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Into Letters…Words…Language
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Month: March 2013
Or perhaps correspondence…(Asking after the Nature of Nobody, pt. 3)
from pt. 2:
It writes this as “my world,” or “the world that I in-habit.”
Or perhaps correspondence…
(Asking after the Nature of Nobody, pt. 3)
…is precisely what is occurring.
“Each biological life-form, by reason of its distinctive bodily constitution (its ‘biological heritage,’ as we might say), is suited only to certain parts and aspects of the vast physical universe. And when this ‘suitedness to’ takes the bodily form of cognitive organs, such as our own senses, or the often quite different sensory modalities discovered in other lifeforms, then those aspects and only those aspects of the physical environment which are proportioned to those modalities become ‘objectified,’ that is to say, made present not merely physically but cognitively as well…the difference between objects of experience and elements of sensation is determined primarily not by anything in the physical environment as such but by the relation or, rather, network and set of relations that obtains between whatever may be ‘in fact’ present physically in the surroundings and the cognitive constitution of the biological organism interacting with those surrounding here and now.”
-John Deely, Umwelt–
Given the apparent disjunction of its maps to the potential largesse and intricacy (unknowns) of the territory, it reconsiders.
It thinks it may be inextricably related to the territory. In no way accurately or exhaustively (in relation to the territory) yet constitutively via what kind of co-respondence pertains (in relation to the species of which it is an example).
In other words, by inter-relation to the territory, and by nature of its dynamic organismal systems of sensation-perception-cognition and communication (+ language – the capacity to model the above relational systems): it is I.
It co-evolves personhood. The capacity to refer to an I among Is. An individual personality among a We.
Map and territory, co-respondent. The map being a model of that correspondence and correlation. Therefore, of course it is idiosyncratic and fraught with misperceptions, disjunctions and erroneously organized interpretations and representations of the networked environments…yet the map = correspondence with the territory in species-specific experience.
Perhaps?
Correspondences of one to many and many to one, and to a very delimited aspect of the territory, but still constructed by real linkages (reciprocal relations and responses) to that “Territory.”
Bees’ links look different. If a lion were to speak we would not understand. Every organism its own relations to the territory, selecting and responding, sensing and processing various aspects of the territory into species-specific lifeworlds, but correlated and corresponding particular to their kind.
Or…our maps are our maps. Ever changing, adapting, responding to our environments and experiences, genuinely related to the territory, representations of our habits of being in the world (in-habit-ing it as humans).
I can’t lay claim to truth about the territory, but my maps derive from it and shape my forays within it, can be shared and examined, evaluated and adjusted with other mapmakers, and trusted as the experience of a peculiar entity of a particular species modeled in reciprocal relation to specific environs of the territory.
“The map is not the territory” but a model, a depiction, a fragment co-evolved in and with that territory, a specific kind of rendering and representation, and valuable for the explorer-species of the sign.
Disjunctive Cartography – Our Propensities, Asking after the Nature of Nobody, cont’d
“The map is not the territory. That’s an expression which means
the world does not match the picture in our heads”
-Lemony Snicket, All the Wrong Questions, vol. 1–
It thinks. It considers that it has not done with it. It reasons that I will know more tomorrow. Its hope of reading, of selecting and organizing, of patterning and arranging toward some partial whole, toward an item, an element, a concept or thought (any Other) that it might also become (or have been, an “I”).
In other words, it requires difference.
Yesterday I played soccer with my son, it concocts. I was the Other experiencing, moving, tripping-shouting-laughing – discretely – other than the ball or grassy ground, other than the leafy trees and wind, the boy (the one I called son), it was anOther yesterday, and therefore it may refer to that example of human-in-a-context (a surround of not-it) by a meaningful (adequately functional) pronoun (name-toward), namely “he” or “I.”
I gained definition by my surroundings, it conjures. Any object will do (it’s perceiving assorted matter and energy, its limbs rest on some as “desk,” the 10” fence as “books” and the process of sensing, transforming to perception as “time” and mediates “it” as separate-though-connected – of the same stuff (matter) but in motion and of a unique form (relating to) – and names its organized system “self,” “me,” “I”).
It meditates (categorizes, classifies, identifies, compares and contrasts) on these sensations/percpetions/affectations and wonders. “It was I,” it hears without sound – a confession aimed at a photo of a boy-child near against an aged man I knew as “grandpa.” I looked so different – of different cells and height and weight, blood pressure and vision, facial contours, bones, hair and skin – so very different (it looks at a reflection) – how is it the “same” (identical to) “I” it is now?
