Continuity and causality-- this is what Heidegger means by "Being and Time," and only one of them can exist, the one that means "existence." By creating a dichotomy between Being and Time, this is what Heidegger implies, and what that crank Sartre makes palpable with Being and Nothingness. How can something that "is," be also in a place where it "is not"? If an object resides in time, its is-ness, its being, is its occupation of space and time, and this is its continuity, an object existing in space and time. Because the object, outside of these space-time coordinates, does not exist there, that says nothing about a relationship of an object that exists against time. It just means that the degree, the shape, of continuity the object has is its being-in-space and its being-in-time: it continuously occupies the coordinates of that dimensionality. Also, that an object exists in space and time, does not say much, or so it seems, about the independent existence of space and time outside of an object, or as an object in itself. It only says that an object's continuity is demarcated by spatiotemporal existence; space and time are adjectives, not nouns. It does not say that the object has a discontinuity, because what we would read as a discontinuity is the place where that object ends, which is no longer identified with the object. What is discontinuous with the object is what is not the object, and if the object is taken to mean the gestalt of the perceived, then the only discontinuity with the object is the subject, the perceiver.
Yet in so much as this subject can be known, it can be objectified, so the only true subject that is distinguished from an object is what cannot be objectified, and thereby the only thing that cannot-- or so we speculate at this point-- be objectified is the objectification, because in the act of objectifying that is perception, we are identified with the thing we would claim to measure. Or maybe not. Perhaps it is possible to objectify objectification, along the lines of ourselves being able to perceive our eyeball in a mirror, though reversed, with a mental correction of undoing the reversal we believe we have taken in the image of our eyeball, or through a photograph. If we take a photograph of our eyeball, we have used a machine constructed out of our intellectual concepts which approximates the function of the eyeball itself, so we have created a mirror. But what have we gotten with this snapshot? We have only gotten a picture of the outside of the eyeball, something as arbitrary in its relation to perception as our own body is in relation to perception. In photographing the eyeball, or looking in a mirror, we don't perceive perception, and this may be an indication as to what a superficial handful of sand we would receive through any methodology that seeks to do this; but one powerful upshot of this consideration is that here, unlike in Kant, it is perception, not materiality, which is a thing-in-itself, which perhaps may be the origin of super-sensibility being seen as the nature of the external.
But if we dispense with causality, we have dispensed with origins, with journeys, with adventures, with tubular entities, with beginnings and ends. We have perhaps dispensed with all sciences except for philosophy, which alone has the freedom to indulge such a thesis. (Psychoanalysis and its derivatives do not, for they are committed to a causal system of mental sickness, mental treatment; this made you sick, this will make you well. Philosophy is love of truth, it is committed to "what is." Biology, chemistry, physics are measures of a system of causal structures that is taken for granted, as truth. If we question the causal structures themselves we are not permitted to make a statement that is physical, only metaphysical, which we could define as that which concerns the mental relationship between perception and the physical.) And this is where we get into trouble, is in fixing priority, originality, to anything, whether it be perception or the physical world. Mind is cause, physics is cause, perception is cause, whatever you can name as cause, no proof can be made, because in objectifying anything you do not ever have a handle on its cause, because you can never get a handle on its total cause. You can say this came from that, but what did that come from? Everything is caused from energy, the Big Bang, but what caused the Big Bang? The beginning of something is nowhere any indication of its local causality, it is just the starting determination of its existence in time. Furthermore, if we place all of this in the category of "existence," of being, of what is, what causes something to be, in general? It cannot be anything outside of existence, for then it is non-existence which causes existence.
