Jud:

Pure "existence" in the crass transcendentalist sense is a chimera — the name of the game is entitic modal change. In the short time that you have been reading my words upon your screen, countless mega-trillions of changes have occurred to the denotatum [insert your name here] and everything in the room that surrounds you. Everyone on this list, everything in the cosmos is in a different existential modality since you first started to read this sentence, and by the time I type the final full stop, you and it will have changed again, and I am not talking about the odd fleck of dandruff on your desktop

Richard:

Hi Jud! I agree with you about the changing of things (who would not?) however you fail to mention what, if anything does not change. Your belief, for example, in the "entitic modal change” does not change, right? Your name does not change, your self-awareness does not change, the fact that you know my name does not change, and on and on. So, in the midst of all the changes in the body and in the universe, what do we call what does not change – or at least appears not to change.

 Gary. C. Moore:

Time is the fundamental modality of reality. You cannot get behind or beneath it. It is most obviously experienced, even more than any object or sense impression, yet is inexplicable as a 'thing' reified as concept because it cannot be made into a representation of itself. It just 'happens'. It is filled with contradictions, cruxes, aporias. "Reality" is judged 'real' by its being 'present', yet the present is a dead issue or a mere starting point for future purposive cogitation if ‘reality’ is to be judged and founded upon that which is UNCHANGING. Yet even the present as a 'dead' thing can only be 'dead' within a living perception which means it can only be 'dead' within a process of change.

Space is measured by movement, therefore time. Zeno's paradoxes of experience come into play here. If time is the ground, or rather the "urgrund" of understanding experience, that is, every understanding is a modality necessarily changing perception's abstraction into words, then understanding itself is changing, understanding itself is an abstraction of action irreducible to in itself to abstraction just like an arrow moving through space. Therefore "understanding" in this scheme is necessarily perception

(a 'generalization' of all sensual activity) whose purpose is to NAME entitic modal change, producing a locus of stability that is simply a moving point or tally of relationship within language. "Names", "words", "abstractions" then are skilled abilities of thinking action, as in Hubert L. Dreyfus, that carry acts of relating other acts that are nominalized into relations. And “relations” inherently retain their connection to action since they must “be” in the process of relating in a context, relevant to everything within it, that is continuously changing (“the world”, “the universe”).

As everything that is in understanding is in living and therefore in time, everything in changing including terms indicating ‘unchanging’ stability. The ‘unchanging stability’ of certain terms seem in everyday life as the most fundamental concepts such as “entitic modal change” and “your” and “name” and “your self-awareness” and “the fact that you know my name”. All these ‘things’ that are supposedly “unchanging” are linguistic, and words are dead unless placed into a purposeful, living context. They are “always already” in the process of “relating” and therefore serve as a middle term or axis of two or more changing modalities like Liebnitz’ monadic windows that are changing the view of the very world they are constructing.

Jud:

My belief in the “entitic modal change” does not exist and therefore cannot change — only the believer in entitic modal change exists and can change — and does change from millisecond to millisecond.  My name does sometimes change — or the signifier by which I am sometimes addressed changes from "Jud" to "Darling" and "Dad" at home to "Sir" when I am out shopping, etc.  My given name does not exist and therefore cannot change only the human entity to which the name is attributed exists, and that entity is in constant change.  My self-awareness does not exist and therefore does not change — only he or she who is self aware can change and does so continually.  The fact that I know your name does not change for it does not exist TO change, and therefore cannot change.  Only the person/persons who know your name exists, and therefore has the possibility of forgetting your name. and on and on.

Of course as long as I live, [unless I grow senile] I will never forget your name.

Richard:

As for the human body changing, while the cells of our body are constantly dying and being replaced, the new ones are generally programmed to serve the same function and “look alike.”

Gary.C. Moore:

Abstraction “does not exist and therefore cannot change.” That which ‘abstracts’ exists, existing is change, and therefore literally “does" change from millisecond to millisecond.” Though it may be inconvenient to constantly try to account for change in every millisecond, we do, in a sense, often ‘stop’ and “take account” of the number of changes. One cannot say the “function” stays the same because “function” is the act of that which functions, and that which functions “does change from millisecond to millisecond”. So, over time, even the word “function” accrues noticeable changes to what it means, if nothing else, in the simple accrual of relations. Also the understanding of “your self awareness” changes as it is realized there are multiple “yours”. As Michael Crichton said of a Japanese within his own culture in RISING SUN, his self changes as he moves from room to room. And he counters objections by noting in Western culture one changes the self one presents to others according to the meaningfulness and status of the person. “You wouldn’t say that to your mother, would you?” And I have just been reading about status languages in Southeastern Asia. There are LITERALLY different languages used according to the status of the person you are talking to. So the “you” in your changes and, since the word “awareness” only has literal, factual, real meaning through the action of being aware (perception), awareness, as it actually exists, changes with life.

