Author Archives: M D

With regard to a discussion on causality…

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My initial post to a question about causality…

One thing that comes to mind is Schrödinger’s cat. Determinations are made by the act of observation that preclude certain results and determine causal outcomes. Could we think of the “box” as determining the result?…perhaps better to think of the observer as predisposing physics towards his expectations – quite a murky business in any case.

After the deserved critcism of being too “poppy” I expanded the explanation…

Yes, perhaps a bit “poppy” in my brief post but the mystery remains.  Speaking of the observable disorder in molecules Schrodinger writes, “But whether any particular molecule, supposing you could follow, its course, will be among those which have reacted or among those which are still untouched, he [the chemist] could not predict. That is a matter of pure chance. This is not a purely theoretical conjecture. It is not that we can never observe the fate of a single small group of atoms or even of a single atom. We can, occasionally. But whenever we do, we find complete irregularity, co-operating to produce regularity only on the average.”

 “What Is Life”, pdf page 27

http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf

It is a bit of a wishful leap to suggest that the phenomena that Schrodinger observed on the quantum scale has been “explained”.  His supposition was that order arises out of chaos (peros from aperion) not unlike the thoughts of Plato, I might add.

I would submit that the slit experiment can actually strengthen my rather anemic response.  When individual photons are emitted through two slits (or more) to the photographic film, the apparent simultaneity of the photon passing through both slits introduces an uncertainty that has yet to be explained.   While Schrodinger referred to this “mystery” as entanglement, Heisenberg addressed the wave particle duality in his “uncertainty principle”.  Subatomic particles incessantly pop in and out of existence in a way that disallows determinism and can only be explained statistically with essential and inherent uncertainty.

Forgive the indulgence but according to the Copenhagen Interpretation (not pop) if you never measure the x-spin (box, i.e., Schrodinger) of an electron, it will never jump to an eigenstate of x-spin and thus will have a 100% probability of y-spin (a contradictory state).  The conclusion is that observable results depend on whether the electron is in an indeterminate state or determinate but unknown state.  Indeterminate states are not just determinate states we have no knowledge of.  Physical objects actually behave differently depending on whether their states are unknown or indeterminate.

One need look no further than quantum entanglement, the spooky action at a distance that Einstein despised and tried to refute with his EPR paradox only to end up showing the non-classical characteristics of the measurement process.

A Couple Quotes:

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

Niels Bohr

I think that I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

Richard Feynman

I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.

Erwin Schrödinger

Guns and False Quotes

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“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes….Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Thomas Jefferson)

This was not a quote by Jefferson as many on the net have asserted.  He  compiled a book of quotes called, “Legal Commonplace Book.”  The quote is actually from Cesare Beccaria’s Essay on Crimes and Punishments.  The only notation made by Jefferson on Beccaria’s quote is, “False idee di utilità.” or …false idea of utility.  It should not be attributed to Thomas Jefferson unless one’s philosophy allows for the sophistry of ‘false ideas’.

See this reference:

http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/laws-forbid-carrying-armsquotation#_note-2

Also, this was not in the Constitution as some have maintained…”that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed”.  It is in a personal letter…  

To Major John Cartwrigt Monticello, June 5, 1824

Here is a fuller context to the quote…

“The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.”

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl278.htm

Racism, Sexism, Homophobia and Republicans

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In G.W. Bush’s recent interviews for his book “Decision Points” he discusses how he was enraged at Kanye West’s comments that imply he was a racist due to the Katrina disaster and the apparent lack of concern for black, impoverished folks.  The new right has been accused of being racist and sexist but the cutting edge of that movement denies the charge.  The first point I would like to make is that racists and sexists most commonly find their ideological home in the Republican Party.  Recently, the tea party has skirted these accusations.  Ken Buck the tea party candidate for U.S. Senator was caught making a sexist comment about “not wearing high heels” on video.  Mark Kirk, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois, was accused of voter intimidation of blacks in Chicago, http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/10/25/republicans-intimidate-minorities/.  Tea party signs have made derogatory comments about blacks and gays.  The highly charged venom towards Nancy Pelosi goes way beyond the traditional forms of disagreements in politics and appears highly vindictive towards the most effective women Speaker of the House in U.S. history.  It seems to me to cross the line into sexism and rage fueled by a woman beating white men handily at their own game.  In spite of these suspicions, this kind of overt racism, sexism and gay homophobia seems to be relegated the periphery of the Republican Party and can easily be dismissed as extremist party faithfuls. 

