Andorian basis for ethics

It has been said that there is mathematical reasoning/truth, scientific reasoning/truth, and moral reasoning/truth. .  If I understand T.M. Scanlon correctly, at least insofar as his book, "Being Realistic about Reasons" is described by Thomas Nagel, moral reasoning stands apart from these other types of reasoning and relies upon a normative element.  That we should swerve when driving to avoid hitting a pedestrian is clearly and obviously true, and its truth is not based upon anything else, rather it is based upon its shouldness. Moral statements have a clear normative element, and that normative element does not make them any less true.
I would propose a different schema. The obvious shouldness underlying the statement we should swerve to avoid hitting a pedestrian derives from its participation in, its strengthening of, the "and" and the "or".   For if you don't swerve, and you strike and kill the pedestrian you are not participating in the "and" and the "or".  Rather, you are standing outside them and trying to vanquish  them.  That you are clearly destroying your relationship with others (and), severing the relationship between the pedestrian and others (and), denying the pedestrian the right to an independent existence (or), and shattering the diversity upon which the universe relies could not be more obvious.
Though not as extreme as in the case of killing, other acts that are generally regarded as immoral, such as stealing, are similarly damaging to the andorian fabric that holds us together.    
Thus, to repeat again, the apparent normative basis of moral reasoning derives from its participation in the "and" and the "or".   In much earlier posts I have described the Andorian basis of mathematical reasoning as well as the Andorian basis for scientific reasoning (and many other disciplines.)  Reasoning is not divided. Each area of reasoning does not constitute its own universe.  The "and" and the "or" underlies all that is.

For

For Andorian thought gave birth to quantum physics.  For quantum physics says electrons have particle and wave properties.  And what is the particle but the "or", something that makes itself infinitely small so that it can shy away from, distinguish itself from, all other things.  And what is the wave but the "and", smeared out throughout the universe, everywhere and touching everything. Quantum physics is an expression of Andorian thought.

The answer

Andorian thought resolves the issue of whether the world is one or many, an issue that has roiled the world of philosophy since the age of the pre-Socratics.  The world is neither one nor many. It is two.

Well

"But," you say. "Nature, even in its irreducable form, consists of the many.  Physics, both theoretical and experimental, shows that the building blocks of nature are many in number.  There are many many subatomic particles, many types of strings (if you believe string theory)."  "Well," said the philosopher, "It is the 'or' that makes possible the many".

Thingness

Thingness is that which is inherent in all things and separates each thing from every other thing.  Thingness is inherent in living things as well as inorganic matter. Accordingly, if the "or" has its origin in things, as opposed to movement or energy, thingness is what makes the "or" possible.  Alternatively, thingness can be seen as another expression of the "or".   We can also trace thingness' place in cosmogony if we take the big bang theory as a starting point.  For the universe, at the beginning of time, was not a thing.   Rather, it was "everything" compressed into an infinitely small point.  Thingness was chained, and it burst free of its constraints at the big bang's inflationary moment. 

An Orandian approach to an Andorian analysis of emotions

One area in which the Andorian appoach that I have championed seems most wanting is the study of complex emotions.  How can an emotion such as "love", assuming it is an emotion, be reduced to the "and" and the "or"?  For when one loves someone he/she is not simply drawing towards, but there are a number of thoughts that accompany it, namely the awareness of that emotion, and all emotions, that make the human experience, and purportedly human life in general, so enriching and valuable when compared to that of lesser species.  Of course, the existence of thoughts accompanying emotions, and of "consciousness", is susceptible to an Andorian analysis.  In an earlier post I described the role of the "or" in the existence of consciousness.  But to move from its role in the existence of consciousness, to its activity in certain types of thoughts requires more, shall we say, thinking.

So we can take the example of love.  Clearly, love of another does, to an extent, involve a feeling of closeness to another.  So the "or", and other biological processes, which the and and or play a role in, are drawing the lover to the loved, as is the "and". But there still seems to be a lot that is missing from this analysis.

My proposed strategy: Think of all the things that may be meant when I say I love another, and apply a phenomenological andorian analysis to each of them.  This is in part analytic (Orandian), as it involves breaking it into parts (which involves the "or").  Clearly an Andorian analysis of something as complex as love would require a book, possibly of several volumes, rather than a post, but we can start with one or two ideas and see whether we can reach some general conclusions.

So some of the things I may mean when I love someone: I yearn for him or her when that person is not around; I see "the good" in that person; I feel elevated when dwelling with that person, etc.
And yearning for another may involve focusing solely on him/her to the exclusion of others and other concerns...which may involve the "or" pushing away other parts of the environment not associated with that person, and excluding what may be deemed negative aspects of that person, while the "and" elevates and wants to achieve union with these admirable characteristics.

