Is-Ought: Allowances and Rights

There is the ideal of what human rights are (a characterization of this as expressed in this article) and then there is the reality of what human rights are, which is even less than legal conventions--they are mere allowances.

On an intuitively compassionate interdependent level, it ought to be the case that there are some set of "inalienable human rights," that there is something which can ground, say, the gold and silver rules of conduct. Such a foundation, however ethereal it might seem, requires that the individual "gets outside" him or her self: the part needs to vibrate empathetically--come to identify--with the whole, let's say.

The current reality, however, seems mostly framed to deny such a perspective. It favours division over unification, emphasizes the individual over the collective ("survival of the fittest," "dog eat dog," etc.) or emphasizes specific individual collections while de-emphasizing or negating the collection of all such individuated collections (that is, the status quo of almost all specific groups appears to promote and endorse an attitude of "us vs. them"), and, as a result, what is the case is that some individual or, more typically, some small group of select individuals, with power and authority allow others to have what seem as "rights" so long as the granting of these allowances do not interfere too terribly with their power and authority, which is otherwise known as control.

When control faces (what seems to it as) a serious threat by specific "rights" (allowances), those "rights" are either scaled back or removed entirely.

For example, many of us feel we have a "right" to publicly assemble for protest. The reality is that we are allowed to assemble for protest only until such protest becomes a threat to control. When control perceives a threat to its function as control, then we see various levels of response. For example, (1) perhaps laws are created to reduce the "rights" of people to publicly assemble--this could include, for instance, where and when people can and can not gather for protest, and/or (2) perhaps the thugs invested with "legitimate" authority by those in control move in to quell the protest. Such a response could include, for instance, arrests, the use of force, and so on. In extreme instances control will simply remove the individual or individuals it feels most responsible for organizing and perpetuating protest against it: curtailing most or all of the allowances that this particular individual or group of individuals were previously granted.

The pressing question about human rights is much less "what are they" and much more how do we get from what is the case to what ought to be the case: how do we get from allowances granted by those in control to actually existing universal and inalienable rights?

Given X, then Y.

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
~ J.B.S. Haldane

(1) If it is the case, as some suppose, that mathematics is somehow fundamental to the universe, then the above quote is necessarily true. Simply think of all the weirdness of the Reals. For example:

"You can hit a random Real number with a dart and we don't even know how to look at the result, how to differentiate it from all the other ones around it" (see 6:41 in the video below). And note that almost surely (probability = 1) we will hit a number of this sort.

Also consider Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem: "Informally, Gödel's incompleteness theorem states that all consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions (Hofstadter 1989)." In other words, there are statements that can be made within mathematics that can neither be proven nor disproven: things queerer than we can suppose.

(2) Further, if it is the case that mathematics represents only some part of the universe and there are things within the universe not expressible in mathematics, then Haldane's suspicion is also necessarily true simply because it would entail the conjunction of all those things within the domain of mathematics, which we know contains things queerer than we can suppose, with all those things not expressible in mathematics; thus, it doesn't even matter if the things not expressible in mathematics are queerer than we suppose because we already have that.

(3) Finally, we can suppose that mathematics has nothing at all to do with universe, but if this is the case, then throw out all contemporary science (and, as a result, all the wonders of modern technology) that is intrinsically dependent upon mathematics for its expression. And this seems a result that is queerer than we can suppose.

__________

(4) Therefore, not only is the universe queerer than we suppose, but it is necessarily queerer than we can suppose.

Related:

Unspeakable Things (thanks +Bill Reed for pointing to this article).

Remember to forget!

Dredging Up the Dead

The following two pieces were written in October and September of 2002 (respectively). They were written in response to someone on a forum I used to partake in and s/he was inquiring into Carl Jung's Septem Sermones ad Mortuos. I dredged these up because someone else recently quoted the second paragraph of Sermo I on G+ and I thought: ah, Jung, I like that--where's it from (i.e., I did not recognize it as the second paragraph of Sermo I)? So I Googled it and found I had already encountered it before. Y'know how it is with memory, or, at least, I know how it is with my memory, heh. Anyway, simply thought I'd reacquaint myself with both Jung's text and my own and figured I might as well collect it here on Drifting Labyrinths.