Only existence can cause existence, and therefore auto-causality is the essence of being. And it is "continuity" which I have used as a term, possibly wrongly, for this auto-causality. All other causes that we witness are conditional and local, and may always be interpreted as a complex intersection of forces that stretch beyond the conceptual reduction we might make for a straight relationship between unitary cause-and-effect. The natural world as we perceive it is so complex that it could be said that for any fact of life, there is such an overwhelming plurality of forces that can be named as causes for this fact of life's existence, that we have no way of conceptualizing that causality outside of generalized causality: i.e., things are caused, but not by things, but by complex relations. And these complex relations cannot be grasped as a "thing" which causes things, they are a nexus of factors (or the factor of a nexus), like that assessed by space and time themselves, in which and by which an object exists. So what is "the world," as we use that term meaning a gestalt? Is the world really an object, a thing, or is it these causal relations which appear to "make" existence happen? Of what use is to call that a "will," if it is just a relationship? That is like saying-- two cars get into a collision, and thereby there was a will to collide. Two wills to drive cars without getting hit were disappointed by an accident, two forces, that of the car's engines and not their drivers, collaborated unbeknownst to themselves to materialize a relation between them, a relation which also includes the other drivers, the roads, the stop-lights, the weather, whatever the accident involved, and the accident involved everything. Any one event is completely connected in time and space to every other event through causal chains that build up in such a multiplicity that even the simplest explanation tends to mention "a combination of factors." "It was raining, and I was upset, and so I didn't notice the other driver early enough, and then I braked too late," or some such thing. This example is useful because the driver might have been equally upset and thereby less attentive on another occasion and braked in time, but because they were upset and the rain made it so they needed more distance to come to a stop, an accident occurred. And perhaps the car in front of them is on the highway, at a complete stop, and there's a story there, why are they at a complete stop? Engine trouble? Why is the engine not operating? And on and on. The accident happened because someone had engine trouble, and someone else didn't give appropriate braking distance for hydroplaning they might have otherwise given, but they were emotionally distraught and driving on the highway burdened by thoughts, as one does, and someone at a complete stop on the highway tends to be an aberration, a rare and hapless thing. It was raining that day because of a storm coming from the Northwest, etc, etc. We don't get into circular "becauses," however, we get into infinite "becauses," yet the existence of an infinite because becomes circular by the consideration that in any place we look in space and time we see such an endless multiplicity of causal agents, interconnected with every other causal agent that is an event. The accident itself we have described is now a new causal agent in the matrix of infinite becauses.
And this, this situation, of infinite because, is why I effectively wish to say there is no because. Because what this means is that becauses are always local and conditional, practical thinking for our own little life, but that becauses are always in the particular thereby, never in the general. Or, rather, they are only in the general as an absolute plurality of becauses, and this makes it somewhat suspect and strange to discuss it as "causality," because this implies a singular cause. The causality of the universe is ____. A multiverse. A set of vibrating strings. However many dimensions. All that jazz. Whatever you are to put in that blank is restated in the ground of infinite because, in which the goal posts of origins keeps moving backwards. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and thus exists in an acausal, and autocausal, way, which is continuous, and self-enclosed, for lacking enclosure. Forms may be created or destroyed, but that is but the beginning and ending of their continuity in time.
Objects begin and end in space, time, and causality, as measured quantitatively: spatially and temporally we have already discussed. Temporality is linear, beginnings and endings of a form, when it is created and when it is destroyed, as so is causality, though it does not link directly to that timeline of beginnings and endings. Rather causality is the influence upon an object and the influence the object has at every moment in its lifetime, and not just, but including, its origin. Objects have a continuous origin, a continuous being-subject to the causal nexus of reality, and a continuous agency, a continuous effectuality or subjecting-being within the causal nexus of reality. For an object's spatial dimensions, however, there is no beginning or ending, but limits to the object. It is space which testifies to a true dimensionality, a truly complex encounter which is not linear, like that of time. However causality combines both the complex nature of space and the linear nature of time, for the original influence on an object is pluralistic, as is the influence an object has. Therefore it sounds intuitively right to say that Schopenhauer collapses all these categories of the intelligent perception into causality, that from causality everything else is given.
Causality, as it is commonly defined, gives us the object's being at every moment influenced and influencer, in a linear relation like that of time, and the complex, spatial nature of the agencies which influence it, including at the moment of creation, and which it influences, including at the moment of death. In this way we might say causality is the fifth dimension, not merely something within the four-dimensions we know, because it contains within a larger context both the concept of linearity, or singular expansion, which is expressed in time and the concept of sphericality, or plural expansion, which is expressed in space. In the course of writing that sentence I have invented a conception which is at least new to myself, and possibly exists on shaky ground. Why not call an array, or a circle, that of plural expansion? It seems not arbitrary to term as spheric the notion of plural expansion, because if we drew lines from every conceivable array out of a central point, and they were all drawn in parallel, we would produce a sphere. Thus, the line is often the symbol of the first dimension, and the square is often the symbol of the second dimension, and then the cube for the third dimension-- but alternatively, one could say it is a more generative relationship between line, circle, sphere, because we take an original point, a dot, and expand it to create a line. To make this line two-dimensional, it seems more arbitrary to make just one perpendicular line and draw a square with it, to "square" the sum of the line, which let us say has the value of "2." So to make the first dimension a second dimension, we square the line, and make 4. We cube the line, and make 8.
