Multiplicity

Multiplicity

Samuel Bird

Explain something to me. Go ahead, try to think of any object or idea, and then think of how you would explain that thing to me. You would likely give me a description and then a definition. The first is to describe. You take a list of qualities that this explicable thing possesses, and then you put them in an order that makes sense. Next, you define it. The same as one defines the shape of a statue from marble, you do so via a cutting away. You tell me what something is, by telling me all the things it is not. Combined, it may sound something like: “It is similar to this other object, except for it does not have this or that quality.” These are two of the most powerful resources that we have access to make sense of a phenomenon. We will utilize what surrounding facts are available, and then we will either contrast or check similitude relative to these other facts. In fact, if you attempted to explain one fact, you would need a list of shared facts that we both possessed to express such. You could not explain a boat with any ease if I had no knowledge of water, wood, and travel. If not, you can explain such, but if in your attempt to share the concept of travel, you would need to assume I understand the temporospatial situation and the concept of changing such. Even if we are fortunate enough to have access to the same language to refer to the facts in the world, there is a degree to which we need to have shared facts. Societies have varied in the degree to which they shared a world with other societies, and in my day you are able to live in the same geography as another, and still not have access to their private technological world. This presents an issue. We talk passed each other, using the same words to express different things. When we ask what we mean, I wonder what we mean by mean. This may seem like the pinnacle of philosophical pretension, but I think it is worth asking. Meaning as a value, is the seemingness of the totality of a series of facts. This is how I primarily use the word in my writing. However, another usage I see more often in my reading is “meaning” in terms of idea expression. When they say they “mean” something, it is to say that they are alluding to something. If we ask what someone really meant by something, we are less using “meaning” as I do in this book, and more asking what they were alluding or referencing to in the world. The more that I work with language, I find it to be the pointing of the finger at being and saying, “that.” We build complex systems that then build on what we have and assume we are pointing at the same “that,” but we are likely not. In a controversial example, someone will say they do not like people of the same group. The other person will hold the innocent members of that group in the mind while the other person will hold those members that have allegedly done harm. Outside of a fallacy of composition, they are talking about different things. This gets to an idea that has been floating around in my head. 

