The Trouble with Air Breathing Swim bladders

Raintree

  One view suggests language is a representation of reality that varies from language to language and as a result produces different understandings of reality.

 Chomsky's  view suggests  that language is essentially the same from one language to another language.

 You and I talk about flexible meanings in the symbols of language. I think my view is that while the symbols might stay the same meaning changes, gets added to words and it gets taken away from words. Language is a process that moves.

 What do Cognitive science people say about language and  how we understand things.

 What they come up with is an interconnection, sometimes called Global to mean really interconnected, that ultimately defies attempts to define it with structures. That old Austrian Wittgenstein's conviction "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" is a tidy axiom. But we forget that synthesizing thought predates the noises of spoken language, we have to work out how to say things and sometimes we have to invent new words, or take one from another language, like "schadenfreude" to satisfy those "thereof one must be silent" moments.

 God knows where grammar comes from.

 We humans did not make our vocal cords from scratch, they go back to a simpler time 400 million years ago, when we were air breathing fish. A lung fish which had developed folds to prevent water entering our air breathing swim bladders. 

  

The Husserl/Sartre Heresy

Mallow

  Easy to get side tracked with Saint Teresa, she was an astonishing person, and I wonder about the causes and sources of her fits, which might have been epilepsy, might have been moldy bread, could have been mushroom or womanly wiles.

 Which brings us back to Husserl's influence on Sartre's essay - Emotions: Toward a Theory. His suggestion that Emotions were a Bad Faith, magical source of illegitimate excuses for inauthentic action must have been received with degrees of astonishment from professionals in the psychiatry business who, I believe, had been suggesting since Descartes that the Ego was a guide or some sort of decider with the power to squash rebellion and exile the rebellious 

  Sartre's Ego-less existence, when confronted be a Bolshy back row does, in his theory of emotions, seem to have a rebellion squashing technique. I think Freud and maybe Jung saw the role of psychology in our society as "bandage the damaged and send them back to the front." Sartre was, if you'll forgive me, more wishy-washy liberal in his search for a cure rather than a bandage.

  Patience sweet one! For Husserl consciousness was always "intentional." What does that mean? It means consciousness is always directed at something. Might come as a surprise to some, but you aren't just always slack- jawed conscious, what you are is always conscious of something, of a tree, of ruby red lips, of a spot on someone's nose, and so on. Consciousness for Husserl darts around from one corner of the eye to the other, and yes it can be absolutely exhausting.

 Sartre would have seen Saint Teresa's visions, whether from epilepsy, moldy bread, or mushrooms, as her mind choosing a magical transformation of the world. His main squeeze, de Beauvoir, along with a vast swath of psychiatrists, psychologists and the like would want to remind Sartre that the brain was part of a situation. Then they'd go on to moan about how Consciousness does not start from a vacuum. It has to interpret and it has to inhabit the physical state it finds itself in. Consciousness doesn't just lush out and dream of sex and chocolate, it's intentional, it darts around form object to object.

 With Husserl and subsequent thinkers the meaning in "Object" contained the idea that Consciousness was always conscious of something, this something included both traditional objects such as cups and loaves of bread and other objects of the mind including ideas, fear, emotions anything that consciousness could be conscious of. 

 Here the argument goes, "As soon as you reflect on something, that something becomes an Object." 

 This understanding was a golden moment for Sartre. Consciously and intentionally reflecting on something resulted in that object becoming an object that could be examined. The object, in this case an emotion, whether it be ennui or rage, is no longer you. It's an object.

 For Sartre, "If I can step back and observe my own fear, my own ideas, and even my own Ego, then none of those things are ME. They are all objects floating in front of consciousness." And as such, from occasion to situation, these objects could be thought of as a rebellious back row, which meant the magical transformation this particular rebellious back row was attempting to make could be eidetically examined, the layers peeled away and the truth, bad faith or otherwise, revealed.

  Husserl’s phenomenology had dragged everything out into the light. Sartre loved it, it was liberating. But for traditional Cartesian Philosophy, your "mind" or "Ego" was a sacred inner room where emotions, thoughts, and identity lived together as a cozy, neurotic heap of "I'm thinking therefore I am-ing." It was a pile or a stack rich with potential for well paid work, so long as Union Breakers like Husserl and down-right Bolsheviks like Sartre didn't have their way. 

Beauvoir's Situation

Boots and Socks

  Beauvoir's views on object and subject explored in her book Ethics of Ambiguity, addresses an understanding that "You cannot manifest freedom in a vacuum." My freedom requires your freedom. You can't just say "hell is other people" because other people mess with your theory. Schopenhauer might have agreed with Sartre on the "other people" issue, Beauvoir did not.

 Those who avoid wallowing in the extreme irony of sociopathy and retain a fondness for ethics, moral principles and good human conduct, might enjoy Beauvoir's : "To will oneself free is also to will others free." We can think about that as we look to understand the world Beauvoir preferred to live in. 

 In Ethics of Ambiguity, creating the "Me" is inherently political and collective. You build your "Me" through your concrete actions in the public square, and your primary moral duty is to tear down the physical, economic, and political structures that prevent others from building their "Me." Freedom isn't an abstract feeling inside your head, it's the physical space you fight to clear so that every human being has the bread, the dignity, and the air to decide who they want to become.

 She had her archetypes, her villains, her "other people," her crew of inauthentic. They included:

 The Apathetic. They live in a state of dull inertia, letting society, habit, or routine make every decision for them. They fear passion, fear commitment, and live like a houseplant.

