Russell's Lament, Psychsem Consolation
Russell’s Lament, Psychosemiotic Consolation
“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origins, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collusions of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all their devotion, all their inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and that the whole temple of Man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins –all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foudnaiton of unyielding despasir, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be built.” Bertrand Russell
Despite have been raised in the church, and absorbing its spirit into cellular habits if anyone could have, it never occurred to me, in studying Russell’s technical philosophy, to challenge this assessment of the human situation. I should have expected it to be different? THAT would take a lot of ego, which the study of philosophy assumes one checks at the door. His weltaunschuung seemed not only essentially ‘modern,’ but incontrovertible.
This was a tough-minded era, when it came to what was assumed about reality. Where logical positivism (‘the meaning of a proposition is its verification’) interacted with the causal theory of perception (‘verification is by consciousness of sense qualities’), out popped the sense-datum theory of the external world. Roughly: what we know about the reality of the external world is based on and metaphysically reducible to relations between brain-events extrapolated for purposes of communication into universes of discourse under sign-use. Signs and the signified: both inner, as products of previous neuro-anatomical discharges (“cathexis” – Freud); both stratified under Text/token higher-lower layers, or levels of organization. Physical sciences have constructed descriptions of the way the universe is laid out in space, mapping the same skies and cosmic orbits visible now as recorded millennia ago. Biological sciences have constructed descriptions of the way organisms originate and develop in time, mapping the same routes of DNA-protein molecule-cell replication to produce and maintain societies (origin of morphic field concepts). Reproductive sciences have constructed descriptions of the process of sexual arousal leading to copulation and the orgasm reflex, which is the highest point of cathexis of libido accompanied, of course, by discharge of the greatest quantity of accumulated intense excitement in currents of pleasure. (Reich) These three levels of psychosemiotic processing (S*3 = total body sensation; S*2 =total quality manifold of waking conscious moment; S*1 = totality of neuro-anatomical arousal, peripheral and inner, passing over into conscious content), together provide as much material as anyone would have the right to expect this life to provide. And these are only the lower triad, the first three dimensions of completing totality shared by all persons. All this goes to show that out of this tough-minded era, when it came to knowledge of reality, there grew up a tree of knowledge inside, as it were. The swing-point was Kant’s reduction of apace and time as transcendent categories, as containing totalities of conscious content under sign-use, to transcendental ones: not referred to as external, but presupposed by all referencing, as internal morphic fields (although the distinction what is external and what is internal collapses in morphic field theory, in the end).
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Deconstruction of “Intelligent Design” to go with sense-data
Analysis of motives of users of this phrase in today’s political context, as a token onto which teaching about the origin of the species and the abortion issues are attached as text.
Those who speak of “intelligent design” for the universal totality want to refer to something ‘beyond’, but not necessarily incompatible with the reality of Russell’s lament.
1. At the level of common cosmic totality (S*7), they want to see it completed as Person completes the body, designed for the individual to function. They want “God”, the completion of all totalities, therefore necessarily of what is personal in humans. “Design” without a “Designer” would be compatible with Cartesian deux ex machina, deism (cf. Jeffereson again), the human soul as a ghost in the machine.
2. At the level of totality of sign-uses (S*6) they want the unity of a synthertic apriori basis of universal field theory of all individuals. (“God” is the self-created creator; whatever else is created and dependent. His thoughts are the forms of their materiality in space-time-gravity – Aristotle)
3. At the level of ego-consciousness (S*5), they want an inner umbilicus to the nurturing phantom placental consciousness: renewal of valor, strength and will-to-be by the return to the unborn state and battling the strangling poisonous placenta to be born, again. “God” is the completing totality of the perpetual need of rebirth and realignment of the lower and higher triads. S*5 is the consciousness that accepts the libido/eros quotient generated in the organism from below, manifesting at S*3, and sublimates a portion of it into libido/agape.
