At the end of the day, they're both human made.

Let's look at it, not from the Ominous Subject of God. Let's whiddle it down and see how they're both made up Narratives, each equally stubborn in its attachment to itself (I say, a built-in attachment but that's for another discussion).

Whiddled down, they both reveal their Fictional natures, stopping short of Truth, necessarily incapable of surpassing the final leap which inevitably settles at belief. (And this applies to theism/atheism).

Take. You believe, not necessarily that Jesus of Nazareth is God, but even if it comforts you to dilute the myth, and say, that he preached love your enemies to the poor and was executed by Rome. You don't know that for certain, but it was revealed to you by the Christian Bible, has been input into you since childhood, and seems to have been adopted by enough people that it is safely a convention. It is still mysterious and you don't fully understand it, but still you took the leap, even if opposing Signifiers reawaken the Dialectic from time to time.


Now take. Water is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. You don't know that for certain, but it was revealed to you by the Scientists, has been input into you since childhood, and seems to have been adopted by enough people that it is safely a convention. It is still mysterious and you don't fully understand it, but still you took the leap, even if opposing Signifiers reawaken the Dialectic from time to time.

Ah, but the Science Narrative demurs, our belief is supported by observation and can be tested by experience. Maybe not everyone can or has tested it, but we have authorites which confirm it.

And so too does the Jesus camp. Our belief is supported by witnesses and can be tested by experience. Maybe not everyone can or has tested it, but we have authorites which confirm it.

And it is only because we stand from within the Science Narrative that we reject religion's right to make all of the same claims. From Religion's perspective, using their tools and definitions, their claims are tested everyday and prove to be true.


Yet all along, both are wrong. Neither is ever proving to be true. Both are constructing opposing Narratives out of tools particular to each, but in common, uaing the same Mind, and its same structure, Language; and, both require at the very last instance of the Dialectic, a settlement, and a leap to belief in that settlement as if it were True (thats built-in--by its evolution. But for another discussion).

And why should it be any different when we get way up there at God? Theism/Atheism, they're both Fictions, and Philosophy should at least, recognize that, just as it should recognize it in Itself. Afterall what is Logic and Reason, but made up tools constructing Narratives which can never be called True.

Test it. If you think anything I've said is true, isn't it because you believe it? And If you think anything I've said is untrue, isn't it because you believe something opposing?

At the end of the day... breathe. And let them each present their cases for belief.

But for God's sake, let them each present their cases.

I think Berkeley was (unwittingly(?)) referring to human Consciousness. For human Consciousness:

"to exist is to be perceived." — Corvus

; anything not perceived in/by Human Consciousness, does not exist for Human Consciousness.

The "you" which continues to exist in the dream state, is still Human Consciousness.

The you in deep dreamless sleep, is not "you" but the Real Organism which exists in Nature, independently of Consciousness, which "you" have displaced with your experiences constructed out images which must be perceived to exist.

That "you" the one presumably in deep sleep never goes out of existence, but for the dreaming or waking human, that Real You is overshadowed by the shadows in the cave; that is, by things (which must be) perceived.
And, to tie it back to the OP, math is one of those things, restricted to human Consciousness and, therefore, only "real" insofar as constructed and perceived.

In the logic thread I proposed "logos" for the logic-like function of the world. I wonder what a good term would be for "the apparently mathematical in nature?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't logos the beginning of everything humans experience, and therefore not inherent/imbedded in Nature? (And I'm not referencing so-called St. John). Isn't math, computer science, the periodic table, grammar, logic, the rules of Football, and so on, just numerical or other modified formations of the original word, Language? I say, in the beginning of the becoming of human Consciousness and History, was, the "word," all strictly human things were made by the word; and without the word was not any thing human made that was made.

then how do we come to the common agreement on these values and properties — Corvus

If you're hinting that a hypothesis of Mind constructing all meaning is negated by the fact that there are universals we all agree to, that question would most potently address the issue if you're premise is that our common agreement, even respecting these so called universals, is sufficient evidence of their Truth. The fact that we already know our common agreement is not necessarily True, supports rather than negates the chance that we can and do come to common agreement on meanings which we simply constructed.

