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Intuition and Seeing CONTENTS I see Logic and the Metaphysics And I see that the metaphysics is immensely rich Seeing—conclusion, revision and supplement To JoanDear Joan, What lessons do I learn from ‘my’ thoughts? We’re conditioned / adapted to a certain ‘local’ environment and therefore don’t always see ‘it all.’ But we’re ‘of it all’ nonetheless and therefore it’s there to be seen if we would see. Within that framework lies ‘variety.’ No one said it would be a rose garden; but no one said it wouldn’t either; we carry on despite the highs and the insults of the immediate… Two of the latest themes are ‘intuition,’ roughly at first approximation as in Kant’s use and ‘seeing,’ which is the idea to bring the framework of my entire system of thought to the realm of perception—to see it as a act of perception rather than labor (labor of course may lie along the way as in mountain climbing but at the peak it’s pure vision before return to the toil of descent and then the sweat of the plains) On IntuitionA common meaning of intuition is seeing some event, perhaps remote in space and time, knowing its occurrence directly rather than through the usual explicit channels of physical and physiological information transfer; the event is intuited but we don’t know or need to know how it is intuited. Since the explicit physical channels are bypassed this kind of intuition may bypass physical law (according to some) and we can, for example, directly intuit the future. In a more subtle kind under this same general meaning it is perhaps the case that some individuals are more sensitive to subtle cues and that such intuition then does not violate physical law The meaning in my thought has in common with the above meaning in that the process of knowing lies outside knowing. We know but we don’t necessarily know how we know. (We know via adaptation or just plain common sense that even though and while we doubt knowing there has to be some validity to it.) However, it’s crucial to my use of ‘intuition’ that even where we know and even where we doubt that we know and even where we feel quite sure that we don’t know… we reign all that in and label it all as neither knowledge nor not-knowledge but to be determined… to fall out of investigation. This is an aspect of eradication of the (practically useful but conceptually misleading) habit of substance thinking—just as we eliminate a priori commitment to mind / matter in the meanings that we assign to them, so we eliminate a priori commitment to what is known and what is not For Kant, intuition was roughly the faculty of perception—the built in faculty by which we see nature in the characteristic ways that we see it and Kant and then Schopenhauer emphasized the categories of space, time and causality. We don’t know how we see in those terms, Kant may have said, but we know that we see in those terms. His justification came, first, from the transcendental argument ‘we have this experience therefore we must have the faculty for this experience’ and, second, from the science of his day, the Mechanics of Newton and the Geometry of Euclid which had developed to the point where it had begun to seem that the entire natural universe was brought under their reign. But then came non-Euclidean Geometry and the demonstration by ‘Einstein’ that the geometry of the Universe might be non-Euclidean; which also showed that the mechanics of the Universe is non-Newtonian which shattered the certainty of the Kantian account that the categories of perception are the categories of being. Quantum theory whose results coincide with those of Newtonian theory in the latter’s range of validity took the shattered account—the shards—and ground them into fine dust. But even more than that, Newton’s System was the first comprehensive articulated understanding of the Universe, i.e. one that stood alone and once standing showed the dynamics of the Universe independently of further ad hoc inputs and fudges; and it seemed to be that way because more and more of nature came under its realm… until, of course, its limits were reached. Then, under the revolutions of the twentieth century, the Universe grew larger and perhaps stranger. However, innocence was shattered; no longer could we think that we had a final system. The physics of the twentieth century is just one more stage in the stages of understanding of the natural world with a domain of validity outside which lies ignorance meaning ignorance not only of physical law but also of whether there is a beyond and its extent—that extent as far as modern science is concerned might be extrapolated a bit but beyond that there might, as far as modern science tells, be nothing or infinitely more in terms of not only more of the same but infinitely unimagined variety We could leave it all there… but that too would be to succumb to the lure of substance. Having discovered final knowledge, then having it shattered we discover ‘progression’ and turn that into substance. All we can say is science has revealed progression; but we cannot conclude that it will progress infinitely and in all directions. That leaves open neither generality ‘progress forever in all directions’ or ‘the final end of progress’ but the possibility of ‘progress forever in some directions’ and ‘the end of progress in some other directions’ and even ‘what’s the fuss?’ That opens up the possibility that we later see of the ultimate metaphysics that is the frame for contextual knowing and the possibility to discover it and turn away from it and on into being itself Human knowing is built up of two parts. The perception that Kant labeled intuition and inference. Inference is ‘probable’ or ‘induction’—the ‘guessing’ of scientific laws and patterns by generalizing and so on and deduction that is thought to be necessary. Francis Bacon labored to show the necessity of induction but that dream was shattered, so they say and so argued ‘the great’ Hume. But Kant happy in the necessity of the Newtonian Scheme flush with its immense success, inferred the necessity of induction or simply assumed it. And for the deductive side of reason, Kant took the ‘edifice’ that had stood for two thousand years: the Aristotelian Logic Today, and since the nineteenth century, certainty regarding logic has gone the way of certainty regarding science. This is a better kept secret however and we tend to learn of the certainty of logic in our schools. And it does appear as though there are certain parts of logic that are secure but not the whole thing and we have found and continue to find that in its recesses and its light, logic itself is hypothetical and experimental. The more powerful it gets, the less it is trivial, the more its empirical character comes to the fore Therefore the two ‘pillars’ of knowing—fact and inference, or perception and reason—that Kant took as finally secure stand revealed as lacking in Universality and necessity (it is shown somewhere in my thought that fact and inference are the pillars but that same thought cautions the need for openness but openness also requires that we not be so open as to be ever empty and also requires that the foregoing not be taken as a mantra) Therefore, we reign in both perception and reason. We label both intuition and we say, not that both are limited, but simply that we don’t take their reign and degree of faithfulness as given a priori And we take that thought and say that it too is not a pre-script-ion. It emerged in the process of investigation. I.e. we are saying method, such as there is, and content are not distinct. Another way of saying that there is no a priori. Method emerges alongside content even though we inherit method and, therefore think of it as standing outside and above content—the method of thinking stands above the subject of thinking according to the admonishments of so many strict schoolmasters and exquisitely profound University lecturers. But it is because of the habit of substance thinking that they think that way—because of the desire for foundation outside even though there is no outside, the desire for foundation in something else, something deeper even there is nothing else and nothing deeper (than the world.) It is the desire for the perfect dictionary, the desire for authority; and it is because of these desires that have origin in our need and our education that we so think ‘authority exists and lies outside me and the world.’ But it is otherwise and must be otherwise for knowing lies in the world and in this simple way becomes obvious that not only the natural world but also the ways of knowing are among the known and the coming into knowledge and therefore it is not just that method and content arise together, arise in interaction, but are not distinct (of course there are distinctions just as there are distinctions between biology and physics but just as life and matter do not belong to different ‘universes’ so knowing and known belong also to the same Universe) Now having reigned both perception and reason (as well as meta-knowing as described in the previous paragraph which is not other than knowing but is knowing about knowing and includes knowing about perceiving and reasoning) where do we go? Before going though, let us reflect that the ‘reigning in’ is perhaps a freeing for what is being reigned in is not only what we think we know but also what we think about how we acquired and acquire what we know; in other words we giving up, in conception, what we know but also what we don’t. We may therefore be forgiven if we feel quicksand and vertigo because we are as we were when we were born—without the comfort and power of civilizations but also without the tracking of civilization that builds up a picture of the world that then becomes as if the world With those thoughts, a piece from the in-process introduction to the latest in-process version of my writing: This essay narrates a Journey of discovery in ideas and transformation of being and identity Ideas and transformation are not altogether distinct; ideas merge into transformation The ideas have achieved significant maturity and the focus of this journey has now turned to essential transformation The journey