In these times we are afraid of the virus and looking in shock at the number of infected persons. Quite everybody knows the name Johns Hopkins and the latest lethal rate, which is in most cases a legitimation of our acting towards the growth of these numbers. We try to find an adequate response to the subject of this virus out of these aggregate numbers. The virus is characterized and defined out of a subject logic, as Kitaro Nishida would say. The awareness of the entity is a defined and objective system.
The response strategy, of not overloading the medical system, is managed in the same way. Total aggregate numbers of infections as well as their doubling time are in focus for the strategy. The – hopefully reduced and for that reason not exponential – growth of total infections and the stress towards the capacity limit of a medical system is obvious but beside their qualitative relation unknown and varying locally.
But in fact we cannot see or feel the virus if we are confronted with it. When you are sick or even ill, the virus is in the first step still a hypothesis.
Changing the way of looking at the world with a predicate logic might help to find adequate attitudes to this ambiguous situation.
A predicative logic asks for the movement or changes before defining a hierarchy of subjects.
Take the example ‘the ball rolls’. Defined with a subjective logic every ball- as a subject – has the characteristic to roll – as its predicate. But think about a place with an uneven floor let’s say a field, then the ball is not rolling at all. The universal predicate is only true in abstract space. The characteristic of the place has an impact not only to our awareness but also to what will or can happen.
A predicative logic with a focus on place might be an adequate strategy in a situation of uncertain subjects.
So not every risk is about the virus itself but also about the place of virus and infection.
Think local – act regional for complex concerns.
Nishida, K.; 1926; “Ort”; 72-140; In: Elberfeld, R.;”Kitaro Nishida. Logik des Ortes. Der Anfang der modernen Philosophie in Japan”; Darmstadt; Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft; ISBN:3-534-13703-5
image: part of ‘the snower’ by van Gogh