Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 05:44:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Gary C. Moore" <gospode-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: Fw: AMAZON.COM Reviews


--0-1086095012-1000039477=:99799


 
  Gary C Moore <gottlos75-AT-mindspring.com> wrote: From: "Gary C Moore" 
To: "Gary C. Moore" 
Subject: Fw: AMAZON.COM Reviews
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 07:09:30 -0500

 ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary C Moore To: Arun-Kumar Tripathi Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2001 4:30 AMSubject: AMAZON.COM Reviews
Dear Arun-Kumar Tripathi,     Having lost my first printing, I just read your reviews. Since then you added one. THE ROBOT IN THE GARDEN, your first question,"What is the essential relationship between distance and knowledge?" is interesting. But would not any "near" or "far" relate specifically to "Place," topos, in Heidegger? to "distal" and "proximal"? Distance beyond those concepts, it seems, become mere abstractions. Can you sensate, experience the difference between one thousand meters and 1 mile? Otherwise, it merely becomes an abstract measurement within another abstraction or 'picture',i.e., on a map, a satellite photograph, the difficulty in getting a connection on the phone between Germany and the united States which you transpose, 'blame' on distance?     The review of BODY AND WORLD was fine, but as a straightforward presentation, as I have not had any time to read the book yet because of work and my ongoing project of how does one 'know' one's personal and ownmost  real body versus body versus the mere,empty abstraction of the body we are taught as 'ours'in anatomy and physiology class . . . right now I am hung up on how Saint Paul and Bultmann together with Heidegger view the bodily experience of faith as a circular and enclosed belief, of revelation as an experience of . . . 'God'? All three thinkers consider the body absolutely essential and, in the end, the core issue in their theology and philosophy. As Saint Paul approximately said, "If Christ was not resurrected from the dead, and therefore giving us a promise of "after life,"  then everything else is bullshit." This is even relevant to Heidegger even though I think, at least in his published writings, he considered God and immortality wishful fantasies, because, as Sartre amply demonstrated the whole pseudo-'essence' of human being, its whole imaginary psychology revolves around becoming, in some way or other, divine, and therefore, "Man is a futile passion."  The experience is undeniably real especially when one relates the experience with great literature as Abhinavagupta delineates it and which we have all had - versus the experience of something we call divine? Which of course really sounds like an excuse doesn't it? So I will try to at least read the introductory essays today.     As to your review of ON THE INTERNET (Thinking in Action) that you entitled "The attraction and dangers of Internet Platonism," I have a number of things to take issue with, however of course without reading the book. Your statement, "Can we leave our vulnerable bodies while preserving relevance, learning, reality, and meaning?" relates directly  to the "wishful fantasy" of God and immortality above. Living through the internet is precisely another way of becoming 'more' than human. This I think you agree with. However, the net is not real, it is a mere abstraction of many different things 'working together'. But even these separate things only have identity, only 'work' at all, only have presence as 'things' if YOU Arun-Kumar Tripathi think of them that way. And that's, let us say, if you are only considering an "Intel Processor" or some other specific 'part' you can hold in your hand which is really many, many different things put together and can be broken down into their basic elements. Now, even to approach the internet with such a frame of knowledge, is, I think, a tremendous mistake. The internet has far less reality than even God has. IT IS MERELY A 'CONVENIENCE' of thought, a nice way of saying "lazy", which I know, overall, you are the least lazy of people. HOWEVER, in your rush to get 'things done' like writing these reviews as well as the fear if you really said precisely what was in your true complexity of thought, you would befuddle the ignorant reader. But is it worth it? Do you make a sufficient amount of money from this review to justify it - and, yes, a sufficient supply of money is sufficient justification, catering to the empty abstractions in other people's minds?   As Doctor Dreyfus "explains" in his "criticism of the book",  1) in spite of its attraction, the more one lives one's life through the Net, the more loses a sense of what is relevant," 2) and so faces the problem of finding the information one is seeking." In the first part of the sentence merely relates to a purely human situation throughout the ages! Substitute just about any desirable 'object' for net like, "conquering the world," "keeping power as pharaoh," studying astronomy as one is walking along like Thales and falling down a well, "the salvation of one's soul," gaining immortality through the proper Orphic rituals" or "theurgy", saying the proper number and kind of prayers, studying the Torah - all these things "one lives one's life through. But,unless one's BODY is physically isolated or total Angst about death freezes one into such 'life forms', there are always sufficient distractions, likable and dislikable, to tear your mind away from either the Net or from God like a Hassidic Rabbi learning diamond cutting to support him and its noisy family  and shrew of a wife.     