Analogical thinking

Painting: Aristotle and Alexander

The work of art is at the starting point of Aristotle's analysis. For this he has been much criticized. However, his critics often didn't understand that his approach was an analogical one.

The work of art is closer to human sensibility than nature, and thus closer to our psychological conditioning. It is therefore logical, even cunning, to start with our manner of analyzing a human craft to highlight the essential creases of intelligence, creases which constitute the manner in which we analyze and seek the proper principles of reality.

Well then in front of a work of art we interest ourselves firstly in what determines in the order of intelligibility (it's a bicycle or a computer or a table). Thus we look at form (form amswers the question: what is it?), then matter, then the author or agent (i.e. the efficient cause, or the origin), then the purpose or end (in view of what the work is made) and finally the exemplar cause (on what model it was created).

We can put these five interrogations in parallel to our five senses: what it is (sight or the formal cause), of what it is made (touch or the material cause); where it comes from (hearing or the efficient cause), in view of what it is (smell or the final cause), on which model it is (taste or the exemplar cause).

These five questions are then extended to nature and to man. One must therefore extend this interrogation of the "why" of man, following the formal cause of what is. I know reality in its descriptive form, for example "Valerie is a woman", but I want to discover in me (or someone else) what comes first. That is the true appetite of intelligence, for the principle is what is first in its order and that beyond which I cannot go.

Harmony

Harmony, which is a science and an art, is a human invention in view of abstracting laws. But one must be careful, for that is precisely where lays a subtle adjustment, which looks unimportant, yet the consequences of which are far reaching downstream. The Swiss know it well, the source of the Rhone and of the Rhine are relatively close by, but downstream it's a whole other story. One must not mistake the source!

Thus the subtle adjustment, which is crucial, is this one: there is an order in nature, but neither mathematics nor harmony are principles in themselves of this order. They are the fruit of human intelligence which interrogates and seeks to understand these principles. In realist philosophy, this is called a "quiddity", in other terms the intelligibility of a reality.

Let me put forth an example, a true story, to show what a quiddity is but also the error consisting in mistaking it for the first principle. Once upon a time, a little boy was looking at a sculptor chipping away at a large piece of marble. After a few days, out of the marble rose a horse on its hind legs, magnificent, down to the smallest detail. The little boy cried out to the artist: wooooow, and since how long was the horse inside the marble? Well it is the same mistake when someone says that man has not invented mathematics, but has discovered them (just as the little boy could not imagine that the sculptor insufflates a quiddity into the marble, nor creates the horse - the horse was in the marble and the sculptor discovered it.)

This is quite a lovely farce, which has seduced many and close between. I know some who, after hearing this story would say: "well I wish to remain like this little boy". And here we enter into an illusion, that which equates infantilism to the spirit of youth.

Angst

Fear, its object, its consequences, it is part of a large family: timidity, doubt, creeps, alarm, disquietude, apprehension, dread, frisson, stage fright...

What characterizes fear is its object - the unknown - whereas the rest of the family focusses on a known or imagined object. The unknown is obviously death and its by-products, and one should carry out a comparative cost/benefit analysis between the two attitudes confronted to the unknown... all the more so since the modern age person has eliminated fear by disposing of the why of fear.

Clearly, if there is no longer an object, there is no more reason to be afraid. It was thus necessary to find another name for fear, a generic name which qualifies a sentiment with an unknown object, and angst fit the bill.

We are anguished without determining the source, and we speak of an ill-being, which is left to specialists to treat the symptoms of, so as to re-establish a well-being of sorts... which has no more reason to be than the ill-being it replaces!

PS Hey! Being must be rolling on the floor and laughing its ash off to hear that it has been donned with an ill or a well... My! Here I am as an ill-being, do you recognize me luv? I assure you, it's me! lol Hey! Jeepers, you really gave me the creeps, I kid you not... you know, I wouldn't have recognized you otherwise!

Descartes errors

To recap, in short, Descartes' errors:

1) Firstly, the error consisting in giving precedence to thought over the sensible and immediate experience of proper sensibles, which he declares to be subjective, and to do it at the source of his philosophy.

2) Then the other error consisting in holding the common sensibles to be objectively experimented under the pretext that these can be the object of a measure, notwithstanding a measure is a figment of our intelligence, because yards/meters or gallons/liters don't grow on trees.

3) Further the error consisting in confining intelligence to logic, which is only one of the tools of intelligence amongst others.

4) last (but not least) the error consisting in assimilating what is true to reality.

Those are four very infantile errors for a realist philosopher, four beginners' errors... I take that back, a beginner with a normal constitution wouldn't make those errors. Yet not only does Descartes make them, but he proudly displays them as his claim to fame.

Once again, "I think, therefore I am" is obviously not wrong but what is highly toxic is to prop an entire philosophy against that principle.

". . . I noticed that while I was trying . . . to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth "I am thinking, therefore I exist" was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. [Discourse IV, para. 1; CSM, I, p. 127.]"

