Being In the Middle

Fire Ologist

Picture someone throwing a frisbee, and then picture the frisbee while it is still in flight, traveling through the air, before it is caught again. The frisbee in flight, is in the middle.

All, for human beings, is in the middle.

Spawned somewhere in our youth we are unleashed in the throw, and just like the frisbee, the shape of our bodies carries us through this life, needing the air to keep moving and fighting the wind until we are humbled by gravity; we are in the middle of a similar flight right now reading this.

Everything moving, changing; now becoming now, becoming newer now, and again; and we realize we are changing too, both in our own motions re-forming our very selves before these “selves” might be formed in the first place. Then that place is gone again. And as these fleeting attempted selves are becoming, we move other things, making changes back at the world of moving things (like me writing this and sending it aloft, redefining me as a mover of ideas like you who receives them).

We are becoming, in becoming, making things come to be. We are a chain of instances of perpetual motion, but always for only an instant, each chain link replacing the last link, then we move on. Until the frisbee drops.

The metaphysical picture of all of this would be flux. But before any of that, keeping this more obvious, les contrived, more naïve, in the moment, now, we are in between birth and death; just as right this very instant we come from, in the same instant we go toward. Only in the middle of..

If there is something larger than me, say, the solar system, or the galaxy if you need to keep going, you will end up somewhere in the middle. If there are parts of me, say my chemical, and biological, and environmental functionings, you will need to keep digging or building to understand or contain. If there was a past before me and future after me, and if there is right here in front of me (such as these words), and then what is now behind me (such as these words again), always, we start anew as we finish. We keep finishing, or keep starting, somewhere in the middle.

We need not look for first ground, to still live, at home, here in the present, here in the middle, somewhere above the ground, like a frisbee. We don’t need a highest height either, as we can always see there is something more, something left over, always a context to measure any height against.

There is no “this” meaning “this only”. There is always “this and that”, never this only. Every “this” brings with it it’s distinction from “that”, it’s position on the horizon, as it hangs there, flying, being, becoming.

That we would be reading these words started long before we were looking for these words, and this reading will be over soon, and you will remain, in the middle.

Sensation itself is an analogue for this, consciousness itself seated in the middle, between the animal brain with its eyes, hands and ears, and rest of the world. Doesn’t there have to be something to see, like light reflected, off of objects producing or reflecting the light, for me to then find eyes for looking? Eyes come somewhere in the middle of all of this, just like light and objects do.

If I am to learn knowledge, I must admit I do not know and I am cut off, needing to learn, needing learning. And while learning I am in the middle of coming to know, but not knowing. So learning is a motion, an interplay, between that which has already illuded, and that which has yet to become known. Knowing sits in between both a question and an answer; it is not a union between things, but a reunion of things divided, a dividing and a unifying. A making, of a middle ground.

This doesn’t mean there is nowhere to start. Quite the opposite, it means starts are everywhere. Stopping and starting is an entirely different subject. A relativist might easily agree all is in the middle. But that is not the topic here. There is still the truth. But that's something else. All, for me, a human being, is in the middle, such as truth or no truth here with me, and I have to place my ideas, like markers and make them the same in every middle at each point as the frisbee flies (like math or wisdom or science, or the word "frisbee"). I mean, I know you know what a frisbee is. That is at least something that endures here in the middle. But just because I am a becoming thing, and this thing is in the middle, and the truths I place as markers fade, it doesn’t mean marks are not marks; it doesn't mean marks are the same as frisbees. Truth and starts – that is not what I am saying here.

Here, we are talking about, say, here, where you find yourself, now, where this sentence ends on the word "ends". Somewhere in the middle of this little short. Always coming to be, always letting go of the last instant as you are always ready to receive this next one. And the next "one". Like everything else you will find. As we are finding. As we continue from and towards, here, now. Always, again, the middle.

The metaphysical point is this: motion is. Also, identity evades.

The epistemological point is this: we will never be finished coming to know, even one thing.

The linguistic point is this: all words are analogous by design, approaching meaning, directing a refabrication in a communicant at best.

The point as applied to the physical sciences is this: from cause, to effect, then the effect stands as a new cause, causing the next effects, and so on. Also, motion is. (Same as for metaphysics, though metaphysics starts theoretical and moves in that direction, while physics moves towards the empirical.)

The point as applied to logic is this: we only find logic in between the concepts and premises we posit, in the relation that is joining premise to conclusion.

