“Reason” in language! …  oh what a deceptive old witch it has been!  I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

 

Reason is not ‘reality’.  Reality is the ineffable experiencing of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (aka the Tao).

Western culture adherence has put intellectual ‘Reason’ (the bipolar EITHER/OR logic of the excluded medium) into an unnatural precedence over the directly experienced sensorimotor rhythms (SMR) of our inclusion in the Tao.  This unnatural inverting which puts ‘bipolar logic’ into precedence over sensory relational experience is a psychological ‘bipolar disorder’ that manifests in the ‘double error’ (Nietzsche).  Where a social collective ‘buys in’ en masse to a belief in the ‘double error’, their understanding of ‘reality’ splits them into two opposing camps as in the Zen wind-and-flag koan, one pole of which (conservative) believes that reality is where individual-actions-and-developments are sourcing collective actions and developments, and the other pole of which (liberal) believes that collective actions and developments are sourcing individual actions-and-developments.

The Zen answer to this dichotomous koan is; ‘There is no such thing as ‘the sourcing of actions and development’, there is only the transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Tao’.

Modern physics has reaffirmed Zen in this matter, however, Western culture adherents have become so caught up in their bipolar arguing contention, that questioning the ‘reality’ of the double error implied ‘sourcing of actions and developments’ is being overlooked, even though it is a fundamental ‘error’ in Western culture adherent language and grammar based constructing of reality.

(N.B. The first error in the double error is to use ‘naming’ to infer local, independent thing-in-itself existence’ and the second error conflates the first by imputing the notional power of sourcing actions and development to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself).

So, this psychological double error based impression of ‘sourcing of actions and development’ gives rise to a ‘schizophrenic reality’ wherein the collective splits into two mutually opposing sub-collectives on the basis of polar difference in their construing of ‘what reality is’.  Both of the polarized groups with their polar opposite views of ‘what is reality’ deem themselves ‘normal’ by virtue of their agreement on ‘their reality’ WITHIN THEIR GROUP.  As R.D. Laing points out, this sort of ‘normal’ IS NOT NATURAL!

What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.”  — R.D. Laing

When people agree as a group on what constitutes “reality for them”, they are able to cooperate and function harmoniously, within their polarized group, on the basis of employing their ‘commonly perceived reality’ as their ‘operative reality’. However, as Giordano Bruno observed (before he was burned at the stake in 1600 for the heresy of relativity), ‘A majority has no monopoly on establishing what is the truth’.  And as has similarly been observed by Lafontaine; ‘La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure’. 

Individuals (sensitive miner’s canaries who sniff something wrong in this polarization) who do not buy into joining either side of the polarization, become the ‘identified patients’; i.e. the ‘not-normals’ (i.e. those not-wanting to join in either of the polar options as the ‘normals’ are doing).  This ‘culture imposed schizophrenic pressure) shows up when indigenous aboriginals [where schizophrenic thinking is NOT the normality] come into Western culture adhering social collectives)

 ‘Mental Health and Ethnic Minorities’ by Cochrane and Sashidharan, that show that the incidence of schizophrenia in non-native born blacks in the U.K. is 3-5 times higher than native born blacks. As the researchers point out, the implication is that we are not going to discover the source of the illness, no matter how deeply and intensively we investigate the individual’s ill health as if it were the property of the individual.

“From the outset it will be clear that most of the research in this field has followed the conventional epidemiological or medical paradigm by focusing on mental ill health as the dependent variable. It is, therefore, not surprising that there is a lack of empirically grounded research on mental well-being or the psychological resilience and survival of minority groups in this country” — R. Cochrane (University of Birmingham) and S. P. Sashidharan (North Birmingham Mental Health Trust) in ‘Mental Health and Ethnic Minorities’

The same conclusion was reached by Jill Astbury in ‘The Making of Women’s Madness’ in reviewing The World Health Organization statistics on the mental ill health of females which show that women have twice the incidence of ‘affective disorders’ (depression, bipolar disorder etc.) as men.  We usual dichotomous ambiguity associated with ‘sourcing’ of actions and developments (in this case mental illness) surfaces once again.  Astbury observes that there is a problem in assuming that ‘the women are ill’ rather than there is an illness-inducing dysfunction in the social dynamic which may be manifest more visibly in the more sensitive members of the social collective.  In other words, is mental breakdown due to a fault in the individual or due to in the dynamics of the collective in which the individual in included?

