Nothing: A Hungarian Etymology

'Landing', 2013. Grateful acknowledgement to Sadradeen Ameen

Posted by Király V. István

In its primary – and abstract – appearance, nothing is precisely 'that' 'which' it is not. However, its word is still there in the words of most languages (for we cannot know all). Here we explore its primary meaning in Hungarian.

The Hungarian word for nothing, 'semmi' is a compound of the conjunction 'sem' (nor) and the personal pronoun 'mi' (we). The negative 'sem' expresses 'nor here' (sem itt), 'nor there' (sem ott), 'nor then' (sem akkor), 'nor me' (sem én), 'nor him or her' (sem ő), etc. That is: I or we have searched everywhere, yet I or we have found nothing, nowhere, never.

However much we think about it: the not to which the 'sem' sends is not
the negating 'Not', nor the depriving 'Not' that Heidegger revealed in his analysis of 'das Nichts'. The Not in the 'sem' is a searching Not! It says, in fact, that searching, we have not found. By this, it says that the way we met, faced,
and confronted the Not is actually a search. Thus the 'sem' places the negation in the mode of search, and the search into the mode of Not (that is, negation).

What does all this mean in its essence? Firstly, it means that, although the 'sem' is indeed a kind of search, which 'flows into' the Not, still, as a search, it
always distinguishes itself from the not-s it faces and encounters. For searching is never simply a repeated question, nor the repetition of a question, but a question carried around. Therefore the 'sem' is always about more than the tension between the question and the negative answer given to it. For the negation itself – the Not – is placed into the mode of search! And conversely.

Therefore the 'sem' never negates the searching itself – only places and fixes it in its deficient modes. Those in which it 'does not find' in any direction. This way, the 'sem' charges, emphasizes, and outlines the Not, but also stimulates the search, until the exhaustion of its final emptiness. Therefore the contextually experienced Not – that is, the 'sem' – is actually nothing but an endless deficiency of an emptied, exhausted, yet not suspended search.

This ensures, on the one hand, the stability of the 'sem', which is inclined to
hermetically close up within itself – while on the other hand it also ensures an inner impulse for the search which, emanating from it, continues to push it to its emptiness.

And it is in the horizon of this emanating impulse that the 'sem' merges with the pronoun 'mi', in the Hungarian name for nothing. The 'mi' in Hungarian is at the same time an interrogative pronoun and the first person plural personal pronoun. Whether or not this phonetic identity is a 'coincidence', it conceals important speculative possibilities which should not be overlooked. For the 'Mi' pronoun, with the 'Sem' negative, always says that it is 'we' (Mi) who questioningly search, but find 'nothing' (semmi).

Merged in their common space, the 'sem' and the 'mi' signify that the questioners, in the grip of the plurality of their searching questions, facing the meaning of the 'semmi', only arrived at, and ran into the not, the negation.

In the space of its articulation the Hungarian word of the nothing offers a
deeper and more articulated consideration of what it 'expresses', fixing not only the search and its – deficient – modes, but also the fact that it is always we who search and question, even if we cannot find ourselves in 'that', in the Nothing. That is to say, the Nothing – in one of its meanings – is precisely our strangeness, foreignness, and unusualness, which belongs to our own self – and therefore all our attempts to eliminate it from our existence will always be superfluous.

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Király V. István is an Associate Professor in the Hungarian Department of Philosophy of the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. This post is an extract selected by the Editors, and adjusted for Pi, from his bilingual Hungarian-English Philosophy of The Names of the Nothing.

How the Body Keeps Human Nature in Check

From Bauentwurfslehre, 1936, by Ernst Neufert

Posted by Eugene Alper, with Pi

One of the greatest problems of our time is the problem as to how ethics may be incorporated into metaphysics. The problem was first brought to the fore by David Hume, and became acute with Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously wrote, 'Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent.'   He was referring to ethics.  

Yet beyond Hume and Wittgenstein – beyond Plato, Immanuel Kant, George Moore, and many others – beyond ethical naturalism, objectivism, rationalism – beyond all philosophy and all theory – it may be as simple as the human body. 

Imagine, with me, a man (or a woman) who is dropped into this world from the sky – not knowing anything at all.

He would very quickly discover that his body needs to be fed every five hours, and put to sleep every sixteen.  His skin, he would notice, is sensitive to cold, heat, and many kinds of pain.  He would find that food is not readily available – that it is dangerous to have to fight for it with other people and animals.  He would find that it is helpful to cultivate plants and domesticate animals – and counter-productive to wantonly destroy them.

He would find that blankets need to be of a certain size and thickness – being predicted, too, by the size and function of his body.  He would find that door handles need to be mounted at a certain height, and made for fingers such as his.  He would find that his body predicts the dimensions of many things: the size of a soccer ball, the shape of a boat – even the location of a university, or the power of rocket boosters.

He would find that it is troublesome to anger others – and to find a new shelter every night, to evade them.  He would soon guess that it is more energy efficient to get into a peaceful exchange with others, where he could trade for food something of his own – a thing or a service, or even a promise to be fulfilled in future.  He would find that his own body, with its vulnerabilities and frequent needs, force him to cooperate with others rather than destroy them.

