Quote:
Originally Posted by Macrobius
My purpose in posting this thread is, eventually, to answer the political questions raised on the 'consciousness' thread, and to provide a permanent resource on the internet as regards the writings of Frederic Harrison (which so far only exists on Google ebooks, of which this transcription is independent). I hereby place this transcription in the public domain. This post and the one above comprise about 16pp. from his introduction.
Please note that 'Positivism' here means, entirely, the 19th century philosophy of Comte and his followers, and not the 20th century philosophy of, say, Ayer or Carnap. In fact, proving the two are unrelated is a primary goal of posting this. There is a grave tendency in this forum to conflate the two, and make both equivalent to materialist atheism. It should be transparent, after these posts, that this is entirely untenable.
If that's the goal, what's the point? Seems like Bait and Switch.
I, for one, never assumed they were the same, but hold up 20th century logical positivism -- logical empiricism, more usefully -- as the clearing board for gasseous metaphysical nonsense of all sorts, Aristotle's included. This entire business of Scottish Catholicism somehow lacing shoes with the politics of hard-headed euro scientism (I'd guess the Germans were cutting edge, but throw in Calvin if you like) to produce 19th cent. Positivism is, indeed, I would say, transparently not identical with what the Vienna Circle was up to. Without the new logic, with its stricture against psychologtisms, vitalisms, superstitions, miraclism and popish dogmatic anti-scientism, if you want a positive, liberal, intelligible, systematic, self-consistent completing representation of totality (the Whole, what there is, reality, being, etc., when these are used casually for the same thing. All Positivism needs to insist on to earn its name in any century of millenium, imho, is insistence on knowing what you are talking about* before launching off on shifting-sanddunes around some given token (such as "positivism" -- doing positivism on positivism here) .. then floating on to something else. (*This will exclude not only occult powers and gremlin influences -- not that these don't exist, but they aren't part of verifiable scientific explanation unless reduced to causes -- but also unanalyzed descriptive phrases, "the so and so..." which logically, but not rhetorically, entails the existence of one of the so-and-so, as Russell showed.)
I think I should post up where Russell explains this. My philosophy is a footnote to the bolded sentence in the pentultimate paragraph. Please point to where some political ("liberal"), religious ("Calvinist") or other metaphysical assumption is brought in. (What I suspect you object to, character-wise, is analytical philosophy itself, and the word "analysis" hasn't yet popped up on the historical bait-switch file.)
http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus5.html
Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy
CHAPTER V
KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE AND KNOWLEDGE BY DESCRIPTION
IN the preceding chapter we saw that there are two sorts of knowledge: knowledge of things, and knowledge of truths. In this chapter we shall be concerned exclusively with knowledge of things, of which in turn we shall have to distinguish two kinds. Knowledge of things, when it is of the kind we call knowledge by acquaintance, is essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths, and logically independent of knowledge of truths, though it would be rash to assume that human beings ever, in fact, have acquaintance with things without at the same time knowing some truth about them. Knowledge of things by description, on the contrary, always involves, as we shall find in the course of the present chapter, some knowledge of truths as its source and ground. But first of all we must make dear what we mean by 'acquaintance' and what we mean by 'description'.
We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths. Thus in the presence of my table I am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of my table -- its colour, shape, hardness, smoothness, etc.; all these are things of which I am immediately conscious when I am seeing and touching my table. The particular shade of colour that I am seeing may have many things said about it -- I may say that it is brown, that it is rather dark, and so on. But such statements, though they make me know truths about the colour, do not make me know the colour itself any better than I did before: so far a concerns knowledge of the colour itself, as opposed to knowledge of truths about it, I know the colour perfectly and completely when I see it, and no further knowledge of it itself is even theoretically possible. Thus the sense-data which make up the appearance of my table are things with which I have acquaintance, things immediately known to me just as they are.
My knowledge of the table as a physical object, on the contrary, is not direct knowledge. Such as it is, it is obtained through acquaintance with the sense-data that make up the appearance of the table. We have seen that it is possible, without absurdity, to doubt whet there is a table at all, whereas it is not possible to doubt the sense-data. My knowledge of the table is of the kind which we shall call 'knowledge by description'. The table is 'the physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data'. This describes the table by means of the sense-data. In order to know anything at all about the table, we must know truths connecting it with things with which we have acquaintance: we must know that 'such-and-such sense-data are caused by a physical object'. There is no state of mind in which we are directly aware of the table; all our knowledge of the table is really knowledge of truths, and the actual thing which is the table is not, strictly speaking, known to us at all. We know a description and we know that there is just one object to which this description applies, though the object itself is not directly known to us. In such a case, we say that our knowledge of the object is knowledge by description.
All our knowledge, both knowledge of things and knowledge of truths, rests upon acquaintance as its foundation. It is therefore important to consider what kinds of things there are with which we have acquaintance.
Sense-data, as we have already seen, are among the things with which we are acquainted; in fact, they supply the most obvious and striking example of knowledge by acquaintance. But if they were the sole example, our knowledge would be very much more restricted than it is. We should only know what is now present to our senses: we could not know anything about the past -- not even that there was a past -- nor could we know any truths about our sense-data, for all knowledge of truths, as we shall show, demands acquaintance with things which are of an essentially different character from sense-data, the things which are sometimes called 'abstract ideas', but which we shall call 'universals'. We have therefore to consider acquaintance with other things besides sense-data if we are to obtain any tolerably adequate analysis of our knowledge.
The first extension beyond sense-data to be considered is acquaintance by memory. It is obvious that we often remember what we have seen or heard or had otherwise present to our senses, and that in such cases we are still immediately aware of what we remember, in spite of the fact that it appears as past and not as present. This immediate knowledge by memory is the source of all our knowledge concerning the past: without it, there could be no knowledge of the past by inference we should never know that there was anything past to be inferred.
The next extension to be considered is acquaintance by introspection. We are not only aware of things, but we are often aware of being aware of them. When I see the sun, I am often aware of my seeing the sun; thus 'my seeing the sun' is an object with which I have acquaintance. When I desire food, I may be aware of my desire for food; thus 'my desiring food' is an object with which I am acquainted. Similarly we may be aware of our feeling pleasure or pain, and generally of the events which happen in our minds. This kind of acquaintance, which may be called self-consciousness, is the source of all our knowledge of mental things. It is obvious that it is only what goes on in our own minds that can be thus known immediately. What goes on in the minds of others is known to us through our perception of their bodies, that is, the sense-data in us which are associated with their bodies. But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds. It seems natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the things that distinguish men from animals: animals, we may suppose, though they have acquaintance with sense-data, never become aware of this acquaintance. I do not mean that they doubt whether they exist, but that they have never become conscious of the fact that they have sensations and feelings, nor therefore of the fact that they, the subjects of their sensations and feelings, exist.
We have spoken of acquaintance with the contents of our minds as self-consciousness, but it is not, of course, consciousness of our self: it is consciousness of particular thoughts and feelings. The question whether we are also acquainted with our bare selves, as opposed to particular thoughts and feelings, is a very difficult one, upon which it would be rash to speak positively. When we try to look into ourselves we always seem to come upon some particular thought or feeling, and not upon the 'I' which has the thought or feeling. Nevertheless there are some reasons for thinking that we are acquainted with the 'I', though the acquaintance is hard to disentangle from other things. To make clear what sort of reason there is, let us consider for a moment what our acquaintance with particular thoughts really involves.
When I am acquainted with 'my seeing the sun', it seems plain that I am acquainted with two different things in relation to each other. On the one hand there is the sense-datum which represents the sun to me, on the other hand there is that which sees this sense-datum. All acquaintance, such as my acquaintance with the sense-datum which represents the sun, seems obviously a relation between the person acquainted and the object with which the person is acquainted. When a case of acquaintance is one with which I can be acquainted (as I am acquainted with my acquaintance with the sense-datum representing the sun), it is plain that the person acquainted is myself. Thus, when I am acquainted with my seeing the sun, the whole fact with which I am acquainted is 'Self-acquainted-with-sense-datum'.
