But it is not about the ethics of pain, nor is it about the significant whole. This is not an argument about ethics any more than Kant's Critique is about logic and logically solving cognitive puzzles. It is an apriori argument: What is there in an ethical matter such that in order to be ethical at all, this is an essential part to it being what it is. This is value, a structural feature of our existence, always already in our existence (Heidegger's care comes to mind, but he had little interest in ethics. Curious).What is value? "The good"? One thing is clear, remove value from the world, and ethics simply vanishes. It doesn't vanish incidentally, as when one removes the umbrella from above one's head, protection from the rain vanishes; it vanishes essentially: ethics becomes an impossibility. — Constance

What I have said before is also said of value. How could pain be thought of in a being like us, exempt from its valuation? It is not possible insofar as we are beings who react to suffering and pain according to positive and negative valuations, but in the response (be it by judgment or action) the sign already functions. How could the response not be related to pain and suffering? how could it not have effects on our constitution? Pain and suffering transcends to the extent that it is sign and resonates through our being. Its effects transcend its first moment, they are located in the memory, in the judgment, in the representation, in the response. Here pain and suffering is not the simple cause that can be distinguished from its effects, pain and suffering is its effects beyond the abstraction of a first and absolute moment.

Very much appreciate this passage here, "The temporality according to which this Ego is given refers to the constituent absence of the Ego since pain is also given as duration." Would you tell me where this comes from in the "Phenomenology of the internal consciousness of time"? I have it here but I can't find it. — Constance

You find it in Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal time, when he speaks of the three phases that constitute the temporality of consciousness: Retention, perception and protention. This temporality is presented in the epokhé, in which the difference of the "nows" constitutes the living present. But it is necessary to note the difference of the "nows", and how a present-now is immediately past, and gives way to a future-now. In both cases the absence is related and constitutes the living present. In our case, the living present of pain and suffering.

Consider for that moment as you stand before, say, a black plague victim and all the horrors, you proceed to explain that agency itself is negated by a proper analysis of the temporal construct of engagement, and so suffering is analytically without agency... so all is well. — Constance

It is the opposite. When you act in the face of another person's pain, that pain is not present to you. I claim that helping there is an act that transcends the central element of phenomenology (perception and evidence in the living present). You do not have the evidence that the other is suffering (the phenomenological evidence), but you still help the other person. This is what our act of compassion and empathy consists of: The evidence that I am an other for another. The evidence that I am not the only one and that non-presence is so "originary" is something that occurs in my most "isolated and solitary" moment in the reduction of reductions, in the transcendental reduction. It is necessary to be sufficiently other to help and assist in pain and suffering. One must embrace the possible absence of pain and suffering (the pain and suffering of the other is absent in me).

Right, but the questions I think his philosophy points to is: "from whence rules? Why are they useful? How do we come to understand them? Why are they natural to human behavior?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a fragment in Philosophical Investigations that I remember in accordance with what you say:

258. 'Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. -- But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition. -- How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation -- and so, as it were, point to it inwardly. -- But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign. -- Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connection between the sign and the sensation. -- But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'."

I would say that the possibility of following the rule, even in a self-imposed way, is given by repetition as meaning. That is, memory here plays a revealing function: at the moment I remember a sensation there is a repetition, not of the sensation itself, but a trace of it, something of that sensation that is repeated. Signs help us to remember and repeat. That is why the sign ("S" in this case given by Wittgenstein) is not an accident but a necessary possibility given by repetition and "being a trace", "being an indication". That is, memory and sensation function as a system of signs, whereby the external force of another system of signs (the conventional one) can be applied. But, beyond our will, the external force of signification is already operating at the moment of the sensation, the memory, and the sign of the example given by Wittgenstein. By repetition and force it is convention building within ourselves.

From this it follows that an individual and unconventional language is possible to the extent that even in our interiority the external element of language is already functioning. That is to say, when the system of signs [sensing - remembering - writing] is established, there is already an external imposition on the writer of "S"'s own will that senses and remembers. That is why the writer of "S" can understand the correctness (the imposed force) of having to refer to his sensations always as "S".

Accordingly we follow rules (rules are sign systems that function in a certain way but are imposed by force) because we are composed of sign systems and sign systems interact with each other as contending forces. That is, we are linguistic (or semiotic) animals, but at the level of composition, in our case at the level of how the relationship between sensation, memory and writing is given. But even beyond that, for example, at the biological level: Genetics, is not what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life" just the set of rules (system of signs) that make us common as a species? We are already made by rules and rule-process-constitutiing.

I agree that there must be some commonality that allows us to move between games. Obviously people can become fluent in new languages and cultures.

This is why I considered the idea of overlapping, and perhaps somewhat hierarchical "forms of life." Pace Wittgenstein, I think we can often understand Chinese gestures quite well. Hell, we can understand when a dog, lion, or badger is upset because mammals signal aggression in similar ways. The reason "reptilian" and "insect-like," have the negative connotations they do is because these animals don't signal their "emotions" to us in the same way, leading to them seeming unpredictable and alien.

I imagine coming to understand extraterrestrial or synthetic lifeforms capable of language would end up being a good deal more difficult than learning a new human language, although perhaps not impossible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Something I have wondered recently about what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life" is whether this is the limit of language to function. Isn't technology, computation and information the way in which language extends beyond organic life? In informational language we are constantly confronted with concepts and notions such as "code", "programming language", "transcription", "decoding", "information". I wonder whether or not it is correct to state that it is a given or a fact that language extends to reach the non-living and mechanical. From my point of view (which is that of a certain independence of signification-process that prevents it from being confined to intention, to context, and ultimately to forms of life), it is more than valid what computation (even artificial intelligence) can reveal to us about language and about what can perhaps be called "the freedom of the sign".

