Let me tell you something- and where exactly do we end up? What domain but that magic realists world of meaning. For how can the description not ripple with meaning. But this is a strange flat world, for the contours, which appear fixed initially are clearly moving one against the other, as the plan evolves and changes. moreover the dimensions of the plan are far from fixed it might be growing it might be shrinking. Nor are even the dimensions necessarily fixed, what you thought was miles might be an inch, an inch might be a mile: and always watch out - you might far off- this little isle of meaning.
Meaning always creates odd worlds in the telling. There are perhaps five pillars to the strange land. firstly of course everything is weaved by the linear shuffle of sentences that operate backwards and forwards, weaving a meaning that of course at least one more dimension. paths then appear in the process, paths that might be going somewhere or nowhere or perhaps just not where you thought. The temporal reality of reading or speaking translates into an allegory where the very linearity of words reflects the movement of time. except of course the world that forms, the domain of meaning is not formed at one time or an other- it might self consciously straddle many times, and many paths across other times. The line a sentence mirrors time, certainly but is also free from it in itself.
Secondly any domain of meaning is at once self contained and in the spinning at least singular. It will the contain its own set of meaning as a thing apart from the rest of the world. the domains of words, meanings, memory, perception, the light of a mind and the tempest of a passion, are all therein the meaning, and yet as all held under it grasp- all aspects or shining parts of its world. As such meaning will organize its world, it will make its own facts follow there own logic. there are of course in this styles manners, even grammars for meaning - Their are approaches then one might take, and possibly local rues,that define the dimension of this chunk of meanings (and allow it to be articulated to others).
Thirdly these world are real flat earths. they have then their own horizon line - but one that could be reached, and if one does reach, one falls off, and tumbles again in a void beyond meaning. But to where is the problem, it is possible that this world is merely a foot above another or it might be in an abyss. the horizion line is then a place of danger. One might see something there or one might not. One might step or fall, or retrace ones step.Or I might and you might not.
One might even earn (if the meaning allow it) to tread paths between worlds, to thread across the stepping stones of local meanings finding loops, or looking for them. one might then start to capture meaning local worlds in other, world with a dimension of their own. Indeed this is possible, and yet of course if one does thins these other worlds do not contain meaning but are rather self contained world for themselves. The fact this other world of many meanings allows a certain degree of mapping to occur across other domains, does not give it mastery. And way jumping is always risky (in both direction), for it is always possible you will not be where you thought you were .....you might even blow into an abyss.
Fourthly although each are different, each domain also may well have aspects or contours similar to other panes. There might then exist for many planes one way to map out the meaning in any one plane. to map out a scientific hunk is to create a different world from a story chunk, and to do it in a different ways. the spinning of the meaning out, is important as it reflects both the way others can explore the domain, and also articulated this domain against other domains or even the cross domain meaning lumps. each world then might be complete it itself or create bounded voids within itself), and yet be such that the loop to others is made clear - or hopefully is clear.
Finally good meaning tend to reduce both author and reader to an everyman. They inspire both to explore, and to want to explore, both this world (and possibly to inspire a leap into the abyss beyond). To be caught in meaning is then to become the anyone meaning needs to exist, to infuse to share itself with. As I read or learn of a meaning i might be located at a place in the world it creates, and yet that location, in the reading, in the spinning is always also a provocation to look to other places,and let ones mind wander as a sub author on the text, working out other ways other dimensions for the meaning. It is the power the of the truly great meaning domains that as they are unpulled or spin, we feel we are as much as part of the process of the thinking as anyone. Meaning always needs to run between us all and its domains are thought and felt as everyone (rather than a mere transcendental ).
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
meaning as that blind teleology
Any large system has them: a significant movement or moment or trend line - a point of no return- where everything is forever different from. The moments of change which complex systems incarnate for themselves- moments that look from elsewhere, from other than the system as point of instruction (hidden or otherwise) - the pointers to a design.
and yet of course the original movement is no such thing- it is merely a movement with rammification beyond if- one that finds a fault line somewhere else,or else sets of a chain of events: The moment the system changed, and yet a moment in itself so typical so unspecial or so random: as DNA is one of the ore inert chemicals in the body, one so very unspecial, an yet one which can be cascades of chemical reaction elsewhere set is trail process which in time create other process which eventual become a life. moreover its ever unspecialness, its very inertness becomes itself power- in that it does not often change- but when it does by random event specs eventual might shift in their nature (but only is of everything else pulls with the change). The minutest inversion chemicals becomes elsewhere the shift from fish to dinosaur....
