Bending The Divided Line
METAPHYSICAL CATEGORIES OF SIGN-USE ANALYSIS*
Bending The Divided Line:
A Reconstruction of Plato's Theory of Forms
Footnote to The Republic, Book VI
Glaucon
, I thought and the others thought that you gave us a fair measure of truth.
Socrates
But, my friend, I said, a measure of such things Which in any degree falls short of the whole truth is not fair measure; for nothing imperfect is the measure of anything.
....Gl..
....proceed.
Soc.
Yes, I said, but I must first come to an understanding with you, and remind you of what I have mentioned in the course of this discussion, and at many other times.
What?
The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many good, and so of other things which we describe and define; to all of them 'many' is applied.
True, he said.
And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term 'many' is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. "
**********
I propose the following hypothesis for transcribing Plato's text into psychosemiotic categories (reconstructing what it says in the metalanguage of sign-use.)
"the One (absolute) F" (Ex.: beauty, the good; let F stand for any predicate under discussion) is the textual unity of the WORD ("beauty", "the good") introduced into consciousness as IDEA. Essences are reified F's (unity of meaning assumed in each F object).
These are contents of consciousness Plato assigns to the invisible, intelligible upper segment of the divided line. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/mirror/classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.7.vi.html
Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images I mean, in the first place, shadows, and in the second place, reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the like: Do you understand?
...
You are aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and the figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their several branches of science; these are their hypotheses, which they and everybody are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign to give any account of them either to themselves or others; but they begin with them, and go on until they arrive at last, and in a consistent manner, at their conclusion?
Yes, he said, I know.
And do you not know also that although they make use of the visible forms and reason about them, they are thinking not of these, but of the ideals which they resemble; not of the figures which they draw, but of the absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on --the forms which they draw or make, and which have shadows and reflections in water of their own, are converted by them into images, but they are really seeking to behold the things themselves, which can only be seen with the eye of the mind?
****
As contents of consciousness, t
These contents are "wholly contained" in consciousness: non-extended, indivisible, seen with "the eye of the mind". Thoughts of mathematicians and geometers belong to the upper segment's lower part. IDEAS (as absolute) "in", or illustrated by their calculations and drawings, belong to the upper part of the upper segment. In the schema below, IDEAS are as it were folded from upper to left side, leaving The One, above, opposite The Many, below -- as if bending the divided line around on itself.
COMPLETING THE CIRCLE: Time, Memory and Materiality
In order for the Word to pass through The One, to become an Idea for Consciousness, a functional memory must be assumed. Under the assumption that consciousness is consciousness-in-a-body (embodied self-awareness), awareness of ideas requires the capacity to retain learned use of signs with their meanings. This role of memory is overlooked when, like Descartes, the Ideas on which real knowledge depends are "innate"; or "eternal", outside time, echoing Plato, Augustine. If Western science and "modernity" means anything at all in footnoting Plato, it would be here where empirical processing must be brought in tro account for what actually transpires. Tracing content of consciousness to the body completes the circle that traces the body to consciousness through ideas. The quite recent recovery of fetal origins of human experience, retained under birth-trama by most to varying degrees, powerfully motivating group behavior and psychohistory, confirms these intuitions of a 'supra-'conscious givenness associated with logical ideas. But also invite a return of naive projections of reified abstractions. This wedding of form and function in sign-use is The New Transcendentalism.
The lower segment of Plato's line encompasses what is visible (extended), and "shades and reflections" of what is truly real. This is also the realm of THE MANY, below, opposite The One above. The Many, relative to sign-use, are the several subjects of predictions, the objects in space and time referred to in communication. Words, themselves, as tokens, are a Many under the One of text.
This is the formal analogy of "many instances" (of man, animal, plant, celestial body, etc.) under a single term (F), illustrating a common essence when, as in genetic reproduction, there is an external process to match the sign-use (with memory) process. As text is to token, so is essence to object.
The Many are materially differentiated. Even those who deny the existence of matter are required to admit it is a vastly successful hypothesis. "Matter" is not just the polarity of "spirit" in Hegelian dialectic; that is the metaphysical idealist's way of reducing the lower segment of Plato's line to conscious content. It is "true", but only through itself, by consciousness taking back into itself what came out of itself in the modern era. As for the rest, there are the objective explanations: atomic-molecular theory of matter; chemical-cellular theory of organisms; the forces of graviy, electro-magnetics, etc. The doctrine and practice of Christian Science prove it is possible for people to live totally in their head, consciously reducing the body and everything perceived through it to "phenomena", or Berkeleyian "ideas". This expands the category of consciousness to its spatial material opposite. It is consciousness (mis-)using metaphysics to defend its Ideas as real (they exist transcendentally, not imminently (under the form of sensory intuition: Kant).
But if the reality of material causal processes is admitted, the admission goes directly over to physical-psychic processes involved in use of signs. This means: anatomical/nervous preparatory apparatus, especially centered in the central fornix-cortical brain interactions). This completes the circle of conscious sign-use from the token side (the many token-particulars of each word each have their cause).
These are the categories as logical/metaphysical opposites under Sign-use:
The One -- The Many
IDEA -- WORD
Consciousness -- Materiality
Essence -- Process
It becomes possible to show the upper segment in a counter-clockwise circular movement. when the opposites are displayed as criss-crossed in the octagon.
