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FRAGMENTATION OF BEING and the Path Beyond the Void by Kent D. Palmer
copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved. Not for Distribution.
Within the metaphysical epoch, once ontology had replaced the Apieron with Conceptual Being, the stage was set for the development of philosophy as we kno w it from the history which occurred. That history has been a dialectic of philosophical positions which have inaugurated various epochs of Being as Heidegger describes them. These epochs of Being within the metaphysical epoch are in effect reinterpretations of Conceptual Being. Conceptual Being still holds sway as the Symbolic Other to all entities. These reinterpretations occur against a general malaise of the forgetfulness of Being. Since Being is the most empty concept, it generally is considered the weakest and least interesting concept. The interpretations of Being attempt to render it meaningful again. Within these epochs of Being, even finer eras occur within epistime changes and paradigm changes. These are constant reconfigurations of the metaphysical ontological gestalt. It is another story to delineate fully the unfolding of the epochs of Being as Heidegger sketches them in his book The End Of Philosophy. Foucault has sketched the episteme changes in The Order Of Things and defined his method in The Archeology Of Knowledge. J. Bernard Cohen sketched the history of paradigm changes in science in his book Revolution In Science, following Kuhn's program for defining the stages of scientific revolutions. As yet, no one has written a history that unifies all these levels in a single treatment., Each level, the ontological, the epistemological, and the scientific, are as yet only treated independently. Such a monumental work is beyond the compass of the present study. We take the discontinuous breaks in the Western philosophical and scientific tradition for granted based on the evidence given in the aforementioned works (and others). A good general overview of this historical phenomenon and its importance in Western history is found in The Day The Universe Changed by Kenneth Burke.
However, throughout this development, Conceptual Being has remained the unmoving pivot for the dialectic of philosophy. Reinterpretations of Being have left it fundamentally unchanged in itself. Recently though, this has begun to change. A new phenomenon has occurred which is more significant than the discontinuous changes within the metaphysical ontological tradition. This new phenomenon is the "fragmentation of Being" itself. Conceptual Being has always been an, unmoving whole. This suddenly started to change. Conceptual Being is fragmenting into different kinds of Being. This phenomenon truly signals the end of ontological metaphysics. It is this phenomenon of the fragmentation of Conceptual Being that will become the focus of this chapter. By this focus, we have moved from one end of the metaphysical ontological epoch to the other, for this phenomenon of the fragmentation of Being has only become manifest since the turn of the last century starting with the work of Husserl and his student Heidegger. From there, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Michael-Henry, Derrida, Adorno, Deleuze and others have played major roles in uncovering this new direction in ontology. Even tracing this chapter of the history of ontology would prove to be too great a scope for this essay. Instead, a summary account that focuses on the essential will be offered. We will condense the history of philosophy focusing only schematically on its beginning and end. This is, of course, a distortion which should be remedied with a full account. However, those with some knowledge of that history shall easily be able to imagine the account of how the dialectic of philosophical opinion has filled in the intervening period, mostly with the perpetual reinterpretations of Being which still left it whole and unchallenged as the preeminent ontological concept. However, once Being begins to crack into different kinds, it becomes obvious that it is no longer suited to be the ultimate metaphysical principle. Conceptual Being's obscureness of the arche -- Apieron -- is suddenly at an end.
Let us start by remembering that Parmenides' Conceptual Being was whole and uncut, while the goddess who determined its fate was itself fragmented. We will present the end of ontological metaphysics as a transformation whereby the goddess, as a substitute for the Apieron, becomes whole, and the Concept of Being fragments in its stead. This might suggest that the continuity of Conceptual Being was always an illusion from the beginning. Now at the end of ontological metaphysics, that illusion is shattering. In this process, the underpinnings of Conceptual Being are becoming visible which will hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of metaphysics. Ontological metaphysics was a detour which was fated from the beginning. We are at the end of that detour and have the virtue of hindsight to help us prepare for the end of the epoch of metaphysics as well.
The fragmentation of Conceptual Being will be presented schematically. Like the fragmentation of Parmenides' Goddess, it is a fourfold split into distinct kinds of Being. Understanding the structure of the fractures and the differences between the kinds of Being is very important for the comprehension of the rest of these essays. It is also important for the understanding of the times in which we live, for since Parmenides set up Conceptual Being as Arche in the place of the Apieron, it has stood firm. Now that central pivot of the Western philosophical and scientific tradition has become broken, revealing the pattern of an ancient legacy. It is as if Conceptual Being were a mirror into which Indo-European man looked in order to see himself. The different interpretations of Being are like the different viewpoints from which Western man tried to see himself, attempting to get a better view in the mirror of Conceptual Being. However, as Western man gazed in the mirror, it broke into pieces, revealing a reality behind the mirror that was being covered up by the glistening surface of the mirror. And also, the cracks in the mirror reveal an ancient pattern which has more to say about who Western man is than the reflection in the mirror ever could.
The fragmentation of Conceptual Being might be called the discovery of the meta-levels of Being. Each meta-level of a concept discovers an entirely new dimension of that concept. These dimensions, on the analogy of higher dimensional spaces, are vistas from which a whole new perspective on the concept is gained. Each meta-level of Conceptual Being will be referred to by a superscript.