weaves through the immediate world and the entire Universe—all being, i.e. whatever ultimates may be found—and relations between the immediate and the ultimate. The immediate illustrates the ultimate and the ultimate illuminates the immediate The developments draw inspiration from experience of the world. It is natural and perhaps necessary that they also draw inspiration and learning from the history of thought and transformation. The narrative is has gone beyond the traditions through modern times in certain directions to ultimates in ideas and transformation Skepticism encourages doubt about even ordinary knowledge. How then can ultimates be known? It will emerge that the ultimate is immediate rather than remote—more precisely, the foundation of the ultimate does not distinguish immediate from remote. An essential task will be the discovery of how to see andor reason such ultimates and how to weave what might otherwise be trivial into a system of understanding that has ultimates in faithfulness, range, and power The essence of the response will be, first, to look at the world as it presents and not in terms of something else that explains the world and its being and nature. This look will not emphasize detail; it will not emphasize scientific explanation or common sense understanding; however, these modes of understanding cannot be said to be alien to presentation and therefore will not be deemphasized; instead the a priori attitude to them will be neutral—that we will learn from them what we may, incorporate of them whatever survives examination. The second aspect of the response will be to see whether there are any Objects—or system(s) of Objects—that have the characteristics that (1) Knowledge of these Objects is or can be perfectly faithful, (2) The Objects capture some aspect of the entire world—the One Universe—that enable framing of an understanding of the entire Universe. We do not expect to know the Universe in all its details even if that were possible and we doubt that it is (and later will see proof that such knowledge is Logically impossible.) Therefore the framing will be the framing of what understanding we have with a proviso that knowledge of the Universe under the framework will be at least conceptually enhanced and may progress (it will be seen later that the limit of the faithfulness of such knowledge will be the inherent limit of the Objects thus ‘known’) The ‘prescription’ of the previous paragraph is a rough description a part of the approach here to the discoveries in ideas. Were it truly a pre-script-ion, there would or might be a violation of the intent to look at the world as it presents. In fact the description has not been a pre-script-ion but has arisen in the (of course learning, halting, pausing, reviewing, retracing) process of looking at the world as it presents—in which process it has been natural to learn from the received traditions of seeing, inferring and reasoning but, simultaneously, to not take any content of those traditions as a priori to investigation… to not take them as standing apart from or above or even below investigation… for the instruments of knowledge—especially any essential and true instruments, too, are of the world These ultimates are in depth or foundation as well as in breadth or range of ideas and variety of being (the meanings of ‘ultimate,’ ‘depth,’ and ‘breadth’ are developed later) The focus of transformation is in being and identity—in the way to realization of ultimates. A secondary focus is in action, especially ‘action in the world.’ Action and ideas are modes of transformation but as transformation they are essentially incomplete. However, the ideas are, first, the place of appreciation of transformations and realizations and, second, a framework that shows the necessity of ultimates in transformation while also constituting a partial instrument of negotiation of the world in the realizing The contents of the narrative are presented as a contribution to the history of ideas and action To Joan… againHi once more… I sent you a third email on ‘Seeing’ or so I thought but somehow I seem to have sent a repeat of the one on Intuition. What I write below will not be as good because I am not now in ‘flow’ mode. First, however, comments on the Void. The Void has no Law but it has law. What on earth does that mean? The Upper case ‘Law’ refers to what is immanent in the thing (Void, Universe…) but the lower case ‘law’ refers to our reading of the laws. Thus ‘F=ma’ is our reading of a pattern of nature but what is immanent is in some sense an image of ‘F=ma’ but not ‘F=ma’ itself. We don’t normally append ‘logic’ to our reading of the pattern but it’s implicit. It’s important to remember that when thinking of the Void, our thoughts must satisfy logic. If we don’t satisfy logic we will find that 0 apples = 1 apple and therefore since the Void contains no apples it contains 1 apple. I.e., the Void contains no Law but the law of logic (Logic) must be satisfied in talking of the Void To BrentHi Brent, Here is the ‘lost email’ … somehow, Joan received it but it’s not in my sent items