BEING and LIFE
Each one of us begins --- even now, in life. The life that is 'our' life is immediately present, it is evident, it is within. Please ponder this just a moment. If there is any 'life' in the desktop screen I cannot say, but if there is, it is of quite another nature than the digital "stream". The life I am referring to is present immediately to my sense---it is the power of my eyes to see---it is the understanding of my mind of what appears to me here and now.
Let us consider the life that lives my life! I see that my life is a free gift, that all the steps have been laid out before me---and I am amazed at the wonder that surrounds me everywhere, that is, if I dare to look at all of this scene but with an added sense of wonder and amazement at just this. Students of Zen will hear this profoundly Buddhist expression--suchness---just this!
Thomas Aquinas may have touched on a similar realization of being---if one keeps one's gaze set upon this question---how is it that being (this being? all being? any being?) comes into being?
A physicist tackles a similar challenge in unfolding the universal origin in fundamental big bang cosmology.
Each one, be he Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Ginni Rometty must wend their way through their own life and this realization of being is always a mere step away.
Now, take a step back and consider once more: that which appears before me may be an intricate hidden matrix of which I am somehow unaware of, as it were in a dream---this evidence that is immediate to me in my senses may be 'mediated'. And if mediated, then the 'I' that I sense that I am, may not be the "ground floor" of this reality that appears to me.
A great deal of modern philosophy hangs on this immediate and certain presence of evidence and whether it is or is not impregnable.
If I take the here and now---this morning---sharp and bitterly cold in december of the year 2016 of the "current" era---then I certainly wonder at the amazing sense of being alive---one senses this 'jouissance' even in the squirrel dipping into the bird feeder or Olivia, our terrier, fiercely chasing after! It is joy that is awake in being.
Now, if it turned out that this entire scene is mediated by an unknown 'reality'--be it matrix-like, or the digital nervous system, or some other 'ground floor'--you know, neural modulation, or some other important sounding name---if this were the case (note the use of a subjunctive hypothetical: "if it were the case...")---then I for one would be a little bit disappointed when I discovered that my very beloved pet is but a dream, or a vision, and not a real substance. My deepest conviction that this dog is real and true substance stems from my direct and immediate grasping of the presence of, let us say, how this morning unfolds as I write to you. My deepest hope and wish is that this be true.
Let us Contrast Two Ways of Being: Hypothetical Being and Exigent Being
"If this were the case..." the trigger 'if' followed by the subjunctive mood 'were' announces a counterfactual statement. To each counterfactual a quick refutation awaits: "If it were the case...?" "Ah, but it is not the case!" This is the way of the hypothetical---physicists are familiar with the ideas of statistical probability upon which so many of the the theories of quantum mechanics rely.
The hypothetical announces what may be...the counterfactual and the probable.
Certainty is of another ilk, this is the way of the exigent: What must be in order that a, b or c must be.
Interrogatively the hypothetical states: A. If this were (or were not) the case (i.e.true), then.,,,x, y or z would or might be the case.
Interrogatively the exigent states: B. (This is the case---immediate evidence)--How is it that this is the case?
Note the very small semantic difference in these two forms of questions---very small but very important!
A is easily refuted by providing a counterfactual. B is not as easily refuted. Provided that one begins with self-evidency, to the question, how did this come to be, or how could this come to be---seeing that it is absolutely self-evident (provided of course that one looks at the evidence of one's perception not theoretically but directly in truth). One begins in this immediate grasping of truth---and ponders into it! How is it that this comes to be? This is the way of true philosophy.
The hypothetical mode is of another sort---starting hypothetically, one can never ascertain the true because it is banished in the 'if'. Put it this way, IF it were the case that this self-evident immediate experience that I am sharing were true, then the only manner this set of affairs can be described is exigently and by way of exigency---things are this way because they must be this way. There is no room for contingency. This way of thinking must be banished.
Rene Descartes, the great father of calculus, attempted to banish what he called 'le malin genie'---the hypothetical spirit that rules in dreamtime. Waking consciousness buffets and throws off this dreamtime 'deceiver' fairly easily. But then Descartes takes a hypothetical turn: What if this 'evil genius' were at the foundation not only of dreamtime, but the the foundation of material reality---for this is what AI suggests---then truth might be banished once and for all. The only truth discoverable would be the architecture of the digital nervous system, or the Agents within the matrix, or the neuromodulation of each and every thought in my mind. It is rather important to avoid allowing this 'malin genie' to enter my argument concerning the certainty of present self-evidence. However, in my opinion, Descartes did not succeed in doing so and was himself the first victim of Cartesian philosophy---starting with the hypothetical he was never able to return to his starting point. No matter how well-wishing his goal, he managed to sequester truth rather than to secure it. He and his followers have never been able to return to the original starting point of self-evident present being.
Note how differently the philosopher of exigency proceeds: he or she begins at the same starting point as Decsartes---self-evident truth experienced immediately---but does not make the hypothetical assertion of the 'evil genius'. In fact for the philosopher of exigency, there can be no hypothetical or counterfactual appeal at all. One begins with -being-in-truth and then asks after the conditions of its possibility. Note that possibility in this case does not refer to the immediate grasped presence of truth in human waking perception, it refers to the task that human understanding sets before itself each time it ponders the self-evidence of present reality. This immediate truth is not not-negotiable, it indeed is the starting point of any analog human inquiry into truth and reality. Granted it is only the very rare and odd individual who makes this pursuit the object of their calling. Nonetheless, in reading about Socrates, or reading from Aristotle or Heidegger or Aquinas, one greets there fellow travellers in the inquiry of truth and true-being.
Worldly thinkers, politicians, physicists do not deem this effort worth their effort. Even academic philosophers engaged in particular inquiries of being are not actively pursuing truth. This undertaking is rarer than commonly imagined. Nowadays, the internet makes a strong case for AI and the advent of a smarter planet. Truth is spoken of as 'intellectual property', as brand name, as highly speculative theory, etc., etc. Never before has the seeker of truth been so hidden "in plain sight."
For all speculative reason and contingency models the realist says: "there is no there there" and of his own immediately grasped truth he can only say: "the only here is here." The difference of my "here and now" and the "here and now" of my reader---these differences in space and time---simply make no difference at all in the immediate givenness of truth. For wherever you are, you are there and wherever I am, I am here. Temporally speaking yesterday today was tomorrow; and tomorrow, today will be yesterday. This paradox can never be overcome. The individual human being always faces directly into the truth and yet he or she remains one step away.
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