TABLE 22
Modality of being-in-the-world
Names of meta-levels
Superscripts
Definition
ontic
being
Being0
entities; beings; ontic level
Present-at-hand
Pure Presence Being
Being1
ontological level; Pure Presence Now; The plenum of Parmenides' Concept of Being.
Ready-to-hand
Process Being
Being2
Being1 + Time; temporal gestalt
"In-hand"
Hyper Being;
Being (crossed out); DifferAnce
Being3
Cancellation of Being2 and Nothingness (its opposite); Essence of manifestation.
"Out-of-hand"
Wild Being;
Being4
What is revealed after the cancellation of Hyper Being; Cancellation of Essence of Manifestation and the cornucopia of distinctions (Catalyst, its opposite).
non-existence of the concept of Being
Being5
Emptiness; Void; Idel (old english)
Each higher subscript indicates the raising of the Concept of Being to the next higher level of logical typing. An excellent example of this technique is Gregory Bateson's essay on the logical levels of learning. Bateson argues in that essay that four meta-levels are the highest anyone can think a concept. He gives the example of the progression from physics of Stillness-Motion-Acceleration-Jitter-? In Bateson's analysis, the fourth level of meta-learning takes us to the edge of the unthinkable. In this schema, the unthinkable meta-level of the Concept of Being is given by the superscript `5' and will be referred to as the Void or Emptiness for reasons that will become clear as we proceed. Correctly speaking, only levels one through four really belong to Conceptual Being as such. Level zero refers to the ontic level covered over by the Symbolic Other of the Concept of Being acting as an umbrella covering all things. Level five is what is unthinkable beyond the concept of Being which starts as a meta-level five and exists, I believe, as a natural limit to ontological discourse.
These successive levels of Conceptual Being were revealed in the dialectical unfolding of ontological discourse over the last one hundred years. That history itself is fascinating. It began with the attempts by Husserl to radically relay the foundations of philosophy and thereby logic and mathematics. His attempts ultimately failed, but in so doing, he revealed not just the abgrund, abyss, upon which all the sciences were founded but also something essential about philosophy that all previous philosophers had not noticed. Heidegger seized upon this key new concept and made it the basis of his philosophy as expressed in Being and Time. Essentially what Husserl discovered via his new phenomenological method was that there was a third way between induction and deduction. Husserl called it direct perception of the "essence." He noticed that we recognize the essence of the Lion, for example, without either induction or deduction. Charles Pierce in the United States had a similar idea when he added abduction as a third logical device upon which he founded scientific discovery in his Pragmatic philosophy. The phenomenological method revealed that all prior philosophy depended on the Greek definition of logic and had not given a true measure of the essence of things. Essences were, in fact, dynamic apprehended via noumena and noesis. Phenomenology tested the limits of the variability of essences with thought experiments in which characteristics of things were varied until the thing became something of a different kind. Essences were, by these thought experiments, seen to be highly elastic but to have specific limits of variability. Induction and deduction were recognized to be part of the conceptual apparatus which connected the Idea with the entity covered by the idea. Yet, this conceptual apparatus did not account for the dynamism of the essence or its direct intuition.
Heidegger seized on this insight and constructed his philosophy in Being and Time. He distinguished between the old kind of Being upheld by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, as well as almost all others in the history of ontology since Parmenides as Pure Presence Being(1). It is the Being of everything at the now point. To this, Heidegger contrasted a new and very different kind of Being called Process Being(2) which was the kind of Being that the temporal gestalt as a whole had stretched through the now point and described unfolding through time. This new kind of Being2 was a mixture of Presencing with time. Heidegger emphasized the difference between these two kinds of Being by saying that human beings had two modalities for interacting with things in the world. The first modality was the "present-at-hand" which related to Being1 or pure presence. The second and newly revealed modality (of course it has always been there) was the "ready-to-hand" which was related to Being2 or Process Being. Process Being is a mixture of showing and hiding that occurs as the temporal gestalt passes through Pure Presence of Now toward completion. Pure Presence becomes idealized and associated with the point of completion now.
This distinction between Being1 (Pure Presence) and the meta-level concept Being2 (Process Being) opened up a whole new world for philosophical exploration. It brought to the surface two distinct kinds of truth associated with the different kinds of Being, the kind of truth associated with Being1 since Descartes was verifiability. This became the standard for all truth until the development of Heidegger's philosophy. Verifiability insisted that at each now point a comparison between the statements made about reality and the facts themselves which were designates as real be revalidated. Statements were only true so long as this revalidation was performed to assure their continued truth. This is the fundamental conception of truth in silence. The replication of experiments necessary for the general acceptance of scientific findings is the epitome of this kind of truth in operation. However, Heidegger was the first to recognize that truth as verification is based on another more fundamental kind of truth that he associates with the Greek concept of "aletheia" which was the truth of manifestation. Things had to manifest before they could be described, and those descriptions validated and revalidated. Manifestation was a process that takes time, not a point solution like the truth of validation. Manifestation gave rise to the entire temporal gestalt of the eventity essencing forth. It did not just focus on a synchronic slice. In manifestation, it was diachrony of entities arising together and reaching their height of development and then perishing together that was brought to the forefront for consideration. Heidegger came to believe that the Greeks had this kind of truth in mind from the beginning, and that truth as verification was merely a narrowly defined special case within the world created by the more general truth of manifestation.