Replacement of cells is change.  As is well known the replacement cells are NOT the same cells and are slightly inferior copies of the originals.  hence the body changes dramatically as wrinkled skin appears and the hair drops out, etc.

Richard:

OK, OK, I keep forgetting that nasty little fact that nothing exists that is not material. But, and it is a big BUT that I have brought up before and have yet to receive a satisfactory answer: I cannot see that what you call entitic modal change is any different from, simply, change of state – or, more precisely, change of material state. While you deny that the process of change itself (e. g. the turning gears of a clock, or the movement of blood in our bodies) has no existence, because it has no materiality, I believe that change itself has an existence. Of course it is not the same kind of existence as this keyboard, or our bunny, but remember when I mentioned the hawk spying the change of state of a scene beneath him, signaling perhaps a rat or gopher – you said you would think about it.

Gary.C. Moore:

I would take issue with “change itself has an existence,” but “not the same kind of existence as this key board.” There can only be one kind of existence. Anything else would be dualism, that is, two realities. There are few thoughts systems that actually accept true dualism because of the inherent contradiction within it, that is, if you are in this existence, you cannot even deduce ‘that’ existence. All systems eventually resolve themselves into a monism of some sort because the only way they can even relate is validity/invalidity, that is, “You are right and I am wrong,” and vice versa. It is only meaningful to have a dualism if, at some point, they connect. However, necessarily, at that one point they must be, then, “one”. And therefore one is merely a part of the other, one is whole and the other is partial, all within one whole system.

What this in turn becomes is the only meaningful conflict between mutually self-consistent ‘metaphysical’ systems. However, since they must resolve into a “monism” as I said above, the open ended-ness of future experience necessarily makes any metaphysical system incomplete and therefore neither “metaphysical” nor “systematic”. You have Hegel’s Idealism where the only ‘real’ reality is the infinite Idea and Marxist materialism which is parasitical on Hegel for its ‘metaphysical system’. But this is an unusual kind of parasitism because the parasite engulfs the host. To have abstractions or words at all you have to have Idealism, you must believe these words really have some sort of existence. But to have existence you first must have material particularity. I must exist for the Idealism in this letter to exist. My particularity must primordially exist for the Idealist conception of the universe to live. I am always necessarily here first, “urgrund”, even to say the whole process of human and natural history went before me to create me. I must necessarily be my own father conceptually for any history to exist.

Richard

I believe that to the hawk that change of state had existence – i. e. it was sensed. If you come back with, well, he sensed an entitic modal change, I would claim that whatever you call it, he sensed it. If it can be sensed, does it not exist?Thus, though there is change and replacement, there is something built in that insures identical functionality and morphology, and those are the things that matter. Something in that process of change or replacement, did not change – functionality. I know that sounds Platonic or even Aristotelian, but there you have it – the heart's functionality is to pump blood; it is hard to deny this. (What I believe Ruth Millikan calls its proper function) That functionality does not change.

Gary.C. Moore:

But “function” is necessarily purely an act. That would be then an unchanging change. The arrow shot in the air is changing its context BY its movement and therefore changing itself in its physical existence, its actual particularity defined within the context of the observing, living being. “It was over there and now it is over here.” In the process the whole world has changed, and has not stopped changing. You cannot say the “function” does not change because “function” is, by itself, an empty abstraction denoting the physical movement of the arrow. So, just like the word “existence”, it must relate, to be meaningful at all, to a specific object. The word “functionality” is the height of empty abstraction, it is the reification of a word. And if reified, then it would be ‘legitimate’ to say “Functionality functions”.

But the heart does not know it is pumping blood. It may know in some sense it is pumping since an organ as such is, in a sense I don’t understand, a living being in itself. It can pump other things besides blood though it is sensitive to the counter-pressure of the tissue blood itself. It can pump water, but not for long whereas air causes it to stop (collapsing because pressure is not sufficient to keep the chambers of the heart open?). It certainly cannot have any functional morality and know its “proper function”. Or can it? But that would necessitate knowing exactly what an organ is as distinct from a machine or independent animal. However, one theory of life says that the primal bacterium was, in a sense, an organ of the primordial soup of the sea. And as the bacterium evolved its living complexity and had organs of its own, literally bacterium (mitochondria, for instance) within bacterium it evolved the possibility of becoming independent of its medium.