So on the contrary, I think nothing we do exceeds use. My interpretation is Wittgenstein I don't thing was creating a theory of meaning. But saying that what we think of as meaning is nothing above use and behavior. — Apustimelogist

What I say about use I can say a fortiori about the organic ends of the organism. At this point the power of language extends beyond the organism and is able to situate itself in the non-organic. This is the case, for example, with computation. But computation is a possibility of the signifier to function beyond organic context to the point of becoming autonomous in its production of signification (artificial intelligence). All this is something natural to the signifier since signification comes to analogize itself to the most mechanical reality in the sense of being composed of different systems of signs of different hierarchy and their relations. It comes to me the notion of "transcription" which expresses how different sign systems interact with each other extending signification beyond the human environment. A first system of signs affects a second system of signs, configures it, and unleashes different relations and movements in that second system. All this takes place to the extent that the signifier becomes unrooted from its current context and functioning (use) and opens itself to reinterpretation (even in interpretation in its most mechanical sense). "Things make signs of other things" is perhaps why language allows us to relate to the world; there is something in language that simply does not belong to us and maintains continuity with the world. Isn't this what the ancients called "Logos"?

I would say that at the level of the signifier there is an inability of use to master language and signification. For example, supposing that two cultures meet, the first thing we have in mind are the signifiers they utter. But how do we know that there is something beyond the sounds that another person utters? The use would not be given at once at the moment of uttering sounds. That is why a person can intuit that the other person speaks a language, because the signifier, the sign, in a certain sense, has been decontextualized, it appears decontextualized. The sign functions qua sign (signaling a meaning or a use) even when the context and use is not given or immediately present to an interlocutor.

And isn't this the possibility of communication, intercultural for example? If a person says "hola" to an English speaker, "hola" appears as just a signifier to the English speaker but devoid of its meaning and use. But it is precisely to the extent that "hola" has become unrooted from its context that it is possible for its context to be learned: the English speaker learns the use and meaning of "hola" from its own context. Only then is communication possible: To the extent that the sign refers beyond the given context and usage. Significance, the most proper of language, exceeds use but does not exclude it. It must be said that language has stopping points where signification slows down and that is what we call use and meaning. But signification always extends beyond these stopping points.

According to the above, meaning survives, for example interculturally, to the extent that one's own usage can be learned by a foreign culture. Because signification exceeds contexts. One cannot be a cultural relativist if meaning (even if understood as usage) transcends culture. Wittgenstein would not have taken into account the fact of the signifier that exceeds use and makes communication possible. In this sense two persons or two different animals (as in the cases of captive chimpanzees and humans) can understand each other insofar as there is signification. Did Wittgenstein have a theory of the sign?

Even if I were to grant that the experience of pain was memory contingent, this would not, nor can anything, undo or diminish the manifestation of the pain qua pain. — Constance

And I agree with that. But I consider that pain must be seen as part of a significant whole. In this sense pain is not only the sensation but the memory, the value, its interpretation, its representation, and so on. This, I believe, reveals to us an element of absence (non-presence, Husserlian non-evidence) in its ethical consideration. Hence, I cannot give primacy to my pain with respect to the pain of the other person. The value of presence and of the evidence of experience in phenomenology is surpassed by the value of absence in order to be able to pose the ethics of pain.

Husserl's is not a Cartesian cogito. It is a transcendental ego that stands in an intentional relationship with its object, and these relationships are not simply knowledge relationships, but include liking, disliking, anticipating, dreading, and so forth. But no matter. Note that that which is inscribed in a chain of signification is merely an "adumbration" of the experience. I recall that I sprained my ankle, but that recollection does not relive the pain of the sprain. The pain itself is transcendentally occurrent, meaning it issues from a "now" that is not discovered in the retention — Constance

I agree that Husserl's transcendental Ego is not exactly the same as the Cartesian Cogito. However the epokhe saves an Ego. Husserl's analyses of the temporality of that Ego in my opinion are irrefutable. The temporality according to which this Ego is given refers to the constituent absence of the Ego since pain is also given as duration, moments that are more intense than others, sometimes it passes, and sometimes it returns. It is impossible to detach pain from the temporality composed of "here and now" and therefore with the relationship with other "here and now" that are not present. Is this not the experience of the other? Another person who has experiences in relation to me is another "here and now" that I do not perceive. The pain of another person is given in a here and now that I do not perceive and is not an experience of mine.

This is confusing to me. Levinas said the opposite. One's own suffering translates into a knowledge of suffering that there is a metaethical grounding to one's compassion. The Other's suffering has always been understood empathetically, which places the nature of understanding always with the self. Transcending one's self begins with self knowledge: I see another suffering, and "it hurts; it hurts and I know it." This is the foundation of empathy. — Constance

That is why I am not "Levinasanian". The condition for there to be a pain or suffering of another person is that the value of the experience, the presence and the present of that experience is to be transcended by an absence. In this case the experience of the other that I do not perceive and that is given to me as absent. But in the end this absence is constitutive, even of the ethical consideration of myself and of the inscription of pain in a process of signification. The process of signification is like language: it functions with signs. And it is characteristic of a sign to function in different contexts. In this case pain is a sign, it can have existence in me or in another person, different organisms, different contexts, transcending the value of presence "here and now". It is the most common story of meaning: When we read a book we relive what a person thought in the "here and now" and captured it in ink (or in some data), but that "here and now" is completely absent at the moment when I read the book written by another person: I am another "here and now" also absent for the writer. But the meaning of the book "survives" transcends the experience and the evidence (Husserl's evidence) of both the reader and the writer.

