Subject: Re: Inner experience vs. Descartes
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 20:03:45 -0700


On the Irrational

Contrasting the feeling function of thought with the more logical functions
of thought might be called forth
not just because feeling resides in thought, but more appropriately feeling
is
undifferentiated thought. A modernist  would simply say that there is A
cognitive
and an emotive element to all thought, no doubt. But more primordially what
we may be talking about is valuation or feeling in thought. For instance in
the Platonic dialogues we are confronted/invited to a discussion of what is
called virtue [Protagoras]. Since virtue is part of the human condition, it
is something
that guides moral actions, then I would say that in terms of the soul, which
is the personality, as opposed to more logical aspects of the mind which
relies on symbol and sign, and a set of rules on logical reference, feeling
is a sensibility that is more or less a union of the emotive and the
logical. I have resorted to the use of a phrase which I call the split word
(Certeaux_Fableax) which combines the bi-polar nature of the human
condition,
that term is 'logical intuition'. No my understanding is that an intuition
is some form of recognition that is also a combination of the ontologic and
the phenomenologic properties of existence.

This means that thinking is both of a perceptual phenomenological nature and
an ontological nature where intuition intuits an object. The subjective
nature of phenomenon is perceived by the senses (is the most factual = from
the senses) and it is essentially irrational in that what has color, what
has
odor, etc., cannot be interpreted in pure physical terms alone, but is
simply there as the 'it world' (Heidegger & Husserl). The sixth sense thus
is an intermediary of sense perception and mind or intellect (and in
Aristotle_De Anima &
Memoria). The conceptual nature of phenomenon therefore is purely an 'it'
(no different than a number or a telephone number)
and is not interpretable except to say that from a metaphysical stance some
phenomenon are directly perceived and some phenomenon are indirectly
perceived. Aristotle observed this feature of seeing. All objects of sight
must pass
through an intermediary, but the sense of touch is more direct. This has
implications for phenomenology and ontology since what may be interpreted
from
afar (Aristotle uses the example of a light in the distance that is
interpreted as a flare or torch but is actually something else perhaps a
reflection from some shiny surface) may be something else. The fact that
there is a bright light does not yet indicate that the light is a lighthouse
or a reflection cast by the sun; this last part is a more logical
representation based on memory of similar images. But the sense of touch
does not require interpretation. Hot is always hot, and cold is always cold.
It is in interpreting the object that the more logical or differentiable
aspect of thinking comes into play.

Now back to the soul. My understanding is that the feeling part of the soul
involves several intermediaries that are referred to in the Timaeus as the
one, two, three and the missing fourth (valuation). So the implication
therefore for philosophy is that the feeling function is extremely important
since as the dialogue states the fourth is missing and in order to have the
fourth represented by two of the interlocutors. Now what I have read in the
Timeaus indicates to me that the Creator of the universe was not jealous for
his creation. I interpret this as an inference by the interlocutor to mean
that
the missing fourth has been represented in feeling. The interpretation is
that the feeling function asserts that the creation of the universe was good
and good is a value or imperative of a commendatory nature. And since God
the Creator is increate he or she cannot speak except through creation. That
the Creator was not jealus means one thing: that there was no other universe
for which the Creator could be jealous about.

Now the really fascinating observation that I have made is this. In your
question regarding Sophia, you mention that Sophia is a word, a feminine
word, that is used to denote wisdom of a sort. Wisdom is an intermediary of
the three but also of the fourth, valuation. Wisdom is both a logical form
of knowledge and a illogical form of knowledge that is an intermediary of
data, information and knowledge, or experience at a transpersonal level. It
is an understanding about the cosmos in which life exists. It is termed
observational wisdom by the Greeks in my opinion.

Arne Naes has written an account of 'self realization' that relates the
function of the process of realization for the self. In this article he
mentions that a mature self cannot 'avoid identifying with all living
beings, beautiful or ugly'. He says that the mature self develops through
three stages: from the ego to social self, and from social self to
metaphysical self. He says that the meaning of self is 'enhanced' through a
passage through each stage. Ultimately the meaning and joy of life is
enhanced by this progress. He suggests that the realization of the self is
accomplished by a recognition not by acting morally as such but by acting
beautifully. Now I think that is important because to act beautifully means
that life is ultimately a felt experience rather than a logistical act of
comportment, regimentation. Moral acts therefore are neither beautiful nor
ugly only thinking makes them so apon reflection ...right.

