I see many insightful comments on the Romans, many true at their symmetries of perspective, and equally true there, but I did especially appreciate Derto's mention of assimilation.
In my mind, one of the most evolutionary innovative actions of the Roman collective was the integration of other collective minds' ideas, or thought constructs - a more difficult turn at the time than now, relatively speaking, I suppose (remember, that from the progression of kin to clan to village to polis to state to nation-state, the evolutionary movement is from greater exclusion of other minds towards greater inclusion; which can also be seen as a collective movement from greater recoil to the Other mind to less recoil; from less empathic identification to more). This will towards inclusion of others' ideas by the Romans seems to be a lessening of recoil towards the Other, albeit a limited one from our perspective. Maybe that was a current below the eddies...? (before you feel that recoil, ask: is the eddy separate from the current; is one more "true" water than the other?)
I see here much learning, dazzling actually - about linguistic deconstruction, Aristotelian stuff, murmurings of radical subjectivism, searching for Unicorns, etc. - but I have one question:
What is trans-cognitive knowledge? And if there is a perception beyond formal operational cognition, then what would it see?
Would it see deeper symmetries of "quality" or "truth" or "beauty"?
And would those that are not yet ready to go there still say that "that" does not exist, could not exist? Arguing for their own limitations, don't the minds holding on to the past against change, seeing it as always a chaos, necessarily have to say to each other, to themselves, that such see-ing is indeed where dragons be, as the illusion of the Nothing-ness yawns (Was that enough bread on the water, or did I go too far?!).
If you "will", please, tell-me "what" "this" "means:"
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflections,
The water has no mind to receive their images.
M-
|
Dgarr, I say "bread on the water" and you bite, saying, a progression towards Spiritual vampirism. You make an assumption; that trans-cognitive knowledge is a product of a failure of knowledge. That is a bias to categorize all perception beyond one's own as a negative, as a No-thing-ness, as the place of dragons. It will keep you from going places...
As for Latin, I do not speak it, so you will have to tell me if I missed anything. Here is a story. Many years ago, I looked into a PhD in philosophy at the Univ of Chi & they said fine, but wanted me to learn a dead dialect of Greek. Studying primary souces is good, as those things go, but it takes a lot of time away from actually be-ing a philosopher. I then looked at their syllubus and the last thing they had on psychology was Freud! No Jung even. My, my, how the logical positivists have plied their way...
Everyone, here is my request: stop telling me what other philosophers told you about what they saw. That is looking into a mirror. Tell me your philosophy/meta-narrative, or better, just what you *see.*
Nandric: thank you for asking me back, and not in semiotics, etc., which makes my old head hurt these days!
You also make an assumption, again, one symptomatic of an attachment/bias (I do not mean disrespect in saying this, its just the most concise way of saying it...). You assume that a metaphor/symbol, in order to convey knowledge to the "brain," must do so in thought-constructs, which we then use to talk to each other in sentences. Yes, that is knowledge too. But I have a question: when you are not think-ing, who/what are you? Do you disappear when you are not-thinking? If not, then the silence between thought-constructs, like the silence between notes, must be prior to that construct. And, if prior, then actually its ground.
When you are deeply listening to the music, and the attachment to cognitive/objective grasping and control has faded into an open silent ground, do you cease perceiving meaning in the music-constructs greeting you from your stereo?
I would love to take credit for the Geese metaphor, but it was written many centuries ago by someone who knew more than me and is, in fact, not a metaphor - that is another assumption. That is part of its trap, for the mind that grasps to see its knowledge in terms of only thought-constructs (and even though, illogically, that same mind experiences musical meaning from a symmetry of consciousness that is absent of thought). It is actually a koan, meant to produce silence in the mind. How? Because the harder your thinking mind tries to wring its meaning through cognicizing, the more cognitive turmoil it catalyzes. It is a letting-go exercise, or a putting-down exercise, however you want to shake that rattle.
When you stop shaking the cognitive-attached rattle, what can you *see*? If you can logically concede that a knowledge may exist that integrates all cognitive knowledge while at once transcending it, are you not, as minds on a knowledge search, at least obligated to be open to that possibility?
But to the cognicizing mind, attached to the mirror, this feels like a death, with concurrent recoil.
The recoil is from the possibility of a deeper symmetry of perceptive consciousness, one that is equally all of our potential.
As I said, argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they are yours (another stolen quote).