The most potent form of racism, sexism and homophobia is what has now become institutional.  Republicans did not have anything against blacks but the Republican faithful in Louisiana, possibly the most Republican state in the United States, was all too happy to let the failing and ancient levees in New Orleans come to their inevitable demise.  Did it matter that those behind the levees were poor and black?  If they were rich and white would that have mattered?  If young, single women were rich, voted and were padding the pockets of Republicans would the Republicans allow the anti-abortion movement to dominate their ideology?  If gays were an important component in Republican successes would they oppose equality as vehemently?  When the institution permits these kinds of injustices the individual is no longer on the hook.  It is the system’s fault, no one is personally responsible.  Some even go so far as to blame it on the Democrats.  Folks do not need to be racist or sexist anymore they can just go along with the status quo to achieve the same social results.  They can even personally state they are abhorred by racism and sexism and still let their conservatism conserve the inequities.  This is a concrete example of how the ‘it’ of truth and the absolution of responsibility in the neutrality of the institution have preserved inequity while absolving the individual (See http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/11/10/responsibility-and-the-goods/). 

While President Bush had his feelings hurt by Kanye West men, women and children were hurt in much more substantial ways that makes the feelings of Bush quite insignificant…and yet, Bush had his hurt feelings blasted all over the media while selling his memoir.  Here is a thought, why not donate the proceeds of the book to the survivors of Katrina?

Responsibility and The Goods

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In the light of multiple narratives that run through the notion of the good, responsibility takes on different necessities.  In Patocka’s notion of orgiastic and Kierkegaard’s notion of hedonism, responsibility is defined in terms of service to self.  Responsibility is not imposed externally but driven by needs.  It adheres to no logic or nothing greater than itself. 

In Plato, the Good is ascertained by logos as the apprehension of the Forms, later into Christianity’s res cogitans of Latin, and modern logic as thing-cognition.  The shadow world of mere passion is not informed by the Good, the true, the real beyond mere appearance.  In Plato a shift to cognition achieves two goals.  It moves responsibility to a more subtle footing of thought, a move towards the internal.  It also has the effect of moving responsibility outside, external, to the mere immediate desires of the self.  This double move of internal and external is the beginning of logic.  As Derrida points out in “The Gift of Death”, this is still the orgiastic. 

The orgiastic is no longer thought in terms of overt passion or need but the organ of cognition is essentially involved in the knowledge of the Good.  A connection to the Good has moved from sensation to apprehension.  Apprehension is towards the alterity of the Forms.  Its movement is towards externality while maintaining its internal locus in thought-feelings.  For Patocka and Derrida this is still orgiastic albeit the beginning of the movement of secret.  As such, it is also the step towards preservation of sanity as Foucault envisions it.  The sane is common to many selves.  It is constancy of purpose; as Nietzsche thinks of it, the freezing of the greatness of the Greeks into logic. 

Responsibility begins with Plato as beyond me, directed towards the Forms.  The Good is beyond being but places a burden on being to rouse itself (themselves) in apprehension.  Each being is responsible before the evocation of the Good whether he or she knows it or not.  The cave of shadows holds prisoners in chains to illusion while outside the cave the sun of the Good shines upon the prison of being.  Plato states this in the Republic,

You and I must first come to an understanding. Let me remind you of what I have mentioned in the course of this discussion, and at many other times.

What?

The old story, that there is many a beautiful and many a good, and so of other things which we describe and define; to all of them the term “many” is implied.

True, he said.

And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term “many” is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each.

Very true.

The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the ideas are known but not seen.

Exactly.

And what is the organ with which we see the visible things?

The sight, he said.

And with the hearing, I said, we hear, and with the other senses perceive the other objects of sense?

True.

But have you remarked that sight is by far the most costly and complex piece of workmanship which the artificer of the senses ever contrived?

No, I never have, he said.

Then reflect: has the ear or voice need of any third or additional nature in order that the one may be able to hear and the other to be heard?

Nothing of the sort.

No, indeed, I replied; and the same is true of most, if not all, the other senses — you would not say that any of them requires such an addition?

Certainly not.

But you see that without the addition of some other nature there is no seeing or being seen?

How do you mean?

Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to see; color being also present in them, still unless there be a third nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see nothing and the colors will be invisible.

Of what nature are you speaking?

Of that which you term light, I replied.

True, he said.

Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and visibility, and great beyond other bonds by no small difference of nature; for light is their bond, and light is no ignoble thing?

Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble.

And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say was the lord of this element? Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear?

You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say.

May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows?

How?

Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun?

No.

Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the sun?

By far the most like.

And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is dispensed from the sun?

Exactly.

Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognized by sight?

True, he said.

And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind:

 

Will you be a little more explicit? he said.

Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person directs them toward objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the moon and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind; they seem to have no clearness of vision in them?

Very true.

But when they are directed toward objects on which the sun shines, they see clearly and there is sight in them?

Certainly.

And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned toward the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence?

Just so.

Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honor yet higher.

What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good?

God forbid, I replied; but may I ask you to consider the image in another point of view?

In what point of view?

You would say, would you not? that the sun is not only the author of visibility in all visible things, but of generation and nourishment and growth, though he himself is not generation?

Certainly.

In like manner the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.

— Plato, Republic 507b-508d

In this discussion Plato begins the tradition of light as a metaphor.  The metaphor of light and sight lets us see the manifold, the many, objects of sense.  In like manner the mind and knowledge is given by the Good.  It allows us access to being and essence, the oneness that holds the many of sensation.  And yet, the Good is beyond mind and knowledge just as the sun is beyond sight and light.  In Plato, the distinction between sensation as sight and knowledge as being and essence is preserved in the metaphor.  Sight and light are not the same as mind and knowledge but inform us about how being and essence are like the sun in relation to the Good.  Plato distinguishes between sensations and mind and this begins the going under of being and essence.  Metaphysics has seemingly lost its chains to its shadow world and freed itself (ourselves) from mutability and change.  The mortal has tasted immortality and responsibility is borne on these wings.  The separation of thought from sensation makes logic possible.  Logic, the logos of being, guides and gives rise to being and essence. 

In Christianity John states, “In the beginning was the word (logos) and the word was with God and the word was God.”  John 1:1.  Jesus states that “no one is good but God alone”.  Mark 10:18.  Isaiah states in Isaiah 64:6 that “your righteousness is as filthy rags” (menstrual rags).  In Christianity the Good is emancipated from being and essence.  Here the Good has become a tautology for God.  The Good and God are equivalent as A = A and being is thought in terms of B.  In this move the secret has become the will of God for Abraham to sacrifice his son.  Ethics has become murder, responsibility has become secret…the will of God.  God and the Good are not beholden to man and apprehension.  A tautology owes no allegiance to contingency.  Logic has become absolute Spirit.  Neutrality has been placed beyond the reach of man and the command of it is the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery (God).  Abraham obeys the will of God over and above his love of Isaac.  From an ethical point of view “Thou Shalt Not Hate” and “Thou Shalt Not Murder”  have been subordinated to the will of God.  Abraham must hate his life to find it.  He must hate his son and murder him for the sake of God.  In the face of the singularity of tautology hate and love have become one.  Responsibility has gone under in the force of secret.  Will to power and will of God have orgiastically merged in an unseen incestuous relationship.  In this history science begins.

What was lost along the way was the openness towards alterity, the Judaic shekinah glory of God, the holy of holies that is preserved in the separation of the people and God that is mediated by the high priest once a year.  The graven image of god is idolatry.  The itness of tautology as the culmination of logic and the great divorce of man and God has come full circle to pre-Socratic, orgiastic hedonism.  Science as beyond being has made the question of being and the concern of philosophy mute.  Truth owes no allegiance to human kind and yet has become the tool of human kind while making human kind its tool.  Logic has completed itself in the external and internal, self-determination and “I willed it thus” and “now man has become like one of us” have completed themselves in the logic of tautology, the history of light, the System of Hegel.  The other has been reduced to a term of it.  The secret absolves responsibility into self.  The absolute external and the absolute internal are now the force of will, the logic of identity.  The he or she, the other, is a step along the way, a faint memory of mythos.  All the while, the neutrality of the secret that commands from down under has reemerged onto the orgiastic Dionysian rite of death.  Totality and tautology, the will of God has become will to power, the it of truth has replaced the he or she of the other and responsibility is the ‘said’ of “I willed it thus”…all the while, on the other side of the mote from the castle, the grass grows under our feet and violence effaces the face of the other.

Colorado State Budget FAQ

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Blogger – I really am not against helping the underserved. But the lines in this country as to who the truly underserved are have become increasingly murky as the poor have become big business. 30% of our state budget is huge, and will become much more under ObamaCare

This is Colorado State budget information for 2010-2011 and the previous year 2009-2010. 

