The quote, as you probably know, is Jung's - his model of human consciousness incorporated the 'shadow side' or darkness. Pretty sure he is saying that to be enlightened means to integrate all elements of your conscious being (including your evils) in the process he called individuation. When complete, you are enlightened... I guess. I think this says a lot about Jung's notions of attachment, and he is probably saying too that everyone is on a path to enlightenment but only some 'complete' this individuation process. However, I don't think he is saying that we are all partly enlightened. That sounds suspiciously like being partly pregnant. But who knows? — Tom Storm

Forget about Jung, even if Jung said some excellent things. The measure of their excellence begins with what can be affirmed in the structure of the manifest and familiar encounter with the world. If there is such a thing as, call it foundational level philosophical enlightenment (questions begged here are obvious; but then, getting beyond this takes argumentative work), and I am sure there is, it is going to be about foundational questions/assumptions and the knowledge relationship we have with all things. It is going to be about the epistemic structures that deliver the world to us, but, and this is rather a big point, unlike philosophical business as usual which seeks answers IN the talk itself, as where, say, Wittgenstein showed apriori that logic cannot explain what logic is and dismissed all the "hurly burly" of human entanglements as unanalyzable, here, the desideratum is revelatory: One is being invited to experience an alteration in the perceptual act itself.
So in this matter, the reason why you and others are skeptical about revelatory enlightenment is, it seems, because you are too fixated on a propositional conclusion that requires no foundational alterations in the act of perception itself.

So, anyway - Metaphysical questions cannot be addressed with yes or no answers. They’re not issues of right or wrong, what matters is usefulness. — T Clark

I say, think of metaphysics as an "Other" that confronts the inquirer with as much vigor as anything else. It is the ideatum that exceeds the idea; the desideratum that exceeds the desire. Metaphysics has a long history, so I say put this down altogether, and put down the epistemology texts as well. All one can reasonably say about the world must be grounded in the bare encounter, and not in the long discursive arguments, and the insight one seeks in metaphysics is not augmentative, but pure. It begins, I claim, with the reduction from knowledge claims that clutter and dialectically collide, to the clarity of the structure of the encounter itself.
The beginning of "good" metaphysics (as opposed to bad metaphysics, as when we talk about God's omniscience and the like) lies in the simplicity of the pure encounter, the "presence" of the world as presence. Alas, this seems to be something very difficult to do, that is, to understand with this kind of clarity, for when one tries to adjust the perceptual Archimedean point, if you will, mundane analyses assert themselves by default. This is what stands in the way of really addressing metaphysics.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” — Tom Storm

But then, all this talk about light and darkness itself is an imposition of thought upon the world, as if the world possessed something of their values and we had access. Putting metaphors aside and there you are looking, say, in your back yard looking at trees and houses: where is this enlightenment supposed to have a place? It's not as if you have to climb a mountain as sit with Swami Rama on some rock. No, there is something about the structure of experience itself that, were you climb that mountain, you would carry with you. I think the matter goes here: when one simply opens one's eyes, one faced with familiarity instantly; always, already, if you like. Discover the nature of this familiarity and you will know what it is that stands between you and enlightenment.
The awful truth of this is that, this familiarity is the world, and to be enlightened, in the deepest sense of te term, one has to give up living in the world.

Space and infinity are some of my favorite ideas, and they seem to naturally go together when we consider the universe. If there were a limit to the universe we could go to the edge and point, asking "how far is that way?" It seems most natural to me to think of space as infinite. And actually it seems to be infinite in opposite infinite ways. There is no end to how small something can shrink. And if I hop towards a limit, there are always infinite sub-steps. So infinity as space seems to be the ground of everything and "what is finite itself" adds form to the chaos. In the end, the world will always seem paradoxical because it has a paradoxically at it's root. What I'd like to know is whether space existing in all possible place is just the mirror image of space being infinitely divisible — Gregory

You seem to think that space is something that is there in the world which one can observe and talk about its properties, as a scientist might talk about star content or plate tectonics. But space has no observable properties, so when you make a move to "divisibility" it is not space, but an abstraction of space you are bringing up, a logically structured method of measurement formally called geometry. Its not space that is divisible at all, and the references to such divisions are really about the mind that adds the, as you say, form to chaos. But then, space isn't chaos either: this would take something observable, that can be out of order in the first place.
No, if you want to get at the heart of space philosophically, you have look to the language that is presupposed in an utterance: before one can even conceive of space in any way at all, there has to be a matrix of language, through which concepts can have any meaning at all. This is not Einstein's space, but what is there prior to Einstein, prior to even the mention of space as a theme of inquiry. Ask: can there be space without the logic to conceive it? Well, the ontology of space is only meaningful if one can posit space securely, and such a positing is essentially a logically structured event, a proposition. No matter how rigorous science gets, it is essentially propositional and therefore presupposes language.
So understanding language is the first order business in the understanding space at the level of basic questions (philosophy).
Or did you think when we observe the world, the world somehow simply intimated itself in the observation, and space presented itself to the brain as if wwe perceiving agencies were some kind of mirror? Look at a physical brain. Does this LOOK like a mirror?
The true beauty of this lies in the radical disillusionment of understanding that we, ourselves, and this world are entirely something Other than what is, well, "out there". And space is, as with all things, pure metaphysics, if there is such a thing (I think there is), at root.

