Notice: This page represents a project in development, and perhaps a very slow development at that; and does not yet represent a settled opinion as of 4/12/03. It is more a musing and wondering at this stage. For more current essays see Kant.
1/4/97 Saturday 6:53 PM As of this moment I have changed my code. I open each session with a calender timing as before, but now I skip two lines before the beginning of a first session of the day* (except when I make a mistake, of course).
[* 1/5/97 Heretofore I began each day of entries with the date as I have just done here, and would do that only once for the day. Now, it seems, I am changing that rule to include the date each time I begin a session, usually once early each day and another, if at all, in the evening; but will now skip two lines for the opening session each day to indicate quickly whether or not it is indeed the first session of the day.]
That's an interesting thought, the notion of mistake. I hear a man sing (or play a trumpet) in a pattern and then I catch a note out of the pattern, and I justify that by saying that the man made a mistake. Therefore a mistake is something which is just as real as the non-mistakes, but by virtue of the fact that it breaks the pattern, it stands out, and so we must explain it.* And we do so by saying that is a mistake, i.e., that is an allowable breach of the pattern, in a paradoxically way of speaking, even though that may not make any sense to those born blind. ????
[* 1/5/97 And this, essentially, is what the a priori provision of the object is all about. By means of the Transcendental Object = X, we unify specters into objects which possess necessity, and then we explain deviations from that necessity, e.g., the note was a mistake, or the traffic single is taking so long because it is broken, a term which must be essentially meaningless for the empiricist and the rationalist alike.]
I am not sure yet how much of our world (of those who see) the blind are able to grasp. And I don't mean merely the lack of color and light, but I mean also that they have no images at all, and so we might ourselves (if we were now to go blind) dream up other images to correspond to the things about us, that we see, much as though a person sees a face in the cloud (and another does not). This would be the Anschauung, i.e., the sighting of real objects, i.e., objects which exist in that envisagement and, at the same time, correspond to a(n intellectual) derivation of such a thing in space and time (like a sketch book presenting two mans facing each other in space, and making sense out of it, since the space referred to there in the sketch book would not be at all like the space that the pursuer lives in; and so I would not imagine that any intelligent being would mistake the two,i.e., the sketch of two mans and two mans themselves; after all we are not fools!)*
[* 1/5/97 Here I am really musing about the capacity of recognizing a map or depiction of some reality, i.e., look at a map and see, instead of the physical object (the physical map itself), or rather, in addition to the physical object itself, see it as a model of some other physical reality, much as looking at the photograph of a face and not thinking of that as a real face, which it most certainly is, but rather as referring to a real face. {This is very difficult to express!}]
My primary interest just now is that the invisible world of the blind is the world of the pure intellect (or almost so), and there there are no images at all, and so it were possible that we who see see something that is entirely subjective, and not be any more the same than when I say to my wife, "I'm tired," and she translates into Japanese: "I really love the landscape," and her family all smile at me, and I smile back, of course.
[1/5/97 A recurring thought of mine is that Franz Kafka may have understood Kant better than anyone else since Kant.]
That gives us a whiff of the envisagement, i.e., it is the molding of diversity into unities. It is an act of the understanding, directed on the tentative unities seen in time and space, like a face in a cloud or on the front of a person's head.
Now the first step in the ascertainment of whether someone can see the same world that you see, you have to be able to give a demonstration, and the demonstration goes in this way: I saw you draw a circle in the air, and I can even point out the location and parts of the circle that you drew, even though the impact of your finger in the air leaves no trace in my eye (although certainly apart from it, in a smaller version, Leibniz would say dogmatically and metaphysically, in tracking down your monads to ever diminishing degrees, i.e., according to Leibniz there would be tracing in the monads "disturbed" by the movement of the finger.).
I can point out that circle, and thereby do I determine you with regard to your speech (devise a test and find a certification or authentication), for I can distinguish the drawing of the circle now from the (pantomimic) circle itself, and so therefore I can see the circle also in time, i.e., in its communication, even if the object itself (the circle) is seen as existing independently of that time, i.e., hovering invisibly and imperceptibly in the air [, i.e., as a mere intelligence or thought thing????]
