Monday, January 17, 2011

Meaning as partial knowledge

Wa would meaning if we actually knew it all?
The point about meaning is in a sense hat we imply or read it into the world. It is the point that we want more of the world than we can know. Finding meaning in the world and belief (of very differing sorts) run together. Meaning happens we then we start to tell the tell - and yet do so always with our eye on something or some one else. The question then is merely how we understand the role of this partial knowledge within the tapestry we create. In best philosophical traditions one might say their are two engines of meaning at this point- - an immanent and a transcendental one.
The immanent methodology assumes that every partial truth represent a point or part of an underlying picture,mundane or divine- a picture they then seek to use reason or experiment or learning or faith to explore this underlying substance through the partial knowledge they have and that they hope to have. This then opens up an articulation between the two. So that the overarching theorem should explain partial knowings to come, and when it is the partial knowledge that in its partiallity hints both at the underlying structure, but also to the fault lines in that structure- the points it might be wrong from, or at least point one does not know. The very partiallity of the knowledge is then a part in the picture - it poses the problems in the first place, but is also very capable of breaking free from boundaries imposed upon it- and forcing the substance that would appear to explain it to say other things. Substance might then explain, with its world, and so concot a fabric for the partial things- but the partial bits, actually evalue and judge that judgment- making it appear good or bad or demanding further clarification. That is in the end in the immanent model it is the very partial nature of the partial objects, the hint to being a part of, that actually is the creative engine for meaning- it is what makes sure we are always in the middle of any and every story, and that real endings are seldom simple or absolute, even when (or particuliar when) the facts themselves are true.
The transcendental methodology uses a rather different approach, is taken for what it is in itself. A truth real or lusty, meaning or levelly. This approach is then inhabitied, the feelings explored, the the different worlds it opens on viewed- it is then this world, this other place built from hollowing out a single partial fact,into a world, that is then justified and explained or perhaps merely assumed. Single line truths will then war into the world, as the world is change to suite or guide them. A single partial fact is then in a sense partial because the world has not yet been found that is big enough for it, and it is the task of thought or feeling to provide that world. single feelings or events or occasions becomes then the gate into other worlds, world we need to then justify or explain. Minds become the the story houses for of the shelf explaination - that is standard truths that can be used, well known facts that inhabit the many worlds the event-as-gateway partial objects would open out upon. These off the shelf truths becoming the the great refrains of the mind (and ultimately representing an FACT, or long running partial truth or set of truths of their own). the entire picture has then a very complex symmetry, where one event hollows out a world using other partial objects and well known truth - or other events to do so, including ones self interest and self importance. These others might well be gates to their own worlds, and use this using to illustrate that. the entire picture then being held together by passions, and the power of the individual events to crate a resonance in the mind- and to demand a world.
Take the recent Jack Straw example of Asian men. Grooming white girls. Absolutely emotive (and pure partial fantasy - this act of grooming under age sex is a horrific but absolutely standard bit of modernity). Jack minds jumped form one salacious and disturbing story across the range of the problem of ethic assimulation (which we knows clearly parts from government statistic, and part from constituency stories) added a bit of 'every young man is the same', mumbo jumbo, and bobs your uncle got the the of story the media loves to discuss (and to prove - albeit in an utterly unscientific manner. The problem of course in that the reporting of the story makes itself a story of its own- we are all invited to entire Jacks world, and many will, and he world changed.
Partial objects then really matter- for meaning is impossible without them. the problem is always merely what follows from that mattering? Is it enough that their is the problem i the object.a problem beyond simple solution? r must one somehow got to the bottom of the object itself, and run with it (and not merely its problematic status)? That is do the worlds of meaning these open out to exist through the fact that these objects are not confined to this world alone (and so demand any other nature to comprehend them)? Or must that very partiallity be occluded with hollowing out the 'object'- the event itself to the full, and not merely left as a creative problem, and the worlds they might enter in so sampled ?

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