That's understandable, but, why would not a different abstract process undertake this which would demonstrate the nature of the dimension as the expansion from a point to that value of "2," as well as the circularity that is immediately possible when we enter the second dimension? It is as if we apply linearity to the second-dimension and make a square, because we do not see the circularity latent in the linearity. We do not treat the point that line emerged from as anything, we do not see the line as a beginning and an end. We do not treat it as a vector, having magnitude as well as direction. Hence we refer to the line as the value "2" and then this results in a square and a cube. What that may reveal, simply, is the conversion of pure quantity as magnitude to physical space, that the unit of dimension is the line, 1, 2, 3.
So what do we say when we say this linearity is a singular expansion? Why did I refer to it as that in the first place? Because with respect to time, linearity is a singular expansion of the continuity of an object from its beginning to its end; time is a vector. Similarly, with respect to space, the contours of an object are always an expansion as measured from a central point within that object, by which we can measure greater or lesser spaces. So, even when we measure the line with the value "2," without direction, without its being a vector, it is 2 as expanded from its center, relative to that zero, since it grows in both directions to negate the sense of having a direction. A non-vector is but a binary vector. I just mean that, visually, the pure abstract measurement of magnitude would hook the correspondence between the central points of two sums to find commonality; i.e., what makes this 9 and this 7, is its relation to the zero-point, which cannot be the beginning or the end where it comes to a line, since that makes it a vector. A "binary vector" as a sum is interesting, because it shows us that to lack direction, to have pure magnitude, is to have all possible direction.
This sounds arguable, and like a mathematician in me is going "that's all just arbitrary." But the point I'm trying to make is more neatly expressed as: relative to what is that quantity that is measured by a line which is then squared and cubed to give an image of dimensions elaborating arithmetically? (And this brings us back to being being self-privileging, with nothing to compare itself to.) That first-dimensional sum, that quantity, whether it be 1 or 2 or whatever, is measured as a distance in the line, so what is it a distance from? It is a distance from nothing. If a line is worth "1" it is not measured as such relative to "1," but relative to both points that are at either end, which are neither beginning or end, just an end. Being two "ends" we must fix the "beginning" at the center, which is the zero-point. Otherwise what is that distance? There seems no logical place for it to exist except as a binary expansion out of the central zero, because otherwise the line as pure unit, as pure quantity, is only measured relative to itself, which means it is not measured, which means that it provides the measure in the first place; that all numbers are valuable by virtue of their expansion upon "1." But "1" itself has a value, which is the elemental value of quantity, and we know when there is a "not a line" somewhere, when this quantity is absent.
I guess I'm saying that it's like you get a blank piece of paper, and what in our world a blank piece of paper means is that there's a line on it. And that's not how our mind works. A paper has writing on it if there's a line on it, and the simplest geometrical form of writing would be this line with the value "1." If the line were covered with lines all over, and then I drew a line on it, and said, "look at this blank piece of paper, I've drawn a line on it," you would say I'm crazy or joking, and you may not be able to see the line I drew due to the abundance of lines. You would know I've drawn a line, you would be able to measure the line, as a presence, by virtue of the surrounding absence. Therefore, like psychic valuation, we are able to measure or value something due to there being nothing to compare it to. The line is entirely visible and objectified only by a surrounding, or pervading, absence.
Which brings us back to perception. How to objectify what does the objectifying? Another, better explanation as to why it cannot do so, superior to what I provided earlier, which is that while in the act of objectifying we cannot be in the act of objectifying that objectifying, which I'm not sure of for the record. I cannot "look" at perception like I can look at a line, because to objectify the line entirely is to see it on a blank piece of paper, to measure it is to claim its distance relative to zero, as the blank ink on the page is an impression upon the white paper, a relative contrast. In looking at perception, I must be looking at perception in a surrounding and pervading absence-of-perception, but this is blatantly contradictory. I cannot compare perception with absence-of-perception because it is within perception that both would be theoretically looked at.
P E R C E P T I O N
I did that because I wanted to create a "perception line." In doing this, I have photographed an eyeball, and we have just seen a representation of perception, and not the real thing. Because as I attempt to objectify perception through this means, my eyeballs are looking out of that word.
