This unity [the child], however, is only a point, [an undifferentiated unity,] a seed; the lovers cannot so contribute to it as to give it a manifold in itself at the start. Their union is free from all inner division; in it there is no working on an opposite. Everything which gives the newly begotten child a manifold life and a specific existence, it must draw into itself, set over against itself, and unify with itself. The seed breaks free from its original unity, turns ever more and more to opposition, and begins to develop. Each stage of its development is a separation, and its aim in each is to regain for itself the full riches of life [enjoyed by the parents]. Thus the process is: unity, separated opposites, reunion. After their union the lovers separate again, but in the child their union has become unseparated.
-- Hegel, Love fragment, p 307-308/381, emphasis mine
Friday, January 31, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
[The state of nature was taken, by numerous philosophers, to be humanity's 'natural state' before we were brought out of it into the state of laws:]
Now in the separation [of unity from multiplicity] empiricism lacks in the first place all criteria for drawing the boundary between the accidental and the necessary; i.e., for determining what in the chaos of the state of nature or in the abstraction of man must remain and what must be discarded. In this matter the guiding determinant can only be, that as much must remain as is required for the exposition of what is found in the real world: the governing principle for this a priori is the a posteriori. If something in the idea of the state of law is to be justified, all that is required, for the purpose of demonstrating its own necessity and its connection with what is original and necessary, is to transfer into the chaos an appropriate quality or capacity and, in the manner of all the sciences based on the empirical, to make, for purposes of so-called explanation of reality, hypotheses in which this reality is posited in the same determinate character, though only in a formal-ideal shape as force, matter, capacity, etc. Any one of these is very readily made intelligible and explicable in terms of the other.
[...]
But the unity itself can only proceed, as in empirical physics, according to the principle of an absolute quantitative multiplicity; in place of the many atomic qualities it can only exhibit a multiplicity of parts or relations---once again nothing but multiplex complexities of the presupposedly original simple and separated multiple units, superficial contacts between these qualities which in themselves are indestructible in their particularity and capable of only light and partial interconnections and intermixtures.
-- Hegel, Natural Law, p 425-6, emphases mine
Now in the separation [of unity from multiplicity] empiricism lacks in the first place all criteria for drawing the boundary between the accidental and the necessary; i.e., for determining what in the chaos of the state of nature or in the abstraction of man must remain and what must be discarded. In this matter the guiding determinant can only be, that as much must remain as is required for the exposition of what is found in the real world: the governing principle for this a priori is the a posteriori. If something in the idea of the state of law is to be justified, all that is required, for the purpose of demonstrating its own necessity and its connection with what is original and necessary, is to transfer into the chaos an appropriate quality or capacity and, in the manner of all the sciences based on the empirical, to make, for purposes of so-called explanation of reality, hypotheses in which this reality is posited in the same determinate character, though only in a formal-ideal shape as force, matter, capacity, etc. Any one of these is very readily made intelligible and explicable in terms of the other.
[...]
But the unity itself can only proceed, as in empirical physics, according to the principle of an absolute quantitative multiplicity; in place of the many atomic qualities it can only exhibit a multiplicity of parts or relations---once again nothing but multiplex complexities of the presupposedly original simple and separated multiple units, superficial contacts between these qualities which in themselves are indestructible in their particularity and capable of only light and partial interconnections and intermixtures.
-- Hegel, Natural Law, p 425-6, emphases mine
Monday, January 27, 2014
Self-awareness arises to facilitate this sharing. Hence “only as a social animal did the human learn to become conscious of himself—he does it still, he does it more and more” (again, GS354). “Consciousness is genuinely only a connection-net [Verbindungsnetz] between human and human, — only as such did it have to evolve [entwickeln].” So consciousness belongs to our “communal- [Gemeinschafts-] and herd-nature,” and it has “finely evolved” only in relation to “social- and herd-utilities.” We become self-aware, that is, not because it's in our own interest, but because it enables us to be fuller members of the herd: we look inward, the better to align ourselves with others. And this inhibits us, Nietzsche thinks, from understanding ourselves individually, since we become conscious only of our “average” (Durchschnittliches). Our thoughts are controlled by this “genius of the species” that controls consciousness, and are “as it were majoritized [majorisirt] and translated back into the herd-perspective.”
