Criticism

[Mark Tetzner]

Thanks Mark ... hearing the audio now, so not sure what happened there, so hopefully Jeff will respond. Like you, I'm also curious as to how he comes to conceive of some fundamental primal Will, as per Schopenhauer, absent any experiential element, i.e. what does willing even mean without that—unless 'to will' has some much different connotation in German than I am familiar with?

Sounds like the guy doesn't like pure instinctive will, but also keeps thinking in the blind spot, so he feels the need to redefine "will" as it is used in German idealism. But, like you, I doubt BK will be commenting on any of these things until our next incarnation So we may as well start thinking about it for ourselves.

JW can be in places interpretet as if he maybe had "German philosophy" either at university or has been an avid student of them during his life under the bridge (referencing something he wrote on his blog). It would be interesting to find out more about his background, JW, in which language did you read the "Germans" etc, how many did you read, can you share about your background Pumped to learn more.

[JeffreyW]

I’ll post my response to Mark’s two questions later this evening after I’ve had dinner, but take a couple minutes now to answer Mark’s question of background. Usually I claim no more than to be a simple semiliterate biker to evade the whole credentialist thing. It’s more important to focus on what is being said than who is saying it. I studied philosophy and physics (not an unusual combination where I attended) at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Chicago in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I speak German, French, Spanish, Russian, and Norwegian and have only read philosophy in the original languages. Heidegger, for example, cannot even be understood in translation.

During my time in the doctoral program I taught some seminars on Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who along with Wittgenstein, comprise my primary interest in philosophy. During that time I studied with Paul Ricoeur, Saul Bellow, and Clayton Koelb as a student in The Committee on Social Thought, which Bellow chaired at the time. There came a point where both Bellow and Koelb left within a year of each other, which led me question my desire to engage in academics at all. Before leaving, Koelb secured a fellowship for me at Harvard, but this came at a time when I had just married and intended to start a family and, most unexpectedly, was offered an incredibly lucrative offer at a global management consulting firm which I accepted.

I made the strategic decision of never writing anything until I was in a position to do so with no regard to finance or career - impossible to do as an academic. Having recently retired, I am now in that position and write extensively. Fortunately, I have no need to monetize, so I can write whatever I please.

I’m glad to be here.

[AshvinP]

I’ll post my response to Mark’s two questions later this evening after I’ve had dinner, but take a couple minutes now to answer Mark’s question of background. Usually I claim no more than to be a simple semiliterate biker to evade the whole credentialist thing. It’s more important to focus on what is being said than who is saying it. I studied philosophy and physics (not an unusual combination where I attended) at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Chicago in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I speak German, French, Spanish, Russian, and Norwegian and have only read philosophy in the original languages. Heidegger, for example, cannot even be understood in translation.

During my time in the doctoral program I taught some seminars on Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who along with Wittgenstein, comprise my primary interest in philosophy. During that time I studied with Paul Ricoeur, Saul Bellow, and Clayton Koelb as a student in The Committee on Social Thought, which Bellow chaired at the time. There came a point where both Bellow and Koelb left within a year of each other, which led me question my desire to engage in academics at all. Before leaving, Koelb secured a fellowship for me at Harvard, but this came at a time when I had just married and intended to start a family and, most unexpectedly, was offered an incredibly lucrative offer at a global management consulting firm which I accepted.

I made the strategic decision of never writing anything until I was in a position to do so with no regard to finance or career - impossible to do as an academic. Having recently retired, I am now in that position and write extensively. Fortunately, I have no need to monetize, so I can write whatever I please.

I’m glad to be here.

That is very impressive, Jeffrey, and I'm glad you are here as well! It's not often a critical thinker who we are commenting on actually shows up to clarify (this is probably the first time since I have been around, except once BK showed up on the Sam Harris thread). So with that said, I take back everything I speculated about your position until you have a chance to clarify for us. Thank you.

[JeffreyW]

Mark: Vielen Dank für die Einladung!

It’s late here and I’m going to bed but will be happy to return tomorrow to answer all the questions. I’m looking forward to an interesting discussion. In addition, if any of you would like to discuss this live on my YouTube channel, I’d be glad to host it.\

I did not think you would show, so I removed my video.
Here is just a small starting-point to start a discussion.
Schoen, dass Du doch gekommen bist, JW.

Mark, you asked two very big questions to which I will give somewhat rudimentary responses but look forward to exploring more deeply wherever there might be interest.

To your first question, I believe I said no “important” philosopher since Nietzsche. This may at first look arbitrary where I can just name the philosophers that I agree with, but in reality there isn’t a lot of dispute about who the most important were as measured by influence and breakthrough understandings. Equally as important is that they are the culmination of a direction centuries in the making.

