Historically, mechanism failed to account for intentional actions and actions-at-a-distance (formal-final causes). I remember reading Schelling w.r.t to these issues in Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, and his three types of motion:

1. Quantitative motion, which is proportional only to the quantity of matter - gravity;
2. Qualitative motion, which is appropriate to the inner constitution of matter - chemical motion;
3. Relative motion, which is transmitted to bodies by influence from without (by impact) - mechanical motion. — Schelling

I'm not sure to what extent the chemical, magnetic and electrical revolutions managed to be reduced down to mechanism, but organisms in general don't seem reducible to me. It at least seems fairly intutive that our actions are at least normative - they purpose failure and intentionality - then you do not have a merely mechanical world. Things maintain to their form (and intentions), which is then indicative of how they act.



You'll have to argue for this. Its not a given that anything is just x.

Thanks, Streetlight. That makes sense to me.

, I'm still somewhat curious as to what you have to say about my question about the set of all fundamental particles being able to account for all causal changes. Not that I would advocate for such a view, but past it being pragmatically and perhaps inconceivably difficult to measure, what are the rebuttals? I tried reading that Bunge book awhile back but the guy is fairly dense, as I recall, in formal language.

The Ontogeny of Information looks interesting, though. Would you recommend it?

Well. This would be the set of all fundamental particles. Not a aggerate within a certain area. What then?

Out of curiosity, do you have any way to avoid this type of reductionism?

Strongly suspect that this is the root of goofy reductionist theories that claim that causation only happens between fundamental particles or whatever - a dogmatic reduction of every instance of causation to efficient cause.

Because it seems like once we make this reduction - into the particle world - then all Aristotelian causes begin to fall apart? Particles causation doesn't seem to make sense of certain formal, material, or final causes?

I'm also a little wary of an explanation of causality being explainable on a particle level? Because these mechanical explanations could just keep going ad-infintum if we go through this bottom-up route. And bottom-up causality seems to be a bit spooky.

Interesting, UC. I'll think about it for a bit.

Yes. Casual disposition cannot fail to accord to a certain standard, whereas intentions can. Intentions... intend to some action which can fail.

Its not equivocation. There's plenty of philosophers who see desires, beliefs and intentions as normative. I can't distinguish what you're talking about as anything more than casual dispositions. So if you think desires are synonymous with casual dispositions then cool.

I didn't base my belief on feelings, Ernestm.

I'm not seeing the problem, Ernestm. Being conflicted about your desires doesn't make the desires unconscious, it just means you have conflicting desires.

I don't buy into an "ID" as being the "base-level" of our self, as if there's some sort of primordial urge (ID) that implicitly supervenes over our conscience (Super-Ego), and then the conscience supervenes explicitly through sheer act of will-power. The triadic theory seems to put ethics as something over and above the passions, and seems to put practical engagement (Ego) over and above the passions/"bodily needs" (ID). They just seem to me to be equiprimordial.

The common usage of the word is used ambiguously, MU. Surely you're not suggesting that the dictionary is the arbitrator of philosophical language?

Well, I think your interlocutor here can just say something to the effect of the desire is equivalent to the will insofar as one has to choose to desire, instead of being casually disposed to hunger. Then it just seems like you're in an impasse. How do you convince them? How do you figure this to not be a semantic dispute?

Obviously a ascetic can tell you he does not desire a loaf of bread even though he's hungry. But you would just say that he desires in virute of being hungry.

The feeling of hunger isn't a desire. It's a casual disposition. I don't desire to feel hunger, I am hungry and as a consequence I desire to eat. Once I desire to eat, I intend to do things. That's why desires and beliefs are normative.

I think we experience both: awareness and attention. I attend a dog barking at me, I'm aware of my surrounding around me. Everything has this foreground/background distinction, it's the essence of a gestalt shift too.

So, I think without being attuned to something explicitly, we can still make a decision implicitly. You just have to at least at some point have been aware of forgoing the decision. Of course one isn't aware of all nuance details they do implicitly in any actions.

The illusion is acknowledged to be not an illusion in virute of a belief that overcomes the prior experience. It's not that we don't experience the illusion, and then experience it, it's that we experience it differently in virute of a conceptual difference.

But any way, even if there is a relationship between the unconscious, this doesn't mean it has desires, intentions, and beliefs. These would just be mere causal dispositions?

