metaphysics and epistemology

AnalysiS OF philosophy
Using the Philosopy of Completing Totalities

There are two major fields of theory in philosophy

Metaphysics: theory of reality.

Polarizes along dialectical lines (pivot: theory of knowledge) into: A. Idealism (esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived; tends toward rationalism) B. Realism (reality is independent of mind: 'external')

Epistemology: theory of knowledge

Polarizes along dialectical lines (pivot: theory of universals) into A. Rationalism: knowledge is acquired through reason; and B. Empiricism: knowledge is acquired through experience.

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Discussion of traditional philosophical dialectic. Why/how it must be surpassed.

Part One. Theory of knowledge: Rationalism and Idealism

Rationalism tends to go over to Idealism as a metaphysic, because the truths of reason predicate on forms that are wholly given in sign-use (S*) (paradigms: arithmetic, geometry, logical formulae). Since what signs communicate qua form is known to humans only by experience (awareness, consciousness) the condition for knowing getsw converted* into the condition of what is known, so 'reality' tends tp become identical with content of consciousness. But that which is a conditon of all content cannot be converted into one of the conditioned contents without negating the distinction between them (the conditioned and the conditioned). If consciousness is essentially "of" its content, then it cannot be "of" itself: "consciousness of consciousness" would be the same as "space of emptiness (non-space)" However, "consciousness" is predicable of all content; it is the generic term for awareness. Resolution? Consciousness is not essentially "of" its content; its content is "of" it. This gives the notion of the content of consciousness as One thing (a unity) distributed through (thus, not one of) its content: the unity of the given multiplicity = consciousness under sign-use.


Beginning with Descartes, modern philosophy has been driven by rationalism, in theory of knowledge, tending toward Idealism in metaphysics. The tradition of organized scientific knowledge from the Greeks in geometry, mathematics, astronomy, logic, harmonics, etc. was continued in scientific discoveries wherever formal work involving number, geometry, measurement, axiomatics turned up, which was everywhere in "experience" -- from planetary orbits aroound our earth's sun, to the periodic chart of elements in the atomic-molecular theory of matter (through calculus, optics, many other formal sciences; plus forces of gravity, magnetism, vectors, gradually coming to understand energies, especially electricity. All that was "apriori" in these, using Kant's term for the mind's contribution to knowledge, was driven inward by critique, from clasical projection of envelops of perfect solids as real cosmic components, as in Plato's THEATETUS, Euclidean axiomatic geometry, and Ptolmaic astronomy, to Newton's Principia, with laws of action and reaction of objects in 3 dimensional space laid down for the physical world. Then, further, by the refinement of grammar of written language to logical form (by Boolean algebra for Aristotelian syllogisms; true-false sentence construction for modern quantification theory), to pure logical syntax for reconstructing necessary formal connections in general; the necessity of necessity implicit in sign-use since Parmenides, becomes refined down to "analytic truth" involving only forms of a small number of 'primitives" signs as a given empirical set. All rigorous constellations of which, if leading validly from truth to truth, can be displayed in machine-checked sequences ("sentences of proper logical form", the only kind usable in science, hence the only kind metaphysics needs to assume, by Occam's razor). This has been the great metaphysical accomplishment of 20th century formal logic: to shrink the notion of necessity, first, into ritualized sequences of sign-uses; then, make it virtually disappear.

To emphacize: "virtually". Virtuality took on metaphysical significance when sign-use, previously spoken and written, was analyzed down to "=" and "-", 0/1, digital grammar. This allowed: 1. mathematics, which had previously been shown by Russell and Whitehead to be a deductive system reducible to system of logical truths (analytic propositions; tautologies), comes to be imposed upon the tokens of sign-uses "through the back door", as it were. The requirement of being articulated in a sentence of proper logical form does this, when that form is defined by the 'digital apriori' of set theory. Then the analytical format 0/1 is imposed on all communicated content, constituting "virtual reality". The paradox may then result that what is actually real, but does not come under the 0/1 grid, will be counted an non-real, since only what is computable can show up on the computer. Reality and virtual reality will have reversed places. The real will be (regarded as) virtual; the virtual will be (regarded as) real. The real = the virtual; the distinction collapses.