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 91
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 91
Sunday, January 26, 2014
This supplies a further reason why our values are not immediately or inevitably available to us. It's not just that they lie mainly in our drives, rather than in our conscious purposes. It's also that these values are “in” our drives not just by virtue of how those drives are now, but by their past. My values are settled by selection that worked largely before me—in the history of my species and society. And even there, this selection worked quite above or behind my ancestors' conscious sense of what they valued and why. The mechanisms selecting values are opaque to us, despite our ordinary confidence that we understand and choose our own values. We don't really know what we want. To find out, we need genealogy.
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 77
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 77
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Prison Culture: 15 Things That We Re-Learned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 2013
"2. We were still sterilizing women in U.S. prisons as late as 2010."
"Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found."
"2. We were still sterilizing women in U.S. prisons as late as 2010."
"Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found."
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
In that case, happiness [eudaimonia] does not lie in amusement; for it is indeed a strange thought that the end should be amusement, and that the busy-ness and suffering throughout one's life should be for the sake of amusing oneself. For we value almost everything, except happiness, for the sake of something else; for happiness is an end. To apply oneself to serious things, and to labour, for the sake of amusement appears silly and excessively childish. 'Play to be serious', as Anacharsis has it, seems to be the correct way; for amusement is like relaxation, and it is because people are incapable of labouring continuously that they need to relax. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it occurs for the sake of activity.
-- Aristotle, 1176b25-1177a1
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
703
One has confused displeasure with one kind of displeasure, with exhaustion; the latter does indeed represent a profound diminution and reduction of the will to power, a measurable loss of force. That is to say: there exists (a) displeasure as a means of stimulating the increase of power, and (b) displeasure following an overexpenditure of power; in the first case a stimulus, in the second the result of an excessive stimulation--- Inability to resist is characteristic of the latter kind of displeasure: a challenge to that which resists belongs to the former--- The only pleasure still felt in the condition of exhaustion is falling asleep; victory is the pleasure in the other case---
The great confusion on the part of psychologists consisted in not distinguishing between these two kinds of pleasure---that of falling asleep and that of victory. The exhausted want rest, relaxation, peace, calm---the happiness of the nihilistic religions and philosophies; the rich and living want victory, opponents overcome, the overflowing of the feeling of power across wider domains than hitherto. All healthy functions of the organism have this need---and the whole organism is such a complex of systems struggling for an increase of the feeling of power-----
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
-- Aristotle, 1176b25-1177a1
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
703
One has confused displeasure with one kind of displeasure, with exhaustion; the latter does indeed represent a profound diminution and reduction of the will to power, a measurable loss of force. That is to say: there exists (a) displeasure as a means of stimulating the increase of power, and (b) displeasure following an overexpenditure of power; in the first case a stimulus, in the second the result of an excessive stimulation--- Inability to resist is characteristic of the latter kind of displeasure: a challenge to that which resists belongs to the former--- The only pleasure still felt in the condition of exhaustion is falling asleep; victory is the pleasure in the other case---
The great confusion on the part of psychologists consisted in not distinguishing between these two kinds of pleasure---that of falling asleep and that of victory. The exhausted want rest, relaxation, peace, calm---the happiness of the nihilistic religions and philosophies; the rich and living want victory, opponents overcome, the overflowing of the feeling of power across wider domains than hitherto. All healthy functions of the organism have this need---and the whole organism is such a complex of systems struggling for an increase of the feeling of power-----
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
Monday, January 20, 2014
From Twin Peaks.
*Spoiler alert.*
Sheriff Truman: He was completely insane.
Agent Cooper: Think so?
