metonymy4u

Bergson stated that Kant had confused space and time in a mixture and proposed to advance our understanding of human reason by unmixing them. A deliberately poetic metaphor that begs for some redescription. What I believe Bergson wants to express is the fact that we often measure time by measuring space. And because we believe space is infinitely divisible into innumerable little packets, each one uniformly the same as the other for everyone everywhere in the universe, we therefore also believe the same about time. This model ostensibly helped Kant undermine the 17th century Cartesian notion that thinking substance is essentially separable from material substance. For if, as Kant proposes, space is merely the expression of our external awareness of these innumerable little packets and time merely the internal awareness of the same, then the 17th century dialectic (subjective vs. objective, thinking vs. material substance) devolves upon a cognitive description of homogenous awareness applied to a heterogeneous world of mere appearances. In a manner redolent with Cartesian solipsism, Kant proposes that we offset the instability of a world of experience with the consistency of the manner in which we experience that experience. Property dualism is undone by a description of cognitive monism. How neat.

What Bergson proposes is that we redescribe Kant’s idea of the homogeneity of our intuition of space and time as sets of quantitative heuristic tendencies (our sense of space and time as infinitely divisible) and sets of qualitative heuristic tendencies (our sense of change or “duration”). For Bergson the idea of duration functions to alert us to the distinct character of qualitative metaphors such as the difference between “anger” and “joy.” Such comparisons cannot rest on quantitative descriptions, but are expressed through qualitative comparisons only. Bergson thought that Kant had used his model of space and time to describe our sense of quantity only, mixing them together into an ineffective blend of “quantitative multiplicity” and thereby neglecting our qualitative sense. Thus Kantian space and time become for Bergson the manifold of quantitative understanding only, whereas Bergson’s idea of “true internal time” (duration) becomes the manifold of qualitative understanding. This was the clarification that Bergson hoped to promote by speaking of time and space all mixed up in the mind of old Kant. One might as well describe our sense of constancy (manifolds that can be counted) and our sense of change (manifolds that cannot be counted but only experienced).

After Bergson, two questions then arise: One is in regard to the impact of a model which no longer views space and time as the absolute unchangeable entities that they once were. What happens to our notion of cause and effect when the only identifiable constant in the universe is movement (change)? And furthermore, if nothing can be known as being where we think it is, at a given point in space or time, what can be said to exist? Finally, by redescribing duration (internal sense of change), as something distinct from space (external sense of constancy) doesn’t Bergson just get us into another (inverted) solipsistic trap, like a hole in space that has been neatly turned inside out but which still holds us tightly bound at its quicksand depth?

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when i suggest that we view tacts and mands as features of a relatively more heterogeneous or homogenous verbal context, i’m suggesting that we make the same move we recommend to our clients: to view the world contextually instead of categorically. to describe our context and its features rather than trying to track down “cause and effect.” the idea is to try to edit less and be more.

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kant returned to the age old question of “what sort of resting place can we discover for our sense of certainty in a world of uncertainty?” the form of this question for him was “what place can we find for morality in a world of science?” or “what place does freedom have in a world of contingent events?” which is nothing more than the question of the teleological suspension of the necessary and the conditioned. one might as well redescribe it as the question of “where does the individual fit in with other people?” his answer was that since our sense of freedom is at odds, experientially, with our sense of contingency it must therefore be separate from it. reason is taxonomized into a dialectic divided against itself—into speculative, constrained, aesthetic categories and practical, creative, moral categories. indeed, he made the same move plato did when plato assumed that if some pattern in the world, such as the consistent ratio of the hypotenuse to the rest of the triangle, was present to our senses, it must therefore have a real cause, expressed in that case by a mathematical relationship. for both plato and kant, mathematics and deduction were the paradigm for the discovery of the real. kierkegaard on the other hand chose to approach from another path. the question for kierkegaard was how to build a world in which both aesthete and ethicist could live in harmony. the aesthete is the one constrained by ecstatic inspiration, nietzsche’s dionysian spirit if you will, and therefore subject to contingency, not free. the ethicist on the other hand is the manifestation of kant’s free, apollonian, a priori rational good will which gives the law unto itself. except that for kierkegaard, neither of these individuals takes priority, neither wins the battle. each is constrained to live their lives as they are thrown into them, trapped within the facticity of a leap unto faith that wanders out and about themselves with every breath. don’t you know that yet?

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Nietzsche suggested that we view Kant’s work not so much as an a priori generality, but as the product of his particular journey through life. Still useful and beautiful and necessary for him and perhaps for us as well, once we have understood the process that we are calling “us”….