Now, I have to go clean out the gutters. Wish me luck... |
Hello Ralph. Yes, thought is necessarily dualistic and temporally bounded, but I truly believe that there is correspondence between your designing mind and the mind that listens, and I think it can be more than a simulcrum of your original intent, or vision. I know this in your case because I have conducted the empiric injunctive of listening to your preamps. Their musical-ity (defined here as the ability to catalyze the mind to deeper symmetries of perception of meaning), I would kindly submit, is not a random occurence. The MP-1 is one of my favorites, for many reasons; some of them to be explained in words, some of them ineffable.
True, from a mechanical perspective, the creation of technology, or tools, is nothing more that the manipulation of matter into various forms, and it is certainly a tough row to hoe to embue the creative mind within that material creation...and yet, you keep on.
Funny how that happens...
M- |
Dgarr. Thank you for your response. This is, of course, the problem when we try to bound ourselves in literary terms; as in, the linguistic, academic regression that has occurred over the few last decades.
On this literary bug up our brain: Using the thinking mind to dissect metaphor/symbol/sign, etc. can certainly yield interesting sights and can point in some directions, as it has. But considering the moribund state of philosophy as a discipline, much less a search path, I think what we might actually might have been learning lately, collectively, is that this deconstruction is attempting to tell us to have the courage and creativity to move on to the next little road.
Of course, it does make for lots of nice, little published journal articles... ;0)
Lewn, nice post. But, you know, you can know. Your "mysterious" is not as far away from your waking world as you might, well, think.
Atmasph: I glanced at your post again, really like it. The intent thing is interesting. Heidegger looked at a painting of some old shoes by Van Gogh and was sure it was a proletariat-tinged in meaning, but Vincent's letters (to his brother Theo, I can't quit remember) show that it his intent was something else.
When I look at a painting, I first see its composition, the brushstrokes. This is when my cognitive processes are most engaged and I see its meaning in more objective terms. This is the same that we do with our stereos; we look for detail and value the objective when we first sit down (and which is the level that produces our audio language). As we sit and listen and our thinking mind calms its waters - as our waking day, prey-predator oscillating attachment to cognitive control fades - we experience the musical meaning from a deeper, but not separate, symmetry. And still, deeper, as the thought currents become relatively still, from another.
Atmasph, a submission for your consideration: perhaps Heidegger got it objectively wrong on the meaning at the shallower levels of perception, but, perhaps, the meaning at the deeper levels was wholly translated to him? When you create a preamp-tool-art, perhaps the objective intents that you envision are never quite translated in just the way you saw them, but perhaps the ineffable that you embue in that matter/energy contrivance does become more wholly translated. Perhaps, the deeper you go in perception, the more of meaning is translated? Of course, the thinking mind doesn't like this idea. I mean, the sum structure of your ideas about the world, the egoic structure, wants to be everything, right?
Atmasph, I would submit that the experience that makes your preamps like the Van Gogh painting is the meaning that is more wholly translated by it (not to consciousness, but in an event with it) at the deeper symmetries. Maybe this is why people want it but can't say exactly why.
Goldenguy: yes, you have a point...but its a big sandbox.
M- |
Nandric, thank you for your response. Yes, I saw you out there. That's why I threw the "regression" in there, on the water. I didn't know it would be you, but you are the smartest at the academic lingusitic stuff, so I figured it wouldn't be long. :0)
Yes, I agree, science and mathematics are their own languages too. And, yes, writing and mathematical languages have different referent rules, etc., but that does not mean that they are not still both bounded by the dualistic operation of thought construction.
Deconstruction is an interest in dicing up things. As far as it goes, such dicing up interests is a good thing, as I think I said, but there has been a prolonged over-reliance/attachment that has led to a stagnation. Maybe a little reintegration is needed in our stew. Or maybe, just maybe, a search for the ground of these cognitive constructions (I mean, we've looked everywhere else, right?).
And here's the new flash: Change does not evolutionarily favor no-change mind!
Yes, Nandric, there is a relative language issue between us, but, you know, we are on the same "planet" because we are both HERE NOW. Do you *see* this/me?
On Heidegger: I did not put him in with the regression stuff, purposely; he's in a lower paragraph on the art stuff that was meant primarily for Atmasph. Although, since we are there, did he ever really see what was below the signs and symbols? The cognitively attached mind defines the absence of things - matter-things, thought-things, sign-things, symbol-things, etc. - as a No-thing-ness.
Nandric, again, the same question, no textbooks: what/who are you when you are not thinking? Does it feel like a No-thing-ness place to you?
The same question: what existed before the Big Bang?
