The following came to me today: The implicit nature of things is pattern. The explicit nature of things is form. Both are equally "real." We are the pattern, the implicit. We yearn to see the implicit, which means that we yearn to see the pattern, which means that we yearn for meaning, which means that we yearn to connect part with whole. This yearning is what produces form. It is through our enacting of form that we re-enact pattern. Are we form, or are we pattern? We are the pattern, but all we can see in the mirror is form. All that we can imagine is form. We can, however, intuit the pattern. Do you get it?
Onefinity: Did you mean "epistemology"? Probably not. In what way are we the pattern? In what way is pattern meaning? What is meaning but that which is taken from the subjective desires of an individual being?
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Confused No. I really am. And I assure you that I am not thick. What do you mean by pattern? Please refine or rephrase your thread start.
No, I meant epistemontology, because I have unified what were previously two distinct things. For me, the question of "What is there" and "how we know what is there" are not separable. I have chosen to not further clarify what I have posted for this thread. I believe that it is perfectly clear as I have written it, and no amount of rephrasing or explanation will make it clearer. The words are simple, but they may take work to understand.
We are atoms arranged with a harmonic balance that gives us a pattern to see ourselves through mirrors.
I believe I understand what you are saying but I believe that you could have attempted to paraphrase your post as requested. After all your own Theory would mean that, within your Theory we are searching for a Pattern which will lead us to the form. Therefore, maybe you should see that not all patterns are the same to all people. I will attempt to interpret your statement in a simple form (my preferred pattern style). To understand anything we need it to fit it to an established knowledge (the pattern (internal) once this is achieved we see the bigger picture (the form (external). Maybe all the posts here are about adjusting patterns. For example I have read your pattern then related it to my own understanding which has then created my pattern, which in turn created the form. Then in turn others might read this reply and use both patterns (mine and yours) to make their own unique form based on their own pattern. Does this pattern relate to your form?
I mean that ontology and epistemology can be treated as a single -ology. That WHAT IS THERE can be discovered by exploring HOW WE KNOW, and that HOW WE KNOW can be discovered by exploring WHAT IS THERE. And that the process by which what IS becomes what IS, is the same process by which we KNOW what we KNOW.
Right. Trifle egocentric do you think? No, you probably don't. Thank you for the invitation to discuss, but with a put down like that I'm not interested.
I decided to add some more clarification Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Here is a mathematical metaphor, although I am in no way attempting to quantify what I think is purely qualitative: Another way of thinking about pattern is a "function" or equation like " x = 2y". This specifies a pattern in which whatever x is, y is twice as much. We have no idea what x is, and we have no idea what y is, and it doesn't matter, because all we're doing is specifying a pattern. Humans think of themselves and the objects in their world as forms. Not as x = 2y, but as 8 = 2x4. What I'm suggesting is that we are not that, but that is what we must see in the mirror in order to place self as object (form) along with all the other objects (forms) we see. Now, if we were to get fixed on 8 = 2x4 for a long time, the pattern x = 2y would vanish. Fortunately, we can't stay fixed on 8 = 2x4 because that is part of a larger pattern in which the 8 and the 2 and the 4 are interconnected to other things like 64 and 1 and 4444. So while our attention flits from form to form to form (the explicit), that flow is pattern (implicit). If you will imagine a pattern that is in search of itself, and in so doing produces forms, including its own body-as-seen-from-the-outside, and in so doing gets a hint of pattern without really knowing that the full unrevealed pattern is its own body-from-the-inside. That there is a single pattern - which is We - which out of a never-ending-yet-always-completed pursuit of connecting to (re)build itself through new connection - and that this pursuit produces a VIEWPOINT that is populated by FORMS (including itself in the mirror of eye and skin-touch and mind and culture). I reiterate: those forms are not "less real" than the pattern. Nor are they "more real" than the pattern. One is explicit, the other implicit. A blind spot the only difference between them. We walking half in one world - one of no time and no space, no age and no size, where the center is everywhere - and half in the other, temporal and material, all the time.
Onefinity: I think Kant would have agreed with you. Transcendental Idealism is rooted in this notion. I would also concur with this statement as it stands, considering I see epistemology and ontology as fundementally linked. In fact, this is one of the great things about philosophy: All of it is linked. It is practically impossible to simply deal with one aspect of philosophy without considering another. However, as regards your patterns, I remain a bit confused as to what you're getting at. In what way does a pattern require the creation of forms? And are you asserting that the mind litterally creates form out of pattern?
Ontology is epistemological over-indulgance. Form is epistemological. Then again, one might say that the idea of knowledge and truth in and of themselves are practical, but quite flawed. For instance, the now is all there is, yet in the now, knowledge and truth are not as one might generally think them. There is no impression of the now in the now because it doesn't fit. If there is no time in for which you to have knowledge, how can you? How can there be truth when the truth is unknowable with no time for it to be known in? The moment is fleeting... an infinitessimal slice of time between the past and present. What exactly exists in that lil slice? What can be known in it? What can be truth in it? Thus, how can the idea of knowledge be correct? "what we know" takes time to access. It does not all exist in consciousness at once, though it is accessible from there over time. So while it is not in consciousness, is it "known"? How so? It exists in a memory, tucked away in mind. Further, there is no "what it is" other than "what it be like". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You have a sample of what you take to be ontological from which to garner things you can tuck away into your mind. There is necessarily no way to objectively verify "what it is", so you're stuck with "what it be like", rendering ontology a sham.
