Verstehen truths

Who is the real Destre? Some people say it’s Michael, others, one of the other areopagites repeated, but, what does it really matter? Oscar Wilde wrote on the importance of deception and face management as a way of portraying some kind of other reality of a person.

When Liberace died, many were curious about the nature of his death. Liberace was a beloved celebrity in the United States and beyond, representing a certain kind of mindset or kitcsh. For many, he was a cultural icon, for a certain demographic, he was the face of a new wave of technology that was otherwise unfriendly and inaccessible. The legacy of Liberace, unlike that of Sinatra, will not last, and did not last with much warmth after his death.

Why was this? A large speculation is that many peole inquired into the cause of his death. A media frenzy then came of this issue, of how, or why he died. It then became that the man’s reputation, which he took his life to build, was destroyed by the suggestion that he was a homosexual. With that, his career ended in a way that not even his own could have taken away. I see today in the news of some rumours about John Lennon; all interesting for the newspapers to get us buying and watching.

It got me to consider the whole importance of face management in social interactions. In many professions, and to the identity of many social individuals, reptuation, and image, is everything. Perhaps it is that impetus to understand our fascination with trying to find celebrities with their pants down (figuratively and literally). Those icons who work hard to their eminent status and those individuals who have by means of their own effort and goodfill have achieved a status, or did a service, or entertained in ways few people could ever do, are those individuals we are so fascinated in dishing the dirt about.

A galpal once told me, and I think is apt. Everyone has dirty laundry. I was with Michael at the time and he just kept sniggering about a certain person in the room, who had notably dirty laundry. Immaturity aside, the serious point is that we could all find something shambolic and embarrassing about others, perhaps the shambolic and embarrassing thing can be that they have no interesting lives.

If there is an image that can be shattered, the pieces of its shattered glass clearly show that the image was not a false one. The shaming of individuals is mere self-indulgence. Because truths about the self are truths of a different domain of facts than those normal ones we think of. To say there are ‘truths’ about a person is not to speak in a domain of facts, but within an ellipsis. It is, to invoke a pun. A verstehen turth of a person that may or may not be truth-apt, bit far from it is it to assume truth-aptness as a tacit and necessary condition.

Antisophie (and Sinistre*)

The antiomies of the foundations

There is a distinct contradiction, and yet, agreement, in the following two propositions:

P1. Mathematics cannot be shown to be complete
P2. We cannot but conceive of Mathematics, properly construed, as ideally composed of a set of axioms such that all and any system of mathematics can be reduced to a common simple system, or set of axioms such that shows a common genus to all mathematics.

This view, I maintain, is a Kantian view of mathematics. Kant’s constraints upon the proper conduct of science is that there ultimately originates a primary concept, but, that this concept is knowable or discoverable, or even actual, is not relevant, nor should we be too concerned if we never find it.

For science to be proper, Kant says, it must fit an ideal of knowledge, but such an ideal is projected (this entails the ideality of natural kinds) and not real. Such an ideal also seems to suggest that we use a bit of elipsis in our explanations and descriptions of science. A Kantian view of science also would set as a desideratum that there were a formalisability/mathematicisation constraint on anything if it is to be proper science at all.

The ideal is a projection, and is an “as if it were real” constraint (that is the ellipsis to which I speak of). Because it is a projection, our kinds and entities and laws within the scientific frame work not only can be subject to change, but desirably so, are they changeable, for scientific theories could always change, and are not rigidly set.

Rigidity is still present in the Kantian conception of science, however, in the desideratum of the constructability of formal langauges upon which we describe our phenomena. Consider the difference between ‘Water’ (h20) and water (that stuff we drink). Most, if not all the water we come across is not ‘water’, perhaps in some ways, ‘water’ does not exist, HOWEVER. Water necessarily presupposes ‘water’, in virtue of its ideality. For what makes water1 the same as water2 other than h20? Nothing.

H20 is criterial of water, but in a way, its pure form is never to be found in water, only ‘water’, which projects onto all thigns called water, makes sense of our empirical concept in such a way to be science. But, because ‘water’ is a priori regulatively ideal, it is also subject to change. The contradiction is, then, how is water necessarily h20, yet only indexical to our scientific understanding?

