the impossible is evident...

I know that I exist, and nevertheless I am uncertain whether there is any ‘body’ in the nature of things. Therefore I am not a body. This argument is weak, unless it can be shown that extension in itself fully establishes substance. For even if this is assumed, it is certainly obvious that thought cannot originate from that substance; but this is not yet shown. And so we know this at least, that thought is not a mode of extension, but we do not know whether it cannot be a mode of substance, of which extension itself is a mode. [But it seems not to be so, because two different modes must be resolved into something common] For evidently extension and extended matter itself are different in body.

Therefore this is the true method of proving the distinction between mind and body: because it is impossible for us to ever know with certainty whether body exists. However I call body everything that is like those things that we perceive. But that this is impossible is evident, because it is impossible for us to be able to be made certain about the existence of bodies [except through a priori reasoning, from understanding the nature of God], or it cannot ever be proved by philosophical reasoning that bodies are not appearance or substances.

Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz, The Distinction of Mind and Body, [Gr p511] [A VI iv p1368]

or the possible is evident...?

the sole purpose...?

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Schopenhauer [Memories, Dreams, Reflections]

...does darkness = nothingness?

la commedia è inizio...

Io veggio ben che già mai non si sazia
nostro intelletto, se ‘l ver non lo illustra
di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia.

translation -

I see well that never is our intellect satisfied, unless that truth illumines it beyond which no truth may soar.

Dante Alighieri, La Comedia [Par. 4.124-26]

what is...

It is natural to suppose that, before philosophy enters upon its subject proper - namely, the actual knowledge of what truly is - it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The apprehension seems legitimate, on the one hand that there may be various kinds of knowledge, among which one might be better adapted than another for the attainment of our purpose - and thus a wrong choice is possible: on the other hand again that, since knowing is a faculty of a definite kind and with a determinate range, without the more precise determination of its nature and limits we might take hold on clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth.

This apprehensiveness is sure to pass even into the conviction that the whole enterprise which sets out to secure for consciousness by means of knowledge what exists per se, is in its very nature absurd; and that between knowledge and the Absolute there lies a boundary which completely cuts off the one from the other. For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process, and has in view, a moulding and alteration of it. Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument which we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through which the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium. In either case we employ a means which immediately brings about the very opposite of its own end; or, rather, the absurdity lies in making use of any means at all. It seems indeed open to us to find in the [132] knowledge of the way in which the instrument operates, a remedy for this parlous state; for thereby it becomes possible to remove from the result the part which, in our idea of the Absolute received through that instrument, belongs to the instrument, and thus to get the truth in its purity. But this improvement would, as a matter of fact, only bring us back to the point where we were before. If we take away again from a definitely formed thing that which the instrument has done in the shaping of it, then the thing (in this case the Absolute) stands before us once more just as it was previous to all this trouble, which, as we now see, was superfluous. If the Absolute were only to be brought on the whole nearer to us by this agency, without any chance being, wrought in it, like a bird caught by a limestick, it would certainly scorn a trick of that sort, if it were not in its very nature, and did it not wish to be, beside us from the start. For a trick is what knowledge in such a case would be, since by all its busy toil and trouble it gives itself the air of doing something quite different from bringing about a relation that is merely immediate, and so a waste of time to establish. Or, again, if the examination of knowledge, which we represent as a medium, makes us acquainted with the law of its refraction, it is likewise useless to eliminate this refraction from the result. For knowledge is not the divergence of the ray, but the ray itself by which the truth comes in contact with us; and if this be removed, the bare direction or the empty place would alone be indicated.

The Phenomenology of Mind, 1807, Introduction, G. W. F. Hegel

...may not be. or is it? absolutely?

things do not change...

Two boys arrived yesterday with a pebble they said was the head of a dog until I pointed out that it was really a typewriter.

- Pablo Picasso


...or can they?

power and tragedy...

"The Church is precisely that against which Jesus preached and against what he taught his disciples to fight".

