Guten Tag Klaus,

In my opinion it’s very important a proper understanding of notions of space and time. We, human beings, live in a 3-D space and experience ageing (that obviously means “not passage of time” but “motion of physical entities we all have got in our organisms”.

MfG

Andrew

Hello Andrew,

thank you for your comment! I agree with you, that we need to clearify the notions included in the questions asked. Concerning the notion of time we could head into at least three different directions of definition: 1. a physics-like definition of time ("space-time") 2. an experiential definition of time (phenomenological, empiricist) 3. an usage-based cultural/anthropological perspective on time.

I could make out elements of the first two ways in your comment: "3-D space" and "motion of physical entities" seem to belong to 1, "experience ageing" probably belongs to 2. If I understand correctly, you want to define "time" as no metaphysical entity or extra Dimension, but something grounded in physical motion (the notion of "motion" of course presupposes that of "time", does it not?). Do you feel that I have understood the direction that your definition takes correctly?

I am not sure, that "time" is a single concept at all, that could be grasped in a single definition. I am also not sure if a physical understanding of time is adequate for the understanding of human orientation in time (well - of course one could say, that time-research in physics is itself a complex practice of human orientation ;-) But I would rather start with simple practices...).

I would like to read more...MbG

Nicolas

Hello Rajesh,

thank you for posting! The theoretical direction you mentioned sounds promising. If I understand correctly, that perspective grounds the way we orient our actions in values (schemata of better and worse?), that are a part of the human evolutionary strategy we call "culture". I like that perspective, because it brings something to the front, that is a blindspot of a physical understanding of space-time: that human orientation develops in a "significant" environment, not one composed of the objects of natural science. Do you have any reading suggestions?

Nicolas

Andrzej Lechowski

>“not passage of time”but “motion of physical entities we all have got in our organisms”

I think the passage of time, is detected in the mind by a LOGGING function needed to allow us to repeat rote experiences. In essence parallel processes are logged in a manner that creates a pseudo-sequence where each snippet is linked in a manner associated by the relations this goes before this, or This must come after this.

Evidence is that the movement through space is first recorded as relative movement, I moved forward or backwards, I turned right or left, I climbed or descended, and then translated into a map of each episode, where common elements are grouped to form a consistent whole using multiple maps, based on triangulation against other commonly experienced elements.

We know where these processes happen in the brain, and as such, we can experiment with animals like mice and rats and interfere with their ability to remember where they can rest in a water maze, and whether to turn right or left in a simple T maze.

Orienting however is more than that, it is the ability to recognize where we are, with respect to these maps, and thus predict where we can go, what we can do, etc.

Hi Nicolas,

ND: Concerning the notion of time we could head into at least three different directions of definition: 1. a physics-like definition of time ("space-time") 2. an experiential definition of time (phenomenological, empiricist) 3. an usage-based cultural/anthropological perspective on time.

Of course, we can understand time in various ways. 1. In physics (just motion/changes of something). 2. Colloquially (time is over; I have no time, etc.). 3. As a measure unit (one second; one year).

ND: I could make out elements of the first two ways in your comment: "3-D space" and "motion of physical entities" seem to belong to 1,

Agree

ND: "experience ageing" probably belongs to 2.

Maybe.

ND: If I understand correctly, you want to define "time" as no metaphysical entity or extra Dimension,

Of course. BTW time cannot be so-called fourth dimension because if one travels in any of them needs time (motion).

ND: but something grounded in physical motion (the notion of "motion" of course presupposes that of "time", does it not?). Do you feel that I have understood the direction that your definition takes correctly?

I am not sure, that "time" is a single concept at all, that could be grasped in a single definition. I am also not sure if a physical understanding of time is adequate for the understanding of human orientation in time (well - of course one could say, that time-research in physics is itself a complex practice of human orientation ;-) But I would rather start with simple practices...).

I have referred number of times to my article http://www.eioba.com/a/33e7/why-time-cannot-dilate where you can find my understanding of time, also, among other things, on my website.

Spacetime is a curious portmanteau. Space and time are essentially unrelated abstractions... completely different categories of being. Hermann Minkowski noted some similarities in the way events are described by modern physics. I see no problem with that as long as one realizes that it is a computational 'device.'

It is difficult to summarize my thoughts on the subject. I have done so in other threads. I recognize six 'categories' of being, along with a variety of transcendental predicates. They are ordered in the following hierarchy...

1 Transcendental predicates,

2 Quantity,

3 Space,

4 Affection,

5 Time,

6 Action and

7 Material form.

The basic principle involved is what Isaac Newton called the "great principle of similitude," dimensional analysis...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis

plus a serious reflection on Aristotle's ***Categories.***

I agree with Andrzej Lechowski on the importance of motion (action) in understanding time. But would emphasize that time must be understood in terms of all the 'categories' and transcendental predicates, as well.

wonderful!!!

Hello Andrew,

thanks for the comment and the link! I read your article just real quickly and like its critique of much senseless time-talk in physics. Even though I am not a physicist, I will probably come back to you to answer more questions...

MbG

Nicolas

Dear Lava,

I thank you.

Pasnagiotis Stefanides

Hello Nicolas,

I am not physicist either. I am writing on how I understand real world. At the same time I’d like to stress that don’t claim it’s the only one and proper point of view and those, who interest in these topics can choose what is convincing them most. I am of course at your disposal (as well as at anyone’s) to clarify any questions that need to be more specific.

MfG

Andrew

Hello Graeme Smith,

thank you for your comment - which involves a lot of technical detail. It does sound like explanations used in programming and cognitive modelling. I would like to read more about it, but first I would like to ask - since my interest lies primarily in human orientation - what in your opinion this could teach me about our understanding of time and our orientation in the world and in life?

Sure, it is one possible way of describing things - but maybe more relevant to a.i. or to robotics than to humanities? Or am I missing the point?

Nicolas

Hello Bill Overkamp,

Thank you for your suggestion. After stating my research interest rather broadly, I think I need to be more specific now to make this threads intended topic clearer and maybe contribute to a bit more focused discussion.

As I wrote earlier, I am not a physicist and neither a mathematician. My aim in this project on „Forms of human orientation“ is more in the direction of - if I had to put some disciplinary label on it - philosophical anthropology or cultural theory, maybe also historical epistemology.

Methodologically I would like to focus on actual practices, and (at this stage at least) less on discourse in physics or psychology. It has been widely claimed (by Quine and others), that scientific discourse is fundamentally based on ordinary language (from which it can of course wi(l)dely deviate). But also our whole variety of practical ways of handling temporal relations, of planning, expecting, carrying out projects, of evaluating time-ressources, of cooperating with others etc. are in many ways grounded in our cultural embedding. What we take to be possible for us is deeply influenced by the temporal structure of the stories we situate ourselves in. Who wrote on this???

And the conceptualizations of time of course changed over the course of history. In Aristotle‘s time, as many scholars of today say, the concept of the cosmos was „closed“, or „finished“. Aristotle saw the human species as having culture as a means of adopting to changes much more flexible than other species. But at the same time, the „ideas“ where all already there (here the same as with Plato) and there was no room for genuine human invention. The concept of an open future, which is (at least in part) for humans to make did not develop until around late Renaissance. And it would not be until the late 18th century with Herder and later on Hegel, that the historicity of self-conceptualizations would be subject to human investigation (in complex ways, that do not correspond to our modern disciplinary divisions of physics, mathematics, logic, linguistics, moral philosophy etc.). Even in physics since the 20th century this historical consciousness has deeply settled in.

Now, with so many possibilities - where to start, or better: from what position could one speak? I suggest to start with a grammatical investigation of the notions involved - in the sense of the later Wittgenstein - and ask: How have we learned the meaning of the words „time“, „space“, „motion“, "today", "world history" etc. In what kinds of practical surrounding are they used? Anyone a little familiar with studies in child language acquisition is aware of the fact, that there is no easy story to be told here. Cognitive understanding and verbalizing of time relations belongs to the most complex verbal techniques to master...

Concerning your categories: A complex of ideas like your suggestion obviously is not easy to grasp without getting into the details. But what would really interest me at first: What is your opinion on how your ensemble of categories relates to what I have very briefly said about the changing (and of course historically overlapping) cultural techniques of orientation in the various aspects of human life?

Nicolas

Hello Venkateshappa Shrikanth,

I hope I have made my use of the term "orientation" in the working title of the project a little bit clearer in my last comment.

Greetings, Nicolas

AL: "In my opinion it’s very important a proper understanding of notions of space and time. We, human beings, live in a 3-D space and experience ageing (that obviously means 'not passage of time' but 'motion of physical entities we all have got in our organisms.'”

Certainly place and time represent different abstractions.

It seems useful that an animal would have a certain built-in form for the perception of place and time. Since place is approximately Euclidean, it makes sense that our senses would be optimized for the perception Euclidean geometry.

I think that the fundamental form for the perception of the passage of time is mediated by the rhythms inherent in the body. I understand that there is a fairly constant brain wave of about 40 cycles per second that probably maintains that perception. Other rhythms, such as the heartbeat would also enter into the mix.

What we perceive as the basis for the passage of time are the changing affections of the soul... a somewhat broader concept than motion, alone. The form by which we perceive changing affections is the passage of time.

The physical basis for changing affections is, of course, motion. Something always moves when the affections change.

AL: "If I understand correctly, you want to define 'time' as no metaphysical entity or extra Dimension."

Time certainly is a dimension in the sense that it is one of the fundamental measurements physics recognizes, along with length, mass, charge, and temperature...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis

AL: "Of course. BTW time cannot be so-called fourth dimension because if one travels in any of them needs time (motion)."

In speaking of four-dimensional space-time, physicists are not imagining that things move apart from time. They are simply employing certain computational benefits obtained through tensor calculus etc. Is this understanding beyond you?

Hello Rajesh Kher,

thank you for your comment and your suggested papers. I will have to read more thoroughly to be able to explain...I am sure they put forward interesting ideas if one is looking for biological/neuroscientific explanations of space-time perception.

However, philosophically speaking, those approaches do not satisfy my curiosity and interest in the notions of "space", "time" or "orientation", because they methodologically presuppose those notions: One needs to apply a certain concept e.g. of "time" in order to be able to experimentally locate corresponding functions in the brain.

There is nothing wrong with that in scientific practice. But my philosophical questions about human orientation need exactly the opposite, which is the reflection on the different uses of those notions and their implications.

So in this respect, neuroscience presupposes practices of natural language and I would want to get deeper into a usage-based approach of describing those practices of orientation. A classic text here is P. F. Strawsons "Individuals", but there is much more...

Once that has been done, it will be much easier (for me) to judge, with what kind of orientational practices the different physical or neuroscientific research is concerned. That change in perspective might even lead to differences in the interpretation of the data...but my chief interest is to link this investigation to the ways we lead our lives.

Here's a question into that direction:

How much time does it take to be yourself?

ND: "How much time does it take to be yourself?"

It certainly takes no time at all. It is by being what a thing is that it participates in time. Thus, time is a property of substance... while substance is not a property of time.

BO: That sounds like a good answer.

But of course the question could provoke answers from many different philosophical backgrounds - e.g. those, who consider humans to be more than "things". What if you think of yourself as a being with a sense of future and past, with fears, hopes, desires and plans for life? Here are three other answers:

1. I am sure a neuroscientist would now calculate the minimum amount of time that the corresponding neurological processes need to function properly.

2. Some other people might say, it is the total of all your experiences, actions, achievements etc. that show "who you really are". In that sense, it would take quite literally a whole lifetime to be yourself.

3. And some other people might say, it takes as much time as you are willing to give - and still you can only reach happy moments that will pass. Since the 18th century a still growing number of westeners feel that they have at first to find out what it means to really be themselves and that one has to constantly work not to fail that attempt as one navigates through life.

An important distinction in answering the question seems to be that between numerical identity (which one just has) and qualitative identity (which one needs to gain and can lose). Another is the different uses of the word "be".

Compare it with an example: Being a father. In one sense, I just am a father - it is a property of mine, that takes no time to be so. In another sense, being a father takes of course a lot of my time and not being able to spend that time would make me suffer from a loss of something that I consider to be an very important part of myself.

So when we ask the question about humans with all their capacities and their specific way of "existing" and self-relations - how would you relate that to your answer?

ND: "But of course the question could provoke answers from many different philosophical backgrounds - e.g. those, who consider humans to be more than 'things.'"

It is interesting that you would take what I said to imply that I think of humans as "things." In one sense, of course, the word 'thing' might be used appropriately, in another it is not.

ND: "What if you think of yourself as a being with a sense of future and past, with fears, hopes, desires and plans for life?"

Certainly I do have "a sense of future and past, with fears, hopes, desires and plans for life." But those are not what I am. Fundamentally I am an animal. I suspect that most animals have some sense of past and future. Most have fears, hopes, desires, etc. Some seem to plan.

ND: "I am sure a neuroscientist would now calculate the minimum amount of time that the corresponding neurological processes need to function properly."

Certainly a neurological process takes time. But I could not have such a process without a body. It is the ***condicio sine qua non*** for any neurological process.

ND: "Some other people might say, it is the total of all your experiences, actions, achievements etc. that show "who you really are". In that sense, it would take quite literally a whole lifetime to be yourself."

Yes, certainly I have enjoyed more of life than I deserve. But at each moment of my life, I have been Bill Overcamp. I never had the illusion of being, say, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Jesus, Socrates, Achilles, Helen of Troy... or for that matter, anyone else. So clearly, underlying each of the many moments in my life there is something common... without which none of those moments could exist... and that is clearly what I am.

It would seem to me that serious doubt of this obvious truth might involve a long period of treatment at a mental health facility. Few people meet with that fate, but it does happen.

I clearly recognize that there are boundary questions in identifying that common essence. We do this, however, in talking about oak trees and horses. I see no reason why those same principles would not apply to man. For I am something of a pragmatist.

ND: "And some other people might say, it takes as much time as you are willing to give - and still you can only reach happy moments that will pass. Since the 18th century a still growing number of westeners feel that they have at first to find out what it means to really be themselves and that one has to constantly work not to fail that attempt as one navigates through life."

This point seems to be but a version of the previous one.

ND: "An important distinction in answering the question seems to be that between numerical identity (which one just has) and qualitative identity (which one needs to gain and can lose)."

I don't particularly understand what you mean by "qualitative identity." Are you supposing that there might be someone similar to myself? Certainly, there are men who share certain qualities that I have. For instance, there are many Americans. There are even many who live in Georgia. And there are many computer programmers who live in Georgia... But it is easy enough to qualify myself to the point where the many become few... even to the point of being unique. I suspect that no one else has fingerprints similar enough to mine so that the two of us could not be distinguished by an expert. I might be wrong about that, but I wouldn't use that possibility to plan a crime... the odds would seem to be against me.

ND: "Another is the different uses of the word 'be.'"

Aristotle noted ten categories: substance, quantity, place, time, relation, quality, action, passion, position and having. And he recognized transcendental terms, as well. The word 'being' is predicated analogously in each case... so that being a substance is to substance as being a quantity is to quantity; as being a place is to place; etc.