4. At the level of the totality of common human conscience/consciousness (S*4), they want an objective, moral judge (Father, by Archetype). Also, One who acts providentially to bring about His Plan of salvation on earth devised from eternity for His children. How would humanity be helped by the existence of intelligent design if noone of them could figure out what the designed was? They want God as a Providence, and a prophet to speak the Word.
5. At the level of the totality of full bodied experience (S*3), they want a spiritual completion of the totality orgasmic reflex response: an ejaculatory reward for withholding love entirely from things of the lower triad in order to devote it to things of the upper triad (S*7,6,5). This totality is social through the uses of signs communication about sexual matters. They want to see that Plan in history, now.
6. At the level of totality of phenomenal experience (S*2), they want to see Him (without being seen). “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord ..” the song says. “Glory, glory hallulja!” sings another. “And the glory of the Lord shone around and about them.” “The light of the world is Jesus.” “Come to the light, ‘tis shining for thee; sweetly the light has dawned upon me.” These intimate portals in the transcendental unity of apperception, opening onto the 5th dimension in Tokenspace.
7. At the level of totality of neuro-anatomical processes which pass immediately over into elements affecting conscious content under sign-use (S*1), they want dreams, and visions, to be creditable to God (or his Son, or Holy Spirit). This, of course, is one of mankind’s earliest beliefs: people – some, at any rate – have experiences they wish to credit with originating from what they call “God”, which closes the loop from cosmic to bio-psychic (quasi-comic) “creator”. This typically happens in altered states of consciousness, as in flashbacks, hallucinogenic field-states (Enoch’s transport, etc.) Carl Jung made a great point of hyper-cathectic states (“peak experiences”) as transformative, if borderline psychotic. Shamann, gurus, drug adepts and deadheads share loop secrets that change people with one another.
A vignette that confirms this last claim, that those who are pushing the Intelligent Design agenda are wanting to establish a linguistic processing loop between God (the forces of completing conscious and unconscious totality) and Man (experiences of certain ones). It comes from a CNN interview with some professor from Georgetown University who was asked to commenting on the subject of intelligent design as a matter of faith vrs. science.
. “You know?”, he went…”Lets face it. Science isn’t wired to be able to perceive Intelligent Design.”
The exact wording may have been slightly different, but the intent was clear. It was to ‘bracket off’, in U.’s sense, the entire universe of discourse subsumed under “science”, as exclusionarily self-contained, blocked off or ‘programmed not to compute’ information about the Big Picture. The trick he turns here is grammatical: scientists, as persons, are surely as bright, intuitive, sensitive, responsive to possible cosmic, if not occult influences, as good Christian or other people who believe in Intelligent Design. Some of the best (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton) have been outstanding in these respects. Thus, whatever a true believer in intelligent design migh pick up on, by special ‘wiring’ can be checked out by science. Unless it is in principle incommunicable -- in which case it has no credibility ex hypothesi. .
This assumes the claimed knowledge falls under the scope of repeatable experiment. A big If. One-time, private audience messages would be the historically unique kind. Interpretations of reality changing so rapidly it is impossible to keep up or go back.
What the professor edges toward, with his scientifically unwired intelligent design followers is a priesthood of believers -- who will get together as many facts as needed to interpret the ever-seething, dynamic group process as part of it, from inside of what descriptive scientific accounts can give only externally, one case at a time. The mode of interpretation and interaction is through absolutized ideologicals (see blog of this title elsewhere) Those who control the upper triad processes can always spin these in wedg-uses to generate reality- tokens that override those of “science”, because they predicate on totalities in a Time of which no record exists except in sign-use itself. (Whose tokens instantly terminate after showing their text) This tacit priest hood of believers are those intent on politicizing all sign-uses, thus all experience, to bring it under control of God-sanctioned discourse It does this by controlling the mechanisms of social sublimation; this bring the topic back to the university. These are those for whom reality is/must be identical with what they communicate (about; predicate on, as psychosemiotic totalities.)
