On Decoding Schopenhauer

[Abernathy D]

Hello,

I failed to contact Mr Kastrup. But I think some people here would be kind and try to answer my remarks and questions.
I'm french and, in accordance with our bad reputation, I've a terrible english skills. So please forgive me, I try the best I can.

Thanks

________________________________

I read with pleasure and interest your book on the decoding of Schopenhauer's metaphysic. Since 2004, I read and reread, I meditate on Schopenhauer's philosophy (French edition). I have read twice, as he recommends WWR .

I think and rethink the ontological question. After Schopenhauer, my other two great sources of inspiration are Bateson and Castoriadis.

I think I agree with your outline in chapter 11. And indeed, your contribution to Schopenhauer's understanding seems undeniable to me. You answer the objections of opponents in a convincing way. All the more so when these objections take on an unnecessarily derogatory tone.

However, certain objections seem to me to remain relevant.

Please let me tell you, then ask yourself a few questions.

On unity of the Will :

You indicate that the term will is not a vague metaphor. Nor a word to designate a force. It is quite difficult, indeed, not to consider the will as a computing power (information ontology after Bateson for who Information = difference that makes a difference, and Mind = interaction between parts of a system), or as a vis formandi (Castoriadis).

But the idea of experiences of volitional states is strong. Will is for Will, I can agree. But a Will out of space and time, out of causality... I think it is somthing poor and simple. Not really an experience, not really a mind, not really information. So much more a nothingness.

Simple, out of space and time and causality. Ok but, all these terms refer to the forms and categories of sensibility, understanding (entendement), and reason.

You talk about differences of intensity, like quantic states of excitation, etc.

The difficulty is to accept much more than one state of the Will. And only one state, implies only one; only a Same, only a unitary and homogenic white flat nothingness, not even impulsive, not even painful, not even productive, not even objectivable. So we have to think the Will as unity, but not homogenic. A Will with states, so primary, the Will is in a sort of space and time, and causality : not with our representation categories but with information, so difference, and so a combinationof Same and Other, so a duration of what is Same in order to make sense of a relation, to make sense of a difference (so identity and otherness). I think it implies a sort of space/time (for heterogeneous in the Will = states).

Only heterogenics, identity, alteration can rely on states and make active these states, and so generates objectivations, Ideas, and breaks the unity. Moreover, only a primary difference can make a state as a particular state different from another state.


Connexion between Will and Representation :

That the forms of the representation are ours does not imply that the thing in itself cannot have, in a certain way, one of these forms (or similar). French philosopher Marcel Conche in Temps et Destin, affirms that the transcendental aesthetic is not conclusive on the thing in itself.

Castoriadis affirms that the fact that we apply our categories to the unknowable x, implies at least that this x can be applied to these categories.

I believe that time is more present than you say in the thought of Schopenhauer. In addition, there is a form of feedback from the representation on the wil. Which implies a certain capacity for transformation of the thing in itself, a de ontologization of the will, a historicity. The history of negation. The thing in itself can never be without the representation also exists, otherwise the very idea of objectification is gratuitous and mysterious.

The will remains the blind will, but through the light of the phenomenon, a strange loop is formed, which allows negation and magic.

Without that negation does nothing, everything is already there, and there is no need to speak of refusal of procreation as Schopenhauer does. In fact, from your perspective, it seems to me that the world goes on, and the will too, as eternally, and some are contemplators and no longer suffer, but everything else continues, so all the suffering that is real and possible as well. The denied will must just as much continue to assert itself, it negates itself by accepting to assert itself, to assert itself by objectifying itself in suffering beings who cannot be contemplative. So, she remains in suffering through these non-contemplative objectifications.

Indeed, a universal negation which would be the contemplation of Ideas without individual objectification would indeed be an innovation and annihilation of the world, which we observe every day that it has not taken place. So in a way, if it has taken place, it is not 100% effective, and therefore, for beings like me, not effective at all. This contradicts, it seems to me, the Schopenhauerian ethics.

The problems of Kastrup interpretation :

I think your interpretation is too coherent. I think problems are fertile : too much incoherence is maximum entropy, too much coherence is maximum negentropy - two forms of sterility . And here it's maybe a mistake. In my opinion, this is why you are losing, why you do not speak at all about part 4, about all the ethics of asceticism. You reduce negation to artistic contemplation. But Schopenhauer insists on the degree of liberation and negation. The effects are not the same even if the root is the fall of Maya.There is not only the contemplation of Ideas, not only the fixity of Ideas not yet individualized. Nor is it just the nothingness of the return to the non-objectified will. There is the new dimension of a will denied but conscious of itself. There must be more to this than just acceptance and contemplation of the cycle.

I wonder why you don't talk about this negation. Is it because you have, as Schopenhauer says, an optimistic impurity (impété de l'optimisme) regarding the universe, and life?

Furthermore, I would have liked and I would like you to resume your diagram from the chapter on animal magnetism and magic, in On the Will in Nature, or his Essay on Spirit Seeing and everything connected therewith . This text partly contradicts your assertion p.79 "we can't change the Will-at-large merely by wishing".

You criticize physicalism, but I would say for my part that physicalism measures its strength by its technoscientific achievements, your alternative should measure its strength to magic.

Few more questions :

I believe you are implying that the brain is an objectification of a state of the will (representation and re-representation), therefore is it thinkable in your opinion that an artifact like an artificial brain, or a simulation can objectify something similar (an animal or human consciousness), or even a higher level (a higher posthuman)?

Are there a limited number of Ideas? Are there possible new ideas that can emerge from the interplay between will and representation? Are all the possible states of the will finite, determined and limited?

Thank you very much if you read this and answer me a little

[Abernathy D]

Hi,

Has anyone read this book on Schopenhauer, or care about schopenhauerian issues ?
Maybe it's my questions, not so clear or well expressed ?

[lorenzop]

There are times of little traffic here so don't assume your posts aren't clear - just give folks time to respond.
I have not read Schopenhauer - but can say my 'philosophy' is simple - if I'm reading a philosophy and cheerfulness does not break through, I put it down and move on.