Hello.

In my opinion any idea of minimal blocks of the universe to be valid or true must specify what those blocks are and carry out an effective reconstruction of the world (as we know it). And that is something that cannot be done. What the title of this topic asks for can also be interpreted as: Is it possible to reduce the universe to a few small objects that would explain everything we know about the world? Every reduction has a starting point, the universe as we know it; but to be valid the reduction must have a way back and forth.

For example, we can say that a geometrical object like the triangle is composed of atoms since the triangle is an idea, ideas are physical-chemical processes of the brain. But at the moment of saying this we must immediately ask ourselves if we can reconstruct the triangle with which we started with those atoms, their relations, compositions, etc. In the same way we reconstruct the triangle through the relations of three lines (which is a correct reduction, because you can reconstruct the triangle from three lines in an euclidian space).

The reason of why I identify the ego with the self is because the common core of both notions is unity in identity as self-relation excluding alterity and otherness.

However, I would not agree that one can be ignorant of the suffering of the world. First because I would not speak of the world but of persons and sentient beings; second because this process of projection is not knowledge but how the experience of suffering in general is given. But not only of suffering but of any experience (so I'm not a pessimist). It is not something that can simply be known or ignored but that already operates in us and in the way our perception works. In this sense no being can deny that it is possible for there to be another-suffering.

Hi,

In my point of view the suffering of other people is given to us (as a possibility) through a process of alterity that affects the self. This process forces us to project our suffering in others:

Our experience of suffering is inscribed in a chain of signification that the self, the ego, cannot dominate. That is why when we speak of suffering in a certain sense we do not speak only of our suffering but of a suffering-other. For the very moment that suffering takes place as something that happens to an "I" it is projected onto the form of a "here and now". All suffering takes place in a "here and now", but not all "here and now" are equal. This inequality in the "here and now" introduces in us the notion of another "here and now": the "here and now" of the possible other, of the other subject: Projection. I perceive myself then not as a simple self, but as an other for the other. Where do we get the idea that another person suffers? From our perception, which presents itself not as something absolutely mine, but already in a certain sense as something-other. Only in this way can we be able to say: I suffer as another suffers, because I am sufficiently other to myself.

I believe you are right about the way language constitutes the Being of what can be said. But not the Being of what cannot be said. When language is deployed to speak the world it encounters the impossible, that is, what is "exterior to itself. A toothache's ache is not a thesis. I put most emphasis on the value dimension of our existence which is so emphatically underscored in the existential declaration of what it is. This I hold to be evident beyond question: screaming agony, say, as the most poignant example, is NOT an interpretative phenomenon in the purity of its presence[...] — Constance

Here, I do not care if I am caught in the middle of interpretative necessity (after all, saying something is outside language is itself an occasion pf language) which have no limit in subsuming phenomena, and the "purity" of the pain. The screaming pain of this sprained ankle IS absolutely authoritative, and this sense of absolute IS aligned with the traditional sense of ontology, which Heidegger wants to ignore.

As to universal maxims being followed by humans, we take no issue with this. But the analytic of ethics/aesthetics (Wittgenstein says they are the same thing, and I agree) reveals a transcendental Reality that has nothing to do with the Kantian/Heideggerian ontotheology.

And God is, I argue, certainly NOT a cogito. This is a rationalistic perversion invented by logicians. — Constance

I claim that there is indeed a process of interpretation. As I said, suffering does not occur in the absolute singularity that you claim. And this is demonstrated in the exercise of the recognition of pain. What is the link between pain and memory? If pain were not part of a process of signification, we could not even say that memory, insofar as it has as its object of memory, is somehow related to pain. In this sense, what is it that memory brings out of pain? Meaning. Pain cannot be thought of without its inscription in a process of signification being already given at the very moment of its existence. That would be to make pain something absolute, but so absolute (absence of relation) that neither thought (nor memory) could relate to it.

This even occurs at the level of presence that you point out: Husserl's understanding of temporality. It is not convenient here to recall Husserl's analyses of temporality. Husserl refers us to a differentiated structure of the moment in which something presents itself to the cogito, and this moment is related to the traces that are retained (retention, protention) in this moment (such as the moment of pain). Thus the aforementioned presence of the experience is inscribed in a chain of signification. That to which I have constantly referred. It is not an absolute, and its meaning is not given from itself. Language, therefore, is not a mere accident that survives the experience, but a possibility that is given by essence insofar as the experience is imbricated and inscribed in the signification.

I claim that this transcendent reality of which you speak when you speak of pain belongs to what Heidegger calls Western ontotheology. And this is so insofar as you have referred to the absolute, to purity, and to authority about something like pain. That reference to purity, to the absolute, and to the presence of pain is the classical element of the unconditioned and that whose meaning and being is given from itself. But how do we make this compatible with ethics? Such an absolute makes impossible the recognition necessary for empathy and understanding of the pain of others. More ethical than "I suffer" is "the other suffers". And the suffering of the other is not my experience! Ethics at this point must challenge and transcend the value of presence and experience, just as memory and language do, and just as the process of signification in which pain is inscribed invites us to think.

