Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[Pharoah]

A view from Nowhere:
The last section between the ****, is relevant to cause to action.

p.13 Chapter II Mind
p.13 First, does the mind itself have an objective character? Second, what is its relation to those physical aspects of reality whose objective status is less doubtful? Third, how can it be the case that one of the people in the world is me?
p.17 2. Mental Objectivity:
p.18 The first requirement is to think of our own minds as mere instances of something general—as we are accustomed to thinking of particular things and events in the physical world as instances and manifestations of something general. We must think of mind as a phenomenon to which the human case is not necessarily central, even though our minds are at the center of our world.
p.18 I mean a concept under which we ourselves fall as instances—without any implication that we are the central instances.
p.19 3. Other Minds
p.20 Each of us is the subject of various experiences, and to understand that there are other people in the world as well, one must be able to conceive of experiences of which one is not the subject: experiences that are not present to oneself. To do this it is necessary to have a general conception of subjects of experience and to place oneself under it as an instance. It cannot be done by extending the idea of what is immediately felt into other people’s bodies, for as Wittgenstein observed, that will only give you an idea of having feelings in their bodies, not of their having feelings.
p.25 5. The Incompleteness of Objective Reality
p.26 Still, even if objective understanding can be only partial, it is worth trying to extend it, for a simple reason. The pursuit of an objective understanding of reality is the only way to expand our knowledge of what there is beyond the way it appears to us.
p.27 If on the other hand one starts from the objective side, the problem is how to accommodate, in a world that simply exists and has no perspectival center, any of the following things: (a) oneself; (b) on’s point of view; (c) the point of view of other selves, similar and dissimilar; and (d) the objects of various types of judgment that seem to emanate from these perspectives.

p.28 Chapter III Mind and Body
p.32 2. The Self as Private Object
p.36 There is a distinction between appearance and reality in this domain as elsewhere. Only the objectivity underlying this distinction must be understood as objectivity with regard to something subjective—mental rather than physical objectivity.
p.37 Whether or not we accept his [Wittgenstein’s] positive account, with its famous obscurity and reticence, I believe his point that mental concepts are sui generis is correct. They refer not to private objects like souls and sense data but to subjective points of view and their modifications—even thought the range of mental phenomena is not limited to those we ourselves can identify subjectively. The question is how to apply to the problem of personal identity this general idea that mental concepts do not refer to logically private objects of awareness.
p.37 3. Personal Identity and Reference
p.38 I believe that whatever we are told about continuity of mental content between two stages of experience, the issue logically remains open whether they have the same subject or not. In addition, it is clearly part of the idea of my identity that I could have led a completely different mental life, fro birth. This would have happened, for example, if I had been adopted at birth and brought up in Argentina. The question is how this idea of the same subject can meet the conditions of objectivity appropriate for a psychological concept: how it can express an identity that is subjective (not merely biological) but at the same time admits the distinction between correct and incorrect self-identification.
p.40 I suggest that the concept of the self is opne to objective “completion” provided something can be found which straddles the subjective-objective gap. That is, the concept contains the possibility that it refers to something with further objective essential features beyond those included in the psychological concept itself—something whose objective persistence is among the necessary conditions of personal identity—but only if this objectively describable referent is in a strong sense the basis for those subjective features that typify the persistent self.
p.51 7. The Possibility of Progress
p.51 What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective on the world, and in some cases a capacity for self-awareness as well.... An integrated theory of reality must account for this, and I believe that if and when it arrives, probably not for centuries, it will alter our conception of the universe as radically as anything has to date.

p.54 Chapter 4 The Objective Self
p.54 1. Being Someone
NB. p.54 One acute problem of subjectivity remains even after points of view and subjective experiences are admitted to the real world—after the world is conceded to be full of people with minds, having thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that cannot be completely subdued by the physical conception of objectivity. This general admission still leaves us with an unsolved problem of particular subjectivity. The world so conceived, thought extremely various in the types of things and perspectives it contains, is still centerless. It contains us all, and none of us occupies a metaphysically privileged position. Yet each of us, reflecting on this centerless world, must admit that one very large fact seems to have been omitted from its description: the fact that a particular person in it is himself.
What kind of fact is that?

p.67 Chapter 5 Knowledge
p.67 1. Skepticism
NB. p.69 Since we can’t literally escape ourselves, any improvement in our beliefs has to result form some kind of self-transformation. And the thing we can do which comes closest to getting outside ourselves is to form a detached idea of the world that includes us, and includes our possession of that conception as part of what it enables us to understand about ourselves. We are then outside ourselves in the sense that we appear inside a conception of the world that we ourselves possess, but that is not tied to our particular point of view. The pursuit of this goal is the essential task of the objective self. I shall argue that it makes sense only in terms of an epistemology that is significantly rationalist.
The question is how limited beings like ourselves can alter their conception of the world so that it is no longer just the view from where they are but in a sense a view from nowhere, which includes and comprehends the fact that the world contains beings which possess it, explains why the world appears to them as it does prior to the formation of that conception, and explains how they can arrive at the conception itself.
p.71 2. Antiskepticism
p.74 We can only try to make our conception of our place in the world more complete—essentially developing the objective standpoint. the limit to which such development must tend is presumably unreachable: a conception that closes over itself completely, by describing a world that contains a being that has precisely that conception, and explaining how the being was able to reach that conception from its starting point within the world.
p.74 3. Self-transcendence
p.74 To provide an alternative to the imaginable and unimaginable skeptical possibilities, a self-transcendent conception should ideally explain the following four things: (1) what the world is like; (2) what we are like; (3)why the world appears to beings like us in certain respects as it is and in certain respects as it isn’t; (4) how being like us can arrive at such a conception.
NB. p.74 The aim of objectivity would be to reach a conception of the world, including oneself, which involved one’s own point of view not essentially, but only instrumentally, so to speak: so that the form of our understanding would be specific to ourselves, but its content would not be.
p.78 4. Evolutionary Epistemology
p.78 self-understanding is at the heart of objectivity.... It requires that we come to understand the operations of our minds from a point of view that is not just our own. This would not be the kind of self-understanding that Kant aimed for, that is, an understanding from within of the forms and limits of all our possible experience and thought.... What is needed is something even stronger: an explanation of the possibility of objective knowledge of the real world which is itself an instance of objective knowledge of that world and our relation to it. Can there be creatures capable of this sort of self-transcendence?
NB. p.81 It is not the kind of thing that could be either a brute fact or an accident, any more than the identity of inertial and gravitational mass could be; the universe must have fundamental properties that inevitably give rise through physical and biological evolution to complex organisms capable of generating theories about themselves and it. This is not itself an explanation; it merely expresses a view about one condition which an acceptable explanation should meet: it should show why this had to happen, given the relatively short time since the Big Band, and not merely that it could have happened—as is attempted by Darwinian proposals.
p.82 5. Rationalism
p.83 the position to which I am drawn is a form of rationalism. This does not mean that we have innate knowledge of the truth about the world, but it does mean that we have the capacity, not based on experience, to generate hypotheses about what in general the world might possibly be like, and to reject those possibilities that we see could not include ourselves and our experiences.
p.85/86 The idea of a full conception of reality that explains our ability to arrive at it is just a dream.
Nevertheless, it’s what we aim toward: a gradual liberation of the dormant objective self, trapped initially behind an individual perspective of human experience. The hope is to develop a detached perspective that can coexist and comprehend the individual one.
p.86 6. Double Vision
p.86 [The dangers of pursuing the goal to make objective progress are excessive impersonality, false objectification, and insoluble conflict between subjective and objective conceptions of the same thing.]:
The first comes from taking too literally the image of the true self trapped in the individual human perspective.... Objective advance produces a split in the self, and as it gradually widens, the problems of integration between the two standpoints become sever, particularly in regard to ethics and personal life. One must arrange somehow to see the world both from nowhere and from here, and to live accordingly.
p.87 Often an objective advance will involve the recognition that some aspects of our previous understanding belong to the realm of appearance. Instead of conceiving the world as full of colored objects, we conceive it as full of objects with primary qualities that affect human vision in certain subjectively understandable ways. The distinction between appearance and objective reality becomes the object of a new, mixed understanding that combines subjective and objective elements and that is based on recognition of the limits of objectivity. Here there is no conflict.
But it may happen that the object of understanding cannot be so cleanly divided. It may happen that something appears to require subjective and objective conceptions that cover the same territory, and that cannot be combined into a single complex but consistent view.