The research stemming from this viewpoint had a systemic blindness. It could literally not see what it was doing, as the normative quality of its own presuppositions had made them invisible.” – Jill Astbury

As expressed in Mach’s principle;” The dynamics of the inhabitants (boils) are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat (flow) at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat (flow) are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants (boils).  In other words, the habitat and the inhabitant are (as in the Zen koan of wind-and-flag) without ontological independence (the all-including Tao or ‘wave-field’ precludes  the ontological independence that the abstractions of language and grammar impute to relational forms are psychological impression and not sensory experience based.

The results of the philosophical investigations of Nietzsche, Bohm, Schroedinger, Wittgenstein and others, support the understanding that ‘reason’ allows to construct abstract language and grammar reduced-reality-constructions that effable-ize’ the ineffable Tao, delivering the huge benefit of rending the ineffable Tao (a reduced version thereof) effable.  What was unshareable because ineffable becomes crudely shareable by way of ‘reason’.   That is, the ‘duning’ that is non-local and non-material because it is a resonance phenomenon (wave-field phenomenon, when it is reduced to ‘double error based dunes’ (name-instantiated local things-in-themselves with powers of sourcing actions and developments) gives us the abstract intellectual ‘traction’ for ‘reason’ based ‘explanatory’ constructions.

‘Reason’ becomes problematic here in that it is an abstract intellectual reduction that constitutes a ‘dumbing down’ of the reality  of our sensory relational experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (the Tao). 

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Reason is based on logic of which there are two types;

The BOTH/AND (quantum) logic of the included medium (e.g. boil and flow are seen as a one thing while the ‘two-ness’ is only ‘appearance’. Reason based on this  BOTH/AND logic has no exposure to ‘schizophrenia’ as does EITHER/OR logic

The EITHER/OR logic of the excluded medium (e.g. boil and the flow are seen as two ontologically unique and separate things-in-themselves. Reason based on this EITHER/OR logic is ‘schizophrenia’ inducing (some say the boil is sourcing the flow and some say the flow is sourcing the boil (see also the Zen wind and flag koan – that brings forth the question; which is sourcing movement?) Answer; neither, there is only transformation, no sorcery.

Indigenous aboriginal cultures and modern physics base their ‘reason’ (remember, reason is a reduction of our ineffable experience that renders the ineffable crudely effable) on the BOTH/AND logic of the included medium (boil and flow, or ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’, are only one, but are distinguishable as two by ‘appearance’, but not by ontic separateness

Western culture’s ‘standard’ mode of ‘reasoning’ employs EITHER/OR logic.  This logic is innately ambiguous as in the Zen wind/flag koan or the boil/flow topology; i.e. does the dynamic of the inhabitant source change in the habitat or does the dynamic of the habitat source change in the inhabitant?  EITHER/OR reason is innately ambiguous and leads to the ‘conservative – liberal’ polar opposition in THE WESTERN SOCIAL COLLECTIVE, … where people form groups whose reason polarizes against each other (one group takes the EITHER/OR reason branch wherein ‘one rotten apple spoils the barrel’ (conservative) and the other group takes the EITHER/OR reason branch where ‘it takes a whole community to raise a good/bad child’ (liberal).

Sensitive individuals (miner’s canaries) do not want to ‘take sides’ so they become human ‘buffers’ who embody this polarizing split in order not to ‘take sides’ (they allow the ‘sides’ to form within their own self).  ALL OF THIS COMES ABOUT BECAUSE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EMBRACE OF THE ABSTRACT LOGIC OF THE EXCLUDED MEDIUM AS THE BASIS OF THEIR ‘REASON’.  (Don’t forget, our sensory experience (sensorimotor rhythms etc.) gives more basic but ineffable understanding of experience.  ‘Reason’ is only a crude tool (even though it’s explicitness impresses us) that falls innately short of our sensory experience; however, reason is effable while sensory experience of inclusion in the Tao is ineffable (not shareable by language).

Modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta embrace reason based on BOTH/AND logic of the included medium (the boil is the flow and only appears separate).  Reason based on BOTH/AND logic of the included medium, can be suffested in language; e.g. by speaking in terms of ‘duning’ (wave-field resonance) rather than ‘dunes-that-shift-and-grow’.  The same for ‘humaning’ (wave-field resonance).  This is the EASTERN mode of reason which is not exposed to the schizophrenia (of the collective and/or individual) as the WESTERN mode of reason is.  The Tao is nevertheless the un-reduced reality directly available to us through our senses (e.g. our innate wave-sensing or resonance-sensing which gives rise to forms in the flow such as ‘organisms’.

DON’T FORGET, THE TAO THAT CAN BE TOLD IS NOT THE TRUE TAO.  THAT IS, OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE IS OF INCLUSION IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM, WHILE LANGUAGE-BASED ‘REASON’ IS A LESSER FORM OF UNDERSTANDING, THAT EMERSON POINTS OUT IS THE ‘TOOL THAT HAS RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN’.

Neurofeedback is one means of breaking the out-of-control hijacking of our understanding by ‘reason’ and put us back in touch with our sensations which are our means of understanding the ineffable inclusion in the Tao. But first we have to acknowledge that ‘reason’ is problematic, particularly the schizophrenia inducing reason that comes with the logic of the EXCLUDED MEDIUM, the popular logic of Western culture that splits the social collective into ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and for sensitive miner’s canaries who don’t like to ‘take sides’, it splits them into mutually opposing poles as in ‘bipolar disorder’, making the ‘abnormal’ by the standards of those who accept the splitting into conservative and liberal.

REMEMBER, THIS IS ALL ‘REASON’ BASED AND ‘REASON’ COMES FROM REDUCING THE INEFFABLE TO THE EFFABLE.

Reducing ineffable sensory experience of inclusion in the Tao to an ‘effable’ ‘reason’ -based account of such ineffable experience is what gives rise to the emergence and development of the tool of language and grammar.   Western culture schizophrenia arises where we let this tool of ‘reason’ ‘run away with the workman, the human with the divine’.

“Reason” in language! …  oh what a deceptive old witch it has been!  I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

So long as we are using ‘reason’ to try to figure out what is wrong with our thinking, we are in a Sisyphusian struggle akin to trying to bite our own nose (‘schizophrenia’) or trying to change the drive-train on our car while driving in it.

Goedel’s theorem of incompleteness of all finite systems of logic says that reason can’t be used to overcome its own innate limitations.  Reason reduces the ineffable Tao to something effable, called ‘reason’, which is no longer the Tao but something innately less.  The issue described by Emerson of ‘the tool (of reason) running away with the workman, the human with the divine’, is what Nietzsche (an admiring reader of Emerson) is talking about in regard to our Western culture practice of using ‘reason’  that imputes the power of sorcery to ourselves via the ‘double error’ of language and grammar.

REASON (as in the EITHER/OR logic of the excluded medium) IS A CRAZY-MAKER, A BREEDER OF SCHIZOPHRENIA THAT PLAYS OUT IN THE SOCIAL COLLECTIVE AS THE CONSERVATIVE-LIBERAL BIPOLAR DISORDER, OR IN THE INDIVIDUAL AS AN INDIVIDUAL ‘BIPOLAR DISORDER’ (SCHIZOPHRENIA)

IT IS ‘CRAZY’ TO LET REASON ‘TRUMP’ SENSORY-EXPERIENCE-UNDERSTANDING THAT COMES THROUGH INCLUSION IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM (AKA ‘THE TAO’).

The ‘bipolar disorder’ that manifests in the social collective as the conservative-liberal ‘reasoning’ split comes from the same language and grammar source as the bipolar disorder that arises within the individual; i.e. the ‘double error’ of naming to impute thing-in-itself being (first error) conflated with grammar that conflates the first error by (second error) imputing the power of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself.

NOTE THAT BECAUSE THE SPLITTING OF THE COLLECTIVE GIVES RISE TO PLURALITIES OF PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT EACH OTHER ‘AGAINST EACH OTHER’, THE SCHIZOPHRENIA IS NOT ‘ABNORMAL’ (IT IS ‘NORMAL’) WHEREAS IN THE CASE OF THE INDIVIDUAL, THIS SPLITTING IS WITHIN ONESELF AND IT STANDS OUT AS ‘ABNORMAL’ SO THAT THE ‘COLLECTIVE OF BIPOLAR NORMALS’ WILL TRY TO HELP THE INDIVIDUAL BIPOLAR ‘ABNORMAL’ RETURN TO THE COLLECTIVE BIPOLAR ‘NORMALITY.

