Heidegger

In a message dated 28/09/2006 _artefact at t-online.de_
(mailto:artefact@t-online.de) writes: Cologne 28-Sep-2006

JUD EVANS: Please note as usual - the caps are for emphasis only.

JUD EVANS: [earlier]
It depends in what sense and in what circumstances the significations are
employed. Sometimes the word *one* is used as an alternative first person
pronoun in such constructions as:

*One has to take more care of oneself as one gets older* - meaning - *I*
have to take care of myself, and others of a similar age group to me need to do
the same.

It can also be used to indicate a causal object whose name is unknown: *The
one with the red hair and yellow dress.*
*Nothing, something and anything do not exist per se, though if your hostess
says: Will you have *something* to drink?* she will actually be employing
the abstraction *something* in order to avoid saying:

*Would you like a whisky, a gin, a rum, a coke, a lemonade, a cup of tea, a
cup of coffee, a glass of water to drink?*

DR. ELDRED:
This commonsensical empiricist account of language as an assemblage of
convenient abstractions seems plausible enough, but, examined more closely, is
entirely untenable.

JUD EVANS:
Your contention therefore must be that if language is NOT an assemblage of
convenient abstractions - it must be an assemblage of convenient material
objects?

DR. ELDRED:
Our human understanding does not and cannot work that way. To understand the
various things in this list, “a whisky, a gin”, etc. as belonging together
in the class of “something to drink”, they must already be understood as
“something” and “something drinkable”. These latter categories are _prior_ and
_constitutive_ for our understanding, and the concrete specifications as whisky,
etc. are derivative.

JUD EVANS:
But what you say has nothing at all to do with the fact that these useful
abstractions ARE abstractions - all that you are adding here is the fact [which
I could have already told you] that we humans organise these useful fictions
and categorise them into similar types of utile convenient envisionings? The
word or the substance *something* is NOT drinkable.

If you answered your hostesses invitation to *have *something* to drink* by
saying: Yes, thanks - I’ll have something,* she would raise her eyes to heaven
imploringly and say again: *And WHAT are you going to have - WHAT would you
prefer?*

IF you then said* * whisky please,* she would open the bottle marked:
*Whisky* - a causal object which, if she hit you over the head with it, would cause
a considerable lump on your head, and pour you some of the stuff inside - a
golden causal liquid object containing alcohol, which if you drank enough of
it, would cause you to get drunk, or, if you spilled it upon her best silk
cushions, would cause a stain which would cause her to throw you out of the
house.

On the other hand you could drink your fill of *something* as much as you
liked all night and not get drunk, and it would not stain her best silk cushions
if you spilled it, nor would it cause her to throw you out of the house -
BECAUSE *SOMETHING* SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST - and *something drinkable* also
includes sulphuric acid.

DR. ELDRED:
In other words, what exists first and foremost for human understanding
(but not in the mode of singular real things) are the abstract universals
such as “something”.

JUD EVANS:
What you say has little to do with ontology and all to do with ease of
communication. You are confusing a human understanding of the convenient
grammatical strategies of periphrasis and ambage with the ontological investigation of
the realities of what exists and what does not exist.

DR. ELDRED:
Only by being able to understand something _as_ something can you ever see
and understand that cup of tea before you on the table as “something to drink”.

JUD EVANS:
That of course is true - but what we are discussing is what exists and what
does not exist and NOT our understanding of an object’s precise existential
modality in relation to [say] the traditional tea-drinking society of Britain.
A member of the Bongo-Bongo tribe from the foothills of Mount Wilhelm, the
highest mountain in the The Bismarck Range, which is part of the central
highlands of northeastern Papua New Guinea confronted for the first time with a
cup and saucer of a steaming brown liquid could see and pick up the cup, feel
it, smell it, hear the cup rattle in its saucer and even dip his little
finger into the hot liquid. He would know immediately THAT THE OBJECT EXISTED, but
would not know whether one was meant to drink the brown liquid or whether it
was used as a constituent of a plant-dye for the colouring of penis-sheaths
for the export market.

