ILP thread on value-ontology (starting with Nietzsche, WTP)

Bravo.

Rather, I am dismissing the notion that there is an “is” separate from perspective. But Nietzsche has already done this. What I have done is to make the definition of the perspectival more logically evident, by placing it in properly perspectival terms.

I have essentially done nothing beyond what Nietzsche has thought, I have only ignored the structural limits he imposed on the world (I refuse to posit a “the world”) and brought to the foreground something where I see the core. I have refused to take Nietzsches laws as equal to his thoughts.

The will to power, useful as it is, is not to me his clearest or deepest insight. It is relatively obvious even, and its imposition rather brutal (as in ‘brute’, ugly) compared to his finely making-apparent of different valuing beings, types.

It is hard to find any passage in Nietzsche that is not an address of value/valuing.

“How can anything exist if it does not posit itself? The notion “it is simply there” is what is absurd. There is no “simply is”. There is only acting, positing. And I have answered the question, several times: by accident, enabled by the absence of its active impossibility.”

About the “enabled by the abscence of its active impossibility”, I think I can come around. Having thought about it more carefully, I actually even like the statement.

This issue comes back (to me) to the fact that the isn’tness and isness is not essencial. I think there may be infinite different otherness that we do not value, and there may be none. There may be 678 and 56/6. Only what is valued is for us.

I think, in the end, we agree.

I believe that Nietzsche, as seem to do many great men, succumbed to the mythical side of his philosophical narrative.

I read Zarathustra as the thickest blood and the only requirement to understand the heart of what Nietzsche knew. Experience as knowledge, quantum of experience as depth of knowledge - the life that cuts into life out of its lust of eternity.

Nietzsche lusted after eternity, when he posited that the world is nothing besides will to power. His will to recur infinitely gave cause to a pain that he needed to overcome – he willed to power, and to fortify this will he posited it as the penultimate and quintessential reality of meaning. He valued the will to power as the one and only necessity.

We may thank him and shed tears for this but we must not bleed for it again. To bleed once for a thing is noble, sacrifice strengthens, to bleed twice is bad, sacrifice weakens.

We cannot imagine it as it is, as we are ourselves within curved space-time. Of course we can imagine it as a rubber sheet that is distorted by massive objects, but this is not helpful to explaining it, as the force by which that analogy would explain it, gravity, is precisely the force that the model seeks to explain!

Ah, so you decided to use the word “metaphysical” correctly again for a change. Yes, of course I believe that; so do you! The bond that you propose is the bond of their shared “self-valuing”.

Obviously “it’s simply there” is not all I say about it! As Heidegger himself says, “will to power” is a Nietzschean answer to the question “What is being [Seiendes]?”…

Too much empty words.

Let’s have the final word in the Spartan way!

What is a subject? - Everything that possesses a center!

Does the universe possess a center? - If yes then only temporarily. Like Dionysus who is teared apart and then comes together from those parts.

Like someone who wants to create above himself but can not because he is surrounded by nothingness and thus he destroys himself.

Only so can the universe as a whole have a will to power - temporarily and without a final sense and goal.

Most of the time universe is a chaos of different centers of energy, i.e. subjects.

You have it wrong. The distortion is the massive ‘object’, and it is not an object, but affect. Nor would such a simplistic analysis do away with the usefulness of the model.

One of its uses is that it enables us to imagine time and mass /energy as being the same fabric. It is the scientific formula uniting time and being.

No, I don’t. This nonsense is precisely what value-ontology does away with. There is no valuing-ness being posited. Self-valuings are not units of a greater, all encompassing meta-thing that gives them their character.

And that answer is not “it is simply there” at all.

I was just using xkcd’s words. And don’t you mean “effect”? Or is that your own, Nietzschean addition? For surely the science does not say that it’s affect!

That’s fine, but in that it’s no different from any other space-time model (e.g., block-time). What does the notion of curvedness add to the notion of a space-time continuum, with regard to its imaginability?

They’re all “self-valuings”… You coined the term “will-to-power-ness”. I’ve never claimed that the will to power be an all-encompassing “meta-thing” that gives beings their character!

Really?? Does Nietzsche ask, “Why is there will to power and not rather nothing?” or anything like that?? Then tell me where!

All-too-unambitious. But I thank you, we have together sharpened the theory. Last words here: Kill the Father!

