Self/Other relation.

For Sartre, my relationship with the Other is fundamentally antagonistic. The moment I realize I am the object of the Other's look, I have been objectified, I have been reduced to bare facticity: I am a recluse, I am a writer, I am a musician -- I am no longer that which I am not and not that which I am, in Sartrean terms. This transformation robs me of freedom, and so renders me inauthentic. But at the same time, I no longer need to confront the overwhelming anguish that freedom necessitates: responsibility for who I am. On this picture, however, my relationship with the Other simultaneously robs me of my freedom and reduces me to "that which I am" -- this bare facticity that must be turned away from in order for me to realize my authentic self.

Are our relationships with each other really this dismal? Is it necessary for me to turn away from the Other -- to step away from the human herd, as it were -- to realize my potential freedom? It would explain, on the one hand, the fact that non-reflective "inauthentic" individuals tend to surround themselves with more people. To put it crudely: in high school, the most popular kids were always also the least intelligent. In Sartrean terms: these people didn't have the strength to face the anguish of their own freedom and so sought refuge in the look of the Other.

Thoughts?

Yes, you're correct.

I have had to dumb myself down from a very young age just to be able to socialize on any level. I was such a nerd all I could talk about was school, and didn't understand why no one else was interested in the same things I was.

Now I just keep my mouth shut about most stuff to most peoplez...

Poison IV wrote:

Now I just keep my mouth shut about most stuff to most peoplez...

Thus, the internet forum. Where we may express ourselves more freely.

Note that I wrote the first post drunk.

Note that I am still drunk. This must be how d63 feels...

You, as perceived by you, is an instance of reality that will, with luck, last about 100 years.
The enduring you is what others see.
We create worlds in our minds, and then we destroy them by dying.
Without the other, it is as if you never existed.

phoneutria: I'm interested in the kind of effect my encountering the Other will have on me, directly. In short: what it means, practically, for the Other to "see" me.

Actors and puppets on stage wearing a variety of masks doing our little dance until the giant red curtain comes falling down on us all.

without-music wrote:

phoneutria: I'm interested in the kind of effect my encountering the Other will have on me, directly. In short: what it means, practically, for the Other to "see" me.

It makes you exist.

In the quantum world a particle's location and properties remain unknown until it is observed. It even exists simultaneously, in more than one location, in varying states, until the conscious act of measurement occurs.

The act of living entails a slow and methodical detachment.
The membrane, then the skin, is a barrier that encloses the Becoming, wanting to close it off completely and Be (Being).

This is the duo in dualism....reality juxtaposed against the organic assessment, of it - a relationship.

Solitude is the outcome of growing awareness of increasing individuation. The fear of freedom is the realization that as one grows stronger one becomes more and more reliant on self, and nothing and nobody else: independent...and that more and more the forces that confront this independent conspire to destroy it, via attrition, the flow of time or envy, the weak coveting strength.

phoneutria wrote:

without-music wrote:

phoneutria: I'm interested in the kind of effect my encountering the Other will have on me, directly. In short: what it means, practically, for the Other to "see" me.

It makes you exist.

Correction:

It's part of his existence....

If he lived alone out in a cabin in the middle of the woods for 15 years, he would go on existing just fine....

(with some survival skillz)

Lilith wrote:

In the quantum world a particle's location and properties remain unknown until it is observed. It even exists simultaneously, in more than one location, in varying states, until the conscious act of measurement occurs.

This is a clever way of saying that the world is fluid and that it is our brains that freeze it into particles (things) with a static position, and measurable mass and velocities and trajectories.

The world is unaffected by your eyes...but it is made comprehensive in your mind.

Poison IV wrote:

Correction:

It's part of his existence....

If he lived alone out in a cabin in the middle of the woods for 15 years, he would go on existing just fine....

(with some survival skillz)

Prove it.

Lilith wrote:

In the quantum world a particle's location and properties remain unknown until it is observed. It even exists simultaneously, in more than one location, in varying states, until the conscious act of measurement occurs.

