In this essay, I want to convince you that you probably do not know what it means to be a human “being”. My strategy is to start from an imaginary story and then proceed to learn something of interest from the possibilities we imagine in the story. Imagine that one day you go back home to find that there are two copies of your mom at home. Both claim to be your mom; they are identical with each other: They have exactly the same accent, exactly the same look, exactly the same demeanor, and wearing exactly the same clothes. Knowing that only one of them can be your mom, you request them to tell you the truth about their identities. “Who is my mom among you?” you ask. Each of of them tearfully insists she is your real mom. Recognizing that its impossible for you to know who your mom is, you now start to find a way out of this dilemma. One and only one of them MUST be your mom. But you have now learned that co-existing with this reality, however uncomfortable it may be, is ineluctable. “Why not accept both of them as mothers?” you wonder. “But how can I experience as mom one who deliberately lies to me about the dearest to me? How can I trust as mom someone who is untrustworthy by definition? People refuse to believe a lie, so how can I LOVE a lie?” The challenge in this weird situation is not that you do not know what to do. The challenge is that you do not even know what the problem is. Your mom is out there in front of you. She is not dead so that you can mourn her. She is not sick so that you can be sad for her. She is not lost so that you can seek to find her. She becomes like a severely painful suspended mode of existence which is neither genuine existence nor nothingness. What do you exactly want to bring back then? The answer: your mom. You want your mom HERSLF. But what is this “herself-ness” you are trying to find? What is it for your mom to be “herself”? In this situation, you encounter this herself-ness as a vital need. You discover that nothing would satisfy you but being with your mom HERSELF. However good the copy is, however convincing the picture is, what you want to experience is the herself-ness” of your mom. You want her exactly as she is. You want the selfsame laughs, the selfsame smiles, the selfsame way of walking, the selfsame accent. You want that Being which “became” a specific fragment of the world. You do not want any other Being. As a Being, we become (I am using this verb as a transitive verb requiring an object) a part of the world (this noun phrase is the object of the verb “become”). Here is an interesting question that will help deepen your understanding of what I mean by “Being”: Suppose that you are to choose between the following two alternatives: 1- To have the pseudo-mom living with you while knowing she is NOT your real mom, 2- or to have a well made movie containing all the acts your mom had performed before she “disappeared”. You would probably go for the second choice. In the second alternative, your mom is NOLONGER there. She does NOT exist. Nevertheless, the movie retains her acts- all the things of the world she was able to BECOME. The only problem with the second choice is that your mom no longer becomes things by HERSELF. She is made to become those things. The machine will make her do them over and over again. The machine, in this case, is REPLAYING your mom becoming all that she has ever become. This analysis suggests that a clear distinction should be made between two modes of existing: Existence and Being. But how should we interpret this distinction exactly? My claim is that a rational understanding of these two modes of existing is possible if we start from the internal structure of Existence and then work to derive the natural world from this existence. The point is that the property of existence is explorable (characterizable, describable). One traditional criticism of the whole idea of Existence (as a ground of the existential pool we interpret as a world) is that this “property” is definable only in terms of its opposite, nothingness. The end of our life, for example, gives us a definition of what it means to live. The absence of mom defines her presence. Not to believe in God defines what it means to believe in Him. I believe that this traditional criticism is valid but should not be used to deter our analysis of the property of Existence. The fact that Existence is definable only in terms of its opposite (nothingness) should be philosophically problematized rather than being taken for granted. Existence is definable only in terms of the naught because Existence is basic. A property P is basic if and only if any other property P’ implies P but P implies none. Existence is “basic” in this sense. If I say that an apple is green, I also imply that it exits in a certain world. But if I say an apple exists, I don’t imply anything about its (in-)existence. Existence is also symmetrical. By the symmetry of existence I mean the following: Imagine we have two distinct objects A and B. Suppose that the only property that each of the two objects have is Existence; they only exist and are not determined in any way. The distinctness of A and B is logically impossible because for A to be distinct from B, one of the two must have at least one property that the other does not have (for example, the property of being located in a certain place). Therefore, A=B. Now, why is it relevant to analyze existence in terms of these “second-level” properties (basic-ness and symmetry)? It is relevant to do so because the world is