Or might be tomorrow – through an utterly unknowable future of events, weather, interactivities, sensations, affectations and cognitions. Will it be me tomorrow? It wonders how identity can withstand such difference – variance, change, even replacement and erasure – and still meaningfully or validly considered “same”?
It places its’ head on its’ wrists. It writes these words (is writing) in order to create (or craft) a recognizable trace, an effect, communally learned, socially agreed-upon marks that construct a momentary reflexivity its’ own existence. A sort of extrinsic, partial it, to feel like also an I, at a moment.
It in-scribes in a medium, borrowed from others – borrowed, acquired, manipulated, stolen – a kind of proof to it that it is, and is unique, separatively connected, yea, conjoined seamlessly, molecularly, and yet… distinguishable… therefore I-able. Referable. Nominal.
It senses discomfort in parts labeled (categorized, classified, i.e. generalized and lumped indiscriminately/arbitrarily or learned) “head” and “neck” and “shoulders.” It shuts its eyes. I slept well last night, that is, I woke refreshed, my discomforts (aches) diminished. It remembers I went to bed dry-eyed and suffering allergic responses to Springtime. It drinks coffee. It is not the same.
This is a portion of a map that does not represent the territory. There are, perhaps, moments – instances – in which I fit with my surround – but usually it is organizing a mapping conference of sensation, affect, percept and infinite inputs coupling to pre-formed acquired categories and classes, fuzzy generalizations to stencil lines and rivers, mounds and fissures with very little correspondence to the world.
It writes this as “my world,” or “the world that I in-habit.”
Set Screens
for Friday Fictioneers, March 15, 2013.
With age I come to see more clearly, through glaucoma and the cataracts. Each layer beamed away, burning holes in cloudy veils. Colors hardly remembered, bright edges that the world lends. All that glitters can’t be told. Even my hearing improves, as if long years of practice had taught me how to listen. The paper of my skin whispers pages’ sound. Dying’s process of deletion, dropping memories like scales. Surgery after surgical procedure – removing the lens, installing; expanding tubes, constricting; bypassing and shunting – internal edits increasing my awareness that I’ve no idea how deep my set screens go. I am yet to see this world, through the versions that I’ve filmed.
N Filbert 2013
Our Propensities
“identifying a function for dreams or pretend play or fiction doesn’t mean that we’ve identified the function”
-Jonathan Gottschall-
I am enjoying this book more than I expected. Often overview-type books of aspects of human phenomena leave me with a touch of “yeah, we all know that (i.e. we experience that), but tell us something new, give us opportunities to create knowledge from new data!” Gottschall’s book is a well-written tour (akin to the work of de Botton on aspects of human life) – representative of current knowledge, suggestive rather than pedantic, and fluidly engaging.
“Consider the following information:
Todd rushed to the store for flowers.
Greg walked her dog.
Sally stayed in bed all day.
Quick, what were you thinking?…
In the same way that your mind sees an abstract pattern and resolves it into a face, your imagination sees a pattern of events and resolves it into a story…studies show that if you give people random, unpatterned information, they have a very limited ability not to weave it into a story…the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t…it’s usual method is to fabricate the most confident and complete explanatory stories from the most ambiguous clues…the Sherlock Holmes in our brains job is to ‘reason backwards’ from what we can observe in the present and show what orderly series of causes led to particular effects…we will always rather fabulate a story than leave experience unexplained.”
And so on. In fact, the sentences he writes above are on-the-fly conjured random fact-statements unrelated. Most of us probably had already begun to fit it into something ‘meaningful to us’ before we finished the third one. Does this help you see how your view and perspective on reality – your ‘automatic’ or instinctual or deferral mode comprehension ALWAYS needs sorted out with CONTEXT and the empirical world? Our minds are amazing and unbelievable in their functions and operations (literally), factories of fictions based on ancient genetic messages qua homo sapien, empirical experiences from our own individual lifespans, and an untangleable web of socio-cultural input and in-formation. We’re fascinating…and utterly unreliable. Thus we have each other, and our senses and myths and science and all sorts of other-world perspectives to adjust and possibilize our own stories. Perhaps there are moments our thoughts align with facts, but those will be rare in our lives.
Taken in a context of Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking, John Canfield’s Becoming Human and Alan Singer’s The Self-Deceiving Muse, Gottschall’s delightful foray into the impulsivity of fiction-like brain behavior makes for a savory meal. I’m concocting stories about it even now (it’s sure).
Situating Language
“ultimately all the meaning of all words is derived from bodily experience”
-Bronislaw Malinowski-
(from The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages)
RESPOND
Midterms
3,111 words into a midterm exam…welcome breaks:
All my Words are Silent 