The point as applied to ethics and politics is this: we suffer injustice as we cause injustice, and we remedy this only when we remedy a community of all people, remaining throughout this interplay, somewhere in the middle.

The existential/ ontological point is this: where else could we possibly be, or need to be, or want to be, but here in the middle? But like a frisbee, I'm tired and need to rest.

Possibly a more interesting point: everything I am trying to say here fits in part with many different philosophic and mystical traditions. I am hoping you see any threads floating beyond this short flight.

I wonder if we forget our place if we don't sometimes remind ourselves of the middle.

180 Proof

I wonder if we forget our place if we don't sometimes remind ourselves of the middle. — Fire Ologist

Yes, we are 'beings-in-media-res'. I prefer Jasper's notion of 'Existenz' as conditioned, or grounded, by what he calls the encompassing¹ or even better, more concrete, Spinoza's/Deleuze's 'radical immanence' (i.e. eternal and infinite substance²).

https://philonotes.com/2023/04/karl-jasperss-concept-of-encompassing ¹

https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/the-world-as-immanence-415a86f5003d ²

Philosophim

The metaphysical point is this: motion is. Also, identity evades.

The epistemological point is this: we will never be finished coming to know, even one thing. — Fire Ologist

I actually prove we can know at least one thing, and then build up a full knowledge theory from there. You might like it as its approach is from the reader's experience like you've done here. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1

There's a great summary from the first response if you want to read that first.

Fire Ologist

I actually prove we can know at least one thing — Philosophim

If you notice, I said identity evades. I didn’t say identity is not. I agree we can know things. My point here is that in order to do epistemology, you must place yourself in the middle of reality, an experience of that reality which can be known, and then the rejoining of the known experience to that reality. And this is a for instance. But you never move off the middle. When you rejoin, when we know, we know things, so we are still in the middle.

The middle is where or when experience is.

It’s more metaphysics than it is epistemology, but the metaphysical point that “all for human beings is in the middle” means that whether we do epistemology, or physics, etc, we must reckon with motion.

And like I also said, truth and starting (as with a discreet experience), as when I might claim an essential property in some thing in experience, these also are true. This is the other side of motion though. It is the thing that is moving. This is another subject. Being in the middle speaks of where and when and how; it does not speak of what.

And I’m not saying you didn’t understand what I meant by any of the above. Just trying to refocus.

Fire Ologist

I prefer Jasper's notion of 'Existenz' as conditioned, — 180 Proof

Yeah, “being in the middle” isn’t even a sentence, let alone a noun like “existenz”. I like “thrown-ness” which I think is Heidegger. But ‘being in the middle’ as a concept is more tentative; it’s a phrase that might be found in the middle of a whole sentence. Existenz has exist in it, which I like, but it all has a more fixed feel to it, so I think it is better phrased then it is clearly identified.

It’s where being and becoming blur into no need for distinction between them.

unenlightened

All, for human beings, is in the middle. — Fire Ologist

Indeed, one is always in a mid-life crisis whenever one philosophises - in the middle of a muddle.

Life is only completed by death. and identity is merely what one writes on another's tombstone. Everything is becoming except oneself, and that remains forever empty, though the world pours in at every sense.

Being just is, and only nothing happens.

Joshs

I wonder if we forget our place if we don't sometimes remind ourselves of the middle.
— Fire Ologist
Yes, we are 'beings-in-media-res'. I prefer Jasper's notion of 'Existenz' as conditioned, or grounded, by what he calls the encompassing¹ or even better, more concrete, Spinoza's/Deleuze's 'radical immanence' (i.e. eternal and infinite substance² — 180 Proof

I was going to mention Deleuze’s Rhizomatics.

The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. It is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five, etc. It is not a multiple derived from the One, or to which One is added (n + 1). It is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills.

180 Proof

↪Joshs

:up:

ENOAH

at home, here in the present, here in the middle, somewhere above the ground, like a frisbee — Fire Ologist

While generally I'm OK with interpreting a text outside of authorial intent, in this case it would be folly to ignore the opportunity.

Here's what I read. Am I overreaching?

The middle is not a place on the course (of becoming), but the gap, actually inaccessible to us, but it's where being resides, in the present.

If we never dip our toes in the same always moving river twice, there's no [at least, discernable] middle.