Further, your comments make sense, and I cannot fault you or your questions, there are complexities that I did not address. For instance, not only does our common agreement not negate the fact that we are agreeing upon Fiction, even in universals, but, that, I submit is one of the very ways our constructions are adopted as belief: I.e. by convention. The meanings are constructed following an autonomous process regulated by evolved Laws and dynamics, and oversimplified, what gets settled upon as believed follows criteria like functionality, Reason, convention, sometimes fantasy, like religion, hope etc. And I'll stop here, apologizing for my necessary brevity.

but that doesn't seem to be a warrant for the solid consistent foundation for any sort of rational and consistent universal principles, which tends to suggest the strong hint of possibility of the meanings and truths committed into unreliable relativity. — Corvus

Firstly, unless I've misunderstood: yes, relativity. So? But as for unreliable, no. Mind (both individual and History) tests every belief through a dialectical process. Belief is that settlement or "synthesis" which is most fitting. Even so called universals are still meanings once constructed, continuing to evolve. . The so called universal principles, are not universal. They suit only the hosts of Human Mind.

What is the evidence for "I am" is a fiction? Are you not you are? — Corvus

What is the evidence of an "I" period? Let alone an I that is, and is a Being within the being. I only is in Language. My Body provides obvious evidence of its own Reality, without the need of a Fictional construction, a nevessary mechanism in Grammar and thus Mind. That,
i.e. the human animal, ought to have been the given; the pre-reflective, a priori, noumenal, etc. Truth. Not our ideas about it. If "I" isn't the so called being requiring evidence then why is it that "I" was the Subject of Descartes inquiry. And where did he locate the "I" ? In thinking. And what structures that thinking? Language including its laws and dynamics such as grammar/logic, meaning, difference, Dialectic, convention and belief.

Apology once again for the clearly simplistic reply to your complex points on a complex matter which should take up more mental preparation/organization and space than can justify in this communal context.

Sensory-motor embodied enactivist approaches to perception and consciousness are based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception — Joshs

If Descarte's Real Self is an “I am,” a being within Being, unwittingly Fabricated and Fictional; and if—standing upon the shoulders of those, like Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, recognizing the Fiction of a being within yhe being, and resolving it with not a being within, but a disclosing of being, a becoming—Merleau-Ponty took the Real Being all the way to recognizing the Reality of the Body, but never getting over the obstacle of becoming, stopping short at I can.

I think we are heading in the direction of liberating Body from its misplacement; emancipating the Real-so-called-Self, once and for all, from the Fictions of both being within and becoming, and understang that it is not I am, not I can, not “I” anything wherein Being is accessed. Being is just the “is”; and one step more, to be precise, since “is” is an artificial “capturing” of Reality by Language, like a photograph, re-presenting, a construction of the Being within or of the Becoming, Mind; the Real self is just “Is-ing.”

Sensation—seeing, hearing, external feeling/touch, smelling, tasting, internal feeling/mood, image-ing—are is-ing.

Perception, takes sensation and in imperceptible time displaces it with meaning. Not discovers Real meaning. Where does the meaning come from? We construct it out of available Signifiers stored in memory operating in accordance with an evolved set of Laws and Dynamics, following sometimes lightning speed dialectic, and settling at belief, also a mechanism of the Fictional structure seen by us as Truth.

us being a 'different kind' from other animals is simply the same pattern repeated in nature again and again. Having an intellectual or consciousness gap between other animals does not mean we are separate from them. — Philosophim

I agree.

In fact we do share Real Consciousness with all other organisms once you remove the uniquely human experience of Mind from the equation.

Real Consciousness is an organism presently and actively aware-ing ("its"--- there is no "it") be-ing ("in" ---there is no separation of organism and world) the environment, having evolved for survival. A human aware-ing others for avoiding, consuming, mating and bonding. A plant aware-ing wetness and sunlight for growing towards. And so on.

If that is the extent of Real Consciousness why then the inquiry into Mind, Being, Reality? That is our "fall." The pursuit of knowledge over living (Genesis reference may not be coincidence but I am not claiming divine revelation either).

Because out of humans aware-ing Consciousness emerged the astronomical surplus use of Images for survival, therefore, over eons Language and an autonomous system of constructed Consciousness emerged. With that, meaning displaced survival as the drive. Constructing meaning in Time, or becoming, displaced being present. And much more I won't get into now.

But this Fictional Consciousness emerged, Mind; one which we construct and cling to at the expense of the Organic Reality our fellow creatures enjoy. And from that, our human made suffering, and the corresponding need to construct meaning to apply to our environment, incuding, inter alia, the Subject I, difference, Reason, and the linear Narrative form.