"S knows P" is the disputed propositional form. The trouble with this piece of silliness is that the integrity of 'P' is simply an assumption. There is no P simpliciter, for you cannot separate P from the justification of knowing P. Every time you try (consider the history here of severed head and barn facsimile attempts) you run into the impossibility of establishing P at all! I mean, before you talk about what it is to know P, you have to first establish P independently of the conditions for knowing P, but this is impossible because P's affirmation IS an epistemic assumption to begin with!!!!
They wasted so much time on this piece of rubbish. It just goes to show you what a waste of time analytic philosophy has become.

You should ask the OP. I am just saying what frame of reference to look at it from. I did not say it, I won't defend it, please ask the OP. I am washing my hands. — god must be atheist

But I am the OP. I like atheists, and you are one I assume from your moniker. But I like them because they have at least begun to second guess orthodoxy. Not that I agree, though, that, say, God is a meaningless term that challenges ethical nihilism. I do look for thoughts on this matter of beginnings because it opens inquiry into basic assumptions. What are your thoughts on this?

The point of language is not to understand the world but to understand each other. — punos

Oh. Well, you did bring in science for your basic explanatory context, and I wanted to point out that the philosophical, as I argue, take on the world begins with a departure from this, not an engagement.

The brain did not evolve to understand truth.. it evolved to figure out what works in order to increase the chance of survivability and reproduction... a purely pragmatic endeavor. What would be different if you were to figure out the answers to your "non-pragmatic" questions such as about one's existence, Being, etc.?
The question as to "why are we born to suffer and die?" is a purely subjective interpretation of the situation, and signals to me your desire for a pragmatic solution. It's as if you think that the universe or God set everything up just to make you suffer and then kill you. If you want a chance at the right answer then you have to change your questions. Only the right questions yield the right answers. — punos

The rest of this falls short. Before you talk about God or anything else, really, you have to take on the whole affair in terms of the most basic questions, otherwise you will simply end up with scientific cliches and philosophical trivialities. Anthropomorphism is the first to go, for popular concepts are the furthest away from insight. The issue of suffering and dying is, in its defining presence, absent of religion, especially bad metaphysics. Suffering is an issue because, well, it is there, in our midst, IN the world, as is reason. This latter has a very long history of phenomenological analytical study: one observes reason, its structure, the way reason is an essential feature of thought and judgment, etc., just to see what it is.

Note that in this history there is nothing of evolutionary theory. It is apriori theory, and thus deals with the essential nature of reason. Consider suffering in the same way: remove all that would immediately claim it in talk about evolution, biology, physics, anthropology, and so on. Suspend these altogether so one can observe it for its manifest parts and functions, as one one would observe, say, an automobile engine rather than anything else PRIOR to classifications and other explanatory contests. This crude analogy actually works. Here one stands in the world, now observe it basic features, as one might observe a rear axle or carburetor. The task first os observation of the phenomenon, not the scientific interpretation (though science is, in the philosophical analysis, everywhere; it is an expression of practical reason). Science's trouble (though we find no issues with science at all in what it does. As you say, it makes great flat screen tv's) has always been that when it encounters affairs at the basic level, the premises simply run out, but the world remains undefined at the basic level. Hence, philosophy.

Finally, it must be understood the what you call subjective is only reasonable in mundane discovery. Look further into it, and you find you cannot remove the objects of empirical science from such "subjectivity". this is simply manifestly true. Try to do this and you will find contradictions instantly upon you. Science cares not for this kind of discovery, and it is just not what science is about. Ask a modern physicist about how this brain mass can epistemically receive something in the world, and you will find yourself deep question begging answers. Hence, philosophy.

If you want to understand language then look into and study how language evolves in nature. Look at how cells, ants, plants, etc. communicate. Try to understand how DNA and mRNA work. If you observe nature, and you know how to observe well, and know how to ask the right questions, then she will disrobe before you and expose her sexy secrets. When one becomes familiar with those more basic patterns then one will be better equipped to tackle the more complex forms of language and communication. Look to nature itself to inform your philosophy and not so much old philosophers. You must look at the systems below the one you are looking at to gain insight to "understand" it. Move out and under the human world experience and try to see things from a lower and simpler perspective. The level at which you are trying to analyze the issue is to complex if you don't know the basic forms it's made of. It's like trying to understand biology without knowing about chemistry, or understanding chemistry without understanding first physics. — punos

But consider, and this really is the point, that when you look to nature, and its cells and the rest, and all the sexy secrets, there are questions unasked hidden by the process of disclosure. I observe an ant, I magnify its cellular parts, then classify according to categorical norms and the totality of scientific paradigms that might apply. This is all too clear to all who have endured high school physics. But to ask philosophical questions is a whole new matter. Here, we look at the presuppositions of science and everyday life. The sexy secrets have just begun, for the finality and determinacy of science is just an illusion. One has to ask the most basic questions to see this.

