FT24016: Mind field and Gods

     Does a gradual rise from a pantheon of gods to a single to an understanding that a single god is method for phenomena to arise a necessary process? The jump from many gods to one has a interesting leap. Many gods stand for separate ideas that seem to have a potentiality in this god. These mythical beings represent constant things in life that are necessary and universal (re: weather, birth, etc). In this pantheon it's common for a god that resembles a monothesistic god except this god exists among the rest just the same (re: Zeus etc).

    When gods represent something common like a field of growing crops we relate to it as an observer. We don't see our self in the field of crops even though we see the god there. There is a dependency as well as we give gods to what is most important to us. We desire them but cannot understand them but we are deeply tied to them.

    A single god represents more of our mind. We can see ourselves in god and god in ourselves. Our minds have to constantly avoid mistakenly placing our mind in that of god's because its hard for us to recognize that we do this. Perception is not just a matter of dependency on our surrounding but active participation in creation of the world that we observe. Much more exists in potentiality and our imagination is near a cause of being. 

    Once no god is, we are left with our thoughts and also our history we've recorded with them. We not only have to avoid placing our mind as all powerful but also undoing meaning derived from it. If we view reality as largely our cognitive understanding of it, we can then undermine any sense of importance of it because it comes from a flimsy mind and there is no great power to sync to that gives reality rigorous existence. 

FT24015: Subjectivity is for the Individual

     Subjectivity opens the world to many interpretations. This contrasts with objectivity which one hopes to reduce the possibilities to something single. Our hopes to achieve objectivity can be seen in our language when we reduce names to something specific. Example: indexed nomenclature to name a star rather than using mythological names. Language is so important because we are trying to isolate something specific and share it. This barrier only exists when ideas need to be shared and we want to partake in objectivity.

    When we are isolated as a single thinker the terms we use for our own thoughts matters little. If we obscure the meaning of something in multiple ways it is a product of muddled thoughts that wouldn't benefit with a precise name. Many philosophies that promote the individual acknowledge precision is pointless and see reality as the manifestation of the will.

    This odd feature contradicts the philosopher who abhors the mob trope that you can see in thinkers like Plato and Kierkegaard. Objectivity seems to be a particular type of mob that agrees on all the definitions and premises that logic reasoning will start with. 

    There is also the trope of the free-thinking individual who sees things clearly and doesn't integrate to a group setting because the group is misled. When one chooses this path they are often seen as neurotic and irrational because the established starting points do not apply to them. Philosophies of the individual often appropriate this neuroticism as what is most real. 

    One illustration of this is how existentialism lacks a clearly defined book of ethics like Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" or Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." Seeing reality as the song we sing much like Nietzsche does leads not only to subjectivity but also to irrationality in the way Lukacs formulates.

FT24014: Simplification and delimiting

     Abstracting takes the form of reducing a lot of information and experience into a condensed form. The way we can abstract is by general knowledge where we have actually gleaned the point behind what we ruminate on or mere simplification where we reduce complexity to reduce what we have to think about often to ignore something.

    Simplification can take the form of a method we can follow even if we don't understand the steps involved. An algorithmic way to add 2 and 2 to make 4 will work whether you understand the numbers represents units of 1 and like units can be combined. 

    Math explains this fact but rarely do people abstract their daily life into numbers so the meet of these processes deal with qualitative reasoning. Typically the simplification does not have a necessity because the simplification conforms with some underlying reality, but rather we simplify to save our attention for what we value as important. 

    Simplification often shapes our view of reality even though it is somewhat an arbitrary version. Our values are often based on what we like and dislike rather than what is true or false. When our simplifications are challenged and we are forced to consider what is outside them they confront us as an irrationality. Meaning the world we've set universal limitations to is delimited. The delimiting is in two ways that it confronting our personal limitations and de-limiting them in the non-conventional way of the the word, but the world is actually delimiting itself in the conventional way the word is used. 

    There is tension as reality-as-it-is is confronting our personal reality. The stoics advised to be more aware of reality-as-it-is rather than our personal reality because it upsets us greatly to have these conflict. The solution is to have your personal reality mirror what really is even if we don't it. 

    This process has a pragmatic tinge to it and may also be a simplification itself. Meaning we should adhere to reality-as-it-is because we prefer the consequences of this rather than asserting a conflicting reality. I won't explain it further here but this is not the case if the result is abstracting that leads to actual knowledge rather than a preference.

FT:24013: Actualizing Thoughts

     Aquinas sees learning as a process an individual has to undergo personally even with the help of a teacher. Although a teacher is provoking the student's thoughts in a certain direction the thoughts all come together in the mind of the student. However this process has a spiritual level as this process from potential knowledge to actual knowledge comes to be in the student but through God which is the ultimate source of this capability in ourselves. 

