Verdingt und trotzdem frei?

Ein Hauptbegriff des späten Marx und vielleicht sogar der Kernbegriff seiner Kritik der politischen Ökonomie in Das Kapital ist bekanntlich der verdinglichte Wert. Warum von so etwas wie einer Verdingung von Mensch und Natur beim sich verwertenden Wert überhaupt die Rede sein soll, wird weiter unten erläutert. Marxens Kritik lese ich nicht lediglich auf konventionelle Weise als eine Kritik der bestehenden, praktischen, politischen, gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse (die politisch umgewälzt werden sollten), sondern schon zuvor als Kritik an der Denkweise, in der wir alle gefangen sind, und in der wir im sogenannten Kapitalismus bzw. Spätkapitalismus leben. So gelesen ist die Kritik eine phänomenologische Ideologiekritik — nicht unverwandt mit der Hegelschen Phänomenologies des Geistes —, die darauf zielt, die Wahrheit über unsere kapitalistische Gesellschaft bloßzulegen. 

Dies ist um so schwerer, als nicht nur die Klasseninteressen der verschiedenen Sorten von Kapitalisten (grob gesagt die Bezieher von den verschiedenen Anteilen von Bruttoprofit, der in Zinsen, Grundrente und Unternehmergewinn aufgeteilt ist) im Wege stehen, sondern bereits vorgängig unsere nicht ganz unbegründete Überzeugung, daß unsere persönliche, individuelle Freiheit von diesen 'bestehenden Verhältnissen' abhängt. Denn die Parole der 'Freien Welt' ist nicht bloß Augenwischerei, sondern hat auch einen gewissen Wahrheitskern, der freilich die häßliche Seite dieser Wahrheit verdeckt. (Das Bewegungsprinzip dieser Freien Welt ist nämlich zutiefst lebensfeindlich.) Marxens Rede von den modernen Subjekten als bloßen Trägern von gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen und als possenhaften Charaktermasken ist keine billige Polemik.

Ich habe versucht, der täuschenden Ambiguität in der Wahrheit über den Kapitalismus zu begegnen und begrifflich zu fassen mit der Unterscheidung zwischen dem Gewinnspiel auf der Oberfläche der Gesellschaft einerseits und der darunterliegenden unendlichen Verwertung des verdinglichten Werts andererseits. Der Liberalismus kann verstanden werden als die Denkart bzw. Ideologie, die versucht, die moderne Gesellschaftsform als von dem freien und fairen Spiel der individuellen Subjekte getragen zu denken. Jedes versucht allein oder mit anderen zusammen Schmied seines eigenen Glücks zu werden. Da das Spiel oft und vielleicht sogar in der Regel hart und unfair gespielt wird, bemüht sich die liberale Gesellschaft durch ihren demokratischen Staat vor allem darum, das Interplay im Gewinnspiel in den Bahnen der Fairneß zu halten. Vor allem der Machtkampf über die Aufteilung des gesamtgesellschaftlichen Einkommens muß durch Kompromisse geschlichtet werden. Diese Aufteilung soll mehr oder weniger fair sein, hängt aber davon ab, wer im Gewinnspiel momentan die Oberhand hat. Die darunterliegende Verwertungsbewegung des Mediums des verdinglichten Werts, die sich hinter den Rücken der Spieler als eisernes Gesetz durchsetzt, wird dabei gar nicht gesehen. Daß es ein solch globales Bewegungsgesetz gibt, wird als blanke Ideologie abgetan. Man hält sich an die harten Fakten, um die globale ökonomische Bewegung wirtschaftswissenschaftlich zu erklären, und kann seit dem Sieg der positivistisch-empirischen Wissenschaften über den philosophischen Geist seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts auch nichts anderes tun.

