File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0306, message 86


From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 09:56:34 EDT
Subject: About Thinking and Thought


Ontological Oddities Date: 22/06/2003

From: sdblack-AT-telus.net (Steve Black)

heidegger-dialognet-AT-yahoogroups.com



Jud: 

Thinking and breathing do not exist, for thinking and breathing are ways that 
the body-brain exists, not the way that thinking and breathing exist. If we 
stop thinking or breathing we soon die unless our lives are extended by means 
of artificial respiration or others maintain us in a vegetative state. A 
thinking, breathing human exists but not his thinking and breathing. When he dies he 
ceases his thinking and breathing, but they do not accompany him into the 
grave for they never existed to die and be buried in the first place, for actions 
are ways that an existent exists. 

I suppose that one the one hand nominalism helps us get a clearer idea of 
just exactly what it is that we are sharing the world with and what are no more 
than humanly created chimera, secondly it protects us from being conned, 
because we tend to ask for more clarification when abstractions are employed by 
others in order to manipulate us. 

 No, I'm not suggesting for one minute that we should stop thinking or 
cognising or acting in a logical way just because thought, cognisance and logic 
don't exist, nor that we should stop all mathematical activity and sack all our 
math teachers because number and sets and the symbols of arithmetical 
calculations don't actually exist other than in the brains of mathematicians, but rather 
that as thinking perceptive human beings at the beginning of the 21st century 
we should at least BE AWARE THAT THEY DON'T EXIST.



Steve: 

Okay - another try. I have this idea and I am struggling to get it into words 
clearly - here's another go...



The value of hermeneutics is that it places the quester - the investigator 
herself very much into the investigation. It reminds over and over that the 
thinker locates a very specific "place" - and that that place is not omniscient. 
It "owns" this and tries not to forget it.



I am going to focus on one point for clarity. I am going to start with the 
sentence, "thoughts don't exist". There are two ways this could be taken - one - 
"there are no thoughts" - which is clearly nonsense! The other way also 
strikes me as forced - but at least I can see some room for affirming it. It (still 
"undefined") is that way that I want to look at.



Jud: 

I concede that you must be allowed to approach this problem from any 
direction you wish in order to access the question of “thought.” For my part, I would 
prefer to investigate the question in line with my own ontology, and here I 
pause to point out that I don't actually HAVE an "ontology," but rather the 
action of my brain evaluates problems of what H calls the "ontic," and I call the 
"the entitic macrocosm" [as a verbal short cut, for I don't believe that the 
"entitic macrocosm exists either] for those entities which exist in the 
cosmos, and therefore not to refer to  "thought," which is some nebulous reification 
of my acts of thinking, but to the thinking thinker, also known as: "the 
embrained body - embodied brain" which is also identified by the name Jud Evans.



Steve: 

As an exercise in hermeneutics I want to hold up this conversation itself as 
a clear point of study. (I want to also avoid generalizations to obtain 
clarity - if possible). This debate itself is "thought" expressed in words and 
grammar in an electronic format. This is what Julia Kristeva(??) calls the "hule" - 
the physical stuff of letters and ink - or in our case some strange working 
of electronics. 



Jud: 

I too see this conversation as a hermeneutical one, which is the way that I 
originally approached Heidegger. I have concluded that the nominalist approach 
to the “question of being and time” allied to an in depth understanding of 
the BE-word and how it works syntactically and semantically is far superior to 
Heidegger's, in that it is unburdened with ambiguity, obfuscation and allows a 
much sharper examination of these metaphysical questions, simply by revealing 
that there are no metaphysical questions at all because there is nothing 
metaphysical to be questioned.  Heidegger's whole ontological game-plan is 
dependant on one huge wager, and that is that the “theosophical” gerund “Being” is a 
viable concept.  If the Being-word is removed from his philosophical 
entablature the whole pack of Heideggerian cards comes crashing to the ground. Now you 
can see the importance of the admittance of gerundial abstraction into 
Heidegger's doctrines.  Heidegger NEEDS the “departure” of the train to exist, and 
if it is replaced by the compelling existential truth of the “departing 
train” his whole Grundbegriffe bites the dust.



