Automorphism.

Integral to what I call Value Philosophy or Value Metaphysics, what others call Value Ontology, is what I will henceforth call automorphism. The concept is a correction of "anthropomorphism", which already contains a blatant automorphism. After all, "man" (ho anthropos) is an abstraction, a generalization; I'm not a human being, but rather a human being, to me, is a being that is like me in an essential manner. And it's integral to Value Philosophy to posit that all beings automorphize. This positing is, of course, itself also an automorphism.

Wow, you beat me to it.

Except you have more balls, you consider this as an ontological event, worthy of its own name, indeed central to your entire understanding of ontology.

I guess this is the injustice you keep bringing up? But then, one would need a justice. I myself use evolution as the term here.

Justice is the interest of the strong, after all.

Pezer wrote:

Wow, you beat me to it.

Except you have more balls, you consider this as an ontological event, worthy of its own name, indeed central to your entire understanding of ontology.

I guess this is the injustice you keep bringing up? But then, one would need a justice. I myself use evolution as the term here.

Justice is the interest of the strong, after all.

Thanks. And yes, you're right about injustice. Also, your last comment seems helpful for understanding what you mean by "evolution". Evolution has often been associated with "the survival of the fittest" (which in Dutch is rendered as "the right of the strongest"; perhaps it's similar in your own native language). But evolution only entails the survival of the fittest in a very specific sense. Even if one understands "survival" as "genetic survival" (that is to say, as reproduction as well as survival), fitness is relative to the environment. For example, the fact that the last generation of dodos did not reproduce while the contemporary generation of chickens did does not mean the latter was in any sense stronger than the former; in the same environment, those chickens might have lasted even less long than those dodos. Likewise, if the creatures that live on the earth's surface were suddenly teleported to the surface of the sun, the fitness of all of them would be reduced to a number tantamount to zero (and even if one should keep track of their survival in nanoseconds, the factors determining their survival would be different: for instance, how large and how resistant to flame instead of how fast and how furry). Considerations such as these are examples of what I call "justice" (doing justice to the dodo, for example).

I think that justice is compassion almost, certainly pity, a missunderstanding of the things that are really there to be valued.

Evolution, like so many concepts from so many unworthy masters, was freed from Darwin by Nietzsche (look up his anti-Darwin aphorism in Twilight of the Idols). A so to speak aristocratic conception of evolution would simply have it be the process by which life is, came to be and shall be in the abscence of a creator god. The answer to the problems beings encounter in the evolutionary process (survival, as Nietzsche said, being one of the shittiest and least cool problems) and, often enough, the germs of the problems themselves come from inward, in being a place conformed by out and unified by previous experience of what we call, what is life.

It's fun becuase, rather than being a despairingly long process of conflict to arrive at a righteous end, it is a never-ending process which end is the conflict itself, the betterment and fruitfulness of it.

Pezer wrote:

I think that justice is compassion almost, certainly pity, a missunderstanding of the things that are really there to be valued.

Evolution, like so many concepts from so many unworthy masters, was freed from Darwin by Nietzsche (look up his anti-Darwin aphorism in Twilight of the Idols). A so to speak aristocratic conception of evolution would simply have it be the process by which life is, came to be and shall be in the abscence of a creator god. The answer to the problems beings encounter in the evolutionary process (survival, as Nietzsche said, being one of the shittiest and least cool problems) and, often enough, the germs of the problems themselves come from inward, in being a place conformed by out and unified by previous experience of what we call, what is life.

It's fun becuase, rather than being a despairingly long process of conflict to arrive at a righteous end, it is a never-ending process which end is the conflict itself, the betterment and fruitfulness of it.

As I've argued in my "Nietzsche contra Darwin?" thread, Nietzsche fundamentally misunderstood Darwinism and actually agreed with it.

Nietzsche was not against compassion or pity, but only against active compassion or pity ("the compassion [or: pity] of the deed", as he called in in section 2 of The Antichrist).

"The opulent Cleopatra called 'Culture' ever again casts the most priceless pearls into her golden beaker: these pearls are the tears of compassion [Mitleiden] for the slaves and for the slaves' misery. The gigantic social crises of the present have been born from modern man's pampering, not from the true and deep pity [Erbarmen] for that misery[.]" (Nietzsche, "The Greek State".)

