From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 10:46:40 EST
Subject: The Leaf Episode



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Content-Language: en



Kenneth recently:

"(i. e. existence is the (artificial) sum of its (artificial) predicates and
nothing besides, and this because, 'as' existence, existence does not exist.
(It can only X. ist))"


Jud:
Kenneth is absolutely correct of course =E2=80=93 existence doesn't exist=20=E2=80=93 it is
only the things that exist that exist.

Michael:
>From these I receive:
I recall that Sartre began his 'Being and Nothingness' with a guiding
statement to the effect that any being is simply the sum of its appearances
and nothing besides, e. g., ". And if we no longer believe in the
being-behind-the-appearance, then the appearance becomes full positivity, its
essence is as "appearing" which is no longer opposed to being but on the
contrary is the measure of it. " [Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 3rd para of
the Intro]

Jud:
Sartre got it wrong =E2=80=93 the gesamtsumme is not just a question of the
'appearances' of an entity but of the countless trillions of hidden
existential modalities too. He must have been a pretty na=C3=AFve sort of bloke to
take things on appearances alone [of which I will write more later] no wonder
he ended up living with a one-eyed Mexican transvestite with a wooden leg!
[Just kidding but you get my drift don't you?.]  The human body is made up of
40,000 genes and 40,00 enzymes all busily interacting with the billions of
cells they govern for starters, and even the most self important medical guru
doesn't claim to know everything about how this complicated machinery works. 
In other words the job of enumerating the continuously changing, dying,
renewing and growth of the cells of the human body is enough to keep an
auditor of existential modality in work from here to eternity.  So now Sartre
passes the ontological buck to 'appearance' does he?
Hah! Well what is 'appearance?'  Appearance is how something appears TO YOU!
In other words if you had no eyes or you where not there to observe it  - it
would not APPEAR to you.  =E2=80=93 It wouldn't give a certain impression or have a
certain outward aspect because there would be nobody there to give it to. It
wouldn't come into sight or view because there would be no one there to see
it or view it.
In other words the appearance of something is not an existential modality of
the PERCEIVED but of the PERCEIVER! If when the earth was young there where
no mammalian or insectival eyes to see entities, then they would not have
appeared.
They would still have existed of course!
So what price Sartre's appearance/being now?  If for him as he says in your
quote, appearing is the measure of being, what happens to this magical
'being' when there are no observers to catch these 'appearances?'  Does the
cosmos have to wait until a couple of guys called Heidegger and Sartre with
human eyes come along before appearance kicks in and pulls the 'being switch'
down to the on position?

Michael:
 Nothing lies beneath or under the being


Jud:
Nothing lies beneath  - on top or anywhere as far as 'being' is concerned,
for being doesn't exist - just like dancing, screwing, sailing, flying,
shopping and all the rest of the reified nouns don't exist. These words are
simply convenience words, which describe the ACTIONS of entities  - the
existential modalities of things. 

Michael:
 (it is not supported behind the scenes by some hidden essence, the 'real'
behind the mere appearances, the kernel under the dross, etc); neither is the
being supported from above, no transcendent 'over' ('spirit', 'god',
'heaven', 'subject', 'idea', etc). No transcendence from either behind or
above.

Jud:
There is no such thing as ESSENCE [isness] It was just a mediaevalist fantasy.

Michael:
Transcendence: the climbing over, across and through (some being); climbing
or climbed over & above & across the being {as the series of its appearances}


Jud:
There is no climbing involved in attaining 'transcendence' unless you get
your kicks from mountaineering that is.

Michael:
 (its being this and that, its predications, in toto -- its gesamtsumme),

Jud:
Predication only enters the picture when we frame sentences in language =E2=80=93 you
are getting yourself confused between sentential predications, [the way we
talk about or describe existential modalities,] and the existential
modalities themselves.
As to the 'gesamtsumme' it is a word which I borrowed from German and I
haven't seen it used before in a philosophical context though other may have
done so =E2=80=93 it seems to do the job.

Michael:
the being now as the 'physical' without transcendence. . . i. e. , without
the meta-physical [moving from Roman to Greek]. If the being is without a
supportive/relieving transcendence then it IS just the sum, the series, of
its appearances.

Jud:
Not of its 'appearances'  - of its EXISTENTIAL MODALITIES.

Michael:
 But, how does that sum manifest itself as THE sum of THIS being's
appearances?

Jud:
You walk along the street and suddenly spot it in a shop window.
It manifests itself in that way because the existential modalities of the
particles that comprise its gesamtsumme have conglomerated in that particular
format.
The outer surface of the massed particles reflect light which is transmitted
to your eyeball by photonic activity =E2=80=93 you see the image =E2=80=93 the 'appearance'
of the object is one of YOUR existential activities NOT the object's in the
window.