Hence what is Mind? It must be, we conclude, by necessity of the structure itself (Mind), something which extends beyond the brain. It must be a privelged Reality, which animals don't have. When really we have their Consciousness, and what we call Mind is a Fiction. And so on.

Either way, spirit or brain function, this function of wondering what my mind is, can only result in the embarrassment of looking for my glasses while wearing them; nowhere in sight can I possibly appear, because in everything I look at, in the looking itself, I am already there, and still I wonder "what is there?" — Fire Ologist

:up:

And, ironically, the "what" of the "what is there [wondering]" is the Language of the wondering.
But
The what of the True Being, that which we are truly after but ignore, even malign (see Plato; see everyone thereafter in search of Spirit or Soul; and their treatment of fles/body) does not wonder, is the "language-less" "wonder-less" organic Being, not in any transcendent substance, or substance grounding, or behind; not, like Mind, in the becoming, the always constructing itself, regulated by Time and the linear Narrative, but simply in that Organic Being's be-ing, in its is-ing; in its aware-ing; in any and every present participle verb it "partakes" in. Take one step beyond is-ing, and you have left that and "entered" the make-believe world of Mind, Time, and becoming etc etc

thinking of nothingness as though it was a thing - — Fire Ologist

We are trapped by the ghosts of philosophy past. Per Hegel, nothingness is indistinguishable from indeterminate being,
And
As both nothing and everything are that to which no thing can be added or taken away, they too are indistinguishable.
Sounds a bit "mystical," eh? Thus, is it that the East is too mystical? (As some might surmise) Or is it that while metaphysics might be accessed through reason, where principles like Logic can be applied ( "x" can br either/or; not both, etc) the pith and substance of Truth and any ontology of Reality (as opposed to/beyond Mind) cannot be accessed through Reason?

My mind is the activity, and not some fixed thing. My mind is becoming a mind as long as some mental construct is being constructed — Fire Ologist

Agreed, and further, Mind is, and only is, those constructions operating..., etc. And, thus, Mind is ultimately a fleeting, empty, Fiction accessible by its own means and tools, like reason. The "fixed thing," we are actually after, Real Being, is only accessible beyond Mind. And who knows? Maybe there is some light to be extracted from the east.

Thank you. Informative. And I agree with you about Plato, ultimately. I am being hyperbolic owing to my appreciation for silence. . . And yet, I chatter on driven by my autonomous desire to know, and my autonomous desire to make known.

Having read your thread, I like your take.

My earlier comment about epistemology was in jest, and yet that seems to have been your read on these Daoist "parables."

I think you agree that while for the West, epistemology represents the intellectual desire to know (even the "how we know")which is prevalent since Plato seemingly ignored Socrates and went on in a futile pursuit of knowledge.

While Zhuangzi was more "Socratic." For Zhuangzi, the exercise is fully practical. You cannot know, so be always open to the endless changes (I.e., the existential possibilities), like an uncarved block.

Thank you. I've never seen that "extended" (?) version. Zhuagzi, the Father of epistemology!?

I'll check out your thread!

Maybe the "walk through" mysticism from Western Philosophy is being done "backwards."

Maybe the approach could be to reflect on the concepts of import (to a given individual) from the western perspective (since same is unavoidable, like thinking in English is to me), and then, from there, find the parallels in Eastern traditions.

One eg., upon my own reflections, I come across the problem of Mind and conclude, on my own, from within my western narrative, that Mind might not have any corresponding Being, or Reality, "driving", "grounding" or "behind" it, and that it might just be structured by empty signifiers. Comparing that to eastern philosophies, I find the principle of Sunyata (emptiness of Reality). While I believe that the Mahayanists might have gone too far, and that Sunyata applies only to the constructed reality of human experience, yet still, there is a workable parallel.

We are all humans, East and West, drawing upon the same nascent constructions input into all of us, and developed collectively throughout the generations. It wasn't just Schopenhaur who first incorporated the East into Western philosophy. I may not be best suited to demonstrate this, but I feel it is not unreasonable for an historian of philosophy to find what is traditionally thought of as eastern patterns weaved through western thought and vice versa, since the presocratics, and likely much earlier.