Wittgenstein said this about logic. It would require a perspective removed from language, but this too would find its analysis question begging and would also require yet another pov, ad infinitum.

But on the other hand, language is inherently open. It confines or limits content in no way, even regarding its own nature, meaning when I ask what language is I get answers, as with symbolic logic and semiotics, but ask what these are and there are more answers, but these, too, are questions deferring to others, and so on (Hermeneutics).[....]

Jab a knife under my ribs and the pain is exclusively me and mine. It is not a cogito at all that experiences this — Constance

"We use language to talk about language". In this sense, language becomes the space of essentiality. It is what Heidegger pointed out when naming language as "the house of being". That is why I point out this exteriorization of language, even of language on itself. We give ourselves in language, not so much by language but by the transcendentality of language that is even at the level of the cogito. And I would go further, to the level of perception and sensibility: memory. When you say that pain is something mine and mine alone, you are already carrying out a re-appropriation: there is no pain without duration. So the repetition already takes place even at the level of sensibility. That is why we can remember a pain, because its meaning as pain transcends it and makes it possible (as duration or repetition). It is almost like the movement of a language, full of signs and signs of signs. Pain is also a sign.

This is why the whole matter has to be reconceived, just as you say. The universal cannot grasp the singularity, but only itself, and this is undone by Derrida who argues it does not even do this, and one feels a kind of thud as one hits the bottom of the rabbit hole. The question ends there, for it has turned on itself as one's curiosity faces a world, perhaps for the first time, as an uncanny presence. Important to see, I am saying, that once in this "no man's land" it is thought that got you there. Thought is the way "in" as well as the way "out" (in and out, two particles of language. But why should language be set apart from the very uncanniness it brings one to? There is an epiphany in this: ALL is indeterminate, or transcendental, if you like. — Constance

The thing is that it is not universalization in the strict sense. It is transcendence, and singularity begins with transcendence (as has been said above about pain qua singularity) and signification. Hence we can establish an ethics about pain because if it were so absolutely singular it would be impossible to remember, or even to be aware of it. Religion, according to my reasoning, is a case of reappropriation of the field of transcendentality. It is something that still establishes universal maxims that must be followed by humans. God according to tradition is a cogito, but his condition of possibility (transcendence) exceeds the cogito.

It seems to me that this is an inconsistency in the approach. An evil animal would be an animal that does not follow its nature. Consequently, no animal can be evil (but neither good) by nature but by accident or by a deviation from its nature. As I understand it, to be good or evil cannot be something proper to the nature of a being. To be good or bad is something external in relation to nature.

In general today we understand evidence as scientific evidence. Scientific evidence depends entirely on repetition in controlled environments where particular experiences composed of beliefs, desires, motivations and various subjective phenomena are neutralized.

Subjective experiences and scientific evidence are not the same thing. In subjective experience that which validates a belief does not escape the particular subjective experience. In scientific evidence that which validates theory necessarily escapes particular subjective experience. At least scientific evidence is intersubjective. And to say "intersubjective" is an understatement.

When we compare both types of validation we realize how poor is the validation of beliefs on the religious plane, since their "evidence" is nothing more than testimonies and inscrutable subjective experiences.

I would not confine language and all the mediatedness in which we are involved as a simple medium that divides two poles so easily: man and the world. My view is that the medium is more than what can be confined in a cogito, in a self, or in man. Language for example is not a mere medium for thought but a possibility of it which reveals to us -perhaps even better- the very nature of thought itself, or rather, something essential to thought which does not allow itself to be secluded in thought and which slips into language as a necessary possibility of thought.

For example, if we take an affirmation such as "I am" supposed for thought, it never presents itself in a pure singularity but in a repetition (Kant said that the I accompanies all our representations) in which its meaning implies the possibility of repetition. Thus the "I am", or the "I think", makes sense on condition of my own absence and disappearance. Hence man can speak of the I am as something that even makes sense in language, in writing, etc. According to this, if thought did not "begin" as repetition, it would not be possible to write "I am" in a book and for another person to understand it when reading it.

Perhaps this is what Husserl was referring to when he spoke of the original intersubjectivity at the level of the cogito. But do we see the passage from one to the other? So language is not an accident of thought, nor something that is simply recruited into a cogito, it becomes a necessary possibility of intersubjectivity. And why not beyond? All this indicates that there is an element of exteriority in our interiority. Derrida said that the outside is the inside. Ultimately I agree with him: the separation between subjectivity and the world cannot be maintained so clearly. Not if it is analyzed from the point of view of the whole framework of exteriorization that implants us in the world and does not allow for a radical gap as has been thought since Descartes.

Religion is at the heart of this matter. Our evaluations from the origin contemplate its repetition (something that is valid for other men). The divinity that man thinks is perhaps an act of recognition of the exteriority of our valuations. In the sense that my evaluations escape from me (just like the I am of which we spoke above). The error of religion in general is perhaps not to consider that repetition and exteriority escape subjectivity. Thus, we still make the presentation of our evaluations too subjective. The divinity, as will, thinking being, etc., is the cogito trying to reappropriate that which exceeds it.

In a sense my point is very similar to what Derrida says about how the identity of the self in order to transcend and have a certain ideality implies the particular disappearance of that self. Derrida suggests that when someone writes "I am X" we are in the presence of the identity of the self beyond its mere presence, and suggests to us that its factical absence is necessary and implied.

