From: John Foster <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>
Subject: RE: Digital Being versus Analogic Being
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 22:17:32 -0700


Kenneth writes:

My own pondering is along the line that if everything is force, force can
only be force if it exhibits itself as it is, force. And in its exhibition,
it must follow possibility and since each unrealized possibility is created
from prior actualized possibilities, all exhibitions of forces would
necessarily have to take place in a measured reactivity, one with the
other. This reactive exhibition is what we (as force) experience as time.
This idea would fit more closely with Einsteins relativity theory, where
force is a condition of relations of different degrees of possible
exhibitions.
[John Foster] Points to ponder alright. Force is simply an an attribute of 
an event observed. Force has no phenonena in particular but phenomena may 
posses the appearance of force and this is relative to what has no force, 
ie. what is passive as in passive adaptative management.

Attributes, behaviour and so on apply strictly to physical phenomena. 
Although energy may be understood as psychological or emotional it is 
difficult or impossible to measure force in a psyche or intellect; force 
must belong to physical phenomenon such as "grip strenght"; any of the 
these attributes of matter and the perception of how matter behaves must be 
based on observation. Being trained in science, statistical inference, and 
so on means to observe phenomena. Usually the only way to observe phenomena 
is to wait long enough to observe some change in the phenomena with the 
senses or with the aid of equipment. Statistical inference simply measures 
observations and groups those observations by classification schemes that 
are intelligent and based on some prior suppositions. The type of 
phenomenon that are particularly  suited to measurement are often discreet 
phenomena such as the height of a tree, etc. But some phenomena are 
continuous such as audible pitch.


  In terms, I mean, of wherever more mass of force exists, so too does its
possibilities for reaction change, to the point where when the mass becomes
so concentrated in what we call a black hole, 'possibility' for exhibition
is reduced (changed) to almost nothing, and so there is no 'time' to speak
of there, though there is enormous mass. Perhaps this is as close to
'Being' as material reality can come, a place where there is no more
Becoming because there is no 'time' (reactive exhibitions) to become other
in.
[John Foster]  Pure being is the immediacy of sense certainty. Heidegger 
states that pure being is the "true immediacy" of sense certainty, not 
something for which more is at play than just the extant sensible object. 
Thus angst is this something more at play; it may be the intention of the 
perceiver to acknowledge intellegently some thing more, say dispossession, 
aloneness, as a consequence of the extant sensible object through 
apprehension. Angst is a reaction to some impendence, or apprehension, of a 
potential event sometime soon or undetermined. Pure being which is 
immediacy of sense certainty then asserts reflectively that there is a 
principle difference between the observer and the object of concern. What 
is also called "noisy procuring" or "besorgen" is some thing mindless 
perhaps, since "patience is a truly human way of being thoughtful of 
things". I do agree that the truth of "sense certainty" is its immediacy. 
Nothing more or less than the now of the this which is intending.

"Patience is the care [Sorge] which has turned away from all that noisy 
procuring [Besorgen] and has turned to the whole of Dasein. Genuine 
patience is one of the basic virtues of philosophizing - a virtue which 
understands that we always have to build up the pile of kindling with 
properly selected wood so that it may one point catch fire. Patience is the 
first and last instance -"patience"- this word has withdrawn from essential 
language." [Heidegger, Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit.]

It is the principle difference that I wanted to profess here. Patience 
before the revolution so as to allow das energy to build sufficiently 
before the force reaches critical mass. AS far as sorge is it must not 
simply be ground for angst at all but angst is a reaction to dispossession 
as an existential possbility or potentially defamiliarizing now of worldly 
loss. Where as care as the ground for angst is a basic mode of being 
without any value [absence of any intending objects whatsoever] since it is 
grounded in intention or the intending of the sense object. What ever if 
der tod is valid as a potentiality it must be the confrontation of a dasein 
with its dispossession as apprehension, & solictious concern for the 
future.

chao

jon


I have more thoughts on your reply above, especially the greeks, this one
just crashed into my mind and I thought I'd post it quickly because I'll be
gone for the rest of the day.