Something happens somewhere, and a world inhabits that sift- makes it matter- makes it blind certianitude appear to have a purpose. The effect of such changes is to straighten out a system and create a distinct temporal flow within it. That is the blind telelogy is the point the change changes from, the point then a certain series evolved,a series that dominated the entire process, a series that became the unstoppable direction for the system; All its virtual possibilities are then collapsed into an arrow of time- and made to move only in one direction: They shift then into might have beens in the face of this movement the teleology is the blind start of fate - it is what will appear latter to be planned or to the make the plan. and yet as with all fate is starts hidden the merest of small difference that chances everything, so an entire world in unhinged and re-articualted.
But such movement such become purposes in a action (this is why everything changed- the moment) come is two very different forms. there are those whose purpose emerges within the system, and those whose purpose in thrust onto the system (from without). The difference is profound (event though the process is the same.)
The type of blind teleology are the type one finds in history natural or human. In a sense they are the real ones. A change happens hidden and unheard, like a silent thunder clap, or a pebble in the mountain, and yet and yet the cascade builds and changes. the power of that first move is in a sense nothing. it does not modify the whole, so much as set a process moving - leaving ti to other changes elsewhere to modify the cascade- by the same blind process. There is no design in any of this - it i is not even a cookbook, (which implies the instructon are to do stuff), merely a sequence of cascades of changes, that come together in some great water fall, and make a single smoking rain. So it is also is that nailing a fairly standard treatise on the door of a cathedral, where many such other treatise are nailed from tome to time, becomes a spark that ignites a sequecne of revolution in thought...
The second type of teleology arise at the other end of the living process. it is the product of the conscious mind - and the words in inhabits. this is a teleology that operates in creating a word, and becomes later a world. a category then such as sinner or witch or big society or communism is created. a word which has elements attach to it, and yet has not actaully incarnate meaning. That is one knows how one would react if this thing happened- one knows where this is gong, but not what it looks like. one has then in the face for this word and immediate reaction, which keeps the word in ones mind. One impetus that then makes one look for it in the world. And of course one finds it in some form or other . No matter that the original purpose has hidden in defining the world or that the process to which it is attached where merely doing what they were doing (and may very will be a desperate bunch in themselves). Their mere identification is enough to get the teleology whirling. For a sequence of events becomes action that lead somewhere- they become as if they had a goal and a purpose which might be lauded(the market does this, acts this way) or condemned (the poor operate to encourage their poverty). Action are then made into purposes, and re-action caliberate accordingly: We the start to worry and into infere according to this frame work this idea of causation we have foistered onto this little world - and idea that may or may not actually relate directly or indirectly to these change. A sequence of movement sis then seen as anything but innocent: It becomes a moment in that larger picture and to be interfered with accordingly.
Blind teleologies invest meaning. Or perhaps a lot of meaning is merely about looking for those teleologies or noticing as fixed rules those that are in the world. We feel that once the teleology is found, once a teleology is found, we have it- the meaning for the process and the end of thinking it does not matter whether the thought of the order makes sense or whether it is necessarily the way the system operate - for what is that to meaning? Meaning has its own take on reality- it marks after all the point at which one can move on in thinking and start to think a thought in finished and meaning made. ...
Where would meaning be with its teleologies? Teleologies that it will happily fo(i)sture onto the world, and yet which it will joyfully also find in a world and assume that that process has as great a significant to its part as teleology does in the mind. Relatively inert chemicals become the the handbook for life, and random lengths of DNA what evolution is good for...
Teleogy real and imagined becomes the the cause of all things- even though that cause is in any other world other than meaning blind- for its only meaning that gives it the power of sight - a sight that remains of course ours alone.
and yet of course the original movement is no such thing- it is merely a movement with rammification beyond if- one that finds a fault line somewhere else,or else sets of a chain of events: The moment the system changed, and yet a moment in itself so typical so unspecial or so random: as DNA is one of the ore inert chemicals in the body, one so very unspecial, an yet one which can be cascades of chemical reaction elsewhere set is trail process which in time create other process which eventual become a life. moreover its ever unspecialness, its very inertness becomes itself power- in that it does not often change- but when it does by random event specs eventual might shift in their nature (but only is of everything else pulls with the change). The minutest inversion chemicals becomes elsewhere the shift from fish to dinosaur....