I think that such things as visual illusions and unconscious desires exist along a continuum.

In virute of what do you make this claim, though? It seems prima-facie binary: one is conscious -- we experience it -- and the other is unconscious -- we don't experience it.

Do you deny that you're experiencing illusions?

I agree with this, but I'm not sure how one can ascribe the terms "intentions, beliefs, and desires" meaningfully to the unconscious. Just that there seems to be a casual relationships between it and experiences. But there's also one between the mind and the brain, and we generally reject the idea that the brain has beliefs, desires, and intentions. That's why we say the mind is irreducible to the brain in virute of x, y, z.

No, I mean unconscious. Subconscious, as far as I know, was not used in psychoanalytical writings, and both Freud and Jung postulated that the unconscious does have a will, purpose, desires, ideas, etc. But what I'm asking is how is it meaningful to say that they have these, and why is the unconscious and conscious a "continuum" anymore than a body and mind is a "continuum?"

Wayfarer, that's fine. But how's that related? I'm not denying that the brain alternates perceptual structures in some form. I mean, Hering Illusions is also another example of that. So is the Mach Effect or whatever. But these aren't desires, intentions or beliefs. Of course I agree that we experience these.

The notion was that these only make sense w.r.t consciousness. What does it mean for normative states - intentions, beliefs, and desires - to be unconscious? How do we know that the unconscious has desires? I've never experienced them (for that would mean for it to be conscious) to know how they are like. It's not like they're perceivable either.

But control is also constitutive of agency. That requires intentions, beliefs, and desires - which are a part of the consciousness.

Is there an *ontological* difference between say the experience of a couch, and the experience of a human?

Yes, that's the distinction between Dasein and the ontic.

And it's obviously not "special pleading", as Heidegger writes thousands of pages dividing the essential differences between the two.

If existence itself is a particular thing, and not a concept, can you point to this thing, or describe to me where I might find it.

Well, it's particular type of "thing" - namely the entire world. Definitely not an object/subject in the usual sense, but it's surely not a concept. Conceptual knowledge is existentially neutral. Conceptually, there's no difference between a hundred possible dollars and a hundred actual dollars. So the predicate "existence" adds nothing more to the subject.

Existence surely has to be there prior to any determination on our part.

The PSR says that for every existing thing, there is a reason for its existence. A universal, or generality is a concept. Therefore a universal, or generality, is only an existing thing as a concept. So we have two principal categories, particular things, and universals, or generalities. To treat a member of one category as if it were a member of the other category is a category mistake.

Since existence is not a concept, I take it I can apply the PSR to the thing which is - existence.

Also, this doesn't make any sense with other universals. What about the universal redness? Does that mean you can't apply the universal redness to existing things?

I'm honestly fairly perplexed. Why is this a categorical error? Why is applying the PSR, when applied to a generality fail? Would you mind formalizing your thoughts? In all the work in Pruss, Feser, and others who talk about the PSR, this type of argument has never been mentioned.

I'm also not sure why existence is a property.

So if we desire to apply the PSR to being, there is only the concept to apply it to.

Why? I can obviously apply it to existence it-self, not the concept.

Oh yeah, Hegel and Schelling liked their Jacob Boehme and Meister Eckhart. Probably have to read both of those thinkers to understand them.

How Kierkegaardian. I share this thought of time too. I think it's breifly in The Concept of Anxiety?

...When time is correctly defined as infinite succession, it seems plausible to define it also as the present, the past and the future. However this distinction is incorrect, if one means by it that this is implied in time itself; for it first emerges with the relation of time to eternity and the reflection of eternity in it. If in the infinite succession of time one could in fact find a foothold, i.e. a present, which would serve as a dividing point, then this division would be quite correct. But precisely because every moment, like the sum of the moments, is a process (a going-by) no moment is a present, and in the same sense there is neither past, present, nor future. If one thinks it possible to maintain this division, it is because we spatialize a moment, but thereby the infinite succession is brought to a standstill, and that is because one introduces a visual representation, visualizing time instead of thinking it. But even so it is not correctly thought, for even in this visual representation the infinite succession of time is a present infinitely void of content. (This is the parody of the eternal.) The Hindus speak of a line of kings which has reigned for 70,000 years. About the kings nothing is known, not even their names (as I assume). Taking this as an illustration of time, these 70,000 years are for thought an infinite vanishing; for visual representation they widen out spatially into an illusive view of a nothing infinitely void. On the other hand, so soon as we let one moment succeed the other we posit the present.