Insofern ist davon auszugehen, daß das Interesse an der Frage, ob der Marxsche Begriff des verdinglichten Werts in verdingenden Wert umbenannt werden soll, gering ist. Vielleicht haben beide Bezeichnungen jeweils ihre Berechtigung. Marxens große Leistung in Das Kapital ist es, den Wertbegriff als tragenden Begriff des Ganzen zu setzen. Alle Hauptbegriffe von Ware und Geld über Kapital und Arbeitskraft und (absoluten und relativen) Mehrwert bis hin zu Zinsen und Grundrente sind Wertbegriffe, die es zusammen erlauben, das ganze kapitalistische Wirtschaftsgeschehen als eine antagonistische Bewegung von sich transformierenden verdinglichten Wertformen zu begreifen. Denn Ware, Geld, Arbeitslohn, Kapital, Profit, Zinsen, Grundrente, Unternehmergewinn u.v.m. sind alle Wertdinge. Die ganze Bewegung findet statt um der endlosen Vermehrung des sich verwertenden Mediums willen, wobei das Verwertungsmedium selbst seine verdinglichten Erscheinungsformen wie Proteus ständig verwandelt, aber das Medium selbst 'flüssig' bleibt. Insofern wäre es angemessen, von dem Medium selbst als (die verschiedenen Wertformen) verdinglichend eher als verdinglicht zu reden. Dementsprechend wäre die Wendung 'Medium des verdinglichten Werts' sowohl als genitivus subjectivus zu lesen wie auch als genitivus objectivus, während die Wendung 'Medium des verdinglichenden Werts' nur als genitivus objectivus zu lesen ist.

Die deutsche Sprache besitzt auch die Verben 'verdingen' und 'dingen'. Man könnte sagen, daß das Medium des verdingenden Werts die verschiedenen verdinglichten Wertformen 'in den Dienst nimmt' (und somit dingt) um seiner eigenen Verwertung willen. Umgekehrt durch die verdinglichte Einkommensform des Arbeitslohns verdingen wir uns Menschen selbst beim sich verwertenden Vergesellschaftungsmedium. Zudem könnte man sagen, daß das Medium des verdinglichenden Werts die neuzeitlichen Wissenschaften und die darauf basierende moderne Technik gedungen (gedingt) hat um der Verstärkung und Vergrößerung seiner eigenen Verwertungsbewegung willen. Oder anders herum: die Wissenschaft und die Technik hat sich beim Medium des verdinglichenden Werts um der Verwertungsbewegung des Mediums willen verdingt; sie sind in seinen Dienst vor allem als Produktivitätssteigerer und Umschlagsbeschleuniger getreten. Auf der Oberfläche der Gesellschaft jedoch erscheint diese Steigerung und Beschleunigung lediglich als notwendige Folge des harten Konkurrenzkampfes im Gewinnspiel. Im Grunde weiß 'man' überhaupt nicht, warum die Zeiten immer hektischer werden, sondern 'man' redet etwa bloß vom 'Preis des Fortschritts' und dergleichen.

Wir modernen individualisierten Subjekte leugnen die tieferliegende, beunruhigende Wahrheit des 'Spätkapitalismus' und wähnen uns als frei, obwohl wir schon längst zu bloßen Spielern im Gewinnspiel mit sehr verschiedenen Erfolgschancen degradiert worden sind. Wir haben keine Einsicht darein, daß das verdinglichende Medium uns sowohl assoziiert als auch dissoziiert. Dieses Assoziieren ist eine spezifische geschichtliche Weise der Vergesellschaftung, zumal das Medium uns auch (vermittelt) als individuelle Privateigentümer dissoziiert, die ihre individuelle Freiheit vor allem als Verbraucher von Zahnpasta bis hin zu Immobilien genießen. Somit sind wir nicht nur gedungen (gedingt) sondern auch verführt vom süßen Gift des Mediums.

Wir bleiben — zumindest so lange das Einkommen genügt — selbstzufrieden und -gefällig und sehen überhaupt keine Notwendigkeit, uns über unser geschichtliches Schicksal als Bewußtseinssubjekte Gedanken zu machen. Alles bleibt beim Alten. Wir machen uns nicht auf den Weg zurückzugehen, um uns zu fragen, wer wir eigentlich in einem anderen geschlichtlichen Entwurf künftig sein könnten. Wer möchte heute überhaupt kontemplieren, daß, statt eines inneren Bewußtseins zu 'haben', wir in Wahrheit ursprünglich der Offenheit der dreidimensionalen Zeit gehören?

Further reading: On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Devastation of the Earth. 

