I agree with, and admire, everything you’ve said in this post so far.
Unconscious matter has by definition no consciousness. However, how do you know there is “matter” (or force) which is unconscious? Is consciousness not simply the reaction of something to something else? And is not human (self-)consciousness a most complex, and chaotic - in the sense of “chaos theory” - combination and interrelation of such forces? Which all seek the “path of least resistance”? I.e., if we apply Nietzsche’s anthropomorphism, to seek power over that over which power is attained most easily first?
Is it aimless? Can we eradicate “action at a distance” from our principles?
I once posted a picture of myself as a 3 year old looking at a sandpile I had constructed with my mother. I was holding a little shovel looking out while my mom did all the work. I remember feeling proud to be part of this work; a fortress against the tide functioning as agent of entropy.
At this time the Ford factories were closing down here, and protesters has signs with ‘Ford Moet Blijven’ - [Ford must stay] I took ‘Ford’ to be ‘fort’ - fortress in dutch, and I exclaimed that slogan when the sea came threatening.
The point I want to make with this is that I can see my defense of structure related itself to the world of grownups as a higher authority. I hoped my parent’s big people would invoke the entropy to stop. So I seek ever higher authority, and surmount in God. Not at all, of course - I keep seeking for an ever higher God.
On the other hand, I relied on my own authority by standing there and presiding over it. I deeply felt that watching it kept it safe. I took my own subjective epxerience as a proof of order. That is something your (Satyr’s) theory doesn’t cover - the completeness of the world of a child.
It comes from nowhere because it is absent. It is invented by the human mind as a consequence of how the mind thinks.
We feel in ourselves an absence, a lack, and we try to fill it by creating or imagining an ideal that will fulfill us and give us meaning.
Organizing is simply a way of resisting the decay.
A reaction to an action or to an activity.
It begins as an accident, a chance occurrence in the flow of constant change.
But power or order attracts just as mass attracts. And so some order commences which slows the entropy by providing a resistance to it.
An emerging unity is born.
The more ordered it becomes the more it resists and drops away from the flux or separates from it.
We are able to project an image of structure by taking what we know as a pattern for what we don`t.
We take what structure there is in us, in self-knowledge and self-awareness and we project it into the unknown.
But even here there is incompleteness.
Sauwelios
Of course you can never know for certain but only deduce it.
For me consciousness is matter focusing its energies into a cohesive unity with a common motive.
Consciousness is not only a reaction but a focused one - a more efficient reaction. This focus with a motive is the Will.
This is why consciousness can only choose the path-of-most-resistance as an act of Will.
Because I cannot perceive a focused motive behind the flux of all matter but only see it as a constant flow along the paths-of-least-resistance I call it unconscious. I see coincidence of flow, like a river, attaining a cohesion due to this coincidence and shared flow with a shared resistance and force but I cannot say that this is focused or that it has a motive or a goal.
What motive I find I place there as an explanation derived from self-consciousness or self-awareness.
My abstractions are artificial absolutes which help me understand what I am experiencing.
Because consciousness is focused energy it requires a focus, a destination. The abstraction becomes one.
If none is available then it constructs it…in higher organisms, as an ideal it strives for and which characterizes it by its striving.
But yes we seek to overcome that which is more easily overcome, most of the time. It`s part of our nature.
If it is not then I must conclude that the entire universe is conscious.
But aren’t we the universe becoming conscious?
One of the principles of consciousness is awareness through negation.
I identify myself or anything by what it is not.
You must simplify the concept of “power” in order to disengage it from anthropocentrism. It is no longer as essence of anything, since it can be used to describe contrary parts, as in the the case of entropy as a power…and order as a power. Which is the true power if each opposes the other? There is no thesis/antithesis to validate a correct conceptualization of “power”. Power has become a metaphor where it should only be a term used to describe an aspect of the physical. Inertia, momentum, rigidity, solidarity, motion, …none of these are psychological descriptions. None of these have will.