Alternatively if you visited his village, you too might be presented with an
object of which its use was a complete mystery - but YOU WOULD KNOW that the
object EXISTED. I think to introduce the subject of the anthropocentric
consideration of the USES and even UNDERSTANDING of the things in themselves that
surround us in such a basic, primary ontological investigation [the enquiry
into NOT the *problem of *Being* but whether there IS *Being* - the
interrogation that Heidegger never carried out] as to whether they exist or not is to
invite someone interjecting:

*I don’t give a damn WHAT the object is USED for - for hammering or as a
doorstop - in this ontological examination I am only interested in if it exists
or not.*

DR. ELDRED:
Human understanding moves from the most abstract universals through to more
concrete particularizations (or specifications) to grasp the singular in its
singularity, and never in the other direction, from the singular thing up to
merely nominal, conventional abstractions. (Our understanding would simply not
know where to head upward.)

JUD EVANS:
I interpret this as an acceptance on your behalf that abstractions do NOT
exist and that it is only the concrete objects exist. I am overjoyed to see this
turn - for it may be the harbinger of a new you - unfettered from the
constraints manufactured in mountain monasteries long ago. Welcome to the club.
BTW my own feeling is that it matters not a jot whatever way or direction *human
understnding* decides to float or move in order to grasp something
substantial from the billowing, gossamer webs of ontological obnubilation that drift
over human discourse like a gentle, blanketing fog - the causal things in
themselves exist in the cosmos in the way that they exist notwithstanding
humankind and its categorising, ticketing, syntactico-semanticising and constant
organising of sets of interrelated ideas or principles.

DR. ELDRED:
Furthermore, your pugnacious eliminativism would seem to have put its
nitty-gritty mits on things in themselves by naming concretely “a whisky, a gin”,
etc., but these specifications or particularularizations of the more abstract
universals, “something” and “something to drink”, do not and cannot ever
reach the singular thing in its singularity. Why not? Because our human
understanding works in no other way than to identify the singular with the universal
(or the particularized universal). E. g. we do not merely understand that
“whisky is something to drink” (an identity of a particular with a universal),
but also that “this here is something to drink” (the identity of a singularity
with a particular), and even the expression “this here” is a universalization
of the intended singular thing. Even doing without the “convention” of lan
guage with its “convenient abstractions”, and pointing and grunting instead of
speaking, eliminativism would not attain its postulated rock-bottom reality
of tangible things in themselves.

JUD EVANS:
Again you consistently introduce human understanding which concerns opinion
AS TO THE WAY IN WHICH OBJECTS EXIST into the question of WHAT EXISTS AND
WHAT DOES NOT EXIST. Objects exist whether or not humans understand or not - or
whether they are right or wrong in their opinions of HOW they exist [in what
manner in accordance with human language etc.] The objects of the cosmos
existed eons BEFORE the human race developed and will continue to exist long
AFTER the human race has disappeared from the universe. OK, humankind can argue
as much as they like about their perception of the manner, mode or way in
which that which exists is perceived to exist through the imperfect sensorial
medium of their sensors - but there is no argument AT ALL about the actuality
that ONLY objects exist, and that they exist IN the way that they exist. If
you have hard evidence that objects DO NOT exist in the way that they exist
then now is your opportunity to present it to the public.

Dr. ELDRED:
As it is, your materialist eliminativism operates with a postulated,
unfounded basic unit called “causal object” which is no less an abstraction than the
category of “something to drink”. So denying the existence of the latter (as
a conventional abstraction) implies also the non-existence of the former.

JUD EVANS:
It seems you have forgotten that when a nominalist or an eliminativist uses
the term *causal object* he only ever employs it in the sense of addressing a
singleton - so if you are truly convinced that my postulated basic unit
called “causal object is no less an abstraction than the category of “something to
drink* then I invite you to participate in a public demonstration. A modern
version of Dr Johnson’s invitation to Bishop Berkeley to kick a stone. We
could arrange a screening of our little test on Deutsche TV. You could sit in a
chair and a studio carpenter could hit you over the head with a causal object
- let us say a hammer. If my postulation is incorrect and the hammer does
not exist then I will concede to you that objects do not exist.

