Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 11:22:17 -0700
From: "J. Foster" <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>
Subject: Re: silence


At 07:33 AM 8/15/99 -0700, you wrote:
>J. Foster--
>
>Apologies for interrupting this thread, but I have a
>few question regarding your remarks on concepts.
>
>--- "J. Foster" <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net> wrote:
>
><The concept is timeless, but is it a general concept
><openfor discussion, or
><is it an absolute concept that is not open for
><discussion?Is this concept
><yours alone or is it shared? As a rule, absolute
><andgeneral concepts have
><the power to annul time. Since philosophy does
><notconstruct concepts but
><merely defines or explains concepts, perhaps you can
><tellme how something
><like masculinity can be defined in this way? You
><supplied asimple predicate
><timelessness but you have not demonstrated a proof
><yet. Howwould that be
><done is my question? Mathematics supplies
><rigorousdefinitions to supportive
><of proofs, it is axiomatic in definition, but in
><philosophythere is no such
><rigour. Mathematics constructs concepts, while
><philosophylooks on only.
><Philosophy in large part only corrects the
><understanding ofconcepts, and it
><does not create concepts. Your concept of man thus
><isdiscursive since it is
><not self-evident that masculinity is timeless in a
><purestate. What is meant
><by timeless? 
>
>Minimally, it seems to me that your remarks on the
>difference between mathematical and philosophical
>approaches to concepts presuppose a particular concept
>of what a concept is.  

Yes. There are innate ideas expressed in the term concept about what it is.
I have postulated a notion regarding a concept. 


>This is especially evident in
>your claims that mathematics offers rigorous proofs
>for its concepts, whereas philosophy does not.  The
>claim that one ought to provide a proof for a concept
>strikes me as particularly strange.  We do not prove
>concepts, but conclusions following from particular
>sets of propositions. 

Mathematical propositions take the form of A implies B, or other simple
forms of propositions. Proof can take many forms: the plausible as a simple
opinion, the probable as in a belief, and as a demonstration. As such
mathematics and science want to know nothing about nothing [Wittgenstein];
therefore opinion or mere doxa, and paradoxa, belong to the plausible and
probable. For instance, human understanding consists in two modes of
knowing: cognitive knowing and feeling. In philosophy both types of knowing
are valid for inquiry, but in mathematics only cognitive knowing is valid.
However, in the inquiry about feeling, math can be applied to reject or
accept plausible or probable hypotheses  via rigorous application of
statistical methods and experimental design, for instance. 

Some thinkers refer to a 'social calculus' but this is only a metaphorical
understanding of what is referred to. As such all knowledge then is
'metaphorical' in nature since the human situation is not open all at once
to all knowledge [Cassirer]. There are other minds, and there are distances
[space and time] which permit perspective, and aspect. Mathematics reasons
from propositions and as such is also called symbolic logic. The
understanding of mathematical concepts is thus due directly intuited
symbols; math is a form of pure symbolic representation. Math is entirely
axiomatic, in that axioms are derived a prior. For instance the linear
function derived from axiomatic set theory is used both in economics and in
physics. The Lorenz transform was not 'constructed' by Einstein, but was
discovered to serve a purpose for Einstein as an equation that functions in
such a way as to calculate relative time, depending on the location and
frame of reference of the observer. 

Secondly, before I get too deep into this, at the ontological level, there
is no reason why the now should be more important than the past or the
future. However, especially in the work of say Heidegger, it is emphatically
pointed out that the now, or 'presence', is ultimately important. For a
second one could fall for this, but it is a determination based on 'feeling'
and it is entirely up in the air what is realy meant by this, because what
do people do when the read? The read someone's past thoughts only, often
writing about someone else's past thoughts. 

The purely mathematical apprehension of nature then is as an exact science
or art, it does not automatically subsume the now as a value. Feeling
interferes with mathematics and you obtain the absurd. 

Philosophy attempts to explain concepts in the form of: What is Marx's
concept of Man? What does it mean to be maternal? These questions involve
feeling, other minds, history, and so on. 

>Perhaps you can elaborate a bit
>more on what you believe a concept is and what it
>means to prove a concept.

