Introduction
Self-consciousness has the capacity to learn from its experience in the living objective world of appearances. Over time, it gets better at expressing its inner activity, its thoughts, attitudes, desires, through speech and deed. It can convey its own inner activity, the activity of the objective external reality, the relation between the two, with a higher degree of nuance and precision. This ability is not bestowed upon it by some higher power in accordance to a mechanistic and lawful principle, reality is not a welfare state. This ability is earned through its own persistent efforts.
It has been months since the last update for this blog. In that timespan I have lost 30 pounds of fat and gained the same amount in muscle, I have improved my ability to grasp Newtonian mechanics and calculus, have learned statistics and probability theory, have improved my relationships, most importantly with my family members, all in accordance to a single unified principle, which we will uncover in the following set of posts. A week remains before another semester begins; I shall attempt to update this blog as much as I can until then, perhaps and hopefully reaching the end of observing Reason. If we are able to reach that goal, we shall for the first time be able to provide the beginnings of a truly objective and rational account of the major political developments as of this writing, including the migration crisis in Europe and North America, the ascent of Donald Trump, and the student protests in North American universities. These are all related.
That being said, I must admit that I do not recall the details of what I have written in the past regarding the journey of self-consciousness towards Absolute Knowing; most of what I have said has sunk into my unconscious mind, solidifying and crystalizating into conceptual girders that compose my immediate experience of the Here and Now. This is a basic consequence of living in time for self-consciousness; the content of its conscious awareness is limited and has boundaries. It cannot sense nor perceive the infinitude of universal substance. It can only make contact with the universal substance with its intellect; the ability to have this kind of intellection is developed as a kind of mind product through the refinement of its thoughts.
The stoic self-consciousness engages in this kind of activity of thought refinement. Its thoughts are stable and inert lawlike generalizations of the recurring patterns that it is able to apprehend from the universal fluctuations of the world of appearances. The stable and inert character of the stoics thoughts animate the stable and inert character of the stoic. He is calm and tranquil, he restrains the external expression of his emotions and animal, he apprehends objective reality with an inquisitive and systematic demeaner. He is, in principle, free. His freedom is a conceptual and hypothetical kind of freedom, which appears alongside a hard determinism that contradicts this conceptual freedom.
The Skeptical Attitude
The stoic self-consciousness was like a stable, inert, law onto itself. Self-consciousness is the unity that has the capacity to differentiate itself from itself while remaining itself. In the very act of self-awareness, it makes itself into an object for itself, assigning for itself the role of knower and known simultaneously. As knower, the stoic is the legislator of laws for itself, it is commander. As known, the stoic obeys those self-imposed laws, it is commanded. As such, the stoic cannot help but express the law of inversion - like becomes unlike, commander becomes commanded, freedom becomes determinism, self unity becomes self division.
This rigid endurance constitutes the nature of the first half of the divided self of the skeptic, and is epitomized by Seneca the Younger. It is cut off from the multiplicity of the living world of appearances, and is indifferent to natural existence. This first half is above and beyond the flux of appearances; while it is immersed in external reality, it is not subject to it. This self-consciousness is only subject to itself. It legislates and casts judgment upon itself. In producing thought products in accordance to the principles of logic, it determines what is and what is not reasonable and good, thus it legislates and casts judgment upon the external world of appearances.
The skeptic inherits the stoic attitude as its transcendent self. Self-consciousness has internalized the role the lord that commands, legislates, and casts judgment. The lord enjoys the satisfaction of his desire through the labor of the bondsman. The transcendent self has a transcendent desire that it wishes to satisfy - freedom. The labor of the other pole of the skeptic, the contingent self, transforms the conceptual freedom of the stoic into an actuality.
Skepticism is the living experience of free thinking. Rather than being theoretical freedom, it is actual freedom. The contingent self is in a continuous state of inward rebellion. When it comes to legislating and casting judgment upon itself, rather than obey itself, it disobeys. The restraint of emotion and the rigid personality of the stoic gives way to the free expression of emotion and the slack personality of the skeptic. In legislating and casting judgment upon the external world of appearances, the skeptic doubts its own legislation and suspends its own judgment.
If the stoic self-consciousness is prevalent during the height of the Roman Empire, one that commands and obeys, then the skeptical self-consciousness is prevalent during the period in Roman history that has come to be called the Crisis of the Third Century. The skeptical self-consciousness commands yet fails to obey, obeys yet fails to command, or worst of all, fails to both command and obey; its slackness leads to self-bewildering self-contradiction. The skeptic attains the independence that was sought after by the stoic. Certain that it cannot attain the certainty of absolute knowledge and itself, the skeptic self-consciousness is certain of its having absolved itself of every kind of self-contradiction and the tension that goes along with it. Through uncertainty it is certain that it has achieved the transcendent tranquility of ataraxia.
The skeptical self-consciousness escapes from the grasp of universality and runs into the arms of contingency. Its concern is not to attain the stable, self-same, lawlike, and universal character of thought, but to immerse itself in the fluctuating, self-differentiating, lawless, and particular world of appearances. Its concern is the short-term, decadent, satisfaction of its desires as they arise, whatever they may. The flux of appearances is unstable, nothing stable can be derived from it, for no reasonable premises, due to the following reasonable premises:
(1) the composition of material objects never remain the same, but are subject to change; water becomes ice, or it may become vapor, we cannot be certain which. Since the parts of the objective world are subject to random, unpredictable change, so too is the whole of the objective world.
(2) objective thoughts, in the form of lawlike commands, or stable inferences about experience derived by means of induction never remain the same, stable, and inert; they are subject to change; the fluidity of thought cancels its validity.
