Time and relationships (or, consciousness per Martin Heidegger)

[Darken-Sol]

during meditation i catch little glimpses of a "place" where there is no thought. no me. it is slightly deeper than awareness. by that i mean when i realize I'm there, i can't stay there. it is difficult to explain how all the concepts I've read in this post remind me of that "place" and the layers i have to shed to get there. could it be consciousness?

 

[apeiron]

during meditation i catch little glimpses of a "place" where there is no thought. no me. it is slightly deeper than awareness. by that i mean when i realize I'm there, i can't stay there. it is difficult to explain how all the concepts I've read in this post remind me of that "place" and the layers i have to shed to get there. could it be consciousness?

The different ontic stances expressed here would give you completely different answers I would say.

A panpsychist might want to agree that you are describing a dissolution of the particular self into some more primal or global state of self.

But the pansemiotic view would be that consciousness exists at the top end of things, rather than being materially fundamental. It is the result of developmental complexity rather than primal simplicity. So meditation and letting go cannot be taking you towards some "higher state of being". Instead it would be doing the opposite - taking you towards merely a vaguer, less developed, state of being. The reverse of enlightenment in fact.

Not sure how the Heideggerian view would fit though. It would seem to demand a sharp sense of self, or at least a precise sense of orientation and location, to also have a sharply defined state of authentic interaction.

 

[Darken-Sol]

Not sure how the Heideggerian view would fit though. It would seem to demand a sharp sense of self, or at least a precise sense of orientation and location, to also have a sharply defined state of authentic interaction.

i sense the things that i use to define myself most of the time. after i tune out external sensations and later emotions and memories i can experience thoughts without words in them, bet there is still a strong sense of self. its only when i get past the thinking that i lose orientation,self, and the ability to interact. any attempt to do anything forces me back a few steps then i usually give up.

 

[Darken-Sol]

aperion, have you heard about Dr. Amit Goswami, Ph.D? i recently watched a documentary of his. i haven't looked further into it but it seems to be along the same lines as this post. i don't know enough about the scientific side of consciousness to form any opinion about his ideas. from reading your posts you seem like you could argue for or against him. that would help me a great deal as i can ask you questions. if you don't mind.

 

[apeiron]

from reading your posts you seem like you could argue for or against him.

I would argue against him for sure. But that would be too far off-topic here.

 

[Darken-Sol]

I would argue against him for sure. But that would be too far off-topic here.

not trying to jack your thread. consciousness interests me more than any other topic. where should i start, scientifically?

 

[ConradDJ]

I think where these conversations keep floundering is with the urge to assert that the situation is fundamentally this (ie: monistically boiling down to authenticity, to the primacy of subjective interaction) and so not fundamentally that (ie: the antithetical notion of the inauthentic, the objective view of a collection of interacting subjects).

But what is real only exists because it is separable into figure and ground, event and context, the particular and the general, or whatever hierarchical dichotomy you choose to describe the situation.

It becomes tenditious to call one authentic , and the other not, when nothing could actually exist without them both being present and having a precisely complementary and synergistic relationship.

Apeiron – I really appreciate your patience with me, considering how stubbornly I resist your point of view. Your response is very much on point.

You’re right that there’s something “tendentious” about these terms “authentic” and “inauthentic”... even though I’ve tried to emphasize that the inauthentic viewpoint – that is, objectivity – is in no sense “wrong”. In fact, it defines a fundamental kind of truth, the truth of facts – the kind of truth that remains true no matter what perspective anyone has on it.

And you’re right that there’s a kind of “synergistic” relationship between these standpoints. Even though my own point of view is the only one I will ever have, I have to grow up into a world as discussed and determined by other people, before I can even begin to develop a perspective that’s uniquely my own. I not only need to learn the customs and conventions of the society I was born into, but I have to learn how to transcend this particular socially-determined viewpoint and envision some kind of higher, universal truth – which is the mission of the many philosophical and spiritual traditions, and also of science.

It’s only from this kind of detached, transcendent perspective – which does not have to be an intellectual one – that the issue of how to be authentically yourself arises. It’s only when you’ve really internalized the notion of a universal truth, that you can see the possibility of something further, another kind of foundation, in which the unique particularity of the individual plays the basic role.

Now to me, what’s genuine and powerful in the point of view you’ve developed from Peirce, is the determination always to include both sides. If you look at Greek thought, or the various Eastern traditions, there’s a powerful belief in transcendence, so the particular is always caught up and pulled into the universal truth. But the Western tradition, with its long immersion in Christianity, again and again comes back to the individual as having a basic kind of truth of its own. After all, each of us only has our own existence. The universal truth is after all only an Idea, not something anyone can live and breathe.

The Western tradition has been so creative, intellectually, just because it keeps on insisting on both sides. It wants universal principles, but it also wants them to arise out of individual existence. In your terms, what’s completely universal is to begin with merely Vague, non-differentiated. It has to become individual, local and particular in order to develop any shape or structure.

So stepping back, the real interaction we should be focused on is the global one between the authentic and inauthentic, using your terms, not simply the localised play of interactions which you call the authentic.

Now here is the heart of our disagreement. In trying to understand this creative, evolving interplay, you and Peirce want to focus on the universal Idea of the interplay. The “real” interaction is the global one that happens between the principles of global and local, etc. Of course, you’re not talking about a battle of principles that takes place on some abstract level – the principles are always instantiated in particular, local events.

But this is why I keep referring back to Hegel. He was a true “existentialist” in his time. He believed that even the highest, universal truth works itself out in and through the daily grind of individual, material existence. But he found a universal Logic in it – as did Peirce. I can see reasons for preferring Peirce’s logic to Hegel’s, which is all too “binary”, too close to the traditional logic of “A” or “not A”. But the spirit is the same – the quest for Universal Idea that’s adequate to encompass all the particularity of existence.

Kierkegaard and Heidegger made the opposite choice. They wouldn’t agree with you that the “real” relationship we need to grasp is a relationship between Ideas. From their point of view, to the extent that global principles have meaning, it’s because they arise out of the “local” relationships between unique individuals in their particular contexts.

To you, this is a non-issue, because in any case we need both “global” and “local”. It’s foolish to argue about which is bigger or better or more basic – the point is to clarify the universal logic of their global interaction.

But for me, this “stepping back” to a global perspective where principles are what’s “real” is exactly the issue. What I want to emphasize about existence is precisely what becomes invisible when my individual, moment-to-moment existence gets pulled out the “here and now” of real life and turned into a principle.

Philosophy, like all forms of knowing, is about generalisation - the forming of universal ideas or universal truths. Descartes' faculty of reason is simply the result of a history of such generalisation about the world...

...then it is general systems principles which explain how particular points of view can even be. There has to be a context (of universalised constraints). This is what supports the existence then of localised interactions.

What you say makes sense, and this is the time-honored perspective. And I feel I should apologize for my persisting – but I believe that philosophy can take a new direction.

We agree that “evolution” and “development” are both important, in the emergence of life. And I keep insisting on evolution, because to me it’s by far the best image available of an “existential” science – one based not on universal principles but on the contingencies and exigencies of particular, accidental situations. It’s just because the quest for a general theory of development is seeking a universal systems logic, that I think it’s misguided.

You will say – yes, but even the effort to understand evolution must try to generalize about it. But if you look at the vast amount we do understand about evolution, not much of it has to do with general principles. The systems theorists have the goal of making biology look more like physics, based on a compact set of principles. My goal would be to make physics look more like biology. Ultimately we are where we are because of history, and not much of that is logical.

So on the one hand, “foundation” refers to an Idea, a Process that’s the basis for everything. And on the other it ultimately refers to something individuals provide for each other in their “local” relationships. My existence depends on my mother and father, my context of family and friends, on all the extremely improbable events that led to my “here and now”. There is something deep we need to understand about this, but I don’t think it will take the form of a set of global principles.

 

[ConradDJ]

Imagine some kind of interaction between two points. Draw a line. It seems easy to do. At a stroke, there can be a crisp and unambiguous relationship. It seems fundamental. You can now imagine building upwards to construct a world of point-to-point authentic interactions in this fashion.

Yet to draw that line, you also needed a generalised context, an empty backdrop. The line could only be definite to the extent that the absence of line everywhere else was equally definite. It was the dichotomy between event and context that was the fundamental relationship. And this fact needs to be central to the philosophy.

I get your point... but what kind of imaginative space are we in, here? We’re imagining an “empty backdrop” that you and I are not actually in. We’re not looking at this line between two points from any specific angle, or thinking of it as something that’s happening right now between us. So this image of a line between two points is nothing at all like the kind of relationship that people have with each other... or for that matter, the kind of relationship that two oxygen atoms have with each other to form a molecule.

I think it’s a deep reflection on our intellectual situation today that the world “relationship” does not distinguish at all between these two utterly dissimilar cases... on the one hand, the relationship between 2 and 4, or between local and global, or between two points on a line. And on the other, the relationships we actual beings “have” with each other, without which we couldn’t exist.