p.90 chapter VI Thought and Reality
p.90 1. Realism
p.91/2 Human objectivity may be able to grasp only part of the world, but when it is successful it should provide us with an understanding of aspects of reality whose existence is completely independent of our capacity to thing about them—as independent as the existence of things we can’t conceive.
p.99 3. Kant and Strawson
p.101 I want to agree with Strawson in denying that we know things only as they appear to us, but agree with Kant in holding that how things are in themselves transcends all possible appearances or human conceptions.

p.110 Chapter VII Freedom
p.110 1. Two Problems
p.111 The question “What is action?” is much broader than the problem of free will, for it applies to the activity of spiders and to the peripheral, unconscious or subintentional movements of human beings in the course of more deliberate activity (see Frankfurt (2)). It applies to any movement that is not involuntary.
p.115 There is no room in an objective picture of the world for a type of explanation of action that is not causal. The defense of freedom requires the acknowledgement of a different kind of explanation essentially connected to the agent’s point of view. [X]
p.119 Can we proceed part way along the inviting path of objectivity without ending up in the abyss, where the pursuit of objectivity undermines itelf and everything else?....
It would require some alternative to the literally unintelligible ambition of intervening in the world from outside (an ambition expressed by Kant in the unintelligible idea of the noumenal self which is outside time and causality) [my “unintelligible” idea too?]

****

p.126 5. The Blind Spot
p.128 we can also reflect that our actions may be constrained by an influence we know nothing about. This might be either something we could successfully resist if we did know about it, or something we wouldn’t be able to resist even then, but which we also couldn't accept as a legitimate ground for action.
The incomplete view faces us with the possibility that we are constrained in one of these ways without knowing it, by factors operating in the blind spot.
p.128 It is clear that we can’t decisively and irrevocably endorse our actions, any more than we can endorse our beliefs, from the most objective standpoint we can take toward ourselves, since what we see from that standpoint is the incomplete view.
p.130 6 Objective Engagement
p.130 The most ambitious strategy would be to seek positive grounds for choice that commanded the assent of the objective will no matter how far removed it was from my particular perspective. This, if it were possible, would amount to acting sub specie aeternitatis. It would be analogous to the epistemological strategy of grounding belief in a priori certainties: mathematical or logical truths or methods of reasoning of whose false-hood one cannot conceive—of which one can’t even conceive that a far wiser being might see that they were false, though it was beyond one’s own powers.
Since such absolute objective grounds are even harder to come by in practical than in theoretical reason, a less ambitious strategy seems called for. One such strategy—a strategy of objective tolerance as opposed to objective affirmation—is to find grounds for acting within my personal perspective tat will not be rejected forma larger point of view:....
The epistemological analogue would be the identification of certain beliefs as limited in the objectivity of their claims.
p.132 The conflict between prudence and impulse is not like the conflict between chicken salad and salami, for it is a conflict between levels: the immediate perspective of the present moment and the (partly) transcendent perspective of temporal neutrality among the foreseeable moments of one’s life.

p.138 Chapter VIII Value
p.162 6. Overobjectification
p.162 In ethics, as in metaphysics, the allure of objectivity is very great: there is a persistent tendency in both areas to seek a single complete objective account of reality.

****

 

[Constance]

The next page following the notes re MH on technology that I quoted above, going deeper into 'enframing':


"We are questioning concerning technology in order to bring to light our relationship to its essence. . ."

It is not enough, Heidegger tells us, to have identified enframing as the essence of modern technology. We need to determine how we, as human beings, stand in relation to technology.

Throughout the essay, Heidegger writes as if humanity's "enframing" orientation to the world were an inevitable outgrowth of the history of human consciousness. In this next section, he emphasizes this point, stating that the question about how we are to relate to technology always comes "too late," since we are already caught up in an enframing view of nature as much as we are caught up in the concrete realities of technological development. We can, however, gain some perspective on our own orientation to the world, and thus achieve a perspective on technology.

What comes next is crucial for Heidegger's argument. Heidegger will characterize how human history is related to the historical development of technology, and he will begin to suggest how humanity might come into the "free relationship to technology"--which is, remember, the aim of his essay.

He approaches the subject by way of a play on words: Geschichte, the German word for "history," and Geschick, the word for "destiny," derived from the verb schicken, "to send." The human drive to obtain a quantifiable and controllable knowledge of the world "sends" humanity on the way to an orientation that views the world as a set of raw materials, as "standing-reserve," culminating in modern technology. From the primal relationship in which the physical world reveals itself to humanity on its own terms, humanity moves into an enframing relationship with the world. Within this relationship, however, the earlier relationship is mainitained: humanity is still experiencing the world as the world reveals itself.

Because enframing does not utterly change humanity's connection to the world, there is room, even within enframing, for a different--we might say "renewed"--orientation to the world. It is not exactly right to speak of enframing as an inevitable development of humanity's interaction with the world--Heidegger cautions against a fatalistic view of technology's incursion into our lives. We can neither throw up our hands in the face of the problems brought on by technology, nor, as Heidegger writes, can we a "rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil" (307).

Once we realize that our own orientation to the world is the essence of technology, once we "open ourselves," in Heidegger's words, to this essence, we find an opportunity to establish a free relationship to technology. We have a choice, which Heidegger characterizes this way:

•Humanity can continue on its path of enframing, of "pushing forward nothing but what is revealed in ordering," and structure its life according to the rules and values of this orientation. Heidegger seems here to be invoking an image of a technological dystopia, of the kind we see in films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Terry Gillian's Brazil.
which would cancel out the other possibility:

•Humanity can come to realize that it, too, is "on its way" to an arrival, and that only by re-orienting itself to the way in which nature reveals itself can humanity establish a relationship with the world that is not ultimately self-destructive.


What Heidegger views as the danger associated with technology is not so much the direct effects of mechanization. It might be easiest to characterize Heidegger's sense of the danger as a threat to humanity's "spiritual" life, but we should be careful not to associate with Heidegger's thought too many assumptions about "spirituality" in the sense of traditional religions (in spite of the fact that Heidegger's early training was in theology, a field in which he maintained a life-long interest). Heidegger's description of this danger has four main elements:
•In continuing on the path of enframing, humanity will eventually reach a point at which the human, too, becomes only so much "standing-reserve."


