Post-metaphysical? 2

To continue from the original thread:

Here’s Habermas again, this time from Postmetaphysical Thinking (MIT, 1992): 

I would like to go into the critique of the philosophy of consciousness that paved the way for postmetaphysical thinking. Specifically, the transition from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language…. This transition breaks out of the circle of a hopeless to-and-from between metaphysical and antimetaphysical thinking, i.e., between idealism and materialism. Moreover, it makes it possible to attack a problem that cannot be solved using the basic concepts of metaphysics: the problem of individuality.  

…naturalism has cast doubt on whether it is at all possible to approach consciousness as a foundation, as something unconditioned and original: Kant had to be brought into accord with Darwin. Later, the theories of Freud, Piaget, and Saussure offered third categories that avoided the basic conceptual dualism of the philosophy of consciousness. The categories of the expressive body, of behavior, of action, and of language introduce relations that the socialized organism of a subject capable of speaking and acting already has to the world, before this subject takes up an objectivating relation to something in the world (44-5). 

Yet a different intuition underlies the use-theory of meaning, which Wittgenstein developed from his critique of the truth-semantic conception once shared by him. W uncovered the action character of linguistic expressions.  

W’s formula—that the meaning of a word is its use in the language—is admittedly in need of interpretation. 

W conceives of the practice of the language game…not as the result of individual teleological actions of the part of isolated, purposively acting subjects but as the “common behavior of mankind.” With “language game” he names the whole, comprising the linguistic expressions and nonlinguistic activities that are interwoven with each other. The network of activities and speech acts is constituted by an antecedent accord about an intersubjectively shared form of life, or by a preunderstanding of a common practice regulated by institutions and customs. Learning to master a language or learning how expressions in a language should be understood requires socialization into a form of life. The latter antecedently regulates the use of words and sentences within a network of possible purposes and possible actions (62-3).

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Some frgaments already posted by theurg: 

Review of Habermas: “Postmetaphysical thinking appears to coincide with the movement away from metaphysical philosophies of reflection of which Hegel is understood to be the final innovator… Habermas draws heavily on Mead to develop a theory of social interaction that is not dependent upon idealist notions of the self positing of the ego which, up to Fichte, depended upon the I as the original source of consciousness. In developing Mead’s idea of the social ego Habermas puts forward that consciousness is not a originary act of the ego, but an external force that encroaches inwardly and forms the ego within a set of responses to stimuli from the other, wherein the I through being referred to by another can gain knowledge of himself in seeing how a second actor organises his interlocutionary demands.” 

Habermas: “I would like to go into the critique of the philosophy of consciousness that paved the way for postmetaphysical thinking. Specifically, the transition from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language…. This transition… makes it possible to attack a problem that cannot be solved using the basic concepts of metaphysics: the problem of individuality.”  

Habermas on Heidegger: “Heidegger turns as always against the monological approach of the philosophy of consciousness, which takes as its point of departure the individual subject who in knowing stands over against an objective world of things and occurrences….” 

Habermas on Witt: “Learning to master a language or learning how expressions in a language should be understood requires socialization into a form of life.”  

My sense is that a good place to start to understand the idea of the “philosophy of consciousness,” which is symptomatic of “metaphysical thinking,” at least as Habermas envisions it, and the “movement” away from it, is to look at Heidegger and Wittgenstein's respective relations to, and critique of, Cartesianism. To facilitate this, and because I don't have alot of time these days, I have selected a pair of articles on the topic(s), and I will let them do the talking for me. Much more could be said with respect to both, particularly Heidegger, and especially as to (ala Gadamer's interpretation of Heidegger) how hermeneutic “understanding” and the “historicity” of consciousness characterize “Dasein.” 

I will make this short summary statement, however. Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein hold that the Cartesian ego is not originary or fundamental or foundational. It is always-already “Dasein” or a “being-in-the-world” and “in time,” as Heidegger would have it, or in relation to a linguistic community, as Wittgenstein would have it (ie., intersubjectively constituted). 

