A Continuation...

I feel like saying this: Metaphysics – like translating a great, indeed the greatest poem ever written: Being. It can only be done from what can be revealed in our particular language and history.

  The essence of, for example, a tree is far from being definitely given by an Aristotelian definition or a logical definition with necessary and sufficient conditions, however adequate such definitions may be for thinking about reference /extension. An Aristotelian essential definition is meant to capture the essence of a thing, identifying what it is fundamentally. According to Aristotle, such a definition consists of two main components: the genus (the broader category to which the thing belongs) and the differentia (the specific characteristic or set of characteristics that distinguishes it from other members of that genus). The essential definition aims to describe the nature of the thing in a way that reveals its defining properties, which make it what it is. 

·        Genus: The general category under which the object or being falls. This part of the definition identifies the broader class or kind to which the thing belongs.

·        Differentia: The specific qualities or characteristics that differentiate the object or being from other members of the same genus. The differentia points to the essential attributes that make the thing uniquely what it is.

·        Essence: The definition seeks to capture the essence, or ousia, of the thing—what it fundamentally is by nature. This essence is what remains consistent despite changes in non-essential attributes.

So, for instance, we can capture the essence of a “forest” – its being or its idea – in a definition. The genus would be an ecosystem – the nearest proximate more abstract category. The differentia would be what distinguishes forests for other ecosystems: A large, dense area dominated by trees and other vegetation, characterized by a complex web of interactions between the flora, fauna, and environmental factors. This definition categorizes 'forest' within the broader genus of ecosystems and differentiates it by its density of tree cover and the complex interactions that define its ecological structure, setting it apart from other ecosystems like grasslands or deserts. These Aristotelian definitions aim to capture the essence of what it means to be a tree or a forest, using the method of genus and differentia to provide clear and precise definitions based on their essential characteristics. And now we have brought our minds – our Idea of a forest – in conformity with reality i.e. real forests. We know what they are.

  An Aristotelian definition aims to capture the essence of a thing by identifying its genus and differentia, focusing on what fundamentally makes it what it is. This approach seeks to logically classify and define a concept based on its essential characteristics. In contrast, a scientific definition describes a concept or object in terms that are precise, measurable, and consistent with empirical observation. Scientific definitions are often based on observable and testable criteria, focusing on how something functions or operates in the natural world. While Aristotelian definitions aim to capture a stable essence, scientific definitions are more dynamic and open to revision as new data emerges, reflecting the ongoing development of understanding. But of course, Aristotelian definitions might aim to be closed and definitive, in practice we can do on deepening our understanding of things almost indefinitely. Philosophy has no end.

   And this is what bothers me about the so-called pre-modern philosophies of Aristotle and Aquinas. Both by striving after a stable, unchanging, and thus closed essential definition, assume that philosophy can come to an end. That we can live in a world that is transparently intelligible to us – at least in principle. We can in theory know everything we can perceive or logically deduce. The cosmos has an intelligible order to which we can make our Ideas conform. We can know a knowable universe, at least those parts of it that we can perceive.

      You don’t get to the meaning of philosophical or natural concepts by clear essential definitions or logical definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. That you can only do for terms, for concepts that per stipulation have been closed and made univocal. Greek tragedy, helium, kilometer, continent, and the set of real numbers are closed concepts: stipulated definitions (intensional meaning) precisely determine in advance of any possible uses and the reference (extension). There will never be any more Greek tragedies written – like the language they were written in, the concept is a dead concept, though still useful for certain purposes. A concept like novel may be taken as a prototype of an open concept. As applied to the works of writers from Cervantes to Dickens to Joyce, the word obviously has an analogical meaning. The concept novel is capable of indefinite extension that cannot be fixed or determined by a rule in advance. Dickens may not have been able to recognize Ulysses as a novel – his idea of a novel may have from his perspective seemed so tied to what he wrote, that to call what Joyce wrote a novel may have seemed an equivocal use to him. But if the application of the concept to different objects makes sense to a large group of people and if it is possible to grasp the sense (see the analogy) it makes with a broader or less narrow-minded perspective, then it makes sense to recognize and welcome to new application to the family. This is not the same thing as liking or accepting it: to recognize that Joyce was writing something different from yet in the tradition of the novel, to which Dickens also belonged, is not to imply that they should find each other’s work good, though they might. 

       Metaphysical concepts are necessarily open. I think natural concepts are open, too. We can deepen them without end, since reality is without end relative to our ways of knowing and experiencing it. 