“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origins, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collusions of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all their devotion, all their inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and that the whole temple of Man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins –all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foudnaiton of unyielding despasir, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be built.” Bertrand Russell
Despite have been raised in the church, and absorbing its spirit into cellular habits if anyone could have, it never occurred to me, in studying Russell’s technical philosophy, to challenge this assessment of the human situation. I should have expected it to be different? THAT would take a lot of ego, which the study of philosophy assumes one checks at the door. His weltaunschuung seemed not only essentially ‘modern,’ but incontrovertible.
This was a tough-minded era, when it came to what was assumed about reality. Where logical positivism (‘the meaning of a proposition is its verification’) interacted with the causal theory of perception (‘verification is by consciousness of sense qualities’), out popped the sense-datum theory of the external world. Roughly: what we know about the reality of the external world is based on and metaphysically reducible to relations between brain-events extrapolated for purposes of communication into universes of discourse under sign-use. Signs and the signified: both inner, as products of previous neuro-anatomical discharges (“cathexis” – Freud); both stratified under Text/token higher-lower layers, or levels of organization. Physical sciences have constructed descriptions of the way the universe is laid out in space, mapping the same skies and cosmic orbits visible now as recorded millennia ago. Biological sciences have constructed descriptions of the way organisms originate and develop in time, mapping the same routes of DNA-protein molecule-cell replication to produce and maintain societies (origin of morphic field concepts). Reproductive sciences have constructed descriptions of the process of sexual arousal leading to copulation and the orgasm reflex, which is the highest point of cathexis of libido accompanied, of course, by discharge of the greatest quantity of accumulated intense excitement in currents of pleasure. (Reich) These three levels of psychosemiotic processing (S*3 = total body sensation; S*2 =total quality manifold of waking conscious moment; S*1 = totality of neuro-anatomical arousal, peripheral and inner, passing over into conscious content), together provide as much material as anyone would have the right to expect this life to provide. And these are only the lower triad, the first three dimensions of completing totality shared by all persons. All this goes to show that out of this tough-minded era, when it came to knowledge of reality, there grew up a tree of knowledge inside, as it were. The swing-point was Kant’s reduction of apace and time as transcendent categories, as containing totalities of conscious content under sign-use, to transcendental ones: not referred to as external, but presupposed by all referencing, as internal morphic fields (although the distinction what is external and what is internal collapses in morphic field theory, in the end).
******/
Deconstruction of “Intelligent Design” to go with sense-data
Analysis of motives of users of this phrase in today’s political context, as a token onto which teaching about the origin of the species and the abortion issues are attached as text.
Those who speak of “intelligent design” for the universal totality want to refer to something ‘beyond’, but not necessarily incompatible with the reality of Russell’s lament.
1. At the level of common cosmic totality (S*7), they want to see it completed as Person completes the body, designed for the individual to function. They want “God”, the completion of all totalities, therefore necessarily of what is personal in humans. “Design” without a “Designer” would be compatible with Cartesian deux ex machina, deism (cf. Jeffereson again), the human soul as a ghost in the machine.
2. At the level of totality of sign-uses (S*6) they want the unity of a synthertic apriori basis of universal field theory of all individuals. (“God” is the self-created creator; whatever else is created and dependent. His thoughts are the forms of their materiality in space-time-gravity – Aristotle)
3. At the level of ego-consciousness (S*5), they want an inner umbilicus to the nurturing phantom placental consciousness: renewal of valor, strength and will-to-be by the return to the unborn state and battling the strangling poisonous placenta to be born, again. “God” is the completing totality of the perpetual need of rebirth and realignment of the lower and higher triads. S*5 is the consciousness that accepts the libido/eros quotient generated in the organism from below, manifesting at S*3, and sublimates a portion of it into libido/agape.
