There are two ways to look at descriptions and representations. One way is to imagine that a description or a representation functions like a portrait, that it captures the likeness of the object of the portrait. Now, certainly, a portrait is a kind of representation, and we could imagine that a diary might provide something like a written portrait of someone's mind. This is obviously a metaphor, but the metaphor works.
But not all descriptions or representations are intended to be likenesses. For example, a legal description in a deed does not give us a likeness of the parcel conveyed, it is intended to clearly specify the reference of the deed. Rather than a portrait, a good deed functions like an index finger, telling us "that real estate." An architectural rendering is an interesting case. In some sense, we are interested in the representational value of the rendering. We want to visualize how the flow of the building may or may not work. But on the other hand, blueprints serve another function, they help the crew constructing the building to know how to proceed. Thus, a description might variously show us what an object is like, help us to find where an object is, or even tell us what to do. It is important to note that a description or a representation might be nothing like its object, but might still tell us how to find the object, and how to go about getting there.
For me, I start from the supposition that human life matters, by which I mean that I believe that all our choices, no matter how insignificant, matter in the ultimate scheme of things. This belief may be criticized as irrational. The sun is due to burn out in five billion years, and all life as we know it on Earth will be dead. Will it ultimately matter that Hitler murdered millions of people? Can we say that it would ultimately have been better if Hitler spent his life striving for world peace and not world war? I fall in with those who choose to say it does matter, that all our lives matter ultimately.
But what does it mean to say all our lives matter ultimately? Ultimately, life as we know it will cease to exist, the sun will burn out, the universe may experience heat death. It is clear that when I speak of the ultimate, it cannot be the ultimate in the domain of facts. What I mean is that based on the choices we make in our lives, we will face ultimate reward or ultimate punishment. This reward or punishment will not happen within the space of facts, but in the after-fact or after-life. I am, of course, speaking of the reality of Hell.
Why do I write of the reality of Hell? This sounds very old fashioned, and may strike some as evidence of intellectual or mental decline. But the bottom line is this: our lives can only have ethical meaning if our lives have some kind of ethical consequence. Rather than absolve us of some great burden, the denial of Hell divests our lives of great meaning. If there is no Hell, then in what sense has Hitler been held accountable for his choices? What distinguishes him from Gandhi, ultimately? Why would one follow Gandhi over Hitler if it does not matter in the end? Ironically, the denial of Hell, rather than spare us, condemns us to live lives from the point of view that our lives ultimately don't matter. It takes Hell from its location beyond mortal life, and makes mortal life the realization of its condition. It is better to try and fail than live a life devoid of hope.
In the oldest conception, the question of heaven and hell is nothing more than the expression of the relationship of a soul with God. Heaven is communion with God, and in Hell we choose ex-communication. If God is love, then to live with a view toward heaven is to live in communion with love. Heaven may be impossible here, but intimations of heaven are. Certainly, cruelty, despair, hatred, envy, these are all possible, and give us visions of alternative human possibilities.
So what does it mean to say that one believes in the reality of God and God's judgment, and the reality of heaven and hell? The mode of God's being, to my understanding, is inconceivable. Whatever heaven and hell might be, they are surely not actual places anywhere. Certainly, we have mental images, of court rooms, of burning landscapes with tortured souls, of angelic choirs and light. But there can be no issue of these images "corresponding with reality." There can be no question of proof in these matters.
What I am talking about is a specific attitude that one takes to life. The purpose of the pictures was never to describe some metaphysical castle in n-space. The purpose of the pictures is to orient us in the world, and to direct us in how to live. Perhaps in walking this path, we begin to understand the truth which we are called to, this truth that is a higher truth, beyond a world of mere facts and trivialities. A truth written in the heart, not in text books. But not something that can be written out to the satisfaction of geometers. The truth of faith.
The question of attitude is a question of choice. We can live our lives as if they don't matter, or we can live our lives as if they do. Nothing can ever prove, one way or the other, whether our lives have value, except perhaps ourselves. So why do we deny Hell? Why do we embrace meaninglessness? The reality of salvation is something that can be experienced in this life. Why do we choose to turn away from it? What are we running from. . . if hell does not exist?
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Pensee
"What else does this craving, and this
helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of
which all that remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything
around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in
those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled
only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself." -Pascal
Seeds
The seeds were planted invisibly in the darkness. No one saw the hands, no one witnessed the footprints in the dust. No one noticed the disturbance in the earth.
The sun rose and set over the field. Light, dark. Eventually, the rains fell, soaking the earth, until the sun returned. Then suddenly, they appeared, golden shoots through the soil. Some of the plants grew strong and tall and bore fruit. Others withered and died. The villagers were no fools. Someone had planted the seeds, although no one saw the identity of the farmer. They knew that the plants grew from seeds although no one saw the seeds themselves. No one thought to doubt the existence of the farmer or the seeds. Otherwise, what they witnessed would be unintelligible.
The sun rose and set over the field. Light, dark. Eventually, the rains fell, soaking the earth, until the sun returned. Then suddenly, they appeared, golden shoots through the soil. Some of the plants grew strong and tall and bore fruit. Others withered and died. The villagers were no fools. Someone had planted the seeds, although no one saw the identity of the farmer. They knew that the plants grew from seeds although no one saw the seeds themselves. No one thought to doubt the existence of the farmer or the seeds. Otherwise, what they witnessed would be unintelligible.
Matter and (In)Difference
What we call matter is the principle of difference. Material things can be differentiated from one another. Material things are discrete and exist in relation to each other. We can speak of beautiful things, but beauty is omnipresent.