I have given some highlights that I think are significant to the topic at hand, but I invite you to read each article (the Wittgenstein article is actually pretty good):  
From “Heidegger's Reading of Descartes' Dualism: The Relation of Subject and Object”: 

“Heidegger reverses the “cogito Sum” with “I am in the world”, i.e., Dasein's Being-in-the-world. He rejects the dichotomy of the subject and object in the Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world. He interprets dualistic modern ontology in the concept of Dasein's Being-in-the-world. Therefore, for Heidegger, “I am in the world” precedes the “cogito sum….Heidegger criticizes traditional concepts of time, which belongs to the transcendental context of the knowing subject. Heidegger says that Dasein is neither an individual nor a subject in the traditional sense because beings are in time.” 

From ”Inner and Outer, Self and Other: Wittgenstein on Subjectivity”: 

”Hence, Wittgenstein explains, Cartesianism leads to a paradox: “if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and designation’ the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.” PI § 293 The paradox is that Cartesianism wants to secure the existence of psychological phenomena but effectively makes what we think and feel into meaningless by-products. “The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way.” PI § 304 Cartesianism tries to account for the fact that I cannot be mistaken about my being in pain (at least not in usual cases) by claiming that I have direct access to my own pain and can only speculate about the other’s. However, by claiming that I introspect my pain (as opposed to just having it) Cartesianism drives a wedge between me and my pain, and effectively cannot account for this certainty any more. For if I can be said to observe my pain, I can also be said to misinterpret or overlook it. But we only say in highly exceptional cases that somebody erroneously thought to be in pain. As a rule, I cannot have pain without feeling it, or feel pain without having it. The Cartesian claim that I introspect my pain then distorts the relationship I usually have to my own thoughts and feelings. [kela: cf: privileged access] … According to Wittgenstein, the inner is not something wholly pre-given; we are not born as blank slates but nonetheless develop our inner life under the guidance of others….Now the Wittgensteinian account as I have presented it can be said to be developed in response to a Cartesian view on the nature of man. Wittgenstein’s strategy is one of counterbalancing the Cartesian obsession with the private by emphasizing the public quality of psychological phenomena, and of counterbalancing the fixation on the self by emphasizing the role of the community.”

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Habermas: “This transition breaks out of the circle of a hopeless to-and-from between metaphysical and antimetaphysical thinking, i.e., between idealism and materialism.” 

It's almost as if, here, Habermas is referring to P.M.S. Hacker’s article on Carnap’s “The Elimination of Metaphysics.”  As Hacker shows here, for the later Wittgenstein, Carnap's very idea of the elimination of metaphysics is wrongheaded to begin with because of the assumptions it makes about kinds of propositions, kinds of inquiry, etc. I suggest starting at “Wittgenstein’s Volte Face” and reading up to the bit about Strawson. 

Here is another piece of a related nature that treats the so called “mind-body” problem in terms of Wittgenstein’s approach.  I suggest reading from the first full paragraph where the link leads (“As  result of so much emphasis”), through “An Illustration,” and then to the end of “Intractablity,” to get the point.  

I think this is what Habermas is getting at here: that both sides of the debate make, and share, unwarranted assumptions, assumptions that keep the delusion of an actual metaphysical “debate” alive.

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One more note. The comments at the bottom of page 139 in the piece on Carnap are interesting:

“What was confused was the idea that essence and language are independent features of things… But it is grammar that is determines what we are misleadingly inclined to call the essence of things.”

This should remind us of the Prasangika Madhyamika account concerning the interdependent relation between “prajnapti” — conventional designation — and “bhava” or thing; or, between signifier and signified.

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Here are a few tidbits from the Mead thread:

Now the cultural ground that Edwards talks about above, that presupposes subjectivity, is not the same as Wilber's metaphysical ground. Habermas speaks of it as a postmetaphysical “lifeworld” and describes it thusly in PT:

“This [lifeworld] background…constitutes a totality that is implicit and that comes along prereflexively–one that crumbles in the moment it is thematized; it remains a totality on in the form of implicit, intuitively presuppsed background knowledge. Taking the unity of the lifeworld, which is only known subconsciously, and projecting it in an objectifying manner onto the level of explicit knowledge is the operation that has been resonsible for mythological, religious and also of course metaphysical worldviews” (142-3). 