Isn't this the ideality of a universal that, in a sense, detaches itself from its particular ground and projects itself onto a repetition as the condition of possibility of identity? Derrida suggests to us that identity, the Being of things is always in transcendence and that transcendence is necessary for identity (just as in a book about me, read by someone else is an inelidible transcendence [Derrida would call it Spectrum] of my being and my identity ).

Nominalism would not take into account the repetition and transcendence in the identity of things, thus depriving itself of any discourse on Being. And like all skepticism it would fall into its own pragmatic contradiction by speaking of the being of things while denying the condition (transcendence, spectralization if you will) that allows it to speak precisely of things and to be a philosophical stance.

This is just an example of a thing not fulfilling its end properly; and NOT that it had no end. It is uncontroversially true that the body develops the eyes for seeing all else being equal. When the circumstances impede, then there can be an eye which is developed in an impoverished manner. — Bob Ross

Think about how you discover for the first time that an eye is used to see. You obviously don't know that a priori, until it is actually functioning. And the assumption that "seeing" is somehow magically contained in the development of the eye is actually conditioned by elements external to the eye (e.g. the light that the eye needs for vision, and this is evidently external to the eye, it cannot be said that light belongs to the teleological identity of the eye); but mainly it is never demonstrated a priori, only a posteriori. An eye can always fail to see, and it is not necessarily a failure, it is just one more possibility of the eye. But why a posteriori? Because what we call the function of the eye is externally determined by other identities (such as light), which can no longer belong to the essence of the eye. So: light is not the eye, but light is necessary for the vision of the eye. If light is not the eye then light is not part of the teleology of the eye. And consequently vision is not something that is somehow prefigured in the eye. So there is no teleology called "vision" in the eye.

This doesn’t negate in the slightest that we are biologically predetermined in various ways: which is just to say that our bodies have functions. Those functions dictate our design in a weak sense of Telos. — Bob Ross

I would say conditioned but not predetermined. As I said, predetermination implies foreshadowing, or rather, that assumes that the future is implicit in the past in some way. But that is undemonstrable and is easily refuted by people who are born with eyes and yet are blind. Did we say that their eyes had the Telos of seeing and not seeing? Then the prefigured nature of something is not something that can be verified other than a posteriori and is just a possibility. For example, we can say that the Sun will be extinct in X years exactly, that is a Telos that we understand, and we can do all the tests we want and that will not prove that it will be extinct in X years. Since thousands of things can happen that can make the Sun explode, what would happen to the Telos? Telos is a simple possibility, perhaps more minor plausible than others, but not a predetermination, neither an essence which can encompass all possibilities . You can say that the telos of life is to reproduce and survive. Do we say that people who do not want to have children have no life? And people who commit suicide? Thousands of similar examples can be proposed. The point is that you cannot take as a necessity that which is a possibility.

In my view nominalism fails to recognize the persistent and repetitive element of things. We can take time as the framework of the demonstration: If we imagine that something, a thing, in its minimum time this minimum time is less than that which is necessary for us to realize that it is a thing. This suggests to us that although no time is the same, something must remain the same in order not to fall into an absolute difference that would not allow us to identify things. In this sense in the identity of things there is essence and universalization (repetition through difference, through different moments or times. Isn't that belong to universals?). Thus the link of essence with identity is permanence and repetition through difference. Something that links essence with identity is permanence and repetition. Even in the principle of identity, in its formulation the repetition of sign X in X=X is implied. Universals are at least something that repeats and is the same for different times.

It can be said, in a certain sense, that nominalism becomes absurd if it is carried to its ultimate consequences. For it would deny the very possibility of identity as repetition and permanence. We need time and permanence in order to distinguish and identify. Identity and difference imply each other.

You are right, it is better to talk about self-deception.

However, I think there is a misconception. Bad faith does not refer to the absence of freedom; according to Sartre, you are also free when you act in bad faith. Bad faith, as I understand it, refers to pretending to be a mere object whose actions are determined by your circumstances and not by your freedom.

You cannot self-deceive yourself that you are acting in good faith, because that implies that you know what it is to act in good faith. But no external determination like a knowledge act as an agent of your freedom. Therefore you cannot self-deceive yourself about your own good faith.

The paradox is actually different. It is that when we pretend to be determined by our circumstances, social roles, etc., we are already making use of our freedom precisely in order to pretend. As in the case of the waiter who pretends to be a simple waiter, but the very act of pretending makes it clear that he is not a simple waiter.

From my point of view a very important thing to ask is: If we are free, are we condemned to be free? If so, then the act of bad faith is the attempt to free yourself from all responsibility for your life and your being. But A person, following Sartre, acting in bad faith would irremediably be free. Therefore bad faith is pretending that you are not free and that you have no responsibility. So to act in bad faith is to speak dishonesty. Bad faith is in relation to the other: When we act we do not simply affect ourselves, but we affect the other (even ourselves as the other). In this sense we can say that the act of bad faith consists in getting rid of the ethical commitment with respect to the other.

Consequently, bad faith is only recognized by those who act in bad faith. It is a secret, like a testimony. But it has ethical consequences in relation to the other.

I cannot agree with the teleology of being. It is a form of preformism that in my opinion is already well refuted.

To illustrate this, one can take the example of genetic transcription in biology: If we have a DNA sequence, this in itself does not possess genetic expression; it is only in its relation to the RNA and the process of transcription that something like an expression takes place. The idea here is that what we believe to be the prefigured result does not actually exist but only takes place in the relationship of the DNA to an other that interprets and translates it in its own way. The information of who we are is not in the genes, but, strangely enough, in the unprecedented process of transcription, interpretation, translation, etc., itself.