The answer to this lies in the conception of necessity. Necessity here, is defined as a criterial relation. Therefore, to say that “2 is a number” is necessarily true is to state a criteria. Necessity is criteria. But then, is not necessity similar to possibility? For criteria presupposes the conditions, and conditions is construed in the Kantian system as possibility. It would seem then that necessity can only take place as a concept where possibility is first defined, such that in a sense, necessity is only possible if, possibility allows, and this is necessarily so.

Destre (and Michael)

There is a very strange affinity and conduciveness of listening to extreme heavy metal, or serialist music, while reading Kant.

- Michael

AAHH!!

I am currently reading through the Opus Postumum, which is basically fragments of a book not actually finished. There is a section which I am reading titled “Critical note”, which goes as the following:

“It may seem that in this section we have greatly transgressed the boundary of the a priori concepts of the moving forces of matter, which together are to form a system, and have drifted into physics as an empirical science (e.g. into chemistry); but one will surely notice that….”

Oh, and then the passage breaks off…as Kant didn’t finish his sentence. That was an important passage that I needed to read up on, and HE DIDN’T FINISH HIS SENTENCE!!!

Sometimes you have to laugh!
Michael

Should we be wary of our emotions?

A sentimental point of view 

I am afraid that a certain philosophical enemy could be right about the way he understands the passions. Let us a set of tenets:

• Some beliefs are pre-rational; pre-deliberative. They are just there; like “Ouch, that hurts!”; there is no deliberation or reflection involved, we just form that belief in response to immediate stimulae
• The way we judge something to be good; or beautiful, is by the way that we are affected by it. To appreciate beauty is to be taken in by feeling; to know of love is to be captured by a certain tenderness, a certain warmth, compassion, closeness; to know of virtue is to admire strength, be in awe at greatness, and be angered towards vice.
• To be fully human, and, further, to be good judges of art and goodness, we must embrace the inner feelings and sentiments we hold about them, the affections we have define and form the background of our responses to them.

Let me give some cases where it seems the emotions have an important role; where affection is crucial:

1. Empathy/strong sympathy: empathy is the capacity to simulate the emotional state of another insofar as one can relate to their experience, current or present. Sympathy is an association with our common kin and involves a sense of concern about them, a strong form of this would involve maintaining or proteting, or event assisting with, the interests that person may have.
2. Love?: To fall in love in our putative conception, and express affection; is to very much be taken by the passions. The very word ‘passion’ finds its most common usage when associated with love. Kant uses this word as if it was a very very bad and scary thing. Kant’s definition is certainly stronger than Hume’s, yet my worry is that Kant’s strong form does apply in certain cases, and is a challenge to our authority of judgements and agency itself; having strong feelings is something I fear a great deal.
3. The justification of beauty: when I listen to a fine Tarot song; or a certain piece of music from my pianistic past; I feel very much taken by the sentiment of the piece; for Tarot, I admire the contrasting properties of Marco’s voice; the roughness of his voice (post-Stigmata); yet the sincerity of feeling; the honesty of expression, against the anger of some parts. Claire de Lune took me strongly when I listened to it recently; so many things I was reminded of; it reminded me of the past; my hopes, who I used to be; and memories of when I played it. I used to feel as if ‘in love’ when playing it; to make such a sound, trying to maintain the pianissimo passages; the legato-ness of the arpeggiations, and simply the dreaminess of the melody, took me to a place that normal life simply doesn’t take me. It was a journey of love, a journey of such tenderness, solitude, yet, togetherness. To really know of such beauty IS to take part in the passions. Should I be afraid of this?

Why should I be afraid? (Michael)

Emotions are good AND bad. Emotional standardised responses can be negatively manipulated through long term chemical alterations; social location; long term suffering; and just the plain unlucky.

Emotions, and like nearly everything else in life, seem to be something that can bring both positive and negative effects. This may show us, following Spinoza; that the passions, in all its glory and despair, is a double-edged sword. Nothing completely good can truly give us harm (assumption). We must assume that the worth of the emotions are merely instrumental.