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1901, 168

"Christianity is still possible at any time. It is not tied to any of the impudent dogmas that have adorned themselves with its name: it requires neither the doctrine of a personal God, nor that of sin, nor that of immortality, nor that of redemption, nor that of faith; it has absolutely no need of metaphysics, and even less of asceticism, even less of a Christian "natural science". Christianity is a way of life, not a system of beliefs. It tells us how to act, not what we ought to believe."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1901, 212

"For this is how religions tend to die: the mythic premises of a religion are systematized, beneath the stern and intelligent eyes of an orthodox dogmatism, into a fixed sum of historical events; one begins nervously defending the veracity of myths, at the same time resisting their continuing life and growth. The feeling for myths dies and is replaced by religious claims to foundations in history."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1872, 10

"Tales of My death have been greatly exaggerated" as God might say... Yet the essential nature of Nietzsche's critique here remains sound. We do indeed see myths taken too seriously, we see 'religion' perverted into a form of 'control-freakery' with no freedom of belief, of thought, of possible progress, a denial even of knowledge and science itself. This strangulation of religious thought, this total rejection of evolution or change in any form, destroys free-will, that supposed 'special' gift of God to humans. It thus rejects God in itself, whilst pretending otherwise. Thus it wasn't Nietzsche who killed God, but the fundamentalists, who rejected (and still do) the beauty of His creation - the world-in-itself. It is if we have presented to us a 'mystery play', which is repeated, endlessly, without the slightest variation or emotion by the most wooden of actors - who could possibly love that ? If God has no real followers, then He must, inevitably, wither away...

CALResCo Complexity Writings, "The Will to Power" by Chris Lucas

...1872, ...1901, ...or 2005?

in concreto, in individuo...

...no objects can be represented through pure concepts of understanding, apart from the conditions of sensibility. For the conditions of the objective reality of the concepts are then absent, and nothing is to be found in them save the mere form of thought. If, however, they are applied to appearances, they can be exhibited in concreto, because in the appearances they obtain the appropriate material for concepts of experience -- a concept of experience being nothing but a concept of understanding in concreto. But ideas are even further removed from objective reality than are categories, for no appearance can be found in which they can be represented in concreto. They contain a certain completeness to which no possible empirical knowledge ever attains. In them reason aims only at a systematic unity, to which it seeks to approximate the unity that is empirically possible, without ever completely reaching it. But what I entitle the ideal seems to be further removed from objective reality even than the idea. By the ideal I understand the idea, not merely in concreto, but in individuo, that is, as an individual thing, determinable or even determined by the idea alone.

The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant, "BOOK II, CHAPTER III, THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON, Section I, THE IDEAL IN GENERAL"

...experience being nothing?

denotation v. connotation...?

An expression denotes the object (if any) which is unambiguously determined by its sense.

Therefore:

An empirical expression denotes an intension, never the value of the intension in the actual world.

On the other hand:

An expression refers to the object which is the value of its denotation in the actual world-time.

"Sense, Denotation, Reference: A terminological/philosophical Chaos", Dr. Pavel Materna


...or does it make sense?

...

I'm nobody? Who are You?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog to tell your name
the livelong day to an admiring bog!

Emily Dickinson, poet

a construct...

Reality! What a concept!
Robin Williams, Comedian

iterate or reiterate...?

When a man says, I have found, in all past instances, such sensible qualities, conjoined with such secret powers, and when he says, similar sensible qualities will always be conjoined with similar secret powers, he is not guilty of a tautology, nor are these propositions in any respect the same.

An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume

exist to will...

...if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing — as he wills to be after that leap towards existence.
Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)

backwards/forwards...

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived- forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.
Soren Kierkegaard

...part of the cunundrum?

one alone...

Each person was to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid, always alone. If I should scream, if I should call for help, would anyone hear... would it even matter?

- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

...would it even matter?

no control...