Nietzsche describes power as a “will” to become predominant, to seize, control, expand, etc. These are anthropocentric interpretations. It is true that the organic world, as it consists of atomic bodies, retains an identity as long as possible…so to speak. We would say that the “thingness” of a rock remains until its atomic structure is acted upon by a force or body. But here we are limiting our interpretations to describing “power” as a tendency to resist change and alien forces. Is not, then, the “power” of a body only a reaction to forces which are expressing power by influencing change? Do you see the interchangeability of the concept here?
Power and “will” cannot have “purpose”, because purpose implies a teleological end. There is no such end in nature. This perhaps is what confuses those who entertain the possibility of the Eternal Recurrence.
All of them are the result of “quanta” of force interacting. To understand force, we must anthropomorphise it: ascribe an inner will to it.
Action is always reaction, yes. The will to power is a pathos, i.e., something that is aroused.
“The question is ultimately whether we really recognize the will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of the will: if we do—and at bottom our faith in this is nothing less than our faith in causality itself—, then we must perform the experiment of positing the causality of the will hypothetically as the only one.”
[Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 36.]
Causality - the idea of cause and effect - is a simplification of the flux of Becoming. In order to be conscious of anything at all, we have to simplify it. Note that “simple” etymologically means “single”: we have to discern “entities” (units or unities) within the flux, which are really only relatively different and separate. This is what logic is. Logic simplifies Becoming to interactions of “Beings” (entities). Nietzsche’s insight is that we can only explain (rather than merely describe, i.e., model) these interactions by conceiving these Beings as having a “will”: we say this Being behaves such and such because it wants to do this or that. We can understand this - empathise with this - because we humans know what it is to will: will is what is immediately intelligible to us, because we “know” it firsthand - feel it. We cannot explain this feeling; it’s just there. We can understand that it is aroused by something - by an image, an image of Being, toward which we then want to become -, but we cannot explain the nature of this pathos by any other, “deeper” analogy.
There is no such end in nature, but there is the illusion of such ends. The will is aroused by an image (German Vorstellung) - an image of “Being” (in the Parmenidean sense): an image of perfection, absoluteness - an ideal.
Eternal Recurrence means Becoming forms a great ring of Being (in a higher dimension). So Becoming does not become Being, but Being - the Ring of Recurrence - consists of Becoming.
Becoming, however, can only be understood as the result of the will to Being (the will aroused by an image of “Being”, which then strives to realise this image).
As I said, Nietzsche says the highest will to power is to stamp Becoming with the character of Being. This means will to power is always a will to approximate Becoming to Being - for instance, by simplification. So the simplification of the flux of Becoming into entities which affect each other must already be understood as an effect of the will to power. And this presupposes the existence of relative entities; the simplification consists in falsifying these as “absolute” (thus the idea of absolute duration and unity - “Being” in the Parmenidean sense - is a simplification of the actual occurrence of relative duration and unity).
I understand how Nietzsche defines his idea- the smallest entity in substance, what is knowable, is what he called the “quanta”. This is really an ambiguous term as he used it. Quantum physics states that the smallest unit of substance is the particle. Here one could ask Nietzsche if the particle is the result of “quanta” interacting. According to Nietzsche, a “particle” could not exist…because it is only a composition of “quanta in flux”. Eventually, Nietzsche would have to admit that he was using the term “quanta” only to describe a hypothetical entity, or, admit that the smallest know unit of substance known to man is not a result of a state of flux but instead is highly ordered…“determined” and casual, if you will.
This “inner will” must be either the definition of a singular, universal state of motion that all things are animated by, or a quality that only a transcendent thing has (in this case you are a dualist), such as the psyche, the “consciousness”, which does not act as inorganic material does.
In the former, the organic and the inorganic are synonymous. Equal as both materials which consist of moving parts. Since any part of a thing, if you divide it up, must be part of the overall body that is in motion, the only common feature that all material bodies share is their tendency to move, while they can be very different in attributes…“physical” characteristics. “Movement” is not an attribute or a quality…it cannot be exclusive to only specific things.
In the latter, the universal force of movement is not an example of "will’ because as the “mind” is not material, it is not capable of movement, and therefore cannot exist in, or as, substance. You would need a different term for each category- “will” in immaterial things is “the pathos”, “will” in material things is force (which is movement, or will be movement).
