Nietzsche’s Critique of Thingness and its Implications on Mainstream Beliefs about Science

Liebregts Page 1 of 35

Eric Liebregts #115816380

Major Research Paper

Wilfred Laurier University, Department of Philosophy

Academic Advisors: Dr. Bob Litke and Dr. Renato Cristi

August 3, 2012

Nietzsche’s Critique of Thingness and its Implications on Mainstream

Beliefs about Science

We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we are able to live -- by positing bodies, lines,

planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith no

one could endure living! But that does not prove them. Life is not an argument; the

conditions of life might include error (GS 121).

The senses do not lie the way the Eleatics thought they did, or the way Heraclitus thought they

did, -- they do not lie at all. What we do with the testimony of the senses, that is where the lies

begin, like the lie of unity, the lie of objectification, of substance, of permanence (TI ‘Reason’ 2).

I have long since declared war [against the] optimism of logicians (LN 38[4]).

ABSTRACT

Many intellectuals take a naive, realist, metaphysical stance with respect to logic and

the related concepts of ego (in terms of I-ness, not in the Freudian sense), thingness, and

causality. This is problematic. In this paper, I will explain Nietzsche's reasons for being

skeptical towards these concepts and suggest that the transformation of sensory experience

into concepts is akin to the conversion of analog information to digital form. It is problematic

to take a naive realist stance with respect to the conceptual realm because its representations

are inherently lossy with respect to their source, and they create the illusion of exactitude.

INTRODUCTION

I begin my paper with a sketch of the three levels of reality that Nietzsche identifies: 'the


actual world' from where we commonly assume our stimuli originate, 'the experiential realm' of

raw sensory impressions, and 'the conceptualized realm' -- our world of logicized things 'which

we experience as real' (LN 9[106]). I will argue that the transformation or 'carrying across'

(Ubertragung) of information from the experiential realm to the conceptual realm is like the

transformation of information from analog to digital form. The same problems -- lossiness

and the illusion of exactitude -- pervade our attempts to logicize or conceptualize our sensory

experience.

As Nietzsche's critique of logic shows, logic is not a metaphysical reality but a tool in

service of life imperatives that allows us to function more effectively in the world. As

Nietzsche puts it, the logician 'actually speaks of nothing but instances which never occur in

reality' (WP 478). The concepts of logic, ego, materialism, and causality all presuppose

'identical cases' (LN 40[13]), but such cases cannot be found in the unlogicized realm of raw

sensory experience. Because science is built upon the same presupposition as logic is, i.e.,

realism towards thingness, Nietzsche's critique applies to it as well. Nietzsche sees naive

logical realism as a religious belief, essentially a hangover from the previous Christian

moral-aesthetic picture of the world.

Nietzsche believes that prior to our scientifically-ordered, empirical world, we

experience an immediately perceived 'vivid world of first impressions' (OTL 84), and this

uninterpreted world is pictoral or imagistic in form. I will characterize the fluid, streaming,

confusing multiplicity of this world of impressions as being analog. This is in contrast to our

logicized, conceptual world, which can be thought of as being digital in character. In addition

to Nietzsche's remarks, I offer four arguments for thinking that uninterpreted sensory


information can be described as being analog in character.

I will use examples of analog and digital representations to highlight two problems that

arise when we attempt to represent an analog phenomenon in a digital form. First, analog to

digital transformations are inherently 'lossy', which is to say that no digital reproduction can

preserve all the information of an analog original because it is impossible to finitize the infinite.

The second problem is a psychological tendency. Digital representations of analog

phenomena create the illusion of exactitude; their stark, bold character makes it easy for us to

overlook that the subject of the digital representation -- the raw sensory information -- seems

to be fuzzy and inexact in character.

Nietzsche's critique of logic aims to show that we must not be seduced by success in the

logicized realm of science into granting metaphysical status to logic, e.g., the idea that the

scientific perspective can provide a complete picture of what happens in the experiential realm.

Of course, the logical perspective is a highly useful tool that we can use to make life decisions,

and it has been very beneficial to the human species. However, we must not lose sight of the

fact that since it is based upon a presupposition -- that identicals are real -- we cannot ascribe

to it metaphysical status, as an arbiter of capital-T truth in the experiential world or the actual

world. We must not grant the imperatives of logic priority over the imperatives of life,

because logic is a tool created to serve the biological, psychological, and linguistic necessities of

life. Since science presupposes logic, a critique of logic is a critique of scientific practice.

Naive realism towards logic, ego, thingness, and causality hide the truth about the unavoidable

loss of information involved in the use of these concepts.

I want to raise the philosophical profile of analog types of representation. Like the


professional audio engineer, who uses both analog and digital tools in the recording studio, I

hope that intellectuals will learn to use analog representations to complement the digital

representations that are so dominant in modern Western philosophy. I also hope that my

discussion of the critique of logic can shed light on some of the so-called 'illogical' or

'contradictory' passages from Nietzsche's writings and show that when viewed from a

non-naive logical perspective, his thoughts are actually highly lucid and insightful.

I: THE ACTUAL WORLD, THE EXPERIENTIAL REALM, AND THE REALM OF CONCEPTS

Nietzsche suggests that there are three spheres of reality. The first is what I will call

'the actual world', “in which everything is bound to and conditioned by everything else” (WP

584). This is what we commonly believe to be the source of all of our sensory experience, it is

where we live. It is 'the outside world'. Although Nietzsche talks about other realms, both of

these other realms are encompassed within the one actual world. Although we commonly

talk as if we possess knowledge of the actual world, in fact we can have no direct experience of

it because everything we know about it (including the assumption that it exists and is the

source of stimuli) comes to us via our senses. All of our impressions of the actual world arrive

to our brains already filtered by the limits of our sensory apparatii. This makes it difficult (if

not impossible) for us to make direct assertions about the actual world.

The second stage of reality is our 'immediately perceived' 'vivid world of first

impressions' (OTL 84), or what I have been calling 'the experiential realm'. This is the stage at

which stimuli from the actual world first encounter the brain. In this realm, these unlogicized

sensations are chaotic and imagistic in character, and they cannot be expressed linguistically.


We can focus our attention upon the experiential realm by making a deliberate effort to not

classify, compare, or conceptualize our sensory information. When we do this, we can see the

character of this realm as a continuous, fluid stream in which there are no discrete elements,

but a confusing, flowing multiplicity. Nietzsche describes this realm as “the formless,

unformulatable world of the chaos of sensations” (LN 9[106]). Part of my thesis is that we can

think of this experiential realm as being analog in character.