There were many ramifications of this insight, like the fact that subjectivity and objectivity were indeed reciprocally related and tied to the truth of verification. Human beings were not just related to the synchronic slice of the present now, but also had an essential relation to the diachronic temporal gestalt's manifestation. Human beings were described as "dasein" instead of subjects in this new wider relation to manifestation. Desein means "being-there" which is a special relation in which human beings project their world by throwing it outward. Within the projected world, humans discover themselves as another entity within the world, falling toward their own fated death. In this fall toward the abyss of death, dasein cannot find any handhold to slow his descent no matter how hard he tries. His flailing attempts to thwart his destiny and preserve his own existence are the source of his injustice to other beings. In this desperate situation dasein unveils its inner core which Heidegger discovers to be "care" or "sorge." It is dasein's care, generated by its fated predicament, which dictates its general orientation toward the world and the things in the world. The things in the world might be called "ejects" rather than objects since they are thrown too -- arising and perishing at different temporal rates. Some other philosophers have had a difficult time distinguishing between subjectivity and dasein. The difference is that subjectivity and its related objects have Being1 of the synchronic nowpoint only, where as dasein is oriented toward Being2 of the entire diachronic process of manifestation which contains both dasein and other ejects. Dasein is special because it projects Being2, whereas all other ejects live merely in the world projected by Being2. Dasein is, therefore, a meta-level concept in relation to subjectivity. Dasein is specifically subjectivity's relation to the manifestation of the world. One could say that the difference is that subjectivity is the unity of autonomy and interiority of consciousness in the nowpoint, whereas dasein is the termporal gestalt of human consciousness throughout one's life.
The next development of significance after Heidegger's assertion of the distinction between Pure Presence and Process Being was Sartre's formulation of Nothingness as the center of human consciousness. Nothingness turns out to be the exact opposite formulation of Process Being. Process Being is aimed at the constitution of the world. Nothingness is the way human subjects perceive the manifestation of their subjectivity. Process Being is an unfolding of the world as manifestation. Nothingness is the infolding of consciousness as it experiences its own constitution within the world of things. Heidegger at first rejected this turning of his concept of Being2 inside out. However, later he describes Being (crossed out) as the cancellation of Process Being and Nothingness. It became generally recognized that Process Being and Nothingness were antimonies which conceptually cancelled each other out. The cancellation was realized to be a further meta-level of conceptual attenuation. Merleau-Ponty gave this meta-level the name Hyper-Being in his book The Visible And The Invisible. This meta-level is called Being3 in this essay. There are many forms that the definition of Being3 have taken. The most significant of these is Michael Henry's concept of the essence of Being2, or as he calls it, the Essence of Manifestation. Henry's main argument is that during the whole history of ontology, a fundamental assumption has been that Conceptual Being grounds itself. This is despite the fact that Parmenides explicitly describes the fourfold goddess as grounding Conceptual Being. Henry calls this assumption Ontological Monism. Being is interpreted in almost all ontological discussion as self-grounding transcendence. The concept that transcendence provides its own ground is unwarranted, according to Henry. He therefore develops an Ontological Dualism, as an alternative metaphysical ontology. He contrasts transcendence with pure immanence, and identifies this as the essence of manifestation. From his view, both Process Being and its opposite, Nothingness, are forms of transcendence that give rise to manifestation. Behind them is an immanent source that is never manifest. Where Being2 contains both showing and hiding, the essence of manifestation only hides. It is like the unconscious of manifestation. It can only be seen by distortions in the process of manifestation. However, since the immanent essence of manifestation, Parmenides' Goddess, cannot manifest itself, it cannot be regarded as a type of Being. Being, by definition, manifests. Thus, Being3 can only be known as the distortions in the process of manifestation.
Above all others, it is Derrida who has attempted to make clear the existence of these distortions. His name for the distortions within the process of manifestation is differAnce. DifferAnce is described as differing/ deferring within manifestation. It is an analogous concept to Freud's displacement theory of the unconscious mind. Derrida makes the key observation of the difference between speech and writing. He notes that all models of manifestation have used speech (logos) as the basis for description on manifestation. He shows that writing has many properties different from speech and posits, that writing is a more fundamental model of manifestation in which displacements are more readily visible. Manifestation is seen as a palimpsest in which one eject overwrites previous ejects as they successively come into and go out of existence. This overwriting shows the phenomenon of displacement in terms of differing and deferring. The new writing differs from previous writings, but allows meaning to be deferred or reinterpreted. What comes later in time may proceed an earlier text changing its meaning. The differAnce between texts which fall into fragments when deconstructed is the focus for making visible the action of the essence of manifestation within manifestation. Being3 manifests as differAnce. However, it also manifests as the cancellation of Process Being and Nothingness as conceptual glosses. With this cancellation, the process of Ideation comes to a dead halt. The illusory continuity of the upwelling of logos vanishes, and what is left is a sea of fragmented texts. We have already dealt with this kind of text with our interpretation of the Presocratic philosophers. In that interpretation, we have provided a narrative that strings these fragments together, attempting to give a unified meaning to them. This narration is an illusory continuity which uses the fragments as stepping stones for our argument. Whether it is successful or not, it remains an attempt to unify the fragments. To Derrida's deconstructionist method, all texts are viewed as fragments, and the role of interpretation is not to unify those texts but precisely to make visible the lack of unity in those texts. This is the manifestation of the ephemeron. Deconstruction makes visible the ephemeron. The ephemeron is the result of the cancellation of the concept of Process Being and Pure Presence. In that cancellation, the action of the essence of manifestation is seen as fragmenting everything n the world into discontinuous texts. Pure Immanence itself does not appear but has the side effect of reducing the world to the ephemeron.With the cancellation, manifestation becomes completely hollow as if the only action was that of differAnce. Seeing manifestation as a whole is no longer possible. The nothingness at the center of consciousness has at that point engulfed the world. Manifestation itself is seen only as a fabric of distortions in which the immanent essence of manifestation makes itself known indirectly.