"Modern man's pampering": that is to say, his impotence not to act on his feelings. My justice, on the other hand, is not active pity, as it does not seek to save species from extinction or anything. However, it's one thing to let species go extinct, but another thing to say that that's because they're weak, inferior, etc.

The aristocrat feels no compassion, he relates to the human state of "slaves." Compassion is rather to feel and relish pain of others. It is not just that a man suffer, it is just that he stop suffering. It is evolutionarily inevitable that we all suffer, it is wastefull to see potential in a lower man and leave it. It is celebratable excess to wonder about the potential of a man already up to his neck in sweat, blood and tears. What potential is found depends on the value of the man searching for it.

Darwin's theory is that the main directive is not to die, both in body and, as you say, in lineage. This is... Is this what you are putting into question? Nietzsche was very much against this. Evolution is all there is to life, can you sit there and tell me that mere survival is all there is to life? How wretched that would be... I might be aroused to celebrate you! Maybe I, a son of this pampered society, am too cynical for the true aristocracy which would have looked down on you if this is the case. I remember the way actual aristocrats I knew looked down on people, but no, deep down it was celebration of life. "You belong there and I belong here."

But let's leave aristocrats for now and focus on philosophers. Passive compassion, by its very passivity, has nothing to do with justice. No, you are not weak, not free of excess... What you feel is not justice... It is asthetics! You see beauty in tragedy. This is well enough, very much not suited for survival btw. The dodo was quite beautiful, maybe even more so than the chicken! I see the germs of a problem here...

Sauwelios was very early on in my 'career' one of the few who understood evolution as an ex post facto law; it's quite obvious, but still most people think that evolution has an actual aim, as if it is an entity. It has neither aim nor outcome; it is outcome, and an aim, of a conscious being, might be to be part of it.

Even in the case of actual entities, having an aim is entirely impossible in the absence of consciousness. Survival is the result of what must be seen as arbitrary conditions prescribing arbitrary 'fitnesses'; what tended to come out on top was not necessarily physically strong or intelligent, but simply happened to a) not be immediately killed soon and b) be chosen to mate with. None of this could have been the 'goal' of an unconscious being.

Rather than that survival is the goal of evolution, it is evolution; that which has evolved is that which has survived.

Sex is a good example. Most people think that the formal telos of sex is procreation. But this is only the outcome; the tendency to engage in sexual contact surely had nothing to do with some early sexual organisms premonition of rearing offspring. Telos only comes into play with consciousness.

Survival is not evolution, it is an excess of evolution. A bi-product. Like offspring is an excess of sexuality.

It would be silly to assume that survival does not play a directive role in evolution now and then, like Zizek says, unimaginable catastrophy after unimaginable catastrophy. But equating survival with evolution is like equating a Picasso with ink. How banal...

A practical way of better grasping the disjointedness of ontology and teleology, of being and formal (or known or held) aims, is to study ones own aims, in comparison with the outcomes of ones actions.

It is only under specific circumstances that aim and outcome tend to  correspond.

In small, routine tasks, the correspondence is regular. But in case of "real goals"; ambitions, conscious aims that drive human through entire lives, the aim is usually only an agent for activities that bring forth very different results. As John Lennon said, life is what happens to you when you while you're making plans; so is evolution what happens while entities are going about their entirely pointless business of self-valuing, which is not projected into time, but rather direct expression of what one is.

A goal presupposes that one is actively selective about what one is, that one expresses only portions of ones power that one expects to lead to this aim/ In reality, power sets goals; we can be ascribed only those aims which we are capable of attaining, and we can only set those goals which we imagine being capable of attaining; these two are of course very different.

The feeling of power versus the actual potential, this is an as yet unresolved duality within the Nietzschean will to power model; the feeling of power represents the potential to act, but the actual potential represents the potential to attain something. The former is not teleological and real, the latter is teleological and exists only ex post facto.

What has evolved must have survived, so survival is required for evolution. It's quite inevitable. Somethings requirement can not be rightly called its by-product.