In the previous year Medicaid was 22% of the budget.  For the current year it is 17.7% of the state budget.

Human Services are 9.2% of the budget.  This includes money for developmental disabilities or mental illness, juvenile delinquents, and children who are the victims of abuse and neglect.

Here are the state numbers, what would you cut and how much?  You have already said you would eliminate Social Security.  What about Medicaid, CHIP, Welfare?  What about the safety net program you mentioned.  What is that and how much percent wise are you willing to spend on this?

97% of the FY 2010-11 General Fund appropriation is devoted to just five areas of service:

  • 45.6%, K-12 Education is the largest component of the General Fund budget and was off limits when balancing in FY 2009-10 due to a required 5% General Fund increase.
  • 17.7%, Health Care Policy and Financing provides services that are mostly entitlement programs that have a counter-cyclical relationship with the economy. When the economy goes down, Medicaid enrollments go up.
  •  9.2%, Human Services are provided to the state’s most vulnerable and highest risk populations such as those with developmental disabilities or mental illness, juvenile delinquents, and children who are the victims of abuse and neglect.
  •  15.2%, Corrections, Public Safety and Judicial provides public safety services. Staffing levels that were reduced during the last recession have still not been restored. Judicial staffing was increased pursuant to HB 07-1054.
  •  9.3%, Higher Education is one of the last remaining areas of the budget where there continues to be budgetary flexibility and where federal stimulus funds have mitigated major reductions for our state’s colleges and universities.

 

http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1251665650766&ssbinary=true

Previous Year Budget

 

2010 State spending & deficit in billions[6]

Total spending Pension Health care Education Welfare Protection Transport Deficit Budget gap
$19.6 $3.2 $4.4 $4.8 $1.7 $1.7 $1.2 $17.9 $1.6


a $26 billion plan to give states money for Medicaid and education that the President signed into law on August 10, 2010

http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Colorado_state_budget

Here are the Federal numbers for Health Care Reform.  I have not seen how Health Care Reform affects the sates with the 26 billion dollar kickback but I do know this…

Here are the CBOs Long Term Budget Outlook for 2009 and 2010.  This is pre-Health Care Reform and post-Health Care Reform.  These quotes are taken from the section dealing with health care costs.

Percent of GDP Chart Projected 2035
Pre-HCR, 2009 Projection Medicare Total Spending 8%
Pre-HCR, 2009 Projection Medicaid, CHIP 5%
Post-HCR, 2010 Projection Medicare Total Spending 6%
Post-HCR, 2010 Projection Medicaid, CHIP, Subsidies 4%


Total spending for Medicare is projected to increase to 8 percent of GDP by 2035 and to 15 percent by 2080. Total spending for Medicaid is projected to increase to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 and to 7 percent by 2080. (2009 page 35 in pdf)

Under the extended-baseline scenario, which reflects current law, federal spending for those (Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the insurance subsidies) programs would grow from 5.5 percent of GDP today to about 10 percent of GDP in 2035; about 6 percent of GDP would be devoted to Medicare, and about 4 percent would be spent on Medicaid, CHIP, and the exchange subsidies. (2010 page 41 in pdf)

The Long Term Budget Outlook 2009

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10297/06-25-LTBO.pdf

The Long Term Budget Outlook 2010

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/06-30-LTBO.pdf

The gift of death or the face of the other… (Updated 11/5/10)

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11/5/10 – Addition of paragraphs 3 and 4

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Jemeinigkeit, Heidegger’s notion of being-toward-death, is Dasein’s (the ‘there’ of human being) utmost possibility.  The possibility of the impossible is Dasein’s own most.  It cannot be outstripped.  It holds open the possibility of Dasein’s authenticity.  Death is not a he or a she.  Death is mine but it cannot be understood or apprehended.  No light can penetrate my death.  Death cannot be seen.  It cannot be taken hold of.  It even resists the notion of ‘is’.  Death ‘is’ but its final tragic comedy is the erasure of my ‘is’.  As such, death is alien.  It erases my ‘is’ while it writes my ‘is’.  Death is ‘it’.  It is a referent that does not point to another referent but ends, as in the Greek notion of telos, culminates, and gives referential meaning by point backward in the genesis of me as arche and telos, alpha and omega, the circle that has no outside.  Death is singularity; singularity that gives birth to me.  In death the neuter, the ‘it’ that begins and ends in ‘itself’, is identity.  It ‘is’ it…It ‘is not’ it and thus, contradicts itself in tautology…this is the absolute impossibility that nonetheless is possible.  All the notions of linguistics, the laws of physics, betray each other in singularity.  Death is the unmoved mover, the impenetrable ground of being and thus, the history of light.