Yes. Quantum theory aligns with Sartre very nicely.

phoneutria wrote:

Lilith wrote:

In the quantum world a particle's location and properties remain unknown until it is observed. It even exists simultaneously, in more than one location, in varying states, until the conscious act of measurement occurs.

Yes. Quantum theory aligns with Sartre very nicely.

How?

phoneutria wrote:

without-music wrote:

phoneutria: I'm interested in the kind of effect my encountering the Other will have on me, directly. In short: what it means, practically, for the Other to "see" me.

It makes you exist.

I think you're radically perverting what Sartre has to say. The Other steals the world away from me, so to speak; the Other reduces me to objective existence; the Other certainly does not make me exist, whatever that could mean.

Without objective existence, you are nothing.

phoneutria wrote:

Without objective existence, you are nothing.

Nice.

Lilith wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Lilith wrote:

In the quantum world a particle's location and properties remain unknown until it is observed. It even exists simultaneously, in more than one location, in varying states, until the conscious act of measurement occurs.

Yes. Quantum theory aligns with Sartre very nicely.

How?

The freedom of the being for-itself is the range of possible quantum states.
The cat is both alive and dead, until the Other opens the box.

phoneutria wrote:

Without objective existence, you are nothing.

Very good! If you knew Sartre at all, you'd know that this state of nothingness is the very criteria for freedom itself! It is when I become "somebody," when I become objectified in the Look of the Other, that I am robbed of my freedom. This doesn't make me exist; on the contrary! It limits my existence.

Quote :

The freedom of the being for-itself is the range of possible quantum states.
The cat is both alive and dead, until the Other opens the box.

You're smarter than you let on. To use your metaphor: when the box is opened by the Other, the cat is reduced to a bare facticity that eclipses his potential for authentic freedom. It is only insofar as the cat is not reducible to such facticity, that the cat is free at all. Surely you see the distinction between a limit to my freedom and the ground for the possibility of freedom itself. To attach to the former the necessary condition for existence is simply nonsense.

phoneutria wrote:

Lilith wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Lilith wrote:

In the quantum world a particle's location and properties remain unknown until it is observed. It even exists simultaneously, in more than one location, in varying states, until the conscious act of measurement occurs.

Yes. Quantum theory aligns with Sartre very nicely.

How?

The freedom of the being for-itself is the range of possible quantum states.
The cat is both alive and dead, until the Other opens the box.

But how is the cat affected by whether or not I choose to look in the box?

Varda wrote:

In order for something that exists to have a preference for existing... it must be aware that it exists.
Is that too simple?

Is the cat self-aware or not?

I think this cat is trying its hardest to look uber duber philosophically aware.

And failing...

without-music wrote:

You're smarter than you let on. To use your metaphor: when the box is opened by the Other, the cat is reduced to a bare facticity that eclipses his potential for authentic freedom. It is only insofar as the cat is not reducible to such facticity, that the cat is free at all. Surely you see the distinction between a limit to my freedom and the ground for the possibility of freedom itself. To attach to the former the necessary condition for existence is simply nonsense.

The dreaded cat in the box metaphor.

Are you saying that the cat is nothing unless the other opens the box?

I believe it was our Sartrean Quantum Theorist, phoneutria, who was leaning more in that direction.

without-music wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Without objective existence, you are nothing.

Very good! If you knew Sartre at all, you'd know that this state of nothingness is the very criteria for freedom itself! It is when I become "somebody," when I become objectified in the Look of the Other, that I am robbed of my freedom. This doesn't make me exist; on the contrary! It limits my existence.

Quote :

The freedom of the being for-itself is the range of possible quantum states.
The cat is both alive and dead, until the Other opens the box.

You're smarter than you let on. To use your metaphor: when the box is opened by the Other, the cat is reduced to a bare facticity that eclipses his potential for authentic freedom. It is only insofar as the cat is not reducible to such facticity, that the cat is free at all. Surely you see the distinction between a limit to my freedom and the ground for the possibility of freedom itself. To attach to the former the necessary condition for existence is simply nonsense.

