Heidegger

Cologne 01-Dec-2007
O great server, you who are more down than up, I beseech you to mediate
this epistle.

——– Original Message ——–
Betreff: Re: Axiom 0 vs. back to thinking being (Parmenides Frg. 6)
Datum: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:01:01 +0100
Von: Michael Eldred
Rückantwort: artefact at web.de
Firma: http://www.webcom.com/artefact/
An: “Heidegger, An-archos”
Referenzen:

Cologne 29-Nov-2007 ADDENDUM

Michael Eldred schrieb Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:59:49 +0100:

> Cologne 25-Nov-2007
>
> Joseph Polanik schrieb Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:21:22 -0500:
>
> > Axiom 0: On Choosing a Root Predicate
> >
> > >>JP: here you seem to be suggesting that one is obligated to use as a root
> >
> > >>predicate every predicate ever used as a root predicate by anyone.
> >
> > >ME: I don’t care one wit about “root predicates”. You’re the one
> > >asserting root predicates.
> >
> > JP: you are the one who insists that ‘being’ is co-predicated of any subject
> >
> > to which ‘reality’ (used as a root predicate) is attributed.
>
> ME: Actually, I now want to radicalize that co-predication into
> pre-predication (see below).
>
> >
> > JP: I’m only saying that this claim of ‘co-predication’ is untrue *unless*
> > being is defined to mean no more than ‘is not a member of the empty set’
> > which is what a root predicate asserts. you are claiming to know much
> > more about ‘being’ — for instance, that it is the name of the
> > originary phenomenon. *none* of that is co-predicated of that to which
> > the root predicate is attributed.
>
> ME: You have already predicated being in the very formulation of your Axiom 0,
> because Axiom 0 postulates that there is something to be said that can be said
> about each and every x that is, i.e. about each and every being. But it is
> precisely the task of ontology to delve into what “x is” means, i.e. to
> elucidate the sense of being rather than surreptitiously presupposing it and
> taking it for granted. “x is” already contains the mystery.
>
> >
> > >>>ME: No matter which so-called “root predicate” you “choose”, the
> > >>>predicate “being” is always ALSO chosen. Try it out.
> >
> > JP: As I’ve shown, the claim that ‘being’ is always also chosen is false;
> > for, sometimes it is assigned a completely different meaning.
>
> ME: You attempted to show this with your example of osmium, which shows
> nothing, for it is based on an arbitrary and haywire taxonomy.
>
> > >>1: I assume Axiom 0.
> >
> > >>2: I construct a substitution instance of Axiom 0 by choosing ‘real’
> > >>as a substitute for the placeholder, P, in Axiom 0.
>
> ME: This is an arbitrary postulation. The point would be to unfold the
> phenomenon of reality, not to simply assume ‘real’ as a predicate which, as
> Hegel would say, is “begrifflos” (thoughtless).
>
> > >ME: So ‘real’ is your predicate P. That implies that for all x, x is
> > >real. And you’re claiming that ‘x is real’ does not imply that ‘x is a
> > >being’? And yet x is???
> >
> > JP: again, where ‘real’ is defined as the root predicate, ‘x is real’ does
> > not imply that ‘x is a being’ *unless* ‘being’ is also defined as the
> > root predicate — something which I don’t do.
>
> ME: As if one could pick and choose predicates to suit one’s tastes and
> preferences! “x is”, postulated within Axiom 0, already predicates being
> before you have taken a single step further. But that “x is”, is already
> mysterious and calls for questioning. Formalizing Axiom 0 in symbolic logic or
> bringing in set theory is no rescue from, but merely obfuscation of the
> inevitable presuppositions in Axiom 0, and it is these presuppositions which
> make an axiomatic approach to ontology utterly futile. Ontology has to find
> its starting-point in what is most originary and entirely without
> presuppositions.
>
> > >>JP: 3: this substitution instance Axiom 0 is taken as Axiom 1 of the
> > logic
> > >>of the language of reality; and, ‘reality’ becomes the root of a
> > >>taxonomy of all that is (when that taxonomy is presented within the
> > >>language of the real).
>
> ME: A “taxonomy of all that is” is useless in itself. Ontology inquires into
> what it means for “all that is” to be, and is therefore most comprehensive
> inquiry of all or, as Aristotle puts it, it is the _prima philosophia_.
>
> >
> > >>JP: 4: I assume Axiom 2 which (as stated within the logic of the language
> >
> > >>of reality) is: not every reality has the same reality type.
>
> ME: Yet another arbitrary postulation.
>
> > >>JP: 5: I take inventory of the reality types that are attributable within
> >
> > >>the language of reality. as mentioned these on previous occasions,
> > >>they are:
> >
> > >>a) existential or physical reality (anything made of matter/energy and
> > >>spacetime).
> >
> > >>b) phenomenological reality (subject or object of any experience)
> >
> > >>c) ontological reality (ie being; or, more generally, anything that has a
> >
> > >>reality independent of our experience of it (ie a metaphenomenal
> > >>reality); but, which is not an existential reality).
> >
> > >ME: This classification of “reality types” is flawed for all the
> > >reasons I have stated previously in extenso, but especially because it
> > >is captive to the ontology of subject and object.
>
> ME: Your tripartite taxonomy conveniently, tendentiously and arbitrarily
> truncates ontology in its omnicomprehensive breadth.
>
> >
> > JP: perhaps you don’t like my inventory of reality types; but, you
> > challenged me to show that “No matter which so-called ‘root predicate’
> > you ‘choose’, the predicate ‘being’ is always ALSO chosen”; and, I have
> > met that challenge by using ‘being’ as the name for ontological
> > realities as defined above.
>
> ME: You have met this challenge merely by defining “ontological reality” to
> exclude what you term “existential reality”. But such a defining is arbitrary.
>
> Let me now strengthen my claim: The predicate ‘being’ is not just
> co-predicated when ‘choosing’ what you call a ‘root predicate’, but, prior to
> that, has already been assumed (or pre-predicated) in the very formulation of
> your Axiom 0 because this Axiom 0 already assumes every x that is, or ‘all
> that is’. So Axiom 0 itself must be questioned to bring to light what it means
> that “x is”, the originary _logos_ that says of x that it is. In other words,
> the predicate P that Axiom 0 postulates as applicable to all x is simply that
> x is, i.e. the predicate asked for is already assumed, surreptitiously
> postulated and taken for granted within the axiom itself. So instead of
> serving as a self-evident foundation for further derivations, the very sense
> of “x is” or “all that is” calls for elucidation, and this can only be
> achieved by regressing rather than progressing, going deeper in asking what it
> means for x, or all x, or everything that is, to be.

