I’ve started re-reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics (although if “re-reading” implies any serious memory of the first time, then we should remove the “re-“) with an eye towards the role of categories and tree-like organizational structures. So far, that’s turning out to be an oddly useful (= consistently distorting) lens.

In Book Beta, Aristotle is still examining how others have approached the problem of what things are. Previous philosophers have made the mistake, he argues, of thinking that principles and classes have to be independent things; in fact, they believe principles are the most real and the most eternal. But then you end up with the “greatest absurdity” [997b.5, p. 46], he says, for you’ve divided beings into an individual and the principle that makes the individual into what it is, and you have no way of getting them back together.

Worse, it’s the individuals that are most real (despite Plato), but if all we have are individuals, there’s no possibility of knowledge:

If there is nothing apart from concrete individuals, and if these are infinite, how is a science of infinite individuals possible? For whatever things we come to know, we come to know in so far as they are one or the same, and in so far as some general attributes belongs to them all. [998a, 23, p. 51]

But it isn’t possible that the condition for knowing is incompatible with the nature of being. Can we get to something general enough to count as knowledge without denying that to be is to be an individual?

Aristotle says predecessors failed at this. Those that say principles are real beings are needlessly multiplying entities and can’t explain what it means for an individual to “participate” in a principle, And, he argues, it doesn’t help to point to the constituent elements of things because if that’s all you have, you can’t understand what makes a bed into a bed; for that you have to see how the parts are put together and understand that a bed is for sleeping…a purpose not contained in the sum of constituent elements.

But, even if we agree that knowledge of a thing is knowledge of what kind of thing it is, how general should the kind be? Do you look at its most immediate genus, or do you look at the root of the tree to see the primary genus? [998b.15, p. 49]

…what many beings have in common cannot itself be a this-somnething, but is a “what”; whereas a primary being is a “this.” If we were permitted to supposed that what is predicated in common is itself a this-something, then Socrates would be many animals: himself and “man” and “animals”…These are the consequences of supposing principles to be general. But if they are not general, but individuals, they are not knowable; for knowledge of anything is general. Hence, if there is to be knowledge of such principles, there must be other principles prior to them, namely, what is general to them. [1003a.8, p. 60]

These are the problems that arise from assuming that being and knowability are one (an assumption we moderns don’t make; we assume that things are apart from how we know them), and not yet seeing how categories can be different in kind from the things they categorize. We don’t have a problem saying that Socrates is a human and an animal because we see that — looking upward — categories can be nested and inherit properties from their containers, and — looking downward — how categories can emerge from what the contain, just as beds emerge from constituent elements. Through the odd lens I’m using, reading this chapter feels like watching the birth of the level of abstraction required to make nested categories work.

I’m reading the Richard Hope translation from Ann Arbor Paperbacks.

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I read Book Alpha of Aristotle’s Metaphysics this afternoon (trans. Richard Hope). (A book is about 40 pages.) He reads like Bach sounds.

Book Alpha takes on a different cast when you read it looking for clues about the way in which things organize themselves into genuses and species. For example, the book begins, famoulsy, “All men naturally have an impulse to get knowledge.” This is not an unargued premise. Aristotle presents evidence for it: “A sign of this is the way we prize our senses.” We most highly value sight, even when “we have nothing practical in view.” Why? “The reason is that of all the senses it can best bring us knowledge and best discerns the many differences among things.”

So, now we know that knowledge has to do with seeing the differences among things. But, if you only see what makes something distinct, the world becomes populated by unique things, and knowledge is impossible: I need to distinguish Plato from Critias, yet see that both are men, and distinguish men from chickens yet see both are bipeds. So, knowledge requires the distinctions and groupings that a genus-species arrangement gives.

We see this in Aristotle’s critique of Plato. Most of Book Alpha is given over to showing how Aristotle’s predecessors got it wrong. Aristotle spends more time on Plato, his old teacher, than on anyone else. (Go have students!) Here’s one of his complaints about Plato’s notion of Ideas:

Also, there will be more than one pattern of the same thing, therefore more than one idea; of man, for example, animal and biped and at the same time also man-himself. [991a.25, p. 29]

Again, this is a problem that a nested, hierarchical view solves.