There's a story which opens a movie called Smoke I saw when I was a kid, which I think William Hurt tells, about a guy who measured the weight of smoke by, simply, smoking a cigar and then ashing his cigar on a scale until he had smoked the entire thing, and the subtracting the weight of the ashes from the weight of the cigar, giving him the weight of smoke. I think of that all the time.
I'm saying that to provide a little grandeur to this conclusion. Where is perception now? Where has it gone?
R E P R E S E N T A T I O N
Perception is the white space around the word, which permits us to see the representation. Perception is the zero-point, perception is absence. And yet perception is this all-pervading presence. The mirror, the blank piece of paper, reflective surfaces. How do we know being, existence, except through this absence which is perception, which permits a presence to be detected? This sets off an explosion in my mind.
For we have a strange logical situation. In previous posts we have described presence as valuation, as being, as what is. We have argued that existence always privileges itself, and sets off a logical sequence of subjective valuation, that we are not "emotionally" driven to think in terms of "good" and "bad" but that the thinking of "good" and "bad" is a direct consequence of "is" and "is not." Because for lack of comparison, being is the preference over non-being. "There is no comparison" is a value-judgment, which completely combines fact-perception and value-perception. But now we say this strange thing which has made my head dizzy (as if it wasn't already spiraling out of control in the previous remarks on sphericality, representing an argument that is not yet complete, btw-- not to mention that we've left another thread way back behind, on causality and autocausality) which is that this comparison which values existence over non-existence, supposedly, is enacted upon the absence that is perception.
What makes anything capable of representation is its emptiness, like the mirror, reflective surface, but that emptiness is only one part of the equation, right? Because the mirror is a smooth surface, this is why there is specular reflection, rather than a diffuse surface, like the new nano-screens Apple makes, which gets rid of that reflection. Ditching the reflection in an object is a matter of its having a surface that is not smooth all over, and its being smooth, means that it is effectively empty of irregularities. Apple's nano screens have to inscribe a rough surface into the glass in order to remove that division between you and the screen. I believe this only extends the notion of emptiness and absence towards the idea of perception, that perception is an emptiness, and further, implies that perception is smooth? That perception has the texture of being smooth, as does emptiness. It's more of a poetic observation.
But the lack of writing on a piece of paper makes it blank, and able to be representative of "irregularities" which make a surface rough, and which create diffuse reflection of light, which does not represent other objects. Interestingly, I'm thinking of how it's harder, and more annoying, to write on top of glossy paper, and paper as we tend to write on it is rough. Of course, that's because we're writing on it, it's not reflecting, it's more like sculpture, because we're molding some jagged material, this textured piece of paper, with this ink. Sculptor's clay is like three-dimensional paper. It can become rough, contoured, and attain to the existence of representation. But this comparison shows that paper and clay have the characteristics of both smooth and rough, of both emptiness and form. Because they can be molded, with writing or shape, they are fluid, and smooth, "blank." But because they actually become the things that are written or shaped into them, rather than reflecting them temporarily while the original exists elsewhere, they have a roughness, a viscosity (which is the state of being semi-fluid due to internal friction). These creative tools exist between smooth and rough, simplicity and complexity, a simplicity that is the emptiness that makes something reflective, and a complexity that is the form that makes something substantial, indeed, existent.
So perhaps contrary to what we wrote earlier-- about the reality of intelligence-- the reality of intelligence, if intelligence is to be said to be a complicated understanding, is actually an intense simplicity, a vast absence that can house a vast presence. And so there is no augmentation to perception's concept, there's no division of perception and understanding that Kant and Schopenhauer contend there is, which seems to hinge on the problem of an urge to conflate sensation and perception. To perceive is to understand, and the only distinction is the intuition of causality that is made between the two terms in Schopenhauer. I think that's incredible, personally-- feel free to disagree with me, absent reader of these representations! Intelligence is the degree to which a perception is un-occluded by "presences," which to me is highly suggestive of the limits placed on human intelligence by psychological and social factors.
However-- which representation is the intelligent perception? For we have complicated things a bit. A piece of paper, and sculptor's clay, is this what perception is? This combination of roughness and smoothness? Don't we see in three-dimensions, and have thoughts which appear upon the blank piece of paper of our mind? Isn't perception, as Kant and Schopenhauer say, a combination of reflective and intuitive capabilities, or as I have said in the past, emulative and indicative?