What would be the next step backward away from the drawing of the circle, and also forward into the future?* [which may include this rehearsal of the past, for it can be presented only in one direction as far as the human is concerned, for causation means, for us, a unified direction in time, and thus we take what we can see (the envisagement) and assert that we shall see back in time].
[* 1/5/97 Here I am playing with the notion of having established at least one fact, i.e., I have distinguished the drawing of a circle from the circle itself. I might now look further back and see an entrance into a room on the part of the mime artist where the circle was then drawn; or I might look forward to the exit from the room of that same artist; and then I could also begin to make further connections and sightings, e.g., the journey to the door, and the journey from the door, etc., etc. In other words from this one fact, this recognition of pattern and necessity, I now begin the process of encompassing all of time and space into a single story, i.e., the story of my life and my experience, i.e., how I and my life fit into a single world along with other objects, and do so backwards from that moment and forward from that moment.]
I just realized that that is rather remarkable. I sat here and imagined a past sequence, but I was able to see it backward from a later time, or (equally well) I was able to see it forward in that time (closer to me now), i.e., as B going to C, or as C going to B, where in both case I am already at D (a later time) and looking back on this unit of time, BC (or CB), let us say. That means that I am able to take something which is in time and put it into a reverse trajectory, or into a forward one, but in each case as seen (filling) in the same time such that the past can be distinguished, or rather the direction of the past can be reversed.*
[* 1/5/97 That may be difficult to grasp (as it is to express). I am sitting here reviewing what I wrote yesterday. When I look at what I wrote before this point in the journal, I could look at it in terms of the preceding by going from this point to the previous point and back to the beginning, or I could start at the beginning of the musings for yesterday day and see them progressing up to this point in the essay. It would be the same multiplicity and the same time, but looked at from two different directions.]
I am not sure but I think that is already a proof that time is a sheer envisagement, i.e., we see our selves looking forward in time, but we could somehow just as easily see our selves going backward.*
[* 1/5/97 But which would be impossible if our grasp of time were merely empirical, in which case we could only picture things in the sequence in which they first appeared.]
But we not only see our selves in a particular dimension of time, we also know that this is the only time, and that it is into this time that the time of narrations are positioned, and where we then can trace an event in either of two directions, either backward from when came its cause, and from before from whence comes its attraction and draw.
[1/5/97 This, I think, has to do with the capacity to take some event in our own lives and to see it as simultaneous with other events, e.g., that my conversation with some person takes place in the same time that a bird flies over head, and unknown to me at the moment. Thus the project for experience is not merely to string perceptions together into a coherent whole as rather it is only by means of an objective whole, originally imagined by us (subjectively speaking), and to which we ascribe our perceptions as particular, subjective events (sightings), that we are able to make the composite whole that we call nature and reality.]
So we necessitate from behind forward, i.e., from point B we depict B as having to follow from A, and we also see that that is objective necessary in time, i.e., we see time actually in that way, as advancing. And it is for this reason that it makes sense that we would utilize the concept of causation for one of our connective mechanisms, for it is by means of cause that we are able to determine and necessitate the state of specters in (a single direction of) time, such that the specters are determiningly ascribed either to the inner sense (dreams and imagination) or to the outer sense, into which we are able to cast even pantomimic circles and actually see them there (in space).*
[* I am not sure that any animal can do that. That would really be remarkable, to see something which is not really there, i.e., a pantomimic circle which I see before my eyes and which I can locate and point out in space, but which I am able to assert that it is not really there, and thereby assure my blind sisbrots** that they must believe us, i.e., we know whereof we speak, i.e., we are neither lying or ranting, i.e., we do in fact see a circle before us and can point it out in space for others to see, but there is nothing really there except that we actually do in fact put it there.]
[** This is a new additional to my androgynous lexicon, namely brothers and sisters.]
That is the solution to something. We do in fact really see circles in the air, but we do not see real circles, but only imaginary; but we still nonetheless really see them.