Sustainability? Of what?. 

CO2 and The Medium.

Thingified value begets individualized freedom.

Democracy's highest (hidden, thingified) value.

An Invisible Global Social Value TT&S Vol. 5 no. 2, 2024.

Hegemony of The Medium?.

Capitalocene & The global law of movement.

Laws of movement & Energy.

The time has come

" 'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things,...' "

Lewis Carrol Through the Looking-Glass 1871.

"Gedanken, die mit Taubenfüßen kommen, lenken die Welt."
"Thoughts that come on doves' feet steer the world."

Friedrich Nietzsche Also sprach Zarathustra 2. Teil; Die stillste Stunde 1883.

εἶς ἐμοι μύριοι, ἐαν ἄριστος ἤι.
"One is tens of thousands to me, if the best."

Herakleitos, Diels/Kranz Fragment 49
Motto for On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Non-commutativity of time and movement

Down the rabbit hole

To continue on from my preceding post to view the antinomies in the conception of quantum indeterminacy from another angle. Whereas in quantum physics, one has the non-commutativity of position and momentum of quantum entities that vitiates any attempt to mathematically control them precisely in the one-dimensional time of linear causality, thus forcing a fallback position of calculating with probability distributions, pondering the non-commutativity of time itself with movement shifts back a gear to more elementary, more originary considerations entirely outside the purview of the modern physicist's mind. The gear-shift also challenges the misconceived non-commutativity of time and energy in quantum physics.

Understandably, and by definition, the physicist's mind is trained upon physical movement, i.e. the movement of physical things that are characterized as having extension and matter, and occupying a place in space. All three of these essential properties of physical entities can be and have been mathematized since the 17th century as measurable size, mass, and position in a vector space, respectively, and as such enter into equations as algebraic variables that can be determined by solving the equations in order, ultimately, to precalculate their movement, or rather their (loco)motion. For it turns out that a specific kind of physical movement, viz. motion, or change of place, is most amenable to mathematization. Whereas Aristotle investigated four kinds of physical change (μεταβολή, change-over): of what (progeneration), how (quality), how much (quantity), and where (locomotion), the former three can be conceptually reduced to change of position in a vector space, and thus grasped mathematically. Hence, for example, in modern science, specifically chemistry, qualitative change of physical entities, i.e. chemical reactions, is conceived as the reconfiguration of material molecules in space.

This is all a consequence of modern physics' having disappeared down the rabbit hole of mathematization of the phenomena, whereby the phenomena are substituted by algebraic symbols that can be deployed and solved for real numbers in equations.

Because physical entities with a view toward predicting, i.e. precalculating, their movement have precedence, the conception of time that gains sway, and seems natural, is that it is itself counted off physical movement and in particular off physical motion, in the first place, the motion of celestial bodies. Time is thus conceived as a circular linearity causally linking physical events. For, without a cause-effect nexus, there would be no way to predict, pre-calculate, effectively control the motion. Causality and linear time are more or less synonymous, similar to how, in general relativity, space-time curvature is synonymous with gravitation. Giving precedence to physical movement dictates a conformable conception of linear time in which causality becomes mathematically calculable.

It could nevertheless, even at this late stage, give the rare, intellectually unsettled physicist pause for thought to consider that it is questionable whether the first quantum entity — apparently experimentally 'discovered' by Einstein in 1905, viz. the photon, lacking as it does mass, extension and determinate position — is a proper physical entity at all. Strictly speaking, the photon is immaterial, pure motion.

Turning the tables

My claim, however, is that the phenomena of time and movement do not commute, with the consequence that giving precedence to the phenomenon of time affects also the pertinent kinds of movement that come into consideration. To the dyed-in-the-wool physicist's dismay, there are kinds of movement that are not physical at all, but rather pre-physical, immaterial. Consider, for instance, a change of mind or a change of heart or a change of mood. None of these kinds of movement is predictable, masterable, let alone mathematizable. Nevertheless, modern science is bent upon bringing also these kinds of movement into the grasp of calculability, preferably by reducing them conceptually to physical movements of matter but, if not, at least quantifying all aspects of them. This is the dogma of modern science that scientists complacently accept; it holds sway throughout the scientific world, i.e. throughout the scientific mind. 

