From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Method - Axiomatic casting
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 19:40:51 


Michael Eldred wrote:

> > Michael, please tell me you already had all of these texts on your
> > computer, and didn't actually type it all in just to reply to me! Either
> > way, thank you very much. I have always wanted to read the exact text 
>where
> > Heidegger discusses this issue.
>
>Anthony,
>
>Isn't Heidegger's lecture course available in English translation?

I'm sure it is, but I hadn't read it yet, so I wouldn't have known to look 
there to find his specific elaboration on this issue. I had always known 
that he had an in depth explication of his views on the mathematization in 
Cartesian philosophy, but I never knew exactly where it was. In any case, 
thank you very much for posting all those texts.

>Heidegger says in the same text:
>
>"Teaching is a giving, offering; but what is offered in teaching is not 
>what can
>be learned, but rather, only the instruction is given to the pupil to take 
>for
>him/herself what s/he already has. When the pupil only adopts something 
>that has
>been offered, s/he does not learn anything. S/he only comes to learning 
>when
>s/he experiences what s/he takes as something which s/he him/herself 
>properly
>speaking already has. Genuine learning only takes place where the taking of 
>what
>one already has is a _giving-to-oneself_ and is experienced as such. 
>Teaching
>therefore means nothing other than allowing the others to learn, i.e. 
>mutually
>bringing each other to learn. Learning is harder than teaching, for only 
>those
>who can truly learn -- and only as long as they can -- can genuinely teach. 
>The
>genuine teacher is distinguished from the pupil only in that the teacher 
>can
>learn better and wants to learn more properly. In all teaching, the teacher
>learns most." (S.56)
>
>The essence of the mathematical is taking what one already has. This is
>learning. This taking of what one already has is radicalized in modernity 
>to the
>self-certain subject taking what is self-evident or what can be brought 
>into
>self-evidence through stepwise deduction.

But again, I don't see how this is essentially different from Aristotle's 
description of the immediate knowledge of primary premises and then bringing 
other things into evidence through stepwise syllogistic deduction from those 
primary premises. That is exactly Aristotle's description in the Posterior 
Analytics of how scientific knowledge is acquired by a knower. The only 
difference between this and Descartes is in what specific things can be 
known, not in the process of knowing itself.

>The capitalized line reads in Greek:
>_hos ou taei thesei diapheronta monon alla kai taei dynamei._ (208b20)
>"how they [above and below] do not differ solely according to position, but
>according to potency".
>
>For Aristotle, geometrical points are abstracted from natural beings in 
>their
>place to become placeless points (_atopoi_) which nevertheless have a 
>position
>(_thesis_). Arithmetical number results from a further abstraction to 
>placeless
>and positionless entities. Thus geometrical points can have relative 
>position,
>but numbers cannot, since numbers themselves are positionless.
>
>I.e. whereas the _topos_ belongs to natural beings, the _physei onta_, 
>Aristotle
>separates off from these the geometric and arithmetic entities, that is, 
>the
>point (_stigmae_), which is placeless (_atopos_), and the unit (_monas_), 
>which
>is both placeless and positionless (_athetos_).
>
>You may find my online paper, Casting of a Digital Ontology, helpful in 
>this
>connection. http://www.webcom.com/artefact/dgtlon_e.html
>
>This makes it clear that Aristotle does not think natural beings in their 
>being
>as 'point masses', i.e. mathematically in the narrower sense. And yet you 
>claim
>that this difference (which lies at the heart of how natural beings are
>conceived in their essence) is no essential difference from
>Newton/Descartes/Galileo.

But the only thing that distinguishes Aristotle's notion of place above from 
pure position is potency. So yes, Aristotle does not think of natural beings 
as just masses with position, but that is only because he thinks that there 
is also potency with the position. The removal of potency therefore leaves 
nothing but pure position.

> > This is a text (again from Physics IV) where Aristotle directly opposes 
>his
> > own view to exactly what Newton says in his first law of motion:
> >
> > "Further, [if there were a void] no one could say why a thing once set 
>in
> > motion should stop anywhere; for why should it stop here rather than  
>here?
> > So that a thing will either be at rest or must be moved ad infinitum,
> > unless something more powerful get in its way." (Physics IV.8)
> >
> > So Aristotle himself sees that Newton's First Law would be a necessary
> > implication of a void, since in a void, places would not be 
>differentiated
> > by  any natural characteristics which would result in a mobile stopping 
>here
> >   instead of there. So Aristotle himself explicitly opposes Newton's 
>First
> > Law  to his own teleological view that things tend to stop in certain
> > places. The  reason is easy to see - Aristotle's view is that things in
> > linear motion tend to stop, while Newton's First Law states that they do 
>not
> > tend to stop. They are exact opposites, so the rejection of one 
>naturally
> > entails the other.  So again, it seems to me that the changeover to
> > Newtonian physics is  better explained in terms of the new scientific
> > observations favoring inertial  tendency (esp. Galileo's inclined plane
> > observations) within the same casting  of being. If two different 
>castings
> > of being were involved, it would never have  occurred to an ancient 
>Greek
> > like Aristotle to oppose the two views.
>
>How do these "new scientific observations" come about? They are guided by a
>certain thinking, which in turn also develops through the observations. 
>What
>kind of thinking is at work here in this historical transition?
>
>It is the Aristotelean casting of natural beings in their being, i.e. as 
>having
>of their nature a place toward which they tend, which excludes infinite
>unhindered linear motion. As Heidegger points out, there is no possible
>experience of infinite unhindered linear motion. On the contrary, 
>experience
>supports rather the notion of infinite circular motion for those bodies 
>which
>are in their place in the heavens.