     I want to say: All the good poems and stories about forests, the traditional lore about particular trees, the experience of wonder, beauty, or fear, the sense of violation when certain trees or forests are seen as nothing but a ‘natural resource’ – all this and more tell us what a tree really is / can be. There can never be closure until the human mind is closed. Tolkien uncovers something of the essence of forests. What he uncovers belongs to them as surely as that dark brown belongs to Paul's eyes and that pale grey belongs to Kilian's eyes. 

      ‘But aren’t these experiences you talk about merely subjective projections on an inert, valueless thing? Or do these experiences reveal a tree’s participation in some other, archetypical world?’ Two forms of fanciful speculation. One can take or leave it.

. . .

My friend sent me this: ‘The human perception of reality is like a drug that’s been stepped on. Human perception takes reality, mixes it with their memory of life and then that becomes their “reality.” I tell you a story about a horse ride. You remember an incident where you were thrown from a horse when you were a kid and that memory / feeling steps on your perception of my story. That becomes your reality.’

    Well, it is interesting to me because it helps me define my position by disagreement with one aspect: In the metaphor, our experience of reality is made impure by being mixed with our particular lives. So distorted by it. I know well our personal life experiences and the damaged psyches almost all of us suffer under make it hard to let the reality of anything show itself to us: when deep resentment based on deep-rooted inferiority combined with massive fantasies of omnipotence, for example, deep-rooted narcissism, or an all-consuming greed make it impossible to see what justice requires socially and economically,  or what responsibility or love demands with respect to the care of the earth, then that metaphor of reality made impure by our experience works. 

        For Christians, 'sin' has so darkened the human intellect that, without grace, all apprehension of reality is impure, distorted by selfish desires, etc. etc. But I believe that this kind of thing is the corruption of something that in itself is not necessarily impure. We are different, and thus reality shows itself in different ways, always in a limited way, but not necessarily impurely or falsely for that reason. Being is bigger than our minds and senses – to me that is a given; or even if, amazingly, Being is truly nothing but what we can perceive and know, then there would be no way we could know that for sure, no more than a two-dimensional consciousness could know that a three-, four-, or five-dimensional reality obtained. All understanding of Being is relational, is perspectival: a human being is a (potential) perspective on the world. But just because I cannot fathom the whole ocean doesn't mean I can't see the shore if I really try, train my mind, learn how others have understood what I 'see' and compare that with my own constantly evolving understanding of that. 

       And I don't even discount the possibility that some of us might have antennas to pick up signals from another dimension or realm (for me, Jesus above all but also: Plato, Buddha, Mohammed, Shakespeare, Bach, Dostoevsky, Einstein, Chagall, Weil, Tolkien among many others); there might be leaks from another realm that some of us, maybe even most of us, have access to if only we make ourselves receptive. But I don't insist on that. To me reality, Being, is not just a vast collection of particles and energies and forces, as physics understands the universe. It is more like a poem that Being is constantly employed to compose, and we read our part of it only in translation from the original into our different sounds, languages, images, thoughts, concepts, emotions, articulations; into sounds, myths, stories, poems, books of metaphysics, etc. – always our part of it. Translations can be wonderful; they can be mediocre or even flat-out wrong; but there is no one final translation, ever. The 'original' can only be understood by limited readers in translation, but it transcends and in a way is the ultimate judge of all the translations.

. . .

Kant believed all of reality as we represent it cannot be known in its reality to reality itself. The world is our representation of it. In the world representations can change but not because they are closer to or further away from the truth; they are replaced by more representations. A representation by can of another representation, which itself can be the representation of another representation. My view – and I guess it is closest to Plato’s; at least, to my understanding of Plato, but that isn’t important – is that we exist, we are part of being, and being can reveal itself to us in partial ways. Even if it revealed itself completely to us, we could not know it. A dog knows only the images on the TV; not the full reality of what he sees. Because reality is bigger than our ability to know it and even experience it, philosophy is open; our concepts can’t be closed except by arbitrary stipulation, which always point to some power agenda.

  The inability to prove that our Ideas of the world as a whole are Ideas of the real world is part of our finitude. I believe my ideas about my children are ideas about real children. I don't think anyone elses's ideas of my children - the teachers', for example - are nearly as close to their true being as mine are.  I can’t get outside of my consciousness and compare what is a taken-for-granted part of my idea of my children, that they really exist as the individuals they are, but from that it does not follow that I cannot be certain that they do really exist as the individuals they are. 

. . .

I feel like I have just been rambling today.