The third sphere of reality is the familiar, empirical world of scientific assertions and

communication, or what I call 'the conceptual realm'. This is 'the world which we experience

as real (LN 9[106]). In is in this sphere that we make generalizations upon which to base our

behavior. We commonly assume that knowledge in this sphere is legitimate information

about 'the actual world', but of course this is a naive assumption. We rarely pay attention to

our passive reception of stimuli; instead we immediately leap from the reception of a stimulus,

e.g., a loud 'bang!' (the experiential realm), to identifying the source of that sound, e.g., a

cannon firing (the conceptual realm). However, since Nietzsche wants us to avoid being naive

realists, he wants us to resist the temptation to jump immediately to the conceptual realm of

things, to the idea that what one hears is a specific 'thing', without understanding that it is the

sensation, the 'bang', that is actually first received by the brain.

According to this model, a stimulus that we assume originates in the actual world passes

through two stages before reaching the conceptual realm. In the first stage, the move from

the actual world to the experiential world, there is a trimming of information. This stage of

trimming is passive. Only the information that fits within the 'bandwidth' of the sensory organ

can be transmitted:


Sense perception happens without our awareness: whatever we become conscious of is a

perception that has already been processed (LN 34[30]).

Our eyes can only detect a narrow spectrum of light, and so infrared and ultraviolet light

information is not detected, and of course our vision must be pointed in a specific direction,

meaning that light information from behind us is also not detected. Of course other

organisms may have more (or less) developed sensory receptors, i.e., different 'bandwidths',

but all sensory organs have a limit to what they can receive. This means that before a

stimulus ever reaches our brain, i.e., the experiential realm, many other potential stimuli have

been lost because of the biological limits of our sensory apparatus. I am not particularly

interested in this first stage of processing because we can know very little (if anything) about

how it functions, other than to make the claim that we probably receive less information in our

brain than is available to it. To make any claims about this process, we would require direct

access to the source -- the actual world -- and of course this is problematic if not impossible.

My concern is with the second stage of processing, where the raw sensory data of the

experiential realm is transferred to the logicized, conceptual sphere. I believe that we can

make meaningful observations about this process works because we can examine the original,

raw, experiential information and compare it to the processed, logicized version of it in the

conceptual realm. Although for most people the processing that takes place at this stage is

done so quickly that it seems unconscious, Nietzsche believes that we can make ourselves

conscious of this process.

[The conceptual realm] remains protected and closed off from the immeasurable multiplicity in

the experiences [of the experiential realm][...][.] [It] is presented only with a selection of


experiences -- experiences, furthermore, that have been simplified, made easy to survey and

grasp, thus falsified -- so that it in turn may carry on this simplification and making graspable (LN

37[4]).

Although the process seems automatic and unconscious for most adults, it takes years

for a newborn to efficiently and properly conceptualize raw sensory information. What

Nietzsche wants us adults to realize is that this transfer of information from the experiential

realm to the conceptual realm can be observed, although he admits that this is not easy for

most people to do:

That every thought [or impression] first arrives many-meaninged and floating, really only as the

occasion for attempts to interpret or for arbitrarily fixing it, that a multitude of persons seem to

participate in all thinking -- this is not particularly easy to observe: fundamentally, we are trained

in the opposite way, not to think about thinking as we think (LN 38[1]).

I accept Nietzsche's challenge and want to make an attempt to characterize this process. My

thesis is that the transfer of information from the experiential realm to the conceptual realm is

like the transfer of analog information to a digital form. Although digitized representations

can be highly useful, we must be aware of the two key issues that arise: lossiness and the

illusion of exactitude.

Like digital audio, our logical world -- the world of 'things' -- requires us to divide up the

world and slot each chunk into discrete categories. However, like a sound wave, the

experiential world doesn't seem to be neatly divisible in this way, and so any time we apply our

logico-linguistic apparatus to our sensory experience, we are making an approximation. No

matter how much detail we manage to achieve in a logical account, information about the

world will always be missing because logic is digital and the experiential world seems to be

analog. It is a mistake to think that logic could ever give us a complete picture of our


experience, however well-defined and useful such a picture becomes. It is an error to be

prejudiced against alternative, i.e., non-logical or analog, perspectives on the world because no

logical or 'digital' picture of the experiential world can ever be complete, and in many cases, an

'analog' picture might be more appropriate to use than a 'digital' one.

II: THE CRITIQUE OF LOGIC AND A GENEALOGY OF NAIVE LOGICAL REALISM

Such erroneous articles of faith, which were passed on by inheritance further and further, and

finally almost became part of the basic endowment of the species are for example: that there are

enduring things; that there are identical things; that there are things (GS 110).

Logic is tied to the condition: assuming that identical cases exist. Indeed, in order to think and

conclude logically, the fulfillment of this condition must first be feigned. That is: the will to

logical truth cannot realize itself until a fundamental falsification of all events has been

undertaken (LN 40[13]).

[T]he psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids us to speak of 'things-in-themselves'

(WP 473).

We set up a word at the point at which our ignorance begins, at which we can see no further,

e.g., the word 'I', the word 'do', the word 'suffer': -- these are perhaps the horizon of our

knowledge, but not 'truths' (WP 482).

Nietzsche's critique of logic calls into question the realist perspective with respect to

thing-ness. Because the existence of identicals is a presupposition of logic, it is a mistake to

believe that any thing, e.g., your television, that pen, a cat, actually is separated in such a way

in the raw, uninterpreted experiential realm. Although our conceptual apparatus allows us to

speak in terms of televisions, pens, cats, and shoes, when we subject these things to scrutiny,

we find no clear boundary between [SHOE] and [NOT-SHOE] in terms of language or in terms of

physics. Although the main target of Nietzsche’s critique is logic, because scientific practice

presupposes logicality, a critique of logic is a critique of scientific thinking.

In linguistic terms, the lack of a clear distinction between [SHOE] and [NOT-SHOE] is


readily understandable. There is no end to the debate about what distinguishes [SHOE] from

[NOT-SHOE], e.g., whether the footwear under consideration is more appropriately categorized

[SANDAL] or [BOOT]. The central feature of a linguistic community is an approximate

consensus about the way in which sensory information is grouped into conceptual categories.

The common feature of linguistic communities in general is logical realism, in agreeing to play

the linguistic game of realism about things. If you say, 'the book is in the car', you are

assuming that you and the other person have similar conceptions of what [BOOK] and [CAR]

signify in terms of raw sensory experience. But in order for this agreement on conceptions to

function, we must already accept the fundamental presupposition of logic: that it is really

possible to divide up our sensory experience in such a manner in the first place. In other

words, we have to agree to act as logical realists. This process of "simplification, coarsening,

emphasizing, and elaborating [is what enables] [...] all 'recognition', all ability to make oneself

intelligible" (WP 521). What Nietzsche wants us to realize is that although we must employ a

logical realist perspective to live and communicate, this by no means entails that we must

believe that either the experiential realm or the actual world is structured in this way. We can

be skeptical about logical realism and still continue to employ logical realism in order to

communicate and make generalizations in our lives.