Beauty is not material, and thus beauty cannot be differentiated in any absolute way. It is not an ingredient of material things, the way carbon atoms may be. Quantity necessitates measurement, which necessitate materiality. To measure something, it must be capable of differentiation from what we use for measurement. (Because beauty is not material, beauty is not differentiated, ergo beauty is one, not in the sense of a numerical unity, but in that it forms an undifferentiated unity of many contrasts, a family resemblance. Because it has no material limit, it admits to no ultimate description or definition the way a material phenomenon like electricity does. A definition can only be possible by considering only a limited number of its manifestations. Such a definition is always a lie, because it is founded in placing a material limit on a concept which has none.)
Can beauty be said to exist? Certainly, the existence of beauty cannot be proved by scientific investigation of the world, as beauty is not material. On the other hand, beauty cannot be said to be subjective, as after all, beauty is a concept, and "beauty" is a word, and the meaning of the word is not completely idiosyncratic. We may never agree that Van Gogh's paintings are beautiful, but you still know what I am saying if I say that "Cypress Trees" is beautiful. On the other hand, if I made up some word, "zalligook", which I employed to idiosyncratically label random things, you would have no idea what I was talking about. So to be clear, the use of the word "beauty" is governed by intersubjective norms of usage. Beauty in this sense exists, similar to the way in which we say that trees exist based on insubjective agreements of perceptual judgments.
But beauty is a concept, and beauty is incapable of measurement, and we can imagine a tribe somewhere lacking a concept of beauty, and another tribe with a sense of beauty which was completely unintelligible to us. We can ask, why is it that our concept of beauty doesn't simply fall out of our language? I think we have to say that beauty has not been erased from the language because beauty is something we value. Of course, I also have to admit that beauty has a worth, it is in general, a good means of selling something. Beauty has its fair admixture of the meretricious.
Worth I will leave alone. It is clear that worth relates to the realm of quantity, that is to say, it is by nature material. Value, on the other hand, is clearly immaterial. We value our children without generally assigning them worth. Furthermore, it is clear that worth is in some sense parasitic on value. If someone we value dies as a result of another person's negligence and there is a lawsuit, we will be forced to place some worth on the life of our dearly departed, and if we get a favorable verdict, we will be said to get justice which will in fact be a lie. Yet worth and value are disentangled. The performance of certain financial transactions yield great worth, but are difficult to justify as manifesting anything in the way of value, in fact, sometimes they yield negative value. Likewise, we may value Van Gogh's paintings, but they never yielded anything significant in the way of worth during the life of the painter.
Yet it is difficult to conceive of a society of people in which the concept of value had no place. Certainly, the life of a traditional person is soaked in value. There is the ritual performed before the planting of the corn, to demonstrate the value of the corn and the value of powers which sustain the corn crop through the growing season. There is the ritual of harvest, of thanksgiving to the benevolent powers which yield such bounty. There are the rituals performed for the dead, to celebrate their value to their families and their communities. There are rituals of birth, and marriage, to celebrate the creation of new forms of life and connections. On the other hand, the modern person has made progress, and has disposed with the rituals and superstitions of the past. One way to view this progress is in the devaluation and desacralization of ordinary life. Yet even the modern person, who mindlessly plants and harvests mere things, still manages to conduct rituals for dead relatives and marriages and the like. People are still ready to make sacrifices for political or charitable causes. The reduction of the human being, and the reduction of the human environment to a mere series of mechanical events in time has not been accomplished. We have been denuded of our ancestral memories, of our historic customs and our ways, but there is still room for progress, there is still more we can forget before we become like the machines we idolize. In fact, perversely, the cult of progress may be nothing more than the valuation of machinery over people and our collective memory. Only a person would be called to sacrifice their humanity in order to become a part within a mindless machine. The machine, like a sadistic killer, is supremely indifferent.
Ultimately, a humanity without value, no matter how twisted or warped, is inconceivable. A world without value would negate the need to measure or to ascribe worth. What is depression, if not the total devaluation of human life and the world? For the material world to function as a space in which human forms of life are possible, we must presuppose the existence of something from outside the material world, the source of this mysterious value. We may even initiate new rites: the breaking of the machine.
Beauty is not material, and thus beauty cannot be differentiated in any absolute way. It is not an ingredient of material things, the way carbon atoms may be. Quantity necessitates measurement, which necessitate materiality. To measure something, it must be capable of differentiation from what we use for measurement. (Because beauty is not material, beauty is not differentiated, ergo beauty is one, not in the sense of a numerical unity, but in that it forms an undifferentiated unity of many contrasts, a family resemblance. Because it has no material limit, it admits to no ultimate description or definition the way a material phenomenon like electricity does. A definition can only be possible by considering only a limited number of its manifestations. Such a definition is always a lie, because it is founded in placing a material limit on a concept which has none.)
Can beauty be said to exist? Certainly, the existence of beauty cannot be proved by scientific investigation of the world, as beauty is not material. On the other hand, beauty cannot be said to be subjective, as after all, beauty is a concept, and "beauty" is a word, and the meaning of the word is not completely idiosyncratic. We may never agree that Van Gogh's paintings are beautiful, but you still know what I am saying if I say that "Cypress Trees" is beautiful. On the other hand, if I made up some word, "zalligook", which I employed to idiosyncratically label random things, you would have no idea what I was talking about. So to be clear, the use of the word "beauty" is governed by intersubjective norms of usage. Beauty in this sense exists, similar to the way in which we say that trees exist based on insubjective agreements of perceptual judgments.
But beauty is a concept, and beauty is incapable of measurement, and we can imagine a tribe somewhere lacking a concept of beauty, and another tribe with a sense of beauty which was completely unintelligible to us. We can ask, why is it that our concept of beauty doesn't simply fall out of our language? I think we have to say that beauty has not been erased from the language because beauty is something we value. Of course, I also have to admit that beauty has a worth, it is in general, a good means of selling something. Beauty has its fair admixture of the meretricious.
