From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 10:37:58 EDT Subject: IRRATIONALITY IN DAVID HUME Dear Jud, Another way to put it is -- a high degree of probability, no, let us say the very highest possible degree of probability is still just probability. There is an infinite difference between "there is usually" and "it is certain." Now, the power of "custom" that resides in "usually" is fully acknowledged in Hume and is said to be an, in a -- I think -- proper sense of the term -- Absolute necessity in the practical machinations of the everyday in our minds. For one important point, the destruction of "certain" truth, as opposed to mere "belief" solidly supported by "custom" and experience, destroys the imposition of any way of behaviour upon other people when their behaviour does not cause physical harm of any sort to others. "One can be all that one can be" as long as it does not physically interfere with others no matter how distasteful that 'being' is. Dear Gary, But what does: "One can be all that one can be" actually mean? For me there is no other way that one can be, other than the way one is the way one is? If one decided not to be all that one can be, what would happen? As far as I can see the only escape from being all that one can be is to commit suicide? If "One can be all that one can be" is an American expression or figure of speech that means something different in AE, then I apologise in advance, but to a Brit speaker: "One can be all that one can be" is a rather mysterious phrase. I don't think that "usually" has the same power nowadays as the Humean: “absolute necessity in the practical machinations of the everyday in our minds." For example: "Funny. Mr. Jones usually hangs his hat on the hat-stand, but today he took it with him to his work-station and put it under the table." Obviously in a situation like this the only case of absolute necessity would be if there was a large notice displayed to the effect that: - ANY EMPLOYEE FOUND NOT HANGING HIS HAT ON THE HAT STAND WILL BE DISMISSED - and even then that rule would only apply as an absolute necessity to those workers who were petrified at the thought of being unemployed, for to those who either wore hats but didn't care if they lost their job, or to those workers who never wore hats, the exhortation to hang one's hat on the hat stand wouldn't be of that much importance. For millions of people certain truth corresponds exactly to what they believe - political zealots - religious maniacs - monomaniacs etc. However I think that the commonality of people in modern Europe, [I don't know about USA?] including thinkers like us, are more circumspect in their positions, and the older one gets, if one looks back and reviews one's life, one realises that there have been changes in outlooks some quite profound - others are in the way that we relate to our family, friends and neighbours. Gary: Of course there will be many border line cases like spam or phone-call advertisements that amount to harassment, but there one gets into pragmatic cause-and- effect behaviour and also understanding one's own responses to such situations. How one responds may have worse consequences than doing nothing at all. Jud: It is true that ignoring things like spam and unsolicited sales-calls and hoping that it will go away seldom solves anything. It depends on how much one views it as an assault on privacy? One can always install a spam-killer programme or take the phone off the hook - but viewed from a wider perspective, should "naked capitalism" allow companies to thrust themselves at us in this way? As somebody who is sympathetic to a more controlled form of capitalism, I recognise that genuine advertising, though sometimes intrusive and irritating, does act as a stimulus to technical development and progress, [a progress which like any development in the history of mankind has its advantages and disadvantages,] whereas spam brings no revenue to the developers of hardware or the ISPs, with any concomitant saving for the subscriber or PC owner, and therefore does not benefit anybody but the spammer. Gary: But this is a situation of "maybe." That something, anything at all, WILL inevitably happen is dependent upon something that does not exist and is a pure figment of our imagination -- the future. That the "future" is important to us as conscious, thinking beings may even be stated as an axiom and Absolute. That any relation to the future has "certain truth" value, however, is meaningless. Jud: I entirely agree, and that is why I made it clear that inevitability can only EVER be attributed to things that were, or are in certain entitic states. One can never make an absolutely correct statement about the future - though one can take a chance and make a general one. If I said, referring to my house: "This house will be here tomorrow" I am really making a general statement based on probability, hoping that because we have gas, the gas will not ignite and blow the house to smithereens, or that one of the kids will not set it on fire, or that one of the aircraft that can be seen as silver trails in the sky high above will not descend on our home and crush it to bits. But even so, even if it is still here tomorrow, ontologically