An empiricist, who does in fact see an imaginary circle, must perforce admit that it is there on its own (driven by the necessity of his own theory), and that he, the empiricist, really does see it. But then he could not account for the distinction of the imaginary pantomimic circle and the real object, for since some objects, the pantomimics, are see as faint, and since they are really there, in perception (and per our hypothesis here), it follows that there is no reason why all objects cannot simply fade away into nothing, for surely the pantomimic is the next step into nothingness, i.e., not even the imaginary.
7:19 PM In order to uncover the sources of human knowledge, Kant (I theorize) had to imagine himself talking to a blind man and trying to get the blind man to understand the world that the narrator (Kant) is looking at and recognizes. He will have described circles, both pantomimic and empirical, and maybe even justified how it was that he was able to be sure that he and the blind man were neither dreams nor dreaming. How do you make that clear to a blind man, who will not be able to distinguish dreams from wakefulness, i.e., there never will be a point in consciousness when one set of depictions come up against another such that a meaning to the term "dream" were ever necessary; for vivid dreams (sounds and feelings) are more emphatic than weak whispers, and make a bigger impression in the gradual adornment of the object, i.e., the gradual accruing of reality to the object, like the brightening of objects at sun rise; so then how do you make clear to him the difference between a dream and wakefulness? And without such a distinction, there is no meaning to either of the terms, dream and wakefulness, any more than there is between A and B, abstractly considered.
7:23 PM First rantings, I think. We imagine a world which is populated by objects which appear to us in a certain way, i.e., in terms of time and space, and we imagine space somewhat in this way. [Here I describe the infinite sphere]*
[* 1/5/97 An infinite sphere is an example of an object, space, which is both infinite and which is synthetic and a priori, but which is not in need of any category {and therefore which corresponds to Kant's B version of the Deduction of the Categories in Pure Reason, #26, Par 3, footnote}. Generally I conceive a system of concentric spheres possessing a common center and each of which is between two or more of the spheres (and "touching" them). (There is a precise formulation which I omit for brevity.) Now such a sphere is thought of as the center of vision of an individual, and two such spheres can be conceived of as encompassing the same space with some point, an object of mutual sighting, situated somewhere between the two centers and thus as in an all encompassing space, which the two centers (or two systems of concentric spheres) also encompass. The picture is not finite and therefore open ended and therefore in no need of any category, which is a device of finiteness or closure, e.g., delineating a single event in a series of possible events. And at the same time it is synthetic and a priori, for it is our ways of picturing the space in which we live, which is not derivable from empirical data which, always and at most, show the objects are diminishing in size (See Hume's Enquiry, Sec. 118--use back button to return here).]
Now when I imagine those two spherical systems interlocking, then I imagine the objective world and the world of simultaneous perceptions, i.e., that I am as much a perceiver as an object of a(nother) perceiver (I perceive that that relationship), in that I can explain some behavior in another (someone facing me, for example) by the fact of my own behavior, i.e., with people with whom I talk. It is no accident that the eyes of the others come to a certain direction when I make a noise, but the direction is centered in me (as I compare several stares and notice the straight line relationships among several looking eyes, I see a convergence upon me.*
{1/5/97 At this point in my ramblings I unexpectedly have come upon a device that infants and babies perhaps utilize to determine the objective world, namely by noticing the spatial direction of looking eyes (of others), they are able to notice that some object, perhaps, themselves even, is the object of attention. Now this will be a pattern, and humans notice patterns, and will be the basis for conceiving of the objective world. {Once we notice a pattern, then we begin to understand (necessitate) that pattern via the categories, and the final step is to explain deviations from that pattern, e.g., faces found in clouds.}]
And then I can see the same thing at another point in space, in which I see an object, and I come to recognize that we are all looking at the same object, and that object is sometimes myself.
[*1/5/97 Again by noticing a convergence of sightings and looks.]
7:32 PM Wow! That's what we do. We see a convergence of eye sightings at an object (sometimes being me) and we know that we all, the other lookers as well as myself, are doing the same thing, and that we all are looking at the same thing.
[1/5/97 Here it hits me! this experiment and observations that we all do at some time as infants in order to see and recognize an objective world.]