Your "obstacles" 1 to 3, (which I know you are exposing and not endorsing) are ways in which we "deliberately" construct barriers out of prejudice. For instance,
1. "test" it? arguably the east has a better test, doing, i.e. yoga and meditation. If mind's conclusions are admittedly questionable (hence, phenomenology), what better test than to silence mind?
(I am not prepared to endorse meditation as any certain test, just saying we could open ourselves to that if we are seriously pursuing Truth and not just fetishizing it and or its pursuit)
2. "physical world?" arguably sitting in meditation for the purposes of silencing the chatter and perceiving the world through the Body for a change, is exactly approaching reality through the physical world. What is more empirical than what your body tells you without interference of concepts?
3. "subjugation of mind to soul?" Firstly, that is the problem I see with western metaphysics in the traditions of Plato, Descartes, Hegel etc. Moreover, Mahayana blatantly denies the "soul." The subjugation part, the so called goal to reach Satori/Kensho or Moksa, is intended to liberate you from the mundane chattering of the Subject Self. Descartes tried to do the same but got stuck in the chattering and gave privileged status to the Subject Self, I (see Heidegger's ontic, everyday vs ontological Being, which I think, he ultimately remains in the ontic everyday, but that's another discussion). And so on...

Understood

every language we know of has words for one and two and some, just like all have words for live and die.
https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/natural-semantic-metalanguage/what-is-nsm/semantic-primes — Lionino

Thank you.
But for your reference to be effective in demonstrating what appears to be your position on this, you'd have to accept that all of the primes are inherent in Nature and none are derived from post-lingual human constructions. Are you? Some of those primes seem to be questionable as to their "ontologies."

To answer briefly,
1. 'nature" in whichever way we define/understand it through mind, is included as one of the fictions. I cannot know that Nature is real. It's just that I think most philosophical pursuits of the problem make it worse when they focus on MInd/Form/Spirit/Dasein as real when for every other member of our universe, it is Nature alone that is "present". Descartes, after his impressive acrobatics, concluded I think...But he started in the place which poses the problem in the first place, not the presence of his breath, but in the re-presentation of his thoughts. The "I" thinking is already a fiction.. He should have concluded, Body breathes, Body is.

2. Sankara, though closer, also got lost in the fiction with the necessity of Brahman to "oppose" maya. "Oppose" is only necessary in the system regulating Mind. And yes, how do we even dare to speak of a Reality vs Mind when, as you say, there isn't knowledge of the Absolute, since we end up with no grounds for the fiction/reality distinction? We cannot speak. Speaking belongs to the Fiction. I am not suggesting that our "access" to the reality, like everything else, be mediated through the Fiction. I am suggesting that the Reality cannot be "known" in the sense that we understand knowledge. If we "want" to "access" Truth or Reality, as distinct from our constructions, we must, and can only, do so in be-ing. Don't expect me to be able to answer the question further, because, as it turns out, I'm already just reconstructing fiction. But if anything, don't look to Sankara, don't even look to Mahayana epistemology and metaphysics. Look to Zazen, not Zen philosophy, but the actual sitting in Zazen.Maybe that process allows for brief, timeless (because free from the construction of time) "moments" of Real be-ing.

If, on the other hand, there is no quantity in reality, then this will entail the fact that there is no plurality of coexistent psyches: with this directly resulting in solipsism - wherein the one solipsist by unexplained means "fictionalizes" everything, quantity very much included. — javra

Solipsism--only one psyche exists (in Reality)

What about the position that psyche--including its constructions--doesn't exist at all in Reality? Nihilism? No. Nature exists in/is Reality. Mind is a system "reflected" in the organic body, which functions as it does because it evolved, inter alia, a logic that it must be real. But it is not. So no one mind only; but rather, no mind. Just the be-ing body.

And we intuitively "know" this. If we didn't, there wouldn't be these challenges in philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics including ontology.

Bear with me then, I might need to think it through. But it seems, that while I recognize the contradiction of submitting Mind cannot know Reality, but only construct a (Fictional) reality, still I'll state a hypothesis about Reality, at least as I understand that fiction.

Is the so called real world, Reality, and not the world I am submitting we construct in Mind? And if so is Reality devoid of representation, as you are suggesting?

Isn't it devoid of representation by so called definition? Isn't Reality present, by "definition" (the past has vanished, the furure has not happened). Reality is necessarily that which is, and not that which is re-presented? The instance of re-presentation is the irretrievable loss of presence, and Reality.