Lakoff & Johnson also describe this lifeworld background in PF as the “cognitive unconscious”:

“The very existence of the cognitive unconscious..has important implications for the practice of philosophy. It means that we can have no direct conscious experience of most of what goes on in our minds…. Cognitive science…allows us to theorize about the cognitive unconscious…however does not allow us access to what the cognitive unconscious is doing as it is doing it.

“The cognitive unconsious is vast and intricately structured. It includes not only all our automatic cognitive operations but also all our implicit knowledge” (12-13).

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Excellent, excellent, wonderful, Ed. Lots to riff on here — not just concerning Kant and Wittgenstein, but two other of my mentors, Collingwood and Gadamer. We are on the way — as Heidegger would say — to “post-metaphysics.” Back later.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

More fodder on the linguistic nature of the lifeworld background through Washburn's mental-intuitive function can be found in this post from the “transpersonal cognition” thread.

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There's a point that's lurking here, in regard to the ego as not original or fundamental, in regard to the philosophy of language, and in regard to post-modernism as a whole.

Namely, that the abstract idea of context is based on a different feature of the same sort of post-modern visual metaphor. When you look at an object, there is a perceived boundary between that object and the background.  Because the boundary is what separates the two, the object and the background are equally defined by their shared boundary.  This implies that any change in shape of either the object or the background will necessarily affect the other. 

By mapping this logic into the realm of abstractions, we get the ideas of subject and context.  They are defined by the set of limits that separates them, and since they share this “boundary,” each is affected by changes in the other.  In psychology, they call this the figure/ground effect.

This metaphorical mapping makes a particular shift possible.  Just as you can shift your visual focus from foreground to background, so too can you invert the priority given to subject and context.  This shift occurs commonly only in post-modern thought – which makes sense, because you wouldn't expect this shift unless you already use the perspectival and figure/ground metaphors.

This shift in priority leads to conceptions of the context or environment as original, fundamental, and foundational.  Thus are theories of social, linguistic, and cultural construction born.

I would contend that these theories are no less metaphysical, since they presume the existence of a generalized entity known as “context” which has a certain essence that it imparts to the subject.

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I disagree Karl because the lifeworld, as so-called foundation, is not something we can “rest” on, given its utterly unknowable depth. Only when we “project it in an objectifying manner onto the level of explicit knowledge,” when we claim to bring it to full consciousness, does it become a metaphysical foundation. Yes, we can theorize about it and in so doing this allows us to use its bottomless depth as a sort of foundationless foundation, at least in terms of not making grand claims to the Real. And I even think we can chip away at it, bringing a bit more of it to conscious light with advances in development, thus reducing our ignorance if just by a little. But it truly is a bottomless pit of primordial ooze.

And another thing. I don't think pomo extends the figure-ground metaphor at all but rather transforms it through interaction. It's not that there is no boundary, that everthing is the same. And yet it's not that the boundary completely separates subject/object, because in the process of interaction they both change. Hence the figure is not a stable thing in relation to a stable ground, but through their interaction they exchange in a symbiotic inseperability and in a sense are “one,” yet not.

It's the same with “context.” You speak of it as if pomo reifies it into a thing separate from something else, like in distinction with the subject or object. But because it too is contingent and changes with the wind, so to speak, it is not “grounded” enough to be an essense. And again, context too is in the interaction or relation, which changes moment to moment and is “ultimately” unfathomable. We simly cannot know all that goes into any given situation or context, since the “all” is always here/there. Sure, we by nature must limit it by linguistic description, i.e., contextualize the context, but at root of even language is the bottomless pit and the lifeworld background, the cognitive unconscious, the eye in the triangle, Castenada's dark, voracious Eagle is waiting to devour us all. Better to provide a context to give us the illusion of safety.

Speaking of Castenada and the Eagle, see this excerpt from The Eagle's Gift on the tonal and nagual which relates to our discussion.

PS to kela: Oops, sorry, I voiced my own opinion here instead of providing a quote, and I'm not supposed to be capable of that. I'll try to observe that dispassionately in my next meditation.