Something happens somewhere, and a world inhabits that sift- makes it matter- makes it blind certianitude appear to have a purpose. The effect of such changes is to straighten out a system and create a distinct temporal flow within it. That is the blind telelogy is the point the change changes from, the point then a certain series evolved,a series that dominated the entire process, a series that became the unstoppable direction for the system; All its virtual possibilities are then collapsed into an arrow of time- and made to move only in one direction: They shift then into might have beens in the face of this movement the teleology is the blind start of fate - it is what will appear latter to be planned or to the make the plan. and yet as with all fate is starts hidden the merest of small difference that chances everything, so an entire world in unhinged and re-articualted.
But such movement such become purposes in a action (this is why everything changed- the moment) come is two very different forms. there are those whose purpose emerges within the system, and those whose purpose in thrust onto the system (from without). The difference is profound (event though the process is the same.)
The type of blind teleology are the type one finds in history natural or human. In a sense they are the real ones. A change happens hidden and unheard, like a silent thunder clap, or a pebble in the mountain, and yet and yet the cascade builds and changes. the power of that first move is in a sense nothing. it does not modify the whole, so much as set a process moving - leaving ti to other changes elsewhere to modify the cascade- by the same blind process. There is no design in any of this - it i is not even a cookbook, (which implies the instructon are to do stuff), merely a sequence of cascades of changes, that come together in some great water fall, and make a single smoking rain. So it is also is that nailing a fairly standard treatise on the door of a cathedral, where many such other treatise are nailed from tome to time, becomes a spark that ignites a sequecne of revolution in thought...
The second type of teleology arise at the other end of the living process. it is the product of the conscious mind - and the words in inhabits. this is a teleology that operates in creating a word, and becomes later a world. a category then such as sinner or witch or big society or communism is created. a word which has elements attach to it, and yet has not actaully incarnate meaning. That is one knows how one would react if this thing happened- one knows where this is gong, but not what it looks like. one has then in the face for this word and immediate reaction, which keeps the word in ones mind. One impetus that then makes one look for it in the world. And of course one finds it in some form or other . No matter that the original purpose has hidden in defining the world or that the process to which it is attached where merely doing what they were doing (and may very will be a desperate bunch in themselves). Their mere identification is enough to get the teleology whirling. For a sequence of events becomes action that lead somewhere- they become as if they had a goal and a purpose which might be lauded(the market does this, acts this way) or condemned (the poor operate to encourage their poverty). Action are then made into purposes, and re-action caliberate accordingly: We the start to worry and into infere according to this frame work this idea of causation we have foistered onto this little world - and idea that may or may not actually relate directly or indirectly to these change. A sequence of movement sis then seen as anything but innocent: It becomes a moment in that larger picture and to be interfered with accordingly.
Blind teleologies invest meaning. Or perhaps a lot of meaning is merely about looking for those teleologies or noticing as fixed rules those that are in the world. We feel that once the teleology is found, once a teleology is found, we have it- the meaning for the process and the end of thinking it does not matter whether the thought of the order makes sense or whether it is necessarily the way the system operate - for what is that to meaning? Meaning has its own take on reality- it marks after all the point at which one can move on in thinking and start to think a thought in finished and meaning made. ...
Where would meaning be with its teleologies? Teleologies that it will happily fo(i)sture onto the world, and yet which it will joyfully also find in a world and assume that that process has as great a significant to its part as teleology does in the mind. Relatively inert chemicals become the the handbook for life, and random lengths of DNA what evolution is good for...
Teleogy real and imagined becomes the the cause of all things- even though that cause is in any other world other than meaning blind- for its only meaning that gives it the power of sight - a sight that remains of course ours alone.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Meaning as Bondage and its escape
There is a real sense that meaning - becomes all about slavery and mastery. To know a meaning is after all to predict the future in some manner, and to be able to use that knowledge in some manner. It is to capture a little piece of the world in ones own mind, to assume or to make it ones own. It does not matte if that bit of the world includes other individuals and their action. Read the meaning of there actions and they become merely as a scrap of matter to be predicted and acted upon.
Meaning then invents some level of control or at least prediction a some point in the series. it creates a point where freedom breaks down, and humanity becomes an open predictive book to be read and learnt. Knowledge Then defines point at which be are all the slavs of matter or the mechanics of the eye and brian: It creates a shadow world where are actions are predicted - a world in which chains can be forged to hold us all. Meaning becomes then confused with slavery rather quickly - at least at certain levels.