And you might say, I meant that within Reality, representations exist, the lion's roar, etc. But the simplest way to adress that is we run from a lion's roar, its a drive, a bird is attracted to another's "dance," it's a drive. The representation status is a construction of mind. While the so thought of, "real world" of Mind may have math and representations, and we are inescapably attuned to that, Reality does not anywhere have representations and math hiding in it somewhere, waiting, like everyone from Plato to Heidegger have said, to be gleaned out by us through some real process of becoming. We are not a special species with a God given spirit (who else then, but God?) called consciousness. Consciousness is a structure of Fiction, in perpetual construction of Fiction with effects on Nature through the human body and human culture.

We're that super weird conceited ape who somehow evolved its internal sense of imaging and memory, into an autonomous System which has taken over our organic aware-ing. So much are we attuned with that system that we invent theology, create civilizations, and math too, and insist that they are real, that uniquely we discovered them in Nature, instead of proudly admitting we made them all with our brains.

Quantity only exists in Nature because we displace Nature with quantity, etc. Think of quantity without reference to any form of representation, but on its own, in its allegedly pure and essential form as it supposedly inhabits Reality. You can't, that's absurd, right? The very thinking utilizes representations. Then why do we shy away from acknowledging that our uniquely human Conscious experiences are structured by representations and as such, they are not ultimately Real?

Dumplings!

Sorry:up:

There are eastern philosophies which work, but the fact that they start from the assumption of God, gods, deity, Western philosophy just doesn’t go there, or reduces it to some peculiarity of the human mind. — Punshhh

Let's be fair to Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. The former, no god. Tge latter, no more religious a god than Hegel, or arguably, Heidegger.

Have a good day at work.

Hence, to my mind, the only way of appraising all maths as strictly within us and thus as having nothing to do with the quote unquote "real world" is by appraising the "real world" to be fully devoid of quantity. — javra

If you replaced the word math, with symbols, or representations, would the above also hold true for you?

A quick addendum, and I'll leave it.

One of the ways we arrive at truths, as you know, is by convention. This is a powerful structure for triggering the settlement commonly called belief.

I don't know about you, but when it comes to math beyond a Senior highschool level, I cannot test my beliefs, and must rely on convention.

If you were in the same boat, (l accept likely not,) and you and I agreed, Math has some essence of The Truth of The Universe to it, what the hell would we even be talking about?

And, my point is not what you think. It's not to say we should stay out of things we cannot be certain about. My point is tgat is what we all do, necessarily, all the time.
We construct Fiction, and settle upon the functional places, whether because of convention, reason, or fantasy; all of them also Fictions.

Short reply:

Unless I misunderstand, (in which case, sorry) a pathological insistence that Darwin cannot be applied to Mind is only evidence of folly, or at best dogma, not evidence that it cannot be.

And, yes, Mind is ultimately empty. It is not Natural, but being empty, it ultimately is not Real, either. It's a Fiction made of fleeting images, applied as Signifiers to code the Body to feel (not as in emotions, as in those organic process which we organically sense) and act. Not dualism or physicality, but a qualified physicalism: Body/Nature real, Mind exists as a separate "entity" but is Ultimately empty and fleeting.

And as for how does it displace Nature? That's exactly what it does. There was a now mythical, time when a human might have looked at an apple and seen what a (mythical) equally intelligent animal sees. But you and I cannot see apple without it being structured by the chains of Signifiers, images in your memory, structuring that experience for you as seeing an apple. In Nature I.e. in Reality, you or that mythical animal wouldn't see apple; as a Real Being, you would just be be-ing; not seeing apple, just see-ing, an incessant present, not chopped up by the structures of Mind into successive objects and moments of time.

In fairness to this post, our experiences, all of them including MATH, as amazing as they are, are Fictional constructions which, in effect, displace Reality. There's no essence, Spirit or being behind Mind, nor its constructions. You already are that Being, as a living body. We just want it to be the Fiction that's real. We want it to be Mind. Hence everything from Plato to Hegel.

Ha! Fascinating. Thank you. Cannot draw conclusions from a glance, but I'll read further. I wasn't aware of that hypothesis.

Maybe unwittingly I am (like I said, need more info) but I think I'm going deeper. Not just cultures are influenced by their linguistic structures, but Mind, collectively, and particularly, is structured by (very loosely) lingustic-like structures. Our "reality" is those structures displacing our natural organic aware-ing.

