Lacunae

If it were possible to solve the riddles presented by language, one feels we would be close to solving most of the uncertainties and disagreements native to humanity. If this were possible. But this would presume there were an actual resolution, a visage behind the masks. An expression not distorted by grammatical form and semantic nuance. This would presume there were actual thoguhts prior to being shaped into words. Perhaps there are, perhaps there is some formless, void material that the semantics of culture and thought make into particular utterances. But this prima materia is prior to any possibility of expression, even to oneself. Experiencing it and making it meaningful, pulling it into the social sphere in which the individual consciousness is formed means dragging it through the conceptual filters that make it thinkable.Further: If these riddles were solved (if) we would find all that is valuable in human life torn asunder. For it is the lacunae of meaning which provide for romance, art, magic, love, all that is beautiful and makes life worth living. This scientistic search for an absolute truth, this negating of the individual by locating life 'within' a grander, concrete material framework, is what I am most opposed to.

Aesthetics and Selfhood

To wonder why we cannot "perceive perception" is a fallacy based on a linguistic misunderstanding: it is like asking why we cannot paint red red, or eat eating. Perception is not an event in the world, or a relation between two objects; it is a transcendent, and it is what constitutes the world. It is perception which gives the world its form and shape, and what makes objects what they are (i.e. gives them their object-nature).

This is why perception can never happen within the world. To perceive someone preceiving would place their world, their selfhood, entirely within mine - and they would become a function of myself, an object of mine rather than a subject in their own right. They would be a figment of my imagination.

The corollary of this: although the self is transcendent, it does not transcend other selves. Selfhood itself is transcendent. It can never be contained in a world for it is the condition of a world, the canvas on which a world is drawn. Selfhood is the boundary condition of a world, and likewise we may understand God as the boundary condition of the world (I speak metaphorically - this is not supposed to be taken literally or mapped in any way on to reality). Just as 'I' cannot be proved (subjectivity cannot be established within the world for it is only that by-which a world exists), God too cannot have a presence within the world, as it is the limit, the boundary by which world-ness is defined. God is never object but only subject, the subject of subjects, the boundary condition by which subjectivity is possible.

As such it is undefinable, it is that by-which, i.e. Being. It is the sine-qua-non of life.

The Rebirth of Metaphysics

If modern philosophy has seen the end of metaphysics (as is often claimed), everyday life will see its rebirth.

As AC Grayling postulates in last week's New Scientist unless we subscribe to a very narrow view of what we mean by 'mind', i.e. equating it with brain activity, then actually understanding how the mind functions will also embrace, also extends into, language, society and history. This means we can only understand thought (what we use the word mind to mean) by extending this beyond subjectivity, and into the web of social life with which the self interacts and finds definition. So, just as Saussure claimed about language, that the units (words) which comprise it are not understandable in isolation; in fact, lack any meaningful content outside of their relation to other words, so the units of society (people; minds) are also not understandable in isolation. The symbols we use to designate a person (i.e. their name) do not refer beyond themselves to any entity whether spiritual or physical, neither to immaterial souls nor to biophysical bodies and processes. A person is a prolonged social event which only has meaning in terms of its interactions with the rest of the world: we are defined by our social role and by our activity. We are happenings, not objects.

And this is why I say that in fact we are now witnessing the rebirth of metaphysics - for this extended concept of selfhood is nothing if not metaphysical. It involves a reassessment of the previous 'spiritual' or supernatural implications of the word, but I have a strong feeling that those associations were always misinterpretations of these complex concepts anyway. It is easy to mistake subtly shaded meanings for bluntly literal ontological ones.

(none)

I worry sometimes that there's too much truth in the notion that one cannot separate the philosophy from the philosopher.

God and Existence

The problem with discussing religion (or God) as something which is true or not, is that this places it within a universal context of truth. In fact, for many (especially the more mystically inclined), God (or their religion) is the universal context within which factual truth is one subject. The debate on the existence of God attempts to make God not context but subject within the context Truth (or Fact). Such is to vastly misinterpret not only the role and nature of religion, but also the nature of human epistemology.

Because we have the words 'God' and 'exist' which we use meaningfully everyday, we think we can combine them in a way which meaningfully maps onto reality and can be judged either true or false. But this forgets that all thought (and language as an expression of thought) comes from the context of an individual mind in which God either is or is not part of the context which defines the qualitative nature of all other, contingent, truth. Those attempting to prove God's existence regardless of individual consciousness seem to be on a false path from the start. They seem to pose a question such as "How does the world look when everyone is blind?" Those attempting to place a conditional on the context of God (i.e. agnostics) so they don't affirm the conclusion within their axioms are likewise doomed to failure. God is simply not an objective fact. It is intimately bound up with subjectivity itself - they are inseparable. One is condition of the other. For the religious (the monotheist) this should be clear: scripture never talks of God in separation from man. God and man exist solely in relation to each other, for each other.

Aphasia

Philosophers use words too much. This is why the field is so often devoid of any real insight.

Beyond Logic

Of course, what I have recently been primitively grasping at is the fundamental notion Wittgenstein was expressing the Tractatus: I have come to understand that the only truths that matter (and thus, the only accurate aim of philosophy) are the personal; the subjective. The truths of logic (which are what all external, or scientific, investigations lead to) are essentially meaningless: they every one reduce to tautology. Leibniz's A=A. Logic, science, mathematics...all are investigations of different ways of expressing this single principel which is their sole axiom. The arts (in the broadest sense) however, refuse any requirement of axiom. They begin from the individual, that is, life, with all the contradictions and irresolutions that implies.

This is why the philosophy that matters has to be carried out as an art. I want, I need, to say more than A=A.