What is the Will to Power?

witchdoctor wrote:If you aim to be a teacher, it would benefit you, as well as your students, to be less condescending.

witchdoctor wrote:You say that things don't have power, they are power.

I say things are energy, and what we call power is the potential or ability to transform, i.e. disequilibrium.

witchdoctor wrote:

Barracuda wrote:Perhaps you will understand. Or do. The concept of self-valuing, the logical formula representing a quantum of WtP and thus also the ground to identity-based logic (formal logic and math) eliminates our power to deceive ourselves through the schizoid belief that a concept is not a thing and that "thing" isn't a concept.

This belief has cleft the integrity of humanity ever since Sokrates "knew that he knew nothing".

Perhaps I will understand, but it will take more than that

witchdoctor wrote:You say that things don't have power, they are power.

I say things are energy, and what we call power is the potential or ability to transform, i.e. disequilibrium.

so it's the potential of changing that's the power? not what energy transforms into, but the transforming itself?

The will to power is not a being, not a becoming, but a pathos... the most elemental fact from which becoming and effecting first emerge...

hmm. that means the more powerful something is, the more it changes. seems to me that merely changing can't be an indication of power.

this speculation is metaphysical of course since we aren't asking about definitive quantities but processes, like change. the safe way to go... especially to avoid frivolous semantics, is to stick with the orginal thesis; that power is a capacity to perform work through a distance.

yeah i think we can agree, if you agree with this. quibbling over this stuff like we are will only send us deeper and deeper into metaphysics.

metaphysics is an old habit that dies hard, man. i still balance on that wire a lot, but thankfully the positivists talked some sense into me. can't let go of fritz, though, or the WTP. problem is defining what that power is... and since science can only describe, not explain (N), metaphysics is almost unavoidable.

Barracuda wrote:
Yes. But it will come from you. Do you want to understand?
This wanting itself is part of the understanding and of what is understood.

I can't teach, nor do I aspire to. I am a writer of aphorisms and jests, I am a philosopher of hell, for that is where we live.

witchdoctor wrote:the potential, or ability. The transforming, itself, is a use of power.

witchdoctor wrote:Capacity being the key word here, not work, nor distance (motion), which are the effects of that capacity being exercised.

MS wrote: Even if those customs have been obeyed flawlessly since a few nanoseconds after the (last) Big Bang, they must have been "made" first.

Bertrand 'the hustle' Russell wrote:natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere dscription of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question 'why did god issue just those natural laws and no others?' if you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. if you say that in all the laws which god issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe- if there were a reason for the laws which god gave, then god himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing god as an intermediary. you have really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and god does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver.

Zoot Allures wrote:

MS wrote: Even if those customs have been obeyed flawlessly since a few nanoseconds after the (last) Big Bang, they must have been "made" first.

but by what or whom?

Bertrand 'the hustle' Russell wrote:natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere dscription of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question 'why did god issue just those natural laws and no others?' if you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. if you say that in all the laws which god issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe- if there were a reason for the laws which god gave, then god himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing god as an intermediary. you have really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and god does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver.

Zoot Allures wrote:what is power?

a potential for work or work itself?

what would it mean to say a battery has power in it if it isn't discharging itself but sitting on the shelf?

but how does something 'have' a potential for motion?

either it is presently producing motion or not. it cannot 'possess' a possibility like it can possess a physical quality.

so then something 'turns into' energy... rather than providing it? but everything is energy already, so everything is already kinetic power. things don't 'give' energy.

well what does that mean? it means everything is moving, but nothing 'makes' movement, or 'effects' movement in something else...

so nothing 'possesses' power. things can't have power... they are power... insofar as they are moving.

Zoot Allures wrote:there is no 'will' to power because there is no 'will'. no kantian transcendental 'will', no schopenhauerian 'will'. you have to keep in mind that nietzsche's influence by schopenhauer was what put that concept model into his mind... he was responding specifically to the 'will to life', as schopenhauer called it, and disagreeing with the premise that if there was a will, it would be simply a will to life.

schopenhauer and nietzsche were both considered 'vitalists', but nietzsche wanted to extend the notion of biological power to physis, to mechanical power; the will to life is not explanatory... there must also be a will in the very mechanism of all things before they even become biological. although schopenhauer also called the phenomenal world a 'representation' of the noumenal world of 'will' (which he inherited from kant), he did not claim that the will which represented the world was about 'power'. this was one of nietzsche's breaks with schopenhauer.

nietzsche abhored schopenhauer's pessimism, so he set out to put a different spin on the concept of the transcendental 'will'; suffering and striving are consequences of weakness of will, not of will itself, as schopenhauer had it. life is NOT inherently bad, and the judgement 'bad' reflects only a physiology and/or psychology of the one who makes the judgement. a judgement is a symptom only. schopenhauer was sick, but not a pure pessimist because he played the flute. nietzsche gave him that much credit.

then later nietzsche realizes he's misled everyone by calling it a 'will' to power in a fundamental sense. he explicitly admits that there is no 'will' countless times throughout his work.