However, the world does not disappear as a result of this cancellation that halts ideation and brings down the conceptual superstructure. Manifestation is still there beyond the conceptual scaffolding of ontology. What is left after the collapse has been dubbed "Wild Being" by Merleau-Ponty in The Visible And The Invisibile. Wild Being is the fourth meta-level of the concept of Being designated by Being4. After rigorous deconstruction, what is left is Wild Being. Merleau-Ponty modeled his concept on Levi Strauss' concept of The Savage Mind. Merleau-Ponty thought that after the scaffolding of Ideation that produces conceptual glosses collapsed, men were returned to a more primordial state which always exists as the core of the lifeworld. Conceptual structures are built upon this core primitive mentality which was still accessible via phenomenology. One merely had to learn how to unlearn the conceptual glosses that obscured the primitive direct apprehension of manifestation that existed before the separation of immanence from transcendence. When immanence and transcendence collapse together into a preontological whole, then Wild Being becomes manifest. Wild Being is always there as the core of the lifeworld. Yet it is almost never seen because of the scaffolding of conceptual glosses built up around it. However, this core and still primitive apprehension of the world is not an amorphous blur. Wild Being has a structure of its own that Merleau-Ponty names the Chiasm. He points to the phenomenon of "touch-touching" itself as an example of this structure. When one touches oneself, one can only feel the touch from one side at a time. One cannot omnisciently feel from both sides at once. Thus, there is an inherent thickness in the flesh and a reversibility in experience at its most primordial level that gives it a structure. The Chiasm is very similar to the wholes of opposites pointed to by Heraclitus.
Unfortunately, Merleau-Ponty died before he could develop his concept of Wild Being. The concept is very difficult to develop because it occurs in a state where concepts have ceased to be effective. It was finally Deleuze and Guattari who worked out a way to explore Wild Being philosophically in spite of conceptual cancellation and ideational halting. They worked out that it is possible to take two non-philosophical disciplines, such as economics and psychiatry, and allow them to cancel, and then these could be talked about at a meta-level within philosophy. This tour de force was executed in Anti-oedipus: Capitalism And Schizophrenia. In that book, they develop the concept that the only designated as real levels of existence are the Socius and Desiring Machines (partial objects). The individual is an illusion. He is made up of a network of machines. Humans are no different from machines. This destruction of the distinction between humans and machines is the result of cancellation. In Wild Being, humans and machines cannot be distinguished because the cognitive superstructure has collapsed that could make such a distinction. That cognitive superstructure which is identical with working ideation, is identified with Oedipus, and the social sages of the emergence of the Oedipus complex is recounted. But the core of the book is the relation between the desiring machines (partial objects) and the so-called "body-without-organs." The body-without-organs is more or less equivalent with the unconscious and the essence of manifestation. It is derived from Spinoza's concept of the essence of God and its relation to the attributes of God. The body-without-organs has intensities. Its zero intensity is matter. In schizophrenia, it reaches higher and higher intensities. This is interesting because it allows us to conceive a continuum between the dark essence of manifestation (which Sartre would, as a materialist, equate with the practico-inert), and the source of distinctions which is the source of the cornucopia of variety that pours out in manifestation. These two cancel to yield Wild Being. The body-without-organs is the unconscious thought of as a field with intensities to which the desiring machines are attached (they say like metals on the chest of a general). For something to be manifest from the unconscious, it must be orthogonal to every other entity that manifests from the same source. This precludes us telling a story about the unconscious. Instead, we must look for totally unconnected phenomena which arise from it as if they were all independently manifesting. If there is relation, then the cognitive faculties are at work, and ideation has not completely halted. Their vision has given us a way to discuss Wild Being philosophically by looking at two other disciplines cancelling instead of Process Being and Nothingness. If the cancellation occurs in philosophy, then the tools of philosophy are broken. Their brilliant strategy was to allow the cancellation to occur in two outmoded disciplines, Marxian economics and psychiatry, which we do not care about, and to observe exactly how it occurs and attempt to identify what is left after ideation halts. Their answer is the socius and the desiring machines. The individual vanishes as we realize that the fundamental level of society is schizophrenic. This is just a shocking way to say that there is an out-of-control variety generator at the heart of the social which is identical with the collective unconscious. There is a cornucopia of variety and variation pouring out in human society. This outpouring is dammed up by social institutions that fear disorder and so engage in repression, and because of this, it breaks out at unexpected times as emergent events. This dammed-up repressed variety generation tosses and turns and acts on the ideational glosses that try to paper over it. As such, it is seen as the collective unconscious or splinters off as the individual unconscious. As such, it appears in the individual as the body without organs which is the blind spot in consciousness and self-manifestation, from which partial organs or desiring machines project out as unrelated phenomena. We are very lucky to have the definitive treatment of Wild Being by Deleuze and Guattari because it rounds out the set of kinds of Being, giving full development to each in turn, and allows us to see the complete system of Western ontology.