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In the simplest terms, Western culture has built into its language and grammar a ‘double error’ which invokes, in the abstracting intellect, an innately ambiguous bipolar splitting which, in the case of the social collective, divides the collective into ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ factions, and in those sensitive ‘miner’s canaries’ who want to avoid ‘joining in such polar faction-building, ’embody’ this language-and-grammar induced psychological splitting within their own ‘self’.  REMEMBER! … this splitting is a psychological impression that comes from language and grammar, — WESTERN CULTURE LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR, … by way of the ‘double error’ where, for example, in the relational transformation we know as ‘duning’.

In reducing resonance (‘duning’) with the double error, we (first error) use ‘naming’ to impute thing-in-itself existence to one of the lobes in the washboard-appearing resonance train, and conflate this with grammar (second error) that imputes to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself, the power of sourcing actions and developments (second error).  By way of superficial ‘appearance’, we can separate out (as if using a marking pen on a photograph) a ‘particular lobe’ in the ‘washboard-like’ visual pattern of the resonance-induced (wave-field-induced) multi-lobe forming (duning) of sand, dust, bio-matter etc., … and then, having outlined a single lobe in the resonance based ‘washboard’, start speaking of ITS DEVELOPMENT and ITS MOVEMENT, as if BY ITS OWN POWERS OF ACTION AND DEVELOPMENT (i.e. ‘this dune is growing longer and taller and in shifting to the East’).

THIS IS WHERE AND HOW ‘REASON’ TAKES OVER IN REDUCING THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM TO DOUBLE ERROR BASED ‘THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES WITH THEIR OWN (NOTIONAL) POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT.

The reduction of the resonance-phenomenon (wave-field phenomenon) of ‘duning’ (as available to our sensory experience even though it is a non-local, non-material relational phenomenon), to the local, material terms of ‘the dune’ and ‘what the dune does’ illustrates ‘what is lost’ in such Western-culture-habitual language and grammar ‘double error’ based reduction.  What is ‘gained’ is our being able to share (some reduced semblance of) what is inherently ‘ineffable’ since resonance is the manifesting of the tranforming relational continuum aka ‘wave-field’ which is inherently non-local and non-material (non-explicit).

REASON BASED ON THE DOUBLE ERROR SERVES AS A CRUDE MEANS OF SHARING THE INEFFABLE (CRUDE BECAUSE IT ENTAILS ‘DROP OUT’ OF ESSENTIAL MEANING.).  But we win some as we lose some . THE HUGE GAIN HERE IS THAT THE EFFABLE IS EXPLICITLY SHAREABLE WHILE THE INEFFABLE IS NOT EXPLICITLY SHAREABLE (in other words, it is not the ‘ineffable’ that is being shared but some reduced surrogate.  For example, I can utter the word ‘duning’ and/or ‘resonance’ but these terms imply only non-local, non-material wave-field phenomena, relational forms of understanding that do not support REASONING.

In order to reduce our relational understanding (this which comes to us directly through our sensory experience) to make it fit for REASONING, we resort to ‘the double error’ of language and grammar.  By reducing our experiencing of the ineffable by way of the double error of language and grammar to render it fit form REASONING, we impute God-like powers of jumpstart creating to abstract name-instantiated things-in-themselves. This is nevertheless a very useful tool (it enables SHARING a crude reduction of our unique ineffable experience), but when the tool is used not simply in an inference oriented support role (e.g. as in poetic inference/allusion) but as a ‘substitute reality’, we have a problem that Nietzsche alerts us to as follows;

“Reason” in language! …  oh what a deceptive old witch it has been!  I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

 

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FOOTNOTE:  Nietzsche quote (in English and German) on the deceptiveness of ‘reason’ in philosophy — (Proposition 5 in Chapter 5 (Reason in Philosophy) of Twilight of the Idols.

 

Chapter 5.