It seems quite obvious to me that nothing is static and everything moves and evolves or changes in this universe. It makes no sense to me to define a thing as simply a thing with no ability to interact with other things in the universe. If it exists for any sufficient amount of time then it implies that it serves some function that keeps it existing. What else would the universe be if it did not evolve and "act"? — punos

Observe a blade of grass in movement. The observation itself is what is at issue. This is not a simple event, but is a thing "of parts": Here, the agency of observation, there the movement, and then, what is this act of observation? It itself is a movement, but this establishes one movement conceiving another, and the question as to the nature of movement itself is apriori lost, for the analysis of movement presupposes movement, the very definition of circularity in reasoning.
What is needed is analysis of this circularity, and this goes to the two sides, agency and object, and their relation. Consider this circularity more closely: I observe, say, my own brain in an "awake brain surgery". I speak, censors identify speech localities, and so on, and this is very useful for avoiding the surgical removal of important tissue. But this usefulness says nothing at all about this relation's identity; it only gives us utility. As to the relation, you find a brain trying to explain a brain: all you will ever get is brain answers that emerge, which are the very problematic you are trying to address. The brain you see is a brain phenomenon. Certainly, the whole matter reveals that there is a pragmatic relation, but the epistemic question yields this intractable circular reasoning.

As to what else the universe would be if not evolving and acting, it is like asking, what would a flower be if not petal and peduncle and the rest? To a particle physicist, it would be systems of atomic and subatomic particles; to a gardener, a beautiful natural presence; and on and on. It is not that it is not one or the other, but that saying what something is must have its contextual bearings. There is no "flower petal" outside of a context in which the term occurs.

We are the same, only the term of our analysis are very different at the basic level of inquiry. I am a perceiving being. Well, what is perception? ANd then we find we are simply in another world of thought, for all of our "outer" world events are perceived before they are what they are called in science and everydayness. This puts perception at the very front of understanding at the basic level. Turns our that this is very, very tricky: perception conceived by a being for whom all that is known is first perceived. Sound like question beggin at its finest.

The questions dealing with physics or how the physical world actually works should not be answered through philosophical thought alone, and questions that can not be answered directly from physics are more properly addressed by philosophy. But philosophy has to constrain itself to the patterns that physics has already discovered so as to keep the whole enterprise coherent. — punos

You say this, as expected, because you haven't read any continental philosophy. Analytic thinking rules philosophy in the US and Britain, and has for a hundred years or so. Now things are changing for the most obvious reasons: Analytic schools go nowhere. I've read enough to see this. Nowhere. They were so hell bent on avoiding the stigma of irrationality that they set their sights, following Russell, Wittgenstein, Frege, and others, on logic and coherency and they ended up containing the foundation of our human inquiry to the restrictions of science's paradigms. They are an insufferable lot, full of logic and rigor, but unable to say anything about foundational issues, for these are taboo since they trail off into experience apart from where theory can control and assimilate. But the horror of this is, this is exactly what true analysis of the human existence reveals: "we" stand outside of analytical categories at the basic level. This "outside" is very analytically accessible. We can describe the threshold.

Actual things do not enter the mind, just data or information about a perceived thing in the world. The brain tries to recreate it's environment as a neural simulation that we call the conscious mind as opposed to the unconscious mind from the data or information acquired from the sense organs. The brain creates a neural structure in itself that is representative of the object it perceived. The actual neural network pattern constructed is the actual symbol the brain uses to think with, but it is not the thing itself. The brain itself only perceives the output of the neural structure when it's output is active in the conscious mind. — punos

Of course, this is quite true. No one disputes it. It is simply preanalytical. Thatis, it's not philosophy. I mean, who could argue that the brain is NOT a system of neurons and synapses and axonal fibers and so on?? Or that evolution is not a valid theory? It would be absurd. But with these philosophy has not even begun.