The first piece is an attempt at answering the forum member's question:

What are your thoughts on the text?

And the second piece is an attempt at answering a different question this person had asked:

What do people think of Jung's concept that alchemy and gnosticism formed a kind of unconscious to the institutional relgions that labelled such beliefs and preactises as heretical?

Here is the text for Septem Sermones ad Mortuos in case you'd like to read it for yourself.

*******

 First Piece

Attempting answers (complement: questions; combination: analysis) at ancient analogies.

First thoughts roll with sevens. Seven days in a week, seven classical planets (recall the celestial bodies which circled round a stationary earth), lucky seven, The Chariot, seven major stages in the alchemical process: calcination, putrefaction, solution, distillation, conjunction, sublimation, and philosophic congelation. And of course, our seven sermons.

The Chariot is driven by the light and the dark engines—it is the two forces which power the single vehicle. If we can extract anything from Sermo I, it is a discussion of opposites, but on several layers. We are told that “[t]he pairs of opposites are qualities of the plemora which are not, because each balance each.” Above this statement we are shown eleven pairs of opposites as examples of the binary pairings which negate one another in the plemora. We will now list these as eleven unordered pairs: {effective, ineffective}, {fullness, emptiness}, {living, dead}, {difference, sameness}, {light, dark}, {hot, cold}, {force, matter}, {time, space}, {good, evil}, {beautiful, ugly}, {one, many}. It is these and other pairings that exist as one and the same thing in the plemora; that is to say, they don’t exist in the plemora because it of itself has no qualities. So we get a further pairing of {existence, non-existence} (which may seem similar, but perhaps not readily identical to {living, dead}), as a non/quality (and here we note the ‘/’ is used to indicate, in this case, both the absence and presence of a quality) of the plemora. We might want to recognize that some of Jung’s work focuses on the pairing {internal, external} with respect to individual; in different words, Jung looks at connections between a person’s psyche and the manifest world.

E.E. Rehmus informs us that the plemora itself is the Gnostic divine being, it is the Universal Soul. He goes on to note that all aeons emanate from it. In a Jungian sense, we might consider this to be the archetype of the Self, and from the Self, we derive selves—personal aeons or the aeon of an individual—in the small. In Sermo I, we are told that the plemora is nothingness and fullness, and I recall from a lecture on Jung that he felt the Self was also empty, yet contained every other archetype and, in this sense, is full. We are also told, in the Sermo, many other contrary things about the plemora. In particular, we are informed that we are not part of the plemora, that “we are from the plemora infinitely removed,” because to be a distinct creature is to be distinct form the other, and in specific, distinct form this Universal Soul, and in this Soul there is no distinction; however, we are also told that “because we are parts of the plemora, the plemora is also in us.” So we see here a further pairing of {plemora, individual} or, perhaps more in a Jungian flavour {other, self}. What we can begin to see is that the plemora and the individual, or the self and the other, share an identity in so far as each pairing, in their non/existence in the plemora, become one thing—we’ve denoted this one object by borrowing from set theoretic notation: the unordered binary pairing {x, y}—which is nothing (but of course, everything = nothing). We can note a numeric example of this pair as framed in computational language: {1, 0}.

More important to notice is that “the plemora is both the beginning and end of the created beings,” and that “the plemora prevadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof.” So here we have further pairings of contraries giving rise to our existence, and yet, canceling out that existence. We are told that the plemora has not created being, but yet, it is the end and beginning of existence, and that it is ubiquitous throughout existence. In the pattern of thought being followed, the plemora has {nothing, everything} to do with non/existence. Or in different, but unsurprising words, the plemora is all and it is nothing, that we are both the plemora itself and entirely distinct from it. It is in our being—our existence—that we continue and create distinction: “[w]hen we distinguish qualities of the plemora, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness.” Thus, since the plemora is empty and possesses no qualities, which is to say that it is full and posses all qualities, it is we who ‘pull out’ (‘push in’?) the pairings, and we who further divide the elements of the pairings—one here, and one over there. Put differently, it is we who create things, it is we who are the blind demiurges that shape the world, it is we who are the plemora. But if we weren’t blind and could see this in its entirety (its eternity), then this “would mean self-dissolution,” and “[t]herein both thinking and being cease.” Perhaps this would be the end (beginning?) of the Jungian goal: full integration of the shadow into the personality.