Our deepest difficulty, in trying to be philosophers and scientists today, is that this abstract mental space in which we envision a relationship between two points is such a natural and normal place for us to be. We’re completely comfortable in this space, which was not available at to the pre-Socratic philosophers, writing before Euclid.

In contrast, we can hardly begin to imagine the world we actually experience, from a point of view inside. All of these relationships we’re in, at the moment, happening in the context of all these other relationships... I use the word “context” because I haven’t found a better one. But there’s barely any similarity between the way words on a page made a literal context for each other, and the way what happens in a relationship makes it important what happens in another relationship.

Say instead you tried to draw a line in some chaotic space where there was just a foam of possibility and no simple unmarked backdrop. How could the line have been clearly a line (when it is lost in a general confusion). It would be like painting a trace on a choppy sea.

So Heidegger's approach does not tackle the necessary existence of a global context for any localised notion of an authentic interaction.

This is right – but I question again whether a global context is really necessary. “Global” or “universal” is basic to the logic of our traditional philosophy, but does it correspond to anyone’s actual experience of anything? “Global” refers of course to the wholeness of the Earth, but we don’t know that the universe has that kind of wholeness. The world we actually experience, from a point of view “inside”, is unbounded in every direction.

Where everything happens, in our existence, is in our local “here and now”, in relationships with other things present nearby, and also things distant from us, both in space and time. The structure of this world has hardly been described – mainly because we take for granted that our image of the world in that abstract mental space of “objectivity” is adequate.

And of course it is adequate, for describing objects. It was Heidegger’s point that we need a different conceptual structure for describing the “here and now” of relationships in which we exist, each from our own point of view.

So “global” / “universal” is a basic logical category in the object-world. But we shouldn’t assume it plays the same role in relation to existence. The category “authentic” doesn’t operate within the object-world at all. It’s not at all the same as“local” or “particular” as aspects of reality. What’s particular about me is how I differ, objectively, from other people. But “authentic” refers to my own viewpoint, my own existence – which is neither “like” or “unlike” anyone else’s existence, because in existence there is never more than one’s own point of view, in relation to others. There is no comparing one existence with another.

And in existence, “local” doesn’t mean “in some certain locality” that could be anywhere in the world... it means only here, only in this moment. So to articulate the world from inside requires a very different set of conceptual tools.

 

[ConradDJ]

Yes, you can argue that all philosophising must start with personal experience. The subjective stance. But it also seems clear enough that our subjective mind already has a history of development and carries its own heavy freight of context.

Yes... to try to understand the world “out there”, or even to understand yourself and where you come from — you need to able to get outside your own point of view and grasp the facts of your situation, your history and your psychology. The goal is not to do without the objective viewpoint, or the logical categories we've developed for the object-world.

And so a complete philosophy would have to embrace that essential dynamic. It would value both the particular and the general. And seek to account for the whole of nature in terms of that most fundamental interaction.

But for you the essential dynamic is something that can be envisioned and analyzed “from outside”, in that abstract mental space. And for me, the essential dynamic is between authentic and inauthentic ways of being, which can only be envisioned from the standpoint of one’s own life and one’s own personal difficulties.

On the one hand, we observe the dynamic of the local and the particular, the clear, crisp foreground against the vague, empty or chaotic background.

On the other, we struggle to find out how to be ourselves and also be in our relationships.

These are very different visions of an essential dynamic, involving different kinds of essential differences. In the one case the world evolves through logical dichotomies... in the other through our existential dilemmas. In the one case there’s a given basis of universal principles... in the other a history of successful relationships that were the basis for new kinds of problems, calling for new ways in which things can be a basis for each other.

It hardly makes sense to argue about which of these visions is “right”... since the contexts are so different. But I very much appreciate the opportunities you’ve given me to try to articulate a point of view.

 

[Energystrom]

Yes... to try to understand the world “out there”, or even to understand yourself and where you come from — you need to able to get outside your own point of view and grasp the facts of your situation, your history and your psychology. The goal is not to do without the objective viewpoint, or the logical categories we've developed for the object-world.

This is agreed; any attempt at understanding must begin from a transcendental standpoint, or that of the individual. That is to say, the most fundamental type of experience or understanding must account for the conditions of our consciousness to which all facts that we possesses are subject; essentially, the conditions that color and make my experience possible. Of course, conditions of consciousness are not static apparati; they cannot be abrogated, but cannot ever be fully accounted for either. The necessity of the "objective" standpoint is obvious at this point--we can only strive to understand these conditions of consciousness, as you said, through a rigorous descriptive psychology and exegesis of socio-historical reality. Inasmuch as the content of human existence is the only means which we have for analyzing the human, we must harness this objective world with the ultimate goal of coming to a richer understanding of the transcendental standpoint of self.

But for you the essential dynamic is something that can be envisioned and analyzed “from outside”, in that abstract mental space. And for me, the essential dynamic is between authentic and inauthentic ways of being, which can only be envisioned from the standpoint of one’s own life and one’s own personal difficulties.

On the one hand, we observe the dynamic of the local and the particular, the clear, crisp foreground against the vague, empty or chaotic background.

On the other, we struggle to find out how to be ourselves and also be in our relationships.

These are very different visions of an essential dynamic, involving different kinds of essential differences. In the one case the world evolves through logical dichotomies... in the other through our existential dilemmas. In the one case there’s a given basis of universal principles... in the other a history of successful relationships that were the basis for new kinds of problems, calling for new ways in which things can be a basis for each other.

It hardly makes sense to argue about which of these visions is “right”... since the contexts are so different. But I very much appreciate the opportunities you’ve given me to try to articulate a point of view.

I also agree with respect to this. "Abstract mental space" must still submit to the conditions of consciousness; inasmuch as this is concerned, it follows that the organic conditions of consciousness must play a vital role in relationships between the individual and other individuals and the individual and the world. As the amorphous (yet existent) conditions of consciousness are changed and shaped by the individual's experience, his understanding, appreciation, and search for meaning are fundamentally altered as well. There exists a living, holistic, and dynamic relationship between the individual and what is there for him in both inner and outer experience.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Conrad, have you read Whitehead's Science and the Modern World or Process and Reality yet?

I actually agree with almost everything that Apeiron wrote in #175 and I also agree that Peirce has much insight on these issues. But Whitehead went further than anyone else it seems, in concordance with the development of modern physics, in his career - which was not an option for Peirce due to his point in history and was not taken up by Heidegger because he was paralyzed by the same word games and concepts that you have raised so many times in this thread.

Philosophy is indeed about generalization, about reducing complexity to simplicity and showing how simple assumptions can lead to complexity. Yes, humans exist necessarily in complexity, not simplicity. We are the result of at least 4 billion years of evolution - or 12 if we start from the beginning of this universe. But philosophy and science are about reasonable inference regarding origins and evolution. We'll never KNOW how the world became so complex - how I, or you, or apeiron, became so complex. But we can make reasonable inferences that are hopefully testable. And thus philosophy and science move forward in creating a (hopefully) increasingly accurate picture of the world independent of any particular human - and, yes, always interdependent.

Whitehead's ontology is all about melding the subjective with the objective, in a perpetual oscillation between subject and object, which is thus all about interdependency.

Heidegger, Peirce and Whitehead are almost completely commensurable - there's nothing "wrong" about any of their ideas (well, maybe some...). They're all looking at the same basic issues, but tackling different pieces of it and reaching different conclusions. But if we're seeking the broadest, most reasonable, most useful, and also the most hopeful, philosophy I think Whitehead and his successors have much to teach us.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Darken-Sol, my view is that there are "twin ultimates" and that various types of religious/spiritual experience can be explained by a metaphor of "holonic navigation." Holons are parts/wholes, which are all conscious in their own right, to varying degrees. With perhaps one very large exception: the most basic ground of being/Brahman/apeiron/ether is, I believe, probably not conscious. It transcends subject/object. It is pure Spirit. To be reunited with this ground of being - to lose one's ego, one's sense of self, is to experience pure bliss (satchitananda).

This is holonic navigation to the ground, the base.

But other types of navigation are possible, it seems: upward navigation. So rather than dissolving one's ego into pure Spirit, more personalized experiences of religious ecstasy seem to suggest a merging with a higher level holon. Just as the cells in our body are individuals in their own right (with most likely an extremely rudimentary consciousness) that form the higher level consciousness we call our "self," so this self may merge at least temporarily with an even higher level consciousness.

I'm not entirely convinced of this higher level holonic navigation because it seems that we should have more evidence of higher level intelligences than we do. But I am quite convinced of the downward holonic navigation - there is abundant evidence for this, and I have personally experienced this type of dissolution of ego on more than one occasion.

I think the model of holonic navigation is potentially quite powerful and it is one item on my increasingly long list to use this as the basis for a "general theory of spirituality." One day...

 

[ConradDJ]

This is agreed; any attempt at understanding must begin from a transcendental standpoint, or that of the individual.

Whitehead's ontology is all about melding the subjective with the objective, in a perpetual oscillation between subject and object, which is thus all about interdependency.

The deep question is – what is this “standpoint of the individual”? Maybe just because this standpoint is the only one we ever have, it’s the most difficult thing to be articulate about. Because it’s the thing that’s hardest not to take for granted.