If we dip our toes in a river that is whole, with no beginning or end, then the significance of the movement (becoming), and a middle, is an illusion.

Are there other options? Either way, the middle is inaccessible to us trapped in becoming.

It is accessible "somewhere else" "above the ground like a frisbee." Is that not in the presence of being?

Fire Ologist

Here's what I read. Am I overreaching? — ENOAH

I think we’re looking at the same thing, same moment or place, and you are seeing more than I’m saying, so maybe not seeing exactly what I’m trying to point out.

The middle is not a place on the course (of becoming), but the gap, actually inaccessible to us, but it's where being resides, in the present. — ENOAH

Being in the middle, draws out simply becoming. It’s the is is-ing. It can be a place (middle). Or it can be a time (present).

You used all of these words, but you said it is not a place. You said it is a gap.

If “I am” links this becoming to the “I” and this is illusory, I say that I’ve tempered the illusion of identity by saying nothing of “I” and positing only “being in the middle is”. I’ve replaced the “I” with anything being in the middle, so nothing in particular, or everything. It doesn’t matter (at least not to make this point because this point is already becoming made).

By simply saying “gap” we have simultaneously made a “gap between” as a gap is only a gap between this and that, here and there. By making a gap, we have drawn boundaries all the same; and only then can you fix the gap in the middle.

But each boundary is just as much in the middle as the gap would be, where and when these are being, are becoming.

If you say “inaccessible”, I would say this implies one here “accessing” (or failing to access), another one there. There is no distinct inaccessibility without these many other ones in the same instant of accessing (or inaccessing, it’s still in the middle).

Becoming moves off of middles, in the middle, towards middles. Always middle, because that is where or when or how becoming just is.

In the middle demonstrates how; it does not demonstrate what.

Just as “gap” and “boundary” or “the inaccessible” or “illusion” are too fixed when speaking of becoming, “middle” sounds more like something fixed as well. Nevertheless, to ground becoming for just a fleeting moment as if it could be an object, my term for becoming is…being in the middle.

Fire Ologist

identity is merely — unenlightened

That says a lot.

Identity is merely, needs lines that are blurred. So you have both the clarity of identity, and you do not have this clarity because those same clear lines are blurred destroying identity.

Being in the middle is 100% a way to talk about the problem of identity.

And without identifying anything, nothing happens.

To me that leans too far. You can so lean, as the lines are extremely blurry. But I can’t unsee the lines. I still see enough to call being in the middle something happening.

unenlightened

To me that leans too far. You can so lean, as the lines are extremely blurry. But I can’t unsee the lines. I still see enough to call being in the middle something happening. — Fire Ologist

To who? I talk about identity as if i have none and for sure that leans too far. But perhaps "we" can find the balance together? Something and nothing — someone and no one.. When philosophy fails, maybe try poetry.

Joshs

↪Fire Ologist

And without identifying anything, nothing happens — Fire Ologist

‘Das nichts nichtet’. Heidegger’s famous line that the nothing nothings means that truth happens in the nothing, which is another name for transcendence. Happening, the in-between, event, occurring, transit, difference, becoming are prior to identity.

ENOAH

↪Fire Ologist

Yes, I see how "gap" is problematic.

ENOAH

Being in the middle, draws out simply becoming. — Fire Ologist

For me, being/becoming: never the twain shall meet. (Except by illusion in becoming).

If “I am” links this becoming to the “I” and this is illusory, I say that I’ve tempered the illusion of identity by saying nothing of “I” and positing only “being in the middle is”. I’ve replaced the “I” with anything being in the middle, so nothing in particular, or everything — Fire Ologist

I kind of see what you mean...but, I ask, was "tempering" the illusion, not just a "trick," like all of this is? Like all of my thoughts and expressions in the fleeting of becoming. And, therefore, are we not truly in the unbridgeable "gap" between being and becoming, when we are truly in that nanosecond worth of being in the middle?

you say “inaccessible”, I would say this implies one here “accessing” (or failing to access), another one there. — Fire Ologist

Yes. I say becoming necessarily failing to access being; the latter, only accessible to/by be-ing.

So ultimately, I misunderstood. I now think "middle" in your query, intends a time/place within becoming.

If that is the case, where is its "magic" (referring to that which you so eloquently described in your original post)?

Fire Ologist

For me, being/becoming: never the twain shall meet. (Except by illusion in becoming). — ENOAH

If becoming is like surfing on a wave, being stands still on the beach. Becoming captures motion pictures; being is a snapshot.