But still, there is nothing that “standeth [as] something fixed, or in some way established from the beginning.” So we speak of “qualities of the plemora which are not.” In other words, even our groupings of these pairs into units, and then into non/existence stemming from, into, through, an empty and full plemora is still creating distinction, it is still our thoughts about the plemora, and thus, “we have said nothing concerning the plemora.” “What is changeable” is the shifting thoughts and experiences by which, even in recognizing an x and its contrary y as an {x, y}, and then negating this in the plemora—which is ourselves, we generate the individual as “fixed and certain…or even as a quality itself.” “The plemora is rent in us”: there appears to be a necessity of something as it exists in the tension between everything and nothing, where {nothing, everything} is {infinite, eternal}, and yet, not that at all. In other words, we are thinking of a way, or a being told ways in which we can think of the unthinkable, by which we can ascertain something outside of our experience. Put differently still, the Sermo is both conditioning, reconditioning, and unconditioning our ways of thinking with respect to ultimate reality: it offers us tools that work on our neurosemantic interpretations of reality, and in effect, tells us at one and the same time that ultimate reality—here framed as the plemora—is both thinkable and unthinkable, knowable and unknowable, that from which our experience derives, but also that which has nothing to do with our experience. In short, it seems a jarring interplay between contraries which may serve to free the reader (or hearer) from his or her own private (or not so private) dogmas and fundamentalisms: nothing is true, everything is possible (?).

I would like to note that there is further binary pairings which can be built from basic units of pairs (this again borrows from set theory). We can see that what is asserted about the plemora can be modeled in the following way: {{plemora, {x, y}}, {not plemora, {x, y}}}. This pairing might shed some light on the “deep structure” of the first Sermo: the plemora is full of all possible binary pairings where these pairings are self-negating (balance each other out—cancel or annul one and other), and the plemora has nothing to do with any possible binary pairings. In a yet larger scope we might construct the following binary pairing: {{{plemora, individual}, {x, y}}, {{not plemora, individual}, {x, y}}}, or perhaps some mixture thereof.

To turn briefly to the closing remarks of the opening Sermo, which concern “the striving after your own being.” Which appears to concern the resolution or dissolution of apparent opposites into complementary unities with respect to the identification of self with other, or with the plemora and the individual. It is suggested that the only real striving is that after our self, which I think Jung would agree with: we are, through our being in the world, seeking after that which we are, which, I think, might be seen as a manifestation of Self. What appears to be asserted is that it is our very thoughts and thought processes which move us a step away from being in what might be seen as purely experiential; that is, it is thought which serves to divide the pairings of complements into pairings of opposites, and this division is what separates self from other (leading, in heightened or more “crystalized” form to acute alienation), which in turn places us a step removed from the “isness” of unanalyzed experience. In different words, our interpretations are simply partial representations which further increase distinction, and the uninterpreted is the undifferentiated reality. In coming to “the right goal by virtue of [our] own being,” we might come to the identification of self with other or come to know the unknowable not through analysis or thought, but by the absence of these. In closing, I’d suggest that Sermo I is linked to the first step of alchemy, calcination, where we burn (or transform) the black into the white.

Variables Vibrate Vicariously. 

*******

Second Piece

One of the things I have appreciated about Jung’s thought regarding institutionalized religion is how it can often become a barrier to promoting a personal religious experience. If I recall correctly, Jung felt that what often occurred in the case of an organized religion was that someone at some point in time, in some context, had some sort of revelatory, mystical, or otherwise transcendent contact with the ‘divine’. If the person who had this experience was moved to attempt to describe it to others, and if others were significantly affected by this person’s relation of the experience, then the budding of a new religious movement could now begin.