“Reason” in Philosophy

 

At long last, let us contrast the very different manner in which we conceive the problem of error and appearance. (I say “we” for politeness’ sake.) Formerly, alteration, change, any becoming at all, were taken as proof of mere appearance, as an indication that there must be something which led us astray. Today, conversely, precisely insofar as the prejudice of reason forces us to posit unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, thinghood, being, we see ourselves somehow caught in error, compelled into error. So certain are we, on the basis of rigorous examination, that this is where the error lies.

It is no different in this case than with the movement of the sun: there our eye is the constant advocate of error, here it is our language. In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things–only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word.

Very much later, in a world which was in a thousand ways more enlightened, philosophers, to their great surprise, became aware of the sureness, the subjective certainty, in our handling of the categories of reason: they concluded that these categories could not be derived from anything empirical–for everything empirical plainly contradicted them. Whence, then, were they derived?

And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: “We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, for we have reason!” Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language–oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

 

(Original German)

Kapitel 5

Die »Vernunft« in der Philosophie.

 

 

– Stellen wir endlich dagegen, auf welche verschiedne Art wir (– ich sage höflicher Weise wir…) das Problem des Irrthums und der Scheinbarkeit in’s Auge fassen. Ehemals nahm man die Veränderung, den Wechsel, das Werden überhaupt als Beweis für Scheinbarkeit, als Zeichen dafür, daß Etwas da sein müsse, das uns irre führe. Heute umgekehrt sehen wir, genau so weit als das Vernunft-Vorurtheil uns zwingt, Einheit, Identität, Dauer, Substanz, Ursache, Dinglichkeit, Sein anzusetzen, uns gewissermaaßen verstrickt in den Irrthum, necessitirt zum Irrthum; so sicher wir auf Grund einer strengen Nachrechnung bei uns darüber sind, daß hier der Irrthum ist. Es steht damit nicht anders, als mit den Bewegungen des großen Gestirns: bei ihnen hat der Irrthum unser Auge, hier hat er unsre Sprache zum beständigen Anwalt. Die Sprache gehört ihrer Entstehung nach in die Zeit der rudimentärsten Form von Psychologie: wir kommen in ein grobes Fetischwesen hinein, wenn wir uns die Grundvoraussetzungen der Sprach-Metaphysik, auf deutsch: der Vernunft, zum Bewußtsein bringen. Das sieht überall Thäter und Thun: das glaubt an Willen als Ursache überhaupt; das glaubt an’s »Ich«, an’s Ich als Sein, an’s Ich als Substanz und projicirt den Glauben an die Ich-Substanz auf alle Dinge – es schafft erst damit den Begriff »Ding«… Das Sein wird überall als Ursache hineingedacht, untergeschoben; aus der Conception »Ich« folgt erst, als abgeleitet, der Begriff »Sein«… Am Anfang steht das große Verhängniß von Irrthum, daß der Wille Etwas ist, das wirkt, – daß Wille ein Vermögen ist… Heute wissen wir, daß er bloß ein Wort ist… Sehr viel später, in einer tausendfach aufgeklärteren Welt kam die Sicherheit, die subjektive Gewißheit in der Handhabung der Vernunft-Kategorien den Philosophen mit Überraschung zum Bewußtsein: sie schlossen, daß dieselben nicht aus der Empirie stammen könnten, – die ganze Empirie stehe ja zu ihnen in Widerspruch. Woher also stammen sie? – Und in Indien wie in Griechenland hat man den gleichen Fehlgriff gemacht: »wir müssen schon einmal in einer höheren Welt heimisch gewesen sein (– statt in einer sehr viel niederen: was die Wahrheit gewesen wäre!), wir müssen göttlich gewesen sein, denn wir haben die Vernunft!«… In der That, Nichts hat bisher eine naivere Überredungskraft gehabt als der Irrthum vom Sein, wie er zum Beispiel von den Eleaten formulirt wurde: er hat ja jedes Wort für sich, jeden Satz für sich, den wir sprechen! – Auch die Gegner der Eleaten unterlagen noch der Verführung ihres Seins-Begriffs: Demokrit unter Anderen, als er sein Atom erfand… Die »Vernunft« in der Sprache: oh was für eine alte betrügerische Weibsperson! Ich fürchte, wir werden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch an die Grammatik glauben…

 

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