It is an analytical truth that evolution can not exist without survival; as true as 'a red ball is red'. But indeed, it is only a synthetic truth, and at best a half-truth at that, that survival can not exist without evolution. We can imagine and even produce counter examples; there are primordial bacteria that have no need of evolving.

However, in as far as we are addressing evolution, we are speaking of the evolution of life, not of the dead. Survival is implicit in evolution.

The problem is with the word "fittest". Evolution is rather "survival of the most fortunate".

Nietzsche's less popular expressions deal with the role of luck and coincidence in all good things.

It can help to be strong or to have moral integrity, it can also hurt. It depends on the environment.

Lastly, it will, per self-valuing, in cases be more fortunate to perish than to survive. So to posit fortune as the agent is incorrect too; let's keep it at fate.

Indeed, evolution is indifferent to individuals' ambitions. Its forces are otherwise.

I think an answer exists to debanalizing the problem of survival in evolution. See, it is not a matter of who is more fit to survive, but who is able to and effectively gets water. Water has its own dynamics on organic beings, so even when got, any prescribed aim is vulneable to the realness of it.

Thales of Milates, ladies and gentlemen. Knew his shit.

Anyway, fate, getting water, this is not what makes evolution interesting.

That is my problem with justice. Automorphism is a beautiful event, one with many awe inspiring relations of power. To see it is a philosopher's prerrogative, and this gives way to celebrating the philosopher!

My question is not whether the competition for Water produces what kind of being. My question is how do we get philosophers water!

Pezer wrote:

Anyway, fate, getting water, this is not what makes evolution interesting.

That is my problem with justice. Automorphism is a beautiful event, one with many awe inspiring relations of power. To see it is a philosopher's prerrogative, and this gives way to celebrating the philosopher!

My question is not whether the competition for Water produces what kind of being. My question is how do we get philosophers water!

As you've repeatedly expressed, BTL is quite instrumental in this.

Philosophy is after all water to the philosopher; and to practice philosophy it is useful to have other philosophers around - and to keep out the non-philosophers.

BTL's self-valuing is quite exemplary; non philosophical entities have a lot of trouble self-valuing in its region, but it draws philosophical ones.

I won't claim it draws "the philosophical type" but it certainly works well as a value standard-setter.

Plato had above his door some harsh banishment of those who weren't initiated into mathematics. If we can learn anything from Plato it's from his politics, which were always aimed to secure the position of the philosopher.

It would be very good to found an "Academy"; a physical place where philosophers may freely dwell. It would be a good move to explicitly separate philosophy from academia by creating a new Academy.

But we need foremost to realize how far we already have advanced, how much terrain we now have to roam and how many people have been irreversibly touched by the idea of self-valuing; verily it is like a life-form that is a disease for the weak and a medicine for the strong.

It is not unlikely that I will at one point be able to create such a physical locus; since Capable and I set out working together, originally a great part of which was developing politics for philosophers, this tree has grown tremendously, through all sorts of human-all-too-human resistance.

I am generally more optimistic about these things than I let on. But it is perhaps not unwise to make it clear how close I sense we are to a fold in the fabric, having crossed which, we'll be working with entirely different coordinates; coordinates that are oriented on our own star.

Hunting down water is like philosophizing itself. A dojo? Money. Money? Society. Society? Change. Change? Etc. All of these questions have a number of other interconnections. For instance, academic work? Restriction. Restriction? More resources. More resources? Restriction.

I have been following this thread at serious risk to my life for the last two years.

Bah, I'm more optimistic than I let on too.

That is all good and well... Have you seen, the documentary "jodorowski's dune"? The reason Alejandro seems like a fucking madman when he pitches to his team is that people still have jobs and things... Hell, even his own team went on to make great but comparably banal movies like Alien.

Transcendentalism has not cought up with life. Ambitionalism is still kind of stuck in the master morality age that spawned it, people have groceries to buy and grandmas to appease.

I even tend to decide on the conclusion that they can not be included, but only made to serve new masters as Marx said they used to be made to. Maybe Marx's childish rage makes us not see how he saw a lot that was real and true. The world is a big massive unwieldy mass ball. It cannot be directed with a pool cue. Truth is not enough, or rather too much.