That is one way to leave being and becoming. You are right in the middle of the same thing I’m taking about, you then draw from becoming, being as illusion.

We can get there, but the puts me in the middle of so many distinctions. I makes me be making distinctions, distinguishing being from becoming…

Instead, I’m hovering (like a frisbee) on just being, where being still vibrates and moves. So that becoming is the better first word for being. But where any single being is really becoming single, becoming.

You end up with one thing: motion. Or becoming. Being.

In two ways, you can hover where being and becoming may as well be the same. First, because of the “ing”. Or the “to”. To be or be-ing, like to become or becom-ing. It’s the “to” and the “ing” that supplies the magic, not the “be” or “become”. Second, being is better opposed by not being. The opposite of to be is not to come-to-be; the opposite is not-to-be. Then what is negation? How can negation be if it is the opposite of be? (Negation is the birth of illusion, but that is still another conversation.) Staying simple, since we say “not” everyday, someone says “go get me a chair in that room” and you walk in and say “that’s not a chair, and that’s not a chair”. And someone else says “no, that is a chair, you can sit in it…” and the first one says ”just because you can sit on it doesn’t mean it’s a chair. That, is not, a chair!” In this conversation, full of discreet negations, “not a molecule” or “not a supernova” would be negations that made no sense had no use, but “not a chair” in reference to that shovel over there or that blanket, would make perfect sense, would become useful as the conversation came to be…

But see how fast and how far we fall? There are two many distinctions now. Being in the middle hovers in every bit of this, ignored, because the focus is on the “ing” in focusing.

And, therefore, are we not truly in the unbridgeable "gap" between being and becoming, when we are truly in that nanosecond worth of being in the middle? — ENOAH

I like the nanosecond worth of being. A lot. That is exactly it again. To hold something still in a nanosecond, there “is holding”, so there is still becoming in that nanosecond. We have to chop and measure a nanosecond, so instead, I see chopping and measuring.

Being is the purely linguistic way of pointing to a becoming. “I am” talks (is linguistic) of me becoming but not yet me. Becoming, therefore, seems the better word, to me, but I also see the “ing” in both being and becoming, so I’m fine with the word being just as well, and still need not wonder about illusion and distinction, just the “ing” in distinguishing, in becoming but not yet distinguished, in the middle of distinguishing…

In the middle answers how. In the middle is the “ing” personified as an object and therefore distorted into a “what”, a single what it is. But in the middle does not answer what, it answers how. It is not “it”, but that it.

ENOAH

To hold something still in a nanosecond, there “is holding”, so there is still becoming in that nanosecond. We have to chop and measure a nanosecond, so instead, I see chopping and measuring. — Fire Ologist

I think we're in agreement, and I am stubbornly clinging--like George Costanza clinging to nothing--to my insistence on the "never the twain shall meet." Obviously if we are inevitably always becoming, that nanosecond can only "happen" as a "movement" to being, which as you say, from becoming, cannot be but a simultaneous negation (albeit brief) of becoming. And the middle is that "pause" (?) which (likely) alone* affords such negation (since becoming is otherwise an unstoppable train). *Because death, though it stops becoming, we must presume, at least in this context, also stops being. So yes, the middle. I think I see your point and you're right, the middle is not, as I was insisting, being.

In the middle is the “ing” personified as an object and therefore distorted into a “what”, a single what it is. — Fire Ologist

Yes, because we cannot but becoming, while the x-ing for be-ing is in the is-ing [of it (without subject/object)], for so called "us" in human existence, with the unavoidable subject/object, it can only be attuned to, as the "ing" and not as the subject, in the middle of becoming.

Feel free, if I'm still way off. I do feel like I'm narrowing closer to your narrative.

Fire Ologist

I think we're in agreement, and I am stubbornly clinging--like George Costanza clinging to nothing--to my insistence on the "never the twain shall meet." — ENOAH

I think we see the same thing, but are talking about the differences. I agree with you again that there is a “never the twain shall meet” in view. But it is not as much between being and becoming, as it is between moving (being, becoming, ing-ing) and the thing that is moving.

The frisbee is the thing in the middle. I needed to put something there, being moved, to show you where I was looking. But I am trying to focus only the moving, the being, the motion. It’s hard to see just becoming, because wherever we look, the thing becoming the thing it becomes, keeps getting in the way.