And (2), facing "the problem of finding the information one is seeking" and relating that to "learning by substituting telepresence for real presence (how much???? presence is delivered by the telepresence?), leaves no place for risk-taking an apprenticeship which plays a crucial role in all types of skill acquisition." I, right now, feel plenty of "risk-taking" in telling you what I really, honestly think and you are "risk-taking" in reading right now on the receiving end. So, I'm sorry, that's nonsense. And also the first part of your statement brings up a GREAT short-coming of my own which, however, you also share. "HOW MUCH PRESENCE?!" This touches on the very most fundamental core issue in Heidegger,of 'things' which can be "much" or "little" versus existence which is literally nothing here and now to be made "much" of as something present-at-hand, which you know very well. Da-sein is original temporality both in the sense that it originates temporality AND in the sense that living temporality, the only temporality, is a product of Immanuel Kant's "fundamental faculty of the imagination" which Heidegger discussed so thoroughly in KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS. Life is life and its only measurement is that it is your only life and that the only "life" you KNOW experientially, intuitively is ONLY your "ownmost, unique Da-sein that is always mine," as Heidegger says. And 'things' presence to you only because you, Arun-Kumar Tripathi, are there to experience them as present. So "how much" becomes meaningless here.    The following statement, 1) "Furthermore, without a sense of bodily vulnerability, one loses a sense of reality of the physical world" 2) "and one's sense that one can trust other people." The first part of this statement has already been covered in "one lives one's life through the Net." It is an age-old problem starting with the Neanderthal shaman that really believes he has 'magic.' But not only is the connection of 2) to the rest of the sentence lost tome, but Sartre and many other philosophers and even religious sects like the Quakers and the Amish and the Moravians because there is no legitimate place for "trust" in the world. That is why I sign off my letters 'sincerely.' Either what one says is true or it is not. Either one is going to do what one says or not. "Trusting" and "promises" outside a purely legal framework are simply different kinds of con-games, putting something over on you, taking you for a sucker, elsewise no one would ever need to say "Trust me." And this also applies to the one who 'must' trust. They have to intensify the "trusting" because the very situation calls for mistrust, yet they feel they have no other options.    "Finally," . . . "the overall effect of the Net is to undermine commitment . . . thus to deprive live of any serious meaning." Both what I just said above AND and what I said repeatedly in my letters on Dreyfus article about the phronemos, "Could anything be more Intelligible than Everyday Intelligibility?", as well as his article "Heidegger and Foucault on the Subject, Agency, and Practices" and BEING-IN-THE-WORLD. "Commitment" of and by itself is purely evil, self-destructive, and self-negating. "Commitment," like "trust" and "promises" are ABSOLUTELY AND TOTALLY unnecessary if what you are doing is logically consistent with your personal experience SO THAT one CAN have personal faith in God as long as one does not try to force the conviction of one's purely personal experience upon other people, especially those who do not want to listen in the first place. That is a self-enclosed and personal experience that really CANNOT be communicated! BECAUSE of "commitment" Sartre was a Stalinist and Heidegger was a Nazi and Karl Rahner was a Catholic. Not exactly inspiring representatives. But, as I have said before, Dreyfus should have paid a whole lot more of serious attention to Sartre especially on this issue precisely because Heidegger barely touched on it. I mean, if one's imagination-psychology is fundamentally based, and I already know everyone out there is going to say "Well, that doesn't apply to ME!" - Well Jack, it does and it also means you haven't read BEING AND NOTHINGNESS or read it very poorly. I think Sartre, of the three, had a much clearer and far less sentimental view of what he was doing in his life.    ONLY IF YOU WANT - I can make comments about the rest of that specific review, but that seems to cover it all, and I am running out of time - something I could not do if my life was absorbed into the Net! 'Sincerely' Gary C. Moore P. S. ----- Original Message ----- From: Iskender To: heidegger-dialognet-AT-yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 7:29 PMSubject: [heidegger-dialognet] knowledge and distance
It looks as if on account the tempo of life picking up as the fall sets in, I've lost thread of some threads. Was there a previous discussion on the relationship between distance and knowledge? Is it archived? Even if it not,I would be very interested in the background thoughts to the first paragraph of the following message. Iskender SavasirGCM: THE ROBOT IN THE GARDEN: Your first question,"What is the essential relationship between distance and knowledge?" is interesting. But would not any "near" or "far" relate specifically to "Place," topos, in Heidegger? to "distal" and "proximal"? Distance beyond those concepts, it seems, become mere abstractions. Can you sensate, experience the difference between one thousand meters and 1 mile? Otherwise, it merely becomes an abstract measurement within another abstraction or 'picture',i.e., on a map, a satellite photograph, the difficulty in getting a connection on the phone between Germany and the united States which you transpose, 'blame' on distance? GARY C MOORE:The first premise from Heidegger is: All rational knowledge,i.e., language per se, is relational and, ,just as in Wittgenstein, ultimately tautogical in and of itself. Rational knowledge is and only is as knowledge "always already" based on experience. One person cannot have another person's experience itself, only the language the speaker chooses to relay or not relay about it. So, when you talk about "the essential relationship between distance and knowledge," you are relating rational language directly to what can only and "uniquely ownmost" be purely personal experience. From 'where' does this "distence" derive from then? From where 'you' as Da-sein are, your 'authentic' "Situation," or as the later Heidegger puts it, your Place" as topos, a 'concept,' or MUCH better "formal indication" (Heidegger), derived directly from classical Greek philosophy and Aristotle. The Place of being-in-the-world, from which everything has its distance, is Iskendir Savasir's "unique ownmost Da-sein which is always mine"! (These thoughts about place I mainly derived from Doctor Stuart Elden, University of Coventry.)  