Master and disciple

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/master-of-jazz-michael-lee.html

Arnold Schoenberg writes in the introduction of his treatise on harmony that one must absolutely be wary of any musician who teaches, for that signifies that he has failed in his career as a musician. In truth, and for diverse reasons, any professor of music understands this remark.

In fact, no high level musician has ever left a treatise behind. When Schoenberg writes this he has fled Nazi Germany and has gone to live in the US, where his talent is not recognized. He teaches music, like Beethoven, at times, when he found himself in financial straits.

Let’s look at this more closely. Bach did not leave a treatise. He left the art of the fugue, 22 fugues written on the same theme, without a single comment. Vivaldi left nothing. Mozart didn’t fare any better. I think only Berlioz left an orchestration treatise, which between you and me is of little interest. In jazz it is the same story: Monk, Bud Powel, Armstrong, Parker, Duke Ellington, Mingus, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans… nothing, not the slightest word! What's more… these people did not take any classes! For them, the master is the ear.

There is hence two ways to learn:

The first is to follow the theoretical classes given by a professor, with the risk that Schoenberg has pointed out.

The second is to find a “master” and to “absorb him" in silence, that is to say to imitate him to the point where one is capable of him in any situation. Then one must assimilate him, that is to say emerge oneself from what one has swallowed, lest one remain a clone of the “master”. Someone I know, let’s say his name is Marc Martin, a saxophonist, assimilated in that way all of John Coltrane, to the point where he took himself for him and where in effect, both in the notes and in the sound, he was rigorously his clone. One day he is playing with a great organist, and during the concert he accelerates at top speed into Coltrane type passages, just as if he was Coltrane. In the end, the organist turns to him and says: "Great, you play really great! But just one thing: hey Marc, where is Martin?" lol

Further to this, an encounter with a “master” underscores two other difficulties: the first is that one can only understand a master to the extent that one has already understood him, for I know people who didn’t think before they encountered a master, but ever since they have encountered one, they have stopped thinking! I would even go so far as saying that if we are really in presence of a master and a disciple, the disciple must ultimately understand the master better than the master understood himself, else it is a fiasco.

Now we see that the first difficulty is twofold: is the master really a master? Can I measure myself to him or will I remain a disciple all my life? For a disciple who has understood the master no longer quotes him – and that is certainly the sign, for truth belongs to no one in particular.

Regarding metaphysics

Regarding metaphysics, it has long been engulfed, for several centuries now. It is quite the task to take up a brute metaphysical thought, for not only is it inaccessible, but it is recovered by layer upon layer of errors. It’s as if you wished to find the original wood of your shutters: you must scrape off layer upon layer of paint. It is a tough job, and even wearisome, in particular because some layers which have been deposited are quite tenacious.

For us, it is notably necessary to unstick Descartes, Kant, Hegel and the Marxist dialectics, Nietzsche and then Heiddeger….and then one must pass Plotin, the Fathers of the Church, notably Thomas Aquinus and Augustine of Hippo, and go back in such a manner to Plato, all whilst regularly receiving bits of wood in the teeth, for when one swims upstream of a river one’s face is besieged by any which sort of junk, and at the source, one progressively understands that the world is entirely neoplatonician, and then, one must ultimately decide to start afresh with Aristotle, he who radically faced off with Plato, because that’s where everything plays out…I’d even say that for the Oriental world, for India is very close to Plato, or vice versa, but between Plato and India there is a stunning proximity.

But this task is nothing more than very long, tedious and even fastidious, for the immediate difficulty is that of translations, without mentioning understanding Aristotle, which cannot be done in a day, for ethics or physics or logic is one thing, but the 14 books of metaphysics is another matter, and one must read the Zeta book of metaphysics 100 times before even just hoping to understand the problem under review. Very few consent to this, and the majority flow downstream at a rapid clip, the cadavers being those that descend the most swiftly since they do not oppose any resistance.

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The duck laid the egg!

http://flickr.com/photos/lukedaduke/

It is not unusual to hear some chuckle inanely when asking the question: "what came first, the egg or the chick?", and who think, with such a demeanour, they can ridicule the intelligent theological analysis manufactured by their fellow man. So I say enough, and you God, you must not lie on this matter, even if you were caught out this time around. So if you don't mind, I will say the truth as it is.

Now then, all this is because few have read the Aztec bible, in which the first text starts as follows: "In the beginning, God created the duck", and then it explains in detail how God asked the duck to go fetch him some loam at the bottom of the pond to craft man, and to what extent the duck was very obedient at the time, that is to say before, on the advice of the meandering one, Georgina should eat the earplugs off the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Don't be silly! The duck made several trips, come now, for I don't know if you looked at how you are built, but he could not have brought up 85k of mud in his bill in only one go! To make a long story short, when God got sufficient material to start the job, he sculptured man over several days. The duck waited by docilely, but since time was moving slowly, inevitably, boredom started to yank at its wings, and it decided to play a prank on God: the duck laid the egg of the chick by pushing very hard from behind.

