The1.doc

THE1 Document

By Sid Thomas


Putting The “THE” Back In ATHENA

OR -Waxing Plato’s beard, again
From the Token side this time.


Section Ia. Analyzing The -- RTD

Bertrand Russell’s analysis of “the”, as it occurs in language used with intent to assert true or false propositions, standing in logical relations to other uses of language with similar intent, has been a paradigm of formal analysis for over a century now. Published in the article “On Denoting” in 1905, Russell’s Theory of Descriptions has achieved the status of Wikipedia abbreviation, RTD, alongside Descartes’ cogito, Plato’s Forms, Berkeley’s esse es percipi and the like, as instantly recognizable references to well known content. Such tokening of classical philosophical literature, as it might be called, conjoins with other types of condensed word constructs that make crypto words: acronyms (e.g. NIMBY); common abbreviations: NATO, NAFTA, EU, G7, POTUS, GOP, AIPAC, AEI, NYT; endless lists of movie titles, usernames, menus, TV channels; mantras, memes, mandalas, marionettes dancing on music box lids; Marsyas, Mercurialis, Marduk, Mercury, Meditations (Descartes, again); … (continue list of types of types of such condensed signs used in contemporary daily electronic communications). All of these meta-signs are double text-token sign uses, as will be explained below. Such discourse, predicating on clumps, regions, tiers and figures of other predications is the chief characteristic of post-second millennium communication. It is the efflorescence of a new form of subjectivity expressed in communication, one more aware of details, intellectually active, archetypically engaged in personal interaction by selecting, bouncing around, etc..

But it comes burdened by a fatal flaw: the way the psychic apparatus processes sign uses, and due to the incentives to prosper without punishment built into grammar, the public has no protection against meta-sign use that predicates on self-contradiction. A flip of the “the” with a false S* of S* abstraction, explained below, generates just such a degenerate case of sign use in communication.

The incentive is More Bang For The (Star)Buck(s); monetary value of condensation of most powerful, moving collective content. There is a compartment of each person’s conscious orientation that can use and take responsibility for “we” content – what “we” are experiencing, but as some “I” delegates their own as defining it. Lloyd deMause calls this the “delegate” position of consciousness and traces “we” use to shared unconscious fantasies that all are “children” of the same Mother’s womb, originating from actual fetal origins of everyone’s experience. This shared region of unconscious mental life and history --birth, rebirth, re-re-birth, re-….etc. etc. ad inf. – marks the deepest, oldest, broadest flow of human mental life force on earth. The Great Transition. Therefore what delivers the Biggest Bang in S*will deliver That (The Deliverance).




It is predication over prior self-contradictory predications that generates the degenerate case, and this is seen no as reversal of the Birth Transition to Death. Bizzare as it must seem on first hearing, the signs are that this has actually taken hold. An inverse birth is occurring, a “we” drive to shrink and return into Mother’s Womb from whence all were first born; entwined causally by token associations with the images and feelings marked as “DEATH”. The drive to return to the Womb, ‘press the restart button” and Be Born! all over again … and again … has become confluent with Thanatos, the desire to die. (Literalized as an instinctual death-seeking energy by later Freud.). (This conjunction was first made by Otto Rank.) Both drives, toward Life – Birth from the Womb – and Death – psychologically required to gain Re-Birth – are brought together, entwining like the snakes on Mercury’s Casadesus, in the symbolic ritual of war as sacrifice of children by the group acting collectively for Re-birth. When it comes to war for rebirth, profit and religion go together. They call for God to order them to do it, like he graced Abraham.

The formal sin committed in sign use, to return to that, is violation of rules for properly stratified discourse, in this instance inserting “God”, from transcendental discourse, into “God” of men’s earthly oaths and rituals. The way these are connected in fact is by actual mediating processes in the form of individual personal subjective processes, as by judges, priests, preachers. This is a psychosemiotic sin because it is impossible for the text (“God” as ens realisimmun, and umma bonum) to be completed in a human token totality. Only one man, Jesus, claimed such a union with a transcendent/-al reality, which by the nature of the case could only be unique (all other approaches only through His), and required to proclaim itself as such. Negating the ontology that one man, the Pope, could intelligibly be regarded as Christ’s literal vicar on earth, was what Martin Luther and Protestantism were all about. This assumption co-opts lordship fantasy in the Womb-surround.

The violation of substituting text for its own token – substituting F for x in “Fx”, read: “x is F” gives “F is F” – is self-predication. The rule proscribing this is derived from Russell’s other major logical paradigm, the theory of logical types (TLT). A predicate, as text, cannot boot-strap itself on its own token to gain outside truth. Failure to observe proper stratification in the text-token hierarchy leads ineluctably to the paradox of “predicates of all predicates that are not predicates of themselves”, which both must and cannot be as described. Such psychosemiotic monstrosities proliferate in crypto talk, greatly aided by use of “anti-“ to externalize attitudes.