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  Gary C Moore <gottlos75-AT-mindspring.com> wrote:

From: "Gary C Moore"
To: "Gary C. Moore"
Subject: Fw: AMAZON.COM Reviews
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 07:09:30 -0500

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Gary C Moore

To: Arun-Kumar Tripathi

Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2001 4:30 AM

Subject: AMAZON.COM Reviews

Dear Arun-Kumar Tripathi,

     Having lost my first printing, I just read your reviews. Since then you added one. THE ROBOT IN THE GARDEN, your first question,"What is the essential relationship between distance and knowledge?" is interesting. But would not any "near" or "far" relate specifically to "Place," topos, in Heidegger? to "distal" and "proximal"? Distance beyond those concepts, it seems, become mere abstractions. Can you sensate, experience the difference between one thousand meters and 1 mile? Otherwise, it merely becomes an abstract measurement within another abstraction or 'picture',i.e., on a map, a satellite photograph, the difficulty in getting a connection on the phone between Germany and the united States which you transpose, 'blame' on distance?

     The review of BODY AND WORLD was fine, but as a straightforward presentation, as I have not had any time to read the book yet because of work and my ongoing project of how does one 'know' one's personal and ownmost  real body versus body versus the mere,empty abstraction of the body we are taught as 'ours'in anatomy and physiology class . . . right now I am hung up on how Saint Paul and Bultmann together with Heidegger view the bodily experience of faith as a circular and enclosed belief, of revelation as an experience of . . . 'God'? All three thinkers consider the body absolutely essential and, in the end, the core issue in their theology and philosophy. As Saint Paul approximately said, "If Christ was not resurrected from the dead, and therefore giving us a promise of "after life,"  then everything else is bullshit." This is even relevant to Heidegger even though I think, at least in his published writings, he considered God and immortality wishful fantasies, because, as Sartre amply demonstrated the whole pseudo-'essence' of human being, its whole imaginary psychology revolves around becoming, in some way or other, divine, and therefore, "Man is a futile passion."  The experience is undeniably real especially when one relates the experience with great literature as Abhinavagupta delineates it and which we have all had - versus the experience of something we call divine? Which of course really sounds like an excuse doesn't it? So I will try to at least read the introductory essays today.

