Great - a maths head. I'll check out the thread.

jeeprs;

I don't know anything about longknowledge except that he has a good friend. I addressed what I know about boredom, lonliness, and an observation about his writing style.

However, I did mis-speak in my posting. I said "I am never lonely and it is never boring around me". What I should have said was that when I notice boredom I know that's it's because I have created a plateau to rest on and that I need to get back to work.

Dasein

---------- Post added 03-11-2010 at 07:41 AM ----------

Zetetic;


I'm not saying you should stop using concepts and representations. That would be like telling a carpenter to stop using his hammer.

All I'm saying is that when most people use concepts and representations they confuse them with who they are. It's kind of like telling the carpenter he is his hammer.

When you use concepts & representations to represent who you are, you remove you from the conversation.

You are no longer considering you as you really are.

When you remove you from the conversation then the concepts & representations are not accurate and no longer relevant because the concepts & representations don't take you into consideration.

Dasein

Reconstructo

Not sure this is entirely relevant here but it came up. Here's a sample of Dantzig.

"Herein I see the genesis of the conflict between geometrical intuition, from which our physical concepts derive, and the logic of arithmetic. The harmony of the universe knows only one musical form - the legato; while the symphony of numbers knows only its opposite, - the staccato. All attempts to reconcile this discrepancy are based on the hope that an accelerated staccato may appear to our senses as legato. Yet our intellect will always brand such attempts as deceptions and reject such theories as an insult, as a metaphysics that purports to explain away a concept by resolving it into its opposite."
[RIGHT]Tobias Dantzig
Number - The Language of Science (251)
Pearson Education 2005 (1930) [/RIGHT]

"The axiom of Dedekind - "if all points of a straight line fall into two classes, such that every point of the first class lies to the left of any point of the second class, then there exists one and only one point which produces this division of all points into two classes, this severing of the straight line into two portions" - this axiom is just a skillful paraphrase of the fundamental property we attribute to time. Our intuition permits us, by an act of the mind, to sever all time into the two clasess, the past and the future, which are mutually exclusive and yet together comprise all of time, eternity: The now is the partition which separates all the past from all the future; any instant of the past was once a now, any instant of the future will be a now anon, and so any instant may itself act as such a partition. To be sure, of the past we know only disparate instants, yet, by an act of the mind we fill out the gaps; we conceive that between any two instants - no matter how closely these may be associated in our memory - there were other instants, and we postulate the same compactness for the future. This is what we mean by the flow of time.
Furthermore, paradoxical though this may seem, the present is truly irrational in the Dedekind sense of the word, for while it acts as partition it is neither a part of the past nor a part of the future. Indeed, in an arithmetic based on pure time, if such an arithmetic was at all possible, it is the irrational which would be taken as a matter of course, while all the painstaking efforts of our logic would be directed toward establishing the existence of rational numbers.

Finally, when Dedekind says that "if we knew for certain that space was discontinuous, there would be nothing to prevent us, in case we so desired, from filling up its gaps in thought and thus making it continuous," he states post factum. This filling-out process was accomplished ages ago, and we shall never dicover any gaps in space for the simple reason that we cannot conceive of any gaps in time."
[RIGHT]Tobias Dantzig
Number - The Language of Science (182)
Pearson Education 2005 (1930)[/RIGHT]

Fair enough, I'm a bit of a recovering radical positivist but before that I had an interest in thinkers such as Nietzsche and Camus and Dostoevsky, now I am interested in pursuing Heidegger and Sartre for a bit.

I agree that when we use concepts and representations we loose the cohesive aspect of be-ing in that we are left only with abstract and highly refined representations of parts of what we are trying to speak of, and so loose the essence of what we are trying to say. We can speak of how we relate to the rest of world but in doing this we often loose sight of how we really are in the world.

The trouble is that we often find it necessary to represent ourselves in such a way that is at once accurate and inaccurate when we are limited in how much we can communicate. Here on this forum, it is not usually the case that the time we have to explore a position is very limited, though it is often seen as much easier to say 'I am a logical positivist, therefore I do not believe that metaphysics is sensible, here is some stuff I read in Language Truth and Logic:...' than to expound on the deeper aspects of the conversation.