The history of being is not tangled in the scaffolding of logic, of logos.  It is a retreat from an absolute not, the absolute negation of Being…In the beginning, before God and mortals, there was nothing…the nothing that is my most intimate moment, kairos, the supreme moment of moments from which all in-between moments flow.  The conundrum – this moment is death; it is nothing.  The nothing of death is not some abstract notion of nothing but sunyata, aperion, the fertile void.  It gives life from death, makes possible from impossible.  As the absolute ‘not’ of Being, as thrown from nothing, suspended from the void, there ‘is’ (the there-is) antithesis.  Antithesis is the history of Being, the tragic comedy of light…the logic.  Dasein is the aufhebung, the sublation, the synthesis of thesis – death and antithesis – Being.  The absolute, irrevocable ‘not’, death, reverses the Hegelian direction from thesis to ‘not’ to lifting up to light.

Death is the absolute ‘not’ of me.  It is the end of my freedom.   Death negates me.  Yet, death as the utmost possibility of Dasein that grounds Dasein and is the thrown nullity of Dasein is the antithesis that has become the thesis.  The ‘not’ as the referent that ‘is’ the telos and arche is absolute.  It is not preceded by Being and freedom.  This would be a lapse into the transcendental metaphysics of Hegel’s Logic.  Freedom is made possible by jemeinigkeit, by Dasein’s thrown nullity.  Only a being-towards-death has the possibility for freedom.  The awareness of death makes everydayness inauthentic.  Without jemeinigkeit circumspection would not be rooted in sorge, Care, the temporalizing ecstasies of Dasein.  Such a being would simply be immersed in the necessities of biological life until that being was no more.  The history of light would not be possible for such a being.  A being as this could only be thought in terms of ‘subject to the laws of physics’ from the circumspection of dasein.  Logic as the logos of Plato could only be ‘thought’ to exist from the type of being that is Dasein.  To suggest that the Forms exist or precede existence in a Kantian, categorical fashion for a being without jemeinigkeit is to take the step back into metaphysics.

The reversal of Hegel’s trifecta comes from the contradiction that is tautology, the nonsense of singularity, the moment of death that makes all other moments possible for dasein.  The thesis as the absolute ‘not’ of death and the antithesis as Being are lifted up as dasein.  The thesis is the antithesis and the antithesis is the thesis.  The normalized characteristics of each are reversed. For Hegel the reversibility of thesis and antithesis maintains and preserves the positive and the negation as thesis and antithesis but does allow either to give rise to, have absolute dependence on, the other.  The ‘not master’ is the slave and the ‘not slave’ is the master.  Each negation already asserts what is negated.   However, the formal placeholder of A -> not A = A AND not A is always maintained.  The negation will always assume and posit what is to be negated.  In the reversal A ‘is’ not A and not A ‘is’ A.  The negation, death, does not posit an apriori, a concurrent, contemporaneous Being.  To think death as the telos and arche of dasein that ‘is’ is a conundrum.  Death is not an ‘is’.  When death ‘is’ I am no more.  Death is the absolute denial of ‘is’.  The result of this reversal is the absolute rupture of dasein.  It is the inability to ever be pure Spirit.  It is what will never allow the system to be complete.  It is the trace of the erasure that cannot be summed up or canonized.  It is the narrative that must always essentially have counter narratives.  The tangle of rhizome can never be straightened out and done away with.  The will can never rise above the other as self-determination and self-limiting.  This term of Error refuses, withdraws and conceals and forever denies absolute rest to absolute Spirit.  An other step into this quagmire is posed by Levinas.

Levinas notes the neutrality of death and the evocative of the face of the other and asks, in effect, why neutrality?  Why ‘it’?  Why give precedence, priority, the proper to the unmask-able circle of nothing and light.  Why prefer the repression of the mysterium tremendum, the dreadful night of the soul, the ‘it’ that cannot die but must to the radical alterity of the face of the other?  Why face the totality of eternal light from the abyss of death when the other faces us; the other that is not ‘it’, that does not stand in our logic and fall with our presence?  What choice has history made for us?  What violence are we willing to promulgate to cling to our light?  As Nietzsche wrote of the waning freeze of the heroic Greek in logos, logic so light and ‘its’ logic freeze our dying cry of desperation.  All the while the other stands before us as mother, father, friend, enemy.  The other not as the hermetic seal of logic and neutrality but ‘its’ interruption.  The other is the small still voice, the call that is not of my origin nor of my history but is not alien either.  The caress that cajoles, evokes and washes over me from a time that is not my time.  What if Levinas is correct?  What if jemeinigkeit is the mould of the face of the other, the plastic cast that freezes our infantile narcissism while its cracks beckon us towards the face of the other?