characterizable in terms of how much of these properties is lost. For example, the successiveness features of a geometrical line (anti-symmetry, ir-reflexiveness, transitivity) can be easily shown to be manifestations of the loss of symmetry. He ontological analysis program is a scientific program which is intended to explore the strong hypothesis that the natural properties of the world are manifestations of symmetry loss. Now, let us try to imagine the degree-zero of symmetry that is to say that level at which symmetry is totally lost. Perfect symmetry means A= A. So zero-symmetry means A ≠A. If an object is not equal to itself, then it is equal to anything else. Let us consider the extreme case in which A is equal to everything else. One metaphor that we can use to illustrate this idea of “being everything else” is that of the mirror. There is sense in which the mirror can be said to be a marvelous reality. Consider, for example its extraordinary ability to replicate the slightest details of what we dogmatically take to be the “the real world”. When I was a teenager, I could hardly rid myself of the skeptical thought that what I saw in the mirror might as well be the true reality while “my world” was a mere reflection! Interestingly, the English word “mirror” has a history that reflects its almost magic character. As it is pronounced today, “mirror” came from the Middle French “mirour” from which the modern French word “miroire” is derived. The historical origin of “mirour” is the Latin “mirare” which means “wonder” and “mîrus” which means “wonderful”. The mirror in the human mind, thus, was construed as a wonder-engendering entity. The Latin origin of “mirror” is different from the Germanic one in one important way. While the Latin line produced words indicating supernatural power, the Germanic line did not. For example, there emerged in the Latin line words such as “mirable” (i.e., “wonderful”, “marvelous”) and “miracle”, both of which are from the Latin “mirare”. The Germanic line and the Latin line developed independently from each other: The “mirror” came from the religious history of the Latin line which is full of miracles and wonders. This history was very much dissimilar to the pagan Germanic world of laughter and orgies from which came the words “smile” and “smirk”. What is exactly wondrous about the mirror”? The mirror replicates the world and, by so doing, questions the self-contained character of what we take to be “reality”. It questions Existence. Existence is closed in the sense of being identical to itself- sealed off (this is what I have analyzed as symmetry). Nothing can be at the same time itself and something else. This law of Nature is so simple that it tends to escape our attention. But like many other laws of Nature, this law can be broken; it has an exception: Being- Existence with a zero-level of symmetry. The most primitive form that the breaking of this law takes is the mirror. Just like any other reality, the mirror is positive and self-contained. Still it is nothing but all the other things, apart from itself, since it reflects everything else except itself. When you stand in front of a mirror, you can see yourself and everything surrounding you because the mirror reflects things according to well known optical laws. But the mirror does not reflect itself. You can see the mirror but you cannot see the mirror reflected in itself. What I find interesting about the mirror, understood as a wonder-engendering reality, is that it typifies what consciousness (i.e., Man) is. Man is an ambiguous attempt to literally become all that he is not. A part of this ambiguity is what we refer to as “our bodies”. There is an obvious sense in which “my body” is “me”. I am sure, however, that my hair is much less “me” than, say, my eyes. I refer to my computer as “my” computer; but I use the same possessive pronoun “my” to refer to “my” arms. I find the difference between these two “my-s” sharp and clearly identifiable. What you see in the mirror is not “a picture of yourself” but yourself. When you see a tree, you do not see your “seeing” of the tree but “the tree itself”. When you hear a song, you do not hear your hearing of the song but “the song itself”. What we perceive as an object of sight is not what is imprinted on the retina but the object itself. I have always found this “itself-ness” intriguing about mirrors and our perceptions. When one experiences a toothache, however, one is, in fact, feeling certain damage that has affected a part of his body. The pain one senses is not the damage- It’s just a subjective representation of the damage. The objects of our sight, on the other hand, are not representations of the world but they are themselves the world. This is the sense in which being human is at least partly about reduplicating the world. Another thing I have always found striking about the way one is human is the fact that one always recognizes himself as himself and refers to himself as a self-present reality. 15 years ago, I was younger than I now am, lived in a place different from the one where I now live, looked somewhat different from how I now look and adhered to positions that are extremely different from the ones I now adhere to; still I am fully certain that I am the same person I was 15 years ago. I am not a different person. This permanent self-recognition is the foundation of what I experience as my “identity”.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 22:22:22 +0000
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