FT24017: Thought as Reality

    Aristotle viewed the reality as forms of inseparable matter that moves from one contrary to another. Potentiality exists and it actualizes itself from within its being. Much later we have carved out these changes and compose things as separable. German Idealist like Kant and Hegel go back to this way but not abandoning the science of separability. What they concoct is reality mediated by thoughts. This mediation is not the Aristotelian sense, but returning to that state from vantage point we know we lost this connectedness. 

    Language is seen as the glue that hold being together for Idealism. It is given that the world is seemingly atomized in the way it shows us, but as we ponder it we realize it's atomization is irrelevant in our conception of it and in a deeper way our conception of reality is also a mirror to what reality is. In this way it very much like glue and we few things as separated when we don't understand them. An example of this would be how we view the environment and our transportation as separate but knowing our transportation, I'm meaning cars here that use gas engines, take part in the environment by either polluting the air. In a naive way we see a car and a cloud as separate and we only see they relate by thinking more and conceptualizing the relatedness.  

    The car example is a simple one. Knowledge is gained by reason which seems to be empirically gathered. Empirical observations are isolated and disconnected. Reason sees the connection and makes concepts whole which returns back to Aristotle's philosophy of seeing being as stark boundaries that are internally unable to be broken apart.

FT24010: Images in Step

     Heidegger describes artworks much like things we observe in any other situation. Particularly they 'appear' to us and their actuality merge with our thought of it. He also describes how artwork can be different from normal experience in that the context of the artwork can be severed from it's actual context. This poses a puzzle for the observer to parse together what something is outside of the context we would normally observe things in our day to day observations.

    Heidegger address the puzzle of the observer of art but not that of the creator of art in this paradox. Heidegger seems to diminish the actual role of the artist as some sort of channel for art to express itself. However when an still life is set up before painting, the idea of the object is considered. The ability for the viewer to distinguish the foreground from the background is an important step.

    In a forest there is an anarchic array of trunks of trees which over take the field of vision. To experience the entire tree that is above ground we have to move our head and cannot receive the image in one instance. This is why many landscapes are of fields flanked by tree lines. It's easier to perceive out of context when there is a clearing or reduction of things. While we are in the woods we are percieving without confusion. A painting of the deep woods would be disorienting to the observer in a way that it isn't when there is context surrounding it.

    Heidegger's observation that the reduction of context of a perceived object in art may not be as special as he describes it. His description seems to be pure Art peering through observation is at work in this case. This simplification is done by the Artist to be sure and not some outside abstraction. Yet this simplification may open itself to open interpretations.

    Aristotle was keen in logic to reduce words to the conventions we recognize in in algebraic equations. X's and Y's stand for something distinct and lack alternative interpretations. It is known that language and words opens itself to ambiguities that can complicate communication of distinct ideas. The simplification of the still life or the landscape isn't to reduce ambiguity but mainly to have clear recognizable objects. Without this simplification there would be no interpretation rather than many because nothing is clear. However, few would admit art's simplification is to plot objects on an x and y axis. 

    In this way art more readily codifies observation in language. Yet what can be said with visual language is more vague than even a word that can mean more than one thing. Heidegger is preoccupied with truth being what is revealed by an object. Truth of an art work is not the understanding of it as a linguistic entrapment of observation. The understanding of an individual work of art is it's truth and not the entire field of art itself. Heidegger's paradox of art still persists in how we derive meaning from something out of context. Our role as this discussion making is distinct from our role of observers of reality. Yet this idea of 'World' Heidegger uses is used for the revealing of truth which reality and art both do. In both cases we are still building our World and inhabiting it. 

note: Heidegger's views on art captured from his writing "The Origin of the Work of Art"

FT24008: Dwelling and Retreating

     Heidegger muses about bridge building in his concept of dwelling. Dwelling is not so much at living space that meets the basics needs but almost a stepping point from our creaturely habits to the world around us. One such point Heidegger brings up is where we build bridges and they are placed in special spots for us. They allow us to come and go and return to our places we dwell. Bridges are placed in just the same care as we place our homes and have a similar correspondence to our being as he explains in his writing, "Building Dwelling Thinking."

    All of this happening depends on our intention to dwell in the place. When we are overly occupied with other matters such as our work life we begin to dwell less. Dwelling less means our existence yields itself to being arbitrarily chosen. Reality matches less with our being or represents the fleeing of meaning from ourselves.