Michael:
(e. g. , how do we know that 'measurements' of 'electromotive force' ARE
manifestations of the being, 'electricity', etc?)

Jud:
Because when we switch off the current the charged particles stop their mad
race along the wires.  Electricity is not 'a being' it is comprised of
billions of separate particles all engaged in a similar existential modality
Michael:
This problem is one manifestation of Nietzsche's perceptive motif that if we
banish the apparent world then the real world vanishes too.

Jud:
Nietzsche is wrong =E2=80=93 when we shut our eyes our perception of how entities
appear to us may disappear but they do not suddenly become non-existent.
If you don't believe me shut your eyes for a moment and then re-open them and
you will find that your monitor is still there.

Michael:
Being floats neither behind nor above beings but as they are at any time; in
the appearing of the appearances.

Jud:
The 'appearing of the appearances' is a typically meaningless
Heideggerian-type fiction and nonsense-speak which is the sort of utterance
that brings his philosophy into direpute.  The phase has no more semantic
import than: 'the stamp collecting of the stamp collectings.'  I keep telling
you that things do not 'appear' =E2=80=93 they are seen or apprised by the OBSERVER
as one of his or her existential modalities. An actor may be said to 'appear'
on stage but he or she appears 'TO' the audience, of which THEIR sight of the
actor is one of THEIR existential modalities NOT the actor's.

Michael:
[The more enlightened positivists of early quantum theory (for example,
Heisenberg, rather than Schrodinger) understood this perfectly].

Jud:
Please explain why you say this of Heisenberg?

Michael:
Both Sartre and Heidegger want to make sense of a world of beings without
transcendence, without metaphysics, without the traditional and perplexing
dualisms (being/appearance, being/becoming, being/idea (l), being/beings
(yes!!!)).

Jud:
Then why did Heidegger create his third person present continuous grammatical
gimmick 'Dasein?'  The concept of 'Being' (which Heidegger mentions one
thousand one hundred and forty-one times in B & T) IS a transcendental
concept, for 'Being' doesn't exist and is a transcendental figment of his
fevered imagination.

Michael:
And, they are sufficiently civilized thinkers not to indulge in the fruitless
vulgarity of simply stupidly banning the dualities and their consequences
(the whole of metaphysics from before Plato onwards, and still remaining. .=20.
) from serious thinking;

Jud:
If they are crazy enough to believe that an entity can exist twice at the
same time that then they are either so drunk that they are seeing double, or
they need a comfortable safe place where the four of them =E2=80=93 Heidegger and
Heidegger and Sartre and Sartre can be looked after.  The consideration of
the works of the philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the present day can
still proceed without Heidegger's nutty interpretations. You seem to think
that the world revolves around Heidegger, and that without him the whole of
human ontological enquiry would grind to a halt.  Let's get something
straight =E2=80=93 you don't have to be a transcendentalist to study, read,=20think and
write about ontology.
Unlike Heidegger and his followers I believe that the investigation of the
existing of entities, and the way we describe and talk about these matters,
should be carried out within the framework of a mutually agreed language. 
Creating silly neologisms like 'the beingness of being' and the 'appearance
of appearanceness'  in an attempt to bludgeon language to bestow some sort of
credence upon incredible notions is NOT philosophy =E2=80=93 you can call it what the
heck you like, but it is not even in the same major league as philosophy=20=E2=80=93 it
is more like some worthless game of ontological scrabble, where you make your
own words up to try to win the contest.

Michael:
instead, it (metaphysics, the transcendent) is the very stuff of thinking,
the de(con)struction of which IS the thinking (i. e., however and wherever
and whenever the metaphysical appears one must think its appearing as such
and such an appearance: being is no longer opposed to appearances,

Jud:
There is no such thing as 'THE' transcendent.  The word THE is an
individuator - a DEFINITE article pointing to a separate entity.  THE
transcendent is a made-up word from the verb 'to transcend' it is NOT A THING
IN ITSELF!
 'Appearances' don't appear in themselves - they only 'appear to YOU  - these
so-called 'metaphysical appearances' only 'appear' in your head as imaginings.
Entities don't 'seem to be' or 'appear to be' as a modalic act which is
inhered in their own gesamtsumme =E2=80=93 the apprehension of these entities and an
assessment of their apparent existential modalities is YOUR EXPERIENCE not
THEIRS.