A slavery that need not be about knowledge as such - it might just be the claim to have such knowledge - the church enslaves just as much if not more than the test tube- it just does it less efficiently
for meaning is also of course the line of escape. If one can define the level at which the binding meaning is built as somehow suspect, if one can inhabit meaning elsewhere n the world, then of becomes free in spite of the slavery of knowledge or institution, church or science. To be free is therefore to deride the existing nets of slavery that bind up minds and holds one down - that control action. Something must be suspect in their meanings the logic runs- something that can be found and ridicules as we set our minds truly free. Meaning becomes also then the great stratagem for meaning in the world. find the level at which meaning is- and one finds a freedom that is real.
But these direction qualities of meaning are not quite so simple as all that. For the passage from slavery as it merely builds a new slavery of its own - where else is it going after all but a new meaning? a new sense of control in the world? likewise as with all slavery it founds elsewhere another freedom- as British home live was founded on west indian slavery. Meaning that escapes is then already at another level in the process of becoming slavery; slavery is serving freedoms elsewhere. And yet these are no symmterical process: The freedom slavery creates is always a freedom of being: One creates a fixed state of freedom - fixed rules. The slaver sets the bounds then in which a sector of the world is free. While the becoming enslaved of the move to freedom is a complex affair- for there are no fixed rules and possibly no iron rule. there are many ways the process might great new chains many dark places, and always the possibility that it actually works, and that at some level the walk to freedom and meaning carries on and on.
Well maybe. What is always a mistake is to simply assume that meaning of the being that implies slavery and the process of meaning as freedom that leads from one into a becoming other slavery are going in the sam direction. They are not - and that is the point and of course if you simply confuse the two or pretend they are the same (the end of history, the trimuph of the west etc) then you end forcing the becoming freedom to conform the the being free - you do so by making that very freedom a form of slavery. That is a system no one is allowed to escape or think beyond in spite of the fact that it does not and cannot work in the situation in which it is found. move that creates states as failures and government as mafia....
Freedom slavery and meaning come then in many guises and many forms.
Meaning then invents some level of control or at least prediction a some point in the series. it creates a point where freedom breaks down, and humanity becomes an open predictive book to be read and learnt. Knowledge Then defines point at which be are all the slavs of matter or the mechanics of the eye and brian: It creates a shadow world where are actions are predicted - a world in which chains can be forged to hold us all. Meaning becomes then confused with slavery rather quickly - at least at certain levels.
A slavery that need not be about knowledge as such - it might just be the claim to have such knowledge - the church enslaves just as much if not more than the test tube- it just does it less efficiently
for meaning is also of course the line of escape. If one can define the level at which the binding meaning is built as somehow suspect, if one can inhabit meaning elsewhere n the world, then of becomes free in spite of the slavery of knowledge or institution, church or science. To be free is therefore to deride the existing nets of slavery that bind up minds and holds one down - that control action. Something must be suspect in their meanings the logic runs- something that can be found and ridicules as we set our minds truly free. Meaning becomes also then the great stratagem for meaning in the world. find the level at which meaning is- and one finds a freedom that is real.
But these direction qualities of meaning are not quite so simple as all that. For the passage from slavery as it merely builds a new slavery of its own - where else is it going after all but a new meaning? a new sense of control in the world? likewise as with all slavery it founds elsewhere another freedom- as British home live was founded on west indian slavery. Meaning that escapes is then already at another level in the process of becoming slavery; slavery is serving freedoms elsewhere. And yet these are no symmterical process: The freedom slavery creates is always a freedom of being: One creates a fixed state of freedom - fixed rules. The slaver sets the bounds then in which a sector of the world is free. While the becoming enslaved of the move to freedom is a complex affair- for there are no fixed rules and possibly no iron rule. there are many ways the process might great new chains many dark places, and always the possibility that it actually works, and that at some level the walk to freedom and meaning carries on and on.
Well maybe. What is always a mistake is to simply assume that meaning of the being that implies slavery and the process of meaning as freedom that leads from one into a becoming other slavery are going in the sam direction. They are not - and that is the point and of course if you simply confuse the two or pretend they are the same (the end of history, the trimuph of the west etc) then you end forcing the becoming freedom to conform the the being free - you do so by making that very freedom a form of slavery. That is a system no one is allowed to escape or think beyond in spite of the fact that it does not and cannot work in the situation in which it is found. move that creates states as failures and government as mafia....