At the microscopic level, there is no clear boundary marking exactly where the heel of a

shoe ends and the air around the shoe begins because infinite divisibility prevents any such

absolute demarcation. The 'atoms' of rubber at the edge of the shoe share electrons with the

'atoms' of air surrounding the shoe. No matter how closely we examine the edge of the shoe,

we cannot achieve a level of resolution where we find a clean break between [SHOE] and


[NOT-SHOE]. The 'atoms' of rubber appear to bleed into the 'atoms' of air, and so there is no

precise point where [SHOE] becomes [NOT-SHOE]. Of course, one might argue that we simply

haven't explored deeply enough and haven't yet reached a level where we can observe the

division, and this is a definite possibility. However, we have no scientific evidence to suggest

that this is the case, only pure speculation. The weight of scientific evidence suggests that

atomism does not exist in the realm of physics, i.e., that there is no bottom-level, indivisible

substrate of matter.

Logic can only function by being applied to a world that is already divided into 'things',

into discrete linguistic categories, into atomic units. "Our belief in things is the precondition of

our belief in logic" (WP 516), which is simply to say that like the X's and Y's of an algebraic

equation, the categories we employ when making statements about the world, like [FOOD] and

[APPLE], are similarly unreal. The mechanism of logic requires us to be realists with respect to

'things' in the actual world, and we need these approximations to make generalizations about

the world and to communicate with others. Nietzsche's argument is not that people shouldn't

use logical realism to make generalizations about the world, but that philosophers must realize

that logic is built upon the presumption that identicals exist, and so logic is not an a priori

metaphysical arbiter of truth. The danger occurs when philosophers brazenly attempt to

construct theories upon the basic assumption of logic -- that 'things' are real -- without realizing

that it is based upon a presumption.

People projected their three 'inner facts' out of themselves and onto the world -- the facts they

believed in most fervently, the will, the mind, and the I. They took the concept of being from

the concept of the I, they posited 'things' as beings in their own image, on the basis of their

concept of I as cause. Is it any wonder that what they rediscovered in things later is only what

they had put into them in the first place? -- Even the 'thing', to say it again, the concept of a thing,


is just a reflex of the belief in the I as cause... And even your atom, my dear Mr. Mechanist and

Mr. Physicist, how many errors, how much rudimentary psychology is left in your atom! Not to

mention the 'thing-in-itself', the horrendum pudendum of metaphysicians! The error of thinking

that the mind caused reality! And to make it the measure of reality! And to call it God! (TI:

The Four Great Errors 3)

The concepts of ego and causality all require the same presupposition as logic does --

the existence of identicals -- and so the critique of logic, skepticism towards 'things', applies to

them as well. Nietzsche argues that Descartes' cogito -- 'I think, therefore I am' -- is built upon

a linguistic requirement, not metaphysical truth. Although Descartes extends his radical

skepticism to almost all aspects of his experience, he fails to apply it to the presupposition of

identicals. Although his radical skepticism is sound methodology, his reconstructive strategy,

his identification of a secure starting point as the ego, is problematic. His observation that

thinking is happening by no means entails that there is some accompanying 'thing' that thinks.

Descartes' skepticism doesn't go deep enough; the Cartesian ego retains unquestioned realism

towards thingness.

'There is thinking: therefore there is something that thinks': this is the upshot of all of Descartes'

argumentation. But that means positing as true a priori our belief in the concept of substance --

that when there is thought there has to be something 'that thinks' is simply a formulation of our

grammatical custom that adds a doer to every deed (WP 484).

'The subject' is the fiction that many similar states in us are the effect of one substratum: but it is

we who first created the 'similarity' of these states; our adjusting them and making them similar

is the fact, not their similarity (--which ought rather to be denied--) (WP 485).

When we say 'I think', the 'I' here may be no different than the 'it' in the phrases, 'It is

raining', or 'It is important that you brush your teeth', where the subject 'it' is a syntactic

expletive -- a grammatical unit that contributes nothing to the meaning of a sentence, but

merely acts as a grammatical placeholder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_expletive). The onus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_expletive


of proof is on the philosopher who believes in 'I's-in-themselves' to prove that the 'I' is real, and

not simply a grammatical requirement. Descartes seems to have mistaken a grammatical

imperative for a metaphysical one.

Our bad habit of taking a mnemonic, an abbreviative formula, to be an entity, finally as a cause,

e.g., to say of lightning 'it flashes'. Or the little word 'I'. To make a kind of perspective in

seeing the cause of seeing: that was what happened in the invention of the 'subject', the 'I'! (WP

548)

Of course one might object and say, 'How could there be thinking that is independent of

a thinker? The idea of thoughts existing without a thinker thinking them is unimaginable'.

However, this objection is nothing more than an invalid argument from incredulity. If we

accept the notion that believing something doesn't make it true, we must also accept the

corollary, that not being able to believe something doesn't make it false. Few people in

ancient times would have believed that the world was round or that it orbited the sun, but of

course that didn't change the fact of the matter, and it is perhaps no different for the naive

Cartesians.

That thinking is even a measure of the real -- that what cannot be thought is not -- is the crude

non plus ultra of a moralist credulity (trusting in a fundamental truth principle at the fundament

of things), itself an extravagant assertion contradicted at every moment by our experience (LN

2[93]).

It thinks: but to say the ‘it’ is just that famous old ‘I’ – well that is just an assumption or opinion,

to put it mildly, and by no means an ‘immediate certainty’. In fact, there is already too much

packed into the ‘it thinks’: even the ‘it’ contains an interpretation of the process, and does not

belong to the process itself. People are following grammatical habits here in drawing

conclusions, reasoning that ‘thinking is an activity, behind every activity something is active,

therefore--.’ Following the same basic scheme, the older atomism looked behind every ‘force’

that produces effects for that little lump of matter in which the force resides, and out of which

the effects are produced, which is to say: the atom (BGE 17).

Causal determinists fail to appreciate that their world of 'causes' and 'effects' is built


upon a similar foundation of realism towards thingness: in this case, events. When we say 'X

causes Y', we are being logical realists, i.e, we unquestioningly accept that there are discrete

events X and Y in the world, and so we fail to grasp that 'cause' X and 'effect' Y are not actually

discrete entities in the experiential realm. We tend to ignore that any 'state' is a type of

atomic unit, and atomic units cannot be found in the experiential realm. In any change from

'state' X to 'state' Y, there is a continuum of change. The deterministic picture requires us to

imagine a series of jumps from 'state' to 'state', but offers no explanation of how such leaps are

possible.

Cause and effect: there is probably never such a duality; in truth a continuum faces us, from

which we isolate a few pieces, just as we always perceive a movement only as isolated points,

i.e., do not really see, but infer. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads

us; it is a suddenness only for us. There is an infinite number of processes that elude us in this

second of suddenness. An intellect that saw cause and effect as a continuum, not, as we do, as

arbitrary division and dismemberment -- that saw the stream of the event -- would reject the

concept of cause and effect and deny all determinedness (GS 112).

