series here - vignettes from evo-devo. Stuff you never knew you never knew. Development is so incredibly complex, powerful, and we’re just *just* scratching the surface of it. Genomics is to genetics what the arch was to piles of rocks. And genetics is to development what an untouched granite quarry is to an architect - pure creative potential, with no current way to predict the final product. So, given that the field of evo-devo is about 30 years old, and really on 15 years old if you look at the existence of major research programs - I thought I’d pass around the tray of Stories That Make You Go "Wow" "Whoa" and "Duuuuuuude…". No, that’s not the official title of the series. But it is 4am (7am eastcoast time) and I should get to bed. 

But - a quick view of what’s in store: tweak the flow of some signaling proteins in the embryo of a developing chicken, and you restore the fibula (small shin bone - which is long gone in all birds; it’s that tooth-pick like bone on the drumstick) and its articulation with the ankle joint in one fell swoop - and guess what? It looks like the set-up we see in Archaeopteryx. And then there’s the gain and loss of ancestral and adult traits throughout the development of… loads of taxa (i.e. critters) - therizinosaurs being the most recent example. Then there’s the bipedal goat story, round 2 of antlerogenesis (antler growth), the fin-lobe-limb embryo and fossil work (simply….. stunning; I wanted to work with these guys at Chicago, but I didn’t get into the program there). We could do the evolution of the flight stroke, but that’s pretty over-done. I want to do the stuff that’s not well-known. There’s all the bone biology stuff I’m learning… for class… tomorrow…

Time to go to bed.  

Cox & Forkum: The Ahmadinejad Code

When I first saw the cartoon, I thought it was in exceedingly poor taste. Then I learned about why it was drawn. Then I just thought it was blandly done. Then I squinted at it and began to wonder. Then I clicked the link above, and now I think it’s pretty damn ingenious.

Another exposition of my views on quality of life in grad school, on the Burnout thread in the Science Grad Students myspace group.  

— 

I disagree with Jacob’s cynicism, but I agree with many of his practical points, like reading management books and learning from business and such.

I think there must be a sampling bias on these forums - i.e. mostly it’s the unhappy people who post on these kinds of forums. The happy people are usually out doing their thing.

I guess that makes me in the minority. As usual.

I’m in my 3rd year also. I have an insane, inhuman amount of work to do, the stress is incredible, I’m averaging between 3-6 hours of sleep a night (and I sleep at work, during the week), eating is a chore and a hassle, I usually work till 2 or 3 in the morning, and a good chunk of the weekend, my friends and family complain they never hear from me, and when they do, they can’t understand me, I’ve got deadlines approaching like freight trucks doing 75, I’m too focused to care about all my new gray hairs, I haven’t done dishes in months, I’ve got money management and funding challenges, I entered grad school way behind, and only now am I coming abreast of my labmates in terms of conceptual control and innovation, and it’ll be at least 5 years before I’ve contributed a similar amount in our field, I’ll probably be here another 3.5 years, whereas a guy who entered my year will start applying for post-docs next year….

And I’m ecstatic. And I’m not a masochist, either. Quite the opposite. I love what I do so much, I’m not sure I could be this kind of happy elsewhere. I astound myself on a regular basis, with what I do and what I get to do, and get paid to do.

My purposes and goals are clear, I have a very good idea of my options, and what it takes to realize each one, I don’t expect anyone to do anything for me (including teaching me personal, stress and time-management techniques), and I’m pretty much a maverick in everything I do, every aspect of my life - I just make sure I’ve always got my bases covered, in terms of boxes checked, networking, marketing myself, my ideas and my qualifications, so that I don’t have to worry about the floor falling out from under me at any moment, and I’m free to run.

And I noticed just the other day, during our (once-a-leap-year) lab meeting, that my advisor and my labmates really praised my ideas, directions, and all this stuff *I* have made and done - all the stuff that’s uniquely mine and I’m totally excited about, and proud of, and working my tail off on - and I barely noticed. I registered their positive feedback (I’d have taken more detailed note of any criticisms, so I could go check my work afterwards), but that was about it. I realized I’m impervious, on the personal level, to both insults and compliments from most people, especially at work.

My sense of self-worth comes from how I judge my mind to be meshing with reality *in its approach*, not so much the content, which is always changing and improving, and this is independent of specific people’s evaluations of me and my work. I evaluate myself constantly, in terms of worth, purpose, direction, goals and achievement (long and short-term), and this is my high-octane fuel. I *crave* my goals. I want them so badly, but I also want to own every step of the process it takes to get there. So I’m insanely happy while working, even if I feel like a zombie. I don’t want to do anything else.

Living and working are under-rated - usually for lack of integration and clarity of purpose, I’ve found.

Purpose is a lovely word. In Aristotle’s ethics, the word usually translated as "choice" means, more precisely, "deliberate(d) choice". Milton (1644, I think) called it "That branch of ethics having to do with reason, " and it is also translated in Aristotle as "purpose." The word is proairesis, which is both a Greek and English word, but is almost never used. I have it tattooed on my wrist. It’s the point, the fact which (by its presence or absence) is the essence of human life, and therefore determines its character and quality, if not its outcome, broadly speaking. And it is completely volitional.