And the elevation one feels when dwelling with that person may be what follows, and this "dwelling" would likewise, in its own subtle way, involve the "or" excluding negative thoughts and negative parts of the world from consciousness, while the "and" elevates and creates a closeness to that which remains, which of course includes the other person.  There is no longer the pain of yearning, but a contentment.

What seems clear from this approach is that dwelling may not be present at all times when loves another, as yearning may not be present at all times.  Thus, the character of love fluctuates over time, with different elements present in varying quantities at different times.  The "and" draws these elements into the love equation at some times, while the "or" pushes them out. (It is important to note that we are speaking of but two variables (yearning and dwelling) and there are many more.  And we're not speaking about a love for an abstraction here, such as a love for liberty, or a love of philosophy.

Thus, to a certain extent we are doing what the analytic philosophers do by analyzing how things may appear at different times when we use them in our everyday language. We are breaking things up, to reveal the reality below.   And when doing so, we are taking a phenomenological approach, by looking at how certain things appear to us when experienced.  We may have the beginning of something wonderful here. (Oh delusion, how sweet you are!)

More F'in

In and out. Out and in.  Two bodies, or body parts, drawing into each other and moving apart. Again and again.  The "and" and the "or", the andorandorandor...So yes, it really can be called Andorian or Orandian.  All that can be certain is that one follows the other, a stream headed in one direction, like the passage of time.  And how best to describe copulation in cosmic terms is not all that clear.  Is it "and" "or" tension, a struggle maybe, with the two trading blows, until the two, beaten to a bloody pulp, collapse?  I think not, as that leaves out the climax.  More likely that each is strengthen with each thrust and withdrawal, until the tension, the power that each feels, can no longer be contained in the vessels that hold them.  Becoming one. Becoming separate. Becoming one. Becoming separate. No longer myself, how wonderful you are.  Yeah.  That's what I'll go with.  
What we can say is that the rhythmic interaction of the "and" and the "or" in this act so mirrors, so expresses, the cosmic interplay of these forces, that it is more than a mirror.  It is the "and" and the "or" in their most fundamental form.  It is the heart of nature itself

Consciousness, the triumph of the "or"

There is something about consciousness, that it seems to feel it is detached from all material things. That the thought that it is part of the material world, which it clearly is, seems so counter intuitive, that if anything seems counter intuitive, the evanescence of consciousness seems more counter intuitive than the proposition that 2 plus 2 equals 7.  Thus, to consciousness, it seems detached, that its reality is above the reality of the deteriorating physical world, the world of atrophy.   Thus, the reality of consciousness, illusory as it is, is its "orness" from the world of things.
Thus, like all other things, the mind body problem is moored in Andorian reality.  That being that while the two may be one, the "and" may seem to predominate, the "or" struggles to assert itself and eventually succeeds in doing so by creating the feeling of separateness.  Thus, the sense that the mind is separate, the Cartesian duality so deprecated over the centuries by generations of philosophers, is in fact an indication of a healthy balance between the "and" and "or".
   

The "or" in language

Clearly, the "or" is operative in most deductive reasoning: i.e. All ancient Greek philosophers were men, Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher, thus Socrates was a man.  For this reasoning involves detaching an individual from a class of individuals. Similarly, inductive reasoning, in which you combine facts to reach a general conclusion involves the "and".  Of course, the "and" is also involved in deductive reasoning, for even in the above example involving Socrates, we are combining facts to reach conclusions.
But it would seem that language involves some degree of object recognition; i.e. "That is a rose." When I say that, I am recognizing that this flower, due to a number of characteristics, is a member of a category of flowers we call roses, and I am detaching it from that family when I focus on it and say, "This is a rose."  I am also affirming the detachment of the family, "roses", from all other entities.  In addition, I am adding this rose to that family of roses, so that I'll know for future reference that this is also a rose, thus also invoking the "and". 
Thus,  the "object" is an integral part of sentence structure, and comprehension would seem to involve an act of conjuring up classes of objects, determining that the word uttered is one of those objects, detachment, and the addition of that object to the class of objects of which we speak for future reference. 

Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning

In deductive reasoning; reasoning from general statements to a logical conclusion, the "or" is operative.  For example, in the classic: All men are mortals, Socrates is a man, thus Socrates is mortal,

The great big zero

There is no greater entity, or nonentity, than zero.  When two quantities are equal, one subtracted from the other is zero.  Thus, zero is the arbiter of equality.  And who can deny that equality is something for which we enlightened humans strive?  
But zero is something much more (than zero).  Is it any coincidence that it is shaped like a hole?  It is the wellspring from which all positive numbers flow, only to return once they have done their duty.  It is the bottomless void into which all negative numbers descend, gasping for air until it is time to close their eyes and sleep. It is the nothingness from which the "and" and the "or" came, affirming themselves in the dazzling light of the big bang, like a baby crying as it exits the womb. 
In the end, we can say that zero is the unchanging entity, the equilibrium that underlies the "and" and the"or", regardless of their flux.  Zero is eternal, the deepest reality.  
And while zero is the stabilizer, the anchor that keep them grounded, the "and" and the "or" reach up, forever striving for infinity.  And while the "and" and the "or" are great, so long as they exist in the material world, they will never reach infinity. 
It is the striving, whether it be for the perfection of zero in the world of human affairs, or the greatness of infinity in explosion of the big bang, the guides the material world.  And in this striving for mathematical perfection, we begin to see what Plato meant when he said that the material world partcipates in the world of the forms. 