Violence is done to the phenomenon of mental movement when the attempt is made to reduce it ('lead back' conceptually) to ostensibly underlying material processes in the brain, as neuroscience attempts to do. It is then inevitable that free will is declared to be an illusion. Likewise, violence is done to the phenomenon of interplay as the kind of movement through which we humans sociate with each other when the attempt is undertaken to linearize it temporally under some kind of reciprocal causality.

Once the phenomenon of time is give precedence over movement, the former shows itself phenomenally as an interleaved unity of three familiar, 'empty', immaterial, temporal dimensions which we humans inhabit as long as we live. The kinds of movement enabled by the openness of three-dimensional time are not constricted to any kind of sequential linearity, but are unconstrained and free, even to the extent of seeming unruly and chaotic. Nevertheless, that is what our situation is as mortals exposed to and belonging to three-dimensional time. Within this temporal openness encompassing all kinds of movement, it is foolhardy to set out with a program to master all kinds of movement. By fixating on physical movement from the outset with the Greeks, to the neglect of other kinds of movement, Western science put itself on an historical trajectory that is aptly described as the unbridled will to power over all kinds of movement, under which those kinds of movement that are not physical suffer and even become invisible, since modern mathematized physics approaches the phenomena only quantitatively. They end up as variables, i.e. algebraic symbols, in equations and pseudo-equations, and that only for the sake of precalculating motion. Truth itself becomes degraded to the correctness of empirical predictions. Theorizing degenerates into constructing hypothetical models waiting for experimental verification. Foundational questions are shunned and eschewed. The truth of elementary phenomena themselves is no longer sought, and therefore does not come to any conceptual understanding. Philosophers and scientists no longer know what it means to conceptualize elementary phenomena.

Einstein, a loyal physicist to the end, was most upset by the apparently empirical discovery of quantum indeterminacy and its corollary of the breakdown of efficient causality, but it is only physics' narrow-minded conception of time in the first place that results in such a dilemma, which Einstein proposed to resolve by postulating as yet hidden causal variables. From a conception of three-dimensional time, by contrast, indeterminacy is the phenomenal truth for most kinds of movement, with the linear causality of physical motion being a limited exception.

One could be forgiven for thinking that it is time to turn the tables and give precedence to time over movement, perhaps initially just as a Gedankenexperiment. Due to their essential, phenomenal non-commutativity, the commuting of linear time with movement ends up surprisingly as three-dimensional rather than one-dimensional time, with a concomitant loss of control. Other kinds of (non-physical) movement come into view to be understood rather than explained. From the viewpoint of modern science, that is a calamity. For others it amounts to the liberation of time from its constricted linearity to a three-dimensional temporal openness. In such a three-dimensional time we are then confronted with other phenomena to be thought through that remain invisible in the older paradigm. These include our mental freedom and other quandaries about how we mutually estimate who we are in dealing with our shared temporally three-dimensional, mortal freedom.

Further reading: Quantum indeterminacy a thorough misconception.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo (4.7, 4.8) De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Quantum indeterminacy a thorough misconception

Here another note on quantum indeterminacy that complements what I've written over the years on the subject, especially in the Appendix to Movement and Time in the Cyberworld.

Quantum indeterminacy, as first introduced at the turn of the 20th century, is taken to be the impossibility of accurately measuring the position and the momentum of a quantum entity (photon, electron, etc.) together at the same instant of time. The Planck constant gets in the way. Either you measure its instantaneous position to a high degree of accuracy, and lose accuracy in measuring its instantaneous momentum, or vice versa. This is captured mathematically (initially by Heisenberg in 1925) by expressing the dynamics of such complementary quantum entities in matrices which, as is well known, do not commute. The product of the inaccuracy range measuring position and the inaccuracy measuring momentum, expressed as the commutator of two matrices, is equal to a non-zero multiple of the Planck constant, h.