Further, we know the truth 'I am acquainted with this sense-datum'. It is hard to see how we could know this truth, or even understand what is meant by it, unless we were acquainted with something which we call 'I'. It does not seem necessary to suppose that we are acquainted with a more or less permanent person, the same to-day as yesterday, but it does seem as though we must be acquainted with that thing, whatever its nature, which sees the sun and has acquaintance with sense-data. Thus, in some sense it would seem we must be acquainted with our Selves as opposed to our particular experiences. But the question is difficult, and complicated arguments can be adduced on either side. Hence, although acquaintance with ourselves seems probably to occur, it is not wise to assert that it undoubtedly does occur.
We may therefore sum up as follows what has been said concerning acquaintance with things that exist. We have acquaintance in sensation with the data of the outer senses, and in introspection with the data of what may be called the inner sense -- thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; we have acquaintance in memory with things which have been data either of the outer senses or of the inner sense. Further, it is probable, though not certain, that we have acquaintance with Self, as that which is aware of things or has desires towards things.
In addition to our acquaintance with particular existing things, we also have acquaintance with what we shall call universals, that is to say, general ideas such as whiteness, diversity, brotherhood, and so on. Every complete sentence must contain at least one word which stands for a universal, since all verbs have a meaning which is universal. We shall return to universals later on, in Chapter IX; for the present, it is only necessary to guard against the supposition that whatever we can be acquainted with must be something particular and existent. Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
It will be seen that among the objects with which we are acquainted are not included physical objects (as opposed to sense-data), nor other people's minds. These things are known to us by what I call 'knowledge by description', which we must now consider.
By a 'description' I mean any phrase of the form 'a so-and-so' or 'the so-and-so'. A phrase of the form 'a so-and-so' I shall call an 'ambiguous' description; a phrase of the form 'the so-and-so' (in the singular) I shall call a 'definite' description. Thus 'a man' is an ambiguous description, and 'the man with the iron mask' is a definite description. There are various problems connected with ambiguous descriptions, but I pass them by, since they do not directly concern the matter we are discussing, which is the nature of our knowledge concerning objects in cases where we know that there is an object answering to a definite description, though we are not acquainted with any such object. This is a matter which is concerned exclusively with definite descriptions. I shall therefore, in the sequel, speak simply of 'descriptions' when I mean 'definite descriptions'. Thus a description will mean any phrase of the form 'the so-and-so' in the singular.
We say that an object is 'known by description' when we know that it is 'the so-and-so', i.e. when we know that there is one object, and no more, having a certain property; and it will generally be implied that we do not have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance. We know that the man with the iron mask existed, and many propositions are known about him; but we do not know who he was. We know that the candidate who gets the most votes will be elected, and in this case we are very likely also acquainted (in the only sense in which one can be acquainted with some one else) with the man who is, in fact, the candidate who will get most votes; but we do not know which of the candidates he is, i.e. we do do not know any proposition of the form 'A is the candidate who will get most votes' where A is one of the candidates by name. We shall say that we have 'merely descriptive knowledge' of the so-and-so when, although we know that the so-and-so exists, and although we may possibly be acquainted with the object which is, in fact, the so-and-so, yet we do not know any proposition 'a is the so-and-so', where a is something with which we are acquainted.
When we say 'the so-and-so exists', we mean that there is just one object which is the so-and-so. The proposition 'a is the so-and-so' means that a has the property so-and-so, and nothing else has. 'Mr. A. is the Unionist candidate for this constituency' means 'Mr. A. is a Unionist candidate for this constituency, and no one else is'. 'The Unionist candidate for this constituency exists' means 'some one is a Unionist candidate for this constituency, and no one else is'. Thus, when we are acquainted with an object which is the so-and-so, we know that the so-and-so exists; but we may know that the so-and-so exists when we are not acquainted with any object which we know to be the so-and-so, and even when we are not acquainted with any object which, in fact, is the so-and-so.
Common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions. That is to say, the thought in the mind of a person using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we replace the proper name by a description. Moreover, the description required to express the thought will vary for different people, or for the same person at different times. The only thing constant (so long as the name is rightly used) is the object to which the name applies. But so long as this remains constant, the particular description involved usually makes no difference to the truth or falsehood of the proposition in which the name appears.
Let us take some illustrations. Suppose some statement made about Bismarck. Assuming that there is such a thing as direct acquaintance with oneself, Bismarck himself might have used his name directly to designate the particular person with whom he was acquainted. In this case, if he made a judgement about himself, he himself might be a constituent of the judgement. Here the proper name has the direct use which it always wishes to have, as simply standing for a certain object, and not for a description of the object. But if a person who knew Bismarck made a judgement about him, the case is different. What this person was acquainted with were certain sense-data which he connected (rightly, we will suppose) with Bismarck's body. His body, as a physical object, and still more his mind, were only known as the body and the mind connected with these sense-data. That is, they were known by description. It is, of course, very much a matter of chance which characteristics of a man's appearance will come into a friend's mind when he thinks of him; thus the description actually in the friend's mind is accidental. The essential point is that he knows that the various descriptions all apply to the same entity, in spite of not being acquainted with the entity in question.
When we, who did not know Bismarck, make judgement about him, the description in our minds will probably be some more or less vague mass of historical knowledge -- far more, in most cases, than is required to identify him. But, for the sake of illustration, let us assume that we think of him as 'the first Chancellor of the German Empire'. Here all the words are abstract except 'German'. The word 'German' will, again, have different meanings for different people. To some it will recall travels in Germany, to some the look of Germany on the map, and so on. But if we are to obtain a description which we know to be applicable, we shall be compelled, at some point, to bring in a reference to a particular with which we are acquainted. Such reference is involved in any mention of past, present, and future (as opposed to definite dates), or of here and there, or of what others have told us. Thus it would seem that, in some way or other, a description known to be applicable to a particular must involve some reference to a particular with which we are acquainted, if our knowledge about the thing described is not to be merely what follows logically from the description. or example, 'the most long-lived of men' is a description involving only universals, which must apply to some man, but we can make no judgements concerning this man which involve knowledge about him beyond what the description gives. If, however, we say, 'The first Chancellor of the German Empire was an astute diplomatist', we can only be assured of the truth of our judgement in virtue of something with which we are acquainted -- usually a testimony heard or read. Apart from the information we convey to others, apart from the fact about the actual Bismarck, which gives importance to our judgement, the thought we really have contains the one or more particulars involved, and otherwise consists wholly of concepts.
All names of places -- London, England, Europe, the Earth, the Solar System -- similarly involve, when used, descriptions which start from some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars. In logic on the contrary, where we are concerned not merely with what does exist, but with whatever might or could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved.
It would seem that, when we make a statement about something only known by description, we often intend to make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about the actual thing described. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we should like, if we could, to make the judgement which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgement of which he himself is a constituent. In this we are necessarily defeated, since the actual Bismarck is unknown to us. But we know that there is an object B, called Bismarck, and that B was an astute diplomatist. We can thus describe the proposition we should like to affirm, namely, 'B was an astute diplomat', where B is the object which was Bismarck. If we are describing Bismarck as 'the first Chancellor of the German Empire', the proposition we should like to affirm may be described as 'the proposition asserting, concerning the actual object which was the first Chancellor of the German Empire, that this object an astute diplomatist'. What enables us to communicate in spite of the varying descriptions we employ is that we know there is a true proposition concerning the actual Bismarck, and that however we may vary be description (so long as the description is correct) the proposition described is still the same. This proposition, which is described and is known to be true, is what interests us; but we are not acquainted with the proposition itself, and do not know it, though we know it is true.
It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance.
