Heidegger

Cologne 17-Sep-2006

GEVANS613 at aol.com schrieb Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:18:26 EDT:

> In a message dated 15/09/2006 17:22:36 GMT Standard Time,
> artefact at t-online.de writes: Cologne 15-Sep-2006 Please note - This
> was originally a bit long - I will split it into two. ALPHA AND BETA

> ALPHA
> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] On the contrary ONLY causal objects
> exist in the cosmos. They do not [subjectively] exist as dependent
> entities subject to or in accordance with a human awareness of them.

> DR. ELDRED:Then, at the very least, the name “object” is a misnomer
> because subject and object go together; they are inseparably linked;
> there is only an object for a subject.

> JUD EVANS: I take it that you are referring to a tangible and visible
> entity such as [for example] a soup spoon or the planet Venus? You
> appear to be confusing the issue by introducing the grammatical terms:
> *subject* and *object* which are technical words we employ to
> distinguish different syntactical elements.

ME: No, I am using the terms “object” and “subject” in their ontological
sense, from which the grammatical terms are derived. The object, in the
ontological sense, is that which is “thrown against” (ob-ject) a
subject, and the ’subject* is the translation of Gk. _hypokeimenon_,
which is ‘that which underlies’. In the subjectivist metaphysics of the
modern age, the subject, i.e. that which underlies, is the human being
in whose consciousness the object is represented (representatio,
Vorstellung). In the Christian Middle Ages, and for the ancient Greeks,
the subject is not an underlying human’s consciousness.

> Jud: Used in its ontological sense as you know the syntactical term
> *object* is a term defined as a constituent that is acted upon as “the
> object of the verb.” Hence in the sentence: *The rotting apple* the
> word *apple* is the object of the verb of the continuous present
> *rotting.*

ME: That is not the ontological sense, but the derived grammatical
sense.

> JUD EVANS:[FROM PREVIOUS POST] “I reject the notion of *physical laws’
> out of hand really for what they ACTUALLY represent are the compendium
> of humanly observed events which mankind has usually witnessed over a
> long period and noted that given the same set of circumstances WITHOUT
> EXCEPTION a certain conjunction of causal object (A) with causal
> object (B) will lead to a certain effect.”

> DR. ELDRED:Beyond that, you also posit “causal objects” existing in
> themselves, but these are unknowable Dinge an sich insofar as you are
> unable to say what the two terms in this expression, “cause” and
> “object” mean ontologically.

> JUD EVANS:My interpretation of *cause* is grounded in Humean
> philosophy, with [surprisingly] a dash of an alleged observation by
> Jean Paul Sartre. Hume in the sense of his insight that causal events
> are observational “habits of association” which the brain extrapolates
> via our experience of the repetition of occurrences of A and B.
> events. From infancy onwards we perpetually witness events of type A
> being accompanied by events of type B. This creates a strong
> anticipation of seeing B whenever we see occurrences of A. Such
> expectation forces us to envisage a kind of supranatural “force” or
> “power” or “necessary connection” between A and B, and to suppose this
> force exists, inheres or is somehow intrinsic within the objects
> themselves. Such an illation is both intuitive and inaccurate. We mix
> up the expectation we project onto the objects with a perceived
> abstractive concomitance existing in the world.

ME: So now you revert to the subjectivist, empiricist notion of
causality which you put forward two e-mails ago, and then retracted in
your last e-mails. This subjectivist-empiricist notion of causality is
exposed to the same criticisms I have alread laid out, and to which you
responded by retracting it. If your eliminative ontology operates with a
subjectivist-empiricist notion of causality, the “causal objects”, which
are the fundamental enties in your ontology, exist not in themselves,
but only as a generalization of observed regularity. The consequence of
this is that “causal objects” exist only insofar as certain phenomena
(of the form if A occurs, then B occurs) are observed by human
consciousness to occur regularly. The causality breaks down immediately
if a counter-example is observed — this is the notion of falsification
which you also affirmed two e-mails ago.