I don't think Kierkegaard meant to distance himself from the problem of "inherited" sin and its relationship to the sins of a person might commit during a life. He strove to verify the language of revelation with his view of the human condition. His approach is similar to how Pascal argued that the Incarnation was scandalous to reason while also being the most accurate description of the problem of being human. — Valentinus

But the Concept of Anxiety is Hegelian,and ny this I mean while criticising Hegel, he uses the dialectical method to reveal existential structure of the self in actuality vis a vis rationality, famously commenting that Hegel had forgotten that we exist; and I see its closest connection to Sickness Unto Death, which has this tortured analysis of our finitude and eternity that cannot be simply put off for some Hegelian future rationality where dialectical crises have finally produced the grand scheme of things. It is this dialectical struggle that the analysis of the self yields, and that of time and eternity in which we find the basic structure of who we are bound with this.
I never read much Pascal, but the connection is clear, it seems, for K understood Christian falleness and sin outside of, to borrow a term, rational totalities, with which actuality is on a collision course. I can see your Pascal reference at work here, but not exclusively Christ, rather, the human self. Us.
As to sins committed in life that are not "structural sins", but individual sins, I haven't read where he puts this to theory. All we do is "sinful" in as much as it is alienation from God. But one can be a baker or a candle stick maker and if that person is what he calls a knight of faith, then the affairs of worldly matters are in the eternal present and s/he lives in God's grace.
That would be my rough take on this.

In the sense of the OP. It started with "in the beginning there was the word." — god must be atheist

Ah, but the beginning of an utterance? It implies creation is a narrative. Is this true? (Put temporal beginnings off the table. After all, "time" is term, a particle of language. What are these? This is the question that haunts science and makes philosophy inevitable, for one cannot confidently, and familiarly, speak of time, if time is a term and one cannot tell you what terms are.)

To simplify this issue where do you think information or structure comes from? From where or how did the first element of information or structure manifest? What is the "thing" that comes before the first thing? — punos

It like asking when the first words appeared. Language arrived as a pragmatic, social event, presumably on the heels of more primitive practices buried deep in history. The real question is, what is the relation between language and things in the world? How did language make understanding possible at the level of existential wonder, that is, inquiry that asks questions that target what is not pragmatic at all, like questions about one's existence, Being, like "why are we born to suffer and die?"
It has to be understood that we are not merely "things that evolved and act". And this is not a physicist's line of inquiry. A physicist leaves off when basic questions appear; s/he does respond to, say, questions about temporality as a structure of experience that is presupposed by Einstein's theories, not presented in them.
As to things, and one coming before the other, this has been discussed many times. Take Schopenhauer's claim that the principle of causality is contradictory given that eternity has no beginning. It only gets interesting when you realize that our finitude is embedded in infinity, but there is no line of actual separation, for it is impossible to to say where on ends and the other begins. Ask yourself, as I do almost daily, how is it that anything out there gets in here (the mind)? Never happen. Just impossible to conceive. The only conclusion: what is here before me, what is there, "ready to hand" stuff of the world is, in my localized mental space, utterly metaphysical. This pen, beyond the condition of my experience, is eternal, transcendental, and we are not outside this, but we are this.
This is where question of beginnings leads.

Most words elicit a myriad of associated concepts that will vary in quantity and quality in different people and at different times. The more complex a word is the more it lends itself to varied associations and interpretations (not a fundamental problem of the universe but of human psychology). There is a hierarchy of meaning which of course arbitrary words can be assigned to... but the idea for me is to grasp the most fundamental meanings or patterns which all the other patterns or meanings are made up of (similar to prime numbers).
It's like physics and chemistry in the sense that quarks form subatomic particles, these particles form atoms, molecules, etc.. One can maybe even imagine the possibility of something like a "periodic table" of meaning or pattern. Everything works this way even text. Notice how letters make words, words make sentences, and sentences make paragraphs, etc.. (a fundamental pattern in itself) Once one gets to the most fundamental and simplest patterns or meanings then they become less likely to be interpreted or misinterpreted in many and various ways. — punos

And so, this kind of reflection tells you what about the essential encounter of things in the world? It is not that language is to be discarded, for our thoughts that lead us to this impasse are, if you will, the only wheel that rolls. The point is: look at the way my question to you gives rise to your newly stated explanatory context that looks entirely to language and simply recasts the problem. And if there were this periodic table in place? Would this be some kind of mirror of the world in language? You see, it is this mirror concept, that words are telling us about what is not "wordly" in nature, that makes the issue. What good is talk about subatomic particles when there is a meaning chasm that separates words from "the world"? The real question that haunts philosophy must look to more basic structures that are inplace logically prior to discussions about the world.

The problem with language is that it is not perfect, but that is not a reason to not use it. Look at what we have accomplished because of language (cars, planes, computers, the internet, philosophy, art, etc..). It may not be perfect but it evidently works and it is still evolving. Whatever the presuppositions in science are at any moment in time is only a temporary and dynamic position until a new paradigm shift occurs. — punos

I hear this often about how successful language and logic are in making cell phones, but it entirely misses the point. If something "works" does it therefore impart meaning beyond the pragmatic? If you think my taking the moon AS 'moon' is simply a pragmatic affair, then you leave what is apart from this out of regard completely and the consequence is your pragmatic reduction becomes an abstraction. Bonafide reductions cannot have ad hoc dismissals of that which the world presents as not containable, and in your case, pragmatically uncontainable.
Remember, speaking of paradigm shifts, Kuhn was a Kantian, an idealist. If this is your position as well, then you drop the scientific enterprise altogether as something that can ever hope to, well, "see truly" what is "really" going on, what the world is, for understanding is categorically bound to the mundane. Analytic philosophy goes this route. I do not.