Epictetus tersely noted the central features of a life lived according to nature in his Encheiridion (Manual) that ...the key is to understand how little of what happens is within our control, and stoicism earns its reputation as a stern way of life with recommendations that we accept whatever fate brings us without complaint, concern, or feeling of any kind. Since family, friends, and material goods are all perishable... we ought never to become attached to them. Instead, we treat everything and everyone we encounter in life as a temporary blessing (or curse), knowing that they will all pass away from us naturally.
Epictetus and the Stoics

does nothing matter...?

useful truths...

"I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe."

"But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . ."

"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away."

The Name of the Rose, Seventh Day, Night -- Umberto Eco

meaning = meaningless...?

meaningless = meaning...?

a koan...

What is the sensation of thinking?
What is the sensation of not thinking?

Magnus's Koans

l'infiniment petit, l'infiniment grand...

nothing ≠ something...

Although traditional learning focusses on what is, Heidegger noted, it may be far more illuminating to examine the boundaries of ordinary knowledge by trying to study what is not.

What is Nothing, anyway?

It's not anything, and it's not something, yet it isn't the negation of something, either. Traditional logic is no help, since it merely regards all negation as derivative from something positive. So, Heidegger proposed, we must abandon logic in order to explore the character of Nothing as the background out of which everything emerges.

Carefully contemplating Nothing in itself, we begin to notice the importance and vitality of our own moods. Above all else, Nothing is what produces in us a feeling of dread {Ger. Angst}. This deep feeling of dread, Heidegger held, is the most fundamental human clue to the nature and reality of Nothing.
Heidegger: Being-There (or Nothing)

angst ...?

that's absurd...

In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile. . . . This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his settting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Albert Camus

"Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful."
Waiting for Godot(1955). Samuel Beckett

no truth, no value, no meaning...

what proof...?

I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (Med. 2, AT 7:25) René Descartes

je pense, donc je suis...?

nothing(ness)...

What does a man love more than life?
Hate more than death or mortal strife?
That which contented men desire,
The poor have, the rich require,
The miser spends, the spendthrift saves,
And all men carry to their graves?

(Leemings, 1953, 201)

answer above...

existence...

Like many philosophically interesting notions, existence is at once familiar and rather elusive. Although we have no more trouble with using the verb ‘exists’ than with the two-times table, there is more than a little difficulty in saying just what existence is. Existing seems to be at least as mundane as walking or being hungry. Yet, when we say ‘Tom is hungry’ or ‘Tom is walking’, it may be news to those not in Tom's vicinity, whereas ‘Tom exists’ would be news to no one who knew Tom, and merely puzzling to anyone who did not. Again, we know what it is like to be hungry or to walk, but what is it like to exist, what kind of experience is that? Is it perhaps the experience of being oneself, of being identical with oneself? Yet again, we can readily indicate what is meant by Tom's walking, but surely Tom's existing is not something we can indicate to anyone. On the face of it, there would seem to be no way at all in which we can explain what existing is. [Emphasis mine.] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Existence

but, who is Tom...?

a conundrum...? an enigma...? an oxymoron...?

According to that logical doctrine which the present writer first formulated in 1873 and named Pragmatism, the true meaning of any product of the intellect lies in whatever unitary determination it would impart to practical conduct under any and every conceivable circumstance, supposing such conduct to be guided by reflexion carried to an ultimate limit. The Commens Dictionary of Pierce's Terms (C.S. Pierce)

Existentialism attempts to describe our desire to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. Unfortunately, life might be without inherent meaning (existential atheists) or it might be without a meaning we can understand (existential theists). Either way, the human desires for logic and immortality are futile. We are forced to define our own meanings, knowing they might be temporary. In this existence… Existential Primer

Drawing on the American pragmatic tradition of William James and John Dewey as well as Sartre and the French existentialists, Raskin and Barnet created a research center that was not based on any ideology or hierarchical structure but where "existential pragmatism" was to be the dominant theme and social invention a leitmotiv. First Harvest The Institute for Policy Studies, 1963-83

a conundrum...? an enigma...? an oxymoron...?

so what...?