For periods of months, I will have a phrase that is stuck in my mind and finds its way into a large portion of my psychic economy. An example from recently is asking, “In what sense is x y.” When it is purported that x is y, I ask in what sense that is the case. This is in part an analysis of identity, but it is also to look at in what sense does this thing belong to this category. This idea is worth meditation, but it is not the only idea that I have in mind today. Recently, the top-of-mind phrase is “x in terms of y.” This is the idea that I have been talking about so far. If we have a single thing, we conceptually have nothing, or at least I suppose. It seems that we only have a concept in terms of another available concept. This leaves questions of that first primal concept and the blank or otherwise nature of the mind at birth. However, that is not my question. My interest is how is it that to know one thing, I must know its neighbor. This is relativity. Location, as an assumption, requires another fact for something to have proximity to. How fast do I move? That depends, how fast do you move in terms of what? This is not to say that there could not be a privileged point that we move in terms of, but it would still be in terms of something. This may, prima facia, to be arbitrary. This is because of the contingent nature of what things we have to compare to other things. If you had a much taller friend, perhaps you would see yourself as shorter. I am careful to navigate contingency, but one thing that comes to mind is my increasing belief that the state of the world is necessarily so. By this, I mean that the exact and identical way the world is, is the only possible way it could be. Of course, in modality we would have to answer what “possible” I meant. However, for the sake of this conversation, I would ask in what sense do we have imaginary facts to compare to the facts at hand? Again, different sorts of facts give a differing offering of comparison. In as far as they are the same, similitude. In as far as they are different, contrast. This then leaves an obvious epistemic issue. This would then limit our knowledge not just to those facts as we have access to them, but to those facts that we have access to comparing them to. If you know a thousand things, you would then only have nine hundred and ninety-nine to compare each other idea to. This leads to many combinations of total belief. However, if we get that one-thousand and first idea, would all other initial ideas become null or completely enlivened in its enlightenment? This was the question of Darwinism. This simple principle of how organisms morphed over time based on what organisms were alive to share their blood to a new generation was simple. However, many of the previous ideas were drastically changed in terms of this idea. This happened to the degree that foundational beliefs became conceptually unavailable to some. What small and seemingly meaningless fact will, when conceptually held up to every other idea, seem to tear apart everything that we think we know? This is not a hypothetical. I have done so. It is painful to realize that there is a chasmic rift of a contradiction before you. The ignorance of which, splits the psyche as it refuses to bask in what is. In salvific timing, I present another idea. This is the idea of: “What is x for in terms of y?” Trying to find the location of what that “for” comes from has been messy, but as value-centric beings, we think toward ends via our values and will. We do not just have “in what sense is x y,” or “x in terms of y.” But, we also have this asking of the ends of such. I am starting to be a little bit less shy about this. Every conceptual system has the one thing that is sacrificed to have its model. It is that one point of faith from which all knowledge could precede. If one does not offer their own sacrifice, I have found that God and fate choose it, and they will do so without being impressed. I keep asking myself what it is that Esse Maxim is sacrificing to have this system that will save the human soul from the concepts that lament it. What it gives up is the search to know the world as it is. The sort of thing we are is inevitably doomed to not know the world as it is. The world is no longer this free and independent entity, free of passions, that we can know as it is. In doing so, I have sacrificed that which was likely never attainable anyway. I leave the knowing of the world as it is, on the altar of Esse Maxim. Instead, we have this world, not as it is, but as we are. This was true all along, but now we have let go of the objectivity of the world, to realize we are that subject of perception. There is no world unperceived. There is no unvalued perception. There is no value without ends. We have all those wonderful little values we need to thrive, but in fully realizing what we are, we have to again define what we are not. We are not our own Esse Maxim. We are not that thing that makes sense of all being or upholds all being. We can no longer sit in our conceptual throne room, and attempt to know the world as it is in the hubric Godlike view. In this resignation to what is, we leave the knowing to any potential being that could do so and instead be what we are. The cursing denial to be what one is is the surest way to make sure one is at odds with oneself. You wrote the character you play, but God wrote the scenes and setting. Together, you work out the plot with fervor and even conflict. Not to sound more essentialist than I am, but something of our being or its aspects precedes the fact that we are being. After we are so, we are available to will that teleology we choose, but only as the sort of thing we are. Our parents choose that we are born, we only then get to choose how soon we die. What am I asking of us here? We learn to see x in terms of y. In this instance, we get to know the world in terms of what we are. In what sense could we know the world independent of our being? In what sense could we know ourselves without the world? My mind is made up of dreams of things I saw from the world. The universe is only accessible as those frequencies I can perceive. It is then no more than a playful retreat, to escape to the mind to get away from the permanency of the world or delve into the world to get away from the passions of the mind. Curse not what you are, because it is all you will ever be. You and God will change facts around your being, but you will only ever be you. If that being changed, in what real sense are you still you? This is Esse Maxim. To engage with your existence. To sit right where your eyes meet the world. Kant referred to this shoreline that we have as the only possible location for our knowing. However, I am then wondering about making a plan for how our stay at the beach. This gets back to the idea of what something is “for.” I often see people go from not liking a piece of art, to loving it. When I asked them to explain to me what changed, it was not that the art which changed any facts or even that their values changed. What changed was what that art was doing for them. Folk music may seem like populist, underclass shanties until one sees how the stories tie themselves back to a people and a tradition that makes sense of their life. Classical music may seem pretentious and never leave a pattern for one to sink into, but it plays out as a narrative of ever-swelling and waning means. In a dramatic example, I am a fanatic and musician in what is called “metal” music. The sonic violence uses distortion and dissonance to make a sound ripe for headaches. However, what this music does for me, is it allows me to become an animal. I am no longer human, but rather that beast that I always was. We have looked at “in what sense is x y,” “x in terms of y,” and “what x does for y.” I have thought deeply about these ideas that are on my mind so heavily and tried to make sense of how they converge. In part, I have found there is not anything that makes how I think worth a deeper inspection. However, there is one humble thought that can be mustered from this. I am grateful we have multiplicity. These ideas work because we have x and y. We can use these categories, ideas, qualities, values, objects, subjects, or even complex amalgamations of the above, to have something conceptually graspable. Each additional idea has exponential new total ideas, as we can compare it to anything else. However, as I think about identity as that thing that something can only perfectly be with itself, how little we have when we have either x or y. How much we have, when we have both x and y.