Higher ground

“The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness
are without end.” ~ Alex Grey

 

This leaves us with four different conceptions of existence, within any or all of which some entity may be understood to be. We can see how some entity may be understood to exist in several of these simultaneously; the entities, while distinct, can be linked to one another but can also exist independently. The entities in the objective world all inter-relate with one another: they all exist within the same objective world, at least as far as we can tell. In the same way, our subjective world consists of entities which coexist and correlate within that unique subjective world rather than within a range of them. Intersubjective entities relate in a more complex way, insofar as the unique understanding of the intersubjective symbol within each subjective observer's Cartesian theater informs both the unique understanding of other subjective observers and also the intersubjective meaning attached to the symbol itself - but again these intersubjective entities coexist with one another on the same 'level' as it were. Ideals, similarly, exist on their own 'level' - and yet we have already stated, and can easily say in everyday experience, that entities existing severally on discrete levels relate to one another. These metarelations between things that exist in different senses can be seen as existing in some larger dimension, in the same way as a succession of two-dimensional images can be layered over one another in a third dimension to become a richer and truer whole, and it is this dimension of existence, distinct from the first four, that we call the transcendental. The metarelations of transcendental reality are theoretically perceptible in the same way as the simple relations of subjective reality, and the process of metaperception in this fashion is the subject of the koan I quoted back at the beginning.

Now you have been given access to a somewhat fuller expression of the seemingly simple expression 'I can only be,' and a somewhat fuller elaboration within that context of the opening koan, I have reached a point at which this narrative can pause. If you are still confused, rest assured that this is because I still haven't begun to properly express myself yet. Do not make the mistake of reading into that refrain any sort of promise that 'proper expression' will ever be forthcoming; but strive for the faith that sustains me - the faith that any expression will, in the fullness of its flowering, become sufficiently proper that it achieves some measure of intersubjective potential.

Feel free to share your reactions to this. Let's make some Art.

Bridge to nowhere

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion
that it has taken place.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

 

A word is a representation. Our language has syntax and grammar, and a lexicon of defined words which are themselves ordered arrangements of representative letters; this is a very flexible representative construct, but we can more generally identify a class of entities which exist not only as things-in-themselves but also as representations of other things. These symbols may exist subjectively or objectively, but they are translatable from the subjective to the objective realms and back again. They therefore have the capacity to transcend subjectivity, to communicate the subjective world of one mind-artist to that of another mind-observer. They are intersubjective.

What I am writing here, with these words, is an expression of my subjective world. Every word I use has an objective existence as pixels on a screen, and you can observe them with your eye; but every word you read and understand generates within your Cartesian theater some subjective entity, and the arrangement of all of the words allows you the freedom to arrange your own subjective version of the world I'm expressing. Your world may not be the same as mine - indeed, I'm about to argue below that it cannot be, and we'll later develop that argument into a powerful teleological principle that I call parasimplicity - but it exists for you the way mine exists for me, and the words we're sharing now are the bridge between those worlds. Intersubjectivity expresses the connection between two subjective realms, and makes explicit the relation between Artist and Observer alluded to before. In this formulation, communication is literally an Art.

The expression that "communication is an art," in ordinary parlance, connotes a certain degree of skill incumbent upon us when we intend to share some aspect of our subjective reality with some other objective being. It draws our attention to the real risk that what we convey when we produce some intersubjective expression is not, after all, what we intended to convey. The old parlor game "Chinese Whispers" demonstrates how this risk arises at both ends of the communicating 'bridge' - indeed, the more people there are intersubjectively sharing an idea, the greater this cumulative risk becomes.

We can posit a maximum number of observers who can effectively share an idea without corrupting it for at least one of the group, but for right now let's leave that to one side - another unconsidered trifle, so to speak. Let's instead consider what is going on when we establish the intersubjective connection: when, for example, you read something I have written.

As through a glass, darkly

“The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until
I knew it as such without a single doubt” ~ Rene Descartes

 

We begin, then, at the unsatisfactory base camp established for us by the arch-skeptic Rene Descartes; we begin within our minds. Descartes uneasily proclaimed a link between the world-within and the world-without, with his Cogito. He was at least as aware as any of his critics, either at the time or coming after, of the problem of committing a petitio principii - but the Cogito was the best he could do within the empirical frame he had available to him. We cannot presume to place ourselves above Descartes, who is justly lionized as one of the more important thinkers of Western philosophy; but we can tentatively observe that we have more frames available to us, and the benefit of access not only to the oeuvre of Descartes but to that of many other great minds, too. Korzybski says we are time-binding, and happily he is sufficiently correct that we can rely on him to say so rather than having to appreciate it independently.