The primacy of Zero

Another horizon or limit, within which the "and" and "or" operate, is that they are inversely proportional to each other.  If you take two entities on a plane and move them apart by two inches, you strengthen the "or" by that amount, while weakening the "and" by the same amount.  Similarly, if you move them closer together, you strengthen the "and" while proportionally weakening the "or".  If the distance either the "and" or the "or" is strengthened equals "n", the amount its counterpart is strengthen equals "-n". Similarly, if the distance the "and" or the "or" is weakened equals "n", the distance its counterpart is weakened is "-n".  Thus, the net amount that the "and" and "or" are collectively either strengthened or weakened will always be "n" plus "-n" or zero. This is true in our universe of trillions upon trillions of entities in motion. Take any entity. The distance between that entity and any other entity is either increasing (in which case the strengthening of the "or" is being canceled out by the weakening of the "and", decreasing, in which case the strengthening of the "and" is being canceled out by the weakening of the "or", or the entities are not moving in relation to each other, in which both the strengthening  and weakening of both the "and" and "or" are zero.  Even in an expanding universe, in which the "or" is ascendant, the strengthening of the "or" is balanced out by the weakening of the "and". In sum, there is a kind of balance and equality in all the universes we can conceive of, even those that are contracting and expanding.  Even at the time of the big bang, in which I have stated that both the "and" and "or" were, in a sense, strengthened (as opposed to the above standard model in which they have an inverse relationship to each other), the strengthening of each would seem to cancel each other out.  There seems to be no escape from zero.

Now, in a quantum universe, an infinitesimally small entity may appear to simultaneously approach and retreat from another entity, but even here, the approaching would appear to be balanced out by the simultaneous retreat.  

A thought about being healthy

If we contemplate how the universe is defined by multiplicity and movement, we might come to an understanding about why staying active and moving is healthy.  It is, quite literally, living in harmony with nature.  And when you don't move, you are, in essence, attempting to reject that which can't be rejected.  And the tenseness and anxiety that one feels in such a state, comes from recognizing that you are moving against nature, notwithstanding your protestation of indolence. 
And you may ask, then, why meditation, in which one strives to remain still, can be pleasurable.  My response is, "what happens when you meditate?"  Hard as you may try, your thoughts race, a sound interrupts your reveries, and the universe moves around you.  And the pleasure you may feel comes from contemplating and being at peace with the movement of the universe. 

Preconditions

To understand the essence of the "and" and "or", it may be of some benefit to understand the conditions under which it can exist.  I have said that multiplicity is a precondition for the existence of the "and" and "or", as is movement.  Does movement create the "and" and "or", or do they create movement, or do they simply define each other?  In any event, the multiplicity of things does not assure the existence of the "and" and the "or".
Returning to the question of the conditions under which they can exist, I have also said that if the universe was at one time simply one super energetic atom, lacking electrons or any other subatomic components, then the "and" and "or" didn't exist, though they would appear to have existed in potential form.   In physics, the total amount of energy: potential energy plus actual energy, does not change over time.  Either potential or actual energy changes, but the total does not, and potential and actual are inversely proportional to each other, i.e., when potential increases, actual decreases by the same amount etc.    We can say the same for the potential and actual forms of the "and" and "or".
But another digression.  Where a chain of thought is interrupted by an insight, hopefully it is OK...
We can also say that the "and" and "or" would not exist in actual form if the entire universe, at one time, was simply a void, or nothingness, without even one super atom.
I think we can also say that they wouldn't exist in actual form if the universe, at one time, was a super atom within an infinite void. Even if the super atom moved within the void, it could not draw away from the void, as the void would be infinite in all directions.  The super atom would be forever joined or fused with the void, unable to escape, unless it obliterated the void by blowing itself into smithereens, which is what it did.  If we define the infinite void as something like the super atom, then we may have to qualify our conclusion slightly regarding multiplicity. By multiplicity, we don't mean a homogenous being plus a void, rather, we mean more than one being, where neither of those beings can be the void. As I understand it, relativity says this wasn't the case with the known universe; as we approach the beginning of time space itself shrinks until it consists of this infinitely small super atom.