Fabillionaire

Yeah now it's time to make some philosophy money and start talking about the good stuff! There's a lot to say and I'm a bit torn on which direction to go. I think I will go directly for the big fish and leave aside for now some small ones. With many of the folks I talk to, I find its best to go to qualia because boy do they want to talk about those. I'll rescue em later, it's easy
So, what is the big fish? Well, it's the reason for being in the natural world; said differently, it's the explanation for presence. And presence is my chosen label for what I think the central mystery is, but you could call it what it's likeness, or litness, or undergoing, or occupying, or what you will
And I think you know, I should say a bit to try and really get presence in view.
I guess the first place to begin is with provision and commitment. And this is really just, this is a generalization of believing. I'm not sure we need it, but this is what we anyway after all do, and it really helps with slapping down bad stuff you guys probably wouldn't urge (like apodicticity), but even if you’re not saying it its still there in the tradition and you have to be able to rule it out, and look it's just, I'll just describe it anyway
So in provision, some figure arises in presence; it's thematized in the clearing. That's all it is. And if we think "we provision the figure" (and we do, at times), then that's a claim about its etiology in the clearing, it's the claim we can credit our agency for its arising. But in a bit I'm going to kinda, reframe where etiology even sits, I’ll need to talk objectivity, so ill say, don't take the etiology to be primary but just, that's a further thing we think at times and it's a way of speaking. But really, the basic thing is, a figure that has arisen standing out in the unity of the phenomenal field, that is present or thematized in the clearing, that's the provision step.
And calling this with the abstract name is good because the provisioned figure can be any sort of figure. It can, in particular, be apophantic (apt for propositional attitudes, like a speech or writing yes, but also like the signal flags on a ship's mast), or it can be operative (my word for non-apophantic, ie, not apt for propositional attitudes, which is most figures most of the time, but not of course the ones we mostly talk about – which as an oh by the way, don’t get fooled. Oh by the way but operative looks thin on the ground only if your paradigm is to catch the figure up in a net of words. *woman with box of word-bait & word-nets voice* “man I’m sure finding a lot of apophantic figures in the phenomenal field”)
Anyway, then when we have that figure, we can elect to commit to it. Commitment is a comportment we take up (or have already taken up) towards some figure. And if it's apophantic that would mean, we form a believing attitude (or a relevantly similar doxastic attitude), it’s characteristically belief. And if it's operative, then we can rely on it, it’s characteristically reliance. And belief and reliance are both types of commitment. And this is anyway just what we do, and having a good phenomenological theory is just saying, we have something that earns the commitment. A fortoriori, because, that’s just having any good theory. That’s saying hey look, here are these figures apt for propositional attitudes, what’s the “good job” way of getting on with them? And that’s committing when you should commit and not committing hwne you should not commit.
So, then, on what basis should we commit? And I've mentioned this, but what I think we do is consult our abductive liscence in view of the total story. That is, we have before us the phenomena, and we have got a toolkit of reasoning strategies, and we think what best coheres with all the available involvements and phenomena and reasoning strategies is what we commit to. And we go to the limit of our abductive liscence (if we think we should commit, we do), and then we don't go an inch past it (if we think we shouldn't commit, we don't)
And this really I think, it's just straightforward and it's what we always after all do. Now we don't always care about the license, maybe we just like ufo so we believe in ufos; we do that too. But that’s still provision and commitment, it’s just you’re operating without an abductive license and the alethic cops will arrest you. But pace the license all we do is provision and commit, and we do it in light of the phenomena, and we select from a range of reasoning tools in the process.
But the point of saying it this way is that this is the way out from under what otherwise will be no good, because we don't want to elevate a golden tool and then pretend that what we do is wield the golden tool. We don't want to say, "oh it's transcendental, so it's beyond revision". That's a big mistake and the dusted Germans made that mistake. Well Husserl et al did. So what I think this way of telling gets us, is that it preserves the economy of reasons (there really are a priori and a posteriori; one reason could be empirical and another transcendental; these bear on each other in distinctive ways), but then it also shows that at any time we could find a tool is broken, or needs to be modified, or something else, because it's the total story that adjudicates how well the tool use works. And in particular I really need to be able to say that transcendental reasoning is a perfectly respectable strategy (it's just thinking about preconditions), but I need to be able to say that without making it the golden ur-tool, which of course it is not. And I'm sure you wouldn't have urged that stuff but it's like, I do feel I need to give the story.

And to me, it’s just immensely refreshing to say something like “we choose to commit or not to the items available for belief in light of the total story and according to the considerations we bring to bear” because it feels like, people say things that are not true because they think about everything through abstractions and metaphors they do not realize are abstractions and metaphors, and it’s like drinking clear water just to say what we after all anyway do. And I think if you doubt it, just have a look! Because it is after all what we anyway do, is we decide whether or not to believe something that’s apt for believing in view of the total story and in light of the considerations we bring to bear. And in point of fact we do not, it just doesn’t happen, we do not have our minds inscribed by an apodictic given. It’s not that that’s impossible, it *could* happen, but it’s a trip report. You’re saying, I went to the top of the mountain, I was visited by the silent silver disc, I was sitting alone in the dark and with terrible clarity the apparition appeared, you’re saying something like that – that what after all happened was some other different way of believing came over you. Maybe it could! But I don’t think it does in general, and when people are arguing about philosophy they’re not claiming that it did happen, but they’re nevertheless just confused about what they anyway after all have only ever done, and if that’s kind of a funny thing to be confused about then that was me and it’s everyone because it’s harder to see what’s always stared you in the face.
