CONSCIOUSNESS, MIND AND THE WORLD

AREA 5 EXPLORATION OF THE WORLD

Exploration as Ongoing Discovery of the Variety and Extent of the World

The world is one…but exploration is compound⁸, involving the world itself - the real, ideas or the ideal, and words as symbols - of significance and convenience - for ideas and, in a community, for communication. This includes definition, specification, delineation or mapping of variety. Among other things ideas - and concepts - correspond to patterns, unities whether transitory or otherwise

Exploration is a process with relations and interactions among real, idea, word. Ideas, including ideas of nature, change rapidly relative to the slower changes of the natural realm. This is a partial [and provisional] characterization of the natural realm. In contrast, in the socio-cultural realm, ideas and objects may change at comparable rates and have dynamic interactions

This, too, involves conceptualization: world divided into real/idea…as constituted of something like an ideal-conceptual/perceptual-mental realm, a social or socio-cultural realm - the community of individuals and a natural realm…that words refer directly to ideas and indirectly to elements of the world. I can come back and review and modify. However, I am using the distinctions for convenience rather than as categories

I particularly do not want to imply any categorical distinction between real and idea. An aspect of idealism and the dynamics of the real is that of a strong interaction - if not identity - between real and idea

The present application of these considerations is to consciousness though the origins as far as my own thought are in reflection and, of course, the tradition. The example of consciousness forces us into a larger or whole realm - structured, of course - and the analysis then, it turns out, has implications for the foregoing conceptualizations

Exploration and Science

Introduction: This is a broad topic and I have written on it many times. It would keep coming up in many ways. “Science” is used in many ways and to many purposes…some so far from any ideal or unitary meaning that it becomes clear that it is an umbrella term without, in its manifold use, any specific designation. I should first specify what I mean by science. This is many faceted and could be approached in many ways: the idea, the disciplines, the culture, the myth - science as it is perceived outside the culture, the institution, the ideal and the operational. The idea could be very simple: knowledge that through repeated criticism and test has become established in our culture as secure…and so on. I want to emphasize, however, that the other ways to look at and understand science are significant. These various ways or modes are not, in essence, in opposition but are complementary. Within the modes there may be opposition such as verification vs. selectionism or science as an independent institution vs. science as a transactional institution. The institution of science includes the ways in which science is built into the fabric of society. I may say that science is multifaceted, and transactional rather than unitary and concrete…and despite this it has a unitary character. But my purpose here is to avoid repetition of the issue of exploration and science over and over. So I ask what is it about the idea of science that I find limited? It is the idea of knowledge that, though it interacts with action, is separate from human action. As such there are two criticisms. The first is the lack of real action and therefore the lack of groundedness. But at the same time there is another criticism that is the over caution of science that detracts from its contact with the real… These criticisms also apply to the idea of knowledge that is separate from action. For the separation from action leads to empty action if not apathy of action

The issue of respecting science arises. Science is important in the world today as a primary approach to knowledge and as a fundamental source of basic and applied knowledge, provides significant understanding of our world and universe; science is a world-wide institution and as such is very well funded and has numerous practitioners. In some senses there are too many practitioners…the sheer numbers, while a source of a wide variety of information, also result in a dilution of the significance and standards. My position is this: I believe that use and practice of the ideas and principles of science is true respect; that respect of science is consistent with work in which the tenets of science such as materialism, the atomic hypothesis to name two are suspended and alternatives explored as long as this is stated and the two modes are not confused; that proper questioning is as agreement and sometimes more so. The idea of authority has various meanings but, given limited or bounded rationality “rigid acceptance without question” is not one of them; and for the same reason arbitrary and ad hoc rejection of received ideas is not true openness

Knowledge and science may be contrasted with belief. There is an underlying assumption of a separation from the world in which we can have a science, knowledge of it. However, there is not an infinity of time in which to leisurely seek objective, secure and timeless knowledge. Practically there are separations between knowledge and action. The idea of knowledge as separate from the loop of action is without final foundation. It is the projection of a phase of culture. What is that knowledge that is the part of [human] thought while engaged in action, in the world? Do I have to wait till knowledge is completed before action? Yet this is part of an implicit model of knowledge and science, cultivated in part due to its power in many places and academies. It includes a denial. It is though the hearth of action without final knowledge is a fake. That is not the case. Action is the essence of being. That temporal form of knowledge called belief is not mere belief…it lies halfway between the ideal of final knowledge and the faith of devotion…it is rejected by both extremes in their escapes from the world…but it real - it is our engagement with the world straddling the polarized quests for certainty -- and therefore may be called the ethical action principle of belief

Exploration and Science… Exploration is the fundamental action of being in search of Being…i.e. in search of the whole in the areas of extent in process, modes, and monads. The modes include the elements of the “chain of being” but also subject-object and interior-exterior. Thus for exploration and being: embedding in the real is also freedom. This follows, as discussed in the present circle of essays, from the nature of genesis. Exploration sees being as an integral question and answer…but question and answer that are not separated and are part of being in its depths rather than merely symbolic. Exploration includes science and the idea of ideas separate from action. Again, by the nature of genesis and growth of the world groundedness requires real action and separation. The world contains separation and distinction and variety: these are the richness of the world. Exploration seeks to experience the whole in itself, the richness in itself and the relations among and between these. Exploration is contact with the real

On Common Experience

The question arises as to the relations between esoteric/academic disciplines such as the fields of science, academic philosophy, revealed religion…and common experience

What do I mean by common experience? Is it not related to the esoterica…are the esoterica not extensions of common experience. Is it what remains if the esoteric disciplines are lost? Is it related to our evolutionary situation…these are some considerations

