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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: Kickle]
    #13642215 -

Tell me more...

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: daytripper23]
    #13642967 -

I intuit linearity because of the inevitability of death. Without an end it would be hard to tell any moment from another. And while plenty of arguments exist against the existence of an end, it doesn't change the natural influence that knowledge of an end brings. Such arguments wouldn't exist if there were no end to deny.

Because of seeing linear time the quickest route to a goal is sought. Getting from point A to B isn't something I can just slowly circle my way towards. I've got a finite amount of time and decaying energy reserves to get there with. The longer it takes, the more costly, and the less intuitively desirable it is.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: Kickle]
    #13643633 -

Ok I need to break this down before I can say I understand what you mean.

The consideration of "ignorance", is epistemological, and this would be considerate to

    * What is knowledge?
    * How is knowledge acquired?
    * How do we know what we know?

Our approach must be one of common understanding, and that would begin with the idea of linearity. This is because I do not understand how linearity can just be intuited. 

Being towards death may be linear in its particular history or narrative, but those aren't intuitions. These are ways of describing a way of being. This is still an idea of linearity.

You could say that there is only a way towards death. I would agree that once our life is over the notion of its linearity (as well as our life and existence) might ideally be understood.  But once your life is over, you are no longer understanding or intuiting anything, and regardless to that, what we are considering is what you are saying now, as it concerns now. What you are speaking of could not be described as the way, but only a way towards death.

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: daytripper23]
    #13644060 -

It is only one way towards death but it is the most common way because it doesn't require anything more than self awareness to be felt and in the experiential sense, known. If you deny feeling/having felt a sense of urgency in your life, I'm going to call bullshit. Cause known or unknown, knowledge of this push is intuitive. We wouldn't hurry if we didn't experience it.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: Kickle]
    #13658506 -

Kickle said:
It is only one way towards death but it is the most common way because it doesn't require anything more than self awareness to be felt and in the experiential sense, known. If you deny feeling/having felt a sense of urgency in your life, I'm going to call bullshit. Cause known or unknown, knowledge of this push is intuitive. We wouldn't hurry if we didn't experience it.


Hey, Kickle. I had to take some time to hash out my response here. Hope you don't mind too much.

Immediately, I would say that you are convoluting different levels of analysis. When you are talking about your death, there is ideally only one way to it. When you are talking about our deaths, I would say we are talking about separate variables.

The conditional "if" does not make these fundamentally different ideas of death synonymous. It does not, for itself, serve as “the” existential condition, in terms of any shared knowledge. Think about it; in our shared understanding thus far, what does it mean to find the conditional? What is the “fork in the road”, to a purportedly linear statement, or statement of knowledge? If it really is straight, why is there an “if” to arrive at this latter point that you have conceived?

The conditional you proposed is arbitrary to an empirical line of our discussion. You have only "suggested" (well, to be frank you have made a passive aggressive assertion of) a psychological state. Existentialism is important to me, but I do not conceive of it as a psychological or cognitive “state”. This has led me to find great difference with the shroomery’s most conventional attitude toward existentialism. Maybe you noticed this, and maybe this is why you issued a challenge.

I would say that what you are doing isn’t just arbitrary and thus trivial to a shared epistemology. I agree with your suggestion, in a certain sense. I would agree that the condition of Existence is apparently arbitrary, and this is why it is worth understanding. But this is not an empirical truth that you could “claim”, as a matter of fact. The pursuit of what is arbitrary would not be “based” on anything we have discussed, or worked up to so far.


The condition of being, as it would be considered in this way, is an ontological affair. There is no framework by which we could know, or begin to know, being or death. Rather than considering any standard derived from an encompassing knowledge, which would be fundamentally mistaken, ontology seeks to consider these issues in the manner that they present themselves, as such, from their seed of apparent arbitrariness.

Existential hermeneutics is a method conceived to allow for these “arbitrary” conditions to be understood in a preliminary way, rather than as a simple matter of fact, or generally of either ignorance or knowledge. Existentialism simultaneously contributed to and revolutionized ancient ontology, by acknowledging that it is also a way of being, to seek to understand being.

To speak over, and above, “suggesting” conditions such as “death” or “being”, you are not speaking of any simple matter of fact, but as we will explore, the conditions of any fact. Imagine that the condition is the very ground you are walking on. It is necessary to refer to this condition in a special way. Otherwise our work will degrade itself as a reactionary view, as a semantic overturning of any proposition, or in our pretended grip on it, just a way of pulling the rug out from under another’s feet. I will try to be very specific in my criticism of that.

But to actually begin an ontological investigation, our priority in general will be clearing the air of these same pretensions to any “knowledge” of these conditions. Only then can we begin to consider a revolution in its (social) structures.