•Humanity's overinflated sense of its power over the natural world will result in humanity's coming to believe that humanity has control over all existence.


•This excessive pride leads ultimately to the "delusion" that humanity encounters itself and only itself everywhere it looks--a kind of narcissism at the species level.


•Finally, such an orientation to the world will blind humanity to the ways in which the world reveals itself. In spite of (in fact, because of) the entire set of scientific apparatuses and theories which are meant to guarantee our precise knowledge of our world, we will miss the truth of what the world is.


Heidegger's own words serve as a clear summary of this section (I have changed the translator's "man" to "humanity" throughout):

The threat to humanity does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatuses of technology. The actual threat has already afflicted humanity in its essence. The rule of enframing threatens humanity with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth. (309)"

 

[Constance]

A view from Nowhere:
The last section between the ****, is relevant to cause to action.

p.13 Chapter II Mind
p.13 First, does the mind itself have an objective character? Second, what is its relation to those physical aspects of reality whose objective status is less doubtful? Third, how can it be the case that one of the people in the world is me?
p.17 2. Mental Objectivity:
p.18 The first requirement is to think of our own minds as mere instances of something general—as we are accustomed to thinking of particular things and events in the physical world as instances and manifestations of something general. We must think of mind as a phenomenon to which the human case is not necessarily central, even though our minds are at the center of our world.
p.18 I mean a concept under which we ourselves fall as instances—without any implication that we are the central instances.
p.19 3. Other Minds
p.20 Each of us is the subject of various experiences, and to understand that there are other people in the world as well, one must be able to conceive of experiences of which one is not the subject: experiences that are not present to oneself. To do this it is necessary to have a general conception of subjects of experience and to place oneself under it as an instance. It cannot be done by extending the idea of what is immediately felt into other people’s bodies, for as Wittgenstein observed, that will only give you an idea of having feelings in their bodies, not of their having feelings.
p.25 5. The Incompleteness of Objective Reality
p.26 Still, even if objective understanding can be only partial, it is worth trying to extend it, for a simple reason. The pursuit of an objective understanding of reality is the only way to expand our knowledge of what there is beyond the way it appears to us.
p.27 If on the other hand one starts from the objective side, the problem is how to accommodate, in a world that simply exists and has no perspectival center, any of the following things: (a) oneself; (b) on’s point of view; (c) the point of view of other selves, similar and dissimilar; and (d) the objects of various types of judgment that seem to emanate from these perspectives.

p.28 Chapter III Mind and Body
p.32 2. The Self as Private Object
p.36 There is a distinction between appearance and reality in this domain as elsewhere. Only the objectivity underlying this distinction must be understood as objectivity with regard to something subjective—mental rather than physical objectivity.
p.37 Whether or not we accept his [Wittgenstein’s] positive account, with its famous obscurity and reticence, I believe his point that mental concepts are sui generis is correct. They refer not to private objects like souls and sense data but to subjective points of view and their modifications—even thought the range of mental phenomena is not limited to those we ourselves can identify subjectively. The question is how to apply to the problem of personal identity this general idea that mental concepts do not refer to logically private objects of awareness.
p.37 3. Personal Identity and Reference
p.38 I believe that whatever we are told about continuity of mental content between two stages of experience, the issue logically remains open whether they have the same subject or not. In addition, it is clearly part of the idea of my identity that I could have led a completely different mental life, fro birth. This would have happened, for example, if I had been adopted at birth and brought up in Argentina. The question is how this idea of the same subject can meet the conditions of objectivity appropriate for a psychological concept: how it can express an identity that is subjective (not merely biological) but at the same time admits the distinction between correct and incorrect self-identification.
p.40 I suggest that the concept of the self is opne to objective “completion” provided something can be found which straddles the subjective-objective gap. That is, the concept contains the possibility that it refers to something with further objective essential features beyond those included in the psychological concept itself—something whose objective persistence is among the necessary conditions of personal identity—but only if this objectively describable referent is in a strong sense the basis for those subjective features that typify the persistent self.
p.51 7. The Possibility of Progress
p.51 What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective on the world, and in some cases a capacity for self-awareness as well.... An integrated theory of reality must account for this, and I believe that if and when it arrives, probably not for centuries, it will alter our conception of the universe as radically as anything has to date.

p.54 Chapter 4 The Objective Self
p.54 1. Being Someone
NB. p.54 One acute problem of subjectivity remains even after points of view and subjective experiences are admitted to the real world—after the world is conceded to be full of people with minds, having thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that cannot be completely subdued by the physical conception of objectivity. This general admission still leaves us with an unsolved problem of particular subjectivity. The world so conceived, thought extremely various in the types of things and perspectives it contains, is still centerless. It contains us all, and none of us occupies a metaphysically privileged position. Yet each of us, reflecting on this centerless world, must admit that one very large fact seems to have been omitted from its description: the fact that a particular person in it is himself.
What kind of fact is that?

p.67 Chapter 5 Knowledge
p.67 1. Skepticism
NB. p.69 Since we can’t literally escape ourselves, any improvement in our beliefs has to result form some kind of self-transformation. And the thing we can do which comes closest to getting outside ourselves is to form a detached idea of the world that includes us, and includes our possession of that conception as part of what it enables us to understand about ourselves. We are then outside ourselves in the sense that we appear inside a conception of the world that we ourselves possess, but that is not tied to our particular point of view. The pursuit of this goal is the essential task of the objective self. I shall argue that it makes sense only in terms of an epistemology that is significantly rationalist.
The question is how limited beings like ourselves can alter their conception of the world so that it is no longer just the view from where they are but in a sense a view from nowhere, which includes and comprehends the fact that the world contains beings which possess it, explains why the world appears to them as it does prior to the formation of that conception, and explains how they can arrive at the conception itself.
p.71 2. Antiskepticism
p.74 We can only try to make our conception of our place in the world more complete—essentially developing the objective standpoint. the limit to which such development must tend is presumably unreachable: a conception that closes over itself completely, by describing a world that contains a being that has precisely that conception, and explaining how the being was able to reach that conception from its starting point within the world.
p.74 3. Self-transcendence
p.74 To provide an alternative to the imaginable and unimaginable skeptical possibilities, a self-transcendent conception should ideally explain the following four things: (1) what the world is like; (2) what we are like; (3)why the world appears to beings like us in certain respects as it is and in certain respects as it isn’t; (4) how being like us can arrive at such a conception.
NB. p.74 The aim of objectivity would be to reach a conception of the world, including oneself, which involved one’s own point of view not essentially, but only instrumentally, so to speak: so that the form of our understanding would be specific to ourselves, but its content would not be.
p.78 4. Evolutionary Epistemology
p.78 self-understanding is at the heart of objectivity.... It requires that we come to understand the operations of our minds from a point of view that is not just our own. This would not be the kind of self-understanding that Kant aimed for, that is, an understanding from within of the forms and limits of all our possible experience and thought.... What is needed is something even stronger: an explanation of the possibility of objective knowledge of the real world which is itself an instance of objective knowledge of that world and our relation to it. Can there be creatures capable of this sort of self-transcendence?
NB. p.81 It is not the kind of thing that could be either a brute fact or an accident, any more than the identity of inertial and gravitational mass could be; the universe must have fundamental properties that inevitably give rise through physical and biological evolution to complex organisms capable of generating theories about themselves and it. This is not itself an explanation; it merely expresses a view about one condition which an acceptable explanation should meet: it should show why this had to happen, given the relatively short time since the Big Band, and not merely that it could have happened—as is attempted by Darwinian proposals.
p.82 5. Rationalism
p.83 the position to which I am drawn is a form of rationalism. This does not mean that we have innate knowledge of the truth about the world, but it does mean that we have the capacity, not based on experience, to generate hypotheses about what in general the world might possibly be like, and to reject those possibilities that we see could not include ourselves and our experiences.
p.85/86 The idea of a full conception of reality that explains our ability to arrive at it is just a dream.
Nevertheless, it’s what we aim toward: a gradual liberation of the dormant objective self, trapped initially behind an individual perspective of human experience. The hope is to develop a detached perspective that can coexist and comprehend the individual one.
p.86 6. Double Vision
p.86 [The dangers of pursuing the goal to make objective progress are excessive impersonality, false objectification, and insoluble conflict between subjective and objective conceptions of the same thing.]:
The first comes from taking too literally the image of the true self trapped in the individual human perspective.... Objective advance produces a split in the self, and as it gradually widens, the problems of integration between the two standpoints become sever, particularly in regard to ethics and personal life. One must arrange somehow to see the world both from nowhere and from here, and to live accordingly.
p.87 Often an objective advance will involve the recognition that some aspects of our previous understanding belong to the realm of appearance. Instead of conceiving the world as full of colored objects, we conceive it as full of objects with primary qualities that affect human vision in certain subjectively understandable ways. The distinction between appearance and objective reality becomes the object of a new, mixed understanding that combines subjective and objective elements and that is based on recognition of the limits of objectivity. Here there is no conflict.
But it may happen that the object of understanding cannot be so cleanly divided. It may happen that something appears to require subjective and objective conceptions that cover the same territory, and that cannot be combined into a single complex but consistent view.