     As to your review of ON THE INTERNET (Thinking in Action) that you entitled "The attraction and dangers of Internet Platonism," I have a number of things to take issue with, however of course without reading the book. Your statement, "Can we leave our vulnerable bodies while preserving relevance, learning, reality, and meaning?" relates directly  to the "wishful fantasy" of God and immortality above. Living through the internet is precisely another way of becoming 'more' than human. This I think you agree with. However, the net is not real, it is a mere abstraction of many different things 'working together'. But even these separate things only have identity, only 'work' at all, only have presence as 'things' if YOU Arun-Kumar Tripathi think of them that way. And that's, let us say, if you are only considering an "Intel Processor" or some other specific 'part' you can hold in your hand which is really many, many different things put together and can be broken down into their basic elements. Now, even to approach the internet with such a frame of knowledge, is, I think, a tremendous mistake. The internet has far less reality than even God has. IT IS MERELY A 'CONVENIENCE' of thought, a nice way of saying "lazy", which I know, overall, you are the least lazy of people. HOWEVER, in your rush to get 'things done' like writing these reviews as well as the fear if you really said precisely what was in your true complexity of thought, you would befuddle the ignorant reader. But is it worth it? Do you make a sufficient amount of money from this review to justify it - and, yes, a sufficient supply of money is sufficient justification, catering to the empty abstractions in other people's minds?

   As Doctor Dreyfus "explains" in his "criticism of the book",  1) in spite of its attraction, the more one lives one's life through the Net, the more loses a sense of what is relevant," 2) and so faces the problem of finding the information one is seeking." In the first part of the sentence merely relates to a purely human situation throughout the ages! Substitute just about any desirable 'object' for net like, "conquering the world," "keeping power as pharaoh," studying astronomy as one is walking along like Thales and falling down a well, "the salvation of one's soul," gaining immortality through the proper Orphic rituals" or "theurgy", saying the proper number and kind of prayers, studying the Torah - all these things "one lives one's life through. But,unless one's BODY is physically isolated or total Angst about death freezes one into such 'life forms', there are always sufficient distractions, likable and dislikable, to tear your mind away from either the Net or from God like a Hassidic Rabbi learning diamond cutting to support him and its noisy family  and shrew of a wife.

    And (2), facing "the problem of finding the information one is seeking" and relating that to "learning by substituting telepresence for real presence (how much???? presence is delivered by the telepresence?), leaves no place for risk-taking an apprenticeship which plays a crucial role in all types of skill acquisition." I, right now, feel plenty of "risk-taking" in telling you what I really, honestly think and you are "risk-taking" in reading right now on the receiving end. So, I'm sorry, that's nonsense. And also the first part of your statement brings up a GREAT short-coming of my own which, however, you also share. "HOW MUCH PRESENCE?!" This touches on the very most fundamental core issue in Heidegger,of 'things' which can be "much" or "little" versus existence which is literally nothing here and now to be made "much" of as something present-at-hand, which you know very well. Da-sein is original temporality both in the sense that it originates temporality AND in the sense that living temporality, the only temporality, is a product of Immanuel Kant's "fundamental faculty of the imagination" which Heidegger discussed so thoroughly in KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS. Life is life and its only measurement is that it is your only life and that the only "life" you KNOW experientially, intuitively is ONLY your "ownmost, unique Da-sein that is always mine," as Heidegger says. And 'things' presence to you only because you, Arun-Kumar Tripathi, are there to experience them as present. So "how much" becomes meaningless here.