To be admittedly simplistic, I hear "terrorist," (call that a Signifier) and like Pavlov's dogs it triggers other Signifiers, which following a dialectical dance, trigger organic feelings, which trigger more Signiers which form ideologies, triggering more Signifiers, triggering choices and actions. (I rushed that)

To view either side in this tragic conflict the way a given individual does, they necessarily have to have been triggered to that position by a series of Signifiers, not by anything appearing to them organically in Nature, not presumably by any revelation from a god etc.

I'm not judging that "fact" about Mind, in any way remotely nihilistically. It works amazingly. To wit, people generally eat, and we landed on the moon.

I'm just throwing some new Signifiers into the fire, certainly because (so-called) I had been triggered by Signifiers input in (so-called) me.

I'm suggesting if we are interested in being authentic in our approach to it, be conscious of the structures operating in Mind triggering feelings, pleasure or pain, causing you to fixate on ideology and make dysfunctional choices.

Constructed out of what? Or is it creation ex nihilo? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Short reply: Constructed (like everything else displacing Nature with Consciousness) out of images stored in memories, developing over maybe hundreds of millennia by the same or a similar Darwinian process familiar enough that it requires no describing. What is functional is adopted and input then revised by future generations , so far, reaching the extremely functional stage it has today.

No, not ex nihilo, yet, ultimately empty and nothing. A useful Fiction, like the rest of Mind and its constructions.

Why not that?

Agreed. I like your example regarding circle.
I wish I was proficient enough in math to dig deeper for artifacts of math's artifice. But I chuckle at where it may have taken off: this idea that Math pre-exists our constructions.
When Plato has the slave draw the triangle proving forever the pre-existence of that Form. As if the slave didn't figured it out because he was born into a culture that had triangle constructed as a useful signifier.

Rock on! :meh:

It goes beyond philosophy in the strict sense in that it relies on religious, or theological traditions, which are adopted as a framework on which to construct one’s enquiry. — Punshhh

Or is it that they (these mystical schools) have profound philosophical roots, only to have been reconstructed as religious, by the so called religious? What influence did the gods have on Socrates? Christ on Hegel or even Heidegger?

Or, even if the chronology is backward, and what started as religion, evolved into profound philosophy; why should that discourage serious philosophical enquiry?

Either way, it's possible that Western Philosophy "proper" (with some exceptions) only avoids these schools because of prejudice concerning connections with religion. And that, to the former's detriment.

In spite of our desire to the contrary, Philosophy is not some universal, pre-human absolute. Just as Philosophy defines everything else, it defines itself. Why should it necessarily be restricted by the walls it constructs? Or, to get to the pith and substance of your statement, which I am taking the liberty of (mis)interpreting, why shouldn't philosophy explore the mystical? Does it really restrict itself to Truth? Or is Truth necessarily arrived at through reason?

"Look at the fish swimming about,” said Chuang Tzu, “They are really enjoying themselves.” “You are not a fish,” replied the friend, “So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves.” “You are not me,” said Chuang Tzu. “So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?

The way we generally view, and thus speak, choose, act, re Israel and Gaza, is not open, and authentic, but autonomously driven by our collective Language. To simplify, look at some Signifiers we are fixated on with obvious triggers in the manifest world (i.e., triggering feelings, feelings to ideologies to choices/action): "terrorist" "anti-semitic" "genocide". It is obvious how, on their own, these go through the process whereby they ultimately trigger choices and actions.

The point I'm trying to make :

Because the Language of things like Human Rights, International Law, Foreign Occupation, Authoritarian, Fascist, trigger us in specific ways, more functional approaches to Gaza cannot arise.

Take Israel's response to October 7, and Hamas. Assume, as I'm willing to, that God help them, they're defending themselves against a brutal enemy. They swear to God, they're trying to adhere to international law. It's a challenge. You try and do better.

But 21,000 children dead; and countless others, owing to physical injuries and mental trauma, might wish they had died.

So, really? Because collectively we are fixated on the Language of International Law, we cause Israel to have to behave like a nation state, use a recognized military, and only bomb, occupy, mop up, all the while doing their best not to harm civilians, while openly, we accept that there must be such casualties.

What?