He would find that, even if he were the biggest and strongest of all, he could not be big and strong twenty-four hours a day. For some eight hours daily he would be as defenseless as a baby, and would have to have someone trusted next to him not to get hurt. Even the meanest tyrant with the worst kind of human nature could not be bad all the time under these circumstances. The vulnerability of his own body in sleep and its dependence on non-poisonous food would make him be good at least to his closest circle.

In short, personal ethics, social ethics, political ethics, aesthetic values – building codes, agricultural norms, communications networks, and everything under the sun – would be governed by the body in which this man found himself at the start.  And not only that, but whatever his nature may be – whether 'good' or 'bad' – he would find that his needy body kept it under control.

It is not a new idea.  Theologians proposed it many centuries ago – namely, that a person is designed for certain ends – of whom Thomas Aquinas was the pre-eminent proponent.  Yet it may be precisely because it was a theological idea that it did not gain much traction.  The theology – whether true or false – may be set aside, yet the situation of this man remains the same, who fell from the sky.

We make no moral prescriptions here – no judgements, no commands, no commitments.  We simply leave a description of what a man (or a woman) is.  And whatever it may mean that he has a body or a soul, it finally comes down to this: 'Don't be too cocky', says the body, 'or you will get hurt.'

Is Political Science Science?

Leviathan frontispiece by Abraham Bosse

Posted by Bohdana Kurylo

Is political science science? The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes would seem to present us with a test case par excellence. Claiming that his most influential work, Leviathan, was through and through scientific, Hobbes wrote, ‘Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.’  His work, he judged, was founded upon ‘geometrical and physical first principles of matter and motion’, combined with logical deductions of the human sciences, psychological and political.

Through his scientific researches, Hobbes came to hold a pessimistic view of human nature, which he called the ‘state of nature’, the ‘Natural Condition of Mankind’: a ruinous state of conflict. Paradoxically, he considered that such conflict arose from equality and rationality. Possessing limited resources, a rational man would try to take as much as possible for himself. At the same time, others would need to do the same, as a defensive measure. The likeliest outcome was ‘war of every man against every man’, where law and justice have no place. Such a life, he famously wrote, would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.

Hobbes proposed, therefore, a contract between the people and the Sovereign, as a means of creating peace by imposing a single, sovereign rule. It is the fear of punishment, he wrote, that preserves peace and unity, and ties people to the ‘performance of their Covenants’. Following his logic, individuals are likely to reach the conclusion that a social contract is the best alternative to their natural condition, so surrendering their liberties and rights.

On the surface of it, Hobbes' logic seems compelling, his deductions persuasive, his arguments admirable. Nonetheless, for a number of reasons, it is questionable that his analysis of human nature was truly scientific.

His 'state of nature' was not well founded in history. In Philosophical Rudiments, he wrote (much as he did more generally) that the existence of the American tribes was ‘fierce, short-lived, poor, nasty, and deprived of all that pleasure and beauty of life’. Yet rather than supporting his arguments, this appears to prove him wrong. Historians have generally claimed that the Indians were simple, peaceful, innocent, and uncorrupted by the evils of civilization. Hobbes, it seems, may have absorbed the Puritan tendency of separating the ‘natural’ as regressive, and the non-natural as progressive.

Furthermore, Hobbesian political philosophy becomes complicated when it comes to the fact that his work was both descriptive and prescriptive. The descriptive side is present in his analysis of the state of nature, while his idea of the Sovereign and the Social Contract as a universal solution is evidently prescriptive. Today we are keenly aware of the difficulty of passing from descriptive to prescriptive language. Not only that, but Hobbes' prescriptive language seems to be excessively strong – even emotional.

More than anything, Leviathan reveals that fear was a core element in Hobbes' political study and life. This may be most explicit in his verse autobiography: 'For through the scattered towns a rumor ran / that our people's last day was coming in a fleet / and so much fear my mother conceived at that time / that she gave birth to twins: myself and Fear.' Happy is he, he wrote, quoting Virgil, 'who treads beneath his feet all fear of Fate'. Could it be, then, that Hobbes' political philosophy was born of his own personal history? That it was his own experience of fear which shaped his so-called 'science'? In fact, that his mother's fear of a fleet outweighed all subsequent thought?

If this should be true, what implications may this have for our understanding of political philosophy today? May our political philosophies be shaped by our emotional and historical heritage? May this be a survival mechanism – a memory of the past which cannot be erased through any 'scientific' theory? Were Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, Rawls and so many others with them – mere symptoms of their times – in fact, symptoms of the times which preceded them?

The Death of Rationalism

By Thomas Scarborough

We shall inhabit, for a moment, the world of the German philosophers Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen.  In 1973, Kamlah and Lorenzen co-authored the 'Logische Propädeutic' – an obscure title, with a dull brown cover, and ragged text hammered out on an electric typewriter. Yet it soon became a best-seller.