Quote:
‘For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression “being”. We however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.
- Plato

Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression 'Being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being.
But the reasons for making this our aim, the investigations which such a purpose requires, and the path to its achievement, call for some introductory remarks…


This is a quote from the preface of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. I studied Heidegger at my university, but I think it will be more of a study of a lifetime, as over the last 2 years that I have continued to read it, I have barely begun to understand this text.

I’ve referred to it (so now, I too have also “suggested” something) so that you can understand what I mean when I talk about existentialism, and where I disagree with you on certain things. I have to admit, this is something I am interested in, rather than something I really have much expertise for. I can’t teach it in a straight forward manner. But then, if there is any point that I would like to make in this thread, it would be that existentialism is ideally not “knowledge”, “a subject”, or “ideology”, even while my manner reference, will be suspicious for this.

Observe how in this preface there is no forcing the question. Neither does there seem to be any foreknowledge, or pretense of knowledge of being. He begins, in fact, by indicating that we do not even seem to have access to its question. This would explain why its condition seems so arbitrary.

He continues, in the next section:

Quote:
The necessity for explicitly restating the question of Being


This question has today been forgotten. Even though in our time we deem it progressive to give our approval to ‘metaphysics’ again, it is held that we have been exempted from the exertions of a newly rekindled gigantomachy of substance. Yet the question we are touching upon is not just any question. It is one which provided a stimulus for the researches of Plato and Aristotle, only to subside from then on as a theme for actual investigation. What these two men achieved was to persist through many alterations and ‘retouchings’ down to the ‘logic’ of Hegel. And what they wrested with the utmost intellectual effort from the phenomena, fragmentary and incipient though it was, has long since become trivialized.
Not only that, on the basis of the Greeks’ initial contributions towards an interpretation of Being, a dogma has been developed which not only declares the question about the meaning of Being to be superfluous, but sanctions its complete neglect. It is said that ‘Being’ is the most universal and emptiest of concepts. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and hence indefinable concept require any definition, for everyone who uses it constantly and already understands what he means by it. In this way, that which the ancient philosophers found continually disturbing as something obscure and hidden has taken on a clarity and self-evidence such that if anyone continues to ask about it he is charged with an error of method.


Here at the shroomery, a passing interest in being and death is usually mistakenly ushered into a shared episteme, and I would say this is going about it incorrectly. Yet what Heidegger suggests to those who are sincerely interested in these questions, is a manner of investigation that no less undermines these structures of knowledge. Part of my intention here, will be to distinguish between the former incorrect approach, and the latter that is controversial not for being incorrect, but for its social upheaval.

In any way of actually going about it though, this condition is going to be rooted in ontology, because its fundamental consideration is of the apparent arbitrariness of being, rather than a supervening knowledge of it. So it’s not just as if some worm has wriggled its way into knowledge and its dialectics. The problem may be described that something important in itself lacks an appropriate context.

Generally, for this to be an effective inquiry at all, we will need to step back from the mistaken presuppositions of what we “kinda-sorta” know about being and death, so that for ourselves, we can attempt to work these issues out concretely.

Heidegger continues:

Quote:
At the beginning of our investigation it is not possible to give a detailed account of the presuppositions and prejudices which are constantly reimplanting and fostering the belief that an inquiry into Being is unnecessary. They are rooted in ancient ontology itself, and it will not be possible to interpret that ontology adequately until the question of Being has been clarified and answered and taken as a clue – at least, if we are to have regard for the soil from which the basic ontological concepts developed, and if we are to see whether the categories have been demonstrated in a way that is appropriate and complete. We shall therefore carry the discussion of these presuppositions only to the point at which the necessity for restating the question about the meaning of Being becomes plain. There are three such presuppositions.

1. First it has been maintained that ‘Being’ is the ‘most univesal’  concept. ‘An understanding of Being is already included in conceiving anything which one apprehends in entities.’ 1
Aristotle, Metaphysics
But the ‘universality’ of’ ‘Being’ is not that of a class or genus. The term ‘Being’ does not define that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are Articulated conceptually according to genus and species. The universality of Being ‘transcends’ any universality of genus. In Medieval ontology ‘Being’ is designated as a ‘transcendens’. Aristotle himself knew the unity of this transcendental ‘universal’ as a unity of analogy in contrast to this multiplicity of the highest generic concepts applicable to things. With this discovery, in spite of his dependence on the way in which the ontological question had been formulated by Plato, he put the problem of Being on what was, in principle, a new basis. To be sure, even Aristotle failed to clear away the darkness of these categorical interconnections. In medieval ontology this problem was widely discussed, especially in the Thomist and Scotist schools, without reaching clarity as to principals. And when Hegel at last defines ‘Being’ as the ‘indeterminate immediate’ and makes this definition basic for all the further categorical explications of his ‘logic’, he keeps looking in the same direction as ancient ontology, except that he no longer pays heed to Aristotle’s problem of the unity of Being as over and against the multiplicity of ‘categories’ applicable to things. So if it is said that ‘Being’ is the most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the one which is clearest or that it needs no further discussion. It is rather the darkest of all.