What say you?

Jud: [earlier]
The useful fictional abstraction *anything* is another useful fiction that
can be used in a similar way. *Are you going to eat anything?*

DR. ELDRED:
If something existed in the eliminativist universe, then it could perhaps
also be one, but as it is, nothing at all can be said about what’s in the
eliminativist universe.

JUD EVANS:
Absolutely correct. As no *nothing* - no *something* and no *anything* exist
in the cosmos, all that can be correctly and veritably indicated for the
eliminativist are actual causal objects - things in themselves - which are the
true nominata of the significations employed, as antecedally, mutually agreed
upon signs, as to their meaning by members of the given language family.
Adjunctive, ancillary, appurtenant, anthropocentric descriptive abstractions are
additionally useful fictions in describing the way that causal objects exist
as perceived by the circumscribed and limited sensorial equipment of the human
observer.

JUD EVANS: [earlier]
Does that make the invisible exist? I’ll you who/what informs us that sundry
entities that are invisible to the naked eye actually exist - it is the
scientists and their optical and other sensory equipment that signal the
concreticity of tiny objects - it is as simple as that.

DR. ELDRED:
So the first, and perhaps only, theorem of eliminativism is: For all x, if x
cannot be perceived with the unaided or technically aided eye, it does not
exist. Does this theorem have a proof, or is it to be taken as axiomatic dogma?

JUD EVANS: [earlier]
No, that is not the case. No such theorem, proof, or axiomatic dogma
operates. Firstly there are many instances of the detection and acceptance of
existing causal objects without the unaided or aided eye actually seeing them.
Scientists can establish the existence of a some white dwarfs and black holes by
observing the perturbationary effects or secondary gravitational influences
on a nearby binary system that causes it to deviate slightly etc.

DR. ELDRED:
There’s no problem for science to convert these measured perturbations into
a picture and put it on a computer screen or a photo, just as computer
tomographs can produce 3-D pictures of our insides and electron microscopes can
generate images of the very small. But in all these cases, the images produced
are theoretical constructions depending upon the postulates of physics, and
precisely these postulates have to be subjected to phenomenological ontological
scrutiny and cannot be admitted unquestioned as allegedly ‘hard’ evidence for
empiricist eliminativism. To do so is merely scientistic naivety.

JUD EVANS:
Is it *merely scientistic naivety* for doctors or dentists to take ex-ray
photographs of your mouth or body-meat to ascertain the position of an abscess
or a malignant tumour. Would you have them poke around inside your flesh
instead? And what about the *theorectical construction* of Hickman, M. D., M.
R. C. S.(b. 1800, d. 1829) whose house I lived opposite to during WWII [he had
lived in no.18 - I lived in no. 21 Teme Street, Tenbury Wells,
Worcestershire]
His should be recognised as one of the greatest names in the history of
medicine, certainly in that of the anaesthetic relief of painful trauma by
inhalation. Hickman was the pioneer, unrecognised in his own day, of the earliest
steps of that great boon to suffering humanity, by way of scientific
experiment. Some years before ether came from America to England (1846), and before
Simpson in Edinburgh, three years later (1849), discovered chloroform.

Would you have it that such dewy-eyed scientistic naivety is not allowed to
strive to overcome ignorance and make life more bearable for mankind?
In spite of your uncharitibility towards science, you use the internet and
apparently invest in science-dependant financial ventures - how to you
reconcile this jaundiced attitude to science [for ALL businesses WHATEVER they are
science dependent in some way) and the fact that you derive profit from it?

Anyway, what is wrong with theoretical constructions about the possible
nature of certain causal objects [such as the red dwarf or black hole] existing
as detected by ifs influence upon other visible causal objects? YOU COULDN’T
SURVIVE for long if in your personal life you took that attitude towards
causal objects seriously, for every time you walked out from behind a parked car
there would be a chance that you would be killed by a [non-existent] passing
car.