At its heart lies the concept of the predicator, which Kamlah and Lorenzen thought (in their definition of it) to be the key to a disciplined scientific and philosophical language. A predicator, to borrow a term from Gottlob Frege, 'saturates' the object. For example, in the sentence 'This is a Persian cat,' 'Persian cat' is the predicator. The technical definition: 'We assert a predicator of an object when we state something about the object.' A predicator, too, properly belongs only to a very limited range of predicators. For instance, one can point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is an animal,' although one cannot point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is a bicycle.' Predicators which are legitimately available for our use occur in chains, webs, or networks. For example:

    Cheshire cat → cat → animal → living thing
    Mountain bike → bicycle → vehicle → non-living thing

Note that, even at the end of such predicator chains, we may not arrive at anything common. To put this another way, a Cheshire cat and a mountain bike will rarely turn up in the same conversation. Therefore, the words which we speak fit comfortably into certain predicator chains, webs, or networks (we shall simply call them 'networks' here). Whether we speak about chemistry, ecclesiology, or philosophy, or anything else under the sun, our words fit comfortably into the subject under discussion. Yet even at the same time, most predicators will fail to fit into our conversation at any given time. For instance, while we are permitted to say, 'The maid carries the pail,' we cannot say, 'The maid carries the moon,' or anything of that sort.

In fact, our language is tightly constrained – so tightly constrained that when we put pen to paper, in whichever direction we cast our thoughts, we tend to be able only to construct networks of predicators which are agreeble to our starting point. Kamlah and Lorenzen observe, 'Predicators always stand in such a tightly woven nexus that any one tends to appear with others.' And briefly, they suggest a 'thought-provoking example': philosophy from Augustine to Leibniz was 'determined' by philosophers' understanding of predicators.

A philosophy has ambitions to think in every direction. Yet as it does so, it follows predicator rules (which resemble set theory), and is tightly bound by these rules. Thus Kamlah and Lorenzen note that we are 'thoroughly dominated by an unacknowledged metaphysics'. Therefore, as philosophers sat down in the past to write their philosophies, words were attracted to words – much as magnets snap to magnets – and so predicator networks produced philosophies. One merely needs to posit a starting point – the will to power, for instance – and snap-snap-snap, one has a philosophy. In short, philosophies self-assemble.

It happens through the very nature of words and their attractional forces. We all have experience of the same. Drop an origin into the middle of a pool of thought – or a starting point, a kernel, whatever one may call it – and a system grows. We sit down with a group of people in a hotel lobby. Our talk revolves around the tasteful furnishings and elegant décor. Then I drop a comment that I am doing fascinating research into elephants. From this, a string of conversation results which occupies the whole group for some time – until a concierge interrupts us with a message. I wonder then at my powers of influence. Yet it lies in the very nature of language, which click-click-clicks together in keeping with predicator rules.

Therefore, while philosophising may represent a more systematic pursuit than any casual combinations of words, philosophers have represented little more than the inclinations of the philosophers and their culture. All were bound by centuries of 'unacknowledged metaphysics' – namely, predicator rules. In fact, the same must apply to religion, politics, ethics. Predicator networks, even with the passage of time, remain largely intact. Is there an American in the house? The massacres of the Red Indians are in you, and you were in them. Is there a German? Adolf Hitler inhabits your mind, and you inhabited his. Is there a South African? Apartheid is in your heart, and you were in apartheid's heart.

Of course, we need not think so narrowly. There have been many Americans, Germans, and South Africans, as there have been people of many nations and cultures. A changed environment, too, means changed behaviour for the same hapless creatures. Even predicator networks will change. In this, Kamlah and Lorenzen set their hope. If we take a close look at the system and structure of our language over generations, indeed we may discern faint traces of change, if we focus hard enough.

The Death of Rationalism

By Thomas Scarborough

We shall inhabit, for a moment, the world of the German philosophers Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen.  In 1973, Kamlah and Lorenzen co-authored the 'Logische Propädeutic' – an obscure title, with a dull brown cover, and ragged text hammered out on an electric typewriter. Yet it soon became a best-seller.

At its heart lies the concept of the predicator, which Kamlah and Lorenzen thought (in their definition of it) to be the key to a disciplined scientific and philosophical language. A predicator, to borrow a term from Gottlob Frege, 'saturates' the object. For example, in the sentence 'This is a Persian cat,' 'Persian cat' is the predicator. The technical definition: 'We assert a predicator of an object when we state something about the object.' A predicator, too, properly belongs only to a very limited range of predicators. For instance, one can point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is an animal,' although one cannot point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is a bicycle.' Predicators which are legitimately available for our use occur in chains, webs, or networks. For example:

    Cheshire cat → cat → animal → living thing
    Mountain bike → bicycle → vehicle → non-living thing

Note that, even at the end of such predicator chains, we may not arrive at anything common. To put this another way, a Cheshire cat and a mountain bike will rarely turn up in the same conversation. Therefore, the words which we speak fit comfortably into certain predicator chains, webs, or networks (we shall simply call them 'networks' here). Whether we speak about chemistry, ecclesiology, or philosophy, or anything else under the sun, our words fit comfortably into the subject under discussion. Yet even at the same time, most predicators will fail to fit into our conversation at any given time. For instance, while we are permitted to say, 'The maid carries the pail,' we cannot say, 'The maid carries the moon,' or anything of that sort.

