The Orgasm Biopathy: Breakthrough to the Biological

A preliminary excursion into biology, inspired by from the chapter "The Breakthrough to the Biological" in The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich. Drawings done on my iPad; the two diagrams are from Reich.

Life must be rooted into the physical. Early attempts relied on teleological or metaphysical language to make sense of something so eminent. Some more current biological explanations explain life in an abstract rational language based on reflection, while life from a phenomenal perspective operates intuitively. 

It is true that inclusive fitness is what determines the fate and characteristics of species, while not caring much for the individual. But this is known in hindsight. Living things do not occupy their time with such unforeseeable consequences . 

Sexuality for the individual is not exclusively concerned with reproduction or even genital pleasure early on. Sexuality is the qualitative expression of pleasure from the quantitative expansion of the body and its internal content into the environment. Sexuality involves the physical processes of the whole body. It is the purpose of every organism; not in a teleological way, but from the continued activity of life. I see this conception of sexuality not at odds with the traditional view of sex being for the propagation of the species, but as the complementary psychology of individual sexuality.

"Procreation is a function of sexuality, and not vice versa. Sexuality can no longer be regarded as an unfortunate concomitant of the preservation of the species." Wilhelm Reich 

Reproduction and the primacy of genital copulation are not the original impetus for sexuality for the individual, as this develops later in life. Sexuality is a lifelong process from the very beginning of life. It is a biological process of expansion and discharge into the environment from the built up energy of the body. It can be described as a transfer of electrical potential energy into the mechanical energy of bodily motion. Success in this endeavor continues the growth and development of the individual. The health of mind is related to sexual health.

The orgasm's function is the continuation of the individual organism which comes to serve reproductive functions. The orgasm services the expansion of living things by making such effort pleasurable by not only providing relaxation after a release of tension, but by delivering greater pleasure for greater stores of tension. The orgasm is life in its most potent immediate form. The expression of the "will to power."

Higher potential energy-> greater kinetic energy. A highly charged current will flow to less charged one; flow from first to second. Static electrical energy is converted into current energy. Equalization takes place. Equalization presupposes a difference in potential energy.

"Since the concentrations and structures of the membranes are not homogeneous, differences develop in the tensions at the border surfaces, and, simultaneously, differences in potential of varying energy." Wilhelm Reich

Muscles discharge as energy in the body is in constant motion from places of higher to places of lower potential. Atoms have a fixed quantum of electrical charge; depending on their position atoms cations or anions, having positive or negative charge.

There is a four part formula for the orgasm: mechanical tension, electrical charge, electrical discharge, mechanical relaxation. 

Tension- sexual organs fill up with blood; build up of potential electrical energy

Charge- transfer of mechanical to electrical energy; electrical excitation sent to brain

Discharge- muscular convulsion discharges electrical charge, release/flow of fluids. 

Relaxation- flowing off of body fluids to areas of lower pressure, towards exterior. Drive towards equalization. 

Something that expands in all directions forms a sphere. As internal pressure increases, surface tension of the exterior resists this expansion.

Two things can happen. The sphere can burst, like a balloon. Or the accumulated charge from the fluid tension can be discharged. 

If the body or body part remains in one piece, then the shape will become serpentine while expelling material, becoming more linear as the discharge must go in one direction to avoid bursting. 

Biology shows us how the function of the orgasm is observable among the most simple organisms and common life processes

Mitosis, the division of the cell, reflects this process at the most basic level. The cell is limited in size because the membrane must keep what is inside inside. As the inside grows, internal pressure and surface tension increase. To avoid bursting, the cell shape becomes a little wavy, like the serpentine pattern, but with one trough. The energy can be discharged into the separation of another cell rather than a continuation of the pattern which changes the shape of the cell, which requires constant effort.

The single cell amoeba sustains itself by moving the edge of the membrane to where food is, by distributing the body fluid cytoplasm to areas of the membrane edge, creating pseudopods to move in a particular direction. 

The bladder expels fluid from the body after expansion, increased internal pressure and surface tension. The trail of urine approaches a line the more fluid is being expelled and more effort is being used. 

Organisms are not homogeneous in structure. Differences develop in surface tension on the surface, and the quantities of potential energy inside the body. Energy is distributed unevenly, produced and built up internally. Organic bodies can expand and contract. 

The Inorganic is homogeneous; energy is evenly distributed on the surface, no internal production or build up of energy. The entire body is rigid in structure. 

Muscular armoring makes our orientation to the world rigid, inorganic. Our body still attracts and builds up energy, but does not allow free movement or release. The muscles constrict the flow of fluids like blood in order to prevent the expression of sexuality. Just as when we try to hold in urine when the bladder becomes full to prevent the visible release of what is inside to the exterior. External excitation is reflected or kept inside. 

The twin drives of sexual pleasure and anxious pain can be mapped onto the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. The parasympathetic nervous system aims outward towards pleasure and expansion. The sympathetic nervous system draws inward, exciting the body against external threats. 

Sympathetic- "fight or flight" and homeostasis, basic living functions. Eye dilation, sweating, adrenaline. 

Parasympathetic-"Feed and breed" or "rest and digest." Body at rest, after eating. Crying, peeing, digesting. 

Pain and suffering are related to a build up of tension, but which doesn't lead to expansion for the organism or a pleasurable discharge for the organism. Discharge takes effort to do, rather than being a lessening of tension. Internal pressure increases, to the point where the energy can only be released by external pressure. 