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When limited 'context' is extended to ultimate and un-bounded 'Kontext' – a sort of post-modern Kosmos – does contextual language verge on the spiritual.  At that point, yeah, sure we can never comprehend it all, and so on and so forth.

But context is not necessarily a code-word for everything that isn't the subject being discussed.  To put it another way, context is not necessarily unbounded.  For example, the context “American culture” has boundaries, as denoted by the adjective “American.”

That means that context is not necessarily a groundless ground or a bottom-less pit.  By choosing the limits of the context we take into account, we can pick which ground we want to rest on, even though that ground would not be considered ultimate or final if we chose different limitations on context.

Furthermore, postmodernism does not <i>extend</i> the figure/ground metaphor – postmodernism is the first place where you'll spot it being used with any substantial frequency.  That the figure/subject and the ground/context are actively linked in a system of mutually causal changes due to their interaction is not an extension of the metaphor; it is the metaphor.

Using bounded contexts and change due to interaction together, you get a conceptualization in which a <i>distinguishable</i> but <i>non-separable</i> subject interacts with, changes, and is changed by its environment, but in which that environment is assumed to be a closed system with respect to anything outside its own boundaries.  Of course, there is no ultimate set of boundaries which we can assert leaves nothing out, and so any bounded context can be considered as a subject of a wider context.  (Rinse and repeat, and you get Wilber's holarchy.)

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Karl: … context is not necessarily unbounded.  For example, the context “American culture” has boundaries, as denoted by the adjective “American.”  That means that context is not necessarily a groundless ground or a bottom-less pit.


My sense is context is unbounded: is necessarily rinse and repeat ad infinitum.  Take the very simple question, what's an electron?  The term 'electron' suggests definite bounds, but to answer the question fully, one must describe all aspects of context that constitute an electron an electron.  My back of the napkin survey of that context suggests one will be describing perhaps the entire universe.

Or to refer to your example, 'American culture' is in part how it formed by reaction to other cultures, which therefore bear on the definition 'American culture.'  Etc.

I'm with Derrida: any question of context necessarily spreads beyond bounds of the manageable if not bounds of the known.

One could draw from this the principle that contexting concerns finiting the infinite.  Any finiting (any saying “this”) is thus an imposed activity serving limited purposes only, and therefore to be considered unnatural, contrived, function-limited and function-specific.  'Finite' is a category imposition, a drawing-a-circle-around for purposes of lifting to attention.  That circle necessarily turns a blind eye, as one could otherwise draw no circle.

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There's really no reason why one has to continue applying the context metaphor.  I'm perfectly capable of considering myself in the context of American culture, and stopping there.

So, then the question becomes: have to keep 'contexting' in order to do what?  To know everything that can be known?  To define something completely?  To tell us what's really there?  To erase all ambiguity?

All of these things are already understood to be impossible, simply by following the logic of the perspective metaphor.  The very idea of perspectives makes all of these quests not only impossible, but nonsensical.  At the core, they all amount to attempts to achieve total, objective knowledge outside of any perspective – something that is in direct contradiction to the logic of the very metaphor that gives us the ideas of context and perspective in the first place.

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So, then the question becomes: have to keep 'contexting' in order to do what?  To know everything that can be known?  To define something completely?  To tell us what's really there?  To erase all ambiguity?
 
You note that it is impossible given the pomo metaphor; there is nothing outside the (con)text. And yet the context is infinite. So the purpose, as Habermas states above, it that by realizing the infinite nature of the lifeworld we don't essentialize it or turn it into a metaphysical ground. As Tom notes, Derrida also understood this. And by so (not) doing we still “finite the infinite” for specific purposes but leave contextuality open, allowing for unexpected innovation. It is not, as you say, a “closed system with respect to anything outside its own boundaries.”  

Desilet, in his “Eulogy to Derrida,” compares the above to Newton and Leibnitz creating the “infinitesimal” in calculus. It functions as a zero quantity, an immaterial signified, which allows us to do what we could not before, more accurately track the movement of celestial bodies. So perhaps the infinitude of contextuality might allow us to more accurately track language, meaning and communication? And in the process, perhaps open us to a new metaphor?