In fact, our language is tightly constrained – so tightly constrained that when we put pen to paper, in whichever direction we cast our thoughts, we tend to be able only to construct networks of predicators which are agreeble to our starting point. Kamlah and Lorenzen observe, 'Predicators always stand in such a tightly woven nexus that any one tends to appear with others.' And briefly, they suggest a 'thought-provoking example': philosophy from Augustine to Leibniz was 'determined' by philosophers' understanding of predicators.

A philosophy has ambitions to think in every direction. Yet as it does so, it follows predicator rules (which resemble set theory), and is tightly bound by these rules. Thus Kamlah and Lorenzen note that we are 'thoroughly dominated by an unacknowledged metaphysics'. Therefore, as philosophers sat down in the past to write their philosophies, words were attracted to words – much as magnets snap to magnets – and so predicator networks produced philosophies. One merely needs to posit a starting point – the will to power, for instance – and snap-snap-snap, one has a philosophy. In short, philosophies self-assemble.

It happens through the very nature of words and their attractional forces. We all have experience of the same. Drop an origin into the middle of a pool of thought – or a starting point, a kernel, whatever one may call it – and a system grows. We sit down with a group of people in a hotel lobby. Our talk revolves around the tasteful furnishings and elegant décor. Then I drop a comment that I am doing fascinating research into elephants. From this, a string of conversation results which occupies the whole group for some time – until a concierge interrupts us with a message. I wonder then at my powers of influence. Yet it lies in the very nature of language, which click-click-clicks together in keeping with predicator rules.

Therefore, while philosophising may represent a more systematic pursuit than any casual combinations of words, philosophers have represented little more than the inclinations of the philosophers and their culture. All were bound by centuries of 'unacknowledged metaphysics' – namely, predicator rules. In fact, the same must apply to religion, politics, ethics. Predicator networks, even with the passage of time, remain largely intact. Is there an American in the house? The massacres of the Red Indians are in you, and you were in them. Is there a German? Adolf Hitler inhabits your mind, and you inhabited his. Is there a South African? Apartheid is in your heart, and you were in apartheid's heart.

Of course, we need not think so narrowly. There have been many Americans, Germans, and South Africans, as there have been people of many nations and cultures. A changed environment, too, means changed behaviour for the same hapless creatures. Even predicator networks will change. In this, Kamlah and Lorenzen set their hope. If we take a close look at the system and structure of our language over generations, indeed we may discern faint traces of change, if we focus hard enough.

The Thing-in-Itself

By Thomas Scarborough

Benjamin Lee Whorf, the American linguist, made a puzzling observation which, for no patent reason, has held our fascination for nearly eighty years. Whorf wrote it in simple language, and briefly:

'Around a storage of what are called 'gasoline (petrol) drums', behavior will tend to a certain type, that is, great care will be exercised; while around a storage of what are called 'empty gasoline drums' it will tend to be different-careless, with little repression of smoking or of tossing cigarette stubs about. Yet the 'empty' drums are perhaps the more dangerous, since they contain explosive vapor.'

Whorf, I here suggest, had stumbled upon the core problem of the thing-in-itself, and with that, the core problem of the thinking of our entire Western civilisation. The interpretation of the thing-in-itself is not critical here.  It is sufficient to understand it most simply as any 'object of inquiry'. Let us begin at the beginning.

First, the Scottish philosopher David Hume observed that all knowledge may be subdivided into relations of ideas on the one hand, and matters of fact on the other. That is, one begins with a handful of facts (which includes objects), and these facts stand in a certain relation to one another.

This view has remained engraved on metaphysicians' minds ever since. Generations later, Bertrand Russell wrote that many philosophers, following Immanuel Kant, have maintained that relations are the work of the mind, and that things-in-themselves have no relations. While this is not to say exactly the same, the thought is not far from Hume's.

A marble is a thing. A house is a thing. Even gravity, ideology, taxonomy are things (we call them constructs), which may in turn be related to other things. In a sense, even a unicorn is a 'thing', although one is unlikely ever to find one. Of course, our 'things' may not be exactly the same as we perceive them – but the point will be clear.

Things-in-themselves are not, of course, facts. They first need to be involved in what we call truth conditions – which is, they need to be inserted into statements. Then one may affirm or deny such statements, which is an essential condition of facts. For example, we insert the thing 'marble' into a statement: 'A marble sinks' – or the thing 'unicorn': 'The Scots keep unicorns.'

On the surface of it, our world is filled with such facts: 'There's a car,' 'A bird has wings,' or 'The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.'

But there is a mistake. There are no things, there are no objects, and therefore there are no facts. Hume got it wrong, and so did every philosopher since. One finds only relations. The mind is incapable of comprehending anything else. No mind can ever settle on a 'thing' alone.