Merleau Ponty made the first step in grounding all these ontological theories in his study of The Phenomenology Of Perception. In that book, he defines the difference between the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand in terms of pointing and grasping. He noted that human beings relate to the world differently when they point as opposed to when they grasp. Pointing isolates the figure on the ground in a gestalt. What is pointed out is the focus of attention. However, human beings may simultaneously be engaged in grasping a tool such as a pen or pencil while focused and completely absorbed in the object of their attention. The tool is grasped and provides a different simultaneous relation to the world. Heidegger points out that it is the mode of ready-to-hand (grasping) which all technology inhabits in the world. Technology is invisible or transparent as long as it works. It is overlooked in the process of working on the present-at-hand focus. However, when technology breaks, then it becomes present-at-hand. The technology pointed to is not the same as the technology grasped. These are two fundamentally different modes of relating to everything in the world. Technological systems are designed and built in the present-at-hand mode, but they operate in the ready-to-hand mode until they break down, at which time they switch back to the present-at-hand mode for repair and upgrade.
Systems in general concern the ready-to-hand mode, whereas objects are isolated in the present-at-hand. The great problem with Systems Theory is the attempt to make systems appear to be present-at-hand phenomena. There is a general lack of recognition that Systems are basically temporal gestalts which are ready-to-hand. Systems engage in showing and hiding dynamics of manifestation which is essentially diachronic rather than synchronic. Most Systems theories want to reduce systems to present-at-hand objects. This lack of the ability to distinguish these two different kinds of Being leads to an empty systems concept which does not lend itself well to the description of the process of manifestation that results in the temporal gestalt. Klir, whose general systems theory is the best example of a formal-structural system, makes this mistake of reducing system to the status of object. This reductionist mover begs the whole question of what is a system. A system is a whole which is apprehended as a temporal gestalt. The system exists in the ready-to-hand, and is only brought partially out of hand into the present-at-hand by a singular effort of abstraction and collapse. Computer hardware embodies the formal-structural system in its highest form within the technological arena.
The question now becomes how are the higher meta-levels of Conceptual Being to be grounded in psychological phenomena such as pointing and grasping. Merleau-Ponty breaches this question towards the end of the Phenomenology Of Perception where he notes that being-in-the-world, dasein, can expand as when the blindman learns to perceive with his stick or someone learns to play the guitar to the point of excellence. So we say his instrument has become part of him. The expansion of the clearing-in-being is another modality through which human beings relate to their world. It is the modality associated with Being3 or Hyper Being. Related to this expansion is a corresponding collapse back immediately after that expansion of being-in-the-world. That collapse of being-in-the-world is yet another modality through which human beings relate to the world. It is the modality associated with Being4 or Wild Being. The expansion has been called the "in-hand" modality, and the collapse has been called the "out-of-hand" modality in these essays. In the in-hand modality, the world becomes larger in some way -- this means that one is able to grasp more, or something different. In the out-of-hand modality, the grasping of more is realized to be a concomitant loss of something else. This is a meta-level showing and hiding. Showing and hiding occur in the process of manifestation. However, the world as a whole, or manifestation as a whole, at times expands to show completely different aspects. When this occurs, other aspects of existence are altered or disappear. This is different from alterations of showing and hiding of entities within manifestation. This is a showing and hiding related to the whole of manifestation. These two modes, beyond pointing and grasping, are directly related to the phenomenon of emergence. With emergence, the whole world changes. When the new thing comes into existence, it is first of all an expansion of the world in some new and unforeseen direction, either by discovery of new objects, or anomalies, or by restructuring concepts. With the advent of the emergent entity, it is as if the whole of the manifestation process had taken a detour which revealed new aspects of everything in existence. However, as the emergent event becomes recognized, it is realized that the world had closed off certain possibilities in realizing the possibilities inherent in the emergent event. This subsequent realization of closed-off possibilities is the out-of-hand mode of relating to the world. Expansion of being-in-the-world shows us new vistas for the possibilities of manifestation in general. It also leads to a contraction as other possibilities are closed off.