Anyway!
We can think about immanence as admitting four kinds of entities. Or well we should define immanence right.
So something is immanent if its availability isn't exhausted by apophantic exhibition. Pretty easy definition. But basically we can believe lots of things because in a certain way there's no limit on propositions, and then, we can believe ‘em. And that doesn't then make them immanent. That is like exactly how something can hang around without being immanent!
On the other hand, anything that is available in any other way? Then it's immanent. An apophantic figure qua figure is immanent, because as an article available to support a (doxastic) attitude it isn't exhausted by the content that attitude takes up -- it's also, as a separate matter, available there to support the attitude
And so my first phenomenology claim of note is that there's a fourfold of immanence, there's exactly four kinds of immanence
The first kind is easy, and it's thematized figuration. An apophantic figure or an operative figure is thematized and it's immanent. There it is. I called this in the gc "explicit", but maybe I shouldn't, because it could imply apophantic. An operative figure is also explicit in that way. Probably better to say thematized
The second kind is fairly easy but maybe not obvious at first look. This is implicit, aka the derminable-x. It's what makes a figure specifically that figure without itself being thematized. You see what things are, and they’re just exactly what they are, and what makes them just exactly what they are is not there in view like the thing is – but it’s not only available by way of believing in propositional content, because in fact there it *already is* whenever you look, just, implicitly
And these two are the ways figures are immanent, they are innumerably diverse. There are needless to say many figures with many implicit profiles. (*Trump voice* “The clearing, folks. It’s a great place. A great place. Many figures, thematized and implicit. That’s what they tell me. Very, very many figures”). But then there's exactly two more which are a slightly odder pair and are not diverse and are not figures but are immanent kinds with another sort of availability
One of those is the apophatic bound, aka the horizon. The apophatic bound is a kind of negative immanence. It's available by via negativa; it's here for us in the sense that it makes what is manifest as finite, manifestly finite. Think about how in vision one sees black — a present figure that notifies of absence — but then one doesn't even see a notification of absence past the edgeless edges of the visual field. Or think of how absence is conceptually realized through determinate negation, where a figure signals absence by arising in presence in order to bear the negation, and then the "content of" the apophasis isn't even present enough to signal its absence
And the other is presence itself. The transcendental precondition to all arising. If immanence names a kind of availability, then presence is that very availability, the fact that here it is whole for me. Presence is in common between everything present but not present as itself. It's not a being among beings but the enabling condition for those beings to be beings (in short, it's Being). And I think actually I don't need to motivate you on this one but sometimes I need to use this fourfold because an interlocutor doesn't even believe in presence. But if you see it, then you see, of course this is immanent. This isn't the mere deliverance of a verbal theory in which I might or not believe; it's presupposed even in committing to a statement of disbelief
And I think, one of the valuable thing about presenting the fourfold this way is that you can see what Heidegger (…I know, I know. But Aristotle said it well: “We must love the truth above our, uh, enmities”) meant when he said being isn’t a being among beings. It’s not! It’s not and it’s a simple fact that it’s not, it’s not racist magic but a simple and important fact. And it’s that the transcendental precondition of all arising isn’t and can’t be a figure in the phenomenal field among the figures, but must instead be this peculiar and indifferent and empty and almost featureless way that everything is held in unity together. Maybe a way in is to think backward from the binding problem and ask, when I see that the field is unified, or when I want to say that, what does that consist in? And it’s a way of all being the same that isn’t peculiar to the shape of anything in particular, in that, figures are all the same in standing out in presence and the presence in which they stand together is *exactly not a figure* because nothing thematic or implicit can be a commonality of the diversity, and whatever further specificity you try to pin on it can only ever be a figure. So, it’s a transcendental precondition
And you might think. You might think, godogly you absolute fool, your fourfold is incomplete because there is mood, and mood doesn’t fit the fourfold! And that’s not quite right. Mood does fit. But it’s complicated. The thing about a mood is that it’s on the one hand thematizable (and then, it’s a thematized figure and we know what that is), but that this doesn’t really exhaust the way it shows up. Mood is funny because its written across the determinate specificity of *the other figures*. Like, if you’re in a bad mood, it all shows up as a bit gloomy, and being a bit gloomy is what makes what all shows up just exactly the specific thing it is. It’s as it were, “the gloomy versions arise”. Or maybe you’re in a great mood which is frankly the more felicitous example. You’re in a great mood and it shows up lovely, it all gleams. Now here it is so lovely, and the lovely versions appear, and abstracting from the common loveliness we thematize the wonderful mood; but, this isn’t the (main aspect of) the mood itself, because, failing to abstract, we’re still surrounded by the mood, because there is loveliness implicit in the determinate specificity of the present figures