As I noted earlier on this thread, I have simplified the categories according to Newton's Great Principle of Similitude...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis

Reducing them to the following: quantity, place, affection, time, action and material form. I accept Aristotle's idea regarding being by analogy, but suspect that with regard to that question, material form must be further divided into matter and form... and even by the several levels of what I call Hierarchical Hylomorphism... so that, for instance, the being of an elementary particle is to the being of an atom as the elementary particle is to the atom.

In any event, there are as you say, several meanings for the word, 'be.' What meaning applies to myself? Well, clearly I am a top-level material form... an animal, having a body.

ND: "Compare it with an example: Being a father. In one sense, I just am a father - it is a property of mine, that takes no time to be so. In another sense, being a father takes of course a lot of my time and not being able to spend that time would make me suffer from a loss of something that I consider to be an very important part of myself."

Being a father is, of course, a relation. Aristotle considered relation to be the least real of the categories. I do not consider relation to be a category, but think of it as a transcendental predicate which is generally attached to one of the categories. Fatherhood is predicated of material forms... of plants and animals... as a relation to a child.

Now clearly a relation exists whenever the two correlated terms exist.

Bill Overkamp - thank you for the great post!

Still I somehow feel you have not acknowledged the question‘s full force yet. Let‘s see where we can reach common ground.

1.

ND: "But of course the question could provoke answers from many different philosophical backgrounds - e.g. those, who consider humans to be more than 'things.'"

BO: „It is interesting that you would take what I said to imply that I think of humans as "things." In one sense, of course, the word 'thing' might be used appropriately, in another it is not.“

It is equally interesting that you would take what I said to imply that I think of you as thinking of humans as „things“ - because I did not say that. I just wanted to open up a space of different possible interpretations.

But as you are mentioning it: In what sense, do you think, is the word „thing“ not used appropriatly when referring to humans?

*******************************

2.

BO: „Certainly I do have "a sense of future and past, with fears, hopes, desires and plans for life." But those are not what I am. Fundamentally I am an animal. I suspect that most animals have some sense of past and future. Most have fears, hopes, desires, etc. Some seem to plan.“

This does not answer the question „What if you think of yourself as...?“, since it is not intended as „Do you accept x?“ but as „What if you accept x - would you still hold your above answer?“

However: I could not agree more with you that humans are animals and also share certain traits with other species. But the original question „How long does it take to be yourself“ is not about some fundamental similarity with something else, but specificly about the human being that asks the question - about yourself. One could say: That, which is not a fundamental similarity, matters most for giving a correct answer.

Besides: I know some people ascribe awesome cognitive powers to their pets, but I do not belive, that any other than human species are

- proud or ashamed of their past

- wonder what the future of their species might bring

- experience fear of the fact, that they might die some day

- hope for a happy ending

- plan to „simplefy their life“

- ask questions about themselves

And myself being an Aristotelian in respect of taking culture as humanities nature, I would say: Yes, those traits are exactly what we as humans are. As modern westeners we might want to add „individuality“...

*********************************

3.


BO: „Certainly a neurological process takes time. But I could not have such a process without a body. It is the ***condicio sine qua non*** for any neurological process.“

In biological thinking, that argument could easily be reversed...however, I thought a brain scientist would stick to his apparatus...but of course it is not at all clear, what should be measured to adress the question. Overall not a big point here.

**********************************

4.

ND: "Some other people might say, it is the total of all your experiences, actions, achievements etc. that show "who you really are". In that sense, it would take quite literally a whole lifetime to be yourself."



BO: „Yes, certainly I have enjoyed more of life than I deserve. But at each moment of my life, I have been Bill Overcamp. I never had the illusion of being, say, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Jesus, Socrates, Achilles, Helen of Troy... or for that matter, anyone else. So clearly, underlying each of the many moments in my life there is something common... without which none of those moments could exist... and that is clearly what I am.“

That is a interesting way of dealing with humean scepticism - but that is irrelevant for this quasi-statistical view, since that focuses on the SUM („the total“) of your experiences, actions etc., and does not even ask, what they have in common. It might be compatible with your view, with a more Kantian view or with just being indifferent about it.

The more important point is, that it can only be said retrospectively, who you „really“ are - like you do („But at each moment of my life, I HAVE BEEN Bill Overcamp.“).

But you still could be surprised by your future („I do not know why it took me so long in my life to be able to face the obvious truth that I really am Napoleon!“).

BO: „I clearly recognize that there are boundary questions in identifying that common essence. We do this, however, in talking about oak trees and horses. I see no reason why those same principles would not apply to man. For I am something of a pragmatist.“

I am sympathetic of the pragmatist view. And I do not think it needs to identify the „common essence“, but recognize the special grammatical status of the first person perspective, e.g. using indexicals, being pragmatically immune to error of self-identification, having a „sense of self“ that preceeds all possible experiences...

*****************************************

5.

ND: "And some other people might say, it takes as much time as you are willing to give - and still you can only reach happy moments that will pass. Since the 18th century a still growing number of westeners feel that they have at first to find out what it means to really be themselves and that one has to constantly work not to fail that attempt as one navigates through life."



BO: „This point seems to be but a version of the previous one.“

Well, I do not see them that closely connected.

One difference is, that you cannot fail to be yourself in 4. (the previous), but in this one (5.), you can fail.

Another difference is, that one can only retrospectivly state who you are (were) in 4., but then for sure, while in 5., you need to anticipate yourself in your future and you either might always (on the stronger view necessarily always) fail.

Being yourself in the sense of 5 is a task.

BO: „I don't particularly understand what you mean by "qualitative identity." Are you supposing that there might be someone similar to myself?"

I suppose I have not ruled out this misunderstanding of the destinction I was suggesting.

With „qualitative identity“ I mean roughly - apart from being the same physical body - a sufficiant similarity of properties of an organism over ITS OWN life span. In the case of humans, this qualitative identity is quite complex and even self-transforming. Other than numerical identity, it can be lost.

An Example: When people suffer from later stages of dementia, they undergo significant changes of personality (extreme emotional arousal, deviation from moral beliefs/maxims firmly held before, childlike openness to total strangers...). Of such a person we say: „She is not herself anymore“ or „She is not the woman she used to be.“

The same applies to acts „under the influence“, to cases of „brainwashing“ etc.

Fundamentally qualitative identity is an integral part of our concept of being a person (in the sense of H. Frankfurt).

It also plays a prominent role in our moral lives when we speak of „being integer“, „being authentic“, „being true to oneself“, „being real“ etc.

*************************************

6.

ND: "Another is the different uses of the word 'be.'"



BO: „Aristotle noted ten categories: substance, quantity, place, time, relation, quality, action, passion, position and having. And he recognized transcendental terms, as well. The word 'being' is predicated analogously in each case... so that being a substance is to substance as being a quantity is to quantity; as being a place is to place; etc.
 […] 
In any event, there are as you say, several meanings for the word, 'be.' What meaning applies to myself? Well, clearly I am a top-level material form... an animal, having a body.“

It seems to me, that there are actually only two meanings of the word „to be“ in what you have scetched out:

a. an ontological sense (being an x; Bx)

b. a logical sense of the identity relation (x=y)

Aristotle's definition seems to go something like this:

Bx : x = By : y

Of course the variable in „Bx“ can be substituted by a constant like „human being“ or even „Bill Overkamp“ and then one arrives at the classical ontological sense of „being Bill Overkamp“ - and then there is no difference between that and being a tree or a horse.

Still there are other senses of the word „to be“:

- an existential sense of „Being-in-the-world“. Thomas Nagel has used this notion in asking „What is it like to be a bat?“

- a possessival sense: „This is mine.“ (it belongs to me)

- a space-relational sense: „The cup is on the table.“

Which one(s), do you think, applie(s) in the question „How much time does it take to be yourself?“

*************************************

7.

BO: „Now clearly a relation exists whenever the two correlated terms exist.“

After what has been said - what are the two corrolated terms in „being yourself?“

ND: "But as you are mentioning it: In what sense, do you think, is the word 'thing' not used appropriatly when referring to humans?"

There are many such meanings...

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thing#Noun

The terms frequently would imply something that is not alive... In the law, a thing is something that can be owned.... etc.

ND: "But the original question „How long does it take to be yourself“ is not about some fundamental similarity with something else, but specificly about the human being that asks the question - about yourself."

Right. It doesn't mean being a computer programmer --- which I am --- or about being a good person --- which I hope to be --- or about my having been an instructor at EKU --- which I was. No, the question is about my being a certain substance, a man, something which requires no specific time, but is completely present at each instant of my life.

ND: "In biological thinking, that argument could easily be reversed..."

Not in its essence. The body exists before the brain is formed. True enough, the brain is first among the organs to appear; the heart coming second. Nevertheless, the zygote exists before either of them.

ND: "The more important point is, that it can only be said retrospectively, who you „really“ are - like you do („But at each moment of my life, I HAVE BEEN Bill Overcamp.“). But you still could be surprised by your future („I do not know why it took me so long in my life to be able to face the obvious truth that I really am Napoleon!“).

Well, do you think I am Napoleon? Or maybe Helen of Troy?

For my part, I generally take C. S. Peirce's statement seriously...

"We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."

~ C. S. Peirce; "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities;" ***Journal of Speculative Philosophy*** (1868) 2, 140-157.

So if you wish me to doubt that I am Bill Overcamp you must give me some reason to doubt it... in my heart, as it were.

ND: "One difference is, that you cannot fail to be yourself in 4. (the previous), but in this one (5.), you can fail."

How can I fail to be myself? It makes no sense. No matter where I go, I will find myself there. It can't be helped.

ND: "Of such a person we say: 'She is not herself anymore' or 'She is not the woman she used to be.' The same applies to acts 'under the influence,' to cases of 'brainwashing' etc."

Clearly you are using metaphors. I certainly have no objection to metaphor... but would simply point out that they are what they are.

ND: "It seems to me, that there are actually only two meanings of the word „to be“ in what you have scetched out: a. an ontological sense (being an x; Bx) b. a logical sense of the identity relation (x=y)."

Funny, then, that you go on to name two analogical senses, derived from what I said, the "possessival sense," and the "space-relational sense" corresponding to relation and place, two of Aristotle's Categories. Being "like a bat" is certainly a matter of quality, another of Aristotle's categories.

ND: "After what has been said - what are the two corrolated terms in 'being yourself?'"

You tell me. For my part, it is not a question of relation, but a question of substance.

ND: "Bill Overkamp"

My grandfather changed the spelling of his name... in order to avoid the insults that came from being German. But he was always 'Hermann Overkamp' and always 'Hermann Overcamp.' For the two names refer to the same substance. And it is the substance, not the name which is what he was.

Hello Bill Overcamp,

Sorry for misspelling your name and also for the late reply due to me being away for some time. I hope we can back into the matter...

1.

BO: „Right. It doesn't mean being a computer programmer --- which I am --- or about being a good person --- which I hope to be --- or about my having been an instructor at EKU --- which I was. No, the question is about my being a certain substance, a man, something which requires no specific time, but is completely present at each instant of my life.“

I wonder why you insist so firmly on the notion of substance. Maybe that is a point where we fundamentally disagree.

As someone who would always at first look to check out the space of possibilities in understanding a question, I just could not reduce its possible meanings to a classical ontological sense and not acknowledge e.g. it‘s ethical sense.

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2.

BO: „Not in its essence. The body exists before the brain is formed. True enough, the brain is first among the organs to appear; the heart coming second. Nevertheless, the zygote exists before either of them.“

I do not suppose you want to argue, that a zygote is a human body without a brain? But since you bring this biological phase up: Do you think that the very zygote, out of which you developed, was „a certain substance, a man, something which requires no specific time, but is completely present at each instant of my life.“?

If not: your answer to the question needs to be rephrased.

If yes: We might have a fundamental disagreement about the notion of „potential“, which in the ancient sense was conceived as something already determined but just not yet realized - but in the modern sense is mostly understood as not entierly determinded and in the case of humans in need of being realized in a genuine self-creative process.

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3.

BO: „Well, do you think I am Napoleon? Or maybe Helen of Troy?

For my part, I generally take C. S. Peirce's statement seriously...

"We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."

~ C. S. Peirce; "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities;" ***Journal of Speculative Philosophy*** (1868) 2, 140-157. 

So if you wish me to doubt that I am Bill Overcamp you must give me some reason to doubt it... in my heart, as it were.“

To repeat myself: this is not about Cartesian scepticism, but about the uncertainty of your own future. It is not at all about believing to be someone else, but about believing what kind of unique human being you are which is practically important for the possibilities you would consider to be YOUR possibilities. Would you deny that how you believe yourself to be is practically relevant for you?

It seems to me one of the most commonly acknowledged facts in modern times, that we at some point find out, that we might not be the kind of person with the kind of future that our parents, peers etc. might have planned for us, but that we want to find out for ourselves!

Imagine a young person, struggling to find her own voice and her own way, seeking your advice - and your answer: „Why, you are always you (Name), and not someone else. And don‘t let Cartesian Scepticism distract you.“

Besindes: It does not matter, who I believe you to be right now - the question is what you believe to be or become in the future.

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4.

BO: „How can I fail to be myself? It makes no sense. No matter where I go, I will find myself there. It can't be helped.“

Yes, of course - in a grammatical sense that‘s true and I did not doubt that. I was just trying to show you a different way of understanding the question - not in a ontological, but in an ethical way. I have given some examples (dementia, intoxication...).

I could give some more examples in literature: Tolstois „The death of Ivan Iljitsch“ - a well acomplished protagonist dies of a sudden sickness and realizes he has completly wasted his life being inauthentic, „not really being himself“. Also many books by Philip Roth deal with issues like this.

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5.

ND: "Of such a person we say: 'She is not herself anymore' or 'She is not the woman she used to be.' The same applies to acts 'under the influence,' to cases of 'brainwashing' etc.

"

BO: „Clearly you are using metaphors. I certainly have no objection to metaphor... but would simply point out that they are what they are.“

Pointing that out seems irrelevant (if not banal) to me - that does not affect the sincerity of what is being said and it‘s significance for our lives.

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7.

ND: "It seems to me, that there are actually only two meanings of the word „to be“ in what you have scetched out:

a. an ontological sense (being an x; Bx)

b. a logical sense of the identity relation (x=y).

"

BO: „Funny, then, that you go on to name two analogical senses, derived from what I said, the "possessival sense," and the "space-relational sense" corresponding to relation and place, two of Aristotle's Categories. Being "like a bat" is certainly a matter of quality, another of Aristotle's categories.“

I did not derive those senses from what you said, but gave alternatives.

How are the „possessival sense“ („This is mine“) and the „space-relational sense“ („The cup is on the table“) analogical?

Nagels question was not about being „like a bat“ but what it is like to be a bat: Would it be intellegible to us, how a bat experiences reality?

If you so lightly connect that „what it is like“ to the Aristotelian category of quality, why do you claim not to understand „qualitative identity“ apart from numerical identitiy?