If you call it pathos, then you cannot also call the physical characteristics of material things pathos, since they are in motion. Therefore, the will of the mind is expressed in “intention” while the will of substance is expressed in its durability and its movement through space. The pathos, which exercises the will in consciousness, is intentional and real only in so far as there is motive in the act, in the “being” of it- whereas- the nonintentional act of consciousness is not an example of its own expression of force. The force of the pathos, the will, is in the intention of the consciousness…the “cognition” in awareness. The will of immaterial things…the simple movement…is not motivated. It is gratuitous…we can only say that it “is” without an end in mind. Ends exist only where there is motive and intention. You can say that the pathos is teleological, but not the will of immaterial objects, not the case of motion.
I bolded “efficient”. Nietzsche is saying here that because he can deduce all things existing to a one, fundamental thing such as the “flux of quanta”, he can therefore say that the will itself is something certain, something stable, something not also subject to flux. No. As I described above, he comes to a problem of definitions themselves being unstable…and in this sense says nothing intelligible.
By “efficient” he really means “I am satisfied with my lexicon here”.
Of course, but what he did not also say is that we cannot but simplify it. When you read this statement, you automatically presuppose there is something other than the simplification given to experience. This suggests inadvertently that behind our experience there is something more of what we experienced that we cannot be aware of. This is a fallacy. He is positing a negative as a hypothetical. Where is this noumenal will? It isn’t anywhere…because it is only this unstable and ambiguous idea of the “quanta in flux”.
I cannot comprehend “flux”. I only know it as a hypothetical absence of order, which is something I have never experienced.
Well, whatever. In any case, what Nietzsche called “quanta” are not the smallest particles in physics, but rather that of which these particles consist. So indeed, such a smallest “particle” would be the result of the interaction of quanta. Neither Nietzsche nor quantum physics believe in “substance”, as the smallest particles of “substance” can themselves be destroyed (e.g., by nuclear fission).
“The concept of substance is a consequence of the concept of the subject: not the reverse! If we relinquish the soul, “the subject,” the precondition for “substance” in general disappears. One acquires degrees of being, one loses that which has being.”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 485.]
Quantum means “how much”, of course. We might also say: “to what degree”.
“The degree to which we feel life and power (logic and coherence of experience) gives us our measure of “being,” “reality,” not-appearance.”
[ibid.]
What about this, then. Let’s try something new for a moment.
How do you claim that in a finite universe, there is chaos? This doesn’t work. If the entire universe is always existing toward a point where it will collapse, then there can never be a state of real chaos within that universe, since all events must be part of the summary of all events that are leading to the end of the universe. Understand? Okay, think of a circle. The duration of its existence is finite…it, as a line, will occupy a former position eventually. Any single moment or event is either after a former moment or event, or will be before a moment or event. The only time it can be the former case is if it is the first moment and event. If this is so, there had to be a first moment and event, and therefore there will be a last (when the circle reaches a former point). If this, in turn, is the case, there is no point on the circle that is truly chaotic or disorganized or in “flux”. Nonlinearly, the same principle applies. Every moment is precisely in order with the necessary effect it shall have after being affected itself. This system is airtight…not a moment or event escapes this causal relationship.
There is no real chaos where there was a beginning and where there will be an end. Agree?
Nietzsche was not alive during the time of the science of quantum physics, so he could not have known what “particles consist of”, much less that there are even things called particles.
What I’m trying to explain to you is that his concept of the “quanta” is only a kind of lexiconic anchoring for his brand of metaphysics/epistemology. He is using the term to refer to what he is trying to explain as the smallest, most fundamental unit of substance, of what exists. He can certainly invent such a term, but what it really means, what it really verifies, is in question.
Dio, are you sure? What does the eternal recurrence infer if not, in the least, an end to new events?
Nietzsche may mean that this repetition is endless, but he cannot mean new possibilities for “being”. What happens the “first time” must happen again, ad infinitem.
No. Heidegger refuted this interpretation -the eternal return of the self-same - quite thoroughly in his essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”. I don’t have time to discuss it - nor do I have the patience to delve into so frustrating a topic at the moment - but suffice it to say that the concept does not actually entail the repetition of given events or moments in time, or even states of energy or ‘force’. I’m hoping Sauwelios has the essay on-hand and can jump into it with more vigor than I can muster.