These people are more elemental than incidental. On the subject of aristocrats, it is to their credit that they deep down appreciated the efforts of slaves, that they saw them as a basic part of the whole. Not as good though inferior, or tolerable, or damned or stupid, but as much a part of glory as a general, as much a part of beauty as the top asthetitians. The most sophisticated thought was integrally indebted to slaves.

In this, fuck it, hollistic way does a philosopher need to re-establish his position with respect to society.

If we love evolution, we love: that its products need not be enjoyed by all individual humans, but by the gods, and only hence benefit even the lowest man. Did you ever see the look of a structrurally poor man who lived through golden aristocratic times? As much nostalgia and pride as Napoleon must have had in that island.

Pezer wrote:

The aristocrat feels no compassion, he relates to the human state of "slaves."

Was Nietzsche not an aristocrat? And, even insofar as he was not (he was not called "von Nietzsche", for instance), was he not most noble? And insofar as he was noble but not an aristocrat, does it matter what "aristocrats" feel?

Quote :

Compassion is rather to feel and relish pain of others.

"Relish"? Is this a cynical view of compassion, or did you mean a different word, or am I missing something? Please explain.

Quote :

It is not just that a man suffer, it is just that he stop suffering.

According to the "compassionate" or in general? If the latter, you and I do not mean the same thing by "justice". I'm not talking about justice in any popular sense of the word. I'm talking about philosophical justice, in the highest sense of the word "philosophical".

Quote :

It is evolutionarily inevitable that we all suffer,

Yes: not just for "sentient" beings, but, according to Value Philosophy as I understand it, in some way for all beings, however "rudimentary".

Quote :

it is wastefull to see potential in a lower man and leave it.

But is waste or wastefulness bad? As I wrote in a draft last week:

I'm not concerned with lowering the cost [at which the West exists] so much as magnifying the waste. I mean, if waste is seen to be magnificent, is it really a waste? [...] But can it really be magnificent if it is not? Must the highest privilege not be exempt from all responsibility? [...] Noblesse oblige: privilege obliges one to enjoy it in full. And perhaps one enjoys one's privilege most fully only in enjoying one's liberty not to enjoy it in full?

The latter are some more variations on the theme of the justice of injustice and the injustice of justice.

Quote :

It is celebratable excess to wonder about the potential of a man already up to his neck in sweat, blood and tears. What potential is found depends on the value of the man searching for it.

I don't follow the last sentence. Don't you mean "values"? I mean, the values the man holds? Or do you mean the value the man possesses, as in "this thing is worth ten dollars"?

Quote :

Darwin's theory is that the main directive is not to die, both in body and, as you say, in lineage.

Well, I'm not completely sure about the man Darwin himself, but insofar as Darwin was a Darwinist in the sense of present-day Darwinism, his theory was not that there was any directive at all. Darwinism is a modern scientific theory, and as such it's descriptive and not prescriptive (normative); it does not make value judgments, only judgments of fact. By this I don't mean that there are no value judgments within modern science, which would be impossible, but that it describes, for instance, the evolution and eventual extinction of the dodo but does not say that any of it is good or bad.

Instincts may be considered "directives", but by no means all evolution depends on instincts, and even they ultimately come about undirected, unless it be in the sense that there are directives in all existence, all beings, no matter how "rudimentary".

Quote :

This is... Is this what you are putting into question? Nietzsche was very much against this. Evolution is all there is to life, can you sit there and tell me that mere survival is all there is to life? How wretched that would be... I might be aroused to celebrate you! Maybe I, a son of this pampered society, am too cynical for the true aristocracy which would have looked down on you if this is the case. I remember the way actual aristocrats I knew looked down on people, but no, deep down it was celebration of life. "You belong there and I belong here."

But let's leave aristocrats for now and focus on philosophers. Passive compassion, by its very passivity, has nothing to do with justice. No, you are not weak, not free of excess... What you feel is not justice... It is asthetics! You see beauty in tragedy. This is well enough, very much not suited for survival btw. The dodo was quite beautiful, maybe even more so than the chicken! I see the germs of a problem here...