This mathematical result has long since been experimentally confirmed, or rather, conversely, the mathematical result expresses what was found initially by experiment by Einstein in 1905 on Planck's insight that a quantization of the energy of light via the Planck constant would avoid grave antinomies in the theory of electromagnetism. Einstein followed Planck's hunch. This earth-shaking event in the history of modern physics, however, comes already late in the day, since the onset of the mathematization of physics eventuates already in the 17th century with Galileo, Descartes, followed, famously, by Newton.

Descartes' post-humus work Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii (Rules for the Direction of the Mind) already lays down the rules for how the phenomena are to be approached scientifically in the Modern Age, namely, quantitatively, mathematically. The phenomena themselves come to be denoted by mere algebraic symbols for magnitudes that appear in equations that have to be solved (cf. Movement and Time in the Cyberworld 2.7 Cartesian rules for an algebra of magnitudes in general as foundation for the modern mathematical sciences). Newton is inspired by this mathematical spirit of the age to find his three simple mathematical rules for governing the (loco)motion of physical entities. Without Newtonian mechanics we would not be living in the modern world. Without his predecessor Aristotle, Newton would have lacked key concepts for his theory. Crucially, Newton mathematized two concepts from Aristotle's ontology of productive movement: δύναμις (dynamis) and ἐνέργεια (energeia). Modern physics has thoroughly suppressed its ontological origins. Drunk on success, it has never looked back and today still claims to be the queen of the sciences with the key to providing the answers to the deepest questions of the universe, including its origins (Big Bang theory) and the secret of what life itself is (a complicated kind of organization of matter). It is still toiling at the coalface of quantum gravity that unfortunately turns upon understanding what curved, four-dimensional space-time is supposed to be in a quantized universe.

Quantum indeterminacy is a deep misconception resulting from the scientific compulsion to measure dynamic phenomena in order to be able to calculate and precalculate the motion of the relevant physical entities that are now deemed to be quanta, i.e. it is a product of the mathematization of physical movement for the very small. The drawback in the case of quantum entities is that their dynamics can only be precalculated probabilistically within a certain margin of error determined by the Planck constant. No worries. At least upon many repetitions of the same physical procedure, the statistical accuracy can be improved, and that's good enough for practical purposes. It's only with one-off experiments that strict efficient causality fails. Quantum computers still remain shining tantalizingly on the horizon offering the prospect of one day speeding up algorithmic calculation to unimaginable heights. Quantum physicists' eyes light up at the thought of being able to simulate any physical process on a quantum computer.

The mathematized approach to the dynamics of any physical phenomena whatsoever, and quantum dynamical phenomena in particular, requires that time itself, in which all physical movement must take place, be mathematized as a real variable in the pertinent equations. Even though complex imaginary variables crop up for some quantum phenomena, e.g. wave phase, time itself remains real, continuous, differentiable. Differential equations with respect to time abound, and they need to be solved to be of use. In particular, any (loco)motion of a quantum entity is presupposed to be accessible at a real instant of time, t. Without such accessibility, quantum indeterminacy would make no sense. Even a photon or electron is supposed to have an instantaneous position, velocity and momentum within a certain range, even when there are Planck limits to measuring them definitively as real observables at real, measured time, t. Taking this limitation into account, position, velocity and momentum are thus conceived mathematically as probability distributions. That time is conceived to be composed of consecutive instants, however, is a mathematical fiction dictated by the will to precalculate motion.

The truth of the phenomenon of time itself is not that it is one-dimensionally linear and composed of instants but, in its most elementary guise as an idea of the human mind, the interleaved open unity of the three well-known temporal dimensions of past, present and future, prior to any effort to mathematize them. The three empty dimensions enable simply a passing-through of essencing entities to the psyche in which they are interpreted and understood in some way. These three temporal dimensions are independent of each other insofar as they do not require or enforce any linear, controllable succession of events, whether they be physical or otherwise. In particular, the movement of the mind focusing on events in three-dimensional time is completely free, unbound by any physical, material constraints. To physics' dismay and consternation (if it were ever capable of dismay and consternation), three-dimensional time itself is non-, or rather, pre-material through and through.

In order for us humans to see, i.e. eidetically conceive and understand, any movement/change at all, including physical-material motion, as such, we must see trifocally, all at once, into all three temporal dimensions. We are endowed with trifocal mental vision. In particular, any physical entity, including a quantum entity, is not merely there in a present, so-called instantaneous position, but is, all at once, also where it was and where it will be, even if none of these wheres is determinable with any precision.