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8.

ND: "After what has been said - what are the two corrolated terms in 'being yourself?'

"

BO: „You tell me. For my part, it is not a question of relation, but a question of substance.“

I take it that you want to handle „being yourself“ and „being a farther“ as two different cases, „farther“ being a relation, „being yourself“ being a substantial. However, both possibilities are beside the point when considering the ethical (some might say: existential) questions, what it means, to be a farther or to be oneself.

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I am not clear about where the discussion is going.

This - even though I enjoy the giving and taking of reasons - could be due to some fundamental differences or misunderstandings, so I‘ll try to change the mode:

- I do not really want to prove anything - and your answer to the question is fine. Neither do I want to challange any of your views. I am into exploring possibilities and would simply like you to acknowledge a different possibility.

- I thought the ethical sense of the question would be quite obvious and one could just enjoy to vexate between possible meanings of the question. It is hard to imagine, that a person of your learning would not recognize the rich philosophical tradition that I am referring to (Rousseau, Herder, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Charles Taylor). But of course I cannot „make you see it“.

- The dynamic conception of nature was developed around the time of Newton, also by Spinoza and then taking off into the whole of European culture. The static cosmological conception of the ancients - Aristotle among them - is hardly compatible with that view. The sense of „becoming oneself“ is deeply rooted in our modern culture - but would have been unintellegible to the ancients. Do you agree?

- Would you deny, that there are ways to be true to oneself and also ways of self-delusion, moral failure, inner conflict and akrasy? If yes - why would that not matter to your sense of self?

Thanks already for a deep discussion...

Greetz, Nicolas Dierks

ND: "I wonder why you insist so firmly on the notion of substance. Maybe that is a point where we fundamentally disagree."

A substance is the proper subject in any thing. By substance, I mean something like a man or a horse. A substance is not a property of something else... but exists in itself. You seem to be more interested in properties than in substance... in having than in being. So perhaps you should ask how long it takes to acquire this or that.

ND: "I do not suppose you want to argue, that a zygote is a human body without a brain? But since you bring this biological phase up: Do you think that the very zygote, out of which you developed, was „a certain substance, a man, something which requires no specific time, but is completely present at each instant of my life?“

I think it a biological fact that a zygote can divide into identical twins. I think it also well proven that one man may consist of two clones formed from different zygotes (fraternal twins) who merged into one body. The most extreme example of the latter is seen in Siamese twins... but there are also cases of perfectly normal-looking men who represent multiple clones.

Is a zygote a substance? Certainly. According to Aristotle, a part of a substance is a substance... Thus a hand or a foot is a substance by virtue of its being a part.

But are you asking my opinion with regard to the political question of whether life begins at conception?

Certainly a human zygote is human. Indeed, the sperm and egg from which it forms were human before joining to form it.

Certainly a living zygote is alive. The living zygote is the continuation of the life of the sperm and egg... so I would say that life continues at conception. The entire process from the development of sperm and egg to the birth of a child and beyond until death is a continuous one.

I think it clear that there is a short period after conception during which a zygote is not 'this man,' Socrates, but such a man, potentially Socrates or whoever. By 'short period' I mean a few days... during which the zygote may divide, or two zygotes may merge. Not being a biologist, I can not tell what exactly that means. But it is clear that within a short period the brain starts to form and starts taking control of things. Probably the brain's first task is to take control of the developing heart... thus the psychic life of the individual begins.

ND: "To repeat myself: this is not about Cartesian scepticism, but about the uncertainty of your own future. It is not at all about believing to be someone else, but about believing what kind of unique human being you are which is practically important for the possibilities you would consider to be YOUR possibilities."

How could I not be me? It makes little sense, for whatever I am, that is what I am.

ND: "I could give some more examples in literature: Tolstois „The death of Ivan Iljitsch“ - a well acomplished protagonist dies of a sudden sickness and realizes he has completly wasted his life being inauthentic, „not really being himself“. Also many books by Philip Roth deal with issues like this."

People write books about all sorts of fictional situations. I can certainly suppose that one who is dying might fantasize how he might have been different than he was. But even such a fantasy makes no sense apart from the reality of who such a man is... a man having a fantasy. Take away the man having the fantasy and you take away the story.

ND: "Pointing that out seems irrelevant (if not banal) to me - that does not affect the sincerity of what is being said and it‘s significance for our lives."

Not at all. Men often think in terms of metaphor. Much of literature is about constructing extended metaphors. Without metaphor much of life would become (to use your word) "banal."

ND: "Nagels question was not about being 'like a bat' but what it is like to be a bat: Would it be intellegible to us, how a bat experiences reality?

And that would seem to be a question of the affections. To experience bat reality one would need to have some sense of the types of phantasms (mental images) a bat has. To do that we would need to know the qualia appropriate to a bat's life.

ND: "If you so lightly connect that 'what it is like' to the Aristotelian category of quality, why do you claim not to understand 'qualitative identity' apart from numerical identitiy?"

I don't know why you say "so lightly connect." If two things are alike, it would seem to be because of some likeness between them. For example, they might both be green. Lacking anything else to call it, I would refer to such likeness as one of quality. What would you have me call it?

I think what I said was "I don't particularly understand what you mean by 'qualitative identity.' Are you supposing that there might be someone similar to myself?"

Indeed, there are people who share certain properties with myself. But along with similarities go differences. And those differences negate any identity underlying the similarities.

ND: "However, both possibilities are beside the point when considering the ethical (some might say: existential) questions, what it means, to be a farther or to be oneself."

I don't know how ethics enters into my being myself... since my being myself is simply a fact of life, as it were. So far as being a father goes... the question seems relevant to my life only in terms of my children. So yes, that is a relationship.

ND: "the static cosmological conception of the ancients..."

I am not sure what you mean by that... or how it is relevant. The ancients certainly acknowledged the fact that the heavens move. Obviously they understood the matter differently then we do. In many ways they believed that there was more movement in the heavens than we do... thus they thought stars rotate around the earth in 24 hours... something barely imaginable in modern terms.

ND: "The sense of 'becoming oneself' is deeply rooted in our modern culture."

Surely you would not want to think of things according to modern culture? The world today is the very opposite of philosophy. No, you may keep MTV for yourself.

ND: "Would you deny, that there are ways to be true to oneself and also ways of self-delusion, moral failure, inner conflict and akrasy? If yes - why would that not matter to your sense of self?"

I think that men can create fantasies for themselves. I suppose that there is a great temptation to do so "in our modern culture." If I am capable of doing that, I'm sure others can do so. In the best scenarios, we learn from our imagination.

Regarding to their being a sense of self... Aristotle spoke of the common sense by which certain things such as motion are perceived. For motion is clearly not limited to any one sense so as to be proper to it. Rather, all the senses enable us to construct a phantasm (mental image) including motion as one of its properties.

In a similar way, we perceive space and time through the common perceptions of all the senses. We see things in space, but we hear them in space, as well... and we feel our bodies as extended in space.

And time, likewise is perceived through changes noted by all the senses.

Aristotle thus noted three ways that we perceive... (1) through a proper sense. Thus we perceive color through vision; we perceive sound through hearing; hot and cold, through touch, etc. (2) through the common sense by which we construct mental perceptions of motion, space, time, etc. (3) we perceive incidentally when, for example, we perceive that a certain object is Socrates.

So how do we sense the self? I would suppose it to be through the common sense. It seems most reasonable to suppose that it would be beneficial to an animal that it have some way to identify itself on a very basic, perceptual level. Clearly such a perception is not the object of any one sense. Nor is the identification incidental.

I would, however, suppose it differs in some ways from other things belonging to the common sense, for it might also seem to include the objects of one's imagination in ways not required for the perception of space, time, motion, etc.

Come to think of it... the perception of time might also seem to include the objects of imagination.

BO: Time certainly is a dimension in the sense that it is one of the fundamental measurements physics recognizes, along with length, mass, charge, and temperature...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis

I don't agree. Physical entities, in other words, matter can be examined under the angle of how it changes under impact of various conditions, to which belong: electric charge, temperature, pressure, humidity and many others. Length and mass may results from any of the aforesaid conditions. Thus, its dimensions are to be changed.

AL: "Of course. BTW time cannot be so-called fourth dimension because if one travels in any of them needs time (motion)."

BO: In speaking of four-dimensional space-time,

There is no four dimensional space. Space-time does not exists. It's just space.

BO: physicists are not imagining that things move apart from time.

This sentence has no sense. Time automatically accompanies anything (everything is in motion), as time = motion.

BO: They are simply employing certain computational benefits obtained through tensor calculus etc. Is this understanding beyond you?

No. In mathematics you can treat time as a separate value. In nature you can't do anything with it, because time is bound with matter. I maintain my stance. There are only tree dimensions in nature that we can experience.

AL: "This sentence has no sense. Time automatically accompanies anything (everything is in motion), as time = motion."

Perhaps you didn't notice the word 'not' in what I wrote?

AL: "No. In mathematics you can treat time as a separate value. In nature you can't do anything with it, because time is bound with matter. I maintain my stance. There are only tree dimensions in nature that we can experience."

OK, you don't understand Dimensional Analysis... that's OK... it is a difficult abstraction and not everyone is capable of getting it.

I certainly agree with you that place and time are fundamentally different abstractions. Certainly physicists do not treat place and time identically... as the more extreme interpretations suggest.

BO: Perhaps you didn't notice the word 'not' in what I wrote?

Sorry

BO: OK, you don't understand Dimensional Analysis... that's OK... it is a difficult abstraction and not everyone is capable of getting it.

Unfortunately, I can't find any analogy to dimensions as a measure of spatial extent. It seems this notion bears sound resemblance but not semantic one.

What 'Dimensional Analysis' tell us is that if two quantities are equal, then they must be measured in the same units.

For example, suppose that the temperature of a given sample is increasing at 5 degrees per second. Then whatever is equated to 5 degrees per second must be measured in degrees per second. You can't equate that to 5 degrees per meter, for example. That wouldn't make sense, since the units (or dimensions) are different.

So if one looks at any equation (say E=MC^2, for example) one must find the same units (or dimensions) on both sides of the equation.

The basic idea was recognized by Isaac Newton. He called it the Great Principle of Similitude: Similar measurements are measured with similar 'dimensions' ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis#Great_Principle_of_Similitude

AL: "Unfortunately, I can't find any analogy to dimensions as a measure of spatial extent. It seems this notion bears sound resemblance but not semantic one."

Well, the usage is well established in physics. There is no physical "analogy" between different dimensions... but there are purely mathematical analogies. A dimension is the basis for a measurement: length, duration (time), mass, temperature, and electric charge. I suppose that given the current state of physics... (the Standard Model) one probably should include Color charge...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge

Strangeness...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangeness

etc... though perhaps, given the current state of physics, few if any general equations involve those measures.

The primary way the idea of dimensions is used is in Dimensional Analysis. It is certainly useful to have some common name for the various measurements... and the name that has been used is 'dimensions.' The term is certainly useful to mathematics... Dimensional analysis is fundamentally the result of mathematical, rather than physical considerations. To compare two measurements one must use the same units. One can not, for example, compare meters per second squared to anything but meters per second squared. Any formula which would do so can immediately be rejected on mathematical grounds without considering any physical arguments or experiments.

So if a physicist wakes up from a dream and writes down some wonderful formula that came to him in his dream, he can quickly determine whether the formula makes any sense, mathematically... without knowing what it means physically.

#H1-424. Forms of human orientation.

H-GEN-1. Bill Overcamp, Jul 14, 2011 11:41 pm. Color charge, Strangeness, and so on(charm, topness?, bottomness?): I also have the doubt as to if these could constitute dimensions. But it seems (thanks for the links you provided) these act at very short distances, and perhaps have no practical existence beyond the atomic nuclei. As you say:

Is there a likelihod we may end up finding meaning in having to give primary status to "local" and "insignificant" also, as we usually do for "universal" and "absolute"?

Dimensionality is a mathematical concept. Physicists apply that concept in a variety of ways. Frequently the application is purely mathematical and bears no resemblance to length, breadth and depth.

From my own perspective, I look upon electric charge, color charge, strangeness, etc. as qualities of material forms. Unlike Aristotle's category of qualities, my own theory of quality attaches qualities as properties to things in another category.

Electric charge is certainly dimensional in the sense that it is additive... we add together the number of charges in a body with positive and negative charges canceling out, to get some overall charge, either positive or negative. Having calculated the charge of a body we can then use that number in equations.

I do not know that physicists use color charge, strangeness, charm, etc. additively. Given an object, say a ping pong ball, we can figure out its electrical charge; but do physicists ever speak of the color charge or strangeness of a ping pong ball? Probably everything balances out in particles much bigger than a speck of dust, so these properties are effectively cancelled out, making it impossible to measure them.

But who am I to say?

Hello Bill Overcamp,

continuing an ongoing discussion...

BO: "A substance is the proper subject in any thing. By substance, I mean something like a man or a horse. A substance is not a property of something else... but exists in itself. You seem to be more interested in properties than in substance... in having than in being. So perhaps you should ask how long it takes to acquire this or that."

So indeed we have fundamental differences in our theoretical commitments. I am not sure, the question can at all be properly adressed in the ways you do. Maybe that is why your answer seems to me pointless - regardless of the many interesting things you add to the discussion.

Of course the question is about BEING a person in the full sense, not HAVING the property of personhood. To be a person in the full sense you have to acquire skills and means (like being able to make long-term plans, to arrange your life, to take responsibility) in order to be able to lead the life of a person. Children need to BECOME persons in order to take self-responsibility, to vote, to have the right to adopt a child etc.).

It seems to be the division between substance and property operating on the concept of a self or a person that leads to shortcomings in the answers (Aristotle did not have a concept of a self, so he did not have that problem).

BO: "Is a zygote a substance? Certainly. According to Aristotle, a part of a substance is a substance... Thus a hand or a foot is a substance by virtue of its being a part."

The issue is interesting, but vastly misleading here. I just thought, when you said "No, the question is about my being a certain substance, a man, something which requires no specific time, but is completely present at each instant of my life." that referring to the zygote that you have developed out of would show that also "being a man" is something which takes time. Referring to male chromosomes does not touch on this, since it is still a "male zygote" which will eventually become a boy and later on a man. However, I do not think this to be primarily important.

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ND: "To repeat myself: this is not about Cartesian scepticism, but about the uncertainty of your own future. It is not at all about believing to be someone else, but about believing what kind of unique human being you are which is practically important for the possibilities you would consider to be YOUR possibilities."



BO: "How could I not be me? It makes little sense, for whatever I am, that is what I am.
"

Again it seems, as if your concept of substance is blocking your understanding of the issue. If the only sense for the concept of a self or a person you can imagine is that of an unchanging substance without properties (which I thought to be under severe theoretical pressure since Kants critique of Descartes Paralogism), then no answer about change, about differences, about processes etc. will make sense to you.

Are you familiar with the two different uses of the word "I", the first referring to the body of the speaker (I am 6 feet tall), the second one expressing the speakers feelings, thoughts etc. (I am in pain, I want to do this). The second one is non-referential in expressing the first person stance. Now this does not require explanation by the notion of a substance and it is also something aquired.