Repression of sexual energy puts one under the control of others for tension reduction. The release of energy built up into internal pressure can only be pleasurable if given an outlet to where there is lower pressure. This is what an organism does naturally, according to its physical constitution. It is unnatural to go against the functioning of the body, which aims outward, and instead increasing tension without release for a pleasurable end. 

When tension and energy are increased without controlled release, the pressure turns inward. The individual turns away from the world and aims to avoid an increase of personal expansion.

Getting to the Unconscious

If we had to learn everything we need to survive in our own lifetimes, we would never have made it this far as a species. In some way we live out the development of the species in the comparatively short span of our individual lives. I find it amazing how often we can understand each other without explaining what we meant. How much effort it takes to hide our feelings and lie to each other. How most of communication is non-verbal. The best explanation I've found for such thoughts is the notion of unconscious mind, something which is worth exploring to get a better understanding of mental life.

The earliest notions of an unconscious are a priori ideas which do not originate from any experience we can name from our individual conscious lives. Such thinking is found in Plato's doctrines of the theory of forms and knowledge as recollection. Aristotle who was critical of the theory of forms instead came up with potentiality, what we are able to do but haven't made manifest.

But it is with Rene Descartes that consciousness becomes something in and of itself which isn't necessary to explain the physical world and which we argue about a deal. The possibility of someone being physically identical to us and behaving like us but not being conscious would have been a very strange thought in ancient days. But now we are surrounded by machines which can perform tasks which were once exclusive to us. Thinking about the the unconscious can get us back to a connection between consciousness and the physical world, as whatever is unconscious cannot be observed directly. Maybe someday artificial intelligence will be so advanced that consciousness itself can only be inferred as well.

A great many philosophers since Descartes have identified consciousness with the ability to use language. The assumption is that we only have access to our own consciousness, which unchecked we attribute to everything else in the world. It is only by inference that we establish the existence of other minds. It is how the world resists our will that we know matter, which isn't conscious. Language is how we express our thinking through symbols. If someone else acts how we expect ourselves, being conscious to act, then they are conscious.

While I do think that language is necessary for consciousness, Descartes went further and argued essentially that any sort of perceptual awareness was consciousness or self-consciousness. Even animals which act as if they feel pain, which requires no language to understand, actually don't feel pain and just act as if they do. This was a very restrictive and human-centric understanding of consciousness to include any feeling whatsoever.

This kind of reasoning becomes mechanical. Manipulating symbols, inferring from a set of rules algorithmically. The assumption is that if something acts consciously and is physically indistinguishable from what is conscious, then it is conscious. Any other criterion reflects only our own thinking. Descartes said in the Meditations that even the most fantastical things can only be put together from something objectively existing. "Even when painters try to depict sirens and satyrs with the most extraordinary bodies, they simply jumble up the limbs of different kinds of real animals, rather than inventing natures that are entirely new." Even HP Lovecraft's most bizarre monsters are composed of tentacles and eyeballs, which can be found individually without difficulty.

This kind of reasoning is what computers can do today, well enough to fool a good number of us that they are conscious (Turing Test). Aristotle defined human beings as the rational animal as if the ability to reason made us unique. With computers and the formalization of logic, what is unique about humans in today's society is what we share with animals (our species-life). A strange state of affairs indeed.

What Descartes didn't have was the intentional unconscious. Descartes had an inkling of the unconscious, which really was a second state of consciousness to explain mental ideas but not caused by the mind as we know it.

"And as to the other reason, which is that these ideas must proceed from objects outside me, since they do not depend on my will, I do not find it any the more convincing. For just as these impulses of which I have spoken are found in me, notwithstanding that they do not always concur with my will, so perhaps there is in me some faculty fitted to produce these ideas without the assistance of any external things, even though it is not yet known by me; just as, apparently, they have hithero always been found in me during sleep without the aid of external objects." Meditations on First Philosophy

This unconscious for him is a causal mechanism which is like mind, except that we are not aware of its cause. This unconscious is really the preconscious, the potential to become conscious, because these thoughts can enter into consciousness without much difficulty, and are only strange in that we don't remember where exactly they came from.

Gottfried Leibniz, an admirer of Descartes, brought us the first conception of the unconscious.

14 "The passing state...is nothing other than what is called perception, which must be carefully distinguished from apperception or consciousness, as will appear presently. And herein lies the great mistake of the Cartesians, that they took no account of perceptions which are not apperceived. It is this also which makes them believe that minds alone are monads, and that neither brutes nor other entelechies have souls." -Monadology

For Leibniz, we must have an idea of everything that exists in the universe, because we are affected by them whether or not we are conscious. If the external world exists independently of consciousness (object permanence) then it should be that our minds are affected by external things even when we are not aware of them. There is a difference between unconscious perception and conscious perception of things.

The key is that the perceptions are not strong enough to be brought to clarity or distinction, not stored by memory or continually seized by the mind. Perception comes from Latin percipere which means to seize. Consciousness is properly apperception, an appetite for perception. Appetite comes from Latin appetitus to desire for or seek after. The difference between consciousness and unconsciousness is a sort of continual intensity on a single thing. [For more on Leibniz's Monadology]

20 "For we experience within ourselves a state, in which we remember nothing and have no distinguishable perception; and when we fall into a swoon, or when we are overcome by deep dreamless sleep."