Freedom slavery and meaning come then in many guises and many forms.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Meaning as the Good
The veneer of goodness haunts meaning. It comes from Plato of course- The idea that true knowledge is ought with Go holy light - so that knowing it makes you good- it does good. a good that is external to us all - a good that sweeps us up and along, and makes things happen this way or that. The idea appears to be then that knowledge has a beneficial external life to that which knows - such that the very act of knowing allows the knower to act and think different.
It is at the bedrock of meaning that it allows a mind freedom: A bedrock that defines means peculiar place as the pivot to thought. fid an meaning and you can make thoughts spin around that meaning - setting many things aright or recasting them- making them anew. To think - to find meaning is to step into a warm if corrosive baths beyond your own thoughts.
and yet vitally this bath is collective. We philosophers can jump into together- together we may swim. Meaning is then never owned by any one of us; it is a collective freedom. a freedom that in finding we share - and want to share. Freedom is therefore always ours - always an open invitation for others to join and meaning reflects that fact.
At which point Plato adds an extra beautiful twist. the Good as meaning is open ended. it is seen only in the light of the knowledge it produces. It is the refracted light of thought in all our eyes. As such it dazzles when we first enter a new kingdom- a dazzling that might shock and might overwhelm. But also It is open ended - you cant top the light illuminating this world o us. To see allow its rays is then to see many things, but to also it is to be able to see more and yet more ad infinituum. Knowledge is therefore open ended- as light illumines. The good the emerges is then a freedom that actually knows no bounds- or better in which every light leads on to new thoughts, new lights and so on. Moreover the actual source for this light is of course hidden in what it shows. We see merely how it refracts, and the open ended freedom of that refraction. The source- the meaning of meaning if you like is invisible and must be so for the vivid light to operate as it does. the mind is therefore free insofar as it cannot see the source of its freedom, and cannot simply gravitate towards it. It must rather revel in the open nature of what that light and knowledge that freedom creates and shows.
The very fact then that meaning ought to lie beyond the thinkers nature- sets it up is a position to beneficially challenge that nature. It is the point beyond our nature that challenges us to think anew an so set our mind free from its chains of supposing, and to share that thought and that thinking. to share and to be free and to think are then all tied to the ought shown by good- the light that gives meaning of a world while of itself remaining hidden in what it shows; a light whose actual nature is only deduced in the concord and freedom it creates.
The threefold yardsick of truth is then- that the good involves: A hidden but open ended revealer ; A freedom as pivot; knowledge as collective. no thought can ever be truly finished, and no description of the world is ever simply over and done with. indeed the external world of meaning keeping its otherness throughout. no description however subtle can then finish the picture. ere is always other things to be said, other possible freedoms for thought. The looking to think is therefore open as lights power is to show us new things.
The direct contrast between such a domain and the one in which we live. that s the domain of shadows and refracted occluded light. a word were the impetus is finish with ideas and even more so to attempt to own them outright. This is my feeling my idea- so there runs the mantra. Or worse than that a word where knowledge's own light footed nature becomes dangerous and unstable: We endelessly lurch between new ideas each we feel we own outright and yet do so without an stability or constancy for thought. Finally the collective nature of thought becomes itself a power. it is then not that we are sweeps way by what lies just beyond us all, so much as the actually act of sharing becomes the power. a mob moves this way or that, thinks with a power of its own will and dynamic. worse than that a mob is easily whipped into a hysteria by a some orator, who takes the place of the light - introducing new current to the mob- currents the mob then collective owns and immediately acts upon.
The very elements of the yardstick of meaning become difficult and dangerous when removed fro the light and its power. that is when knowledge ceases to actually address the external world- a world necessarily beyond all humanity, and become rather merely about what humans generate as group or individual together- it becomes difficult and dangerous. Here one needs of course so much care (care Plato at least has). Care to tell apart the freedom of a mob to act or even to create of itself (or have created) and endless profusion of images or dreams or demands, and the freedom of thought itself. the point of the latter freedom is that it is always at every point a pivot. It is then always a question of where the thought stream comes from. I it the question runs a pivot founded in a land beyond us all- a land that cannot be mastered or is merely in the clouds we together create? This Plato actually poses as a question. The point is that conceptually these are different things- and yet and yet it is of course very difficult to tell them apart - as it is difficult to tell Thrasmachylus apart form Socrates in the end: both after all think the powerful should rule, it is just that Thrasmachylus does not have a Good definition of power(and so confuses the mob with the king with the philosopher), while Socrates is very clear that true knowledge and its freedom are real power.
meaning then poses a paradox- it itself it creates an opened kingdom we can all share in - and an idea that sometimes we might be sharing in that ;and, but always have top be aware that we might allow be deluding ourselves - and merely be part of a mob. the differences between the two are rather elusive and subtle if real - and it is of course only the true lover of thought that is likely to bother to tell them apart.