Worth I will leave alone. It is clear that worth relates to the realm of quantity, that is to say, it is by nature material. Value, on the other hand, is clearly immaterial. We value our children without generally assigning them worth. Furthermore, it is clear that worth is in some sense parasitic on value. If someone we value dies as a result of another person's negligence and there is a lawsuit, we will be forced to place some worth on the life of our dearly departed, and if we get a favorable verdict, we will be said to get justice which will in fact be a lie. Yet worth and value are disentangled. The performance of certain financial transactions yield great worth, but are difficult to justify as manifesting anything in the way of value, in fact, sometimes they yield negative value. Likewise, we may value Van Gogh's paintings, but they never yielded anything significant in the way of worth during the life of the painter.
Yet it is difficult to conceive of a society of people in which the concept of value had no place. Certainly, the life of a traditional person is soaked in value. There is the ritual performed before the planting of the corn, to demonstrate the value of the corn and the value of powers which sustain the corn crop through the growing season. There is the ritual of harvest, of thanksgiving to the benevolent powers which yield such bounty. There are the rituals performed for the dead, to celebrate their value to their families and their communities. There are rituals of birth, and marriage, to celebrate the creation of new forms of life and connections. On the other hand, the modern person has made progress, and has disposed with the rituals and superstitions of the past. One way to view this progress is in the devaluation and desacralization of ordinary life. Yet even the modern person, who mindlessly plants and harvests mere things, still manages to conduct rituals for dead relatives and marriages and the like. People are still ready to make sacrifices for political or charitable causes. The reduction of the human being, and the reduction of the human environment to a mere series of mechanical events in time has not been accomplished. We have been denuded of our ancestral memories, of our historic customs and our ways, but there is still room for progress, there is still more we can forget before we become like the machines we idolize. In fact, perversely, the cult of progress may be nothing more than the valuation of machinery over people and our collective memory. Only a person would be called to sacrifice their humanity in order to become a part within a mindless machine. The machine, like a sadistic killer, is supremely indifferent.
Ultimately, a humanity without value, no matter how twisted or warped, is inconceivable. A world without value would negate the need to measure or to ascribe worth. What is depression, if not the total devaluation of human life and the world? For the material world to function as a space in which human forms of life are possible, we must presuppose the existence of something from outside the material world, the source of this mysterious value. We may even initiate new rites: the breaking of the machine.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Moebius Dialogue
Moebius strip, a definition:
The Möbius strip or Möbius band (UK /ˈmɜrbiəs/ or US /ˈmoʊbiəs/; German: [ˈmøːbi̯ʊs]), also Mobius or Moebius, is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It can be realized as a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.[1][2][3]
Background: Two sentient beings, Dey and Ray, were affixed to the same region of a Moebius strip, but opposite one another. Despite being separated by the band, they could communicate through the strip. This communication was accomplished by the organism pressing his face into the surface of the Moebius strip, which is elastic, so the other organism can see the expression on the other's face, and the sound vibrates through the surface of the strip. Obviously, in their language, each being speaks of their side of the strip, and that the other organism is on the other side of the strip. Each being is inside their side, and the other being is on the outside.
Dey: Ray, I have been thinking. All I really know is my side of the strip, as I have never seen nor experienced your side of the strip. I have heard you talk about it, but I cannot know what you mean as I only know what is on my side.
Ray: Dey, I don't know what you mean. You can see the expressions on my face, you can know what I feel.
Dey: No Ray, I don't see the real you, I only see what is happening on my side of the strip. How do I know that what I see corresponds to the real expression on your face. I see your behavior, not what you are feeling, not what it on your inner face. In fact, I don't even really know that you have an inner face, that there is anything on the other side. For all I know, this side which I experience may be the only side of the strip.
Ray: What you see Dey is the expression of my being. It is not a sign of my feeling, it is their manifestation.
Dey: But Rey, you can lie about your feelings. Just because you say something, or behave a certain way, I don't know what you are really feeling. Your behavior just stands for your feeling, which only exists on your side of the strip. I can never know what is on your side.
Ray: But if my feelings were not connected with my behavior (which you observe) then our words wouldn't have any meaning. Its not that you wouldn't know that I was in pain, it would be that the concept of pain would be meaningless.
Dey: Nonsense. I can point to my pain, even if you can't see it. I can frown to myself, and I don't have to communicate that to you.
Ray: It is not that you don't have to communicate it to me, its that you can't communicate it to me. I can't ever know what you mean, unless I can connect it to something in my experience.
Dey: Aren't you saying that all there is is behavior? We both agree that the strip exists, and that we can see the strip, but I can't see your side, and you can't see my side, so the strip really has no sides, and there is nothing on either side at all.
Ray: Are you saying that I don't exist, that I am like a character in a philosophical dialogue or something?
Dey: Exactly, we are both characters in a philosophical dialogue.
Ray: But who's dialogue?
Dey: That's the point, if we are fiction, then we don't exist, and there can be no question of where a fiction really exists, or who is writing the dialogue. The dialogue exists, but we are not the dialogue.
Ray: But aren't we part of the dialogue?
Dey: No, we are fictions, so we can't be part of anything.
Ray: But how can fictions communicate? Doesn't there need to be a fictional dialogue, at least?
Dey: No, there is only the strip, only the strip exists, because we agree that the strip exists. I see you in the strip, but there is nothing beyond the strip. You see me in the strip, but there is nothing beyond the strip. It has no sides.
Ray: But how can the strip have no sides? How can we even call it a strip then? If you and I both perceive the strip, then how can you talk about a strip at all if no one perceives it?
