Replying to LO25032 --
(including philosophy, existentialism, Heidegger...
so if you want to skip it, you will know NOW.)
Dear Gavin,
>I mean those that strongly associate with the concepts of the seven
>essentialities and being and becoming plus a whole host of other concepts
>that has got cosy without any challenge.
You can get cosy only with the continuous field (CF) and you can challenge
only discriminated objects (DO) right? ;-))
Well, this question would make an existentialist quite furious, I guess.
Isn't it the fear to face naked existence ('Existenzangst') that make
people hide behind cosy constructions of DO's? Isn't it the brave decision
required by the single individuum at this point of ultimate fear after
leaving all DO's behind, that will cause the shift to self directed power
and ease of being? Isn't 'cosy' in connection with CF a sure sign that we
are not talking of the real CF, but of a man made epiphenomenon, a DO,
New-Age-Romantic?
A german philosopher, less known than the 'great' existentialists, Otto
Bollnow, showed by the same phenomenological method that lead to 'fear' as
an essential of existence that 'joy' is in the same deep sense an
essential to human being and not an epiphenomenon, a cosy shell preventing
our deepest encounter of our existance. And with the same argument,
Bollnow could show that from the point of view of joy, fear could be
argued to be an epiphenomenon, a sadistic shell preventing our deepest
encounter of our existance.
Bollnow's conclusion is, that we can either stop learning about human
being and continue the old 'we know the truth, so the others deal only
with DO's - and they are completely oblivious to this'-fights. Or we can
search for more such essential entities to enrich our picture of human
being more and more and thus learn authentically, by the walk of our own
lives, how we relate to this CF.
Consequently, Bollnow wrote books like 'Wesen und Wandel der Tugenden',
were he shows that it is not the case that the current generation has lost
all the values of the older generation, but that each generation has to
discover and express the deep human values a new and in a fitting way for
that generation. Consequently, this philosopher engaged in educational
sciences and wrote a book 'Vom Geist des Uebens', were he emphasizes the
importance of disciplined practice as the ground to grow values. Just like
Senge uses his 'discipline'.
>Actually what happens as soon as we have a variable it becomes a
>discriminated object not part of the continuous field (the wave or the
>particle type concept). Both are in existence something like this: in
>foreground [Discriminated object DO] [Continuous Field, CF] in background,
>and [CF] in foreground, [DO] in background. They are always together, some
>one once said that if you try observe something you find it attached to
>the rest of the universe.
How can one talk about CF without making it, by the very talking a DO? Or
put it in another way: How would you approach to share the paradigm shift
that complex reality does not only consist of DO's? To answer this
question, I only have to read your contributions, right? I understand you
are saying: DO's need to be complemented by CF in a way that requires
suspending LEM.
The existentialist philosopher Heidegger, I think the most famous student
of Husserl, father of phenomenology, may have called DO's 'Einzelne',
which become 'Seiende' only when embedded in the field CF, which itself is
the 'Sein schlechthin'. The question now becomes, how can we know about
this 'Sein'? The answer is by means of 'Seiende'.
How can we know about 'Seiende' without loosing ourself in unlimited
'Einzelne'? The danger is that we become 'Einzelne' by means of our
self-concepts, which make rely on discriminated objects. (Gavin, I
understand your challenging as an attempt to help to realize and thus to
avoid this danger, right? So does At, as I understand it, with
distinguishing rote from authentic learning and warning against learning
his concepts rotely.)
We learn about the 'Seiende' by realizing that we are 'Mitseiende'. As
such we can connect with other 'Seiende'. This is, what creativity is
about. Then we can start to learn about this connection and make sure
about what is essential to such connection. We arrive at 'essential
entities' through our authentic learning about our experiences in
connecting with 'Seiende'. We know very differently about these 'essential
entities' than we know about variables, DO's.
If we want to make sure about 'Seiende', we have to make sure in terms of
'essential entities', not 'discriminated objects'. When we try to
communicate about these 'essential entities', we will find ourselves
doing/talking/acting/expressing objects (beings) and processes
(becomings). This can be for example writing mails to this LO-list. Or it
can be designing a sequence of lessons for a course on EKS.
Gavin, with this, I have a question for you, which I am really interested
in hearing your approach:
When you have a text in front of you, be it Wolfgang Mewes on EKS or At de
Lange on creative learning. How do you know whether you have an expression
of essential entities or a collection of discriminated objects in front of
you?
This question loops back to where I started and instead of joking I ask
you seriously: How do you do this challenging of concepts?
I am so much interested in your answer also, because you obviously go
deeper than simple logical analysis or comparison with mainstream science,
challenges we have had already before.
>In my opinion I think At is stuck at a level of logic (abstraction ) that
>misses the very point of complexity. Using mathematics and the LEM (or any
>other of Aristotle's laws of thought) type logic is not useful for this
>type of complexity.
If you would replace At with Winfried you would have pointed exactly to
where I was stuck until about 9 months ago. I was willing to defend the
univeral validity of LEM and Aristotle's laws of thought - in fact I have
tried it on this list, and I can tell you, this was all but cosy! I've
lost a comrade on this path, John Gunkler. I'm wondering why you are
saying that At is stuck there, for he was warning so strongly against LEM,
that I was challenged to challenge this. At then gently yet firmly helped
me out.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressel" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.