A good way to understand the action of these higher meta-modalities for relating to the world is through a relation of each kind of Being with its own kind of mathematics. The development of the calculus by Newton, and its incorporation into the structure of Kant's metaphysics, epitomizes the Being of Pure Presence. The nowpoint becomes the limit of infinitely, smaller discrete steps reaching that limit at infinity. The calculus gives a mathematical structure for defining continuity and also gives a means of defining derivatives which push us toward the next meta-level. In calculus, the entire mathematical world is discrete values of continuous functions. The development of statistics, on the other hand, parallels Heidegger's insights. Probabilities describe sets of point solutions by overall descriptive parameters such as the mean and standard deviation. The point solutions are actualized events which have been measured. It was discovered that actual events in the mow do not have determinate values, but instead hover around determinate values with a certain error that can be defined using functions. With the development of statistics, the determinate conceptual structures of calculus should be related to actually occurring and measured events. Statistics is the mathematics that describes what is actualized in the now during the process of manifestation. The point of pure presence is usually idealized as a result of a function. This is, however, the projection back on the now of an idealized completion arrived at by mimicing an illusory continuity. This is like drawing a line through the successive values of a function as its parameters change. In reality, the conceptual ideal of the function is not realized in the now. What is realized is individual actual events which when measured, exhibit error. This error makes visible the workings of manifestation along the whole temporal gestalt. It shows the relationship between the idealized determinant solution and the error introduced at the point of actualization in the now. Between calculus and statistics, the whole of the technological system may be defined. However, this does not account for the relation of the technological system to the human being. Recently, Zedha has introduced fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic to bridge this gap. Fuzzy sets allow truth values other than pure true and false. With fuzzy sets, the excluded middle of Aristotle is challenged. Fuzzy sets allow partial membership of sets in multiple sets, and in this way, mathematically represent possibility rather than probability. Human beings relate very well to the world as a set of possibilities. It is as possibilities that the world is projected. Possibilities cover the whole range of the temporal gestalt, and not just its impact on the now point as it is being actualized. However, possibility theory does not explain how possibilities are turned into actualizations. For this, yet another mathematical concept is necessary. This is the concept of propensities. Watanabe1 has developed this concept of propensities in relation to learning automata. He distinguishes deterministic, probabilistic, possibilistic and propensity automata. The propensity is what takes a possibility and turns it into a particular actuality. In mathematics, this is represented by Chaos. Chaos is usually paired with fractals. Fractals, as partial dimensions, are really more closely related to fuzzy numbers. Chaos comes in two varieties. There is butterfly chaos which is seen as the sensitiveness of determinate systems to initial conditions. There is also Moore2 chaos which is not sensitive to initial conditions. Moore chaos is the chaos of ultra complexity, but can be shown to be equivalent to a certain class of turing machines. Chaos determines propensities. It represents small tendencies which cause certain possibilities to be turned into actuality at the expense of other possibilities.
Idealized continuous determinate functions, stochastic probability of actualizations in the now, possibilities for different courses of manifestation, and propensities derived from chaotic tendencies that turn possibilities into actualities; these different forms of mathematics describe approaches to the different modalities by which human beings relate to the world.
TABLE 23
MODALITY
MATHEMATICS
META-LEVEL
KIND OF BEING
present-at-hand
Calculus (Determinate)
Being1
Pure Presence
ready-to-hand
Probabilistic (Stochastic)
Being2
Process Being
`in-hand'
Possibilities (Fuzzy)
Being3
Hyper Being
`out-of-hand'
Propensities (Chaos)
Being4
Wild Being
With these ideas from various mathematical disciplines, it is easier to see how the different modalities of Being interrelate. Propensities are out of our hands. The key point about chaotic phenomena is that it is impossible to predict. Deterministic systems exhibit chaotic patterns which have almost infinite resolution and complexity. These small tendencies give little pushes to events as they are happening which may carry them very far off course indeed. In the process of actualization, certain possibilities are pushed forward and others pushed back by these propensities. Possibilities are in-hand. They represent the many paths for the future unfolding of the temporal gestalt. All the possible worlds are delimited into two sets. There are those possibilities that may be extrapolated from the current state of affairs and past history. On the other hand, there are those possibilities that are hidden. These hidden possibilities may be intrinsic to the temporal gestalt, but completely unnoticed. When an emergent event occurs, these new intrinsic possibilities become apparent. The emergent event is the movement of actualization to a very rare and perhaps hidden possibility through the action of chaotic tendencies. When the rater and hidden possibility comes to the fore, the entire configuration of possibilities projected for the development of the world changes radically. This change in the configuration of possibilities is the expansion of the being-in-the-world of the in-hand modality. However, expansion in one direction as the course of the temporal gestalt's development changes course is accompanied by contraction of other possibilities. The action of the propensities on possibilities changes because the new configuration causes a new set of actualizations. Within the nowpoint, possibilities of actualizations change as well. This causes a discontinuous change to a new set of continuous functions which are projected as the ideal which allows forecasting to occur. There is a difference between the ideal now which is a projection of the completion of continuous functions, and the pragmatic now that contains discrete measurable actualizations. This is the different between the ideal nowpoint at infinitesimal infinity and the specious present of William James and G.H.Mead. Actualizations have associated with them an interval of the becoming which is related to their error from idealized values projected by functions. The whole set of concurrent actualizations projects a cone of possibilities which is closed off when completion is reached. The measured actualizations are the completed ones. The error in measurement and the dispersion in distribution of the actualizations is the residue of manifestation that reminds us of the finitude of each individual actuality. In the measurement, the relation of becoming to possibilities is lost. Moving to the level where the importance of possibilities again becomes important, we get a view of the whole temporal gestalt rather than its action just on the actualizations in the specious present. The inner relation between the whole temporal gestalt and the specious present is controlled by the chaotic propensities that determine how actualization occurs as possibilities are realized. In the process of realization, the whole set of projected possibilities may be changed by the realization of a rare and perhaps previously hidden possibility. The showing and hiding of possibilities is different from the showing and hiding within manifestation as the configuration of possibilities remain fixed. In the more prosaic showing and hiding, it is as if there is a fixed landscape which different viewpoints alternately show and hide various features. In the meta-level showing and hiding, the entire landscape alters as new rare hidden possibilities are realized so that all the vistas are altered. The in-hand modality is like a scenario where the tools transform in our hands as well as the objects on which we are working. New possibilities appear, given new routes of access and manipulation. The out-of-hand records the involuntary loss of old means of access and manipulation which are no longer available because the landscape has changed in a way that closes off those possibilities.