To come properly to grips with the phenomenon of causality in itself,
you would have to go beyond the subjectivist-empiricist notion of
causality as mere observed regularity — observational “habits of
association”, as you put it — and grapple with modes of being called
“force” and “power”. As it is, your vacillation on the point of
causality shows the dualism of your eliminativist materialism; on the
one hand, you posit “causal objects” in themselves, without any relation
to a subject, and, on the other, you posit a clearly inadequate
empiricist notion of causality. To talk of what “we project onto the
objects” means only that you are stuck in this back-and-forth between
subjective consciousness and things in themselves which wondrously are
claimed to be causal _in themselves_.

> Jud: The alleged observation by Sartre which also influenced concerned
> his reported remarks in which he pointed to the fact that
> ontologically [but not legalistically, ethically or emotionally] a
> mugged person is as much *to blame* as the person who mugged them for
> being in that street at that time on that date. Now this alleged
> remark by Sartre was retailed on the Sartre list many years ago - I
> have forgotten by whom it was reported, and though I have made
> half-hearted efforts to trace its provenance I have had no success.I
> did find a reference [a rather weak one] which purported to defend the
> existentialists retention of *freedom* in an imagined scenario where a
> deranged armed mugger points a gun and says *Your wallet or your
> life!* Sartre claims that even in such extremes we retain the freedom
> of choice to hand it over or say no and accept a bullet in between the
> eyes.

ME: Hegel writes on this point, “… that there is no such thing as
compulsion and there has never been a person who has been compelled.
(…) Thus, if somewhere the existence of compulsion is to be
demonstrated, there precisely the opposite can be shown with regard to
the selfsame phänomenon, namely, that it is not compulsion, but rather
an expression of freedom; for through the fact that this phenomenon is
taken up into the form of imagination and thus becomes determined by
interiority, by ideality, the subject is at liberty/in freedom vis-à-vis
this phenomenon. (…) The possibility of sublating/cancelling the
determination which is imagined and is supposed to serve as compulsion
is absolute;” (… daß es gar keinen Zwang gebe und nie ein Mensch
gezwungen worden sei. (…) Wo also irgendwo die Existenz von Zwang
aufgewiesen werden soll, da kann von einer und ebenderselben Erscheinung
gerade das Gegenteil gezeigt werden, nämlich daß sie nicht ein Zwang,
sondern vielmehr eine Äußerung der Freiheit sei; denn dadurch, daß sie
in die Form der Vorstellung aufgenommen und hiermit durch das Innere,
Ideelle bestimmt wird, ist das Subjekt in der Freiheit gegen dieselbe.
(…) Die Möglichkeit, die Bestimmtheit, welche vorgestellt wird und als
Zwang dienen soll, aufzuheben, ist absolut; ‘Über die wissenschaftlichen
Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine Stelle in der praktischen
Philosophie und sein Verhältnis zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften’
(1802/03) Werke Bd. 2 S. 513).

>
> Jud: It is of no consequence really if Sartre’s alleged remarks about
> *equal blame for any event* was a true report or a false one, it
> supplied me with a half-way-house position as part of my final
> abandonment of the false facticity of *cause* and *event,* and
> motivated me to discoverer a more logical eliminativist ontology with
> which to replace it.
> The combination of Sartre’s remarkable insight and Hume’s observation
> that we are influenced by a repetition of occurrences resulted in my
> own *no objects caused the event,* position. With it came the
> realisation that because the abstractions *cause* and *event* do not
> exist, in the sense that ALL objects in the cosmos naturally occur in
> such contingent modalities as changing entities or causal objects as a
> natural feature of their coupling constants.
> Bottom line? *Cause* does not exist - objects simply exist in the way
> they exist [as things in themselves] as a feature of an existential
> contingency which may be defined as the outcome of a coadundate
> conjunction of a particular set of concomitant couplings that apply in
> a particular space-time situation.

