Please help me understand the coherence of Schopenhauer's monism!

[Damian Baden]

I had not put much thought into the concept of metaphysical monism until picking up The World as Will and Representation. My understanding of Schopenhauer's thought is as follows: that fundamentally, in-itself, everything is a oneness; what Schopenhauer terms 'will.' The multiplicity that we enounter is only an illusion, so to speak, insofar as the multiplicity is phenomena, or the will "objectifying" itself in space, time and according to the various forms of the principle of sufficient reason. To quote Schopenhauer directly:

"As we have been saying, the will as thing in itself lies outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and therefore has absolutely no ground, although each of its appearances is entirely subject to the principle of sufficient reason: it is moreover free of all multiplicity, notwithstanding its innumerable appearances in time and space..."

Now, to me, all of this is completely baffling and incoherent. First of all, I find it questionable whether it is even possible to conceptualize such a monism as Schopenhauer has formulated it. I mean, how could you conceive of it when it is postulated as existing outside of all that is required a priori for human conceptualization (space, time and causation).

Anyway, his idea here is of that which through and through is one---no differentiating elements whatsoever. But my question for anyone who can help me is this: how are we to understand multiplicity being borne from that which itself contains no multiplicity?

This whole metaphysical monism doesn't make any sense to me. It seems that in order for will to possess the capability to exhibit itself phenomenally as multiplicity, it would have to have some differntiating factor within it. Otherwise how can a oneness through and through objectify itself into anything at all, let alone objectify itself in multiplicity?

Please help! Am I missing a point?

 

[T S]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achintya_Bheda_Abheda

The Indians called it 'inconceivable'. It usually pays not to argue against the Indians.

[Santeri Satama]

The one-many problem goes away when you start from inherently intuitive idea of continuum, instead of metaphysical quantification.

[Damian Baden]

I wonder if maybe I am not articulating the struggle that I am having well enough.

What I am talking about here is the idea of a fundamental substance/energy/force/will/'X' call it whatever which grounds everything--literally everything. But the main point is that this fundamental 'X' is entirely undifferentiated and undifferntiatable. Or maybe another way to say it is that it is an 'X' that is an undivided unity. There would be nothing that the fundamental 'X' contained which was in any way distinguishable from any other part of it. I am at a total loss to understand how something of that nature could ever produce the diversity and multiplicity that we see, even if it is doing so only in a phenomenal form. I just don't get how that which is undivided unity could do or become in phenomena anything at all.  

In a sense, I feel like what I am asking here is one of the most basic questions about metaphysics: I mean, if you study metaphysics--which I have not especially--you are either a monist or you are not a monist, right?

But I was also hoping maybe Bernardo Kastrup might be around to give some feedback about what his thoughts on this monist question are in relation to Schopenhauer. Kastrup wrote Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics, and I have yet to buy and read this book in its entirety, but from what I am seeing there is nary a word about monism. Yet monism is the bedrock presuppostion we have to make if we are to take Schopenhauer seriously. Schopenhauer's claim comes down to something which we are to understand as a completely undivided, entirely unified X (the will), which is the total antithesis of multiplicity, somehow doing something (?) in order to "objectify" (Schopenhauer's word) itself phenomenally in the form of multiplicity. Is it obvious how that would work? Am I crazy? It seems to make no sense. Please: What am I missing here?    

[Santeri Satama]

You are articulating the question very well, and not the first to wonder this core question of philosophy, question of form from formless, on which countess books have been written. :)

Here's my take. Let's suppose formless, void, sunyata, nothing, non-ground - pick your term.  However, we are wondering this question in the world of forms, so we are just supposing a hypothetical abstraction of formless void as a thought experiment. So, obviously there is more than nothing. Looking from more than nothing, the supposed void was less than more than nothing. Thus we have already arrived at complex network of relations.

The primary event of more than nothing is not a noun or comparison of nouns or things, it's just more than a negation. A verb refusing negation. The Will!



Hope this helps. Note that there was no reference to or any implication of discrete number theory and related concepts. When the cover of number theory is lifted and removed, discovery becomes more clear.

[Scott Roberts]

On Monday, January 11, 2021 at 11:23:44 AM UTC-10 damia...@gmail.com wrote:

What I am talking about here is the idea of a fundamental substance/energy/force/will/'X' call it whatever which grounds everything--literally everything. But the main point is that this fundamental 'X' is entirely undifferentiated and undifferntiatable. Or maybe another way to say it is that it is an 'X' that is an undivided unity. There would be nothing that the fundamental 'X' contained which was in any way distinguishable from any other part of it. I am at a total loss to understand how something of that nature could ever produce the diversity and multiplicity that we see, even if it is doing so only in a phenomenal form. I just don't get how that which is undivided unity could do or become in phenomena anything at all.   