ADDENDUM ME: This is sounding more and more like Parmenides:
_chrae to legein te noein t’ eon emmenai_ (Frg. 6)
“It behoves saying and thinking the being in its being.”

Instead of accepting an axiom as an intuitively self-evident foundation
for
thinking further what can be derived from the axiom, viz. the derived
propositions
or theorems (it is a misnomer to call what is derived from an axiom an
axiom.), it
behoves us to say and think what it means for beings to be. The former
is the
‘pro-gressive’ thinking that distances itself more and more from, and
loses sight
of the genuine originary phenomenon, having overlooked it in the first
place when
postulating its ostensibly self-evident axiom as a starting-point. The
latter kind
of thinking abides with the mystery that beings are at all. Only such
tarrying
provides the groundwork for then daring to proceed to a differentiation
of beings.

Thinking in the modern age, and especially British empiricist thinking
that has
flowered into the analytic philosophy dominant today, is based on a
cover-up of
the question residing at the very start. Therefore it defends itself,
and must
savagely defend itself, any attempt to uncover the cover-up, for
otherwise it
would be confronted with the abyss of its own untenability. Empiricist
thinking
was first called to the scene of history to dispose of a scholastic
medieval
thinking that hd become ossified, cut-and-dried, dead and which was
employed
principally for a theological underpinning of the rule of the summum ens
in a
Christian world order. Instead of God as the causa sui to which all else
can be
traced back and to which all else is indebted for its existence, the
human being
entered upon the scene as the ultimate underlying subject. What the
subject can
see with its own eyes, i.e. the sensory, visual evidence, is now to
serve as a
foundation for certain knowledge.

The concept or idea of matter as the underlying substance in which all
empirically
observable, sensuous phenomena inhere must be taken as absolutely
posited,
unquestioned and unquestionable metaphysical basis, whilst disposing of
other
‘merely’ ‘metaphysical’, ostensibly empirically unverifiable phenomena
such as
’soul’, ‘ideas’, ‘categories’. Ideas now become subjective
representations that
have to be tested empirically against the given facts.

