Heidegger

JUD EVANS:
I would re-phrase that as: If, given their experience of geometrical objects
two people can determine that all triangular objects have three angles whose
sum is always 180 degrees, does this mean that following from that
experiential knowledge, there exists irrefutable conditions that inevitably lead to
the same result by any human mind that can understand such triangular shaped
objects? Are there such things as triangular objects? Yes there are I have some
in my house and there are countless billions which we will never see. It is
not that *triangularity exists* but that triangular objects exist. because
being triangular is a shape that *nature* [the existential imperative] finds to
be amongst the most appropriate in certain circumstances. We all know what
abstractions are; but it is challenging for some to determine their essential
quality. Let us begin by distinguishing between concrete facts on the one
hand, and abstractions on the other. Such definitions come easily to the
eliminativist, for the adjectival qualifier ‘concrete’ is a redundancy. All facts
are concrete. The words: ‘fact, thing, being, object, entity and the descriptor
‘real’ are synonyms. The adjective ‘real’ is exclusively descriptional of
objects alone. The adverb ‘really’ is applied solely in accordance with the
perceived truth, fact or reality of a material entity. *Truth’ can be defined as
a correct description of the existential modality of an object in relation
to another object or objects. Such definitions of ‘truth’ are always cast as
‘qualified’ or ‘best fit’ descriptions of objects, in view of the detectional
limitations of the human sensorium. The terms ‘reality,’ being, existence,
actuality, are rejected as probably the most extreme manifestations of
reification

An abstraction, reification, hypostatisation, personification and
deification are conceptualisations which do not exist in or by themselves, but are
labels representing generalities or salient features of the observed objects of
the environment as described by categorizing human beings.

‘Rectangularity’ is not an object, fact or an entity having an independent
existence. It cannot be found in the world existing as a thing to which you can
gesture, touch, taste, smell or hear and say, ‘Look! This is
‘rectangularity.’ There are of course uncountable millions of ‘rectangular’ entities in the
world of different types, colours, temperatures, weights, sizes, tastes and
smells. The abstraction ‘’rectangularity’ is a useful fiction which enables us
to avoid time-wasting paraphrasis and circumlocution. But as useful as the
term is for economy of words and rapidity of communication -
‘’rectangularity.’ ‘ still does not exist and no amount of wishful thinking will make it so.

It is understandable that the idealist might comment: ‘OK. But
‘’rectangularity’ is a real characteristic of all rectangles, realised wherever these
shapes exist, and nowhere else.’

To which the eliminativist would no doubt respond.

The ‘property’ of being shaped like a rectangle does not exist - only
rectangular objects themselves can be found in the world.

To instantiate the conception of ‘rectangularity’ remote from any particular
rectangular object is to reify (or render as real) the concept of
rectangularity. In a similar way to hypostasise the social behaviour recognised by
society as ‘honest behaviour’ with the abstraction, ‘honesty’ is also to fall
into an ontological trap, for ‘honesty’ is not a concrete fact, but a
distinguishing quality of the behaviour of a multitude of concrete honest humans.

GARY C. MOORE:
The idea of a *perfect* anything has absolutely no ground, again,
*absolutely* because that involves perfect agreement between minds in the abstract
instead of the very approximate and vague agreement of mere words. The rules of
geometry are never *given*. They are always learned by individuals in
different situations that give different slants, points of view – quite literally,
physically, and materially – from anyone else. Therefore Lobachevsky can take
the *given* rules of Euclidean flat surface geometry and put then upon
irregular surfaces which give completely different results from Euclid.

JUD EVANS:
*Perfection* like *beauty* is an anthropocentric concept. All objects in the
cosmos are *perfect* in the sense that not one of them is exactly the same
as the other, but is a *perfect* example of the way it is. [otherwise it
would BE THAT OTHER] All objects are real - even real fake Rolex watches.

RICHARD SANSOM:
There are those [such as Roger Penrose and Plato] who say yes there is such
a thing, that thing is the ontic reality of the 180 degree sum of angles and
the perfect circle.

