Thursday 18 December 2008

In the Act

You are reading this sentence. You are now reading this one. And now this is exactly where your mind is located, inseparable from the mental activity in which it is engaged.
"Ah but what if I am not reading any of the above, or for argument sake lets say I am reading the third sentence. This makes a lie of the first two claims. They can't all be true simultaneously."
But they don't exist simultaneously. They exist as intellectual phenomena in the act of being read. For a baby, for example, whose attention is fixed on the writing, the words only exist as visual phenomena, and that is their full existence if only witnessed by that baby in that period. As intellectual phenomena, rather than simply visual, they require a compatible intellect to inhabit so as to exist as the intellectual phenomena that they are. Try to think of a sentence that is not being thought of. Tautologically impossible- it only exists when it is being thought of, and is real in the moment of thinking it.
The existential nature of a closed book is enough to drive a mind, sufficiently dogged in the pursuit of its elusive reality, mad.

So each of the three sentences are perfectly true statements- more of a mental achievement than might be imagined though there might be an argument for replacing you with I: ie "I am reading this sentence", etc. They are mind substances and cannot have a reality independent of the human mind, though of course the mind can have a reality independent of these effluences. Perhaps the individual intellect with which so many tend to identify themselves can be seen in a very similar light to all of this. And unlike intellectual phenomena, one can't even point at an individual intellect as an object. So is the "individual intellect" simply an intellectual phenomenon?
That, come to think of it, is what I have a feeling much supposed psycho-analytical theories simply amount to: rather than standing at the summit of a hierarchy of thought uniting all the other thoughts, simply the, more than likely delusional, thoughts produced at that moment, then falsely treated as anchors upon which to found a notion of self, and to bind the full self, falsely convinced these are its parameters, within those imprisoning parameters.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting. You have a similar approach (i think) to the later Wittgenstein, e.g. in the Brown and Blue Books.

Andrew said...

I'm afraid I wouldn't know, though the Brown album by Orbital is superb, if you're ignorant of its existence, or even if not.

Andrew said...

Slightly changed the last paragraph, by the way.

Anonymous said...

Orbital - vaguely know the name but i don't think i know the music. i'll have a look on youtube (my substitute for TV and radio).

The Witt is a bit damn tedious but you have something like his ability to see things as if without the mediation of other thinkers.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, i don't by that mean your post was tedious, just that your method of approach seemed similar. The Witt is interesting in parts, it's just utterly unlike other philosophers and so rather demanding.

Andrew said...

Sorry bout the delay. Internet access gone scarce. Orbital one of the excellent UK electronica music artists producing gerat stuff in early to mid 90s. I'd possibly recommend the 'Snivilisation' album most. Definitely should check out.
From my very ltd knowledge of Witt- read one short book about him- his later stuff seems of an ilk to where my thoughts on thought seem to lead me.