I also thank you Cezar. Pretending that you oppose value-ontology, you have enthusiastically described its ground and necessity. The question is: What is “possessing a center” ?

Pezer - That you may reap from this thought and (so) sow its seeds. It is a tree and its fruit is life.

The difference between valuing-into-being/being as value and will to power (as value) is that power is translated to value. Thereby the mechanism becomes evident: exchange. Between what? Not an absurd question. Between entities that evidently aim to conserve their own structure, which permits them to posit themselves unto each other – mind you though, the issue is that they do so in a certain way. The particular comes closer to view. A new acting is assumed, not an omnipresent storm of willing, but a coincidentally arisen, minimally possible somethingness, very spefically the thing that would survive in such an unlikely case of something against nothing - - a thing that ‘holds’ ‘itself’ ‘as good’. These three are one, amount to - noble, for instance, or kingdom. Cell. Metaphors are required.

“Subject” is an anthropomorphism. “Value” stands to reason as the earth to the sun.

Always. Let us keep this in mind:

[size=90]Language as an alleged science. The importance of language for the development of culture lies in the fact that, in language, man juxtaposed to the one world another world of his own, a place which he thought so sturdy that from it he could move the rest of the world from its foundations and make himself lord over it. To the extent that he believed over long periods of time in the concepts and names of things as if they were aeternae veritates, man has acquired that pride by which he has raised himself above the animals: he really did believe that in language he had knowledge of the world. The shaper of language was not so modest as to think that he was only giving things labels; rather, he imagined that he was expressing the highest knowledge of things with words; and in fact, language is the first stage of scientific effort. Here, too, it is the belief in found truth from which the mightiest sources of strength have flowed. Very belatedly (only now) is it dawning on men that in their belief in language they have propagated a monstrous error. Fortunately, it is too late to be able to revoke the development of reason, which rests on that belief.

Logic, too, rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption of the equality of things, the identity of the same thing at different points of time; but this science arose from the opposite belief (that there were indeed such things in the real world). So it is with mathematics, which would certainly not have originated if it had been known from the beginning that there is no exactly straight line in nature, no real circle, no absolute measure.

Human, All Too Human 1.11[/size]

Leaving behind us (behind me at least) now the de debate overe whether or not value ontology holds water / is “superior” to the will to power, on to an indication of its uses. For this I introduce this topic:

“Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.” (Thomas Carlyle)

If this is so, and this is no rock solid fact, but at the least a tempting thought, scientific thought would be the result of a valuing the world negatively in terms of self-value. To realize this is of course useful. It gives us the suggestion that science, if we do not radically deviate from our approach to it, and question the nature of its analyses, will keep on trying to negate, which means level.

Science does not permit inequality. Its logics are based on standardizing al value. What remains is value that van be standardized against the ground-value of science, which is not mans self-valuing per se. Science after all arose out of the minds who had to arm against nature, not in those who were “fit to it”.

Philosophy, this is at least the tast that I see now as possible, would have to bestow a new, affirmative morality onto science. Science may, as further understanding into in the future be employed to invest in the world as it is (grows, becomes, emerges, stands forth), instead of trying to subdue this becoming.

A further study of the theme Nietzsche opens with, in the Birth of Tragedy, would be useful. Because the Greeks, in creating Apollo / the Apollonian did the same thing as what the scientist / inventor does - arming against the terribleness of nature – but they did so by positing their own aesthetics against it, rather than to simply submit their judgment of nature to what was possible as a functionality of dominion. In other words, they created something that they could value higher in terms of self value, than they could value nature herself.

This is the genius of the Greeks, their noble genius, set against what must have arisen as the all-too-human genius which Carlyle describes. We must look at this dichotomy, science versus the Apollonian, to recognize in our own culture these two different types of valuing, for they both exist next to / intertwined into each other. In order to ‘heal’ our culture, to truly improve it, we have to make it possible first to distinguish what is Greek, and what is, in short, “nature-hating-ape”.

It is here that the size of the task becomes somewhat apparent, as an immense jungle of perspectives and conglomerates of perspectives, all intertwining by laws of an entirely hybrid nature, in an untraceable chemical sequencing of different and differentiating moralities, with with Nietzsche means physiologies, which means as much as (electro-)chemistries. But now we have a hand in this chemistries, from an intellectual viewpoint. We know what it is that we may know.