The “standpoint of consciousness” is what we’re always looking through. It’s invisible to us in the same way that light is invisible: even though all we see is light, we look right through it and perceive the world of objects around us. And our basic mental orientation is to this world of objects in space and time, that we share with everyone else. It’s very difficult to shift back to the standpoint that’s truly our own, and consider the world of present-time interaction and communication in relationships.

First Descartes and then Kant made heroic efforts to take the standpoint of consciousness. Because of their efforts, modern thought became familiar with the subjective point of view, the idea that each of us has a world of our own “in our heads”. This left philosophy with a strange conundrum: the only universe each of us has is the universe within our own minds, yet our own minds clearly exist as part of the objective universe.

Tam’s statement about Whitehead above seems correct. His is one of a long series of attempts to “meld the subjective with the objective” in some way. To my mind, though, these attempts don’t really take the “standpoint of the individual” seriously enough. They end up talking about “mind” or “apperception” as something going on out there in the real world of objects. That is, these philosophies all live in that abstract mental space in which we envision the world “from outside”, as if we weren’t actually there.

Just to be clear, I repeat – there’s nothing wrong with this traditional theoretical viewpoint at all... so long as we’re talking about the object-world. The error is in taking this point of view for granted in trying to grasp what’s truly fundamental.

When we do that, we can easily convince ourselves that the radical conundrum of subject and object is not really such a big problem. Tam just says, look, they’re exactly the same – everything is both subject and object. True, I get that. Everything has its own point of view in the world, and everything can be seen from some other point of view – fine. We can relax and feel we’ve accomplished something. But to me this kind of “armchair philosophy” is not helpful, that sits on the sidelines of existence and comprehends it all from a distance. This doesn’t get us any closer to appreciating what’s involved in being here, Heidegger’s “Da-sein”, the “standpoint of the individual”.

It’s not merely that our point of view on the world is “subjective”. It’s that everything we ever experience is this universe of our own experience. As Leibniz put it, “the monad has no windows.” I believe the human mind is the most radically isolated, self-enclosed entity there has ever been. No one else will ever have any clue about what your world looks like or feels like, since hardly anything of what you see and feel, moment to moment, can be put into words. And (as Kant said), you have absolutely no access to a world that exists beyond the world you imagine.

Unless we grasp this isolation of our own minds emphatically, we can’t have any idea of what this word “relationship” really means. Communication between two human minds is like communication between two entirely separate universes. It works only because you and I both imagine that it works. We believe in a world outside our own minds, and we imagine how other people feel and think. This is what Heidegger means by “transcendence” – that we reach, in our own minds, for something beyond, out there in the world, and everything we do and think happens in the context of that unconscious reach.

It’s not easy to appreciate the point Heidegger’s trying to make. It’s much easier just to say, obviously humans get information about the world around them, through their senses... obviously humans communicate with each other, through language. What’s the problem? And then we continue to take for granted that abstract mental space, in which what’s truly fundamental can’t appear.

For most practical purposes, our minds are not isolated from each other, of course. For most practical purposes, the objective viewpoint works great for understanding what’s here in the world around us. Forget about “the standpoint of the individual” – it’s no big deal, it’s just something we all have, right?

But I think, if we want to understand how human consciousness evolved, or how the physical universe evolved, we have to find ways to stop taking so much for granted, specifically about our relationships, and our ability to communicate. Human minds could only evolve this level of “self-consciousness”, this awareness of our own existence in our own unique mental space, because our relationships with each other evolved to make that meaningful, through the language we’ve evolved for mutual imagining and believing. Something like “mind” could never have evolved by itself, in isolation. We can be the most radically isolated beings in the universe only because we’ve evolved a sense of connection between us that can bridge the gap even between two different universes.

This is hard not to take for granted. I think even Heidegger wasn’t able to appreciate the depth of what’s involved in this business of “having a relationship”. He didn’t focus on the one-on-one aspect of existence, that’s expressed in the word “you”. Instead he wrote about “being-in-the-world” in general – and it was all too easy for his readers to mistake this for the usual “subjective” viewpoint of the mind in relation to the object-world.

Apeiron objected to my focusing on personal, one-on-one relationships. His objections make sense, but only so long as we’re operating within the usual abstract mental space occupied by theorists and philosophers. But I don’t believe what’s fundamental in existence can be seen within that space. You have to be here, it won’t do to keep on imagining the world from outside. You have to work from the standpoint of what’s fundamental to your own existence... and for me that means one-on-one, personal connections.

 

[ConradDJ]

I think, if we want to understand how human consciousness evolved, or how the physical universe evolved, we have to find ways to stop taking so much for granted, specifically about our relationships, and our ability to communicate.

Here’s a link to another thread that didn’t go very far, but tried to open up the question –

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=334249"

Also, in case anyone is interested in what this approach could possibly have to do with physics, here are a couple more links to old threads. Essentially I’m taking “measurement” in quantum theory as equivalent to “communication”. The idea is that we take it for granted that physical communication just means “data transfer” between systems – despite the fact that data is never just “copied” from one system to another, in physical interaction -- any more than data gets physically copied from one person’s brain to another’s. In both cases we’ve hardly begun to understand what sort of environment of real-time relationships can actually support defining and communicating information between different systems with different points of view.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=314441"

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=332292"

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Conrad, I think what you're really looking for is life experience, not philosophy. I don't know how old you or what your background is, but it seems that you don't need words and ideas - you need raw experience.

Whitehead did not assert, and nor have I asserted, that subject and object are the same thing. Rather, they are alternating dual aspects of each actual thing. Whitehead's "concrescence" is the process by which each actual entity becomes actual, starting from a subject, "prehending" the universe (a generalized term for perception), and then making a choice as to how to manifest objectively based on the sum total of prehensions. Whitehead's scheme is actually much more complicated than this, involving also "eternal objects" (Platonic forms essentially) as well, but what I've wrote captures the essence.

As such, the universe is nothing more than the sum total of each actual entity oscillating from subject to object in an eternal cycle of prehension, objectification, perishing of subjectivity and then revival again. It starts very simple but complexifies through the combination of actual entities at various levels.

Whitehead explicitly disavowed Leibniz's windowless monads and, instead, posited fully windowed monads. Actual entities are akin to Leibniz's monads but each actual entity is fully interconnected and interdependent with literally every other actual entity in the universe because it is part of the causal fabric that constitutes the universe. Leibniz's system was rather strange and required positing an omniscient God to coordinate monads in a "preestablished harmony." This is hardly an explanation of anything because it necessarily raises the question: where did God come from? Plausibility is much enhanced if we posit the brute facts of our system as being very simple, rather than a priori complex, leading to complexity through reasonably inferred processes.

We are indeed isolated minds in terms of not KNOWING anything other than our own experience, our own minds, but we can through reasonable inference know other minds - and other minds include literally everything in the universe. As we expand our conception and perception of self, we can come to know the entire universe.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Just simply, can this particular interpretation of Daesin or authenticity be authentically explained? Is there an awareness of authenticity that isn't inauthentic?

Can it communicate authentically? For instance, can it communicate without an inauthentic awareness of itself, or further, the existence of others?

I’ll quote Apeiron, too, from another thread, but mentioned in relation to this one, in case that helps.

Langauge clearly objectifies the subject, the doer, along with the doings and the done-to (the verbs and the objects). It already lifts us out of any local particular notion of the subject, the active agent, the effective cause, and forces us into a generic or objective stance where we are just an example of such a locus of agency, the cause that produces the effects.

Although, I would qualify that position.

 

[ConradDJ]

Is there an awareness of authenticity that isn't inauthentic?

Can it communicate authentically? For instance, can it communicate without an inauthentic awareness of itself, or further, the existence of others?

No. I think the most important thing to understand about authenticity (in Heidegger's sense) is that it can't do without inauthenticity. The point is not to get rid of inauthenticity.

As Apeiron says, inauthenticity -- the ability to imagine the world from no perspective in particular, to "see" a world that goes far beyond the actual "here and now" -- is fundamental to language and to being human. I would say, it's what most radically distinguishes human "consciousness" from the kinds of awareness other animals have.

If you want a "pure" authenticity (or the state of "no-mind", that JDStupi discussed) – a kind of awareness that's fully in the present moment – just imagine how a cat or a dog sees the world.

The thing is, it can be very difficult for us to find our way back into a point of view that's truly our own. And to me, this doesn't involve undoing the inauthentic viewpoint or escaping from it, back to something like the zen ideal of "no mind". It is important to be able to disengage, to stop the self-talk in your head, to come back into the present moment -- because that's the only place we're really connected with the world and with other people. But for me the point is not to leave behind everything we've evolved in our heads, but to bring it and use it to re-engage, in our relationships.

So in physics, we certainly don’t want to leave behind everything we’ve learned about the world from an objective viewpoint. But I think in order to understand what’s going on in the physical world, we also have to see the world “from the standpoint of the observer” – i.e. from the standpoint each of us actually has, in the moment. This is something physics has only been able to do to a very limited extent – e.g. in Carlo Rovell’s “http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002v2" .”