Someone might object: 'But this is a coffee cup, and that's a fact!' But is it really? Take away the table on which the coffee cup rests, and what does one have? One has a coffee cup which rests on nothing.  If we ever found such a thing, we would marvel that it exists.  One would have scientists queuing up at the door to see it.  Further, the table, on which the coffee cup rests, stands on the floor, and this in turn rests on the earth, and so on.

The same is true if we down-scale our thinking as it were. Supposing that we should say, 'This coffee cup has a handle.' The same applies. We have to have a mind for a whole world of relations to be able to speak of a handle.

We never worried about this much – before the publication of Samuel Johnson's great dictionary of 1755.  But since then, our 'things' have been defined, and they have been defined (if implicitly) as things-in-themselves. But this they are not, as we have seen.

This now promises to explain Benjamin Whorf's puzzlement over the dangerous way in which people went about with empty petrol drums, and our continuing fascination with the same today. We have come to see petrol drums today as things-in-themselves, without the obvious relations in which they are involved.

One might wonder at the possible significance of it all. Quite simply, when we speak of the world today, our language causes us to view it as people viewed Whorf's petrol drums, namely, as a profusion of things-in-themselves.  Yet we deal with things far more dangerous than petrol drums.

Painting Change

Will Kemp Art School: How to Paint Over an Acrylic Painting

Posted by Tessa den Uyl, with Pi

We all arrange the world in our minds. I should say, our world in our minds. I am a painter – so let me speak rather of 'painting' our world in our minds. 

We paint our village streets in our minds -- to remember them and make sense of them. We paint our supermarket shelves and bus routes there. We paint social networks and personal schedules. We even paint university curricula and religious beliefs there. In short, we paint a vast number of things, which we place upon the easel of our minds for easy reference.

Yet as we paint this painting, we find that everywhere the subjects of our painting are changing. From year to year, even day to day, the painting no longer matches the world we are fixing in paint. The ubiquity of the word 'change' in our language says it all: 'The times are changing,' and 'We change with the times' – it's 'a change of tack,' or 'a change of pace' – 'Let's change the channel,' and 'Let's change the subject' – 'Ring in the changes!' and 'Plus ça change!'

And even as we paint our world in our own minds, we are aware, too, that other people have other paintings of the world in theirs. While my painting is my own – their painting, too, is theirs. This becomes a problem both for me and for them, in equal measure. Let me explain.

This morning, in a small village in Morocco, I went out to buy a washing powder called 'Tide'. Ilias understands 'tête' (which is paté) instead of 'Tide'. Now why would one buy tête in a shop where they sell products for the home? For more than two years, Ilias and I have continued our dispute over misunderstandings surrounding pronunciation. His French is not my French, and my French is not his French. I try to apprehend his pronunciation, I speak slowly – but we’re still on the same track where we started off.

Now what does this small situation have to do with 'change'? It goes to the heart of the problem of change, insofar as to communicate profitably, both parties need to pay attention, not to pronunciations of 'Tide' or 'tête', but to the painting of the world in the other one's mind – to different cultures and perceptions, different languages and foci. They have to look at another painting, instead of their own.

How overly simplistic this example might sound – but it presents the difficulty of finding mutual understanding, to change something in each other's understanding – so that my lack may become his lack, and his lack may become mine. Ilias thinks that I should learn to speak better French – which means, from my point of view: his French. It is the problem of who will leave the territory in which the 'proper' conviction lies.

There is always a defence of the 'proper' vision. We think that one painting is more preferable than another. How then can we change? Change probably only can come about through the genuine awareness of diversity. To put it another way, truth does not have common ground. A change – or rather, a transformation of attitude – always faces the problem of 'property': the 'ownership' of truth. To change something means to let go of the ownership of the painting in my mind, and the effects that it has on me.

An example. A Yemeni woman exclaims: 'Sometimes I hope a missile will just blow us all away' (meaning her and her family). The woman’s desire for the impossible, to resolve her suffering, is the desire to obtain consolation over a painting of the world which is lost. And this present desire is based on the same painting which the woman painted back then. It is a double painting of the same scene – a painting painted twice.

We recognise it when we lose control of something – that it is about a painting of our world in my mind. Losing control is due to a present idea that doesn’t correspond to the first idea any longer. This is what makes change difficult. Change poses the problem of a reconstruction within a previously painted painting.

No thoughts are uprooted while change is based upon the logic of some existing principle. Such 'change' merely serves the function of that principle. We desire change without the desire to discard the painting we painted previously. We want to continue to recognise something, while including within that something the yet-to-be experience of change – forgetting that change cannot happen that way.

Change is not adapting to previous notions. Perhaps this is why the Yemeni woman 'desires' death. She senses that only through death can real change come to be.

Can change be thought? And if change is something that does not conform to the world that we know, then where is it found? That which is changing, we do not yet know. It can only exist in an unknown space in our psyche. One might say that our nature evolves continually in 'the instability of our stability'. How contradictory our being is!

And yet, if change needs to be something truly new, then how wonderful it may be – meaning: full of wonder. Because change is about more than we can subtract. It is not about painting over an existing painting, or obliterating it. It is about new colours and composition, new moods and perspective, new connections. It is everything new – or it cannot be called 'change'.