2. It has been maintained secondly that the concept of ‘Being’ is indefinable. This is deduced from its supreme universality, and rightly so, if definition fit genus proximum et differentiam specificam. ‘Being’ cannot indeed be conceived as an entity; enti non additur aliqua natura: nor can it acquire such a character as to have the term “entity” applied to it. “Being” cannot be derived from higher concepts by definition, nor can it be presented through lower ones. But does this imply that ‘Being’ no longer offers a problem? Not at all. We can infer only that ‘Being’ cannot have the character of an entity. Thus we cannot apply to being the concept of ‘definition’ as presented in traditional logic, which itself has its foundations in ancient ontology and which, within certain limits, provides a justifiable way of characterizing “entities”. The indefinability of Being does not eliminate the question of its meaning; it demands that we look that question in the face.

3. Thirdly, it is held that ‘Being’ is of all concepts the one that is self-evident. Whenever one cognizes anything or makes an assertion, whenever one comports oneself towards entities, even towards oneself, some use is made of Being; and this expression is held to be intelligible ‘without further ado’, just as everyone understands ‘The sky is blue’, ‘I am merry’, and the like. But here we have an average kind of intelligibility, which merely demonstrates that this is unintelligible. It makes manifest that in any way of comporting oneself towards entities as entities – even in any Being towards entities as entities – there lies a priori an enigma. The very fact that we already live in an understanding of Being and that the meaning of Being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle to raise this question again.
Within the range of basic philosophical concepts – especially when we come to the concept of ‘Being’ – it is a dubious procedure to invoke self-evidence, if indeed the ‘self-evident’ (Kant’s ‘covert judgements of common reason’) is to become the sole explicit and abiding theme for one’s analytic – ‘the business of philosophers’.
By considering these prejudices, however, we have made plain not only that the question of Being lacks an answer, but that the question itself is obscure and without direction. So if it is to be revived, this means that we must first work out an adequate way of formulating it.


Here, Heidegger is speaking of certain conventions of knowledge in the Western tradition of philosophy which generally obscure the investigation of fundamental ontology. At the shroomery, we have our own similar conventions.

It is often frustrating to me that there seems to be a strong urge towards existential investigation, and yet what always presents itself in that, is precisely the impossibility of it. This problem, which I have already stressed in general, is that our emboldened “existentialists”, “cynics”, “skeptics” cannot for themselves seem to avoid framing existence in terms of a supervening knowledge of reality. When the existential condition is claimed as a fact (and of course, not to mention in aggrandizement of the speaker, as “his own” structure of knowledge), however it is already described, it makes the investigation and inquiry that some of us sincerely seek, impossible.

Instead of inquiry into its condition, it has been represented as a matter of fact. As "a matter of fact" the existential condition is something typically “asserted”. This we’ve covered, but as broader example, it is often referred to as some kind of antithesis to theology, and so for that it has become an ideology and label for itself. In whatever the particular manner, being preoccupied with the signification of death in a public sphere of knowledge, or in other words establishing this as a “claim” of the condition, that one pretends to know, is an avoidance of the investigation and interpretation of that condition itself. This pretended knowledge closes the prospects of addressing our conditional existence, because the illusion that it is “known” makes it trivial.

At the shroomery, we are experiencing a near absolute inflation of existential terminology, in opposition to its inquiry. It has become the mere usage of words, a rhetorical turn, or a way to generally point the finger at another. This blunt manner of addressing entities is an ad hominem, in general, but I would say it is also a fallacy for existential inquiry in specific. As a result of dwelling in this convention, a person neither looks to what is already known, nor to where the condition is to be found most proximally, in one’s own being. It has instead been made out as a matter of fact, and public knowledge.

Here we have an example of the broad distinction that Heidegger is attempting to make. He distinguishes an "everyday" or "preliminary" understanding of being, from a "fundamental" understanding of it. The former understanding, as a way of being, dwells in conventional knowledge, and the latter way of being, seeks to raise inquiry towards fundamental or otherwise arbitrary conditions like being and death. Here, it is especially important to point out that Heidegger never completed the project of a fundamental ontology. So the truth of being was never made transparent to convention, or it was never bound in doctrinal text. Though he made the distinction, there is no union to speak of.


