Existentialism

Over the last several months I have been teaching an undergraduate course in the philosophy of existentialism.  Along the way I made some sketches, drawings and paintings.  Here are a few.

  

 

Getting Used to Nothing

Why is there anything rather than nothing?

 

Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1686) defines philosophy as “arguing from phenomena to investigate the forces of nature.” Newton’s discovery of universal gravitation demonstrated that things that seemed to have nothing to do with one another – falling objects and the motion of the planets – were forms of one principle.  Magnetism and electricity were later understood to be forms of one thing – electromagnetic waves – light was recognized to be an undulation of EM fields – space and time were seen to be aspects of the same continuum – spacetime – gravity was discovered to be a kind of curvature or bending of spacetime. The understanding that gravity is curved spacetime explained the discovery that the universe is expanding – it is racing outwards away from us in every direction at fantastic speeds – it is not expanding into anything but instead is creating distance / duration between every two points in spacetime.  The ultimate constituents of the universe seemed to be waves and particles – later all these constituents were seen as particles, sometimes following the laws of classical mechanics and sometimes new laws of quantum mechanics.  Quantum mechanics leads to the idea that all phenomena of whatever type are interactions of the same kind. Quantum field theory unifies all known phenomena (gravity, electromagnetism, weak force, strong force) and leads to Dirac’s prediction of antiparticles (1928) – this explains the discovery of the positron (1932) – which unifies the micro and macroscopic scale – a universe extending outwards from the earth in all directions 10²⁶ meters, and resolving to the Planck scale at 10^-33 meters – thus Newton’s principles and their consequences unify many observations – but at fantastic cost: for they also virtually unify existence with empty space – being with nothingness.

 

The discovery of antimatter demonstrates that the vacuum – the place where everything is taken out – i.e. the void, nothingness, nonbeing – complete and utter emptiness – does not exist.  This discovery seems to spoil the meaning of ‘nothing’ as that less than which we cannot conceive, but also conforms to the basic goal of saying what is so. 

 

The ‘vacuum’ is swirling with a sea of particles and antiparticles eternally – the cosmos is ultimately a kind of fluid that looks the same to all observers – the ‘condensate’ – in interaction with which particles begin to form and have mass.  Spacetime emerges out of something that at higher levels of energy and smaller regions of space no longer has the properties of a ‘location’ or a ‘time’ – thus we talk about spacetime breaking down at the event horizon of the singularity – a kind of origin-place where the quantities used to measure the gravitational field become infinite – this is what people are referring to in the idea of the ‘Big Bang.’

 

Einstein held a theory that people today call “local realism” on the ‘realistic’ assumption that all objects must objectively have a pre-existing value for any possible measurement before the measurement is made.  This theory was tested and disproven in 1981. This suggests that the proposition he was contesting – what he called “spooky action at a distance” – is closer to what we can actually observe. Quantum entanglement, as it is now called, is a physical phenomenon that occurs when groups of particles are generated in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently, and yet a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole. 

 

In effect the “Big Bang” is a kind of “spooky action at a distance” in which objects do not objectively have any pre-existing value before a certain event occurs. 

 

Being (the physical universe), according to this schema, emerges unaided from quantum mechanical waves in Nothingness (the condensate).

 

Why is there anything rather than nothing?

 

It would appear that being and nothingness are powerful principles of explanation which when merged too closely undermine the explanatory force of the model.  Parmenides, a father of philosophy, urges keeping them separate in Way of Truth.  Plato ignores this when he says that “a false proposition asserts the non-existence of things that are and the existence of things that are not.”  This suggests that a proposition like ‘X does not exist’ must either be false or meaningless; either X exists, in which case the original proposition is false, or X does not exist, in which case X has no meaning.  This ancient problem – “Plato's Beard” – What is not must in some sense be or otherwise what is there that there is not? – is ‘solved’ by thinkers such as William of Ockham, by keeping principles to a minimum  – Frege, Russell, Quine, Davidson all show that a name can be a description, or means of recognition, so that sentences involving names can have meaning even if they have no truth-value – Bradley’s thesis is that if there were no way re-identify the referent of a name, then there would be no way to use the name in the first place.

 

Thus the sort of “nonbeing” that Parmenides warns us about is very familiar – thoughtspace as we inhabit it includes endless false claims, innumerable references to imaginary beings, unlikely stories and flat contradictions.  Nothingness and Nonbeing and the Not and Emptiness and many other such places are all profoundly human and completely ordinary.

Thus we know just as far as we can measure – things before us become analogies – particulars become symbols which foster translation to larger contexts.  When we ‘know’ something, we have already left the immediate context – ‘understanding’ wrests us out of the here and now – we have already left the world of being and crossed over into nothingness.  

Why is there anything rather than nothing?

 

The question ‘Why is there anything rather than nothing?’ somehow encapsulates the whole of philosophy and all the longing of human beings over a stretch of time we can hardly imagine. 