I choose to think of our debate as the exchange, by means of encoded 
electronic significations, some results of the thinking processes of our brains which 
if it pleases you to do so you may call "thoughts." However it is not the 
thoughts that actually exist, it is simply the activity of your thinking brain 
thinking they are thoughts instead of the results of the activity of my brain in 
thinking which now you are thinking about with the help of this electronic 
medium?



Now just why you or anybody else desires [perhaps even feels the need?] to 
nominalise the activity of my thinking brain, or your own thinking brain and 
call them thoughts [rather than the process or activity of thinking] and going 
down the road of turning this activity of thinking into something that exists on 
some other sort of [presumably transcendental level I just cannot understand?



Here are some dictionary definitions of "thoughts" which you will see [and 
you can check your own dictionary too] all describe thoughts as actions or 
processes of the brain rather than as an entity that exists. Clearly this is 
because the compilers of the dictionary realised that the generality of English 
speakers think of thoughts not as some entitic phenomena that "exist" but the 
activity of an existing human entity 



(a) The content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking about.

(b) The process of thinking (especially thinking carefully)

(c) The organized or recorded beliefs of a period or group or individual.

(d) A personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty



Therefore "thoughts" are clearly the neuronal activity of the human brainmeat 
with its specialised cells, which actually do the thinking, but it is the 
thinking brain of the thinking human that exists not the thinking of the 
thinking. This activity of my thinking brain is then converted to mutually 
intelligible symbols, which serve to communicate and transfer my thinking processes to 
your thinking processes. When you read the symbols on your screen your thinking 
brain decodes the strings of symbols into the meaning that the thinking of 
your brain thinks the symbols signify. 



Steve: 

This hule exists - well perhaps that's more problematic 



Jud: 

Sounds very much to me as if Julia has pinched the Greek work hyle, meaning, 
"matter?" For Heidegger "hyle" is one of the four "ways of being responsible" 
in Heidegger's model of causality based on Greek concepts; the silver that 
makes up the material being of the chalice is an example of hyle. 



The "matter" of the screen on which these symbols of ours in projected 
certainly exists, and the actual electrons which are fired by the electron gun at 
the back of our monitors actually exist too, but the results of the electron 
stream as converted into the squiggles on our screen exist as coded electronic 
information, they are not "Steve and Jud's thoughts crystallised on the screen" 
in the way that Marx thought of money as "crystallised labour" for it is the 
thinking mode of our thinking brains that thinks, and in thinking interprets 
the squiggles into a thinking about the thinking of the other thinker.

This repetitive use of the of the continuous tense of thinking which is 
necessary to communicate this concept indicates just how useful abstract nouns like 
“thought” are as communicative and cognitive shortcuts.  Well that is fine 
and dandy EXCEPT when because of constant usage people begin to believe that 
THEY ACTUALLY EXIST like Bruce has become so used to dealing with mathematical 
abstractions that he thinks that numbers or numers or numerals, or whatever he 
and his colleagues choose to call them ACTUALLY EXIST IN THE WORLD AS 
ENTITIES, rather than just as the activity of using them as symbols during the periods 
when he is thinking in a mathematical modality.

Steve:
[Hule] because it only exist electronically for us - but let's pretend that 
this a regular letter on paper for arguments sake - the ink and paper "exists". 
(Irony?) Yet the whole point about language - especially written - is that it 
only works, or it works best when it is "invisible". You read these words and 
because you have a competence in English you aren't really even noticing the 
physical stuff (hule) of the language - you are processing these words on a 
different level entirely. This dynamic is very clear when you learn another 
language and you really do have to struggle with the hule - the words themselves 
come only as obstacles to "meaning".

The point behind these words is that I am hoping that you "process" them - 
and construct from them "thoughts" that (if I am doing my part well) have at 
least some vague connection to what I am hoping to express as I write here from 
the other side of the planet.

Jud:
Any medium of communication is concerned with symbols.  If we are 
communicating in Morse-code our thinking embrained body [or embodied brain - take your 
pick same thing,] converts its thinking [or thoughts] if you prefer] into a 
series of dots and dashes which exist as dots and dashes on the message pad paper 
as traces of graphite on the page. The configurations of graphite on the page 
exist in the world as graphite, and not as the ideas, which the configurations 
of graphite communicate when the embodied brain of the recipient reads them, 
after they have been transmitted down the wire and taken down on the pad of 
the operator on the other side of the country. The “thoughts” only exist as an 
occurrence of thinking in the brains of:



(a) The creator of the message.