speaking it will not be the same house as the "this" of today refers to, the "this house" of tomorrow will be a different house, having shed and accreted billions of molecules during the 24-hour period. So you are right Gary when you say: that any relation to the future has "certain truth" value, however, is meaningless. Gary: Let us consider the project of Bertrand Russell to get rid of the "is" word. Jud: Count Korzybski is more famous for this desire to consign IS to the flames. Gary: Hume repeatedly says adding "existence" to the "impression" of a present-at-hand object adds absolutely nothing more to it. Jud: Quite so - for years I have been pounding away saying that "existence" doesn't exist, and that only the entities that exist exist. Gary: It is either a fact or it is not a fact. That is all that matters. But "usually" needs an "is," a substratum of "being" independent of facts that simply 'reside' in themselves and 'say' absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever, about the past, about the present, or about the future. Jud That is because 'usually' is an adverb derived from the adjective usual, and as such it normally modifies or qualifies something other than a noun, i. e., verbs or clauses which introduce the existential modality of the way the subject, [which in this case 'usually,' or does 'not usually' perform some action. or have some action performed on him or her or it.] Consider the sentence: "Billy is usually in bed before 10 pm." Here, as always in the case of a subject existing in the present [either actually or sententially] and being described as taking part in some passive state or action ALL the words in the sentence need the BE-mechanism in its IS conjugate form to attribute existential manners to the Gesamtsumme that is Billy whilst that conglomerate of disparate particles which are Billy are being Billy. And that is the only being that is involved in being Billy, for there is no other being peeping Chadlike over the wall smiling enigmatically. In other words being can only ever refer to being this way, or being that way, and never to the fact of being this entity or that entity, or not being any entity at all. There is NO ACT of being a being - one is either a being or one is not a being. However, once a being is a being the word being may be employed to describe certain ongoing or continuous acts singled out from the existential Gesamtsumme as being worthy of note such as: “Billy is being naughty,” and to say such things as: “Billy is just being Billy” refers to the usual or expected sort of behaviour that Billy displays, not to the existential fact or actuality that Billy exists in the cosmos as Billy. Therefore the adverb 'usually' is only one part of the predicational information concerning the existential modality of the subject needing the IS-word to: (1) Attribute its qualifying power of 'usualness' or 'everydayness' to the existential modality of the predicational information: [the verbal clause: "in bed before 10 pm."] (2) Attribute the existential action to the subject of the sentence. Gary: Those are conditions of "existence" one is trying to add to the object. Jud: But this is the precise point - there ARE NO conditions of "existence", there are only the conditions of the way in which an entity exists. To get down to the ontological nitty-gritty so to speak, the only conditions are the conditions of the disparate molecules that come together as the entitic conglomerate that we call Gary. C. Moore, and the only conditions of the macro of conglomeration called Gary.C.Moore are the existential conditions of his existentiality as manifested in modes and states. But those molecules that by association are called Gary.C.Moore are existing in the condition or modality of conglomeration, and a condition of existential spatial proximal occupancy. There is nothing in the cosmos which exists in an unconditional state of unconditionality - the moment an entity exists - it exists in a certain way, manner, state or mode. In other words [from an anthropocentric point of view] a soon as one names some entity, even if one simply utters that name, the said entity has been attributed with the existential modality of nominality, and often, subject to context dependence, with the accompanying modes of identification [that it's Gary. C. Moore] and classification [that he is male.] Gary: One might express it this way -- simply an experiment on my part -- the only proper expression of certain truth other than tautological is wordless awareness. Jud: Remember you and I wordlessly pointing at a tree? Gary: When one adds words to the situation, one not only adds mere probable speculation, regardless of how much it is probable, and one also adds the necessity of using the "is" word, which Russell so wanted to get away from, because temporality can ONLY exist in words, not in totally boring, bare-assed awareness. Jud: The AIT material contains much about the fact that any use of the IS-word is statemental or asseverational. Metaphorically the IS-word can be clicked [icon-like] and the analytic proceedings halted whilst the predicational information is checked out from other sources as to its truth claim. Gary: We use words, then, because we would