While we cannot forget all the previous strokes of the brush, we can understand the brush's potential for more. We can come to see new directions, new perceptions, new affections – destabilising the old, as we look not so much to the painting which we had, as to intuitions which lie within. And when there is a meeting of hearts which so desire change, it is the beginning of all possibilities.

NEW VERSION How the Body Keeps Human Nature in Check

From Bauentwurfslehre, 1936, by Ernst Neufert

Posted by Eugene Alper, with Pi

One of the greatest problems of our time is the problem as to how ethics may be incorporated into metaphysics. The problem was first brought to the fore by David Hume, and became acute with Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously wrote, 'Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent.'   He was referring to ethics.  

Yet beyond Hume and Wittgenstein – beyond Plato, Immanuel Kant, George Moore, and many others – beyond ethical naturalism, objectivism, rationalism – beyond all philosophy and all theory – it may be as simple as the human body. 

Imagine, with me, a man (or a woman) who is dropped into this world from the sky – not knowing anything at all.

He would very quickly discover that his body needs to be fed every five hours, and put to sleep every sixteen.  His skin, he would notice, is sensitive to cold, heat, and many kinds of pain.  He would find that food is not readily available – that it is dangerous to have to fight for it with other people and animals.  He would find that it is helpful to cultivate plants and domesticate animals – and counter-productive to wantonly destroy them.

He would find that blankets need to be of a certain size and thickness – being predicted, too, by the size and function of his body.  He would find that door handles need to be mounted at a certain height, and made for fingers such as his.  He would find that his body predicts the dimensions of many things: the size of a soccer ball, the shape of a boat – even the location of a university, or the power of rocket boosters.

He would find that it is troublesome to anger others – and to find a new shelter every night, to evade them.  He would soon guess that it is more energy efficient to get into a peaceful exchange with others, where he could trade for food something of his own – a thing or a service, or even a promise to be fulfilled in future.  He would find that his own body, with its vulnerabilities and frequent needs, force him to cooperate with others rather than destroy them.

He would find that, even if he were the biggest and strongest of all, he could not be big and strong twenty-four hours a day. For some eight hours daily he would be as defenseless as a baby, and would have to have someone trusted next to him not to get hurt. Even the meanest tyrant with the worst kind of human nature could not be bad all the time under these circumstances. The vulnerability of his own body in sleep and its dependence on non-poisonous food would make him be good at least to his closest circle.

In short, personal ethics, social ethics, political ethics, aesthetic values – building codes, agricultural norms, communications networks, and everything under the sun – would be governed by the body in which this man found himself at the start.  And not only that, but whatever his nature may be – whether 'good' or 'bad' – he would find that his needy body kept it under control.

It is not a new idea.  Theologians proposed it many centuries ago – namely, that a person is designed for certain ends – of whom Thomas Aquinas was the pre-eminent proponent.  Yet it may be precisely because it was a theological idea that it did not gain much traction.  The theology – whether true or false – may be set aside, yet the situation of this man remains the same, who fell from the sky.

We make no moral prescriptions here – no judgements, no commands, no commitments.  We simply leave a description of what a man (or a woman) is.  And whatever it may mean that he has a body or a soul, it finally comes down to this: 'Don't be too cocky', says the body, 'or you will get hurt.'

Picture Post No. 8: Apples COMMENT ADDED

This is definitely not a Picture Post, Thomas. I think you have to reformati it. It is a bit more of your theory of how language works, so I guess should be 'potentailly' a post. But even as that it does seem rather trivial. You would need I think to redynamise this one - more examples maybe?

Martin

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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NOTE:  I have put a preferred version of this post at the top, yet have left the previous versions intact (below), to give priority to the editorial eye. Thomas.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

One sees, above, the results of two Google Image searches. First, I searched for 'apples'.  Then, I searched for 'pommes'.  Then I jumbled them up.  Pommes, of course, are apples in French.  Do not scroll down. 

The 'apples' (English) have an ideal form.  Several shift even into abstraction or stylization.  They only occur singly, and most of them sport only one leaf.  They are red, and only red, and are polished to a perfect shine. One apple has been cut: not to eat, but to engrave a picture perfect symbol on it.  The 'pommes' (French) belong to a family of pommes, of various colours: red, green, even yellow.  One may take a bite out of them to taste, or cut them through or slice them: to smell their fragrance, or to drop them into a pot.  Pommes, too, are always real, unless one should draw one for a child.

Now separate out the apples from the pommes. Scroll down. You probably distinguished most apples from pommes. In so doing, you acknowledged – if just for a moment – that in some important way, apples are not pommes.

(While this example is flawed, try the same with more
distant languages, and more complex words).

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Posted by Thomas Scarborough

One sees, above, the results of two Google Image searches. First, I searched for 'apples'.  Then, I searched for 'pommes'.  Then I jumbled them up.  Pommes, of course, are apples in French.  Do not scroll down. 