What is not accessible to common experience is not basic truth

On Words and Meanings⁹

I think of a word and have numerous associations…other words, ideas, things, relationships…I enter the realm of meaning

Some points of view argue that meaning is determined by use¹⁰. Here I argue that this is a valid idea but that “use” is not a simple concept…and that this valid idea is nested in a larger view that is a dialog between “use” and understanding placed in a context of the world and its processes. A reason is that the world is in a process - in a number and variety of processes. If, in the beginning, there was nothing then at which point is “use” determined? When were words coined? What was the occasion and intention at the coinage? Did the originator - I do not mean to imply that origination was a discrete occasion or the work of a singular individual - have an intent? Can an individual experience the meaning of words? There is a dialog between use based in the world and meaning seated in the mind without either actually dominating the other

Ideas and words have an ordinary, day-to-day, practical realm [within the real, or otherwise] and so have an ordinary, day-to-day, practical meaning. Of course, the idea of an ordinary, day-to-day, practical realm is not definite…for it varies among individuals, communities, cultures and societies and over time…even the significance of the ordinary vary and change…and these changes are clearly “nonlinear” in that there are interactions among the elements and factors of change and so changes of meaning may be sudden, discontinuous and even show inversion at times

If we think of words and concepts as relations to the real then, as adaptations, they have no immediate need to be precise or exact and nor is there an immediate meaning for precision or exactness to be derived from adaptation. Exactness is revealed as a projection from the stark aspects of experience rather than as a universal experience or desiderata. From this, perhaps initial, perspective the relations need only to be “sufficiently” good. In cases of bounty idea-concepts from all realms - natural, social, ideal, universal - can be pure fiction. Clearly, there is a pragmatic factor at play but that does not imply - or deny - any pragmatism. Concepts of truth are not ruled out; they may derive from some refinement or higher order adaptation; and they may derive from an individual or a culture facing the questions of choice in making their language in to an instrument fashioned according to select imperatives. At the same time, these freedoms may also be subject to forces of the real

I may think of adaptation as a name for mutual conditioning of the elements in the processes of the world

These and the following issues speak to the difficulties of any naïve philosophy of ordinary experience, or any naïve ordinary language philosophy, or naïve pragmatism. For the total system of uses of words and language involve origins before antiquity and the multi-valencies and interactions of uses that vary from necessity to freedom…this includes the thought that in the origin and mint of language use and coinage of words are inspired in one function or one individual - a shaman or a priestess - but in a complex society somewhat removed from the original forge of its language, in which the institution of language is “established” the “functions” of use, meaning and analysis have differentiation among the public-at-large, the practitioners, and the specialists…but this differentiation is not at all split according to the class - nor need it be. Although establishment is in the past, there is an ongoing origination in a relation between “natural” language and “constructed” or artificial language with incomplete separation among use/meaning, public/specialist, and natural/artificial. It may be the mystique or the hubris of the specialist that permits a clean separation in imagination, perhaps only outside of consciousness, that results in the idea of construction as artificial. The difficulties, then, of the idea of an ordinary language philosophy, or a pragmatism, or any kind of ontological or epistemic utilitarianism is more that the distinctions they imply are temporary and partial, not absolute, rather than incorrect and they become artificial only when turned into an ontology, an epistemology, or a theory of semantics

Going Beyond Ordinary Meaning...Fiction and Reality

The above shows that going beyond the ordinary is somewhat artificial for it is ordinary to go beyond the ordinary. There is a significant realm of meaning defined by use but this remains in relation to other institutions of meaning¹¹ and in transition in mutuality with the world and relations to the world. This historical mutuality means that individuals, groups, “public-at-large,” societies and cultures, civilizations are agents of ideas, words, meanings and their changes¹²…but that these elements and their changes are subject to the forces of the world, of the real

In saying this it is, of course, a mistake to view the agents and bearers of cultural change to be outside the real. This error at once substitutes a barren and stern epistemic stranglehold on what are the exuberance and variety of truth and the real

At other times I may use “truth” with hallowed tones. Sometimes the “barren and stern stranglehold” becomes, in the hands of a magician, an ice-mountain of pristine beauty. That, too, is proper

What ways and motives are there in establishment and change in words, meanings and concepts? The drive to relate idea-word-meaning-concept to the world comes under the umbrella labeled truth. This sounds like the correspondence theory but when we remember that the system is also in the world it also implies coherence. I might as well drop these two C-words… There are motives to “improve” the day-to-day and the common [shared by the public and the “keepers” of meaning]…there is the motive to go beyond - the motive to adventure - in realms of mind and nature: humankind stepping ahead, metaphorically, of the known dimensions and territories of real…the motivations to love…the motive to survival, of keeping up, metaphorically, with the real and its varieties and changes

Old Meanings and New

There is, of course, value to established words, ideas, concepts and meanings. Old word associations, however, are also found to be blocks…especially as the ideal elements [words, concepts, meanings…] are successful and form circles, systems or conglomerates - tightly woven or otherwise: we are ever a mix of old and new and subject to old associations even as we attempt to overcome them in the enterprise or phase of transition. This points to a value in new words and other ideal elements

On the Real

Clearly, words partake of a nominal and a real character. These are not exclusive. The nominal aspect is obvious… the primary ultimate limitation on the real character of ideal elements is the existence of the real

On simplicity

The ideal elements - ideas, concepts, meanings, words…- are layered, compound and complex. Simplicity and minimality consistent with reality is a value, has elegance and is conducive of incisive understanding. What is elegance and realism in one realm of use may be error and confusion in another

However, this is not an apology for relativism. In going from the ordinary to the universal it may be necessary to discard the comfort of familiar ideas. But, since the realms are interwoven, the enterprise is of value even in the realm of the ordinary