From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 10:12:52 EDT Subject: Hume, Hegel & Heidegger Hi Gary! Yes, I've been giving a lot of thought to the ways various philosophers have had [and still persist in having] of arriving at a classificational methodology of the ontological nature of the objects that surround us. Leaving aside the Platonic kindergarten notions of 'form' and and 'essences' other discredited inanities, I suppose the Aristotelian approach provided the first articulate suggestions which resulted in the various later modifications or re-jigged versions of this basic principle of 'ontological stocktaking' which have plopped out of the other end of the teleological cloaca-pipe and ended up in Freiburg of all places? As with the classical Hegelian/Marxian hypothesis of, thesis - antithesis and sythesis as applied to human social progress, which apparently satisfied the social, political and personal needs of the hirsute-chinned classifiers, the classificatory objects, [that which is so classified] remain exactly the way they existed before such busybody 'quality-surveyors' and 'property assessors' licked their ontic pencil-stubs and started ticking-off the 'qualities' that an entity is supposed to 'have' and 'have not.' Rocks and fruit flies still exist as inert rocks or short-lived entities, [by our standards] and people still exist as the greedy, self-centered opportunists that they were before, during and after the Communist or Fascist experiment. It doesn't need much thought to realise that if indeed the phenomenological fairyland 'qualities' or 'essenses' of the fantasists did exist, [rather than being merely modalities of the existential actuality of the given entity] that even if they sat down for the next umteen trillion billion years they would never be able to exclude from the object in view even a tiny fraction of the 'qualities' or 'properties' which it didn't have. In a similar way they would need to sit down for another umteen trillion billion years in any attempt to include as part of the suit of properties inherent in the object in view, even a tiny fraction of the 'qualities' or 'properties' which it did have. In other words objects neither have or have not anything whatsoever and these metaphysicalities of 'property' or ' basic or essential attributes' shared by all members of a class. It [together with the notion of 'identity' and even worse still - 'essence' is the biggest load of bollocks in the whole of philosophy. As you say below all those primitive concepts are only there to enable coherent speech, to which I would add that whilst such classification is helpful, even vital as a feature of the coherent speech of quotidian generality in the workaday world of words in the bar room or the bus queue, it has no place in serious philosophy where a more rigorous ontological standard should be applied. As to the morals or ethics of 'promises' and who 'deserves' this or that, or if 'human rights' are God given or creations of society in order to protect itself etc., I normally steer well away from such discussions, because I find them ultimately frustrating. I don't mean to say that ethical questions bore me, but rather that I find other areas of philosophy more interesting, and now, due to the ever increasing pressures upon my available 'thinking time' [three young boys] I tend to concentrate more on ontological questions. I loved Dr. Ulrich Voigt’s recent remark that: 'I myself cannot accept the Kierkegaard – Heidegger postulate on the fundamental importance of Angst - It is an anarchistic theory.’ There is one line of thought which I have been pursuing lately about which I would welcome your opinion, [and Richard's and Jon's if they have time] and that is the question of my growing uncertainty about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This theory of chaos, which is always trotted out by 'the Heideggerian and Kierkegaardian foot-soldiers in the dispiriting 'Armies of Angst' as a way of refuting analytically or materialistically minded thinkers' notions of a physically ordered universe - that is an unchaotic one, where certain physical laws are held to be universal. It came to me recently, that without the possibility of change and a certain degree of chaos in the behaviour of subatomic particles there would be no universe at all, for the whole of the material of the universe is undergoing constant change as a vital part of its nature [or the nature of nature] and in the absence of behavioural aberration, [for example in the genetical material of biological entiies] there would never be any change, and in keeping with the Darwinian analysis without mutation, which is part and parcel of the mechanism of survival and specialisation and niche-finding, life [if it had managed to emerge at all] would still have remained as tiny mono-cellular organisms living on the detritus of others of their kind. In this way, or following from this theory that fortuitousness, indefiniteness, and randomness at the quantum level is merely a reflection of what goes on at the macro-level, even in our own lives with the neverending progression of chance meetings, with other humans, or speeding trucks, or religious maniacs piloting aircraft into buildings. sincerely, 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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