The demonstration of a concept as I noted above is a matter of emphasis. In
philosophy you need only consensus to validate a concept, unless it is
entirely your own, or simply an agreement as to what the concept is. A
concept is a cognitive object which is useful for organization. It is
foremost a principle for organizing thinking. It is the organizing principle
with a sign that indicates something subsisting for thought and for feeling
in its object, whether vaguely conceived as in a notion or as an idea fully
understood in detail. 
>
>Secondly, what is the difference between constructing
>a concept and analyzing a concept, and why does the
>former practice only belong to mathematics? 

> Your
>statement that philosophy only analyzes concepts seems
>to lead to one of two conclusions:  Either (1) on
>concepts are created by mathematics and thus
>philosophy is parasitic on mathematics insofar as it
>analyzes the concepts produced by mathematics (a
>rather strange consequence insofar as we are then led
>to wonder what rigour mathematics could possibly have
>if it has not analyzed its own concepts, or (2) the
>concepts that philosophy analyzes are natural kinds or
>essences that are simply there at hand to be analyzed.

Your last statement there is the most accurate. I don't think that we can
compare math and philosophy the way have in the first statement. Philosophy
and mathematics have as their object entirely different objects. Philosophy
is the study of Man for the most part, and math is formal logic. A subject
area of philosophy which is called symbolic logic is not philosophy as such
but is used as a tool to aid discursive thinking about the object man,  God,
nature or woman. Mathematics does not study these objects except indirectly
for philosophy, math is a tool, a piece of cognitive equipment. Philosophy
does not create concepts that it wishes to study ex nihilo, it as I
explained only explains or describes concepts. To think that philosophy
could create a concept as important as Man or Woman in the world is to
create a Utopia with say a Hermaphroditic sexual being. Math could via
symbol create a homogenous sexual being, but of course in terms of
metaphysics that is not possible. One would have to the most rabid supporter
of epiphenomenon to support this as a hunch even. Mathematical reasoning
does not give dime for belief, opinion or the merely plausible, and the
least it can do for reasoning is supply exact definitions for the merely
probable as it does in statistical reasoning, which is as near the social
sciences as math gets. 

So to extend the metaphor if you want something to define hardness, it is
math, it is inflexible. But is all that is the man contained in  the ratio?  


> Either of these results follows from your initial
>claim that only mathematics constructs concepts.  But
>it's also questionable to assert that philosophy
>constructs no concepts of its own.  Certainly
>Descartes concept of the Cogito, Spinoza's concept of
>Conatus, Kant's concept of a Transcendental Condition,
>Hegel's concept of a Dialectical Contradiction, or
>even Bataille's concept of Death are not merely the
>result of analysis but represent real constructions
>and interventions in the field of discursivity... 

The cogito is the I am of being. It is an observation of nature. Philosophy
did not come along in the form of Descartes and say "I am" once and for all.
The cogito has been around since we began as a species probably 3.5 million
years ago. Our most closed relative, the bono monkey, can reason as well as
we do, use symbolic language, and feels emotions. Originally it was stated
in the Jerusalem bible that God was the 'sum' of the 'cogito' and that
humans received knowledge via revelation only, well anyway divine knowledge
then about comportment, and living together with God in the polis. 

>Which is to say that they represent interventions in a
>Problem in much the same sense that mathematical
>constructions intervene on a Problem.

Like I said there are similarities and overlaps but the problem as you
describe it say in the notion of death [we cannot have a define idea of
death at all since we have never experienced it] is something important,
critically important, but it cannot be solved mathematically. It is not
perceived mathematically since it is a notion of feeling. Now if Baitalle is
correct, death itself is a metaphor for something else. Is it being used as
first principle in explaining and describing a much greater concept, say the
human situation, or condition? What does he mean by the use of term  death?
Does he mean what happens after death, or what is meant by the
transformation that death implies of the body, or of the mind and the soul
or does he mean as a possibitility for existence, factical existence? 

Batailles answer may be:

"I believe that the supreme philosophical question coincides with the
summits of eroticism" 

You may very well ask then what is eroticism? Is the erotic simply the
opposite, the polar opposite of thanatos, or death. Is the erotic itself
simply life here or is it love in the Aristotlean sense? Or is it simply
that a of sense of being, since we as humans actually never expereince
death. So then more or less the erotic is a sense of being alive fully, of
not being dead yet in the sense of not being aware of death or finitude,
etc. So if eros is a speculative nothing and nothing more than an attitude
about ourselves and others, then what is ultimately important in our
comportment, in our structure of comportment [Merleau-Ponty] is attitude as
well as conscience in the face of life, or eros. Where does the construction
of any conceptual thinking inhere in this explanation. 