"The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things." The I Ching

Even the Taoists knew that language was imperfect, but they still wrote their books anyway to at least try to explain the Tao. I think they did a good job considering. — punos

Take this position and you seem to move towards the analytic assumption that there is a wall, impenetrable, between us language users, language obstructionists, if you will, and the world itself, this latter, the thing itself, being removed from sensible discussion altogether. But there is a philosophical alternative: Look at language as a tool, a problem solving "event" as Heidegger did. But then, to see it as a tool is something that applies to the very ontological claim itself. One thereby must withdraw from language to observe language, which is impossible, clearly; but the matter needs to be recast. Language that talks about language opens mere engagement to inquiry, and inquiry is the question, and the question is annihilating in its nature, for it brings dialectic pressure, or even cancelation, on to a thesis, even the simplest, like "the moon is bright, tonight". In others words, possessed within the pragmatic totality of language there is the existential question that takes the inquirer beyond language. This, I claim, is philosophy's end, its purpose. This is where Taoists go, or desire to go. But then, all talk that carries that presumption of "knowing" has to be suspended. Scientific vocabulary is out the window, and one must sit quietly and let the world "speak".
Certainly not that science has no use. But it does not inform this issue here.

A word's instrumentality possesses relationship possibilities because it's how the mind works. The mind records sense impressions and compares and contrasts with other prior impressions, making associations and relationships between impressions. The relationships are not in the words, they are in the mind, and words are just used as an attempt to express and reconstruct the relationship in another mind. — punos

You will not be able to separate words from mind. To conceive of a mind, one must first conceive of that which conceives of mind, which turns the matter over to thought itself, and here we encounter language and logic.

I find it better to think of what a thing does rather than what a thing is. I don't need to know what a pencil is, i just need to know what a pencil does or can do. If i need to write something on a piece of paper then i know i can use a pencil. There are different levels and dimensions of knowing a thing such as knowing how to drive a car compared to knowing how to fix a car. — punos

Of course, but once you define a pencil by what it does, you have to ask, what is there in the doing of things, pragmatics, that discovers the very structures of doing itself. If it is pragmatics all the way down, that addresses all that is encountered that demands analytic satisfaction, then you have a lot of exploaining to do, as in the ethical/aesthetic dimension of the world: this spear in my side is killing me, but is this really reducible to the pragmatics of the affair? No. The world is far more than just what is done as a quantitative concept.
In other words, saying you are concerned only with wht a thing does, first, does not give analysis to the doing, which is, e.g., a temporal event, and there is a long history here from the Greeks, to Augustine, and so on. Second, says nothing about the existential dimension of the world

Remember only one thing, and keep it in mind when you answer or add to this topic: WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE THE BEING THAT CREATED THE BEING. You MUST assume there were no beings at first. — god must be atheist

Sorry, but....BEFORE??? In what sense do you mean this?

A word or term has meaning when it signifies or points to a thing or idea such as when a finger that points to the moon means the moon and not the finger. — punos

But you have to ask the Derridean question: When one says words, how do these stand alone as a reference to something? Does the term 'moon' really refer exclusively, epistemically, to that object in the sky? Or is the matter more complex such that reference itself is called into question? Keep in mind what philosophy's mission is: To address the world at the level of the most basic questions. Prior to this, you are doing no more than speculative science.

If the language is unclear then one should just simply ask for clarification of the specific terms or phrases in question. The main goal in this respect is for all parties involved in a discussion to have the same definitions for all the terms being used. The real point is the meanings and not the words... words are merely vessels for moving meaning from one mind to another (communication), for it is meaning and not mere words that bring insight and understanding to the mind. Two heads are not better than one head if the two heads can not communicate. — punos

No, that's not it. It is not that certain language is unclear. It is that language itself is problematic, and it is philosophy's job to give this problematic analysis. For the matter is about the presuppositions of science, not science.

A term or word is just a tool that refers the mind of the listener or receiver to an object in the world or a concept in the mind. — punos

A tool? Quite right. But how does a tool's instrumentality possess relationship possibilities 0f the kind you assume? I use pencil, but in that use do I "know' what a pencil is? Does a cow know its teeth are chewing tools? Of course not.
The interesting question this presents is pragmatism's, and Heidegger's: Is use engagement something that constitutes knowledge? Is language itself just pragmatic tools? Or do we grasp things in an existential "presence"? What can this mean? If I use the hammer, do I know what a hammer is? If language is all vocabulary and rules, how does vocabulary link up with moons and stars so that we can talk about them and only them?

