Heidegger

PART TWO OF TWO.

JUD EVANS:
- 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?

DR. ELDRED:
This ontic clownery carries no weight in any ontological argumentation.

JUD EVANS:
It is only my good-natured way of shielding you from the embarrassing
reality of the claims you make, softening the blow if you like, for I am beginning
to get the feeling that you will NEVER come up with the proofs for your
curious claims and you are truly boxed in a corner from which there is no
argument that you can escape. The classical response at this juncture, according to
my experience on this list is that an element of personal attack starts
creeping in, usually out of frustration that they have run out of ideas in order
to counteract the relentless logic of my arguments and the final realisation
that they haven’t got a snowball’s chance of ever providing any proof. This
sort of thing comes as no surprise to me of course for I recognised long ago
that folk philosophy is a faith - it is not philosophy or ontology at all.

DR. ELDRED:
The appropriate experiment to prove the existence of your causal objects
independently of any human understanding would be to set up an experimental
arrangement in which a non-hammer (a hammer as a practical human-made thing is a
product of human understanding and therefore necessarily excluded from this
experiment) is not-hit over the non-head of no one (because this experiment
has to take place outside the identity of human understanding and being) on
non-TV (since TV is a human invention, the product of human understanding,
which has to be excluded from this experiment).

JUD EVANS:
But every object in the cosmos is a causal changing object whether it is
spewed out of the mouth of a volcano and fashioned by an artisan in a
tool-making workshop. You talk about the *non-hammer* and the *non-hit* over the
non-head* only demeans your curious onto-faith even further in the eyes of an
amused public. Even the ontofolk are not silly enough to be taken in by that sort
of comedy. Now come on - let’s be serious about this. You cannot wriggle out
of your responsibility to provide some REAL proof for your claims. The
viewers will understand PERFECTLY that sitting on the chair is a folk ontologist
whose claim is that objects cannot cause anything. THey will see the hammer -
they will see your head - they will see the arm of the studio-assiatant raise
the hammer in his hand and bring it down with great force upon your head. The
will see you slump to the ground.

The announcer will then turn to the audience and ask who in there opinion
was right concerning causal objects. Your bloodstained figure on the studio
floor will bear mute testimony to the utter foolishness of your claims.

DR. ELDRED:
The non-observers of this experiment outside any possible experience would
have to (non-)observe the non-effect of the non-hitting with a non-hammer of
no-one — and report the results neatly on a non-data sheet (because nothing is
given to the non-present, non-experiencing non-observer to report). Then
you’d have water-tight proof of the existence of your causal objects
independently of any human understanding. As it is, your repeated assertion of the
existence of things in themselves, independently of any human understanding
whatsoever, can only be the articulation of non-human sounds outside any possible
or conceivable human experience.

JUD EVANS:
The evidence is staring you and the millions of viewers in the face - your
recumbent figure being stretchered away by the ambulance men.

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.

DR. ELDRED:
No, it is not “*merely scientistic naivety* for doctors or dentists to take
ex-ray photographs,” etc, because that’s their job as scientifically trained
practitioners,

JUD EVANS:
So in your view during the stages when scientists are theorising and
experimenting with new means of unburdening suffering humanity they are vilified by
you, but when their *naive theories* prove to be efficient and workable
methods of relieving human trauma you are fist in the chair for treatment. Do you
not detect a little hypocrisy in such behaviour?

DR ELDRED:
but it IS scientistic naivety to adopt, in an ontology, the tested and
proven ontic procedures of science and/or natural science’s fundamental concepts
without subjecting them to thorough ontological critique.

JUD EVANS:
And what specifically are you referring to here? Even the doctor varies his
questions to the patient as if already not sure whether pain exists or not for
example. Sometimes he says *Which is the painful shoulder?* and sometimes he
says: *In which shoulder is the pain? As the Philip was quick to point out
the obvious - it matters not to the patient whether *pain* exists* or not when
he or she is contorted in agony, and ait matter not to the lovelorn whether
*love* exists when he or she is consumed with passion for the beloved. As an
ontologist I am NOT interested in the patient or the lover [that is NOT to
say that I am devoid of the normal feelings of empathy for my fellow creatures
- I am ONLY interested in the question which underpins the wide, unrequitable
gap between modern ontology and folk ontology - the most important question
in philosophy - *WHAT EXISTS AND WHAT DOES NOT EXIST? It is impossible to
subject ANY of the tested and proven ontic procedures of science and/or natural
science’s fundamental concepts to thorough *ontological critique* without
FIRST OF ALL subjecting the fundamental foundations which underpins that
*ontological critique.* If one approached the scientists in Cape Kennedy who had
just successfully landed a space vehicle on Pluto and explained that some Doctor
fellow in Germany who didn’t believe that objects change and that they are
incapable of causing anything wanted to *ontologically criticise them* what do
you think their response would be? Oh yes, they would say *Well how does he
think we got the damn thing off the ground if the thruster rocket where
incapable of causing any pressure?* But they wouldn’t just say that would they -
they would have a lot more to say which isn’t fit for public publication on
this discussion group.