At length we grasp that things -- consequently atoms, too -- effect nothing: because they do not

exist at all -- that the concept of causality is completely useless. -- A necessary sequence of states

does not imply a causal relationship between them (-- that would mean making their effective

capacity leap from 1 to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). There are neither causes nor effects. Linguistically

we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If I think of the

muscle apart from its 'effects', I negate it -- [...] Interpretation by causality a deception -- A

'thing' is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by a concept, an image (WP 551).

The intellectual tendency to see causes and effects (rather than seeing the process as a

continuous singularity) seems to come from the fact that our intellect highlights certain aspects

of the process, making them stand out for us. We are trained to focus our attention upon

certain aspects of the change and to ignore other aspects, but this by no means entails that

these highlighted aspects are real. An organism with different biological requirements might

conceptualize the process in an entirely different manner, focusing upon the 'events' that stand


out for him, upon the events that he believes he can temporarily grasp and perhaps exert

influence upon. The intellect requires this presumption in order to function, but by no means

does that make the results of this process of approximation real.

The principle of identity has behind it the 'apparent fact' of things that are the same. A world in

a state of becoming could not, in a strict sense, be 'comprehended' or 'known'; only to the extent

that the 'comprehending' and 'knowing' intellect encounters a coarse, already-created world,

fabricated out of mere appearances but become firm to the extent that this kind of appearance

has preserved life -- only to this extent is there anything like 'knowledge'; i.e., a measuring of

earlier and later errors by one another (WP 520).

Nietzsche sees the trend towards naive logical realism in philosophy -- most commonly

manifested in the belief that science can provide a complete picture of the world -- as a

remnant of the Christian moral picture of the world. In both modes of thought, it is assumed

that nature conforms to some overarching, metaphysical 'law'. In the Christian perspective,

the world conforms to the laws dictated by God, and in the modern logical perspective, the

world conforms to the 'laws of nature'. This naive 'scientific' perspective has retained the

basic assumption of Christian morality and has simply replaced one source of 'law' with

another. The basic underlying assumption – that the world is understandable and governed

by laws in the first place – is left unchallenged. This is the naive logical realism that Nietzsche

finds so problematic.

The presupposition that things are, at bottom, ordered so morally that human reason must be

justified -- is an ingenuous presupposition and a piece of naivete, the after-effect of belief in

God's veracity -- God understood as the creator of things (WP 471).

Nietzsche's critique applies equally to the Christian as to the naive logical realist in

philosophy. First, the idea that the world is understandable is a metaphysical claim because it

speaks from a perspective that is necessarily outside of the realm of physics, i.e., of what can be


observed empirically. The claim is about physics itself, and therefore it cannot be justified by

appeal to anything that is observable by scientists, i.e., by anything that occurs within the realm

of science. For one to make any metaphysical judgment, i.e., to determine how things 'really

are', one requires an external perspective from which to judge. However, without the

existence of a supernatural deity, this higher perspective is impossible to attain. Here, the

Christian can at least offer a religious argument in his defense; the logical realist is actually in a

worse position, for he has absolutely nothing to fall back upon. The 'scientific' realist is

oblivious to the fact that his argument rests upon a belief that is more religious than rational.

His arrogance, his conviction that he is supremely rational, is dangerous and unscientific, not to

mention incorrect.

You must forgive an old philologist like me who cannot help maliciously putting his finger on bad

tricks of interpretation: but this ‘conformity of nature to law’, which you physicists are so proud

of, just as if – exists only because of your interpretation and bad ‘philology’. It is not a matter of

fact, not a ‘text’, but instead only a naïve humanitarian correction and a distortion of meaning

that you use in order to comfortably accommodate the democratic instincts of the modern soul!

‘Everywhere, equality before the law – in this respect, nature is no different and no better off

than we are’ (BGE 22).

Second, the idea that the world is understandable is essentially nothing more than a

moral-aesthetic argument: we tend to prefer simple, harmonious pictures over more complex,

messy ones. However, a preference is not a criterion of truth. The problem here is that we

have assumed that it is our sensory apparatus, rather than our faculty of reason, that is to

blame for the incommensurability of experience and logic. Both the Christian and the logical

realist posit a 'real world' in opposition to an 'apparent world', which they take to be a

corrupted, inaccurate version of the former. They choose the pretty picture -- a logically- or

divinely-ordered world -- without asking whether this picture actually corresponds to their


observations. The logical realist assumes that the world is ordered because he cannot imagine

it being any other way, but this is fallacious reasoning, an invalid argument from incredulity that

makes the same mistake as the argument used to defend the cogito earlier.

The problem with this moral-aesthetic outlook is that it gives the erroneous expectation

that there are existing ‘natural laws’ ‘out there’ that structure nature and are waiting to be

discovered. What this view ignores, however, is that all scientific discoveries are a result of a

particular mode of observing the world, i.e., the realist stance with regards to thingness.

While the Christian can point to passages in the Bible that support his view that the world

follows 'divine law', the naive realist in the scientific realm can point to no source for his

'natural law' other than nature itself, which is a tautology. The naive realists are asking us to

accept as a matter of faith their assertion that the world is governed by an underlying set of

laws without offering a valid argument to support such a view.

III: ARGUMENTS FOR AN ANALOG EXPERIENTIAL REALM

'Completely true to nature!' -- what a lie:

How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?

The smallest bits of nature are infinite!

And so he paints what he likes about it.

And what does he like? He likes what he can paint! (GS, 'The Realistic Painter')

The treacherous and blind hostility of philosophers towards the senses: It is not the senses that

deceive. Our nose, of which, as far as I know, no philosopher has ever spoken with due respect,

is as yet the most delicate scientific instrument in existence: it is capable of registering vibrations

where even the spectroscope fails (WP 461).

The main argument of this section is that the experiential realm of raw, uninterpreted

sensory information seems to be infinitely divisible or 'smooth', as opposed to the finite,

discrete, conceptual realm that we operate within when we communicate and make


generalizations. I want to make an analogy here between the realms of human cognition

introduced in Section I and different types of media. My claim is that the experiential realm of

raw sensory information is like an analog medium, and the logicized conceptual realm is like a

digital medium.

Although it may appear at first glance that this claim is the same type of metaphysical

speculation that Nietzsche opposes, it should be understood that nothing about this assertion

goes beyond the information that we have access to in the experiential realm. While of

course my claim cannot be proven conclusively, it has the benefit of being refutable, unlike the

logical realists' position. My argument is simply that upon close inspection of our raw sensory

information, it seems to be not structured according to a finite logical or digital framework, and

so we have good reason to characterize it as being analog in character: infinitely continuous

and infinitely divisible. My argument could be refuted by the identification of a single aspect

of the experiential realm that is discrete and non-continuous. My argument in this section

draws upon four pieces of evidence: Zeno's paradoxes of motion, the indefinability of elements,

the irrationality of numbers in nature, and the divergence of science.

