What are vague monster concepts ? They might be described as having a huge comprehension which hinders them being grasped as an intelligible whole so that one is inevitably lead to form a subconcept of which important aspects are missing (we could call such concepts 'quantum' or even 'fractal' in the Baudrillardian sense). This allows a rhetoric of the concept which can pragmatically justify opposing statements according to circumstance (in the theory of Thom, it is almost if it were alive and had developed a sort of self-defense mechanism). It also invites the questioning of whether the concept as a whole represents anything consistent and intelligible beyond being merely a cloud, a manipulate veil for power and control. Western culture abounds in monster concepts. We mentioned 'religion'. Another concept is 'intelligence' though this is also a the same time a pseudo-concept (as is the concept 'socio-economic class'). We do not of course mean here the sense of 'intelligence' which pertains to the essence, structure and dynamics of human reason, of the human mind, of consciousness...the subject of the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, etc. Nor as in 'animal intelligence', etc. No, what we address here is the pseudo-concept of 'intelligence' in which in certain cultures individual A is said to be 'smarter', 'more intelligent', 'brighter', etc. than individual B. 'Intelligence' not as a common essence of a (biologically) normal human being, but as some kind of alleged extra virtue or special attribute. There are universal valid concepts of being 'intelligent' : i) knowledge of the moral law, or, knowledge of what should or should not be done, knowledge of how one should treat other human beings and animals. The organ of intelligence is empathy and compassion (durch Mitleid wissend...). Without empathy and compassion, without a firm knowledge of the absolute universality and inviolability of human and animal rights there is no way a human being could ever be considered 'intelligent', but rather in this instance should be considered some kind of aberration and monster, a case of stunted development. ii) insight-wisdom in the practice of self-reflection into the nature of consciousness. iii) possession of skills which contribute to the common good and alleviation of suffering of human beings, animals and the environment.
We can say that genuine philosophy starts not so much with 'amazement' in itself but with compassion and horror at the malice and suffering of mankind and the desire to redress this state of affairs, and this includes understanding its causes. And the most important aspect of the philosophy of language is precisely that in which it is inseparably integrated into the science of consciousness.
What we discuss in this post is the western monster concept of 'science'.
In a nutshell: there are really only two species of authentic 'science': the science of consciousness, the philosophical psychology we have discussed previously, and the 'science' (which we call welfare engineering, a primary example being medicine) whose primary goal is lessening the suffering and improving the lives not only of human beings but of all life (ethically guided medicine, engineering, history and other human sciences). Human beings love to explore and travel and discover new worlds, and science can furnish the tools and vehicles for doing this but this tendency and activity in itself is not science, it is what science can serve. Now purely theoretical and formal 'science' that abstracts from the conditions and needs of human beings and other living beings on this planet - and which is not concerned with the phenomenology of consciousness and psychotherapy - has been vastly overrated, over-prized, overvalued as have the so-called abilities and achievements in it (the myth of the theoretical 'genius' who in reality is just an individual payed and idolized by society to engage in games, hobbies and obsessions, often involving an amount of plagiarism, with no true human, social or environmental value). In ancient Greece beyond medicine and Thucydides welfare engineering was largely non-existent (before Archimedes and the Hellenistic era; however in an interesting passage Aristotle envisions the idea of tools which work by themselves). And more importantly theoretical science, the idea that man obtains fulfillment through an external knowledge which has no bearing on the welfare and life of living beings or any connection to the direct phenomenological self-knowledge of consciousness aiming at personal liberation, clearly has its template in medieval scholasticism and the particular kind of historical, organized and revealed religion it served. A whole new paradigm for the development of welfare engineering needs to be developed which emphasizes collaboration and purges research from ulterior motives based on financial, social and personal gain as well as the poisonous ideology of competition and struggle or glorification of the 'entrepreneur'. There is also a vast new field of the archaeology of welfare engineering with regards to its presence in various historical cultures (even if not in a conscious conceptual form).
Perhaps welfare engineering is not the best term as we include under it also history and many of the human and social sciences. In fact historical analysis and research is the most important of all alongside medicine. There are no 'sacred' or 'taboo' historical narratives, no narratives which cannot be questioned and concerning which documents, evidence and a rational reconstruction cannot and should not be demanded, no matter how much they are upheld and imposed by power and fear. False narratives, myths in the service of power, domination, control and psychological oppression, this is what Jung did not take into account. Only through honest, objective and scientific historical research can human beings achieve psychological freedom and impartial justice be served.