Michael:
it is the appearing of such  appearances; the being of metaphysics
Jud:
Metaphysics doesn't have a 'being =E2=80=93 it is simply a label that we use to
describe the ACTIVITY of the philosophical study of existing and knowing

Michael:
 is the appearing of its manifestations (e. g., in positivisms, in
materialisms, in idealisms, in every kind of religiosity (whether godly, or
of the state, of patriotisms, of atheisms, of hedonisms, etc), etc).

Jud:
The manifestations of Metaphysics do not 'appear.'   We read, study, and
discuss various metaphysical ideas.  We may read a book on or by Plato =E2=80=93 the
book =E2=80=93the print =E2=80=93 does not 'appear' for our benefit =E2=80=93 we obtain a certain
impression, or form a certain conclusion from its outward aspect.  The
physical and mental activity is OURS - not the book's or the metaphysical
ideas within the pages =E2=80=93 it is OUR existential modality that is involved NOT
the books.
In the sentence: 'The book is being read by the boy' it is the BOY'S
existential modality that is being exercised NOT the book's. The book's
existential modalities are being picked up by the boy and having its pages
turned =E2=80=93 the reading of the metaphysical ideas is the existential modality of
the boy - NOT the existential modality of the metaphysical ideas.

Michael:
Certainly one such naive version of the appearance of metaphysics, of the
transcendental, lies in what often poses as its opposite but lies precisely
in the same site, its other half: materialism.

Jud:
Metaphysics or Materialism HAS no 'appearance'  - you continue in your
confusions.

 Michael:
'Matter' is precisely some transcendent being; an immense and dense
abstraction,

Jud:
Matter is in no manner or mode 'transcendental.  It can be felt, smelt,
tasted, and heard.  Try knocking your head against a brick wall if you don't
believe me.

Michael:
observed extraction from beings in their beingness

Jud:
Beings don't have any 'beingness' just like dancers don't have any
'dancingness.'

Michael:
(ousia); an attempt to pull out of beings their being;

Jud:
You can't 'pull out' of beings their 'being'
(a) Because there is nothing to get a grip upon.
(b) Because 'being' doesn't exist in the first place.

Michael:
pulling out another kernel/nugget (essence of. . . ) from the
dross/covering/appearance. This attempt to pull out what lies within and so
transcend the being's mere appearance ends in a curious kind of being:
matter. This matter can only be seen in its manifestations as material
things, material beings; but this results in an extraction of precisely what
makes the being THAT being as such!

Jud:
The only thing that lies within an entity, is the matter that lies within the
entity.
You cannot  'extract' that which lies within' without interfering with the
existential modality of the entity. As Kenneth says, there is no such thing
as existence =E2=80=93 there is only that which exists.

Michael:
The being (say, a leaf) is not matter, never appears as matter itself (it
only ever appears as the appearing of leafiness).

Jud:
A leaf is made of matter. Buy yourself a junior microscope and see for
yourself.

Michael:
The being of the leaf cannot BE matter without destroying the leaf-as-leaf
(making of it some kind of organic matter, some collection of chloro-filled
[sic] cells, an assemblage of biochemicals, a host of vibrating molecules,
even so-called atoms & so-called subatomic particles, etc; i. e., no longer=20a
leaf, a former leaf, a leaf deceased, a leaf no more, . . . ).

Jud:
The leaf has NO BEING. I had assumed that your reading of Heidegger's
infamous Leaf Episode would have taught you that =E2=80=93 the IS =E2=80=93=20the BEING =E2=80=93
doesn't BELONG to the leaf =E2=80=93 the BE word simply introduces the EXISTENTIAL
MODALITY of the leaf which is green.  The word  'leaf' that we use to
describe such an entity remains viable until the leaf changes its existential
modality in such a 'dramatic' way that it is no longer recognisable to us as
a leaf. It may be a small heap of dust =E2=80=93 which we now describe as 'a small
heap of dust' which material once had the existential modality of being a
leaf.

Michael:
With the reign of matter as the be-all-and-end-all of beings we have another
example of the King's New Clothes,

Jud:
Matter does not 'reign' =E2=80=93 it is an unthinking insensate ousia without any
monarchical pretensions whatsoever.

Michael:
a new set of dualisms, further transcendence, more metaphysics (and more
arrogance that such a metaphysics is not only not metaphysics but is the
death and transcendence of such metaphysics, bah!):

Jud:
The cutting away of old outmoded ideas and fiercely held illogicalities and
self-deceptions is a bitter pill to swallow.  This is particularly true for
the older person who has clung to certain notions throughout their lives.
Like an alcoholic or drug addict they will go to enormous lengths to deny or
deflect the new reality.
I genuinely feel for you as I watch you squirm and struggle to fight your way
out of this particular ontological paper-bag. I am only the messenger =E2=80=93 not
the message. :-)

Cheers,

Jud.




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