How do you know what I feel and see?

How do I know?

If no man is less than nothing and you are after noblesse, it follows that you are missunderstanding your instincts as to the elements of evolution because of a tyranical (I will concede, noble) need to bend modern academia to philosophical reason.

Thus, you see the evidence Darwin and Darwinists show for why life is as it is and you make excuses that allow both for you to fit in with them, masters of modern academia, and them to not really mean what they are saying.

Let's take your perspective: they are not dictating that life exists so that animals don't die and have offspring, they are describing how not dying and having offspring is the driving force for the development of life.

Then you say it is just that dodos are cool even if they didn't survive these forces.

Meesees only beauty and definetly a will to escape the dumb tyranny of Darwin. But you try to call philosophy beyond evolution and use the name justice or injustice to account for extra-evolutionary forces.

Honestly, I think your justice and injustice are strength and weakness, a la Nietzsche, and agree that a noble spirit may delight in the poetry of weakness, its beauty, as much as strength.

Understand this and automorphism will escalate in value for your self-valuing action: nothing in life is outside of evolution. Not even Noblesse. Otherwise, wait for it...

it would not survive.

The only real 'driving force of life' is excess. Every ontic being (retains at least a little consistency-congruity in time and space) is a groupie to some range and frequency of excessive profusion.

Life doesn't care about survival, just as survival doesn't care about life.

Let's assume that chairs are conscious. What would we call it if chairs made a "philosophy" which reduced everything about life and being a chair to the factory manufacturing processes, compositions of different kinds of wood and nails, and economic profit and sales forces that led to humans making chairs? We would laugh at such a philosophy, we would laugh at the absurd myopia and narrow-minded ignorance of the chairs. What would we call it still, if chairs outlived the human race and in 100,000 years from now still held to such a philosophy as exclaimed all those old production processes and economic forces of humanity that chairs have long-since moved away from? We would call such a philosophy even more idiotic.

I'm waiting for a sign that we are ready to consider our reality. The best parts of Nietzsche are where he tries, although ultimately fails, to raise his eyes. But usually I see people liking Nietzsche for all the wrong reasons.

Just because he happens to be the first philosopher doesn't mean he was, relatively speaking (not relative to all the non-philosophers that came before and still keep coming after him, but I mean relative to REAL philosophy), a particularly great one. He was good enough for his role, namely as I just said, of being the first philosopher. Let's valorize and understand him from that view only, and then move on already.

I have my Pentad post ready. I think we have satisfactorily greeted and and discussed, the prelude is done.

Great, feel free to create the new topic for this in the Pentad forum, I'm looking forward to it.

Pezer wrote:

How do I know?

If no man is less than nothing and you are after noblesse, it follows that you are missunderstanding your instincts as to the elements of evolution because of a tyranical (I will concede, noble) need to bend modern academia to philosophical reason.

Thus, you see the evidence Darwin and Darwinists show for why life is as it is and you make excuses that allow both for you to fit in with them, masters of modern academia, and them to not really mean what they are saying.

Let's take your perspective: they are not dictating that life exists so that animals don't die and have offspring, they are describing how not dying and having offspring is the driving force for the development of life.

Then you say it is just that dodos are cool even if they didn't survive these forces.

Meesees only beauty and definetly a will to escape the dumb tyranny of Darwin. But you try to call philosophy beyond evolution and use the name justice or injustice to account for extra-evolutionary forces.

Honestly, I think your justice and injustice are strength and weakness, a la Nietzsche, and agree that a noble spirit may delight in the poetry of weakness, its beauty, as much as strength.

Understand this and automorphism will escalate in value for your self-valuing action: nothing in life is outside of evolution. Not even Noblesse. Otherwise, wait for it...

it would not survive.