Desilet concludes the following:

“Whether in the case of signifier, being, or subject, Derrida finds infinite divisibility (and its correlate of infinitely variable context) to be an irreducible factor and a manifestation of the continuous intrusion of the 'other' into the selfsame. This continuous intrusion of the 'other' necessitates a routine vigilant questioning—an endless opening and reopening, interpretation and reinterpretation, of the evidence of 'texts' through the course of their divided or shifting trajectories in changing contexts. Through this practice of vigilance no text has a chance of becoming 'sacred' and no person has a chance of becoming sacrosanct. And, by the same token, every text retains a chance of holding out something new and valuable.”

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This notion of infinite context—this never-not-context—but restates Einstein's relativity for social, linguistic and conceptual realms.  A move to a thoroughgoing (Einsteinian) relativity has bearing upon the question of what we mean when we say 'post-metaphysical.'  Metaphysics generally has concerned 'the absolute' and its ken , the infinite, eternal and unchanging.  But in a super-relative world, what can be said to be unchanging, infinite and eternal—absolute?  Relativity-as-such—context-as-such.  These might be the proper metaphysical subject for the postmodern era.

Here's Hartshorne on this point:

Metaphysics seeks, I suggest, the essential nature of becoming which does not itself become and cannot pass away; or, it seeks the universal principle of relativity whose validity is absolute.  'Nothing is absolute but relativity' — this saying, which I heard as a student, and which meant nothing to me at the time, I have come to see as, properly construed, the secret of secrets, just as the man who uttered it claimed that it was …

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That contexts are not infinite is one of the things I draw from Lakoff & Johnson.

If it is our embodiment that provides the basis for the structures we use to do abstract thought, then our thinking is not free, unconstrained, or unlimited.  We can only have thoughts that are supported by the kinds of thinking we are capable of, which are in turn determined by our physical capabilities.

So while there are infinite number of contexts we can choose from, they are not infinite like the integers – they are infinite like the real numbers between 1 and 10.  This would imply that the variety of contexts/perspectives is limited in some regard.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Karl: then our thinking is not free, unconstrained, or unlimited …


Depends what you mean by 'limited.'  If any limitation applies only for limited purposes in a limited domain, the notion of limitation itself will be seen to imply the unlimited.


This is not a small point.  The term 'limited' is given meaning by reference to its opposite, 'unlimited.'  Meaning itself—communicability and intelligibility—depends on this primary implication.

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L&J acknowledge that our conceptual system is limited by our physiology but also that it is “expandable: It can form revelatory new understandings.”  And within our bodily limitations, through empathy and imaginative projection, we can in a sense “get outside of our bodies” and experience a form of transcendence. And this they relate to “spiritual” experience (565).  

So even though our inherent capacities are limited to far less than theoretical infinitude, even if we are limited to say the real numbers between 1 and 10, the infinitesimal, as I understand it, is something akin to cutting the distance in half between 1 and 2, and so doing again and again, without end, i.e., for all intents and purposes, infinite. (As is our cognitive unconscious). And just this notion allowed an incredible insight into physics. 

Which of course relates to Desilet/Derrida’s point, and the same one apparently Tom is making, then this infinite divisibility (viva la differance) is what makes meaning itself intelligible. One implication is that we also open ourselves to “revelatory new understandings,” one of which is that by empathetic projection to/from the “other” we open ourselves to the transcendent (in an immanent way). This is what Derrida is getting at with his notion of the “wholly other” and the undeconstructable.

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Now it’s difficult to accuse Derrida of perspectivism, because the premise inherent to that is that there is a definite presence or being that grounds a perspective. That is, that a (any) perspective assumes one is fully present to have a solid view, a firm foundation or position from which to view another perspective. But difference challenges this unacknowledged premise or perspectivism in that presence or being is always already contaminated with absence. Hence there is no undiluted perspective, no clean and clear separation of one perspective from another. Rather Derrida might be called apersectival, but that term should not be used as merely the opposite of perspectival but rather the mutual relation of perspective and non-perspective. Or as Haberams terms it, the argument between metaphysics and materialism must be transformed via “naturalism,” which has much in common with this type of non-dual aperspectivism.