The degenerative result of following what’s wrong for so long is the psychological condition Carl Jung called enantiodromia. This a Greek term for reversal of a one-sided orientation of consciousness into its opposite, as a result of its being carried to extremes. It is what happened in Bush’s America to Republican politics.

Illustration: <= 2.17.’09 CNN “Situation Room”’s Wolf Blitzer quotes a Rep. spokesperson claiming the party of fiscal conservatism ‘lost its way’ during the Bush years, following the easy path of overspending. This, while labeling Democrat’s attempt to cut military spending “tieing the hands of our troops shedding their blood on foreign battlefields to defend their right to protest.”

Now, they have seen the light, returned to their ideological Reaganesgue roots, and are obliged by conscience, concern for our children, their children, indeed, for all of God’s children of the future, to oppose this horrific spending package the Women Jew Democrats call a “stimulous”, like they do – always dressing Death up as sexy.

No, said Wolf, charges of inconsistency don’t trouble them. Who can prove they’ve done anything wrong?


Section Ib. (con’t.)


Russell’s analysis of “the present king of France”, the phrase, used as subject of predication, “…is bald”, construes “the” as part of a definite, as opposed to indefinite or general, description of some object of reference, theoretically replaceable by a proper name of the object in logically equivalent expressions: “the present king of France is bald” is true if and only if “ ---- is bald”, where “….” would be the place a name would occur, if there was one. Of course when Russell was writing, there wasn’t; that was the point of using that example, to analyze what happens, inferentially, when there is no nameable individual, as assumed.

The analysis of “the” supplied by RTD begins from, and itself predicates on the function of, discursive, fact stating language. As, indeed, philosophy itself has ever done, explicitly since Plato. There is a use of language according to reference; true or false; existent or non-; with common consistent features qualifying as organized knowledge, or science. If uses of signs per se is taken as the over-riding category of reference (metaphysical primitive) , this interest in sign-use (S*) specific to philosophy can be said to concern text. Text is what is expressed by grammar, the hypothetical totality of S* whose intent is cognitive.

However, shifting outside this totality, yet standing alongside philosophers and scientists, surveying the place from which cognition appears as only “one half” or “one side” of what any S* is communicating, there is use of language for a vast number of other purposes. Actual contexts -- conversation, ‘ordinary’ language – requires actual tokens, fungible particulars -- spoken words, inscribed letters, pictures, word-picture formats (cartoons, comics, movies, Youtubes, Tweets, etc.) – in formal settings, or frames. These empirical traces of sensory brain-firing present “the other half” of what is communicated on the actual occasion. These frames supply processing templates for linear word/idea sequencing. The sub-conscious psycho-neurological causal processes deposit the result of their firings, looping perceptual content back through the cortical brain, present sentential and other complex textual sequences that standing in logical relations to each other ‘seen’ by a separately functioning inner brain scanning quality and qualia.

The conjunction of the two independent flows-of-process, one causal, the other logical (Mercury’s Cadasus), is the unit S*, the ontological product of text x token. S* => (the) text of a content of consciousness; S* <= (the) token whose occurrence expresses the text.

Illustration 1: large case letters used to indicate Proper Names (<= doubled; token modification used to express intended reference to an individual).

Illustration 2: As empirical entities, tokens have material causes, while texts do not. Movement of the arm in intentionally drawing a circle illustrates knowledge of circularity transferred from brain 1 to brain 3, through vision-will brain 2 link.

Section II. The S* of S*

Double Text-Token Abstractor.
Uses and Abuses in metaphysics.

The predicate of a subject-predicate sentence “x is F*” distinguishes the mental content common to variable instances a, b, c, …etc.. What it refers to, or discriminates in perception in each case, can be mentally re-introduced by reviving tokens of the predicate sign, leaving names aside altogether, as indicated by the gap in “…is F”. This gives the a Quinean “open sentence”, replacing Russell’s “predicate”, but the difference is not important here.

This itself – the act of distinguishing what can be brought back by S*, parallel to but not causally on the same track as, what is causally brought back in perception – abstracts and bonds two repetitions as ‘universals’: qualities repeated in experience and tokens repeated in Sign use. The act of abstracting qualities from instances by name goes with, and without careful attention is confused with, the act of recalling the name; and, indeed, the fact that these occur on separate causal tracks is shown when a person misspeaks: “Oh? Did I call it blue? I meant red.” In general, the so-called “problem of universals” that has so taxed the great minds of philosophers since Plato, through the Christian Middle Ages, and into analytical philosophy of science, has turned a great deal, in my opinion, on this massa confusion, inability to distinguish tokens of text in communication from the other flow of qualities and qualia of experience. However, this is best shown in detail in contexts where it relevantly occurs.