More readings from “The Gift of Death”

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Patocka seems to be an interesting thinker.  On page 30 Derrida is discussing Patocka’s idea of responsibility.  He suggests that Christianity is unknowingly based on Platonic philosophy with which I agree.  He goes on to state that Platonism wants to distinguish the “orgiastic” from responsibility.  For Plato responsibility was for The Good.  However, Patocka wants to suggest that Plato’s responsibility is still orgiastic.  He thinks that Platonic knowledge still sensationalizes The Good.  Christianity’s mysterium tremendum, the unsymmetrical gaze of God is grasped by dread, faith or a ‘relation’ to God.  Because of this, responsibility is mediated, muted or resolved.  Derrida brings up the question of knowledge.  How can one have responsibility without knowledge?  Isn’t that an aporia, a conundrum or a riddle…a paradox for Christianity?   

Perhaps the question could be placed in another setting.  When responsibility is directed towards ‘knowledge” it is directed towards neutrality, the Idea, the Forms, Truth, God, Revelation, etc..  The ‘personal’ relationship to God uses terms of person but the ‘person’ never appears.  The faith appears, the ‘truth’, the ecstatic, orgiastic communion with the Holy Spirit but the Revelation is always deferred, mediated into an economy; the economy of faith.  Therefore, ‘knowledge’ has once again shown itself in the Platonic tradition of light, presence, aletheia. 

In the Hegelian tradition perhaps knowledge could be thought as terminating in the darkness of the ‘Not’, at least, as an intermediate stage before the transformation of synthesis, sublation, aufhebung.  Yet, here again, the tradition of light and the orgiastic prevail.

In Levinas the termination, the telos, is directed towards the face of the other.  Here responsibility does not end in an ‘it’ but a he or a she.  In Levinas knowledge fails in the face of the other.  Light turns in on itself as the tradition of narcissism, totality not because it takes up its own self limiting viz. self-determination but because the other faces me.  The time of the other is not my time, the anachrony of the saying that always stands before the said.  Neutrality as self knowledge, as universal logos, logic, that is always orgiastic cannot answer to the other.  Responsibility has become a he or a she and Ethics is not supplanted by reason but centered by his or her face.  Violence, the primordial retreat from the other into the totality of light, of orgiastic, can never again be rationalized, justified, ethnic-sized as the criterion is no longer a relative construct but the unique singularity of the other, the irrecoverable distance of the one that faces me.

Thoughts while reading Derrida’s work, “The Gift Of Death”

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Disclosure is a showing.  In Husserl and Heidegger phenomena is what shows itself without imputing theoria, specific ways of seeing, in an extraneous manner, in a way that changes, covers over or hides the showing.  Error is induced by not seeing what shows itself in the phenomena.  Thus if science understands space as ether we hide the showing of space as semblance, we re-present phenomena to ourselves with additional, extra-phenomenal appearance.  Heidegger wants to think space without imputing his own ideas but by analyzing various ways in which space shows itself such as space as extension (historically abstract), space as lived (experientially), space as sorge (temporal ecstasies).

When Heidegger refers to the thingness of a thing, he wants to ask us what informs us that such and such is a thing.  Is ‘thing’ a word that is self-evident and as such need not be thought further?  Heidegger thinks that in the showing of the thingness of a thing something else also shows itself, a history.  A ‘thing’ is really a hermeneutic, an interpretation that shows us more about who we are than what ‘it’ is.  He thinks that there is a long history since the Greeks that mistakes and reduces presence to what really is.  So, if we take a ‘thing’ as simply what is there in its ‘pure presence’ what we are really mistaking is our own historicality, as uniquely human, for what is showing itself.  When we see a thing, the presence of phenomena is taken hold of, pre-understood as neutral, as separate and not a subject; an object.  The whole ontology, the historical thinking of being as substance, separate from me, the subject, is already understood in seeing a “thing”.  The phenomenality of a ‘thing’ inseparably brings with it our theoria, our way of seeing as historical beings.