 

[ConradDJ]

I have a couple of comments on Apeiron’s note in the Vygotsky thread, mentioned above –

... the inauthentic view seems in fact fundamental to humans in this regard. Langauge clearly objectifies the subject, the doer, along with the doings and the done-to (the verbs and the objects). It already lifts us out of any local particular notion of the subject, the active agent, the effective cause, and forces us into a generic or objective stance where we are just an example of such a locus of agency, the cause that produces the effects.

The open question is whether animals also have some kind of proto-objectification and cause and effect thinking wired in.

Yes, certainly the brains of other animals have built-in neural “hardware” that enables them to identify and track relevant “objects” out in the world. If you think about how difficult it is to get a computer to do this effectively, you know that this involves many very sophisticated, very complex processing systems.

Human language is a separate “software” system that makes use of this animal hardware. It’s “software” in the sense that it gets “installed” in our brains from outside as we learn to communicate with others. And it’s this that gives us that “inauthentic” ability to “see” the world from no point of view in particular, to keep track of people and things even when we don’t see them for days or years... even to make pictures in our heads of things of things no one will ever see.

But Apeiron says “language clearly objectifies the subject, the doer”... I would rather say, written language does this. In purely oral cultures there is much less of a sense of things as “objects” just existing in themselves with certain characteristics. There is much more of a sense of things as “agents”, “doers” that behave in certain ways.

In pre-literate culture there is a kind of built-in balance between authentic and inauthentic – and thinking about this is a good way of seeing how these two aspects of human awareness work together. Langauge allows us to “step back” out of our own immediate experience, but in a purely oral culture, language only exists in “real time” relationships, in the moment. Talking is “doing” something with other people, expressing oneself from one’s own point of view, much more than it is just a description of reality. And telling stories is a much more basic function of language than arguing about objective truth.

In our culture, which has been more and more shaped by written language over some 2,500 years, the objectifying, “representational” function of language becomes more dominant, particularly in the intellectual sphere. Some even claim that making statements about reality is the function of language, or at least the most important one. And only in a literate culture is it conceivable that the inauthentic, “objective” viewpoint on the world is the only one worth considering.

Obviously I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with literacy, any more than with objectivity. But I would say that our culture, and above all our academic culture, has lost the balance between authenticity and inauthenticity that was a given throughout most of human evolution.

 

[apeiron]

But Apeiron says “language clearly objectifies the subject, the doer”... I would rather say, written language does this. In purely oral cultures there is much less of a sense of things as “objects” just existing in themselves with certain characteristics. There is much more of a sense of things as “agents”, “doers” that behave in certain ways.

I certainly agree about that. Luria classic study of Uzbeks in transition from an oral to literary culture illustrates your point. Also Walter Ong's more recent work - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orality

 

[fuzzyfelt]

No. I think the most important thing to understand about authenticity (in Heidegger's sense) is that it can't do without inauthenticity. The point is not to get rid of inauthenticity.

I understand both are required here, so then the response to Whitehead’s matrix of interpenetration of the two perhaps was about the "from outside" view being considered too priviledged?

To my mind, though, these attempts don’t really take the “standpoint of the individual” seriously enough. They end up talking about “mind” or “apperception” as something going on out there in the real world of objects. That is, these philosophies all live in that abstract mental space in which we envision the world “from outside”, as if we weren’t actually there.
...The thing is, it can be very difficult for us to find our way back into a point of view that's truly our own.

Rather, the idea called for here may instead privilege subjectivity or authenticity?

I would rather say, written language does this.

Derrida disagrees with the "devaluation of writing".

"In the application of this ensemble of rules and historical perspective, one observation about the "devaluation of writing," proved crucial for all of Derrida works: the devaluation of writing is an ancestral bias that was born with Western civilization itself, and remains crucial in modern culture, including science.[5] "


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

Derrida’s arguments against the devaluation of writing includes the idea that writing makes processes more apparent. Amongst things he mentions, too, is the division of self during inner dialogue, into speaker and listener.

He “interiorly” considers the structure of such concepts and “exteriorly” writes of uncovering historic dissimulation.
‘In a 1972 he remarked the historical aspect of deconstruction:[4]
To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think – in the most faithful, interior way – the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine – from a certain exterior [...] – what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...] By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence.’It is also this sort of approach to things like subjectivity and the time of “presence” that I think is quite balanced. I enjoy considerations of boundaries and "trace".

 

[ConradDJ]

I understand both are required here, so then the response to Whitehead’s matrix of interpenetration of the two perhaps was about the "from outside" view being considered too privileged?

...Rather, the idea called for here may instead privilege subjectivity or authenticity?

Well, yes... but both the authentic and inauthentic viewpoints can be “privileged”, in very different ways. On the inauthentic side there’s everything from bigoted dogmatism to the open, self-critical objectivity of science, which deserves to be privileged. Authenticity can’t make the same kind of claim to being right about things. It’s “privileged” only in that it’s the point of view we all start from and end with.

The key point is that both are required, as you say, but the value of both can only be appreciated from the authentic viewpoint. Objectivity wants to move beyond “subjective appearances” to uncover the reality of things. All well and good. But I think when we take that distanced mental perspective that envisions the world as Whitehead does, what’s most important about our connectedness becomes invisible. We get abstract notions about how things connect. Whitehead’s “apperception” is modeled on sense-perception. Tam refers to Ken Wilbur’s metaphysics based on the notion of things being parts of other things. We can probably all agree that “interdependence” is a basic aspect of the world. Apeiron looks to theoretical biology and general systems theory as a guide to describing what this means.

But I think it’s only when we take seriously our own personal point of view on the world, as we live it moment to moment, that we can begin to see what it means to be in relationships, always in the context of other relationships. This was the main point of Being and Time, that the environing structure of “being-here” is different from any objective description of “what’s there” in the world. The “here and now” in which existence happens is very different from the space and time of world-history seen “from outside”. And the basic failing of the inauthentic view is that it doesn’t see this difference at all.

So authentically, we can appreciate what we learn from an objective standpoint about our shared reality. But the kind of philosophy that imagines the world from no point of view in particular misses what’s fundamental. It describes the world of connections “from outside” and talks about the relationships between things from the standpoint of a third party. It can’t see the side of the world that consists in points of view communicating with other points of view, each in its own context... even though that’s all any of us have ever actually experienced.

 

[ConradDJ]

Derrida disagrees with the "devaluation of writing"...

Derrida’s arguments against the devaluation of writing includes the idea that writing makes processes more apparent. Amongst things he mentions, too, is the division of self during inner dialogue, into speaker and listener.

This links to the part of the Wikipedia page that’s most relevant –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#Of_Grammatology

Thanks for pointing this out. I find Derrida’s language hard to tolerate, so I haven’t spent much time on his work. It seems that Heidegger’s main influence, in French philosophy at least, was to encourage a rhetorical style that feels to me deliberately obscure. But this is very relevant to the discussion...

I’m sorry, though, I have to be at work early this AM, so I’ll have to respond tomorrow.

 

[ConradDJ]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#Of_Grammatology" –

Derrida argues that people have historically understood speech as the primary mode of language and understood writing as an inferior derivative of speech.​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orality" is that on the contrary, in our literate culture it’s difficult to appreciate the nature of speech, since our ways of imagining the world have been formed over the centuries in writing. And it’s oral culture that’s often dismissed as primitive and inferior.

Derrida argues that speech is historically equated with logos, meaning thought, and associated with the presence of the speaker to the listener. It is as if the speaker thinks out loud and the listener hears what the speaker is thinking and if there is any confusion then the speaker's presence allows them to qualify the meaning of a previous statement. Derrida argues that by understanding speech as thought language "effaces itself." Langauge itself is forgotten. The signified meaning of speech is so immediately understood that it is easy to forget that there are linguistic signifiers involved - but these signifiers are the spoken sounds (phonemes) and written marks (graphemes) that actually comprise language.​

Heidegger often emphasizes the opposite, in relation to “language”. That is, what’s essential in language has to do not with the “signifiers” but with the kind of relationship to the world and to other people that talking makes possible. Everything humans do and feel is bound up in this kind of communicative relationship, which goes far beyond the use of words and sentences.

This thought that something very basic to existence is being taken for granted and “forgotten” is very much in Heidegger’s vein. But for me, this basic thing that’s taken for granted has to do with the nature of human relationships. For Derrida, it seems to be the technology of “signifying”, or “language” in the narrow sense:

The consideration of language as writing leads inescapably to the insight that language is a system of signs. As a system of signs the signifiers are present but the signification can only be inferred. There is effectively an act of translation involved in extracting a signification from the signifiers of language. This act of translation is so habitual to language users that they must step back from their experience of using language in order to fully realize its operation...

The insight that language is a system of signs, most obvious in the consideration of language as writing, leads Derrida to state that "everything [...] gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to [...] the name of writing."​

So Derrida takes “language” in such a narrow sense that it almost excludes talking, as a “naive” derivative of writing. Of course he can’t mean that talking evolved out of writing. But he thinks that only writing brings out what’s essential in language.