The Serious Man. Claims to care deeply about morality, but they surrender themselves to an external Cause, an Organization, a Party, or a God. They say things like "The doctrine is absolute. I am just a humble servant." By pretending the "Cause" is an objective truth, they feel justified in crushing anyone who opposes it.

The third type, Beauvoir referred to as Nihilists.  I think we can consider Beauvoir's Nihilist as the person who knows the Serious Man is full of crap, but has decided that nothing is objectively true, nothing matters! Everything is permitted! It's a cynical and destructive nihilism, an Existential Nihilism rather than an Epistemological Nihilism.

 Her fourth archetype, she called The Adventurer. The Adventurer loves their own freedom and lives wildly, taking risks, pursuing passions, and exploring the world, but doesn't care about anyone else's freedom. They treat other people as mere scenery or obstacles in their personal game. A cad and bounder. A spittoon next to an altar, as they say. 

 For Sartre without a pre-ordained "Me," you are radically free to become your own "Me" in a world that is simultaneously material and idea, object and subject. Now if your existence precedes your essence and if you are radically free to be a "Me" your "Me" has no excuse for your Bad Faith choices

 Sartre treated the emergence of "essence" as a solo flight into empty space. Beauvoir saw that emergence as a human life lived on solid ground among other people. For her, essence is not something you invent in a vacuum, it is a slow, concrete sediment built up through your choices in dialogue with the world, your body, and the choices of others.

 Beauvoir agreed that there is no divine blueprint or fixed "nature" waiting inside us when we enter the world. But her point was that even without a fixed nature, you never exist as a blank slate. No!  You exist in a Situation.

Breakfast with Simone and Jean-Paul

Young Turkey

 Let's look at existence as it was between Sartre and Beauvoir who shared a long intimate relationship with each other. The Sartre in question is Jean-Paul Sartre, a man presented as a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, and is considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. The Beauvoir is Simone de Beauvoir a woman presented as a writer, social theorist, and feminist activist, who didn't consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered a philosopher at the time of her death, yet her influence on Feminist Existentialism and Feminist Theory is considered dramatic.

 For those who might be concerned about this and that, or find it difficult to breath without titles, a philosopher, is either a Professional Confuser, a Question Machine, or according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a thinker, scholar, or seeker of wisdom who studies fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, ethics, and reason.

 One of Beauvoir's many books, is Second Sex which was published in 1949 and was soon banned by the Vatican. In the book Beauvoir asked "What is Woman?"

 Her answer, in mid twentieth century society, Men were considered the default, Women were considered the other. She argued that the great defeat of woman occured in the Bronze age with the emergence of private property which resulted in woman becoming riveted to their body, like an animal and made it possible for men to dominate both her and nature. Beauvoir followed the Ancient Greek idea that men succeed in the world by transcendence, immanence is the lot of women. She added the twist that "One is not born, rather one becomes a woman." And yes her writing style was very precise. 

 Immanence for Beauvoir meant existing within the boundries of an object, a cup, a mind, a body, nature. There was no way out, no transcending motherhood for girls. Her point, the family and patrimony oppresses women. Yes indeed Simone de Beauvoir was one of the few who believed that of women this side of the Bronze Age only Saint Teresa of Avila lived her life for herself.

 What did Beauvoir think of her long time male friend who was scared of lobsters, a condition exacerpated by his one time, 1935, experiment with that favorite of the early beatnik aesthetic, Mescaline. How did she manage his understanding of Freedom, how did she react to his approach to a theory of emotions which suggested that emotions were basically feeble bad faith reactions that resulted from chosing not to be free.

 Well these were the cool people, the van guard of the future, who understood irony, never delivered milk, mail or worked in a coal mine. For them Mescaline was an experiment with the mind in an attempt to get closer to creative, not a chance to forget until Monday morning.

Simone wanted to show how men had historically built a culture that claimed, Reason, Logic, and Action for themselves. This was their Ego, they were the Subject of Reason, Logic and Action.. In the process, as Simone understood it, they dumped Emotion, Passivity, and the Body onto women. To men, Beauvoir was inclined to think, Women were the Shadow, they were the Object of Emotion, Passivity and the Body, an immanence they were unable to transcend because, you know, they gave men sons.

 At the breakfast table the Patriachal division of existence went this way for Simone. The Male was reason, action, mind. He was The Subject. The female was emotion, passivity, body. She was the Subjugated Other.

 When men labeled women as overly emotional or hysterical, Beauvoir reckoned  they were doing exactly what Sartre called Bad Faith. Men were running away from their own bodily, emotional vulnerabilities, because they'd dumped those weakness onto woman.

 For Jean-Paul emotions were a magic trick, they were chosen by consciousness to avoid difficult realities, they were malaise foi big time. For Simone, there was no magic trick, emotions were "genuine, embodied responses to real world vulnerabilities and situations."

 For Jean-Paul, other people were a threat to his freedom. "Hell," he claimed, "Is other people." Simone thought that just silly.  For Simone, the condition of her freedom was my freedom. Her freedom required the freedom of others.

 For Jean-Paul the body was a fact. It was a facticity, it was something to transcend though choice. For Simone, we people lived through our physical, emotional and everything else body. It was the anchor. Go ahead, transcend appendicitis while you eat your crusty baguette and complain about your coffee being too hot!

 Sartre saw us people as possesing a radical, lonely freedom, we had no moral guide to tell us what to do. For Simone that was a bunch of quaint pipe smoking and sometimes cute nonsense. She saw action in solidarity, people helping people. Freedom was only authentic when it worked to liberate others. Anything else and what was the point, go live in a mountain, be a Pallas's Cat.

 Those breakfasts must have been fun to witness