> Oh, that's it; use internal relations as a stand in for ineffability and
> don't define 'see' or 'fragmentation' or explain how, within capitalist
> relations of production, we can't define the *full-ness* of rationality yet
> are still capable of understanding atomic processes well enough to create
> technologies that can wipe just about every terrestrial species off the
> surface of various geological structures [I'll leave aside the difficulties
> associated with taking care of deep sea critters].. Of course we don't need
> to define progressive in any way whatsoever, it's epistemologico-ontological
> status safe from the dynamics of contending definitions.
This is a very meaningful way of putting it. There are rational grounds for worry in the fact that Dr. Strangelove (insightful name that) type minds that are to some significant degree destructive, hostile, sadistic and paranoid are "capable of understanding atomic processes well enough to create technologies that can wipe just about every terrestrial species off the surface of various geological structures" I've explained before what I mean by "progressive". An implication is that wiping "just about every terrestial species off the surface of various geological structures" wouldn't be "progressive."
The concept of "internal relations" isn't "ineffable." I've given its definition numerous times. It's simple and obvious to anyone whose eyes aren't manically wide shut. I'll "persevere" one more time (though repetition doesn't work because it can't budge the real obstacles to understanding). Used in relation to the development of rational self-consciousness it explains why the owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk i.e. it assumes that internal relations which are ultimately incompatible with the development of fully rational self-consciousness are consistent with sufficient development to enable enough people within them to understand it sufficiently well to change it in a progressive way.
Things are externally related where their "identities," their "essences," are independent of their relations. Another way of putting this is that such things are "substances" in the senses of Aristotle and Descartes. A thing is a substance in these senses when it possesses qualities without being itself a quality (Aristotle) and when it requires nothing but itself in order to exist (Descartes).
They are internally related where their identities depend on their relations. Where relations are internal there are no "substances" in the above senses.
These definitions can be illustrated by means of their implications for forms of reasoning that make use of the logical idea of the "variable", e.g. arithmetic. (Hayek's "logic of the situation" approach to social explanation is reasoning of this kind; it assumes persons are everywhere and always "rational" independent of the relations within which they develop and live. Such reasoning doesn't have to be mathematical.)
Where things are externally related one thing plus another thing always makes two things i.e. the process of adding things together, changing their relations, can't change their identities in ways that prevent the result from being described as two things. When they are internally related this may not be true. A commercial jet liner plus a World Trade Tower may not make two things.
I earlier reproduced simple elaborations of the concept by two people who were initially deeply hostile to it and had to pulled kicking and screaming to see what was meant: Russell and Popper. Here once more are those elaborations.
Russell illustrating it with the idea of "numbers":
"Take, for instance, numbers: when you count, you count 'things,' but 'things' have been invented by human beings for their own convenience. This is not obvious on the earth's surface because, owing to the low temperature, there is a certain degree of apparent stability. But it would be obvious if one could live on the sun where there is nothing but perpetually changing whirlwinds of gas. If you lived on the sun, you would never have thought of counting because there would be nothing to count. In such an environment, Hegel's philosophy would seem to be common sense, and what we consider common sense would appear as fantastic metaphysical speculation."
Popper illustrating it with ideas from physics:
³Thus the law of conservation of matter (and of mass) had to be given up. Matter is not 'substance', since it is not conserved: it can be destroyed, and it can be created. Even the most stable particles, the nucleons, can be destroyed by collision with their anti-particles, when their energy is transformed into light. Matter turns out to be highly packed energy, transformable into other forms of energy; and therefore something of the nature of a process, since it can be converted into other processes such as light and, of course, motion and heat.
³Thus one way say the the results of modern physics suggest that we should give up the idea of a substance or essence. They suggest that there is no self-identical entity persisting during all changes in time (even though bits of matter do so under 'ordinary' circumstances); that there is no essence which is the persisting carrier or possessor of the properties or qualities of a thing. The universe now appears to be not a collection of things, but an interacting set of events or processes (as stressed especially by A.N. Whitehead).
"A modern physicist thus might well say that physical things - bodies, matter - have an atomic structure. But atoms have a structure in their turn, a structure that can hardly be described as 'material', and certainly not as 'substantial': with the programme of explaining the structure of matter, physics had to transcend materialism.² p.7
If these don't help, how about Engels:
"When we reflect on Nature, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, the first picture presented to us is of an endless maze of relations and interactions, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes out of existence. This primitive, naïve, yet intrinsically correct conception of the world was that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and also is not, for everything is in flux, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away. But this conception, correctly as it covers the general character of the picture of phenomena as a whole, is yet inadequate to explain the details of which this total picture is composed; and so long as we do not understand these, we also have no clear idea of the picture as a whole. In order to understand these details, we must detach them from their natural or historical connections, and examine each one separately, as to its nature, its special causes and effects, etc. ... But this method of investigation has also left us as a legacy the habit of observing natural objects and natural processes in their isolation, detached from the whole vast interconnection of things; and therefore not in their motion, but in their repose; not as essentially changing, but as fixed constants; not in their life, but in their death. And when, as was the case with Bacon and Locke, this way of looking at things was transferred from natural science to philosophy, it produced the specific narrow-mindedness of the last centuries, the metaphysical mode of thought." Engels, Anti-Duhring, pp. 26-7 see also p. 132
Finally here once more is Whitehead using it to explain the limitations of deductive reasoning in general and of deductive reasoning that makes use of the logical idea of the "variable" in particular:
"In this lecture we seek the evidence for that conception of the universe which is the justification for the ideals characterizing the civilized phases of human society.