One of the more trivial bequeathals of Descartes' thought is the concept of the Cartesian theater. This is a metaphor or model for what we might poetically term the "mind's eye," and describes the milieu for those entities that occupy our minds - all the things that I have communicated to you and that you have read awoke such entities in your mind, and all of those things existed in the same subjective sense. Subjective being has the character of arising endogenously within our minds - it is real to us, but is not directly accessible to anybody but us. Indeed, it is only directly accessible to ourselves insofar as we understand ourselves to be entities within the Cartesian theater - that is to say, insofar as we are possessed of self-awareness. All subjectively real things are things of which self-aware beings have awareness.

We could assert that there are subjectively real things of which we are not, or cannot be, subjectively aware; but that would invoke entities with which nobody could interact, and Occam's Razor tells us we need not involve such entities in our models. More importantly, we understand enough about these subjective entities that we can approximately measure their impact on us, and as a result we can advance the scientific hypothesis that subjective entities arise in the process of developing awareness of them. Thus, a subjective entity is a 'made thing' in a sense analogous to the Art we discussed earlier, and we as rational beings thereby become 'Artists of the mind.' The Art, in this instance, comes into existence only when we are aware of it, and this is an aspect of the reason why I chose to define Art to necessarily involve an Observer. We are aware of subjective entities as being the manifestations of a conscious and self-aware experiencing of the world, and in this sense we-qua-Observers intuit the agency of we-qua-Artists in the construction of that experience.

The idea that we could experience the world without either consciousness or self-awareness is a very hard one for us to grasp, because it is an idea that is from first principles not appreciable as a subjective entity. It is in this sense of a subjectively real existence that Bishop Berkeley intoned: Esse est percipi. We'll not follow Bishop Berkeley all the way back up the causal chain to the original Unobserved Observer, partly because that would be too lengthy a digression and partly because the notion of subjective existence we're discussing here is only a beginning.

Ars gratia artis

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth”
~ Pablo Picasso

 

While I'm still being pretentious, let me talk a moment about what I think it means for art to be made. One can, with only a little exercise of the imagination, picture a rock formation which is a perfect or near-perfect analogue of some abstract sculpture - perhaps by Henry Moore - and then pose oneself the question: which of these is Art? We can skirt Paley and assume that the rock formation is not a 'made thing' in the sense of being the product of willed agency; we might then conclude that the sculpture is Art, while the rock formation is not, because of the artist. From that point, we can then, with only a very tiny further exertion of our imagination, conceive of a grilled-cheese sandwich, likewise made by the willed agency of that same Henry Moore, and assert that this would not be Art. This assertion would not necessarily invalidate our thesis; we could evolve it slightly to suggest that what makes an artwork is the willed intention of the artist to make Art. This concept achieves its apotheosis in the artist who makes Art simply by declaring of something that pre-existed that it has become Art - a clarifying elaboration of this concept actually won a Turner Prize for the artist Simon Starling a few years back, and will again be something to which we return (assuming, as I must no less than I assume your existence reading this in the metanow, that you are still with me when Starling reappears in this narrative). We could make different assertions concerning rock and sculpture and sandwich - we could imagine an aesthetic in which only the sandwich were Art, or in which none of these things were Art - and there might indeed be some profit in following these alternative aesthetics to their conclusion (and you can find counterparts to Starling for any of them, from Chris Ofili to Tracey Emin to Andres Serrano). But I will advance here, without at this point providing anything substantive by way of justification, the argument that Art is made by the intuition of the Artist in the eye of the Observer.

To really elaborate on that it's necessary to return to an earlier, and similarly unsupported, argument: I can only be, I said, without troubling to define any of those terms. I'm now going to embark on one of the more foolhardy quests available to the philosopher, and examine what I understand being to ... be. In doing so, I make no presumption of authority, nor even of adequacy to the task. I simply intend to express, to my own satisfaction and with my own nebulous appreciation of the broader form of my expression as a whole, what it may be to be a being: in what senses some entity may be understood to be.