ME: The bottom line, after your reversion to a subjectivist-empiricist
notion of causality, is that “causal objects” do not exist in
themselves, but only insofar as certain concatenations of events conform
to a regularity of observation in human consciousness. In this way, the
couplet, object- subject, is preserved, and causality is a matter of
observation by human consciousness. Otherwise you are free to vacillate
back and forth within this dualist dilemma.

>
> DR. ELDRED:You have to show the ontological structure of cause, i. e.
> the causality of cause,
> JUD EVANS:As I explain above - there is no structure of cause - there
> is only the causal object itself - it just exists that way. As to the
> *causality of cause* I see it as a similar type of construction as
> *The causality of nothing.* In religious terms it is easy and does not
> overtax the mind [hence the popularity of religion with the masses]
> God is perceived both as the causer of cause and the causer of its
> universalistic application. My own view is that the cosmos could not
> have not existed for the simple reason that *nothing* is an
> ontological and physical impossibility.

ME: Why is “*nothing* an ontological and physical impossibility”? Your
dualist eliminativism is reduced to affirming the existence of
unknowable Dinge an sich.

> Jud: If one wishes to continue the ontological quest one needs to
> descend into the micro-world of quantum physics and explore the
> underlying structure of causal objects themselves. I suspect however
> that the micro-level will prove to be just as deterministically driven
> as the macro, in spite of the present lack of understanding of the
> so-called chaos principle.

ME: Now you rely on “quantum physics” which you accept as a basis for
your materialist ontology, even though such “quantum physics” itself
remains unclarified ontologically. This amounts to a mere scientistic
prejudice that goes along with the fashion of the age.

> DR. ELDRED:and also the ontological structure of the object, i. e. the
> objectivity of the object. Your implicit response to the first
> requirement is only to supply a subjectivist-empiricist notion of
> cause (as generalized experiential regularity of a connection between
> two phenomena), but this response is inadequate, for it clearly does
> not reach things in themselves. Your postulation of “causal objects”
> therefore remains, in ontological terms, a dogmatic and unproven
> assertion, and ontologically unclarified to boot because you do not
> show how the “causal” inheres in the “causal object” in itself. As for
> the objectivity of the object (which is necessarily paired with the
> subjectivity of the subject), you have not even approached this
> ontological problem as yet.

> JUD EVANS:As far as the objectivity of the object is concerned I have
> no problem and no compunction in dismissing the notion as an unproven
> abstraction for which not one shred of evidence is available. It is up
> to those who claim the facticity of these abstractions to prove that
> they exist and not for the unbelievers to prove to the contrary.

ME: So the object has no objectivity, i.e. it remains unclarified
ontologically. Therefore, one cannot claim within the terms of your
ontology that an object exists, and a fortiori, you cannot claim that
any causal object exists.
Since your eliminative materialism admits only “tangible, visible”
objects as existing, what’s a phenomenologist to do in the face of such
dogmatism apart from to say, “Open your eyes, especially your mind’s
eye”.

> Jud: Regarding the existence of *cause* I am as convinced that the
> empiricist notion of cause (as generalized experiential regularity of
> a connection between two phenomena), is just as flawed as the realist
> version.

ME: But you have just affirmed above, that your “interpretation of
*cause* is grounded in Humean philosophy” … “Hume in the sense of his
insight that causal events are observational ‘habits of association’
which the brain extrapolates via our experience of the repetition of
occurrences of A and B. events ” Thus you have reaffirmed the
“empiricist notion of cause” after a brief, episodic retraction.
According to such a notion of cause, cause is merely an observed
regularity of the form “if A then B”, which regularity is observed only
by human consciousness (which you reduce to “the brain” — which cannot
observe anything).