    We now have more information about how knowledge forms in our brain through circuits. We may not know exactly how neurons form these systems but there is definite agency in them. This formation of neurons isn't involved with teachers or god or even ourselves. Is this difference of perspective any different in the ultimate idea of a person actualizing knowledge through themselves? 

    The nuts and bolts are clearer than knowing we think somehow within our body rather than some animated flesh as they did in the past. The process of learning still takes place as it did when we did not know about neurons, but we may put less value to it and assume it occurs by a mere mechanical method. 

    Our thoughts are formed still no matter if we assume they are a gift from god, some part of a rational whole, or network of neurons. It does not matter what we attribute them to but it is important to recognize our thoughts beyond the narrative of their origin. 

    Our explanation for their origin complicates what it is we have. If we explain they are a diminutive version of what God has we become ashamed of their inadequacy. If we explain they are mechanical we down play their actuality and emphasize the mechanical. The two origins can also be combined with god giving us a diminutive thought that has its workings within the material. 

    Origins do not allow us to use our thoughts or lay out a road for how we use them. In Aristotelian thinking maybe the origin of our thoughts are like potential thoughts and in this framework are not actual until they are developed into actual. It makes sense to give thanks if we are given them or take care of ourselves because we think better when we are physically healthy. Actualized thoughts go beyond their origin and exist as their own substance.

FT24012: AI as a Nihilism Bank

    Understanding in the days of old consisted of things read for us. These things drew attention to our ability to recognize them revealing an inner world of ourselves and our rationality. Aristotle was a good example of this method. Heidegger nuanced it with a Faustian twist. Underneath what we observe is a hidden layer that reveals us a truer understanding. This means to recognize true objects we have to be specialists and see the atoms at play or the stats behind something that first appears random. 

    In this pursuit we want to make a super intellect with our computers. This new intellect does not see things as things but grids of normalized numbers. This is the atomized intellect that corresponds with this new rationality which is not mediated by concepts like our human understanding is. In order for us to understand it we have to then link it to a known concept we do recognize. 

    This new intellect doesn't do what Heidegger says we do, reveal. We don't know what it is doing and we cannot interpret it conceptually and it doesn't map to our experience. As we do this we further isolate this process of revealing what is hidden to something that is more like that hidden. We could could see thinking moving towards this creation and then reverting back to a more human centered way of thought letting this process of truth we cannot see maintain the knowledge of the truth we cannot see. 

    The culmination of this project has been at the expense of our sense of meaning. Nihilism has been a noticeable part of culture because our values may obscure or dim perception of what is hidden. Nietzsche was sure this project of seeing hidden things in a cascade of hidden things a source of weakness in our psyche. He was stumped as how to overcome this vaguely referencing some Buddhist like methodology that needs to be translated to western thought.

    Maybe a more realistic way is we create a machine to be nihilistic better than we can. Humans often think in terms of reaching completion like Aristotle does in his teleological thinking. When something is more complete than we can be we don't gravitate towards it. We take conceptual thinking and rationality as a goal in many ways because we only see it in humanity. Humanity has not always emphasized nihilism and we may accept computer do a better job of it than ourselves freeing ourselves back to our more qualitative and conceptual origins as thinkers.

FT240011: Space and Kant

    Space and mind have a similar arrangement for Kant. Our minds heavily analyze what's in space but Kant does want to distinguish that space is independent of our experiences and our on looking is all but contingent. In a way--a mind outside a mind.

    Space though is filled with concepts just as we have in our mind and we are attuned to it. This is also similar to Heidegger's idea of 'dwelling' in that we are not simply observing but making our observations our own. Another feature is space must be similar to our way of observing for this to work.  Hegel wants to nuance this familiarity as he sees our mind and the world as intimately combined but through a process of negation. 

    Hegel's negation means we recognized the phenomenal world is mind but outside of our mind. Is this different from Kant seeing Space and mind as fundamentally the same? Kant seems to limit our experiences in a way umpires do in the sense of calling balls and strikes but Hegel does not see so clear a separation. Kant sees limits between mind and the world while Hegel is persuaded that these limits are also a distinction the mind makes. Kant's view can explain the world as we observe it while Hegel may not grant this directness in observation and convinced we always observe from a distance and the world is ourselves that we make inverted by observation. 

    Hegel makes us work harder to fully understand existence making the content of phenomena. One reason to think this is he doesn't define space like Kant does. Kant views space as where phenomena happens and Hegel thinks this clearly defined place for events is problematic and the reason that Kant then quickly limits what space can ultimately be in terms of our understanding of it. Kant sees space as a mind we cannot fully fathom working independently from us. Our roll in observing makes little difference in its appearance and we lack a certain agency. 

    Kant's limitation separates us from connected whole we were part of in earlier philosophies and something Hegel responds to giving us back this connection setting a framework where Heidegger's idea of 'dwelling' can make sense where it would seem unimportant in Kant's framework.

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"