There is very little disagreement among those involved in philosophy that the two towering figures since Nietzsche were Wittgenstein and Heidegger, both of whom declared Western Philosophy dead due to a 2500 year error of metaphysics. The next rung of thinkers who renounced metaphysics includes Russell, Quine, and Rorty. There really are no thinkers of this rank practicing metaphysics. Of course, Idealism and god, as metaphysical constructs, were abandoned.

There are important reasons for this which become clearer when we trace the most important steps in eliminating metaphysics. Western thought didn’t start out metaphysical. The pre-Socratics were prior to any idea of reductionism and focused wholly on the experience of the physical universe in a primarily esthetic manner, from the Dionysian musicality of Pythagoras to the palpable sensing of time of Heraclitus. Logos as poetic experience of Being prevailed until the time of Socrates. This is best presented in two of Heidegger’s essays: “Einführung in die Metaphysik” and “Die Frage Nach der Technik.”

Socrates introduced the dualism of the physical world and a transcendent Ideal world beyond our senses. Heidegger explains how with this transformation Logos is reduced to logic as Being is stripped from the physical world and displaced to the transcendent Ideal. Heidegger formulates this as the move from A is A to A=A, where the being of is (to be) is removed in the sensible world where beings are now seen as equatable objects and the ultimate essence of things (Being) is now imaginary. (All of the wordplay on the various forms of to be and esse employed by Heidegger is lost in translation along with much of the meaning.)

This prevailed and heightened through the Medieval Scholastic Period until Empiricism began to fight back for turf in the 17th Century. The first critical step was made by Francis Bacon, whose scientific method wrested control of scientific study from the metaphysicians and grounded it in the world of the senses. From then through the 19th century there was a steady parade of subject smoved from metaphysics to scientific empiricism.

The next and most revolutionary step came in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which demonstrated how Reason can only validly reveal truth when confined to sense data. When reason oversteps those bounds it ends up creating Transcendental Illusions - imaginary questions and answers that only produce confusion and wrong directions. He demonstrated this through his four Antinomies in Book II of the Critique where he provided contradictory arguments of equal explanatory power to four questions, the thesis driven by pure reason’s blind drive toward unity and completion to continue on beyond sense data, and the antithesis from our objective understanding projecting itself beyond what the senses support. For example, the question of finite or infinite universe is shown to be a nonsensical question of this sort.

The next step was made by Schopenhauer concerning the Idea of Will. Schopenhauer remained squarely within Kant’s epistemology and phenomenal/noumenal dualism. The only difference of any importance contributed by him was to overturn Kant’s idea of Will as a further step toward the elimination of metaphysics. Kant’s intention was to rescue empirical truth from Hume’s radical skepticism yet still retain enough Idealism to retain his belief in god and free will, which contradict the deterministic phenomenal understanding of the world. To do so, he equated Reason to Will, and Will to God. (By this time, Will was seen in German philosophy as the elemental force of the universe.) Schopenhauer turned this upside down, proclaiming Will as the irrational energy driving the universe from within its physicality. With that move, metaphysics was close to eliminated. Nietzsche picked up this notion and completed the destruction of metaphysics with the Madman’s announcement that god was dead and we (the descendants of Enlightenment Reason) killed him. We have shared that Madman’s vertigo ever since.

In the 20th Century philosophy divided into the Analytic and Continental camps, both of which claimed to work post-metaphysically. The Analytics reacted against the remains of Hegelian metaphysics and strove to reduce philosophy to an exploration of the logic within language - an effort that ultimately failed due to the remnant of metaphysics in propositional logic and the assumption of atomistic facts. Wittgenstein, who was an original founder of Analytic Philosophy, went on to denounce it and declared philosophy dead due to its metaphysical infection. The mystery of the universe resided in the physical world but beyond our meager logical cognition. Therefore the only role left to philosophy was to “point” at what cannot be spoken, and untangle all the illusory knots inherited from metaphysics (letting the flies out of the bottle).

Heidegger likewise repudiated his phenomenological past and focused on Being revealing itself through a return to poetic Logos - a strenuous staying with and hearing what Being presents to us in its manifold meaning inherent in its physical presence. The primary difference here between metaphysics and Heideggerian ontology is the realization that words used authentically are not for defining but exploring. That means resisting the misappropriation of meaning but rather dwelling within it. Thinking becomes a way of life in contrast to a methodology. Heidegger loved Hölderlin’s line: “Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde. “

In short, metaphysics brought us useful technical information but can never deliver authentic truth of the world and our place in it, resulting in our spiritual destitution. Our own essence as the fullness of humanity can only be regained, and with it the Madman’s vertigo remedied, but dwelling poetically on this Earth.