The in-hand and out-of-hand modalities are both associated with their own unique forms of truth beyond verification and manifestation. For the in-hand, it is the different configurations of possibilities which are projected by the temporal gestalt as it unfolds, to which truth is addressed. Truth for the in-hand modality is the difference between various configurations of possibilities. Manifestation can occur without changing these configurations. Thus, this kind of truth closely associated with the arising of emergent events has to do with the variation in the temporal gestalt as a whole. On the other side, for the out-of-hand it is the opacity of the relation between the possible variation in the temporal gestalt as a whole and the actualizations that occur in the specious present which is the point of interest. In the in-hand truth, new possibilities arise to change the course of the temporal gestalt and thus reveal new directions for manifestation as a whole. In the out-of-hand truth, the relation between these new possibilities for the whole temporal gestalt and what is being actualized in the specious present is of the utmost concern. The in-hand truth is the same kind of truth that the unconscious effects have in psychoanalytic theory. It points to a greater truth beyond what is immediately visible. It is the truth of the essence of manifestation which never manifests. It is the truth of differAnce which are the distortions in manifestation. This is the esoteric truth as opposed to the exoteric truth of manifestation. This is the truth of the emergent event as it is arising, as the world is expanding. On the other side, when the difference between esoteric and exoteric truth collapses, then what is left is the opaque truth of the chaotic propensities that thorough possibilities into actualizations where there is no difference between possibility and its realization -- this is where the dark truth of the out-of-hand modality lies. In some ways, this dark primitive truth is more hidden than the esoteric truth. In other ways, it is more visible than the exoteric truth. This is the truth of our primitive direct relation to manifestation without the illusory distance created by the conceptual scaffolding. It is the truth of the worldview as it changes from one gestalt to another. It is the point of flux in which we have let go of one configuration of possibilities, but have not quite grasped the next. It is the point when we directly confront the deep change in manifestation naked of all conceptual parachutes. We should call the in-hand the emergent truth and associate it with the novum of primordial Being. We should call the out-of-hand the truth of the epoch. In the transition between epochs, there is a point which is not in either. At that point, one is brought back to one's primitive direct relation with existence that underlies the lifeworld. Epochs must be formed by that which is beyond epochs. This has been called the proto-gestalt.
The proto-gestalt precesses, and as it does so, manifestation enters different temporal gestalts. Each temporal gestalt is an epoch. The changeover from one temporal gestalt to the next is heralded by the emergent event. The emergent event is a novum in which a new configuration of possibilities replaces the old configuration. The emergent event embodies the new possibilities. The difference between the old and the new configurations is the novum as realized within an epoch. The difference between the old and new gestalts is the epoch. This difference between old and new gestalts indicates the existence of the proto-gestalt. The difference between old and new configurations of possibilities indicate the existence of the sources from which all entities arise. The indicated sources and the indicated proto-gestalt take us back to the primal image of the well and the tree. Each set of opposites within the set of eight elements of Primordial Being are in some way images of the difference between the well and the tree.
All this is very abstract and needs to be grounded in psychological characteristics which can be readily recognized. A set of psychologically valid correspondences for the in-hand and the out-of-hand need to be indicated that are like pointing and grasping. Our first indication of the psychological counterpart for the in-hand will be taken from the work of Levinas. He has attempted to chart the territory beyond Process Being. He has indicated that the next psychological stage beyond grasping is the bearing of responsibility toward the other. The exploration of alterity guides Levinas' search. He notes that we are forced to bear up under the alterity of the other from the time of our nascence. We are confronted by the alterity from the very first moments of our existence. Thus, the other bears with us, and we have to bear with the other until we are strong enough to break away and stand on our own against the other. Thus, we propose to follow Levinas and assign "bearing" to the in-hand as its psychological manifestation.