And I am withholding judgment on the thing and the becoming, seeing both as equals, as necessitating the other, as each causes the other as effect, or as each would be the condition before which the other might be the effect.

Motion is. Motion cannot be tracked as moving, unless something endures long enough to be moved. So the thing is as well. But before we jump to ask “what is this thing” we can remember, if the thing “is”, it is also consumed by motion again.

“There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of goods for gold and of gold for goods.” - Heraclitus

Fire is the becoming, or the being (when held fast); things or goods, are in the middle, being exchanged.

Yes, because we cannot but becoming, while the x-ing for be-ing is in the is-ing [of it (without subject/object)], for so called "us" in human existence, with the unavoidable subject/object, it can only be attuned to, as the "ing" and not as the subject, in the middle of becoming. — ENOAH

Yes, exactly. Except maybe I am not as hard a judge on the “us”, or the subject or the object being in the middle. I don’t see either the becoming or the thing becoming the thing as less or more necessary and ever-present - both already are if either are. And motion sure is. So the stillness of “us” must just as surely come to be.

Joshs

↪Fire Ologist

Motion is. Motion cannot be tracked as moving, unless something endures long enough to be moved. So the thing is as well. But before we jump to ask “what is this thing” we can remember, if the thing “is”, it is also consumed by motion again — Fire Ologist

Are you getting this from Heidegger? One question :
If we use the motion of an object as a metaphor for becoming, then do we also keep the fact that the nature of the object doesn’t change through the course of its movement? For instance, we assume that a qualitative concept like a frisbee persists in its identity throughout the progress of its spatial displacement over time. The becoming of the movement is a quantitative change, and the persistent being of the frisbee is a qualitative enduring as the same thing.

ENOAH

↪Fire Ologist

I think I have a clearer lens on what you've been saying. I think if you develop your "middle" more (and who am I to say you haven't. Perhaps the Forum can only afford meager glimpses), I now understand that it is more akin to what Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, inter alia, were constructing with their (simplified collectively as:) what is/how to exist authentically. Your middle is constructing something more like that.

Of course, that must "take place" in becoming (and yes, acknowledged, in this context, becoming to being and so on). You are talking about the middle as a "tool," the optimal place from which to "navigate" the, ideally, (or, inevitably) transformative movement from being to becoming to being.

...?

That's why my fixation on "being" had no place. (Although, you made room for it, carved out a place, more than once,

The becoming of the movement is a quantitative change, and the persistent being of the frisbee is a qualitative enduring as the same thing. — Joshs

the most recent courtesy.)

But from the beginning, you were getting at,

All, for human beings, is in the middle. — Fire Ologist

And

And as these fleeting attempted selves are becoming, we move other things, making changes back at the world of moving things (like me writing this and sending it aloft, redefining me as a mover of ideas like you who receives them). — Fire Ologist

And

There is no “this” meaning “this only”. There is always “this and that”, never this only. Every “this” brings with it it’s distinction from “that”, it’s position on the horizon, as it hangs there, flying, being, becoming. — Fire Ologist

,

you were saying in this human all too human world of becoming, of this and that, of endless transformation, the middle is the "place" where you can get the best view (to 1. Oversimplify, 2. Presume, 3. Try to encapsulate).

Anyway, here's my personal challenge as an eager disciple of wisdom: If I've understood you, I like it. If I haven't, humbly, I like it anyway.

So while I hope I have finally understood your intent, I cannot help but feel gratified either way. I look forward to reading more.

Fire Ologist

So while I hope I have finally understood your intent, I cannot help but feel gratified either way. I look forward to reading more. — ENOAH

Kind words. I appreciate you are giving this a good hearing, and I’m grateful as well.

And honestly, I think we are so close, the differences may not be worth the effort. Indeed leaving our positions as not fully aligned places my concept “in the middle” separate and in between us both (so it sort of makes the point clearest, to leave the misalignment be.)

So instead of thinking I need to explain myself to you, I’m trying to develop it just a bit more.

If I were to try to say what I’m saying slightly more analytically, I’d say I’m am pointing at middles and motions.

This is really two. Things; and their motion.

Seen this way there are middles (things) and motions in so many philosophies (maybe all of them).

There are things and motions (middles and motions) in the eternal recurrence of the same or the Apollonian appearance facing the Dionysian source, in the Hegelian dialectic, in the Platonic dialogue (the midwife), in the phenomena with its noumena.