The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
We shall not at this stage attempt to answer all the objections which may be urged against this fundamental principle. For the present, we shall merely point out that, in some way or other, it must be possible to meet these objections, for it is scarcely conceivable that we can make a judgement or entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or supposing about. We must attach some meaning to the words we use, if we are to speak significantly and not utter mere noise; and the meaning we attach to our words must be something with which we are acquainted. Thus when, for example, we make a statement about Julius Caesar, it is plain that Julius Caesar himself is not before our minds, since we are not acquainted with him. We have in mind some description of Julius Caesar: 'the man who was assassinated on the Ides of March', 'the founder of the Roman Empire', or, merely 'the man whose name was Julius Caesar'. (In this last description, Julius Caesar is a noise or shape with which we are acquainted.) Thus our statement does not mean quite what it seems to mean, but means something involving, instead of Julius Caesar, some description of him which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.
The chief importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our experience. In spite of the fact that we can only know truths which are wholly composed of terms which we have experienced in acquaintance, we can yet have knowledge by description of things which we have never experienced. In view of the very narrow range of our immediate experience, this result is vital, and until it is understood, much of our knowledge must remain mysterious and therefore doubtful.
__________________
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Risibility and nitrous oxide
RISIBILITY and nitrous oxide
To be Humorless is to be inhuman
Aristotle
The Laughing Gas Effect and Current Events
Part I. It's all a joke -- don't look for a rational explanation
Freud on Psychic Locality
(the connection between contents of consciousness and localized anatomical process)
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality. We shall wholly ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus concerned is known to us also as an anatomical preparation, and we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality in any anatomical sense. We shall remain on psychological ground, and we shall do no more than accept the invitation to think of the instrument which serves the psychic activities much as we think of a compound microscope, a photographic camera, or other apparatus. The psychic locality, then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in which one of the preliminary phases of the image comes into existence. As is well known, there are in the microscope and the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to apologize for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make intelligible the complication of the psychic performance by dissecting it and referring the individual performances to the individual components of the apparatus. So far as I am aware, no attempt has yet been made to divine the construction of the psychic instrument by means of such dissection.
Part II. But What Is a Joke? (if you're not just jokin')
The Psychosemiotic Quadrants of Sign-Use takes up where this left off. Using Freud's model to reconstruct dream connections in discourse.
1. The epistemic principle: psychology from the side of consciousness. The content given through the lense-eye-apparatus (or hearing-ear-apparatus, etc,) is a. simple (not complex, as in divisible into parts: as qualities wholly present) b. nameable, recallable and communicated; c. cognitively related
2. The Overall effect of current MSM content flowing through the collective//group psyches (not quite the same thing, but...),.... when replayed in consciousness through signs S* at the 7 StopInders of the completing totality (of individual consciousness under sign-use) .... becomes comedic, 'funny', clownish, laughable.
What is experienced, like a mirage on hot pavement, can be grammatically construed as a "property", or "attribute" of the event occasioning the reaction. (the mirage looks like it is 'on' the shimmering surface; 'the pavement looked like glass'. This reaction has been taken up to contents of the thinking center. It is undeniably a reaction to something 'objective' that comes off, through the signs to us, and can have psychosomatic effects. I am talking about cable TV news that makes people who watch it sick. That describes both its phenomenology and its epistemic status.
I offer the following as examples:
1. The picture of George Burns as God, welcoming Bish and Cheney at Heaven's Gate... Juxtaposition of 'Just the thing to carry your conscience in" headline grabber from NYTimes favorite list 7.18.70
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18bags.html?em&ex=1184904000&en=509fb1e485bf0c57&ei=5087%0A
, and the Cosmic symbol of Remorse of Conscience, Christ's Cross (=>Revulsion-Recoil of direct emanations of the Holy Sun Absolute at what nankind had become/is ...in tucked into special pricey bags sewed up for the purpose. (This would be a Freudian displacement; Remorse of conscience disturb you? -- rummage around among the gefultefish.)
2 The Elephant and the Donkey (masking a deeper ultimate archetypal splitting) pulling "all-nighters" in the US Senate: reported in two ways for whose lead you follow)
NYSlimes: Democrats Lack Support to Force Vote on Pullout http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/washington/18cnd-cong.html?ex=1342411200&en=6b31b7414e57409a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
or Republicans block vote on troop withdrawal http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3390227
..calling attention to the contrasting grammar: NYCity more Jewish based grammar depicts the Dems "lacking support", "failing to stop", "lacking force" -- women, like Cindy Sheehan, who couldn't give a fuck about real soldier's woes. .... The ABC headline puts the grammar where the game is. These are America's Men, standing firm against seductions to bed with the enemy. Christian soldiers defending the Jews.
You have to be in a certain mood to appreciate this as humor -- gallows
3. "America", through its official spokespersons in the Middle East, used in discourse in connection with moral language, such as "human rights". Again, is that hilarious? or what.
4. The image of a philosophical trajectory leading from DO => Socrates (as in Plato) internalizing "know thyself", asking "what is wisdom".....to neuro-physiologists and artificial intelligence brain-dissecters .. looking for origins of conscious content in the lower-level base, as opposed to use of the 'functional apparatus' model of the anatomic preparation for mapping the totlity. (No Calvinist God-gene, I reckon; that's a spoof; like DNA 'gayness').
5. The juxtaposition when he was president of Ronald Reagan and an AIDS child in a photo-op has stuck with me over these years. The images and associations flowing together to vivify this vignette on that occasion, back around '84, return and flow together again to bring back threads into the present, humors turned to bile.
6. The image of the totality of American Male sexual being being spent on Love Dolls imported from Japan ...order one with credit card and iPhone today! -- has that glint of objective absurdity attached to it...
7. The completing of
*****
What has happened in each of these examples can be explained by the effects of Laughing Gas, N20 on the psychic system. The loosening of signs by means of which we communicate takes place as described by Wm James. The given habitual order, memory-loops, rection-arousal feedbacks, falls away, along with the assumption of "representation of one world." Words, word-parts, numbers-as-signs, pictures tumble around in the head, as if the qualities, external objects, solid material bodies of ordinary experience were dissociated.
Such a phenomenon can be explained through the results of Gurdjieffs mental experiments, when an apparatus was hooked into his skull sending "tripping- jolts" through his system, described thus:
"At first,what is called my 'initiative-of-constatation proceeded in the usual way, that is, according to what is called the 'center-of-gravity-of-associative-experiencing , but later, when this initiative of constantation of everything proceeding in me gradually and almost imperceptibly became the function of my essence alone, the latter not only became the unique all-embracing initiator of the constating of everything proceedig in me, but also everything, without exception of newly proceeded, began to be perceived and fixed in this essence of mine." (A&E, 164)
I am taking that say: as he experiences himself undergoing dissolution, all that remains to hold experience together into a unity is the inner factor he calls "essence", taken here as, roughly, soul-coating -- his sense of himself as an individual. This is as if a permanent factor, thenceforth fixed by this experienced dissolution and shift of center, as an imprinted content and function.
"From the moment that my essence began to perceive impressions directly, and to constate independently thta from what was proceeding, the was being entirely destroyed, as it were, in my common presence, firstly that parts of my planetary body, then, little by little, also the localizations of the 'second' and 'third' being-centers. At the same time a constatation was definitely made that the functioning of these centers passed gradually to my 'thinking-center' and became proper to it, with the consequences that the 'thinking-center' with the increasing intensity of its functioning, became the 'unique-powerful-perceiver' of everything actualized outside itself, and the autonomous initiator of the constating of everything proceeding in the whole of my presence as well as outside it."
Comment: .... when the unified results of normal processing are broken down into separate constituent parts, and the "upper rarefied" processes followed by the flow-of consciousness are concentrated solely in the 'thinking center", as G. describes above, it is possible to append this note: of the three constituents of normal consciousness proceeding from the three feeling, movement and thinking centers, those from the feeling, the Holy Reconciling center, are key to unified totality of the three centers in a single experience (under 'own I')
The N2O effect explains one major strand of what is happening to the American psyche today, I hold. It's soul containers have come apart. Its feeling- centers still function, but with unity dispersed throughout the psychosemiotic system. The signs, rituals, gestures, poses, arranged by the MSM for them to see themselves and others through the lenses of, sucked up into phenomenal content for the thinking-center, alone, appear like mechanical sock-puppet lines which the characters playing roles on a vast historical drama are acting out, knowing-unknowingly to themselves.
it is watching itself wrongly complete itself (transition from TI to DO on a great historical octave), courting the eternal danger of never being able to return to a bio-renewable default position.