>Finally, the claim that a concept remains discursive
>is tautologous and doesn't really represent any
>counter-argument to the timelessness of a concept. 

The analytic is by nature a tautology. I don't mean the simple statements of
the form what is water? Water is water or in some cases ice. But the
tautalogy is not always discursive. The idea that an object has no
predicates seems to bugger up a lot of rational discourse. Does the word
God, as a nameless one, without any predication simply end the discussion of
God because any statements on the 'essence' of God are tautalogical? I would
agree that some concepts like God are tautalogical, but many others are not
such as the concept of democracy, which are discursive. 

>Discursivity and conceptuality just are the same
>thing.  

Again we are mentioning a continuum here. One side of the continuum are the
utlimately discursive concepts such as my comportment towards life and God
which is the least discursive; the term discursive implies reason as a first
principle only, not an end itself which a concept is. Do not confuse
dialectics with the object of dialectical discussion, or the logos [word]
with the works [books].


>Your suggestion seems to be that the
>discursivity renders it arbritrary or contingent in
>nature.  Is that really the case?  

Precisely. As you mentioned the cogito, the thinking being is contingent.
His own most possibility is always a condition. The presence of death comes
like the sound of little pigeons feet, it comes almost from nothing,
unawares, like a raven which appears as a far off speck in the horizon and
flies overhead, but it is not death itself, it only signifies the coming of
death to the individual [Salish Myth]. The whole body of existentialist
literature of Beckett, Camus, Sartre, etc., exist due to the thinking of the
radically contingent nation of the human situation, especially in light of
the experience of the two world wars in Europe and the Pacific. The fact
that a airplane can be flown over a large city and a single atomic bomb be
dispense means that everything in existence is contingent. Were those people
living in Hiroshima innocent of being engaged in a war, were they justly
murdered? What was there crime, and why did children have to killed in the
process? Was this meant to punish the wrong doer? Or was it revenge or
simply cold tactical reasoning based on the math that was used to design a
bomb? Whose testimony should we believe in any of answers supplied here? 

If we are talking about the concept Man as hardness though, then here we
have an example of his hardness, no? Or what about the holocaust, is that
not an example too? Was there any sense of honour of being a army pilot and
dropping those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Enola Gay? Is
masculinity honour combined with hardness? What is the ontogical substance
or predicate here that we are searching for in the contingency 'man'? 


>Just as in
>mathematical construction, there are many "conceptual"
>solutions to a particular problem, so too in
>philosophy we can imagine that there are many
>conceptual productions that are adequate to a problem.

I dont deny 'conceptual problem' solving, bu that is not the sole domain of
math which is formal logic. 

>The fact that there are many solutions to a problem
>in no way counts as evidence against the solution, but
>only demonstrates that a solution admits of many
>actualizations that are nonetheless timeless. 

As I stated concepts like the bicycle annul time. The bicycle can annul
time. But does the automobile as a concept annul time? 

>Demonstrating that Marsha's concept of Man is
>contingent and arbritrary depends on much more than
>simply showing that there are other competing concepts
>of Man... 

Or that there are more complete and satisfying concepts. First of all the
question needs to be asked what is to concieve of the masculine and the
feminine, and what is meant by gender. When there is consensus and
agreement, then we have partly solved the problem. Then what is left is to
demonstrate how the concept as agreed apon can be used to improve the
situation for families, for partners and for communities. It involves an
eternally operative system of feedback, and assessment as to the
sustainability of the consensual conceptual framework that one is contingent
apon. That is good and that is bad, or is beyond either. 


 It would consist in demonstrating that
>these concepts (1) arise out of the same problem
>space, since problematicity is a necessary condition
>for the construction of concepts, and (2) that the
>concepts (actualities) that arise out of this problem
>space are actually at odds with one another or
>represent solutions to a *false problem*.

There may be no problem at all. There may be a simply opportunity to
investigate based on curiousity. Much of science and speculation derives
from serendipity, or the pure joy of understanding, believing, and
enjoyment, joussaince, volupte, or what ever purely pleasureable effect
arises from being in the presence of the beloved object. 
>
>Paul
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