The present, however, is not the concept of time, unless precisely as something infinitely void, which again is precisely the infinite vanishing. If one does not give heed to this, then, however swiftly one may let it pass, one has nevertheless posited the present, and having posited that, one lets it appear again in the definition of the past and the future. On the contrary, the eternal is the present. For thought, the eternal is the present as an annulled [aufgehoben] succession (time was succession, going by). For visual representation, eternity is a going-forth, yet it never budges from the spot, because for visual representation it is a present infinitely rich in content. Likewise in the eternal there is not to be found any division of the past and the future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession... — Soren Kierkegaard

If I understand it correctly, it's a type of presentism where the present is really a moment, an instant. A constantly changing eternal nowness.

Maybe I missed something, but is there a reason you want to do the introduction last?

To be honest, and I don't think it's the greatest defense there is, but I do think that obviously what Heidegger had to overcome required a completely different framework of thinking, and a new vocabulary. It's the only way of getting past the older substance ontology of the ancients, the absolute subjectivity of the German Idealists (and the world as being a projection of the subject), and the older conceptions of time as a spatalized continuum of 'nows'.

The problem is he refuses to use too many examples in B&T to illustrate his points. I think it might be partially due him denying easy access into his own philosophy for others to give easy criticism of his work. That and sense his project is largely hermeneutical, he obviously wants his readers to have a good understanding of the history of philosophy before unraveling his work. The best way to do this is to force readers to read slowly, and meticulously - to pay attention to why he's using different words.

I'm not sure. Late and middle Schelling also gets very mystical, so I'm not sure if we can blame it entirely on Hegel. Holderlin, Hegel, and Schelling must've had a conversation one day back in their university to make their philosophy impenetrable. Plus they were all into mysticism.

No. Fichte is the clearest German Idealist.

Same. There's something about Heidegger's writing which I found particularly lucid and brilliant - though it takes sometime to get used to. I don't feel the same way about Husserl, early Merleau-Ponty, late Levinas, and especially Hegel and Derrida, though.

I think most of the claims against Heidegger are over-exaggerated. I'm glad there's more interest now-a-days in Continental Philosophy than there was twenty years ago from the AP tradition.

I'm not sure how you're going to reduce the present-at-hand to the ready-to-hand because we just seem to operate in the world with both modes - as intellectually detached from our projects in the world as Daseins, and fundamentally absorbed within our projects. They're both needed.

The being of something also always belongs to beings. Being doesn't just float around abstractly. Beings under a "realist" interpretation also do exist Dasein-independently, but I guess that can be argued in favor an anti-realist interpretation of Being and Time which I'm sympathetic to.

I think Levinas basically attempts to switch over Being & beings into Existence and Existents, and show that the latter is completely dependent on Existence. He just doesn't tie it to a Dasein in-which discloses being.

I'm still not sure what this means, and I asked four people to clarify your post - none of them could make sense of it either. I'm not trying to be dismissive, your post just confuses me.

Like why can't we apply the PSR to existence without applying it to the concept of existence? And what does it mean to apply the PSR to the concept of existence?

I thought the task was to show a (unique) first cause, like Craig, and then (perhaps) that the first cause is necessary?
— jorndoe

I see. I thought I addressed this, but I myself wouldn't defend the Kalam cosmological argument all the way through. I was addressing the classic cosmological argument (basically the argument from contingency), and explaining how divine attributes follow. But to answer your question it's the exact reversal: because it is necessary for their to be a first cause, then it follows there must be a first cause, and that since it cannot be temporal, it is unique. There is no special pleading involved, imho.

— jorndoe

• the principle of sufficient reason cannot apply to existence ("everything") without circularity, since otherwise the deduced reason would then not exist, which is contradictory
• 2+2=4 may be another example, as suggested by @Wayfarer, which converges on the strange Platonic realm of old
• thus, before applying the principle to some x, you must ensure x is not one such example (this is usually simple enough, or reasonable, for ordinary everyday trivialities)
• unconditional application can be misapplication, and has a logical structure of "everything and then some", which violates the first law, the law of identity
• if the whole universe is everything, then the principle cannot apply to the universe
• you must first show that the whole universe is not everything, or, more accurately, that the principle applies to the whole universe

I'm not sure the mathematical example you said works. I forgot to mention it, but the scholastic PSR states: "everything that is has that by which it is." Which is a weaker PSR. It talks about things that exists, real being, not that there is a reason for things like mathematical equations. That would be a rationalist version of it.