be literally bored to death just staring at objects. Jud: A good way of putting it - but more than that, our lives can depend on communication - gesture alone is insufficient to explain that the Egyptian fleet has just rounded the headland and will be discharging its warriors upon the small spit of silver sand beyond the clump of birch trees. Of course we could all learn sign language I suppose? BTW I have a deaf friend [a lifelong friend] who I have read and have been told is most eloquent and expressive when he signs, and that poetry in sign-language can be just as beautiful and uplifting as in ordinary speech. Gary: If we bring temporal tenses into our language, and how can you avoid it without speaking practical nonsense, you bring in "is," the brother of "was" and "will be." All that is "certainly" true, though, is only the pure tenseless present, and that no one can sanely deal with for long. One has to have "was" and "will be" or go mad. Jud: Sounds like with me you do not believe that time exists other than as an idea? Am I right? Gary: That may possibly be a key to the problem of reflexivity. The statement "I know that I know" is the basis for a great deal of action and judgment of that action, i.e., "The bastard knew what he was doing!" Some . . . people . . . claim it as the primary distinction between animals and human beings. I think Hume would ask, How do 'They' know this? But my point is, "I know that I know," though it borders on experiential nonsense and smells of tautology, makes a great deal of practical sense and is certainly the operational fundament of morality, custom, and law. However, "I know that I know that I know that I know that I know . . . " etc., strikes everyone as mere verbal nonsense. Jud: I agree that it isn't verbal nonsense at all. While I am at it, I have often wondered WHY philosophers seem to have "a down" on tautology? To me tautologious statements have a purity and beauty all of their own, and they are usually [often] truth statements, which rain down an aureate benison of tautologious exactitude. ;-) What is your take on tautology Gary? Gary: However, again, it is a logical consequence of the all-important "I know that I know." There is no way around it. The only way to judge is merely pragmatic, not strict logic. So is the whole thing nonsense right from the beginning and we totally delude ourselves. I think we need to seriously consider that possibility in a Humean light. Hume would say that the only STRONG determining force here is "vigour and vivacity" and he is, as usual, perfectly right. It is purely an emotional determination, at least right off hand. Jud: It may be a survival mechanism - in fact I AM SURE [:-)] that it is - in nature the decision makers make it - the dilly-dalliers who fall behind and are dispatched by the sword of indecision don't. Gary: On the other hand, knowing one has the ability always at-hand to say "I know that I know that I know that I know that I know . . . ' ad infinitum is very reassuring of the enduring sense of one's personal identity, one's 'existence,' through wordy time. Is "the enduring sense of one's personal identity" in any possible way, other than desire and avoidance of insecurity, justified though? Jud: Yes I think so - though it's a great bonus if someone [as I usually do in your case] says: "Yes, you're right Gary!" Gary: Common sense tells us we change every second, and it says we change fundamentally in each day several times. Insecurity and fright tells us we are always the same person. The law holds us to account that we are always the same person from day to day. Is this justified, justified IN FACT at all? But can you see how the word "being" subtly re-insinuates itself constantly back into one's thinking even when is trying very hard to get rid of it? One can call it by a different name, "inevitability" and "necessary" are two possible examples, but the functionality remains the same however distasteful. Jud: For me there is no symmetricalness whatsoever between the accomplished ubiety of the things that are the things that are being referred to as being inevitable, or that the series of inter-entitic [inter-entity] actions that have taken place since the big bang couldn't have happened in any other way, because if that was the case things wouldn't have happened as they inevitably did on the one hand... and The fact that some people attribute an existential dualism that canters alongside us as we ride our way along the disparate trails of our lives. For me there is NOTHING above and beyond or aside from the actual physicality of materia-energetic objects. We are no more than thinking meat - embrained bodies - embodied brains. All else than unique and ever-changing entities are no more than the ideas and whimsies [some useful - some entertaining - some evil] created by our human brains. Gary: I hope that clarifies things. Now, I am going to get back to reading Hume. Jud: As usual your text was overflowing with tasty conceptual goodies and very stimulating too. 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> 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> --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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