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BO: "People write books about all sorts of fictional situations. I can certainly suppose that one who is dying might fantasize how he might have been different than he was. But even such a fantasy makes no sense apart from the reality of who such a man is... a man having a fantasy. Take away the man having the fantasy and you take away the story."

People write books about real situations, too - and even fictional situations might tell a very true story, how we, as humans are. And again: This is not about "taking away the man"! It is about seeing through one's own self-deceit. And again: This self-reflecting behavior cannot be grasped with ancient distinctions, since they did not have a concept of a self.

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BO: "I think what I said was "I don't particularly understand what you mean by 'qualitative identity.' Are you supposing that there might be someone similar to myself?"

No, not at all. By "qualitative identity" I mean a similarity of yourself at one moment in life to yourself in another moment in your life. But of course, as long as you detache the notion of "being yourself" from anything that can change (e.g. properties), the concept of qualitative identity of a self makes no sense (because it makes only sense, if something can change at all).

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BO: "I don't know how ethics enters into my being myself... since my being myself is simply a fact of life, as it were."

And I see why: If "being myself" is reduced to being a substance existing in itself, it does not actually take part in life.

But the basic question of ethics is something like "What should I do?" For Orientation we (as Humans) have scales of evaluation and we grade ourselves (and others) according to those scales. A person not being able to make ethical (not "moral", not necessarily our) distinctions at all, we would not see as a person in the full sense. But of course you would consider him to be a substance. But being a substance is not being a person in the full sense.

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BO: "I am not sure what you mean by that... or how it is relevant. The ancients certainly acknowledged the fact that the heavens move. Obviously they understood the matter differently then we do. In many ways they believed that there was more movement in the heavens than we do... thus they thought stars rotate around the earth in 24 hours... something barely imaginable in modern terms"

By "static cosmological conception" I am referring to the fact, that for most ancient greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) the cosmos was "ready-made". Today (basically since Francis Bacon) we see it as something changing, where things can emerge that did not even exist as an idea (Platon) or as a formal potentia (Aristotle) before. This is connected with the idea of the possibility (and value) of genuine human invention - and self-invention.

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BO: "Surely you would not want to think of things according to modern culture? The world today is the very opposite of philosophy. No, you may keep MTV for yourself."

By "modern culture" I am referring to a pluralistic cultural background that is fundamental not just for MTV, but also for modern science, literature and the arts, technology, politics, economics and possibly even Bill Overcamp.

To all those aspects of modern culture the self-understanding as individuals, who have - at least in principal - an open future of what they might become, which is partly theirs to choose or make, is a very common view. That is a deep difference to ancient greek times.

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BO:" In a similar way, we perceive space and time through the common perceptions of all the senses. We see things in space, but we hear them in space, as well... and we feel our bodies as extended in space.

 And time, likewise is perceived through changes noted by all the senses."

How can one explain to "perceive space" or "perceive time" without already presupposing the concepts of space and time? Does it make sense to imagine someone, who has never perceived time, and then then gives a report of her first encouter ("Wow, now THAT is time! I have never perceived it before!")

If "time" should at all be considered as a single concept, then the Kantian alternative seems to me more promising (Time and Space as necessary preconditions for any perception, actually as the form which all our perceptions have).

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BO: "So how do we sense the self? I would suppose it to be through the common sense. It seems most reasonable to suppose that it would be beneficial to an animal that it have some way to identify itself on a very basic, perceptual level. Clearly such a perception is not the object of any one sense. Nor is the identification incidental.

I would, however, suppose it differs in some ways from other things belonging to the common sense, for it might also seem to include the objects of one's imagination in ways not required for the perception of space, time, motion, etc.

Come to think of it... the perception of time might also seem to include the objects of imagination"

I do not think it sensible to consider the self as something perceived: Because also in that case the self is that which perceives. It is like this: you can look at yourself in the mirror, but you cannot find there the root of your perspective. This is why the subject-object-conception has been heavily criticized in theories of self-consciousness.

ND: "So indeed we have fundamental differences in our theoretical commitments. I am not sure, the question can at all be properly adressed in the ways you do. Maybe that is why your answer seems to me pointless - regardless of the many interesting things you add to the discussion."

Well, would you agree with Georg Barkley, that there are no substances, but only qualities --- disconnected from any hypokeimena? Or do you suppose there is a substrate, but think it unimportant? Science, of course, assumes that there is some kind of substrate and devotes the greatest effort in describing it as best as can be done.

ND: "Children need to BECOME persons in order to take self-responsibility, to vote, to have the right to adopt a child etc.)."

Certainly children need to learn good citizenship. But are you saying that people who do not learn good citizenship are not persons?

My son is 34 years old. He is mentally retarded and seems to think like a two or three year old child might. Is he not a person? I certainly consider him to be one.

Are criminals not persons? Some criminals are highly educated. Are such people not persons?

What should we do with people who are not persons?

ND: "(Aristotle did not have a concept of a self, so he did not have that problem)."

I really wonder what you mean by that... As I understand it Ancient Greek did use the middle voice to express reflexive verbs and it recognized first person verbs, as well. I am sure Aristotle had no problem thinking of himself... he certainly gives the impression of one who was very proud of his personal accomplishments, as well. It is hard for me to see how he could have done that if he had no concept of himself.

ND: "I just thought, when you said 'No, the question is about my being a certain substance, a man, something which requires no specific time, but is completely present at each instant of my life.' that referring to the zygote that you have developed out of would show that also 'being a man' is something which takes time."

Well, let me try again... I either was such a zygote at one time or I was not. I am not particularly insistent in claiming to know the exact moment at which I began to be... but science clearly shows that the zygote acquires its essential unity within a few days of conception. After that point it can no longer divide to form identical twins; it can no longer merge with another zygote. When the zygote from which I developed reached that stage I can not in any way disassociate myself from it... I was once what it was. I know of nothing which science can point to which needed to be added to it to make it myself. So the burden of proof is on the one who would claim that it was essentially different from me. What is science not seeing?

ND: "Again it seems, as if your concept of substance is blocking your understanding of the issue. If the only sense for the concept of a self or a person you can imagine is that of an unchanging substance without properties..."

Certainly every substance (with the possible exception of god) has properties. Some properties of substance are inherent to a substance. Some properties are not inherent to it, but are said to be accidental to it. Now clearly substances do change in the sense that they acquire different properties. For example, most men are born bald (My parents always told me that I was not born bald, but had a great deal of hair when I was born, so I am an exception.) but they grow hair later... and may yet become bald as they grow old... (And yes, I still have my blond hair though I am getting a bit up in years... my beard, however, has turned white.)

So clearly substances do change.

ND: "Are you familiar with the two different uses of the word "I", the first referring to the body of the speaker (I am 6 feet tall), the second one expressing the speakers feelings, thoughts etc. (I am in pain, I want to do this). The second one is non-referential in expressing the first person stance. Now this does not require explanation by the notion of a substance and it is also something aquired."

I suppose that one may fantasize himself as not having a body... but so far as I am aware, even people in mental institutions really do have bodies. Science investigates these matters. Antonio Damasio, for example, seems to associate feelings and thoughts with something he calls the 'body.' I tend to agree with him. So I suspect that when you talk about your feelings you are, in fact, referring to that same 6 foot tall body which you seem to associate with yourself. Indeed, what is it that feels pain, if not a body? And when you want to do this or that, I suspect that, once again, you are referring to that same 6 foot tall body mentioned above.

I am not at all sure how one can disassociate himself from his body. I have been reading ***Cartesian Meditations*** by Edmund Husserl...

http://www.researchgate.net/group/Husserl/board/thread/15740_Cartesian_Meditations?page1=6&sort1=creationDate+asc

Clearly he seems to think that his fantasy of himself can somehow be disassociated from his body. He seems to think that if he just ignores his body 'parenthesizing it' it will somehow go away. Surely his body patiently sat there while he fantasized its epoché. I can not help but wonder what a scientist would have thought seeing him sitting around thus fantasizing. Did his body really disappear while he meditated?

We see similar claims coming from Eastern mysticism. If we meditate in such a way, we will somehow become disassociated from our bodies. But scientists studying such meditation do not report missing bodies. They report on things like heart rate, blood pressure, etc. but no missing bodies... at least in any reports I have read about.

ND: "This self-reflecting behavior cannot be grasped with ancient distinctions, since they did not have a concept of a self."

Once again, I would note that the ancients did have such a concept. It seems bizarre to think otherwise.

ND: "No, not at all. By "qualitative identity" I mean a similarity of yourself at one moment in life to yourself in another moment in your life. But of course, as long as you detache the notion of "being yourself" from anything that can change (e.g. properties), the concept of qualitative identity of a self makes no sense (because it makes only sense, if something can change at all)."

But as I have pointed out, I do change. It seems silly to think otherwise. The important thing is not in identifying what changes, but in identifying what remains the same. That is where the challenge is.

ND: "If "being myself" is reduced to being a substance existing in itself, it does not actually take part in life."

I suspect that even a hermit living in a cave --- no wait, I will go one step further --- I suspect that even Edmund Husserl in the depths of epoché continued breathing like other men. Does one have a choice? If one is to live then he must take part in life. It would seem silly to think otherwise. Certainly I am involved in life.

ND: "But being a substance is not being a person in the full sense."

I never doubt that a man is a person in the full sense... but earlier you did express such doubt in supposing that children somehow become persons... and clearly you would exclude someone like my son. Whenever I go to visit my son I see another young man who extends his hand to me. I always shake it. I have no doubt that he is as much of a man as I, though he is severely disabled... in a wheelchair and unable to feed himself or take care of himself in a number of other... let us say, intimate ways. I honor him as a man and as a person... It is precisely because a recognize in him the same essence as I see in myself or my son, that I honor him.

ND: "By "static cosmological conception" I am referring to the fact, that for most ancient greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) the cosmos was "ready-made". Today (basically since Francis Bacon) we see it as something changing, where things can emerge that did not even exist as an idea (Platon) or as a formal potentia (Aristotle) before. This is connected with the idea of the possibility (and value) of genuine human invention - and self-invention."

Well I hate to break your bubble, but actually, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle seem to have been exceptions. They hardly represent "most ancient greek philosophers." In some sense, Pythagoras might be put alongside Plato; and in some sense, Parmenides inspired Socrates... but those associations were very limited in scope. After Alexander died, Aristotle fled Athens. His ideas were quickly abandoned... not to be revived until Ammonius Saccas began the Neo-Platonic revival. Eventually, the Islamic Golden Age brought about a second revival... and then the Scholastics came on the scene with a third revival.

I might like to fantasize a fourth revival, but that is just a dream of mine.

In any events, the ancients generally believed as you do... Socrates said that Parmenides alone, of all the wise men before him believed that the world was more than change and motion. The Stoics who followed believed that the world is nothing but bodies in motion... So the evidence is against you.

ND: "To all those aspects of modern culture the self-understanding as individuals, who have - at least in principal - an open future of what they might become, which is partly theirs to choose or make, is a very common view. That is a deep difference to ancient greek times."

The question is not whether the future is somehow 'open' but whether it is based on something solid. Science tells us that it is.

ND: "How can one explain to 'perceive space' or 'perceive time' without already presupposing the concepts of space and time? Does it make sense to imagine someone, who has never perceived time, and then then gives a report of her first encouter ('Wow, now THAT is time! I have never perceived it before!')"

I am not sure what you are saying... Certainly babies develop concepts gradually. Undoubtedly they are born with some pre-defined potential for learning about space and time. It just makes sense that an animal would need such potency. We see that in other species. An antelope, for example, must be up running with the herd within a very short time from birth. Such an animal must have that ability pre-defined. I am sure it is the same in men, though human babies develop more slowly.

Clearly we use space and time long before we know the words 'space' and 'time.' Clearly space and time were there all along as we learn about them.

ND: "I do not think it sensible to consider the self as something perceived: Because also in that case the self is that which perceives. It is like this: you can look at yourself in the mirror, but you cannot find there the root of your perspective. This is why the subject-object-conception has been heavily criticized in theories of self-consciousness."

Yes, but you don't even think the ancient philosophers were smart enough to have had such a concept.

I suppose if the self is some bit of fluff, unassociated with real life, you may be right. But I am talking about real life. It seems useful that an animal would recognize itself. Such recognition is not necessarily a concept... rather it is more a matter of behaviors associated with feelings. Thus an animal would react differently if its leg were caught in a trap, than if the leg of another animal were caught in a trap. Such recognition is not derived exclusively from any one sense, but is created through all the senses. The senses together form images (or phantasms) of what the self is at any particular moment... that is to say of the condition of the body at any moment.

Hello Bill Overcamp,

I detect some negative emotion towards my comments in your post - I am sorry if I have said something to offend you and hope I can sort out what might have been a misunderstanding.

1.

BO: „ Well, would you agree with Georg Barkley, that there are no substances, but only qualities --- disconnected from any hypokeimena? Or do you suppose there is a substrate, but think it unimportant? Science, of course, assumes that there is some kind of substrate and devotes the greatest effort in describing it as best as can be done.“

No, I do not agree with George Berkeley, that things are only perceptions and do not exist independendly of our perceptions of them. We do have the concept of e.g. „material object“ and that concept includes exactly, that a material object exists also if not perceived.

However, I think the alternatives of either things being substances with qualities or things being composed of qualities but without substance both equally misconceived.

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2.

BO: „Certainly children need to learn good citizenship. But are you saying that people who do not learn good citizenship are not persons?

My son is 34 years old. He is mentally retarded and seems to think like a two or three year old child might. Is he not a person? I certainly consider him to be one.

Are criminals not persons? Some criminals are highly educated. Are such people not persons? 

What should we do with people who are not persons?“

Obviously this is not about the common sense word „person“ like in „I agree with this person“, but about a philosophically interesting status of humans, which is commonly called personhood.

The point is not about „good citizenship“, but is meant to show, that being a person in the full sense is something else than just happening to be alive as a human being.

If someone lacks (for whatever reason) the capabilities, that we consider to be essential for personhood, she could e.g. not be allowed to get a driver‘s licence, to join the military, to adopt a child etc.

My older Son is 3 years old. He is not a person in the full sense yet. My grandfather, suffering from demetia, was in his late days no longer a person in the full sense.

The fact, that some people are not persons in the full sense, does not alter our moral responsibility towards them and certainly does not affect our feelings towards them. I honored my grandfather literally to his last hours.

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3.

BO: „I really wonder what you mean by that... As I understand it Ancient Greek did use the middle voice to express reflexive verbs and it recognized first person verbs, as well. I am sure Aristotle had no problem thinking of himself... he certainly gives the impression of one who was very proud of his personal accomplishments, as well. It is hard for me to see how he could have done that if he had no concept of himself.“

I did not say, that he did not have a „concept of himself“, but not a „concept of a self“ - that means e.g. as a self-reflexive substance, the „I“ or the „Ego“ etc.

