Renee Descartes's (pr. Day-kart) position is simply, "I think, therefore I am". He was saying because I can think of something or about something or about myself, I can objectively conclude. I can say what Is. I can be assured that it actually is because I pointed. It exists in the way I see it because I see it that way. There's a joke that he put Descartes before Dehorse. But alas, his idea has been left aside due to the notion that Descarte's notion was not in fact confirmation of objective reality, but merely of human perception. "I perceive therefore I perceive", is the truer statement.
Ludwig Wittgenstein's position was less aimed at what is and more aimed at the processes by which we conclude what is. It's hard to find a broader or more helpful term for his work than the Linguistic Philosophy or the philosophy of language. Put simply, function determined meaning/location/value, and that language is relative to experience. One example is the question of color. What color is green? It's green, but does the word green, the sound, or the spelling, etc determine greenness? Does the color determine the name? What does the condition of being colorblind do to an objective definition of color in general?
Through this basic question of color, Wittgenstein shows both the subjectivity of human perception and language, the means of both symbiotic and parasitic realities. I believe that we all exist in parasitic and symbiotic relationships. These relationships contain functional language that serves either connection. Those attempts to serve connection or disconnection are rarely conscious, and are often determined by patterns formed during ages 0-5. The ways in which we go about connection and disconnection, or seek symbiotic or parasitic connections, are like a photographic negative, conversely revealing our particular symbioses and parasitic relationships.
One easy way to see this occurs when a conservative person uses profanity. They'll switch it with some sanitized version, like 'darn' or 'dangit'. But the function is the same. I believe the more important 'word' in use here is not the specific reformation of damnit, but the outburst itself. What does the outburst tell you? That word functions in this culture to signal a problem or frustration. So what's the problem? They see the problem as the form of the outburst instead of the outburst itself. Shouting a curse word in such times is kind of like physical pain. It points to something unpleasant, and notifies us to take action. But what if the thing that caused the frustrations isn't frustrating for other people? What if, like cauterized flesh, we can't feel or certain words that might or might not benefit us. What if we don't have 'ears to hear'? This is where language either reaches outward or retreats inward. Linguists (human individuals) deal with difference in particular ways. We pay attention to the ways intead of the whys. Heh. One of the most intriguing forms of language is body language. Professionals now look for 'micro movements' that can betray things like aggression or fear. Polygraphs exist because of this reality. Our bodies react when language is employed towards a particular end.
I can't say it's impossible to receive whatever Truth from absolutes. But, how could you know for certain? I've been wrong before, and with the amount that our unconscious drives our day to day interpretations, it's very difficult for me to think that I can access and convey something that is absolute when my experience is so finite and confusing. It would probably start with an answer to some question, and I don't even know the question. How would I know that what I perceive as the Z in the alphabet of whatever was just given to me? And I don't really know where to begin from there, as every detailed road ends in my own or someone else's false and/or coercive objectivity.
The scientific method is merely a particular way of writing something down, it's the question on paper, and the process of finding an answer first conceived, then enacted, then recorded. But before the question even takes form, the subjectivity of human experience and culture is at work. The questions of Edison weren't the questions of Einstein, neither were they mutually exclusive. Newton's physics have been all but abandoned as wrong or more generously as antiquated. Quantum physics... Neuropsychology... all point towards relative connections in the universe which we don't yet have language for, in other words, we don't yet know what to anticipate in those languages.
Atheists and Deists are both overreaching. Absolutists often cause brittle and parasitic connections. The most prized wisdom literatures all point to relativism. In both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures authors attempt to convey the necessity of pluralistic relativism. "There is a time for everything" is one poem of Solomon. Paul tells Christians that all things are permissible, but not all things are good or constructive. All things in moderation is another prominent idea rarely exhibited by absolutists only comfortable with excessive simplicity and their own conclusions.
Sun Tzu's know your enemy is both similar and different than Jesus' love your enemy, but not entirely. Sun Tzu is assuming parasitic realities that need to be guarded from and thus known, (as does Paul in Romans 13). Without denying the danger of exposure to hostilities or difficult and impossible connections, Jesus assumes that Symbiosis is possible, and better.
Rather than the independent ability to know and name the external world, Descartes and Wittgenstein only revealed how dependent humans are on contexts beyond our own individuality.
Like a tornado heading in a particular direction affects everything in its path, contexts attempt to monopolize everything in their vicinity. These details either serve the flow of life and the living, or work against it, and we'll never fully know which.
A tractor picked up by a tornado, and flying through the sky is an old word out of context, and a new terrifying word entirely.