This distinction, at least, is not only made only by Heidegger. Some eastern traditions have a somewhat similar approach. As ultimately significant to Madhyamaka Buddhism doctrine, Nagarjuna drew a distinction between conventional truth and the ultimate truth of emptiness:

Quote:
The Buddha's teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and an ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha's profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.
—Nagarjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārika 24:8-10



The basic tenant of taoism is also similar, in that existential concepts such as "being" and "death" hold a certain nuance in their representation. You could say that “The existentialism that is represented is not true existentialism”. This would be true in terms of its idols, and embodiment, as well as its most basic symbolic terminology.

Aside from these intriguing horizons, this is what I would like to consider, concretely. I will address the issue of representation in predicate logic:

Existential quantification (Ex), may be taken as precisely the opposite of an existential inquiry. Its representation is the absolute inflation of existential terminology.

Let H stand for human

(Ex) Hx means there is a human, or there is at least one human. And from that we could derive more simply “x is a human”.

(Ex) symbolizes existence, and for that, merely implies, and thus eludes the work to be done in understanding what “there is” actually means. This is a convention of logic or of dialectic in general.

“There is” is at the basis of any idea, and so must at least be reasonable that it is represented. This may be conceived as an important step.

But this doesn’t mean that we actually understand what existence means in a more fundamental sense. The symbolic representation of existentialism is so much as to say, something “just exists”.  That may mean either “we don’t claim to understand it”, or maybe it's some person's profound moment (and rather personal, wouldn't you say?). In our manner of acquiescing to this form, of generally assuming representation, we could mean many different things by this condition. But it seems that primarily, we have a tendency towards its convention, invoking a self evidence of existence, or an all too vague understanding. It "just exists".

Urgency is what you have spoken towards in your last post, and yet I would doubt that there is any way to explicitly represent that urgency. It only stands out for itself, in its own unique, and personal consideration. I disagree with the pattern of dialogue that makes a "claim" to this urgency. In the broadest sense I do not sympathize with a linear or strictly conformative standard of being-towards-death. 


Quote:
Being Towards Death
(German: Sein-zum-Tode)
Being-toward-death is not an orientation that brings Dasein closer to its end, in terms of clinical death, but is rather a way of being.[3] In the analysis of time, it is revealed as a threefold condition of Being. Time, the present and the notion of the "eternal", are modes of temporality. Temporality is the way we see time. For Heidegger, it is very different from the mistaken view of time as being a linear series of past, present and future. Instead he sees it as being an ecstasy, an outside-of-itself, of futural projections (possibilities) and one's place in history as a part of one's generation.



Edited by daytripper23 (12/20/10 11:48 AM)

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: daytripper23]
    #13658550 -

Cool video.


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L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs

Edited by Cognitive_Shift (12/19/10 11:56 PM)

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
    #13672481 -

If it really is straight, why is there an “if” to arrive at this latter point that you have conceived?

Because people are blind to many things that exist right in front of their face. Psychologists have long called these blind spots aspects of the unconscious. When they enter consciousness, individuals are no longer blind to them, and they are no longer unconscious. If it is unconscious, then one will not be aware of it despite it's existence. The straightness of its existence does not vary despite individual wiggle room in degree of awareness. 

My conditional statement was directed to you on an individual level in an attempt to remove some of the wiggle room that we all inevitably find when death is the topic of discussion. The intellectuals amongst us tend to wiggle away from it by reaching into the deepest depths of our intellectual knowledge.

I intend to read through the rest of your post as I think there is a lot of good information in it and I appreciate the effort you put into making it. I'll respond more as I move through it.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Re: Circles of Ignorance [Re: Kickle]
    #13676060 -

It is often frustrating to me that there seems to be a strong urge towards existential investigation, and yet what always presents itself in that, is precisely the impossibility of it.

I don't see the impossibility. Capturing the investigation is what seems impossible to me. Define it in any way you can, it still isn't complete. Define it by what it is not, it is still not complete. 

I don't think anyone who really discusses the topic disputes this, including the philosophers that Heidegger singles out. We use words to express something we find important or valuable. An aspect of being that is significant from a specific world view. Closing down to its significance because it is not the whole truth is a mistake, although I am not saying you are doing so. More, I'm not sure what you're saying. Despite speaking strongly towards something that is honest, I would not declare it the truth. Despite speaking strongly of honest experience, I would not declare it whole. However, I will as I have been call it honest. An honest examination of what is really here, no matter how small a fragment of the whole it may be. It's better than a dishonest examination in my book :shrug:

... continuing.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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