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But this is the moment of gravest metaphysical danger. It may be just through this "loop" that consciousness is brought to itelf, in completing the rationalist's side of the dialectic; consciousness of consciousness attained through digitalization of discourse. This would be the metaphysics of the movie The Matrix. To be is to be a program in the matrix. This would complete the "spiral of necessity', as it were. Historically spiraling out to nothing, then back onto itself. What such a completion would bring could not be consciousness as a totality, with out it being absorbed into Sign-Use, for which it was supposed to supply the unity. Consciousness of digitalized discourse as a metaphysic cannot be all there is of consciousness of consciousness, or it is nothing. The dualism that keeps recurring is between text and token in sign-use. Consciousness through text gives true-or-false content under a logical grammar. But consciousness through the token gives the particular qualities of experience the text conveys. On the token side are the qualities; on the side of text, is whatever is true. (This is the text-token resolution of the mind-body problem: where mind and matter meet.)


Part Two. Empiricism and materialism

Truths of experience are non-tautologies; deniable.

The notion of the "matter" of an assertion, as opposed to its "form", coincides with, or goes over to, the notion of the 'material', or "subject matter", or "what it is about." In empiricist metaphysics, "the material world" is contained under all terms of sign-use that have assigned name-meanings. This is a world of objects of whatever sort, bearing properties or characteristics communicated by predicates. In paradigm cses, the subject term is supplied by perception (e.g., "this"), the predicate by attribution (..is plastic, not leather). "Names" is the name given by word-sign use to tokens assigned to particulars, objects brought into textual discourse under the laws of identity and difference. (A=A, where "A" is the name of any object)

Knowledge derived from experience tends to go over to materialism as metaphysics because it begins from particularized (countable) reality as content. The first known particulars of experience are the qualities given through sense experience. These are discoverd to be mediated by causes, e.g., light reflecting off objects to see the black spot striking the eye (and disappearing inside the head). Hence, when anomolies turn up -- inconsistencies in perception, viewed as a single causal -- for example, the straight stick in a pool of water appearing bent by refraction of light off its surface -- the explanation the anomolies is traced to the same source, so that what is real in perception is distinguished from what is merely 'appearance' by the same 'material causes' that explain what is 'real'. But if the same thing is used to distinguish reality and appearance (non-reality), and that thing is causes acting through matter ('material causes', in Aristotle's terms), the role of 'mind', with its formal conditions for cognitive signp-use is metaphysically diminished.

But once again, when the way knowledge (taken as a unity -- relating to reality through sign-use) comes to exist is taken up into the totality of knowledge
(as a self-consistent totality), the result calls for self=-predication on a 'flattened' background, this time, with text being crunched down into tokens; form absorbed into matter, predicates, as mere 'mental' attachments by attribution (speech act) disappear into "characteristics" of material objects; the ray of light that entered into the skull through the eyes, comparing both the black spot and stick-bent-in-water, is discovered to "stimulate the brain". The movement of hand and head to change the stream of experience is a Pavlovian (learned material) brain-input/brain-output correlation. Consciousness? Disappears, too.
Brain efflux.

BUT HEY! THAT'S WHERE WE STARTED FROM! - AWARENESS OF OURSELVES USI8NG SIGNS, COMMUNICATING EXPERIENCE ??! WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT?

Pavlovian psychology is empiricist one-sidedness in epistemology going over to materialist metaphysics, and turning on its parent-tree of sign-ses to claim its priority. The only hypothesis Occam's razor calls for to brigde the input/output gap in brain function is stimulous-response, supplemented by "punishment-reward" (pleasure-pain stimuli) for psychology. This philosophy reduces man, however vaunted his knowledgeability, to a highly complex vortice of materiality.