And since you didn't really elaborate and how your other examples really deflate the issue concerning the PSR I'm gonna have to ask you to, again, elaborate on those examples.

As for your last two statements about the universe being everything, this is just simply question-begging. I don't have to demonstrate it's not everything. You have to demonstrate that physicalism/naturalism is true without begging the question.

It's interesting you say this. This view of history is characteristic of modern consciousness - up until the 1800s, the concern over power structures was almost non-existent. — Agustino

I'm not sure how you can say this, though. That the concern for power structure is a "modern thing."

Beginning somewhere from some of the earliest historical writings, like the Peloponnesian war from Thyucydides, has shown the exact opposite of virtuous societies existing harmoniously with each other. I'm sure he can be said to be a inaccurate in some way today, but the conditions he spoke of in ancient Greece seemed brutal. For example, as history shortly moves on from 432BCE with the Debate at Sparta and Declaration of the War, to the speeches given in 416 BCE by the Melians in war, there became a sudden decline in what speakers could consider justice, and how the collective polis itself begins to crumble to merely fear, violence, and power. This is just shortly after the Persian War where Sparta and Athens battled together - which makes it surprising that once the Athenians were reaching a state of power in the Mediterranean they were already attacking, and shortly after attempting to persuade Sparta not to start a war they provoked. The most baffling thing is that Sparta accepted their plea (which was mostly pandering) even after justifying a promise to protect Potieda whom the Athenians attacked. The ethical dimension of language and reason already moves considerably in just fifteen years. Reason was ruptured between slaughtering others for survival, to a pragmatic stance in not slaughtering others so that maybe "other might not attack again if we showed some mercy."

You see this type of strife all throughout Greek tragedy too. Each play within Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides shows that each of those authors understood how attempting to resolve ethics ended in disaster. Each play shows a mythical past that's riddled with ethical puzzles that had no answers, no resolution, and ended with aporia.

You see this in the Macedonia culture during the time of Alexander the Great. All the city-states attacking each other for power - particularly easily reclaiming land and power at the moment Alexander's father dies. It seemed that each city broke into not just herd mentalities, but ruptured differences each considerably brutal…

...Although, I do think that value of individualism and the beginning of egocentricity was marked at the emergence of capitalism predominantly, this definitely didn't begin in the 1800s. The beginning can be found at the tail end of the middle ages. I would agree before then there was probably more of a commune between the caste systems, but only because social ranking was divinely and financially put into place from birth. If one has no distinct and changeable lifestyle from others, then you're initially rooted into a place where identity becomes homogenized with the rest of society. The need for competition becomes less needed. Freedom and identity wouldn't have existed together at that time. But to think this was an era of prosperity for these individuals seems contentious.

After this time, going into the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment, egocentricity only became worse and worse, imho. But I do think that in the modern period is probably the worse concerning this particular issue. You have a sort of paradoxical individual-collectivism: where everyone must be individual. But if everyone is an individual then the idea becomes a part of mass culture. Where society begins to flatten out the antagonisms between good and evil, between higher art and lower art, between high and low culture which you have in mind.

Notice that the more power structures are removed in the modern age, the more chaotic the world becomes - the more violent, mean and selfish it will become. — Agustino

We live in a world where there is more law, more power structures, more surveillance than ever before. We've created a society that refuses to acknowledge any other system than its own. When mankind cannot no longer see alternatives to the society it lives in, where forms of suppression now become invisible forces in the guise of a "neutrality," then one could be completely analogous to a somnambulist — walking through his daily life asleep, and in-taking new forms of "progress" without realizing their mass consumption, (and essential non-radical conformity).

Our society can hardly be called radical or progressive. In fact, we live in probably one of most dangerous times where newer ideas become harder to come by due to the crushing status-quo.

The explosion of pathologies today isn't because we've become radical and progressive, it's come because we can't find an identity anymore in the meaningless (secularized) bureaucratic and technological world.