In all these things, I see myself more as Descartes and as an absolutist. I'm' often so unconscious of my unconscious even though I believe all these things, that I find myself in the midst of road rage or suicidal thinking. I see myself as more parasitic than not. It takes one to know one.
Ludwig Wittgenstein's position was less aimed at what is and more aimed at the processes by which we conclude what is. It's hard to find a broader or more helpful term for his work than the Linguistic Philosophy or the philosophy of language. Put simply, function determined meaning/location/value, and that language is relative to experience. One example is the question of color. What color is green? It's green, but does the word green, the sound, or the spelling, etc determine greenness? Does the color determine the name? What does the condition of being colorblind do to an objective definition of color in general?
Through this basic question of color, Wittgenstein shows both the subjectivity of human perception and language, the means of both symbiotic and parasitic realities. I believe that we all exist in parasitic and symbiotic relationships. These relationships contain functional language that serves either connection. Those attempts to serve connection or disconnection are rarely conscious, and are often determined by patterns formed during ages 0-5. The ways in which we go about connection and disconnection, or seek symbiotic or parasitic connections, are like a photographic negative, conversely revealing our particular symbioses and parasitic relationships.
One easy way to see this occurs when a conservative person uses profanity. They'll switch it with some sanitized version, like 'darn' or 'dangit'. But the function is the same. I believe the more important 'word' in use here is not the specific reformation of damnit, but the outburst itself. What does the outburst tell you? That word functions in this culture to signal a problem or frustration. So what's the problem? They see the problem as the form of the outburst instead of the outburst itself. Shouting a curse word in such times is kind of like physical pain. It points to something unpleasant, and notifies us to take action. But what if the thing that caused the frustrations isn't frustrating for other people? What if, like cauterized flesh, we can't feel or certain words that might or might not benefit us. What if we don't have 'ears to hear'? This is where language either reaches outward or retreats inward. Linguists (human individuals) deal with difference in particular ways. We pay attention to the ways intead of the whys. Heh. One of the most intriguing forms of language is body language. Professionals now look for 'micro movements' that can betray things like aggression or fear. Polygraphs exist because of this reality. Our bodies react when language is employed towards a particular end.
I can't say it's impossible to receive whatever Truth from absolutes. But, how could you know for certain? I've been wrong before, and with the amount that our unconscious drives our day to day interpretations, it's very difficult for me to think that I can access and convey something that is absolute when my experience is so finite and confusing. It would probably start with an answer to some question, and I don't even know the question. How would I know that what I perceive as the Z in the alphabet of whatever was just given to me? And I don't really know where to begin from there, as every detailed road ends in my own or someone else's false and/or coercive objectivity.
The scientific method is merely a particular way of writing something down, it's the question on paper, and the process of finding an answer first conceived, then enacted, then recorded. But before the question even takes form, the subjectivity of human experience and culture is at work. The questions of Edison weren't the questions of Einstein, neither were they mutually exclusive. Newton's physics have been all but abandoned as wrong or more generously as antiquated. Quantum physics... Neuropsychology... all point towards relative connections in the universe which we don't yet have language for, in other words, we don't yet know what to anticipate in those languages.
Atheists and Deists are both overreaching. Absolutists often cause brittle and parasitic connections. The most prized wisdom literatures all point to relativism. In both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures authors attempt to convey the necessity of pluralistic relativism. "There is a time for everything" is one poem of Solomon. Paul tells Christians that all things are permissible, but not all things are good or constructive. All things in moderation is another prominent idea rarely exhibited by absolutists only comfortable with excessive simplicity and their own conclusions.
Sun Tzu's know your enemy is both similar and different than Jesus' love your enemy, but not entirely. Sun Tzu is assuming parasitic realities that need to be guarded from and thus known, (as does Paul in Romans 13). Without denying the danger of exposure to hostilities or difficult and impossible connections, Jesus assumes that Symbiosis is possible, and better.
Rather than the independent ability to know and name the external world, Descartes and Wittgenstein only revealed how dependent humans are on contexts beyond our own individuality.
Like a tornado heading in a particular direction affects everything in its path, contexts attempt to monopolize everything in their vicinity. These details either serve the flow of life and the living, or work against it, and we'll never fully know which.
A tractor picked up by a tornado, and flying through the sky is an old word out of context, and a new terrifying word entirely.
In all these things, I see myself more as Descartes and as an absolutist. I'm' often so unconscious of my unconscious even though I believe all these things, that I find myself in the midst of road rage or suicidal thinking. I see myself as more parasitic than not. It takes one to know one.
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