Meaning as the good is therefore at once an allegory of opened modest thought - but also a problem of keeping good and so keeping it creative.
It is at the bedrock of meaning that it allows a mind freedom: A bedrock that defines means peculiar place as the pivot to thought. fid an meaning and you can make thoughts spin around that meaning - setting many things aright or recasting them- making them anew. To think - to find meaning is to step into a warm if corrosive baths beyond your own thoughts.
and yet vitally this bath is collective. We philosophers can jump into together- together we may swim. Meaning is then never owned by any one of us; it is a collective freedom. a freedom that in finding we share - and want to share. Freedom is therefore always ours - always an open invitation for others to join and meaning reflects that fact.
At which point Plato adds an extra beautiful twist. the Good as meaning is open ended. it is seen only in the light of the knowledge it produces. It is the refracted light of thought in all our eyes. As such it dazzles when we first enter a new kingdom- a dazzling that might shock and might overwhelm. But also It is open ended - you cant top the light illuminating this world o us. To see allow its rays is then to see many things, but to also it is to be able to see more and yet more ad infinituum. Knowledge is therefore open ended- as light illumines. The good the emerges is then a freedom that actually knows no bounds- or better in which every light leads on to new thoughts, new lights and so on. Moreover the actual source for this light is of course hidden in what it shows. We see merely how it refracts, and the open ended freedom of that refraction. The source- the meaning of meaning if you like is invisible and must be so for the vivid light to operate as it does. the mind is therefore free insofar as it cannot see the source of its freedom, and cannot simply gravitate towards it. It must rather revel in the open nature of what that light and knowledge that freedom creates and shows.
The very fact then that meaning ought to lie beyond the thinkers nature- sets it up is a position to beneficially challenge that nature. It is the point beyond our nature that challenges us to think anew an so set our mind free from its chains of supposing, and to share that thought and that thinking. to share and to be free and to think are then all tied to the ought shown by good- the light that gives meaning of a world while of itself remaining hidden in what it shows; a light whose actual nature is only deduced in the concord and freedom it creates.
The threefold yardsick of truth is then- that the good involves: A hidden but open ended revealer ; A freedom as pivot; knowledge as collective. no thought can ever be truly finished, and no description of the world is ever simply over and done with. indeed the external world of meaning keeping its otherness throughout. no description however subtle can then finish the picture. ere is always other things to be said, other possible freedoms for thought. The looking to think is therefore open as lights power is to show us new things.
The direct contrast between such a domain and the one in which we live. that s the domain of shadows and refracted occluded light. a word were the impetus is finish with ideas and even more so to attempt to own them outright. This is my feeling my idea- so there runs the mantra. Or worse than that a word where knowledge's own light footed nature becomes dangerous and unstable: We endelessly lurch between new ideas each we feel we own outright and yet do so without an stability or constancy for thought. Finally the collective nature of thought becomes itself a power. it is then not that we are sweeps way by what lies just beyond us all, so much as the actually act of sharing becomes the power. a mob moves this way or that, thinks with a power of its own will and dynamic. worse than that a mob is easily whipped into a hysteria by a some orator, who takes the place of the light - introducing new current to the mob- currents the mob then collective owns and immediately acts upon.
The very elements of the yardstick of meaning become difficult and dangerous when removed fro the light and its power. that is when knowledge ceases to actually address the external world- a world necessarily beyond all humanity, and become rather merely about what humans generate as group or individual together- it becomes difficult and dangerous. Here one needs of course so much care (care Plato at least has). Care to tell apart the freedom of a mob to act or even to create of itself (or have created) and endless profusion of images or dreams or demands, and the freedom of thought itself. the point of the latter freedom is that it is always at every point a pivot. It is then always a question of where the thought stream comes from. I it the question runs a pivot founded in a land beyond us all- a land that cannot be mastered or is merely in the clouds we together create? This Plato actually poses as a question. The point is that conceptually these are different things- and yet and yet it is of course very difficult to tell them apart - as it is difficult to tell Thrasmachylus apart form Socrates in the end: both after all think the powerful should rule, it is just that Thrasmachylus does not have a Good definition of power(and so confuses the mob with the king with the philosopher), while Socrates is very clear that true knowledge and its freedom are real power.
meaning then poses a paradox- it itself it creates an opened kingdom we can all share in - and an idea that sometimes we might be sharing in that ;and, but always have top be aware that we might allow be deluding ourselves - and merely be part of a mob. the differences between the two are rather elusive and subtle if real - and it is of course only the true lover of thought that is likely to bother to tell them apart.