Heidegger wrote much about truth and historicity yet according to Wolin's 'Heidegger in Ruins' Heidegger engaged in deliberate falsification of his own manuscripts and uttered falsehoods regarding them. A liar and denialist of biographical history wrote about truth, human existence, historicity and forgetfulness ! We find the Heidegger-Husserl correspondence very depressing and the dreary pettiness of the corresponding academic milieu is striking ( itself a strong argument against academic philosophy), specially considering that these thinkers claimed to address huge transcendent questions about human history and existence. Heidegger seems to have been rather duplicitous and ungrateful towards Husserl. Heidegger was never a man to speak truth to power and defend the oppressed, rather for him power was truth and truth was power. Someone has to say it: i) there is a lot of Nietzsche, Darwin and racist pseudoscience in Heidegger, ii) his philosophy is a secularized atheist variant of medieval scholasticism cloaked in the language of phenomenology. iii) it seems doubtful that there is any Heideggerian 'category' or 'analytics' that is not already found in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic.
The categories and analytics Heidegger sets up in Sein und Zeit in order to allegedly deconstruct metaphysics are precisely themselves those one learns to deconstruct in Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Ontological pluralism and morality (compassion, non-harm, restraint) on the other hand cannot be deconstructed. The way Heidegger approaches 'the question of being' is designed to invoke cosmic and existential anguish. But his 'question of being' is itself a naturalistic opaque veil which can be viewed as hiding something else, something marvelous and wonderful. Even T.S. Eliot had a higher glimpse of this with his 'man cannot take too much reality'. And: 'why is there something rather than nothing ?' can be seen from a different perspective in light of the Mahâyâna doctrina of shûnyatâ.
There is a structural analogy between philosophical psychology and welfare engineering; the Pali suttas abound with Indian medical terms and there is likewise a connection between ancient Greek medicine (where experimental and empirical methodology was present) and both Pyrrhonism and Stoicism.
Now there are two objections that easily present themselves:
i) cannot engineering and even medical research be used equally for immoral ends and for great harm ? How about advances in medicine which involve experimentation of animals ? Or in general what about the misuse of engineering for the power and profit of a human group causing great harm to other human beings, animals and the environment ? So why use the term 'welfare engineering' ?
ii) does not progress in applied science, in engineering and medicine depend crucially on theoretical science and even on mathematics ?
iii) are you not espousing a kind of pragmatism for natural science which contradicts what Aristotle wrote in the beginning of the Metaphysics: all men have by nature the desire to know ?
We will address i) in a future post (the pragmatism of engineering makes manifest its essential link to ethics and human consciousness, contrary to the cold hypocrisy of purely theoretical science). We can also observe that there is a connection to the theory of magic and sacrifice in antiquity where, according to some, the gods were originally conceived as impersonal forces (either of nature, of consciousness, of both) which are governed likewise by fixed impersonal laws. The magician or shaman or medicine man would then apply a corresponding technique in order to harness and direct these powers to obtain a certain goal. The huge problem is when such techniques (ceremonial magic) were believed (in the most degenerate and barbaric cultures) to have to involve causing suffering or death to living beings (sacrifice) - something which can drastically contrast to the 'path of power' found in the Pali texts, wherein 'magic' powers are a direct result of personal spiritual attainment and have nothing do so with causing suffering to other beings. We can certainly draw a parallel between the heinous presence of experimentation on animals in modern science (whose justification often verges on sacrificial rhetoric) and such sacrificial magic.
ii) is easy to answer. The fact of the matter is that the extent and depth of the purely theoretical and mathematical underpinnings of much of medicine and engineering have been grossly and drastically exaggerated. Rather the legitimate and modest theoretical and formal apparatuses emerge naturally through the context of experimental feedback. It is as if somehow nature needed to say something and she somehow manages to say it in the most succinct and practical form, contrary to the shadowy, artificial and sickly proliferations of the theoreticians. The legitimate theoretical should be a tool for a tool, or rather a tool that should be designed to best operate on the tools of engineering. As for iii) this ideal of pure knowledge is found in philosophical psychology. And Aristotle can be considered (despite the presence in his work of material of a different nature such as the De Anima) the founder of the monster of a purely theoretical and formal science divorced from engineering and welfare and divorced from a science of consciousness and phenomenology. His theoretical science held back progress in applied and experimental science for centuries and helped justify misogyny, racism and colonialism.
We have seen how core logic, arithmetic, computability, games and combinatorics form a closed interdependent circle (thus there is no reason to postulate the primacy of the 'logic' component, i.e. the one based on language) and how authentic logics come in families, the members of which mirror each other. We have also seen how philosophical psychology espouses ontological pluralism and thus, without sacrificing the deep truths of phenomenism, phenomenology and the self-reflection and self-introspection of consciousness, freely postulates the existence of a physical universe as well as a multitude of poles of conscious experience. Thus we can speak of an implicit 'order of the world' which encompasses both domains of consciousness experience and domains of physical existence as well as their relationship. Logic is about bringing to light the implicit unconscious order (which is also the order of the world and thus linked to praxis) of aspects of conscious thought, and as thus its task is always incomplete, its achievements partial. Logic in an extended sense is revealed in the structure and dynamics of the living activity of authentic science, there is no a priori armchair logic (a comparison might be made with some aspects of Adorno. Also we can address the issues Habermas raised regarding the focus on consciousness and the subject.).
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