 I agree that Will cannot just be an undifferentiated unity for the reason you state (that nothing can come of it). On the other hand, it cannot just be a multiplicity. The way to resolve this is to regard Will as not an undifferentiated unity (formlessness), nor as a multiplicity of forms, but as the polarity of formlessness and form. I have explored this in more depth in my Tetralemmic Polarity essay.

[Ashvin Pandurangi]

Anyway, his idea here is of that which through and through is one---no differentiating elements whatsoever. But my question for anyone who can help me is this: how are we to understand multiplicity being borne from that which itself contains no multiplicity?  

I also encourage you to read Scott's Tetralemmic Polarity essay, and the rest of the essays on his blog while you're at it, because they will give you the linguistic tools needed to better understand all manner of triune polar relationships and clearly explain the reasoning of why those tools are useful. 

We don't need to rely solely on a highly abstract formulation (or a deep mystical experience) to understand how the triune polar relationship is real,  but we can also look to everyday experience/mentation. Such as the relationship between our thinking and our thoughts, or our feeling and our feelings. Scott (jse) goes through all of that in his short but sweet essays.

[Damian Baden]

Thank you. I will definitely read the Tetralemmic Polarity essay and then revisit this. I appreciate it! 

On Monday, January 11, 2021 at 5:30:36 PM UTC-5 jse...@gmail.com wrote:

[Lou Gold]

The primary event of more than nothing is not a noun or comparison of nouns or things, it's just more than a negation. A verb refusing negation. The Will!

I LIKE!

[Damian Baden]

I read the draft of Tetralemmic Polarity, and I also read through some of the posts made under that topic. I hope it will be okay to post my comments and questions about the draft here instead of under the other discussion.

Where the draft states that "fundamental reality is not a being that acts, but activity itself, which we call variously thinking, or creativity, or will, or by many other names." This is without doubt Schopenhauer's conclusion, although how Schopenhauer gets there is different.  

If I may ask whether I am understanding the basics of the draft properly:

The first horn of the tetralemma I believe that I understand perfectly, since it states a version of what led to my initial difficulty. To say that there is “ultimately only formlessness” is the same as saying that there is fundamentally only unity.

 Horn 2 of the tetralemma is where I could use some clarification. This horn states that there is “ultimately only form.” What Scott goes on to say is,

 “This would mean that an observer, when they finally come into existence, is just another such object. This raises the question of how one object can be aware of another object. An observing object must somehow connect each element of the observed form into a whole. But if the observing object is itself nothing but a set of parts, where can it "put", so to speak, these connections?”

These remarks seem to mean that a fundamental formlessness or “ultimate formlessness” must be posited in order to account for ourselves as an experiencing subject.

In this second horn awareness of objects suddenly enters the argument. Is the following anywhere along the lines of what horn two is getting at: That “form” alone or "pure form" is closed upon itself, or maybe you could say so full and complete in itself that the very concept of “form” does not allow for the possibility of experience? The argument seems to be that since there is experience, this very experience itself is the proof that fundamental reality cannot be form alone? This is another version of saying that positing pure form is just as incoherent and inaccessible as positing pure formlessness? This would also imply that (as an impossible hypothetical) were awareness/consciousness not a possible part of reality, then, in theory, pure form alone could be, in such a case, the ultimate basis of reality. The same could be said for pure formlessness. But because we know that awareness is possible, we cannot posit either.

Horn two made me think of Sartre’s dichotomy in Being and Nothingness, his idea that if the subject is fully equal to, or to put it another way, if the subject is of exactly the same nature as "being"--- that which the subject experiences---then that subject would never be able to be aware of being because the subject would just be more "being". In Being and Nothingness Sartre has written seemingly paradoxical or mystical sounding things like, “I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it.” My takeaway is that there must be some kind of separation from that which we are [“are”, or, to put it in other words, our experiences of objects] in order for us to have an experience at all.

Horn three enters into a claim about the interdependence of the fundamental concepts. And really, that's what I am understanding the takeaway of this draft to be about: interdependence. Not of two separate entities nor of one single entity. Clearly one must be so careful here to even describe such a thing. As the essay states,

"The first observation to make is that there is no denying that tetralemmic polarity cannot be understood, in the usual meaning of the term "understand"."

How do you "understand" the force or movement which results from an interdependency? It seems that this interdependency claim really stretches the limits of conceivabilty. Does it exceed the limits of conceivability? Someone else remarked about the Indians boiling things down to that which is inconceivable, but I think that we need to be able to conceive or else the whole thing is as useless as that which is postulated in horn 4 of the tetralemma. 

If I am in fact understanding these basics correctly... Well, for one thing, it would mean that Schopenhauer is wrong when he states outright that Will contains no multiplicity. What I do need is to think more about how I would conceptualize this movement resulting from an interdependency. But if you wouldn't mind letting me know if I am even on the right track?