    In extreme instances we have no opportunity to dwell. Xenophon writes in his retreating from the Persian army this very thing. As he retreats he finds abandoned cities no longer dwelled in. He's rushing ahead of the army pursuing them. There's only enough time to describe the structures briefly before he has to rush out and keep going. Staying in these places longer would cause their capture and execution. They cannot dwell there and the buildings only serve as a momentary amusement in his escape of his hangman. 

    Dwelling in this case requires us to have the mindset to settle down and not chase after fleeting adventures or escape perils. This severs our connection to reality because we cannot build it ourselves. If we are lost in the woods at night the stars cannot give us much more than a momentary delight because they do not light our path and we can only see points of light in the dark. We can only feel part of them only when we know where are because we need to ask nothing of them.

    Only when we settle ourselves can we be comfortable in being and the world we are in. Otherwise we are waiting for something to appear or hoping what we experience will soon change to something else. Our want for change in our world also corresponds to ourself and we become formless and become creatures that escape ourselves. We only have discrete moments to exist. 

FT24007: Technology of Cognition

    Hiedeggar sees technology separately from the crafts of ancient Greeks that informed Aristotle's causes. The causes Aristotle uses apply the clarity of our senses. We wonder about the things that appear to use. Technology is something different in that we anticipate something unseen in our observations that has to be elucidated. This elucidation is not based on observation but a testing of a framework we apply to our observations meaning because we don't directly observe it we have to imply it is there. This goes beyond mere imagination because as we adopt these assumptions we have greater agency than when we don't. 

    One example Hiedeggar gives is a cultivating a farm. A field is easy for us to imagine growing plants from it. With technology we see more than what a field is to increase the growing capacity of the earth. Particularly we imagine all the components of invisible matter that composes the field. Hegel wants to do this with philosophy. In the early stages of his phenomenology, he states that philosophies prior to his only promote a 'love of wisdom' rather than achieve actual wisdom. Much of how he attends to this project is to go into the mind past what is clearly spoken about in cognition to make a science of cognition.

    There is a characteristic problem with atomizing cognition which Hegel is keenly aware of. The relation between Subject and Object is not so separate. When we atomize cognition, we atomize it through our cognition. Plants will still grow in a field we make obscure to increase its growing capacity even if we don't study why as a farmer benefits from science even if the farmer doesn't study science and knows nothing about why the field grows more plants. The mind atomizes itself through itself and to use this new science of the mind the mind must study itself. For the field to be fertile it must have the enhanced fertilizer and must deliver the nutrients to the plants and the plants have to assemble this into their bodies. In philosophy the mind is the field and must do all this work for itself. For it to benefit from these studies it must know all the bits that are needed rather than rely on plants to grow for it. 

    What happens to this heightened sense of self-awareness.  It does not seem to go as far as Nietzsche's overcoming of man. Hegel does not promote a self that creates its own values as this self is still planted in Reality that cannot be ignored. In Hegel's project we may not even change what it is we are doing but just have a more intense and realistic understanding of who we are. Unlike many technologies receiving boundless funding now, there does not seem to be gains to be made with this science that we promise by atomizing things like biotechnology and computer science. We are still in the middle of our humanity and its limitations that aren't broadened from where we started.

     

FT24006: Creation and Thought

     Theistic philosophy sees God as a creator. Creation as a god cannot come from a material source so this creator is often given the property to create by thought. Much how our imagination is limited, God is not, and everything we see is in fact a thought of God. Humans have a limited capacity to share in this. These philosophies often see our roll, not as creators of the universe, but those who observe it. Being is generated by god but our capacity is a diminutive form of it. Instead of creating being we recognize it and name it. 

    Naming can almost seem a form of creation. If we name something few have experienced or few can understand we are credited for this naming. This naming still has the abstract quality of being and all its vagueness. Our names are generalities that can be applied over and over again to different observations. We take this practice when we name our children names that have named countless other people. However, names that are oddly specific or names of well known people strike us as odd. So odd we wonder if their parents are not capable of thinking clearly. Here it is clear that naming is important to allow multiplicity and avoid being overly specific. 

    Mathematical naming is an extreme example as an exception to our naming schema. In logical practices like these it's import that a name cannot denote anything other than the very thing at hand. In mathematical formulas its important that a symbol mean something specific and not allow the vagueness words bring in such as different understandings of what a word means. An equation cannot be calculated if this is not the case.

    Reason involves the matching of our understanding with what is created around us. We attach words to these understandings but if we become too descriptive we lose the pairing of our understanding towards reason. For instance, it's common for someone grappling with a concept to expect a knower of this concept to relate it in a clearly assembled set of words--in much the same way as a succinct formula. This is rarely a possibility and rejecting this simplicity is often the first step in learning. This succinct, precise language can be bound by logic but it does not amount to Reason. 