THE ONE
*consciousness essences
IDEAS -------------- WORDS:
neuro-psychic process materiality (the visible)
THE MANY
Bending The Divided Line:
A Reconstruction of Plato's Theory of Forms
Footnote to The Republic, Book VI
Glaucon
, I thought and the others thought that you gave us a fair measure of truth.
Socrates
But, my friend, I said, a measure of such things Which in any degree falls short of the whole truth is not fair measure; for nothing imperfect is the measure of anything.
....Gl..
....proceed.
Soc.
Yes, I said, but I must first come to an understanding with you, and remind you of what I have mentioned in the course of this discussion, and at many other times.
What?
The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many good, and so of other things which we describe and define; to all of them 'many' is applied.
True, he said.
And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term 'many' is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. "
**********
I propose the following hypothesis for transcribing Plato's text into psychosemiotic categories (reconstructing what it says in the metalanguage of sign-use.)
"the One (absolute) F" (Ex.: beauty, the good; let F stand for any predicate under discussion) is the textual unity of the WORD ("beauty", "the good") introduced into consciousness as IDEA. Essences are reified F's (unity of meaning assumed in each F object).
These are contents of consciousness Plato assigns to the invisible, intelligible upper segment of the divided line. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/mirror/classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.7.vi.html
Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images I mean, in the first place, shadows, and in the second place, reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the like: Do you understand?
...
You are aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and the figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their several branches of science; these are their hypotheses, which they and everybody are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign to give any account of them either to themselves or others; but they begin with them, and go on until they arrive at last, and in a consistent manner, at their conclusion?
Yes, he said, I know.
And do you not know also that although they make use of the visible forms and reason about them, they are thinking not of these, but of the ideals which they resemble; not of the figures which they draw, but of the absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on --the forms which they draw or make, and which have shadows and reflections in water of their own, are converted by them into images, but they are really seeking to behold the things themselves, which can only be seen with the eye of the mind?
****
As contents of consciousness, t
These contents are "wholly contained" in consciousness: non-extended, indivisible, seen with "the eye of the mind". Thoughts of mathematicians and geometers belong to the upper segment's lower part. IDEAS (as absolute) "in", or illustrated by their calculations and drawings, belong to the upper part of the upper segment. In the schema below, IDEAS are as it were folded from upper to left side, leaving The One, above, opposite The Many, below -- as if bending the divided line around on itself.
COMPLETING THE CIRCLE: Time, Memory and Materiality
In order for the Word to pass through The One, to become an Idea for Consciousness, a functional memory must be assumed. Under the assumption that consciousness is consciousness-in-a-body (embodied self-awareness), awareness of ideas requires the capacity to retain learned use of signs with their meanings. This role of memory is overlooked when, like Descartes, the Ideas on which real knowledge depends are "innate"; or "eternal", outside time, echoing Plato, Augustine. If Western science and "modernity" means anything at all in footnoting Plato, it would be here where empirical processing must be brought in tro account for what actually transpires. Tracing content of consciousness to the body completes the circle that traces the body to consciousness through ideas. The quite recent recovery of fetal origins of human experience, retained under birth-trama by most to varying degrees, powerfully motivating group behavior and psychohistory, confirms these intuitions of a 'supra-'conscious givenness associated with logical ideas. But also invite a return of naive projections of reified abstractions. This wedding of form and function in sign-use is The New Transcendentalism.
The lower segment of Plato's line encompasses what is visible (extended), and "shades and reflections" of what is truly real. This is also the realm of THE MANY, below, opposite The One above. The Many, relative to sign-use, are the several subjects of predictions, the objects in space and time referred to in communication. Words, themselves, as tokens, are a Many under the One of text.
This is the formal analogy of "many instances" (of man, animal, plant, celestial body, etc.) under a single term (F), illustrating a common essence when, as in genetic reproduction, there is an external process to match the sign-use (with memory) process. As text is to token, so is essence to object.
The Many are materially differentiated. Even those who deny the existence of matter are required to admit it is a vastly successful hypothesis. "Matter" is not just the polarity of "spirit" in Hegelian dialectic; that is the metaphysical idealist's way of reducing the lower segment of Plato's line to conscious content. It is "true", but only through itself, by consciousness taking back into itself what came out of itself in the modern era. As for the rest, there are the objective explanations: atomic-molecular theory of matter; chemical-cellular theory of organisms; the forces of graviy, electro-magnetics, etc. The doctrine and practice of Christian Science prove it is possible for people to live totally in their head, consciously reducing the body and everything perceived through it to "phenomena", or Berkeleyian "ideas". This expands the category of consciousness to its spatial material opposite. It is consciousness (mis-)using metaphysics to defend its Ideas as real (they exist transcendentally, not imminently (under the form of sensory intuition: Kant).
But if the reality of material causal processes is admitted, the admission goes directly over to physical-psychic processes involved in use of signs. This means: anatomical/nervous preparatory apparatus, especially centered in the central fornix-cortical brain interactions). This completes the circle of conscious sign-use from the token side (the many token-particulars of each word each have their cause).
These are the categories as logical/metaphysical opposites under Sign-use:
The One -- The Many
IDEA -- WORD
Consciousness -- Materiality
Essence -- Process
It becomes possible to show the upper segment in a counter-clockwise circular movement. when the opposites are displayed as criss-crossed in the octagon.
THE ONE
*consciousness essences
IDEAS -------------- WORDS:
neuro-psychic process materiality (the visible)
THE MANY
posted by Sid Thomas | 1:28 AM
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