In a similar way we can see ourselves: "I am I and my circumstances" (Ortega y Gasset), "Existence precedes essence" (Sartre). The end of our existence is never prefigured and is always about to happen, and it is to the extent that we develop in our circumstances that we become what we are. Nietzsche entitled one of his books as follows: "Ecce Homo: How one becomes what one is". We can say of ourselves that to a large extent we become what we are. We become. Which means that the end is not at the beginning (as teleological thinking presupposes).

But religion would be our reaction to the deployment and imposing force of the law which constitutes us as theoreticians or followers of the law. We, consequently, in some cases, act religiously. However, such an unfolding cannot itself be religious insofar as it is the condition of possibility of religion itself.

As I remember, advaita philosophy resorts to a process of identification just like monism. As I understand it, there are three metaphysical realities that identify themselves: Brahman the Absolute, jīvātman as individual sentient entities, Jagat as the physical universe. It is hard to not understand this as classic monism. Also I don't think that the via negativa (such as negative theology, "neti-neti") is enough for exclude advaita from monism since there is such identification in metaphysical realities.

I wonder where your thoughts lie on the matter. — Constance

We cannot prevent our assessments from slipping into how things should be. We cannot avoid that our assessments are posed on a quasi-universality space. Society, language, culture, writing, technology, multiculturalism make our problems project beyond a singularity. "I am a slave to my own words" means that what I say is not said by me, but also by the other, and moreover, it may be said by everyone. We say how one should act in general, because it is impossible to say how one should act for myself alone and for no one else ever.

The essence of religion consists in giving a face and a will to the universalizing influence that is exerted upon us and upon which we are deployed. It is the law with a face and a will. Hence that face and will can become anthropomorphic (God). The question is why do we give a divine face and will to the unfolding of the law? The essence of religion, it seems to me, lies in the answer to the question of why we give face, will and divinity to the quasi-universalizing (it would be better to say Exteriorizing) unfolding of our valuations.

I wonder to what extent such a non-dualistic viewpoint offers a solution to the split between materialism and idealism, as well as between atheism and theism. I am aware that there have been many debates on the topic on the forum. Also, there are various philosophical positions, including substance dualism and deism, so it is a complicated area. Here, in this thread, I am focusing on the idea of non-duality and asking do you see the idea as helpful or not in your philosophical understanding, especially in relation to the concept of God? — Jack Cummins

From my point of view non-duality means monism (there is only one substance) and duality means dualism (two substances). But I am not a substantialist. Substance means that which is absolute, exempt from relation that conditions its existence or its being.

For me the classical concept of God is framed in substantialism and dualism. So the only way that atheism can be closer to theism is to the extent that such atheism is substantialist and such theism is not dualist. Therefore the first meeting point is monistic pantheism.

If dualism refers to the mental thing and the material thing, the classical theism of a personal God cannot be in agreement with a monistic pantheism, since it starts from the distinction between spirit and matter, etc.

This doesn't seem like Plato to me. Indeed, Plato says words cannot be used to bring one to knowledge of the Good (Republic, Letter VII). This seems more like the post-Humean Enlightenment project of thinking in terms of "rules all rational agents will agree too." But I think this is quite a bit different from the classical view of ethics, which focuses on the virtues. For one, the virtuous person enjoys right action. They don't need coercive, external rules. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm referring to ideas like of the Good, which are found in a hyperuranian topos and cannot be constructed but can be discovered. That is, as simple ideas of autonomous constitution to which humans can have access, but cannot constitute.

My stance is kinda particular on this matter. I claim that Universality is always virtual, it is under construction and surpasses our subjective particularity, but it is not given once and for all like in Plato.

Our moral judgments are always in a project of Universality. This is why a moral judgment, no matter how particular it may be, is not simply particular but is on the way to Universality. However, if Universality is virtual, there is always a remainder that allows moral judgments to come into play, to gain relative dominance and stability over one another, or even to coexist relatively.

But never in an absolute manner. Never in an absolute manner such that it closes this virtual space where morality and ethics are put into play. Hence, determining how one should act can never be closed to the other and their possible point of view. This is what Derrida called the principle of hospitality, which makes the ethical and moral task infinite; as long as the space in which ethics and morality are played out never closes and is always open to the participation of another. Doesn't this virtual space of Universality impose itself in such a way that we should assume that our ethical and moral judgments are not absolute and are always in play in discussion with other judgments? According to this the least we should do is be open to the participation of the other.

This position is not anti-realist in the sense that it does not close the path from the particular to the universal, it does not deny the space of Universality. Anti-realism fails to recognize a space that exceeds the particularity of judgment and subjectivity, and that allows that judgment to come into play and discussion. It also fails to recognize that judgments can become kinda universal.

But neither is it a realist position in the sense that it does not assume ethical and moral rules given once and for all like in Plato. I claim that there is an excess that constitutes our judgments and makes them project onto Universality. For example, the very language we use is constituted by rules that the subject does not master and that exceed subjectivity. That is a degree of Universality.

My attempts to find a non-fictional example of an object not being an ideal has failed. This is strong evidence for the conclusion reached. — noAxioms

Think about the embodied-mind. There would be a relation between our ability to grasp objects and the appearance of things as objects in our perception.