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Hopkins criticizes Heidegger as misunderstanding Husserl because,

“if the ‘phenomena’ of phenomenology lose their phenomenal status as the ‘exhibitive manifestation’ of the matter or matters themselves, and are understood, thereby, to be structurally coincident with that which, prior to their phenomenal (reflective) exhibition, manifest themselves as having been ‘reflexionlos (without reflection).’ This state of affairs can only be understood, from the Husserlian prerogative, in terms of the ‘ontologizing’ of the transcendental Sinn of the essence of intentionality, which misunderstands Sinn to be equivalent with the pre-transcendental, factically determined exemplars that serve as the phenomenal field for the exhibitive manifestation of transcendental Sinn.”1

Thus Hopkins thinks Heidegger transcendentally reifies Being in order to ground his analysis.2

However, Heidegger might suggest that Hopkins makes the opposite mistake, he takes particular beings as the same ‘kind’ as beings as a whole.  This was the fallacy of Antiphon that Aristotle pointed out.  It is a fallacy of equivocation.

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We can look at the argument above as a symmetrical argument that works in either direction?  Could both arguments be true but traverse from opposite directions?  In my discussion here, http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/09/02/aristotle-and-modern-sciences/, I bring up Dr. Brogan’s discussion of Being and beings, Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle, wherein beings show themselves simultaneously as one and many.  To take the one, Being, as a universal, immutable, static whole in the tradition of Parmenides or the Ideas of Plato is to assign a priority to the pre-given, apriori.  On the other hand, to take transcendental intuition as a phenomenological reduction from facticity is to assign a priority to a particular hermeneutic of ontology.  Aristotle wants to think the one and the many, being and beings, as a co-arising, an essential, interdependent dynamic of their isness.

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Values as third person, as rules given, are given precedence by virtue of their neutrality.  The neutral is “scientific”, apodictic, impartial, omniscient and thus, modernity’s god.  The step away from responsibility as he or she, towards the totalization of an ‘it’, is a step into a transcendental sameness, a valueless objectivity, narcissism     In Nietzsche’s words “that the highest values devalue themselves.”[iii] 

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Neutrality masks what is by what is not.  Neutrality is a forgotten metaphysics in the present.  In the present it is submerged but interprets what shows itself.  Thus, it gives what we see by what is not seen, viz. the history of metaphysics.  Truth as aletheia is inseparable from semblance.  As for Hegel, the ‘not’ is already assumed in any positive idea.  The production of perception is made possible by contrast, opposition and separation.  Polemos, the god of war, is the Sisyphean perpetuity of Being to wrest truth from semblance.  The aristeia of existence is the marriage of triumph and tragedy, the ‘is’ and not, Being and nothingness.  Grace; to hold together the absolute contradiction of existence, the god-man, the call without voice…the voice of god is the Ethics of other.

1 Burt Hopkins, Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993) p. 201.

2 In Praise of Fire: Responsibility, Manifestation, Polemos, Circumspection, Ian Angus, Department of Humanities

Simon Fraser University, Submitted to The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Vol. 4 – 2004. Edited by Burt Hopkins and Steven Crowell.

3 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968) p. 9. Translation slightly altered.

Mortal Ghost Polemos

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Motion mine

moved-unmoved

Eros dying

Silence crying

Gaze defying

Soul

Sacred sanctum

Alter-mysterium

Profane gift

It is

I am

We were

Howling night wind

Moaning moon

Foaming surf

Fading star

Nothing is

Is nothings

Grace dismembered

Others remembered

Without blows

immortal abyss

Within gives

death

Hollow, hallowed

Hole…

Holy, Holy, Holy

                                                                                In memory of my brother, Joe

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Problems with Medicare and Medicaid

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Here are my ideas for Federal Health Care…

We spend more on health care than all these countries while life expectancy is lower than others, comprehensive care per capita is less and quality is less than some.