Because we are fixated on words like, Authoritarian, foreign occupation, and fascist, Israel cannot have done what likely would have saved 21000 children, and countless others, including, their homes, and billions in reconstruction. They couldn't do what El Salvador's guy did. Call Hammas criminals. Send in an army of police to round up anyone even smelling like Hamas. Enter their properties without a warrant, search and even rip shit up. Give them quick and basic trials, the clearly innocent will be released. Everyone else, the death penalty.

Our fixation on Language makes that sound abhorrent. And I agree. It sounds abhorrent. But note, even when the police are ripping shit up, arresting grandpa, and even shoving grandma around, to get her out of the way, no child is really harmed.

And the conventional way; the way so far, endorsed--with obvious cognitive dissonance--by the entire liberal democratic world, openly accepts that children will be harmed. And guess what? They are. But 21000 children? How's that better than a police state rounding up criminals without regard for their civil rights or due process?

While I dread both, if forced to choose, give me a police state over the massacre of the innocents.
...


Wait.


?



Nah.

We could have come up with a whole different numbering system than the one we have now. — L'éléphant

I agree. I noted in a You Tube "documentary" recently that there is a tribe in the Amazon that counts by 2s. Was that embedded? I think math, like Language, and everything else accessible to human mind/experience is a posteriori constructed by Mind and accepted if functional, rejected if not.

Palestinians could surrender totally and unconditionally to Israel in exchange for peace?
How many children are YOU willing to sacrifice — neomac

:up:

I realize you don't speak for Israel, but if that's the price to pay to save the children, while I personally might be willing to pay it, is that not a brutal ransom to exact? Palestinians, in your own words, must surrender totally and unconditionally to Israel to save the children?

As I've said before, all judgement aside, there are functional ways to approach this tragedy and there are dysfunctional ways. Hamas can be the monsters that they appear to be, and still, that doesn't mean the ransom you offered would be helpful, let alone justified.

Don't you think?

Nice. Thank you!

As for Sartre, since @Gnomon references him, yes, Consciousness is supported by a Being which is not itself. But contra Sartre, that Being is the Organic Being, the human animal.

What Consciousness is, is the system of autonomously moving images which displaces the Organic aware-ing of that Being, with the former’s constructions, empty of Real Being, and fleeting, Fiction.

The Dialectic that Sartre observed goes beyond Subject and Object, Self and Other. Like Freud, Sartre was astute enough to observe a Dialectical dynamic to Consciousness, but fixated on the most obvious Dialectic accessible to one in pursuit of an existential or phenomenological Ontology: subject/object (just as for Freud, in pursuit of Neuroses, the Sexual Conflicts were most manifest).

But dialectic is not limited, in Consciousness, to Self and Other. All of Mind moves through a dialectic; Signifiers autonomously competing to be heard, only surfacing at the arrangement most fitting for that specific locus in an individual Mind, and the locus of that Mind in History, or Universal Mind.

Even when my Body’s vision (sensation) is directed at a mundane cup; it does not “see” the Real “object,” like an equally intelligent animal might see; or, rather, it does, but there is no “object,” only see-ing and what Natural response see-ing might trigger. But with Mind, too quickly for that see-ing to be organically felt and responded to by that Real Body in aware-ing, Mind has already begun its Dialectic: Signifiers compete, and the Signifier arrangements most functional, for a given locus, surface to the aware-ing, displacing the Real Organic aware-ing with the "text", and triggering, à la Classical Conditioning, the Body to feel and or act in response to that fiction (all the while receiving those Signifiers in Narrative form, believed to be experience.).

And, only following that process, not Real, not disclosing itself to us as Real Being, but fleeting, and fictional, do I perceive that Signifier chain which won the Dialectic Dance and surfaced to Body, preassembled with belief, as that commonly shared object we call “cup.”

What is the human condition? Shit that just happens. But the point that Heidegger, Sartre, Arendt and so on are desperate to make is, ironically, right in front of our noses. We are authentic beings, not when we construct authenticity, or reflect upon what it is to be the Being of beings, or when we allow Being to disclose itself in authentic choices etc. All those things are sincerely admirable ways to follow the Narrative, just like Altruism might be, or for some, heroic sacrifice. They feed History, and thus inevitably, all of Human Consciousness (to wit, you and I). But what's already in front of our noses is we are authentic Beings, our Body is. To be that authentic Being, just be. If any details need be provided, it would be: breathe, eat, reproduce.