'Apples' have an ideal form.  So much so, in fact, that they tend to shift into abstraction or stylization.  Mostly (though not in every case), they sport only one leaf.  Apples only occur singly.  They are red, and only red, and they are polished to a perfect shine. One apple has been cut, though not to eat it – rather to engrave a picture perfect symbol on it.  'Pommes', on the other hand, belong to a family of pommes, of various colours: red, green, yellow, even plum.  And leaves: they may have one, or two, or none.  One may take a bite out of them to taste.  One may cut them through, or slice them: to smell their fragrance, or perhaps to drop them in a pot. And pommes are always real, unless one should draw one for a child.

Now separate out the apples from the pommes. Scroll down. You probably accomplished this with 80% accuracy. In so doing, you acknowledged – if just for a moment – that in some important way, apples are not pommes.

(Now try the same with more distant languages, and more complex words).

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Two Google Image searches.  First, 'apples'.  Then, 'pommes'. (A pomme, of course, is an apple in French). 

The 'apples' (English) have an ideal form.  Several shift even into abstraction or stylization.  They sport one leaf (with two exceptions).  They only occur singly.  They are red, and only red, and are polished to a perfect shine. One apple has been cut: not to eat, but to engrave a picture perfect symbol on it.  The 'pommes' (French) belong to a family of pommes, of various colours: red, green, yellow, even plum.  One may take a bite out of them to taste, or cut them through or slice them: to smell their fragrance, or to drop them into a pot.  Pommes, too, are always real, unless one should draw a picture for a child.

Signifier points to signified, we are told, whether 'apple' or 'pomme'. But in English and in French, are the signifieds the same?

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Gedicht: Freundschaft

Von Theo Olivet geschrieben *

Mit Dank an Tamarris Art Galleries

Eine Kernfrage ist wohl: Woran kann ich Halt finden bei der Suche nach der eigenen Position im Leben. Hilft Freundschaft? Kann man aus gemeinsamer leidvoller Erfahrung Staerke gewinnen? Seine kuenftige Position definieren? Inwieweit kann man auch durch einen Schwachen gestuetzt werden?

Freundschaft

Komm, wir wollen uns verneigen
an diesem uns so sehr vertrauten Ort,
hier schnipstest schnippisch du so manche Kippe fort
und ließt den weißen Rauch  aus deiner Nase steigen.

Und dann, in das so tiefe Schweigen,
das sich oftmals daraus ergab,
hustete ich was Raues ab
und suchte dabei deinen Blickkontakt  zu meiden.

Mal fiel in diese Stille auch ein leises Wort:
Ich laufe morgen vor mir selber fort.
Und Du darauf, ganz unumwunden:
Ich hab noch nicht zu meinem Typ gefunden,
ich bin mir manchmal spinnefeind …
Ich fragte:  Meinst Du oben oder unten?
Dann haben wir lauthals geweint.

Das waren Zeiten! will ich meinen.
So Großes, Mensch!  das kommt nicht mehr,
wir standen da mit beiden Beinen
jeweils in einem Meer von Teer …

Komm, gib mir eine mal von deinen,
denn meine sind jetzt fade im Geschmack,
ich werde anders, will mir scheinen,
mein Innres macht da Knick und Klack,
da rüttelt manches an den Türen…
ich muss da nur noch Strom zuführen.

Die Zigarette,  ja… ich sage Dankeschön,
so wie sie schmeckt und mich im Rauch erinnert,
wie du so schnippisch oft an ihr gefingert,
Du … ja … so hoff ich auf ein Wiedersehn …

*Theo Olivet ist ein Autor, Künstler und pensionierter Richter in Schleswig-Holstein

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Special Investigation: Why is ESP interesting?

Because it is sensational

Perhaps the most important reason why extra sensory perception (ESP) is interesting is because it is more than interesting, it is sensational. Whatever interesting conclusions or inputs ESP may bring to other debates and enquiries,

In "Psychophysical interactions with a double-slit interference pattern", Dean Radin carries further the usual quantum mumbo-jumbo "it's the observer who creates reality", into Science (!) by testing whether observers thousands of miles apart from a double slit apparatus can influence it (through a web portal). Annoyingly, it does prove that our perception can influence subatomic behaviour, and suddenly physicists are tasked with testing their truly fashionable nonsense in a less than (scientifically) fashionable parapsychology setting.

 (the materialism-idealism debate, the evolutionary need to perceive more than meets the senses, the conditions of possibility of a rigorous extrapolation of quantum physics to mundane affairs), the most important is the revolutionary potential of ESP, in the most immediate dimensions of our individual and social lives. In the first part of my investigation, I will address only the mind-reading and clairvoyance aspects of what is commonly called ESP, because the other aspects, premonition and telekinesis, appear much more exceptionally in daily activities, and for theoretical reasons that will become evident in a second part of this investigation.

ESP changes the way we love. It changes the way we feel.

In a society where ESP would be commonplace, the following would not be stashed in a dusty mental cubby: how many times have I picked the phone to call a loved one, only to realize when moving my hand toward the phone that I had a phone call -- from this loved one (never somebody else)? How many times, when my wife was in distress, did my kid wake up as if a fire had erupted in the place? How many times did I hear a friend say: I was thinking about that!

