A Fragment on Singularity

Here’s a funny thing, I have tried several times to write for this blog, and got bogged down in getting it perfect—like I had to say everything all at once, and in a way that was entirely correct. What ends up happening is I either save, or more often, delete the entry, and don’t really return to it—although I may return to the ideas several times while not writing about them.

This is contrary and counter-productive to an aspect of what I am trying to accomplish here, which is, namely, to start writing philosophy again, to pick up the ideas I was working on in times past.

Now, part of this hesitation to post incomplete or partially formed positions and thoughts is because one day I want to make this blog more public, and I want it to be functionally fabulous in relating the ideas it sets out to explore. So I’ve set myself up with a paradox: write freely about these ideas as if no one else is reading, but restrict the writing to only polished and perfected pieces that will be suitable for public consumption.

Heh, figures I’d create a strange loop for myself over this endeavour: after all, the strange loop is what this is all about!

Lol, in reading over the wikipedia article I find myself laughing at how I could attempt to explain the “…hierarchy of levels…[where e]ach level is linked to at least one other by some type of relationship, [so that the] strange loop hierarchy…is "tangled" …[such]…that there is no well defined highest or lowest level [resulting in a structure where t]he levels are organized such that moving through them eventually returns one to one's starting point” which makes me choose this term to describe my ambitions, but then I’d have to start and finish a blog that was identical to this one: yet another strange loop.

Anyway, I’d like to get on with an aspect of what I spend time thinking about, the singularity.

So let’s take a moment to consider one thing all on its own—let’s call it A. Further, if we think about what we mean by “one thing all on its own,” then we find that what we mean—literally—is a singular thing: a thing with no parts, no properties, but a unit in and of itself.

“A unit of what?” we might ask.

Well, we cannot answer this question because we are considering A as existing in relation to nothing else, and this means there is no possible observation of A because A is the only thing that exists.

“But aren’t we observing it now, as we consider it?” we might ask.

No we are not. What we are observing in our mind’s eye is, perhaps, a picture of some object that looks like the capital letter A surrounded by empty space. In other words, we are observing a representation of the circumstance described, but we are not observing A itself, because as we have said, we are attempting—and failing, apparently—to examine a thing as it exists as a singularity.

Kant also thought along these lines, I mentioned this before—this time I did look it up though—noumena is what he called a singular thing in itself. As Kant also reasoned, a noumena is “specified negatively as unknown and beyond our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way.” ^1.

So the singularity, the noumena, remains unknown to us because it relates to nothing else. If we were to come to know it, then we would have to become it, but if we become it we lose ourselves which would necessarily include all our thoughts, ideas, modes of interpretation—since the noumena is not that—and all we are left with is being without any relations; being without anything at all.

Put differently, if A exists, then it exists as nothing, and the only way to understand “exists as nothing” is with the notion of ‘nonexistence.’ In other words A exists if and only if A does not exist.



1. Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pg. 400.

Something To Believe In

I want to write something that makes me believe that I believe in something. I want to write something that examines the belief that I believe in something. I want to write something that makes me believe there’s something to believe in. I want to write something that I believe.

That was a bit of a riff on Love & Rockets song. Maybe I’d put a link in there if it wasn’t such a hassle, but then, I didn’t start this blog to complain about my current technological limitations.

No.

I started this blog to express and examine my beliefs about reality. About what is.

While I was out having a smoke, I got to thinking about Kant. I got to thinking about his neo-platonistic views of an ideal—the essence of something that lies beyond the appearance of something. I can’t quite recall what his name for it was, but it was hidden behind or beyond the manifestation; similar, I guess, to how there are Platonic ideals of things, the instances of which are pale shadows of the perfection. I guess I could look this shit up, but I’m going free flow here.

And somehow this got me dredging up Anslem and his perfect being (being God). It’s not necessarily immediately related, but my mind’s made a connection there—probably something to do with this ideal form that must exist because part of its perfection would be existence. But wait, wasn’t it Kant who established that existence isn’t a predicate or quality of a thing?

Wow, I’d have to look that up.

Anyway, then next it was old Uncle Nietzsche’s, “if you stare into the void, the void stares back” (at least I think this (likely paraphrase) was his). And what happened here in my head was that this perfection, this ideal, this thing that is but is not possibly experienced by us, became that void. And earlier tonight this notion of perfection crossed my mind and I thought about how practice never makes perfect, but it can and often does make better.

Perfection is absence. Ideal is absence. In absence it is the imperfect things, the things of this world, which manifest to fill the void. It is, my mind turns again, pratityasamupada: the void stares into itself, and its absolute absence creates inter-dependent-co-arising manifestation. I can not stare into myself and see nothing; the world cannot stare into itself and see nothing. If there is something to stare, then there must be something to be stared at, and these things are manifestations of nothing and all.

And while maybe that was the nugget I was mining for, the mind then turned to Existentialism, and of course, the notions of despair and longing it carries; although, perhaps transformed, through alchemical process, into satisfaction and relief—turning (or burning) the dross into dreams.