Jud:

I would argue that the functionality is not identical and that as the process of continual change progresses muscles become less functional, food is more difficult to digest, the sexual ardour decreases [not in OUR case I know]  ;-) 

The heart becomes less pliable and the arteries begin to harden — less oxygen is delivered to revitalise the muscles — we get stiff more quickly and gasp for air.  Change HAS TO TAKE place, otherwise there would be no existential modality — nothing would or could exist.

Richard:

Jud, meetings you are splitting a hair here. I misstated by saying “identical” but nevertheless, surely you will agree that it is the functionality that is preserved through the change – as slightly or greatly as it might be altered?

I think I have found the chink in your armor. How about this: Only CHANGE exists! The atom and probably the sub-atomic particles are apparently little or nothing more than fluctuating levels of energy, the back and forth of energy exchanges that create what we perceive as matter, but is really nothing more than the probabilistic patterns of fluctuating levels of energy. Thus, one might posit that it is change itself that is the sine qua non of matter and of everything, and thus, again, it is what results in what we call that which exists. If (as you have said) we remove change from the processes of matter and life, we have nothing left to deal with. This being the case, it is the change of state that is the essential (and the only) parameter that counts. Matter sans change, cannot exist, and change without matter (or energy) is (seemingly) nonsense. I vote for CHANGE as the “god” of the universe. If we look closely at CHANGE we see actions and reactions, i. e. causal relationships, even when we do so on the quantum level. I cannot get rid of the apparent reality of this causal and change component of everything. You say that: “Only that which is functional exists.” While this is perhaps (in the mind of the philosophical physicist) problematic, I tend to agree. But when you say this you credit change, or the function that is at work, with the establishment of the criteria for existence. That seems to make my case more than it does yours! If it is functionality that is the determinant for existence then it is functionality that exists!

Fun stuff, this!

How about this: Only CHANGE exists! The atom and probably the sub-atomic particles are apparently little or nothing more than fluctuating levels of energy, the back and forth of energy exchanges that create what we perceive as matter, but is really nothing more than the probabilistic patterns of fluctuating levels of energy. Thus, one might posit that it is change itself that is the sine qua non of matter and of everything, and thus, again, it is what results in what we call that which exists. If (as you have said) we remove change from the processes of matter and life, we have nothing left to deal with. This being the case, it is the change of state that is the essential (and the only) parameter that counts. Matter sans change, cannot exist, and change without matter (or energy) is (seemingly) nonsense. If we look closely at CHANGE we see actions and reactions, i. e. causal relationships, even when we do so on the quantum level. I cannot get rid of the apparent reality of this causal and change component of everything. You say that: “Only that which is functional exists.” While this is perhaps (in the mind of the philosophical physicist) problematic, I tend to agree. But when you say this you credit change, or the function that is at work, with the establishment of the criteria for existence. If it is functionality that is the determinant for existence then it is functionality that exists!

Gary.C. Moore:

Once again we have a dualism. Words are merely pointers to physical acts. Therefore what physically does “Only change exists” point at? This changes and that changes and you can point at this and that but never at the change. The point of Zeno’s paradox of the arrow shot in the air is that pointing as if defining a specific position in time is fallacious since the movement can only exist as seen as a whole. The arrow can NEVER be found in any position whatsoever till it stops. So there is a beginning when it is about to be shot and an end when it hits something. It never really exists at any point in-between ACCORDING TO ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. Having positions in flight for the arrow has the same objections to it as the irrationality of calculus has. Calculus logically, an assemblage of straight lines ‘as if’ a circle, metaphysically, logically cannot work. An arrow shot through the air going through all its infinite positions would never reach its target (Achilles and the Tortoise). However, in experience and not words, both things ‘work’. And matter IS change. It cannot be without it. It is thrall to time as everything else is.

So the real question is, Why is time, seemingly based on the dead reality of the present, always being thrust forward? Even to the point of taking little or no accurate account of the present, much less the past? Even in staring at a still life you note change because of an increasing anxiety at just staring. Where does this anxiety come from? Now, patience with "still life" is somewhat cultural. An Eskimo or a Sioux in ambush can stay perfectly still observing the same object for what would be for us an impossible length of time. But even they will stop. And I do not think simple bodily functions or an uncontrollable fantasy life is the answer. They can pretty well erase those things just like the Zen Japanese monk can erase "self" and the "universe" and the Yogi can go without, for us, necessary breathing. We can slow time down to a level we can objectively observe in others, but futural directionality in time STILL remains, however minuscule. Why?

'Sincerely'

Gary.C. Moore