Not sure what you're asking here... perhaps you can rephrase the question. — punos

Science is not some clean and pure reflection on the world of objects. It is think with analytical possibilities that look to what is presupposed by utterances..

In the beginning i believe there was pure Energy (can not be created nor destroyed), chaotic with no stable pattern or information (quantum foam). Energy is the primal and fundamental "substance" in which information (pattern or structure) can be expressed. Within this chaotic energy at the lowest level of the universe, random patterns are constantly emerging and immediately descending back into Chaos (creation and destruction). Sometimes a pattern emerges that is potent enough not only to resist the dissolving influence of the surrounding chaos but can also nucleate and impart it's own pattern or form to the surrounding energy like a growing and expanding crystal (Big Bang and Inflation). This new and potent pattern becomes the template for an entire universe, with a specific logic that is internally self-consistent and specific to it's own structure (The Word or Logos of the Bible).

Ordo ab Chao --> The God of order is Chaos itself for Chaos is the alpha and the omega of all order or possible orders (Logos). Chaos is the full potentiality of infinite possibilities, the true source of creation with no need of any prerequisite. It is unbounded, unlike order which can only express a finite set of possibilities.
Meaning emerges out of the interaction and relationships between the ordered parts of an emergent universe. An atom or a molecule in our universe for example means nothing outside our universe because the underlying fundamental pattern of each universe would be different and incompatible. Think of the difference in pattern for example of Legos and Lincoln Logs construction sets, The Lego universe has it's own structure and logic which is different than the Lincoln Logs universe. Both are viable and meaningful but only in their respective universes. — punos

Typical, really. If you want to take the matter to the level where questions become philosophical, then, and I don't think this is a debatable point, You must go the source of all terms such as "quantum foam" or "chaos" before things are even taken up and talked about. You have to ask, what is it that a term has meaning at all? Why is language going unexamined with all this language being put forth to make sense of things?
So the question to you is not what is chaos? but, what is the relation between a term and the world? After all, you wrote paragraphs filled with language and logic. How is it that this needs no analysis to determine if there is not something PRIOR the manifest meanings of empirical science?

That particular theory uses Shannon information theory, but others, including myself, are looking toward a non quantifiable theory of information, where information is a fundamental non-quantifiable observable. — Pop

This is where you have to comes to terms with reality: The only non quantifiable theory of information there can be, is the art experience itself. You have, in my thoughts, arrived at the critical point: To the extent that a theory is non quantifiable, it is the very embodiment of the quality it is supposed represent. I wonder, what could this be? A poem? Or am I completely missing something?

Qualities are demonstrable. Information that conveys, transmits, carries qualities, elicits aesthetic responses itself.

Academia is coming around to the understanding that information is fundamental - is equal to energy and matter — Pop

Energy and matter are just place holders for metaphysics, as I see it. Information presupposes these, just as it presupposes metaphysics.

If something has “nothing whatsoever” to do with qualitative distinctiveness why should it offend? — praxis

"But then, life and death qualitatively has nothing whatsoever to do with actuarial tables. This is why your announcement that art in information offends others here. They think art is profound, religious, or deeply meaningful. Others look to the meanings in play, how truth connects to images, how images are iconographic reflections of the self; and so on."

Talk about actuary tables in matter of life and death is about an affect neutral response to something that carries great significance for people. The idea is, of course, intended to refer to occasions of life an death outside of contexts where actuary tables are relevant and expected. This much does rely on the reader's discernment.
Anyway, since I hold that art is essentially about an aesthetic response, about affect, and affect is a qualitative distinction, then having the principle feature of the definition of art to be quantitative, and altogether excluding qualitative properties, is absurd.

These are experiential qualities, and whoever 'they' are, experience art as profound, religious, or deeply meaningful. This has "nothing whatsoever" to do with Pop's claim so it's strange that you say it's offensive. — praxis

What is art? Information.

What is life and death? An actuary table.

I thought this clear: The latter is meant to be analogous to the former in that it takes something qualitatively distinct and reduces it to terms quantitative. Read the part where I talk about this.

Strange take, I don’t know anyone who is offended by an actuarial table, or anyone who’s not emotionally affected by artistic quality. — praxis

I cant match what you say here to what I wrote. They are wildly different.

Not really sure what this means. Nevertheless, I am impressed with your energetic, and enthusiastic, philosophy. If you don't mind, I would like to tell you why I hold the fort pretty well. My understanding is based in systems theory, constructivism, enactivism, integrated information theory, and yogic logic. Half of these are main stream science, and the other half are about to be, and Yogic logic agrees with a lot of it. They have an information theoretic running through them, which I am in the process of understanding. They create a picture of everything existing as interactive systems and subsystems in an enmeshed and interdependent evolutionary process. This mix of theoretical understanding unifies and integrates very well, and can be used to understand almost any system or situation, from complex financial systems, to tiny simple microorganisms.

