Heidegger

In a message dated 23/08/2007 18:47:34 GMT Standard Time,
_chaney525 at yahoo.com_ (mailto:chaney525@yahoo.com) writes:

Jud said,
“My own theory is that the reification of abstraction has a biological
basis in which cognitive and communicative word meanings and sentential
structures are grounded in a pragmatic physical dynamics which is associated with and
is an aspect of the human, species-specific process of natural selection.”

So all of this grounding is merely by chance or natural selection.

Fred

Jud:
My model of cognition is the connectionist one, in which activity patterns
are generated holistically [the neuronal net] and not disparately as with the
curious notions of folk psychology. Because connectionism gels so well with
eliminativism - if the connectionist paradigms are found to faithfully reflect
the processes of our cognition, then all the abstract guff about
Nietzschean-type *will* and * beliefs, desires, * which were once characterised by
Malcomb [before he went missing on a camel expedition in the sandhills and dry
grass of the Gibson Desert which lies in central Western Australia) as being
*intentional entities,* will be about as attractive to the *philosophy of mind*
folk as a tucker-bag full of Tasmanian Highland cheese which has been left
lying in the bottom of a billabong for a week at the height of summer.

I see the old timers of folk psychology’s attempt to reconcile, moderate and
come to terms with, or make the new, incoming sensory information *fit in*
and be *perceptually accommodated* with the antecedal or existing
psycho-physical regularities of the cult which as no more than sophisticated
extrapolations of reificational paradigms that have been established since childhood.
Folk psychology puts one in mind of a scenario where the natives of some Pacific
Island had found a crashed WWII Liberator in the jungles of Borneo and had
dressed themselves in the dead air-crew’s clothes and adopted the words of the
flight manual and radio responses as a form of language to describe their
fellow’s behaviour. Reading a book on folk psychology is like donning an old
white rain coat and hitching a lift in a time-machine back to the early
nineteen-forties.

For, me these old *laid down* layers of the reification of abstraction can
be thought of as the *established theory,* [ossified world-view] and the fresh,
incoming data, which arrives via the sensorium [ through observation,
conversation, reading etc.] can be labeled: * the anti-theory.* But the so-called
reasoning from the general to the
*particular* by which a *synthesis,* is arrived at resulting from
conflictual mentation, is not the oversimplified Hegelian/Marxist dialectical type
version that we many [even non-Marxists] have come to accept.

In other words it is only for some people that the synthetic reconciliation
results in a classical intertheoretic recasting or reformulation into an
acceptable synthesis is possible.. For them fresh information that is not
absolutely diametrically opposed to their version of the *particular* (their
Weltanschauung) is ALWAYS reconcilable in some manner or other.

However for some other people, there is an outright rejection of any:
*cognitive compromise* or accommodation, and a new, antitheoretic ( Kuhnian type]
psycho-physical
*revolutionary* model is substituted in place of the old (though admittedly
the new model continues to be influenced by interpretational echoes of the
old.)

My primary interest is in the philosophical ramifications of reification and
instantiation of abstract concepts into quasi-entities, by treating them
semantically and syntactically in some degree as if they were objects, when in
reality they are fundamentally separated from embodiment I believe that the
entification of abstraction is detrimental to the rational investigation of
philosophical truths and principles of human experience, knowledge, or conduct.
But I am also fascinated by *the notion that the reification of abstraction
has a biological basis in which cognitive and communicative word meanings and
sentential structures are grounded in a pragmatic physical dynamic which is
associated with aspects of the human, species-specific process of natural
selection* which you referred to.

Although the dissertation which I am writing just now is obviously directed
at the philosophical community, the problem, as I see it, is widespread and is
not restricted to that domain - it is simply more visible or high profile
because of philosophy’s rightful preoccupation with ontology, and the careful
evaluation of words and meaning.

One of the conclusions I have arrived at - is that for many people exposure
to persistent reification is a key feature of habituation. To become
accustomed to repeated reificationary instantiation of the irreal like Heidegger did,
and is to internalise the insubstantial and the imaginary and diminish new
paradigmatic development and the production of innovative action-strategies
which play a vital role in the struggle for group dominance and the accumulation
of individual success and failure in the process of natural selection.

I am not BTW talking about some *airy-fairy* domain of academia, or
meta-philosophical discourse, but in regard to our own personal lives NOW - RIGHT
NOW. I believe that de-reificatory action patterns represent to a high degree
the successful overcoming of interiorised reificatory behaviour-traits, or
psycho-physical regularities, which are stored in what is termed the
“connectivity matrix” of our networks. It is these de-reified innovative action-patterns
which stimulate the paradigm-shifts which effect our PRESENT view of the
world as we sit at our computers, and have hitherto facilitated mankind’s
ascendency over other life forms since God knows when.

I see de-reification as a positive feature in the determination of the
individual’s success or failure in the competitive domain of ideas and action.

To de-reify is rather like shoving a rubber hose up Heidegger’s “nose” and
giving his a cognitive enema of hot schnapps and flushing out all the old
abstractive crap. Reification is identified as having seriously prejudicial,
socially retrogressive effects with inherent negative implications for
scientific, societal, political and religious stability and personally I want no part
of it, but cannot escape from its coils, other than retreat into my own
private world and keep as far away from tall buildings as possible.

As far as the grounding [basic ideas] of any philosophy is concerned.
Philosophy is as much a part of mankind’s journey from the caves to Cape Kennedy as
anything else. Philosophy is as much susceptible to a philosophical version
of Kuhn’s theory of competing scientific paradigms as any other domain of
ideas. It will undergo similar processes of verification and falsification. The
paradigm of twentieth century angst, individual selfishness and juvenilia
posited by the autolatrous Heidegger was a product of the Zeitgeist of the times
and gained a hold with the pimples and *lack of self-confidence brigade*
for a variety of interrelated reasons to do with the liberation of women,
feelings of sexual inadequacy and the proliferation of technology which old fogeys
couldn’t understand and which led to the sidelining of hordes of pre-war
*has-beens* and put swathes of old farts out of work, together with the
dramatic social and cultural changes in industry and colonial collapse of
European empires to say nothing of its sinister political undertones and the
triumphal success of capitalism in America. According to Emile Furzarsch (1949)
who wrote a book released by Nuremburger Presse under the title: *Bumming
around with Heidegger* the tiny thinker was 47 before he learned how to use a
telephone, but that was probably because he was too small to reach a public
kiosk telephone and had to be lifted up to the speaker (before the introduction
of handphones which he learned to knock off the cradle with a stick).]

The persisting physical-intellectual tensions in modern philosophy reflects
an ongoing opposition between the worship of reificational absolutes or
apperceptive inferences of perceptual reality which support the transcendental
status quo, as opposed to the responsive de-reificational adjustment towards
intellectual realism and reality-engagement. Thus the present- day
intellectual struggle in philosophy mirrors and preserves the primal, exclusively
physical rigidity versus adjustment model of early biological life-forms. Every
new paradigm encounters resistance, but the increasing shift in the
distribution of professional allegiances can be seen in the academic corridors of
shame - where Heidegger and what he stood for is treated with either derision or
uninterested silence.

Regards,

Jud Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_  http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

“In nuclear war all men are cremated equal.” Dexter Gordon

Regards,

Jud
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

“In nuclear war all men are cremated equal.”
Dexter Gordon

Posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 8:40 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback