Take Heidegger's distinction between present-at-hand/ready-to-hand.

Prior to Heidegger -- at least so the story goes from his lips -- ontology was focused upon the present-at-hand.

Heidegger disputes that -- negates it.

But he doesn't just say "No"

Instead he broaches a question: How can we make the question "What is the meaning of being?" make sense again?

Broaching the question is the encounter with the groundless/bottomless. But negation had to happen prior -- a realization that our thought is not "all there is" even though we thought, due to this being ontology, that's all there was -- to even form the question which then leads to a distinction as it develops.

We can judge a specific ontology as groundless, or bottomless, if we think that the claims of that ontology are ungrounded, or unsound, but that would just mean that we disagree with the ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm thinking that "hitting bottomlessness" is not something we ascribe to other thoughts as much as is an encounter with the vertiginous. We don't judge a specific ontology as groundless as much as, in the course of thinking identity as primary, we encounter the failings of thinking.

If bottomlessness is where we find truth then, no, we don't just disagree with an ontology: We're seeing something new through the act of negation rather than simply denying it as false.

Then bottomless, or ungrounded, is just an avoidance. Instead of addressing what we disagree with, we simply dismiss the ontology as groundless or bottomless. So the charge of bottomless, or groundless, is just a nothing charge, useless and meaningless, while those who make the charge are acting out bottomlessness..

Hopefully the above addresses your concerns so that this does not follow.

However, hitting bottomlessness is absurd to me. Therefore, I suppose I can conclude that I have felt that moment of seeing the absurd, as "hitting bottomlessness". — Metaphysician Undercover

To take back what I said far too flippantly yesterday:

This is close, I think, but I want to make a distinction between the absurd and the groundless on the basis of the opening to this section: In one sense "the absurd" can be a terminus of thought and in that way I think it'd be wrong to interpret Adorno. Rather it seems "the groundless" is the beginning of thought proper that is not merely mirroring activity.

So rather than an empty and quiet absurdity it seems we have the vertiginous groundlessness which is a beginning rather than an end to thought. So insofar that "hitting bottomlessness" leads to some new thought then I think we're close in our thoughts.

Dialectics and the Solidified --

Thought is always negative but does not leave what is solid behind. That which is immediately perceived begins as a moment of the solidified and then upon reflection is mediated. While Hegel tried to ground dialectics in this mediated immediacy Adorno claims he did not leave the domination of the object by the subject behind as much as covered it up with "Geist"

The following I'm having trouble disentangling:

The Hegelian Logic foots the bill for this in its thoroughly formal character.
While it must according to its own concept be substantive, it excises, in
its effort to be everything at the same time, metaphysics and a doctrine
of categories, the determinate existent out of itself, in which its
beginnings could have legitimated itself; therein not so far away from
Kant and Fichte, who Hegel never tired of denouncing as the
spokespersons for abstract subjectivity.

Especially the first clause of the second sentence: "While it must according to its own concept be substantive, it excises, in its effort to be everything at the same time, metaphysics and a doctrine of categories, the determinate existent out of itself"

"While it must according to its own concept be substantive" where "it" = the Science of Logic

"it excises..." -- I'm trying to figure out which of the latter clauses this is connecting the first clause to.

"in its effort to be everything at the same time" must not be the clause because it immediately follows so this feels more like a parenthetical notation or an aside from the main point. But "it" is still Hegel's logic.

it's the next two that have me scratching my head: does the logic excise metaphysics and a doctrine of categories, the determinate existent out of itself, or both and the comma is effectively an "and"?


***

Next paragraph:

The spirit wins the battle against the non-existent enemy -- I take it "the enemy" are examples like Krugian's feather, and that Hegel's response is a "stop thief"

I'm guessing "stop thief" is riffing on the common phrase? So Hegel is, effectively, yelling an accusation in order to stop what seems to be a reasonable ask of a universal philosophy? Or is there such a thing as a thief who takes stops from others?

I think Adorno is taking Hegel to task here for being assured in the concept because his logic primarily deals with the conceptual and leaves behind the non-identical. And this is seen by seeing through the autonomy of subjectivity which, in turn, leads to several consequences that unravel to show the solidified beyond the concept.

***

Consciousness has a certain naivete. If it did not then thinking would lose itself and become naive. If the experience of consciousness did not create resistance to the facade (what I'm gathering is this naive experience in consciousness and then the reflection upon that naivete) then thought and activity "would only be dim copies"

I'm gathering that this is the sort of thinking he's speaking against, i.e., identity-thinking: whereas Adorno wants thought to have more to it than merely representing activity or reflecting it.

***

"What in the object goes beyond the determinations laid upon it by thinking, returns firstly to the subject as something immediate; where the subject feels itself to be quite certain of itself, in the primary experience, it is once again least of all a subject."

This naive certainty is not a subject but the return of what is in the object after determinations are laid upon it: we call a ball "round", but that ball could be an American football (it is round after all) or an International football (spherical) -- the object will return what is beyond the concept "round" and we'll be able to distinguish further, but this immediate experience -- the naive realism of the immediate -- is not fully determined by our concepts. There is still the non-identical, and this immediate return of the object is the least subject-like consciousness.

***

"The confidence that the whole seamlessly emerges out of that which is immediate, solid and simply primary, is idealistic appearance [Schein]. To dialectics immediacy does not remain what it immediately
expresses.It becomes a moment instead of the grounds. At the opposite pole, the same thing happens to the invariants of pure thought. "


So this "least subject like' experience is still an idealism when taken as a ground. Only by taking it as a moment in the dialectic, with its opposite (thought) do we obtain truth of the solidified.

And it's interesting how Adorno is speaking against a philosophy which emphasizes invariance as the seat of truth -- Platonic realms underlying the mere shadow of our experience as a classic example. We think "permenance" is the marker of the Solidified, but the marker of ideology is when these moments become solidified as transcendence -- the exact opposite of the Solidified in ND.

But, Adorno finishes, Idealism is not per se ideology, but rather is something which hides in the substructures of "something primary". I'm guessing that this is the conclusion for this section, but I am having more difficulty with it than the previous one.

the "something primary" for Hegel is the dialectic, I think. Whereas Adorno is trying to bring in the non-conceptual Hegel is the example he's using to note how the identical, and the unchanging, are markers of the solidified, but that for ND the solidified is taken in a negative, non-idealistic capacity.

I'm having a hard time, felt what? The moment I saw the absurd, or the moment I saw multiplicity? Or is multiplicity absurd for you? I don't know if I've ever really felt either one. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then the answer is "no" ;)

But how does "ontology hits bottomlessness" make any sense? — Metaphysician Undercover

Didn't I answer this?

As a moment in a dialectic rather than a literal ground we stand upon.

"Hitting bottomlessness", I'd say, is the moment you see the absurd: that which is beyond the categories.

Or, to use Heidegger, ontology hitting bottomlessness is realizing that there's a difference between the present-at-hand (that which has a bottom) and the ready-to-hand (that which has now been fished out of the bottomlessness to contrast with our bottom)

On a personal level I'd say it's the moment when you see multiplicity -- and all you can say is "it's multiplicity, but I'm trying to make sense of it"


Have you ever felt that?

I believe he's trying to keep the tension, the dialectic, of grounding alive. Descartes grounded certainty in the cogito, as a way to escape dogmatism, and this now has recoiled in just that. I guess for Adorno this is the ultimate fate of any stable grounds, they are sealed and buried, never to be questioned, until they become hollow. But the main reason I engaged with MU the way I did, is because he said that negative dialectics escapes bottomlessness, and that it is a lie. Whereas the way I see it, there is no escape, but Adorno seems to imply dialectical confrontation. — Pussycat

:up:

I agree with this interpretation.

I don't think I or Pussycat would disagree with "ontology never finds truth" or that "truth is hidden from us" (not always, tho). I put it this ways because it looks like we agree more or less on "bottomlessness" — Moliere

Rethinking here:

Where ontology hits bottomlessness is the place of truth, but that does not, in turn, mean that ontology finds truth.