Along this line I’m reminded of Algis Mickunas, whom I quoted in the Gebser thread. Here the “field” of such relation has no boundary, for it is, like the above, not the ground in contradistinction to the subject, which maintains perspectivism, but the aperspectival field of both/neither. Hence Geber’s integral is not bound by space-time or boundary, since it doesn’t accept the premise of perspectivism. And the key to the verition of this is what he calls the cosmic difference, which sounds remarkably like Derrida’s differance, which again is not difference in contradistinction from sameness.

Curiously and asyncronistically enough, in searching around on the topic I came to Karl’s 12/4/08 blog called “Derrida saves the day.” In it Karl comes close to getting the D but still finds him leaning toward Wilber’s aperspectival madness. Aperspectival yes; mad, I'm not so sure. For by this Wilber indicates he cannot make any qualitative judgments, that all distinctions are equal. But that certainly is not the case. As Desilet notes (cited above): “…interpretations nevertheless require, contrary to what some critics of deconstruction’s relativistic slant have suggested, rigorous justification, evidence, and argument in their presentation” within any defined context.

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To emphasize the above on this “field” I provide a quote from Derrida, from “Structure, sign and play”:

If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is not because the infinity of a field cannot be covered by a finite glance or a finite discourse, but because the nature of the field—that is, language and a finite language—excludes totalization. This field is in fact that of freeplay, that is to say, a field of infinite substitutions in the closure of a finite ensemble. This field permits these infinite substitutions only because it is finite, that is to say, because instead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical hypothesis, instead of being too large, there is something missing from it: a center which arrests and founds the freeplay of substitutions.

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Tom: Depends what you mean by 'limited.'  If any limitation applies only for limited purposes in a limited domain, the notion of limitation itself will be seen to imply the unlimited.

This is not a small point.  The term 'limited' is given meaning by reference to its opposite, 'unlimited.'  Meaning itself—communicability and intelligibility—depends on this primary implication.

There's a different metaphor here – the metaphor of physical presence/absence mapped onto abstractions to form binary oppositions like limited/unlimited.  It's relevant for two reasons: First, only in such a scheme does a thing necessarily imply it's opposite.  Second, that's a part of what Derrida (as I understand him) was getting at – that Western metaphysics has been based on binary oppositions of this sort, and has typically understood one member of the pair as primary, pre-existing, and fundamental, while understanding the other as secondary, contingent, and derived.  That's not surprisingly, when you consider that the idea of physical absence requires the ability to imagine or remember something that isn't present (e.g. studies on object permanence.)

In regard to the contextual limits on limitation, this is a perfectly valid point in the abstract, but less convincing in the specific.  Since we have human bodies, and that doesn't seem likely to change, we're really rather stuck in that context.  The limitations of that context – that we can only think in certain ways constrained by our embodiment – are not things we can evade by conceptually recontextualizing them.  Our conceptual recontextualizations would be just as limited by the constraints imposed by our embodiment.  Unless we plan on becoming disembodied, there's really no way out of this particular context – or its limitations, contextual as they may be.

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Karl, everything you say about a something is a 'definition.'  Take your word 'body,' which you imply is of-itself—really—limited.  Given that 'body' is a definition, give me the full definition of a body—try yours.  

That fullness will necessarily include the full description of every atom in every cell, their origins and evolution—the parents of literally everything, and parents of parents …—their arrangement and rearrangement over time, their replacement and augmentation etc.  Same for all cells, and same for everything else specifiable about your 'limited' body.  

Your description will of course include—because we're going for full definition here, finition for all purposes conceivable and from all angles—every aspect of every context that every atom, molecule, cell, etc. encountered in its entire history (let's hope things really began in the big bang, ey?).  Those contexts will include description of every atom, molecule, cell—and let's not forget the quarks!—that interacted with every such in your limited body.  Note, for this purpose, that what we call a 'particle' is also a wave, so you're right there into describing probably the entire universe, if you haven't already done that for other purposes.