Both Freud and Skinner followed Nietzsche along this path, encouraging the rest of us to see our words as part and parcel of our experiences. The difference between them, as I experience it, is that Freud also followed Nietzsche into an inverted Platonism and Skinner did not.

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Since our institutions have become more important than the individuals whom they serve, we have, in deference to this inhumane system, been forced to suppress our shared humanity. Will we ever learn to put a stop to this runaway monster, before it grinds us to shreds in the gears of cruelty and greed?

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Poems are the fictions we build out of our lives.

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As I sat in zazen last night listening to my teacher describe his experiences growing up in a family that practiced meditation and mindfulness, my own growing up years were suddenly thrown into stark relief. I realized that I had grown up in a home beset by the constant threat of violence. And when I started to imitate the violence of my parents, as children will, my parents then used violence to try and suppress the violence that they themselves had taught me! Much of my adult life has been taken up with learning to live with the consequences of this violent early learning history. And in that moment of zazen that I have been speaking of, I realized that the thing I most try to avoid in my life is a sense of inadequacy, the sense that I am broken and that I am a creature that can only be confronted by violence, and that if there is a solution to any vexing problem in this world, then violence must be the answer, and must be the answer that people are approaching me with. I often assume that those whom I have not learned to trust are approaching me with violence in their hearts. The possibility, the very real and dependable possibility that non-violence might be a more effective solution was never taught to me, at least not in the realm of interpersonal relations. This was something I had to learn from other teachers, principally my psychotherapy supervisors and meditation teachers including my one and only al-anon sponsor of some years gone by. In the course of my professional career as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I have learned that my particular story is in fact quite common and I often stop to wonder: has the world gone completely mad?

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Dialectics began in the west with Plato, at least as far as the written record is concerned. The classical Greek word dialectic refers to a debate or discussion in which multiple perspectives are presented. It is related to our word dialect, and captures the sense of verbal exchanges. Plato conceived of human experience dialectically. In a move that inspired the 18th century writer Immanuel Kant, Plato depicts Socrates, the first anti hero of the western tradition, examining classical Greek pretensions to knowledge as represented by a series of discussants, some portrayed as wise and sophisticated, some as rascals or buffoons. Through dialectic Socrates unpacks the implications of his interlocutors’ ideas of knowledge and demonstrates their inadequacy. With these discussions, Plato examines what must logically be true if our experience of knowledge is to be more than just a contingent illusion. The most famous account of knowledge is the myth of the cave and the divided line. These parallel metaphors describe Plato’s notion of how we may, through dialectic, escape the cave of mere opinion and rise to the eternal light of truth and knowledge. The divided line assures us that knowledge and opinion, though related, are distinct and separable. These metaphors have been redescribed many times throughout the course of western history as a series of footnotes to Plato’s original account. We have the dialectic of nature vs. society (Hobbes), cognition vs. passion (Hume), receptivity vs. spontaneity (Kant) or reasonable mind vs. emotion mind (Linehan).

Where we have finally begun to emerge from the redundancy of Plato’s cave is in the anti-philosophical undermining of words as representations. The notion of a thought which outlasts its thinking or a word that stands for something else is now no more useful to us than the notion of a walk that outlasts its walking. Where did walking go, when you were finished? The walking was an event in a series of events. Nothing more. So the notion of an unconscious thought is nothing more than what Quine called the “idea idea” whose cash value has never fully appreciated in 2500 years of maturation. Plato divided his line in order to convince us to get out of the cave on a road paved with true words, to en-courage our belief in a higher form of being. Yet we now understand that the cave is a cave of our own creation. And as soon as we allow the idea-idea to live and die a natural death, like all events that pass into time, we can live where-ever and when-ever we want. Indeed, I often wonder where we might alight at the end of an un-divided line? To say that a series of words may end at the truth is to say that we could arrive as a set of unconditional word-events outside of space and time. And although some still like to amuse themselves with talk of the beginning of all events (the big bang) or the end of all events (the big crunch), we understand now that this represents nothing more than the last faded vestiges of Plato’s smile, unregenerate glowing still in the warmth of a cave lit camp fire.

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In difficult times I believe we need the courage of poetry.

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Modern behavior therapy asks us to engage in an activity that Richard Rorty calls “redescription.” Redescription is the creation of new metaphors to observe and describe our experiences. The value of these metaphors is not that they bring us closer to truth understood as a set of theoretically uncontingent statements that need never be redescribed ever again, but that they increase our flexibility in the world. Achieving the Truth on this reading would bring an end to all creativity and effort. Instead, what I want is to continue to practice my “not giving up”-behaviors.

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