Dey: We both happen, by accident, to exist, but if we did not, this strip would still be this strip.
Ray: How do you know?
Dey: Because the strip has always been here, and neither you nor I can cause the strip to disappear. We can adjust or manipulate the structure in the strip, but the strip simply exists, without any sides.
Ray: Isn't that simply a picture? You have a picture of the strip, and you imagine that the strip exists timelessly, but you don't know anything of the sort. You know that the strip is here now, and that the strip has responded in certain ways through the course of your life, but you certainly cannot say what the strip will do in the future.
Dey: I can measure parts of the strip, and observe changes in the strip which precede my existence.
Ray: But you don't know what the strip will be like in the future.
Dey: I can feel pretty confident based on the regularities I am aware of in the past as to what the status of the strip in the future will be.
Ray: But what do you mean by the strip? I see your face in the strip, I can see the gestures your hands make in the strip sometimes, but all I know about the other side is in the strip.
Dey: That's right, the other side doesn't exist, only the strip exists.
Ray: But all I can refer to is what exists on the other side. I can refer to your face, your hands, etc. I can never refer to the strip. The strip contains everything I can refer to, and if only the strip exists, then I don't know how you or I could know the strip. I believe the other side exists, that your side exists, and on your side is your essence, and your activities are manifest in the strip. Thus, I ascertain your essence from your activities.
Dey: But how can we speak of an invisible essence here if all we can know is the activity?
Ray: Well, as you say, sometimes what the activity reveals is false, and sometimes there is no activity, but something is going on on your side.
Dey: What if we were both part of the strip itself? That only the strip exists, and we exist as parts of the strip? Different sides of the strip as it were.
Ray: Sometimes the light is carried through to the other side, and sometimes, it was too weak, or hidden or disguised? The strip is divided into two sides, and each side of the strip communicates to each other by physically manipulating the strip?
Dey: Exactly. But then my side of the strip must be capable of manipulating your side of the strip, and vice versa. But my side is my side, and your side is your side, and only I can know what is on my side. So how could I even know if I were manipulating your side? I can only know what the strip says. There is another problem, I don't see how something on my side can physically interact with the strip. I can see something in the strip, and I can correlate a future state of the strip based on a prior state of the strip, but I can't see how something outside the strip could affect the strip.
Ray: Exactly, if a structure suddenly appears in the strip, I don't know why I shouldn't just say it is random, rather than some manipulation of the strip from the other side. You may say that you caused the change, but you don't exist, all I have is a correlation between an observable speech act and change in the strip. All we can know is the change in the strip, and the only way we can know it is by determining regularities in the changes in the pattern. We merely use the language of a "side" of the strip as a mean term to predict changes in the pattern. For example, if you say you are hungry, then I may subsequently be likely to observe you eating in the strip. But there is no one eating, no one observing, and nothing beyond the changes in the strip, which we can predict with certain regularities.
Dey: But how can we say that we see the same strip? I see my strip from my side, you see your strip from your side. Why should we say it is the same strip?
Ray: Well, we do say it is the same strip, we agree, so there must be some real strip that exists independently of what we see.
Dey: But we can never know the strip that exists independently from what I observe, and what you observe. You are suggesting, not one, not two, but three strips. The one I see, the one you see, and the one that really exists. But how does it help reconcile the contradiction of the fact that we see two different strips, yet we agree about what we see? How does postulating the existence of a strip that neither one of us can see help explain our agreement?
Ray: But we say that the strip exists, and it exists independently of our seeing it. Why should we say that if it does not exist?
Dey: What if the strip were nothing more than the boundary between the two sides?
Ray: What do you mean?
Dey: The strip seems to be the boundary of our activity and experience, and we agree at that boundary. If I could cross the boundary, I would really be on your side, and not stuck on my side. If the boundary did not exist, there would be no sides, no differentiation. But we both exist in each other at the boundary, so to speak.
Ray: Well, I imagine that there would have to be a third strip, and even if it could not exist independently, I imagine that God sees it at all times, and it resembles the strip that you see, and the strip that I see.
Dey: But how does that solve the problem of our agreement? We agree that there is a strip, but whether God agrees with us or not, what we see is different.
Ray: No, what we see is the same, if it wasn't, we wouldn't agree.
Dey: But it can't be the same, because I don't see what you see, and vice versa, we only say that we see the same thing. To say God agrees with us too (or would agree with us if he could see the strip) does not explain our agreement. In this case, there would have to be something above us and God to explain the agreement of the three. There must be a cause of the agreement, and the cause cannot be present in the seeing, because the seeings are different, even if what they see is reckoned to be the same.
Ray: Why can't the agreement just be the ground of meaning?
Dey: But something has to cause the agreement.
Ray: Why? We can't say anything about the cause of the agreement. If we did not agree, then we could have no conventions, and if we had no conventions, then we could have no descriptions. The agreement just is, or perhaps God is the agreement itself, what unifies our lives, which makes meaning possible.
Dey: Then what is God? He would have to be present in both of us, in order for us to agree. He would also have to be present everywhere, because we could only agree where he is present. But God can't be me, because then he would not be you. He could not be on my side, because he couldn't be on your side. He could not be in the strip, because, as we determined, the strip had no sides, and God would have to be on both sides of the strip. Moreover, the strip lacks consciousness, it is simply matter that we both observe. Further, we can't say anything about God, because he is the source of agreement, the source of meaning. Only through the operations of God could my side be unified with your side, and we can only talk intersubjectively about a side-less strip that we can agree on. So this God-talk is ultimately nonsense, and all we can talk about is this strip which we can both observe and which clearly has no sides and is not conscious.
Ray: Agreed. What's on TV?