why then the doctrine? because he had to explain the direction and process of becoming and change, indicatively. why there is change and becoming. for his purposes he anthropomorphizes becoming and change so that we can think of it as a vitalistic process, a metaphysical process; why do things evolve and change? because they have an inner will, are directed by an inner will, to do so. and what are they willing? not just life, but power.

that was nietzsche's original thesis.

but there is no 'Will' with a capital W. when we talk about 'will' we mean to say that someone or something is acting voluntarily and with purpose. and it makes no difference whether you are a hard-determinist, compatibalist, or indeterminist, for the word to be meaningful in language.

joe is taking a metaphysics-free walk to the store because he's willed it, because he wants to go to the fucking store and buy a pepsi, a snickers bar, and a lottery ticket (i don't know why because joe has a better chance of getting struck by lightening than winning the lottery). joe has the will and he knows the way. nuff said

Zoot Allures wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:the potential, or ability. The transforming, itself, is a use of power.

i'll play. fuck it.

a) it is impossible to know what an object is capable of doing. the object may have acted a certain way, performed a certain way, many times, or even all times, in the past... and yet that doesn't guarantee it will do it again in the future. therefore, to speak of something's 'potential' is meaningless.

if, on the other hand, on object can possess something about itself which can be guaranteed to prove a certain result when it acts, whatever it possesses must be quantifiable.

if a characteristic or attribute about this object is quantifiable, it would be a certain, definite thing separate from the object which possesses it.

think of a battery and its store of electrons.

we can't say that the battery 'has' potential, because it wouldn't be the battery, but the electrons that produced the power. now, apply terms a) to the electrons... and you are back to square one.

does the battery have the electrons that have the quarks that have the power that has the potential to produce movement?

you see here that confusions arise when we speak about something 'having' power... about something being able to 'produce' power. this is why i insisted on the simplification; things are power, which is essentially movement, action, spread out across a field of ripples which, mysteriously, take the form of both particles and waves.

that presents all kinds of common sense problems with logic, btw... especially aristotle's law of the excluded middle.  

now see where metaphysics will get you? which doctor, witch doctor, told you metaphysics is good for you, anyway?

yeah ordinarily the word 'capacity' is equivalent to 'potential', but do to our above conclusions we may have to now discard it. remember, to say something has a 'potential (capacity)' can only mean: if the laws of nature remain as they were a moment ago, object A may perform/act as it did at time B, before.

i don't want to invest my metaphysical certainty on such guesses, for i am a lover of knowledge and wisdom and stuff.

verily, i say that power is the object, and not what it 'does'... not what it might do.

Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:what if those laws are really only that, laws, nomoi, customs? Even if those customs have been obeyed flawlessly since a few nanoseconds after the (last) Big Bang, they must have been "made" first.

In the beginning there was nothing,
And it didn't like itself,
So it started dreaming up this Other
Most unlike itself.

The nothing as self-disvaluing One? The Other then indeed as self-valuing--many. Logically.

Magnus Anderson wrote:
Does that mean that rocks want power?

So WTP means that everything in the universe is willing power? Even our hands? Our hands want power? They want to become independent and powerful? They don't want to be slaves to humans?

witchdoctor wrote:[Zoot says] that things don't have power, they are power.

I say things are energy, and what we call power is the potential or ability to transform, i.e. disequilibrium.

Zoot wrote:so it's the potential of changing that's the power? not what energy transforms into, but the transforming itself?

hmm. that means the more powerful something is, the more it changes. seems to me that merely changing can't be an indication of power. this speculation is metaphysical of course since we aren't asking about definitive quantities but processes, like change. the safe way to go... especially to avoid frivolous semantics, is to stick with the orginal thesis; that power is a capacity to perform work through a distance.

Witch Doctor wrote:Not even the transforming, itself, but the potential, or ability. The transforming, itself, is a use of power.

No, the more powerful something is, the greater ability to affect change. The difference is subtle but very important.

Zoot wrote:a) it is impossible to know what an object is capable of doing. the object may have acted a certain way, performed a certain way, many times, or even all times, in the past... and yet that doesn't guarantee it will do it again in the future. therefore, to speak of something's 'potential' is meaningless.

you see here that confusions arise when we speak about something 'having' power... about something being able to 'produce' power. this is why i insisted on the simplification; things are power, which is essentially movement, action, spread out across a field of ripples which, mysteriously, take the form of both particles and waves.

verily, i say that power is the object, and not what it 'does'... not what it might do.

Witch Doctor wrote:I would think that hands want power.

Magnus Anderson wrote:

Witch Doctor wrote:I would think that hands want power.

I would argue that the property represented by the word "want" is inapplicable to the concept that is represented by the word "hand".

Hands do not have wants.

I challenge you to define the word "want".
Good luck with that

Magnus Anderson wrote:

. . . I disagree with Witch Doctor's claim (if that's what his claim is) that power is the potential of the thing to be changed and I agree with Zoot's impression that mere change can't be an indication of power.