Did not Aristotle even argue against the seperate existence of a „soul“?

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4.

BO: „ Well, let me try again... I either was such a zygote at one time or I was not. I am not particularly insistent in claiming to know the exact moment at which I began to be... but science clearly shows that the zygote acquires its essential unity within a few days of conception. After that point it can no longer divide to form identical twins; it can no longer merge with another zygote. When the zygote from which I developed reached that stage I can not in any way disassociate myself from it... I was once what it was. I know of nothing which science can point to which needed to be added to it to make it myself. So the burden of proof is on the one who would claim that it was essentially different from me. What is science not seeing?“

You said you were a „man“ at every moment of your life. You think that biologists see no difference between a zygote and a man?

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5.

BO: „Some properties of substance are inherent to a substance.“

„So clearly substances do change.“

I remember you defining „substance“ as something without properties, existing in itself. I might have understood you incorrectly.

Now, would you claim that a self is a substance without inherent properties? Is a self a substance that can change?

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6.

BO: „So I suspect that when you talk about your feelings you are, in fact, referring to that same 6 foot tall body which you seem to associate with yourself. Indeed, what is it that feels pain, if not a body? And when you want to do this or that, I suspect that, once again, you are referring to that same 6 foot tall body mentioned above.“

You completely missunderstood me, and I think also Husserl. The whole issue is not about „dissociating from the body“, but about changing the aspect of a discription!

The expressive use of the first person pronoun is not an ontological claim! It is a change of semantical aspect. It is a change in what one is talking about.

Would you claim, that in talking about oneself, one can only talk about the body?

Husserl did not think, that his body will in any way disappear! He was making a methodological step by saying: let‘s not make any existential (ontological) claims, but only describe what we actually perceive - only „phenomena“ and see what we end up with.

***********************************

7.

BO: „Once again, I would note that the ancients did have such a concept. It seems bizarre to think otherwise.“

They of course has pracitical means of reflective behavior. But they did not have a theoretical concept of a self to explain self-reflective behavior. If you think otherwise - show me some theoretical passage to prove it.



**********************************

8.

BO: „But as I have pointed out, I do change. It seems silly to think otherwise. The important thing is not in identifying what changes, but in identifying what remains the same. That is where the challenge is.“

Now were getting somewhere. Your original position seemed to be, that there is no challange because you always are yourself anyway. But the challange of identifying what remains the same sounds more appropriate to the original question „How much time does it take to be yourself?“ To achieve qualitative identity is exactly that challange! Being able to integrate stages of life is essential to the life of a person - and so persons can say: "to become oneself"

*********************************

9.

BO: „ I suspect that even a hermit living in a cave --- no wait, I will go one step further --- I suspect that even Edmund Husserl in the depths of epoché continued breathing like other men. Does one have a choice? If one is to live then he must take part in life. It would seem silly to think otherwise. Certainly I am involved in life.“

Certainly you are - and that seems to suggest, that you are not a substance without properties that exists in itself (- like you said before. Of course in the meantime you have altered that definition).

***********************************

10.

BO: „I never doubt that a man is a person in the full sense... but earlier you did express such doubt in supposing that children somehow become persons... and clearly you would exclude someone like my son. Whenever I go to visit my son I see another young man who extends his hand to me. I always shake it. I have no doubt that he is as much of a man as I, though he is severely disabled... in a wheelchair and unable to feed himself or take care of himself in a number of other... let us say, intimate ways. I honor him as a man and as a person... It is precisely because a recognize in him the same essence as I see in myself or my son, that I honor him.“

As I have said above, by „person in the full sense“ I do not mean the common notion of person that can be substituted by „man“, "woman" or „human being“ but someone who has acquired personhood.

Also moral responsibilities, affections etc. towards human non-persons do not differ from those towards persons. Not being a person is not a „moral downgrading“ in any way.

For more I recommend the Passage on „Personhood“ in the Stanford Encyclopeadia article on „personal Identitiy“

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

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11.

BO: „In any events, the ancients generally believed as you do... Socrates said that Parmenides alone, of all the wise men before him believed that the world was more than change and motion. The Stoics who followed believed that the world is nothing but bodies in motion... So the evidence is against you.“

I am not claiming, they did not conceive of motion or change in general! My claim regards the conception of the cosmos being readily made or conceptionalized. E.g. the Demiurg of Plato is not a creating God, but a Craftsmen who makes things according to a preexisting plan. The same holds for Aristotle.

You might be right about those two being exceptions - however we where basically discussing those - so my „bubble“ is about those. And you would still have to point out me a passage by an ancient greek that discribes the cosmos as something emerging in unknown ways, to evolution etc.

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12.

BO: „The question is not whether the future is somehow 'open' but whether it is based on something solid. Science tells us that it is.“

If someone is struggling with his life and his personal identity, and consideres it to be a human right to choose her own future - how can the question of the openness of the future not matter?

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13.

BO: „Clearly we use space and time long before we know the words 'space' and 'time.' Clearly space and time were there all along as we learn about them.“

This does not concern my argument. I am referring to the kantian concept of time and space not being categories, but being presupposed in all categories. He calls them „forms of apprehension“, meaing - our perceptions cannot but come in that form.
This is about a axplanatory theory of time, not about how the linguistic practices are acquired etc. (which is important, but another issue)

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14.

BO: „Yes, but you don't even think the ancient philosophers were smart enough to have had such a concept.“

Come on, this is not really fair. The question, if ancient greek philosophers had a theoretical concept of a self is not about them being smart or not. It is about differences in the cultural self-understanding of two historically very distinct epochs. If they did not have a theoretical concept of a self, then there was probably no need for it. Actual self-reflective behavior is not dependent on that anyway.

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15.

BO: „I suppose if the self is some bit of fluff, unassociated with real life, you may be right. But I am talking about real life. It seems useful that an animal would recognize itself. Such recognition is not necessarily a concept... rather it is more a matter of behaviors associated with feelings. Thus an animal would react differently if its leg were caught in a trap, than if the leg of another animal were caught in a trap. Such recognition is not derived exclusively from any one sense, but is created through all the senses. The senses together form images (or phantasms) of what the self is at any particular moment... that is to say of the condition of the body at any moment.“

One needs to be clear here about the difference between „body-schema“ and „self-recognition“.

1. Animals feel their leg is in a trap because of a basic body-schema. But that is not „self-recognition“. The don‘t "recognize" a leg that is trapped and "recognize" it to be their own.

2. Some animals recognize themselves in a mirror (primates, dolphins, some birds, elephants...). That is commonly called „self-recognition“.

3. When we speak of humans as selves or of having a self, we do not refer to „the condition of the body in any moment“. I would again recommend the article on personal identity.

I hope all of this helps to clearify my position...

ND: "I detect some negative emotion towards my comments in your post - I am sorry if I have said something to offend you and hope I can sort out what might have been a misunderstanding."

No, I was not offended. You have your philosophy and I have mine. There is nothing to get offended at.

Indeed, I hope I didn't offend you. Please forgive me for drawing out the consequences of what you said in ways you did not anticipate. Socrates did that... saying what others left unsaid.

I am very busy, today and can not reply in detail to what you said. But there was one point I had wanted to clarify.

You have indicated that substance can not change. The interesting point is that substance is the only one of Aristotle's categories which can change.

The color orange does not change when an orange becomes a host for fungi. The color orange is still orange and will always be orange and nothing but orange. The change is not in the color, but in the colored object, the hypokeimenon underlying the color.

"The most distinctive mark of substance appears to be that, while remaining numerically one and the same, it is capable of admitting contrary qualities. From among things other than substance, we should find ourselves unable to bring forward any which possessed this mark. Thus, one and the same colour cannot be white and black. Nor can the same one action be good and bad: this law holds good with everything that is not substance. But one and the selfsame substance, while retaining its identity, is yet capable of admitting contrary qualities. The same individual person is at one time white, at another black, at one time warm, at another cold, at one time good, at another bad. This capacity is found nowhere else, though it might be maintained that a statement or opinion was an exception to the rule. The same statement, it is agreed, can be both true and false. For if the statement 'he is sitting' is true, yet, when the person in question has risen, the same statement will be false. The same applies to opinions. For if any one thinks truly that a person is sitting, yet, when that person has risen, this same opinion, if still held, will be false. Yet although this exception may be allowed, there is, nevertheless, a difference in the manner in which the thing takes place. It is by themselves changing that substances admit contrary qualities. It is thus that that which was hot becomes cold, for it has entered into a different state. Similarly that which was white becomes black, and that which was bad good, by a process of change; and in the same way in all other cases it is by changing that substances are capable of admitting contrary qualities. But statements and opinions themselves remain unaltered in all respects: it is by the alteration in the facts of the case that the contrary quality comes to be theirs. The statement 'he is sitting' remains unaltered, but it is at one time true, at another false, according to circumstances. What has been said of statements applies also to opinions. Thus, in respect of the manner in which the thing takes place, it is the peculiar mark of substance that it should be capable of admitting contrary qualities; for it is by itself changing that it does so.

"If, then, a man should make this exception and contend that statements and opinions are capable of admitting contrary qualities, his contention is unsound. For statements and opinions are said to have this capacity, not because they themselves undergo modification, but because this modification occurs in the case of something else. The truth or falsity of a statement depends on facts, and not on any power on the part of the statement itself of admitting contrary qualities. In short, there is nothing which can alter the nature of statements and opinions. As, then, no change takes place in themselves, these cannot be said to be capable of admitting contrary qualities.

"But it is by reason of the modification which takes place within the substance itself that a substance is said to be capable of admitting contrary qualities; for a substance admits within itself either disease or health, whiteness or blackness. It is in this sense that it is said to be capable of admitting contrary qualities.

"To sum up, it is a distinctive mark of substance, that, while remaining numerically one and the same, it is capable of admitting contrary qualities, the modification taking place through a change in the substance itself. "

~ Aristotle; ***Categories;*** #4

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/categories.1.1.html

BO: „Indeed, I hope I didn't offend you. Please forgive me for drawing out the consequences of what you said in ways you did not anticipate. Socrates did that... saying what others left unsaid.“

Hello Bill Overcamp,

I am glad to read your reply. No, I was not offended either. Sure, we are socratic in articulating what we see as consequences of what the other is saying.

However, Socrates, at least in Platos depictions, seems to be much more slow and careful than we are and gather more information about the others position by asking series of short questions and then bringing the answers together, so the other cannot but reply in one of the offered ways without contradicting his earlier statements.

We might be able to more deeply indulge in maieutics on a nice walk just outside the walls of the Acropolis...

http://www.rostseite.de/fotos5/athen_blick_auf_die_stadt.jpg

BO: „You have indicated that substance can not change. The interesting point is that substance is the only one of Aristotle's categories which can change.“

Just a minor correction: I did not indicate, that substance cannot change. I only pointed out something I took you to be saying (I might have misunderstood you, of course).

But nonetheless the passage on substance you posted is very interesting - also because Aristotle is primarily not talking about what substance is, but explains what is said about it.

By the way: The passage contains the very distinction I used earlier - that between numerical identitiy (numerically one and the same) and qualitative difference (admitting contrary qualities). From there it seems easy to see, what „qualitative identitiy“ could mean: not admitting contrary qualities.

E.g. trying to be (and stay) a good man and not admit the quality of being bad means to strive for qualitative identity.

However that may be - a central question in our discussion seems to be, if „yourself“ is a substance that changes its qualities or if it is that specific substance only in a certain configuration of qualities.

You seem to say, it is in all configurations still numerically the same substance, while I want to consider the alternative „ethical“ sense, that by „being yourself“ we indeed refer to an individual challange of leading your own life and e.g. achieve qualitative identity.

Self-consciousness seems to be another candidate for an inherent quality without which you would not be the substance „self-conscious being“ (if one at all wants to talk of substance here - which I hesitate to do. I am here just trying to hypothetically adopt your distinction).

Much of what I see in this thread has very little relevance to anything I would recognize as "cultural theory". The closest "substance" approaches to relevance is in the consideration of philosophical realism vis-a-vis aggregates called by terms such a s 'society', 'culture', etc. Leslie White and others were well known for decisive (if not always incisive) statements on the matter.

Let's try, please, to deal with what the common man takes for these words and modify from that posture. Even anthropologists and sociologists vary in their definitions, but we all have fundamental commonalities implied or otherwise indicated in reference to 'culture' and 'theory', the two terms used by N.D. to identify himself by way of professional interest.

Let's therefore start where the originator started. He's the one with the question, let's assume he understands basic words and thus take him at his word. Which is to say, how about talking about cultural theory in a thread asking about -- cultural theory.

I do work in cultural theory, but only in three primary segments, the most fascinating to me being what earlier workers saw as shame-guilt and what recent theorists term honor-dignity (myself included). I also do work in the theory and application of the concepts of office and (its) stewardship, concepts of which I know the Germans are much more au currant than Americans. And then there is the sociology of law, in which I treat of belief-reliance systems and how they vary as between cultures. This site also has a cross-cultural group you might be interested in.

I have just given a short overview that no one with knowledge in the field cannot immediately comprehend and sort with other areas. I have yet to determine, however, what area N.D. is interested in, though admittedly I ran through the comments too quickly. So, for starters, can N.D. offer a brief overview that leaves no question as to interests and goals, subject matter and that all are within well-understood norms of the two lead ideas, i.e., culture and theory.

I enjoy the opportunity to discuss a field I like and work in but not when there is no statement demonstrating a solid subject appropriate to the announced precepts, and where all others are left to interpret according to their favorite ideas and hankerings, few of which have the slightest relevance to anything regarding cultural theory. If you want to talk about cultural theory, do it-directly, straightforwardly, concretely, briefly and with a distillation leaving no question how to approach your interests. For the present I have nothing to say for there is nothing to direct my remarks at that I can recognize as such.

Thank you, C. M., for your comment. You are right, that the connection of many posts to the topic of human orientation in cultural theory is not easy to see.

Probably I should have opened the thread under the title: „Cultural forms of human orientation“.

The somewhat lenghty discussion between Bill Overcamp and me is concerned with understanding the differences in each others basic explanatory concepts...it takes place here, because it originated here - but you are correct in bringing it back to it‘s original point.

Anyway, I have tried to clarefy my research interest above and so first will post a part of that again, with some corrections - comments and questions on further clarification most welcome!

Here it is:

My aim in this project on „Forms of human orientation“ is in the direction of philosophical anthropology or cultural theory, maybe also historical epistemology.

My project should start with very basic orientational behavior and go right up to the temporal structure of our narrations of world, self and community. How are they build up to this complexity? Are there simple explanatory principles and if so, do those hold when comparing different cultures?

I would decribe this as an approach in cultural theory, because it is a theoretical reflection on cultural means of oriention and also includes the study of articulations of cultural self-interpretations in theories (and elsewhere).

Methodologically I would like to focus on actual practices, including linguistic practices, and (at this stage at least) less on physics or psychology of time - as this thread is at home under the topic „Language“, but I would include gestures and other actions, some artifacts etc. as well.

