All posts by anomalogue

Metaphysics and epoche

Philosophy

The phenomenal can be interpreted variously, but it must be incorporated in any interpretation. In other words, in a legitimate interpretation no phenomenon can be omitted

A dimension or pole of the metaphysical manifold can be omitted from a legitimate interpretation, but this omission is not a matter of will (a.k.a. “faith”). It is a matter of experiencing the metaphysical extensivity in the phenomenon or not experiencing it. To superimpose an interpretation onto an experience, either before or after, is bad faith. If the interpretive superimposition leaves the phenomenal element intact, somehow that is even worse.

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Proper faith tries on possibilities and makes a genuine effort to see differently. If it succeeds, it succeeds; if it fails, it fails – but faith is necessarily intellectually honest.

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Subjective intellectual honesty is the ground of friendship. Active, receptive intellectual honesty is the ground of philosophical friendship. It has been said that true friendship only exists among philosophers.

Interest

Etymology

Consider the etymology of “interest”, and ask yourself: Isn’t it a case study of how meaning drains from words over time? Inter + est. Nowadays the word “interest” implies that we stand apart from a thing and regard it objectively. That is we stay apart from it and keep it “whole against the sky”, as opposed to entering into its being – really being with it. At least we’ve preserved some formal grammatical clues: we remain interested in something, not interested about it, or on it, or toward it.

Reflection on the Moon

Fables, myths & parables

The Moon, the pseudo-Sun of the night sky, which derives its illumination entirely from the Sun it imitates, always shows us one face. The other side, the “dark” side, always faces away: like the back of one’s head when one looks in the mirror, or like the self when one reflects on who one really is, or like the status of a relationship or a situation when one regards it objectively.

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I wrote this in order to participate in the mythical existence for a moment. What was it like? I’ve trained my reflective mind to admit: I don’t know.

Subjectivity

Philosophy

Until a person discovers the existence of the existential I (Dasein), subjectivity exists as the objective psychic content of an objective self.

Until a person discovers the existence of the existential We and connects it back to existential I, subjectivity exists as the container of objectivity. What stands beyond the existential I literally is  unthinkable, because one does not know what to look for or how to think with the appropriate structures. Such a thinker can find only Himself at the ultimate bounds of knowledge. This ignorance is spiritual bliss.

A vision

Hermeneutics, Holarchy, Philosophy

Having vision is a matter of seeing from a distinctive point of view. What is seen from that perspective is not itself the vision but the result of the vision.

Objectivist thinking misses what is essential to vision and leaps over the perspective directly to the objects of sight. Any vividly imagined aggregate of ideas is “a vision”, whether it is seen coherently or not.

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A vision, being perspectival, is holistic. If, in the course of resolving a problem, you have a vision of its solution, if you are open and alert, you will notice that much more than the object of the vision is affected. With genuine philosophical problems everything is affected simultaneously.

Objectivist thinking misses what is essential to holism and leaps over the quality of wholeness directly to the object-parts that “constitute” a whole. Any aggregate, whether it is seen coherently or not, is called holistic if it satisfies all criteria of “completeness” – that is, no omission is identified. The being of the wholes is reduced to sum of parts.

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Thinking literally: If you stand in place and have someone else shift the furniture around for you have you changed your perspective?

If you change your opinion on this or that isolated fact have you changed your perspective on it?

Existential entities

Hermeneutics, Philosophy, Pragmatism

The existential I – Heidegger’s Dasein – is the cheapest and most exciting philosophical discovery.

The existential You – Buber’s Thou – is more elusive. Catching sight of the concept of the existential You points the way to the development of the intellectual and ethical practice of existing in the I-Thou relationship. The rules in this strata of being are different from those of ordinary objective thought.

Developing the practice of the I-Thou relationship, one necessarily discovers the existential We, the ground of I-Thou. With that discovery one begins to move into the profound and boring world of Pragmatism.

(At this point, I’d call myself a Hermeneutical Pragmatist. When I’m done reading Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology I am looking forward to reading Richard Rorty.)

Atomized

Ideas

Business habitually adopts philosophical language with very specific, subtle and valuable meanings, softens the meaning, and reduces the words to banal synonymity. Precisely what most needs saying cannot be said.

1) Each; 2) Sentence; 3) Is; 4) Reduced; 4.a) To; 4.a.i.) A; 4.b) Series; 4.b.i) Of; 4.c.) Discrete; 4.d.) Words.

  • The
  • Format
    • Is
    • As
  • Inhospitable
  • To
    • Meaning
  • As
  • The
    • News.
      • Separated
      • and
      • decontextualized

    everything

    1. is
    2. synonymous.

The flower arranger

Fables, myths & parables

The man and the woman met when they were students. Once or twice a month he would bring her a perfect rose. He would go from shop to shop, looking for one with a perfect color and shape with no blemishes on the petals or stem.

After they graduated and got married, he began giving her bouquets. At first they were conventionally perfect, but gradually they became increasingly eccentric. He began combining selections of flowers in unusual ways, in symmetries she had never seen, but which felt familiar to her.

After the birth of their child, he began arranging the flowers in front of her. He would dump a pile of flowers on the table and, without taking his eyes off her, he would arrange the flowers into a perfect unity, incorporating every one. She sometimes saw him steal flowers from the neighbors’ front lawns as he walked home.

At some point she realized that his flower selections, which had been growing more haphazard by the year, were now random. Some of the flowers were severely damaged and some were rotten–but he used them all, and his compositions gained depth and power. He would finish, and, seeing what he had made, she would cry without knowing why.

Toward the end of their life he would run his lawn mower over a corner of their wildflower bed, and create a bouquet from the clippings.

Being concept-bound

Philosophy

To think conceptually is not the same as to be concept-bound.

One decisive difference is in one’s interpretation of sequence: are the conceptualized elements that constitute the concept understood to precede and produce the meaning of the concept; or do the conceptualized elements follow and attempt to account for the spontaneous meaning of the concept?

To make this concrete: Let’s say that a wife is angry with her husband. He asks her why. She begins to explain, listing reasons. However, each time she lists a reasons her husband calls it into doubt, pointing to an assumption she’s made about his motives. According to him it is these unsubstantiated assumptions that have caused her offense – not his actions as he meant them. He points out to her that since the reasons are faulty, her anger is unfounded. Here’s the crux: the assumption is that her anger is founded on the assumptions.

In this example if the husband actually believes his own argument, he is concept-bound – and this is true even if the wife has in fact misinterpreted the meaning of his actions. And if the wife is not genuinely emotionally persuaded but is no longer confident in her assessment of her husband’s behavior she is also concept-bound. She has been bound-up by her husband’s argument, and made unable to act on her interpretation, not relieved of a painful conception and enabled to act according to a less painful and more persuasive truth. If the wife were brought to see what happened from a shifted perspective and found that her offense has simply vanished this would have been thinking conceptually without succumbing to conceptualization.

The conceptualization of facts preceding meaning is itself one of our deepest concept-binding conceptualizations.

Derivative conceptualizations are sometimes conceived to to relieve a thinker of unwanted conceptualizations. Examples are: 1) Skepticism, the belief that calling all individual elements of a way of seeing into doubt will weaken the sense of an unwanted interpretive or pre-interpretive meaningful whole; 2) the notion that conceptual thought is the root of unwanted interpretive or pre-interpretive wholes, so avoidance of clear thought is avoidance of concept-boundness; and 3) a favorite of moms everywhere, that we can decide to conceptualize individual elements and the whole in a way that suits us in order to feel how we wish to about life.

The way out of concept-boundedness is to be faithful to one’s full experience and to reflect on this experience conceptually.