-k
----



>Cologne, 28  May 1999
>
>Kenneth Johnson wrote:
>
>> Michael,
>>
>> A passing thought occurred to me while writing my last post, that the
>> digital can represent/reproduce phenomena only by discontinuous points,
>> each series of 1/0's being one point that when passed rapidly through 
give
>> the impression of continuity but are really each in themselves a
>> discontinuous event. The rapidity of these digital series fools the ear 
(in
>> digital music for example) by seeming to be continuous (like a motion
>> picture is produced from still frames). Analog music notes, on the other
>> hand, are produced as a continuous wave.
>>
>> I didn't follow your thread on digital being closely enough to know what
>> your aim was in it, and maybe the above isn't pertinent or was covered
>> there, but thought I'd add it as it occurred to me.
>>
>> Wonder also if this phenomenon applied to grammar might be the cause of
>> nouns, this ability of nouns to impose a pause in the continuity of
>> 'Becoming' and at this or another point to take this unmoving point as a
>> 'point' of view - one on or of Being.
>
>Kenneth,
>
>I find these interesting questions, both of them.
>
>There is an issue here of the ontological status of continuity and
>discontinuity. As you rightly point out, digital beings are based on 
number,
>whereas analogic beings (which are natural beings as we are normally deal 
with
>them in daily life) are continuous.
>
>To get closer to the phenomena of continuity and discontinuity, it is
>useful to
>return to Aristotle's thinking-through of these topics in  _Physics V,3_ 
and
>_Categories_ 6 as well as _Metaphysics_ I Chap. 2.
>
>In _Physics V,3_ Aristotle provides an ontological analysis of continuum 
as
>that which hangs together in such a way that the individual elements 
"touch
>each other at their extremities" (_lego d' einai syneches hotan tauto 
genetai
>hai hen to hekaterou peras hois haptontai_ 227a11 sq.)
>
>This ontological definition of continuum is the culmination of a series of
>phenomenal-ontological definitions that start with separated (_choris_)
>elements. Separate elements come before those which "touch each other"
>(_haptesthai_), the medium or in-between (_metaxu_), what follows one 
another
>or the sequential (_ephexes_) and "that which has itself", i.e. that which
>hangs together (_echomenon_). The last is characterized by sequential 
elements
>that touch each other (but whose extremities are not identical).
>
>The point of this build-up is that the continuum is not as originary a way 
of
>being as discrete separation of elements. This means that number 
(_arithmos_)
>is ontologically more deeply originary than the geometical dimension, 
which is
>based on the continuity of perception.
>
>Geometry proceeds on the basis of perceived geometrical figures that are
>abstracted from the shapes of naturally occurring things. Number, on the 
other
>hand, has a deeper connection with a being in its being. Each being is a
>something, and this something is a unique unity. Aristotle points out that
>numbers remain demarcated from each other in any composition of numbers,
>whereas in a geometrical figure such as a line, the individual points
>(elements) are all of the same genus.
>
>The most decisive point is that number is accessible through the _logos_,
>which
>is likewise discrete, separate (each word and syllable for itself). Number 
is
>seen by _noesis_, thinking, whereas geometrical structures rely on what is
>perceivable (_aisthesis_). The ontological insight into number at the 
heart of
>the being of beings (the oneness of a being in its being something) means 
that
>thinking (_noesis_) is given great scope in thinking-through the being of
>beings when they are reduced to number, whereas geometry remains retarded 
by
>its essential ties with perception.
>
>H. comments on these things in _Sophist_ GA19:100-121.
>
>The upshot is that "Number is more originary; therefore, every
>determination of
>beings by following the thread provided by number in the broadest sense is
>closer to the ultimate principles of beings (_archai_ of _on_). (GA19:121)
>
>This would seem to indicate that the dissolution of beings into digits 
(i.e.
>number), as is today being realized, is at the end of a long trajectory 
that
>was initiated in Greek ontology. Cartesion analytical geometry was one
>important station along the way. The power of number is its proximity to 
the
>ontological roots. Today's digital technology is the unknowing heir  to 
the
>wisdom that Greek ontology opened up.
>
>These days people are so unthinking that they reckon that Bill Gates 
invented
>the digital world that is now confronting us. We need to think more deeply 
of
>these ontological origins to know where this world came from and where 
we're
>heading.
>
>Your point about nouns "imposing a pause" also has Greek roots, for it is
>Aristotle who, in analyzing the _logos_ into _onoma_ and _rhema_ (like 
Plato),
>says that the _onoma_ (noun, name) is _aneu chronou_ (without time) (De
>Interp.
>Chap. 2 and 3).
>
>The noun is being that has come to stand in its de-finite limits and
>provides a
>view of itself as a standing being, a sub-stantive being. This 
standingness of
>being in its (for the _nous_) visible limits provides the discreteness of 
a
>something which, in turn, is accessible to number. The noun is "without 
time"
>because it per-sists (keeps on standing) in self-identity through the 
passing
>of (the continuum of) time.
>
>There is a lot to think about in these interrelations between being,
>number and
>time (as continuum). We are usually distressingly superficial in trying to 
say
>what digital technology is.

>Michael




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