p.90 chapter VI Thought and Reality
p.90 1. Realism
p.91/2 Human objectivity may be able to grasp only part of the world, but when it is successful it should provide us with an understanding of aspects of reality whose existence is completely independent of our capacity to thing about them—as independent as the existence of things we can’t conceive.
p.99 3. Kant and Strawson
p.101 I want to agree with Strawson in denying that we know things only as they appear to us, but agree with Kant in holding that how things are in themselves transcends all possible appearances or human conceptions.

p.110 Chapter VII Freedom
p.110 1. Two Problems
p.111 The question “What is action?” is much broader than the problem of free will, for it applies to the activity of spiders and to the peripheral, unconscious or subintentional movements of human beings in the course of more deliberate activity (see Frankfurt (2)). It applies to any movement that is not involuntary.
p.115 There is no room in an objective picture of the world for a type of explanation of action that is not causal. The defense of freedom requires the acknowledgement of a different kind of explanation essentially connected to the agent’s point of view. [X]
p.119 Can we proceed part way along the inviting path of objectivity without ending up in the abyss, where the pursuit of objectivity undermines itelf and everything else?....
It would require some alternative to the literally unintelligible ambition of intervening in the world from outside (an ambition expressed by Kant in the unintelligible idea of the noumenal self which is outside time and causality) [my “unintelligible” idea too?]

****

p.126 5. The Blind Spot
p.128 we can also reflect that our actions may be constrained by an influence we know nothing about. This might be either something we could successfully resist if we did know about it, or something we wouldn’t be able to resist even then, but which we also couldn't accept as a legitimate ground for action.
The incomplete view faces us with the possibility that we are constrained in one of these ways without knowing it, by factors operating in the blind spot.
p.128 It is clear that we can’t decisively and irrevocably endorse our actions, any more than we can endorse our beliefs, from the most objective standpoint we can take toward ourselves, since what we see from that standpoint is the incomplete view.
p.130 6 Objective Engagement
p.130 The most ambitious strategy would be to seek positive grounds for choice that commanded the assent of the objective will no matter how far removed it was from my particular perspective. This, if it were possible, would amount to acting sub specie aeternitatis. It would be analogous to the epistemological strategy of grounding belief in a priori certainties: mathematical or logical truths or methods of reasoning of whose false-hood one cannot conceive—of which one can’t even conceive that a far wiser being might see that they were false, though it was beyond one’s own powers.
Since such absolute objective grounds are even harder to come by in practical than in theoretical reason, a less ambitious strategy seems called for. One such strategy—a strategy of objective tolerance as opposed to objective affirmation—is to find grounds for acting within my personal perspective tat will not be rejected forma larger point of view:....
The epistemological analogue would be the identification of certain beliefs as limited in the objectivity of their claims.
p.132 The conflict between prudence and impulse is not like the conflict between chicken salad and salami, for it is a conflict between levels: the immediate perspective of the present moment and the (partly) transcendent perspective of temporal neutrality among the foreseeable moments of one’s life.

p.138 Chapter VIII Value
p.162 6. Overobjectification
p.162 In ethics, as in metaphysics, the allure of objectivity is very great: there is a persistent tendency in both areas to seek a single complete objective account of reality.

****

Thanks, Pharoah, for providing us with all these extracts from The View from Nowhere. This gives me a better idea of what you have been looking for, hoping for, as an alternative to the hard problem [though I don't see it as a substitute for the HP or as an overcoming of the HP]. The problem Nagel presents is indeed a harder problem. I don't share the need to seek answers to it for a number of reasons, including some he provides.

Re this section:

"p.90 1. Realism
p.91/2 Human objectivity may be able to grasp only part of the world, but when it is successful it should provide us with an understanding of aspects of reality whose existence is completely independent of our capacity to thing about them—as independent as the existence of things we can’t conceive."

the object-oriented philosophers/speculative realists might be interesting to Nagel and to you, though not in terms of helping in the goal he and you have in mind. The book cited here several times recently by Morton, entitled Hyperobjects, came to mind when I read the above.

 

[smcder]

While casting about today for some enlightenment about what H meant by 'enframing' I came across this account, which is very clear. {Now why could H have not expressed his ideas so clearly?}

CriticaLink | Heidegger: The Question Concerning Technology | Guide to pp. 325-328

"We dare to use this word in a sense that has been thoroughly unfamiliar up to now. . ."

The German word Gestell has a number of meanings, some of which Heidegger mentions: rack, skeleton--the basic sense is of an armature or framework. Heidegger develops a new application of this term to describe how human beings have come to relate to the natural world.

. . . ."

Excellent! ... coincidentally I just finished listening to Gregory B Sadler's first lecture on The Question Concerning technology ... it's very good and hit the above points ... appropriately enough I was chopping wood and mowing at the time!

 

[smcder]

The next page following the notes re MH on technology that I quoted above, going deeper into 'enframing':

"We are questioning concerning technology in order to bring to light our relationship to its essence. . ."

It is not enough, Heidegger tells us, to have identified enframing as the essence of modern technology. We need to determine how we, as human beings, stand in relation to technology.

Throughout the essay, Heidegger writes as if humanity's "enframing" orientation to the world were an inevitable outgrowth of the history of human consciousness. In this next section, he emphasizes this point, stating that the question about how we are to relate to technology always comes "too late," since we are already caught up in an enframing view of nature as much as we are caught up in the concrete realities of technological development. We can, however, gain some perspective on our own orientation to the world, and thus achieve a perspective on technology.