> Jud: In the same way that I have challenged you to produce evidence
> for the existence of abstraction would challenge the traditional
> empiricists [old style determinists] to prove the existence of
> *cause.*
> In the same way that you would be forced to produce two interacting
> lovers if I demanded you show me an example of *love* the empiricist
> would have no alternative to show me two objects - show them
> interacting [say two billiard balls] and claim that what I was
> observing in their collisions was *cause* and *effect. I say that
> *love * and *cause* and *effect* do NOT exist, and that only the
> interacting human causal objects and the interacting spherical objects
> actually exist - and that the *phenomena* of some apparent *product*
> of their interaction is an illusion. The lovers and the billiard balls
> just exist that way and there are no *ontological extras* and no
> extraneous duality AT ALL between or in addition to their physical
> presence and the way that they exist as ontological and mereological
> things in themselves.

ME: And, according to your now reaffirmed notion of causality, they do
not exist _as_ causal objects _in themselves_, but only empirically for
observing human consciousness.

>
> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] This may well be the consequence of
> your own conception of my conception of *cause, * because you adhere
> to an old traditional way of looking at the world and the causal
> objects that populate such a place. For me the glass soap-dish exists
> and if I drop it on the hard surface of the bathroom floor it would
> probably break [subject to velocity, angle of contact etc.] These
> causal objects exist in themselves - they certainly do NOT exist in
> the *selves* of any other object, or in the prescriptive *selves* of
> humans, [including Sir Isaac Newton.]
> DR. ELDRED:The statement, “For me the glass soap-dish exists and if I
> drop it on the hard surface of the bathroom floor it would probably
> break” is a subjectivist-empiricist notion of causality; it says
> nothing at all about the glass soap-dish in itself. I am also not
> counterposing my own conception of cause to yours, but merely drawing
> out the contradictions inherent in your own statements of what cause
> is. To understand at all what cause is ontologically, one has to
> return to Aristotle and his brilliant phenomenological elucidations of
> such terms as _aitios_ and _archae_ and _dynamis_.

> JUD EVANS:What Aristotle meant by saying that one event is caused by
> another is that everything that changes is made to change by
> something. [Physics 7, 241b].25]
> For Aristotle the necessity of a cause of change and the process of
> eventuation is explained like this:
> (1) The cause of change must be assumed an absolute necessity.
> (2) Everything that changes is made to change by something. [Physics
> 7, 241b].25]
> (3) Motion is the process of the actualisation of what is capable of
> being so moved.
> (4) What undergoes change is what has a potency or capacity to do so.
> [Physics 251a, 12]
> (5) The actualisation of this potency needs an agent.
> (6) Nothing which has a capacity to undergo change can bring that
> change about by itself. [Physics 257b .9]
> The most sensible format is for me to address each Aristotelian
> proposal one by one.
> He would have been better to start by questioning whether in fact the
> abstraction ‘change’ actually exists. Surely what exists are
> modifying objects or changing material entities -not ‘change’
> itself? This is true, but it all hinges on what the ‘something’
> is? For me entities change the way that they exist in response to the
> impingement or coupling of other causal objects – not some
> ontological ignis fatuus called ‘cause,’ or potential,’ or
> ‘capacity.’ The question of ‘capability’ does not enter into
> it – if entities could not move they would not exist. No movement =
> No existence.
> *The question of ‘capability’ does not enter into it – if
> entities could not move they would not exist. NO MOVEMENT = NO
> ENTITY.I find this interesting in that he suggests that objects exist
> with an intrinsic property of “capability,”

ME: What you here refer to as “capability” in Aristotle is the notion of
passive _dynamis_ which inheres in the thing itself. Thus, for example,
a nail has the passive _dynamis_ to be nailed into a wall, but a glass
of water does not possess this passive _dynamis_ in itself. Since you
deny that anything has such a “capacity” exists, neither a nail nor a
glass of water could be nailed into a wall. Such a concept of passive
_dynamis_, as elaborated in extenso in Book Theta of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, applies to things in themselves, and has nothing to do with
modern conceptions of causality for which causality is merely a
subjective matter of observation of a regularity (Hume).

Trying to say in any supportable way what the phenomenon of cause is _as
such_ (rather than affirming dogmatically the mere facticity of cause),
requires the move to the ontological plane upon which, at the very
least, an ontological concept of _dynamis_ is possible.