So by positing our being in the middle, I am trying to see the overlap in so many differences.

But with the “middle” I explain these two with one.

Above you talked about stepping into the same river twice. That is exactly where I’m at. This is all straight out of Heraclitus. He’d love the being in the middle, I think.

A thing in the middle must be moving. There is no rest in the middle. Things are like starts and finishes. Resting only. But with starts and finishes, between the start and the finish, is the motion. Motion and things. These both are the starting point for all experience, as it is starting, experiencing.

Heraclitus is forever tied to flux and motion, but he admitted this means things must fix to be moving things.

But by just saying middle, the start and the finish in are captured in motion at once. The middle carries with it the start it moves from with the finish it moves toward, with the motion, all in one phrase.

So it is really one thing. In the middle. This is the Heraclitean incite. “It rests from change; the barley drink only stands still, while it is stirring; there is unity and harmony in opposing tension.”

The middle as an analytic concept, as a strictly metaphysical entity, characterizes the concept of identity (as Heraclitus put it), or maybe as you put it:

in this context, becoming to being and so on — ENOAH

Fire Ologist

Are you getting this from Heidegger? One question :
If we use the motion of an object as a metaphor for becoming, then do we also keep the fact that the nature of the object doesn’t change through the course of its movement? — Joshs

Not from Heidegger, but I see that it doesn’t contradict Heidegger.

But yes, we need the fixed object to trace movement, but at the same time we need movement to bring about the fixed thing. Both can be separated in mind as concepts, but they are one in a body, in experience, in the midldle.

ENOAH

makes the point clearest, to leave the misalignment be. — Fire Ologist

Always!

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Fire Ologist

The point as applied to logic is this: we only find logic in between the concepts and premises we posit, in the relation that is joining premise to conclusion.

Aristotle makes just this point in the Posterior Analytics.

[71a] All teaching and all intellectual learning result from previous cognition... This is also true of both deductive and inductive arguments, since they both succeed in teaching because they rely on previous cognition: deductive arguments begin with premisses we are assumed to understand, and inductive arguments prove the universal by relying on the fact that the particular is already clear.

Aristotle, in Metaphysics, IX 10, distinguishes between two kinds of truth: truth as the correctness of speech and thought (true vs false propositional knowledge), and truth as the grasping of indivisibles (ignorance versus awareness) (asyntheta, adiaireta).

A lot of discussion of adiareta looks at how it can come prior to propositional knowledge as a sort of basic sense awareness. However, I think it would be appropriate to say that propositional knowledge must reinforce and "make more full" our awareness of terms as undivided unities. For, if we had to "unpack" all our propositional knowledge about complex things every time we used them in thought we'd never get any thinking done.

However, me might also think of adiareta being in some ways unconscious/subconscious processing, something I've written about before in the context of R. Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory" (https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/blind-brain-theory-and-the-role-of-the-unconscious-b61850a3d27f)

One of the things that often gets missed in discussions of metaphysics that draw from physics is the way in which computation — which we increasingly use to describe how the world moves from state to state (causation) — is how computation is inherently step-wise and processual. 2+3 = 5 is taken as simple identity, instead of something that becomes.

And this leads to all sorts of problems, like the "scandal of deduction," where it seems that no new information is ever developed by deterministic computation. The problem here is to miss precisely what you highlighted, that thought is essentially processual. Eternal relations, taken as what is most real by positivists, are an abstraction from such processes.

Wittgenstein takes the opposite view in the Tractatus, calling belief in a causal nexus a "superstition," and pointing to eternal entailment relations as what is more real. I think this is a mistake. What we deal with is becoming, even when we work with syllogisms. Such reasoning is, as Aquinas says, dividing and concatenating, it is discursive and processual.

There is a long history in philosophy in giving epistemic preference to the immutable and eternal, since truths about these things should always be true. Plato really cements this trend, and you can see all through the history of philosophy: Hume's relations of ideas vs matters of fact; Kant's analytic/synthetic, etc.

What later versions of the divide do though is they miss Plato's focus on the unity of knowledge, the way in which the grasp of things goes beyond the discursive. So we end up in a weird place where trying to know what must be most unified through these discursive means. We try to get to reality rather than appearance, the in-itself rather than the relative, while still firmly stuck in the mode of knowing that is discursive and relativising.