I am imagining at this point to make sense of things, but I'm thinking that ontology is a sort of beginning whereby we say various things we take to be true with respect to reality: Every event has a cause. No individual can be at two places at once. Space is Euclidean.

But truth is where we begin to see these statements unravel: the groundlessness demonstrates how the ontological statement is false, sometimes, and so unravels its universal expression.

However, theory (ontology) must be sought out again after ontology hits bottomlessness.

The one negates the other at the most extreme point they can and this is how thought progresses to the next point in the dialectic.

But rather than all the assertions of Hegel we get a somewhat open dialectic...

Still speculative at this point, for sure, but the thoughts I'm having.

Where's the difficulty? Think of it as I said, when ontology hits (the bottom of) bottomlessness, there it finds truth. In other words, ontology never finds truth. And, contrary to those who think that truth is never hidden from us, Adorno seems to think it is always hidden from us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Probably in us talking past one another in some sense, somewhere.

I don't think I or @Pussycat would disagree with "ontology never finds truth" or that "truth is hidden from us" (not always, tho). I put it this ways because it looks like we agree more or less on "bottomlessness"

But then that's to show how these terms warp around one another more than its an interpretation of the text at hand, no?

We are, after all, still in the introduction :D

Maybe some relativism to the text is worthy to pursue together? Whether we think this or that way?

I want to condense Against Relativism in a facetious manner:

Relativism is something which ND opposes.

Not in the way that others do, because (various reasons)

The points I think that are important here are that ND is against relativism, and this is a long overdue time for ND to transition from the epistemic to the ethical.

It would be more fruitful to cognize relativism as a delimited
form of consciousness.

Sums up his take on the bourgeois form of relativism, I think: Rather than producing arguments against it one can, from a philosophical vantage, see that such kinds of relativism or skepticism aren't worth addressing: But that's not to say that skepticism is not worth addressing (as Adorno has already done)

How would one ever "hit groundlessness"? Adorno claims that Heidegger hits bottomlessness, but that really doesn't make sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

As a moment in a dialectic rather than a literal ground.

The objection of bottomlessness needs to be turned against the intellectual principle which preserves itself as the sphere of absolute origins; there however, where ontology, Heidegger first and foremost, hits bottomlessness, is the place of truth.

I'm more inclined to see this as a straight expression, but I don't know. It seems hard to reconcile the notion that Adorno is making fun of this idea while also noting how the place where ontology hits bottomlessness is the place of truth.

Now, Heidegger's philosophy may not be guilty of such and such,, but also Heidegger, the man, was certainly a fascist. And while Heidegger, the man, may have an intricate philosophy the fascists, at large, pretty much fit the mold as I see it -- in the face of uncertainty the fascist provides easy answers as one might retreat from groundlessness and place a foundation in an infinite hole.

I wouldn't evoke that if it hadn't been for Adorno pointing out the fruits of fascism at the beginning of The Vertiginous -- but with all this heavy imagery going on I have a hard time reading this like he's poking fun. It seems to me that he used Heidegger because he broached the topic, but perhaps is a good example of what may come of that if we abandon the theoretical moment to reflect upon this bottomlessness.



Pure speculation on my part, but that's how I'm seeing it right now.

I didn't tag @Metaphysician Undercover so I'm doing so now so he sees the ping.

But the main reason I engaged with MU the way I did, is because he said that negative dialectics escapes bottomlessness, and that it is a lie. Whereas the way I see it, there is no escape, but Adorno seems to imply dialectical confrontation. Between you and me, he might as well think the same, not sure. — Pussycat

Makes sense.

I suppose I was trying to pay really close attention to untangling that just because of the dispute above -- one, as a way to focus my reading, but also to understand both of your respective readings (or, all y'all's readings, in my vernacular).

This is how I read it too, like there are two kind of groundlessness, a true and a false one. One that is acknowledged, and one that is not and forgotten — Pussycat

Is groundlessness something has two kinds, or is it that the detractors show themselves to be groundless whereas ND, by acknowledging groundlessness is able to bounce back to the theoretical moment -- i.e. not be groundless ?

