14 - Extra Points: What is Time? What is Zero? What is Empathy?

Extra Points: What is Time?  What is Zero?  What is Empathy?

Three Topics:  
What is Time? (A Beginning); & Nothing About Zero; & What is Empathy? 

(1)  What is Time?    


The Beginning: 

Only today exists.  

Within today, we remember yesterday, 
and we look forward to tomorrow 
to remembering today and yesterday.  

Yesterday, we looked forward to today 
and to tomorrow.  

Tomorrow, we will remember yesterday 
and today, and remembering yesterday 
while it was today.  

All of this happens within today.   


__________ 
[Editor's note:  Philosophy Today:  Some of the above is a condensation of Phenomology, one of the Post-Modern Philosophies of Twentieth Century Eurporean Philosophy.  Existentialism assumes existence and asks what we are going to do with it; next, Phenomenology looks at the essence of existence; then, Structualism looks at the shape of existence; finally, Post-Structualism says all is fragments; and altogether, these form Post-Modernism, which is still with us today.  

The British and the Americans get a little sea-sick with it all, and prefer Analytic Philosophy, sort of a cross between Scepticism and Logic, with a little Linguistics.  The truly disallusioned have moved onto Computer Science.  For a little more on this, I refer you to http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7162361085837752771&postID=639018739932532947http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7162361085837752771&postID=639018739932532947  http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7162361085837752771&postID=639018739932532947  

Or:  http://philosophyfaqs.blogspot.com/2010/09/tell-me-about-modern-post-modern-and.html ]
_________


(2)  What is Zero?


Following is a Light-hearted Trip Through the Questions of Zero, Followed by a Few Tentative Answers: A Barrel of Laughs. An Empty Barrel?

Definitions:

Number: abstract idea that communicates how many in a set. Numeral: names of numbers. Digit: a set of symbols we use to write numerals. Then comes Zero.

Number, numeral, digit. But what is Zero?

What is an empty set of nothing?

If it's a placeholder, isn't that a property,
and if it has a property, doesn't that
imply existence? Yet, existence, by
definition, is the one thing nothingness
does not have.

If you take a number like 100,000, you find
that it contains 5 zeros. Are these five
nothings all sub-sets of nothingness?
How can one nothing be larger than
another nothing?

Yet, without Zero, our current number
system collapses, and we are reduced
to number systems like Roman Numerals.
Are Roman Numerals actually numbers?

Have you ever tried to multiply with Roman Numerals?
If a Zero is an empty set of nothing,
what is its referent? Where is nothing?

Is nothingness a quality without a
quantity? Then why do we need
it for counting? Isn't counting
or measuring the basis of quantity?

In short, Zero may be nothing, but,
in my opinion, it is full of paradox.

I hope this has brought you a laugh.


Proposed answers:

Zero is infinite negativity.

As a four (4) is
a representative of all the
fours in the universe, so
Zero is a representative
of complete negation to
an infinite extent. (0)
Or, like numbers themselves, zero represents
one instance of an infinite number
of similar numbers. A number,
then, could be said to be a
representative of one member
of the set of infinite like
numbers.

Is Zero the emptiness that gives shape to the digits around it, that way the empty space around letters give them their meaning. Is nothingness the context of meaning?

Is the infinite nowhere the place where we define our symbol systems? Is the myth of numbers exploded by the unending vacuum of Zero?

Numbers are a fantasy we use to represent the unrepresentable universe. The universe can never be totally, truly known. Numbers are always insufficient. The map is not the territory. Zero is the necessary empty space upon the map. The map is nothing by itself. It points to, but is not real Earth. The Zero points only to universal negativity. Zero points to Empty Earth?

There we live. In a fantasy of a numeric myth defined by ultimate nothingness.

Numbers are there; we are here; Zero is nowhere.

We like our numbers.

 [Editor's note:  I don't have anyone to blame this on.  All Rights Reserved.] 



(3)  What is Empathy? 




Empathy was best discussed in The Problem of Empathy, by St. Edith Stein.  

In one of the horrible ironies of all time, she was executed in a death camp by the Nazis.  

I recommend reading her book.  

Empathy is an especially difficult subject for traditional Western (male) Philosophy. The Ancients didn't discuss it, and the Medieval Philosophers were more interested in Revelation and the Divine Passion. Compassion between consenting adults was less discussed.  

Empathy implies that at least two people exist, and at least one of them is able to do something more than just understand the other, but to enter into the mind of the other in such a way that they can experience the world through the perspective of that other. If you're really lucky, it can work both ways, but that takes communication and practice.  

First, one has to believe in the existence of the self.  

Descartes, the Rationalist of the 1600s, for example, proved that he did exist because he thought. I think, therefore I am, he wrote: one of the most famous sentences of all of Philosophy. He wasn't so sure initially about the existence of the outside world, but finally decided that because God is good, there must be a creation. It took him two marvelous, beautifully written books to come to these conclusions I have so bligthly summarized. He is, after all, one of the greatest Philosophical writers of all time. I'm not the only one who thinks that, and I never feel sufficient in describing his ideas and proofs.  

The point, here, is that Descartes thought he proved the existence both of the self and of the outer world, that is, both the self and the other. He proved the existence of God, too, but that is another discussion. He does not seem to have addressed the issue of empathy.  

Two hundred years later, David Hume, the great Scottish Sceptic, doubted that he existed, that God existed, and that causality existed. He was an Empiricist and a Materialist. Even though he had trouble describing the sensations of the outside world, he seems to have always believed that the material world existed. So, we might say he doubted the self, God, and causality, but not the existence of other people. He was fond of saying we should live by common sense, whatever that is, which implies, by the use of the word, “common” that there must exist more than one other person. We would conclude that he would have trouble with empathy, because there would be no self to empathize with the other, or others.  

Presumably, Hume must have been a sceptic about empathy, as well as all those other things about which he was a sceptic.  

Jean-Paul Sartre, in the second half of the Twentieth Century, was the great spokesman for Existentialism. He could be persuaded that the Self existed, and that the Other existed, but he thought they were forever separated into the subjective and the objective. One could be one or the other, and although at times, they changed sides, one could never be both the Self and the Other.  

There is a lingering discussion of whether Simon de Beauvoir, his closest friend, the first female Doctor of Philosophy of France, and the author of many books, disagreed with him about the forever estrangement of the Self and the Other. In her best known work, The Second Sex, she explains that one of the great problems of the world is that men are forever viewing women as the Other.

Husserl, the Phenomenologist, which is one step beyond Existentialism in Continental European Twentieth Century Philosophy, leaned toward the possiblity of the self and of the other being able to understand each other. 

It was his famous student, the first female Doctor of Philosophy of Germany, later canonized as Saint Edith Stein, who put forward the possiblity and the importance of empathy. It's been a very long time since I read The Problem of Empathy, but I was very impressed by it, by its understanding of Phenomenology, and by its careful proof of the existence of empathy.  

During her study, she converted from Judaism to Catholicism, and to fulfill her commitment to empathy, became a Carmelite nun. However, Hitler was in search of even more Jews to kill. He dictated that "baptized Jews," who had previously been free of the treatment of Jews, because they were Christian, that even these should die.  

Therefore, the author of first European text on existence of empathy was sent to the gas chamber.  

Thinking can be a dangerous thing.  

It is only fair to note that it was the effort of contemporary Germans who worked so hard to have her canonized as quickly as possible.  

Empathy can sometimes be difficult to prove, but it is one of those things, like kindness and friendship, that make life worthwhile. Our lives are short and mean without empathy.