What occurs at this point is the codification of the details of the experience. Moreover, the personal religious experience of a single individual now becomes the paradigmatic focal point and touch stone for people who might want to recreate such an experience for themselves. However, as the codification becomes dogma and doctrine, and as the experience of one person becomes structured into a organization, we immediately get issues of power and authority. Who is it that understands what that original experience was really about? We get the rise of those who will now become the interpreters and mediators between the source of some other individual’s experience, and the everyday lives of ordinary people. That is, we get, in an organized religion, those who are, by their position in the power structure, allowed to read scripture (or such) in such a way that they are the ones who will interpret this record of the events of a single individual for other people. They become the ones who will lead the flock (so to speak).

Now, it seems to me that alchemy is the personal pursuit of an encounter with the divine. It is the seeking after Hermes’ Bird, the Philosopher’s Stone (and many other names), but this is nothing other than the understanding that the individual is right there with God in creating the world. As Joderowsky frames it in The Holy Mountain, it is turning your excrement into gold. In existentialist terms, it is deciding the meaning and direction of your life without fear or angst in the face of the idea that there is no meaning or direction. In a sense, the alchemical pursuit is the unification of self and other, especially in terms of the mundane with the divine, or the particular with the universal. This entire pursuit is one that must be carried out by the individual alone, and not something that can be given or learned from someone else. I think that in traditional alchemy it was the alchemist alone who would mix the ingredients in the alembic, and it would be the alchemist alone that would supervise, observe, and participate in the growing of Hermes’ Tree. It seems to me that the idea here, in more Jungian terms, is that it is the individual who must turn his or her shadows into light, or integrate the shadows of his or her being into a whole individual. While people might be able to give guidance and what not, the life of any person is entirely in that person’s hands (whether he or she can admit this or not).

While I am not particularly well versed in Gnosticism, if I recall, one of the driving ideas is that the world was created by an evil demiurge, and that the real God was so far removed from this world that he or she had no contact with us, nor we with him or her. So let us put this into the context of what I’ve been spinning out so far. Alchemy is the individual quest for unification with the divine, for participation in the creation and transformation of the world. Gnosticism seems at least partially correct so far as contact with the divine is not an everyday part of most people’s lives, and that contact with the divine appears very difficult or might be impossible. So, if we have organized religion arising out of an individual’s encounter with the divine, then the individualized encounter was something unique, difficult, and not likely to be duplicated. Thus, we see how there might be elements of alchemy and Gnosticism providing the origins of an organized religion in so far as the origins are founded in an individual’s experience. As the experience itself becomes lost in the religion’s codification and increasing rigidness of formalization, the original experience which shares these elements of the alchemical pursuit and certain ideas pertaining to Gnosticism does become like the unconscious underpinnings of the institutional tradition.

At least part of the reason that such beliefs and interests in things like alchemy and Gnostic ideas become viewed as heretical is because these ideas would or could serve to promote in the individual a unique and difficult encounter with the divine for that individual. Such an encounter will likely be counter to some or all of the codified ways of the institution, and so, would work to undermine or at least question the authority of those “higher up” in the power structure. If everyone could promote his or her own encounter with God, then what would be the need for a church (in the traditional sense)?

So, in a sense, I agree with Jung that the institutionalization of an individual’s religious experience often seems to prevent others from having their own encounter with the divine. Such an encounter must be based upon, and stem from, those things which become labeled as heretical under the authority of a power structure, and this structure, paradoxically, owes its existence to these same heretical experiences, which become the “unconscious” (in the sense of unrecognized or forgotten) of that institution. 

This Isn't Quantum Physics. Wait. It Actually Is. OK, Maybe Not Really...

I don't know why I sometimes feel inclined to take decent, working, knowledgeable scientists to task, but there could be something Freudian there. Y'know: we don't really know ourselves, and we don't know what motivates us to do the things we do. Of course, that doesn't really explain much, does it? And perhaps claiming that "...really everything is quantum physics" doesn't explain much either or maybe it's simply a mistaken point of view to take.