The big problem is that we are not able to think those events; they disappear from our lives with the same suddenness they appeared. The most profound implications of a shared thought between loved ones remain unthinkable.

It might be argued that some cultures today are attuned to those extrasensory perceptions. Consider those cultures where action at a distance is the basis of many social codes ("magical thinking"). And indeed those of European descent will find in the stories of their grandparents habits and so-called superstitions that remind us that these perceptions may have been part of their own social fabric, in a not so distant past.

But those connections that are experienced as part of a highly ritualized mode of living are degenerate forms of the wild form of ESP that occur in our disillusioned minds. They are corroded by superstition and the resulting social fabric is not as tight, not as homogeneous, as one might expect from a regular actualisation of connections between members of the society. For extrasensory perceptions to weave the social fabric, they must tend to be as strong and intimately meaningful as when they involve two closely related persons. When this happens, a new string of causes and effects is started; the implications are wider than the prayer-like thoughts of magical thinking that we're accustomed to, they have profound practical implications.

After the shared thought happened and made us act with exquisite precision at the same moment, although separated by miles, and not under any specific schedule, I, we, should wonder what life means when we are NOT synchronised.

ESP is normal, whether we realize it or not

The principle of parsimony, if well applied to the case (and not as a naysaying method), suggests that these unexpected and barely thinkable moments must become expectable and thinkable by simply tweaking our understanding, without adding too many new explanatory epicycles.

Logically but breathtakingly, such a simple idea would be that we switch to other synchronies after that, on and on, without realizing it because there is no validation, no "me too!", no Internet functionality to verify this. Or perhaps it's how things must logically be! (But more on that below.)

According to Rupert Sheldrake, in all those normal day-to-day telepathic communications, the person we can relate to the most to is the self we were before: a normal aspect of our inner lives would be to "telepathically" interact with this other self that we were 2 seconds, 15 minutes, days or years ago.

It is coherent and rather simple, but what about those thoughts that don't seem to require, or even welcome, external influences? What about ideas?

Ideas 

Consider the last time you had an idea which a close friend or loved one 'had' at the same time. (If you can.) Who 'had' it? Both of you? It seems, when you have this idea which will soon reveal to be shared, that it was really yours, that you came to it all by yourself. But if you ask the other person, she will respond exactly the same thing! Excluding the hypothesis that we are both deluded, that this idea was neither 'mine' nor 'hers', it appears logical that this idea functions as a binding element per se and that, as such, it serves as a kind of bridge between two distinct times, mine and hers.


Boredom is the sense of time that you have when the only idea you have in mind is time, and the sense you have of it. Perhaps this is the reason why millennia of thinking about time have apparenly produced relatively little, if not massive amounts of boredom. Perhaps things could change if thinkers opened up to "the paranormal"?



Starting, for a change, the investigation from the non-solipsist and "paranormal" moment of a shared thought, the other thoughts (and experiences) seem to be diffuse instances of shared time, where there is not just one other loved one at the end of the ESP line, but many, many, many others (humanity?), that I may not know of (yet).
 
This is looking like Jung's collective unconscious. To capture this configuration, I'll use this art work that made a tremendous impression in popular culture, Sense8.

Two characters from the Sense8 miniseries beginning to see their lives intertwine, starting with the routine activities and meaningless accidents of life, the mere interferences from one sense8 person to another. Of course, their shared existence will ultimately respond to a higher calling.

In this series, the fact that the telepaths ("sensates") are 8 in number fulfils a dramaturgic purpose. Each of the sensates has some skills that organically constitutes the whole sense8 entity. One of the Sense8 saves his or her life by using the skills of another Sense8 (these people have very busy lives).

A Sense8 spin-off designed to resemble what our lives are really like, call it "Sense8000000", would have encompassed those things that are not normally part of a typical TV blockbuster character: the wanderings of the mind, the "intimate" feelings and thoughts; the normal human condition: life stages, interpersonal conflicts, systemic oppression.



Sheldrake showed convincingly that the more people think about a thing together, the easier it becomes to think it; an exam is more easily and successfully completed if others have completed it minutes or hours before (without cheating!); the same goes for animals who learn new tricks thousands of miles apart from each other.

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Those life exams, that are not graded, constitute the basis of a large-scale "me too!" phases of time which escape our awareness but responds to the same rules as the exams and the animals' new tricks. They exist as a collective creation.

While the "me too!" moments are just that, moments, they result from the build up of the personal thoughts and actions of two people, until they appear as those of the two people at the same time. How does this build up happen? We are far from a description of this gradual entanglement of persons. But perhaps what is missing is the basic hypothesis that entanglement is the basis (as in physics), and that we only have to try and understand just what is entangled.





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Here's a 10 minute clip from a PBS show i was on, discussing why ESP is interesting from a scientific perspective.http://www.closertotruth.com/series/why-esp-so-intriguing#video-2859
Posted by Dean Radin on Monday, April 6, 2015

(1) Dean Radin - Here's a 10 minute clip from a PBS show i was on,...