The Ontological Tyranny

Right! That seems to be a primary form of imagination/conception. The form most consistent with applicability, hence what we would be tempted to call the most objective. I agree that these conceptions seem to be hardwired in us, and that in as far as we are the standard, they objectively exist. Whenever Kant talks of a priori intuitions I am thinking of such basic geometry, of which duality (from wich logic is derived) is one aspect.

Here it becomes possible to conceive of thought that is more objective to man than logic - thought that is more fundamentally consistent with the human mind.

I added the word “more” before “fundamentally” in the last sentence - we can surely move beyond geometry too, surely also geometrical conceptions arise from certain conditions. But understanding logic as secondary to ‘geometrical intuitions’ seems to be a step closer to the root of our cognitive consciousness, which should enable a level up of control over our environment.

Before we automatically think control in terms of technology, deeper understanding may disclose a different type of control, and a different type of conception of “environment”.

So the apriori categories of thought in so far as they are not conditioned by language, may be based on neural structures. If so, it seems a way toward understanding the objective psyche [a Jungian term] would be to integrate the findings of neuro-cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and structural linguistics like Steven Pinker is doing.

I would group linguistics under geometry.
Try to understand our conception of grammar by explaining it in terms of our conception of form.

I’ll work on that. Meanwhile, I’m curious, what’s the significance of the Song of Solomon quotation in your signature line for you?

For me that phrase has to do with sacrificing the subjective in favor of the objective. I feel that western man is in such a position, if ‘vineyard(s)’ means ‘world’ or ‘reality’ - he subscribes to an image of the world which is per definition not his, and the notion of which therefore takes away from his own world.

I adopted the phrase at the surprising realization that I actually have the power to explain existence in terms that make sense to me, terms that actually (here, now, in relevant terms) make sense. I’ve for long faithfully believed in science as “the truth out there” as most of us do, until this valuation-concept dawned on me.

[size=85]The “objective” science of functionality (totally subjective to the specific condition that objectifies it) is deathly, and Nietzsche painstakingly made the first step to another type of science, a “philosophy of the future”. We should be keeping two things closely in mind: the will to power as the scientific formulation for what drives and keeps the world moving, and willing as valuing. Value and power are closely related concepts and this relation has not been fully understood in philosophy so far. The reason for this failure to understand becomes apparent in this thread, as philosophers hark back to a Darwinistic model, where repetition of successful function, “nature as law”, is emphasized, instead of nature as a constant experimenting, to which success and procreation, and consequently also “natural law”, are contingent. [source-thread][/size]

This made of science a comprehensible product, useful and true in its own context but quite random outside of it. Something by nature obedient instead of commanding - a revaluation that is steering me toward my own vineyard.

I was also just admiring the poetry of Solomon. It is remarkably exuberant compared to the dusty image the Jewish God has acquired.

Hegel extensively dealt with the things discussed here, and pointed to similar conclusions as I have arrived at… or so it seems. I was just reading in Phenomenology of the Spirit:

[size=90]“This unconditioned universal, which is now the true object of consciousness, is still just an object for it; consciousness has not yet grasped the Notion of an unconditioned as Notion. It is essential to distinguish the two: for consciousness, the object has returned into itself from its relation to an other and has thus become Notion in principle; but consciousness is not for itself the Notion, and consequently does not recognize itself in that reflected object. For us, this object has developed through the movement of consciousness in such a way that consciousness is involved in that development, and the reflection is the same on both sides, or, there is only one reflection. But since in this movement consciousness has for its content merely the objective essence and not consciousness as such, the result must have an objective significance for consciousness; consciousness still shrinks away from what has emerged, and takes it as the essence in the objective sense.” [A. III][/size]
“the reflection is the same on both sides, or, there is only one reflection.”

This reflection is what I have proposed to be recognizable as basic geometry. In a manner of speaking, the screen between the subject and object, the mediator between consciousness and its product (of which it is itself is a product) - the “magic mirror” through which “raw” existence / energy appears to itself as form, being(s).

Interesting application of the verse. My impression is that thought has been trending more and more towards the subjective for several centuries. It may be the result of a rapidly changing society where individuals are atomized and consequently there sem to be less judgments that hold good in the same way for everybody. Realization of our subjectivity has not cured us of our disasterous attempt to overcome our dependence on nature.

Hegel’s statement’s here apparently grew out of Jacobi’s reaction to Spinoza’s “pantheism”. In Spinoza’s system what things are depends on their not being other things. In themselves everything is part of God. So being a particular thing depends on each thing conditioning and being conditioned by everything else. This results in conditions of conditions. Grounding requires something unconditioned. For Jacobi this was God. Faith could not be justified in cognitive terms.

If one does not except God as the explanation of the world of conditions one has to find the conditions of the unconditioned because explanation is precisely the specification of the conditions of something. The German idealists attempted to break out of this infinite regression by proposing to find the unconditioned in subjectivity. That is, consciousness itself is unconditioned because it is what enables us to be aware of all conditions.

To prove it, they appropriated Kant. The existence of the objective world is inferred from causality, but the category of causality depends on the subject. It is the subject’s spontaneous application of the concept of causality to phenomenon.

Hegel seems to take the next step in the passage you quote. Kind of an apotheosis of subjectivism. From there it is only a hop, skip and a jump to the grandiosity of a historical dialectic and projection that the rational was the real and the real rational. No?

I don’t think any scientist has realized his subjectivity to the proper extent. And without including science, a notions of subjectivity are meaningless, because they would still fall within the belief in the presence of scientific objectivity.
It is one thing to understand the world as being perceived as subjective, it is quite another to explain science as a subjective endeavor - refute the notion that it is objective, as I believe I’ve done, sort of. I need to work on that more.