This feels to me like an extreme of the Cartesian viewpoint – the intellect enclosed in its own world, recognizing there’s no way of connecting with any world except the one it constructs itself. But at least it can be aware of the technology it uses.

Naturally such a distanced intellectual perspective prefers writing, i.e. objectified language. It takes the representing / signifying function of language as essential, and ignores the function of letting people be in touch with each other, as something merely illusory.

It’s true that the only world we actually experience is the world each of us builds “in our own heads”. It’s true that when we talk, we’re only imagining there’s someone out there who’s listening and understanding. And when we listen, we’re only imagining we understand what another person thinks or feels. But this kind of mutual imagining is what relationships are made of, and it’s what’s basic to the kind of “consciousness” we humans evolve.

I think human language began with the emergence of this kind of relationship, that we all learn to participate in when we’re very young, and from then on take for granted. As compared to this, the aspect of language that appears in writing is highly derivative, very distanced, “inauthentic” – but certainly not “inferior”.

For a great many purposes, including science and philosophy, writing is indispensable. Derrida is right, that written language in particular is what makes self-reflection possible. But self-reflection isn’t all there is to existence. Nearly all of what makes us human had evolved long before writing.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I’m rushing and I’m unlikely to account for Derrida well in a post, and even less likely to at the moment, but I’ll make a quick attempt.

So Derrida takes “language” in such a narrow sense that it almost excludes talking, as a “naive” derivative of writing. Of course he can’t mean that talking evolved out of writing. But he thinks that only writing brings out what’s essential in language...

That is not my understanding. Spivak argued along these lines. Derrida's aim was to treat both writting and speech similarly.

An asymmetric reversal, with one side privileged at the expense of the other, would be at odds with Derrida’s anti-totalitarian stance. Derrida’s aim was to destroy the opposition in the relationship, not reverse it. An example of destroying opposition is that both terms “master” and “slave” require the other for their definition, enslaving the term “master” (from ‘The Restricted to General Economy’).

He treated speech and writing similarly, as “writing” in this case is about a signifier for as long as there has been one (including prehistory), which (imperfectly) points back to a signified, and so includes speech. Speech equally requires “reading” and interpretation.

More, this idea of “writing"/iterability/inscription/textuality, not only includes speech but all the philosophical system (Reilly, 2005), or all experience (Coward, 1990). And so, along these lines, Derrida is looking from inside experience's relationships, rewriting categories and concepts.

Metaphorically or not, Derrida reads between these historical dichotomies of reason/philosophy/experience in ever changing con-texts, within the relationships between these oppositions, and in uncovering what is present but unsaid/absent (“a chain of signification becomes the trace of presence-absence”) he, at the same time, reconstructs.

I don’t know how to link to areas on a wiki page, but there is a heading here called Heideggerian Dasein and Derridian Trace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_(deconstruction )

Thanks for the more specific link before, but perhaps other parts of the page introduce some of the related ideas more simply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

It may be some time before I can post again.

 

[cosmographer]

Conrad, again, you're taken with Heidegger's supposed sweeping away of traditional philosophy. You think "qualia" is some scientistic term to distract from authentic experience.

Qualia ARE authentic experience. Qualia are subjectivity. Qualia are mind.

Everything you do is the flux and flex of qualia. You are qualia. Your wife IS qualia.

These are all terms for exactly the same thing.

Reality, as you have defined it, is a construct of complex collections of qualia - human minds, in this case. Reality is, thus, dependent on the deeper reality of what you have called Existence. So Existence is what needs to be explained in any decent ontology.

Forgive me for barging in and quoting a post from some pages back. Great thread, but I believe you here exhibit most clearly what has been strangely unpalatable to me in much of your argumentation. I believe it is the style of your inquiry. I would characterize is as the style of ontology that wants to go all the way down, that is not ready to grant any thing an irreducible ontic consistency. It needs to be qualia all the way down, or turtles, or objects, or systems. What is strange is that you seem to admire Whitehead. With Whitehead we might think of any theorizing we do here as devising "lures for feelings" that will direct us toward the world once again, on new trajectories towards coming actuality. The engineering of our abstractions matters. When we think in the style of academic ontology we're often dragged down the slopes because for our "systems" to be universally arguable above others we seek out the safe haven of the mythical "smallest" (or biggest, or universal mode of transformation). If I have understood you correctly you wish to argue for the ontic primacy of qualia as congregating into events. Fair enough, but where does that lead us when we wish to interrogate the ontic consistency of human minding for instance? I would argue that there is really not much use to posit a theory of the smallest things when we, in everyday experience AND from what the sciences explicate as being in our world, encounter so many things that have irreducibly different ontic consistencies. The ontic consistency of human minds, the weird self-knowing reality, that all these human shaped bodies seem to carry around should perhaps be first and foremost treated as a unique "element" in the universe. We routinely observe other observers that have an I to talk about and a who (we acknowledge this when we name)t hat may compel our thought. Not only that, the thinking of kinds activated by the talk of "elements" breaks down when we approach observers, because they are never actually regular! Finding a mind in nature might be like finding a gem of which there exists no other instance in the universe. Isn't that enough to have us thinking already, to compel us to inquire into the specificities of these unique realities? Or take any "kind" that the sciences make available for us to think and talk with. Why would we go and reduce them to fit a systematic onto-story when their specificities are already there, excessively compelling thought that doesn't inevitably lead us down to final principles, the final stuff of the universe, mechanisms of becoming etc.

tl;dr. Could we not for every level of organization be ready to accept a certain mode of existence and rather ask what it does in the world, instead of trying to build these reductive onto-stories?

 

[ConradDJ]

Derrida's aim was to treat both writting and speech similarly.

An asymmetric reversal, with one side privileged at the expense of the other, would be at odds with Derrida’s anti-totalitarian stance. Derrida’s aim was to destroy the opposition in the relationship, not reverse it...

He treated speech and writing similarly, as “writing” in this case is about a signifier for as long as there has been one (including prehistory), which (imperfectly) points back to a signified, and so includes speech. Speech equally requires “reading” and interpretation.

Thanks for the clarification... your interpretation of Derrida is surely more accurate than mine... though he apparently denies not only the possibility of accurate interpretation, but even the relevance of considering what an author actually meant. But, it also seems that when he denies things, he likes to keep them on the table, “under erasure”... part of the dance of “absence - presence”.

Here’s the specific link. (I don’t do anything special to get the link... I just click on it at the top of the web page, and copy whatever shows up in the URL box on my browser.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_(deconstruction)#Heideggerian_Dasein_and_Derridian_Trace

This section has this summary at the end –

The sign never leads to the extra-linguistic thing, it leads to another sign, one substituting the other playfully inside the structure of language. We do not feel the presence of a thing through a sign, but through the absence of other presences, we guess what it is.​

I think this is only partly true, but I get his point. Of course, words can be used to indicate things that aren’t words, and our language everywhere assumes a non-linguistic world of things. But that world does come pre-interpreted through language.

On the other page there’s this section – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#Speech_and_Phenomena

Derrida argues that language is a structured system of signs and that the meanings of individual signs are produced by the différance between that sign and other signs. This means that words are not self sufficiently meaningful but only meaningful as part of a larger structure that makes meaning possible. Derrida therefore argues that the meaning of language is dependent on the larger structures of language and cannot originate in the unity of conscious experience. Derrida therefore argues that linguistic meaning does not originate in the intentional meaning of the speaking subject.​

This makes sense to me too, though it sounds very one-sided. Certainly language isn’t a transparent medium on which the autonomous intentions of pure consciousness imprint themselves. But neither are the thoughts and feelings of people irrelevant to what they say to each other, or to the evolution of language. It’s just that our thoughts and feelings depend on the background of language.

By describing language as if it were essentially writing, Derrida emphasizes what I’ve been calling the “inauthentic” side – the aspect of language that’s already there before we’re born and already given in the culture into which we grow up, that we appropriate in order to learn to be conscious in the human way... the aspect of language that doesn’t “originate” in us. But that’s only half the story.

Derrida seems to want to “erase” the person who speaks to another person, and consider only the language itself as a system of signs. But I doubt there’s much that’s useful to be said about this kind of system, unless we’re thinking about how it serves the evolution of people’s relationships with each other.

The “authentic” aspect of language is what each of us has to invent in the moment, in order to say what we need to say, to someone we care about. The face-to-face aspect is key here – so that even when the communication is an email written to someone far away, what’s going on is more like speaking than writing and reading. For some reason Derrida seems to set this aspect aside as “naive”. But speech is only secondarily a matter of “signifying” and “interpreting” – at bottom I’d say it’s about creating and maintaining personal connections with people. Understanding a person is quite different from reading a text -- at least, in life outside the Forums.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Sorry for the delay

Thanks for the clarification...

Pleasure, although I see some mistakes I missed during numerous edits, but hope it makes some sense.

…though he apparently denies not only the possibility of accurate interpretation, but even the relevance of considering what an author actually meant. But, it also seems that when he denies things, he likes to keep them on the table, “under erasure”... part of the dance of “absence - presence”.