So the overall scope could include our whole variety of practical ways of handling temporal relations, of planning, expecting, carrying out projects, of evaluating time-ressources, of cooperating with others, calenders, chronicles, narrations about the "beginning" and the "end of time" etc.

These are interwoven with our cultural embedding and self-understanding. What we take to be possible for us - and so e.g. think of as worth persuing - is deeply influenced by the temporal structure of the stories we situate ourselves in. I think of something like M. Bachtins „chronotopes“...what are promising alternatives to describe this?

I suggest to start such research with a grammatical investigation of the notions involved - in the sense of the later Wittgenstein - and ask: How have we learned the meaning of the words „now“, „later“,„future“, „time“, „today", "world history" etc. In what kinds of practical surroundings are they used?

Anyone a little familiar with studies in child language acquisition is aware of the fact, that there is no easy story to be told here. Cognitive understanding and verbalizing of time relations belongs to the most complex verbal techniques to master...“ - Michael Tomasello and others have done valuable research about this.

The area of interest is vast, so it would be necessary to limit its scope. What would be promising cultural phenomena to study these fundamental structures of practices of orientation and their transformations, where empirical research has been done and which are also commonly known and of wide interest? (I would even more appreciate a specific answer like „english childrens literature“ than large notions as „language“)

N.D.:

O.K., good. Here in Bakhtin you locate yourself by the above signposts (Speech Genres & Other Essays, at 47):

"It was as though the artistic image felt an organic striving for attachments to a particular time and, more importantly, to a particular concrete and graphically visible position in space. (...) [T]he image strives not so much for internal verisimilitude as for an idea of it as an event that actually occurred...."

Now were I being consulted as a member of your potential Ph.D. committee for this topic I would venture the following observations (I don't mean to patronize, but the approach is, you will admit, fecund and realistic)...

1) This topic strikes me as a mix between the social psychology of Edward T. Hall and the constructivism of Berger (Social Construction of Reality).

2) Were I you, I would prefer a focus that a) distinguished and compared movements as between time and space and suggest how this is itself a possible cultural artifact (Russians will concentrate on spatial magnitude, e.g., and early Americans on Turner's approach to Manifest Destiny, versus the honor-based approach to time identified by folks like Hofsteder and which is claimed to be far less relevant to Western societies or, generally, dignity-based moieties), and b) placed your work in a specific topical context, as for example, the discovered or anticipated consequences. That is, how does the work become both explanative and predictive, and why? Otherwise, you risk losing a good share of potential interest as to cultural 'relevance' or 'interest' or 'importance' -- you catch my drift, as these are prime criteria for academic publishing, no?

3) In America, this would be handled in Sociology and not Philosophy, but that is in part because Americans are particularly inept at Philosophy or anything approaching it. And even in Sociology, American professors might well show reluctance to take on your project for lacking sufficient grounding in it themselves, as it always seemed to me they thought themselves to have a profound stake in the result (a big ego thing if you ask me) and so would force the student to reorganize their work to conform with a passing fancy of some professor or another!! I do hope you are not burdened in this way in Germany, but I suspect it could be even worse there, just a guess in the dark...but at any rate, I am thinking you would do well to situate your work as between Sociology and Philosophy. Here would be my approach: The two disciplines ideally place greater stress on methodology than description/explanation per se, with this distinction, in my view -- philosophy tends to go more for the inductive embracing-overarching explications, and Sociology more the actual cause-effect manipulations that are studied more locally even if the result is expected to be generalized. In short, sociology is more of the contemporary scientific method, if you will, and philosophy more the classical principles of good theory. Since I am a theorist and develop my own methodologies, you will understand my interest and where I would fall.

The more clearly you delineate and establish yourself within the parameters mentioned the easier it will be for anyone to follow your lead and offer intelligent dialogue. Until then, remarks are apt to be a bit sketchy, patchy and/or disconnected, though this can stand only as a personal opinion for what it's worth.

As I say, the topic interests me, but I require something more concrete. Nonetheless I think you are more than capable of sorting these things and presenting a formidable project of interest to everyone here, with sufficient clarity and direction to encourage and obtain valuable input.

Yours respectfully....

ND: "However, I think the alternatives of either things being substances with qualities or things being composed of qualities but without substance both equally misconceived."

Well, I suppose a third alternative is that substance and qualities are not necessarily related... that there might be substances without accidents or unattached accidents.

Certainly there are people who say that god is a substance without accidents. One might doubt whether there could be two such substances... for there would be nothing by which they would differ.

As for an an unattached accident... I have no idea how such a thing can exist... except, perhaps in the imagination... and yet even there it would seem to be nothing more than a word. And yet, they are attached to the one imagining them.

ND: "The fact, that some people are not persons in the full sense, does not alter our moral responsibility towards them and certainly does not affect our feelings towards them. I honored my grandfather literally to his last hours."

That may feel right to you, but a philosopher must look beyond his feelings. If there is no effectively absolute meaning for the word 'person' then you have nothing to base your ethics on. Why should the government feel kindly to my son? He never did anything for them. He is a burden to society. He surely represents what Eugenics, "the self-direction of human evolution" might call the 'surplus population.'

ND: "Did not Aristotle even argue against the seperate existence of a 'soul?'"

Aristotle's ***On the Soul*** is a difficult work to interpret. I have commented on it as well as I can...

http://www.researchgate.net/group/Philosophy/board/thread/3843_On_the_Soul

Aristotle was a biologist, first and always. He also wrote on other subjects like philosophy. ***On the Soul*** is clearly biological in tone. There he says that the soul is the formulable essence of a natural body having life potentially. He added the word 'potentially' in order to include seeds in the discussion... for though they have life potentially, they are not actually alive.

He goes on to say that the body is substance in the sense that it is the matter of a substance... it is the matter belonging to a living plant or animal. He then says that the soul is substance in the sense that it is the form of a substance. He does not say that the body and soul are different substances, but many interpret it that way... and with some justification.

He goes on to describe three types of souls: nutritive souls capable of nutrition, growth and reproduction, sensitive souls capable of sensation and movement and rational souls having minds. (Keep in mind the Egyptian idea of the Ba and Ka, two souls existing in one man. Is Aristotle supposing that men have three souls? Some have interpreted him to mean that. He doesn't say one way or anther, though it seems from other things that he wrote that there can only be one form for a given substance.)

Here the plot thickens... he goes on to say...

"The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind, but of that which has mind, so far as it has it. That is why, when this vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassible. That the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself."

~ Aristotle; ***On the Soul;*** Book I; Part 4.

What does he mean, the mind is an independent substance implanted in the soul? Must we divide Socrates into Socrates' the Mind and Socrates the Mindless? It makes no sense to me.

He goes on to divide the mind into the active mind and the passive mind. The active mind would seem to be that part of the body and soul, the vehicle, in which thinking occurs. The passive mind would seem to be that independent substance mentioned above.

And, of course, there is the question of what does 'formulable essence' mean. The term has often been taken to mean form. I have, however, seen it interpreted to mean definition.

The question came up of whether different men have different formulable essences. Certainly if one interprets formulable essence to mean definition, then there would be one...

"Averroes held that the passive intellect, being analogous to unformed matter, is a single substance common to all minds, and that the differences between individual minds are rooted in their phantasms as the product of the differences in the history of their sense perceptions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_intellect

Thomas Aquinas took a common sense approach to these questions. He interpreted Aristotle to mean that the soul is separate from the body and that the passive intellect is simply the soul's ability to think.

As for what Aristotle, himself, meant... your guess is as good as mine.

ND: "You said you were a 'man' at every moment of your life. You think that biologists see no difference between a zygote and a man?"

Certainly, I have never been anything but a human being.

I think that a biologist would see that a human zygote is human. I think he would see that within a few days of conception, the zygote is no longer capable of dividing into identical twins, each capable of continuing to full term. I think that he would see that within a few days of conception two zygotes can no longer merge into one body.

ND: "Now, would you claim that a self is a substance without inherent properties?"

I do not know what you mean by 'self.' I know that I use the word to mean a certain body, having life with a certain form or structure... what one might call a 'soul.' This body with its soul would seem to be a substance. But it clearly has properties. For instance, at the moment it is typing a comment.

ND: "Is a self a substance that can change?"

Certainly this body with its soul can change. I was typing the sentence above. I am now typing this sentence.

ND: "The expressive use of the first person pronoun is not an ontological claim!"

True enough... but you just did make an ontological claim about it... namely that it is "a change of semantical aspect." And clearly there are ontological claims that can be made regarding that to which the "semantical aspect" changes: a certain body with its soul.

ND: "Husserl did not think, that his body will in any way disappear! He was making a methodological step by saying: let‘s not make any existential (ontological) claims, but only describe what we actually perceive - only 'phenomena' and see what we end up with."

And I ask whether the scientist ever gives up ontology. What does the scientist do when looking for Bigfoot? Isn't he attempting to make an ontological claim? Isn't that his 'Holy Grail?'

ND: "But they did not have a theoretical concept of a self to explain self-reflective behavior."

Clearly, the self refers to a body with its soul. By reflective behavior one means the behaviors of such a self toward itself. What else could it mean?

ND: "Now were getting somewhere. Your original position seemed to be, that there is no challange because you always are yourself anyway. But the challange of identifying what remains the same sounds more appropriate to the original question 'How much time does it take to be yourself?' To achieve qualitative identity is exactly that challange! Being able to integrate stages of life is essential to the life of a person - and so persons can say: 'to become oneself.'"

Certainly there are intellectual challenges in identifying the exact nature of the hypokeimenon underlying my existence. But there is no challenge in being that hypokeimenon. I have no choice in that regard.

ND: "You might be right about those two being exceptions - however we where basically discussing those - so my 'bubble' is about those. And you would still have to point out me a passage by an ancient greek that discribes the cosmos as something emerging in unknown ways, to evolution etc."

Actually I named three, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle... with two more closely related to their work, Parmenides and Pythagoras.

Titus Lucretius Carus' ***De rerum natura*** did just that. He described how the world is guided by physical principles and chance, rather than by the gods. He thought that living being arose from the inherent potencies of matter. Many see Lucretius as having laid out what Darwin would later claim. The Nobel Prize winning chemist, Ilya Prigogine, in particular, credits him with understanding physical principles which Prigogine believes govern nature.

ND: "If someone is struggling with his life and his personal identity, and consideres it to be a human right to choose her own future - how can the question of the openness of the future not matter?"

That is an ethical question, not a metaphysical one.

ND: "I am referring to the kantian concept of time and space not being categories..."

I reject Kant from Alpha to Omega. He was wrong in supposing that mathematics is known a priori. Everything else he said follows from his first error.

As I see it there are six 'categories' arranged in a hierarchy: quantity, place, affection, time, action and material form. By quantity, I mean all that is described mathematically: arithmetic, geometry and logic. By place I mean something like New York, or Germany. Such things clearly are not mathematical objects, yet they are described quantitatively on coordinate systems. Thus they come below quantity hierarchically. By affection, I mean something like white or hot. Such things are clearly not places, but they do occur somewhere. Thus they come below place hierarchically. By time I mean something like Christmas or Monday. They are clearly not affections, but they are determined by changing affections. By action, I mean something like sit or see. Actions are not times but always occur at specific times. Finally, by material form, I mean something like man or horse. A material form is not an action but is the hypokeimenon underlying actions.

Thus the very condition that you say eliminates space and time from consideration as categories is what I say qualifies them as categories.

ND: "One needs to be clear here about the difference between 'body-schema' and 'self-recognition.'"

I have tried to be as clear as I can. I am a certain body with its soul or formulable essence. There is no magical fluff associated with me... no mysterious ego somehow separable from my body along with its soul. That may disappoint some, but that is all there is.

ND: "the passage on substance you posted is very interesting - also because Aristotle is primarily not talking about what substance is, but explains what is said about it."

The particular point he was making was...

"The most distinctive mark of substance appears to be that, while remaining numerically one and the same, it is capable of admitting contrary qualities."

The rest of what he wrote was his explanation of what he meant in that sentence.

ND: "By the way: The passage contains the very distinction I used earlier - that between numerical identitiy (numerically one and the same) and qualitative difference (admitting contrary qualities). From there it seems easy to see, what 'qualitative identitiy' could mean: not admitting contrary qualities."

Clearly there can be only one substance with its exact properties. So qualitative identity and numerical identity are the same.

ND: "Self-consciousness seems to be another candidate for an inherent quality without which you would not be the substance 'self-conscious being.'"

I am not sure what you men by "the substance 'self-conscious being.'" Surely, there are many such substances.

I guess I should qualify what I said above... Space is a mathematical concept and therefore a subcategory within quantity. Place is a category, distinct from space, described physically, not mathematically.

Regarding the notion that someone might not be a person... I can think of no analogy to explain what is meant by it other than some legal definition.

For instance by the Three-fifths Compromise, the following clause was inserted into the Constitution of the United States...

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

~ ***Constitution of the United States;*** Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3.

The Three-fifths Compromise was, of course, rendered irrelevant by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Another instance I might site comes from Sharia Law which generally holds that a woman is half of a person.

I can not help but wonder what fraction of a person my son might represent...

http://vimeo.com/25164794

Hi Nicolas and welcome,

I disagree with BO comment concerning his wrong comprehension of Sharia and supposed value of women as a person he is publicizing.

Such information (griven roughly outside their context) are totaly false. But He could have the intellectual honesty to mention the references of those official texts that say so a in sharia and their real context.

Btw, I just would like to share with you an thought concerning your work:

- I noticed, whatever the deep feelings, convictions and/or beliefs human can have, they all act the same in one situation:

when they are afraid of something or in a very bad situation that involve their lives, (they all have this instinct of conservation) leading them to unite their forces independently from their convictions, colors,.... This is very strange, because a single situation can modify the usual orientation of the individual either he is alone or within a group...So may be in the list of the forms of orientations you can add a variable function of the human sensitivity (basic ones: fear, starvation, ...) those that shape us humans before being cultural humans belonging to social groups. I do not know if you got what I am trying to say...Cheers

KSB: "But He could have the intellectual honesty to mention the references of those official texts that say so a in sharia and their real context."

Hmmm... I would not imagine that you would be intellectually dishonest. But you accuse me of dishonesty?

I do not claim to be an expert on Sharia. If you wish to be intellectually honest, then you should present the official texts. Show us how a woman's testimony in court is of equal value to that of a man.

#H1-429. Forms of human orientation.

Thanks for the Nicolas Dierks and Bill Overcamp exchanges.

1. BO

@*. True, we are not ourselves without our body; but are we ourselves without our mind?

2. BO, Jul 13, 2011 3:19 am .

@*. Splendid observation.

ibid,

@*. I wouldn't say it is a uncommon happening, but i would consider it definitely as not a common happening. I woud be satisfied even if i don't concede to necessarily include the probability of zygote hesitating to decide.

3. BO, Jul 20, 2011 5:42 am.

@*. i too do think that the things concrete we use, can be independent of our perceiving/recognising them.

SN: "we are not ourselves without our body; but are we ourselves without our mind?"