To be Humorless is to be inhuman
Aristotle
The Laughing Gas Effect and Current Events
Part I. It's all a joke -- don't look for a rational explanation
Freud on Psychic Locality
(the connection between contents of consciousness and localized anatomical process)
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality. We shall wholly ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus concerned is known to us also as an anatomical preparation, and we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality in any anatomical sense. We shall remain on psychological ground, and we shall do no more than accept the invitation to think of the instrument which serves the psychic activities much as we think of a compound microscope, a photographic camera, or other apparatus. The psychic locality, then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in which one of the preliminary phases of the image comes into existence. As is well known, there are in the microscope and the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to apologize for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make intelligible the complication of the psychic performance by dissecting it and referring the individual performances to the individual components of the apparatus. So far as I am aware, no attempt has yet been made to divine the construction of the psychic instrument by means of such dissection.
Part II. But What Is a Joke? (if you're not just jokin')
The Psychosemiotic Quadrants of Sign-Use takes up where this left off. Using Freud's model to reconstruct dream connections in discourse.
1. The epistemic principle: psychology from the side of consciousness. The content given through the lense-eye-apparatus (or hearing-ear-apparatus, etc,) is a. simple (not complex, as in divisible into parts: as qualities wholly present) b. nameable, recallable and communicated; c. cognitively related
2. The Overall effect of current MSM content flowing through the collective//group psyches (not quite the same thing, but...),.... when replayed in consciousness through signs S* at the 7 StopInders of the completing totality (of individual consciousness under sign-use) .... becomes comedic, 'funny', clownish, laughable.
What is experienced, like a mirage on hot pavement, can be grammatically construed as a "property", or "attribute" of the event occasioning the reaction. (the mirage looks like it is 'on' the shimmering surface; 'the pavement looked like glass'. This reaction has been taken up to contents of the thinking center. It is undeniably a reaction to something 'objective' that comes off, through the signs to us, and can have psychosomatic effects. I am talking about cable TV news that makes people who watch it sick. That describes both its phenomenology and its epistemic status.
I offer the following as examples:
1. The picture of George Burns as God, welcoming Bish and Cheney at Heaven's Gate... Juxtaposition of 'Just the thing to carry your conscience in" headline grabber from NYTimes favorite list 7.18.70
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18bags.html?em&ex=1184904000&en=509fb1e485bf0c57&ei=5087%0A
, and the Cosmic symbol of Remorse of Conscience, Christ's Cross (=>Revulsion-Recoil of direct emanations of the Holy Sun Absolute at what nankind had become/is ...in tucked into special pricey bags sewed up for the purpose. (This would be a Freudian displacement; Remorse of conscience disturb you? -- rummage around among the gefultefish.)
2 The Elephant and the Donkey (masking a deeper ultimate archetypal splitting) pulling "all-nighters" in the US Senate: reported in two ways for whose lead you follow)
NYSlimes: Democrats Lack Support to Force Vote on Pullout http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/washington/18cnd-cong.html?ex=1342411200&en=6b31b7414e57409a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
or Republicans block vote on troop withdrawal http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3390227
..calling attention to the contrasting grammar: NYCity more Jewish based grammar depicts the Dems "lacking support", "failing to stop", "lacking force" -- women, like Cindy Sheehan, who couldn't give a fuck about real soldier's woes. .... The ABC headline puts the grammar where the game is. These are America's Men, standing firm against seductions to bed with the enemy. Christian soldiers defending the Jews.
You have to be in a certain mood to appreciate this as humor -- gallows
3. "America", through its official spokespersons in the Middle East, used in discourse in connection with moral language, such as "human rights". Again, is that hilarious? or what.
4. The image of a philosophical trajectory leading from DO => Socrates (as in Plato) internalizing "know thyself", asking "what is wisdom".....to neuro-physiologists and artificial intelligence brain-dissecters .. looking for origins of conscious content in the lower-level base, as opposed to use of the 'functional apparatus' model of the anatomic preparation for mapping the totlity. (No Calvinist God-gene, I reckon; that's a spoof; like DNA 'gayness').
5. The juxtaposition when he was president of Ronald Reagan and an AIDS child in a photo-op has stuck with me over these years. The images and associations flowing together to vivify this vignette on that occasion, back around '84, return and flow together again to bring back threads into the present, humors turned to bile.
6. The image of the totality of American Male sexual being being spent on Love Dolls imported from Japan ...order one with credit card and iPhone today! -- has that glint of objective absurdity attached to it...
7. The completing of
*****
What has happened in each of these examples can be explained by the effects of Laughing Gas, N20 on the psychic system. The loosening of signs by means of which we communicate takes place as described by Wm James. The given habitual order, memory-loops, rection-arousal feedbacks, falls away, along with the assumption of "representation of one world." Words, word-parts, numbers-as-signs, pictures tumble around in the head, as if the qualities, external objects, solid material bodies of ordinary experience were dissociated.
Such a phenomenon can be explained through the results of Gurdjieffs mental experiments, when an apparatus was hooked into his skull sending "tripping- jolts" through his system, described thus:
"At first,what is called my 'initiative-of-constatation proceeded in the usual way, that is, according to what is called the 'center-of-gravity-of-associative-experiencing , but later, when this initiative of constantation of everything proceeding in me gradually and almost imperceptibly became the function of my essence alone, the latter not only became the unique all-embracing initiator of the constating of everything proceedig in me, but also everything, without exception of newly proceeded, began to be perceived and fixed in this essence of mine." (A&E, 164)
I am taking that say: as he experiences himself undergoing dissolution, all that remains to hold experience together into a unity is the inner factor he calls "essence", taken here as, roughly, soul-coating -- his sense of himself as an individual. This is as if a permanent factor, thenceforth fixed by this experienced dissolution and shift of center, as an imprinted content and function.
"From the moment that my essence began to perceive impressions directly, and to constate independently thta from what was proceeding, the was being entirely destroyed, as it were, in my common presence, firstly that parts of my planetary body, then, little by little, also the localizations of the 'second' and 'third' being-centers. At the same time a constatation was definitely made that the functioning of these centers passed gradually to my 'thinking-center' and became proper to it, with the consequences that the 'thinking-center' with the increasing intensity of its functioning, became the 'unique-powerful-perceiver' of everything actualized outside itself, and the autonomous initiator of the constating of everything proceeding in the whole of my presence as well as outside it."
Comment: .... when the unified results of normal processing are broken down into separate constituent parts, and the "upper rarefied" processes followed by the flow-of consciousness are concentrated solely in the 'thinking center", as G. describes above, it is possible to append this note: of the three constituents of normal consciousness proceeding from the three feeling, movement and thinking centers, those from the feeling, the Holy Reconciling center, are key to unified totality of the three centers in a single experience (under 'own I')
The N2O effect explains one major strand of what is happening to the American psyche today, I hold. It's soul containers have come apart. Its feeling- centers still function, but with unity dispersed throughout the psychosemiotic system. The signs, rituals, gestures, poses, arranged by the MSM for them to see themselves and others through the lenses of, sucked up into phenomenal content for the thinking-center, alone, appear like mechanical sock-puppet lines which the characters playing roles on a vast historical drama are acting out, knowing-unknowingly to themselves.
it is watching itself wrongly complete itself (transition from TI to DO on a great historical octave), courting the eternal danger of never being able to return to a bio-renewable default position.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Metaphysics of Sign-Use
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macrobius
Main answer to side topic now in this thread:
http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26744
'Liberalism, Calvinism, Positivism, and the Religion of Science'
My Reply
Religion and science do not begin from the same place (assumptions) in determining what is true. "The Religion of Science" is an obfuscating take-out except as literary psycohistorical flourish.
