Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 12:32:17 +0000
Subject: stating (of being)
From: "Michael Pennamacoor" <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>


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Jud recently stated:

"Human Language IS logic. When we make statements employing the word 'is' or 'being' etc. we are making propositions about the states or modalities of the subject."

Confining ourselves to statements of the form "X is Y", stating is a laying out of some being, saying something about something else.

I stare away from my iMac's yummy screen for now and notice a leaf leaving the tree (it is autumn/fall after all); the leaf is falling; you are looking elsewhere and I say "look, there's a leaf (falling)" and you say "there is no leaf" (you're looking elsewhere), and I say excitedly "look where I'm pointing!", and you say "yes, Michael, the leaf is (there)"; the leaf is. What is the nature of the unusual 'statement' "the leaf is"? We'll return to this presently...

"The leaf is falling". X is Y. Falling is something that the being, the leaf, 'does'. Other beings can be falling too -- men in parachutes, stars, night, rain, the price of petrol, etc. Falling does not 'belong' to leaves, not inherently of them: many beings, including the leaf, can and do fall. "The leaf is golden-brown". Many beings are also golden-brown; the potato fries, that dress she is wearing, etc. Golden-browniness does not inhere in the leaf, not peculiar to the leaf or the (other) leaves. "The leaf is leaf-shaped". Other beings are also leaf-shaped; the cutout of the photograph of a leaf, the graphic design emblem on the cover of my book of Irish Fiddle Music, etc.

Supposing we could completely enumerate every possible predicate of the leaf (surely we can imagine that we could, in the same sense that one can talk in Calculus of taking some process to the limit, after 'infinite' 'goes' [perhaps see a previous but recent post of mine concerning the being of the infinitessimally small]) insofar as we are still talking of the leaf-as-a-leaf... supposing we exhausted the leaf of all leafy predicates, supposing we stated everything we could of the leaf, every Y of "The leaf is Y". What are we left with? Is there anything left of the leaf to state? I think there is: "The leaf IS [nothing else]". Left of the leaf: its being [nothing else].

If we were to follow a particular royal road from Aristotle (I think) we could fill up the shock of the question and the absence of a neat answer to the question concerning the being of the leaf (or any being) and come up with 'beingness' (ousia and parousia), 'substance', 'hypokiemenon', etc, finally ending up with the curious matter of 'matter'. "The leaf is matter": the final word. Matter lies behind and under all predicates that can be made of the leaf (or any other being); it itself like the unmoving that grounds all motion, is not itself predicatable; it has no motion, no colour, no shape, etc. We cannot say that "matter is particular (i.e., composed of particles)" because one can only say that of beings (particles). So, have we solved, dissolved our problem (of the being of the leaf) -- in matter?

I do not think so: although we cannot predicate matter (e.g., "matter is blue"), we can (and surely must) say that "matter is"; it exists; is in being; is. If it were not it could not underlie all material beings; material beings would be groundless, would be precisely, immaterial (within the limits of the way materialists employ the metaphysical notion of 'matter'). What has occurred here is that the problem of being has slipped from the leaf (a being) and transferred to matter (another being?); being has left the leaf and been transferred to matter. So, what is the being of matter? And what is the matter with being? Is there no difference between the leaf and its being (the leaf)? Can we state: "The being of the leaf is the leaf itself"? X (the being of the leaf) is Y (the leaf itself). But this can be generalized: "the being of P is P (nothing but P)". "The being of matter is matter itself", then. We cannot predicate anything material of matter since matter is matter, the!
 essence of the material, the whatness of material beings (in the same sense that circularity is not itself circular), and thus not a material being itself. So when, as we must, ask "what is matter (itself and nothing else)?", we are asking after the being of matter. But, we cannot say "matter is Y" because matter is un-predicatable (materially).

This problem for thinking remains: it is hard to think being as that which inheres in and of beings yet is not identical with them in each case, and, itself is not (a being), but without which (without being) no being is. The problem cannot be transferred to highly generalized and abstract beings like 'matter', since the problem re-arises in such an abstracted being's particular manner of being (like that of some immaterial matter underlying all material beings).

Getting back to statements as the basis of language (of philosophical language), as language as logic: I'm not sure that statements, stating, predicating, can do justice to the being of beings. The leaf still IS, and this is different to the leaf itself. Stating is laying out; a being laid out is a being revealed in its being what and that it is at all; this laying out, this out-standing of the being, is not the being itself. And yet...

Laid back, I watch the falling of the leaf and consider the being of falling... zzz ["silence is a rhythm too!", The Slits, 1979]

MichaelP
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