What comes next is crucial for Heidegger's argument. Heidegger will characterize how human history is related to the historical development of technology, and he will begin to suggest how humanity might come into the "free relationship to technology"--which is, remember, the aim of his essay.

He approaches the subject by way of a play on words: Geschichte, the German word for "history," and Geschick, the word for "destiny," derived from the verb schicken, "to send." The human drive to obtain a quantifiable and controllable knowledge of the world "sends" humanity on the way to an orientation that views the world as a set of raw materials, as "standing-reserve," culminating in modern technology. From the primal relationship in which the physical world reveals itself to humanity on its own terms, humanity moves into an enframing relationship with the world. Within this relationship, however, the earlier relationship is mainitained: humanity is still experiencing the world as the world reveals itself.

Because enframing does not utterly change humanity's connection to the world, there is room, even within enframing, for a different--we might say "renewed"--orientation to the world. It is not exactly right to speak of enframing as an inevitable development of humanity's interaction with the world--Heidegger cautions against a fatalistic view of technology's incursion into our lives. We can neither throw up our hands in the face of the problems brought on by technology, nor, as Heidegger writes, can we a "rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil" (307).

Once we realize that our own orientation to the world is the essence of technology, once we "open ourselves," in Heidegger's words, to this essence, we find an opportunity to establish a free relationship to technology. We have a choice, which Heidegger characterizes this way:

•Humanity can continue on its path of enframing, of "pushing forward nothing but what is revealed in ordering," and structure its life according to the rules and values of this orientation. Heidegger seems here to be invoking an image of a technological dystopia, of the kind we see in films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Terry Gillian's Brazil.
which would cancel out the other possibility:

•Humanity can come to realize that it, too, is "on its way" to an arrival, and that only by re-orienting itself to the way in which nature reveals itself can humanity establish a relationship with the world that is not ultimately self-destructive.


What Heidegger views as the danger associated with technology is not so much the direct effects of mechanization. It might be easiest to characterize Heidegger's sense of the danger as a threat to humanity's "spiritual" life, but we should be careful not to associate with Heidegger's thought too many assumptions about "spirituality" in the sense of traditional religions (in spite of the fact that Heidegger's early training was in theology, a field in which he maintained a life-long interest). Heidegger's description of this danger has four main elements:

•In continuing on the path of enframing, humanity will eventually reach a point at which the human, too, becomes only so much "standing-reserve."


•Humanity's overinflated sense of its power over the natural world will result in humanity's coming to believe that humanity has control over all existence.

•This excessive pride leads ultimately to the "delusion" that humanity encounters itself and only itself everywhere it looks--a kind of narcissism at the species level.


•Finally, such an orientation to the world will blind humanity to the ways in which the world reveals itself. In spite of (in fact, because of) the entire set of scientific apparatuses and theories which are meant to guarantee our precise knowledge of our world, we will miss the truth of what the world is.


Heidegger's own words serve as a clear summary of this section (I have changed the translator's "man" to "humanity" throughout):

The threat to humanity does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatuses of technology. The actual threat has already afflicted humanity in its essence. The rule of enframing threatens humanity with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth. (309)"

Denied entry into the promised land. It seems to me we've made considerable progress on these four:

•In continuing on the path of enframing, humanity will eventually reach a point at which the human, too, becomes only so much "standing-reserve."
•Humanity's overinflated sense of its power over the natural world will result in humanity's coming to believe that humanity has control over all existence.
•This excessive pride leads ultimately to the "delusion" that humanity encounters itself and only itself everywhere it looks--a kind of narcissism at the species level.
•Finally, such an orientation to the world will blind humanity to the ways in which the world reveals itself. In spite of (in fact, because of) the entire set of scientific apparatuses and theories which are meant to guarantee our precise knowledge of our world, we will miss the truth of what the world is.

 

[smcder]

@smcder... so much going on in these posts... glad you are having fun
Picky is good. Taking me to task is good. Being a bastard even better (you know where you are with one of them).

Teleology and purpose: It is quite simple and perhaps a misunderstanding. I don't use the term purpose, because 'purpose' gives this idea of some-'thing' having purpose; that something being a Designer, God or Mother Nature. The terms purpose and teleology are loaded with such pre-conceptions. Sometimes it takes as much effort dismantling pre-conceptions as it takes making the argument to explain what one means by the terms. MH would probably empathise!

Morality: Similar issue really. cf. my paper at Hierarchical Theory of Moral Philosophy | Efferent Cognition | Philosophy of Consciousness
you say "Morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.
the extent to which an action is right or wrong."

So far so good... as I said, morality concerns itself with principles (whose constituents are conceptual constructs) about action... about behaviour.
Therefore, concepts of Good and Bad require reference to the evaluation and judgment of good and bad consequences. Principles are inevitably reliant on the hierarchy that determines what experiences and behaviours constitute good ones and bad ones–their origins are in the hierarchical construct!
You say, "So, if morality had to do with survival of the species, why would some people say that ending the human species or even all of intelligent life was the right thing to do?"
As I have explain in my previous post, causes to act from each hierarchical level are conflicting. In order to make sense of this conflict, humans try to come up with a conceptual worldview that provides the necessary rationale behind their principles that govern their decisive and 'most appropriate actions' to any given scenario. Without this rationale, one is paralysed to confusion and inactivity (hmmm... some mental conditions spring to mind). Unfortunately, logic has it, in some situations, that killing people can be the right thing to do. Of course, with HCT, logic does not have the final word in the assessment of a moral stance. Humans (and particularly academic ones like philosophers) give a great deal of weight in their decisions to act, on their perceived rationale, on their idea of what is logical. This is very dangerous, because they (humans) think that logic is immutable. But, all logic is driven by a blind belief in the accuracy of the individual's worldview, whose conceptual stability takes precedence over any other consideration (no matter how cruel the consequences). The reason why conceptual stability holds sway over logic, is because it defines our self-identity within that world-view we possess. i.e. in summary, we are compelled to defend our worldview (our concepts about reality and ourselves within it), this we do by calling upon a series of logical stances and rational positions that make that worldview valid (sane even). So, we think the logic is immutable and we think a rational is solid. We act on that rational even if it is wrong... because it re-enforces our concept of ourself in the world. Not to do this, is to develop a chaotic or insane worldview. But insanity tends to beget insanity because of the twisted logic that must ensue to prop up the worldview. MH is very interesting to me as an analyst because of his logical and worldview conflicts.

Contemplating morality is human nature. HCT explains why morality is, along with spoken language, an incidental and inevitable consequence of the emergence in early hominids of an awareness of the qualitative phenomenon of conscious. That is why moral realism holds, but like facts, morality is observer-dependent not independent, i.e., not a (metaphysical) fact.

Apples and Newton: I was just trying to make the point that a theory of morality does not have to explain how you should behave. It does not have to explore the scope of the idea to be valid. If the principle holds, then the apple need not be caught.

@smcder I have a problem writing philosophy because I don't seem to fall into any ...-ist camp and do not see the divisions in metaphysics, epistemiology, and ontology. So I am doomed... to a life of obscure obscurity. But that was always to be expected. Nearly everyone will come round eventually though...

Let me know if I have missed anything out in my response. Don't apologise (if that was one) for being pedantic etc. I find the criticisms and questioning helpful. You can be much more brutal if you feel the urge.

So I am doomed... to a life of obscure obscurity. But that was always to be expected. Nearly everyone will come round eventually though...