I'm not sure which is the best reading, it's just the question I had -- in a way I could see either yours or MU's point with respect to groundlessness.

And, really, it could just be meaning the same things with different words -- rather than a "kind" it's the right "way" to treat the encounter with groundlessness rather than groundlessness "being a kind of truth"

The Fragility of Truth

I'm taking this section to be defending truth as something fragile, rather than describing the reasons for its fragility.

That is, rather than the absolute totality of the grounded system, truth is something other from this structure. Furthermore the opposite of this is no better:

No unreflective banality can, as the imprint of the false life, still
be true. Every attempt today to hold back thought, for the sake of its
utility, by talk of its smug overwroughtness and non-committal aspect
[Unverbindlichkeit], is reactionary.

Here I'm thinking of Heidegger's "everydayness" as an analogue, or perhaps Bergson's wash into indistinctness -- the other kind of bottomlessness, we might say, which falls to modern criticism:

if you want, I can give you any number of such
analyses. Therein each becomes devalued by every other.

But intellectual thinking, the open thought, has neither guardrails from being false nor is it the choice of just anything. It is remarkably fragile. But rather than following a deduction or an induction, a linear path from one point to the next, philosophy creates a web around its object. Rather than the faux-certainty of "I know this, and I cannot be wrong" Adorno points out the original desire for certainty was anti-dogmatic: but in such a world where truth is protected from error nothing happens at all, but it's merely a tautology.

The Vertiginous

Because of the discussion about bottomlessness/groundlessness I'm going to stop with this very short section to see what others think.

As I read that first paragraph I think Adorno is basically saying that two "charges" are provoked by denying identity-thinking: the proclamation that said philosophy is groundless, and the proclamation that only poets should deal with vertiginous feelings, whereas philosophers should "say what they mean, clearly".

I'm hesitant to say that ND keeps both open because I think he's trying to deny both charges by noting how, 1, ND is not groundless**, and 2, philosophy should deal with vertiginous feelings.

The hesitancy for 1 comes from Adorno describing the charge of bottomlessness as recognizable by the fruits of fascism: So I don't think he wants that as much as he's dismissing the charge as a fascist desire for control, certitude, and a kind of philosophy which finally tells everyone else what to think, whereas the latter I take it he's poking fun as the positivistic impulse towards totality. It is philosophy's job to push against both in order to arrive at truth -- the vertiginous feeling is a sign that we're getting closer to the non-conceptual, and the desire for absolute grounds is a fascist desire which is philosophy's task to fight against.

**EDIT: Getting to the next section I can understand where confusion is coming from on this. I think what I'd say wrt Heidegger is that he hits groundlessness, but the fascist objects to groundlessness and so posits a sphere of absolute origins. The truly groundless move here would be, after hitting groundlessness, to shirk back and create some absolute beginning in order to cover up the truth. (hence leading to its fragility next...)

Because of the page break I decided to go back over each title previous and write it down, trying to feel the overall flow of the argument that we've slowly read over several months now to get back to "the whole":

I think I might summarize all these sections up to here as "What is negative dialectics, and why is it needed?"

I have actually been tackling "Argument and Experience" since my last posting. I found myself having to go back to "System Antinomical" several times as a lead-in to it, which caused me to go back to the beginning of "System" a few times -- but I think there's a good conceptual break between the Rage of Idealism and "System Antinomical" in that I don't see much of Idealism's rage in "Argument and Experience", but I do see the concepts of an antinomical system being used in it.

I'm breaking out the parts and rewriting them here because I've had to reread this several times and I think this is the time it's actually clicking:

____

Argument and Experience

1.

When we think, in a positive manner, there is "nothing outside the dialectic consummation" we must, by that very thought, recognize an overshooting of the object to which our thought is directed.

We can read Kant's separation between intuition and the intelligible sphere as an attempt at this insight, whereas Hegel would condemn saying the thought "overshoots" to a place aside from the object: He'd say that the dialectical consummation is absolute.