God forbid your full definition should ever run into an infinite, non-repeating number.  We need to know every digit, Karl.

Can this process of description end?  Can science end?  “Great, we've wrapped it up; we've got every law gettable.”

A body is limited (an activity of limiting by the human mind) for limited purposes.  It is vast beyond comprehension.

Humans have this mental naivete that by saying “body” or anything at all, they've captured something.  It's the best monkey trick of the lot.  A true conjuring act.  Lol.

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Take your life experience…

It is a sequence of one experience chained into the next. Much like a book, with letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, pages and chapters.

When a chapter ends, a new one is started. It continues until the show is over (we die). So our life is a story and we are the authors of it whether we are conscious of it or not.

Regardless, there is absolutely nothing more sacred than who you are. Never let anyone undermine your own authority and potential. You are vast beyond comprehension.

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i think of us as co-authors of our life story as we lack total control over what happens in its pages. there is greater authorship in terms of how we tell the story, of course.

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Tom:

Following that train of thought to it's logical conclusion, you seem to think you've captured something in that there post.  At least, one presumes that's why you write…if not, I'll happily stop reading your posts.  It's fine to play the game of “well, everything is situated in a larger context so we can never fully understand anything.”  But it's pretty hard, from that point of view, to convincingly criticize anything, since any criticism is itself an attempt to understand something.

I suppose that mirrors the Habermas/Wilber performative contradiction argument, which I find rather inane, but…inanity breeds inanity.

When you arrive at a contradiction like that, you can do three things:
1. Stick to your guns
2. Give up
3. Backtrack and figure out where you went wrong

I take the third approach.  Contextuality seems reasonable to me, and nested contexts make sense, but something is still pretty clearly problematic.  I settled on “infinite” as presenting the problem – even if there “really are” (metaphysical scare quotes) infinite contexts and perspectives, that doesn't mean we can take them all.  There are limits to what we can cognitively process.  L&J provide a pretty convincing argument for why that might be.

Given our apparent cognitive limitations, the word body isn't intended to refer to the actual set of things whose real interactions create my experience of embodiment – it's meant to refer to a contingent stability in the confluence of contexts I am capable of considering.  Hopefully, it maps to a similar confluence in the cognitive understanding of the reader.

(I take it as a good sign that my understanding of the responses to my posts does seem to have a correlation to my own understanding of the subject of my posts.)

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Captured?  I think I've set something free.  Where's the contradiction in requesting full definition?  What, after all, do you mean by 'body'?

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Karl, would you say the constraints our embodiment imposes on the form, nature, and range of our cognition are necessarily unconscious and indeterminate, or can they be identified? 

What metaphorical reading would you apply to L&J's theory of cognition?  Possibly, Abstract Thought as Subtle Replication and Reapplication of Sensorimotor Activity? 

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What do you mean by the question? ;)

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Further to describing a body, I forgot to mention possibility.  Given the conditionality that holds anything as the thing it currently or seemingly is, the thingness of the component parts, call them what you will, and their arrangement, will change with any change in conditions.  Thus any given thing—here, a body—is also what it could be otherwise at any given time; these are actual possibilities.  The atoms in my body, grouped and related as they are by the active information that constitutes my body as body, could be grouped in (infinitely?) different constructions, relations and coordinations.

Thus any 'thing' is also, beyond present appearances, what it possibly can be.  These possibilities, and with it some measure of future (the entire measure?), must also form part of the full definition 'body.'

This context thing, gargantuan as it is, IMO raises its head as soon as a definition appears.  Every word, I might note, is a definition—a finition, a saying this not that, a distinction, a limitation.  It seems to me that limitation does not inhere in that which a person is attempting to describe (ie, limit).  Limitation is imposed mind-construct, a super-over-simplifying in the face of unthinkable complexity.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Tom,
Several days ago I began to outline an argument that runs parallel to yours on this thread, but from my usual bedazzled by chaos and ambiguity point of view. It was a start, stop, get side-tracked train of though, that probably will never made the full run. But I wanted to let you know that I like what you are doing here, keeping the language vital and on the job while anesthetists run rampant all around. 