1. What is the source of this fore-knowledge? And can you very briefly put what it is that everyone will come around to?

2. Without a good knowledge of philosophy, how do you know what you are saying is new?

• EO Wilson's Consillience
• Ken Wilber's thought

3. I have a problem writing philosophy because I don't seem to fall into any ...-ist camp and do not see the divisions in metaphysics, epistemiology, and ontologay

That sort of statement is typical of the misunderstood genius archetype ... it's a common mythos around historical geniuses that doesn't usually hold up to scrutiny. How do you differentiate your case?

Why I am a Destiny :: Nietzsche
1
I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful — of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite. — And with all that there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion — religions are affairs of the rabble, I have need of washing my hands after contact with religious people . . . I do not want ‘believers’, I think I am too malicious to believe in myself, I never speak to masses . . . I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy: one will guess why I bring out this book beforehand; it is intended to prevent people from making mischief with me . . . I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon . . . And none the less, or rather not none the less — for there has hitherto been nothing more mendacious than saints — the truth speaks out of me. — But my truth is dreadful: for hitherto the lie has been called the truth. — Revaluation of all values: this is my formula for an act of supreme coming-to-oneself on the part of mankind which in me has become flesh and genius. It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being, to know myself in opposition to the mendaciousness of millennia . . . I was the first to discover the truth, in that I was the first to sense — smell — the lie as lie . . . My genius is in my nostrils . . . I contradict as has never been contradicted and am none the less the opposite of a negative spirit. I am a bringer of good tidings such as there has never been, I know tasks from such a height that any conception of them has hitherto been lacking; only after me is it possible to hope again. With all that I am necessarily a man of fatality. For when truth steps into battle with the lie of millennia we shall have convulsions, an earthquake spasm, a transposition of valley and mountain such as has never been dreamed of . . .
2
Does one want a formula for a destiny that has become man. It stands in my Zarathustra.
— and he who wants to be a creator in good and evil has first to be a destroyer and break values.
Thus the greatest evil belongs with the greatest good: this, however, is the creative good.
I am by far the most terrible human being there has ever been; this does not mean I shall not be the most beneficient. I know joy in destruction to a degree corresponding to my strength for destruction — in both I obey my dionysian nature, which does not know how to separate No-doing from Yes-saying. I am the first immoralist: I am therewith the destroyer par excellence. —
[From Ecce Homo, translated by R. J. Hollingdale]

 

[smcder]

EO Wilson's Consilience is available here:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...R0IFj5-mik_QWqCeEf-14yg&bvm=bv.92291466,d.eXY

I hope it's relevant ... it's been a while since I read it. I remember thinking it seemed to have a lot in common with systems of philosophy that relied on a single idea to explain everything - a single drive to explain human nature for example: Nietzsche's will to power (maybe), Freud's sex drive and its sublimation - the idea for Consillience is consillience the unity of knowledge. If a fair parallel can be drawn, in HCT it's equilibrium.

But, all logic is driven by a blind belief in the accuracy of the individual's worldview, whose conceptual stability takes precedence over any other consideration (no matter how cruel the consequences).

 

[smcder]

The question concerning technology:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...SgqOaAwOK4kGgKndXKfqYpw&bvm=bv.92291466,d.eXY

 

[Pharoah]

@smcder I was merely trying to point out that I find it difficult working out if I am such a thing as a moral realist given that the field is diverse and argued the world over. I don't like being boxed, and when I try to box myself I find that it is not clear to me what the boxes mean... nor is it clear what HCT is in relation to existing philosophy. Philosophers are like a community of blind people at the bottom of an ocean feeling around and declaring with authority what is on the surface, and somehow, one has to relate this self-assurance to one's own fumbling around with a white stick. If my inability to relate to existing ideas is a barrier then obscurity may be the result. Am I bothered? Not really. I am not tortured by this. I think that HCT will be "discovered" by other people anyway. Personally, I seem drawn to a challenge and the biggest challenge that I could have undertaken given my significant intellectual weakness and inability to assimilate words particularly well, is to get published once. But that very possibility seems absurdly remote to me.

 

[Pharoah]

Has anyone read or watch The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Constance]

If my inability to relate to existing ideas is a barrier then obscurity may be the result.

I don't find your ideas to be obscure nor most of the ways in which you express them. We're all coming to the question of what consciousness is out of a long neglect of the subject in most of the history of philosophy and a total neglect on the part of science until the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies was initiated only a few decades ago. I value the perspectives you bring to this discussion, including not only your HCT theory but the general tour you provided us with through perspectives on consciousness expressed in philosophy of mind. You're too hard on yourself in the balance of this new post; we are all struggling with the various approaches that are being taken to consciousness, and it's to your great credit that you have been willing to invest your time in reading phenomenological philosophy, one of many perspectives that shed light on consciousness, which you had not taken up before. Let's keep trucking through this morass of ideas, ok?

 

[Constance]

Has anyone read or watch The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I saw the film when it was first released, at least a dozen years ago and I think more. I would like to read the book on which the film was based and will probably order it now that you've brought it to my attention again. I'll check it out at amazon and also read the wiki entry. What are your responses to what you've read there about the book and film?

 

[smcder]

Has anyone read or watch The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many moons ago, when it came out.

Of course Kundera didn't like it (and Lem didn't like Solaris ... nu? mu)

 

[Constance]

This paragraph from the wiki entry is interesting:

"Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story's thematic meditations posit the alternative: that each person has only one life to live and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again — thus the "lightness" of being. In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a "heaviness" on life and the decisions that are made--to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor, it gives them "weight". Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective.

The "unbearable lightness" in the title also refers to the lightness of love and sex, which are themes of the novel. Kundera portrays love as fleeting, haphazard and possibly based upon endless strings of coincidences, despite holding much significance for humans.

In the novel, Nietzsche's concept is attached to an interpretation of the German adage Einmal ist keinmal ("one occurrence is not significant"), namely an "all-or-nothing" cognitive distortion that Tomáš must overcome in his hero's journey. He initially believes "If we only have one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all," and specifically (with respect to committing to Tereza) "There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison." The novel resolves this question decisively that such a commitment is in fact possible and desirable."

Since the book and film take up philosophical questions in the context of the lived experience of situated humans, it might be interesting for all of us at this point to either read the novel or view the film. Are you guys interested in doing that, and if so which text should we use?** I haven't mentioned it before, but phenomenological philosophy has taken form in fiction and cinema over almost its entire development. Sartre, Camus, Bouvoir, Dos Passos, and many others used the novel and play forms to work out philosophical issues in terms of lived experience, as well as discovering insights into phenomenology expressed in literary artworks of others, I hope you both want to do this (maybe we can lure @Soupie back for it too) because I'm getting tired of this level of abstract thought we've maintained for months on end (is it a year yet?). We can always be abstract again later.

**given Steve's comment a few minutes ago, I suggest we read Kundera's novel.

 

[Pharoah]

This paragraph from the wiki entry is interesting:

"Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story's thematic meditations posit the alternative: that each person has only one life to live and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again — thus the "lightness" of being. In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a "heaviness" on life and the decisions that are made--to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor, it gives them "weight". Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective.

The "unbearable lightness" in the title also refers to the lightness of love and sex, which are themes of the novel. Kundera portrays love as fleeting, haphazard and possibly based upon endless strings of coincidences, despite holding much significance for humans.