These states Leibniz describe can be empirically investigated. In the 19th Gustav Fechner and Ernst Weber and others came up with psychophysics which explores the relationship between physical stimuli, like touch, and sensations, like pain. For thousands of years philosophers have debated the relationship between mind and body. Prior to psychophysics Spinoza and Schopenhauer, both very influential to the 19th century German thinkers, argued for mind and body being two aspects of the same world, and not some causal relationship, a debate which continues today. But they didn't really have a measurable quantitive mechanism to the relationship between the two. Psychophysics likewise avoided the debate between whether and how body and mind interact and instead looked to when exactly the mind becomes aware of physical activity. Much like Leibniz's difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, as degrees of awareness. Psychophysics aims to establish the quantitative relationship between the two without reducing one to the other. What difference in physical stimuli is noticable? This is what psychophysics explores. 

Looking to psychophysics, there must be a way in which physical stimuli affect us even when we are not consciously aware of them. To explain phenomena like dreams, slips of the tongue, hysteria, neurosis, phobias, fetishes etc.

This gets us to a link between conscious sensation and physical stimuli, but what about stimuli that is beneath the threshold of consciousness? How can we measure that?

The truth is that the unconscious as a causal factor as well as a psychological reality must be inferred. We cannot experience or measure the unconscious directly, but neither can we experience or measure directly the thoughts of others. We infer that others are conscious, even if not in daily life because we are familiar with our own consciousness and apply that to others readily. But the unconscious by its nature is not something we even want to apply even to ourselves. We want to be in control of ourselves. But it is a qualitative "mechanism" which could explain our ability to understand each other, not as physical phenomena but in terms of something we do share. The unconscious as the missing link between the body and consciousness. 

For the mature notion of the unconscious, the German speaking philosophers of the 19th century had to eliminate the vestiges of idealist/dualist thinking, inherited from Leibniz and reaching its apex in Georg Hegel. The revolutionaries would follow a line of criticism against Kant's thing-in-itself and thing-as-appearance and the German idealists who offered stronger idealisms as a solution. I'll write about that in a different post. 

The Necessity of Empirical Knowledge

There are things which are known without regard to sense experience. The truths of geometry are self-evident, as are the conclusions of deductive arguments like the old 'Socrates is mortal.'

But such truths cannot yield other truths. This sort of reasoning cannot lead to anything else than is already known. The truths are ultimately tautologies. 'A is A' and 'A is not not A' do not tell me anything new. Nothing else than what is contained in the subject. And even truths of mathematics like 7+5=12 requires something other than is in the notions 5, 7, and 12 (once we have these notions, however, the truth of mathematics require no further experience for their truth).

Experience is what gives us new information. Experience is the content of our concepts. Analytic concepts which require no new experience to know are themselves derived from experience at some point. They are the products of the condensation and distilling of experiences, by our own activity, whether we are aware of it or not.

Our concepts are given the impression of universality because of external conditions which are stronger than individual will. Our species life is what gives commonality amongst other humans and with animals to different extents due to our common biological descent.

The other reason for the seeming immutability of our conceptions, and equally as hard for most humans to comprehend, is that the nature of consciousness imposes conditions on our knowledge. To understand the world, the purpose of which is self-preservation, it is entirely unnecessary to be aware of or remember everything. Only what is advantageous to maintaining difference with the environment to continue bodily motion is sufficient for life. This selectivity, due to our limited budget of energy expenditure, is responsible for our notions of space, time, and causality, which are the basis for scientific or objective knowledge [As is the existence of rest mass].

Reality is radically pluralistic, even as it is 'one' reality. One only knows something in relation to something else. Everything comes together and apart; invades each other's personal space. We attempt to impose unity or a false pluralism where similar things come grouped together under a set of arbitrary rules. Any thought we have is accompanied by a physical action, not by some mechanical relationship, but in that they are different aspects of the same thing. They are material, they are sensual.

Leibniz's Monadology

This is an easy, short work but one that is quite difficult to comprehend. So much of it goes against the widely accepted atomic view of the universe. If one wants to appreciate the depth of Leibniz's system, a knowledge of some of Aristotle's and Descartes' ideas is necessary, as is a familiarity of the competing materialist/atomist system of the time via John Locke and others.

First off, the monad is originally a Pythagorean idea. It is a point, self contained and the first of anything. Everything is equidistant from this point and this point precedes all constructions we make. It is represented as a point surrounded by a circle. Whatever is is in the monad. This point has zero dimensions of space; it is not extended. A one dimensional object would be a line with two points, a dyad. It isn't something in relation to something else, as say a line exists between two points.

Leibniz used monad in a different way. A monad is a first of its kind, not first in terms of anything existing which is what the Pythagorean monad sounds like. There can be more than one monad because they are unique. In fact there are seemingly an infinite number of monads. A monad is a created thing in that it's nature is the same throughout its existence until it's non-existence. Its time begins and ends with its existence, and so is timeless one could say.

The monad is defined by what describes it, using subject predicate logic. A predicate is either contained in a subject, or the subject is predicated of another subject. The monad contains all of its predicates. What describes it does not change because of anything except for itself. Monads cannot destroy themselves and are not affected by anything else. What is destroyed are combinations of different monads, extended in the various dimensions of space and accordingly time.

Anything that exists is either a monad or a complex of monads. Complexes are what we call bodies, which are composed of smaller parts and differ from one another by size, shape, and arrangement of parts. These complexes do not change the nature of the monads, its simple parts. Something can change over time in its size, shape, and arrangement of parts and be the same thing.