The epistemological point is this: we will never be finished coming to know, even one thing.

If a thing is what it does, its relations to all other things (properties), then it seems impossible that we should ever grasp them in their entirety. Even if we were to grasp much of what a thing is, it would not be present to us "all at once," since thinking is processual.

However, a thing's relation to mind is the relation in which the most of its properties can be brought out. A thing only does so much during any given interval, not all of its properties are actualized. Only in the knowing mind can these be digested in discursive knowledge and the made present in a unified term.

Complete knowledge cannot be a view from nowhere, since appearances are part of what a thing is. The absolute contains reality and appearance, so the absolute view contains all appearances, a "view from everywhere," that must also be "all at once," the God's eye view.

Fire Ologist

if we had to "unpack" all our propositional knowledge about complex things every time we used them in thought we'd never get any thinking done. — Count Timothy von Icarus

2+3 = 5 is taken as simple identity, instead of something that becomes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

thought is essentially processual. Eternal relations, taken as what is most real by positivists, are an abstraction from such processes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is all spot on to me, grappling with the exact observation I’m trying to make about being in the middle and how we can proceed to talk about it, and to simply know.

And I agree with Aristotle, and disagree with Wittgenstein.

Which means I was imprecise to say “ALL for human beings is in the middle.” By my own admission, the processing middle incorporates some THING identified as a unity in that process. I had to posit a frisbee to posit its in flight, middle motion. We don’t sense the middle process without simultaneously sensing the thing (whether that thing has its own context and is changing simultaneously or not - that analysis would just take positing something else to start and seeing its motions in its middles). So in the middle is just the processing; the thing processed still must be, to be in the middle. So middle is not “all”.

I may get away with saying “All” because motion is so ubiquitous, even in thought. But any wisdom cannot be recognized in this without both fixing things to demonstrate it (true discursion contra Wittgenstein), and fixing an observation about something demonstrated (adiaireta pro Aristotle).

So we end up in a weird place where trying to know what must be most unified through these discursive means. We try to get to reality rather than appearance, the in-itself rather than the relative, while still firmly stuck in the mode of knowing that is discursive and relativising. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is the whole rub. Seeking the permanent things among the shifting rubble of change, using a process (more change). Pits the knowing (process of unifying) in between its polar enemies of the knower (unified thought) and the known (unified thing).

Which is why I settled on just “being in the middle” for the title of the post. I am attempting to identify a good first premise, a relevant single subject of inquiry, the single albeit complex premise that: motion is, and undoes all things, but like things undone by motion, the motion itself is, so permanence and permanent things to be known, are as well. And this is one premise, like just being in the middle. The key observation to me is that we couldn’t notice motion in the first place without something unmoved in it being moved; motion and fixation come together always, by necessity of thought, of physical being, of any sheer motion or any sheer thing. Permanence and change must each carry with them, the other. Straight out of my hero, Heraclitus.

Leaning to one side (all is relative becoming and no knowledge) or the other (only the permanent can be) are both mistaken, or incomplete.

There is a lot more to clarify and develop here.

Thanks for your post!

Fire Ologist

Heidegger’s famous line that the nothing nothings means that truth happens in the nothing, which is another name for transcendence. Happening, the in-between, event, occurring, transit, difference, becoming are prior to identity. — Joshs

Truth happens in the nothing. I do think truth is solely in the mind, so happening in non-material. Truth is truth of some thing in the something. Heidegger contains hidden gems.

But Heidegger and Sartre both said existence precedes essence. Being in the middle denies priority between them. I don’t see how we see existence at all without seeing the essence existing, just as I don’t see how to identify an essence without becoming or being or existence.

I think the existentialists prioritized existence because of how precarious it is to fix any essence in all the becoming. But none of the becoming would be observable absent some thing becoming the thing, or the becoming thing becoming. If there is to be a priority, existence needs essence to be prior, just as essence needs existence to be prior. So priority has no place here, in the middle.

Essence and existence simultaneously disclose their place in the middle.

Dare I disagree with Heidegger and Sartre on this point. And the context of their statements about essence were maybe a bit different than my context here; there may be senses in which existence is broader, deeper, more essential (in a sense), than essence.

wonderer1

I've written about before in the context of R. Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory" (https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/blind-brain-theory-and-the-role-of-the-unconscious-b61850a3d27f) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very good article!

Being In the Middle

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