    To come back to the point of theism, we should recognize that Reason would be us adjusting our understanding to God's thoughts. The question is does Reason have currency in atheistic philosophy. Here being does not have a starting point that is outside our self. Descartes does give god the credit of a creator but he does launch a train of thought that could go in another direction. His famous "I think therefore I am" does amount to giving our thought as a generative power much like God. His rationalism give our source of thinking first before we can then intuit any concept of God.

    Other stand-ins for God include society and further yet the individual. This wraps up philosophy in the terms of politics and our will. Particularly the existentialists took hold of this and promoted the individual as the locus of being and creating being but curiously preoccupied with nihilism.

    As philosophies move away from theistic foundations the source of being becomes less important. The role of language can even mock this non-significance. The vagueness in words can suggest a multiplicity that lacks intelligibility. Word play can be a spectacle about our distinct inability to know Reason in any meaningful way. There is no grand thinker causing the being around us in this case. The words we use to correspond with Reason are empty.

FT24005: Will and Anger

    Ressentiment for Nietzsche combines the lust for revenge that never gets satisfied. This is unhealthy and disfigures a soul that is consumed by it. He doesn't discard revenge in totality but advocates that the strong willed exact revenge in a way that satisfies an insult. He often connects this with an old world cultures that appear in pre-christianity to show how the modern man is developing into a pathetic set of thoughts.

    Yet, writings from this old world do not always agree with this. Old writers emphasize the toll anger exacts on us. Servants and slaves cause rumination on this topic. Nietzsche mandates that this period is categorized by the strong dominating the weak. These old writers would fit this category in that they are masters over people with less status fully subjected to the Nietzschian will to power. What happens is these servants perform tasks poorly and in their position they can exact any punishment that they see fit. Writers like Plutarch caution against this from the stand point of what becomes of you as you act in rage.

    All these annoyances sum up and Plutarch responds with a common motif of ethical thinking from the period. He asks us to look at people that have obvious problems with rage and how we react to them. We see these people as out of control and by their habits lose themselves to their emotions. Plutarch admits it's better to let people squander on trivial tasks like failing to remember buying bread for dinner than distort yourself in anger in punishing it. 

    Another writer of these times--Seneca--also has a similar conclusion. Instead of conjuring an instance of someone else, he has us imagine what our faces look like in the mist of rage reflected in a mirror. Our sober self would cringe at the sight. The transformation of our selves in this way is a clear indication of lack of virtue. This virtue is not some decree by the will to power as Nietzsche genealogizes morality to be but some fundamental recognition of stability. 

    Here there is a conflict. Nietzsche has morality be this code that is arbitrarily imposed by those who rule. He uses the past to justify the violence we see in this time but it is also the time which virtue ethics culminated. True, he does acknowledge Aristotle but only to undermine him and show his ethics is just a cloaked version of the will to power. These ancient thinkers had more cultural lee way in how they treated others yet they did notice that behavior--even if allowed--causes a disfigurement just as much as the ressentiment of Nietzsche.

FT24004: The Will in the Present

     The will is located in the present. It is not an integral part of our history and it isn't clear what the future holds. The will is a fundamental part of an individual and exist at the same time as we think. Our present does not stay the same and our will is fundamentally different in different parts of our life. Our actions are provoked by our will and commands us to focus on certain things rather than others.

    Philosophers attribute certain qualities to the will and what motivates it--re: Nietzsche et al. These qualities seem to exist prior to any formation by experience and experience can even tarnish the will. Yet we also see the will develop in philosophies like Hegel. We experience as we will and this experience we have to understand and see how it fits with our willing. Hegel has a passage contrasting the will of the heart vs. the will of the world which focuses us on how we actively have to measure our will with reality.

    This constant reoccurring projection of our will into the present has an iterative nature and each present vanishes into another present. If there were no source of change each present would be the same present much like some coral in a the sea staying the same until it dies. Defining the self as the will is problematic in that it doesn't account for why this will changes and why we choose to disregard our will much like how Hobbes defines the our contract in society. 

    With our experiences, we filter these presents differently even if there is no fundamental change in what we will. There has to be some connectivity with the past that forms our present--even if the present us is what is most real meaning what we exist in. The shaping process of our intellect is very much the accumulation of past experiences. The past shape is also a limited shape and this contrasts with present which opens itself to many possibilities. The present using the past shape to slightly nudge the past shape is a part the will plays in but does not define a person fully.

