Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 01:04:56 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Method - Axiomatic casting


Cologne 01-Mar-2002

Anthony Crifasi schrieb Thu, 28 Feb 2002 19:40:51:

> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> >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.

Anthony,
The issue here is apparently the Aristotelean casting of being vs. the Cartesian
casting of being. Heidegger has a lengthy exposition of this in Die Frage nach
dem Ding, so it would be most appropriate for you to have it out intensively
with this text.

> >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 difference lies in the metaphysics, the _protae philosophia_.

> >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.

Pull out _dynamis_ as a mode of being from Aristotle's metaphysics, and you have
already done half a demolition job. What you propose here would be piecemeal
tinkering -- altering merely the 'definition' of natural beings, as if it had no
metaphysical implications.

> >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.

Of course certain experiences can be summoned, but they cannot be decisive
because experiences are such only within an understanding of beings as such, and
this leads to differing interpretations of the same experiences.

> >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.
>
> >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.
>
> >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.

Being or the being of beings cannot be found in any sense organ, whether it be
the brain, the ear, the eye. Why not? Because in any sensuous encounter with
beings, their being resides in the _as_. No explanation, scientific or
otherwise, can account for the wonder of seeing the candle _as_ a candle, the PC
monitor screen _as_ a PC monitor screen. In proceeding to arguments and
observations concerning how sense data are received, the _as_ has already been
skipped over. Scientific developments alone cannot induce such a momentous
change as the positing of the rational subject, but only these in conjunction
with a metaphysical casting of beings as a whole in which the _as_ is decided
historically (through long struggle) and another historical stance of human
existence is assumed toward the world..

> >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.

These observations are produced by an experimental set-up. Nature is set up to
answer scientific interrogation. The questions posed are themselves produced by
and within an understanding of the being of natural beings and also beings as a
whole. This understanding of being predefines access at all to beings, how they
show themselves, how they can show themselves. The axiomatic casting of being,
as laid out for instance in Descartes' Regulae, defines in advance what a being
can be and how it can show itself, i.e. mathematically in the sense that beings
have to present themselves either directly in a clear and distinct intution or
indirectly through a rational deduction (Regula 3) and ultimately quantitatively
(Regula 14). Ratio is a holding-to-be. The ego cogito is posited as the subject
to which all beings have to present themselves rationally; otherwise they _are_
not.

Whereas in the Aristotelean categorial casting of the being of beings, beings
have inter alia a place, beings themselves become placeless in the Cartesian
casting. For Aristotle, it requires an abstraction or separation (_chorismos_)
from natural beings to arrive at geometrical points (_stigmae_), and a further
abstraction to arrive at number (_arithmos_), which is not only placeless, but
also positionless. In the Cartesian casting, all this collapses -- natural
beings _are_ then nothing other than numerical masses -- both placeless and
positionless. Geometrical position itself is collapsed into ordered co-ordinates
in Cartesian geometry, enabling a certain kind of calculus, i.e. rational
deduction of a mathematical-numerical type. The motion too of natural beings can
be grasped (concipere) by a kind of mathematics (differential calculus), because
natural bodes _are_ now nothing other than number co-ordinates in Cartesian
space, their motion a curve. These modern forms of mathematics arise only on the
basis of the casting of being of natural beings, not conversely.

In the Cartesian casting of being, beings are cast, i.e. posited and held, to
be, nothing other than quantities of certain kinds amenable to the grasp of
certain kinds of mathematics which arise precisely in response to this new
casting of being.


> >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.

Obviousness is the death of philosophical thinking, and Newton was a
philosopher. Being content with the obvious amounts to taking unquestioningly
for granted. The point is to question obviousness until it yields a view of the
granting. There is a certain granting going when beings lose their natural
place, and more besides. One historical apophantic _as_ (the categorial) recedes
as world-opening in favour of another (the mathematical).

Michael
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