Indeed that is why it becomes necessary that we have leaders - not only in politics - which exemplify and wear the virtues for all to see. People do what seems to be popular to them, and what seems popular is what they see their leaders do - those who are in the public eye. People learn and arrange their lives based on Hollywood, actors, musicians, comedians, politicians, etc. But the media and Hollywood, and Western politicians are mostly hyper-progressive. They don't wear any virtues, apart from the virtue of benevolence towards everyone and everything, which they mistake for complete virtue. Courage, loyalty, trust, kindness, self-sacrifice, chastity - these virtues, they most certainly don't represent. — Agustino

I think all these things are a result of technological rationality. People are no longer really a result of localized beliefs and values, but history and technology. But perhaps I'm too Marcusean.

It's related to our prior conversation when I said God is completely transcendent.

Any way, I'm mustering up a reply to this...

Real quick:

It seems like what you want is an ethical theory that can ground, but isn't that the very thing that Levinas wants to say is impossible? That normative ethics provide justification for law, and law then becomes violence? Then the reasons we ground an ethical system eventually become subversive. So order becomes a form of power, a way of producing a demand on others to obey some x. But we already know historically this hasn't worked well. We get technocracies, bureaucracies, capitalism, technological enframing, educational systems that begin to take a monopoly of what's right for our children. History hasn't proven to be progressive ethically, and the epitome of violence was seen in second world war for Levinas.

As for offering further phenomenological explanations, I'd go do some research on Levinas' face-to-face. I'd offer an explanation but it's not really related to the topic, and it'd require some work and general phenomenological assumptions which I'd need some time to think about. :-!

Can you elaborate further? I'm not sure what you mean. It seems if the cosmological argument proves the universe to be contingent it necessarily implies there's something beyond the universe. That and reason isn't solely contained in the universe - isn't merely physical constrained.

In order to prove God you're assuming he's beyond the physical realm. I must be missing something you or the other members are trying to say?

Are you saying the PSR is a pragmatic and useful way of viewing the world? That only exists in the intellect?

And can you give me examples of where propositions are fuzzy and ambiguous?

The need for a ground is merely to say all unconditioned beings must find their end in something other than themselves. Are you talking about epistemological foundationalism/anti-foundationalism?


Yes, this all seems pretty fair in the classic conceptions of motion, etc...

Hey, I can't answer this all right now, so I might aim for tomorrow.

I'm not sure that makes sense...
The terms "instantaneous" and "cause" are already temporal, and "before time" is incoherent.
So, if said "first cause" did not begin at the definite earliest time, then what?
You could redefine "cause", but that would most likely be special pleading for the occasion. — Jorndoe

Is an instantaneous cause temporal, though? I mean, I don't think so. Something that can be said to be in an instant wouldn't be occurring in time at all - that requires duration. I don't think this is a really discrete moment in time, like a Planck time unit, but something without duration. It's resistance to being caught into time at all. And if you think such a thing is impossible, then I would say you estimate time wholes behaving the same way as object wholes, but we might argue that time is not consistent of part wholes at all like extended objects are, and that you merely assumed such in viewing time as a spatialized continuum.

We're just not looking at temporal causes here. We're looking in terms of priority for first cause. First cause would then be the first in priority, not receiving its existence or anything else from a prior cause.

But I think the most important thing to consider is it's just simply logically required by the cosmological argument. Even if we were to say such as thing might be hard to conceive, or even experience, we see rather retrogressively that a contingent universe needs a necessary unconditioned ground. So even if we said it's special pleading, it's a justified case of special pleading.

As for the before time... it is incoherent. This isn't a before time. This is anterior to time. Or perhaps the cause that puts time into motion instantaneously. I don't think this is so ridiculous since we've had at least Kantian transcendentalism demonstrate that the TS could offer us the conditions of possibility for time to occur at all. As well as those people think that time is put into world as soon as consciousness occurs.

The principle of sufficient reason cannot apply to existence (everything) without circularity, since otherwise the deduced reason would automatically not exist — which is contradictory.

Therefore, applying the principle to the whole universe, automatically/implicitly assumes something "extra universal" — which just is a subtle form of begging the question. — jorndoe

I'm not sure if scholasticism is trying to deduce reason using reason - which would be circular. I think the argument is: the PSR is either false or true (LEM). If it's false, then the world as a totality would be without reason, including our very thoughts which are a part of it. But then our very reasons for justification would not have ground.