I do not believe that there is such a thing as a 'mind.' Mind is an act and a potential for action, not a substance. I know I am differing from Aristotle --- or at least his words --- for he described mind as an independent substance implanted in a man. That makes no sense to me. It is like saying that when we wish to discuss Socrates we must specify whether we mean Socrates the Mind, or Socrates the Mindless.

I believe we are body and soul. I am referring to the body when I speak of the many parts of a man: hands, feet, elbows, knees, etc. I am referring to the soul or form of a man when I speak of the whole which binds the parts into one being.

The mind is an act, or a potency for an action of the form or soul of a man. Specifically, mind is the man thinking... either actively, or habitually. We know that the mind controls the body... and every part of the body. The mind controls the heart and lungs, digestion and metabolism.

What is a man without a mind? Dead.

SN: "I wouldn't say it is a uncommon happening, but i would consider it definitely as not a common happening. I woud be satisfied even if i don't concede to necessarily include the probability of zygote hesitating to decide."

It happens. A philosopher ought to recognize its possibility... and its significance in the individuation of the zygote. What I think is more amazing is the opposite possibility... that two zygotes, possibly from different human clones... possibly of different sexes... may unite to form one individual. Siamese twins, of course, are well known examples. But from what I understand there are people who appear perfectly normal who represent two such different human clones in one body. And that is amazing!!

NH: "Thus we can stop our heart beat from Normal to Zero/minute through Mind? I am just Interested to know that how Mind performs this function of controlling the Heart Beat? What is the Inside Mechanism?"

One's ability to control the heart is partly conscious, partly unconscious. In either case, the effect is obtained through the mind.

Suppose I want to speed up my heart... nothing could be simpler... I start jogging and the heart speeds up. Suppose I want to slow it down... again, nothing could be simpler... I relax.

It is said that there are yogis who develop this ability to an amazing degree. I know little about how this is done, except to say that it is through concentration and 'biofeedback.' They become very sensitive to the heartbeat and are able to speed it up and slow it down at will.

http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/yogi-stops-heart-for-six-weeks/

EJ: "Do you know and believe that 'Heart' is a thinking organs?!!"

I believe that the entire body is involved in thinking. I have never heard of a brain, having been removed from the body which nourishes it, continuing to think. When science can show us that a 'brain in a vat' is able to think, then I will be among the first to accept it. But I shall not hold my breath waiting.

It seems that everything I wrote yesterday has been deleted. I spent a good bit of time responding and now it all seems wasted. I do not know that I should be spending my time on this site if my comments are deleted.

I hope everyone will go to the Feedback Group and write a comment about this new design...

http://www.researchgate.net/group/Feedback/

HI Nicolas

If you talk about human orientation and you accept that human beings are purposeful, then your "forms of human orientation" would be another name for forms of tge 'purpose of life'. I mean "purposes of life" as distinct from purposes within a particular endeavour or project.

I have empirically observed 7 distinct 'purposes of life' (which I provisionally labeled as "Primal Quests" because they have been in existence since the dawn of humanity). I also have the theoretical framework (systems model) which predicts and/or corroborates their existence. These Quests in turn generate other discoveries related to human nature and how we orient ourselves in being human. I will be posting this soon on my website: http://thee-online.com , but you can already see the framework for "personal endeavour" (where purpose is at Level-6) which is the basis for the Primal Quests (or Purposes of Life).

Warren

#H1-503. R8P3-2. V Shrikanth: i am coming across your monkey for the second time, hence: i am surprised, have you been able to separate humans from monkeys? We may use more reason, but do we use in sufficiently more contexts? [but i dont know how i have assumed this question.]

#H1-504. R8P3-3. This thread had interested me from the beginning, but i took the word to mean "physical orientation". Out of the attention therefore had become seeded, now i have made an observation, which though would be nothing new, i record my thanks here: it appears that, when shifting to a new residential area: (1) the first few days, we have to actively remember the design and colour of the building; (2) as the day's go by, it is sufficient to attend for just the entrance; (3) and it also seems that, it becomes specifically remembered/referred by the mind the "content" within about 5 to 10 metres in all directions from the gate of the house, so that we may be immediately alerted or our legs guided on reaching the spot.

Of course, this must be similar to sometimes experience of driving through without noticing the roadside buildings, but becoming aware when our/my particular building is reached.

#H1-504. R8P3-4. After re-reading CH and ND and BO [i liked them too], i do feel mine's an out of place interruption.

Nevertheless: i think (1) exact/ water-tight definitions would hurdle thought; (2) sometimes i think, that it is nothing wrong to treat patently non-normal situations, like the double zygote single body persons and the mentally challenged persons, have been "enabled" by a "different" law (atleast until we understand enough).

Hello Nicolas! Thank you for your intresting question.

The philosopher I. Kant published 1786 in the "Berlinische Monatsschrift" a paper on this subject: "Was heißt sich im Denken orientieren?" ("What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?") In this popular writing Kant wanted to position himself in the pantheism-controversy around F. H. Jacobis Letters to Moses Mendelssohn (1785) but the paper can be read as a general, critical discussion on the topic at stake: How do we as humans orient ourselves in space and time, how in individual and cultural histories - and last but not least: By which means and in what Forms do we find orientation in life (and thinking!)? The pivotal concepts in his answer are self-consciousness and freedom. I also suggest to read the related precritical paper "The first ground of the distinction of regions in space" (I. Kant, 1768).

Ok, I am going to take a different slant from the rest of you, and step away from the hoity toity concepts of orientation as a cultural phenomena, and suggest, (Horrors of Horrors) that the cultural phenomena is how we interpret the physical signals that allow us to Orient ourselves.

To understand why there are so many different Orientation Cultural Phenomena, we have to accept that the nature of Explicit Memory, and declarative memory is not a classical philosophical tradition, as much as an evolutionarily determined mechanism of mapping the organism-centric what-where signals to slow wave When signals.

But the episodal aspect of the Declarative Memory is by no means it's only use.

I have suggested that, in fact, declarative memory is the Meta-Index, the Legend of what we have explicitly discovered in our implicit memory, and conceptually mapped. In other words, it is not JUST episodal, but also conceptual, and thus impacted by our cultural norms. There is little doubt in my mind, that at the base of all this tradition is a common mechanical mechanism that links what and where to when. We actually have discovered this link in rodents, and it is sited in the Subiculum/hippocampus/Entorhinal Cortex brain structure. So, if as I say, we have found this structure, the difference in cultures must come as a part of the conceptual mapping that allows us to find the object in its physically activated mapping.

In my memory model, the Meta-Index, is itself an implicit memory link between a location in the hippocampus, and a chunk of memory, that when activated will give us a functional cluster of implicit memory locations, (in the cerebrum) that in turn will create the implicit data cloud that represents the object. As such, the exact constitution of the data cloud, depends on what chunk of memory, the link activates.

In other words we can "Learn" to interpret the same base mapping in significantly different ways depending on how our culture affects which elements we allow to be part of the functional cluster.

#H1-506. R8P3-5. Graeme:

@. You mean to say that there are separate/specific receptors/memory for *what*, *where*, and *when*? Notwithstanding if so, is it nonpathologically possible the three w's can occur dissociated untogether?

Or could there have been a time in evolution when nonpahologically/ordinarily there might not exist any of the w's in any organism's understanding?

If yes to the above, then, anybody has already identified potentially there could be more of the type? (eg) i dont know what is after content,space,time. Are there still more things as further irreducible?

Even among the three w's, even though/if they must appear together, and therefore should be equally significant, is that also possible that on some counts they could be unequally significant, and in such cases, how to retain their equal fundamentality, unperturbed by their seemingly varying significance in some comparisons?

When they vote in UNO general assembly, the US and the many small island nations, they have equal vote; but in the cartographic map, they are not at all equal. There is no easy way to understand here eg quality and quantity together?

I can't answer all of your questions, but I can start to answer some of them.

Are the 3 W's separate? Yes.

There are actually three areas of the brain that have been linked to separate processing of What and When, and timing signals. The What link is to the medial temporal cortex, the where link to the Mid Parietal Cortex, and the when link eventually gets back to the Reticulate Formation in the brain stem. These three signals are combined possibly first in the multi-modal associative tissues in the crook of the Parietal/Temporal connection, and then processed again in the Para-hippocampus, we believe, and fed to the hippocampus where "Place Cells" and "When Cells" are linked to the entorhinal Cortex where we think we have found mapping coordinate systems that are stacked, so we can approach a "What" mapping that has multiple dimensions.

The subiculum is thought to be like the thalamus, and the pons, a sort of link and pre-activation center between the prefrontal cortex and this mapping system, that allows us to map the environment in an episodal manner, and if my assumptions about the entorhinal cortex are correct, allows us to map concepts as well.

Does this interpretation help at all?

Sentill:"Or could there have been a time in evolution when nonpahologically/ordinarily there might not exist any of the w's in any organism's understanding?"

Yes of course, but I think you are making a big assumption that the animals that don't have episodal memory have anything resembling understanding.

For example the Lowly Snail, has no hippocampal area, that evolved long after snails DNA was stabilized, there simply aren't enough genes in the genome to describe it. But snail brains are purely reactive, Sense, Ganglia, Motor systems, with very little memory but the potential to be conditioned. Both Woods Hole, and Columbia did extensive research on Snails, it might be worth your while to look it up.

Sentill:"If yes to the above, then, anybody has already identified potentially there could be more of the type? (eg) i dont know what is after content,space,time. Are there still more things as further irreducible? "

How would we know to test it?

There are some interesting variations, Spiders and Insects and fish for instance, that have brains that might be completely differently organized, but not being a Biologist nor hooked up to comparable anatomy, I couldn't say, you are certainly welcome, I imagine to track back in evolution to just before the hippocampal addition and see what types of animals developed in different ways. I imagine the preponderance of hippocampal designs in the vertebrate phillum indicates that it has a higher evolutionary benefit than others though, it could just be chance that caused hippocampal episodal memory to develop.

Sentill:"Even among the three w's, even though/if they must appear together, and therefore should be equally significant, is that also possible that on some counts they could be unequally significant, and in such cases, how to retain their equal fundamentality, unperturbed by their seemingly varying significance in some comparisons? "

There is no doubt that in the human brain, and probably in most mammalian and bird brains that the brain spends a lot more time on certain processes than on others. For instance our time sense is cobbled together and is a real kludge, as can clearly be experienced when you get into a really interesting book, show, or research topic. The old saying "Time Flies when you are having fun" is actually really just a shadow on what researchers have found, quite literally our time sense is cobbled together from all too brief instances when we are aware of time passing, and has no relevance to clock time at all. After all the clock didn't evolve with us, it was an invention we created to help us keep time, because our own time-sense was so screwed up. From music and chants, to the modern cesium clocks we use to time the flight of neutrinos, the flakiness of the human clock has been gradually overcome, and that capability has fed civilization in significant ways, but recently the sheer abundance of clocks has made us more arrogant about what the ability of the mind to keep time should be, and we have failed to take into account the fact that time really isn't about nanoseconds in the human brain, it's about the need for the brain to be able to tell what came first, so it can assign cause and effect relations to things. You need that type of processing especially with mirror neuron input when being able to mimick another animal might be the difference between getting fed or not.

I personally have a rather elastic time sense, that is interfering with the way I am being treated. When I get into my writing, I lose all track of time, and sometimes if I am not careful, fail to get to appointments. The current medical system where I am living is unforgiving when it comes to losing track of time, and missing appointments, so that I have been forced off of some treatment plans simply because I didn't get there on time often enough that the services were withdrawn.

#H1-507. R8P3-6. Thanks Graeme, you are introducing to me new readings. I shall come back. I want get to read more about the brain (artifacts?/tools? What word) you have said about. I hope to read a few thousand words from internet. i may or may not be able learn/know/understand.

Senthil:"I want get to read more about the brain (artifacts?/tools? What word) you have said about."

If you are talking about the subiculum/hippocampus/Entorhinal Cortex, you need a book, or course on Neuro-Anatomy. These are actual organs in the brain that are roughly situated behind the Medial Temporal Lobe. The nasty names are actually an international convention from the history of anatomy, when most scientists were trained by the church to understand Latin, a now almost dead language, but one which used to be used in Roman Catholic Church Services. Since they agreed only on the use of latin, and Anatomy became an International science topic, many of the terms even if translated become trite descriptions rather than useful names for the organs. For instance the hippocampus translates roughly to "SeaHorse" which only roughly describes its shape.

I am afraid the Medicine has been almost since the dawn of time, protected by jargon, and cloaked in the Authority of the Doctors, and so it is perhaps the last bastion of protected knowledge, where Jargon is more important than accuracy.

#H1-509. Graeme: i wrote a reply on Sunday itself, but because of an uncautious oqera mini mobile phone browser, some mispressing, i lost the content before i could save or upload (but i should not repeat this litany every now and then!).

In that, i had thanked you that you had given a good summary of the neuroanatomy of the brain's apparatus that's processing a situation; possibly, i can ask you further, rather than search the net.

I also wonder: (1) generally it appears, we need the three W's together to understand a situation; what,where,when. (2) but the memory hardware are separately require to deal with content questions,place questions,time questions in our brain hardware, due to structural simplicity reasons?

Then may be, building up and integrating from components is simpler than directly proceeding to complex requirements? Then, in the case of formation of "living/ life" forms, evolution is simpler than directly going to humans and fair/just/good humans?

Bv there must have more trade off why billions of years of evolution rather than a fiat creation?

Or, are we wrong to anthropocentrically model/question; perhaps bacteria, insects, fishes, birds are all themselves self-sufficient? But how (if) without ideative/ethical/cultural thought capabilities? Or atleast NOW without paper and internet?

[?=.]

i shall continue later.

SN: "i wrote a reply on Sunday itself, but because of an uncautious oqera mini mobile phone browser, some mispressing, i lost the content before i could save or upload (but i should not repeat this litany every now and then."

I don't know that you should blame your browser for all your problems. The way HTML works, web sites have to logout users after some period of time. In other words, if you download a page at 8:00, you probably have until 10:00 --- or so --- to reply. If you don't reply, the host probably will not know who is replying and so be unable to record the response. If you need to take longer you might be able to refresh you session from another tab or window... or you may need to save your response just in case your session has timed out.

SN: "I also wonder: (1) generally it appears, we need the three W's together to understand a situation; what,where,when. (2) but the memory hardware are separately require to deal with content questions,place questions,time questions in our brain hardware, due to structural simplicity reasons?"

Your questions about the three W's are of relevance to my ideas of Hierarchical Hylomorphism. There was an interesting presentation on ***On Being*** which is related to one aspect of this question... was mathematics invented or discovered?

http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/being/unheard_cuts/2011/12/06/20111208_who_ordered_this_uc_livio_64.mp3?_kip_ipx=1021182462-1324408097

#H1-511. Graeme, 4 days ago: my yd-night google search on snail behaviour not good.

From what i learn from you, competencies of forms of organisms can be stacked like a hierarchy, and therefore, in a way to speak, organisms can have, say bacteria have 0.1 of the known set of competencies and humans 0.75. But i always thought this range is also "rudimentarily" related.