[quote]I believe the best way forward for this topic is a critique of Positivism, because there seem to be a lot of implicit theses, both political and epistemological that are up and about in this forum -- not particularly your posts, which are rather explicit as to politics and epistemology. However, understanding where our various political positions tie in to the enterprise of 'Positive Science' (as perhaps distinct from Science in general) could clear the air a bit.{/QUOTE]
All science is Positive, from the epistemic standpoint; all dogma, tradition, superstition (Medieval Aristotelianism, mediatd by Muslims, before 1500) is Denying force ("Negative", in re experimental, self-correcting, systematic knowledge) in respect to scientific knowledge (if it is knowledge -- if it's not, it won't be corrected from the side of religious psychology, though that might well inspire Critique, if it is Positive Religion, such as Calvinism: there's no excuse for falling short in it).
The chief feature of positivism relevant here, as elsewhere, for me, is merely the psychosemiotic stipulation "no word intended for literal reference to particular objects predicated or generalized over in a scientific language (artificially re-constructed so that sentences for resoluable truth value for sentences) shall lack exemplification
(=> this rules out hypothetical constructs as metaphysical primatives by Occam's razor; logically pursued, it leads to => the principle of acqaintance: roughly, the language of science shall contain no predication on objects unobservable-in-principle -- i.e., inferentially related to objects of Kantian sense perception (modern science) or stand in referential relation to more than one object ("x = x" for all x =a, with Leibniz' principle of identity of indiscernibles to rule out 'hidden particulars' smuggled in by cunning shifts in S*- uses, to attribute non-existent particularities and/or project false geometries, as "Gods Creation", when they are actually the result of a fucked up bunch of well meaning spiritual goons trying to keep alive the remnants of a far, far distant set of truths mediaed on earth by the Very Saintly Jesus Christ as adopted political imperative, not mentioning any names, but many worship YHWY.) These stipulations, and the discipline to follow through with them, appear to be the bones of contention I will stick with. The 5 senses are the interchanges with great nature from which common knowledge arises and is verified; the source of all appearances that must be saved.
Please say "I specifically deny that" if you do (leave 'why'? optional -- following your suggestion of nailing down a floor plank.
Quote:
Secondly, the actual views of the Positivists themselves (and doubtless Mill as well) are important context for Frege's famous 'anti-psychologism'. We can't have this all ways. If we like modern Logic (Frege), we have to ditch the Positivists.
1. Frege is just one source of modern logic. He defned the quantifiers, preparing for the unification of propositional and class logic , but did not carrying through the deduction of arithmetic, nor could have done so, since his system lacked the theory of types, yielding self-contradictions. I'm not sure Wittgenstein and Ramsey ever read him. Would have gone the way of Polish notation unless towed into the 20th by Principia Mathematica ( assume we both know that)
2. As to his anti-psychologism, THAT was OK. It leads to rigorous logicl syntax. Even Russell's use of the word "implication" (connoting a mental process, collapsing the 'formal' (syntactical) vs. 'material' distinction that emerges in the reconstructed symblolism, to the annoyance of Carnapians) and "predicate". I use it deliberately as a psychosemiotic constant, but it is also a pre-psychologized (though exemplified) construct that became distastful to later Quine-Frege "sentence" (vs "proposition") threaders. Here is where I part ways with the purely formal syntacticians, ALL of them (from Goedell to Hilbert to Carnap, whoever): the metalanguage of logic is in ordinary discourse, which, with what it communicates, is the undeniable premise of the possibility of knowledge or non-knowledge. The formalists GAVE UP on the idea of a tacit thorough-going logical matrix inherent in ordinary grammar language. I haven't; nor, as I think, have you. But they must be kept separate. They belong to different sectors of the metalanguage, one for thought (text), the other for consciousness (token).
The Positivists threw out consciousness -- the baby with the bathwater. All MIT computerized AI Thought processors as metaphysicians do this -- they'll define that Turing difference for you. (With 1/3 of their brain-systems functioning -- 1/2 half side of that).
Quote:
If we ditch the Positivists ...
Well, one doesn't ditch certified knowledge, to which the formal logicians can claim to have contributed, by unifying the field of logic and mathematics. Nor (see argument above), does one ditch the principle of acquaintance as a necessary condition for empirical science, without a Critique of objective sign-use. It is a proven fact that power-possessing beings (politicized S* users) will introduce false, or inwardly staged fake references to themselves as "thinking, feeling human beings" and commence dispensing warnings about Punishments From God and Jihad based on "gut feelings".
No, not to ditch logical empiricism. Add an adequate theory of consciousness to it. (Vygotsky, Bergmann, Harre, to lesser extent)
This relativises APPLICATION of the formal apparatus to levels of predicates; at every level up to S*7 (where the logos of Consciousness Itself ingresses) the same formal rigor in reasoning must apply in langauge intended for descriptive discourse -- communication of what is real.
The formalized use of "levels" provides an order of predicates over domains of individuals (of individuals, of individuals -- a law of extensionality comes in) down to/through: material objects in three dimensions-to-phenomena-to-neurophysiological base. This, I hold, is descriptive ('material', non-analytical) metaphysics.
The objects to which logical language applies depends upon which type of token (S*7- *1) is used in context. Thus, moral predicates (right and wrong, of actions: S*4) presuppose intentions of agents (S*5 things), applied to the S*3 domain of causal consequences, etc., but still fall under the laws of non-contradiction, etc.
The formal apparatus then slides up and down the scale S*7- *1, as it were; relativizing the system of predicates to subjects by APRIORI level of asserted content: built into the condition of representation, not into the conditions of existence of objects represented (but not barring it, [i]pace[i] metaphysical posotivists, who are silly).
We are on level S*6 - philosophical -- which has its own 7 'notes'. It is here, in consciousness, raised to metalangauge of content, that the difference between Biology and Physics is addressed as two different ways we relate to the three-dimensional container, as the type of "brained" being we are. (cf. Protagoras)
(See my post on psych. The crux of metaphysics, after cutting through the fal de ral and getting down to experience, is what is taken as the objective basis of self-observation -- what content of consciousness, how described, constitutes objective human knowledge. I don't imagine we know this at birth, as John Locke pointed out to Descartes. I do imagine -- insist, in fact -- that a systematic, thorough-going Critique is required to complete the project of rationally determining what we can about human knowledge.
Please understand, Macrobius, future effort, energy and focus expenditure, for me, must be channelled through this simple, but all-encompassing system for representing content of consciousness under Sign-use, namely "The System S*", as the Formal Matrix (grammar and template)
of metaphysics of sign-use. One who had done the work to arrive at it would be making labor lost to do otherwise.,
I ask no one to use it, but hold that it cannot be denied without self-contradiction, so where it applies is apt to appear a harsh animus, but I insist is not. (naturally) No time left for history unless it's currently visible in the dynamic. Being-controntative logic is all it's about, now.
(I will look at your post on the other thread, though, but but it's busy time...don't do a Nero ... can't make that scene.)
Originally Posted by Macrobius
Main answer to side topic now in this thread:
http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26744
'Liberalism, Calvinism, Positivism, and the Religion of Science'
My Reply
Religion and science do not begin from the same place (assumptions) in determining what is true. "The Religion of Science" is an obfuscating take-out except as literary psycohistorical flourish.
[quote]I believe the best way forward for this topic is a critique of Positivism, because there seem to be a lot of implicit theses, both political and epistemological that are up and about in this forum -- not particularly your posts, which are rather explicit as to politics and epistemology. However, understanding where our various political positions tie in to the enterprise of 'Positive Science' (as perhaps distinct from Science in general) could clear the air a bit.{/QUOTE]
All science is Positive, from the epistemic standpoint; all dogma, tradition, superstition (Medieval Aristotelianism, mediatd by Muslims, before 1500) is Denying force ("Negative", in re experimental, self-correcting, systematic knowledge) in respect to scientific knowledge (if it is knowledge -- if it's not, it won't be corrected from the side of religious psychology, though that might well inspire Critique, if it is Positive Religion, such as Calvinism: there's no excuse for falling short in it).