The duality of the Greek versus the tool wielding primate is one I choose, not one of which any claim can be made that it objectively exists, but one that I expect to illuminate what is good and what is less than good, in what “we”, i.e. the humans before us, have done, and placed before us.

Indeed.

For example, psychology. It has the value, as an example, of not being purely scientific, being mixed with humanitarianism.

Most of the financial backing that goes into psychology these days is probably theraputic psychology, the psychology that aims to help the individual cope with his own existence. Otherwise, it is the normal scientific mind-set that you have just described, a leveling mind-set, or spirit.

So, how about a psychology that studies us with the scope of the will to power, which I think here applies quite well, as in the art of understanding the will? A psychology that understands itself as a tool, a craft, and not a leveler. In this way, psychological craft, or study, would value itself and its art. Everything that it found would be included in a valuing system instead of a leveling, with many levels.

That would be the beginning of honesty, i.e. clearing the “lens” of perspective. In the oriental studies of subjectivity, stupidly understood as “mystical”, such an approach has been pursued at length with useful results, such as for example, yoga, which must be understood as far more than a set of stretching postures.

Sommer 1872 - Anfang 1873

19[24]

“Es handelt sich nicht um eine Vernichtung der Wissenschaft, sondern um eine Beherrschung. Sie hängt nämlich in allen ihren Zielen und Methoden durch und durch ab von philosophischen Ansichten, vergißt dies aber leicht. Die beherrschende Philosophie hat aber auch das Problem zu bedenken, bis zu welchem Grade die Wissenschaft wachsen darf: sie hat den Werth zu bestimmen!”

We are not concerned with a destruction of science, but with controlling it. She is in all here goals and methods through and through dependent on philosophical perspectives, but forgets this easily. The controlling philosophy must concern itself with the problem to which degree science may grow, she must determine the worth.

19[25]

“Nachweis der barbarisirenden Wirkungen der Wissenschaften. Sie verlieren sich leicht in den Dienst der „praktischen Interessen“.”

Proof of the barbarizing workings of the sciences. They lose themselves in the service of "practical interests.

Against the distinction between “logic” and “mysticism”:

“Das Unbewußte ist größer als das Nichtwissen des Sokrates.”
(the subconscious is greater than the not-knowing of Socrates.)

[Nietzsche, fall 1869]

Socrates was the Hellene who had become too weak to tolerate the unseen as a source of knowledge.
His instincts had turned against him.

“Das Dämonion ist das Unbewußte, das aber nur hindernd dem Bewußten hier und da entgegentritt: das wirkt aber nicht produktiv, sondern nur kritisch. Sonderbarste verkehrte Welt! Sonst ist das Unbewußte immer das Produktive, das Bewußte das Kritische.”
(The Daemon is the subconscious, which however only works as a hindrance towards the conscious: it does not work productively, only critically. Most bizarre twisted world! Actually the subconscious is always the productive, and the conscious the critical.)

“Plato’s Austreibung der Künstler und Dichter ist Consequenz.”
(Plato banishing the artists and poets is the consequence)

[ibid.]

Consciousness critical towards itself as critic :
“I know nothing, except that I posit what(ever) I posit.”

I realize now that my statement “all too unambitious” may have been interpreted as a sign of giving up. On the contrary, I considered my point sufficiently proven. But it was a stupid exclamation.

What else could it be? It does not matter who coined that term first.

It describes something entirely different. It refutes the idea that time would progress independently of conditions. There is no “time”, there is only space-time. Just as there is no “will”, only will-to-power.
The "speed of time’ is ‘set’ according to the amount of affect its progression involves.

This is precisely the difference between the WTP and value-thinking. The will to power presupposes both a totality (the world) and individual units. Value-thinking does not assume any “world”.

The WTP assumes a totality, which provides for the “will to power-ness”, its universality, and imposes this ‘-ness’ on individual units. As if the units are only there by virtue of the totality.

I propose the opposite. Whatever total quantity we may count, establish in a given moment, is always the result of individual self-valuings, which come into being at any time.

I do not believe that existence is a closed system, so I do not believe that the law of conservation of energy applies to it.
And in fact present science corroborates that there seems to be an increase in matter.

