From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 13:26:47 EDT
Subject: Ouzo or Ousia?


Michael writes:

Also, on reading your opinionations regarding Heisenberg and the Uncertainty
Principle, it is clear to me (and I almost completed a chemistry degree,
taking a very great interest in quantum mechanics before I left to join a
rock-n-roll band...) that you have not actually read Heisenberg himself,
especially on the subject of the relation between physics and philosophy
[say, in ], but have skimmed stuff from bits and
bobs that float around like ethereal gossip particles around the internet
etc. I strongly recommend you read his actual stuff before talking the
nonsense you do about his stuff. 

Jud:
Firstly see Heisenberg's  'Physics and Philosophy' which I am very familiar 
with and which has been posted on my website for months.
<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/heisenberg.htm">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/heisenberg.htm</A>
So it seems that you may have Heidegger's Ontological Coverter fitted 
incorrectly, check that  the helmet pipe is engaged correctly - the end is supposed 
to go into your rectum not in your mouth. 
See <A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ontoconverter.htm">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ontoconverter.htm</A> for the 
correct fitting instructions of Heidegger's complicated strap-on equipment.  I 
think, under the circumstances, that your descision to join the rock & roll 
band was a prudent one, I hate to think of the condition of the lab if you had 
been mixing the chemicals.  ;-)

I employ the adjective 'transcendentalist' to describe a person who advocates 
Transcendentalism as a system of philosophical, religious or political 
beliefs, or an engagement in poetry and the arts which accentuates the intuitive and 
spiritual above the empirical and material.  Likewise when I employ the 
abstract noun 'Transcendentalism', I do not imply that such a thing actually 
exists, but rather that the word [as a shortcut] represents the general mental 
activity of those that hold these beliefs and indulge in the myths and  practices 
associated with such notions as 'Being.'  There is no more reason why we should 
accept the word of someone who claims he is aware of 'Being,' which has 
mysteriously unconcealed 'itself' to him, than we should listen to Mother Teresa's 
claims that she experiences an encounter God in the streets of Calcutta, 
whereupon, looking around, the streets are empty of Burning Bushes and Firery 
Pillars and all that can be descried are the usual crowds of uncaring [or 
self-hardened] humanity stepping over the recumbrant figures of the human stick-insects 
that litter the pavements.  

Of course I could onerously avoid the employment of such terms all together 
and substitute descriptive phrases such as: 'those that think in a 
transcendentalist manner,' or: 'the philosophical, religious, political and poetical 
behaviour associated with emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the 
empirical and material,' but to be forced into using these tiresome circumlocutions 
and definitions would not only be onerous for me in my writings, but boring for 
the readers, most of whom are already quite aware that for a nominalist it is 
not a case of avoiding or 'banning' the use of these reifications, but being 
AWARE that they ARE reifications when discussing things philosophical and 
ontological.

What transcendentalists have in common - the shared thread which unites such 
beliefs - is the belief in some divine or spiritual, incorporeal, supernatural 
phenomena [as per the 'Myth of Being,' and explaining the belief in things 
such as a creator, a code of behaviour, a political creed and its leader or 
leaders as the guiding principle in man, existing apart from him, and not subject 
to the limitations of the material universe. The belief in such notions is 
either conceived to be of a higher order than the concerns of individuals, or 
conversely in some transcendentalist cults such as Heideggerianism the emphasis 
is on the individual who is thought of as being of a higher order than the 
other - particularly if he has the gumption to be aware of his own inevitable 
mortality and to cut his black nihilistic coat according to his existentialist 
cloth.
Thus in religion there is a higher 'being'  which transcends the puny lesser 
beings below, whose small misdemeanours are punished with incredible ferocity 
and cruelty, or there are the ideas of a transcendent state, or a racial 
homogeneousness, often associated with a charismatic leader which is above the 
individual citizen. What is held in common is the notion of something immaterial 
which is reified into something quasi-material and which is nevertheless spoken 
of as if it actually exists, such as 'The Holy Spirit' or 'The People's 
Reich' or 'Blairite Democracy' or 'The Will of Allah.'

Heideggerianism and other such existentialist cults are conceived of as 
furnishing prissy support and sustenance or assistance for these reificational 
systems, and act as ontological jam-pots to which otherworldly oddballs are 
attracted, and which are magnetic to theologians [something which Heidegger actually 
claimed that he was] and the religiously minded as secular supports or 
manifestations of sympathetic advocacy from the realms of 'respectable' philosophy 
or ivory-towerville academia for the basic notions of transcendentalism which 
are the ground of their curious beliefs. Some religious screwballs have usurped 
aspects of Heideggerianism and twisted it to accommodate the apologetics of 
Christianity, where religious faith is characterised as being closely related 
to the feelings of alienation, angst and anxiety and despair as depicted by 
Heidegger as part and parcel of the Daseinic experience, only to be avoided or 
circumvented by a descent into nihilism and a stoical expectation of approaching 
and inevitable death, and the release that it will bring. In that respect 
Heidegger and Mother Teresa make good side-of-bedfellows - both ghoulishly 
welcoming, glorifying, and apparently gloating over death. One seeing the final 
uncovering of Being in the death rattle of the dying - the other greeting the 
Christian God, who comes a'gloating at the slightest whiff of the pre-death 
uncontrolled bladder and bowels.


