As I was writing this morning, a storm rolled in and we lost power. I love storms, and, occasionally, the romantic nostalgia evoked of times that did not require electricity. The weather was supposed to hit over the weekend and I was excited, prepared and expectant. It was three days late, and, of course, this morning I was using a desk-top and lost everything on which I was working and so forth: stupid computer. That was slightly annoying, together with how the lights and stove stopped working. In addition, I make such a mess out of kerosene that, fortunately, we got our power back (although I do need a new gas-lamp).
This kind of weather is rare in Los Angeles, and more or less usually welcome. After the initial shock passed together with the somewhat negative consequences of losing power, it was actually quite funny. It took me a few beats to process that I was vacantly typing away on an unresponsive keyboard. Registering that the computer was powerless, however, did not translate to an understanding that the power was out. I got up and started flipping a light switch, in disbelief, as an uncanny Twilight Zone feeling started creeping over me. When I finally processed that we had lost power, generally, I was relieved more than I felt stupid. Something clicked. The transition in my experience of trying to use the keyboard revealed something worth articulating: stupid computer.
There are different ways of experiencing things. I tend to focus more on what I conceive as the difference between things, instead of how the same things can be experienced in different ways. The consequence of this focus is that I tend to think I live in a world composed of things rather than understanding how the distinction between things is primarily informed by a more primordial difference in the way things are experienced. In other words, the recognition heuristic of my confirmation bias is set to distinguish the relationship between objects and this interferes with my recognition of the relationship between different modes of experience -- something a computer can only try to understand despite itself.
I think the most helpful way to articulate this is to call upon Heidegger. In the first part of "Being and Time," Heidegger investigates how there are different ways of dealing with the world. Dasein, human existence, comports itself to the world of available things as being either ready or present-to-hand. The ready-to-hand is the keyboard I am using right now. As I type, the keyboard is not something with which I struggle (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding). I do not always have to think of how the alphabet is configured and positioned before me. The keyboard is transparent and I just type. Conversely, if suddenly the keyboard broke, or if the power went out like this morning, it would get in the way of my typing. The keyboard would cease being transparent and ready-to-hand. It would become obtrusive and conspicuous. The readiness withdraws to reveal the keyboard as present-to-hand. The difference in the experience between things being either ready or present is similar to the ontological difference between Being beings.
The point of this is to remember that there are different ways of experiencing things. Things can develop existentially different meanings according to how they are experienced. To conclude that real meaning does not exist by indicating the breakdown of a particular value system is like claiming that computers are stupid because I do not know how to turn one on, with my car keys. This describes my confusion, not that I am lacking something (which is more than I can say about the second part of Being & Time). I do not want to humor pessimism about the real existence of things in general because solutions to incorrectly stated problems seem trivial at best. Being is (something) even the solipsist cannot deny. As Heidegger says of the burden required by the extreme skeptic:
"The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again [...] If Dasein is understood correctly, it defies such proofs, because, in it's Being, it already is what subsequent proofs deem necessary to demonstrate for it." (Being & Time 205, 249)
The main problem is that subject-object dualism folds into thought and language, engrained with other presupposed irreconcilable differences, like the conceived duality between mind and body. This gives rise to the "hard" problem of consciousness. Nihilism is part and parcel of this hard problem. Attempts to solve the problem usually end in poorly envisaged acrobatic displays, if nothing else serving the concession with increased sales of buttered popcorn. To cut my teeth on something before the next post, however, I find it interesting to consider that the hard problem is so difficult, people cannot even agree on how it should be formulated.
I think finding the problem hard to put into words is a good sign if looking for new solutions. Currently, my taste favors: "Why is there a subjective component to experience?" The question is nonsensical until I stop thinking of subjective experience as something that occurs inside me as opposed existing "out-there", like an object. To help me perform this transition, I might cheat a bit by substituting readiness-to-hand for indicating subjective experience, and things being present-to-hand for representing objective experience, as a breakdown of the former. This way I can articulate a distinction without falling back upon untenable points of view for the description of human experience. I'm just getting started: stupid computer.
Dimitri Hamlin: Is That All There Is? The Question Of Nihilism
Nihilism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nihilism | Define Nihilism at Dictionary.com
Nihilism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster ...
