Tonight, a mouse ran from underneath the couch and then stood on its hind legs in the middle of the room. The cat stirred and purred, "This ought to be good." I looked on astonished as the mouse theatrically proclaimed:
"I am the mouse who some call Parmenides. Dig? I know something. Being is one and eternal. Thus, there is no void from which it sprang. Thus, there is no possibility of change, for that would mean moving from the what-is into a void of the what-is-not-yet. There can be no what-is-not-yet, because there is no void devoid of being. Thus.......I'm stuck here in the middle of the room. Will you pick me up and cook me some Ramen noodles? Please?"
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Ayn Rand calls herself an objectivist. But her epistemology is hopelessly subjectivist ... and worse authoritarian. I'm not saying all her conclusions are wrong -- just the way she argues is sort of like philosophical fascism.
ReplyDeleteI think we're all prejudice, bias, whimsical, capricious -- but I think knowledge at least to an extent can be objective and autonomous.
I would describe it like this. Say Mr. Smith gets this idea in his head that there are green aliens from venus watching him all day, and in general, setting up road blocks on certain roads where he typically travels (always those roads with elm trees on them). So Mr. Smith avoids these roads ... and he avoids eating shrimp because he knows the green aliens put poison in them -- and in general -- if a restaurant serves shrimp that means the aliens are there -- so Mr. Smith must avoid these restaurant.
Mr. Smith's ideas about green aliens probably has little to do with reality. There probably aren't any green aliens at all. Moreover, Mr. Smith never knows when entering an unfamiliar restaurant whether he'll have to quickly cover his head in tin foil and vacate the premises immediately or not ... why? Because he doesn't know beforehand whether or not shrimp are on the menu.
But he knows and we know that if shrimp are on the menu what he will do -- at least what he should do -- in a manner of speaking. So his actions are being somewhat (fallibly) predetermined by ideas -- completely weird ideas that probably have little to do with reality.
There's a quasi-objectivity to his totally absurd ideas. There is this autonomous side of them. There is this *a priori* true side of them -- even if they are false. There's a Kantian absolute side to them, even if they are totally screwed up.
Of course, no one knows the full implications of these ideas. How many roads are there with elm trees? How many restaurants are there with shrimp on the menu -- or just as a daily special? None of that is in Mr. Smith's head -- these ideas go well beyond mere subjectivity.
We're really just animals -- but we've learned how to sort of pull ourselves up out of the mud a wee bit by our bootstraps via ideas. But we rarely have any idea where any idea will take us. But they do sort of pull us out from subjective experience a bit … they take us places.
That's the magical thing about humans. Our ideas lead us to new places. Even when we are trying as hard as we might to test our ideas and to sort them out -- to brush them up against other ideas, and criticizing the heck out of them -- they're still never quite right -- probably not even remotely close. They just can't quite get reality down. So they are always leading us some place unexpected …
There's an interplay happening here …
So there's this continuous influx of newness coming into the world. It's that great bloom again. And if we think our own pitiful subjective minds can somehow be at one with this -- and that it's all just static, I think this is both arrogant and sad. Arrogant, because we just don't know anything like that … and sad because it misses all the new stuff just bursting out around us all the time.
So I don't claim much … it's those who talk about being and eternity that do that …
But I'm usually pretty amused despite how much I claim not to know.
Being … we're being … whah? That's too monolithic. We should strive to be more versatile.
Just some rambling, fallible thoughts, hopefully not offending.
“The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us, but in the course of time
Through seeking we may learn and know things better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
For even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it:
For all is but a woven web of guesses”
― Xenophanes
Careful where you eat shrimp, Tim!
Wait ... I take that one part back ... the part where ... oh, never mind. I was just rambling.
ReplyDeleteI discern an oddness of attitude in the Popperian stuff you wrote: a utopianism veiled as wait-and-see-ism.
ReplyDeleteI finished reading a book of Brodsky's essays, which contain a recurrent appearance of his own attitude. He talks about the infinite versus the finite -- the inanimate versus the animate (us sentients are only a blip on the screen of being and time). The infinite, being the greater fact, most likely would contain any truth or Truth. And the truth of things would, therefore, be an inhuman fact. Even language, which houses our ideas, is more akin to the infinite than to the finite. The infinite speaks into us via language, not the other way round.
Since every individual is doomed, making or experiencing art and beauty and poetry is probably a better pastime than sweating out the nature of ideas and how they work or don't work. Making or experiencing great art and poetry and music is a confrontation with the numinous, with Being. With the infinite. With what is far deeper than our little utopian games of sharpening ideas.
Schopenhauer would agree with Brodsky.
Maybe there is no Being and no numinous. But if not, then every particular thing -- substance, process, organism, idea -- is doubly absurd. Worshiping process over Being strikes me as a kind of hysterical blindness. And worrying about logic and idea improvement is an odd kind of time-wasting. It is a benighted worship of futurity.
Being is now. All around us and all through us. And it is a very great Opening or Blooming. It drips with a fragrance of mystical gravitas, not of contingency.
I discern an oddness of attitude in the Popperian stuff you wrote: a utopianism veiled as wait-and-see-ism.
ReplyDeleteIt's much less a concern with utopianism and much more a concern for the great suffering wrought in war and blood by false profits. I'm suggesting fallibility. How's that utopian?
us sentients are only a blip on the screen of being and time
But doesn't this presume to know being and time in the first place? I'm presuming we just plain out don't know about such thing, we just have fallible ideas about such things -- and even these ideas we don't fully understand.
Yet am I being scolded for such a humble thought?
Since every individual is doomed, making or experiencing art and beauty and poetry is probably a better pastime than sweating out the nature of ideas and how they work or don't work.
No man is an island. Love should play a role in our lives. I think it's important. You can have all this talk about infinity and being and so on and so forth. Okay, but good old fashion love has a role to play here too, compassion, acknowledgment that others suffer just as we do -- reaching out to others via this compassion. Can art not be birthed out of compassion?
And I'm not limiting our sentiments to just that either … just showing there's a wide mixture out there … indigestion has probably inspired a poet or two …
Making or experiencing great art and poetry and music is a confrontation with the numinous, with Being.
So is a bad hair day, but what of it?
And worrying about logic and idea improvement is an odd kind of time-wasting. It is a benighted worship of futurity.
It's the acknowledgment we are flawed and can make errors.
I suppose, I don't really presume to know much. I don't see myself as a believer in utopia -- I see utopianism as part of the problem.
I do think the individual choices we make in life matter.
Sorry if I came across as scolding. I guess I was just trying to defend the little mouse against a perceived blithe dismissal. :))
ReplyDelete