That is the certitude that comes from the sight world that cannot be expressed in the world of the blind. Not even sounds can be heard spatially, but only acoustically.*
[*1/5/97 This is difficult for many empiricists to grasp. It is true that a blind person may be sensitive enough to distinguish a loud sound from a soft one, i.e., a change in intensity in the sound, and then a close sound from a remote sound, i.e., no change in the intensity in the object, but heshe will not be able to relate the two situations to space, but can distinguish them only in the same way that heshe can distinguish a sound in a hard surface room and that same sound in a room with soft surfaces everywhere, i.e., different,but not spatially so.]
Space then is essentially and profoundly visual. But it is more: it is a sighting in the visual. For there can be the visual without space, and therefore space is a sudden sighting on the part of the mind which, once spied, can never be un-spied, and for that reason (this space) would seem to be objectively situated in reality (somewhat like the face sighted in a cloud), but it is like the pantomimic circle: it is most certainly there, but only because we put it there, for without that putting, we would be living (and very well, perhaps), but we would not be living in space, we would be living in whatever other modes of envisagement there may be available for us.
7:36 PM Thought: the epitome of all this is the sighting of the plural in the envisagement as opposed to the singular, and then utilizing the categories of thought to bind those sightings into singularities respectively, for they are always seen as multiplicities in a singularity.
7:40 PM It's beginning to take shape in my mind. The experiments of the infant.
7:40 PM Concerning mathematics then, it is only in the visual sighting that we are able to obtain a multiplicity for a unification, for apart from the vision, we have only the sensation and perception of the object, but not that it is the second object; so much so, in fact, that I would wage that blind people do not really understand what two refers to.???*
[*1/5/97 The point is this: if I sequentially touch (but don't press) different keys on a piano, I see that they are different and that I am looking at a multiplicity of identities arrayed in space (like a bunch of one's). But the touch sensation is identical in each case, and so, with regard to feeling, I would not be able to say that I was dealing with a multiplicity, except of course the multiplicity that I call diverse perceptions, i.e., now I touch the object for the first time, and now for the second time. In other words I would not be able to distinguish touching one object twice from touching two objects once each. For this I need vision and a sighting in space.]
In this sighting in space we grasp a given multiplicity; for where else can we treat of Hobbes proverbial village idiot, who really is not any different from the born blind in this regard, for neither the idiot nor the blind can quite make out what is meant by two, other than two perceptions of a single object. So the blind will understand two, but merely as an intellectual toy that can be song-sung in rhythm with a sensation, (like the idiot saying: one one one, each time time the clock strikes three) but not that the sensation were different from the previous ones, except only in time, and that is nothing to the blind/intellect. So it is only in space that we can add something which distinguish the sing-song from the object, for we are able to see distinct objects, the units of an object called five, for example, and understand why the blind could not distinguish the perception from the object, for they all feel the same (as units), and so the existence of a real multiplicity, i.e., the indisputable line/standard upon which the enumeration rule (1 2 3 ... 9 10 11 ...) is based, is located only in space. By means of the real multiplicity (although only really there because we put it there [but we really do put it there and it is by virtue of this putting alone that it is really there, and it would not be there if we did not put it there.] So much do I understand about the pantomimic circle!); by means of this multiplicity in space we are able to gather a real multiplicity and literally see it as a singularity, i.e., a real one, which is simply not accessible by the blind who are limited to intelligence alone, and do not have the benefit of sight.
Without this we really would not be able to make much sense out of this sing-song called mathematics where there are these things which come together very close in time, and thereby make up sighted unities* (for you really cannot concentrate but on one sensation at a time---how will infants have treated the fact that when I listen to one noise, the other noises vanish, i.e., they fade, but then I can make them loud again (by listening for and to them), but then the other noises have faded. How do I distinguish this subjective play from the existence of the object?)
[* 1/5/97 Hobbes' village idiot, evidently, was not able to distinguish very well the interval between the first two chimings of the clock at three o'clock and the interval between the chiming of one o'clock and two o'clock, for apart from the interval (of one hour versus one second) there is no difference between one and two o'clock on the one hand and three o'clock on the other. And the striking of the hour all sound the same anyway.]