The Möbius strip or Möbius band (UK /ˈmɜrbiəs/ or US /ˈmoʊbiəs/; German: [ˈmøːbi̯ʊs]), also Mobius or Moebius, is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It can be realized as a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.[1][2][3]
Background: Two sentient beings, Dey and Ray, were affixed to the same region of a Moebius strip, but opposite one another. Despite being separated by the band, they could communicate through the strip. This communication was accomplished by the organism pressing his face into the surface of the Moebius strip, which is elastic, so the other organism can see the expression on the other's face, and the sound vibrates through the surface of the strip. Obviously, in their language, each being speaks of their side of the strip, and that the other organism is on the other side of the strip. Each being is inside their side, and the other being is on the outside.
Dey: Ray, I have been thinking. All I really know is my side of the strip, as I have never seen nor experienced your side of the strip. I have heard you talk about it, but I cannot know what you mean as I only know what is on my side.
Ray: Dey, I don't know what you mean. You can see the expressions on my face, you can know what I feel.
Dey: No Ray, I don't see the real you, I only see what is happening on my side of the strip. How do I know that what I see corresponds to the real expression on your face. I see your behavior, not what you are feeling, not what it on your inner face. In fact, I don't even really know that you have an inner face, that there is anything on the other side. For all I know, this side which I experience may be the only side of the strip.
Ray: What you see Dey is the expression of my being. It is not a sign of my feeling, it is their manifestation.
Dey: But Rey, you can lie about your feelings. Just because you say something, or behave a certain way, I don't know what you are really feeling. Your behavior just stands for your feeling, which only exists on your side of the strip. I can never know what is on your side.
Ray: But if my feelings were not connected with my behavior (which you observe) then our words wouldn't have any meaning. Its not that you wouldn't know that I was in pain, it would be that the concept of pain would be meaningless.
Dey: Nonsense. I can point to my pain, even if you can't see it. I can frown to myself, and I don't have to communicate that to you.
Ray: It is not that you don't have to communicate it to me, its that you can't communicate it to me. I can't ever know what you mean, unless I can connect it to something in my experience.
Dey: Aren't you saying that all there is is behavior? We both agree that the strip exists, and that we can see the strip, but I can't see your side, and you can't see my side, so the strip really has no sides, and there is nothing on either side at all.
Ray: Are you saying that I don't exist, that I am like a character in a philosophical dialogue or something?
Dey: Exactly, we are both characters in a philosophical dialogue.
Ray: But who's dialogue?
Dey: That's the point, if we are fiction, then we don't exist, and there can be no question of where a fiction really exists, or who is writing the dialogue. The dialogue exists, but we are not the dialogue.
Ray: But aren't we part of the dialogue?
Dey: No, we are fictions, so we can't be part of anything.
Ray: But how can fictions communicate? Doesn't there need to be a fictional dialogue, at least?
Dey: No, there is only the strip, only the strip exists, because we agree that the strip exists. I see you in the strip, but there is nothing beyond the strip. You see me in the strip, but there is nothing beyond the strip. It has no sides.
Ray: But how can the strip have no sides? How can we even call it a strip then? If you and I both perceive the strip, then how can you talk about a strip at all if no one perceives it?
Dey: We both happen, by accident, to exist, but if we did not, this strip would still be this strip.
Ray: How do you know?
Dey: Because the strip has always been here, and neither you nor I can cause the strip to disappear. We can adjust or manipulate the structure in the strip, but the strip simply exists, without any sides.
Ray: Isn't that simply a picture? You have a picture of the strip, and you imagine that the strip exists timelessly, but you don't know anything of the sort. You know that the strip is here now, and that the strip has responded in certain ways through the course of your life, but you certainly cannot say what the strip will do in the future.
Dey: I can measure parts of the strip, and observe changes in the strip which precede my existence.
Ray: But you don't know what the strip will be like in the future.
Dey: I can feel pretty confident based on the regularities I am aware of in the past as to what the status of the strip in the future will be.
Ray: But what do you mean by the strip? I see your face in the strip, I can see the gestures your hands make in the strip sometimes, but all I know about the other side is in the strip.
Dey: That's right, the other side doesn't exist, only the strip exists.
Ray: But all I can refer to is what exists on the other side. I can refer to your face, your hands, etc. I can never refer to the strip. The strip contains everything I can refer to, and if only the strip exists, then I don't know how you or I could know the strip. I believe the other side exists, that your side exists, and on your side is your essence, and your activities are manifest in the strip. Thus, I ascertain your essence from your activities.
Dey: But how can we speak of an invisible essence here if all we can know is the activity?
Ray: Well, as you say, sometimes what the activity reveals is false, and sometimes there is no activity, but something is going on on your side.
Dey: What if we were both part of the strip itself? That only the strip exists, and we exist as parts of the strip? Different sides of the strip as it were.
Ray: Sometimes the light is carried through to the other side, and sometimes, it was too weak, or hidden or disguised? The strip is divided into two sides, and each side of the strip communicates to each other by physically manipulating the strip?
Dey: Exactly. But then my side of the strip must be capable of manipulating your side of the strip, and vice versa. But my side is my side, and your side is your side, and only I can know what is on my side. So how could I even know if I were manipulating your side? I can only know what the strip says. There is another problem, I don't see how something on my side can physically interact with the strip. I can see something in the strip, and I can correlate a future state of the strip based on a prior state of the strip, but I can't see how something outside the strip could affect the strip.
Ray: Exactly, if a structure suddenly appears in the strip, I don't know why I shouldn't just say it is random, rather than some manipulation of the strip from the other side. You may say that you caused the change, but you don't exist, all I have is a correlation between an observable speech act and change in the strip. All we can know is the change in the strip, and the only way we can know it is by determining regularities in the changes in the pattern. We merely use the language of a "side" of the strip as a mean term to predict changes in the pattern. For example, if you say you are hungry, then I may subsequently be likely to observe you eating in the strip. But there is no one eating, no one observing, and nothing beyond the changes in the strip, which we can predict with certain regularities.
