by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: October 22, 2009   Last Updated: December 08, 2009

If "a philosophy'" needs a "reasonable point of reference", a foundation of strings, loops or membranes would be difficult to reconcile with points, even with catastrophe theory tipping points. Philosophy is an activity rather than a marketable item or the coordinates of Oprah WInfree's studio. At the string theory level the emanation of an inflaton from loops is easier to imagine than from pencil points or precise coordinates within an infinite meta-universe of distance without anything beyond relative value. The Bean Universe criterion of explosive gas expansion shakes the very foundations of some philosophy, yet not those with a grounding in the Word rather than the gas passing faster than light from a hyper-velocity pressure Columb's law criteria.

Physical theories may have no reference points for a time, but only abstract and non-testable criteria for some time, that might be removed later. Cosmological theories may be set in a hundred of extra dimensions and be just conjecture in the mind of brilliant mathematicians and physicists, while philosophical work needs a reasonable rather than an extravagant or silly point of reference.

Such a point of reference must be at least equal in quality to U.S. Government budget planning that reasonably sees a reversal of deficit spending economics after the total is 21 trillion dollars. That can be our example for a reasonable point of reference. Another example is the deployment of 30, 000 more troops to prop up a puppet government that will have broad support in 18 months when the troops are withdrawn (that sounds like a banking procedure-deposit with loans then withdraw). In 18 months the puppet government of Afghanistan will have large taxation authority able to gather all of the people of Afghanistan together to tax them enough to pay for the government and a large military able to defeat the Taliban insurgency that will arise when U.S. troops withdraw. Now that sounds reasonable.

Philosophical work, unlike physical cosmology requires a higher standard that we can take from the U.S. Government economic and environmental planners. Philosophers need at least one reasonable point of reference to start with. Personally I like Oprah for that, and then just go on to symbolic logic or whatever. W.V.O. Quine in 'Methods of Logic' just took apart the construction of logic making it easy to construct language, of course he didn't have an Oprah endorsement as a reasonable point of reference. Who will the reference be for

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