I'm not sure what you mean by "if no man is less than nothing", but you seem to say that you think I'm someone relatively noble who's looking for noblesse in others, and that, in order to see something noble in Darwin(ists), I have to willfully misconceive of them. If this is more or less what you're saying, my counter will be the question: Is the true the same as the noble? I think "modern academia", as you call it, or modern science and scholarship in general, is something relatively noble; however, I'm not looking to it for nobility but for truth--correspondence to reality. I think that, within the mechanistic paradigm of modern natural science, Darwinism is true. Now Darwinism's main mechanism, the theory of natural selection, teaches the following. Suppose that the members of a same-species group of animals that live in the same place in space-time are represented by marbles, and their environment is represented by a person. Some of the animals are represented by a blue marble, others by a green marble, and others still by a blue-and-green marble. Now suppose the person has too much stuff in his house and needs to get rid of some stuff. He really likes blue, but doesn't really like green. He therefore gets rid of the green marbles, keeping only the blue ones and the blue-and-green ones. Now suppose that the person changes, that with regard to taste in colours he becomes a different person. He now really likes green but doesn't really like blue. And at the same time he again happens to have too much stuff in his house. Now he gets rid of the blue marbles, keeping only the blue-and-green ones. Thus two consecutive environments have naturally selected the animals represented by the blue-and-green marbles. This says nothing about whether they were better than the ones represented by the blue marbles and by the green marbles. I think doing justice to the latter requires that one recognises this; I don't think it's unjust that the latter went instinct, I don't want to save species from extinction. If after reading this you still think I misunderstand or make excuses or try to escape from anything, please explain.

OK then, not noblesse but truth.

Truth is also a part of evolution, otherwise, wait for it...

it would not survive.

Let's call truth a marble that can change colors. The person might choose this or that color, and the marble will have to change with or hide from the person. If it is ever caught, it dies.

Now, is the death of this marble more interesting than the process whereby it chooses colors?

Let's say you think so, but some people that you fear prefer to wonder about the color processes. You want these people out!

You show, with ample use of death pictures, that the only thing going on is the death. That even the colors only respond to who the person decides to dispose of. Shazam! You have used their intrigue for the color processes to convince them that it is less interesting then the death mechanism. Any man wanting to join their well funded group would have to say: "my, look at that color! I wonder what had to die to make it? After all, nothing else makes it."

If such a person were to discover a rivetting color mechanism such as automorphism, he would have to excuse himself: "but this is not evolution! Only philosophy...!"

Pezer wrote:

OK then, not noblesse but truth.

Truth is also a part of evolution, otherwise, wait for it...

it would not survive.

Well, what do you mean by "truth" here, then? The will to truth? Yes, the will to truth has evolved and will therefore most probably go extinct sooner or later, but that's not what I meant. I'm not interested in modern science's will to truth, but in the truth discovered by it--the fact of evolution, for example.

Quote :

Let's call truth a marble that can change colors. The person might choose this or that color, and the marble will have to change with or hide from the person. If it is ever caught, it dies.

Now, is the death of this marble more interesting than the process whereby it chooses colors?

Let's say you think so, but some people that you fear prefer to wonder about the color processes. You want these people out!

You show, with ample use of death pictures, that the only thing going on is the death. That even the colors only respond to who the person decides to dispose of. Shazam! You have used their intrigue for the color processes to convince them that it is less interesting then the death mechanism. Any man wanting to join their well funded group would have to say: "my, look at that color! I wonder what had to die to make it? After all, nothing else makes it."

If such a person were to discover a rivetting color mechanism such as automorphism, he would have to excuse himself: "but this is not evolution! Only philosophy...!"

Not if philosophy comprehends the truth of evolution. But yes, even then philosophy is not beyond evolution. It has evolved. It is the product of evolution. But even saying this is making a metaphysical claim. Evolution, the theory of evolution, is a product of philosophy--this is all we know. It is a value, and not necessarily a fact. We don't know with absolute certainty whether it's a fact that there is only valuation. This is the necessary injustice I speak of--the automorphism even and especially of Value Philosophy. "Especially", because Value Philosophy affirms its own automorphism. And "even", because Value Philosophy is the most probable view of the world. All this from my point of view, of course.

For a man with a snake eating its tail as a presentation card, you seem to have a lot of trouble with the idea that the truth is a part of evolution, and only truth can contain that.

Tell me, if the snake is eating its tail, what point of view other than yours can find more of a fact than yours?

Wherefore probability?

How can fact supercede or precede point of view?

What process can be anything but the process of evolution?