Dey: But how can we say that we see the same strip? I see my strip from my side, you see your strip from your side. Why should we say it is the same strip?
Ray: Well, we do say it is the same strip, we agree, so there must be some real strip that exists independently of what we see.
Dey: But we can never know the strip that exists independently from what I observe, and what you observe. You are suggesting, not one, not two, but three strips. The one I see, the one you see, and the one that really exists. But how does it help reconcile the contradiction of the fact that we see two different strips, yet we agree about what we see? How does postulating the existence of a strip that neither one of us can see help explain our agreement?
Ray: But we say that the strip exists, and it exists independently of our seeing it. Why should we say that if it does not exist?
Dey: What if the strip were nothing more than the boundary between the two sides?
Ray: What do you mean?
Dey: The strip seems to be the boundary of our activity and experience, and we agree at that boundary. If I could cross the boundary, I would really be on your side, and not stuck on my side. If the boundary did not exist, there would be no sides, no differentiation. But we both exist in each other at the boundary, so to speak.
Ray: Well, I imagine that there would have to be a third strip, and even if it could not exist independently, I imagine that God sees it at all times, and it resembles the strip that you see, and the strip that I see.
Dey: But how does that solve the problem of our agreement? We agree that there is a strip, but whether God agrees with us or not, what we see is different.
Ray: No, what we see is the same, if it wasn't, we wouldn't agree.
Dey: But it can't be the same, because I don't see what you see, and vice versa, we only say that we see the same thing. To say God agrees with us too (or would agree with us if he could see the strip) does not explain our agreement. In this case, there would have to be something above us and God to explain the agreement of the three. There must be a cause of the agreement, and the cause cannot be present in the seeing, because the seeings are different, even if what they see is reckoned to be the same.
Ray: Why can't the agreement just be the ground of meaning?
Dey: But something has to cause the agreement.
Ray: Why? We can't say anything about the cause of the agreement. If we did not agree, then we could have no conventions, and if we had no conventions, then we could have no descriptions. The agreement just is, or perhaps God is the agreement itself, what unifies our lives, which makes meaning possible.
Dey: Then what is God? He would have to be present in both of us, in order for us to agree. He would also have to be present everywhere, because we could only agree where he is present. But God can't be me, because then he would not be you. He could not be on my side, because he couldn't be on your side. He could not be in the strip, because, as we determined, the strip had no sides, and God would have to be on both sides of the strip. Moreover, the strip lacks consciousness, it is simply matter that we both observe. Further, we can't say anything about God, because he is the source of agreement, the source of meaning. Only through the operations of God could my side be unified with your side, and we can only talk intersubjectively about a side-less strip that we can agree on. So this God-talk is ultimately nonsense, and all we can talk about is this strip which we can both observe and which clearly has no sides and is not conscious.
Ray: Agreed. What's on TV?
Friday, March 14, 2014
Faith and Truth
The method of faith is to throw ourselves into the hands of the essence
of the universe, and trust it, and not ourselves, to guide us to the
truth. This may sound brave or foolhardy, but if we see clearly, we
realize it was always the only real option.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The Location Problem Part III: The Hierarchy
I made some remarks on the philosophical discipline of ontology yesterday, I let the line out, and so it falls on me to pull some back in. As I said, language is the labyrinth, easy in, very difficult to get out, and I cannot claim any exception for myself.
If we look at Neo-Platonism, broadly conceived, we find what philosophers term an ontology, a kind of typology. For example, the Neo-Platonists write about Intellect, Life, and Being, establishing a distinction between rational souls like ourselves, living things (animals and plants) and inanimate things. What can be missed here is that this typology is actually the expression of a hierarchy. The realm of the intellect is higher than the realm of life, and the realm of life is higher than the realm of being. The ontology here does not locate value in the ontology, the ontology itself is the expression of value. The Form of the Good, the One, lies outside the world, but the world manifests the Good, and that manifestation is the manifestation of value.
What is the philosophical justification for the hierarchy? Given that we are talking about a philosophical tradition that began with Plato, was subsequently influenced by Aristotle and Stoicism, and continued unabated to the development of the university and the re-introduction of Aristotle into Christendom in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (as well as influencing the philosophical development of Judaism and Islam), anything I can say in a short entry in a blog is charitably an over-generalization.
However, in Greek, "theoria" has a different connotation from the English word "theory," which we associate primarily with scientific theories, e.g. hypotheses that are used to make empirical predictions. Theoria in the Greek means contemplation, gazing. It is the act of being a spectator.
I spoke briefly in my first entry on the location problem about what I called "seeing the world as a hierarchy" which I labelled a kind of perception, a way of looking at things. If we want to look to Wittgenstein, this would fall into what he called "aspect seeing" or "seeing as" versus "seeing." If we look to the Platonic tradition, I believe we would be talking here about perceiving the intelligible form.
Now whatever I can say here about theoria, I would be remiss if I did not point out that there is another way of seeing the world, and that is scientifically. When we see the world scientifically, as merely a totality of facts, we see the world lacking in any value or meaning. If I am an engineer, it does not matter from the standpoint of engineering whether I design a contraption intended for the mass extermination of insects or people, except to the extent that human beings or insects differ in their crude physical characteristics, for example, you need a bigger incinerator to cremate human bodies. The sense of horror one may feel visiting Auschwitz is not a scientific horror, but, for want of a better word, an existential one. It is not the fact that millions were killed at Auschwitz, but the meaning of the fact that millions were killed that troubles me. If it had been millions of flies I would not be troubled, and the fact that it was people and not flies has no scientific significance. It means something different to me that an innocent child dies and not a house fly, but that meaning can not be expressed in the laws of physics, the same mechanical principles apply.