DR. ELDRED:
Science itself does not do any ontology and unknowingly works, and must
work, within a certain pre-given ontological understanding of the world that is
not of its own making. It is this fundamental understanding of the world.

JUD EVANS:
There are some scientists who are aware of the ontological factors
underlying their experiments and theories. But generally speaking - yes - you are
right.

DR. ELDRED:
– the historical casting of being in a given epoch — that has to be
brought to light by ontological scrutiny — and not ontic convictions about the
efficacy of science or scientifically established ‘results’, neither of which is
here the subject of debate at all. Such clownery is only evasion of the
ontological argument.

JUD EVANS:
The *historical casting of being in a given epoch* or to de-Heideggerianise
the term as *Opinions as to the political, religious, economic and
sociological conditions in a given historical period* need to be examined and explained
NOT BY PHILOSOPHERS but by specialist political commentators, theologians,
sociologists and economists. This is PRECISELY what Husserl was getting at when
he accused Heidegger of being no more that a glorified sociologist and
anthropologist. All that is left as a *rump* for philosophy nowadays is to
finally sort out the existential mess which folk philosophy has presented us with
and to discuss ethical problems concerning human interaction with other
humans, questions of medical, legal, animal, and environmental ethics concerning
the flora and fauna of the world we share with other entities. Significantly my
own philosophy department is not called *The Philosophy Department* any more
it is called *The Department of Professional Ethics.* The writing is on the
wall for philosophy - *Be relevant* or Sorry - try elsewhere.*

DR. ELDRED:
You have to be clear about what you are doing: either ontology (in which
nothing can be presupposed, but rather everything must be thought through in
adequate concepts) or promoting some pugilistic theory of the universe that
slip-slides between unfounded ontological assertions and natural science that is
taken without question to provide the hard ontic evidence for ontological
claims (which it can never do).

JUD EVANS:
I thank you for your advice, but for me *ontology* means something entirely
different from old folk ontology. The *adequate concepts* of yesteryear are
inadequate arguments concerning historical philosophy, which though as a
separate subject is interesting enough in its own right is completely irrelevant
to modern life. The reason for my *pugilism* is because I identify *old folk
ontology* as a dangerous component of the transcendentalist apocalypse towards
which we are all heading as if hypnotised - and of course *hypnotised* is
EXACTLY what has happened to us - brainwashed from birth into the old lies of
folk ontology - with its enervating dualisms and divisive dialectics. Folk
ontology is as important to religion now as it was in the early days of
Christianity when the church fathers injected the church with large dollops of
Greekish ontological stiffening in order to render it more intellectually
attractive and credible. Folk ontology performs the same service to Bush, Blair and
any other leader driven by the fictions of religion, and similar philosophical
underpinning can be found in Islam.

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?

DR. ELDRED:
E. g. the image produced by an electron microscope. Such images are simply
drenched in theory, and any self-evidence they may seem to have to the
unitiated eye is due only to the cleverness with which the data gathered have been
worked up by the computer into an image on the basis of the human theoretical
understanding of what an electron microscope does and is designed to do.

JUD EVANS:
But EXACTLY the same thing applies to your optician when he makes up a
prescription for your spectacle lens, or when you have your house rewired and the
electrician works out a ring-main and and a voltage demand estimate. Are you
saying that these results should be ignored - I am still unclear whether you
are just unusually suspicious of workmen and technicians, or whether you are a
completely ant-science *back to the hills* anti-scientist? You obviously
view science as a threat but you identify it as undermining and exponentially
exploding some of the myths on which you have founded your very life work - is
this so?

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:
On the basis of unfounded (and I must say, very narrow-minded)
eliminativist dogma that fixatedly focuses the tiny cone of its flashlight on mechanistic
interactions among material particles, to the exclusion of all other
phenomena that we understand very well preontologically.