The chief feature of positivism relevant here, as elsewhere, for me, is merely the psychosemiotic stipulation "no word intended for literal reference to particular objects predicated or generalized over in a scientific language (artificially re-constructed so that sentences for resoluable truth value for sentences) shall lack exemplification
(=> this rules out hypothetical constructs as metaphysical primatives by Occam's razor; logically pursued, it leads to => the principle of acqaintance: roughly, the language of science shall contain no predication on objects unobservable-in-principle -- i.e., inferentially related to objects of Kantian sense perception (modern science) or stand in referential relation to more than one object ("x = x" for all x =a, with Leibniz' principle of identity of indiscernibles to rule out 'hidden particulars' smuggled in by cunning shifts in S*- uses, to attribute non-existent particularities and/or project false geometries, as "Gods Creation", when they are actually the result of a fucked up bunch of well meaning spiritual goons trying to keep alive the remnants of a far, far distant set of truths mediaed on earth by the Very Saintly Jesus Christ as adopted political imperative, not mentioning any names, but many worship YHWY.) These stipulations, and the discipline to follow through with them, appear to be the bones of contention I will stick with. The 5 senses are the interchanges with great nature from which common knowledge arises and is verified; the source of all appearances that must be saved.
Please say "I specifically deny that" if you do (leave 'why'? optional -- following your suggestion of nailing down a floor plank.
Quote:
Secondly, the actual views of the Positivists themselves (and doubtless Mill as well) are important context for Frege's famous 'anti-psychologism'. We can't have this all ways. If we like modern Logic (Frege), we have to ditch the Positivists.
1. Frege is just one source of modern logic. He defned the quantifiers, preparing for the unification of propositional and class logic , but did not carrying through the deduction of arithmetic, nor could have done so, since his system lacked the theory of types, yielding self-contradictions. I'm not sure Wittgenstein and Ramsey ever read him. Would have gone the way of Polish notation unless towed into the 20th by Principia Mathematica ( assume we both know that)
2. As to his anti-psychologism, THAT was OK. It leads to rigorous logicl syntax. Even Russell's use of the word "implication" (connoting a mental process, collapsing the 'formal' (syntactical) vs. 'material' distinction that emerges in the reconstructed symblolism, to the annoyance of Carnapians) and "predicate". I use it deliberately as a psychosemiotic constant, but it is also a pre-psychologized (though exemplified) construct that became distastful to later Quine-Frege "sentence" (vs "proposition") threaders. Here is where I part ways with the purely formal syntacticians, ALL of them (from Goedell to Hilbert to Carnap, whoever): the metalanguage of logic is in ordinary discourse, which, with what it communicates, is the undeniable premise of the possibility of knowledge or non-knowledge. The formalists GAVE UP on the idea of a tacit thorough-going logical matrix inherent in ordinary grammar language. I haven't; nor, as I think, have you. But they must be kept separate. They belong to different sectors of the metalanguage, one for thought (text), the other for consciousness (token).
The Positivists threw out consciousness -- the baby with the bathwater. All MIT computerized AI Thought processors as metaphysicians do this -- they'll define that Turing difference for you. (With 1/3 of their brain-systems functioning -- 1/2 half side of that).
Quote:
If we ditch the Positivists ...
Well, one doesn't ditch certified knowledge, to which the formal logicians can claim to have contributed, by unifying the field of logic and mathematics. Nor (see argument above), does one ditch the principle of acquaintance as a necessary condition for empirical science, without a Critique of objective sign-use. It is a proven fact that power-possessing beings (politicized S* users) will introduce false, or inwardly staged fake references to themselves as "thinking, feeling human beings" and commence dispensing warnings about Punishments From God and Jihad based on "gut feelings".
No, not to ditch logical empiricism. Add an adequate theory of consciousness to it. (Vygotsky, Bergmann, Harre, to lesser extent)
This relativises APPLICATION of the formal apparatus to levels of predicates; at every level up to S*7 (where the logos of Consciousness Itself ingresses) the same formal rigor in reasoning must apply in langauge intended for descriptive discourse -- communication of what is real.
The formalized use of "levels" provides an order of predicates over domains of individuals (of individuals, of individuals -- a law of extensionality comes in) down to/through: material objects in three dimensions-to-phenomena-to-neurophysiological base. This, I hold, is descriptive ('material', non-analytical) metaphysics.
The objects to which logical language applies depends upon which type of token (S*7- *1) is used in context. Thus, moral predicates (right and wrong, of actions: S*4) presuppose intentions of agents (S*5 things), applied to the S*3 domain of causal consequences, etc., but still fall under the laws of non-contradiction, etc.
The formal apparatus then slides up and down the scale S*7- *1, as it were; relativizing the system of predicates to subjects by APRIORI level of asserted content: built into the condition of representation, not into the conditions of existence of objects represented (but not barring it, [i]pace[i] metaphysical posotivists, who are silly).
We are on level S*6 - philosophical -- which has its own 7 'notes'. It is here, in consciousness, raised to metalangauge of content, that the difference between Biology and Physics is addressed as two different ways we relate to the three-dimensional container, as the type of "brained" being we are. (cf. Protagoras)
(See my post on psych. The crux of metaphysics, after cutting through the fal de ral and getting down to experience, is what is taken as the objective basis of self-observation -- what content of consciousness, how described, constitutes objective human knowledge. I don't imagine we know this at birth, as John Locke pointed out to Descartes. I do imagine -- insist, in fact -- that a systematic, thorough-going Critique is required to complete the project of rationally determining what we can about human knowledge.
Please understand, Macrobius, future effort, energy and focus expenditure, for me, must be channelled through this simple, but all-encompassing system for representing content of consciousness under Sign-use, namely "The System S*", as the Formal Matrix (grammar and template)
of metaphysics of sign-use. One who had done the work to arrive at it would be making labor lost to do otherwise.,
I ask no one to use it, but hold that it cannot be denied without self-contradiction, so where it applies is apt to appear a harsh animus, but I insist is not. (naturally) No time left for history unless it's currently visible in the dynamic. Being-controntative logic is all it's about, now.
(I will look at your post on the other thread, though, but but it's busy time...don't do a Nero ... can't make that scene.)
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Sharing Consciousness with Helois
Quote:
Originally Posted by Helios Panoptes
I don't see where I suggested that there is no such thing as consciousness, nothing denoted by the word. Nay, I don't think that, nor have I put it forward for consideration. I was making a suggestion about what sort of entity consciousness is. My view is that it is a property.
I thought that was the import of the quote cited. To advance the notion that one would be fooled if they took 'consciousness' to be a denoting term is precisely the way those who practice ideal language philosophy assert it* doesn't exist, that there is no such thing. This assumes, of course, that denoting expressions have reference (denote something), which is precisely the difference between the IDEAL object language and informal discourse (the common conversational patois, like here). It was Wittgenstein's transcendental contribution (I am going to be replying to others as well as your post, HP -- my chief complaint is that these things are never brought together after decline of classical logical empiricism) that ordinary language does not provide rules for use for terms for all grammatical occassions. Which is how it is distinct from object languages with a formal syntax. In the latter case you aren't free to make up rules as you go along. The tokens are set up in concrete, as it were, before any text is added at all. The language of science has to be that way or else subjective conjunctions, with Jewish-Chinese slants, will slip in. Then we will call it "Intelligent Design In the Year Of The Pig Universal Science". See what I mean? -- and why I talk so much about the 'tokens'?
To introduce a new connective, punctuation convention, or any notational change at all into the ideal 1-1 name-thing (or true proposition-reality) mapping IS A BIG DEAL. Which is why Gustav Bergmann devoted practically his whole life to formalizing the notion of "Means" -- introducing a 'quoting device' to get a "means" operator ( ""S*" means S*" ) -- as a primitive for analysis of intentional contexts (See his Metaphysics of Logical Positivism). This is taking metaphysical responsibility for what you say. (He couildn't have said 'your' there, though.) As later Wittgenstein pointed out, NO WORD is a BIG DEAL in ordinary language; all are tools, and smileys can pop up as periods. I'm hoping against hope all this sashaying around consciousness which the great philosophers of Recent Formation engaged and engage each other in is coming into view on the intellectual-phenomenal horizon (S*6 distinction reflecting in S*2) as due to lack of rigorous observance of the distinction between text and token in sign-use
This is bigger than both of us, Helios.