[JeffreyW]

Your second question on how we can know what we can never know is a question of epistemology and contemporary physics. Our rational understanding (as opposed to our more primordial esthetic understanding) evolved during our time on the savanna as a drastically reductive sketch of our surroundings. Our brains received sense data as electro-magnetic impulses and created simplified icons of what seemed to our understanding as most urgent at the moment, suppressed the rest, and drew these icons in the medium of our subjective senses of time and space, and imputed causality. This was a purely pragmatic effort aimed at survival, not exploration and discovery of cosmic truths. Our present status on this planet is testament to its effectiveness but not to its ability to grasp fundamental reality. Donald Hoffman’s metaphor of 1’s, 0’s, and icons is a great explanation. The problem is that contemporary quantum mechanics and quantum field theory point to an ontological primitive - if such a thing even exists - that exists outside of space, time, and deterministic causality. Instead it is waves in quantum fields upon which float the chaos of cosmic foam. What looks like objects through our icons are really outside of time and space and just the interplay of of the waves of quantum field energy. But even calling them fields and waves shows our inability to grasp this reality. Waves and fields exist in space and time, and are metaphors we use because space, time, and causality are the very conditions of representational thought. This is the inviolable wall separating our understanding from the most elemental truth. The only solution to this problem would be another eon of evolution.

What reveals itself again is the error of metaphysics. It attempts to speak what we cannot say. To define the unknowable most elementary base of existence as consciousness is as meaningless as defining it as fairyland. Both are mere anthropomorphic projections from inside out locked cage of human representation.

[AshvinP]

Your second question on how we can know what we can never know is a question of epistemology and contemporary physics. Our rational understanding (as opposed to our more primordial esthetic understanding) evolved during our time on the savanna as a drastically reductive sketch of our surroundings. Our brains received sense data as electro-magnetic impulses and created simplified icons of what seemed to our understanding as most urgent at the moment, suppressed the rest, and drew these icons in the medium of our subjective senses of time and space, and imputed causality. This was a purely pragmatic effort aimed at survival, not exploration and discovery of cosmic truths. Our present status on this planet is testament to its effectiveness but not to its ability to grasp fundamental reality. Donald Hoffman’s metaphor of 1’s, 0’s, and icons is a great explanation. The problem is that contemporary quantum mechanics and quantum field theory point to an ontological primitive - if such a thing even exists - that exists outside of space, time, and deterministic causality. Instead it is waves in quantum fields upon which float the chaos of cosmic foam. What looks like objects through our icons are really outside of time and space and just the interplay of of the waves of quantum field energy. But even calling them fields and waves shows our inability to grasp this reality. Waves and fields exist in space and time, and are metaphors we use because space, time, and causality are the very conditions of representational thought. This is the inviolable wall separating our understanding from the most elemental truth. The only solution to this problem would be another eon of evolution.

What reveals itself again is the error of metaphysics. It attempts to speak what we cannot say. To define the unknowable most elementary base of existence as consciousness is as meaningless as defining it as fairyland. Both are mere anthropomorphic projections from inside out locked cage of human representation.

JW,

Thanks for the fascinating, clear, and precise comments above. I hope you don't mind me jumping in with some questions. Your comments provide a lot of fruitful territory to explore and I am not even sure where to start. This question of evolution seems as good a place as any, since it gets down to the core of pragmatic truth which potentially overarches the history of human ideas and culture. It seems to me that you are assuming above that evolution is a fundamentally physical process which eventually led to the development of consciousness, "primordial esthetic understanding", and then later to the seeds of our current "rational understanding". So, in that sense, you reject the idealist understanding of evolution, i.e. perception-cognition as the primary force of evolution, as detailed by German thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Steiner, or Gebser. Is that correct?

PS - we can split this off into a separate thread if Mark or anyone else wants to discuss some other aspects of your responses on this one.

[AshvinP]

Your second question on how we can know what we can never know is a question of epistemology and contemporary physics. Our rational understanding (as opposed to our more primordial esthetic understanding) evolved during our time on the savanna as a drastically reductive sketch of our surroundings. Our brains received sense data as electro-magnetic impulses and created simplified icons of what seemed to our understanding as most urgent at the moment, suppressed the rest, and drew these icons in the medium of our subjective senses of time and space, and imputed causality. This was a purely pragmatic effort aimed at survival, not exploration and discovery of cosmic truths. Our present status on this planet is testament to its effectiveness but not to its ability to grasp fundamental reality. Donald Hoffman’s metaphor of 1’s, 0’s, and icons is a great explanation. The problem is that contemporary quantum mechanics and quantum field theory point to an ontological primitive - if such a thing even exists - that exists outside of space, time, and deterministic causality. Instead it is waves in quantum fields upon which float the chaos of cosmic foam. What looks like objects through our icons are really outside of time and space and just the interplay of of the waves of quantum field energy. But even calling them fields and waves shows our inability to grasp this reality. Waves and fields exist in space and time, and are metaphors we use because space, time, and causality are the very conditions of representational thought. This is the inviolable wall separating our understanding from the most elemental truth. The only solution to this problem would be another eon of evolution.