It is impossible for modern scientists, as such, to appreciate this because they have all been trained to approach the phenomena quantitatively, in obedience to Descartes' Rules. Stepping outside the Rules, thus leaving the fold, would render them to be non-scientists. The modern scientific mind can never accept the phenomenological interpretation of time as three-dimensionally open. Such a conception throws a spanner in the works for the precalculability of movement. Instead it contents itself with constructing hypothetical, theoretical models that are then experimentally tested to validate their predictive correctness, as a poor substitute for the truth of the phenomena concerned. The experiments are often designed in advance to empirically test predictions arising from the mathematical models of theoretical physicists, e.g. the existence of gravitational waves (a physical dynamical entity) was predicted by a mathematical model expressed in equations that gave directions to the scientific mind about how to detect them with appartuses gathering empirical data. The data gathered in a recent experiment were interpreted appropriately to confirm the existence of gravitational waves. This is the empiricist-positivist game that all modern science continues to play with sublime complacency, not to say arrogance.

The modern scientist is the agent, or rather, stooge of the unbridled will to power over all kinds of movement, physical or not. As loyal adherent to the empiricist scientific method, s/he is also imbued with the hubris of modern science to regard itself as being at the leading edge of human progress and human betterment. The modern scientist is a figure representing the quintessence of the subjectivist metaphysics of the Modern Age and as such cast historically as the subject underlying all movement in the world, obsessed with controlling it. It is thus blind to and overlooks the openness of three-dimensional time to which we humans belong. Three-dimensional time enables freedom of movement of the mind as well as our interplay with one another, phenomena that are only distorted and violated when subjected to the will to power over movement.

The way out historically is to (learn to) let go of this unbridled, obsessive will to power, a step back which Heidegger calls Gelassenheit (letting-go, letting-be). 

Respite — tranquil, serene.

The step back gains distance from Western science (ἐπιστήμη), whose will to know, from the outset, was always a will to predict, to control. Stepping back from the will to power enables us to see the phenomena themselves more clearly, perhaps to interpret them more truly, thus opening up hitherto unimaginable existential possibilities.

Further reading: Perplexities of quantum mechanics.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo (4.8) De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Movement and Time in the Cyberworld (2.7, Appendix) De Gruyter, Berlin 2019.

Descartes, René Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii Philosophische Schriften Meiner, Hamburg 1996.

Statistical fudging.

Aristotle's "before and after" & quantum gravity.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Martin Heidegger Gelassenheit Neske, Pfullingen 1959/1985.

Non-commutativity of time and movement.

Der Tod hat scharfe Kanten

Der Tod hat scharfe Kanten.

Devastation of the Earth

The horrendous consequences of global climate change — along with other calamities: knots of plastic floating in the ocean, spurious crap floating in our mind — are becoming more apparent every day. Its deniers remain stalwart in their (self-interested) denial. Huge efforts to make a transition to so-called sustainability make headway and also suffer setbacks from fierce resistance. Powerful, effective opposition is led by profit-seeking corporations and national states with their 'developed economies'.

Well-meaning, concerned scientists work hard to present the undeniable facts of climate change. They gather the empirical evidence, interpreting it through well-established laws of physics to enlighten both politics and the general public. The opponents do their best to present 'alternative facts' that downplay the threats of climate change or deny it altogether. They are the stooges of another, unspoken, non-physical global law of movement. Only the profit-making interests of certain big players in the gainful game are visible. If only their interests could be contained and curtailed by appropriate political action on all levels from the local to the global! That would be democracy in action, progressives say.

This amounts to whistling in the wind so long as the underlying, hidden global law of movement in its own Medium remains unknown. Due to profound ignorance of the law of movement of the global economy, the facts on the surface, although modelled correctly, misinterpret events in their truth and therefore propose illusory or makeshift remedies. We continue to live and act blithely in the untruth. The empirical-positivist thinking of modern science is unable to even diagnose our dilemma, to reveal its truth. It is entirely oblivious and essentially blind to our toxication and intoxication by the Medium that enslaves us as free players. Spellbound by the illusion that we humans are free individual subjects acting collectively through 'our' democratic institutions, it is already captured by the status quo and obliged to dismiss any thinking that delves deeper than the facts on the surface as ideological. 