Zeno of Elea puts forth three paradoxes that demonstrate essentially the same point:

that the infinite divisibility of both time and space make motion, from a finitized, logical

perspective, problematic. The most famous of Zeno's paradoxes, and the paradox that I will

draw upon for this discussion, is the arrow paradox. An arrow fired by Adam at Ben must first

reach the halfway point between Adam and Ben. However, in order to reach the halfway

point, the arrow must first reach the point that is halfway between Adam and the halfway

point, i.e., the one-quarter point. However, in order to reach the one-quarter point, the arrow


must first reach the one-eighth point, and so on ad infinitum. There seem to be an infinite

number of points or 'states' between Adam and Ben.

Furthermore, it seems as if the arrow can never even begin to traverse the distance

between Adam and Ben because there are an infinite number of points between the starting

point, i.e., the arrow still being in contact with Adam's bowstring, and the very next point, i.e.,

its having left Adam's bowstring. Motion doesn't seem possible at all from a finitized

perspective because the problem of infinite divisibility pervades even the first 'step' of the

process of motion from point A to B. If we assume that logic is real, i.e., that it is embedded in

reality, we are asserting that every real situation will lend itself to logical analysis. Zeno shows

that this task of logical analysis in which every point is tagged cannot be completed.

Of course, our sensory experience tells us that motion is possible, and that it is

constantly happening all around us. In this case, sensory evidence trumps our expectation

that logic is adequate to capture motion. What, then, are we to make of Zeno's paradoxes?

Zeno seems to be pointing to the continuous, non-discrete, non-finite, analog character of

motion. Whenever we attempt to conceptualize motion into a series of steps, we are

confronted with the problem of infinite divisibility. No matter how refined our observations

become, our description requires that the arrow 'jump' from 'point' to 'point', because we can

find no fundamental, atomic unit of space or of time. What Zeno seems to be suggesting is

that since motion seems to take place within a continuum and not within an atomicized, grid

like structure, the mathematical, logical perspective is inadequate to fully describe it. I will go

a bit further and say that our experience of motion seems to be non-logicizable or

non-digitizable; in other words, it appears to be analog in character.


My second argument for an analog experiential realm is what I call the indefinability of

elements. At first glance, it appears that we do have digital experience: the periodic table.

However, given any chunk of metal -- a gold coin for example -- it is impossible to say with

certainty that such-and-such a sample of metal is 'gold' because parts of the 'gold' coin are

always at different stages of radioactive decay than other parts of the coin, and are thus not

strictly identical to each other.

There is nothing unchanging in chemistry: this is only appearance, a mere school prejudice. We

have slipped in the unchanging, my physicist friends, deriving it from metaphysics as always. To

assert that a diamond, graphite, and carbon are identical is to read off the facts naively from the

surface. Why? Merely because no loss in substance can be shown on the scales! Very well,

they have something in common; but the activity of molecules during the transformation, which

we cannot see or weigh, turns one material into something different -- with specifically different

properties (WP 623).

Even if we were to definitively describe a single 'atom' of 'gold', the problem is that all

'atoms', including that one, are constantly changing, and so our description, that such-and-such

a collection of properties counts as 'gold', would apply to that 'atom' for only a fleeting instant.

"In order to think and infer it is necessary to assume beings: logic handles only formulas for

what remains the same" (WP 517), but contemporary science suggests that the world we

experience is in constant flux: not even two neighboring 'atoms' of 'gold' in a coin are identical.

Logic requires that 'things' be arranged into identical 'types' and, most importantly, that these

'things' remain the same over a period of time. However, empirical scientific evidence

indicates that neither of these conditions hold true with respect to the experiential realm.

This is a paradox that cuts to the core of our logically-based scientific worldview. It shows that

scientists must be willing to be non-logical in order to begin working at all.

My third argument for an analog experiential world points to the irrationality of all


'numbers' in nature. Someone objecting to my argument for an analog experiential realm

might say, 'But there are numbers and ratios in the natural world -- e.g., pi, the golden ratio. If

we can identify these numbers, how can you deny that logical structures are real?' In

response to this objection, I would point out that neither of the above mathematical relations

are, technically speaking, ratios -- they are all irrational numbers, meaning they cannot be

represented as fractions; their decimal places continue to infinity with no predictable pattern.

Although the number 0.3333 (repeating) involves an infinite number of decimal places,

it is a rational number because it can be represented by the fraction 1/3. Pi (3.1415...) and the

'golden' ratio (1.61803...) have infinite decimal places but cannot be represented by fractions.

We can only ever approximate their value. In other words, they are not rational because they

cannot be expressed as ratios of one whole number to another whole number. Pythagoras of

Samos was highly distressed by the discovery of irrational numbers because they called into

question his belief that numbers were the basis of the world. The naive logical realists of

today should be similarly distressed by the observation that none of the so-called 'ratios' of

nature can be expressed as relations of one whole number to another because they are all

irrational.

My final piece of evidence for an analog experiential world is what I call the increasing

divergence of science. It is certainly plausible that the experiential realm is digital and not

analog. If it were digital, i.e., made up of discrete atomic units, we would expect

developments in the realm of science to lead towards greater unity and less complexity.

However, this doesn't seem to be the case. As science progresses, it appears to be diverging

into more and more subfields, not less. Although it could be the case that science will reach a


point where these disunities will begin to resolve, we have no evidence -- only hopeful

speculation -- to support this claim. It seems like the only way to cling to the belief in a digital

experiential world in the face of this argument would be to claim that scientists simply don't

know what they are doing. I do not subscribe to this notion, and I doubt that any logical

realist would, either. Although it is true that we can (and should) question the findings of

science, and that there surely are incompetent scientists out there, the idea that the vast

majority of scientists are systematically deceiving the public is an accusation that requires

evidence, of which there is very little. It also seems unlikely that a logical realist would make

such an argument, since it undermines the very perspective to which he subscribes: the logical,

'scientific' view.

IV: LOSSINESS AND THE ILLUSION OF EXACTITUDE

In the form in which it comes, a thought is a sign with many meanings, requiring interpretation

or, more precisely, an arbitrary narrowing and restriction before it finally becomes clear (LN

38[1]).

[W]ithout accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the wholly invented

world of the unconditioned and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world

through numbers, people could not live – that a renunciation of false judgments would be a

renunciation of life, a negation of life. To acknowledge untruth as a condition of life (BGE 4).

[S]eeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes (GS 228).