> Jud: Every object in the cosmos can move if a sufficiently powerful
> causal object impinges itself upon it in an appropriate way. Compare:
> Archimedes’ Lever” which is proposed as the name for the forum because
> of his quote about being able to move the world with a long enough
> lever. Actually, The OCD renders the quote as: “give me a place to
> stand and I will move the earth.*
> There is no ‘potency’ to ‘actualise.’ What exists are causal
> objects which move or deform if they are impinged upon by certain
> other causal objects. What he is saying here is in fact an ontological
> superfluity, for if objects lacked the existential ‘ability’ to
> change, then they would not exist in the first place.NO CHANGE = NO
> EXISTENCE. At first I was tempted to challenge his claim that nothing
> can bring change about by itself, and point to a rotting apple, but I
> quickly realised that he is right and the process of decay in
> biological material is in fact initiated by other causal objects in
> the environment.

ME: Aristotle indeed does have the ontological concept of beings that
move from within themselves. This is his concept of living beings, i.e.
animate beings. Animate beings have the _archae_ of their movement
within themselves, whereas inanimate beings only have the capacity (=
passive _dynamis_) to react to an active _dynamis_ or ‘force’ residing
in something else (_en alloi_). This _archae_, or governing
starting-point/origin, of living beings is their _psychae_ which
constitutes their mode of being _as living_. Such self-movement, for
Aristotle, is of four kinds: i) change pure and simple (such as the
leaves of a tree turning yellow and brown in autumn), ii) growth and
decay, iii) change of place or locomotion (plants as living beings do
not have this potential) and iv) reproduction (or progeneration,
_genesis_). Your subjectivist-empiricist notion of causal objects,
however, has to make do without such ontological insights because, as
you affirm, it denies the existence of any capacity (_dynamis_, active
or passive). For your own eliminative ontology, the causality of the
postulated “causal object” is (implicitly) a causality only for the
observiing human subject. It remains mute on what so-called “causal
objects” are in themselves.

> Jud: However human cells degenerate as they re-copy themselves over
> time even if are not subjected to injurious intrinsic or extrinsic
> impingement. These abstractions do not exist and it is the potently
> robust entities [material objects] which really exist in existential
> modalities which we judge as being relatively powerful in relation to
> weaker ones?

ME: Here you deny that certain abstractions “exist”, but in one and the
same breath, you assert the existence of other abstractions such as
“existential modalities”. This is just one of the knots in which you
continually tie language, thus contradicting yourself.

>
> HUGE SNIP
> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] I haven’t got a *concept* of *cause.*
> I haven’t got a *concept* of anything - and neither has any other
> human in the world.

> DR. ELDRED:You exist in everyday life, i. e. pre-ontologically,
> embedded in notions, including that of causality, which, at first and
> for the most part, remain ontologically unclarified.

> JUD EVANS:For me there is no a priori ontologicality nor do notions
> [ideas] exist.Neither is there something existing called *unclarified
> ontologically* or *clarified ontologicicality. You need to prove to me
> that such things exists in order that we may move forward.* In the
> spirit of conviviality however I will proceed and simple posit my own
> views in juxtaposition to yours.

> DR. ELDRED:To hazard the venture of ontology, however, demands that
> adequate ontological concepts of everyday notions be developed.

> JUD EVANS:That is the only aspect of Heideggerianism that I can warm
> to - his attempt to root his philosophy in the *everyday* rather than
> in the remoteness of examining the phenomenological aspects of a
> tea-pot high up in an ivory tower well away from the smelly hoi polloi
> far below. Sadly Heidegger’s everyday turned out to be an everyday
> that I found to be philosophically, ontologically and politically
> highly distasteful.

ME: You are very wide of the mark here, because it is not only the
philosopher, Heidegger; who demands ontological concepts, but any
ontology from Plato and Aristotle on.

> DR. ELDRED: Ontology has the essential task of capturing (in concepts)
> the phenomena with which we are thoroughly familiar in everyday living
> and showing what they are _as such_.