I would like to claim that we as human beings do see the world (and other people) as manifesting value or significance, that this is another way of seeing things apart from the scientific viewpoint. There are clearly objections that could be brought to bear on this statement, that perhaps what I am talking about is affective, emotional. But the affect is clearly the result of one thing, and not another, being the case--and what is the case is significant, if not significant in a scientific way. (We can compare Archimedes "Eureka!") In any event, I will not argue the point here, and simply say that Alasdair MacIntyre's work contains some good discussion with respect to this issue. Let's return to ontology.
The Neo-Platonic ontology rises and falls in some sense upon the intellectual vision with which it is connected. It describes a way of seeing the world, and seeing the world as the manifestation of value. It is not that value is going to be contained or located somewhere in the ontology, the ontology itself is contained in value. So if we want to discuss the psychology of ontology, we might say that what leads a philosopher to construct an ontology is some kind of vision of the world (or some aspect of the world) as being meaningful or valuable. In some sense, a "scientific ontology" is connected with a vision that the scientific description of things is the description of greatest value. (And how could you refute someone else's vision? Not scientifically.) Most modern ontology is primarily concerned with issues of consciousness and matter, is matter consciousness or is consciousness matter etc. etc. Are you an idealist, a dualist, a materialist, etc. etc. This is all nonsense in one sense, as I discussed previously, "consciousness" "matter" "mind" etc., are not things or "substances", they are concepts, and concepts which possess an incredibly deep grammar (an incredibly dense set of uses and practices connected with them).
But if we look at ontology as expressing a vision of value, we can make some sense of it, perhaps. As contemporary humans, we are inclined to value consciousness over matter. To put it more clearly, we are inclined to value things to which we generally attribute consciousness over things which we do not. And the question I want to pose is, why not continue to do so? Aren't the facts irrelevant here? I think there are a lot of low hanging philosophical fruits with respect to reductive materialism (for example), but let's say that science advanced to the point that I could predict, based solely on the laws of physics, what a person would doing ten years in the future (or perhaps a group of people). Should I then say this person has no more value than a clock? He or she is just a mechanism? There is no doubt I could say this if I wanted to (some people say the same now even though physics is totally useless in predicting human behavior). But what if I said, I still value this person, she is not simply a clock, because she feels pain, because she loves, because she hates, because she makes mistakes and gets turned around, she will never be a clock. (And physics can never take these facts away from her: She will never behave like a clock.)
So I am not sure what a lot of metaphysics accomplishes here. I don't believe value will ever be located, it is what is expressed in the inclination to produce an ontology. (Fish can't swim outside of the fishbowl either. They not going to swim their way to water.) From the standpoint of value, the issue of the scientific facts is irrelevant (I care that she loves, not how she comes to love). It doesn't matter "what consciousness is"--not that that is a coherent question--it matters that we value it.
What can I say here? I can say that the concept of "consciousness", in general, has greater importance to our contemporary forms of life than the concept of "matter." I suppose you can call this dualism without the "should." I can say that the concept of "value" has, in general, greater importance to our contemporary forms of life than the concept of a "fact." I say this without any intention of signing up at the Flat Earth Society. I think scientific investigation, empirical investigation, must be taken seriously in its own right, but I think it is our duties as philosophers in truly understanding science to also consider and acknowledge the limits of science. If the goal is clarity or understanding, we cannot be content to view the matter like an adolescent writing about their crush. (The philosopher, in the ultimate sense, can never be a citizen of any country.)
Suhrawardi made a distinction between intuitive and discursive philosophy. Intuitive philosophy is informed by theoria, vision, contemplation. And what is that vision? I think in some sense the vision is informed by eros, love, desire, to see something as having the ultimate significance, ultimate truth, ultimate value. But what is revealed is never factual, it can never be a matter of the facts that something possesses ultimate significance. Discursive philosophy is the good old hard work of conceptual analysis. Its job, to put it rudely, is to tear down the idols of eros, to move beyond them, whether they be the concept of God, the concept of consciousness, the concept of naturalism. It is to bring philosophy back down to earth, to point out that we are only talking about ordinary concepts, that the impulse to turn our concepts into something possessing ultimate significance was an error. The will to philosophize no doubt begins in the impulse of ontology, but it must pass beyond the forms of ontology. (They are merely meaningless forms after all.) What we were trying to say in words cannot ultimately be said--but I know what you were trying to say. As Wittgenstein noted, what we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.
If we look at Neo-Platonism, broadly conceived, we find what philosophers term an ontology, a kind of typology. For example, the Neo-Platonists write about Intellect, Life, and Being, establishing a distinction between rational souls like ourselves, living things (animals and plants) and inanimate things. What can be missed here is that this typology is actually the expression of a hierarchy. The realm of the intellect is higher than the realm of life, and the realm of life is higher than the realm of being. The ontology here does not locate value in the ontology, the ontology itself is the expression of value. The Form of the Good, the One, lies outside the world, but the world manifests the Good, and that manifestation is the manifestation of value.
What is the philosophical justification for the hierarchy? Given that we are talking about a philosophical tradition that began with Plato, was subsequently influenced by Aristotle and Stoicism, and continued unabated to the development of the university and the re-introduction of Aristotle into Christendom in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (as well as influencing the philosophical development of Judaism and Islam), anything I can say in a short entry in a blog is charitably an over-generalization.
However, in Greek, "theoria" has a different connotation from the English word "theory," which we associate primarily with scientific theories, e.g. hypotheses that are used to make empirical predictions. Theoria in the Greek means contemplation, gazing. It is the act of being a spectator.