(b) The operator who sends the message.

©  The operator who receives the message.

(d) The final reader of the message.



In other words [and I realise that this is difficult to get one's head 
around] the thoughts don't exist - it is the thinker of the thoughts that exists, 
and his thinking we label with the name “thoughts.”  The same process applies 
to words, language, semaphore and any other medium of communication one cares 
to mention with one exception, and that is the visual presentation of imagery, 
art and TV pictures and the plastic arts sculpture etc., which warrants a 
separate discussion which we can perhaps return to at some later date?

Steve:
Lets pretend that I have with some modesty achieved my goal in writing - and 
you have taken the hule and have constructed "thoughts". These "thoughts" are 
(this is my hope, in any event) not something that you agree or disagree with 
- they are still "my" thoughts that you have constructed for your evaluation - 
they are "there" only to be evaluated. As it happens I write this clearly 
with this in mind - in a hope to persuade (not a hope I hold particularly firmly 
in this case - but nevertheless...) The thoughts "exist" at this point in the 
evaluation process NOT as true thoughts - but merely as thoughts that "someone 
else thinks". As such you are in a good position to proceed and evaluate.

Jud:
For me the thoughts do not exist at all in any way.  The thoughts do not 
“reside” anywhere. They are not stored in the brain as “things” or “mental 
luggage; or stashed away in the brain as entitic records as in a library.  For me 
“memory” does not exist either, but only the “rememberer” engaged in the human 
activity of “recalling” which is the manner of existing of the remembering 
human entity, for thinking and remembering are activities of the embodied 
brain. "Thoughts," or rather more properly "thinking" are an activity [and 
“activities” don't exist - only those entities that are active exist] of your brain 
and mine, and they are an activity of all the of the 200 or more people who are 
on this list and who are sufficiently interested to indulge in the required 
thinking which their body-brain needs to engage in which is necessary to read 
our messages. 



If they read our messages, they are then engaged in thinking about the things 
that we are or have been thinking about, but it is THEIR embrained body that 
is doing the thinking - not our thoughts, which are being “thought” by them.  
In other words they are thinking about our thinking they are thinking about 
it as the thinking of another thinker, for it is us that exist as thinkers 
thinking thoughts, and not our thoughts, which have been thought. 



When we read, for reading is manner of existing, or a mode of thinking of the 
thinking body-brain] the strings of phonetic or alphabetic code which enable 
us to think about another's thinking, we are thinking about another's thinking.

It is not necessary to know who the other thinker actually is or where he or 
she is located, or whether he or she is alive or dead, but whenever we read 
and think about the thinking of another, we are always aware that our thinking 
about the thinking is not about some “transcendental “thoughts,” which exist 
or existed long ago, but of the thinking thinker who exists or existed long 
ago. The thinking of the thinker and the thinking cannot be separated into 
“thinker and thought.”

The thinker and the thinking are correlates and bear a reciprocal or mutual 
existential inhered relation as a coincidental existential state of the 
existing of the existent as a thinking entity.



Those list members who haven't the time to read these messages, or who choose 
not to read them for various reasons. If we conjugate the verb “THINK” into 
its basic indicators of temporality in the first person we get the following:



1. Think, to think, I thought, I am thinking, I think, I will think or I will 
be thinking etc.



We can see now that the tendency to nominalise this activity - to concretise 
it into a “thing” called “thought” when all that the word “thought” does is 
to describe the “process” of thinking, a “process” which doesn't exist 
either as the “process of thinking” is simply the way that the human body-brain 
is existing while it is thinking. This temptation or inclination towards the 
abstractional concretising of action has the same reason behind it that tempts 
us to concretise the disparate activity of scores [if not hundreds] of people 
into the single abstraction “dance” when we say: “Tonight I am going to “a 
dance.” Moreover, to attempt to encapsulate the whole gamut of experiential 
activity involved in simply being alive as the mystical “Being” which is the 
cornerstone of Heidegger's metaphysical mysticism.



Steve:

On we go...

So now you have a "thought". 



Jud: 

For me we cannot HAVE a thought - we can think or we can experience the 
activity of thinking.