The tatters of philosophy remaining after the onslaught of empiricist positivism are engaged in a scholarly game of tiddlywinks among positions concerned inter alia with ethics, normativity, history of philosophy, defence of 'our' democratic values, including fair play. The core value of liberalism, viz. fairness, is rendered hollow by the Medium, since, despite the best efforts to devise norms and laws to implement and ensure fair play, it is thoroughly undermined, subverted and trumped by the Medium. The Medium dictates its terms and conditions (e.g. ruthless exploitation of mineral resources, containing (wage-)inflation) for its continued successful valorization, upon which all seems to depend (e.g. to 'create' jobs). The capitalist agents of the Medium's valorization, aligned as they are with 'conservative' politics, are always at an advantage, since they stand for 'growth' and promise prosperity.

Who or what is the culprit responsible for the ongoing devastation of the Earth? 'We' humans in the so-called 'anthropocene'? Due to our 'technological progress', as proffered by so-called 'philosophers of technology'? Are these interpretations of our dilemma seen through as woefully inadequate? The question, who we are as humans, demands that the question of whoness be insistently posed. Today's degenerate philosophy is unable to even understand the question, having long since given up even on the question of whatness. How, in view of the ubiquity of the Medium as universal medium of sociation (Vergesellschaftungsmedium), have we been cast as humans in the present historical era? As merely more or less free, as more or less unfairly treated players in the global gainful game? Is that what the so-called Free World amounts to? While the Earth descends ever deeper into utter degradation?

Further reading: Three laws of movement (again).

CO2 and The Medium.

Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking Core Phenomena of Political Philosophy De Gruyter, Berlin 2018.

Thingified value begets individualized freedom.

Democracy's highest (hidden, thingified) value. 

Freedom in liberal democracies.

Life, death, degeneration (temporalogically)

What is life?, a question related to the question: What is the psyche? Aristotle answers the former question by answering the latter. For him, the psyche is the eidetic 'look' or εἶδος of a physical body capable of living, its very essence or whatness, which he expresses in the formula that a living physical body has its starting-point for movement and stasis within itself. This having of such a starting-point is its entelechie (ἐντελέχεια) or perfected presence as a living physical body. Aristotle's gaze is thus directed toward such physical bodies that can move themselves, animate, empsyched things (ἔμψυχα) in distinction from physical bodies that are not so endowed, i.e. inanimate ἄψυχα.

Only physical kinds of movement are therefore pertinent, which for Aristotle comprise four kinds or ἔιδη: change (μεταβολή) of i) what, ii) how, iii) how much and iv) where, i.e. i) progeneration, ii) quality (sense perception e.g. hearing-not hearing; sleeping and waking, activity and inactivity), iii) quantity (growth and decay), and iv) locomotion/mobility. For Aristotle, only physical bodies capable of such self-movement can partake of life.

Restricting consideration now (temporalogically) to human living, what about other kinds of self-movement, i.e. those of the non-physical variety? In the preceding post I have already spoken of the movement of the mind as the psyche's capacity to move freely throughout three-dimensional time, a degree of freedom that material, extended, physical things do not enjoy, since the mind is thoroughly pre-physical, unencumbered by matter. 

Or, to take another kind of movement: what about the movement of interplay between and among mortal humans when they sociate with each other, mutually estimating who each other is? Is that not their social living? Interplay is a kind of movement that eludes efficient-causal explanation within the bounds of a tacit ontology of productive movement. This, of course, does not prevent sociology and social psychology from fabricating countless explanatory models based on endless empirical research to account quasi-causally for social behaviour.

There is yet another kind of self-movement to consider, since the self-movement of life is only the converse and complement of the self-movement toward death. What does mortality mean for us humans? Do we die only when, through decay, the physical body loses its self-movement? Which kinds of self-movement?  The loss of mobility, for example, does not equate with death, nor even the loss of sense perception. How about loss of movement of the cardio-respiratory organs? If machines can maintain the functioning of the cardio-respiratory organs artificially, does this still count as living? After all, it is doubtful whether lungs and heart that cannot move themselves, and are thus no long empsyched, are still living. 