> JUD EVANS: I entirely agree with the sentiments you express, with the
> qualification that I would eliminate the word *ontology* and replace
> it with the words: *the ontologist.*

ME: The ontologist does ontology; otherwise he or she is not an
ontologist. In other words, “ontologist” is derivative of “ontology”,
just as “ideator” is derivative of “idea” — if the latter do not exist,
neither do the former.

> DR. ELDRED:This _as such_ is unnecessary and entirely dispensable for
> normal living, but it is indispensable in any ontological endeavour.
> The litmus test for whether a purported ontology is worthy of the name
> is whether the _as such_ has been understood, and is not merely a
> superfluous flourish. _on haei on_ says Aristotle, and all later
> ontology takes its cue from Aristotle, ie. “beings as such” is the
> subject of ontological investigation.

>
> JUD EVANS: I am adamant that no such Aristotelian ontological
> difference obtains, and that the existential modality of an object
> corresponds EXACTLY and PRECISELY with the physical object as it
> exists AS a causal object at any given moment. What Aristotle/Dr
> Eldred conceives of as the *as such* is simply a rather old-fashioned
> way of saying something that I said on this list many moons ago - that
> the total sum or grand total [the *Gesamtsumme*} of an object’s
> existential modalities which - IS THE OBJECT ITSELF as a THING IN
> ITSELF.

ME: Here you seem to have unwittingly adopted the correct form of
expression, to wit, ” the physical object as it exists AS a causal
object”. The ontological endeavour is concerned with the clarification,
i.e. conceptualization, of this AS. And as you have already cited above,
Aristotle’s ontological concepts of passive and active _dynamis_
(potential, capacity, force, power, potency) are essential for this
endeavour. _Dynamis_ in Aristotle articulates a _mode of existence_, a
_way of being_, and your eliminative ontology suffers to the point of
meaninglessness in denying the existence of such ontological modes of
existence of things _in themselves_.

> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] I exist in modes of conceptualising
> that *concept* and
> *cause* are two human abstractions which though they are useful for
> brevity of speech - do not actually exist. At this moment you might be
> conceptualising: *Time for a cup of coffee.*But the *concept* *Time
> for a cup of coffee,* doesn’t exist - only the conceptualising Doctor
> Eldred exists.

> DR. ELDRED: It’s misleading to mix up everyday imagining of notions
> with the conceptualizing that ontology undertakes — and must
> undertake.

> JUD EVANS: It matters not what the triviality or the profundity of an
> *idea* or *notion* is - none of them really exist.

> DR. ELDRED: FROM A PREVIOUS POST. If *cause* = change” in your
> ontology, then change, too, does not exist in itself,

> JUD EVANS:Perfectly correct.

> DR. ELDRED: FROM A PREVIOUS POST. and there are no changing objects in
> themselves, for, change, too, is only a matter of generalized,
> subjective, empirical observation, i. e. Dinge an sich remain
> ontologically unknown and unknowable.

> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] No. Wrong [or rather incorrectly
> extrapolated.] ONLY changing causal objects exist.

> DR. ELDRED: How do you know that ontologically? And what is the
> ontological structure of these purported causal objects _in
> themselves_?

> JUD EVANS: I know this from my experiential observations of objects
> over a more than seventy-year period. No object in the history of
> mankind has ever been credited as remaining exactly the same over a
> period of time - even the world’s hardest diamond is continuously
> accreting and losing various atoms to the atmosphere in the same way
> that the inside walls of the mythic *perfect vacuum* do. There is no
> such thing as *an ontological structure* - only objects in themselves
> existing in the way that they exist exist.

ME: The task of ontology is to spell out in adequate concepts how things
exist “in the way that they exist”. But your ontology never gets so far;
it merely repeatedly asseverates THAT things exist “in the way that they
exist”, without ever elaborating these modes of existence conceptually.

> Jud: Eliminativism as you can see strips away all the layers of
> ontological verdigris which the tradition has ladled on over the
> centuries to reveal at last the conceptually confined but perfectly
> preserved thing in itself which silk-worm-like lies enwrapped in a
> cocoon of concepts like some metaphysical mummy.