Here are the numbers:

Country Health Care Spending as % of GDP
United States 13.9
Switzerland 11.1
Norway 8
Germany 10.7
Canada 9.7
Luxembourg 5.6
Iceland 9.2
Netherlands 8.9
France 9.5
Australia 9.2
Denmark 8.6
Belgium 9
Sweden 8.7
Italy 8.4
Austria 7.7
Japan 8
United Kingdom 7.6
Ireland 6.5
Finland 7
New Zealand 8.1
Portugal 9.2
Spain 7.5
Greece 9.4
Czech Republic 7.3
Hungary 6.8
Korea 5.9
Slovak Republic 5.7
Poland 6.3
Mexico 6
Turkey 4.8
median 8.1

 

Specific Reasons:

ability to pay, as measured by GDP per capita, has repeatedly been shown to be one of the most important factors

In other words, if we can be reamed, we will be (and are)

Americans pay much higher prices for the same health services than citizens in other countries pay

The relatively greater market power on the demand side of health systems in other countries can explain why so many countries allocate a lower fraction of their GDP to health care even though they appear to be more heavily endowed with hospital capacity and health professionals than the United States.

In other words, supply and demand works better for health care in other countries

the U.S. approach to financing health care is extremely complex

gives society the option of purchasing, through health care, additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) at increasingly higher prices

In other words, if you want higher end goods and services other countries have graded cost scales for higher and higher cost goods and services

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/23/3/10.pdf

Solutions with Medicare and Medicaid

Public option

Insurance companies simply pass the increasing cost of health care to the consumer.  The HMOs has some amount of cost control because of negotiated costs of standard services and bigger pools.  A public option would provide a very large pool of consumers and therefore, more negotiation power.  This would address many of the issues cited above.

Comprehensive health care reform will cost the federal government $940 billion over a ten-year period, but will increase revenue and cut other costs by a greater amount, leading to a reduction of $138 billion in the federal deficit over the same period, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a Democratic source tells HuffPost. It will cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the second ten year period.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/cbo-score-on-health-care_n_502543.html 

Other solutions for health care costs

Obesity, smoking, and other population risk factors can lead to expensive chronic conditions; the increased prevalence of such conditions—for example, diabetes and heart disease—drives growth in the utilization of health care resources and therefore in spending.

Bad personal habits drive the cost up.  This costs all of us more money.  We could address these issues with education, new medical technologies and programs that directly address these issues.

Experts note that the nation’s general tendency is to treat patients with available technology when there is the slightest chance of benefit to the patient, even though the costs may far outweigh the benefit to society as a whole.

Over use of treatments that have marginal benefit to the patient.  We should probably have a graded cost scale for these types of treatments so the consumer can make decisions on cost and effectiveness of treatment.

Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for example, evaluates new medical products based on safety and efficacy data submitted by manufacturers, it does not evaluate whether the new products are cost-effective compared with existing products used for the same treatment indications. In turn, Medicare, which generally relies on FDA approval decisions, does not evaluate whether new technologies are superior, either clinically or economically, compared with technologies already covered and paid for by the program.

Nobody evaluates whether new drugs are better than older, more cost effective drugs.  Standards for drugs and procedures are needed based on effectiveness and cost.

In an ideal market, informed consumers prod competitors to offer the best value. Without good comparative information, however, consumers are less able to determine the best value. Insurance masks the actual costs of goods and services, providing little incentive for consumers to be cost-conscious. Similarly, clinicians must often make decisions in the absence of universal medical standards of practice.

Insurance companies enable the health care consumer to lose touch with the real market costs of goods and services. In other words, they do not all the healthier dynamics of capitalism to work, i.e., consumer incentive to control costs.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07497t.pdf

The elderly population increasing

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07497t.pdf

Medicare Part D – Prescription Drug Bill

Needs to be modified to allow the government to negotiate bulk purchasing reductions with the drug providers.

Group Purchasing Organizations: Research on Their Pricing Impact on Health Care Providers

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-323R

Medicare Part D: Spending, Beneficiary Out-of-Pocket Costs, and Efforts to Obtain Price Concessions for Certain High-Cost Drugs

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-529T

Prescription Drugs: Overview of Approaches to Control Prescription Drug Spending in Federal Programs

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-819T

Medicare Advantage

It needs to be eliminated or cut back.  It was always a boondoggle for the insurance companies.

Payments to MA plans have been estimated to be 12 percent greater than what Medicare would have spent in 2006 had MA beneficiaries been enrolled in Medicare FFS.

Medicare spends more per beneficiary in MA than it does for beneficiaries in Medicare FFS, at an estimated additional cost to Medicare of $54 billion from 2009 through 2012.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08359.pdf page 2 in pdf

Other reading…

Medicare: Financial Challenges and Considerations for Reform

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-577T

Health Care Spending

http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/featured/healthcare_spending.html

The current Gross Domestic Product in billions is 14,677.

http://www.forecasts.org/gdp.htm