Albert: But people saw Bob, people saw him in visions: Laura, Maddy, Sarah Palmer.
Major Briggs: Gentlemen, there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt up in our philosophy.
Agent Cooper: Amen.
Sheriff Truman: Well I've lived in these old woods most of my life, I've seen some strange things, but this is way off the map---I mean, I'm having a hard time believing.
Agent Cooper: Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?
Sheriff Truman: No.
*Spoiler alert.*
Sheriff Truman: He was completely insane.
Agent Cooper: Think so?
Albert: But people saw Bob, people saw him in visions: Laura, Maddy, Sarah Palmer.
Major Briggs: Gentlemen, there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt up in our philosophy.
Agent Cooper: Amen.
Sheriff Truman: Well I've lived in these old woods most of my life, I've seen some strange things, but this is way off the map---I mean, I'm having a hard time believing.
Agent Cooper: Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?
Sheriff Truman: No.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
634
Critique of the mechanistic theory.--- Let us here dismiss the two popular concepts "necessity" and "law": the former introduces a false constraint into the world, the latter a false freedom. "Things" do not behave regularly, according to a rule: there are no things (---they are fictions invented by us); they behave just as little under the constraint of necessity. There is no obedience here: for that something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of an obedience or a rule or a compulsion---
The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power---this is the question in every event: if, for our day-to-day calculations, we know how to express this in formulas and "laws," so much the better for us! But we have not introduced any "morality" into the world by the fiction that it is obedient---.
There is no law: every power draws its ultimate consequence at every moment. Calculability exists precisely because things are unable to be other than they are.
[...]
624
Against the physical atom.-- To comprehend the world, we have to be able to calculate it; to be able to calculate it, we have to have constant causes; because we find no such constant causes in actuality, we invent them for ourselves---the atoms. This is the origin of atomism.
The calculability of the world, the expressibility of all events in formulas---is this really "comprehension"? How much of a piece of music has been understood when that in it which is calculable and can be reduced to formulas has been reckoned up?--- And "constant causes," things, substances, something "unconditioned"; invented---what has one achieved?
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
Critique of the mechanistic theory.--- Let us here dismiss the two popular concepts "necessity" and "law": the former introduces a false constraint into the world, the latter a false freedom. "Things" do not behave regularly, according to a rule: there are no things (---they are fictions invented by us); they behave just as little under the constraint of necessity. There is no obedience here: for that something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of an obedience or a rule or a compulsion---
The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power---this is the question in every event: if, for our day-to-day calculations, we know how to express this in formulas and "laws," so much the better for us! But we have not introduced any "morality" into the world by the fiction that it is obedient---.
There is no law: every power draws its ultimate consequence at every moment. Calculability exists precisely because things are unable to be other than they are.
[...]
624
Against the physical atom.-- To comprehend the world, we have to be able to calculate it; to be able to calculate it, we have to have constant causes; because we find no such constant causes in actuality, we invent them for ourselves---the atoms. This is the origin of atomism.
The calculability of the world, the expressibility of all events in formulas---is this really "comprehension"? How much of a piece of music has been understood when that in it which is calculable and can be reduced to formulas has been reckoned up?--- And "constant causes," things, substances, something "unconditioned"; invented---what has one achieved?