ME: I’d say that eliminativism strips away all ontology altogether and
consists mainly in unsupported asseverations of the kind, “x does not
exist for all x where x is not equal to a tangible, visible thing”. Now,
that’s a pretty simple-minded materialism with which even common sense
has its difficulties.

> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] If an object was not *causal* or
> *changeable,* it would not exist in the first place. As *nothing* is
> ontologically impossible - the *existential imperative,* which I have
> been discussing, means that ALL objects are [HAVE TO BE] causally
> changeable objects. If you give some time to considering this question
> you can see that it is a logical conclusion, for if objects were NOT
> causative or changeable they would exist in some primal frozen,
> unchanging state and there would be no cosmos as we experience it
> today. Following this argument it can be quickly seen that *God* is an
> unnecessary redundancy - the cosmos would have existed without *Him*
> anyway.

> DR. ELDRED:I am not denying the phenomena of causality or change.
> Rather, I am demanding to see your ontologically adequate concepts of
> these phenomena. For the Greeks, the phenomenon of movement was
> perhaps _the_ metaphysical problem. Aristotle tries to provide
> ontological concepts of movement (of which there are four kinds), and
> his crucial concepts of _dynamis_, _energeia_, _entelechei_, and
> _metabolae_ were fashioned to come to terms ontologically with
> phenomena of movement.

> JUD EVANS:I repeat my criticism of Aristotle [above] on movement in
> the following snippet:
> *The question of ‘capability’ does not enter into it – if
> entities could not move they would not exist. NO MOVEMENT = NO ENTITY.

ME: And the fact that certain entities _can_ move means that they have
the capacity (_dynamis_) to move — in themselves, i.e. it is not a
matter of subjective attribution.

> Jud: I find this interesting in that he suggests that objects exist
> with an intrinsic property of ‘capability,’

ME: Precisely. They possess this capability (_dynamis_) within
themselves (_en autoi_).

> Jud: Every object in the cosmos can move if a sufficiently powerful
> causal object impinges itself upon it in an appropriate way. Compare:
> Archimedes’ Lever” see his alleged quote about being able to move the
> world with a long enough lever. Actually, The OCD renders the quote
> as: “give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.*

> DR. ELDRED: FROM A PREVIOUS POST. This is a big contrast to Aristotle,
> who was the first thinker to phenomenologically investigate and
> formulate the ontological concepts of cause and change (_metabolae_).
> Against Aristotle’s ontology, what is today presented as ontology is
> risible.

> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] I could say the same about his
> *ontology* the reason I do not laugh at him is because he lived in a
> pre-scientific age and he cannot be blamed for that. However, in this
> modern world there is no excuse for continuing to think in the manner
> of such folk primitivism. If Aristotle were alive today he would
> probably be working for NASA of be involved with the genome project.

>
> DR. ELDRED:I see it the other way round: Our much-vaunted ’scientifc
> age’ is oblivious to any issues of ontology.

> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] The existence of the man identified
> correctly or incorrectly as a thrower is not affected at all by the
> subjective opinion of someone observing the throwing thrower. The
> observed human subject simply exists in the way that he exists. The
> way you think, imagine, speculate, consider and cognise rightly or
> wrongly as to the existential modalities of your sensorial target
> causal object has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the observed object. *Both
> ways - ontological or otherwise* don’t exist for the eliminativist -
> objects only exist in one way - and that is the way they exist at the
> time.ANOTHER HUGE SNIP

> DR. ELDRED: FROM A PREVIOUS POST. The statement, “There is no
> universality of beings,” if true, would reduce you to silence, for you
> contradict yourself with every word you utter.