At every turn, modern ’scientific’ thinking has always already
overlooked to
question what it takes for granted, namely, that there are beings in the
first
place. Hence the boundless hubris and arrogance of modern scientific
thinking,
which disdains ‘mere’ thinking, ‘mere’ theory in favour of the
foundational
concept of matter, now transfigured into the mathematically amenable
concept of
mass whose empirical indications are meticulously measured. Matter as
mass is now
just a quantity (e.g. m=f/a, m=e/c(exp2)) that can be investigated and
known
through a series of mathematical equations that are checked against
given
empirical evidence by constructing apparatuses according to
mathematical-metaphysical theories. All phenomena that cannot be reduced
to
quantities, and thus known and controlled and re-produced, are now
‘unscientific’
and ‘merely’ ’subjective’. The irony is that modern thinking in toto is
(absolutely) subjective in the strict sense of the word, viz. the
subject sets
itself up as fundamentum absolutum over against the object which is to
be known
through certain, rigorous, quantifiable knowledge. And if the world, in
the
phenomenality of its ontological folds, does not conform with the
productionist
(meaning that the phenomena can be brought forth and controlled from the
standpoint of the subject) casting of modern subjectivist metaphysics,
the
phenomena are denied in themselves and coerced unconditionally to
somehow fit the
productionist paradigm.

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_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-
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>
> > JP: in any case, it appears that you accept Axiom 2 (or its analogue in the
> > language of being: not all beings have the same mode of being), since
> > you use ‘being’ as a root predicate and also speak of modes of being.
> >
> > I understand that, following Heidegger, you name the mode of being that
> > is characteristically human, ‘existence’. what are the names of the
> > other modes of being you recognize?
> >
> > I suggest it might be interesting to compare your inventory of modes of
> > being with my inventory of reality types.
>
> ME: There’s no point whatever in comparing “inventories”. What is called for
> is a thinking-through of being and reality to discover what their senses are.
>
> >
> > >>JP: 6: since your claim is that someone who chooses ‘real’ as the root
> > >>predicate *necessarily* co-predicates ‘being’ of any reality, I
> > >>present a reality that refutes your claim: an atom of osmium.
> >
> > >>there is no proof that an atom of osmium is a being or has any being
> > >>as defined above (eg a soul in the cartesian sense). philosophers
> > >>might dispute this point; but, no one has ever proven or even
> > >>presented a shred of evidence that it is *necessarily* true that an
> > >>atom of osmium is other than a mere existential reality.
> >
> > >ME: I know nothing in particular about “an atom of osmium”, but if it
> > >is an “existential reality”, it is also a being. Osmium itself is a
> > >rare, very heavy, brittle, odd-smelling, bluish-white metal, i.e. a
> > >being. And like all atoms in the way modern age science thinks atoms,
> > >an atom of osmium is a theoretical construct of physics and chemistry,
> > >i.e. a being construed by a certain scientific theory. And you deny
> > >that?
> >
> > JP: for reasons given previously, I deny that an atom of osmium is a being
> > as I define ‘being’. I also deny that an atom is merely a theoretical
> > construct.
> >
>
> ME: You have defined ‘being’ in an arbitrary way, but already assumed it in
> formulating your Axiom 0 without, however, further delving into the sense of
> being you have assumed as self-evident.
>
> You may well deny than an atom is a theoretical construct, but then you are
> denying that what atoms are is defined only through a complex set of
> mathematical equations (with terms such as mass, energy/motion, forces,
> momentum, wavelengths, certain constants, etc.) constituting theoretical
> quantum physics. We only see these beings called atoms (and sub-atomic
> ‘particles’) through the equations that define them and their motion (cf.
> _kinaesis_, the great question motivating ancient Greek philosophy: _to on_
> and _to kinaeton_!!). By using the word “merely” to qualify these theoretical
> constructs, you are grossly underestimating the achievements of thinkers, both
> ancient ones and modern scientists, for it is only through this theory that we
> at all can LOOK AT (the original sense of _theoorein_) what composite things
> are composed of.
>
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> _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 9:25 am
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