But again, what about the documentable experience of a definite pattern as 
external impingements decrease? The analysis you quote from Heidegger makes 
it sound like inertia is based on no experience at all.

>Galileo's casting has to be thought prior to
>him conceiving experiments with inclined planes and making observations. 
>What
>happens in the Galilean/Newtonian/Cartesian casting is that natural beings 
>are
>stripped of their inherent nature and place and instead cast as beings that 
>can
>be mastered mathematically, i.e. the subject gives itself the axioms on the
>basis of which the motion can be mastered in scientific-mathematical 
>thinking.
>It is the abstraction from natural beings which enables this mastery and 
>also
>dictates a certain kind of experience with natural beings. I.e. there is no
>empirical observation that is outside a casting of being and could judge 
>over
>it. Rather, experience and thinking are intermeshed.

I am not saying that these empirical observations are outside a casting of 
being. I am only saying that the same casting of being is essentially 
involved in both cases. If we begin with Aristotle's notion that things move 
towards their natural place, which therefore has both potency and position, 
then we can explain place as pure position simply by the subtraction of 
potency. There is no need to resort to a recasting of being as a whole in 
order to explain this change.

> > It may be true that (as he says) no body can ever be completely "left to
> > itself" without anything impinging on it whatsoever, but this does not 
>mean
> > that a clear progressive pattern cannot be observed in how bodies behave 
>as
> > external  impingement decreases. Is he saying that this is the same as 
>"the
> > merely dialectical invention of concepts in medieval scholasticism and
> > science"?
>
>Not at all. He says that the casting of the being of natural beings is 
>prior to
>any experiments with them and cites Galileo's prior reflections in support 
>of
>this. No observation is able to induce a recasting, but rather, the 
>recasting
>itself comes from a metaphysical recasting of beings as a whole and the 
>being of
>beings in which human existence itself adopts another fundamental stance 
>towards
>the world. Experimental observation itself plays an ancillary role in this
>metaphysical recasting and only in tandem with it.

Again, I am not saying that empirical observation can induce a recasting of 
beings as a whole. I am only saying that the same casting of being is 
involved in both cases here.

> > I would have to see exactly how Galileo's opponents tried to explain 
>this
> > experiment. I am almost certain that their alternate explanation would 
>have
> > observable consequences which could also be (and probably were) tested 
>by
> > another experiment. If that is the case, then once again, the changeover 
>is
> > explained by empirical evidence within the same casting of being.
>
>Only it is not the same, since the being of natural beings and beings as a 
>whole
>is now cast in a totally different way -- axiomatically from the 
>mathematical
>subject. A sign of this total revolution is the revolution in the meanings 
>of
>the words 'subject' and 'object'.
>
>"Up until Descartes the word 'subject' was applied to every existing thing; 
>Now,
>however, the 'I' becomes the subject par excellence, i.e. that in relation 
>to
>which the other things are first determined as such. Because they only 
>obtain
>their thingness -- mathematically -- through the founding relation to the
>highest principle and its 'subject' (the I), they are essentially something
>which stands as something else in relation to the 'subject', lie against it 
>as
>obiectum. The things themselves become 'objects'. ... This inversion in the
>meaning of the words subiectum and obiectum is not simply a matter of the 
>use of
>language; it is an earth-shattering transformation in human being (Dasein), 
>i.e.
>in the clearing of the being of beings on the foundation of the rule of the
>_mathematical_. _It is a stretch in the path of history proper which is 
>hidden
>to the common eye_ which is always the history of the openness of being -- 
>or
>else nothing at all." (S.81, 82)
>
>I suppose you would say that there is nothing "earth-shattering" going on 
>in
>this historical transformation. But think about it.