I believe that it is meaningful to characterize our conceptual realm of 'things' as being

digital in character, i.e., divided into discrete atomic units, and the experiential realm as being

analog in character, i.e., not logicized in this way. Whenever we try to transfer an experience,

e.g., the taste of a particular wine, into a concept, e.g., 'dry', 'woody', we have to do something

similar to an analog to digital conversion. The problem is that all analog to digital conversions


are 'lossy' in character because a logical system can only ever approximate an analog source.

In order for certain features to be highlighted, certain other features must be omitted from the

picture. If we desire clarity, we must omit certain 'minor' or 'irrelevant' details, and this

means that the clarity of a digital representation of an analog original entails incompleteness,

despite what our life instinct for efficient decision-making would like us to believe. In this

section, I describe two problems faced by digital representations of analog originals: 1) the

illusion of exactitude and 2) lossiness.

A few examples will help to illustrate the fundamentally different representational

character of analog and digital media. An old-style analog clock has an hour and a minute

hand, while a newer digital clock has a numerical readout of the current time. In the realm of

music, vinyl records and magnetic tape are analog media, while CDs and mp3s are digital. The

theoretical difference between analog and digital representations is the way in which the copy

is related to the original source. The difference between analog and digital audio media can

be described in the following way:

The relation between the configuration of particles on the tape recording is one of analogy; that

is, the specific density and distribution of particles resembles the characteristics of the

waves/cycles in their amplitude and frequency, their loudness and pitch. [...] Even though the

sound recording, on tape or vinyl, is a different material form from the acoustic event of the

sound, there remains an isomorphic relation, or one of similitude, between them. [...] In the case

of digital recording there exists no resemblance, no analogy between the configuration of digits

and the sound. The digits in no way 'look like' the sound. The relation between the copy and

the original in the case of digital reproduction is much more one of difference than in the case of

analog recording (Poster, p. 79).

The analog clock face is an analogical representation of the circular movement of the

sun across the sky; it is a mechanized version of the original sundial. When we refer to an

analog clock, we are constantly reminded of the infinite nature of what we are attempting to


represent -- time. If we see that the minute hand is somewhere between the '3' and the '4',

we can approximate the current time as being about 17 minutes past the hour. However,

with a digital clock, we can overlook the infinitely continuous character of time because the

digits give us the appearance of precision. We can say, in no uncertain terms, 'The clock says

that the current time is 6:17'. The problem that I want to highlight is that we must not forget,

when referring to a digital representation of an analog phenomenon like time, that what we

can achieve digitally is only ever the illusion of exactitude. Although we can gain greater and

greater precision in our digital timing mechanisms, a digital clock can never do what an analog

clock does: sweep through all of the possible time values in its trip around the circle. All

digital representations of analog phenomena require that its input values be trimmed and

approximated before the value can be expressed. Analog representations can retain the full

richness of the original infinitely continuous source.

The second issue that affects digital representations of analog originals is the inherent

lossiness involved. No digital version can retain all the information contained in an analog

original because it is impossible to finitize the infinite. A digital system can never achieve

infinite resolution, and so a certain amount of information will be lost in any transfer from

analog to digital. When we digitize a sound wave, for example, we divide the wave into

millions of tiny time slices or 'samples' and then assign each sample a numerical value that most

closely approximates the height of the sound wave during that microscopic chunk of time. On

a standard compact disc, a sound wave is divided into 44 100 slices per second (44.1 kHz), and

each sample is given a 16-bit binary value, which means that there are 216 or 65 536 ways to

describe the position of the sound wave at any given moment. The series of 16-character


binary values might look like the following, but of course there are 44 100 of them per second:

0010101110101010

1101001010101000

0010110111011011

1001001001001000

1010001011010101

1011101101100010

...

Higher quality digital media can now attain 24-bits of resolution and a sample rate of 192 kHz.

This means that for each second, there would be 192 000 of the following 24-character binary

values:

101000101010110101001010

001010010011010010101011

101101101101000101010101

110100010110110100101011

010111010010110001011010

000101100010100110101010

...

The problem is that no matter how refined our digitization technology becomes, i.e., no matter

how many bits we use and how many samples we take per second, we can never achieve

infinity. The process of digitization takes the original analog sound wave, which possesses

infinite resolution, and finitizes it by slotting each 'snapshot' of the sound wave into a discrete

numerical position. A digital signal can never represent a curve; it can only ever achieve a

staircase pattern with smaller and smaller steps, as illustrated below:


FIGURE 1: from online resource at http://www.blazeaudio.com/howto/bg-digital.html.

This is what is meant by the inherent 'lossiness' of analog to digital transfers. Although

a digital medium can attain a very high level of resolution, there will always be a difference

between where the original analog sound wave is and where the digital version approximates it

to be. Although we can achieve greater and greater specificity with our digital, numerical

representations, we will never exhaust the number of decimal places at our disposal, and so

some information from the analog original will always be trimmed away before it can be

expressed in a digital format.

Because a digital signal can only ever approximate a curve, information must always be

omitted in the conversion from analog to digital. Many audiophiles argue that digital media,

like CDs and mp3s, lack the 'warmth', 'depth', and 'presence' of older analog media like vinyl

and magnetic tape. As my analysis suggests, these analog enthusiasts are not mere Luddites --

analog representations actually do retain more information than their digital counterparts.

The vinyl enthusiasts are correct when they argue that Abbey Road on CD seems to be 'missing

something' compared to the vinyl album, and their hunch, that digital audio will never achieve

analog quality, is also correct.

http://www.blazeaudio.com/howto/bg-digital.html


The philosophical point that I want to make is that the same problems that are inherent

in analog to digital conversions -- lossiness and the illusion of exactitude -- are inherent in any

attempt to transfer information from the analog experiential realm into the digital

logico-linguistic conceptual realm of 'things'. Our logico-linguistic picture of the world is

similarly 'lossy' with respect to its analog source, the experiential realm, and we humans have a

tendency to mistake the clarity of our concepts for completeness -- we tend to be realists with

respect to the concepts we employ. The problematic nature of the transformation of

information from the experiential realm to the conceptual realm is one of Nietzsche's main

philosophical concerns.

V: INCORPORATING ANALOG AND DIGITAL REPRESENTATIONS IN PHILOSOPHY

[H]ow far we still are from the time when artistic energies and the practical wisdom of life join

with scientific thought so that a higher organic system will develop in relation to which the

scholar, the physician, the artist, and the lawmaker, as we now know them, would have to

appear as paltry antiquities! (GS 113)

The first consequence of this need [to alleviate fear] is that causation gets attributed to

something we are already familiar with, something we have already encountered and registered

in memory. This forecloses the possibility that anything novel, alien, or previously

unencountered can be a cause. -- So we are not looking for just any type of explanatory cause,

we are looking for a chosen, preferred type of explanation, one that will most quickly and reliably

get rid of the feeling of unfamiliarity and novelty, the feeling that we are dealing with something

we have never encountered before, -- the most common explanation. -- Result: a certain type of

causal attribution becomes increasingly prevalent, gets concentrated into a system, and finally

emerges as dominant, which is to say it completely rules out other causes and explanations (TI:

The Four Great Errors 5).

