Tuesday 11 November 2008

Infinite Thought Again

Obviously I can't see into the minds of any of my hypothetical readers, except perhaps my own, and even that is debatable, and so maybe I should expand a bit on the Infinite Thought post, and its claims to include exactly that- a thought whose logic cannot be constrained within the finite, even though capable of expression, and that thought being:

This is a translation.

The idea being to treat this as a logical statement...There is an infinite regress here if one tries to pin down the thought to a definite starting point, where, like the paradoxes, the statement can then be examined and found to be false, as in, for instance, "this statement is false" which is obviously not a meaningful line- if unaccompanied by an actual statement- as it isn't a statement. There seems to be nothing, however, in the line, "This is a translation," that contradicts linguistic truth. The line can exist existentially as a meaningful sentence. But it is in treating it as a logical truth and searching for itself at its original source that it becomes so interesting. If it is as it claims a translation, we go to a language- say French- and have the identical statement stating itself to be a translation, and so to a previous language with the same result, and on if desired in a loop of all the human languages ever conceived and back to English again and endlessly onwards. Given its nature we cannot get to a starting point or linguistic first cause, where we then say, "Now it is not a logical statement, as it is not in fact a translation." In response: "Show me that first point." This point, reiterating, can never be reached.

With any rational line the mind attempts to rest on it, to view it as a static form. "This is a translation," however, eludes such a form of mind that regards the external world and its forms from its own static point of perspective. The line and its meaning slips away from it, evaporates at the touch.

But, just in case, it is not a paradox, which is simply a meaningless concept whose existence would imply the falseness of reality and language within it. There is nothing being contradicted with "This is a translation," and is an endlessly more subtle thought. With the paradoxes, which are simply errors of thought, the mind gets to reach a conclusion and satisfy its rational nature, and while it may superficially seem that the conclusion is to damn reason and this its anti-rational substance, it is still an exercise of the reasoning mind which lives on, its processes uninterrupted. Whereas there is no such point of rest with this thought. The reasoning mind itself dissolves if able to properly view this thought and melt into its substance, though, of course, all this explanation is as likely more self-defeating than anything else.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am, indeed, fully dissolved.

Andrew said...

Glad to hear it.