JUD EVANS:
They are dreamers . There is no such thing that is an ontic reality of 180
degree sum of angles and the perfect circle. At micro-level the edges of all
objects are as serrated as an old comb with *aboriginal* atoms floating off
and *foreigners* landing in their place. Such ideas are characteristic of a
society in which the smallest object which could be seen was somewhat smaller
in size to the dot between these two brackets ( . ) It is not a perfect
*point* at all at higher magnification, but more like an example of a Rorschachian
ink-blot or a map of Antarctica.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Penrose would no doubt claim that without such SUBSTANTIAL truth in such
things, mathematics would have no power and the results of its use [in building
houses and aeroplanes, etc.] would always be questionable and quite
unpredictable. Thus, I can see why one might believe in fundamental truths in nature,
without the necessary consensus of others.

JUD EVANS:
The building of houses and aeroplanes, etc. can still take place because of
counting ontic finger and ontic toes and abstracting away from such actual
objects first to abstractions of [say] five fingers - by drawing five fingers
[as in the first hieroglyphs] thence to a roughly marked five lines and from
there [for speed and economy] to a single mark which represented five [5]
fingers.

As this system was used to count many objects [not just fingers] such as
pots, pomegranates, pigs and peanuts the association with the fingers was
forgotten. It was but a short step for the numbers to be abstracted completely, so
that their link with any actual object was unnecessary. If the numbers were
painted equally spaced on a measuring rod accuracy could be obtained for
cutting square stones for the pyramids and other structures because the architects
and the stone cutters all had similarly marked rods. Thus the *truth* of such
things lies in material objects - abstracting human mathematicians and
ordinary abstracting folk who use number and the tapes, rules, slide rules and
calculators we have made to provide accuracy. Thus building, measuring and
counting things becomes highly predictable and the better the material
instruments the more accurate the product. As I have said before. If you have a pebble
in your hand and you believe it is a pebble and it IS a pebble and you feel
it, see it, taste it, smell it, tap it and hear it - then you exist in a
modality whereby you have in your hand what idealists call *truth.*

GARY C. MOORE:
Consensus has absolutely no logical validity for the reasons stated above.
Consensus in physical reality would mean microscopic exactness of reproduction
of results. Even in scientific experiments done according to rigid standards
there are *acceptable* levels of variability so there is no *perfection* to
be found there.

JUD EVANS:
True. Any consensus amongst people is arrived at because the ordinary
bricklayer knows the size of his material bricks and the measure of cement
necessary between them. Using the abstracted numbers which originated back in the
market places of the ancient orient he can measure the length of the wall and
calculate the number of bricks required and tell you in advance how much it
will cost.

RICHARD SANSOM:
All this of course is pure Platonism, but aspects of it are not only quite
comforting in our need to have stability and order, but also hard to refute on
the surface.

JUD EVANS:
People need patterns to live by. I am working on an idea right now that
reification [including the reification of number) is a biological thing. It goes
something like this: Reification is a key social and psychological mechanism
in the steady accumulation of advantage in the process of natural selection,
which has facilitated mankind’s ascendency over other life forms.

Reification can also have seriously detrimental, socially retrogressive
effects and negative implications for societal, political and religious
stability. The main argument is then introduced, which situates reification as an
important factor of punctuated equilibrium, or the stop-start inter-actional
system of natural selection that results in the evolution of organisms best
adapted to the environment.

I seek to persuade the reader that the crucial dynamic of all that
exists is the psycho-physical tension between a disposition towards
morphological, modalic or behavioural adaptation on the one hand and a compensating
antithetical constitutional inflexibility or resistance to change on the other.
In this sense it contains elements of Antony’s dialectic. My initial
intention is to ignore the domain of the inanimate and confine my analysis to the
domain of biological differentiation and adaptation.

Later, I will concentrate exclusively on the human dimension. The main focus
will therefore be to consider the persisting physical-intellectual tensions
in modern man as an ongoing opposition between the formation of
reificational absolutes or apperceptive inferences of perceptual reality which support
the status quo, and the responsive, revolutionary de-reificational adjustment
towards intellectual realism and reality-engagement.

Thus the present- day intellectual and linguistic struggle betwixt
reificational opposites mirrors and preserves or challenges the primal, exclusively
physical rigidity versus adjustment model of early biological life-forms and
the flora and fauna of the modern world as exposed to pollution and human
despoliation etc.