In Book Alpha the Less, Aristotle argues for a single “root,” a single first principle. But, of course, this first principle is not just an abstract category. It is also what gives traits to what follows from it:

To explain a thing it is necessary to know which among a number of things that have some trait in common gives that trait to others. So, fire, being hottestst, is the reason why other things are hot. So, too, what is most true is the reason why other things are derivatively true. Hence, the principles of eternal things are necessarily most truel for they are true always not not merely sometimes; and there is nothing which explains their being what they are, for it is they that explain the being of other things. Consequently, status in being governs status in truth.” [993b.20, p. 36]

So, we’re not looking merely at the order of knowledge but also at the order of being.

BTW, it’s hard for me to tell, but I think Aristotle is making a joke in this section:

Some require accuracy in everything; others are irritated by accuracy, either because they cannot follow a closely reasoned argument, or because they fear hair-splitting. There is something about accuracy that makes it seem unworthy to certain free spirits, either in business contracts or in rational exposition. [995a.10, p. 39]

Hoho! Good one, Ari! And, say, what’s a Grecian urn?

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I’m excited. I haven’t read Aristotle in 25 years, but I pulled down The Metaphysics and Randall’s “Aristotle” this morning, because for the book I’m pre-writing, I want to remember what he says about genera and species. In particular, I’m curious whether his nested view of categories explicitly reflects the way political entities are nested: animal contains human the way Greece contains Athens.

I thumbed through both books for about two minutes after blowing the dust off of them, and had a flash of why I used to love Aristotle. He believed that careful thought could understand the world, which implies that the world is orderly and beautiful, and that language, thought, action and world all could be aligned perfectly.

If only I can clear out enough spam to make room for beginning to read him again.

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Yesterday, during a conversation — telephonic! — with Jeneane, the question of what constitutes “authentic voice” arose.

I dislike the word “authenticity” although I use it because it gets at
something we all (?) sense is there: We know there are phonies, so we need
words to express non-phoniness. “Sincere” works when we’re talking about the
possible gap between feelings and expressions. “Integrity” applies to behavior that consistently matches principles. Authenticity refers to a
possible gap in our very being, whatever that means. (But it seems to mean something.)

While we need the word, applying it to voice gets straight at the difficulty. Authenticity implies that your visible behavior matches your innerness – or, more exactly, it implies a lack of distance between the two. But, our voices always contain some element of construction, decision, anticipation, drafting. That’s not a bad thing. It means that in speaking with you, I am aware of how I think you’ll hear me.

Conclusion: We need the term “authenticity” so we can talk about phonies, and simultaneously shouldn’t trust its implication that only “unfiltered” voice is “real.” But, then what marks an inauthentic voice from an authentic one?

(FWIW, I think the problem with the term “authenticity” is its presumption that we have inner and outer selves, and that the inner self is our real self. I personally find those ideas more misleading than helpful.)

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Gary Lawrence Murphy has a thoughtful and funny response to my piece (comments here) on why I’m not a pacifist any more. An excerpt:

…Dr. Who, on detonating a bomb in an evil tyrant’s lair, was asked by his companions why he’d left his pacifism in this case. He replied, “Sometimes you just have to blow them up” — Krishna too tells Arajuna that some battles are justified, because yes, sometimes there is a complexity that goes beyond the way we wish the world was going.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that human beings respond primarily to connectionist values, that is, their behaviour is determined more by the history of reinforced patterns stored in the associative computing device in their biology than by those tricks of logic and sense we’ve painfully taught that biology to do. It is a testament to our ability as a creature that we have evolved any ethics or culture at all, so we can hardly expect perfection.

We should instead cheer if we see even the slightest moral reserve…

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It’s heartening that Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil,” puts morality at the heart of Google’s mission. It’s a lot better guideline than “Ruthlessly enrich ourselves” or “Crimp the air supply of our competitors.” I personally would like to see “Make the world better” become an explicit part of every company’s charter, just as a reminder.

But, “Don’t be evil” only poses as a principle. It’s not a principle because it can’t be applied to a situation. It can’t be used to guide action. Does not demoting an anti-semitic site’s rank constitute doing evil or not doing evil? Saying “Don’t be evil” just doesn’t help us decide.