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
Friday, January 17, 2014
On the contrary, since Jesus calls the bread and wine, which he distributes to all, his body and blood given for them, the unification is no longer merely felt but has become visible. It is not merely represented in an image, an allegorical figure, but linked to a reality, eaten and enjoyed in a reality, the bread. Hence the feeling becomes in a way objective; yet this bread and wine, and the act of distribution, are not purely objective; there is more in the distribution than is seen; it is a mystical action. A spectator ignorant of their friendship and with no understanding of the words of Jesus would have seen nothing save the distribution of some bread and wine and the enjoyment of these. Similarly, when friends part and break a ring and each keeps one piece, a spectator sees nothing but the breaking of a useful thing and its division into useless and valueless pieces; the mystical aspect of the pieces he has failed to grasp. Objectively considered, then, the bread is just bread, the wine just wine; yet both are something more. This "more" is not connected with the objects (like an explanation) by a mere "just as": " just as the single pieces which you eat are from one loaf and the wine you drink is from the same cup, so are you mere particulars, though one in love, in the spirit"; "just as you all share in this bread and wine, so you all share in my sacrifice"; or whatever other "just as" you like to find here. Yet the connection of objective and subjective, of the bread and the persons, is here not the connection of allegorized with allegory, with the parable in which the different things, the things compared, are set forth as severed, as separate, and all that is asked is a comparison, the thought of the likeness of dissimilars. On the contrary, in this link between bread and persons, difference disappears, and with it the possibility of comparison. Things heterogeneous are here most intimately connected.
-- Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity, p 249
Something I have thought about: is this the longing for the overcoming of metaphor (what Derrida might call a kind of dream of full presence), or is the metaphor itself a disenchanted relic?
-- Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity, p 249
Something I have thought about: is this the longing for the overcoming of metaphor (what Derrida might call a kind of dream of full presence), or is the metaphor itself a disenchanted relic?
In the hundred different environments of its inhabitants, the oak plays an ever-changing role as object, sometimes with some parts, sometimes with others. The same parts are alternately large and small. Its wood is both hard and soft; it serves for attack and for defense.
If one wanted to summarize all the different characteristics shown by the oak as an object, this would only give rise to chaos. Yet these are only parts of a subject that is solidly put together in itself, which carries and shelters all environments---one which is never known by all the subjects of these environments and never knowable for them.
-- Uexküll, A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, p 132
If one wanted to summarize all the different characteristics shown by the oak as an object, this would only give rise to chaos. Yet these are only parts of a subject that is solidly put together in itself, which carries and shelters all environments---one which is never known by all the subjects of these environments and never knowable for them.
-- Uexküll, A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, p 132
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
I'm going to cheat a little, and use this as a place to 'dump' various articles I find interesting and that I might want to use in my research involving animals.
Maybe you'll find them interesting too.
Male Mice Woo Females With 'Love Songs' Similar to Songbirds
The Science Is In: Elephants Are Even Smarter Than We Realized
The Blood Harvest - on horseshoe crab harvest for biomedical purposes
Small animals perceive the world in slow-motion
Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing - abstract
Human-introduced long-term traditions in wild redfronted lemurs? - abstract
The Behavioral Ecology of Color Vision: Considering Fruit Conspicuity, Detection Distance and Dietary Importance - abstract
Maybe you'll find them interesting too.
Male Mice Woo Females With 'Love Songs' Similar to Songbirds
The Science Is In: Elephants Are Even Smarter Than We Realized
The Blood Harvest - on horseshoe crab harvest for biomedical purposes
Small animals perceive the world in slow-motion
Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing - abstract
Human-introduced long-term traditions in wild redfronted lemurs? - abstract
The Behavioral Ecology of Color Vision: Considering Fruit Conspicuity, Detection Distance and Dietary Importance - abstract
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
I offer myself as a nature guide, exploring for values. Many before us have got lost and we must look the world over. The unexamined life is not worth living; life in an unexamined world is not worth living either. We miss too much of value.
-- Holmes Rolston III, Value in Nature and the Nature of Value
-- Holmes Rolston III, Value in Nature and the Nature of Value
Sunday, January 5, 2014
While writing the line "Further, this way of thinking offers...", it occurred to me how I used to take 'way of thinking' as a 'manner of thinking'. But as I work through Heidegger's What Is Called Thinking, I now also hear 'way of thinking' as saying: path of thinking. A way of thinking is not merely a manner of thinking, but it is also a course of thinking.
Somewhat relatedly, but also distant, is the phrase 'of course'. "Of course I think that is best." 'Of course' meaning 'obviously', but also 'of the path', 'of the way', 'of the way things move or flow'.