> JUD EVANS: [FROM PREVIOUS POST] The term; *Universality* is no more
> than a useful abstraction which stands as a marker in place of the
> countless causal objects that populate the universe. You can liken
> this useful fiction to terms like my dean employs when addressing a
> large audience of staff and students as:*Those of us assembled here
> today,* instead of obtaining a list of all the students’ names and
> reading them all out, which would take about an hour to do. You don’t
> need to be the world’s greatest ontologist to work out that their is
> no entity called; **Those of us assembled here today,* but rather,
> John Jones, Mary Green and all the rest of the living breathing
> individuates. Universality is a word used to refer to the quality of
> being universal; existing everywhere, but it is NOT the * quality of
> being universal* that exists everywhere - it is the causal objects
> which exist in the way that they exist which exist.

> DR. ELDRED: If John Jones is a student, then he, in his singularity,
> is a universal, namely, a student.

> JUD EVANS:
> *Student* is merely an alternative name for John Jones when he is
> involved in attending some educational establishment or studying
> perhaps at home.

ME: Not at all, for John Jones is not the only student. I.e. “student”
is identical with “John Jones” and at the same time NOT identical with
“John Jones”. This is too much for commonsense understanding, as your
ontology practises it, to get its head around.

> Jud: If he visits the swimming baths he is referred to as a swimmer*
> ALL SWIMMERS PLEASE LEAVE THE POOL NOW! shouts the pool-attendant when
> it is time to close.When John calls into the TV shop to collect a
> component he ordered: THE CUSTOMER IS HERE FOR THE SCART-PLUG! shouts
> the counter-assistant to the stores clerk.Out in the street again John
> metamorphoses into a pedestrian: GET THAT DAMN FOOL PEDESTRIAN OUT OF
> THE CYCLE-LANE! shouts the policeman to his colleague.HELLO DAD!
> screams his baby son excitedly as John the cyclist leans his bike
> against the wall and strides up the drive.WELCOME HOME DARLING smiles
> his wife - thanks for the phone call - I was terrified in case you
> were a PASSENGER on that bus that the transcendentalist blew to
> pieces.You perhaps are beginning to see now that the universalised
> John Jones is one of many John Joneses in the world, and as also the
> universalised swimmer of all the swimmers in the world, as well as
> being also the universalised customer of all the customers in the
> world as well as being is also the universalised pedestrian of all the
> pedestrians in the world as well as being also the universalised
> cyclist of all the cyclists in the world as well as being is also the
> universalised Daddy of all the daddies in the world as well as being
> also the universalised darling of all the darlings in the world, as
> well as being also the universalised passenger of all the passengers
> in the world as well as being … and so on…. and so on… and so
> on… What ACTUALLY exists of course is the married, male, student
> with three kids coming home from the university via the swimming pool,
> and the TV shop. He is NOT a *universal* at all - he is the unique -
> one-off human singularity that he is and all the rest of it are
> merely *forms of address.*

> DR. ELDRED:This is inescapable. Hegel calls this the identity of
> identity and non-identity, and he shows very amusingly how commonsense
> understanding does not realize what it is saying. For commonsense
> understanding to stick to the straight-and-narrow of saying what is
> incontrovertibly identical, or what is incontrovertibly and
> unambiguously non-identical, it would be reduced to saying either “A
> table is a table”, “A lion is a lion”, etc. OR “A table is not a
> lion”, “A cup is not a saucer”, etc. But even saying the tautology,
> “This table is a table”, would still be an identity of singularity and
> universality!

ME: Whereas “Table is table” would be the totally uninteresting,
tautological repetition of the universality, “Table”.

> JUD EVANS:Identity and non-identity are abstractions - they do not
> exists other than as useful fictions. Hegel would have better spent
> his time more productively instead of ratting through the *socks for
> darning drawer* of ontological discombobulation.

> DR. ELDRED: FROM A PREVIOUS POST. You assert, for instance, that
> “causal objects” exist, but “causal object”, if anything at all, is a
> universal, applicable universally to all causal objects. End of ALPHA

ME: You do not seem to have a retort for this last point, that “causal
object” itself is a universal and therefore, according to your singular
materialism, cannot exist.

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_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-
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Posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 11:45 am
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