I don’t know how we could be certain of totally accurate interpretation. “The experience of the other refuses totality”, is another view (Levinas, from Physicsphan’s link from earlier in the thread). Also this could include the idea of fragmented identity, and I’d guessed the relevance to Rovelli lay in these ideas. However, I understand that when discussing language like this, Derrida is talking of functional language. Yes, both are kept on the table, I understand it isn’t closure, it is like Heidegger’s Destruktion.

Here’s the specific link. (I don’t do anything special to get the link... I just click on it at the top of the web page, and copy whatever shows up in the URL box on my browser.)

Thanks for explaining about specific linking, I’ll try it sometime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_%...erridian_Trace

This section has this summary at the end –

The sign never leads to the extra-linguistic thing, it leads to another sign, one substituting the other playfully inside the structure of language. We do not feel the presence of a thing through a sign, but through the absence of other presences, we guess what it is.

I think this is only partly true, but I get his point. Of course, words can be used to indicate things that aren’t words, and our language everywhere assumes a non-linguistic world of things. But that world does come pre-interpreted through language.

Words can indicate things by what they are not: by distinguishing them from other possible, related things. A “cat” is not another word that sounds like cat, nor another animal with the name cat, from experience and context it is a domestic cat, and not another domestic animal, etc.

Derrida argues that language is a structured system of signs and that the meanings of individual signs are produced by the différance between that sign and other signs. This means that words are not self sufficiently meaningful but only meaningful as part of a larger structure that makes meaning possible. Derrida therefore argues that the meaning of language is dependent on the larger structures of language and cannot originate in the unity of conscious experience. Derrida therefore argues that linguistic meaning does not originate in the intentional meaning of the speaking subject.

This makes sense to me too, though it sounds very one-sided. Certainly language isn’t a transparent medium on which the autonomous intentions of pure consciousness imprint themselves. But neither are the thoughts and feelings of people irrelevant to what they say to each other, or to the evolution of language. It’s just that our thoughts and feelings depend on the background of language.

The experiences of a person in time may be part of the context.

By describing language as if it were essentially writing, Derrida emphasizes what I’ve been calling the “inauthentic” side – the aspect of language that’s already there before we’re born and already given in the culture into which we grow up, that we appropriate in order to learn to be conscious in the human way... the aspect of language that doesn’t “originate” in us. But that’s only half the story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_(philosophy )

I think you have, as, following the structuralists, Derrida has, described various things aside from linguistics as language. Perhaps you would mention which you are talking of, how it is different to other language, and how the type of language you are referring to “originates” in us, differently to other types. I’m confused by what you said, you could be claiming oral/”phonocentric” authenticity on the grounds that it originates in us?

Much earlier in the thread I mentioned that Heidegger came to say that all language was “inauthentic”.

Derrida discusses functional language, “Because at its functional level all language is a system of differences, says Derrida, all language, even when spoken, is writing, and this truth is suppressed when meaning is taken as an origin, present and complete unto itself. Difference traces function, transforming texts. ”

However, the term “authenticity” itself is tricky, but I offered some suggestions of authenticity previously in the thread along historical lines of inauthenticity associated with reason, although I didn’t mention Heidegger’s discussion of death.

And, just btw, since I mentioned “function”, what is the significance of Heidegger’s view of objects as functional? That this occurs to people before they are even aware of it?

And another aside, since I have now mentioned Heidegger’s discussion of death, I’ll mention a problem Derrida discusses with this view.

“Mortals are they who can experience death as death. The animal cannot do so. But the animal cannot speak either. The essential relation between language and death flashes up before us, but remains still unthought.” (The Nature of Language, translated, Heidegger)

http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12931

The concluding paragraph of Derrida’s response-

Against, or without, Heidegger, one could point to a thousand signs that show that animals also die. Although the innumerable structural differences that separate one “species” from another should make us vigilant about any discourse on animality or bestiality in general, one can say that animals have a very significant relation to death, to murder and to war (hence to borders), to mourning and to hospitality, and so forth, even if they have neither a relation to death nor to the “name” of death as such, nor, by the same token, to the other as such, to the purity as such of the alterity of the other as such. But neither does man, that is precisely the point! . . . Who will guarantee that the name, that the ability to name death (like that of naming the other, and it is the same) does not participate as much in the dissimulation of the “as such” of death as in its revelation, and that language is not precisely the origin of the nontruth of death, and of the other? (A 75-6/PF 336)

Derrida seems to want to “erase” the person who speaks to another person, and consider only the language itself as a system of signs.

In this balanced way, “…the name of the author is a signifier linked with others, and there is no master signifier (such as the phallus in Lacan) present or even absent in a text “(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Or if this refers to the one who is being, Heidegger was criticised for an emphasis on “Being”, “His infatuation with ‘Being’ is equal only to his devaluing of ‘Beings’” (Levinas, again physicsphan’s link). In being influenced by both Heidegger and Levinas, Derrida may have destroyed (not reversed) the error by instead concentrating on the connection here.

But I doubt there’s much that’s useful to be said about this kind of system, unless we’re thinking about how it serves the evolution of people’s relationships with each other.

Would “useful” things said about this system describe it “from outside” and talk

about the relationships between things from the standpoint of a third party.

?

However, as these sorts of ideas have been about for around 40 years, I think it has had some influence. There could be merit in redefining categories, as Heidegger suggested, which has met with some success in changing perceptions of others like females, etc., opening up new categories of study, or balancing pervading logocentrism, and, yes, a use may include “how it serves the evolution of people’s relationships with each other.” Was that last sentence meant as a criticism?

Whether or not it furthers the hopes of thread that it

may eventually lead toward some clarity on this matter of consciousness,

I think Derrida raises worthy objections and additions to Heidegger. Possibly being open to seeing things differently might help.

The “authentic” aspect of language is what each of us has to invent in the moment, in order to say what we need to say, to someone we care about. The face-to-face aspect is key here – so that even when the communication is an email written to someone far away, what’s going on is more like speaking than writing and reading. For some reason Derrida seems to set this aspect aside as “naive”. But speech is only secondarily a matter of “signifying” and “interpreting” – at bottom I’d say it’s about creating and maintaining personal connections with people. Understanding a person is quite different from reading a text -- at least, in life outside the Forums.

I think I’ve addressed this already in this post, asking for greater explanation of which speech or type of linguistic connectivity is primarily not a matter of signification.

 

[ConradDJ]

I think you have, as, following the structuralists, Derrida has, described various things aside from linguistics as language. Perhaps you would mention which you are talking of, how it is different to other language, and how the type of language you are referring to “originates” in us, differently to other types...

...asking for greater explanation of which speech or type of linguistic connectivity is primarily not a matter of signification.

I think about language mainly from an evolutionary viewpoint. So what’s basic to language in this sense is not the specific function that Derrida emphasizes in connection with writing – i.e. the way words and linguistic expressions get to have meaning in relation to different words and expressions. I don’t disagree that this is important – but I think this aspect of language evolved to support something deeper, which tends to fall into the background when things are written down instead of spoken face-to-face.

This deeper thing in language is the kind of relationship expressed in the word “you” – a word which is almost not needed in written language, but which is always implicit when we speak with each other.

To me the key thing that makes us different from other animals is that we’re born into a unique kind of emotional connection with other people. Just as one example, babies learn to recognize faces before anything else in their environments. And of course, human infants develop in a state of helpless dependency on others for much longer than almost any other animal, including our primate ancestors. So we’re biologically programmed to grow up into a web of “you-relationships” – which is what I take to be essential in language.

In this sense, language is the “software” that runs on the human brain – i.e. whatever gets installed in our heads through communication with others, as we grow up. That includes specific languages and other kinds of codes we pick up, along with all the rest of human culture.

The basic thing this communications software does, from an evolutionary standpoint, is just to communicate itself, from one brain to another, to another. Since only to the extent it succeeds in doing that, can it continue to evolve.

One of the main things about literate culture is that’s able to “freeze” ideas and expressions in writing, and conceive them as static objects to be analyzed. In pre-literate, oral cultures, there’s no way to “preserve” any aspect of language or culture. Only what actually gets spoken in the moment by one person to another, only what gets enacted in real time between people, can get passed down – everything else disappears. So during the greater part of its evolution, the language-software was developing the emotional dynamics of face-to-face interaction, rather than static sign-systems and the intellectual ability to “read” them.

Now if we’re interested in analyzing the results of this evolutionary process – i.e. the state of a language or a literature or a culture, at a certain point in time – it makes sense to imagine it as like writing, as a system of signs interpreting other signs. But if we’re trying to imagine the process itself, I think it’s important to think about all the things people do in trying to make (and break and repair) their relationships with each other. That certainly includes many ways of “signifying” and “interpreting”, but not only that.

To return to the question of authenticity and inauthenticity – these are built into the process I’m describing. We always begin by learning how other people communicate with each other, we pick up codes invented by others and try to behave the way other people expect us to behave. So yes, in that sense it makes sense to say that “all language is inauthentic.” The connection-software gets installed in us from outside.