folder; the Seeing section of the pvs email may be regarded as supplement / complement to this -----Original Message----- To Joan…Joan I said there were two recent themes ‘Intuition’ and ‘seeing’ and my prev email stopped short at Intuition SeeingThe original versionThis is the original version of ‘Seeing’… the later version, below, has revisions and supplement As you know my thought is and is the result of a long evolution… a process that has had labor and insight. Then, in 2002 ‘the insight in the shadow of mountains’ the thought to look at the Void and its properties instead of looking at the world (which meant looking at my limited picture of the world.) Implicitly, although it took a while to see this, looking at the Void and its properties entails looking at the Universe and its properties The Void is the absence of being… Where, however, are the laws of physics? The question is a little weird. It’s not ‘What is a law…?’ but ‘Where is a law…?’ What does that mean? OK. We read laws among the Patterns of Nature. F = ma; etcetera, etcetera… We know that ‘F = ma’ is not necessarily of universal application but what is it? Is it something that is merely read? Something not of the world? Surely, even if the reign is not universal, there is some limited reign that has this pattern of which ‘F = ma’ is our rendering. ‘This pattern’ which is the thing that the law is expressing may be called the Law. The Law is immanent in the world; and when we encounter and decode Law, we call it law So, then, the laws of physics are in our heads, our scratchpads, our libraries, our classrooms, the chalkboards in the offices of Einsteins and so on. But the Laws are immanent in the world. The Laws are everywhere Not so fast. If ‘F = ma’ has limited reign the Law that it reads is not everywhere, not even everywhere in our cosmos but only in a limited realm of it (limited not just by spatio-temporal extent but by energy and size.) That Law is somewhere in this cosmos So, then, if the Void is the absence of being it contains no thing. But, not only does it contain no thing, it contains no Law. Alternately, Laws are Things but we don’t recognize them as such. Just as Electrons may be patterns but we see them as things I.e. the Void contains no Laws What is the Universe? There is a concept for the idea of all being. Just as the Void which is the absence of being contains no Law, all being will contain all Laws. We use the term Universe for all being. Therefore the Universe contains all being which includes all Law. Being is that which exists Therefore The Universe exists and contains all being and, it should go without saying, all Law A domain is a part of the Universe. Domains exist. A Complement of a Domain is the part of the Universe that is not part of the Domain. Complements exist. The Void is the complement of the Universe relative to itself. Therefore the Void exists (this can be questioned but this questioning is addressed in the essay and briefly below) The Void is the absence of being, exists, and contains no Law If from the Void, some state of being did not come—that would be a Law of the Void. Since that is not possible (the Void has no Law) it follows that from the Void comes every state of being (everything from nothing) Except, of course, a state of the Universe that contained ‘an apple that is entirely green and not-green at the same time’ cannot exist. In other words the Universe is still subject to the laws of logic. But we can see that these are laws regarding what we can say of the Universe but not of the Universe itself. In other words the only universal law is the law of logic whereas, while the Universe contains all Laws, there is no Universal Law Now there’s a problem with the idea that the Universe cannot contain an apple that is green and not-green. I can’t imagine it but perhaps my imagination is limited. Perhaps the Universe can contain some contradictions. Perhaps the Universe can violate some of our empirical laws of logic. Well and good. But perhaps also there are some logical or quasi-logical things that can never be violated. We call these things Logic, the ideal thing, to distinguish them from logic which is our probably limited rendering of Logic Therefore The one law of the Universe is Logic… i.e. the Universe has no universal Law Now it might seem that this is empty since Logic is a defined concept. However it is not for its source is logic. Thus whatever Logic may turn out to be, we know that the law of Logic is a law of infinite freedom (and depth) The reasoning is sort of intricate but the result is plain: Logic rules. It is not austere—it is immensely rich and permissive; it cannot be too permissive if everything that does not violate Logic is permitted then permitted too is struggle, and horror, as well as ‘paradise’ and this normal world. It’s not an escape: it’s a promise and a warning but it’s a warning and a promise only if we care about those things So anyway, here we are ‘seeing’ Logic rather than laboring over it. That’s the theme of seeing. In the end, after all’s said and done can we see the truth. All the wise