As I see it, most contemporary understanding is based on a mix of these theories, spiced up with insight and data from here and there. Such as this theory of individuality released last year. Unfortunately most understanding on this forum is rather old - being based on old philosophy that did not have the benefit of these theories, or the contemporary view that information is something fundamental. Most of this older philosophy is fundamentally flawed in this way, and as a result so is the understanding that is based on it. This is largely my opinion, which I thought I'd share with you if you are interested. I thought it might be something you might want to look into as a way to strengthen your philosophy, by expanding it to incorporate an information theoretic. Of course it is hardly my place to tell you what to do — Pop

Heh, heh, careful what you call old. Speaking for myself, the post, post modern works that have a lineage that reaches back to Kant, through, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and into the current French Husserlians who examine the phenomenological reduction of Husserl, like Jean Luc Nancy, Michel Henry and others; and, speaking of yoga, the way the reduction aligns with, explains phenomenologically, yogic practices (yoga, from the Sanskrit meaning, to join. I suspect when you talk about yoga logic, you have this in mind. Keep in mind, the point here is to establish a union with something ultimate and profound), as well as others contributions.
I read through The information theory of individuality you provided a link for, about half way through. I find this:

Shannon did not describe entropy in terms of heat flow and work but in terms of information shared through a channel transmitted from a signaler to a receiver. The power of information theory derives in part from the incredible generality of Shannon’s scheme. The signaler can be a phone in Madison and the receiver a phone in Madrid, or the signaler can be a parent and the receiver its offspring. For phones, the channel is a fiber-optic cable and the signal pulses of light. For organisms the channel is the germ line and the signal the sequence of DNA or RNA polynucleotides in the genome

The virtue of this concept seems to lie in the way it describes the fluidity and interference in passing from one agency to another of some quantity, the original form of which is entropically diminished, distorted, etc. in transmission. The "information" designates a wide variety of possibilities, from sound vibrations across a wire to hereditary biological features found genetic material.

Such a concept even applies to the preservation of the self in time: how much is actually preserved of this constructed self in the transmission of self in time from past through to future? The self is in decay, or, each moment is an entropic loss of the previous, and perhaps a reconstruction: the self is thereby defined as a fluid reconstruction of information, what Husserl called predelineation: We live in an adumbration of the past that is presented in eidetically formed predicated affairs, to use his language. I find this interesting, and perhaps I will look into it.

My trouble, as I read through this, is that it is entirely a quantifiable analysis. Aesthetics is not quantifiable, or it is (in some hedonic scheme), but this is not the point; the point is, quantifying is altogether absent of the quality, and aesthetics is all about quality. All talk about complex transmissions of information may be true, as the actuarial tables are true for people selling insurance, and no one can say such tables are false, or wrong. They're not. But then, life and death qualitatively has nothing whatsoever to do with actuarial tables. This is why your announcement that art in information offends others here. They think art is profound, religious, or deeply meaningful. Others look to the meanings in play, how truth connects to images, how images are iconographic reflections of the self; and so on.

To me, it is a bit like looking at the human condition and its most meaningful dimension, and saying, well, what does the actuarial table say? You may be right, I mean, the table might be a true account. But how is this quantitative account even remotely adequate?

But here again, the Experience of Solidity is only justified by the existence of Truth, imo, yes, but I see no other possibility. — PseudoB

But what does this mean? Solidity? Truth? These are meaningless without context, even if the context is talk about acontextuality, which would need further discussion. Explanations can be a way to terminate explanations, in Occam's razor fashion. But this has to be, well, explained, laid clear.

So can anyone explain why “the Good”, in and of itself, supposes the opposite to have to be?

I understand that most use contrast to justify this, but clearly the Gnostics have found no need to maintain giving life to death. To be clear, I am not set on any particular “religion”. I do however equate the Experience of Solidity whatsoever with Truth, and all Ideas as a Water, thus making much sense, or shall I say, making such Thoth, Thought, sensible, tho clearly Cabalistic in revelation.

This Absolution of Good, presents as an accessible Kingdom, a Realm in which Mind is a realm tainted by Division. This division is maintained throughout all society, and as noted in the scriptures, “a house divided cannot stand”. It may be necessary to maintain a Forceful mindset, but to maintain Humility in a Circle would put Nature under Subjection, and without Force….