Please bear with me, for these ideas are in an early formative stage right
now.

Hitherto the mechanisms of selection have been ascribed to genetical
factors. Spontaneous individual change whether unconscious or deliberate involving
the rejection of conventional paradigms has to a large degree been discounted.
Animals and plants that survive are those that inhabit niche environments
and are able to respond and adapt their behavior or physical characteristics to
new factors in their surroundings - those that resist adaptation on the
basis that tried and tested survivalist paradigms are eliminated.

With respect to the development of human phenotypes I consider the
punctuated equilibrium theory of Eldredge and Gould as an adjuvant rather than as a
methodological criticism of the traditional Darwinian theory of evolution. For
Darwin evolution is seen to happen as a slow, uninterrupted process, without
abrupt leaps forward or periods of quiescence.

As revealed by the punctuated equilibrium theory, a detailed critical
inspection of the fossils of organisms reveals that in subsequent geological
layers, you will see long intervals of equilibrium. There are periods in which the
forces of change and stasis cancel one another out, followed by abrupt,
epochal change, in which species become extinct and are superceded by altogether
new forms. Such a developmental scenario fits perfectly with the ’stop - start’
theory of human discontinuous reification, whereby older, existing social
paradigms are challenged by de-reificationalists, which, if propitiously
successful, become the replacement social templates that in their turn are
interiorised, bolstered etc.

Human history is replete with outstanding examples of the repudiation of
traditional reification and the introduction of new, innovative reifiational
patterns. The reified belief in ‘the stable state’ for example is highlighted by
Donald Schon (1973, first published 1971) who takes as his starting point the
loss of the stable state. Belief in the stable state, he suggests, is belief
in ‘the unchangeability, the constancy of central aspects of our lives, or
belief that we can attain such a constancy’ (Schon 1973: 9). Such a belief is
strong and deep, and provides a bulwark against uncertainty. Institutions are
characterized by ‘dynamic conservatism’ – ‘a tendency to fight to remain
the same’ (ibid.: 30). However, with technical change continuing
exponentially its pervasiveness and frequency was ‘uniquely threatening to the stable
state’ (ibid.: 26). He then proceeds to build the case for a concern with
learning (see inset).

Discontinuous reification is more of a comment upon natural change rather
than an alternative theory of evolution.
However, this explanation is more persuasive in the light of some general
insights from the systems approach which I plan to outline soon. [the actual
grammatical mechanisms of reification which can be traced back to Sanskrit etc.]

GARY C. MOORE:
This is true again. As William of Baskerville demonstrates, one first
approaches ambiguous knowledge Idealistically trying to fit it into archetypes of
identity, but as more specific physical knowledge is gained – an object
approaching you or you it – the Idealism is discarded to account for personal
physical observation that may not fit any known archetype whatsoever. Is
Salvatore, for instance, human? In some things yes, in other things *he* is far
outside the limits of our normal individual experience. These things can be
accepted as methodologies in specific circumstances - an object is far away and bl
urry - but with more specific knowledge, they must be discarded. They are
hardly *perfect* in any physical sense. I doubt if there is anything perfect at
all in physical nature, that what seems perfect at first is merely an inability
to achieve closer observation.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Think about the Pythagorean theorem: any REAL and COMPLETE proof requires
that some very tough things must be dealt with: what is a straight line? What
is a 90 angle? these are not trivial questions, yet they are assumed to be
handled by our intuitive powers.

JUD EVANS:
Human entities exist as respondents counterbalanced and effected by the
interplay of opposing elements or tendencies of physical tension engendered by the
radical stimuli of the changing environment. The necessity of abstracting
ideas of straightness and angularity was essential at certain stages in the
development of mankind. Planning the shortest crossing of a lake, making sure an
arrow found its mark [primitive ballistics] Those that abstracted
successfully crossed the lake in safely - the others drowned. Those that worked out how
to shoot an arrow in a straight line ate - those that didn’t [or couldn’t]
starved.