I think what you expect to find is an object unmediated by our categories, for example. But that is like saying we are going to perceive something without perceiving. Every perception involves an adaptation, an interpretation. There is no access to reality that is not mediated, but we can ask why our means are embedded in reality, and above all, we can ask why they work and what the link is between the world we are in and our categories, our language, our ideas, etc. Therefore, the world would have something ideal-ish that allows our thinking and our perception to maintain a certain continuity with the world.

Well, according to my view the idea of God is located at de limits of the reasonable. Just because is a limit-idea which overflows any context of a posible proof.

But then again, we can certainly replace the logic sentence denoting God by five axiomatic expressions in higher-order modal logic. That is what Gödel did. Hence, God is not ineffable. Where is the proof that God would be ineffable? Furthermore, God can be proven from carefully chosen axioms because that is exactly what Gödel did. — Tarskian

I think you are misleading my argument. A proof like Gödel's continues in this step of enclosing God through logic. Again, can't God be contradictory? When we talk about an incapacity, aren't we betraying the nature of God? What happens is that by trying to conceptualize God [whether through Gödel's axiomatic expressions] we enclose the very concept within a context that conditions it [Gödel's proof does not prove the moral God, nor the creator God].

For me, the important thing is to show how our proofs, precisely because they are proofs, miss the mark, thereby showing that the concept of God is so plural that it is difficult to see how a valid proof can even be conceived. If I choose unconditionality as an attribute of God [why shouldn't I choose it?], the matter is practically closed. Then there is no proof sufficiently exhaustive that could work.

I would like to show that the idea of God is closely related to the idea of limit. And that because of this relationship, a huge problem arises that overwhelms the capacity of any proof. However, the idea of God is necessarily linked to the idea of limit. This is the reason why God, in my view, is related to the ineffable, as philosophies like those of Levinas or Kierkegaard have done. But then it is not a moral God, not a physical God, not a logical God, etc. God would be the limit of his own definitions.

There is something interesting that arises from considering the possible proof of God: Why do we believe that God is something that can be proven?

A Proof belongs to a context of interpretation that delimits its conditions of possibility. But isn't that precisely a form of conditioning? For example, when we understand God as the creator of the universe, as a kind of origin of everything that exists, aren’t we subjecting His concept to linear causality, to His physical intervention in the creation of matter and energy? Isn't it paradoxically a subsumption of God to physical causation rules that He does not dominate? The same can be said of a logical proof or a moral proof: Can God not be contradictory? Can God not do evil?

In each case, the nature of God is subordinated to a context that betrays His nature by conditioning Him. This is the old issue of how a finite being can access the infinite and even relate to it. Or how the unconditioned can relates the conditioned. It is the issue of why it seems that the idea of God is problematic in itself as it relates to the ineffable and that which is unconditioned. Ironically, according to the above, it can be said that if God exists, He cannot be proven. God would be beyond reason and will always be a mystery.

Hello.

So this got me thinking, and I could only conclude that what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. — noAxioms

When we say that objects are a product of language, we are simply shifting the problem from the external world to the interiority of language. We then say that there are objects in language.

We might rather ask why language functions and allows us to operate as subjects who are part of reality and act within it. Doesn't this mean that if there are objects in language, then there are also objects-ish in "the world external to language" that authorize and enable our language to function? Why aren't we crazy animals wich constantly fails to interact effectively with the world?

This breaks with the skepticism that seeks to radically separate language from reality or the external world. If there were no certain ontological continuity between language and the world, we would simply be animals incapable of grabbing a rock, striking it with another, and creating fire.

When I think about emergentism, a lot of questions always arise (and of course I don't ask to be answered, since they are a bit rhetorical): When we say that something emerges from a physical thing, do we say that what emerges is also physical? And why do we say it is physical? Is it because they share some property? Is there any consensus on the definition of this property? Is it because they share constituent parts? Is it because the relationships and laws that govern these constituent parts explain the characteristics and properties of that which emerges? If emergentism tells us that new properties arise from its constituent parts, are the properties of the parts preserved in the new reality that emerges? Or are the properties lost? If the property is "being physical," wouldn't it be necessary to determine how that physical property is repeated and persists in the reality that supposedly emerges?

One can say that a citizen is composed of cells, but it is difficult to say that cells can be fellow citizens of each other. That seems like a categorical error. I think that emergentism gives an explanatory power to composition that it really does not have and that it constantly proves not to have as soon as we try to explain an increasingly larger whole from the parts. Thus falling into constant fallacies of division and composition. What remains in doubt is that we are actually talking about a whole in which each of its parts share a common property that, however, seems too specific and that can be applied less and less as we increase the focus to see a larger reality and greater content. And not only that, but the rule of unidirectional construction from the smallest to the largest is called into question. This is why I am not a substantialist (physical substance monism in this case) but instead advocate insubstantial pluralism.

There is the architectural metaphor. It tells us that there are building bricks from which structures and objects such as buildings are formed. But when I ask myself what are the building bricks of, say, computer language, ethical and moral values, mathematics and many other things (that at first do not seem physical to us) I feel like we are talking about how a joined bricks of a building explain the functions of the company that operates in that building.

I think you do not take into account that the gravitational singularity is defined according to space-time, although we are talking about an infinite curvature. If the value of curvature is taken to a limit, it does not imply that we stop talking about curvature, nor its need to represent it in space-time. I claim that the need to represent according to a space-time scheme tells us something about space-time time itself. At this point the philosophy of space-time can provide us with the general-ontological concept that is exercised in physics. We can ask ourselves: Does the gravitational singularity coexist with the current state of the universe? Should we differentiate them as two different moments? You could say: "In the gravitational singularity there is no before or after." Well, then there is an inadequacy of that space-time scheme that we use to represent the difference between one state of the universe and another state.