Steve:

We are not talking about a Nazi thought - or a 9/11 thought - or a thought 
about starving children in Africa 

- I want to try to be more specific - you (hopefully) have "my" thought (at 
least some rough and ready version of what I'm thinking - I only say this 
because I think that language can work - but only partially and with a great deal 
of unavoidable ambiguity.)



Jud:

I prefer: I am thinking about a version of what I think that you are thinking 
about the way that you think I am thinking about the way you think.



Steve:

What does it mean to say you have such a thing as a "thought" from me?



Jud:

It means that I am thinking about what you have communicated to me [by 
electronic alphabetic signs] regarding the way you are or have been [perhaps 
recently - perhaps not] thinking.





Steve:

 I have no problems agreeing that this "thought" is an Existential 
"modalities" of your brain as much as it is possible.



Jud:

In reading what you write my existential mode of thinking concerning the way 
in which you have thought or are thinking it allows me to share, or have an 
insight into, a particular activity or existential thinking modality of your 
brain.



Steve:

Yet that really doesn't tell us much! With this specific "thought" in mind - 
and not other more sinister global "thoughts" - this modest little thought 
here as an example - what does it mean to say that it "doesn't exist". (Other 
than perhaps that it simply cannot be constructed by you in any clarity because 
of my obtuse manner of speech...)



Jud:

The sad fact of human communication is that whilst language is a wonderful 
achievement of humankind it can never faithfully reproduce our thoughts in their 
entirety or their complexity - it is simply not up to the job.  If I sat down 
for a million years at the keyboard trying to describe the true actuality of 
the pen I hold in my hand I could never do so, for the existential totality or 
entitic Gesamtsumme of the pen is changing with every nanosecond as molecules 
are lost and replaced, as ultraviolet rays degrade the colouring and surface 
areas and the chemical composition of the ink within modifies its existential 
nexus, desiccates and finally is transformed to powder etc.  Language is 
simply inadequate for conveying the reality of constant existential transformation, 
so it is impossible for you or I or anybody else to try to capture the 
thinking activities of our brains using encoded alphabetic squiggles or sounds which 
are interpreted as messages by the vibration of our eardrums and passed on as 
simulative activity for the thinking body-brain.



Steve:

However you choose to respond to this - you are also using "thoughts". 



Jud:

Again I prefer to conceive of my response to your message as thinking about 
what you have told me you are thinking about, rather than “using thoughts,” 
whether those thoughts be yours or my own. I cannot “use” your “thoughts” 
because they don't exist, although I can think about what I think you are thinking 
about. The term “using thoughts” is redolent of acquiring “ready-made” 
thoughts which are “available” simply by reading your messages, when in fact for 
me my thinking about your thinking is to access not some of your “thoughts,” 
[which have been packed and parcelled and delivered by cyber-post] but to 
think about you existential modality of thinking as described by you to me.



Steve:

This In fact (and I'm sure this will come as no surprise to you) your whole 
argument is nothing but thought! (This is where the whole hermeneutics thing 
comes in).



Jud:

Again from my position “thought” as such does not exist other than as a 
series of symbols which English speakers agree should apply to describe the past 
tense of thinking as in:”



 I thought I saw a fox in my garden last night, but when I shone my torch it 
turned out to be a stray dog.”





Steve:

We have NO direct access to the brain! It may be that only the "brain-meat" 
exists - but we have no direct access to this "brain-meat". This is an 
important reflection - I think. Our ONLY access to this "brain-meat" is through our 
thoughts! This is out ONLY WAY IN! 



Jud:

You are partially correct here. The only thing I would quibble about is that 
neurosurgeons have been able to establish which areas of the brain “process” 
certain information and are active or inactive in given somatic situations by 
the observation of the behaviour of patients who have been traumatised etc., I 
agree though that this is a very limited knowledge.  It is introspection that 
allows us to attempt to understand the workings of our own brains and by 
watching the performance of others in certain situations. Language is the medium 
whereby we attempt to communicate our conclusions and the conclusions of others 
and for it is by examining the nature of this language - its structure, the 
syntactic juxtaposition of it semantic elements and particularly the BE-word 
and the linguistic mechanism whereby it mediates and communicates our 
body-brain's response and understanding of its own existentiality and that of its 
surrounding environment which offers the only way to understand the modalities of 
our own thinking and the manner in which others think.  Heidegger was never able 
to grasp the true nature of the cognitive mechanism of existentiality the 
BE-word in its IS-word conjugate version, and that is why he had to come up with 
his rather pathetic gerundial plug-in “Dasein” [being there] which let him 
off the ontological hook and allowed the absurdity of the so-called: 
“Ontological Difference.”