That is if you refused to do as scientists do and look for circumstantial
evidence or clues to the existence of unobserved objects, and defied
precaution and pragmatic, experiential evidence as *scientistic naivety,* and walked
out into the path of a speeding car just because you could not see it in
accordance with your person modus of: *what you CANNOT see [like your
non-existent Sumatran trees] does not exist - and what you CAN detect [the sound of
the oncoming car] may not.

DR. ELDRED:
Moreover, if visibility is to be the criterion for whether something really,
really exists, then compare the theoretically constructed image taken by an
electron microscope (which can only be seen and understood through a highly
theoretical interpretation) with the Angst we can see in a painting by Francis
Bacon, which does not require any theoretical prerequisites to be seen and
understood, but only that we are human beings who are familiar and experienced
in taking in who we humanly are.

JUD EVANS:
You do not state what *theoretically constructed image* you are referring to
here? Many of the objects that I have observed through an electron
microscope have no need to be dramatised as being * a highly theoretical
interpretations?* Most of my personal observations have been pretty obvious and
straightforward once one becomes aquatinted with *how to look.* It is rather like a
specialist surgeon may look at an x-ray prior to an operation, or the many,
many times I have looked at the vague foetal shapes provided live ultrasound
scans of my wives [plural of wife] extended stomachs which, after a time,
and with a little guidance from the diagnostic operator becomes familiar and
eventually blindingly obvious. We both knew that our youngest son had a
thumb-sucking habit because we had observed him doing it in the womb before he was
born and were able to take advice on how to dissuade a child from such
behaviour [with the concomitant risk of dental malformation] before his birth.
Personally I believe that it is antiscientific naivety to accuse scientists of
naive scientific theoretical constructions, for if such an attitude were
widespread we would still be huddled in the back of some dark Platonic cave damp
with disease, whilst some perfidious shaman played the beast with two backs
with our young ones.

DR ELDRED:
I know, I know, the eliminativist will say that Angst does not exist but is
only a neurophysiological arrangement of atoms.

JUD EVANS:
Absolutely.

DR. ELDRED:
and Francis Bacon’s paintings are merely arrangements of certain chemically
describable pigment atoms and molecules on a stretched piece of canvas
employed as subjectile whose really real reality can be described in terms of atomic
physics and chemistry.

JUD EVANS:
Don’t fall into the trap of imagining that eliminativists [THIS
eliminativist anyway] do not appreciate the arts as much as any other sensitive, educated
cultured person. Art, poesy, literature and its delights is no stranger to
me - and I once owned my own successful art company which was a springboard
to greater things

DR. ELDRED:
Unfortunately, your nuts-and-bolts materialist eliminativism eliminates
– and above all _overlooks_ — almost everything decisive and interesting
that arises from the identity between human being and being, attempting to
blow it out of the water with crude, down-to-earth, commonsensical tales of how
our brain processes the data it takes on board through neurophysiological
sensors such as eyes, ears and nose. I have yet to see anything remotely
resembling even an attempt at grounding — as opposed to a dogmatic postulation –
of your eliminativist reduction of existents to physical, tangible things.
It’s not very persuasive to keep reading “X does not exist.” asserted without
any argument at all.

JUD EVANS:
You make the typical mistake of muddling up my scientific, ontologically
eliminativist dialectical persona with my personal every-day-life-one.
We all deliberately suspend our belief whenever we watch a film or play, or
read a novel. I am no different in that respect from anybody else.
The difference twixt you and I is that whilst I [like you] am capable of
such temporary suspension of belief in the realm of the arts, I am also capable
of temporary suspension of belief when I go into a church [usually a
Catholic one] as I do at least once a month, to drink in the religious ambience,
admire the holy paintings and statuary, and to delight in the majesty and
resplendence of the sung mass. So too do I read the King James Bible in order to
soak in the glory of my English tongue, or read the Ramayana and Maharabatha to
experience the colour, excitement and sheer entertainment of the Hindu epic.

Just because we/I reject the concept that the abstraction *beauty* does not
exist, and just because I leve my rose-tinted spectacles on the hall table
before I enter the philosophy room does NOT MEAN that for us, what we consider
to be beautiful objects do not, and that I am not as sensitively civilised
in my appetites and pursuits as anybody else.

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

Posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
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