But negative dialectics notes that this thought creates an independence that allows for thought to think freely, neither being determined fully by the object such that " the object itself would begin to speak under the thought’s leisurely glance." nor are we separated from the in-itself ala Kant.


2. To accomplish this -- to have a real commitment which is not absolute and not claiming the in-itself in all of its non-conceptuality -- is to demand thought-models. And negative dialectics employs an ensemble of thought-models.

Philosophy debases itself
into apologetic affirmation the moment it deceives itself and others
over the fact that whatever sets its objects into motion must also
influence these from outside.

I take this to mean that the "objective" attitude of Kant, whereby we only have access to our cognitions of intuition, is deceiving itself (or, perhaps more broadly, the scientific, positivistic attitude).

What awaits within these, requires a
foothold in order to speak, with the perspective that the forces
mobilized from outside, and in the end every theory applied to the
phenomena, would come to rest in those. To this extent, too,
philosophical theory means its own end: through its realization

We need both a foothold in the in-itself as well as the relation to an outside thought which "comes to rest in those" [objects]. I read "end" here as "telos" rather than "no longer existing, finished and done"

3. Demonstration of the previous: the French Enlightenment was animated both by the idea of Reason as well as the rational design of the social order which stopped the French Enlightenment System from the Absolute, at least until Hegel Absolutized that Rational Freedom. In the interim D'alambert's Encyclopedia demonstrates this two-sidedness of both thought (intellectual experience) and wordly experience, of a System that is discontinuous, unsystematic, spontaneous which expresses the self-critical Spirit of reason.

4. If spirit is to be free it requires both the man of letters and the positivistic scientific goal. Philosophy is most productive with both moments together. Dialectics is a sort of critical recognition of this while attempting to maintain that sort of balance*** (or, be "permeated" by it). Otherwise (Adorna takes a jab at analytic philosophy as a purely computational habit)

5. How to argument immanently (which should be understood as "the good way"): Both moments of experience and argument must come together in a synthesis to create a system for the purpose of overturning itself, of finding its own weaknesses or "oppose its own strength". These don't blend seamlessly into one another, into a totality, even though Hegel was right to suspect -- given the organized world right there -- that it is a totality.

6. While scientists will concede some amount of intellectual structure of the world (i.e. not pure empiricism), their scientivism will still go against intellectual experience because it interprets this freedom of thought as a "standpoint" which can be reduced, in some manner, to create a cleaner science. But this is to "invite the diner to the roast"; i.e. I take this to mean that our differences in conceptualization cannot thereby be reduced to our spatio-temporal location in conjunct with the laws of the thingly world: the scientific explanation of "standpoint" does not do the philosophical work of making science "clean" of conceptual construction.

7. When ideology lurks spirit becomes nigh-absolute: this is what theory prevents. There is a sort of spell which the subject can fall for, a self-certitude, but the non-identical is always there. Only critical self-reflection keeps spirit from falling into ideology which would prioritize Theory in shirking from its object or immenance -- the empirical -- in shirking from its active, cognizing freedom. Theory is the check which allows the subject to freely reflect through critical self-reflection.

" The ability to move is essential to consciousness, not an accidental characteristic. It signifies a double
procedure: that of the inside out, the immanent process, the authentically dialectical, and a free one, something unfettered which steps out of dialectics, as it were."

But this dependency between the moments is not one of compromise. -- rather both moments of consciousness are connected through each other's critique.

Hence the emphasis on dialectics in resolving the classic antinomy between experience and argument, or -- in the idealist lens he set up prior -- totality and infinity.



***EDIT: I want to change this somehow. "Balance" suggests "in the middle" -- but Adorno later points out how "compromise" isn't what he's after, but rather a dialectic between the opposites. So "balance" not in a static, but a dynamic way of opposites.

That would not be very useful. — Athena

I suppose my thought is that "as long as you're not copy-pasting an entire paragraph" rather than "as long as you're not copy-pasting anything" -- copy-paste what you want as long as its something you are thinking about and arranging.

back to: if I wanted to talk to an AI I can do that. We're wanting to encourage creative thoughts here, whether they are good or bad.

