“but I think he thinks the concept of the “atom” is a form and consequence of the concept of the “subject”, not the other way round.”
that’s right. i did say 'what necessarily follows is the concept of the ‘subject’. my bad. what i was getting at is that i assumed jakob was associating his idea of the ‘unit’ with the atom, when he said this:
“I disagree that this is an absurd question, it is real and needs to be answered. The answer is “units”. But what is a unit? The definition will to power relies on the conception of a unit.”
not knowing for sure he meant the atom, i still tried to head him off by treating the atom as what he might have meant by this ‘unit’ he mentions, and suggesting that this irreducible ‘unit’ (i could have even said particle) wasn’t irreducible, and as such, wasn’t a center of power. he then goes on to say that he wishes to describe such units through a ‘relating’, and finally that this relating is ‘one value standing in proportion to another’.
i am trying to suggest that because there is no unit, the ‘subject’ which he says ‘relates’, and therefore ‘values’, is in fact not able to ‘value’ because it isn’t differentiated from anything else in such a way as to be described as a discrete entity that can be in conflict with anything else. and if there is no conflict, there shouldn’t be any valuing. any relation between these parts is qualitatively synonomous with any other; a quantum of power is not ‘better’ or ‘worse’, but ‘more’ or ‘less’, if you will.
centers of focused power(ing), relating, yes, but not valuing, because these are not conflicting in this process of relating. rather, they are combining and configuring into different arrangements… the arrangement’s ‘power’ being measured by the ability to perform work; to subsist and remain in motion. to be ‘energetic’.
there is no metaphysical description here, just physical. ‘value’, on the other hand, is not a physical property of anything.
“I don’t think Nietzsche said or thought they could be infinitely divided.”
probably not, but i said it. i believe it was zeno who first pointed out the problems with thinking a massive thing existing in space/time could not be divided (although he didn’t say it like that). anything that takes up space, that is to say a geometric body, can be split along a center axis, resulting in two parts. the same goes for these two parts, and so on. this is observed in particle collisions.
the importance of this fact, for my purposes, is that it shows how ‘units’ can’t consist of essential form… that the essence of physical things in space and time is not structure but power, a process of assembling. but ‘what’ is assembling, moving, if not discrete entities?
we are faced with a real antinomy here; physical things can be divided, so can’t be essentially discrete or even concrete. i mean the very concept of the ‘unit’ can be at the same time considered a ‘field’.
anyway i digress at this point. this is a subject for physicists, not philosophers.
“And Nietzsche also says the whole or the sum of all quanta could not [be] considered infinite (WP 1067). I disagree with him here, by the way, or rather I disagree that considering it finite is any less unthinkable.”
WP 1066 states this more clearly; ‘a certain definite number of centers of force, etc.’
the problem with this idea is that it does not take into consideration the divisibility of these centers. a definite number would mean at some point, these ‘units’ could no longer be split, which is inconceivable. what is conceivable though is that a certain amount of space that a unit occupies will not expand on account of it being split; space does not increase with the division of the unit. two pieces of an object require no more space than the single piece they composed before being split. however, this leads to more, different inconceivabilities, so i have to digress again.
"I disagree again. Surely–and Nietzsche said as much–, the larger is not necessarily more powerful than the smaller! Thus he describes human beings, or at least certain human beings, or veritable human beings, as “beings that play with stars”
hmm. well if by power we only mean a capacity to perform work, a quantitatively larger assembly of quanta has more potential than a smaller one, i think. quantity, not quality is the decisive feature here.
“Just a quick response to this last paragraph, for now: surely subordinates “care” about their superiors in their organisation in some sense, and vice versa?”
it depends about what you are talking. what i meant when i refered to nietzsche’s thoughts- i found where in WTP they are; beginning at WP 642- was that a body assembly does not exhibit any ‘valuing’ of its corresponding parts. it simply takes its shape as a collection of ranked processes that subordinate each other.
“Yes, Nietzsche calls physical laws “necessities”. And he says that “necessity” here does not mean some kind of compulsion, but simply that one thing cannot at the same time and in the same sense be another thing as well. This is interesting, because it’s basically the law of (non-)contradiction–which he elsewhere critiques as a mere incapacity of certain kinds of animals (e.g., homo sapiens), not being able to contradict, but thereby by no means necessarily a “truth in itself”.”
this is an excellent observation, saully. very nice. that is precisely what he must mean! but then the law of non-contradiction concerns only things and classes, no?
to speak with hume again, we infer that there is ‘cause’ for why things act as they do- these being what we call the natural laws- but we can’t know this to be true. we simply observe events with a certain repetitious conformity and assume this results from the compulsion of said laws.
i especially like nietzsche’s ‘necessities’ here. he certainly got this instruction from hume, no doubt. but is there really necessity in this respect? why is it necessary for gravity to exist… i mean not in the way that it can’t both be what it is and not what it is (non-contradiction)… but why is it in the first place, so that we can even ask the question?
maybe neither because of law or necessity, but because of the impossibility of the universe being any other way. was leibniz on to something?
(an interesting aside here is that leibniz’s god wouldn’t be free in the omnipotent sense… and i touched on this earlier when i said god cannot violate the rules of logic, but rather answers to them. russell deals with this as well: natural laws are by god’s fiat, or because he must follow them? there are problems with either scenario)
“If this is true, the whole must logically be infinite. This amounts to the same as saying there’s an infinite number of finite wholes. And such finite wholes could certainly come into [conflict] with one another.”
what i meant here is that for everything that exists taken as a total sum, there would be nothing else for which to come in conflict with, and therefore no possibility of ‘value’, because there would be no other ‘way’ in which this sum could exist. one couldn’t say ‘the system values being like this rather than being like that’. there simply isn’t any other way it could be. ‘value’ is not possible unless there is also ‘disvalue’, if you will. the system does not ask itself: ‘do i value being like this rather than like that’.
i’m skipping through the rest of your post up to this point, for the time being:
“This reasoning will logically lead you back to solipsism, though. I mean, how do you know anyone besides you is valuing, has ever valued or will ever value?”
by analogy. i learn through a shared language what ‘valuing’ means by corresponding the ‘use’ of the word with a certain behavior; joe smiles, and then reaches for the bong. this must mean joe values the bong (assuming he isn’t faking). i don’t look behind the word for what it means, but at how it is used.
this is why i insist that VO has bewitched the word ‘value’ in so many ways. it anthropomorphizes things to which the word should not apply, and confuses its use as a result.
p.s. don’t smash me with an enormous wall of text, yet. i’ll still probably respond some to the other parts of your last post.