In a certain sense, the whole of asceticism belongs here: a few ideas have to be made

ineradicable, ubiquitous, unforgettable, ‘fixed’, in order to hypnotize the whole nervous and

intellectual system through these ‘fixed ideas’ – and ascetic procedures and lifestyles are a

method of freeing those ideas from competition with all other ideas, of making them

‘unforgettable’ (GM II: 3).

The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing speaks for itself


clearly enough. Where there are linguistic affinities, then because of the common philosophy

of grammar (I mean: due to the unconscious domination and direction through similar

grammatical functions), it is obvious that everything lies ready from the very start for a similar

development and sequence of philosophical systems; on the other hand, the way seems as good

as blocked for certain other possibilities of interpreting the world. Philosophers of the

Ural-Altaic language group (where the concept of the subject is the most poorly developed) are

more likely to ‘see the world’ differently (BGE 20).

The goal of my paper has been to identify and dispel the prejudice in philosophy against

non-logical representations of the world. Without a sound argument for logical realism, we

should take a neutral, skeptical stance towards the concepts of I-ness, thingness, and causality

because all of these concepts require us to make the same presupposition as we must make

with logic. Philosophers who wish to dismiss out of hand what I call analog interpretations of

the experiential realm must first offer an argument to show that the logical, digital perspective

is the only possible option. The silence on this issue in philosophical discourse is unsettling.

It is incredible that many Nietzsche scholars, such as Brian Leiter and Maudemarie Clark, fail to

address this issue, which is a central theme of Nietzsche's late writings. Anyone who believes

that Nietzsche's philosophy can accommodate a strict causal deterministic perspective has

either not read the much of Nietzsche’s late work or does not take it seriously. Without a

strong argument showing why this central topic should be ignored, the views of these Nietzsche

scholars should be considered disingenuous if not outright wrong.

What are some examples of analog representations, and how might we incorporate

them into our philosophic systems of thought? One example might be the case of memory.

I believe that we can make a relevant distinction between semantic or 'factual' memory, such

as the date of Jen's birthday, remembered impressions, such as the look on Bob's face when he

saw that snake, and muscle memory, such as how to throw a curveball. I believe that we can


characterize the first kind of memory as being primarily digital, and the second and third types

as primarily analog.

Of course, we can apply a process of digitization to sense impressions and muscle

memories; we can say that Bob looked 'terrified' when he saw that snake, and we can say that

you throw a curveball by 'snapping your wrist when you release the baseball'. However, I

believe it is fair to say that both of the above 'digitized' representations are inadequate because

they are missing quite a bit of information about the impression or procedure that is being

described. Few people who witnessed Bob's reaction to the snake would say that 'terror'

completely describes the hilarious nature of the event, and I doubt that anyone would be able

to throw a proper curveball after hearing nothing but the above instruction.

Arguably, no amount of digital description could ever produce the same effect as the

original sense impression ('If only you had seen the look on Bob's face! You just had to be

there!'), nor could it substitute for actual practice throwing curveballs. Analog memory, e.g.,

sense impressions and muscle memory, differs fundamentally from digital memory like

remembered 'facts'. I can successfully communicate the full meaning of a digital memory like

'Jen's birthday is August 10th' with such a logico-linguistic representation; there is no need to

actually experience Jen's birthday to comprehend everything that the speaker intends to

communicate.

VI: MAKING SENSE OF SOME OF NIETZSCHE'S 'ILLOGICAL' ASSERTIONS

I hope that my paper can shed light upon some of the less immediately accessible,

so-called 'illogical' passages from Nietzsche's late work and has demonstrated the tremendous


implications of the non-logical perspective. In the final section of my paper, I will explore

some of these passages.

Logic is tied to the condition: assuming that identical cases exist. Indeed, in order to think and

conclude logically, the fulfillment of this condition must first be feigned. That is: the will to

logical truth cannot realise itself until a fundamental falsification of all events has been

undertaken. From which it follows that a drive rules here which is capable of both means,

firstly of falsifying, then of implementing a single viewpoint: logic does not originate in the will to

truth (LN 40[13]).

At first glance, this passage seems to contradict itself. How can Nietzsche say that

truth and falsity are the same thing? Passages like these, read in isolation without a full

understanding of the non-logical perspective, are often cited as evidence that Nietzsche's

arguments are illogical and nonsensical. What Nietzsche is saying, in the terminology that I

have introduced in this paper, is that in order to ascertain 'logical truth' -- e.g., whether said

'object' in front of me is [CHAIR] or [NOT-CHAIR] -- I must first convert my analog sense data

into a digital form, and any analog to digital conversion is 'lossy' because it must emphasize

certain details at the expense of others. Before I can begin to decide to which category said

object belongs, I must make a choice about which qualities of the object are relevant to the

[CHAIR] vs. [NOT-CHAIR] distinction and which qualities are not. This 'feigning', this smoothing

over of irrelevant differences -- irrelevant from the perspective of the person making this

particular categorization -- is the fundamental falsification at the heart of every logical truth,

and it is what allows us to make logical assertions in the first place.

Will to truth is a making firm, a making true and durable, an abolition of the false character of

things, a reinterpretation of it into beings. 'Truth' is therefore not something there, that might

be found or discovered -- but something that must be created and that gives a name to a

process, or rather to a will to overcome that has in itself no end -- introducing truth, as a process

in infinitum, and active determining -- not a becoming-conscious of something that is in itself firm

and determined (WP 552).


The difficulty with this passage is that Nietzsche seems to be making a truth claim about

truth, but his claim is essentially that truth doesn't exist. How can he say that it is true that

truth isn't real? Again, with a robust understanding of the non-logical perspective and its

relation to 'truth', we can see that his point is actually highly insightful. The infinite character

of our sensory experience -- what I call its analog nature -- means that our investigation into the

'essence' of a 'thing' seems to be endless. There is no final substratum of existence and no

definitive, unchanging set of laws upon which the universe is based. As I discussed in Section

II of this paper, Nietzsche sees the belief in 'natural law' as a holdover from the earlier Christian

moral picture of the world, in which 'divine law' rules the universe. Although both of these

positions are examples of naive logical realism, all is not in vain. We still can make logical

claims about the actual world, and, as experience demonstrates, these claims are often highly

beneficial to the person making them. The mistake lies in assuming, without supporting

evidence, that we can attain an endpoint, in other words, that 'the truth' is 'out there'. 'Truth'

is a useful concept and a useful process, but we should not elevate it to metaphysical status, as

a 'something there, that might be found or discovered'.

The interpretive character of everything that happens. There is no event in itself. What

happens is a group of phenomena selected and synthesized by an interpreting being (LN 1[115]).