I mean, it seems to me here's an example of mistaking the map for the territory. Sure, yeah, it seems that, when observed in a suiting manner, the universe and all the stuff in it is "... all happening by the interactions of tiny particles," which also happen to sometimes be waves (again, seemingly dependent upon the mode of observation)--a result which, in part, led to the development of Quantum Theory. Yet, "...the rules of quantum mechanics" are the (current) map by which we assess, experiment with, and otherwise observe the going-ons of the stuff in the universe in its seemingly "fundamental (by which we seem to actually mean "smallest scale")" expression. In other words, the interactions of the stuff of the universe--currently observed at very small scales as "tiny particles" and waves--is the territory and Quantum Mechanics is the map. And it's likely a "category error" to say that the interactions of the stuff of the universe are identical to Quantum Mechanics: they are not the same thing. One is a bunch of stuff, the other is a bunch of symbols: territory and map.

For a long time--maybe around two-thousand years--many of the people inclined to study such things thought that Aristotelian physics could explain most (or maybe some thought all) of the stuff of existence. Of course, a few people came along and ended up knocking all that down, and what ended up in its place was Newtonian physics. And maybe some people thought that Newtonian physics could or would explain most or all the stuff of existence. And of course they were mistaken since Quantum physics came along and supplanted the Newtonian version of physics. And no, they are not the same thing.

So, maybe once upon a time some people thought that everything was explainable by Aristotelian physics, and we know now that they were wrong. And then once upon a different time it's likely that some other people thought that everything was explainable by Newtonian physics. Well, we know now that they were wrong too. Now it so happens that currently there seems to be some people who feel like everything is explainable by Quantum physics (or some slight modification of it--gravity being the main trouble-maker here), and we know now that they are...?

History repeats itself, (ad infinitum) as some say, and I'm willing to wager everything I own (although myself and any takers on the bet may not be alive to collect the payoff) that some day something else--some other theory--will explain, well, some things anyway. Because, let's be realistic here, when we ask, "[w]hat is not quantum physics," well, there's a whole slew of things that aren't. And many of those things--at least seemingly so--can be collected under the general heading known as Qualia.

For instance, Quantum physics has nothing at all to say about my taste of, for example, chocolate--let alone whether or not my taste of chocolate is identical to yours. And what's Quantum physics got to say about my like or dislike of Tarantino films: it certainly won't predict if I like his next one or not. And y'know those days where you simply feel like pulling the covers back over your head and staying in bed (well, I know those days, anyway)? I don't think Quantum physics has much to say about that either.

Hossenfelder writes, "[i]f it wasn’t for Pauli’s exclusion principle, you’d fall right through the ground."

Y'know, I don't recall learning about anyone ever having a problem with falling through the ground before Pauli formulated the exclusion principle, but maybe that's a result of some sort of historical revisionism covering up some grand conspiracy or other? I mean, what if people used to fall right through a flat earth or something? But I digress...

Now I can't speak for Hossenfelder's point of view in general (not really knowing her personally or anything), but this particular article appears to reflect a kind of scientific reductionism that I find distasteful, and I suppose that neither Quantum physics nor Freudian psychology are going to explain that particular aversion. Perhaps this hostility towards scientific reductionism--at least in some self-reflective and (semi) self-conscious sort of manner--goes some way to informing my apparent compulsion to take decent, working, knowledgeable scientists to task.

Shrug. I dunno'.

Science is cool, science is fascinating, science is a worthwhile human endeavour and has clearly aided the human race (yet also helped our seemingly insatiable appetite for self/other destruction as well...yet that's not science's fault--or is it? Perhaps if we hold that everything is quantum physics, then, yes, maybe science can be held morally accountable for all the atrocities it's helped to create...oh, sorry, again, my tendency to sometimes digress). But, at least currently, science isn't everything--can't explain everything, at any rate. And when it comes down to the fine grained details none of the stuff of existence is science. Science seems to be a method which produces a body of knowledge: together these inform investigations over a specific and limited range of human-based experiences.

Maybe one day science can and will explain everything there is to human experiences, but I guarantee that from our current position in the timeline we would not understand whatever that will be as science: its theories would likely seem to us as gibberish and its results as some form of sorcery. As it currently stands with or without Quantum--or any other formulation of physics--there are still milkshakes, weight loss, basketball, and Noam Chomsky. Sorry, Sabine.