Needless to describe the speed at which it took off and hid further away, for it gathered that God would only be half amused when he would see what would pop out of the egg. When the chick stuck its head out with exactly the same silly air as Georgina when she puts in her earplugs, the duck laughed out loud, and it cried out to God: "Hey! Check out the peabrained chick that everyone will think you have crafted!" God didn't particularly appreciate the prank, but since his hands were covered in loam, that the duck was some ways off, and that the chick, oblivious to the situation, was walking on his loam, he whacked her a good one, to an extent never seen afterwards, even when Cain made him believe that Abel was doing well and had only gone out for a stroll. It is ever since that day that the little red crest on the head of the chick doesn't quite hold up straight. There, for those who snicker along with Georgina that I think too much: it is the Aztec duck that laid the egg of the chick to play a prank on God... and if you studied your theology instead of just reading People magazine, like Georgina, you might be no less knowledgeable than I am. Hey, I said "might", don't get all excited now!

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Descartes or idealism

Picture: Descartes treading a book of Aristotle.

I learned Descartes in school. Later on it was a real punishment to reread him, in view of showing the inanity of his philosophy, in particular of his metaphysics.

In short, here is why the Cartesian school of thought is a true calamity for the modern world.

All his philosophical construct rests on his renowned “I think, therefore I am”. This assertion is not false in itself as it is evident that each of us can deduce our own existence by establishing that we think. However, what is horrifying is to lay ones thought as anterior to ones sensations. Descartes in this way is the one who laid the first rock of almost all contemporary ideologies, because, as one does not necessarily know, Marx, Freud, and many others were greatly influenced by this radical inversion in our way of knowing. In fact, if our thought takes precedence over our way of knowing, what will we know? It’s simple, we will know ourselves!

So Descartes denies or rejects the proper sensibles, and recognizes the common sensibles as the only objective ones. I will remind what the proper sensibles and the common sensibles are: the proper sensibles are the realities perceived by one of the five senses (taste, smell, sight, touch and hearing), the common sensibles are those accessible through various senses (size, shape, number, motion, rest).

One must realize the crucial role that imagination and affect play in the perception of the common sensibles! If the common sensibles take precedence, as Descartes professes, the proper sensibles go to the wayside, and reality becomes secondary… and when Descartes declares that the common sensibles are the sole objective sensibles, he sinks humanity into subjectivity, later to be coined “transcendental subjectivity”.

All the same, and notwithstanding what Descartes may have thought, who claims that only the common sensibles are objective (given that one can measure them), it is the opposite which is true: only the proper sensibles are objective because they impose themselves to our intelligence externally.

Think of this, when you have a nightmare, you are a prisoner of the common sensibles: it is the big dog that is gaining ground on you, the chains that immobilize you… And then you grab your pillow in a startle, you recognize its texture, and you come back to the real world. It is through the proper sensibles that you escape from the labyrinth of nightmarish images of your dream. Well the neocartesian ideologies are the nightmare of humanity, and one must reconnect with reality to escape from them! This is the first tight turn that ones’ intelligence must not miss, lest it race straight into a field of nightmares.

And what is an ideology ? It is precisely an idea that takes precedence over reality. In general we take something that has some truth in it, and we make an absolute out of it, in other words a total system, cutting out what of reality does not fit into our idea of reality. That is what an ideology is and what history has shown and continues to show it is, and which has on occasion led to large scale massacres.

Hence Descartes is the pillar of modern errant thought, even if William of Ockham, the theologian, alienates objectivity to subjectivity; in fact, Descartes may well have popularized Occam. Whereas Aristotle seeks what is first in knowledge, and looks at the object, in other words at being (later on Thomas Aquinus would state "primo in intellectu cadit ens", "being is the first thing to fall into ones intelligence", borrowing a formula from Avicenna). But when Occam seeks what is first in knowledge, he looks at the “Intelligo”, in other words the “I am thinking”, like Descartes with his “Cogito”. And when Occam looks at the “Intelligo”, what does he know? Himself, also! In both cases being eclipses itself before quantity and the measurable, and from then on quantity has increasingly taken front stage, naturally to the detriment of quality.

Well then it is quality which we touch objectively and immediately, which imposes itself to us, whereas quantity is something subjective, which we only have access to mediately, through measure and specifically the unit of measure, which is not quantity, but something which our intelligence produces so as to all the same have something to say about quantity. Descartes in essence has put everything upside down, and everyman is clapping!!

It is quite remarkable to observe this radical difference at the source of two philosophies, one which starts, like with Aristotle, by interrogating about the existence (or non existence) of a reality, and the other, as with Descartes, which thinks first of the nature of something before even having evaluated the reality of its existence! Further, if God exists, Descartes usurps the supreme title, because in the order of being, it is only with God that the idea can precede the act of creation. Descartes should thus have been more explicit in setting forth his famous expression: “Je pense donc Dieu suis!” (I think, therefore I am God”!).