Taking consciousness* as I use it, as the non-integral field of tokenspace (among other designations), all levels of sign-use, S*2-S*7, are stratified predicates of S*1, which, on the 7-tier psychosemiotic system proposed here, correspond to atoms of consciousness; these further correlate, with neuro-electronic discharges of a certain sort in the anatomical apparatus that have reached a certain level and coherency. As a result of the confluence of three entirely separate and independent factors, namely, flow of physical pulsation; flow of grammatized words, pictures, intra-systemic reactions; and flow of the Holy Reconciling force proceeding from the Djarklon process in the Etherokrilno, again through the Omnipresent Okidonokh, finally through what three brained beings on earth call "soul", .... as a result of this confluence, a Triamizikamno of consciousness comes to exist, completing itself in seven 'notes' radiating from its center.
Note:
...positivists like Carnap will simply refuse to discuss
anything realting to 'property', 'individual', "particular", "event", outside the contet of a formally constructed object-language.
(Wittgenstein's main error was to infer that outside such formal languages with rigid rules of use there could be no formal system of consciousness per se. His bent is nominalistic. But consciousness* is a true 'universal' in the medieval (Anselm vs Occam) sense.)
(yes -- not facetious! --- belief* IS something one has to believe in* in order to for it to exist. It* is a second-level attachment to signs used assertorically sans claim to knowledge.)
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Helios Panoptes
I don't see where I suggested that there is no such thing as consciousness, nothing denoted by the word. Nay, I don't think that, nor have I put it forward for consideration. I was making a suggestion about what sort of entity consciousness is. My view is that it is a property.
I thought that was the import of the quote cited. To advance the notion that one would be fooled if they took 'consciousness' to be a denoting term is precisely the way those who practice ideal language philosophy assert it* doesn't exist, that there is no such thing. This assumes, of course, that denoting expressions have reference (denote something), which is precisely the difference between the IDEAL object language and informal discourse (the common conversational patois, like here). It was Wittgenstein's transcendental contribution (I am going to be replying to others as well as your post, HP -- my chief complaint is that these things are never brought together after decline of classical logical empiricism) that ordinary language does not provide rules for use for terms for all grammatical occassions. Which is how it is distinct from object languages with a formal syntax. In the latter case you aren't free to make up rules as you go along. The tokens are set up in concrete, as it were, before any text is added at all. The language of science has to be that way or else subjective conjunctions, with Jewish-Chinese slants, will slip in. Then we will call it "Intelligent Design In the Year Of The Pig Universal Science". See what I mean? -- and why I talk so much about the 'tokens'?
To introduce a new connective, punctuation convention, or any notational change at all into the ideal 1-1 name-thing (or true proposition-reality) mapping IS A BIG DEAL. Which is why Gustav Bergmann devoted practically his whole life to formalizing the notion of "Means" -- introducing a 'quoting device' to get a "means" operator ( ""S*" means S*" ) -- as a primitive for analysis of intentional contexts (See his Metaphysics of Logical Positivism). This is taking metaphysical responsibility for what you say. (He couildn't have said 'your' there, though.) As later Wittgenstein pointed out, NO WORD is a BIG DEAL in ordinary language; all are tools, and smileys can pop up as periods. I'm hoping against hope all this sashaying around consciousness which the great philosophers of Recent Formation engaged and engage each other in is coming into view on the intellectual-phenomenal horizon (S*6 distinction reflecting in S*2) as due to lack of rigorous observance of the distinction between text and token in sign-use
This is bigger than both of us, Helios.
Taking consciousness* as I use it, as the non-integral field of tokenspace (among other designations), all levels of sign-use, S*2-S*7, are stratified predicates of S*1, which, on the 7-tier psychosemiotic system proposed here, correspond to atoms of consciousness; these further correlate, with neuro-electronic discharges of a certain sort in the anatomical apparatus that have reached a certain level and coherency. As a result of the confluence of three entirely separate and independent factors, namely, flow of physical pulsation; flow of grammatized words, pictures, intra-systemic reactions; and flow of the Holy Reconciling force proceeding from the Djarklon process in the Etherokrilno, again through the Omnipresent Okidonokh, finally through what three brained beings on earth call "soul", .... as a result of this confluence, a Triamizikamno of consciousness comes to exist, completing itself in seven 'notes' radiating from its center.
Note:
...positivists like Carnap will simply refuse to discuss
anything realting to 'property', 'individual', "particular", "event", outside the contet of a formally constructed object-language.
(Wittgenstein's main error was to infer that outside such formal languages with rigid rules of use there could be no formal system of consciousness per se. His bent is nominalistic. But consciousness* is a true 'universal' in the medieval (Anselm vs Occam) sense.)
(yes -- not facetious! --- belief* IS something one has to believe in* in order to for it to exist. It* is a second-level attachment to signs used assertorically sans claim to knowledge.)
__________________
Thursday, July 5, 2007
The L you say
THE L YOU SAY
("HE'S LOOSE!" )
Crystalizing Sign*Lines
Around the Bardic Triad
(Or: Another Republican 4th of July gone by.
'07 ' this time around)
Remember when "L" connoted:
Left
Liberal
Liberty
...Love
I think there is a PsychoSemiotic Police Bund attached to the politburough somewhere assigned to break that up.
Replace it, without through away its 'brown paper bag', sexy clout, by a new set of L's from Hell (see below).
Method:
This work follows the Story unfolding in current events, by stringing together "Signature Tokens", from separate, independent contexts, as key Signifiers*. The contexts are textual content tangent their uses.
The Signature Tokens thread the collective unconscious, laterally as it were, given as a totality outside of time. They also, at the same time (!) provide an episodic trajectory through the historical process of those participating in the Group-fantasy communicated. In other words, properly laid out, the Story of Archetypes in Sign-use is the Story Of both What is Happening Now, in mass, collective-consciousness terms, and Why & How this occurred.
The Signs (S*) are: words, pictures, persons, vignettes, carried as "news" and "culture" in the main stream media (MSM).
"The Daily Bread" of interchanged S*-tokens is taken as a totality*, namely, a (non-integral, in the mathematical sense) field of TokenSpace*, the space of relationships of conscious content under sign use.
The term, TokenSpace*, with the asterisk standing for "in use", correlates with John Locke's tabula rose, Descartes' extreme doubt about the existence of the external world, Bertrand Russell's sense datum, A.J. Ayer's 'language of appearance', and, in general, all those who have followed Kant's Critical consolidation of the phenomenal dimension of human knowledge and experience. It stands for each person's awareness of themselves as a person on "this (their) side" of the two-way nose bridge, looking at, into, another similar being by reading, listening to, conversing with others.
And perhaps it would not be too premature to point out that this implies, as a presupposed metaphysical starting point, a theory of truth, namely, what is true in a string of S* is what synthesizes reality, as confirmed by others.
With no more ado, I cut to this crystal: the July 4th from L.
London
Libby - Lobby - Lieberman
Linked*: Two non-car bombs in London: 1 -1 in the fibonaci
series, "squared" by the Link to Scotland through the "yard"
(note: this is key to the crystalizing Bardo planes. From the very outset, in 'thinking' (cathectng, in thought) on "the Failed London Bombing", one is required to fill in the gap between what actually occurred, which was almost farcical as serious terrorist act, and how it "played out" (or "up"), confabulated by officials and the MSM as a illustrating a global terror plot by al Quidaists.
The Scotland Yard - Glascow, Scotland Link is by use of the word "link" repeatedly to refer to the two (non-) car bombs in London's historic centre. "They were linked", it was said from the start, then over and over. But neither could have "gone off". The word "device" was used vaguely, of the cars with inflammables, and the cell phone containing a 'treasure trove of information' (sic) leading to immediate on-scene nabbing of the suspects as they were pushing their vehicle into the hospital's door before bursting into flame. Those were the pictures and words. Turns out to have been a ring of Muslim Medical Men (wait, M! -- this is L's turn). Undaunted by their failure to blow up Piccadilly, the zealots drive North to try to (non-) blow up the very hospital where they worked. How full of hate is that. "Allah!" the one on fire called out, it was said.