men, some of them at any rate including Plato say this. But here we are seeing all that and so much more—seeing Logic. That’s the theme. What can we see? I see the UniverseDon’t be absurd No, I’m not being absurd. I look out and I see a world starting at my doorstep. That’s the Universe—everything You’re getting soft. You know that you can’t know everything let alone see it No, that’s not what I mean. Of course I don’t mean that I know everything in every little detail. In fact what I’m talking of is the opposite. I conceive all being, the Universe. ‘Universe’ is a name. But if I conceptually abstract out the details and leave the whole that concept is a part of what I see. And here I accomplish a number of things. First, I see the Universe in its oneness with the detail abstracted out. I have simplified the thing so much that I see it faithfully.. And we have learned since Kant that there’s no such thing as seeing the metaphysical faithfully. But I now see that I can see such things, one at least, faithfully and empirically. Therefore here’s an example of empirical and faithful knowledge, i.e., of necessary but not a priori empirical knowledge. And the second thing accomplished is that the method of seeing is the method of abstraction or rather a method of abstraction which is truly one of taking away and not of abstraction in the other perhaps distorted sense of replacing objects by something stick like and remote… i.e. we see method and content emerging together and not just knowing it but seeing it I see the VoidAbstract everything out I see Logic and the MetaphysicsAs above And I see that the metaphysics is immensely rich…and not at all trivial as I might have expected it from the apparently trivial character of seeing Yes and it appears that the rich and the profound are not other than the trivial and the plain and that the seeing is not an act of depth or of getting new eyes but of watching till the proper figure emerges from the ground Anil Seeing—conclusion, revision and supplementThis contains revision and supplement In the essay, a metaphysics is derived via perception and reason. We see certain Objects—the Void, the Universe and from these we derive the fundamental principle of the metaphysics that Logic is the one Law of the Universe. What is meant by seeing those Objects? It is not claimed that we see all Objects as they are but that we see only the Void and the Universe and certain other simple Objects as they are. How can we claim to see the Universe as it is when there is doubt about the faithfulness of even common objects? We do not see the Universe in all its details but in the following sense. The world starts at our doorstep and we have a sense of a whole. If we abstract out the detail then we know that there is a whole. There are two points to that. In seeing the detail we also see the whole; therefore we see the Universe in the sense in which detail is abstracted out. Further, that seeing is perfectly faithful—to Universe-as-whole-without-detail-rather-as-we-see-a-mountain-as-a-mountain-and-not-as-an-accumulation-of-molecules-and-so-on—and the faithfulness results on account of the simplicity of the Object and not because of acuity of seeing. Second, this method of abstraction is one that is not the replacement of a rich reality by a remote stick-like figure but one that takes away details that we distort and leaves a simple that it is impossible to distort. Therefore, and most importantly, there is knowledge that is necessary and empirical but that is not a priori. Here, we see the simultaneous emergence of content (Universe) and method (abstraction) The essay shows how we see the Void and how to derive from it the fundamental principle of the metaphysics: Logic is the one law of the Universe, its equivalent There are no universal Laws How can we see Logic as the one law… that there are no Universal Laws…? We have to come up with different formulations and ‘see’ which one or ones we can see. The one that is perhaps closest to being seen is the equivalent form that since there are no universal Laws, The actual Universe is the simplest of all conceivable universes. (and it’s interesting that it follows from this that it’s also the greatest of all possible universes… and remember while reflecting on these thoughts that the meanings of ‘greatest’ and ‘simplest’ are not given but are open until we find some determination of them based perhaps on what emerges, based perhaps on some emerging or emerged framework.) Perhaps, from Ockham’s principle about making no superfluous hypotheses we can see that the actual Universe is the simplest. That’s the best I can come up tonight but maybe I’ll improve it tomorrow For Brent. Tomorrow has now become today. What am I thinking? I’m still not happy about this version of ‘Seeing.’ One of the SNOOPERVISORS at work is being irritating and I’m a little distracted by it this morning. Since the Object form of Logic, i.e. whatever about Logic is immanent, is without significance—it is only the subject form of Logic called Logic that has significance regarding what we may validly say—it is obviously A Law. However, is it the only Law? If I were to travel throughout the Universe, starting at home where I find that gravity is approximately inverse square and where therefore the inverse square law approximates a law, but now find another cosmological system where something else is Law, I then conclude that neither inverse-square nor the-something-else is a Law of the whole. Traveling in this fashion I might find that every conceivable Law (except the Object-Logic, the ‘Law’ that is no Law) gets eliminated and leaving only Object-Logic. This is but a stab at a thought experiment… Or since a Void is the Void and a Void is effectively attached to every-thing, the Void is attached to every-thing which therefore has no Law attached to it but these are almost just words and I’m not getting much beyond the thoughts of the previous paragraph Anil To Robin and SusanRegarding the day-to-day, here’s a quote from an email to my brother I wrote a day or two ago: Hello Robin and Susan I am rather excited in some small ways. Today is a work day but I didn’t go to work. I got up at 7:30 am; did some chores; went running on the beach—up and down the dunes—it was lovely and sunny and the chill of early morning was giving way to warmth and the wind hadn’t yet picked up; came home; wrote bills; went to town; brought a hip belt to carry things while running; ate some Mexican food; came back; nap; coffee on the porch in the evening sun—it’s usually morning coffee on the porch in the morning shade since my porch doesn’t get the morning sun but I love being outside even if it’s raining when I position my deck chair under the eaves; editing my ‘essay;’ now this; will then continue to watch ‘Children of a lesser God’ which is about a relation between an instructor (William Hurt) at a school for the deaf and a former student (Marlee Matlin—best actress—1986—for the role;) did I ever tell you that Rochester Institute of Technology where I taught, 1975-77 was associated with and on the same campus as the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and that I had an occasional deaf student and a sign language translator; I didn’t learn sign language, it wasn’t expected, I didn’t think it might be valuable to me, but now think it might have been a nice thing, I think I have changed but perhaps I’m influenced by Marlee’s cuteness (she starred in the 2004 What the Bleep do We Know? Which was well received by New Age adherents but which I thought said nothing of significance to our lives and nothing much of scientific or spiritual significance and stood out only for the said cuteness) In the last few months I read Albert Einstein’s latest biography—enjoyed re-acquaintance with someone I think of as an old friend; read ‘The Heart of the World,’ Ian Baker’s account of his searches for the inner reaches of the Tsangpo Gorge—the Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra in India—a journey that is into nature and into a way of seeing the world as in Tibetan Buddhism that is enmeshed with being-in-nature… Baker finally finds the inner reach that he says has eluded outsiders from the time of the British in India until his travels but that he does so because he is led by Tibetans who have known of the place all along but have taken him there because they develop trust in him—because he knows their language, because he has come back again and again, because he travels in their spirit, i.e. not as mere physical travelers but as travelers in a single but dual world whose faces are the world-of-this-world and the world-of-the-spiritual-world-in-local-belief; read ‘Year Million’ which is a science / computer technology based look at what the human species and the world might be like in a million years from now if we survive that long. Of those three books, the experience of reading ‘Heart of the World’ stands above the reading of the other two I’ve been casting around for something else to read and picked up Gao Xinjiang’s ‘Soul Mountain’ which has been on my shelves for about five years. It was recommended by a friend but I didn’t or couldn’t get into it when I bought it. Reading it today in the evening sun on my porch, I felt excited to connect to the narrative. Xinjiang is, perhaps you already know this, a Chinese novelist-poet-playwright-artist-Nobel-Laureate who currently lives in France. Soul Mountain is the story of travels he undertook in China after he had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 1983 but then found out after a few weeks that the diagnosis had been incorrect and so felt he had gotten a reprieve from death. His travels, motivated by this reprieve, were undertaken in the spirit of experiencing what is real. What I am thinking—I’ve read about 25 pages so far—is that it will be about what is real—if perhaps only a face of the real—without being about what is esoteric as in Einstein’s thought, Mystic Travels in Tibet, or Science-Technology centered Scenes of a Million Years from now. I’m also interested in his portraits of China-the-places-peoples-and-cultures-old-transitional-new. We’ll see and I’ll tell you what I find Anil |