However, this leaves us to discover the psychological manifestation of the out-of-hand modality. What is out-of-hand is that which totally engulfs us or which we totally engulf. Enveloping, or encompassing, is the psychological component of the out-of-hand. What is out-of-hand is too close to even be other. Alterity needs distance in order to realize the difference between self and other -- wither as I-thou or I-it. When the self and other are totally mingled, it is impossible to say who encompasses whom. There is only a chiasm or reversible relation between self and other. One cannot bear what is part of oneself. One can only bear the Other. Once the Other is differentiated, then it can be pointed to or grasped as either another self or another thing. This makes clear that at each meta-level the differences between self and other progressively collapse. At the point of encompassing or enveloping, the difference is only chiasmic without separation. The set of temporal gestalts blend together at the core of the proto-gestalt. At the point between epochs, one is enveloped/enveloping. The difference between temporal gestalt as a whole and the specious present has become chiasmic. One is too close to the changes to see the big picture. The world seems to be totally in flux and out of control. Things have gotten out of hand. On the other hand, when one can see the difference between configurations of possibilities, the otherness of the new set of possibilities is clearly defined in relation to the old set of possibilities. The clear difference between self and other allows one to orient oneself toward events as they unfold, whether the preference is for the old or new. When the difference of otherness becomes clear, then one can be said to have gotten things in-hand. One can bear the responsibilities for one's decisions and for the circumstances that arise. One is no longer mad as when things were too much to bear. One can now bear the changes even if they are a very great burden. The epitome of that burden is Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders. From bearing the situation, one may progress to grasping the situation and even beyond that to the intellectual separation which will allow one to point out subjective and objective aspects of the situation. Each stage gives greater focus on manipulation and access vis a vis the manifestation of the temporal gestalt in its arising and passing away.
The four psychological conditions related to the modalities of Being can be summarized in a series of Greimas squares:
These four squares describe the variations in each psychological state related to a modality of being-in-the-world. Notice that each meta-level is an intensification or clinging and craving. Being, is as C.G. Chang said, a subtle clinging to existence. With each meta-level of Being, this clinging intensifies until at the level of the out-of-hand it borders on madness, if not engulfed completely. The final point to be considered in this chapter is the relation of the fourfold nature of Parmenides' goddess and the four meta-levels of Conceptual Being. It is our contention that part of what is happening in the fragmentation of Being is a shift of the division of the goddess to the division of Conceptual Being. This has the effect of leaving the Apieron in the place of which the goddess stands unobscured for the first time since Parmenides' proposed Conceptual Being as Arche. This must mean the eclipse of the Good is coming to an end. So the end of metaphysics is again open of the appreciation of the Apieron until the Epoch changes to whatever is next. However, the division of the goddess was its fourfold faces, whereas the fragmentation of Being is by the precipitation out of meta-levels that represent intensification of the subtle clinging that Conceptual Being represents. This difference demonstrates the difference between Apieron and Conceptual Being. They are not the same. The Apieron is a true metaphysical principle, whereas Conceptual Being is only a substitute which centers our focus too greatly on man alone. The true metaphysical principle is one which is Just to all things. Being is a metaphysical principle which is inherently unjust to all other beings than man. Apieron would have constructed a universe that allowed other worlds in potentia beyond the fringes of the known. Being makes the uni-verse totalitarian because it excludes non-human cosmic structures. If these non-human structures are invisible to us, it claims they do not exist. If they are visible, it attempts to subjugate them. Apieron, as the unlimited, makes no exclusions and calls for justice to other limited beings of whatever type, visible or invisible.
The four faces of the goddess are the attributes of the Apieron, standing in for the single source, as ruler of Being. Being's four meta-levels are the intensification of clinging that is inherent in Being as the manifestation of injustice in the world. Thus, there is no one-to-one correspondence between these two minimal systems of concepts. In the fragmentation of Being, we see the substructure of the conceptual glosses which are used as templates for the domination of existence. We know that the goddess standing in of the Apieron holds Being in its place, and that the development of Being from Parmenides to the present was fated. The fact that Being has flowered into its fragmented form in the last hundred years shows that Being itself is not an ultimate principle. Ultimate principles like the Apieron are by definition changeless. The fact that Being has changed, says it does not measure up to being the pivot for the world. One way that Being fails to meet the criteria as the axis of the World is that it does not represent justice. Instead, it is the signifier of Injustice. It is the representative of the injustice of what is complete now against other beings past their prime or still nascent. From the point of view of persuasion, Being seems to fill the bill inasmuch as it is the center of logos. Persuasion is done through language. However, Being creates a totalitarian uni-verse based on exclusion. The point of persuasion is whether fated finite entities attend willingly or unwillingly to their fate. The injustice of Being represents those beings at the pinnacle of their strength, attempting to hold on in any way they can to what they have. Thus, those beings are not willingly accepting their fate. Being is only related to persuasion as its linguistic basis. It does not fulfill the spirit of persuasion which is contentment and acceptance of one's fate. In fact, Being is the very opposite of this. This gives some indication of why Being is held so tightly in its bonds. Being is the epitome of resistance to fate and injustice to others. Yet, Being itself is fated, and even though it is still unmoving, it has flowered into its meta-level fragments and thus has exhibited the process of change. Change is the hall-mark of corruption and decay which then leads to new growth. That new growth is the emergence of the Apieron from being eclipsed by Conceptual Being. The Apieron is in the guise of the goddess only as the upholder of the decree of the single source. Take away Injustice, and the resistance to fate and the Non-limited will shine of its own light again.
As Being flowers and displays its fragmentation into kinds of Being which arise as meta-levels, we are brought to the question -- what does this pattern of fragmentation in the mirror of Being tell us about ourselves? We have gazed narcissisticly into this mirror of Being since the time of Parmenides, and now it has broken, displaying its own finitude. We thought Being itself was the only concept without kindness; yet now even it displays kindness. Its kindness is the display of the inner core and begins to answer the question of all those of Indo-European descent, "Who are we?"
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