In the novel, Nietzsche's concept is attached to an interpretation of the German adage Einmal ist keinmal ("one occurrence is not significant"), namely an "all-or-nothing" cognitive distortion that Tomáš must overcome in his hero's journey. He initially believes "If we only have one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all," and specifically (with respect to committing to Tereza) "There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison." The novel resolves this question decisively that such a commitment is in fact possible and desirable."

Since the book and film take up philosophical questions in the context of the lived experience of situated humans, it might be interesting for all of us at this point to either read the novel or view the film. Are you guys interested in doing that, and if so which text should we use?** I haven't mentioned it before, but phenomenological philosophy has taken form in fiction and cinema over almost its entire development. Sartre, Camus, Bouvoir, Dos Passos, and many others used the novel and play forms to work out philosophical issues in terms of lived experience, as well as discovering insights into phenomenology expressed in literary artworks of others, I hope you both want to do this (maybe we can lure @Soupie back for it too) because I'm getting tired of this level of abstract though we've maintained for months on end (is it a year yet?). We can always be abstract again later.

**given Steve's comment a few minutes ago, I suggest we read Kundera's novel.

My view of the film does not resonate with this wiki entry, but I like the Nietzsche reference.
IMO the "unbearable lightness" relates to the utter superficiality of ordinary existence: millions of lives come and go. The reason why I think this, is because the film/book expresses a turmoil of life and love between its main characters, a life that is, for its individuals, terribly important and emotionally charged. Then in the last moments after having sorted and simplified their life... I don't want to ruin the ending if you have forgotten it.
So the universe revolves around our Being (in-it)... but our Being is so light and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

@Constance I appreciate your encouraging words very much. And I hope you received the email.
And @smcder btw... I have now pdf archived the entire discussion parts 1-4 (in four files). It is quite useful for searching material. If anyone wants a copy let me know.

 

[smcder]

This paragraph from the wiki entry is interesting:

"Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story's thematic meditations posit the alternative: that each person has only one life to live and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again — thus the "lightness" of being. In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a "heaviness" on life and the decisions that are made--to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor, it gives them "weight". Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective.

The "unbearable lightness" in the title also refers to the lightness of love and sex, which are themes of the novel. Kundera portrays love as fleeting, haphazard and possibly based upon endless strings of coincidences, despite holding much significance for humans.

In the novel, Nietzsche's concept is attached to an interpretation of the German adage Einmal ist keinmal ("one occurrence is not significant"), namely an "all-or-nothing" cognitive distortion that Tomáš must overcome in his hero's journey. He initially believes "If we only have one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all," and specifically (with respect to committing to Tereza) "There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison." The novel resolves this question decisively that such a commitment is in fact possible and desirable."

Since the book and film take up philosophical questions in the context of the lived experience of situated humans, it might be interesting for all of us at this point to either read the novel or view the film. Are you guys interested in doing that, and if so which text should we use?** I haven't mentioned it before, but phenomenological philosophy has taken form in fiction and cinema over almost its entire development. Sartre, Camus, Bouvoir, Dos Passos, and many others used the novel and play forms to work out philosophical issues in terms of lived experience, as well as discovering insights into phenomenology expressed in literary artworks of others, I hope you both want to do this (maybe we can lure @Soupie back for it too) because I'm getting tired of this level of abstract though we've maintained for months on end (is it a year yet?). We can always be abstract again later.

**given Steve's comment a few minutes ago, I suggest we read Kundera's novel.

Since the book and film take up philosophical questions in the context of the lived experience of situated humans, it might be interesting for all of us at this point to either read the novel or view the film. Are you guys interested in doing that, and if so which text should we use?** I haven't mentioned it before, but phenomenological philosophy has taken form in fiction and cinema over almost its entire development. Sartre, Camus, Bouvoir, Dos Passos, and many others used the novel and play forms to work out philosophical issues in terms of lived experience, as well as discovering insights into phenomenology expressed in literary artworks of others, I hope you both want to do this (maybe we can lure @Soupie back for it too) because I'm getting tired of this level of abstract though we've maintained for months on end (is it a year yet?). We can always be abstract again later.

Yes - I'm game!

Dreyfus did a series on existenialism in film and literature:

Phil 7 Existentialism in Literature and Film : Hubert Dreyfus : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

- he discusses the film Hiroshima Mon Amour and I'm not sure if it's this lecture series or another one, but he also discusses Bigger Than Life - starring James Mason who also co wrote the screenplay about one of the early recipient's of cortisone.

 

[Constance]

My view of the film does not resonate with this wiki entry, but I like the Nietzsche reference.
IMO the "unbearable lightness" relates to the utter superficiality of ordinary existence: millions of lives come and go. The reason why I think this, is because the film/book expresses a turmoil of life and love between its main characters, a life that is, for its individuals, terribly important and emotionally charged. Then in the last moments after having sorted and simplified their life... I don't want to ruin the ending if you have forgotten it.
So the universe revolves around our Being (in-it)... but our Being is so light and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

@Constance I appreciate your encouraging words very much. And I hope you received the email.
And @smcder btw... I have now pdf archived the entire discussion parts 1-4 (in four files). It is quite useful for searching material. If anyone wants a copy let me know.

Pharoah, the pdf of what entire discussion? I'll probably want to have access to it too, but want to know what it is first. If it's your discussion with Nagel, I know I'll hope to have access to it.

I don't know it your email has arrived. I'll have to look through my inbox, and will let you know if I don't have it.

 

[Constance]

Since the book and film take up philosophical questions in the context of the lived experience of situated humans, it might be interesting for all of us at this point to either read the novel or view the film. Are you guys interested in doing that, and if so which text should we use?** I haven't mentioned it before, but phenomenological philosophy has taken form in fiction and cinema over almost its entire development. Sartre, Camus, Bouvoir, Dos Passos, and many others used the novel and play forms to work out philosophical issues in terms of lived experience, as well as discovering insights into phenomenology expressed in literary artworks of others, I hope you both want to do this (maybe we can lure @Soupie back for it too) because I'm getting tired of this level of abstract though we've maintained for months on end (is it a year yet?). We can always be abstract again later.

Yes - I'm game!

Dreyfus did a series on existenialism in film and literature:

Phil 7 Existentialism in Literature and Film : Hubert Dreyfus : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

- he discusses the film Hiroshima Mon Amour and I'm not sure if it's this lecture series or another one, but he also discusses Bigger Than Life - starring James Mason who also co wrote the screenplay about one of the early recipient's of cortisone.

"- he discusses the film Hiroshima Mon Amour"

A stunning and heartbreaking film.

 

[smcder]

@smcder I was merely trying to point out that I find it difficult working out if I am such a thing as a moral realist given that the field is diverse and argued the world over. I don't like being boxed, and when I try to box myself I find that it is not clear to me what the boxes mean... nor is it clear what HCT is in relation to existing philosophy. Philosophers are like a community of blind people at the bottom of an ocean feeling around and declaring with authority what is on the surface, and somehow, one has to relate this self-assurance to one's own fumbling around with a white stick. If my inability to relate to existing ideas is a barrier then obscurity may be the result. Am I bothered? Not really. I am not tortured by this. I think that HCT will be "discovered" by other people anyway. Personally, I seem drawn to a challenge and the biggest challenge that I could have undertaken given my significant intellectual weakness and inability to assimilate words particularly well, is to get published once. But that very possibility seems absurdly remote to me.

