Sunday, March 23, 2014

Thingness

Thingness is that which is inherent in all things and separates each thing from every other thing.  Thingness is inherent in living things as well as inorganic matter. Accordingly, if the "or" has its origin in things, as opposed to movement or energy, thingness is what makes the "or" possible.  Alternatively, thingness can be seen as another expression of the "or".   We can also trace thingness' place in cosmogony if we take the big bang theory as a starting point.  For the universe, at the beginning of time, was not a thing.   Rather, it was "everything" compressed into an infinitely small point.  Thingness was chained, and it burst free of its constraints at the big bang's inflationary moment. 

Sunday, March 9, 2014

An Orandian approach to an Andorian analysis of emotions

One area in which the Andorian appoach that I have championed seems most wanting is the study of complex emotions.  How can an emotion such as "love", assuming it is an emotion, be reduced to the "and" and the "or"?  For when one loves someone he/she is not simply drawing towards, but there are a number of thoughts that accompany it, namely the awareness of that emotion, and all emotions, that make the human experience, and purportedly human life in general, so enriching and valuable when compared to that of lesser species.  Of course, the existence of thoughts accompanying emotions, and of "consciousness", is susceptible to an Andorian analysis.  In an earlier post I described the role of the "or" in the existence of consciousness.  But to move from its role in the existence of consciousness, to its activity in certain types of thoughts requires more, shall we say, thinking.

So we can take the example of love.  Clearly, love of another does, to an extent, involve a feeling of closeness to another.  So the "or", and other biological processes, which the and and or play a role in, are drawing the lover to the loved, as is the "and". But there still seems to be a lot that is missing from this analysis.

My proposed strategy: Think of all the things that may be meant when I say I love another, and apply a phenomenological andorian analysis to each of them.  This is in part analytic (Orandian), as it involves breaking it into parts (which involves the "or").  Clearly an Andorian analysis of something as complex as love would require a book, possibly of several volumes, rather than a post, but we can start with one or two ideas and see whether we can reach some general conclusions.

So some of the things I may mean when I love someone: I yearn for him or her when that person is not around; I see "the good" in that person; I feel elevated when dwelling with that person, etc.
And yearning for another may involve focusing solely on him/her to the exclusion of others and other concerns...which may involve the "or" pushing away other parts of the environment not associated with that person, and excluding what may be deemed negative aspects of that person, while the "and" elevates and wants to achieve union with these admirable characteristics.

And the elevation one feels when dwelling with that person may be what follows, and this "dwelling" would likewise, in its own subtle way, involve the "or" excluding negative thoughts and negative parts of the world from consciousness, while the "and" elevates and creates a closeness to that which remains, which of course includes the other person.  There is no longer the pain of yearning, but a contentment.

What seems clear from this approach is that dwelling may not be present at all times when loves another, as yearning may not be present at all times.  Thus, the character of love fluctuates over time, with different elements present in varying quantities at different times.  The "and" draws these elements into the love equation at some times, while the "or" pushes them out. (It is important to note that we are speaking of but two variables (yearning and dwelling) and there are many more.  And we're not speaking about a love for an abstraction here, such as a love for liberty, or a love of philosophy.

Thus, to a certain extent we are doing what the analytic philosophers do by analyzing how things may appear at different times when we use them in our everyday language. We are breaking things up, to reveal the reality below.   And when doing so, we are taking a phenomenological approach, by looking at how certain things appear to us when experienced.  We may have the beginning of something wonderful here. (Oh delusion, how sweet you are!)