A trick question: the "what" that existed before the Big Bang, where is it now? Is it still HERE, NOW?
On the progression on literary deconstruction - sure, the Bloomberg group is as fine as a place to start as any - but, didn't Wittgenstein change his mind later? Isn't there early Wittgenstein and later Wittgenstein?
Here's the koan: can you answer the Big Bang/Mind-beneath-thought questions above without reaching for more Wittgenstein...or Russell, or Popper, or Kuhn, or Freyerabend, or....whoever who is not-you.
When you saw the Early/Later Wittgenstein, did you inflexibly reach?
You said, "Litarature [sic] as art may treat about beauty, or what ever but
is not about the truth. "
Are you saying that the perception of beauty is not a perception of Truth?
Is that because you can not cognitively locate (or dice up) a Beauty-thing?
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflections,
The water has no mind to receive their images?
M- |
Nandric, thank you for both of your responses. I don't understand some of what you said - I assume it is just more category errors between us through different languages - but I can't quite understand what my mental eye is supposed to see in China, or what language games are in relation thereto. Please help, really.
BTW, when did "hints" not qualify as part of a discussion? Did you really think I would let go of my new bone so easily?
Yes, Wittgenstein is seen as a very smart fellow, well recognized. But, cognitive speed is not cognitive agility, or that agility fluidly accelerated by a seeing beyond it.
BTW, I do not *see" with only my mental eye.
Ahhh, and there it is: he thinks that he *sees* something that no one else does....(Stone the Witch! :0)
So, if you will not answer my no-mind questions, I will ask for you: What in the hell does this Asa think that he is see-ing, the bastard? What is this fluidity-to-cognition thing anyway?!
Derto, thank you again for your private tonearm advice. And also on your hopeful post above, which is far from your reactions on the vagaries of capitalism in the high end. Your observations about instinctual greed amplified by our micro-culture are, of course, accurate, but I still like this part of you. We can yell at the Wind - trust me, I've done more than my fair share of intellectual sword play - but, in the end, the most you can do is be a catalyst for change, for the Other (human-other, non-human other, earth-other). Its not up to only you (a catalyst assumes a nexus btween your mind and another's, as opposed to make-ing that other mind see, which ia a causal prey-predator relation). Tough thing to see for the cognitively-endowed, but there you have it...On the other hand, maybe that is what we are supposed to see with that power; realizing the experiential, evolutionary limits of that power.
Derto, posit: If you were "God" and you had someone as smart as you are, wouldn't you want his own smart-ness to show it the limits of itelf, and in that moment, point to something else?
Could be...
M- |
Nandric, you seem focused on your brain, al la the material (as you see, I too can speak in other languages, yet seemingly, only prepositionally so...).
I am not asking what is the state of your brain - its electro-chemical state - when you are not thinking. I asked what is the state of your consciousness, its nature, when you are not thinking?
Do you think that your brain - the material matter - is you, or definitively defines your consciousness?
Descartes: I think, therefore, I am. Well, at least I know this much Latin! If this is what you believe then tell me so, clearly.
I would note that many people who are attached to linguistic deconstruction also want that discipline to be a science - it makes them feel, I suppose, part of the post-modern materialist milieu. I would also note that these same types of minds define all consciousness as necessarliy emanating and bounded by the material, or the brain, because they are focused on looking for the truth only in the material, like the brain.
Saying that I persist, you mis-speak: I did not push you. I have only asked you one question. Again:
As you watch your own mind when it is not thinking, who are you, i.e. who is the watcher, that witness?
We know that you are not in a coma in this non-thinking waking state, so I assume your reference to dream states and coma was merely a jest.
What/who are you when you are not thinking? If you can not see a thought-thing, does this then feel like a No-thing-ness.
Psychology stuff? Yes, I know about that...
Answer, but not with BRAIN:
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflections,
The water has no mind to receive their images.
M- |
Derto: on the arm, you are right of course. But, my capitalist self just spent $500 on repair and $500 on NOS tubes and I'm fiscally groping like a fish out of water...so, of course, my addiction is looking for a nudge. On looking for opinion, I know, but I really do think that you guys have some great experience. Its always in context, but I think that I can see within that. On US/Eur: yes, well put. And, yes, I humbly apologize for the Confederate remnants of my American brethren. :0) Every empire that goes up must come down...
Nandric: on your "very interesting to know that sheeps are no objects." No that's funny!! I got a good laugh. Not at you, and I know you were being, uh, ironical (I'm here stealing material from the movie, "Good Will Hunting"), but it was funny nonetheless. But you gotts know, when someone can't tell that I'm not talking about Cartesianism when I'm talkng about trans-cognitive perception, I have to make sure on these things.