Does death coincide with the loss of movement of the brain, i.e. the organ employed by the mind for mental movement? It is at least plausible that the mind loses its freedom of self-movement in three-dimensional time when its physical organ is defunct. Furthermore: is there the possibility of mental life after the physical body dies, i.e. is no longer capable of self-movement? Such a possibility seems to lie beyond the realm of human experience. Whose mental life could it be after death? Conversely, is there the possibility of mental death (e.g. coma), while the physical body lives on? Can mental movement, i.e. thinking, degenerate qualitatively, without impairment of brain function, e.g. through exposure to mass media and the cyberworld?

Mental movement through three-dimensional time, i.e. imagining, would seem to be the freest of all human self-movements and probably also the most potentially deleterious. Why? Because  imaginings can become untethered from any phenomenal touchstone. Opinion, belief, conviction rely upon an imagination that is more or less careless, fanciful, undisciplined in interpreting what comes to mind. Does the freedom of the mind degenerate into arbitrariness, caprice, prejudice and dogma when thinking does not bother to carefully interpret the phenomena, to at least establish the correct facts as best we can? (Even though the truth of the phenomena thereby remain concealed.)

Presumably it was the freedom of movement of the imagination that occasioned Kant to subject it strictly to the rules of understanding when revising the first, A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781 to produce the second, B edition of 1787. In this way, the superiority of the logical mind was reasserted and upheld. Kant's logical rules of understanding, however, are fashioned after the Newtonian laws of movement of physical objects, and these are laws of continuous movement in one-dimensional, linear time conceived as a succession (Nacheinander) of now-instants. The so-called superiority of human rationality is thus maintained at the cost of a massive petitio principii, or begging of the question, since the power of imagination (Einbildungskraft) is the prototype of three-dimensional time as inadvertently conceived by Kant within the strictures of his subjectivist metaphysics. Kant's subsequent suppression of the imagination's role amounts to a suppression of the truth of the phenomenon of three-dimensional time.

A similar petitio principii is performed when it is conceived that the mind moves, or at least rationally moves, according to syllogistic rules of logical inference. This dogma opens the way to conceiving mental movement as constrained by a series of if-then rules, i.e. as a kind of computation, that then can be adequately imitated by a Universal Turing Machine. Since any computer whatsoever, including those running A.I. algorithms, can be conceived, in principle, as a concatenation of Turing machines, nothing then prevents our believing that the algorithmically steered cyberworld, although patently artificial, nevertheless faithfully models our human mind so that, conversely, we (mis)conceive our mind itself as some organic, 'wet' kind of computer (to wit, the brain), thereby suitably degrading our self-conception.

If free mental movement is at the core of our mortal animation, and if this mental movement is (mis)conceived (hermeneutically) as computation that can be replicated by A.I. algorithms running on ever more powerful, energy-hungry, inanimate computers, have we thereby already cast ourselves as the living dead?  What's the remedy? Think again! From scratch.

Further reading: The human psyche (temporalogically) (previous post).

Aristotle De Anima (On the Soul).

Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking Core Phenomena of Political Philosophy De Gruyter, Berlin 2018, Chapter 5 'Ontology of Exchange'.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024. 

Immanuel Kant Kritik der reinen Vernunft 1781/1787.

'Turing's cyberworld of timelessly copulating bit-strings' 2012.

'Turing's Cyberworld' in Information Cultures in the Digital Age: A Festschrift in Honour of Rafael Capurro Matthew Kelly & Jared Bielby (eds.) Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016 pp. 65-81.

'Algorithmic Control of Movement in Time: Abolishing even our selves ourselves' in Kinder und Jugendliche in der Krise: Gegenwärtige Herausforderungen und neue Perspektiven Rainer J. Kaus, Hartmut Günther (eds.), transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2025 pp. 219-233.

Movement and Time in the Cyberworld: Questioning the Digital Cast of Being De Gruyter, Berlin 2019.

Energy-hungry, surrogate Cyberworld.