I think I (imagining myself now as an infant) engage in an experiment whereby I make noises on different objects with my hands, and notice the correlation of object struck and the tone in my ear, and I can begin to see that whatever I listened to was equally loud, except that more remote objects were usually not so loud.???
7:55 PM I think I just understood from my wife that moon light can make shadows on the earth. Therefore Kant will have looked at the moon and seen that it were bright, and then will have looked at the objects on earth, that they were shinier in some places than in others, and that the darker places were always behind some object with respect to the moon (a spatial sighting), and would have have realized that the same light that bounced off of the earthen objects into his eye, would also bounce back to the moon, and that therefore that the moon's light was also a function of the earth's, in the same way that the light of the earth (from her objects into my eyes) was partially a function of the light of the moon.*
[*1/5/97 A musing about the Third Analogy of Pure Reason]
8:00 PM You're not going to make any sense out of mathematics unless you can see it, for otherwise it really does not make any sense. And that's pretty much the long and short of it.
It makes no more sense that saying: A=B and B=C and so therefore A=C. Pretty cold stuff without any content. Almost like pointing to a cup several times and saying "cup" to someone, and the other person saying: "hey! I understand. It's a cup. Like, yeah man!"
Thus it is in only space that mathematics can make any sense and this is only possible then in the envisagement, for that is all that space is. When we put a pantomimic circle really into space, it is because that space is really in our heads, for how else could be put anything into it. We certainly could not put imaginary circles in to any sort of absolute space on its own, right? I mean, after all: something real on its own is nothing that you can do anything with; and so you would not be so stupid as to try to show someone where a non-thing were in space.
No! Space is within us, for it is in space that we see the two fingers arise from one as that one approaches the nose, and it does not really spit, we assure ourselves, and only seems to due to our looking at it from each of two eyes, which are unified in what we call the brain. No, that split must be in space in order for me to notice the split; but if that split were in any sort of real space on its own, then that would mean that the finger itself did in fact split! even if I could not feel anything. [And then what would the blind man think of me? And so I think we must all agree that the space that we actually see around us, THAT space is merely in our minds as the way that we see the world, i.e., these specters about us (which specters are really on our retinas like the rainbow, right?), for if the space is within us, as our envisagement, then also are the objects which we find in space, they are also in us. But they are seen in space, i.e., of this we can be assured and that is no illusion, for if it were an illusion, (the split fingers I am speaking of now), i.e., we I did not actually see a finger split into two, then I don't know what you are talking about when you describe what you see, for I did indeed see it split.*
[* 1/5/97 This is interesting fodder for musing and speculation. Imagine two persons talking who could not see things in space, but merely see them, i.e., take their own individual perceptions for reality (as the empiricists really must do if they are going to be consistent with their own stories), then when I bring my finger to my noise I will see it split, while my friend will continue to see a single finger only. No reconciliation of our language is possible if we take space (as we see it) for a thing on its own, which is the way the animals and the empiricists presumably take.]
The actual reconciliation is that of the two interlocking spheres of centers of vision.
8:20 PM The fact that the baby makes an experiment to see if his nose (and chin, etc.) feels like the nose-feel of his neighbor in order to imagine then what his own face must look like to others, this fact should suggest that the baby will also mentally intersect the sightings and lookings of others and come to the conclusion that it too is doing and looking like them.*
[*1/5/97 This is remarkable, I think, that the human is able not merely to see a finger or to see two eyes, but is able to see the finger as pointing and the eyes as looking, and thereby connected with some distant object, that pointed to or looked at. Given this, it would be easy then to see a convergence or intersection of two or more looks, and it is this, I suppose, which would enables us to stop at some point and say: "oh, this is what is being looked at," for the line of sighting could be continued infinitely. This is closely akin to the fact that the reason we are able to stop at the 12, when adding 5 to 7, and not continue on (to 13-1, etc., as would be the case with a sheer logical substitution) is because we see the 12 as the object referred to by 7+5 (as a multiplicity seeking a unification, if you will), and not merely as some logical je ne sais se quoi. For this, however, we must be able to see the 12 as a multiplicity objectively speaking, and that is only possible in space.]