    The will as a thing separate from anything else cannot be subject to ethics. Alone it has no account for where it has been and where it needs to go. We can account for this because the will is integrated into how we think and our memory of the past. Even though our wills are important in our existence in the present it is not what makes us ourselves.

FT24003: Skepticism and Statistics

     Skeptics deny the direct apprehension of things and the mediation by our senses then caste everything into doubt. Their origins want to create a mind that's not deceived by appearances and guide someone to ataraxia. This process often starts from something that appears clear and by continually reminding oneself that nothing is clear a person can see through the charade. 

    This attitude is also the same in statistics when we give a probabilistic measure that something is the case or it is not the case. The first step is to see what is in question as possibly true or false. The Skeptics practiced this, too, but only to see this dual possibility as a reason to reject either case at the same time. Yet the statistician role is to use probability to conclude whether something is likely or not by the end of the calculations.

    But the truth of a statistic is never fully granted and either possibility is still granted some validity. Nothing is truly apprehended in this way in comparison to a truth we find indisputable.  The statistic also undermines any knowledge of causality. For example, in some philosophies the belief in God asserted with no possibility for God to be false. Furthermore, in these philosophies the creation of our existence is also given as an absolute reality. While there are observations within this system that are 'indifferent'--as the the Stoics say--there is no place for chance in the important matters. 

    A statistical view or a skeptical view do require a basis of thought underlying them. This is obvious when a statistical model is formed from metrics that do not relate to each other. Because of the formulaic nature of statistics even poorly formed metrics can be calculated and assessed by calculation. What is most troubling is often statistics is used in cases where something is not clear to us. Why would we bother with all the work to calculate the probability of, for instance, the likelihood a person will die or live indefinitely? Because statistics is used to clarify something we do not have a grasp on, it is hard to judge if the criteria of the model is rigorous or even coherent. 

    Statistics are also largely generated from some type of measurement by a machine. These machines are not always precise or accurate. If we had a machine that grossly measured speed wrong, we could statistically surmise that there is no indication that the velocity of something falling increases with time as it falls to the earth.  The skeptics are concerned about our biological machines--our senses. And variation bothers the skeptics and they often use the diversity of thing of a particular genus as grounds to reject forming fixed opinions about them even if we see them clearly with our eyes. 

    Yet the conclusions made from statistics reject a mindset that values concrete reality just as the skeptics do. Statistics differs from skepticism in that its goal is to assent or reject some observed experience. Both ways of thinking do not organize experience in a coherent framework of thinking derived from first principles. Statistical expertise would largely fit into Aristotle's explanation of 'working knowledge' rather than 'actual knowledge'. 'Actual knowledge' is knowing the causes behind experience. Statistics can have some agency in our decision making but we can not fully deduce from it because it lacks the rigor of known premises. Statistics makes a recommendation on what is real or not but does not have a framework for reality. The distrust of reason is implicit in statistics as it is in skepticism.

FT24002: The Will and Nihilism

    The will is central in many philosophies as it is a locus of our self particularly in the present. Many try to ascribe an innate character to the will. For Nietzsche it is the will to power and for Schopenhauer it is the will to procreate. These philosophies of the will also describe the denaturing of the will as a form of nihilism. Remarkably, one can go on with a denatured will, but in shadowy way that ethically blocks the person from reaching an eudaimonic conclusion. 

    Schopenhauer and Nietzsche also see Christianity as flipping of the will. For Nietzsche, loving each person equally hinders the will to power over others. Schopenhauer also sees a flipping Christianity in terms of chastity. This chastity flips the procreative element of the will and shows a will that wants to end life.

    A more recent philosopher, Foucault, also see an important element of the sexual life but in a way that makes a person more radical and differentiates into an individual. He does not agree with Schopenhauer that this is a reduction of the will but the will itself. Foucault's views on sexuality have little to do with causing life. To this end it is interesting that the chastity of Christianity and the abundance of sex with Foucault are related in what philosophers of the will report as nihilism in Schopenhauer's system. 

    However in these cases, the will's temporal nature does not describe a person from birth to death. One's will is often a small slice of someone's life that is under continual flux. The ideas of Aristotle have a broader out look where Society is a container of all our wills past and present. In the Aristotelian view we have to moderate our wills to fit into our society so that at the end of our careers we can achieve our goals while being in good repute with our neighbors. 

    Individualistic philosophers tend to see nihilism as a denatured will that an individual recognizes as insufficient while a societal view of ethics puts society as the judge of the will. If society judges one's will, it is possible for an individual to will but not recognize the quality of their will. An individual that is judging the quality of their will doesn't look to society for approval and many ways sees society as an obstacle in their willing.