Meaning as the good is therefore at once an allegory of opened modest thought - but also a problem of keeping good and so keeping it creative.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Meaning as Structure
It is an old adage - find a structure, a forma and you find a meaning. Meaning and structure appear to run together- to run into each other. There is no meaning without cosmology ....
From which it of course follows that the sciences of structure- mathematics, semiotic genetics, always claim the mastery over meaning. Disciplines aspires to hard structures - to beautiful designs, and fairly glow when they have them. Structure be it the good of creation or the code of life,of the structure of a multi-dimension universe becomes the absolute creed of origin. Find a structure primitive enough and beautiful enough and one finds the truth.
the drive for structure is a thought at least as old as them middle ages- with its cosmologies, and criss crosses not only real science but psuedo science and soft science as well. The same drive. The same basic very elements supplied by a structure.
Firstly a structure creates an impression of something - some though external in power an nature to the thinker. A structure is to be drawn as the history of the world is drawn out. The thought becomes then in art something else- visual or perhaps composed of notes. it slips gear and shed one nature- internal thought to become another. the structure then is highly important to thought as it pulls out an idea- renders it objective as an idea in itself, and in doing so opens it up to others to see and understand. structures are then vital in the way we communicate ideas, and understand them as ideas (and so not merely a part in us).
Secondly and arising out of this last fact, structures impose an abstract reality of their own on truth. Once one has a structure it becomes generative - it creates the places one looks for truth- and the messy affairs of evidence and in structured thought slips away within the power of the single structure. The mind the in this kind of abstraction feels the master to the truth. It has its structure and is so in control. Structure marks the true kantian moment- the moment a thought is our idea because we impose order into it: The point after which it is we who drive the thought onwards, we who generate the rules - and drive the idea - according the the depth and richness of the structure we have found for the world. Structures condition thought, but also perception. We look for what is or could be found- for the structure is the net of finding - and the rhythm of thinking. all ant got really wrong as insisting the there was only one structure possible - and that a reasoned one define by Newtonian space and Time...
Thirdly the revealing of myriad differing shifting structures always patterns the debate about knowledge. For it structures describe origins or moments of abstraction, then working out how and why thought structures form becomes the task for thought. structures then define academic but also personal agenda and reasoning. They define not merely not we are looking for but the kind of explaination we can create to explain this explaination. We need to explain the structures we have found - and need a God a mind or perhaps another structure to do so.Structures then become what is explained - what there is to explain and understand. Linked to this explaination is the tendency to assume that the abstract structure is somehow seperate from the rest of reality. It is something complete and in itself: It is its own rhythm. It follow then that its explaination is also complete to itself- caught in its own world. One needs then the explain not the structure in motion, and not as part of the messy world but rather as cosmos complete. Traditionally such a being only has one possible genetic factor - namely some deep reason somewhere else- so great cause for structure. The recent variation of this is the idea that structure comes for free amongst agents of that structure: It is the what they together acting on to the other create and keep. It has not rhyme or reason therefore beyond their interaction - and no cause beyond the structure they create. A move which is in effect a great democratization of structure... And one that opens up all structures to many process - and many orgines or participations: A move that has actually freed up meaning - so that meanings can be found (causal connections) in new places an between new elements- connection that are fairly restiching our world and making us think anew.
Structures matter- therefore for there are traditionally the very matter of meaning itself. They make the point where thought leaves the single mind, and becomes objective both in itself, and its description of the world. the point if you like the world and an abstract Human mind meet and coalesce. They are then the point we think a world other than us (but capable of thinking us) from - and how we describe that thought one to the other; the point the we share of ability to perceive and explain the world with the world itself. Structures are rooted then in that which we have thought and act in common with that we are able also to explain. As such Structures are built as a defiant reply to doctrine or the other and the Thing in itself which would insist the silent world beyond our nature is actually unthinkable- an known only in its effects it us. This might be in absolute form - in a world where the only contrast was between Us and the World, but thought, structure says need not be quite like that. Thought can tear free of an us, and become a something of the world itself, and form from this perspective a structure - an articulation of though as if it were a thing of the world- an articulation of it as something in common with the world. A brave move that, as with all such moves combines fact and fiction in it. Most structures might be illusions or mere mirages of reason; and the world of origins they appear to demand might also merely be a romantic delusion: and yet the need to structure thought, and have thought as something external to our nature- a thing apart; The need to build machine for thinking remains - and structure is where we being to answer that need from.