This passage might be cited by a postmodernist who wishes to claim that Nietzsche

supports their view that we can interpret someone's words however we like. However, I

believe that we can rectify this mistake with reference to the analog/digital distinction that I

have introduced in this paper. The problem is that Nietzsche is referring here to digital,

logico-linguistic assertions about the analog actual world, not to digital assertions about other


already digitized concepts, as the postmodernists seem to read it. If Dave says, 'That car is

blue', he has digitized the analog sense data that he has received, and this seems to be the kind

of process to which Nietzsche refers in the above passage. Dave has had to interpret and

approximate his experience in order to slot it into the linguistic categories that he has at his

disposal. As I argued in Section IV, this process of analog to digital conversion is inherently

'lossy', which is to say simply that Dave has had to employ a logical realist perspective with

respect to identicals, e.g., [CAR] and [RED], to make his assertion.

If Fred now makes the assertion, 'Dave said that that car is red', this is a fundamentally

different type of assertion from the one that Dave made earlier. Fred is making a digital

assertion about another digital assertion, and digital to digital conversions are not inherently

lossy. Fred's claim can be checked against Dave's claim and be shown to be incorrect because

there is no inherent data loss here. This is, in fact, the strength (and the very purpose) of

digitization: once we have something in digital form, exact digital copies can be produced and

transmitted. Of course, there can be technical problems with digital to digital transfers, e.g.,

perhaps Fred misheard what Dave said, or for whatever reason Fred believes that Dave meant

'red' even though he said 'blue'. My point here is that with digital to digital conversions, we

can verify Fred's claim by simply asking Dave whether he meant 'blue' or 'red'. The

postmodernists' claim, that Nietzsche says that we can interpret a person's words however we

like, does not recognize the fundamental difference between analog to digital and digital to

digital conversions: the first type is inherently lossy and the second is not.

'Completely true to nature!' -- what a lie:

How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?

The smallest bits of nature are infinite!


And so he paints what he likes about it.

And what does he like? He likes what he can paint! (GS, 'The Realistic Painter')

In this passage, Nietzsche is referring not specifically to visual artists, but to the naive

logical realists of the intellectual sphere, who believe that they can construct a complete

picture of reality. Of course, what naive logical realists forget is that the world we experience

through our sense seems to be as infinite inwardly as it is outwardly. These theorists, who

think that they can define everything in the universe, do not realize that their causal

mechanistic perspective cannot define any 'thing' in the universe, because infinity pervades

even 'the smallest bits of nature'. If we understand that no two things can occupy the same

space at the same time, then how do we explain a cue ball 'causing' a colored ball to move? If

the cue ball can never actually come in contact with the colored ball, then how can it impart

motion upon it? The typical response offered by the causal mechanist is to say that some sort

of force of repulsion transfers energy from the cue ball to the colored ball. However, this

response is clearly inadequate from the mechanist's own basic position, which is that all events

in the world are explainable mechanistically. What explains this repulsive force? How does

it 'bridge the gap' between the two balls? If we cannot explain this repulsive force, then

clearly not everything in the universe can be explained mechanistically, and when we

investigate further, it appears that in fact nothing can be fully explained in terms of the causal

mechanistic picture.

Once we grasp that a complete picture of anything in the universe is impossible, we can

begin to understand what the Will to Power, as the fundamental principle of the Nietzschean

world, entails. In the same way as a painter is limited by his abilities and the medium he


works within, the scientist is limited by his abilities and the medium he works within, i.e., logic.

What the painter paints and what the scientist describes is based upon what he can paint or

describe, and not by what is actually 'out there', despite what he would like to believe. The

Impressionist painters made a breakthrough, both artistically and philosophically, when they

realized that their role is to represent not what is objectively 'out there' in the landscape, but

rather to represent the stimuli, the 'impression', that one's mind constructs on the basis of the

sensory inputs one receives from the environment.

Science operates in essentially the same way, in that all of the scientist's 'findings' are

limited by what he can observe and what he can describe. What the scientists 'finds' is not

some 'thing' 'out there' in the world, but a picture built around the limits of his senses and the

constructs of logic, which is itself derived from the imperatives of the Will to Power. What the

scientist 'finds' is not metaphysical 'truth', but an already highly refined, interpreted picture

that the human organism employs to make generalizations to increase his life power. What

the Will to Power constructs or 'paints' is therefore not what is actually 'out there' in the actual

world, but a representation of what serves its particular interests, i.e., 'what it likes'. The Will

to Power does not waste energy on matters that are of no consequence to it, and it this

discarding of irrelevant information is the precondition for logic.

[I]n a world where there is no being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be

created by illusion: a tempo in which observation and comparison are possible, etc.

'[I]llusoriness' is a trimmed and simplified world on which our practical instincts have worked.

It suits us perfectly: we live in it, we can live in it -- proof of its truth for us ... : [T]he world apart

from our condition of living in it, the world we have not reduced to our being, our logic and our

psychological prejudices does not exist as a world 'in-itself'[.] [I]t is essentially a world of

relationships: it could have a different face when looked at from each different point: its being is

essentially different at every point, every point resists it -- and these summations are in every

case entirely incongruent (LN 14[93]).


This passage is a neat summary of the non-logical perspective and the critique of logic,

and it places us in the context of the Heraclitean world where 'the only constant is change', i.e.,

'a world where there is no being'. When we recognize this fundamental character of the

experiential realm, we can see that the assumption of identicals, i.e., the precondition for logic,

is a useful illusion and nothing more. There is nothing pejorative about this kind of 'illusion';

Nietzsche is simply referring to the fact that such a world of identicals is the product of an

active, creative process rather than a passive reception of things as they are 'out there' in the

world. The logical realist perspective thus attained is a result of practical concerns, and the

fact that it is more or less successful is proof of its truth for us. We can abandon the idea of

capital-T ‘truth’ and still recognize that the concept of ‘truth’ (or more accurately, ‘truths’) is

meaningful to us, as a “provisional assumption” (WP 497) that can help us make decisions in

our lives.


WORKS CITED

Ansell-Pearson, Keith and Diethe, Carol. Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2006.

Bittner, Rudiger. Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks. Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, UK, 2003.

Breazeale, Daniel. Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early

1870s. Humanity Books, Amherst, New York, 1979.

Horstmann, Rolf-Peter and Norman, Judith. Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002.

Kaufmann, Walter. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Will to Power. Vintage Books / Random House,

Inc., New York, 1968.

Poster, Mark. ‘Authors Analog and Digital’ from What’s the Matter with the Internet?.

Electronic Mediations, Vol. 3. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001.

Ridley, Aaron and Norman, Judith. Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols,

and Other Writings. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2005.

Williams, Bernard. Nietzsche: The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK,

2001.

Documents

Nietzsche’s Critique of Thingness and its Implications on Mainstream Beliefs about Science