The abstractors flourished and a major part of that ability to reify was to
construct behavioural patterns which were reified into quasi-entities. The
hunt. Preparation for the hunt [ [rituals] Harvesting [rituals] The
objectification of marital and sexual obligations in the words *wife* and *house-bond*
etc. My theory is that in primitive societies, where food and shelter was
plentiful and predators few, less reification took place [less thingification of
verbs] and societies remained comparatively unchanged [static]

The more challenged a group was - the more reificational patterns were
required in order to survive. I need to research this part of it. I may find for
example that primitive forest dwellers had a wealth of abstraction appertaining
to the trees, plants and animals that surrounded them , but less of the
higher type abstraction, which engaged in intellectual curiosity as regards to
the origin of life, the nature of sickness and death etc., other than
attitudes adequate for grieving the death of loved ones.
On the other hand, the coastal dweller had more abstraction concerned with
the ocean and that which dwelt therein?

It is only the kernel of an idea right now and the scope of it is immense. I
would like to claim it as my own idea but in fact it is the work of an
American genius called James. W. Woodard, *Intellectual Realism and Culture
Change,* 1935, who has sunk almost without trace. I managed to obtain his out of
print book at great expense with the help of an antiquarian book dealer. I am
attempting to marry my own specifically eliminativist ideas to his broad
sweep of reification as a biological phenomenon to be found not only in humans,
but also in other animals. Woodard does not limit his concept of reification
to the concretisation of universals (like *Love* etc ) but extends it to the
entification of behavioural attitudes, survivalist ploys and patterns of
feeding, mating, habit formation and all the rest.

GARY C. MOORE:
That would mean purely in the mind, not in physical reality at all. Hume has
already broached this problem. There is no intuition involved. *Intuition*
is mere acceptable approximation - as *acceptable variable parameters* in a
scientific experiment - because if you examine a perfect right angle under a
microscope you discover a wildly irregular line that, enlarged, you would never
accept as *perfectly straight*. This applies to all physical observation and
I know of.

JUD EVANS:
*intuition* for Woodard is a reification of a procedural formula - a *go*
feature of the *stop - go* nature of cultural change. Of course it can work
both ways - the guy who intuitively presses the GO button when dealing with a
new predator and adopts a new tactic may survive to pass on his genes whilst
the others are exterminated, in which case a new behavioural paradigm is
reified - but he may have made the wrong move and HE becomes the one that is mauled
to death. This works in with my point that survival is not EXCLUSIVELY
connected to a slow process of genetical modification over centuries or thousands
of years - individual action and the subsequent re-jigging of old
reificational paradigms can effect spurts in these matters.

En passant Thomas Kuhn made the same point in the sixties when he also
identified such antithetical paradigmatic revolutions in more modern scientific
progress. Kuhn distinguished ‘normal science’ in which problems are solved
within existing paradigms, and ‘revolutionary science’ where the whole ‘way of
seeing’ is changed (e.g. by Darwinian evolution, or Einstein’s theory).

Because such major changes involve revolution in viewpoint (and in this
sense may be ‘incommensurable’ with the old theory) Kuhn said that we could never
be certain that at some future time existing knowledge would not be
superseded by something from a completely new viewpoint.

Others (e.g. Paul Feyerabend) took this further - some even seeing’ science’
as an ‘ideology’ ice a system of value-beliefs without any base of
objectivity. Historian of science Bob Young has come close to this. Feyerabend also
questioned whether there could be a ’scientific method’ since in the past
discovery seemed to him to have come about in a non methodical way.

RICHARD SANSOM:
A straight line is the shortest distance between two points; what is a
point? In what geometric space is *distance* determined?

JUD EVANS:
For me *distance* does not exist - nor does the 300 miles between me and
London. What exists is the earth’s surface and its covering of vegetation,
forests, towns roads, underground cables, drains and human and animal life.
Spatial points are also arbitrary abstractions which only exist as a feature of the
neurological activity of the human brain.

GARY C. MOORE:
Even the mathematicians say a point is pure abstraction, a pragmatic
starting point reflecting no physical reality at all. I am not talking about
definitions which are necessarily hypotheses that need to be applied to physical
reality in order to be confirmed.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Ask anyone to define a line, straight or not, and they will have much
trouble and, if they are familiar with higher mathematics they will get into
infinitesimals, etc and lose most of us. Could it be that the ease with which we
accept these *truths* is related to our competence in the easy acceptance and
acquisition of language?