"We have been assuming as self-evident the many actualities, their forms of coordination in the historic process, their separate importance, and their joint importance for the universe in its unity. It must be clearly understood, as stated in earlier lectures, that we are not arguing from well-defined premises. Philosophy is the search for premises. It is not deduction. Such deductions as occur are for the purpose of testing the starting points by the evidence of the conclusions.
"A special science takes the philosophic assumptions and transforms them into comparative clarity by narrowing them to the forms of the special topic in question. Also even in reasoning thus limited to special topics, there is no absolute conclusiveness in the deductive logic. The premises have assumed their limited clarity by reason of presuming the irrelevance of considerations extraneous to the assigned topic. The premises are conceived in the simplicity of their individual isolation. But there can be no logical test for the possibility that deductive procedure, leading to the elaboration of compositions, may introduce into relevance considerations from which the primitive notions of the topic have been abstracted. The mutual conformity of the various perspectives can never be adequately determined.
"The history of science is full of such examples of sciences bursting through the bounds of their original assumptions. Even in pure abstract logic as applied to arithmetic, it has within the last half century been found necessary to introduce the doctrine of types to correct the omissions of the original premises.
"Thus deductive logic has not the coercive supremacy which is conventionally conceded to it. When applied to concrete instances, it is a tentative procedure, finally to be judged by the self-evidence of its issues. This doctrine places philosophy on a pragmatic basis. But the meaning of 'pragmatism' must be given its widest extension. In much modern thought, it has been limited by arbitrary specialist assumptions. There should be no pragmatic exclusion of self-evidence by dogmatic denial. Pragmatism is simply an appeal to that self-evidence which sustains itself in civilized experience. Thus pragmatism ultimately appeals to the wide self-evidence of civilization, and to the self-evidence of what we mean by 'civilization.'
"Before we finally dismiss deductive logic, it is well to note the function of the 'variable' in logical reason. In this connection the term variable is applied to a symbol, occurring in a propositional form which merely indicates any entity to which the propositional form can be validly applied, so as to constitute a determinate proposition. Also the variable, though undetermined, sustains its identity throughout the arguments. The notion originally assumed importance in algebra, in the familiar letters such as x, y, z indicating any numbers. It also appears somewhat tentatively in the Aristotelian syllogisms, where names such as 'Socrates,' indicate 'any man, the same throughout the argument.'
"The use of the variable is to indicate the self-identity of some use of 'any' throughout a train of reasoning. For example in elementary algebra when x first appears it means 'any number.' But in that train of reasoning, the reappearance of x always means 'the same number' as in the original appearance. Thus the variable is an ingenious combination of the vagueness of any with the definiteness of a particular indication.
"In logical reasoning, which proceeds by the use of the variable, there are always two tacit presuppositions - one is that the definite symbols of composition can retain the same meaning as the reasoning elaborates novel compositions. The other presupposition is that this self-identity can be preserved when the variable is replaced by some definite instance. Complete self-identity can never be preserved in any advance to novelty. The only question is, as to whether the loss is relevant to the purposes of the argument. The baby in the cradle, and the grown man in middle age, are in some senses identical and in other senses diverse. Is the train of argument in its conclusions substantiated by the identity of vitiated by the diversity?
"We thus dismiss deductive logic as a major instrument for metaphysical discussion. Such discussion is concerned with the eliciting of self-evidence. Apart from such self-evidence, deduction fails. Thus logic presupposes metaphysics." (Whitehead, Modes of Thought, pp. 105-7)
"Fragmentation: Severe splitting of the ego, typically in relation to the difficulties encountered in the paranoid-schizoid position, gives rise to a sense of fragmentation, of going to pieces [see II. PARANOID-SCHIZOID POSITION]. Though a normal experience under stress or exhaustion, it is extremely severe and central to problems of the schizophrenic [see 8. EARLY ANXIETY-SITUATIONS]." (R.D. Hinshelwood, A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, p. 310)
Example of "fragmentation" in a quintessentially modern mind from a book published 10 years after a psychotic breakdown in 1729.
"Of Personal Identity
There are some philosophers. who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv'd from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this. Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd. For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd? This question 'tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet 'tis a question, which must necessarily be answer'd, if we wou'd have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible, It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos'd to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore., be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea.' But farther, what must become of all our particular perceptions upon this hypothesis? All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be separately consider'd, and may exist separately, and have no Deed of tiny thing to support their existence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I call reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me. But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind,. I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a .kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos'd." (Hume, Treatise on Human Nature)
"Contempt: Contempt is one of the triad of key features in the manic defences: the other two are control and triumph (Segal, 1964). It represents the focus of the defensive (manic) denial of the importance of the object (Klein, 1935, 1940). As such it is specifically aimed against gratitude to an object which would, if felt, give rise to feelings of dependence and smallness, a dismantling of the feeling of omnipotence."
Example in Ian-speak: "Oh, you mean we should adapt a paraconsistent approach to descriptive-normative approaches to self-description/epistemic capabilities regarding natural and social kinds? How *novel*."
Ted