But the basic functionality of “you-relationships” includes learning to be “me”, inventing your own point of view in the web of connections, as distinct and unique. This is the main thing we’re working on, as kids, from the time we begin learning to talk through adolescence. So the software evolves to promote authenticity as well as inauthenticity.

As adults also, and as philosophers, this remains a fundamental issue – how to take over a thought-system we inherit from others, and "appropriate" it by finding our unique point of view in it. And I think what’s been so vital about the Western intellectual tradition in particular, is just this recurrent insistence on the unique individual viewpoint, as well as the universal code in which we imagine the world to be written down.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

The arguments made here against Whitehead seem weak in light of discussions about authenticity, and this from me early in the thread, ‘it has been suggested that although “Being” is taken to mean human “Being”, that the conclusions could logically be extended to pertain to other “Beings”’, was ignored, so it seems that these ideas with without good reason given, exclude ‘the non-human world’.


The views expressed involve the idea humans have evolved a heritable mechanism from ‘real time’ present connections

“only what gets enacted in real time between people, can get passed down”

which applies meaning to signification other than that gained from contextual experience and difference, but which eludes other animals which have also evolved ability to signify on the basis that

"something "

got passed on. It might seem designed to exclude non-human animals.


However, these ideas are flawed by placing importance on the one being at the expense of other beings. Insistence upon face to face, real time connection with others as a means is the exclusion of the others not present in space or time. These ideas exclude the non-present Other.


And there remains a lot of confusion about how the ideas might be expressed "authentically", being variously described as opposing reason, the view of connections from the inside, and being inside your own head. The last has been used to criticize Whitehead, etc, yet is used for appraisal of the "results" . An "authentic" view has been used here in a one-sided way, excluding non-self areas of the relationship.


Further flaws exist regarding the method Heidegger uses the term “caring”.

‘But the basic functionality of “you-relationships” includes learning to be “me”, inventing your own point of view in the web of connections, as distinct and unique..’

Heidegger’s caring has been called a one-sided caring about the self’s personality, different to Levinas’ ‘responsibility’ to the Other. Given this the aim of the thread, too, appears one-sided

“But it’s not basic to human consciousness, which is essentially involved with the people and things it cares about.”

Heidegger’s ideas seem designed for the sake of own-most personality at the expense of non-Beings.

I think what’s been so vital about the Western intellectual tradition in particular, is just this recurrent insistence on the unique individual viewpoint, as well as the universal code in which we imagine the world to be written down.

Evolution and the vitality of western civilisation have been given as reasons to regard Heidegger’s ideas. I’ve mentioned some attempts by which Heidegger’s exclusive ideas have been learned from, how more balanced ideas been considered and have evolved and adapted, and yet evolution is the reason given to devolve back to the same ideas from almost a century ago. And further, these ideas occurred back, prior to vital Western civilisation committing “one of the biggest crimes against humanity ever made” (wiki). Heidegger, whose ideas are espoused here, became a nazi in 1933, and whose decrees as university fuhrer-rector applying nazi ‘cleansing’ laws were designed for the exclusion of non-aryans.


But it would seem, from the ideas written here about real time, present language over writing, that written communication about Heidegger’s writings would be considered unproductive anyway.

 

[apeiron]

To return to the question of authenticity and inauthenticity – these are built into the process I’m describing. We always begin by learning how other people communicate with each other, we pick up codes invented by others and try to behave the way other people expect us to behave. So yes, in that sense it makes sense to say that “all language is inauthentic.” The connection-software gets installed in us from outside.

But the basic functionality of “you-relationships” includes learning to be “me”, inventing your own point of view in the web of connections, as distinct and unique. This is the main thing we’re working on, as kids, from the time we begin learning to talk through adolescence. So the software evolves to promote authenticity as well as inauthenticity.

As adults also, and as philosophers, this remains a fundamental issue – how to take over a thought-system we inherit from others, and "appropriate" it by finding our unique point of view in it. And I think what’s been so vital about the Western intellectual tradition in particular, is just this recurrent insistence on the unique individual viewpoint, as well as the universal code in which we imagine the world to be written down.

This debate is hard to resolve as you seem to agree there is a irreducible dichotomy here (there is both the authentic and the inauthentic) but then keep returning to the hope that one pole of the dichotomy will be somehow the more important, the more fundamental, the more primary.

Yet the point about dichotomies is that both poles are needed to have anything (anything both persistent and dynamic). So the proper questions to be asking become 1) do I have a rightful dichotomy, 2) what is their mutual relationship, and 3) what is their equilbrium balance (the point at which they are dynamically mixing in a persistently stable fashion)?

To put all this back into a Peircean framework again , and deal with Derrida's concerns too, the fundamental relationship is always the dynamical/developmental one between local degrees of freedom and global constraints.

So in the Peircean triadic scheme, everything starts in vagueness or firstness - the apeiron or the pure unbroken symmetry of potential. Then it develops as an increasingly definite dichotomy. You have secondness - the local concrete events that equate to the authentic you-relations in the Heideggerian view. The degrees of freedom. Then arising out of secondness, but also coming eventually to regulate it, is the thirdness of Peircean habits, or the global constraints that act downwards to shape the local events. The realm of the inauthentic in the Heideggian view.

As an aside, the Peircean view is sharp contrast to the Derridian because Derrida argued that crisp structure (ie: habits) must arise out of some ground already crisply structured. So beginnings are already complex. But Peirce instead says both the impressions and the ideas, the phenomenology and the structure, arise mutually from out of vagueness via their own self-organising process of development. If we must ask what comes first, then secondness is slightly ahead of thirdness - as the fleeting spontaneous event that then immediately implied its own context and so made possible the beginnings of a habit. Or as they would say in condensed matter physics, the fluctuation that broke the symmetry. But really, it is not a very meaningful question (because what comes first is vagueness!).

Anyway, focus on the notion of global constraints acting on local degrees of freedom (thirdness interacting with secondness to stabilise or make use of its crisp possibilities). In the beginning, when things are still very vague, the degrees of freedom are almost infinite (because they are unconstrained). And so anything happening seems essentially spontaneous and meaningless. A long way from "subjective" - a crisp POV.

Take as an example a human newborn and its relations with its own hands. At first the baby is surprised by the actions of the hands. These are just spontaneous events in its world (like everything else, including all those faces looming in and out of view). The baby has no control over the events. They are unconstrained degrees of freedom and so essentially meaningless. But pretty quickly, the baby discovers it can constrain the freedom of its digits. It moves from a realm of the random to a realm of the willed. And it can constrain the freedom of other discrete events like the looming faces. It can wail and then later call out. Then point and even signify in words.

The more the degrees of freedom of the world become constrained, the more the child comes to feel like a subjective being, a locus with a POV. Differance is important also of course. What lies outside the child's conscious control - the unconstrainable facts like the redness of red, or the pull of gravity, or the unpredictability of fellow toddlers - is just as much a part of the subjectivity. The basis of self-other. If we could regulate everything, we would be the world (in the way racecar drivers feel the car as an extension of their own bodies).

So inauthenticity lives within us as well as without. The pure authentic would be just secondness alone - a fleeting, spontaneous, meaningless play of events. Any POV, any context, might be weakly implied (vaguely present). But by the same token, as absent as it is possible to be. Subjectivity arises as a locus (such as an infant) comes to accumulate constraints over the freedoms of what is, now, "its world". The inauthentic has to become locally resident for there to be a persistent and developing succession of authentic moments. You have to have ideas to contextualise the impressions, structure to organise the phenomenology.

Touching again on Derrida, his valuation of the written over the oral is drawing attention to something else really - the need to have a mechanism or technology to encode the constraints. A locale needs to be able to remember its history to accumulate a set of habits. The Peircean view is fundamentally developmental. But dichotomous to development is evolution. And as life and mind show, real complexity demands both.

So a biological level of mind has the coding machinery of DNA. And a sociocultural level of mind arose out of the coding machinery of syntactic language (yes, here comes Vygotsky once more).

Derrida was just pointing out that behind the highly situated and contextualised interactions of everyday orality (the you-relating) was this structuring machinery. A machinery that just becomes far more obvious in writing (as now the interaction between writer and reader has to contextualised in a more overtly "mechanical" fashion - the gaps have to be filled in explicitly).

But again - as always - becoming focused on one pole of a dichotomy leads to unbalanced scholarship. Deconstruction can quickly come to seem like an obsession with syntactical gaps. Whereas a theory of semiotics or meaning would be about the correct interaction between syntax and semantics.

And the story on that seems pretty obvious if you focus on the idea of local degrees of freedom~global constraints.

In the beginning meanings were vague. A caveman went "urgh". An utterance with a huge number of degrees of freedom - especially if written down as a word, but perhaps vaguely interpretable in an intra-personal context where you were out hunting and he was also gesturing towards some prey.

Then syntactical speech got invented. A systematic way to constrain degrees of free floating meaning. The caveman could grunt "animal". Already your interpretation would have a great reduction in entropy (and so the grunt is officially information - a constraint on entropy production).