You misunderstand me! Nietzsche answered a particular question, i.e. what is this being/world? He did not say “the will to power is all there is, and this also answers the question why it is there”.

Nietzsche speaks of “encroaching units”. When asked of what these units are units, one has to answer “of the will to power”. When one asks “what are these units?” the answer is also “will to power”. So will to power is defined now as: units of the will to power, and “The” will to power is defined as “a collection of units of will to power”. We see that this does not bring us any closer to an understanding of what these units are, how they work, what the will to power is.

How can a unit be? What is a unit? How is it defined?

I have emphasized what points to what is lacking in Nietzsches definition of existence - the description of a mechanism. For how does a unit will to power? What makes the universe composed of units, instead of a giant blob of nano-goo? How can it be, given the laws of entropy, that there is any activity or structure at all? The will to power does nothing to explain this, it only describes.

What is needed here is the explanation of the relation, the relating, of different encroaching units. The explanation of why units are both the same (will to power, energy, being) and different (not occupying the same space, interacting with each other, exerting force on each other, willing power over each other).

Aleister Crowley said: “Love is the law, love under will.” He was on to something, in his romantic way.
Law here means: the way in which will operates - necessity.
Love means: Identification. And only by identifying a unit/being/particle as some-thing, can a unit/being/particle exert any influence on it.
Identification presupposes an identity of the identifier – a standard to identify with.
How does a standard exist? A standard is set. The existence of a standard is the result of an activity, an activity of the thing which embodies/uses the standard.
This standard-setting is what therefore must be at the core of all encroaching-being. The world is will to power from the outside - a monster of energy, encroaching units of this monster.

From the inside it must be interpreted as a very different principle: in order for a unit to will to power over another unit while retaining its unit-like quality (and not degenerating into a goo on the first interactions) it must hold itself as the primary condition for this interacting. The interacting/ willing to power must be based on what/that it already is - a potential for a (e)valuation-as-potential. Further, because all of existence is activity, and not cold, static object-as-such, this potential must be at root an activity. And since there is nothing “smaller” than this potential for (e)valuation as potential, at root of what we can conceive, there is the setting of itself of a potential for valuation as potential, which means; a standardization of a perspective.

This standardizing is the primal activity, from which all willing and structuring rises. If not for this self-standardizing, there would be no difference/differentiation, no polarity/energy, no being.

What is this self standardization? We all know it, we all do it – it is in every act that is not an act of self-undoing. It is in every act of interpreting, which means “making ones own”. It can only be understood indirectly - as that which is necessary in order to estimate/engage any-thing at all, in order to be a subject towards an object, a being enduring longer than the most fleeting of moments.

And in steps Rational Metaphysics…

An essential element in RM is Definitional Logic, obviously focused on definitions. Throughout this thread, I couldn’t help but note that a quintessential word has been left undefined and freely used with both of its common definitions. Such always leads to arguments of course (as intended). That word, is “Truth”.

When that word is defined in a specific manner, I can fully support the notion and concept of “Value-Ontology” and can even incontrovertibly prove its validity. But on the other hand, if left loosely defined or undefined, much like the issue of the undefined “God”, disbelief and serpent bane is inevitable. And because the word was not defined by the authors of Value-Ontology, I could only support its notion casually and by exception of noting that the word “probably meant a specific thing, although since it was never defined”, much like the Bible, it becomes anyone’s guess and not worth the political struggle to support whether it was true or not, valuable or not. It loses its value due to its obscurity and vague implications, which in the case of Nietzsche leads directly into serious selfish conflict and disharmony.

Being a little familiar with Fixed Cross, I can surmise what he is intending to say and can confirm, assuming I have guessed properly, that Value-Ontology is in fact valid and valuable as a real and fundamental philosophy of life. Presuming what it really means, I can state that reality itself does in fact work exactly as is being described. Entities respond to all things with respect to their own “self-interest” or they perish, in all cases. Value-Ontology in the interest of its own name, must learn the self-value of fully knowing thyself, and in this case, revealing it in clear text.

But a small bit of advice would be to very quickly establish the proposed means to avoid the train of disharmony quickly approaching by very thoroughly specifying by what means any particulate harmony is to be established under such a value system or thought. That which cannot maintain its “self-interest” harmony (Self-Harmony), WILLs itself to the power of extinction. Homosapian as a species is quickly actualizing that as we idly converse.