Also, we're not saying it's the entire universe. We're saying it's the entire world; it's all of existence. Unless we're question-begging a closed universe in some type of naturalism/physicalism, then the world isn't just the universe.

(Accidently double posted... Please delete)

This is contradictory. If they are groundless, then they cannot be challenged from the ground up because there is no ground.

Yes. They're challenged for being grounded. But they're not grounded.

Then how do we access ethics if they are radically Other? How does a priest for example teach ethics to his congregation in such a case? If ethics are radically Other, then it would follow that even the ethics illustrated in the Bible are not "real".

Ethics are shown in the absence of being, in what it's not. In the sense of what haunts us in the world isn't whats there, but in what's not in the world. A possibility not actualized.

But Levinas never says ethics is up for grabs. That's why justice is radically Other. So if Justice is radically other they can't be for everyone to decide and judge what justice is.

I'm also not sure how being skeptical of ethics in the normative sense is dangerous. The attempt to deconstruct ethics functions like anarchy philosophy. All it means is to go against (an) ground (arche). All ethics are, if you buy into the argument, groundless. Which means it's an absolute duty for us to challenge them constantly from the "ground" up.

Something I've contemplated is whether or how God could "fit" in a human mind. A simpler analogy would be with a spiritual guru. We can't know the guru concretely or in fact until we have become the guru and possesses his insights as are own. Before that moment there is the hope or expectation of such a moment. But it's like a empty negation. "I know there's is something I don't know (that the guru knows.)" But how is this knowledge established? How does the guru have authority before he is understood? The point is that he's not fully real for the disciple until he is contained in the disciple as an insight or realization. — Hoo

Because I rarely do it I wanted to quote Descartes on this. It's a passage Levinas really likes:

"And I must not imagine that I do not apprehend the infinite by a true idea, but only by the negation of the finite, in the same way that I comprehend repose and darkness by the negation of motion and light: since, on the contrary, I clearly perceive that there is more reality in the infinite substance than in the finite, and therefore that in some way I possess the perception (notion) of the infinite before that of the finite, that is, the perception of God before that of myself, for how could I know that I doubt, desire, or that something is wanting to me, and that I am not wholly perfect, if I possessed no idea of a being more perfect than myself, by comparison of which I knew the deficiencies of my nature?" — Descartes

I can't take the PSR as an axiom. Perhaps it's just an implicit acknowledgement that explanation depends on the projection of necessity. But of course top-level necessities are contingent (why exactly these necessities or laws?), unless one hands them to God, but then God is contingent, unless ...?

As to the totality, maybe that's equivalent to God as Being. — Hoo

I think the laws are contingently so in the sense they could have been otherwise, and rely on each other for their function to be such. But this only means they must be contingent (conditioned) by something that is not-contingent. This would be God, as a perfect being is a necessary being.

Okay. Rudolf Otto in the "Idea of the Holy" presents a similar conception of divinity. May I ask you, in your opinion, what is the ethical import, if any, of this conception of God? How do you - as a believer in a God who is Ganz Andere, how do you live your ethical life as a Christian? Are there differences in comparison to someone who is a Thomist? — Agustino

It's meant to place The Other as the metaphysical foundation of ethics, as ethics as first philosophy that comes prior to ontologizing. Which more plainly means to place it outside of the reach of human reasoning.

The tradition comes mainly from a reply to Heidegger's fundamental ontology as the beginning of philosophy, but also as a reply to most of Western philosophy since Descartes whom places the I as the authority, and determination of all knowledge - which include ethics. So it paves the way for ethics to be ontology, to describe the good as a being, and a being that we can understanding inside ourselves since it obviously has a homogenous relationship with reason. I mean, you might even be able to find this within Plato and Socrates who relate knowledge to a moment of recollection (anamnesis), and the good was always within ourselves but lost.

But if you're skeptical of these things - the ability to concretize an ethical system that everyone has a duty towards, in which we place ourselves ourselves as a duty towards our own ethical standards - then you place ethics beyond that domain, into something otherwise than being.

Of course the explanation requires a lot more than I can possibly provide, I think you might be able to see it's a way of humbling yourself and also of seeing the good isn't within ourselves to grasp, but something that always lies within futral possibility.