I spoke briefly in my first entry on the location problem about what I called "seeing the world as a hierarchy" which I labelled a kind of perception, a way of looking at things. If we want to look to Wittgenstein, this would fall into what he called "aspect seeing" or "seeing as" versus "seeing." If we look to the Platonic tradition, I believe we would be talking here about perceiving the intelligible form.
Now whatever I can say here about theoria, I would be remiss if I did not point out that there is another way of seeing the world, and that is scientifically. When we see the world scientifically, as merely a totality of facts, we see the world lacking in any value or meaning. If I am an engineer, it does not matter from the standpoint of engineering whether I design a contraption intended for the mass extermination of insects or people, except to the extent that human beings or insects differ in their crude physical characteristics, for example, you need a bigger incinerator to cremate human bodies. The sense of horror one may feel visiting Auschwitz is not a scientific horror, but, for want of a better word, an existential one. It is not the fact that millions were killed at Auschwitz, but the meaning of the fact that millions were killed that troubles me. If it had been millions of flies I would not be troubled, and the fact that it was people and not flies has no scientific significance. It means something different to me that an innocent child dies and not a house fly, but that meaning can not be expressed in the laws of physics, the same mechanical principles apply.
I would like to claim that we as human beings do see the world (and other people) as manifesting value or significance, that this is another way of seeing things apart from the scientific viewpoint. There are clearly objections that could be brought to bear on this statement, that perhaps what I am talking about is affective, emotional. But the affect is clearly the result of one thing, and not another, being the case--and what is the case is significant, if not significant in a scientific way. (We can compare Archimedes "Eureka!") In any event, I will not argue the point here, and simply say that Alasdair MacIntyre's work contains some good discussion with respect to this issue. Let's return to ontology.
The Neo-Platonic ontology rises and falls in some sense upon the intellectual vision with which it is connected. It describes a way of seeing the world, and seeing the world as the manifestation of value. It is not that value is going to be contained or located somewhere in the ontology, the ontology itself is contained in value. So if we want to discuss the psychology of ontology, we might say that what leads a philosopher to construct an ontology is some kind of vision of the world (or some aspect of the world) as being meaningful or valuable. In some sense, a "scientific ontology" is connected with a vision that the scientific description of things is the description of greatest value. (And how could you refute someone else's vision? Not scientifically.) Most modern ontology is primarily concerned with issues of consciousness and matter, is matter consciousness or is consciousness matter etc. etc. Are you an idealist, a dualist, a materialist, etc. etc. This is all nonsense in one sense, as I discussed previously, "consciousness" "matter" "mind" etc., are not things or "substances", they are concepts, and concepts which possess an incredibly deep grammar (an incredibly dense set of uses and practices connected with them).
But if we look at ontology as expressing a vision of value, we can make some sense of it, perhaps. As contemporary humans, we are inclined to value consciousness over matter. To put it more clearly, we are inclined to value things to which we generally attribute consciousness over things which we do not. And the question I want to pose is, why not continue to do so? Aren't the facts irrelevant here? I think there are a lot of low hanging philosophical fruits with respect to reductive materialism (for example), but let's say that science advanced to the point that I could predict, based solely on the laws of physics, what a person would doing ten years in the future (or perhaps a group of people). Should I then say this person has no more value than a clock? He or she is just a mechanism? There is no doubt I could say this if I wanted to (some people say the same now even though physics is totally useless in predicting human behavior). But what if I said, I still value this person, she is not simply a clock, because she feels pain, because she loves, because she hates, because she makes mistakes and gets turned around, she will never be a clock. (And physics can never take these facts away from her: She will never behave like a clock.)
So I am not sure what a lot of metaphysics accomplishes here. I don't believe value will ever be located, it is what is expressed in the inclination to produce an ontology. (Fish can't swim outside of the fishbowl either. They not going to swim their way to water.) From the standpoint of value, the issue of the scientific facts is irrelevant (I care that she loves, not how she comes to love). It doesn't matter "what consciousness is"--not that that is a coherent question--it matters that we value it.
What can I say here? I can say that the concept of "consciousness", in general, has greater importance to our contemporary forms of life than the concept of "matter." I suppose you can call this dualism without the "should." I can say that the concept of "value" has, in general, greater importance to our contemporary forms of life than the concept of a "fact." I say this without any intention of signing up at the Flat Earth Society. I think scientific investigation, empirical investigation, must be taken seriously in its own right, but I think it is our duties as philosophers in truly understanding science to also consider and acknowledge the limits of science. If the goal is clarity or understanding, we cannot be content to view the matter like an adolescent writing about their crush. (The philosopher, in the ultimate sense, can never be a citizen of any country.)
Suhrawardi made a distinction between intuitive and discursive philosophy. Intuitive philosophy is informed by theoria, vision, contemplation. And what is that vision? I think in some sense the vision is informed by eros, love, desire, to see something as having the ultimate significance, ultimate truth, ultimate value. But what is revealed is never factual, it can never be a matter of the facts that something possesses ultimate significance. Discursive philosophy is the good old hard work of conceptual analysis. Its job, to put it rudely, is to tear down the idols of eros, to move beyond them, whether they be the concept of God, the concept of consciousness, the concept of naturalism. It is to bring philosophy back down to earth, to point out that we are only talking about ordinary concepts, that the impulse to turn our concepts into something possessing ultimate significance was an error. The will to philosophize no doubt begins in the impulse of ontology, but it must pass beyond the forms of ontology. (They are merely meaningless forms after all.) What we were trying to say in words cannot ultimately be said--but I know what you were trying to say. As Wittgenstein noted, what we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.
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