4. At the level of the totality of common human conscience/consciousness (S*4), they want an objective, moral judge (Father, by Archetype). Also, One who acts providentially to bring about His Plan of salvation on earth devised from eternity for His children. How would humanity be helped by the existence of intelligent design if noone of them could figure out what the designed was? They want God as a Providence, and a prophet to speak the Word.
5. At the level of the totality of full bodied experience (S*3), they want a spiritual completion of the totality orgasmic reflex response: an ejaculatory reward for withholding love entirely from things of the lower triad in order to devote it to things of the upper triad (S*7,6,5). This totality is social through the uses of signs communication about sexual matters. They want to see that Plan in history, now.
6. At the level of totality of phenomenal experience (S*2), they want to see Him (without being seen). “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord ..” the song says. “Glory, glory hallulja!” sings another. “And the glory of the Lord shone around and about them.” “The light of the world is Jesus.” “Come to the light, ‘tis shining for thee; sweetly the light has dawned upon me.” These intimate portals in the transcendental unity of apperception, opening onto the 5th dimension in Tokenspace.
7. At the level of totality of neuro-anatomical processes which pass immediately over into elements affecting conscious content under sign-use (S*1), they want dreams, and visions, to be creditable to God (or his Son, or Holy Spirit). This, of course, is one of mankind’s earliest beliefs: people – some, at any rate – have experiences they wish to credit with originating from what they call “God”, which closes the loop from cosmic to bio-psychic (quasi-comic) “creator”. This typically happens in altered states of consciousness, as in flashbacks, hallucinogenic field-states (Enoch’s transport, etc.) Carl Jung made a great point of hyper-cathectic states (“peak experiences”) as transformative, if borderline psychotic. Shamann, gurus, drug adepts and deadheads share loop secrets that change people with one another.
A vignette that confirms this last claim, that those who are pushing the Intelligent Design agenda are wanting to establish a linguistic processing loop between God (the forces of completing conscious and unconscious totality) and Man (experiences of certain ones). It comes from a CNN interview with some professor from Georgetown University who was asked to commenting on the subject of intelligent design as a matter of faith vrs. science.
. “You know?”, he went…”Lets face it. Science isn’t wired to be able to perceive Intelligent Design.”
The exact wording may have been slightly different, but the intent was clear. It was to ‘bracket off’, in U.’s sense, the entire universe of discourse subsumed under “science”, as exclusionarily self-contained, blocked off or ‘programmed not to compute’ information about the Big Picture. The trick he turns here is grammatical: scientists, as persons, are surely as bright, intuitive, sensitive, responsive to possible cosmic, if not occult influences, as good Christian or other people who believe in Intelligent Design. Some of the best (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton) have been outstanding in these respects. Thus, whatever a true believer in intelligent design migh pick up on, by special ‘wiring’ can be checked out by science. Unless it is in principle incommunicable -- in which case it has no credibility ex hypothesi. .
This assumes the claimed knowledge falls under the scope of repeatable experiment. A big If. One-time, private audience messages would be the historically unique kind. Interpretations of reality changing so rapidly it is impossible to keep up or go back.
What the professor edges toward, with his scientifically unwired intelligent design followers is a priesthood of believers -- who will get together as many facts as needed to interpret the ever-seething, dynamic group process as part of it, from inside of what descriptive scientific accounts can give only externally, one case at a time. The mode of interpretation and interaction is through absolutized ideologicals (see blog of this title elsewhere) Those who control the upper triad processes can always spin these in wedg-uses to generate reality- tokens that override those of “science”, because they predicate on totalities in a Time of which no record exists except in sign-use itself. (Whose tokens instantly terminate after showing their text) This tacit priest hood of believers are those intent on politicizing all sign-uses, thus all experience, to bring it under control of God-sanctioned discourse It does this by controlling the mechanisms of social sublimation; this bring the topic back to the university. These are those for whom reality is/must be identical with what they communicate (about; predicate on, as psychosemiotic totalities.)
posted by Sid Thomas | 3:22 PM
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