It is also occasionally(you may disagree) useful to crudely represent oneself in order to spark an interest. This is done quite often (in some sense it's sophistry).

Anyway, I'm off! In the future I expect that I will be on!

Would it be enough to say that the conceiver is not a conception and can only be experienced, or been, where any conception must be false to it a priori. Thus we arrive at Zen.

Zetetic;


I guess I am posing four possibilities:

• If the concepts are just a representation of us why do we have to speak in concepts?
  
• If we don't have to speak in concepts then each of us needs to invent a new way of speaking
  
• If we continue to use concepts to represent we need a way to tell the difference between
  
  • a) people who understand who they are and
    
  • b) people who don't know that they are not the concepts and representations
    
  
  
• Re: the people who don't know that they are not the concepts and representations, how do we tell the difference between those that are:
  
  • a) willing to find out they are not the concepts from those who are
    
  • b) unwilling to find out
    
  
  

Any suggestions? The only thing I have found that works/doesn't work is to keep on telling it the way it is and people come around or they don't.

Let the good times roll. BTW - whether people come around or don't come around is not a good reason to stop telling it the way it is. You are the master of your sanity nobody else is - hopefully.

Dasein

I'll look at your points one at a time and see what falls out:


[/LIST]
This is a question of practicality, I'll leave it for now since your next questions involve this one indirectly.



This is a very interesting point, but the problem is perhaps the limits of communication itself, is it not?


[/LIST]



So now I have seen all of your points. We seem to have trouble communicating about ourselves, and about things in general. The phenomena of people who are not aware that they are not the concepts and representations they communicate about themselves is not something I have considered; and in fact I did not really realize that it might be a common phenomenon. Perhaps I am simply blind to those around me or perhaps I simply make sure those around me are acute enough to recognize these limitations of all current modes of communication (I think many people have been frustrated by their inability to communicate accurately what they wish to, even, and perhaps more than usual, very dull people).

I must make sure I understand the phenomena you are conveying here so I will try to put it in terms that are as concrete as I can muster:
There are people who believe that they fit nicely within certain parameters, and that if they communicated the proper words, then they would communicate properly what they are. Furthermore, they believe that these words exist and are clear in meaning.

If this is accurate, I would say that the only thing they are really considering is the difference between themselves and other persons. So I can say, roughly, "I am a libertarian socialist", as opposed to a "free market capitalist" or a "pro-state Marxist". So I try to convey one parameter of my be-ing in relation to other beings of an already presupposed type (human, conscious, what have you) who are in the world in a particular way.

In this I convey the difference, and this is both in a sense positive and in another sense negative. In the sense that it is positive or constructive, this parameter is one that has been constructed by other beings be-ing in a particular way in order to express how they are be-ing and how they would like other to be and on the other hand it is presented as being opposed to how others might be be-ing and might wish others to be.

So these parameters speak to a difference in be-ing, but also to desire and a way of being-in-the-world, but they do not speak directly to the act of be-ing itself but rather passes over be-ing which implicitly assuming it. Is this fair to say?

Something that I find to be more commonplace is that people push for the results that occur when someone understands you rather than pursuing various tests of understanding. It is easy to give an explanation and receive a response that makes it appear as though the information has been properly conveyed, but in fact it has not. In fact, it is very easy to build the desired response into the explanation itself, so that the listener can simply guess the correct response but only half understand you. In this way concepts become muddled and communication is nearly hopeless without a great level of persistence and patience.

As far as whether we must speak in concepts, it seems quite difficult to avoid doing so. It may be possible ( and many claim that it is) to have a language that can specify perfectly matters of fact and logic. This may allow us to speak very exactly about phenomena we have seen. So, if you will indulge me, I may describe a tree as an equation for a curve (with added information so that you could infer the colors and such) representing the tree, and if you had a computational apparatus to convert this coordinate scheme to a picture (a bit of a trans-humanist solution) you would understand what I am speaking about.

This may be possible, but it then is still necessary to speak of relationships between objects and pictures, and relationships between relationships. So we need a meta-language. Supposing we don't have technological limitations preventing this sort of thing, we could probably allow for much more accurate communication, but this only sidesteps your points. We may be able to accurately convey our experiences, and in doing so we can actually communicate instances of our be-ing (or at least very close approximations), but are we really getting at the deeper problem or just obscuring it by making our concepts more accurate?