#H1-

#H1-512. Bill, 6 hours ago. Thanks for your both posts.

I am not immediately getting, i would like to know, HH as per 3W.

SN: "I am not immediately getting, i would like to know, HH as per 3W."

The expressions we use are dependent on our perceptions, as do the questions you are asking, what, when and where.

As you know, I recognize six categories and additional transcendental predicates. The categories are substance, action, time, affection, place and quantity.

The affections... vision, hearing, touch, etc. certainly can be associated with the sensory areas in the brain.

From what I understand, our actions also correspond to motor areas in the brain.

The affections and our acts are related as action and reaction. They seem to take a certain primacy in our relation to the world at large. I know the sensory phantasms I receive regardless of whatever else follows from them. Without them I would be at a loss as to what is going on in the world outside me. Action, too, is something I know immediately, for whenever I act, I create new sensory phantasms.

Our actions are largely the result of habit.

What, when and where are abstractions drawn from affection and action. We need these abstractions to enable us to judge which habits are useful, which harmful.

What corresponds roughly to substance; when to time and where to place. In a sense substance and place are opposed to the affections and action. The affections and actions tell us what changes in time. Substance and place tell us what remain unchanged in time.

Quantity seems to be a higher level abstraction drawn from substance, time and place.

It seems reasonable to me that our mental apparatus would be optimized for the good of the species. When I say that, I am not arguing either for or against Darwinian evolution, just stating a basic requirement for animal life.

Aristotle said that physics is the first level of abstraction; mathematics the second; and metaphysics third.

Physics focuses on the ideas of substance, time and place... the 3Ws.

Mathematics focuses on quantity, which is abstracted from our knowledge of physics.

Metaphysics abstracts from quantity to the idea of transcendental being.

Senthil:"I also wonder: (1) generally it appears, we need the three W's together to understand a situation; what,where,when. (2) but the memory hardware are separately require to deal with content questions,place questions,time questions in our brain hardware, due to structural simplicity reasons? "

Right the thread on orienting (here) is about how we use the What Where When triad to determine where we are.

In my model we have a multi-layer description of our environment and how we fit into it. At the first level, is sensory Modality, the senses of hearing and vision overwhelming the senses of taste and smell, and the sense of touch, almost at par with the sense of strain associated with tendons and muscles. Currently we think there are 7 senses, including a phermone sensitivity in the volmeronasal organ.

Each sense, probably has a small area of the cortex associated with it, and in most cases they follow a Core/Belt/Associative Tissue pattern. At the intersection between the Associative Tissues from one sense and another, there are what we call multi-modal associative areas, which may in turn connect to even higher operating multi-modal associative areas. Within this level of architecture lie the so called What, Where, When associations. These allow us to experience the feedback from the processing done, in the form of a sort of phantasm episode made up of a sort of listing of things we have done. I turned left [and then I saw her face, now, I am a believer....][Juxtaposition Joke]

The feed from a number of these Higher Associative Areas, probably joins somewhere near the crook of the Temporal Lobe, and then extends via the parahippocampus to the hippocampus where the external view, is analyzed by mapping episodal relations against a global map.

I wrote: "The affections and our acts are related as action and reaction."

I suppose I should clarify what I wrote... Our affections are passions. They are acts in which we participate passively as the recipient. I wrote that they are related as "action and reaction," in keeping with the well-known phrase, but to be more precise, they are related as passion and reaction.

I wrote: "Action, too, is something I know immediately, for whenever I act, I create new sensory phantasms."

Technically, we know action immediately in terms of imagination. The subsequent sensory phantasms which we receive allow for necessary feedback. We know them immediately as sense data, but they inform us of the actions which cause them only mediately.

#H1-513. Gradme, 6 days ago (how time flies unbelievably):

@. "chance caused": it appears to me that, "chance" is what we reach when we go "into backwards" seeking for the "cause" of something but are unable to locate any cause- starting point; "chance" almost says that "anyhow" the subject thing could have started with no "specific" influencing thing; "chance" is when we are unable not eliminate any consideration as could be the "cause" in the situation; thus "chance" is the having arriving at the most secular starting point for "further reasoning into cause".

Of course, we are unable to find a more secular (unsubjective!) solution other than chance behind the evolutionary developments. This, rather than anything else, does it probably mean that, there is still yet another "variety" of reason/ing we may find to our surprise as "similar" to reason in it's ability to trace the "cause" in a situation?"

Le

#H1-514. Actually 513 continued. In an upload failed part, i had pondered on what is cause. A delayed summary is: Physical inevitability? Need ie an hindseen propensibility? Purpose ie an foreseen propensibility?

Am i mixing up physical, biological and conceptual properties?

#H1-516. D3P4-b3. Graeme, 6 days ago:

@. Ofcourse, when i am writing here, 2 hours might just disappear from my time-awareness, i might miss my duties, but i think that's my personal measure, and that the clock reappeared in my memory 2 hours- after should not affect clock's measure/memory, let alone time's or whatever time is. Perhaps it's a boon that there can be a thing, and we can perceive it in multiple inconsistent ways and generate different but each definite utilities?

When we say that a happenstance is due to chance, of course we have failed to ascribe a cause to it. In earlier days, and for some still now, it was just as easy to blame it on the spirits. The fact is, that our brains are trying very hard to ascribe Cause to each effect, whether there is one or not!

One of the worst quandries I have ever heard of, in the Christian Community is "Why Does God allow Bad things to happen to Good People?" The pat answer is of course some dreck about "Free Will", which I take leave not to accept, if only because I question the assumption of will.

If you are a believer, and you believe in a personal savior, then it makes sense that they should, at least protect you from harm. By allowing harm to come to a "Good Person" (read personally saved) the spirit involved has broken the covenant, and therefore what is the point of the covenant? By appologizing for the covenant breaker, religion is forced to accept that whatever benefit they might sustain for having a deity to covenant with, is inconsistent, and therefore of questionable value to the individual. Watch as the sophistication of the argument hides the fact that nobody really knows why bad things happen to good people.

The structure of this argument is, I don't understand why this happened so spirits must be involved. I have a guardian spirit, that is supposed to protect me from stuff like this, why didn't it? they turn to the Diety speaker, and ask, why didn't god protect this person (or me) from harm? The speaker for the Diety says, "The spirits must be mad, because of something they/you did", the victim asks, Something I did?, I didn't do anything (to cause the spirits to be angry) the diety speaker then say's something like "Precisely", leaving the Onus on the believer to explain for himself why he broke the covenant first. (Let alone how).

One of the reasons that science is so hated by "True Believers" is simply because it keeps coming up with other explanations for things that were safely dealt with by religions sophistries. Of course some Moslems fear god, because their impression of him is a dominant sadistic being that is capricious, and thus, because god is to be feared, and obeyed, there is no question of why god is Capricious, Gods are allowed to be Capricious simply because they are so powerful. They are want to suggest that nothing happens without gods will, (Again I question the assumption of Will) and therefore ones fate is to be whirled in capricious and uncontrollable eddies of loss/benefit.

If we assume as science does, that there is an ambient system, which operates blindly without reference to the person, then that system (Call it chance) has no implied covenant, and is not capricious, merely misunderstood, and bad things happen because on the whole they are as likely, and sometimes even more likely than good ones.

RK: "However there are Random events that do occur and are described by the Probability distribution function. We must not confuse the two. Else we always will believe that GODS does not play Dice."

In my humble opinion, Albert Einstein was right: "As I have said so many times, God doesn't play dice with the world."

I think that there are two fundamentally different types of determinism at work in the world. Science studies simple determinism... things that can be described by mathematical formulæ. On the other hand, there is real determinism, which lies behind simple determinism.

Consider this example... I think to myself that I would raise my arm. Suddenly, my arm responds. This motion is clearly deterministic, for I can repeat it hundreds or thousands of times and it always works. In that sense, it is even more deterministic than are Quantum effects, which frequently seem to fail to occur in deterministic ways.

What happens when I decide to move my arm? Undoubtedly there is a flurry of activity in the microcosmic world of Quantum Mechanics, as subatomic particles move about in accordance with my intent. They seem to undergo changes which can not be explained in simple determinism... for they are responding to real determinism.

Physicists do not want to admit that real determinism exists. Why not? I think the fundamental reason is one of pride. The scientist does not want to tell people how he spent billions of dollars on an experiment which he then spoiled by moving his arm about. So he must come up with an alternative explanation, that god is playing dice with the world.

Albert Einstein, of course, would reject my views as much as he rejected those of the Copenhagen School. The scientist's desire to find simple, elegant descriptions of the world is very intoxicating.

I think there are many mysteries involved in real determinism... most importantly in explaining how one can reconcile man's belief in ethical responsibility with it. It is not my intent to explore all those mysteries in this simple message.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

"Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

~ William Shakespeare; Hamlet Act 1, scene 5.

Speaking of Einstein, there is an interesting presentation on ***Einstein's God*** ...

http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/speakingoffaith/programs/2010/02/23/20100225_einsteins_god_128.mp3?_kip_ipx=2056955524-1324659241

GS: "One of the worst quandries I have ever heard of, in the Christian Community is 'Why Does God allow Bad things to happen to Good People?' The pat answer is of course some dreck about 'Free Will,' which I take leave not to accept, if only because I question the assumption of will."

(1) The question, "Why Does God allow Bad things to happen to Good People?" is really more of a Jewish quandary than a Christian one. From a Christian perspective, suffering unites one with the Passion of Jesus and so is an opportunity for us to become what god intends us to be. It is in a Jewish context that the problem is somewhat inexplicable.

(2) It is generally understood that god created the world as an outpouring of god's glory. The perfection of the world as a whole is compatible with the imperfection of its parts. For no possible world could exhaust god's glory. The evils which men face in their lives must be seen against the broader context of god's glory.

(3) Free will is a mystery. It certainly can not be understood in the context of simple determinism or of Quantum indeterminism, Fundamentally it is seen in the primacy of form and intent over matter and motion.

GS: "One of the reasons that science is so hated by "True Believers" is simply because..."

I reject your premise that science is hated by Christ's Faithful. You are speaking from your own prejudice and your hatred of religion... which you imagine to mean that Christ's Faithful must hate you in return.

"Let us call brethren, even those who hate us and in the Resurrection let us sing..

"Christ is risen from the dead!

"By death He trampled Death,

"And to those in the graves He granted life!"

~ The Paschal Sticheras.

Bill:"Physicists do not want to admit that real determinism exists. Why not? I think the fundamental reason is one of pride. The scientist does not want to tell people how he spent billions of dollars on an experiment which he then spoiled by moving his arm about. So he must come up with an alternative explanation, that god is playing dice with the world."

Oh, good shot!, too bad I am not a physicist, if I was, that would have crossed my bow, in good international maritime form.

Bill, on true believers:"I reject your premise that science is hated by Christ's Faithful. You are speaking from your own prejudice and your hatred of religion... which you imagine to mean that Christ's Faithful must hate you in return."

Bill for your reference, I didn't implicate "Christ's Faithful" in that comment, that was added by you. I was talking about a more generic fish, the people who hate science so much they try to jamb it using religious arguments against anything it suggests might be true. Just lately I was contacted by one that had been dropped from the RG and had started a new account. He seemed to think that I would make him a contact, when he had never been a contact before.

What hatred of religion? And why would I assume that "Christs Faithful" which I suppose includes most of my family would hate me? Why to completely make this even more ludicrous, most of my aquaintences are Christian, of one sect or another. (It's to my shame that I can only sustain 1 or 2 real freindships at a time.)

Bill:"(2) It is generally understood that god created the world as an outpouring of god's glory. The perfection of the world as a whole is compatible with the imperfection of its parts. For no possible world could exhaust god's glory. The evils which men face in their lives must be seen against the broader context of god's glory.

Oh, I see, the World as a whole is a Glory, it's everything else that is a kludge....

Right, well, on to real discussion.

GS: "Oh, good shot!, too bad I am not a physicist, if I was, that would have crossed my bow, in good international maritime form."

I know, there are some who would take offense at the mere suggestion that there are alternatives to simple determinism. I think Einstein and Planck would both be offended by the suggestion.

GS: "What hatred of religion?"

What hatred of science? I think many 'six day creationists' would deny the charge. My objection to the Fundamentalist reading of Genesis is that it ignores the real meaning of the text in order to force it into a different mode, completely ignoring the richness of the Semitic text on which it depends.

On the other hand, I do not doubt their sincerity and total lack of hatred for science. They simply have a different view of what science implies. I would not wish to argue with them. Live and let live...

#H1-517. D3P4-14. My msg 516 was in the context of GS's "elastic time" ( there).

Graeme, 21 h ago: the quandary of why bad things to good people:

should i want to start wanting to know when at all "harm" (another concept-word i use is "injuribility") first arose? I don't know, before the birth of life if,---mountains crashing each other, or eartquakes swallowing, or tsunamis sinking the coastal lands, or the 'recent' supernova explosion,---did generate harm.

I always like to think abov as what was the first act of organic food eating [fear or greed would not have preceded it]---which bacteria or multicellular organism would have in it's "hunger", first tasted a part of which another? That would have caused injury, and the first harm.

Then, one animals evolved eating unfortunate others.

I think i cannot get any useful answer to the "why harm" question until i can fathom why the such unmoral method of "eating others" became tolerated to evolve. What tragedy.

[stop time]

SN: "I think i cannot get any useful answer to the 'why harm' question until i can fathom why the such unmoral method of 'eating others' became tolerated to evolve. What tragedy."

(1) I would note that I neither believe, nor disbelieve in Darwinian Evolution. For I see no convincing evidence of it. There is evidence for micro-evolution but no real evidence for the evolution of species.

(2) Darwinian evolution seems to aim at the survival of the species. To the extent that we may speak of morality in such a context, it would seem that the supremely moral act is that which promotes the survival of the species. Clearly many species are carnivorous. Eating flesh is necessary for them. What is truly necessary is always right.

(3) Although it is possible for men to survive on a vegetarian diet, it is difficult for men to thrive without eating at least some flesh. For our bodies are biologically attuned to eating flesh.

(4) Different cultures have widely different customs in this regard. India is known for its ready supply of vegetables which enable the people of India to live on a vegetarian diet, supplemented by milk. Many other places are not so lucky. Israel, for example, is a relatively arid land. There, sheep and goats are able to convert simple grasses, which men can not effectively digest, into foods which they can digest. In the Bible we read how god commanded Noah to eat the flesh of animals. Later god commanded the Jews to eat the Passover lamb as a sign of their covenant with god. Personally, I see nothing wrong with these practices. They are in full accordance with natural law.

(5) I am fascinated by your use of the word, 'tolerated.' Whom do you see as having 'tolerated' this? Are you supposing that such a person is somehow guilty in some way for the course of Darwinian evolution?

(6) I am equally fascinated by your aside, 'what tragedy.' In my humble opinion, the world is fantastic, a miracle in progress. There are some tragedies in life, but life itself is ever so glorious.