Wesmorris: This is invalidated by the fact that people do speak of "living in the now", such as Deeprak Chopra, and find it very rearding. Krishnamurti spoke about something like that, too. Moreover, in what way does the "now" invalidate time? And how is truth "unknowable"? Why can not knowledge be comprehended in an indefinite amount of infinitely small moments? If it exists in the mind, is not it, by definition, known? Logic.
A pattern definitely requires the creation of forms. A simple example is that a line needs points, and a point needs a line. Another example is that all historical patterns and trends only exist in reference to landmarks or "events." A wave needs energy/matter. Et cetera infinitum. Or let me put it another way: can you cite any pattern that is not a pattern of forms? I am saying that there are two parallel cosmoses (cosmi?): pattern and form, and that pattern is implicit and form is explicit, and that pattern yearing to connect with pattern (i.e., process of meaning in the most generic sense) gives rise to form, which in turn is part of pattern. That the inside-out reality of what a "being" is, is the cosmic pattern; that the outside-in reality of what a "being" is, is form(s). This, of course, gets to the question of "What are you? What am I?," the answers to which are typically taken for granted. Now, as to the second question, no, I am not making reference to mind. It is not my assertion that the mind is creating form out of pattern. I'm not trying to define mind or give mind/body a role here.
Is that an appeal to authority? Why is it invalidated because they talk about it? Perhaps they are not thinking of it the way I am? I think I'm trying to figure out what the "now" really is, where it exists... which aspect of it we're speaking of when we say that's where we live. I was thinking of it in terms of "what do I know right now"? Well, I can't know anything right now because there isn't enough now to know it in. By the time I verbalize what I think I know it isn't now anymore, for instance - at least it's not the now that it was when I "knew" it. What about the time it takes to think it? Do you know what you knew at the beginning of your thought as compared to end? Is "knowledge" the slope of a "line" tangent (in or just behind "the real present") to the collision of short and long term memory? Sort of a collision between present and past experience? Meh. I dunno. I'm just freewheeling. I'm thinking about definitive knowledge I guess. I dunno I'm just wading through this kind of aimlessly today. I'm distracted by life stuff and haven't figured out if I have a point in here or not. There's something in here, but it might just be philosophical funk. There are plenty of things in my mind I don't "KNOW". What about it? Crap I thought this was in another thread - my tangent from what I was thinking here. Pardon if I'm off topic.
Onefinity: I grasp your point now. A good point, also. So in essence pattern -> form -> pattern -> form. A causal ouroboros. Yes? Okay, good. wesmorris: Ah, I see, you used my responses here in the other thread, also. I was wondering where my responses went! See my replies in the other area.
"A causal ouroboros" would be a good intermediate-level metaphor. I say "intermediate" because at the deeper level, the "causal" vanishes. Let me lay out a consistent taxonomy of descriptions, ranging from the deepest/most abstract/impossible to grasp logically, up to the more apparent. All are the same model, just explained differently: Most Deep View: Movement is substance and the only thing that exists. 2nd Most Deep View: There is a wholeness that has duality such that it begets itself. 3rd Most Deep View: There is a simple pattern that is the only action happening in the universe. It is 1-->2-->1-->2-->... In other words, 1 begets 2, and 2 beget 1, and the 1 begets 2...It is the cosmic breathing. This can be seen in all phenomena. 4th Most Deep View: The one that is begat by two is already the poles of the two that beget it. And the two that beget the one are already facets of the one. This existence within its own origin does not explain the production of differentiation that is required in order for relationship to form. It is structure, but not process: the process of becoming. What explains the process of becoming is that the one's existence as the poles of the two takes many paths, and the poles' existence as two takes many paths. These paths are slightly distorted reflections of the basic pattern, 1-->2--1-->2-->... 5th Most Deep View: Everything in the universe is made of "secondary dualities" related to each other (these are the multiple paths from 4th, above). Examples are high-low, inside-outside, this-that, here-there, up-down, etc. etc. All forms in the universe can be described in terms of these patterns, which are tied together in a meta-pattern, the "pattern that connects" (as Bateson said). 6th Most Deep View: Differentiation/relation (differelation) between primal qualities gives rise to quantity and magnitude, which are essential to form observed. Size and age emerge and are apparent at this level of consideration. Subject gives rise to object. 7th Most Deep View: Quantities are differentiated to produce an "abstraction" effect and the emergence of numbers. Also, language as a pattern of objectification emerges. An apparent rift emerges between subject and object, although the primal pattern holds true. The apparent rift, regardless of the sense of loss of meaning, fragmentation, pain and destruction it causes, is simply another path of 1-->2-->1-->2-->... It is like a 2 preceding a 1. An awareness of the 1 is always on the horizon, and the 1 seeks it out (for our purposes, in the epic adventure that is human struggle over evil and fragmentation), and because of this, and as a cause of this, Movement (see Deepest Level) is undisturbed. Well, it's one theory, anyway Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Onefinity: Right-o. So you then deny the both the infinite and eternal, by nature that they are static? As well as perfection as an absolute? The pattern-form-pattern-form ouroboros, yes? Okay. Right. Yes. Okay. In what way is "evil and fragmentation" and pain involved with this all?