Or ... to breathe through Heidegger's (mistaken) particularity (present-at-hand simply to the subjective perceiver (because all perception must be subjective to that one perceiver, right?), or, also, another subjective perceiver who might also be in the room, and/or to another (this time, non-present) perceiver (the utlimate 'knower')--how many perceivers necessary to make the present-at-hand objective? a majority, or simply more than one: i.e., present at hand to you is present at hand to me = objectively present-at-hand?) o find the universal so much more refreshing than the darkness, the aloneless of the purely subjective. (Much love)
I don't see any problem or great TRUTH here.
If by subjective you mean the experience of "self", then I suggest the book "Self Comes to Mind" by the neurologist Antonio Damasio. It's not necessarily Damasio's conclusion, but I came away with the idea that self and consciousness are almost indivisible. If consciousness is, in fact, created by the brain as an evolved mechanism of the life intention, it must be set in the context of that willful intention. There would be no reason for the brain to create the virtual reality show of what's happening for its own sake without being able to relate it to the body's own evolutionary agenda, hence the self protagonist that it creates in that virtual reality show. As Damasio observes, everything in our experience is value laden; associated with emotional markers that reflect its biological value to the organism; the "I feeling".
The question “how do you know†I think would need to first be answered in order to get a handle on the subjective component of the question.
that darn cause and effect thing keeps getting in the way of having a nice tidy materialistic theory that explains that everything is nothing more than a giant machine doing its thing.
ie that selfish gene we are just robots here by chance due to that gravity thing just hates the idea of consciousness getting in the way of a tidy theory we can then call facts and teach as truths. :-)
Edmund Husserl moved us in a different direction. Husserl was Martin Heidegger's philosophical mentor. MH pursued the methodology of hermeneutics. Put simply that means that you announce where you begin as provisional and set out to demonstrate that it is correct. So one argues in circles, coming back to the beginning to question it in terms of what has by now been learned.
Everybody has to start somewhere. In place of the subject-object binary, MH arrives at the concept of being-in-the-world. Our self-understanding necessarily depends on the recognition that we always already are in a relationship to a world (of ideas or, as Merleau-Ponty says, of meanings). That avoids some of the pitfalls of the subject-object duality.
I, too, look forward to more posts from this author.
Don't let your English teacher see this one. Just by way of suggesting you should really get an editor. Oh, and don't forget Crtl+S.
You can talk like this all day and get nothing done. Nobody cares about these mental meanderings. You live in a bubble of esoteric thought and at the end the day all you do is exhaust yourself about things that have no importance.
To paraphrase what DeeDee once said : "You toil away looking for answers to questions nobody asked."
Or are you talking about someone else?
I don't see any conclusion in the article but rather a thin sliced, obscure question.
"[T]he state of rest is not a mere negation of motion but its privation, that is, it is a kind of motion. Otherwise, no new motion could ever originate from rest. The number 5, which cannot move, cannot also be something at rest. It took Greek thinkers two hundred years to discover the idea of privation. Only Plato discovered this negation as privation and discussed it in his dialogue The Sophist. This happened in connection with the insight that not every instance of nonbeing simply means not existing but rather that there is nonbeing which, in a certain sense, is. The shadow is such a nonbeing in the sense of privation because it is a lack of brightness." –Heidegger THE ZOLLIKON SEMINARS, p. 47
-Although some skeptics consider 'no proof to ever be enough', more rationalists do accept proof, consider the matter more or less closed and move on.
-The 'ready' vs 'present-to-hand' bit is absolute nonsense. Our ability to recognize, process, function with, relate to and view various objects and concepts (both physical and not), is not slotted into one category or another. The brain doesn't work that way. Everything is a giant shade of gray. It's an evolving and overlapping shade of gray too. Your ease with the keyboard is merely a product of your motor cortex, cerebellum and other parts of your brain creating strong synaptic connections, through repeated use, in describing the function of keyboard operation. The confusion experienced when the power goes out is merely a result of the expected outcome of using the keyboard not corresponding to the actual reality of the blackout. This presents an unexpected situation to which you must adapt to. In reality, we must adapt to unexpected situations hundreds of times per day and your keyboard scenario is in no way special nor different.
(continued in my reply)
Conclusion, in a nutshell: experiences vary as a direct result of what's going on in the organism, synaptically/chemically in the brain, and otherwise. It just doesn't mean anything more than that. Subjectivity exists, but it's basically: the input stimuli-->your brain+current system state-->output perception. Don't get me wrong, we can and should appreciate these differences and the processes that lead to them, but there's nothing more going on here.