Jewish columnist Tom Friedman makes a big thing of this.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/opinion/04friedman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fThomas%20L%20Friedman
"I knew something was up when I couldn’t get a cab. Then there were sirens and helicopters whirring overhead. I stopped a passerby to ask what was going on. He said something about a car bomb outside a disco six blocks from my hotel. A few hours later, I finally found a taxi. The driver warned me that it was nearly impossible to get across town. Another bomb had been uncovered in a car park. Next day, more news: a suicide bomber had driven his Jeep into an airport and jumped out, his body on fire, screaming “Allah! Allah!”
Where was I? Baghdad? Kabul? Tel Aviv? No, I was in England. But it could have been anywhere. The Middle East: Now playing at a theater near you."
Oh how quickly we believe
When once we predicate to deceive
Another S* quirk is the symbol "XMD" turning up in the MSM. It was used for the super-strain of Tuberculosis recently all over the news, in early May, due to the alert that a Demon TB CARRIER, was possibly aboard your plane. This we all know now to have been Andrew Speaker, apparently no more contagious now than he was when given tacit permission to travel, before the CDC and Dr. Judith Gerbering injected themselves into the case on the bases of what has proven to be a false positive test. (his father presciently taped the approval) Well, for "X-" MD's, the Killer Doctors Cell, what should turn up but another link. "Those who cure you will kill you", says a voice from the Demon jihad past overheard by the MSM.
When predicates are built on other predicates, on other .... in TokenSpace*, and at the bottom of the stack of turtles holding up this universe of discourse there is nothing, a Zero for reality, except for that supplied by the person's imagination. Understanding that non-existent phenomena will lay hold on the person on Bardo Planes, that is to say, stages of release from karmic influences that cling to consciousness in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Three Bardo planes tangent to the 4th from HELL
Bardo 1. The Terror Plane Bombs bursting; nails shattering faces, skin
Bardo 2. The Political Plane (-Bill and Hill -- and what a trip --
Did someone say Tripp? (Remember Linda?)
And Starr? -- (Remember Ken?)
Politics => Starr - Tripp redux (at best; at worst, its Giuliani v McCain)
Bardo 3. Cosmic Dissolution - Prions, Worms, diseased blood cells, all seeping up, in, through the cracks to hell itself. Someone left the Cosmic Gate Open.
("HE'S LOOSE!" )
Crystalizing Sign*Lines
Around the Bardic Triad
(Or: Another Republican 4th of July gone by.
'07 ' this time around)
Remember when "L" connoted:
Left
Liberal
Liberty
...Love
I think there is a PsychoSemiotic Police Bund attached to the politburough somewhere assigned to break that up.
Replace it, without through away its 'brown paper bag', sexy clout, by a new set of L's from Hell (see below).
Method:
This work follows the Story unfolding in current events, by stringing together "Signature Tokens", from separate, independent contexts, as key Signifiers*. The contexts are textual content tangent their uses.
The Signature Tokens thread the collective unconscious, laterally as it were, given as a totality outside of time. They also, at the same time (!) provide an episodic trajectory through the historical process of those participating in the Group-fantasy communicated. In other words, properly laid out, the Story of Archetypes in Sign-use is the Story Of both What is Happening Now, in mass, collective-consciousness terms, and Why & How this occurred.
The Signs (S*) are: words, pictures, persons, vignettes, carried as "news" and "culture" in the main stream media (MSM).
"The Daily Bread" of interchanged S*-tokens is taken as a totality*, namely, a (non-integral, in the mathematical sense) field of TokenSpace*, the space of relationships of conscious content under sign use.
The term, TokenSpace*, with the asterisk standing for "in use", correlates with John Locke's tabula rose, Descartes' extreme doubt about the existence of the external world, Bertrand Russell's sense datum, A.J. Ayer's 'language of appearance', and, in general, all those who have followed Kant's Critical consolidation of the phenomenal dimension of human knowledge and experience. It stands for each person's awareness of themselves as a person on "this (their) side" of the two-way nose bridge, looking at, into, another similar being by reading, listening to, conversing with others.
And perhaps it would not be too premature to point out that this implies, as a presupposed metaphysical starting point, a theory of truth, namely, what is true in a string of S* is what synthesizes reality, as confirmed by others.
With no more ado, I cut to this crystal: the July 4th from L.
London
Libby - Lobby - Lieberman
Linked*: Two non-car bombs in London: 1 -1 in the fibonaci
series, "squared" by the Link to Scotland through the "yard"
(note: this is key to the crystalizing Bardo planes. From the very outset, in 'thinking' (cathectng, in thought) on "the Failed London Bombing", one is required to fill in the gap between what actually occurred, which was almost farcical as serious terrorist act, and how it "played out" (or "up"), confabulated by officials and the MSM as a illustrating a global terror plot by al Quidaists.
The Scotland Yard - Glascow, Scotland Link is by use of the word "link" repeatedly to refer to the two (non-) car bombs in London's historic centre. "They were linked", it was said from the start, then over and over. But neither could have "gone off". The word "device" was used vaguely, of the cars with inflammables, and the cell phone containing a 'treasure trove of information' (sic) leading to immediate on-scene nabbing of the suspects as they were pushing their vehicle into the hospital's door before bursting into flame. Those were the pictures and words. Turns out to have been a ring of Muslim Medical Men (wait, M! -- this is L's turn). Undaunted by their failure to blow up Piccadilly, the zealots drive North to try to (non-) blow up the very hospital where they worked. How full of hate is that. "Allah!" the one on fire called out, it was said.
Jewish columnist Tom Friedman makes a big thing of this.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/opinion/04friedman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fThomas%20L%20Friedman
"I knew something was up when I couldn’t get a cab. Then there were sirens and helicopters whirring overhead. I stopped a passerby to ask what was going on. He said something about a car bomb outside a disco six blocks from my hotel. A few hours later, I finally found a taxi. The driver warned me that it was nearly impossible to get across town. Another bomb had been uncovered in a car park. Next day, more news: a suicide bomber had driven his Jeep into an airport and jumped out, his body on fire, screaming “Allah! Allah!”
Where was I? Baghdad? Kabul? Tel Aviv? No, I was in England. But it could have been anywhere. The Middle East: Now playing at a theater near you."
Oh how quickly we believe
When once we predicate to deceive
Another S* quirk is the symbol "XMD" turning up in the MSM. It was used for the super-strain of Tuberculosis recently all over the news, in early May, due to the alert that a Demon TB CARRIER, was possibly aboard your plane. This we all know now to have been Andrew Speaker, apparently no more contagious now than he was when given tacit permission to travel, before the CDC and Dr. Judith Gerbering injected themselves into the case on the bases of what has proven to be a false positive test. (his father presciently taped the approval) Well, for "X-" MD's, the Killer Doctors Cell, what should turn up but another link. "Those who cure you will kill you", says a voice from the Demon jihad past overheard by the MSM.
When predicates are built on other predicates, on other .... in TokenSpace*, and at the bottom of the stack of turtles holding up this universe of discourse there is nothing, a Zero for reality, except for that supplied by the person's imagination. Understanding that non-existent phenomena will lay hold on the person on Bardo Planes, that is to say, stages of release from karmic influences that cling to consciousness in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Three Bardo planes tangent to the 4th from HELL
Bardo 1. The Terror Plane Bombs bursting; nails shattering faces, skin
Bardo 2. The Political Plane (-Bill and Hill -- and what a trip --
Did someone say Tripp? (Remember Linda?)
And Starr? -- (Remember Ken?)
Politics => Starr - Tripp redux (at best; at worst, its Giuliani v McCain)
Bardo 3. Cosmic Dissolution - Prions, Worms, diseased blood cells, all seeping up, in, through the cracks to hell itself. Someone left the Cosmic Gate Open.
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