Facticity ?

Good post, G.H. When Nietzsche pronounced that God was dead, he was sounding the alarm for human independence. Because there was no longer an historical dependence on powers ecclesiastical man had to take responsibility for himself/herself, to grow up as I suggested in another post on nihilism. We are the measure of all things as we experience them. That is the foundation of humanism.

Of course. There is nothing arrogant about "man is the measure of all things" as suggested by Chumly and G.H. My italics were there to draw attention to the point that "things" are human constructs (The first level of measurement being "nominal" i.e. naming). This point, which is self - evident to some of us, appears to be the key sticking point for naive realists. Indeed the "arrogance" if any, lies with those who think a century or so of what we call "science" has confirmed the viability of "an independent reality". Maybe a crash course in social anthropology might be the only "lubricant" that can release them from their entrenchment !

Thanks Fresco

That is totally fair. I can understand the need for a self-evident view which is more accessible and therefore more pragmatic on the personal and social levels.
I do commune with a need for views which operate with greater precision on levels "above" and"below" that. I think this is also pragmatic, though indirectly so, through technology.
I feel like you are equating science with reductionism. I don't think that is entirely accurate, although science until very recently has been very reductionistic. I do not think the lesson to be learned from complexity and emergence is to consider the behaviors incomprehensible. I don't think Information Theory is properly classed as reductionist. Ecological philosopher Robert Ulanowicz agrees. This is because information theory allows for "tangled heirarchies". Higher level behaviors are not simply the product of lower level behaviors, rather the influence runs in both directions. This of course calls into question what "cause" means, but this does not make the system incomprehensible.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point....
http://people.biology.ufl.edu/ulan/pubs/INFOECOL.pdf

I am simply drawn to the ambiguity of experience both because it affords opportunities for creative interpretation and because it is how I see the world to be.
But more to the psychological point I made regarding cognitive style as, in part, the expression of personality structure I am drawn to the ambiguous character of experience because it is my nature to do so. Some people are drawn to more formal and orderly approaches because that is their nature. I do not criticize them for that, that would be like criticizing theoretical explanations simply because they operate with alien paradigms.
I see art as essentiallly extralogical in good part because of its relation to my entire mind, to less than conscious processes, few of which concern themselves with the excluded middle or consistency.
My preference in painting is for non-objective/non-representational images reflecting the same values that shape my attractions to serious music.
My preferred approaches in sociological analysis include the "thick" or multi-leveled interpretations championed by Cliffor Geertz, but that applies less to art because of my aesthetic emphasis on pre-reflective experience.

Jeesh... don't pull any punches on our account.

Fresco, wink or blink?

Perhaps my thoroughly entrenched mind is not up to par, however I do have some difficulty understanding pre-reflective experience as I think you mean to use the term.
My first reaction to the concept is that it is sensation, or perhaps pleasure (in the hedonistic sense). That which is pleasing to the "eye", rather than that which is pleasing to the "I".
Is this your understanding, or am I way off base?

No, you're not off base. I use "prereflection" in the sense of experience before it is cooked" by language and culture, while it is still "raw" (that would include hedonistic immediacy I suppose). It is the "choiceless awareness" (Krishnamurti) of meditative states of awareness. But it also characterizes all our experience as it happens, just before it falls under the grid of cultural processing.

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The claim is made in that reference that an information theoretic approach to the diversity of populations has generated working hypotheses about the progress of such diversity. But surely this begs the question of the definition of "diversity". Cynically, it seems to me that this may be another illustration of an attempt at a paradigmatic impetus which homes in on (= gets grants for) a socio-political issue of the day (ecology).

I suggest that such an approach needs to be contrasted with that of Maturana's "non informational" one since he is cited by Capra as being a key player in ecology issues. To some extent we are dealing with the politics of paradigms rather than their epistemological import.

Do you hold that all of non-meditative thought is the product of language in culture? I assume you mean by extension language and culture as it applied throughout the development of minds (evolutionarily) language as signalling (interactions), culture as environment (selection pressures included). Can this all be stripped away? If it could be, would there be anything left?


This is back from your penultimate post. I am a little stuck on it, because I can't tell what you are associating with the excluded middle.
Logic?
Conscious processes?
Mind?
Art?

My intent was not to present Ulanowicz as a refutation of specific ecological theories, but simply to demonstrate that your implied equivocation (analyzing brush strokes) of science with reductionism is not accurate. There are scientific paradigms with are non-reductionist. Information theory is one such paradigm.
Regarding socio-political value and academic economic incentives, I will have claim (non-willful) ignorance. Is the "issue of the day" ecology or environmentalism?
I will look into Maturana's suggested paradigms for ecological understanding.

I quite like the aprocriphal Zen poem entitled "The Cloud" which consisted of a blank piece of paper. Deconstruction might suggest that paper implied trees which could not exist without rain clouds, nor could the men who manufactured or shaped the paper....etc.

In short "All is reflected in All".

If you desire ease, forsake learning.
If you desire learning, forsake ease.
How can the man at his ease acquire knowledge,
And how can the earnest student enjoy ease?

I suggest that all thought is in good part the product of language. In zen meditation, for example, one sees how thought emerges from immediate extralinguistic phenonema. It is not a matter of choice, i.e., non-thinking zen mind vs. thinking ordinary mind. Indeed, zen mind = ordinary mind. If one wishes to understand how to meditate, one must eliminate all either-or postures. It is so much more subtle than dualism.

I think I understand what you are saying.

I do have a meditative practice, and a physical practice, not specifically in the zen tradition but in yoga (specifically tantra/vajrayana). I don't so much view my meditative practice as negating dualism, but rather transcending it. Dualism being an upaya toward trans-dualistic understanding.

When you speak of language, I think you mean something like human language or internal dialogue. I meant language in an even broader sense of distinction, and include with it all of the interactions which led to our physical presence in reality (evolution of life, societies, etc). I don't think that cerebral activity is possible without distinction. This is the condition that must be overcome in order to understand something beyond distinction.

I wonder if you are including thinking that does not exclude the middle as still being a form of dualism. There are dualistic ways of reaching that understanding (non-excluded middle). I think that in zen this is often demonstrated with paradox.

The problem I often see in zen is a difficulty in distinguishing "the lifting of the curtain" from negation of reality (nihilism, etc.) I think that having an ethical practice helps make that view (nihilism) less easy to slip into.

Yes, when I speak of language I refer largely to the process of distinguishing and categorizing the content of experience. In Dogen's approach "thinking" and "not-thinking" are basically the same, as compared to "without thinking", the prereflective state of immediate experience.
I agree that dualism is essential (as is the central duality of subject and object) to human survival and social functioning. But if one is to have a truly spiritual orientation to existence it must be with the capacity to transcend distinctions and categorizations (which it seems are inherent to the logical manipulation of the content of experience).