Existentialism and Structuralism

 I find it difficult to agree with the premise that structuralism replaced existentialism as far as philosophy goes. Structuralism seems a more materialist, naturalist investigation. Structure is a transcendent, ubiquitous concept with myriad circumstances where overlapping structural systems simultaneously present themselves. A given portion of reality may have a plethora of concurrent systems discoverable. Cosmology and quantum mechanics theory paradigms are a prime example. Structure and relationships obviously exist, yet Sartre viewed existence through a rational interpretation ala Descarte, phenomenologically.

Sartre’s view of first-person being; expressed in Being and Nothingness 1943, was expanded into the tome Critique of Dialectical Reason in 1960. In that work he explained how concatenated social experience of groups and semiotics were expressed with serial and ossified praxis, ques etc. Structuralism on the other hand occurred closer to the realm of naive realism anthropology and linguistic theory epistemologically. Like Freud and Jung in search of deep neurological or even genetic reasons for language, thought and social structures, Levi Strauss sought explanations of phenomenology in neurophilosophy. I tend to regard language not as a grand human equivalent of hard-wired bird language structure, instead as lexicons of sound associations-semiotic sets- such as Kripke and Quine regarded in terms of lexicons, ontology and neorealism and/or nominalism.

B.F. Skinner too may have regarded being as primarily deterministic following biological requisites, yet philosophy is more than that-even inclusive of the idea of spirit. French philosophy was heavily influenced by Marxism until Soviet Marxists evolved toward free enterprise. Since then it is just the French and other N.A.T.O. members of Europe pursuing quasi-structured socialism as a religion of war with Russia to force the lost socialist back into a closer relationship with the remaining socialist super-power; China. It is difficult to know if quantum mechanics and cosmology have saturated philosophy so far as to bring skepticism to the effort to find epistemological satisfaction within a secular deterministic model. They do seem to exist at cross purposes to a certain extent.

Existential Data Points in Nature ( a poem)

 

Since the Younger Dryas
when the glacial melt woke
Mankind felt being and becoming
life was hard like a cruel joke

Wondering a portion of mystery
data points of science to perceive
got the mind and the woman
it is just info that ah need

Come on baby you know I have heard
an ecosphere leads to reason
sending me to lips I gotta love
such are phenomenal daydreams
flying days and nights away
while money kills the environment’s health
puttin nature down on a shelf
it ain’t gotta say

Complex ecosphere data stimulates the brain
branches and iterations, leaves are layered and lain
come on to the river were time flows
to a preponderance of galaxies spinning the same direction
a green place forever grows
life continues together
while wicked fallout would set us aglow.

https://suno.com/s/aNGMO6IrRc5EP6vu The poem as song lyrics

Existential Data Points of Nature

This is a note on the topic of perceptible data in an environment that reaches a brain. In my opinion some environments are far more rich in data, quantitatively than others. Some environments are plain and simple- a square room painted white for example, empty and devoid of furniture, While other environments have far more complexity.

 https://suno.com/s/e2UL7Vz32Ib0vCzl Existential Data Points in Nature (a song)

Wild forests are probably the most complex and data rich environments on Earth. Urban areas are probably the least complex. Humans have a history of reducing the complexity of their habitations to a non-stimulating level complete with regulated temperature.

A forest has a rich environment with billions of data points in branches, leaves, tree trunks, angles of trees, sunlight filtering and reflecting on branches, rain falling through a forest canopy, sounds temperatures hardness and softness variations etc. Urban areas have mostly standard variations on simplified, standard transportation facticities, level and uniform auto and pedestrian surfaces, ossified structural exteriors and interiors and so forth. People find an occasional flight of a bird of prey through an urban core to be a novel event, while in some rural areas someone may set a plate out for such a creature.

I wonder if scientists will eventual compare the complexity in data points of Hilbert space for a portion of wild coastal forests, southern tropical forests and various urban cores such as those of Cairo Egypt, Los Angeles and Chicago.

If they get that done and publish their results, and it might be interesting because humanity has for thousands of years moved into less complex environments they made for themselves for reasons of comfort seeking and economic prowess; they have made their intellectual life progressively more complex yet also somewhat common and standardized since the younger Dryas, and have lost the physiological challenges and stimulus to the body, brain and mind presented by the richly complex ecosphere of nature.