1) I was merely trying to point out that I find it difficult working out if I am such a thing as a moral realist given that the field is diverse and argued the world over.

I like Strawson's take on moral realism in the video ... if I remember, he basically says you know in the end, some things are just wrong ... say, poking a badger with a spoon (I'm paraphrasing here) ... and when I think about the sophisticated Strawson saying this, that makes me think of this:



... with the badger at (2) so we are going along ... thinking ... thinking ... applying principles, all is well, smooth and continuous ... what's this? Badger? spoon?? ... nooo, discontunity ... where does the graph pick up? At some point you are just in the world and something is just wrong. And for the way you live your life, that's a fact. You could trace it all back to something psychological, but that's the old "it's only" or "merely" fallacy - I think that deserves to be a fallacy. After all their are reasons that the pyschology came out the way it did, and the underlying reasons aren't photons and electrons. (talk about obscure ... geez)

2) I don't like being boxed, and when I try to box myself I find that it is not clear to me what the boxes mean... nor is it clear what HCT is in relation to existing philosophy.

I love to box ... I catch myself trying to figure out how to get back in the ring at this stage in my life. The beauty of boxing is that you have just five punches:

jab, cross, straight, uppercut and bolo ... you use jabs and crosses most of the time, but they have to be applied from an infinity of angles and distances. In MMA, for all the studying of various martial arts, combatants use a handful of techniques at which they are expert. I think this is all any expert can do ... it's like working memory 7-9 plus or minus 2, maybe a genius can go 3-4 ... mu?

Proving mathematical theorems? You have induction, contradiction, construction, eruption and badger poking and each of these has even simpler underlying principles - you know, like logic. Programming, the same thing. Any course you take is introductory or beginner or dummies guide to ... advanced courses are misnomers - there are no advanced techniques, just thousands of hours of using the basics ... that said, a mechanic will do things with a wrench that you never thought of and that you can't see from the outside and he probably never thought about it, either. Unless of course he is a Hiedeggerean mechanic.

And finally, don't forget rope-a-dope.

Philosophers are like a community of blind people at the bottom of an ocean feeling around and declaring with authority what is on the surface, and somehow, one has to relate this self-assurance to one's own fumbling around with a white stick. If my inability to relate to existing ideas is a barrier then obscurity may be the result. Am I bothered? Not really. I am not tortured by this. I think that HCT will be "discovered" by other people anyway. Personally, I seem drawn to a challenge and the biggest challenge that I could have undertaken given my significant intellectual weakness and inability to assimilate words particularly well, is to get published once. But that very possibility seems absurdly remote to me.

I don't know that it's an inability to relate to existing ideas ... just bone up on philosophical history - get the Dummies guide ... run the HCT by a local philosophy dept, a local science dept a local humanities dept ... drop it on a Mensa meeting (those guys have seen some weird stuff) and ask if they've seen anything like it before, do some google searches ... step one in research is a literature search.

Personally, I seem drawn to a challenge and the biggest challenge that I could have undertaken given my significant intellectual weakness and inability to assimilate words particularly well, is to get published once. But that very possibility seems absurdly remote to me.

I like that - the first part, the first part about being drawn to a challenge. But I disagree that there is a significant intellectual weakness and in ability ... blah blah blah ... because you know what that would look like?

HCT is like a hellasmart idea and like there are levels, you know? and its really cool because each level, it's like, it's like it's above the other level but its like not touching, you know what I mean? like the level above comes ... out of the level below ... you know and stuff like emerges man and it's really cool but levels above they don't have anything to do with the levels below but they arent like the same as the levels below, they're like totally new, yeah?

Rather, what's going on I think is what anyone enounters when trying to express complex and novel ideas.

There's psychology going on because there's a pattern ... and her's the pattern. Every time you get to a certain point, let's call it the "I was merely trying to point out that" point and then you bust out some beautiful writing like this:

I was merely trying to point out that I find it difficult working out if I am such a thing as a moral realist given that the field is diverse and argued the world over. I don't like being boxed, and when I try to box myself I find that it is not clear to me what the boxes mean... nor is it clear what HCT is in relation to existing philosophy. Philosophers are like a community of blind people at the bottom of an ocean feeling around and declaring with authority what is on the surface, and somehow, one has to relate this self-assurance to one's own fumbling around with a white stick. If my inability to relate to existing ideas is a barrier then obscurity may be the result. Am I bothered? Not really. I am not tortured by this. I think that HCT will be "discovered" by other people anyway. Personally, I seem drawn to a challenge and the biggest challenge that I could have undertaken given my significant intellectual weakness and inability to assimilate words particularly well, is to get published once. But that very possibility seems absurdly remote to me.

So I can go back and find the other examples, if you like. So how do you carry this point or this mood or attitude back into your HCT writing? What is the audience you hold in your head? Is that who you really want to talk to? And what do you really want to do to that audience and what do you want from them?

I've been telling myself stories since I was a kid and I've written very few down. What happens when I do, I'm surprised because in my head, they are stories I tell ... but when I write them down and am limited to only words, I realize that they aren't just words in my head, sometimes I leave off with the words and invoke an action scene or a mood or a texture or a kinesthetic sensation or I gloss over something because I know just what I mean, I don't even have to tell myself that part ... so putting all that on paper is impossible. But it's also taught me sometimes I skip over the logic - so putting it down in words shows me those gaps. And you really do feel like an idiot at that point ... but no, I don't see any intellectual deficiencies on your part, maybe relative ones for you - maybe you are better at one thing than another, like everyone else, or maybe in general most people are better at seeing things in their heads and making sense to themselves than conveying it, I bet almost everyone is ... the freaks are the ones who can simply copy it all down from head to paper.

 

[Constance]

My view of the film does not resonate with this wiki entry, but I like the Nietzsche reference.
IMO the "unbearable lightness" relates to the utter superficiality of ordinary existence: millions of lives come and go. The reason why I think this, is because the film/book expresses a turmoil of life and love between its main characters, a life that is, for its individuals, terribly important and emotionally charged. Then in the last moments after having sorted and simplified their life... I don't want to ruin the ending if you have forgotten it.
So the universe revolves around our Being (in-it)... but our Being is so light and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

It will be interesting to discuss this (book or film, but I think preferably the book). Shall we take a poll of our three preferences and work something out?

Your post above interests me Pharoah. especially these themes apparently from Kundera:

""unbearable lightness" relates to the utter superficiality of ordinary existence: millions of lives come and go. . . . So the universe revolves around our Being (in-it)... but our Being is so light and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things."

Those statements seem to me to constitute a good critique of what can be taken away from Heidegger by most of us because of his stubborn obscurity. It's a misunderstanding of phenomenology, perhaps, on Kundera's part. The core of phenomenology is the recognition that our lives should not be, need not be, 'utterly superficial' and that it is our business (personally and socially) to change the world in which this way of experiencing life has become dominant. Yes, developed, heightened, consciousness of being leaves little mark even on the local world we live in and certainly not on the universe/cosmos as a whole. But it has never been a tenet of phenomenology that "the universe revolves around our Being (in-it)..." or that the significance of our existence should be 'relevant in the grand scheme of things'. Phenomenology is concerned with our being insofar as our experience in the world fails to recognize itself for what it is and what it makes possible for ourselves and our species, even for the planet of which we are inadequately 'in charge'.