I say "relatedly, but also distant," because, of course, that which is a way of thinking is not always obvious.
Somewhat relatedly, but also distant, is the phrase 'of course'. "Of course I think that is best." 'Of course' meaning 'obviously', but also 'of the path', 'of the way', 'of the way things move or flow'.
I say "relatedly, but also distant," because, of course, that which is a way of thinking is not always obvious.
Let The Fire Burn trailer
"When gun fire broke out and tear gas was not enough to pull the MOVE members out of the house, the police decided to drop explosives on the house. A fire soon began to blaze, endangering the several children now trapped inside the house. In an infamous decision, the police made the decision to "let the fire burn", resulting in the destruction of over 60 homes and the death of 5 children and 6 adults. The investigation commission that followed found that law enforcement had acted negligently, but no criminal charges were filed."
-- from Wikipedia
May 13, 1985: Philadelphia
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I had never heard of this before today:
http://rabble.ca/toolkit/rabblepedia/fruit-machine
"It was a top secret system of persecution and oppression of queer Canadians, spurred by homophobia . It involved the calculated and systemic demotion and firing of queers in the civil service by the RCMP."
"The fruit machine was not only the systemic targeting of queers in the civil service, but also an actual contraption. It looked like a dentist chair, with cameras and sensor attached along with a black box that displayed images at eye level for the victim."
"Even after Trudeau decriminalized queer sex, the fruit machine kept secret tabs on Canadians in the civil service up until the 1990s."
Saturday, January 4, 2014
If we nonetheless leave science aside now in dealing with the question what it is to form ideas, we do so not in the proud delusion that we have all the answers, but out of discretion inspired by a lack of knowledge.
The word "idea" comes from the Greek εἶδω which means to see, face, meet, be face-to-face.
We stand outside of science. Instead we stand before a tree in bloom, for example---and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet one another, as the tree stands there and we stand face to face with it. As we are in this relation of one to the other and before the other, the tree and we are. This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these "ideas" buzzing about in our heads. Let us stop here for a moment, as we would to catch our breath before and after a leap. For that is what we are now, men [sic] who have leapt, out of the familiar realm of science and even, as we shall see, out of the realm of philosophy. And where have we leapt? Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we really stand. When anything so curious as this leap becomes necessary, something must have happened that gives food for thought. Judged scientifically, of course, it remains the most inconsequential thing on earth that each of us has at some time stood facing a tree in bloom. After all, what of it? We come and stand facing a tree, before it, and the tree faces us, meets us. Which one is meeting here? The tree, or we? Or both? Or neither? We come and stand---just as we are, and not merely with our head or our consciousness---facing the tree in bloom, and the tree faces, meets us as the tree it is. Or did the tree anticipate us and come before us? Did the tree come first to stand and face us, so that we might come forward face-to-face with it?
-- Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, pages 41-42
The word "idea" comes from the Greek εἶδω which means to see, face, meet, be face-to-face.
We stand outside of science. Instead we stand before a tree in bloom, for example---and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet one another, as the tree stands there and we stand face to face with it. As we are in this relation of one to the other and before the other, the tree and we are. This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these "ideas" buzzing about in our heads. Let us stop here for a moment, as we would to catch our breath before and after a leap. For that is what we are now, men [sic] who have leapt, out of the familiar realm of science and even, as we shall see, out of the realm of philosophy. And where have we leapt? Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we really stand. When anything so curious as this leap becomes necessary, something must have happened that gives food for thought. Judged scientifically, of course, it remains the most inconsequential thing on earth that each of us has at some time stood facing a tree in bloom. After all, what of it? We come and stand facing a tree, before it, and the tree faces us, meets us. Which one is meeting here? The tree, or we? Or both? Or neither? We come and stand---just as we are, and not merely with our head or our consciousness---facing the tree in bloom, and the tree faces, meets us as the tree it is. Or did the tree anticipate us and come before us? Did the tree come first to stand and face us, so that we might come forward face-to-face with it?
-- Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, pages 41-42
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