 

This childlike, venturing, but also skeptical, urgent question is a symbol for us, like the words anvikshiki, tetsugaku, tattuvam, whai whakairo – words from Sanskrit, Japanese, Tamil, and Maori – all of which translate as ‘philosophy’ -- of a deeply human search for meaning. 

 

The teaching about wonder argues that there is a universal human characteristic at work and not just an accident of history.  Any creature, endowed with a symbol-wielding intelligence, will ultimately practice philosophy. 

 

Being and nothingness – all or nothing – formed into the question “why is there anything rather than nothing?” – implies by its asking a prior state of emptiness, so that nothingness is somehow a natural state and not in need of explanation, whereas Being is mysterious – the mysterium tremendum ­– which thus mystifies human beings and requires to be examined. 

 

Therefore, nothingness plays an important conceptual role in contrast to Being, not only in reasoning about the physical universe and the ultimate constituents of matter – e.g. Homer calls Night “subduer of gods and men”; the Pythagoreans derived the universe from the primordial opposites of Hades and Zeus, Dark and Light – but also regarding human being. 

 

The concept of nothingness, of being literally nothing, draws attention to the contrast not just between Is and Is not, but between being a thinking being, a conscious being, and being any other kind of being – the difference between agents and mere things. As Sartre says – a stone is what it is – it has this character. A human being sometimes sinks into passivity in order to evade the core problem of living; but the person who attempts to evade responsibility is responsible for undertaking this course. A stone does not make any decisions, yet a stonelike person has decided to be a stone. 

 

A human being is nothing – not merely a thing – but instead a state, a condition, a process; and because a human being is nothing – not any definite thing – he or she can change and become something; in truth a human being is nothing – not any fixed thing – but instead is always changing – and ultimately a human being dies; he or she becomes nothing.

 

Existentialist philosophy uses the term ‘nothingness’ in a special sense, to indicate that there is no pre-existing human nature, no fundamental human quality or truth; Sartre defines nothingness as follows: “It comes into the world by the For-itself as the recoil from the fullness of self-contained Being.” Sartre says human being is nothing, but is on-the-way.  Heidegger defines human reality as “the placeholder for nothingness.”   

 

The Buddha held that moral self-discipline grows out of the focus and equanimity practiced in insight meditation; wisdom derives from the calm of meditative practice, allowing one to stand aloof from passing experience and extinguish clinging. One way of expressing this change is to talk about moving from ignorance to knowledge – another way describes the gradual realization that reality is empty or “nothing.”

 

In his lecture The State of Nothing Alan Watts talks about this void.  “If you are aware of a state called is, or reality, or life, this implies a state called isn’t. Or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness, or death. You can’t know one without the other. And so as to make life poignant, it’s always going to come to an end. That is: now you can see what makes it lively.”

Malabou

 Malabou (2013) -- Chapter 6 === Damasio / Spinoza

Developing a third-person perspective [vs. the egocentric position]

Commentary on :

Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain / Antonio Damasio / 2003

Phenomena

--A woman is being treated for Parkinson’s disease -- a low-intensity electrical current is aimed at the motor nuclei -- this treatment enables the patient to move her hands without a tremor and to walk normally.  By accident the electrical charge is aimed two millimeters below the correct contact point.  The woman's expression immediately changed to one of sadness. Then she began to cry and to speak of her hopelessness, her sense of worthlessness, of disappearing down a dark hole. Then the current is shut off.  In less than two minutes her behavior returns to normal.

It was as if the symptoms of depression had simply been switched on with the charge to a particular point in her brain and switched off again just as quickly.

-- One of the more radical treatments for epilepsy is the surgical removal of a brain region that causes seizures -- a kind of lobotomy.  Before the surgery, the brain is stimulated with electricity to help identify the region to be excised.  At a point near the proper excision site, electrical stimulation of brain tissue produces uncontrollable laughter. 

-- As a result of damage to a particular bit of the brain, a patient suddenly lost the ability to feel embarrassment.  Others similar cases impacted patients’ abilities to feel compassion, fear, sociability, or to exercise self-control. 

-- Amnesiacs sometimes retain all their core biological functions but have lost their sense of individual identity -- other cases show problems with motivation, sexual arousal, or the ability to recognize voices after the onset of brain injuries. 

Question: are feelings some form of neural electricity?

Intentions?

                                    Values?

Perceptions? 

William James: every time we have an emotion we bring with it an accompanying thought and an accompanying body state.

B. Spinoza: the mind is the idea of the body (the body’s way of seeing / feeling itself)

The idea is not first -- the body state is basic -- the mental process of assigning a cause comes afterwards -- body experiences are parallel-mapped in the brain

To begin from the body and the principle of physical wellbeing -- this goes against the intellectualistic strain in our understanding of emotions (e.g. Stoicism)

Let us return to this body-centered idea

Imagine a child putting a hand in a flame. The bodily sensation of pain teaches the brain about danger. "I will not touch fire again or it will hurt," thinks the child.

Note: when the child learns the lesson, it is imagining a being that does not yet exist: it is imagining its own future self.

The brain is “mapping” a body that is still only imaginary.