Steve:

Even if a surgeon cuts open a skull and touches this flesh - even this does 
not give us direct access - because even then the sensations at the fingers are 
sent to the brain and processed and experienced ONLY AND ALWAYS as thought. 



Jud:

I realise I might be seen to be quibbling unnecessarily here but I prefer: 
experienced ONLY AND ALWAYS as thinking because thinking is an activity of our 
brains and “thought” doesn't exist [as a completed chunk of thinking] because 
thinking is an action or behavioural mode not a “thing” on some cerebral 
floppy-disc or a “mental chip” that can be replayed for if it WERE to be 
“replayed, it would be in the modality of the thinking of the entity which is the 
thinking embrained body - embodied brain.





Steve:

These might not be fully formed thoughts - "Ahh - so this is what the brain 
of Suzy feels like!" No - the thought might be nothing more than a feeling of - 
disgust maybe - wonder - whatever - even this emotional experience is 
"thought". The "simple presence" - besides being a very complicated abstract idea - 
besides this - it is never known in any way directly 

- but only and always as thought.



Jud:

Sorry, but once more I have to ontologically characterise this as the conduct 
[action/process] of thinking rather that “thought” unless that is you are 
willing to concede that when you employ the word “thought” you are actually 
referring to the process or [or in my nominalist lingo] the existential modality 
of the human entity whilst it is thinking?



Steve:

Hermeneutics would want to make sure that we have this point clearly before 
moving on. To miss this is to think that our models aren't just models but the 
"real thing". It would be to not acknowledge the brain's participation in all 
that we know and think - that we somehow can approach "reality" immediately 
and can by-pass thought somehow.



Jud:

I don't want to get into deep water here but it seems to me you are rejecting 
the Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenological approach whereby we are 
“bracketing” a priori knowledge of an entity and just viewing it as what our 
blinkered senses see it as before our eyes?  
For me it will always remain impossible to cut the cords of our human senses 
and view the world as it REALLY IS.  Without human and animal eyes to view it 
the world may well exist in monochrome but who really cares? Whether we like 
it or not we are stuck with our model of reality as mediated my the particular 
senses [sensors] with which evolution [in its “wisdom”] has equipped us with 
in order that we may stand a better chance of survival.  Of course our 
scientists have developed instruments by which we may “see” the worlds of infrared 
and ultra violet and lots more of nature that we might experience using our own 
eyes and ears.

For me as a nominalist, shearing away the cloying obfuscatory [useful] 
garbage of abstraction as characterised by [cognitively lazy] abstract nouns, 
gerunds and adverbial gerundives allows us to venture as close as possible to 
approach the “reality” of which you speak, whereby the employment of these words 
and terms a la Heidegger only beckons us away from the exciting exploration of 
the hinterland twixt human understanding and the wondrous world of reality 
which lies at the outer fringes of our understanding. For me Heidegger is like 
some hollow eyes figure of the past who as you venture forward into the unknown 
tugs at your sleeve and whispers:

“Come back” Come away!” Retreat with me to the comfort and contentment of 
the ancient inception of certainty”



Steve:

If this all stands - and we wish to affirm your theory of "existence" 



Jud:

I have no theory of “existence,” for me there is no such thing.  The only 
thing that exists [as Parmenides and Kotarbinski says] is that which exists,





Steve:

We are now if an odd position of affirming what exists from a "place" that 
does not exist!



Jud:

Yes, “place” does not exist but only that which exists at or in that place.



Steve:

This places "fiction" in a higher position than "fact" - which is just weird 
enough to keep me interested - but I suspect that it will not be acceptable to 
you.



Jud:

“Fact” for me equals: “That which has existed or exists in the way in which 
it really existed or exists.”

 I much prefer this way of looking at the world to: “Fiction” which for me 
equals: “That which has not existed or does not exist in the way in which it 
was said to exist or is said to exist.



Are you SURE you prefer to live by the latter axiom?  ÷)


Take Care




Cheers,

Jud.

<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A> 
Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY.
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>


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