So far the view of science was always ‘in a largely subjective world, at least we can be sure that science is true everywhere’. But we can’t. It all depends on what we start with, the context we choose to manipulate, the criteria we choose to determine consistency.

I’ve tried to show this to be unnecessary. My explanation of “valuation” should account for everything that can be perceived, every form of being, every form. And the beauty is that it does not require belief, just a close look at ones own primary activity.

The key word here is “condition”. That is all one has to look at to explain anything.
There need be no abstract, condition-less explanation of something that is per definition conditioned. Existence is conditioned by it being conditioned. We only need to look at how conditioning is possible in the first place.

But Kant was completely in the dark as to the subjects conditions, how the subject conditions the content of his consciousness.

I find Hegel one of the few who consistently makes sense. He doesn’t just propose things, but thoroughly works out concepts to see what they must lead to, draws consequences, describes process, describes how types of consciousness come into being.

Anyway, the real and the rational are terms for different things, representations of different conceptions. Neither exists as such - neither has meaning for me now that I’ve transcended that dichotomy. So I could not agree that they are equal or interchangeable - in as far as the words have meaning they mean different things. But they are just not meaningful anymore at this point.

Valuation is the consistently relevant term. Notice it’s (derived from) a verb. In as far as anything really “exists” as we understand the term, its being is grounded in this root-activity, the ground of all beings, entities and forms.

What this “primacy of valuation” view brings about is not only an understanding of the supposedly objective in terms of its applicability to the subjective, but also understanding of the subjective in terms of what appears to be happening objectively. The dichotomy “inside”/“subjective” and “outside”/“objective” is not just questioned, but made unnecessary, impossible even.

I don’t know how much any scientist has realized his subjectivity. Science was thought of as a subjective endeavor in so far as thinkers took on the Cartesian aim of making the human subject “the master and Possessor of nature.” A conception of humanity that valorizes our capacity to affirm our sovereignty over ourselves and the world doesn’t seem tenable to me at this point.

I haven’t had your realization. I don’t know how that would work.

That puts us in a place of radical contingency where there is no ground for anything. That may be where we are existentially, but it suggests why the perennial philosophical pursuit of groundedness is so compelling.

Yes, if Kant’s transcendental idealism has any validity, and to my mind it does at this point, it is remarkable that he was able to map the process of cognition so thoroughly without an evolutionary perspective of how it got that was.

Don’t you think the theme of finitude characteristic of post-Hegelian philosophy undermines Hegel’s claim to have access to absolute knowledge?

OK I don’t see how epistemology or ontology can be subsumed under or obviated by valuation.

Felix - there is a radical contingency, yes - lack of ground, to to contrary. If anything this grounds us to a context where things can be known as they are useful to us.

And is that not what in the end is important? This is affirming the bias, letting go the ideal of knowing everything because of the realization that we are not put constituted in a wat to make that plausible. Basic modesty: the world is too many sided to objectively know.

It is possible to us however to know (determine!) what we are, which means to know what we (can) value as ourselves. This is all we need right now, if the aim is good life, instead of brutal extremities.

Pragmatism is always there as a fall-back position. I think William James metaphysical pragmatism was largely a response to Kant’s metaphysical skepticism.

How about this? The realization of the loss of the object in the sense of direct knowledge of the thing itself came through the understanding of the mechanics of perception. Those very mechanics imply a sensible subject. Sensibility itself requires a capacity for being affected. Affectivity includes the possibility of openness. Affectedness by and openness to what? An exteriority, an outside or an other. Thus, subjectivity necessarily involves a relationship with an other. That at least gets us out of solipsism.

I just know James as a psychologist - what did his metaphysical pragmatism entail? How was it metaphysical?

Indeed, though only by implication, but this is good enough.

What is actually identified as the “object” here are the senses, the apparatus of translation of energy to consciousness. I say this because it is through this apparatus that the (what will become known as) objects limitations are first determined. The senses select what is registered of reality and how, and then move this data deeper into subjectivity to the brain to interpret it, where it is established definitively as an object.

I still maintain that this objectification occurs only by virtue of the minds subjectivity, meaning-to-itself, which predicates that the world is to be understood in terms of objects so as to be able to work with it, navigate it in the way that has led so far to survival and selection.

What is unchanged is that where there is no conscious subject, there is no possibility of an object.

Jacob–

I mentioned him here because, I think his pragmatic test of truth was conceived in response to the scepticism of Kant and Hume about the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. To James a grand narrative that was therapeutic met the pragmatic test of truth even if the real object, be it a world or a god, was in a positive sense unknowable.

Right. Subjectivity is defined in terms of its opposite, even if the opposite is only an inference. This, by itself leave open the possibility of conceiving of our existential situation as an I-It or I-Thou relationship as did Martin Buber.

I don’t think so. One spontaneously takes sensation to be about something. Sensations are held to be about something…they include intentionality. Those that are recognized to be “objectless” are identified as hallucinations.

Yes.

Yes.

I agree with this in so far as “object” refers to what we create spontaneously in the process of cognitively structuring sensations. But, I still believe in a world that is independent of our minds.

Important point. Global producer/consumer Capitalism (as a grand narrative) passes the pragmatic truth test to those that benefit from it to the extent that it seems to work -that is even though the full effects are unknowable to any one subjective individual at any subjective point in space and time.

I mean I’m quite sure that the Calvinistic perspective is quite therapeutic to anyone who, by Calvin’s tenants, is favored in God’s eyes by virtue of their prosperity, that is while they equally suffer from a great deal of anxiety about their ability to sustain that prosperity.

But then I’m working from the sense that global producer/consumer Capitalism( or I should say the invisible hand of the market is being presented to us as metaphysical.

The point is, felix, you’ve given me reason to take pause as far as the pragmatic truth test is concerned.

Quite.