This leads to a crucial distinction which is central to understanding the monadology and I think is original to Leibniz. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic difference. This is now called Leibniz's Law or the Identity of Indiscernibles: if everything about something can be said about something else, then they are the same thing. In other words, an external difference does not make things different. There has to be an internal difference, of kind and not number.

"There are never in nature two beings which are precisely alone, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic denomination"

A monad is not a physical thing. A monad does not causally affect other monads and is not affected by others. This is the strangest part of the work which leads to an even stranger explanation.

There are gradations of monads solely on their power to perceive monads clearly and distinctly (language borrowed from Descartes). This is a very important concept to grasp in Leibniz's philosophy. Everything has a degree of perception. This is how things interact with one another. They don't actually change, but are affected by other monads by varying degrees of perception. All monads reflect each other, that is they contain in themselves knowledge of every other monad. When it seems like a monad is affected, it is merely acting in accordance with the perception of the monad. Monads have the power to represent everything else. Just like in dreams and hallucinations where the mind can simulate powerful experiences, though this is only the workings of the mind itself and nothing externally is causing everything in the dream or the hallucination.

Monads can't affect each other because they are the unique ground for every single thing that can be said of the universe. There is something for each self-contained subject which needs no further explanation.

All monads are entelechies, a term borrowed from Aristotle who used it to describe the potential for action. Leibniz uses it to describe "incorporeal automata" which have the power of appetition, of going from one perception to another. Entelechies have perception and appetite, of being affected and attaining new affections. Entelechy is the innate potential everything has, which today we might call energy.

From the entelechy and Aristotle's potential/actual distinction, Leibniz lays out what would later be called the unconscious. Leibniz describes consciousness as apperception, a seizing of perception. Consciousness is essentially an intensification of attention on an object, an act of will or appetite which makes things clear and distinct, whereas unconsciousness is not a state of non-existence, but of indistinct and unclear perception.

Mind begins with memory, which repeats perceptions and can associate them with similar perceptions. Our mind seizes upon the strongest perceptions, determined by the nature of the body of other monads the mind is surrounded by and perceives strongest. These associations produce habits of behavior and the nature of "brute" organisms.

Humans however by reflection can abstract from experience and discover the necessary truths behind such associations. Souls however are only monads "whose perception is more distinct and is accompanied by memory." Thus gradations of being are determined by power to represent from the basic nature of each created monad.

We are unique among living things, for everything is alive in an unconscious sort of way, because we can raise our perception to comprehend God, and in that way we are "made in his image." Leibniz's argument for God is an ontological one; God must exist if he is possible. Instead of a first cause, God is a necessary substance from which everything comes, whose non-existence is inconceivable. By the power of our own mind, we discover what is behind the power of anything that exists in the universe, which is of course God.

It is still odd that every monad doesn't interact with one another, and yet it sure seems that way. Leibniz introduces the ever more strange explanation that God creates the harmony between monad's perceptions of each in creating the universe. This is related to the famous "best of all possible world" principle of Leibniz, or "principle of the best" which responds to the problem of evil under God's existence. God being a perfect and all good being would never create a world where our thoughts didn't align with the actions of bodies. Knowledge would be impossible, and there could no rewards and punishments for good behavior, making justice impossible. "And it is this which causes the existence of the best, which God knows through his wisdom, chooses through his goodness, and produces through his power."

Mind and body are not detached because the distinction arises from representation. The soul is the dominant entelechy, which is in parallel harmony with the entelechies it perceives stongest. Nothing in the universe is lifeless and mechanical, bodies are composed of unconsciously perceiving simple monads. Because of this, there isn't a transmigration of souls, as the soul is always with entelechies which can change without changing the nature of the soul or mind.

The monadology, as bizarre as it sounds, was a proposed alternative to the corpuscular or atomic theory of the universe, where everything is made of the same fundamental particles and differ only in arrangements and forces between the particles. Leibniz just didn't like this mechanistic universe which is externally determined. His predicate logic seemed to necessitate the existence of unique things. Unfortunately his system relies on essentialism, though a relatively limited one, and the necessary existence of God particularly for his resolution of the mind-body problem. For those of us who have accepted Hume and Kant's skepticism in our lives, this is too much.

This book is still worth reading for three ideas. One is the unconscious which Leibniz is the first to really lay out. Second is the suggestion that it is possible for the mind to understand the entire universe if one thinks clearly and distinctly enough, and the distinction of intrinsic and extrinsic difference. I think these concepts made their way into German idealism and even continental philosophy, in thinkers like Henri Bergson (intuition versus analysis) and Martin Heidegger (ready versus present to hand) and of course the whole enterprise of Psychoanalysis.

Democratic Dialectic

This week's readings dealt with, among other things, democratic consolidation. That is how to get parties to resolve conflicts following democratic norms within the state. Democracy is according to Linz and Stepan the "only game in town" when it comes to resolving disputes. Nobody can seriously challenge the government, ignore its commands, overthrow it, or secede from the government as part of a disagreement.

Democracy has a dialectical nature, this week’s and last week’s readings make clear. The people must control the government, and the people obey the government. Linz and Stepan’s article has parallels with Przeworski’s selection from Week III and Almond Verba from Week IV. Przeworski's definition of democracy is partly that democracy replaces violence with competition. Almond Verba made what was to me an ingenious and novel argument that the people must care about government, but they also can’t care too much. If you care too much about the result of an election or policy battle, you might not want to accept the result and possibly develop hostility towards democratic norms and procedures.