You're still stuck in the Newtonian causality. While I agree with you, in fact I said this in my previous post that there was always something, and that the universe did not come from nothing, your train of thought is still the regularity of the laws of the universe. We are totally not on the same page. — L'éléphant

I wouldn't say Newtonian. I conceive spatiality and temporality as part of the thing to the extent that it is always in relationship. However, when talking about the order of coexistence and order of succession I am talking about something that all science implies when using the notions of space and time. Hence, taking the example of the theory of relativity, we represent things in planes and diagrams (such as Minkowski diagrams). Things, in this sense, are always constituted by the spatio-temporality in which their effects and relationships are expressed. In this sense the thing, its relationships, and its effects on other things are in a correlation that determines its being and existence. Therefore, it is not valid to think of an isolated absolute thing (absolved from all relationships) from which everything arises, nor nothingness from which something comes to existence.

You have a three-year-old. You ask him to go to the big fruit bowl on the table across the room and get you two apples and two oranges. You don’t ask him with words because he’s not good with number signs. Instead, you hold up two fingers and say, “apples.” Next, you hold up two other fingers and say, “oranges.” — ucarr

In that case "two fingers" is the third one I am referring to. "Two fingers" is the sign here. To the "two fingers" you have to ADD "oranges" or "apples". Why do you have to add them? Because with the number the numbered thing is not given. The child already understands this autonomy of "2" (for example with the other fingers of the hands) and is able to apply it to different things. He has evidently learned it as something third that is not between apples and oranges. Well, let's remember, if the number were intrinsic to things there would never be two pairs of fruits, the "2" would not be a third; the "2" would belong to one thing and not another (so as not to violate identity).

It just preserves from one pair to another pair what the eyes perceive. Number signs, in order to be assigned meaning, must first be referenced to something tangible and countable — ucarr

No. Relating them (reference) to something "tangible" does not imply their identification. The relationship in this case presupposes two terms, the number and the numbered as something different. The effective relationship implies only that we can do it and that there is a passage from the number to the thing numbered. How is it possible that we can manipulate things by counting them and not fail at every attempt to manipulate them? It is not because there is something numerical in the thing, but because the thing allows itself to be chiseled, so to speak (that is why in general geometric figures do not exactly adjust to the tangible things to which we apply, the same thing happens with numbers, there are always a rest).

I can give you an example of math attached to tangible things and thereby being meaningful and useful: civil engineering. — ucarr

Chiselling. You have to adapt the raw materials for their numerical application. Only then can you successfully manipulate them (numerically, in a exact way) and build bridges, pyramids, etc.

A toddler can see the difference but does not see it as a numerical difference. He can see the difference between an isolated object, and see objects of the same type, or similar, together and separated in space. But there is no number there that he sees. If we tell the toddler to repeat what he has found (difference, spatiality, similarity, etc.) as an order (like in a market) he will not be able to. He needs the objectification that a symbol gives him, for example, in such a way that this symbol can enter into a relationship with other symbols. If we ask what a '9' is, we cannot answer with difference, nor with spatiality, nor with similarity. We respond in relation to other numbers with which this 9 is contextualized, as an addition, of unity, for example, among many others.

The case is that "the number" always appears as another of the things we count. Someone who has already learned elementary mathematics (such as simple numbering) can ask them to give you two oranges or two apples. If the number were not different from the numbered things, it would not be possible to give us two apples after giving us two oranges. Since if the number is not a third with respect to apples and oranges, this number falls into the essence of some of the objects, which would lead to saying that two oranges ARE two apples. Violating identity. That is why we must differentiate between the number and the numbered, and in fact in practice we always do.

With respect to the topic in question we cannot say that the number (in this case the number "1") is an essential (or internal) property of the thing. It is an external property of the thing.

If none of these numbers are there, then how do you assign the number-signs to what you see? — ucarr

Isomorphism.

The in-absentia status of pure numbers gives the impression of their categorical independence, but no, numbers never completely exit the natural world. — ucarr

Well, given what I've said independence is real. Otherwise we fall into contradiction and the complete uselessness of mathematics.

What's new and had existed infinitely was the singular point that has infinitesimal volume. Then big bang happened — L'éléphant

So you think you are as old as the big-bang?

If not then you have come into existence like many other people. And not only that but you are different from the mythical primordial singularity of physicists.

But as I said in my answer, although things come into existence constantly, what would be unusual is for them to come from nothing. Since generally there is a causality that precedes and explains them, kinda. The important thing is that "coming into existence" presupposes the order of coexistence and the order of succession. From this it follows that the universe did not come out of nothing: It could have been there forever.

Yesterday I went to the market and told a worker "give me two of those melons." He gave me the two melons.

But! The imaginary worker-philosopher might have told me "there are not two, there are 57." I wonder, is number two in number 57? But objectively there are not 2 melons, there are 57. Or maybe there are two and 57 at the same time, objectively. There can also be 4 and 57 at the same time. Are there also two pairs? where is the rule for counting? Surely it is not in the thing itself! Isn't it the case that when I said "two" I have given something that wasn't there, a difference, a partition, a slice, a rule, a number simply different from 57 regardless of whether they are melons, apples or anything else? So number is different from numbered things.

I wouldn't say "in-built math". Toddler can differentiate and identify. The quantity appear in another level perception. After all, when we think in numbers we don't think at the same time all the things we have counted.