If we don't have to speak in concepts, you claim that each of us must develop a new way of speaking. Could you elaborate this point?

Zetetic;

Who you are is the understanding you have of who you are, nothing more, nothing less. From the moment you were born until the moment you die you will be projecting that understanding into the future.

It is who you are and you can't turn it off. It happens without you putting any attention on it. You can distract yourself from it or you can try to ignore it, but you can't make it go away.

Your entire existence is committed to uncovering that understanding whether you uncover it or not. When you see through the smoke and past all of the mirrors you will find that this is what every human be-ing does with their time along with paying the bills, raising a family, and having a career.

You will uncover the understanding and discover who you are or you won't. Regardless of whether you uncover it or not, that understanding is who you are, who you will become, and at the moment of your death it is who you will be.

The only say you have in life is whether you uncover who you are or you don't. You can't "make a difference" or "change the world" by poking a stick at life and trying to manipulate it. As you uncover your understanding you will find that life around you will change. It doesn't happen the other way around. Eventually you will realize that you are the one who creates the world the way it is and you do it by uncovering the understanding of who you are. By uncovering that understanding you create something new in the world and you don't perpetuate The Legacy.

It will take a lifetime to uncover the understanding of who you are. In the meantime don't expect the world to understand you. You will save yourself a lot of grief.

There are only two ways to get an understanding of who you are.
1) You can get an understanding of who you are by reflecting you upon the "world" around you. Reflecting on the "world" means that the "comparative reflection" you are making defines your understanding of who you are and you forfeit the right to have any say in the matter. This is called "The Legacy".
2) You can get an understanding of who you are by refusing to reflect you upon the "world" around you. I'm not going to be able to give you anything to hold on to here so don't look for it. If you stop reflecting on the "world" around you, you will confront confusion, doubt, and anger. Don't let them make you run for cover. Stick with it. Something else will show up. It will be the "ground" you stand on. It will be you - you standing on the ground you stand on (understanding).

Remember this. The only thing that matters in life is the understanding you have of who you are. The number one priority you have in life is to uncover that understanding of who you are. The rest of it will take care of itself. The only one who will uncover that understanding is you. Uncover it, don't uncover it, the world doesn't care. Yes, you are alone.

Dasein

Dasein,

Fair enough. I think you make a good point, at least the point that I understand that you have made seems to be a good one. I also think that I was speaking perhaps to something different than you were, thereby validating my second point: That it is very difficult to truly understand one another unless it happens by chance and context that we are speaking to the same thing.

I always tend to view what you seem to be getting at as something 'necessary, in order to be content with death'. If you do not understand you, how could you be content with death unless you have simply already given up on life?

Zetetic;

The most certain thing in life is death. The most uncertain thing in life is when you will die. Hence, the moment you are born you are already dead, you just don't know when.

I choose to live my life as if I am already dead. Death gives me certainty and since death is also uncertain I wake up each day "going for it" in the face of it all. This way of be-ing produces an "edge" that I enjoy. Read all my posts and you might come to the conclusion I am full of ka-ka but you will also notice that I am constantly "attacking the net".

Dasein

Zetetic;

I am naive enough to think that if each of us would stop comparing concepts that we use to represent who we are with then "we" would "show up" in life. As you start to "show up" you will "require" others to "show up". Some will and they will be great friends for a long time. Others won't "show up" and they will remove themselves from your life and most likely blame you for the circumstances. As they say in France, "Such is life"!

There is an unspoken agreement in life which is "If you don't call me on my BS, I won't call you on yours". It is this "agreement" that perpetuates the confusion and doubt. When you will no longer put up with your own BS the people around you will begin to expect more out of themselves and you won't need to have done anything to change them.

People opt for the confusion and doubt so they don't have to hold themselves accountable and the funny thing is that the "mess" around them is "life" telling them that they are accountable and that they need to do something about it. What they need to do is stop perpetuating the "concepts" and "representations" and the rest of it will clear up on its own.

Yes, my friend, it is this simple. It only requires that you manage you and the rest will "fall into place". You really don't have to "change the world". You only need to manage you.

Dasein