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

: )  , and love the chaotic ambiguity, as I've said before.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

I brought up the book Unbounded Wholeness in the “transpersonal cognition” thread. It directly relates to our discussion here, particularly, as Balder notes, Chapter 2. See the link for a few excerpts. You can get the link to the free Google preview higher up.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Tom: This context thing, gargantuan as it is, IMO raises its head as soon as a definition appears.  Every word, I might note, is a definition—a finition, a saying this not that, a distinction, a limitation.  It seems to me that limitation does not inhere in that which a person is attempting to describe (ie, limit).  Limitation is imposed mind-construct, a super-over-simplifying in the face of unthinkable complexity.

Wait, how do we know whether or not a limitation inheres in that which someone is trying to describe?  And how can we know independently of our own perspective?  Doesn't the idea of imposing a construct on something imply that the substrate is primary and actual while the construct is secondary and illusory?  Isn't the implied existence of unthinkable complexity a metaphysical premise?  I don't see that you've escaped metaphysicality at all.

I agree that boundaries/limitations may be mental constructs – but so what?  That's exactly what I'm trying to talk about: that certain mental constructs seem to be an inseparable aspect of our experience.  Like, say…metaphors, for example.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Karl, I'm not looking to escape metaphysicality.  I personally think metaphysics is a valid conceptual, linguistic exercise.  “That something is” is as metaphysical as things get in my books—cannot be proven, cannot be disproven, is a priori-–and look how often 'is' is implied (let me give a counterfactual hint: always).

Whether my notion of unthinkable complexity is metaphysical, it might be, but I was pretty much proceeding empirically before arriving at the conclusion 'unthinkable complexity.'  As a method, empirical plodding pertains more to the physical than the metaphysical.

As to whether a limitation inheres in that which one describes as limited, my perspective is that the idea of limit (always found together with its brother, unlimited) is like a mental flashlight: it lifts and illumines, draws attention to something now called a line, now a boundary, etc.  This activity, for me, is mental constructing.  Thus it makes no sense to say the thing actually is limited.  That would be to nominalize descriptors as real, to project mental constructing outward and mistake it for the actuality with which it interacts.  This projecting also generates the problem of proving limitation in the real, which is what my posts above illustrate: where do you draw the line on drawing lines (limits)?  I don't think it's possible.  

Now, if you were to press me, I'd say the thing is whatever you get when you put limited and unlimited together.  I am accordingly with Korzybski: whatever you say it is, it isn't.  But this is not to regard the construct as illusory: a construct, for me, is a real interaction arising from a very real activity with a very real whateveryouwannacallit.  Jut don't mistake it for that whateveryouwannacallit.  

And, yes, I agree with you that mental constructs and 'experience' cannot be separated.  They are one thing because filtered and translated into and through each other.

Re: Post-metaphysical? 2

Balder said: Karl, would you say the constraints our embodiment imposes on the form, nature, and range of our cognition are necessarily unconscious and indeterminate, or can they be identified?

It seems like some of the limitations can be fairly readily identified, simply by noting that some things are exceedingly difficult to think about without metaphor.  As L&J point out, the core non-metaphorical structure of many common concepts is so sparse as to make them inferentially useless.  The use of metaphor seems relatively easy to become consciously aware of, and there are probably other examples.

It seems like there are some things we can infer, even if we can't become consciously aware of them.  That might include some of the other aspects of linguistic processing, for example.  This sort of inference results in the idea of the cognitive unconscious.

And there may be some limits that we're so embedded in, we can't even figure out what they are.

Balder said: What metaphorical reading would you apply to L&J's theory of cognition?  Possibly, Abstract Thought as Subtle Replication and Reapplication of Sensorimotor Activity?

You know, I'm not sure.  Replication and reapplication come close, but they're not quite right, because L&J's argument isn't exactly that the logic of one domain is copied into another domain.  As I understand it, it's more that our experience in the world tends to neurally link up multiple domains, which then use the same logic as a result.  So, I think their metaphor is more about “connecting between” than about “copying onto.”  Maybe Metaphor as Connection Between Literal Conceptual Skeletons and Sensorimotor Logic?