I quote Russell for a summary of the situation:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/russell09.htm

What we can say, on the basis of physics itself, is that what we have hitherto called our body is really an elaborate scientific construction not corresponding to any physical reality. The modern would-be materialist thus finds himself in a curious position, for, while he may with a certain degree of success reduce the activities of the mind to those of the body, he cannot explain away the fact that the body itself is merely a convenient concept invented by the mind. We find ourselves thus going round and round in a circle: mind is an emanation of body, and body is an invention of mind. Evidently this cannot be quite right, and we have to look for something that is neither mind nor body, out of
which both can spring. *****


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That is the way the dialectic works: each side stakes out its claim (for metaphysical recognition) by laying hold of the totality. But since neither is, both run into self-contradiction by doing so. Each prematurely completes. Neither can open up to the completing totality containingt both as a totality except in an act of self-destruction: letting the other side "win".

And this is where dialectic must be surpassed, as a metaphysic
claiming its own. "Stimulus-response", with conditioning (punishment-reward) become inbgrained* as a way of thinking ourselves

Summary of Parts One and Two, with dire warning

Unless we dispense with the dialectical approach to reality as a metaphysic it will take us down. That is because it can be virtualized, i.e. 'thought' as a totality through/in the electronic media of communication, and it is merely a simulacrum, a copy of copies ... (...of objects and situations experienced, predicated on). If the intelligence projected into this new external TokenSpace of digital electronic communication is allowed to fold into itself, as a virtual reality, the forms of self-reproduction previously included under conscious sign-use will gradually come, by materialized dialectic of dialectic, to absorb the libido of humans. And re-ify some weird transcendental unity for their Pavlovian Sign-use correlations. (cf. "Borat" as virtual messiah)


Part three: the theory of universals deconstructs the false dialectic

There is a dialectic of essence and dialectic of excressence

"Borat" represents the dialectic of excressence -- projects vile anti-semitisms from the mouth of a fictitious reporter-character from "Khazakstan", while at the same time ascribing disgusting indignities to that remote little ex-Soviet province (such as cooking in urine, incest). Message: the ones who view Jews in such vile terms, reminiscent of Czarist Russia during the pogroms, are filth. Who could challenge that? You'ld have to be pro-holocaust. "Borat" lays it all on the line, for those who can see what he is doing.

He is a "Cohen", a U.K. Jewish boy. Using a fictional character to spout hardcore hatred of Jews; Jew hatred; Judeophobia, what ADL calls "anti-semitism". SInce he created the character and invented the lines, as a product of his mind they illustrate what is called "Jewish self-hate" -- acting out the words known to be used by others in condemnation of what he is.

His number is a way of crapping in everybody's face. Anti-semitic feelings elicited? "No! NO! -- vulgar abomination" --Reaction-formation kicks in -- automatic reversal at the conscious level of what is given compulsively (death-wish toward Jews) at the libidinal level. This use of such language (rhetoric, sign-use) by the "comic" -- the routine is supposed to make one laugh by ludicrous exaggeration; the side effect is to open the gateway to the Unconscious. (That is what "jokes" do: good ones accompanied by orgasmically satisfying involuntary hiccup-like convulsions in real belly laughs.)

Putting the collective unconscious into words -- what "everybody is thinking", or almost thinking, but don't dare say) is "dangerous". Elicited and split-off in this way, as by "Borat"'s acting out in a purely constructed, 'private' tokenspace one enters into in watching him, it summons the self-punishing 'super-ego' to sadistically repress the ba-a-a-d (evil, abominable, violent, demon possessed) id-impulses. Carried to extreme, this is how Freud defined hatred: the energy of what repressed love becomes. The man-boy may be a genius, but wht he has created in an ultimate instrument of hate in YTokenSpace. The only way it can be rejected, in dialectical terms, is by virtually affirming the holocaust, which he drives into your* face as his* audience.

But one needs not, must in fact abhor, use of such a prod to resolve the internal dialectic. It is through "Jews" that the dialectic is metaphysically perpetuated.

Flogging the children of Israel; crapping in your face. Making you want to hit him -- anti-semitic if you do. Spinner of the dialectic of hate in pure group TokenSpace. Whatever side you are on can hit on (each other through) his fictional character.

Some call him a 'genius".

My friend and I agree the guy needs punching out.



on reality, as the transcendental unity of apperception (psycholinguistic filter for pre-processing 'rational discourse': "its rational if it can be computerized; otherwise, its non-real.)