From feeling comes the capacity for imagination and hence for empathy.

If we can imagine our future self, we can also imagine other selves.

self-interest and disinterest as opposite tendencies

body state -- mind -- political/social/cultural consequences

*****

Malabou 7 === Neural plasticity

The case of Phineas Gage

“His mind was radically changed” / physical state / mental state

Brain injury as a cause for absent subjectivity

Indifference, coldness, lack of concern, disaffection, neutrality --

The impact is such that brain lesions / losses / life experiences  --- are no longer available to consciousness (this produces the vacuum in subjectivity)

Anosognosia as an example (inability to recognize states occurring in one’s own body -- cf. stroke, Anton’s Syndrome, Babinsky’ disease, cortical blindness, inability to cognize visual losses

General principle of psychic impact -- what comes about sticks around -- as in F’s description of the levels of Rome as a metaphor for psychic depth -- but organic impacts can rearrange material and disrupt the principle of continuity

Brain damage can impact the ability to dream

Questions about patients who lose the ability to connect to the past -- cf. Borges

Note that injuries can be of such severity that they impact the normal human ability to take something in, deal with it, and move beyond it.  Some events cannot be processed but are purely destructive.  Examples bear this out in cases with vision, affection, wonder …

*****

Malabou / conclusion 

Hearing oneself, feeling oneself, taking note of oneself, being in touch with oneself, connecting to oneself -- this ability (call it “autoaffection,” a term from Heidegger) -- basically a way of talking about the reflectivity of subjective consciousness -- this is a capacity that seems vital to normal human processing, which we can see in cases where an injury occurs and this particular capacity is lost

Philosophers appear to disagree about the status of hetero vs. auto affections --

Derrida, Spinoza, Descartes, Damasio, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty offer rival accounts

Normal warm-bloodedness vs. cold blood

wonder seems like a kind of middle state which is at the same time a surprise that arrives from the outside and an enjoyment of the spirit that comes from inside

wonder -- as an example -- shows the fundamental process at work in normal conscious experience as both an inside and an outside

In effect: when affects occur, the I gets separated from itself -- which means that it tries to get back to itself

The protoself (Damasio) is a way of talking about the normal homeostasis that a person tries to get back to after an experience -- an affect, a trauma …

Therefore homeostasis is not simply mechanical -- nor logical -- but also emotion / affective / ‘psychological’ / involving resonances and intentions, divisions and attempts to regain unity

Question: why do we need the outside at all?

The human way of being in the world is this back and forth in and out inside and outside dynamic -- and when we look at this whole sphere we see that it is imaginary, i.e., does not exist, is a phantasm

Because it is this kind of invisible-phantasm, it appears to be indestructible, untouched by the real world -- this was F’s attitude, linked to his ideas about psychic continuity and the preservation of psychic energy 

But clearly it can be impacted by events -- e.g. injuries

Thus plasticity has both a negative and a positive connotation

Solms and Sacks present more cases … in general, we see that brain lesions are also psychic lesions

Discussion of psychic extension -- psychic spatiality -- the way in which the psyche exists in the dimensional world -- this again seemed at first merely a metaphor and a way of thinking about the feel of subjectivity -- cases e.g. with criminal psychopathy demonstrate that the extension-reach-spatiality of the psyche is not merely metaphorical but appears to consist in a kind of imagination / reception / feel oneself feeling middle state, which can be compared to a kind of map -- mind map -- inner/outer interface, within the physical structure (and the electrochemical processes) of the brain

We are inching up here towards a more materialistic vision of selfhood

Subjectivity -- links the humanities and neurobiology

Experience rests on the phantasm of the first person (this must relate to the phenomenology of time consciousness).  Malabou calls this the “originary delusion” of the first person.  Many errors in thinking from the history of philosophy seem to emerge from a failure to adopt a sufficiently materialistic perspective

Consequences of this entire line of argument --

No one ever was or had or is a self … selves are non-entities … what exist (in addition to bodies) are conscious self-models that normally cannot be recognized as models

The subjective experience of being someone occurs if the information processing data-gathering receiving-modules operate under a transparent (does not see itself) self-model

Because you cannot recognize your self-model as a model, you look right through it -- you don’t see it, you see through it

Normal experience -- we tend to confuse ourselves with the content of the self-model currently operating / currently activated by our brains --

This is a way of talking about the / can’t see itself / reflectivity principle inherent in the psyche -- ‘seeing through’ does not see the filters/channels it is seeing through … it just “sees”

Extremely difficult to get behind this -- Kant, Hegel, Husserl

(No performative contradiction at work in this analysis -- the opportunity to see behind the curtain comes from the neurological cases)

Philosophy still has something to learn from the sciences … (despite the prejudice for the a priori in p)

Empiricism!

ongoing projects May 2020

Politics and Friendship
Lecture on 'Freedom'
Symbols
What is Mathematics?
teaching computer ethics
teaching environmental ethics
teaching ancient philosophy
studying phenomenology
  with my colleagues at the
     existential psychoanalytic
       institute

values of a function

musing