From which it of course follows that the sciences of structure- mathematics, semiotic genetics, always claim the mastery over meaning. Disciplines aspires to hard structures - to beautiful designs, and fairly glow when they have them. Structure be it the good of creation or the code of life,of the structure of a multi-dimension universe becomes the absolute creed of origin. Find a structure primitive enough and beautiful enough and one finds the truth.
the drive for structure is a thought at least as old as them middle ages- with its cosmologies, and criss crosses not only real science but psuedo science and soft science as well. The same drive. The same basic very elements supplied by a structure.
Firstly a structure creates an impression of something - some though external in power an nature to the thinker. A structure is to be drawn as the history of the world is drawn out. The thought becomes then in art something else- visual or perhaps composed of notes. it slips gear and shed one nature- internal thought to become another. the structure then is highly important to thought as it pulls out an idea- renders it objective as an idea in itself, and in doing so opens it up to others to see and understand. structures are then vital in the way we communicate ideas, and understand them as ideas (and so not merely a part in us).
Secondly and arising out of this last fact, structures impose an abstract reality of their own on truth. Once one has a structure it becomes generative - it creates the places one looks for truth- and the messy affairs of evidence and in structured thought slips away within the power of the single structure. The mind the in this kind of abstraction feels the master to the truth. It has its structure and is so in control. Structure marks the true kantian moment- the moment a thought is our idea because we impose order into it: The point after which it is we who drive the thought onwards, we who generate the rules - and drive the idea - according the the depth and richness of the structure we have found for the world. Structures condition thought, but also perception. We look for what is or could be found- for the structure is the net of finding - and the rhythm of thinking. all ant got really wrong as insisting the there was only one structure possible - and that a reasoned one define by Newtonian space and Time...
Thirdly the revealing of myriad differing shifting structures always patterns the debate about knowledge. For it structures describe origins or moments of abstraction, then working out how and why thought structures form becomes the task for thought. structures then define academic but also personal agenda and reasoning. They define not merely not we are looking for but the kind of explaination we can create to explain this explaination. We need to explain the structures we have found - and need a God a mind or perhaps another structure to do so.Structures then become what is explained - what there is to explain and understand. Linked to this explaination is the tendency to assume that the abstract structure is somehow seperate from the rest of reality. It is something complete and in itself: It is its own rhythm. It follow then that its explaination is also complete to itself- caught in its own world. One needs then the explain not the structure in motion, and not as part of the messy world but rather as cosmos complete. Traditionally such a being only has one possible genetic factor - namely some deep reason somewhere else- so great cause for structure. The recent variation of this is the idea that structure comes for free amongst agents of that structure: It is the what they together acting on to the other create and keep. It has not rhyme or reason therefore beyond their interaction - and no cause beyond the structure they create. A move which is in effect a great democratization of structure... And one that opens up all structures to many process - and many orgines or participations: A move that has actually freed up meaning - so that meanings can be found (causal connections) in new places an between new elements- connection that are fairly restiching our world and making us think anew.
Structures matter- therefore for there are traditionally the very matter of meaning itself. They make the point where thought leaves the single mind, and becomes objective both in itself, and its description of the world. the point if you like the world and an abstract Human mind meet and coalesce. They are then the point we think a world other than us (but capable of thinking us) from - and how we describe that thought one to the other; the point the we share of ability to perceive and explain the world with the world itself. Structures are rooted then in that which we have thought and act in common with that we are able also to explain. As such Structures are built as a defiant reply to doctrine or the other and the Thing in itself which would insist the silent world beyond our nature is actually unthinkable- an known only in its effects it us. This might be in absolute form - in a world where the only contrast was between Us and the World, but thought, structure says need not be quite like that. Thought can tear free of an us, and become a something of the world itself, and form from this perspective a structure - an articulation of though as if it were a thing of the world- an articulation of it as something in common with the world. A brave move that, as with all such moves combines fact and fiction in it. Most structures might be illusions or mere mirages of reason; and the world of origins they appear to demand might also merely be a romantic delusion: and yet the need to structure thought, and have thought as something external to our nature- a thing apart; The need to build machine for thinking remains - and structure is where we being to answer that need from.
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