Yes it is earth-shattering, but is it necessarily a recasting of being? If 
an explanation in the terms of scientific developments can be found for the 
limitation of 'subject' to only the 'I', from which everything else must be 
deduced, then again there would be no need to resort to a recasting of being 
in order to explain this. So the question is, were there any new scientific 
developments which supported the idea that the objectivity of everything 
must be deduced from the subject 'I'?

That is precisely what the topic of my dissertation is. An argument 
Descartes repeatedly puts forth is that sensation results purely from a 
brain-event, NOT from any event in the outer sense organs. He says this most 
notably near the end of the Sixth Meditation, as well as in the Treatise On 
Man, the Optics, the Principles of Reasoning, and the Passions of the Soul. 
Descartes then argues that since all that actually reaches the brain is 
nerve stimulation, not the qualities of actual things, then what we sense 
does not necessarily have to resemble the qualities of actual things at all. 
In other words, since the sense organ is physically cut off from the actual 
qualities of things, then sensation is physically cut off from the actual 
qualities of things. What we see is therefore subjectivized.

Now, my suspicion before doing my dissertation was that Descartes was the 
first to know both of the two essential premises that (1) that sensation 
results purely from a brain event, and (2) the brain is cut off from the 
actual qualities of things. My dissertation research has supported this. 
There were philosophers and physiologists before Descartes who knew that the 
sense organ is the brain (most notably Galen and his followers), and there 
were also many people before Descartes who knew that the brain is physically 
cut off from the actual qualities of things, but I have found no one at all 
before Descartes who knew BOTH of these. For example, there were many people 
before Descartes (and even during Descartes' time) who tried to argue that 
although the brain is the immediate sense organ, the qualities of things are 
actually carried by nerves to the brain itself (like how fiber optical wires 
carry light), so that the sense organ actually receives the qualities of 
things.

In summary, if the brain turns out to be the sense organ (not the eye or 
ears..., as Aristotle thought), and if the proper sensibles cannot actually 
reach the brain, then the sense organ does not actually receive the proper 
sensibles. That is an explicit reason Descartes gives for doubting the 
identity between what we see and the actual qualities of things. It is easy 
to see the connection between this and doubting the existence of the 
external world, which would obviously imply that external things must be 
deduced from the self if they are to be known at all. So again, I do not see 
the need to explain this in terms of a general recasting of being. The 
specific scientific discoveries which caused the change were BOTH (1) the 
discovery of the essential role of the brain and nerves in sensation, and 
(2) the discovery that the brain is cut off from any external qualities of 
things, such as light and color, sound, heat, etc. These two things 
immediately imply the doubt in sensation that is characteristic of 
Descartes.

> > Yes Newton states them as axiomatic, but if you look at the development 
>of
> > physics in the 100 years preceding Newton's Principia, you can find very
> > specific observations which led to those axioms, supporting the view 
>that
> > things in motion do not tend to stop over the view that things in motion
> > tend to stop. If that is the case, then again, the changeover is 
>explicable
> > in terms of new evidence within the same casting of being, not a new 
>casting
> > of being. This obviously does not threaten Heidegger's view that 
>empirical
> > facts do not stand alone, but are facts only under some casting of 
>being.
> > The only thing I am disputing is that the changes to which he refers 
>above
> > are the result of a new casting of being altogether, instead of 
>developments
> > within the same casting of being.
>
>The only way forward here, it seems, would be for you to write down the
>Aristotelean casting of being and the Cartesian casting of being and see if 
>they
>are different and how radically different they are. You keep on saying that 
>it
>is the observations that lead to the recasting of beings in their being.

No Michael I am not. I am saying that all this takes place within 
essentially the same casting of being, and that these new observations led 
to the elimination of certain views within that casting of being, leaving 
what you aptly call a stripped down version of what came earlier. The same 
thing happened later with the change from Newtonian physics to relativity. 
Experiments like Michelson/Morley, which showed that the speed of light is 
the same no matter how fast you are travelling, forced the elimination of 
the notion of an absolute reference frame for length, time, and mass, 
leaving all of these relative. Other observations of the consequences of 
relativity (such as the bending of light around the sun during an eclipse) 
further supported this. So again, the former view is merely stripped free of 
aspects which contradict new observations.

>What is the significance of Newton's laws being given an _axiomatic_ cast? 
>You
>don't seem to appraise the import of this axiomatic character.

Yes, Newton considered it basically obvious by his time that things do not 
tend towards stopping at their "natural place," but continue on until 
something stops it (as Aristotle himself admits would happen if places were 
not differentiated, as in a void). But this does not mean that there were 
not previous findings which contradicted the "natural place" idea in the 
first place, so that this rejection was almost universal by the time Newton 
wrote the Principia. But I have no doubt that if you had asked Newton to 
defend his first law against the teleological view, he would have had no 
trouble referencing the relevant phenomena.

Anthony Crifasi

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