Audiofeil: oh yea, much worse than that! Newhart - perfect choice.
M- |
Nandric: yes, I know that you are a scientific materialist...that's OK too.
When I got up this morning I thought about saying to you that you should just ignore my last post, because I did not want to push you. I wish that I'd had that time - at the last minute I had to go to work - because I regret that you have chosen to respond to me by saying that I lack the needed knowledge to discuss these things with you, and chose to pick up your math-language sword. I actually wish that I could meet you, and Derto, and...I suspect that our words would vanish, into community. At least, that is my hope.
Lew, I can tell that your statements to me on the brain are genuinely tied to your personal experience. No, I have not expierienced that particular, deep pain (I did have lung cancer when I was 28 and lost a piston, but watching the pain in a loved one is certainly more difficult). So, I understand the empathic force within your statement...
I will try to tread lightly in my response. If one assumes that thought and its conscious ground emanate from the brain (the material is the primary causal ground), then it is common that that same mind, when confronted with a possibility that matter is not primary, tends to then cascade into a conclusion that that possibility necessarily implies that the matter does not exist (i.e. your instruction to me that observing the material detereoration of the brain-thing proves that the brain-matter exists, which I agree that it does).
But I did not say that the possibility of trans-cognitive perception, or the state of no-thought mind, implied that the brain matter did not exist. It is not an either/or situation.
There are a few possibilities, I suppose.
There is the possibility that consciousness exists as the causal ground of brain-matter, integrally tied, with that matter as a nexus. Or - causality turned around - that there is the possibility that the brain is the material, causal animator of thought/consciousness, still integrally tied in operation.
I had a theory on it once, that was both and neither of the above, but it is not something I can prove to anyone and it just seems to whip up the pitch forks these days (from the feudal hamlet at the base of the mountain...). And, to be honest, that just wears me out. Basically, once you know what the answer is, you sorta lose the desire to think about it too much more. Or, it could be that I just got too old!! (ask me when I'm dead...:0).
Which brings me to this: its been fun, really. I saw some brilliant people here and wanted to meet them, thats about all. And I truly feel positive towards everyone - yes, Nandric, you too! But I think that everyone has had their fair say, so let's put it down, bow to each other, and promise to meet later.
So, now, will you help me?
I asked Derto, and he was kind in his candid opinions, which have helped me, but I would also like the opinions of Nandric, Raul, Syntax (you are out there, right?) and the others, who know a lot more about tonearms than me.
I have a Graham 2.0 on a TNT4 with a Cardas Heart cartridge. I know, not up to many of your rigs and a bit dated in that context, but I do have the opportunity to upgrade to a Phantom II at a very nice price and would be intersted in all of your opinions. Some have said that there is not much difference, others love the new MkII arm. My arm is rewired with Discovery copper wire (done by the first owner) and I've always thought that, notwithstanding the copper, I was still working against a certain tendancy towards harmonic thinness in the 2.0, so wonder what you all think.
I realize that I have done my fair share of thread hi-jacking here, and this Graham thing is not the Talea topic, but a quick comment would be great.
M- |
Yes, programming...
But I don't see sheep as objects, they are not rock-things; love me, love my sheep, love the Earth...most of my final interests, before I quit reading, were in radical ecology and the co-evolution between human and non-human consciousness. BTW, I did my post-doc graduate work at LSE - a bastion of Marxism, or so it believes of itself, at least back then (before the City took over...) - so I'm not sure how far the Euro-centric assumptions go. One has to be careful about those things. Aristotle might have cautioned on this (if he could ever stop categorizing on his way towards looking for essenses; like a mouse running through the holes in the cheese looking for the cheese.).
Nandric, I'm curious. What area of physics do/did you work in? You mention particle/wave physics, so I thought maybe there. Cosmology too? BTW, have you guys found that graviton yet? :0)
And, hey, what about my Graham? Cough it up!
M- |
Hey Ralph, did you see that nice example of your MP-1 that listed yesterday at $7500? Gone now, but I have to tell you if I wasn't hopelessly in love with my own pre I would have jumped at that. Matched witn that LAMM 1.1 hybrid monos that just listed and for @$15K combined you'd have one nice rig (I know, but OTLS have too many fire-bottles for me...this is no comment on tube reliability, just my trauma peering out from a Jadis Defy experience years ago). |