These stable and inert lawlike generalizations about the impossibility and invalidity of stable and inert lawlike generalizations regarding the objective world of appearances lead to the following impossible, invalid, stable, yet unstable generalizations about the instability of subjective experience, i.e. the skeptical self-consciousness' sensory and perceptual experience of the objective world:
(3) "The same impressions are not produced by the same objects owing to the differences in animals." Every species of animals has its own unique mode in which they subjectively experience the objective world.
(4) The same impressions are not produced by the same objects owing to the differences among human beings. Every human being, which is a kind of animal, has his own unique mode in which he experiences the objective world of appearances. Substances, their qualities, quantity, relations, etc., present themselves in as many diverse modes as there are human self-consciousnesses.
The skeptical self-consciousness is a moral relativist.
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| Moral relativism is a natural consequence of the mixture of a multitude of self-consciousnesses with a multitude of histories. |
(5) The same impressions are not produced by the same objects owing to the differences among the senses.
Since there is no stability in the objective world of appearances or in the activity of knowing , there is no stability in one when it relates to the other.
(6) "Based on positions, distances, and locations; for owing to each of these the same objects appear different." The same tower appears rectangular at close distance and round from far away. The moon looks like a perfect sphere to the human eye, yet cratered from the view of a telescope. Motion is relative, nothing is in absolute rest.
(7) "Since all things appear relative, we will suspend judgement about what things exist absolutely and really existent. Do things which exist "differentially" as opposed to those things that have a distinct existence of their own, differ from relative things or not? If they do not differ, then they too are relative; but if they differ, then, since everything which differs is relative to something..., things which exist absolutely are relative."
Even those objects that appear to self-consciousness to be at rest have no stability:
(8) "Based, as we said, on the quantity and constitution of the underlying objects, meaning generally by 'constitution' the manner of composition." So, for example, goat horn appears black when intact and appears white when ground up. Snow appears white when frozen and translucent as a liquid.
(9) “We deduce that since no object strikes us entirely by itself, but along with something else, it may perhaps be possible to say what the mixture compounded out of the external object and the thing perceived with it is like, but we would not be able to say what the external object is like by itself."
(10) We can never know what an object is like independently of its being known. Nothing stable can be derived from the unstable world of appearances, or the unstable activity of knowing. If self-consciousness cannot derive in truth the stable thought products it claims to produce in accordance to the so-called stable rules of logical, which includes the conditional statements with conjunctive antecedents, then self-consciousness cannot judge itself or other self-consciousnesses, or the objective world. Further, no self-consciousness has the authority to command itself or others, nor does any self-consciousness have the responsibility to obey either itself or other self-consciousnesses.
For the skeptical self-consciousness, no thought product has the status of being reasonable or justifiable, and a fortiori, no thought product has the unique status being Absolutely True, including, and except for those of the kind listed above. Indeed, the entire logical edifice constructed by the stoics, where premises support conclusions validly in accordance to syllogistic and propositional logic, must be deconstructed by the problem of infinite regress:
"Those who claim for themselves to judge the truth are bound to possess a criterion of truth. This criterion, then, either is without a judge's approval or has been approved. But if it is without approval, whence comes it that it is truthworthy? For no matter of dispute is to be trusted without judging. And, if it has been approved, that which approves it, in turn, either has been approved or has not been approved, and so on ad infinitum." - Sextus Empiricus
Academic Skepticism
The skeptical self-consciousness makes proclamations declaring the Absolute prevalence of flux in the objective world of appearances, in the subjective activity of self-consciousness, and in the relation between the two. Nothing stable, including the very proclamation just mentioned, can be derived from the objective fluctuating world of appearances. That the skeptical self-consciousness makes such a proclamation at all is eo ipso a rebuttal of that very same proclamation, for the proclamation of the prevalence and Absoluteness of flux is a stable and inert legislative act that skeptical self-consciousness steadfastly and dogmatically clings to.
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| Also known as the Socratic Method |
Skeptical self-consciousness becomes aware of the self-contradiction it was certain of having freed itself from, and revises its attempt to know through ignorance. Self-consciousness now declares: "This alone I know, that I know nothing; I cannot know even whether I know or not." The suspension of knowledge is absolute. Knowledge, whether of self or objectivity, is impossible, except for the knowledge that knowledge is impossible. The students of Plato are able to express successfully what Socrates meant to express.
Conclusion
Yet the successful expression of Socratic doubt is the successful revelation of its ridiculous and wretched self-ignorance. In creating the facade and illusory appearance of virtue and knowledge, all the while condemning the sophistry of facades and illusory appearances of virtue and knowledge, Socrates engages in the same facade and illusory appearance of virtue and knowledge he condemns. Let us not, however, be angry with Socrates and demand his execution, for he knew not what what he was doing.
Skeptical self-consciousness is divided within itself to such a degree that it is not aware of its own self division, but rather fancies itself to be whole and complete. Its suspension of judgment is its affirmation. Attempting to escape the rigidity of the stoic self-consciousness, it falls into the bottomless pit of infinite regress. Self-consciousness cannot help but grasp onto the same rigid structure of logic, the same tranquil and self-same transcendent self-communion of universal thought which it sought to escape. It uses the same reasons to which it denies metaphysical necessity to support its own position. Just as the bondsman was wretched in the eyes of the lord, so too is the contingent half of the skeptical self-consciousness wretched in the eyes of the transcendent half of the skeptical self-consciousness, itself. The skeptic feels shame, and does not know the fount whence that shame gushes forth.