The dialectical nature of democracy has a danger which the readings did not touch upon. Increasing democracy can come at the expense of individual liberty. The more power we give the state, even if the state is responsible to the people, the less personal freedom we have in our individual lives. Friedrich Hayek argued in the Road to Serfdom that socialism is incompatible with democracy because giving the state the authority to control the economy means alienating more power to unelected bureaucrats. “Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies. They cannot produce agreement on everything – the whole direction of the resources of the nation – for the number of possible courses of action will be legion...even if, by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem of integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole. There will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual should be given powers to act on their own responsibility.” We can vote how often and for how many people we want, we also as the readings in these class make clear, we have to obey the decisions at some point. Linz argue to the contrary that democratic consolidation requires some degree of state control. A completely free market is not compatible with consolidated democracy, because the state must be able to enact at least some of the demands of the citizenry and be able to enforce said demands. Hayek himself was no advocate of laissez-faire; “The successful use of competition does not preclude some types of government interference. For instance, to limit working hours, to require certain sanitary arrangements, to provide an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition.” Accordingly, I see individual liberty and social/economic regulation as part of the democratic dialectic. There has to be a sensible balance toward limits on government and limits on the market.

I see another reason however to worry about the willingness to grant more state power under democracy, lack of trust. Successful individualism is not based on avarice. An individualistic society involves trusting others to be competent to run their own lives. Individualism is important for democracy because that trust can then be extended to government, where we trust others to be competent to make decisions over us just as they can for themselves. Pericles originally made this argument in his funeral oration. “The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.”

Democratic consolidation to me relies on a tension between individualist and egalitarian moral values. Of all the factors given by the political scientists, this is the most personal and most visible in daily life. I assert my rights against the state and society, to participate in and to be unmolested by the state, and I have to accept and from time to time defend the rights of others. A society without this mutual trust and values is one where we turn to the collective judgement of the state to resolve our conflicts. Instead of working things out privately, we sue each other in court. Thus the "road to serfdom" is paved by distrust and disagreement. We find ourselves bound to the dictates of unelected bureaucrats because we don't trust each other to do what we think they should. A healthier or truly consolidated democratic society should involve the humility and benevolence of accepting that I don't always know what is good for others and trust them to do it themselves. We don’t need to build this into a mathematical model of democracy; we should practice it as individual citizens.

Introducing the Conatus

(Read this first.)

Spinoza sets up the principles for the Conatus in the second part of the Ethics which deals with psychology or "the nature and origin of mind." Spinoza's reasoning begins with God, which is not the personal God of religion but rather the universe. God is anything that can be attributed to existence as such, and so is infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, anything you can think of. But God is not personal, as taking an individual form would negate the infinite and necessary nature of God, who is not a thing but literally everything. 

Gods's existence is necessary by definition in Spinoza's system because anything that exists describes God, which is defined as everything. 

This is important for his psychology because it entails that only God is a substance. Everything else in the universe is contingent, including human beings. Anything in the universe which we have an idea of are bodies, finite things like ourselves extended in space and time. Our ideas are of something existing, and we not being infinite cannot perceive everything. The only ideas we have that are not of bodies would be ideas of ideas, ad infinitum, eventually leading to a body. 

"..if there were also any other object of the mind besides a body...the ideas of some effect produced by this object would necessarily exist in the mind. But because there is no such idea, and therefore the object our mind is a body existing, and nothing else."

The principles which govern bodies derive from thought, but since thought is of bodies, these principles should apply to all bodies, including our own. Thus Spinoza says to understand the human mind, we must understand the nature of the human body and bodies in general. 

"..everything that we have said of the idea of the human body is necessarily true of the idea of any other thing...therefore, in order to determine the difference between the human mind and other things and its superiority over them, we must first know, as we have said, the nature of its object, that is to say, the nature of the human body."

There are two fundamental principles governing bodies; 

Axiom 1. All bodies are either in a state of motion or rest.

Axiom 2. Every body moves, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.

These are the only things which distinguish bodies, and not substance. Any individual thing in the universe is a body in motion or rest, and if in motion, differing by degree of motion. All things share in this and can affect each other (contrary to Leibniz).

Bodies aim to preserve their state of motion, but can changed by any other body to different degrees of rest or motion.

What gets us to the Conatus are composite bodies. These bodies preserve their total state in opposition to the effects of other bodies because each part moves in the same state. So to change the state of motion or rest requires changing the state of every part together. A good example is a bundle of sticks, or dry spaghetti. Individually they are easy to break, but together it takes more effort. Even if you break one the others remain, and their composite nature reduces the casualties. 

"When a number of bodies of the same or different motion are pressed together by others, so that they lie upon the other, or if they are in motion with the same or with different degrees of speed, so that they communicate their motion to one another in a certain fixed proportion, these bodies are said to he mutually United, and taken together they are said to compose one body or individual, which is distinguished by other bodies by this union of bodies."

The form of a body is maintained by continual replacement. The nature of the whole makes it so all members are the same, and maintains this only by degrees of addition or subtraction. The whole operates differently than the parts, and so can maintain its nature throughout change in quantity. Quantity becomes quality. 

The form of something isn't static and universal like it was for Plato, but a dynamic changing actual thing. A drive which continues the individuated existence of something. The form is a tendency to act in a certain way for self-preservation. The body can change, grow and diminish, but so long as the body can perform the action which it could have done before, it's nature is maintained. 

"if the parts composing an individual become greater or less proportionately, so that they persevere towards one another the same kind of motion and rest, the individual will also retain the nature which it had before without any change of form."

This sets up the Conatus, which is presented to us in part three. 

Prop IV "a thing cannot be destroyed except by an external cause."

A thing cannot be destroyed by itself, but only an external cause. By destroy Spinoza means the dissolution of a body or a change in its "natural" state of motion, or tendency to act. This follows from the law of inertia; a body in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by another object. Because there is nothing substantial to individuals other than their perseverance in total motion or rest, change in this is annihilation. As the essence of a body does not entail existence. 

"the definition of any given thing affirms and does not deny the existence of the thing; that is to say, it posits the essence of the thing and does not negate"

Prop V "in so far as one thing is able to destroy another they are of contrary natures; that is to say, they cannot exist in the same subject."

This is because of the law of the excluded middle. Something cannot be what it is and is not at the same time and place. Motion is defined by these qualities. 

Prop VI "each thing, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persevere in its being.

it is opposed to everything which could negate its existence."

If things can exist together, then they can share an essence together beyond their separate states. Parts can form a whole by what they have in common. This is very important as composite body's are "synthetic" as they continue in existence, thus higher forms of matter are possible. The Conatus is opposed to reductionism, which views things as static. 

Prop VII "the effort by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself."

The being is the essence, though in "extended" or spatial-temporal terms.

Prop VIII "the effort by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own being does not involve finite but indefinite time"

This is a major difference between the Conatus of Spinoza and Hobbes. Striving defines the essence of something, not its existence. The beginning and end do not measure the existence of something; its (continual) existence is its essence.  Hobbes says that the impetus "ceaseth only in death," that is in spatial temporal terms. Spinoza's Conatus is a feature of the physical world, not just of organic things. Any individual thing is defined by Conatus.

The Conatus is a way to reconcile the changing nature of the phenomenal world with identity by positing an underlying force which is not extinguished by different time and space. By staking our identity on striving, this concept opens up dynamic and progressive views of human nature. By striving to be actual, we are actual. We can create higher forms of being, not as a static finished product, but continually maintained. 

The Psychology of the Sublime and the Beautiful

(This started as a book review but became a melding of classical associationist psychology with psychoanalytic theory, with some evolutionary theory. Its a book review as well as theoretical work.)

A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke 1757. A very interesting work that attempts to do to aesthetics what Locke tried to do with philosophy. That is to put it on an empirical or scientific basis. Over a century before Charles Darwin, Burke tries to ground the sublime and the beautiful into survival and sexual reproduction. I've come back to this book a second time because some parallels with Sigmund Freud's dualistic theory of drives; Eros and Thanatos. The beautiful is rooted to pleasure and I think ultimately sexuality, and the sublime rooted in pain and aggression, and ultimately death. The work is definitely worth going back to to reconsider the dynamic nature of some of his concepts, much as he tried to root them all in conscious sense impressions.

The introduction on taste is the longest section of the work and understanding the section is crucial toward accepting his conclusions. Burke sets up the work telling us that the standards of taste are the same among all humans and that differences are more "apparent than real." If there were not some standard, we could not communicate with each other as we do on a regular basis. We accept certain measures as objective like money or the law, but continue to declare things like beauty or taste to be "in the eye of the beholder." We have this notion of taste, if there was nothing behind it, its invocation in discourse would be quite absurd. Burke defines taste as the faculty of mind which is affected by something. That something is an object, through sensation. We can safely assume that we humans all experience things the same way. If not we would assume that "the same cause operating in the same manner...will produce different effects, which would be highly absurd."

Language follows this commonality of experience in how we describe certain tastes. Sweetness is pleasant, sourness is unpleasant. Burke then asserts something like Hume's copy principle by saying that the original impression is stronger than any imagination which derives ultimately from the impression. "The power of distinguishing between the natural and the acquired relish remains to the very last." Nobody can think that tobacco is sweet. If one does so, we "immediately conclude that the organs of this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly vitiated." We can however derive pleasure or pain from the same tastes, dependent on our individual habits and temperament, but not different tastes.

So far this is associationist psychology; our aversion and attraction to things is reinforced by prior experiences. Tobacco is desirable to some because of its effects other than taste "things do not spontaneously present themselves to the palate...they are generally applied to it...they often form the palate by degrees, and by force of these associations."

Besides sensation, the mind can also represent at will ideas of things as they are in memory or create new associations between them. This is imagination, which cannot produce anything new. What imagination does is form expectations about things we experience, such as fear or hope. Intelligence consists in comparison among different experiences.

We prefer similarity in our train of thought (which is why it's so frustrating when music skips). We are more struck by resemblance, as completely different things require no more explanation between them than that they are different (law of excluded middle). "Men are much more inclined to belief than to incredulity." It takes mental acuity to differentiate things. Good taste doesn't depend on greater judgment or intelligence, but knowledge from experience. The difference among taste is a difference in degrees of knowledge. But all have common he criterion of pleasure and pain. And "so far as Taste is natural, it is nearly common to all." We can be more sensitive than others or be more familiar with certain tastes, while all having the same basis for judgement.

(Jeremy Bentham would later say that "pushpin is as good as poetry", which would would only be true if one has the knowledge necessary to understand poetry. John Stuart Mill came up with the great retort "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.")

We then arrive at a fuller definition of taste. Taste because it requires some degrees of knowledge isn't just a "simple idea" or single impression, it is a synthetic unity of sense, imagination, and judgement. "The groundwork of all these is the same in the human mind."

Burke sets out an objective, "scientific" or materialist criterion for discussing aesthetics, in line with the associationist psychologies of John Locke and David Hume. He establishes that it is possible to make rational inquiry into what is usually seen as subjective, provided its basis is in sense impression which for empiricists is the substance of reality.

The main body of the work begins on the surface of emotions; novelty. Novelty or curiosity is the most superficial of emotions as it is chiefly concerned with its object. Once we get to know something, it doesn't grab our attention as something unknown, even if said thing is of worse quality. It is an active feeling, which it can be said motivates us into action like hardly anything else. If we want to learn something, it helps to be curious and not familiar with the subject matter. "Some degree of novelty just be one of the materials in every instrument which works upon the mind." Aristotle himself told us that philosophy begins with wonder.

Next we move to the foundational emotions discussed in the taste section; pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain are simple ideas. They cannot be reduced to another; pain is not the absence of pleasure and pleasure is not the absence of pain. Burke labels delight as the absence of pain. The mind can also be in a state of indifference, which is probably the most common state says Burke.

This all struck me as very similar to Freud's nirvana principle, aka the constancy principle, in which the quantity of excitation is zero. This means that stability is the goal of mental processes, an equilibrium. This is also a state of indifference, though stated in thermodynamic terms. A difference between Freud and Burke is that pain and pleasure for Freud are reducible or explainable by disturbances in equilibrium rather than unique positive states. Freud writes in An Outline of Psychoanalysis "It is probable, however, that what is felt as pleasure or unpleasure is not the absolute degree of tensions but something in the rhythm of their changes." The first law of thermodynamics states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system can be transferred to one form to another, but neither created nor destroyed. Pleasure and pain can be interpreted as excitations in the bodily organs from this transfer of energy. Both pain and pleasure for Burke arouse us out of a state of indifference, being at least novel. There is that in common. Freud might have agreed that pain and pleasure are unique conscious states, while maintaining a common physical/unconscious cause for both. Burke however is interested in a more phenomenal treatment of emotions. 

The other link with Freud's drive theory is that the most powerful impressions deriving from pain and pleasure are also dual; the sublime and the beautiful. These two powerful feelings derive from two needs; self-preservation and society. Self-preservation turns by pain, from the state of danger which from expectation of said state brings terror. Society aims at continuing our own existence through the species by generation, and living together in general.

The sublime and the beautiful are for Burke powerful emotions, and he doesn't venture much further than that. He takes the experiences as given and seeks to ground them in sense impressions. His main argument is that the sublime and the beautiful are distinct experiences which can be explained by material/sensual factors.

Self-preservation and the sublime are analogous to the death drive. The death drive aims at equilibrium of the individual with the surrounding environment to reduce excitation. An organism will cannot forever resist this return which takes effort to overcome, making it a very powerful drive. For Burke, pain is a stronger emotion than pleasure, though he doesn't provide an explanation for this other than direct experience. From this he reasons that death is more arresting than pain, by comparison. We are more ready to suffer most pains rather than death. His reasoning I think is from self-preservation. Painful things are harmful to our existence and disrupt a chain of thinking, as Burke said before we prefer similarity to difference and new things to familiar things. So pain puts us into action to return to either indifference or pleasure. Burke said before that indifference is the state we are more often in. By death he probably means the experience of dying and not the actual state of non-existence. Freud's death drive manifests itself in unpleasant emotions and aggression, but aims along with the love drive at a state of indifference. Burke follows the utilitarian logic of action being done to gain pleasure and avoid pain, with indifference being a state of inaction rather an something which takes effort to maintain (equilibrium).

The sublime has its basis in pain, but operates on terror which is an expectation of pain. The sublime is so powerful because it takes hold of all our thoughts, mostly by imagination and expectation. Because of the imaginary and reckoning aspects, at a certain distance, the sublime can be delightful. We can experience the power the terrible holds over us while not being in pain or danger of our lives. The power is our attention because it is disruptive and different. It removes us from a state of indifference without introducing pain, and so can be a source of delight (though not pleasure). By being held in the mental state of terror by the sublime yet not experiencing pain, we can experience delight while avoiding danger.

This ambivalence toward the terrifying and is not unlike feelings toward repressed desires or the superego. In the case of repressed desires like socially unacceptable sexuality or aggression, we still desire to act on them but because we are not allowed to develop an unease when they are aroused or indulged in. Freud wrote that the superego allows aggression to enter into the decision making of the ego, causing this ambivalence as means of extending social control (originally from parents).

The other need is society, the aim of the beautiful, which is divisible into sexual society and general society. Both aim at species life, through generation and maintenance of society. Generation of the species is of course sexuality which has its origin in "gratifications and pleasures." These pleasures are so strong that their loss produces violent and turbulent effects on us which aim at reestablishing said pleasures. These pleasures which seize the mind can be described as love, which like terror forms expectations about its objects and a mental dependency. The pleasure of sexuality and love is far greater than health and maintenance of life. This has to be so, for "the generation of mankind is a great purpose,named it is requisite that men should be animated to the pursuit of it by some great incentive." Without such a reward, it is unlikely that we would undergo the great difficulties in its performance. In this way, love has an aggressive element which introduces ambivalence because it can conflict with our other needs.

The beautiful comes from love which is grounded in pleasure. Brutes and animals attract to each other sexually, but out of instinct rather than choice. For humans, the pleasure others provide us captures our imagination and gives us the need to always have access to them. Love produces expectations for continuation, and to varying degrees reciprocity. "They inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons; we like to have them near us, and we enter willingly into a kind of relation with them, unless we should have strong reasons to the contrary."

The other social need, to belong with others in general, gives "no positive pleasure". This is puzzling since humans are social creatures. Total isolation, Burke notes, is very unpleasant. From this Burke reasons that social life is motivated more from pain than pleasure. Alienation from society is unpleasant, but keeping in mind that the absence pleasurable is not painful, there is an element of ambivalence in that we do as Burke said require some time to ourselves even while long term isolation makes us unhappy. This ambivalence brings to mind Freud's superego which regulates individual behavior by pain and uneasiness. "When the superego is formed, considerable amounts of the aggressive instinct become fixated within the ego and operate there in a self-destructive fashion."

Another difference between Burke and Freud is that Freud sees our social needs (along with the ambivalent feelings) as also grounded in sexuality. Freud differed from the more established and common view of sexuality, where sexuality is seen as genital pleasure linked to reproduction chiefly if not only among adults. Sexuality Freud argued was dynamic and only becomes linked to the genitals and reproduction later in life in accordance with mental, physical, and social development. Sexuality is at root the pursuit of pleasure in all of its forms (polymorphically). The greatest misunderstanding of Freud lies in the confusion of sexuality with genital pleasure and reproduction, making his claims of infantile sexuality and incest seem strange and perverted. Vis a vis pleasure, social acceptance and rejection are instrumental. It would only be by being able to thwart gratification that we would care about social restrictions since they do inevitably constrain us. Thus, social needs are created by internal acceptance of the negative feelings others have toward your sexual behavior and aims.

The beautiful is like Eros, a formative drive. Eros maintains life in its individual forms, by continually striving to resist equilibrium with the environment. The ultimate aim is the preservation of the species, though this develops later in life and is fraught with difficulties for the individual. Self preservation Burke argued works by pain and danger. Species preservation cannot work like this because the good of the species does not always align with the individual and often runs counter. So there had to develop a way of bringing the individual in conformity with species-life. This parallels with modern evolutionary theory (Neo-Darwinism) which seeks to answer why an individual acting only with the survival of their genes would develop altruistic behavior. This begins with kin altruism as our relatives are genetically close to us. But over time these behaviors become reinforced and moored from their original purpose to apply to others.

This process Freud and earlier Friedrich Nietzsche called sublimation. Sublimation channels socially unacceptable desires into socially acceptable desires, without conscious awareness. In society, only a portion of our sexual energy is free to do with as we will. The rest of our sexual energy is prevented from expression. But rather than being bound up inside of us, which is destructive, we channel the remaining free energy into other socially acceptable ways.

Burke lists three social passions which can be viewed as sublimation; sympathy, imitation, and ambition. Each are ways we can enjoy others while at the same time being separate from them. Sympathy as opposed to empathy involves imagining being someone else, rather than feeling the same as they do. It is a simulation, a substitution. The pleasure gained is from a safe distance where we can either imagine ourselves in another's good situation or avoiding their worse situation. Which is why we enjoy reading or watching the lives of fictional characters. Imitation (or repetition) identifies ourselves with others by copying their behavior and appearance, but by our own will. It is a voluntary identification, a multiplication of the other. This is how we often learn, and knowledge gives us power. Ambition manifests an aggressive impulse towards others, but which is aimed at other's approval or recognition of us, a fixation. "Men must remain as brutes do." This domination is largely imaginary, as we depend on the approval of those separate from us. We cannot overpower them to the point of annihilation as we won't gain their recognition if death. This all reminds me of both Thomas Hobbes' diffidence and glory among men in the state of nature, and Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Both deal with the intersubjective and conflicting nature of our desire to command nature to our needs.

The sublime and the beautiful can be understood as repressed or inhibited means of indulging in primal impulses, as sublimation. Sublime experience puts us in the presence of power external to our own. The sublime connects us to the vast universe, as a sort of reunion. Burke lists greatness, obscurity, and infinity as belonging to the sublime. Freud described religion as providing an oceanic feeling, of limitless, and it is no wonder that the vast ocean is a common source of the sublime. This power derives from our initial connectedness to the world, primary narcissism. At a very young age we haven't divided the world into living and non-living, self and other. As we develop, we lose that direct connection to survive, as ourselves and with others. To return to that state would be self destructive, a major regression. The sublime experience is powerful because it brings back the sensation of that lost power without actually destroying us. The sublime is not comprehensible or controllable. It controls us, and it is only that power over us that makes it attractive.

The beautiful in contrast is small, graceful, elegant. Burke maintains that beauty isn't in proportion or perfection. As beautiful things can be frail or very striking. Babies are weak but are found to be pleasing, and giraffe necks are not in equal proportion with their bodies, but are not considered to be grotesque. What is beautiful, it seems, relates to what we grasp, physically and mentally. We want to keep the beautiful, we want to control it, and we are able to comprehend it in thought. The enjoyment is not from power which makes the beautiful less compelling than the sublime, but more sought after. "For the enjoyment of pleasure, no great efforts of power are at all necessary." We can have power over beautiful things to keep them, for out of our control they are not as beautiful as the expectations associated with beautiful things produce a fear of loss.

Beauty and love drive us to continue and extend the struggle for existence; the sublime and terrible drive us to escape individual existence by experience of both reunion with the world and destruction of the self.