============== PREFACE, THE WORDS: Before proceeding to the issue at hand, let's mention an enormous obstacle we shall find on our way, to wit the language. Words don't carry meaning, at best hint at it and in the context of fundamental inquiries become trees hiding the forest, mainly due to innumerable homonymies and to syntax totally incompatible with such fundamental concepts as "mind" or "awareness". Nobody expressed it better than Sartre: "Having discovered the world through language, I have over long time taken language for the world". (my translation).
And yet, paradoxically, this phrase leads to a swamp of misunderstandings. For instance the addicts of "WOT" (World Out There) see in it a proof that Sartre is a transcendentalist positing the primacy of WOT. Actually Sartre means something similar to Popper's World-2. Similar, but not identical - homonymous. And talking about Popper, he uses three homonyms of "world". And there are about as many incompatible homonyms of "world" as philosophical systems. As for the syntax, let's illustrate with a few examples the essential incapability of natural languages to deal with basic concepts, such as "awareness" or "mind". Awareness, the faculty of experiencing is necessarily thematic: I'm not just aware, but aware of something and "I'm aware of pain" (or of other "qualia") means "I feel or experience pain, etc.". One may ask, what's the use of the term "awareness" if it is synonymous with "experiencing"? Well, it is not. It is the faculty, the potential, the support of experiences which are its instances. The predicative structure of natural languages interprets "I am aware" as some "I" having the property "aware". But what is this I? It must be something experienced, or it would be meaningless. But if it is experienceable, then it is founded in awareness, it's not "I" have awareness, but awareness has "I". But which, whose awareness? The only answer: "Mine". "I" is (my) awareness and (my) awareness is "I". In other terms the predicative structure works well for elementary statements of every day's life such as "the stone is hard", but can only mishandle abstract, fundamental concepts. As for the brackets of "(my)" above, particularly misleading are the possessive adjectives like "my", prepositions like "of", etc. We have seen that "My awareness", or "I am aware" misdescribe some "I" having "awareness". Yet, such forms are unavoidable when using a natural language. Sartre introduced a convention to put misleaders in brackets, like in "conscience (de) soi". We shall use it in particularly confusing cases and write: "(my) awareness", "awareness (of) pain", or "(my) mind". Not that it is any more precise, but at least it gives a warning against misinterpretations. Classic intensional definitions fail by most general concepts, having no "super-classes" and may only be defined extensionally, by enumeration of their typical instances. Thus we shall gather any elementary input of experience usually labeled as "sensation", "feeling", "emotion", impression", etc. under the term "sensation". Sensations don't appear to awareness separately, but as elements of structured "events", synonymous of "experiences". ================= Afer this preliminaries we may proceed to our issue at hand. The first idea that strikes me when inquiring into the concept of Mind is that I can only consider (my own) Mind, (my own) awareness (of) qualia. and that I cannot in any way experience other qualia than (mine). Consequently, I may inquire only by introspection and only into (my own) Mind. The findings of this inquiry will be discussed in some detail in the following post, "Foundations of Reason". Anticipating on it we shall mention here very generally some of them without detailed justification. -Mind appears as bounded by sensorium (domain of sensations) which brings in events. -Events are coordinated to form mental entities. -Orderliness of events makes them appear as maps of some ordered external territory, some transcendental WOT projected from outside of the sensorium boundary. Correspondingly, intellectual views, whether philosophical or scientific fall into one of three classes: 1.Immanent (or "physical" for reasons explained in the next message), restricted to the interior of sensorium boundary, i.e. founded in and restricted to Mind. They may have technical difficulties with coordinating events, but are ontologically well founded and unproblematic, however sometimes considered as narrow-minded and too restricted. 2.Mixed, or metaphysical, founded in Mind and deriving WOT as its territory, They have tough ontological problems with ascending from map to territory and have greater technical difficulties than the immanent with coordinating events due to the feedback from the self derived WOT. 3.Transcendent, or speculative, founded in WOT and either deriving from it or neglecting Mind are simply self-deceptions overlooking that their speculative "reality" is meaningless unless reducible to experience and that the view itself, however "objective" and "realistic" is conceived mentally. ============== ============= PHYSICAL VIEW. (REVISE) Monade-like "I" identical with (my) Mind or awareness.accessible only by introspection which unravels the structure of mind. Imaginary "world" coordinated by symbolic structures. ============= METAPHYSICAL VIEW ============= TRANSCENDENT VIEW.(REVISE) bad faith and self-deceit. Entry point necessarily via immanent imagery ordered by some symbolism. WOT is populated with reifications of originary immanent images and symbols. ============= -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group. To post to this group, send email to epistemology@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to epistemology+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology?hl=en.