It's the process that's more important than the result.

Using AI would make developing a thread by myself much easier. — Athena

As long as you're not copy-pasting from the AI generated message you're using it correctly.

FYI I moved this to the lounge.

Would my effort to make it attractive be appreciated or should I let it die? — Athena

Go for it. It's an interesting thread.

object/subject -- this has been a distinction I've wrestled with for a long time on these fora.

I tend to say "it's better to drop that notion", mostly indicating that there's nothing separating us from the world we are in. As @Joshs says we enact the world more than the world stands apart from us.

I feel like "affordance" fits better with that model, but I don't have it worked out very well.

Almost like I still comment on these fora because I'm still thinking about this stuff :)

That said, we probably need to do some work on "affordance" or "mode" to make sure we're not just employing placeholders. — J

Definitely.

I tried to do so with the color-blind example, but it's just an example that I'm generalizing from to get at the idea -- maybe an "affordance" allows object-independence but disallows subject-independence to a certain point, while allowing it "somehow".

Just to make things murky, but it's my best first guess.

There's a whole new barrel of fish. — Banno

Is the "of" relation an indication that the fish are a subset of the barrel?

:D

I think we just learn to associate a certain word with a certain range of visual experiences? — frank

This is basically what I mean by using "affordances" rather than "properties"

"Property" has the meaning that some thing external to myself has this or that regardless.

"Affordance" keeps the "regardless" part, but removes the "external to myself" part -- color blindness is my go-to example here.

That some people see an object differently due to being color-blind does not then mean that the object has multiple properties, but rather an affordance for perception such that people perceive it differently.

:cheer:

That you're willing to say as much is a credit to you.

At least, when it comes to Truth and Logic.

While I understand the apology I'm a sucker for pain.

Heh.

Got it.

That's the next logic textbook cuz of you :D

By the way, in pure set theory these two elements are always sets as well. — litewave

I'm interested.

Where can I learn more on this?

I'm a naive set theory boi who reads logic texts and that's it.

I don't know what pure set theory is.

Heh. If you can help our new friend easily then by all means -- jump in!

I don't think set theory is easy, intuitive, etc.

I'll go so far as to say "another logical object", yet the addition would still amount to 2 elements.

To say "a set is no more than its members" is to say that there is no condition of inclusion aside from being part of the set.

Pardon the intrusion. I haven't read all the posts. You have a set {1,3,5} , and then you have another set that has as elements the properties shared by the elements of the first set. If this derived set is a singleton, then one could identify the elements of the first set. — jgill

"the properties shared by the elements of the first set" might be where @litewave is coming from.

Your expertise is not an intrusion at all.

I think @Banno is there. That's why he posited a difference of hierarchies between elements, sets, sets of sets, etc.

The set of all of our theories of set theory is public, but here we are attempting to figure out what the members of that set are.

What this does is to define what we mean when we say that a set is an abstract object - the set {a ,b} is not something else in addition to it's elements, but a different way of talking about a and b. A bit of extra language, not a bit of extra ontology. We talk as if the set were a new thing, but it isn't one of the things in the domain. — Banno

Rereading I want to highlight this bit as a better explanation of what I've been saying.

Naturally I'd accept @TonesInDeepFreeze, though at this point I wonder if that's too much pressure on them.

OK, yes. "a" and "b" are two things, as stipulated. (and, yes, I like avoiding boxes)

Supose our domain of discourse - what we are talking about - contains only the letters "a" and "b". How many things are in that domain? — Banno

I'm thinking "none" at that level of abstraction.

Or perhaps the opposite in reflection.

If our domain of discourse consists of only two letters then, on the first iteration, there is nothing to be said.

However, just that I understood "contains only the letters "a" and "b" " indicates some meta position wherein I can say things like "contains" etc etc.

Properties dissolved by analysis. Tim will love it. Not. — Banno

I suspect no one will love what I have to say, but I say it cuz I think it's true.

Still probably things to talk about wrt set theory, but glad you understood me.

Amen. :love: