From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 22:49:17 EST
Subject: Re: all or nothing at all, part X


 
 
In a message dated 07/11/2004 02:23:13 GMT Standard Time, janstr-AT-chan.nl  
writes:

Hi  Jud,
sometimes i find it difficult to follow your line of agrument.  My
whole point is that tautologies of whatever kind can and will have
no  epistemic import on materialist ontologies of whatever kind,
because  materialists only gain knowledge of natural necessity by
testing hypotheses  based on empirical arguments obtained via the
processes of induction,  deduction or retroduction.


Hi  Jan:
My ontology  is not the normal materialist ontology of say Marx or Engels
where  *material* whatever THAT is supposed to be is posited but reifications 
and  abstractions abound.
I don't  believe that *Material*  or *Matter* exists - but only that which is 
 entitic and/or that is an object of a force field.
Therefore  my knowledge of necessary *truths* such as: *An entity exists in 
the way it  exists truths* is a *trueism*
for which I  have no need for empirical *evidence*  Plainly, 
epistomologically if an  entity didn't exist in the way that it exists it would'nt exist
in the  first place.


Jan:
For  a materialist it is nonsense to say "matter exists as matter" or
"energy  exists as energy", these are empty phrases, even employed
in didactical  settings [my students would laugh their pants off when
i would claim that  'circles exists as circles' or that 'an integer exists
as an integer' or  that 'the number pi exists as the number pi'].
 
Jud:
I have never made such  claims and I never would never do so.
For me *Matter exists as Matter* is the same sort of  nonsense  statement as  
(2+2=5)=(2+2=5);  
it is not classed as a tautology at all - but is meaningless  noise. 
Neither *matter* nor *energy* exist for me - only that which is *actual*  
[entitic] or *energetic* exists.
*matter* and *energy* are merely abstractions.
I did point out in my last post that there were big differences  between an 
*ordinary* materialist and a nominalist.
For the record Jan you can tell your students that my sort of nominalist  
doesn't believe that circles exist either - and that they only believe that:  
*that which is circular* exists. I also do not believe that number or  categories 
exist either, other than as brain activity in the minds of those  humans who 
happen to be thinking about or dealing with the convenient  abstractions such 
as number or categories.

Jan:
But maybe you can give me some meaningful examples of how  a
(nominalist) materialist would use tautologies in his thinking ?
 
 
Jud:
The tautology: *an entity exists in the way that it exists,* is the only  one 
that I use than I can recall to mind right now.
I'll try to think of some more for you. 

Jan:
You wrote:

>I am not  *just* a materialist* - I am a  nominalistic materialist.
>There are big differences between the  two.

Can you say what the big differences are between the two ?
 
Jud:
I think I have explained this above - if you want more info or wish to  
question me more upon the subject please let me know.
 

Jan:
Can you say what the big differences are between the two ?
 
Jud:
Ditto.



>For me the  [whole]  human holism derives its meaning  from any
>given source of information - not just one of its five  sensors.

Jan:
What other sources of information do you mean here, given the  fact
that you claim that there exist only matter/energy in the cosmos  ?
 
Jud:
Only that which is entitic - that which is energetic. Other sources of  info?
The human voice, books, traffic signs, TV pictures, computors,   
rock-carvings, tapes, maps - 
all the same sources that you receive information from.

>A  materialist [and I can only speak for my own nominalist  materialism]
>does not require *constant* revalidation and verification  of *truths*
>which he has provisionally accepted - that would be too  onerous
>and time-consuming.

Jan:
How can something (a human activity) be "time-consuming" if you
claim  that time doesn't exist ?
 
Jud:
I have repeatedly told MichaelP for the last four years that  nominalists 
have no wish to either abolish abstractions
and start a *world language of nominalism* or anything crazy like  that,  or 
to avoid employing such terms in discourse.
>From a nominalist perspective it is perfectly OK to speak *normally* - it  is 
only when the nominalist ontology of abstraction is threatened, which  for me 
means the whole of  non-transcendentalist philosophy is  jeopardised, by the 
likes of Heidegger's reificational abuse of  abstractions [like being being 
hypostasised into *Being* etc.] that a problem  arises. Ontologically speaking, 
my type of nominalism [and I say *my* because  I have never read of or come 
across any other nominalist like me] in effect is  just about opposed to the 
whole of western philosophy in many ways - not just  Heideggerianism which is 
derivitive of the Western  tradition. Of course  this also includes the early 
nominalists, William of Ockam Abelard and a few  more, but their type of 
nominalism excluded *God* from their reductions.   I have no idea if Heidegger ever 
addressed the question of nominalism at all -  I have never come across anything 
by him on the matter.  I suspect that  he would steer well clear of it, for 
as far as I can see it provides the only  clearly argued and viable oppostion 
to his views.

>All that the  Daseinic approach to *Being* does is to mask these
>>individuate  variations of  instantiated *Being* into a featureless
>universal  aggregation of conflicting  instantiations (cue the
>Hottentot's  ugly-beauteous behind) - in other  words a jumble of
>conflicting  instantiational abstract nonsense.

Jan:
All you say is that Being is a highly conflictuous, deeply  contested
and most obscure concept: Heidegger never said otherwise.
 
 
Jan:
You are wrong here I'm afraid Jan. There was no questioning of *Being* in  BT 
at all..  Read the opening chapters again.  *Being* is accepted  as an a 
priori. or as a give.  It is the *problem* or the *question* of  how *Being* has 
been dealt with from the Pre-Socratics, through what came  later, and up to the 
present day, that he dealt with or attempted to address.  *Dasein* is just a 
handful of ontological dust thrown by him to cloud the  different ways the 
earth's six billions, who *be here* and are *given objects*  in six billion 
different ways and  instantiate  *Being* during the *object givenness* treatment in 
six billion ways  too. That makes *Being* an ontological miscellany or pot 
pourri of  abstract mixed-up nonsense. Dasein universalises -  those damaging  
individual diversifications and magics them away from right under the  very 
noses of the naive. 


>The statement: *An entity exists in the way it exists* is  employed
>didactically to illustrate that in spite of the fact that a  European or
>American might describe a female Hottentot's buttocks as  being
>repulsive or grotesque - the Hottentot man believes that they  exist
>as objects of lascivious beauty.

Of course i'm not denying  the idea that beauty is relative to culture,
but the statement "a female  Hottentot's buttocks exists as an object
of lascivious beauty" is not a  tautology, it is a description of male
Hottentot preferences; the statement  "a female Hottentot's buttocks
exists as a female Hottentot's buttocks",  that would be a tautology.
 
 
Jud:
I made no claim that it WAS a tautology.  |I mentioned it as an  example of 
how the *Being* in the sky regarding a male Hottentot's *object  giveness* is 
entirely different to the *Being* as reified by the old  O.G via a guy in a bar 
in Brooklyn.
My wife is colour-blind as a matter of fact [although I am a negro - she  
thinks I am a white man.  {No, I'm only joking) so the *Being* of the  furnishing 
in our home, and the *Being* of our children's eyes are quite  different for 
her and for me.  [etc.]

>You may be interested in  reading a page on my website concerning
>this very question. It also  mentions the possibility that the word
>YHWH may mean *Being*  [etymologically]

Jan:
Maybe you can post some of the relevant parts to the list?
 
 
Its very short - so I'll post it below.

>It is refreshing to  have a grown-up conversation for a change as a
>respite from the  slanderous juvenilia from other quarters.

I'll keep trying Jud, i'll  keep trying ..
 
Jud:
So do I Jan...so do I.
 
 
Professor J. F. Gannon observes:

The similarity of "Yahweh" to "Jov-" is most likely to be fortuitous.  But 
the similarity is such that it must have attracted speculation earlier.  I'm 
betting someone on this list knows. Here is the little I know. Flavius  Josephus 
is the fellow most likely to have made the connection, a Ioudaios  writing in 
Rome for a Roman audience and stressing parallels between things  Roman and 
Judean. I have often wondered about this, and have really, really  wished that 
he had made the connection. But he does not. When he comes to the  part of his 
narrative that parallels Exod. 3, where Moses asks God's name, he  becomes 
more reserved than the Bible itself: "And God revealed to him His  name, which 
had not previously come to men, and about which I am not permitted  to speak" 
(AJ 2.276).

This is, incidentally, one of the clearest early  indicators of the 
traditional rabbinic refusal to pronounce the divine name.  NB: what one reads instead 
of the written name YHWH is of course ADONai --  another tantalizing one for 
parallel-seekers. People who did find some  resonances, arguably, were those 
who composed the spells on the magical  papyri, which frequently use forms of 
the name: Yahu, etc., no doubt surviving  in today's popular ISP "Yahoo". I'm 
kidding. Someone mentioned the biblical  etymology of "being" for YHWH, and that 
is a much better prospect. It was  common among Greek-speaking Judeans to 
connect their God with ZEUS by a  Stoic-philosophical analogy: both names refer 
to ultimate Being, Nature,  Reason, etc. This is best accomplished with the 
accusative form of the name,  ZHNA, for obvious reasons. See for example 
Josephus, AJ 12.22, where the Greek  Aristeas allegedly says to King Ptolemy II, "Both 
they and we worship the God  who created the universe, whom we call by the 
appropriate term ZHNA, giving  Him that name from the fact that He breathes life 
(ZHN) into all creatures."  In the so-called Letter of Aristeas itself (3rd 
to 1st cent. BC; sect. 16),  both ZEUS (ZHNA) and DIOS (DIA) are connected with 
life-giving (ZWOPOIEW),  connecting the Judean and Greek Gods. The same point 
is suggested by the  Greco-Jewish writer Aristobulus, 2nd cent. BC, preserved 
in Eusebius, Praep.  Evang. 13.12.7. If Dios, then Iove too, I  guess.







Regards,

Jud

Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_ 
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm) 
E-mail Discussion  List:
nominalism-AT-yahoogroups.com


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