[Scott Roberts]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2021 at 6:19:21 AM UTC-10 damia...@gmail.com wrote:

I read the draft of Tetralemmic Polarity, and I also read through some of the posts made under that topic. I hope it will be okay to post my comments and questions about the draft here instead of under the other discussion.

Here is fine. And though I called it a draft when I first put it up, I don't expect to change it at this point.

 

If I may ask whether I am understanding the basics of the draft properly:

The first horn of the tetralemma I believe that I understand perfectly, since it states a version of what led to my initial difficulty. To say that there is “ultimately only formlessness” is the same as saying that there is fundamentally only unity.

Yes.

 Horn 2 of the tetralemma is where I could use some clarification. This horn states that there is “ultimately only form.” What Scott goes on to say is,

 “This would mean that an observer, when they finally come into existence, is just another such object. This raises the question of how one object can be aware of another object. An observing object must somehow connect each element of the observed form into a whole. But if the observing object is itself nothing but a set of parts, where can it "put", so to speak, these connections?”

These remarks seem to mean that a fundamental formlessness or “ultimate formlessness” must be posited in order to account for ourselves as an experiencing subject.

Strictly speaking it only means that formlessness is required for there to be experience of form. Whether that implies an experiencing subject is another issue. 

In this second horn awareness of objects suddenly enters the argument. Is the following anywhere along the lines of what horn two is getting at: That “form” alone or "pure form" is closed upon itself, or maybe you could say so full and complete in itself that the very concept of “form” does not allow for the possibility of experience?

I'm not following you here. This section is just showing that while there must be form for there to be awareness of form, obviously,  there must also be formlessness. I don't know what you mean by "pure form", or it being "closed upon itself", or why the concept of "form" should not allow for experience.

The argument seems to be that since there is experience, this very experience itself is the proof that fundamental reality cannot be form alone?

Yes. 

This is another version of saying that positing pure form is just as incoherent and inaccessible as positing pure formlessness?

I would say "positing only form", not pure form. And positing only form is not incoherent or inaccessible. It is just that doing so means there is no accounting for awareness, so it fails as an ontology. 

This would also imply that (as an impossible hypothetical) were awareness/consciousness not a possible part of reality, then, in theory, pure form alone could be, in such a case, the ultimate basis of reality. The same could be said for pure formlessness. But because we know that awareness is possible, we cannot posit either.

RIght. 

Horn two made me think of Sartre’s dichotomy in Being and Nothingness, his idea that if the subject is fully equal to, or to put it another way, if the subject is of exactly the same nature as "being"--- that which the subject experiences---then that subject would never be able to be aware of being because the subject would just be more "being". In Being and Nothingness Sartre has written seemingly paradoxical or mystical sounding things like, “I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it.” My takeaway is that there must be some kind of separation from that which we are [“are”, or, to put it in other words, our experiences of objects] in order for us to have an experience at all.

I am not really up on Sartre, but one of the things I am trying to get across is that by expanding one's logic to include tetralemmic polarities, what is paradoxical without that expansion, ceases to be so. We need not "sound mystical".

Horn three enters into a claim about the interdependence of the fundamental concepts. And really, that's what I am understanding the takeaway of this draft to be about: interdependence. Not of two separate entities nor of one single entity. Clearly one must be so careful here to even describe such a thing. As the essay states,

"The first observation to make is that there is no denying that tetralemmic polarity cannot be understood, in the usual meaning of the term "understand"."

How do you "understand" the force or movement which results from an interdependency? It seems that this interdependency claim really stretches the limits of conceivabilty. Does it exceed the limits of conceivability?

Yes, because as I go on to say, only objects are understandable, and mumorphism is not an object. But we can (by going through the tetralemmic argumentation) understand that mumorphism is real, and is "what is going on" in our every conscious act. We should not expect to be able to understand understanding, much as we can't see seeing.

 

Someone else remarked about the Indians boiling things down to that which is inconceivable, but I think that we need to be able to conceive or else the whole thing is as useless as that which is postulated in horn 4 of the tetralemma. 

It is not useless because, as I say later, we can get used to it, and then use it to answer those perennial metaphysical questions, as I do, for example, in my essay on time.

 

If I am in fact understanding these basics correctly... Well, for one thing, it would mean that Schopenhauer is wrong when he states outright that Will contains no multiplicity. What I do need is to think more about how I would conceptualize this movement resulting from an interdependency. But if you wouldn't mind letting me know if I am even on the right track? 

You are, except that I would say you should not try to conceptualize mumorphism, since to conceptualize anything means turning it into an object. Rather, one just understands that mumorphism is what allows one to conceptualize (or be aware of) anything else.