Quote :

Very good! If you knew Sartre at all, you'd know that this state of nothingness is the very criteria for freedom itself! It is when I become "somebody," when I become objectified in the Look of the Other, that I am robbed of my freedom. This doesn't make me exist; on the contrary! It limits my existence.

It's not just that alone. Becoming somebody on your own is alright in terms of individual independence but when you have to become somthing through other people the limitations of your existence then becomes apparent.

It's especially worse in this modern era of increased global overpopulation where individualism basically becomes minimal within social collectivization.

Here the individual is deemed nothing and meaningless without the abstract of collectivization.

It is in this sphere of suffocating oppressive uniformity or conformity that the individual along with their sense of self directed will becomes lost as the hive sense of social collectivization becomes all the more over bearing.

The strong, intelligent, and masterful individual becomes succumbed by the overbearing majority of idiots that through large numbers takes them down.

Why are the powerful willed individuals rare in modern society? The reason is because by their nature they are solitary where on the other hand of the coin the weak join together in common defence in large numbers to which they squeeze solitary powerful individuals out of the equation altogether that they view threatening by process of elimination.

You will always notice that nonconformity is a punishable offence by the socialized collective.

This is why large masses of idiots are more and more becoming the norm within any populance.

If things continue down this path we will have nothing more than a inherited future of idiots.

Of course given the mentality where uniformity and conformity becomes the most praised values in all the land where nothing is dared challenged especially when it becomes heresy I think this will only exasperate things even worse. This is the future you get when everything becomes socially collectivized where genuine individualism is removed altogether.

The future will be one down this current path of ripe social stagnation.

Entropy is the only reaping hope that I can currently fathom in that it is the great equalizer.

When human beings foul up things nature always has a way of violently introducing it's own retribution to which balance then becomes restored. Nature is a majestic eternal pendulum like that where human fallability becomes devoured.

without-music wrote:

Very good! If you knew Sartre at all, you'd know that this state of nothingness is the very criteria for freedom itself! It is when I become "somebody," when I become objectified in the Look of the Other, that I am robbed of my freedom. This doesn't make me exist; on the contrary! It limits my existence.

To use your metaphor: when the box is opened by the Other, the cat is reduced to a bare facticity that eclipses his potential for authentic freedom. It is only insofar as the cat is not reducible to such facticity, that the cat is free at all. Surely you see the distinction between a limit to my freedom and the ground for the possibility of freedom itself. To attach to the former the necessary condition for existence is simply nonsense.

Nothingness is freedom, but freedom is imaginary.
This definition of freedom is the ability to wish. It amounts to dreaming.
By accomplishing a wish, you become a being in-itself.
There is nothing without objectification.

Quote :

You're smarter than you let on.

I'm sorry I gave you that impression. That was unintended.

Quote :

This definition of freedom is the ability to wish. It amounts to dreaming.

By defining freedom as a ground from which we wish, we do not have to do away with the concept of freedom altogether, or even call it illusory. Suppose freedom is this ground, when we fulfill a wish, we both accomplish a free act, and negate the ground necessitated by that free act in one and the same gesture. But is this a problem? I don't think so. We might define freedom as the criteria for wish-making -- to keep in line with your terms -- and the fulfilling of wishes as both the coming-to-be of free action and the simultaneous passing-away of freedom itself, that is, of the particular ground for which my fulfilled wish was made.

Quote :

By accomplishing a wish, you become a being in-itself.

I think I've addressed this. By consolidating wish-making and wish-accomplishment, by thinking both concepts as existing in one and the same gesture, in one and the same thought -- that is, freedom itself -- I think the being is able to remain for-itself.

Quote :

There is nothing without objectification.

Remember the distinction between nothing and nothingness.

Lilith wrote:

But how is the cat affected by whether or not I choose to look in the box?

His dilemma is solved. The system ceases to be a superposition of states and becomes one or the other.
To use Sartre's terminology, the cat's freedom is limited by your observation. It becomes a being in-itself.

Quote :

Is the cat self-aware or not?

Of course not. It is an imaginary cat.

I only threw the Schrodinger out as a red herring, you know, to see who'd bite.

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Good work.