But, trapped in our Narrative world, we hate that idea and end up constructing bullshit out of Dialectic. And believing it. Like this.

there is almost no reason we "must" do anything. — schopenhauer1

I'll chime in further, later on, but for now, referencing your statement above, yes: not only is there almost "no reason" to do anything, but there may even be value in doing "nothing" as Heidegger implies, and certainly, as is required by Zazen. Albeit impossible due to our "entrapment" in the chattering of Fiction, there may be timeless moments where we might get a glimpse into our Natural, Organic, and Real aware-ing, by doing, so-called nothing, and thus, returning to that aware-ing

Having looked more closely at Heidegger, I get why you say,

Heidegger considers this classical understanding of being to belong to metaphysics, whereas his fundamental ontology overcomes metaphysics. — Joshs

But I think he shirks metaphysics, rather than overcoming it. He pretends to be doing a Classical, pre-Socratic even, ontology, an inquiry into the Being of beings, but ends up constructing his beautiful piece of architecture on par with Kant and Hegel, about Dasein, the Being of the everyday human being. And I admire it and find it useful, even liberating from some of the fixations of previous phenomenology, but I still have my concern that far from overcoming, he fell short.

Had he said, this is an "Ontology" of Human Mind, how (this mechanism of) being is constructed by it; how it constructs Time, and Handiness (and, he could have added, Logic and Reason); for their function how it is passed on in the form of History, input into every offspring, so that we are born already thrown into its world; how each particular, each individual instance of it partakes simply by being there; had he said that (which I submit, though over simplified here, except for the opening, he did, and a lot more like that) but just added, but don't ever think I am doing an Ontology of Real Being. That's not possible; any effort I make is already coming from that magical make-believe place of being thrown into a world of ready- made(s). That best I could do is give you back that world, rearranged and reconstructed so that you understand that; that afterall is all we really care about; we don't care about Truth (still my hypothetical H speaking); had that qualifier, which I believe he was conscious of, been included... Why does it matter besides the joy of the puzzle? Because if we think H or anyone has done anything other than reconstruct out of what is already there, we are at risk in believing Mind can, contra Socrates, actually know, and the many manifest problems with that....

Any so called Ontology of "Real" Being (which term and concept is itself, admittedly already a ready-made, so don't even start, Socrates), any inquiry and answer to an inquiry into Truth, can only be in be-ing.

Yes, accept that, I don't think Sartre's authenticity was Real in the ultimate sense. I think he knew he was providing instructions, not on how to "attain" authenticity as in Reality, or Truth. But how to make the Narrative authentic within the inescapable Truth of its ultimate inauthenticity.

What do you think?

A ton more can be said, but for now, just one more thing. It's not like we have any way out. Although Nature did not construct Mind, and it is Fictional, it is precisely that which has seemingly permanently alienated us from Truth: organic, natural reality. Even as I write this the intuition arises in each of us, the mechanism of belief built into the structure. I hear that voice whispering, "you mean Truth is those meaningless organic drives? "F" that then, give me the Fiction." See? We construct meaning, Arendt. We don't discover anything.

Not directly addressing the preceding discussion, but I feel it noteworthy to highlight that Human Mind, as differentiated from organic consciousness (simplified as the aware-ing which bodies--even unicellular and plants--do to varying degrees) necessarily includes self-consciousness, or the mechanism of the Subject in action. And sure, Arendt makes a worthy point, as do Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre et. al. all the way down to the daisies, and we too, with our intuition (also built in, the mechanism of belief) to "bury" the Truth about human Mind being Fictional in structure and nature, and construct some (more) positive meaning out of what's present to their recent reflections. But besides the eloquent ways in which Arendt, Et. Al. construct their meaning, their is nothing noble in it. It's actually what we do with the Fiction (Signifiers structuring Mind) all the time: construct meaning. Simple eg. body organically is presently paining; Mind constructs "I stubbed my toe," out of the autonomously moving Signifiers available; the pronouns so assimilated into the Narrative which Body is fed, that its mechanics as signifier of (usually, but not always) Body is ordained with belief, and we "think" there is this poor I who stubbed its very own toe.

My point with respect to Gnomon's obviously great point, is that what Arendt and (I'm thinking most post Kantian) other Western thinkers are addressing is the ever present intuition that Mind is a Fiction. And that surfaces as a double edged sword. On the one hand, oh shit, Mind is Fiction. On the other hand, that means there are astronomical possibilities.