What reveals itself again is the error of metaphysics. It attempts to speak what we cannot say. To define the unknowable most elementary base of existence as consciousness is as meaningless as defining it as fairyland. Both are mere anthropomorphic projections from inside out locked cage of human representation.

JW,

Thanks for the fascinating, clear, and precise comments above. I hope you don't mind me jumping in with some questions. Your comments provide a lot of fruitful territory to explore and I am not even sure where to start. This question of evolution seems as good a place as any, since it gets down to the core of pragmatic truth which potentially overarches the history of human ideas and culture. It seems to me that you are assuming above that evolution is a fundamentally physical process which eventually led to the development of consciousness, "primordial esthetic understanding", and then later to the seeds of our current "rational understanding". So, in that sense, you reject the idealist understanding of evolution, i.e. perception-cognition as the primary force of evolution, as detailed by German thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Steiner, or Gebser. Is that correct?

PS - we can split this off into a separate thread if Mark or anyone else wants to discuss some other aspects of your responses on this one.

I also just want to add here that I am pretty much in agreement with the bold above, but where we disagree is the underlined. Is the underlined an example of what Schopenhauer meant when he wrote, "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."?

[Mark Tetzner]

JW, this is mostly above my head with the physics-stuff but thanks for sharing.

Only a few thoughts.

Is it wise to reference philosophers who did not have at their disposal all the things we know from physics and biology today?
After all, they can not interpret the situation as we can.

I am saying this with something in mind that BK said the other day, that QFT is the most successful theory ever, just as an example.
They did not know of QFT.

Does it make sense to say on the one hand that we can not know and on the other hand denounce ontological primitves like mind?
I think you said yourself physics seems to point at an ontological primitive. And then you said "if such a thing even exists". Does it not make sense to argue for "one", be it one universal mind, one garbage-universe, or whatever oneness?

And:
What reveals itself again is the error of metaphysics. It attempts to speak what we cannot say. To define the unknowable most elementary base of existence as consciousness is as meaningless as defining it as fairyland. Both are mere anthropomorphic projections from inside out locked cage of human representation.

One could hold against that that consciousness is not a projection, it is a fact, fairyland is not. And speculating this is what the universe is all about. Does that make it an antromorphic projection? and not for example an inference? I think an anthromorpic projection would be to say the universe is like us or a personal God. The idealistic argument is that experience is the only ontic category that we know to be really exist as a fact. Why is this speculation less valuable than to posit, as I think you said in your video, that maybe superpositional states result in al kinds of things including consciousness? "The error of metaphysics", as it stands, is just an assertion to me right now potentially begging the question of materialism. My personal speculation is that "one mind" does not get into some peoples heads. But there is nothing strange about it, at least to me.

Along the same lines: The fairyland-sentence: This seems to imply the belief that whatever we could possibly speculate always has to be meaningless. I dont see why you think its meaningless to begin with. To me, speculations could always be wrong. But to declare the wrong only because they could be wrong does not have much purchase for me.

There

Its early here and I have to rush. But one thing I remember from your video but only vaguely. It was one X and one Y and you caid they can not be reconciled into "one". Can you remind me/us and elaborate on that, that was interesting. It made me doubt what you said but I also did not really unerstand it.

There seem to be 2 conflicting definitions of metaphysics.

The one most here would presumably subscribe to is this one: Its just a way to analytically get behind the ontic nature of the world.
A part of philosophy.

You seem to say that we have to stick with German philosophers who dealt with the subject-matter first, meaning that the term is already
begging the question in favor of e.g. idealism, because a transcendent cause or first principle is already considered a given.
That about right?

Do you self-identify as anything....are you a materialist or...

How do you solve materialisms main-problem, that, as many here would argue, materialists are trying to pull experience from an abstraction-space?

What value do you grant to our human experience when potentially figuring things out, be it meditating on a mountain, taking certain substances etc?

Is it conceivable for you say you took whatever substance to change your world-view after the experience? Why or why not?

What also comes to mind you said that the way this world is can not even be grasped. There is this famous idea that scripture
is the "finger pointing at the moon", the moon indeed is the ineffable and can not be grasped so you need a story to illustrate
the ungraspable.

Last but not least: You are saying that Schopenhauer was not an idealist? If so, why did he say what I posted under your video and why did he own a dog named Atman?

Thanks for your great comments, looking forward to more. Mark

[Mark Tetzner]

I apologize for quoting myself several times and messing up this thread, I have already asked Dana to clean up as I dont know how, some of them I can not delete myself it seems. If there are any night owls around simply comment on the one with the smily-face next to "Atman". Until then.

[Ben Iscatus]

If I understand JW correctly, he doesn't think that Mind is fundamental. He thinks that whatever is fundamental is unknowable until we've evolved further. But if Mind doesn't drive evolution, what does?