JUD EVANS:
If as you seem to imply here you are staking a claim on *ANGST* as yet
another abstract existent in your L’Armadietto di Travestimenti Burleschi (
Cabinet of Seriously-Minded Travesties) then go ahead and ticket it to be included
in your forthcoming Große Ausstellung Metaphysischer Proben to which the
world and his wife will flock to see the abstractions in the flesh at last.

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:
So now the eliminativist becomes magnanimous, puts on his slippers and
indulges in his leisure hours in the quaint, non-existent fictions of art and
literature? Very 19th C.

JUD EVANS:
Correction: *Puts on his slippers and indulges in his leisure hours in the
ELIMINATION OF quaint, non-existent fictions.

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.

DR. ELDRED:
No, we do not suspend ontological belief when experiencing art, but can
only experience art precisely _through_ our ontological understanding of the
world within which ANY ontic understanding must be situated.

JUD EVANS:
Same thing - different words.

DR. ELDRED:
You have an extremely naive view of art — as if it were fictitious
portrayal.

JUD EVANS:
You have no idea of my taste in art - which as it happens is extremely
eclectic. For you the oil image of The Mona Lisa IS the Mona Lisa eh?

DR. ELDRED:
Art is realer than your real “causal objects”.

JUD EVANS:
A work of art - IS A CAUSAL OBJECT which causes one to react in certain ways
- we change the way we exist as we direct our gaze upon it.

DR. ELDRED:
The point is that, say, in a painting by Francis Bacon we are able to see
and understand aspects of human being that can never be seen or understood in
the nut-and-bolts, nitty-gritty everyday reality that your eliminativist
ontology casts as the sole reality. In other words, works of art can be the
vehicle through which an other aspect of beings in their being come to light..

JUD EVANS:
I have never ever suggested that eliminativist ontology *casts itself as the
sole reality* - for me only that which exists exists and *reality* is just
another folk ontology fantasy. The human exists in existential modalities of
understanding and being enraptured and relating to any piece of art in a
similar way to anybody else. The difference is that for the eliminativist it is the
understanding, enraptured human appreciator that exists and not some
ethereal *understanding or enraptured realm.

DR. ELDRED:
Your impoverished reality of causal objects doesn’t hold a candle to the
existence of art works and what they reveal to human understanding, especially
about who we human beings are.

JUD EVANS:
Meaningless palavers about the *impoverished reality of causal objects* does
not mean a thing - hits no intellectual button - exerts no ideational
leverage with someone for whom *reality* [whether *impoverished* or enriched*] is a
meaningless term from history - as irrelevant as *phlogiston* or *the
vapours* or *properties, essences, astrology, cartomancy, channeling, chiromancy,
dowsing, fortune telling, geomancy, ley lines / dragon lines, numerology,
ornithomancy, pyramid power, remote viewing, scrying, telepathy, levitation and
other of dusty heirlooms from the museum of metaphysics which were hailed as
the great *triumps* of folk ontology.

JUD EVANS:
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
leave 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.

DR. ELDRED:
All this amounts to is an admission of how impoverished eliminativism is as
an ontology, for all the phenomena you mention here as somehow elevating for a
purportedly non-existent human mind

JUD EVANS:
Where did I mention *mind?*

DR. ELDRED:
and spirit

JUD EVANS:
Where did I mention *spirit?* You are indulging in your favourite fallacy
again the erection of straw men. Do you HONESTLY think you can get away with
such tricks with me of all people? You seem to believe that you folk ontologists
have a god given right to our very culture. My culture - my history is as
much mine as anybody else’s.

DR ELDRED:
are beyond the reach of a narrow-minded casting of mutually impinging causal
objects that are asserted, without argument, to be the sole existent nuts
and bolts of the world.

JUD EVANS:
Then your way is clear isn’t it - provide the proofs to your increasingly
bizarre existential claims and you can settle down with your abstractions,
snuggle into your slippers summon and your real Mona Lisa to step out of her
frame, rest your head upon her ample bosom and go peacefully asleep with a
contented smile o your face and live happily ever after untroubled by the strident
voices of the unbelievers to disturb your transcendentalist tranquility.

DR. ELDRED:
The ontological task is rather to carefully capture, in appropriate
ontological concepts, the rich phenomenality that flourishes WITHIN the identity of
human understanding and being, and not to scourge it with unfounded
eliminativist slash-and-burn tactics. What is it about the British Insulars that
philosophy never took root there, and withered and died among them? Is it the
omnicide for all things ontological known as British common-sense?

JUD EVANS:
They all emigrated to Australia - hence the reputation of Australia as the
ontological and philosophical centre of the earth. ;-0

regards,

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

Posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
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