This is where you are mistaken. Nietzsche’s philosophy is quantum mechanics avant la lettre. Philosophy need not follow science; rather, it can reason out things that science will only confirm later.
No, that is not true. A quantum is not a particle - neither for Nietzsche, nor for quantum physics. That it can behave as a particle, i.e., can be regarded as a particle for practical purposes is the reason it is meaningful to think of “quanta” of force at all.
As a philosopher, I can reason out that quanta do not exist - that there can be no two equal or even one self-same quantum. Even quantum physics is still thinking in terms of mathematics. Mathematics is Platonic: it does not correspond to the physical world (is a simplification and an abstraction of the physical world).
There are no “new events” for Nietzsche. The recurrence is the original occurrence. The eternal return of the same is really the same return of eternal flux.
There are no repetitions; there is only one circle.
Nietzsche had no conception of quantum uncertainty. He thought it possible that an all-seeing eye could know everything about the universe (scientifically speaking). I am referring to the passage about the waterfall.
I can’t recall that passage. But Dionysus is right: Nietzsche only thought that if such an eye could exist (which he didn’t think possible, of course), it could know everything about the universe.
The so-called “uncertainty principle” arises from the attempt to define that which is indefinite. As I said, I can reason out that no definite quanta can exist. I think Nietzsche may have seen this, too, aware as he was of the “soul superstition” as he called it.
I cannot at this point make myself any clearer than by saying that force is finite, yet not definite. A “quantum” (amount) has no definite bounds, yet that does not make it an infinite amount. In fact, I think that the words “infinite” and “unlimited” have been perverted precisely by their use in combination with words like “amount”, “number”, etc. Infinity is not a number; likewise, an amount is by definition a definite amount. Logic and language (note the etymology of logos) are simplifications (in the literal, etymological sense, as well). Fact is that without the idea of a “soul” or its equivalent, there can be no consciousness (hence Jung calls the subsumation of consciousness by the unconscious “loss of soul”).
Upon The Waterfall
When we look at a waterfall, we may think that we can see free will and choice in the innumerable turnings, meanderings, and breaking of the waves; but, on the contrary, everything is necessary, and it is possible to calculate every movement mathematically. And it is just the same with human actions. If one were omniscient, one would find it simple to calculate every single action in advance, every advancing step on the pathways to knowledge, every error, every act of malice. The acting man is entrapped in his illusion of volition. If the wheel of the world were to stop turning for a second and an all-knowing, calculating mind existed to take advantage of this hiatus, he would be able to plunge deep into the most distant future of all beings, and be able to describe every rut burrowed across the path of the wheel. This self-delusion of the acting man, this assumption that there is such a thing as free will, is also part of the calculable mechanism. - Human, All Too Human.
Thus, Nietzsche is suggesting that one can have precise knowledge of both the location and momentum of an electron, for example, or that such knowledge is inconsequential in terms of predicting future events. But I don’t think he would have made this second assertion.
First, let us note that this was Human, All Too Human, which was written in 1878, I believe. As you can see in The Will to Power (especially book III), most of his epistemology is from well after 1883 (and this, the necessity of some form of the soul superstition for consciousness, is an epistemological issue).
Secondly, I think Nietzsche would understand - this is simple Newtonian physics - that if the “wheel of the world” would stand still, that is, if we could make a recording of any one “moment” in the (r)evolution of the universe, there would be no momentum at all: for momentum is a product of (mass and) velocity, and velocity is traveled distance divided by elapsed time. Elapsed time means the time elapsed between two moments. If there is only one moment, i.e., if the elapsed time between the two moments is zero, this means we have to divide the traveled distance (it does not matter that this is also zero) by zero, which is meaningless.
The point is that, at any one moment, there is no velocity, because there is no motion (recall Zeno’s Paradox).
And of course, when recording the (r)evolution of the universe between two “moments”, there is no one location. So even with Newtonian physics, we cannot know both the location and the momentum of a particle at the same time.