The roughness of a piece of paper only permits it to be written on; we print stuff out on glossy paper, and it is seen just the same-- yet, yet, yet, Apples nano-touch glass. Not only does a rough texture on paper permit us to write more "smoothly" than if the paper were smooth, it also avoids the sight of the line, or writing, whatever on the paper to be intruded on by a reflection. Right now-- I don't have nano-touch glass on this laptop-- and as I'm typing I'm watching the lights behind me bounce on the screen while I make the words out. The reflective surface of this screen is an obstacle to its representation of the words on this screen, which competes now with a reflective representation of the lights behind me. Ah, there, I just cranked the angle of the screen back to avoid that. Now I'm inside the writing again.
So, if perception is any good it provides a representation of the world, and this is a feature of its emptiness, its blankness, its fluidity, its simplicity. So we imagine perception as a white sheet of paper, upon which will be shown the world around us. It is completely blank and we see an image materialize on there, which we can make out for its filling this surrounding and pervading absence, which does not compete with it. Here's the crazy hitch: taking this concept of absence too far means we have a completely smooth surface, some glossy paper, which has no texture to it. And so in our image of the world, we see a reflection of the lights behind us in the Panera Bread where we type this up. We see the world reflected off the world. Whatever. Point being, the emptiness of something, taken to an extreme, makes it ultimately reflective, to a point that may be distorting. The paper is too blank; it must remain clear, but it must have a texture to it that is not smooth. It must diffuse the reflection of light. My mind's going round in circles here.
So I look at an image; I am perception and it is the world. The emptiness of my perception permits the presence of the world to be optimally, intelligently felt to the extent of human ability. However let me say my perception is so empty that it is a glossy surface, which makes the world appear glossy. In that glossiness my perception is revealed to me as something involved with the representation of the world. The world appears to me to be the mirror of my perception, which means the world is empty, which means I lose details about the world, I lose, in fact, a perception of the world, and get something which is not-quite-world, and not-quite-perception; both/neither, a partially-developed Polaroid. Now, my perception is empty to the extent of being blank of details, but formed to the extent of being textured, of having a textured emptiness, an emptiness that is form ... which could in fact be defined as "texture" itself, which relates to a "surface," (note: surface and depth are beginnings and ends of form, of spatiality) ...
Madness of intellectual overwhelm. From this we could say that perception is pure texture, as a texture is not synonymous with the surface that is textured by a texture, where the surface in this case is the appearance of the world, which means that the perception is not the perceived. As a texture we express its emptiness, its absence, as it is the texture of something which adds a quantity to its no-thing (permitting it to be reflective and emulative, it lacks color and shape), as well as its form, its presence, as by being a texture it must have some kind of roughness to its emptiness, a translucence, a contour, a waveform. Water reveals sound and sight. The vibrations break against it .... the images are shown to it, reflected off its eyeball, the eyeball is clear, smooth, continually moistened ...
[[Car's wheels screeching, burning rubber on a hard right turn.]] Okay, sorry folks. Textured Emptiness is a great band name, but I am confusing things. For we are looking at the screen, the piece of paper, the sculpture. We are not looking through the screen, the piece of paper, the sculpture. But what our mistake has revealed is that textured emptiness, or just "texture," is the nature of forms, and their place in a causal nexus, an infinite intersection of because's, because like the paper or the sculptor's clay, they are both cause and effect, they are both fluid, like to perception, and ... whoa ... in any material object's being capable of being acted on, the object perceives. So in other words! Causality is a facet of pure perception itself, of its emptiness, not of any separate component of understanding or intelligence! In its being-acted-upon, it comprehends causality!!
Effectuality is perception, and is like to the clarity and fluidity of still water. Still waters ... (through gritted teeth) run deep ... and this is why mirrors are like walls of water, why we associate the reflective Moon with water, because perception is this emptiness, this absence, which is thereby fluid. My attempt to correct this simple explanation with nano-touch glass only showed us what is required for form, for the materialization. Form is like the reflection of vibrations off of emptiness, light or stones thrown inside water. Perception is emptiness, and form is texture, and texture is form and emptiness.
Perception is emptiness, and form is texture, and texture is form and emptiness.
Perception is emptiness, and form is texture, and texture is form and emptiness.
Perception is emptiness, and form is texture, and texture is form and emptiness.
[guitar solo]
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