When the text of a sign use S* is turned on itself, as a token, the resulting form S* of S*, a particular kind of “doubling” of the communication situation occurs. Just as a lecturer might pause, noticing their own perhaps exaggerated hand gesture, so the flow of attention through communication in general doubles back on itself when repetitions stand out. This “doubling back” ‘loops in’ secondary associations, including what can be abstracted from meta-S* constructs. Thus, when “the” is added, to give “the S* of S*”, it functions to bring back, and loop in, the mental, or subjective side of what it predicates. Thus: “the circularity of circles” becomes a construct on which valid predications can be made, since instances can be instantly produced on demand by moving a pencil. By this “of” relation (other prepositions can be used), turning the text of an S* on itself as a token, there is produced an abstraction of its “essence”, what it brings back from the side of the object by what is subjectively reproduced. This entirely internal construct, performed instinctively and mechanically, but nevertheless validly (if properly done), is the psychosemiotic key to Plato’s Theory of Forms. It is based on The Form of Forms double. Further back in history, preceding Plato’s use by 2000 years, had been the psychosemiotic condensation of The God of Gods personified by Marduk (also identified in ancient Sumerian mythology with the number 50). The Ram marking the Age of Aries on the Zodiac, followed by the Fish marking Pisces and the Waterbearer marking Aquarius are also double token-tautologies in primordial TokenSpace.

Example: From ancient Egypt derives a text attributed to the Great God Ptah titled “THE VOICE OF TRUTH”. This is a text-token double that would certify itself by predicating on the experience of what it communicates. (It would be hard to raise critical questions …)

Section III. Wrong “The” use

-to individuate abstracts from false constructs leading to predication on self-contradiction.

From “the unicorn”  mythopoeisis  Alexis Meinong
A Meinongian will distinguish what is real from what exists, arguing that some “the” expressions designate possible entities, whereas others, e.g., ‘the round square” do not. Thus, ‘the’ expressions must stand for something real, if only ‘mentally’, as an ‘idea’ --since logical distinctions are predicable of them; though not all exist. This position coincided historically with the philosophical idealism of F.H. Bradley, T.H. Green, Schopenhauer, Hegel, articulated most succinctly by Berkeley’s esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. This is the metaphysical position that the objects of immediate and ineluctable certain knowledge in any and all cases is subjective: mental, not material. It takes the implication of the causal theory of sense perception worked through intellectually by John Locke, assuming the atomic-molecular theory of matter discovered in the 17th century. The physical world is not solid, as it seems to be in the space of three dimensions. “Solidity” is an “idea”, Hume pointed out next; the originals of all ideas occur in sense experience, Locke had also assumed. Thus the commonsense assumed world of material causes inhabited by people moving their bodies about in three dimensional space through time is a mental construct, a kind of illusion; yet containing all the reality any or all of them will ever know with ineluctable certainty. Thus, paradoxically, expansion of objective empirical knowledge of the universe by Newtonian physics was compensated by contraction of data given the knower to reason from. The given data are phenomenal qualities; colors alongside pangs of conscience in the same individual’s field of awareness. A kind of inversion of external-internal orientation of conscious perspective has occurred, concentrated by focusing the results of scientific theory on the process of sense perception. In reference to that process, the cause of perception of color quality begins from light reflected off a surface into the eye, stimulating nerves terminating on areas in the occipital lobe of the brain near Brocca’s area. It is the end result of this highly complex, mediated process, typically confluent with other nneurological firings from the same areas of the brain in order to form an articulate speech act (“I see a red spot on the wall, over there”), expressing what is called “perception of wall with a red spot.”

. However, 1. this is equivalent to saying merely that ‘the’ expressions do communicate sufficiently, by their grammatical form – have psychosemiotic sense – to call attention to and discuss. There is no need to introduce a “reality” for these “the’s” to “represent.” 2. RTD preserves the relevant logical distinction in the language of “exists” predicated with names. (‘Reality’ becomes a redundant and misleading construct, breeding => “metaphysics” with a false object language.)

*****
My Case against “the” : indiscriminate abstractor of S*- construct content…

From “the Fedora” to “the Duke” (‘the F’ => ‘the D’) => ‘The F-D’

- The word “the” can be used to generate perfectly ambiguous constructs, S* that require a third factor (an approbation: second brain contribution) to individuate the description. But when the third factor is added, the psychodynamic associations introduce a second grammatical up-take, so that an adjacent universe of discourse pops up having to do with something wildly different. The result can be Hillarious: a sudden text-token juxtaposition of opposites that jolts the processing systems. Or Devastating, as in the picture of Vice President misspelling “tomato” in a grade school classroom, avowing “the mind is an awful thing to waste”.




Section IV. Using “The” Best
-Valid arrangement of the approbative Pyramid hierarchy.

THE GOOD and The Good of the Good (Idea Beyond Reality)
-The BAD

-The Ugly (From movie title: shifting text to personified token)

THE TRUE,
-The False (and)
-The Illusory


THE BEAUTIFUL
-The Ugly (and)
-The Intolerable