It is strange that Heidegger's own form of individualism was to make 
subservient; to submerge and subjugate his own free will to that of another.  He seems 
to have had a taste for the dominant, for the youthful subjugation of his 
will to the Supreme Being of the Catholic Church was later subjugated to the will 
of the Supreme Being of the Nazi Party - for him:' “The Fuehrer himself and 
he alone is the German reality, present and future, and its law.'
In a similar way the white raincoat brigade of Sartrean 'existentialists' 
could be seen tramping the streets of Paris in the late fifties and early sixties 
like an identically uniformed crowd of escapees from les Magasins Célèbres 
d'Armée et de Marine.  That for me is the conundrum of so-called existentialism 
- in spite of the emphasis on individuality and personal authenticity, many 
seem to continually say and write the same or very similar things, and appear to 
be bereft [except perhaps for yourself and Rene and a few others] of anything 
contrastive or innovative to say on matters existential?  Perhaps their 
version of 'authenticity' is to be sublimate to Heidegger, like he was to Hitler - 
perhaps part of the weird attraction of Heideggerianism is that it provides a 
place to go and be told what to do, how to act and what to think?  Some people 
feel more comfortable existing like that I know  - perhaps its' a 
father-figure they need?

Maybe the hyponyminal nature of Heidegger's magic mushrooms - 'Being Essence, 
Dasein' and the like intoxicate them, so that it dulls their minds and they 
can't think straight any longer?   Surely you must have noticed this phenomena 
yourself? But the ones at the rock-face of the Heidegger Industry - slogging 
away at regurgitating and recasting the Third Reich Retro from the tired old 
nineteen-thirties material  into philosophically palatable forms - they must be 
as bored out of their minds as a check-out clerk in a supermarket?

As to the existing of the existents in particle physics and whether or not 
they exist 'simply' and 'positively' has nothing at all to do with my ontology. 
I would not go so far as to say that I am not interested in the precise 
details of HOW some entity exists, but I am more interested in IF it exists at all 
in the first place.  Quite simply an entity either exists or it does not exist 
as something somewhere or other in the cosmos. If it is HERE in one nanosecond 
and THERE in the next nanosecond is not important to me. I address the 
Schopenhauerean question 'Why does something exist rather than nothing?'  I do not 
address the Heisenbergian question: 'Why do electrons exist in the way they 
exist and why can't we understand their behaviour?'

There is no 'existential in-between-world' where entities almost exist, but 
not quite - or almost do not exist, but not quite. There is something - but 
there is no ontological bivalence - there is no 'Not something.'  This was 
HEIDEGGER SECOND BIG MISTAKE!
And so we reach at last the answer to the question: 'Why is there something 
rather than nothing?' And the simple answer is: 
'Because only something can exist.'
If anyone wanted to make a further fool of himself by asking the ancillary 
question:
'Why can only something exist?' Let them ask it and we can all have a belly  
laugh.

And so it is of no consequence to me whether an entity exists as the 
conglomeration of particles that I am holding in my fingers at the moment we call a 
pen, or the mucilaginous fluid which flows from it as black ink on the paper, or 
whether the particular entity in question has been whizzed around the track 
of a magnetically powered particle accelerator for a hundred miles or so and 
then deliberately crashed into one of its fellows in order that the impact may 
be recorded and its existence verified and its characteristics studied.  The 
fact that an electron behaves in a certain way when fired at a couple of slits 
and is observed and recorded by the equipment created and installed by a 
scientist, who on his return from his lunch-break cannot understand the behaviour of 
those electrons, and which he immediately labels with the human attributes 
'erratic, eccentric, or unpredictable or uncertain' because their behaviour 
appears 'erratic, eccentric, or unpredictable or uncertain' to him, does not mean 
that these anthropocentricisms can be found in nature - for they most 
certainly cannot be found. Anything that can be found in nature is natural - it is 
only human beings that attribute unnaturality to naturality. 

As Heisenberg himself pointed out:

' Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part 
of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed 
to our method of questioning.' 

Heisenberg also makes the point that the naive use of the word 'existence' is 
to be avoided, hence: ' The criticism of physical realism which has been 
expressed in empiristic philosophy is certainly justified in so far as it is a 
warning against the naive use of the term 'existence'. The positive statements of 
this philosophy can be criticised on similar lines. Our perceptions are not 
primarily bundles of colours or sounds; what we perceive is already perceived 
as something, the accent here being on the word 'thing', and therefore it is 
doubtful whether we gain anything by taking the perceptions instead of the 
things as the ultimate elements of reality.'

So now the floor is yours.First  I would like you to tell me in detail which 
aspects of Heisenberg's 'Physics and Philosophy' a piece of writing with which 
I am very familiar and which appears on my website, I have missed or are 
relevant to my attitude towards Heisenberg's admittance of the human limitations 
of the entitic observation of his electrons? You accuse me without any 
foundation whatsoever of having skimmed stuff from the bits and bobs that float around 
on the Internet, and you don't have a clue what I have read and what I have 
not read.  If you had taken the trouble to do your research first, you would 
have discovered that Heisenberg's 'Physics and Philosophy' has been posted in 
the 'Reading Room' area of my website for months. 

In it he admits

That: 'We cannot know something as it exists "in and of itself"--because our 
very action to observe this thing has a shaping effect on it; it responds to 
our efforts to observe it--thus making a "neutral" observation impossible.'

So what is he saying?  He isn't saying that these electrons do not exist, but 
is saying that due to the methodological activity of observation the observer 
affects the observed in such a way that it distorts the notional nature of an 
unaffected entity.
I was never under the impression that he meant to convey the notion that 
deterministic physical law is not present and governing in his theory. Rather, he 
was trying to demonstrate that those physical laws in play in a given context 
of consideration were so numerous and extensive in their interrelationships 
that they are not discernable with our current methods of interventionist and 
intrusive observation.

My belief system is not 'transcendentalist' in any way whatsoever, and it is 
not a priori intuitionist either.  I read, I observe, I listen and empirically 
digest - and importantly I ENJOY  - above all I experience.  I do all these 
things, but in the last analysis I do my own thinking and have no guru or 
master or cultish obeah-figure - particularly a nasty N--- one.  ;-)




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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