from the glacier

No one denies that thoughts, ideas, are in some way "inside" of man. In fact, we here fully affirm that they are totally inside the man, in every essential respect. When Platonists prescribe the forms "ideas" existing apart in their own separate, higher reality, we see the burden of proof on them. Semi-syllogistically, this would run in the following manner. Thoughts are in man. Man knows his thoughts. To say that his thoughts come from higher requires an addition positing of some third thing, in addition to the two: man and the thought. Occam's razor neatly slices away the other. . .

Why is it necessary that the world be intelligible at all? Intelligibility requires that there be some sense in which the world is in the mind. In fact, it requires either a god to know the world, and our participation in that - the semi-Platonic view, or that the world is in some sense a representation of that inside of man - an un-rigorous Sartrean view. Or perhaps some third intermediary view - like that of Aristotle. There is some "faculty" in us that apprehends the "intelligible form" directly. So that man in his whatness sees the natural stuffocity of the thinghood in question. Jargon? Perhaps. A description of the world? Less likely.

Shouldn't we rather assert that the universe is unintelligible? But there is some "faculty" in man - call it the untruthful faculty - that smears nature into these categories of thought for the sake of recognizing dissimilar situations as the same - for the sake of living. But then wouldn't all recognition of similitude be an analogous smearing of nature? We see the fundamental questionableness of nature. But nature is dumb. She never answers our calls...

All of the so-called "hard sciences" are really informed by a philosophical, that is, metaphysical outlook. Empirical science only "views", it is unable to say what it views, in what manner it views, or make any connections among what it views without said recourse to metaphysics. The world view of the cognoscenti determines the way in which nature is seen. Let us continue our thought process and reason about the sciences, which enlightens the view of metaphysics held by men.

Mathematics has been about the study of man since its inception. Even with the ancient Greeks it was this way. Pythagoreans thought they were studying the "mind" in nature. Plato saw the "forms" the idea, existing upwards. Aristotle saw the study of quantity qua quantity. The only way quantity can exist separate from substance, in an Aristotelian hypothesis, is in the mind. Math is in the mind. Forms of Plato - existence in the mind (disjointed somehow, but one can forgive the mistake for excellent dialectic). Now to the moderns - they have studied mathematics as the pure intuition of the minds logic. Nothing outside of man is required. Definitions and axioms are posited as the way in which human reason proceeds. All of this can lead us to only one thing - consensus sapientiam puts mathematics in the mind of man. It does not exist outside of ourselves.

And to what, we may ask, does modern science conform its viewings? To mathematics. All of nature is pushed into the mind of man, with thoughts of laws, and "love and strife", "struggle for existence" all according to mathematical forms. The humanization of nature (after the de-deification of nature) has pushed the existence of all learning inside of man - and thus imposed man on all of nature.

Which now brings us back to our original point. Since the sciences cannot of themselves comment, and their comments have shown the impression of man on the cosmos, the metaphysics of the age is that of a humanization of nature. This is our task: a deconstruction. If all that I study is only a study of what I know, I respectfully opt out.

Philosophy has followed an interesting strategy since its inception with the ancient Greeks. In all of western tradition the thinker has attempted to describe the world [ousia, presencing, substance, the world of appearances, the subject, nature, physis] metaphysically. By metaphysically, of course, we mean in terms of anthropomorphisms [eidos, idea, essence, res ipsa, forms]. This has trickled down into the modern sciences, where "laws" exist in physics, where evolutionary biology is the norm [permit a Nietzsche quote: "one should not confuse nature with Malthus."], where Chemists talk of "attraction" and "repulsion". The deviancy of this position perhaps is not clear; man thinks, "I am man, I think nature as man, impute my will on the face of creation - how could it be otherwise?" The scientist see great strides in human understanding, for we have kicked the gods out of nature. Unfortunately, we replaced them with man. So, either:

A: The deconstructionalists are correct. Everything is understood in terms of man, but man communicates [thinks] by language. Therefore we should deny everything but linguistic analysis and symbolic logic. These two suffice to explain the universe.

or:

B: We force the de-humanization of nature. We deconstruct our own way, pushing aside man and all that he wills, impugns onto nature. Why seek to understand the laws of nature? This only seeks to understand how we think nature should act.

I, for one, choose B. If we meditate, circling round and round this thought, we see the overfull, needless excess that is the world: disharmonious, unthinking, unpatterned. A violent, nonsensical mash of unrelated happenstance. This should be the beginning of our metaphysics. Once we realize that our science, our sciences, are only understanding ourselves [the oughts of nature] we then clear the way for authentic thinking - an actual encounter - with what is.

Sometimes things which are manifold are oversimplified by vices of language. "Truth is the adequation of the intellect to the thing." No one may deny that there is some sense in which something can be said to be "in" the mind. But this in seems so slippery. I'm sure the shulamite could correct me on this, but it seems that definitions do not admit of demonstration, so long as the thing defined is simple and not manifold. We can name the manifold in actuality by one term, but that does not mean the term so named is simple, or that the definition of this is not the conclusion of some demonstration. What are we adequating? Why are we adequating? How is adequation possible? Why is it even necessary to think that it is possible? Which rem? Whose intellectus? Truth: definitive, propositional, factual, tautological, analogical?

Insofar as all men are rational, all men can reason. Insofar as all men have hands, they can paint. Difference is, not all have the training and tools to do either. First, similarity means the same. This is the error of an accidental [mistaken] cause. Secondly, what applies to a group applies to an individual. This is the error of collective versus genus (or universal). Thirdly, it is either A or B. This is the error that says simply different things are contradictories. The POC only applies to those [A and ~A], not two different things. I hear these three all the time. They obfuscate matters and reasoned discourse impossible. [now if I could only avoid them]

There is a fundamental misunderstanding in judging artwork from the time of Aristotle. Since the Poetics art and the beautiful has been understood from the perspective of the observer. Tragedy is analyzed for what it does to us. Why don't we think of it another way? If we see art and artwork as the creation of the beautiful, and understand precisely this - it is a creative act. Should we then not think of it from the perspective of the creator? See that the plenitude of one man's soul overflows in the creation of some thing? If tragedy causes catharsis in the observer, what does it do to the Tragedian?