Your fellow caveman might indeed increasingly precisify his grunt, going {animal {deer}}. He would of course only say "deer", but the point here is to draw attention to the hierarchical nature of this downward acting contraint on the freedom of your mental response - your semantic state. Animal is more general. Deer rules out a great number of other animals to focus you on one particular variety of animal. You have that much less freedom about what you might have in mind at that moment.

Further syntax produces increasingly constrained or specific states of mind. So {animal {deer {Bambi}}} reduces your available degrees of freedom still more.

Now trace this precisification in terms of the authentic~inauthentic dichotomy. With weak constraint, you get weak specificity. The grunt of {animal} is the inauthentic bit that puts you in mind of some authentic you-relation with...the animal kingdom. But {animal {deer {Bambi}}} is strongly contextualised and so strongly authentic. You are looking into Bambi's doe eyes right now in your mind's eye (you have no choice).

So again, the false move is to try and make one pole of a dichotomy your fundamental. Instead, discover your rightful dichotomies and then map them back to the general logic of dichotomisation (or Peircean triads - which is the fuller view where local~global scale dichotomies arise out of vagueness as a process of eternally dynamic development.)

[Sorry for the essay, but it's a rainy Sunday morning and now the sky is clearing...]

 

[cosmographer]

For another resource on time and Heidegger: Brassier here tries to work through Heidegger's time by means of Deleuze. Dense and compelling as usual. There are six parts to this.

 

[apeiron]

Are we Terrance Mckenna fans here?

No, he's a crackpot. (But very good in Twin Peaks.)

 

[apeiron]

How about Sitchin?

So crackpot I had to google to find out who he was.

Why are you posting the names of cranks which don't have any relevance to the OP?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

This debate is hard to resolve as you seem to agree there is a irreducible dichotomy here (there is both the authentic and the inauthentic) but then keep returning to the hope that one pole of the dichotomy will be somehow the more important, the more fundamental, the more primary.

Yet the point about dichotomies is that both poles are needed to have anything (anything both persistent and dynamic). So the proper questions to be asking become 1) do I have a rightful dichotomy, 2) what is their mutual relationship, and 3) what is their equilbrium balance (the point at which they are dynamically mixing in a persistently stable fashion)?

To put all this back into a Peircean framework again , and deal with Derrida's concerns too, the fundamental relationship is always the dynamical/developmental one between local degrees of freedom and global constraints.

Yes, as I understand Derrida, there is regard for dynamic, developing relationships between apparent dichotomies.

So in the Peircean triadic scheme, everything starts in vagueness or firstness - the apeiron or the pure unbroken symmetry of potential. Then it develops as an increasingly definite dichotomy. You have secondness - the local concrete events that equate to the authentic you-relations in the Heideggerian view. The degrees of freedom. Then arising out of secondness, but also coming eventually to regulate it, is the thirdness of Peircean habits, or the global constraints that act downwards to shape the local events. The realm of the inauthentic in the Heideggian view.

As an aside, the Peircean view is sharp contrast to the Derridian because Derrida argued that crisp structure (ie: habits) must arise out of some ground already crisply structured. So beginnings are already complex. But Peirce instead says both the impressions and the ideas, the phenomenology and the structure, arise mutually from out of vagueness via their own self-organising process of development. If we must ask what comes first, then secondness is slightly ahead of thirdness - as the fleeting spontaneous event that then immediately implied its own context and so made possible the beginnings of a habit. Or as they would say in condensed matter physics, the fluctuation that broke the symmetry. But really, it is not a very meaningful question (because what comes first is vagueness!).

Anyway, focus on the notion of global constraints acting on local degrees of freedom (thirdness interacting with secondness to stabilise or make use of its crisp possibilities). In the beginning, when things are still very vague, the degrees of freedom are almost infinite (because they are unconstrained). And so anything happening seems essentially spontaneous and meaningless. A long way from "subjective" - a crisp POV.

Take as an example a human newborn and its relations with its own hands. At first the baby is surprised by the actions of the hands. These are just spontaneous events in its world (like everything else, including all those faces looming in and out of view). The baby has no control over the events. They are unconstrained degrees of freedom and so essentially meaningless. But pretty quickly, the baby discovers it can constrain the freedom of its digits. It moves from a realm of the random to a realm of the willed. And it can constrain the freedom of other discrete events like the looming faces. It can wail and then later call out. Then point and even signify in words.

OK, I see, if orality equates to authenticity, and if pressed, you feel Peirce sees it is as somewhat prior here to thirdness, whereas I understand Derrida might say generally of apparent oppositions that they may not exist in isolation. I wasn't aware of this difference between them.

I like the "baby" analogy, but even this from the start talks of a relationship. It is about a relationship "with". The baby is surprised “by”, and then may “constrain”. Subjectivity “wills” something (or the absence of something).

I’m not sure I have the same interpretation of Derrida, and you have clarified our different interpretations for me before, thanks. How has he argued origination from crispness? I’m of the impression that he argues for always/already.

The more the degrees of freedom of the world become constrained, the more the child comes to feel like a subjective being, a locus with a POV. Differance is important also of course. What lies outside the child's conscious control - the unconstrainable facts like the redness of red, or the pull of gravity, or the unpredictability of fellow toddlers - is just as much a part of the subjectivity. The basis of self-other. If we could regulate everything, we would be the world (in the way racecar drivers feel the car as an extension of their own bodies).

I like this thought very much.

So inauthenticity lives within us as well as without. The pure authentic would be just secondness alone - a fleeting, spontaneous, meaningless play of events. Any POV, any context, might be weakly implied (vaguely present). But by the same token, as absent as it is possible to be. Subjectivity arises as a locus (such as an infant) comes to accumulate constraints over the freedoms of what is, now, "its world". The inauthentic has to become locally resident for there to be a persistent and developing succession of authentic moments. You have to have ideas to contextualise the impressions, structure to organise the phenomenology.

Touching again on Derrida, his valuation of the written over the oral is drawing attention to something else really - the need to have a mechanism or technology to encode the constraints. A locale needs to be able to remember its history to accumulate a set of habits. The Peircean view is fundamentally developmental. But dichotomous to development is evolution. And as life and mind show, real complexity demands both.

So a biological level of mind has the coding machinery of DNA. And a sociocultural level of mind arose out of the coding machinery of syntactic language (yes, here comes Vygotsky once more).

Derrida was just pointing out that behind the highly situated and contextualised interactions of everyday orality (the you-relating) was this structuring machinery. A machinery that just becomes far more obvious in writing (as now the interaction between writer and reader has to contextualised in a more overtly "mechanical" fashion - the gaps have to be filled in explicitly).

But again - as always - becoming focused on one pole of a dichotomy leads to unbalanced scholarship. Deconstruction can quickly come to seem like an obsession with syntactical gaps. Whereas a theory of semiotics or meaning would be about the correct interaction between syntax and semantics.

And the story on that seems pretty obvious if you focus on the idea of local degrees of freedom~global constraints.

In the beginning meanings were vague. A caveman went "urgh". An utterance with a huge number of degrees of freedom - especially if written down as a word, but perhaps vaguely interpretable in an intra-personal context where you were out hunting and he was also gesturing towards some prey.

Then syntactical speech got invented. A systematic way to constrain degrees of free floating meaning. The caveman could grunt "animal". Already your interpretation would have a great reduction in entropy (and so the grunt is officially information - a constraint on entropy production).

Your fellow caveman might indeed increasingly precisify his grunt, going {animal {deer}}. He would of course only say "deer", but the point here is to draw attention to the hierarchical nature of this downward acting contraint on the freedom of your mental response - your semantic state. Animal is more general. Deer rules out a great number of other animals to focus you on one particular variety of animal. You have that much less freedom about what you might have in mind at that moment.

Further syntax produces increasingly constrained or specific states of mind. So {animal {deer {Bambi}}} reduces your available degrees of freedom still more.

Now trace this precisification in terms of the authentic~inauthentic dichotomy. With weak constraint, you get weak specificity. The grunt of {animal} is the inauthentic bit that puts you in mind of some authentic you-relation with...the animal kingdom. But {animal {deer {Bambi}}} is strongly contextualised and so strongly authentic. You are looking into Bambi's doe eyes right now in your mind's eye (you have no choice).

So again, the false move is to try and make one pole of a dichotomy your fundamental. Instead, discover your rightful dichotomies and then map them back to the general logic of dichotomisation (or Peircean triads - which is the fuller view where local~global scale dichotomies arise out of vagueness as a process of eternally dynamic development.)

Nice explanation. But, just considering the last sentence for now, how does this eternal process arise?

[Sorry for the essay, but it's a rainy Sunday morning and now the sky is clearing...]

I enjoyed reading this!

 

[apeiron]

Nice explanation. But, just considering the last sentence for now, how does an eternal process arise?

What I have in mind here is the heat death universe for example - a process that is eternal in its striving towards the goal, but approaches that limit asymptotically, or with ever diminishing returns. The expanding and cooling of the universe need never stop, so it is eternal, but there is less and less actual progress being made all the time.

If you are asking more specifically how does it arise?, then the Peircean view would be that vagueness fluctuates and fleeting events can spark the start of a symmetry breaking.