Dissimilar emotive states result in a perplexed meaninglessnes often
indicated by a 'dual value response' to temporal conditions (suspended
by temporal objects) in the psychic environment. We can offer
few credible explanations as to why these states occur as perplexities and
when they occur; we are confused since the feeling function which is a
conscious undifferentiated thought about something, something about the
human condition is unclear. What is at heart of the state though is a
metaphysical reality, a simple truth and a real truth. The condition is
reflective of a value intended in the relation between the self and some
other entity, most likely another self (whether real or imaged). The
term value means thus for me 'what is intended in the relation' between
selves or self and an other. What has been experienced then as a self is
an 'intention that is neither there or here' but is a felt. When we say the
word 'awesome' and mean it, then we are close to describing what is
at heart a mystery. How could the differentiable, logical and rational
aspect of life be felt? There is a coincidence of apparent opposities
in the experience. Even expressing the 'awful' we mean 'awe-ful' to
import the content or meaning sense of the thing that is 'awful'.

Naes refers to acts that are moral and acts that are beautiful. He
references Kant by saying that these are contrasting concepts. The moral act
is 'motivated by the intention to follow moral laws'. In the Philebus a law
is interpreted as 'discovery of reality'. But Arne Naes points out that a
moral law is one that is in contrast to a beautiful act since a moral law
requires an obligation which is 'completely against our inclination' and
presupposes that all moral acts are against the nature of what a self is
inherently. The progress of the process of realization implies passage
through three stages: ego, social and culminating in the metaphysical self.
Now it may be a contradiction therefore to suggest that the 'law' which is a
discovery of reality, is against the interests of the self, but I think that
there is an epistemological confusion here, since not all laws made by man
are just nor equitable for the self. To presuppose that a law is in
violation of the self and is therefore not beautiful is based on a 'spurious
reasoning.'

I think that as the self progresses toward a metaphysical relationship that
the laws instituted at this level are not laws that are exactly against the
self interest of the 'pro-attitude' of the self. I think at a more deeper
level the function of the anima and the soul is primarily an orientation
toward an active state at least as far as metaphor is concerned, the idea is
that of satiation and insatiation at a higher level of consciousness.
Underlying desire is a desire to smell a more scentful rose, to see a
waterfall, to hear a new symphony, and none of these desires are in
themselves applicable to a law unless it is purely a psychological law of
human nature: ie. satiation and insatiation.

No matter how old we are and no matter how much we experience of the world
there is always a vertiginous sense or pre-desire to all that we desire. Our
minds and sense of happiness spins in whorls at each new opportunity to
experience something delightful. There is no rational basis for a desire
that is exuberance. Kant imparts that a beautiful act is one which the self
has a positive inclination to do. Therefore if the conception of a moral act
is basically one that carried an attendant feeling of a dis-inclination, of
agony even, then what is a morally beautiful act? Is it both the logical and
the intuited object of desire cast into a political frame of reference?

Casting the human condition into compartments in which something has this
value as an act seems to be simply an act of misplaced emphasis, related to
feeling itself. There is no logical nor no basis in intuition to infer that
an act cannot be both beautiful and morally good. In fact the Good itself is
also beautiful simply because it is all that the soul desires, and only the
mind can gain any comprehension of what the Good is, but it is the soul that
senses the Good intuitively as a feeling or as an imperative which is either
commendatory or recommendable to the mind and the soul together. Why is art
so convincing to the senses but yet against any "single" interpretation? Art
is an
expression of the primordial nature of experience at the level of the most
immature and infantile, as well as at the most refined and cultured
(education
sentimentale); it is an expression of the conflated world of the
child or the elderly. The very incubus and succubus of the soul stretching
forth and being
reached. The 'it' world is the indisputable surface area of contact. There
are for me three senses to life: the contact or meaning sense, the
relational sense and perhaps a comportment sense. The later part is the
orienting function that is ultimately expressed in Sophia or observational
wisdom. This wisdom is the accounting of experience as it is lived; it is
both practical and theoretical culminating in a principled life of
sensibility
and is never exclusively one or the other and
it combines imagination with purpose. Life therefore is a beautiful act if
it is moral not the other way around, life is moral if it is beautiful. No
one has to make life beautiful and the only task required to do this is to
be charitiable to all the live.

chao,

john foster

"Nothing can destroy the soul of sweet delight" Blake