A more dangerous — because more subtle — faux principle is the Libertarian one that says “The goernment that governs least governs best.” It looks like it can be brought in to settle a discussion’s hash. But it turns out to be totally unhelpful. Everyone agrees that governmental bloat is a bad thing. The real question is: What constitutes bloat and what constitutes “least”? When a Libertarian invokes the “Least Governement” principle to explain why she doesn’t want the government to inspect children’s toys, the response is: Yes, but is this a case of least-ness? After all, Libertarians aren’t anarchists. They believe in some level of government regulation. As we argue about toy inspections or seat belt laws or inheritance taxes, we will have to argue the specifics of each case: Are these regulations necessary and desirable? The “Least Governement” principle doesn’t help us at all. It is a faux principle.

At least Google’s faux principle tells the company to be alert to the moral dimension, even though the principle can’t help with the answers. And it’s phrased so succinctly that it won’t fool anyone into thinking that it could actually direct action; Google’s expression seems to have a little distance, a little irony, a little self-awareness. That’s good because, while it reminds us that businesses are moral entities, we shouldn’t think that not doing evil is as easy as it sounds.

[See Josh McHugh’s Wired article on Good and Evil at Google.]

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AKMA has a provocative “semi-random” trio of statements about our powerlessness in the face of signifying. 1. Everything we do signifies (projects meaning), he says. 2. Signifying always escapes our ability to control it: Your wearing of an orange jacket on St. Patrick’s day will be taken as having a particular significance whether you intended it or not. 3. From this AKMA concludes that there can be no ethic of signifying, just as there’s no ethic of gravity. (Pardon my recapitulation. Read the original. It’s written with AKMA’s usual clear-eyed panache.)

The main point of his conclusion is (and I trust AKMA will correct me if I get this wrong) that because signifying isn’t something we do, and isn’t something that we even fully understand, there’s no “real” signification, intended or otherwise, that we can authoritatively unearth. Our simple model of communication (inner thought expressed in outer signs) misrepresents the actual situation.

My question for AKMA: Within the broad swath of signifying, some of it is on purpose (as AKMA acknowledgeds, of course), so shouldn’t we be held responsible for it? Does he general law absolve us of responsibility in particular cases? Somehow I doubt it, but I don’t understand the connection.

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Yule Heibel is beginning an occasional series of blog entries about Adorno, in part because she thinks Heidegger has been getting too much air time. She promises to tell us what Adorno thought was wrong with the Ol’ Nazi.

I used to know enough about Adorno to weasel out of any actual conversations about him. Now I remember nothing at all about him. In fact, I think I’m into negative numbers. So, I look forward to Yule’s writing about this philosopher she cares about.

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Last night I had a dream that I was trying to explain to John Kerry that the Internet is like free speech: Its value comes from its openness to possibility, and that the government should regulate it as little as possible.

Yes, I actually had this dream.

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RageBoy talks a quick trot through AI, cognitive psychology and philosophy, proving once again that autodidacts are the best educated people on the planet.

Since RB ties me into the piece — I am not worthy, I am not worthy — let me answer the question he ends with: “I don’t know quite how I got here from Fodor’s funny take on Dasein.”

Here’s how you got there, muh friend. In a few pithy — and NC-17 — paragraphs you raise the notion of Dasein, and then take us through the clumsy way AI has tried to reincorporate the baby it threw out with the bath water: the mind. But, as you quote Bruner as saying, mind “has been technicalized in a manner that undermines the original impulse.” (BTW, I’ve never read Bruner. Thanks for the tip.)

So, here’s the connection, as if you didn’t know, you sly boots. Dasein is Heidegger’s term for human existence. He uses it precisely to keep his readers from making the mistake Bruner says AI has made: thinking of the mind or self as a thing. Consciousness is always of the world, Heidegger says (building on the insight of Husserl, a Jew he later betrayed). We experience the world, not a thing-like self. In fact, you can’t find a thing-like self even if you look. Nor can you find a self experiencing inner representations of an outer world; that concept comes not from experience but from having certain ungrounded theories about consciousness. We are always beyond ourselves in in time, too, understanding the present in terms of the future we’re heading ourselves towards. So, Heidegger used the weird term “Dasein” — “being there” — to keep us from thinking too easily of our minds and existence as being substances or things.

But there’s more…We are in the world not as knowers but as creatures that care about ourselves and our fellows. That is, the “of” in “consciousness of” isn’t neutral or rational. It’s how the world matters to us.

Anyway, read RB. He’s got a head full of ideas that are driving him insane.

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