JUD EVANS:
When a behavioural paradigm is successfully reified and proves to be
suitable, workable and dependable people stick to it., until the time comes that it
has either outlived its usefulness or is generating results that are
counter-productive.

Foreign involvement good.
Vietnam and Iraq bad = new paradigm in need of reification.
Isolationism?
Friendly engagement?

GARY C. MOORE:
True. Language is only the wildest and widest approximation. Physical
experience is the only validifying factor.

JUD EVANS:
True. Now you know why I called my web site *Evans Experientialism.

GARY C. MOORE:
Having it work out logically in the brain is nice, but it can only be tested
for *Truth* in physical reality, and that physical reality is always
variable. Physical experience is not interpretation. It just is what it is.
Interpretation is pure hypotheses and continues to remain so even after being
confirmed by a hundred experiments because it is a logical possibility on the 101th
experiment different results will be obtained. This is always a necessary
possibility, therefore experimental results, however much confirmed by numerous
experiments, always necessarily remain approximate and therefore subjective
in the strict sense.

JUD EVANS:
Hurrah for Hume!

RICHARD SANSOM:
I think the point is: is there harm in believing in the intuitive
assumptions about these kinds of things? If so, what is that harm?

JUD EVANS:
For me reificational intuitivism is a double-edged sword. It can work
wonders if it works for the good of survival - it can be disastrous if it is put to
misuse [cue aircraft full of screaming passengers heading for tall building
to cries of Allah Akhbar! ] Far better if we USE reification, but make sure
we do not allow it to USE US. The way out of that is to acknowledge that it is
an artificial form of exposition and we REALISE that it is dangerous
[abstract nouns are communicational hand-grenades in the wrong hands] but we are in
control and don’t REALLY take it seriously enough to believe that it actually
exists.

GARY C. MOORE:
Definitely. If nothing else, one distances oneself from the real sources of
knowledge and, worse, erases their very narrow limitations. For instance,
sense experience is not interpretation. There is only very little I can really
*know* as opposed to mere interpretation and pragmatic acceptance. Those are
simply compromises on how to get along with the world. Do you believe the
world is *getting along*? Do you believe we *have a handle* on how the world
really works and it is as near perfection as we can get it? Since I reject
*perfection* in any mode whatsoever, it is a mute question for me. But I think
*compromised* knowledge - which is the only knowledge there is - necessarily
comes to a failure point sooner or later.

RICHARD SANSOM:
I have my opinions about this but I would like to hear others. Another
question arises related to such things as universal truths: we can safely ascribe
to the utility if not the full veracity of mathematical *truths,* but, except
for doctrinaire pronouncements from religion, which are all over the map,
often in disagreement, there are no universally agreed to similar axioms for
morality and human behavior. What does that leave us with? Are mathematical
*truths* somehow very different from other kinds of
*truth?*

JUD EVANS:
For me all of the axioms for morality and human behavior are just ephemeral
opinion - look at the changes in attitudes towards sex, homosexuality we have
witnessed in our short seventy years of existence.

GARY C. MOORE:
A good comparison and one directly relevant to THE NAME OF THE ROSE. The
problems of heresy arise specifically because of commonly held beliefs applied
to physical reality. This means locale, social class, and the privileges of
the people involved. What is orthodox in Provence is heretical in Italy. What
is orthodox in Florence is heretical in the countryside. What is orthodox to
Louis the Bavarian is heretical to John XXII. And the change of political and
economic situations through time again changes what is *Perfect Truth* month
to month, year to year.

RICHARD SANSOM:
For me [for what its worth], as I have opined, probably ad nauseum,
*knowledge* should be defined as only that which is immediately perceived by
the senses; all else, included what is contained in memory, is belief.

GARY C. MOORE:
In which case *knowledge* would be a *perfectly* neutral thing that is just
*there*, not already belonging in any system whatsoever, not giving any
*knowledge* at all until words are experimentally applied and are found to fit -
or not to fit - in logical propositions. And those propositions are always
subject to change considering the gain of further knowledge which means it is
all accidental.

JUD EVANS:
You are right - only *the knowing ones* exist the term *knowledge* is just a
helpful reification.

Posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 3:50 am
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