    The following statement, 1) "Furthermore, without a sense of bodily vulnerability, one loses a sense of reality of the physical world" 2) "and one's sense that one can trust other people." The first part of this statement has already been covered in "one lives one's life through the Net." It is an age-old problem starting with the Neanderthal shaman that really believes he has 'magic.' But not only is the connection of 2) to the rest of the sentence lost tome, but Sartre and many other philosophers and even religious sects like the Quakers and the Amish and the Moravians because there is no legitimate place for "trust" in the world. That is why I sign off my letters 'sincerely.' Either what one says is true or it is not. Either one is going to do what one says or not. "Trusting" and "promises" outside a purely legal framework are simply different kinds of con-games, putting something over on you, taking you for a sucker, elsewise no one would ever need to say "Trust me." And this also applies to the one who 'must' trust. They have to intensify the "trusting" because the very situation calls for mistrust, yet they feel they have no other options.

   "Finally," . . . "the overall effect of the Net is to undermine commitment . . . thus to deprive live of any serious meaning." Both what I just said above AND and what I said repeatedly in my letters on Dreyfus article about the phronemos, "Could anything be more Intelligible than Everyday Intelligibility?", as well as his article "Heidegger and Foucault on the Subject, Agency, and Practices" and BEING-IN-THE-WORLD. "Commitment" of and by itself is purely evil, self-destructive, and self-negating. "Commitment," like "trust" and "promises" are ABSOLUTELY AND TOTALLY unnecessary if what you are doing is logically consistent with your personal experience SO THAT one CAN have personal faith in God as long as one does not try to force the conviction of one's purely personal experience upon other people, especially those who do not want to listen in the first place. That is a self-enclosed and personal experience that really CANNOT be communicated! BECAUSE of "commitment" Sartre was a Stalinist and Heidegger was a Nazi and Karl Rahner was a Catholic. Not exactly inspiring representatives. But, as I have said before, Dreyfus should have paid a whole lot more of serious attention to Sartre especially on this issue precisely because Heidegger barely touched on it. I mean, if one's imagination-psychology is fundamentally based, and I already know everyone out there is going to say "Well, that doesn't apply to ME!" - Well Jack, it does and it also means you haven't read BEING AND NOTHINGNESS or read it very poorly. I think Sartre, of the three, had a much clearer and far less sentimental view of what he was doing in his life.

   ONLY IF YOU WANT - I can make comments about the rest of that specific review, but that seems to cover it all, and I am running out of time - something I could not do if my life was absorbed into the Net!

 

'Sincerely'

 

Gary C. Moore

 

P. S.

----- Original Message -----

From: Iskender

To: heidegger-dialognet-AT-yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 7:29 PM

Subject: [heidegger-dialognet] knowledge and distance

It looks as if on account the tempo of life picking up as the fall sets in, I've lost thread of some threads. Was there a previous discussion on the relationship between distance and knowledge? Is it archived? Even if it not,I would be very interested in the background thoughts to the first paragraph of the following message.

 

Iskender Savasir

GCM: THE ROBOT IN THE GARDEN: Your first question,"What is the essential relationship between distance and knowledge?" is interesting. But would not any "near" or "far" relate specifically to "Place," topos, in Heidegger? to "distal" and "proximal"? Distance beyond those concepts, it seems, become mere abstractions. Can you sensate, experience the difference between one thousand meters and 1 mile? Otherwise, it merely becomes an abstract measurement within another abstraction or 'picture',i.e., on a map, a satellite photograph, the difficulty in getting a connection on the phone between Germany and the united States which you transpose, 'blame' on distance?

 

GARY C MOORE:

The first premise from Heidegger is: All rational knowledge,i.e., language per se, is relational and, ,just as in Wittgenstein, ultimately tautogical in and of itself. Rational knowledge is and only is as knowledge "always already" based on experience. One person cannot have another person's experience itself, only the language the speaker chooses to relay or not relay about it. So, when you talk about "the essential relationship between distance and knowledge," you are relating rational language directly to what can only and "uniquely ownmost" be purely personal experience. From 'where' does this "distence" derive from then? From where 'you' as Da-sein are, your 'authentic' "Situation," or as the later Heidegger puts it, your Place" as topos, a 'concept,' or MUCH better "formal indication" (Heidegger), derived directly from classical Greek philosophy and Aristotle. The Place of being-in-the-world, from which everything has its distance, is Iskendir Savasir's "unique ownmost Da-sein which is always mine"! (These thoughts about place I mainly derived from Doctor Stuart Elden, University of Coventry.)