Some would call this the Stone. — PseudoB

Lots of metaphors in there. Perhaps you could say it in straight prose. Doing this, using language with as much clarity as possible, without yielding to dogmatic clarity, which I think is what analytic philosophy has done, is the only way to reveal the idea.
On dogmatic clarity: this is the insistence that meaning is confined to the accessible, familiar language possibilities. Alas for this as an abiding principle, the world is not like this at all. It is a mystical place, to put it flatly, the foundations of which are intimated as revelatory. This is why I don't condemn such talk as yours as blatantly obscurantist. It is obscure, but the world is obscure at the level of basic questions. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to clarify---not at all. This clarifying what is at a distance from what language can say clearly is philosophy's job.

But we can not put the cart before the horse. — Pop

Not to provoke, but just a quick note: this cart before the horse? The real construction of horses and carts lies in the hor-ca-se-rt. This is phenomenology. Dewey was close to this, but like I said, he missed the boat...or cart.

Well, without being too open, I will try to point at it. Reason being because one must invest into the equation, to have a personal experience with the Truth, else one is just taking another’s experience as Gospel, with no personal evidence.

The scientific mind is indeed the closest to the Truth in these days, but on needs to see the relationship between where we came from and how the four Elements function. The relationship of the Elements, in practice, presents as a fire heated seven times hotter than normal.

This furnace is depicted in every Cathedral, and the hints in concrete and metal artwork throughout history. The Key allows for the greening and growing of Splendor Solis, that is also in every business building’s artwork, whether in stone or art.

Once one can see this unspoken Cabala all throughout every aspect of society, as a constant reminder of the renewing of the mind needed to accomplish the Worke.

Many have said there is more Truth in the first ten scriptures of Genesis than in all the libraries of the world. To answer the question, “what is Truth”, I can only answer: what has no opposition, and is always, regardless of Experience. Truth accounts for all experience of solidity, where all came from a Water.

I hope I have not overstepped. — PseudoB

As for me, I don't think you overstep at all. It is rather welcome, and this is because, while I don't attend much to religious scriptures, I do take them seriously as a means of addressing the world at the threshold of thought where the totality of ideas meet their match and simply have to fall away.
I think one always has to keep Wittgenstein in mind. The Good, he said, was divinity, but one may not speak of it. It is a given, and language cannot penetrate this, so one should simply not try to speak of it. This goes to aesthetics, for these feelings and these extraordinary encounters at the threshold of things in music and art are absolutes. Value is an absolute. An unpopular position, but then, everyone else is wrong on this. I would make the point that philosophy can make inroads into religious matters. The way to do this lies with ethics and aesthetics, or, more precisely, metaethics and metaaesthetics. MetaValue! This is at the philosophical core of religion.

So the basis of the scientific method being used to validate Experience, would only ensure the solidifying of a grand circular idea?? — PseudoB

Circular in that a pragmatic theory of knowledge knows no way out. Peirce was the only one who had this "long run" part of his thesis that suggested that affairs in a community of inquirers eventually would resolve in something inevitable, and opposition would be won over. Something like that. Rorty seemed to think something along these lines, holding his liberal irony thesis in which ethical systems would eventually become stable out pure pragmatic necessity. I'd have to read his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity again to recall it well. He said the world is made, not discovered. I think he is both right and wrong.
But look at the scientific method. It is the conditional logical structure of causal events in the world. What is a star, for example? It is, "when one observes a star, certain effects result, and are designated by erms like brightness, distance, doppler red shifts, and so on. Of course, the whole matter is extremely complex, but that is what knowledge is, the "forward looking" anticipation of a thing that predelineates the thing antecedent to encounter. So, to know, is to anticipate what will happen with regard to engagement. This is the hypothetical deductive method, so called. Pragmatists think this is what a knowledge experience is, an event that confirms an anticipation. Circular? There is in this no Hegelian finality.
But then, while I agree that this is what knowledge of object is about, and this is a temporal theory, which has to be the case, I don't believe it is the be all and end all of our being in the world at all.

But the reductive direction of this for a human being is appalling
— Constance

Ha, ha, You mean this is far different to the ingratiating and romantic philosophy of the likes of Dewey and co. Yes it is. The thing to remember is that this is just the barebones underlying logic. It still need to be interpreted in terms of daily life and aspirations, and so on. So there is plenty of room to romanticize it if that is what you wish, and any sensible philosopher wishing to be popular would be wise to do this to some extent. :grin:

But then, the aesthetic of art, which I claim is essential, indeed, the most essential, defining, dimension of art, is subordinated to information, hence, the trouble with the direction of this reduction, and it is the same as calling food information or a sprained ankle information: such a reductive tendency leads to a foolish loss of MEANING. Meaning must be front and center, and information is just a dimension of meaning.
— Constance

I'm afraid you misunderstand, and I can not see a simple way to redirect you. I will be doing a few more information threads in the near future, so If you are interested perhaps take it up then.

Instead I'll say: Meaning only exists as integrated information - when information is unified and integrated it becomes meaningful, and not before.

And: In an experience you are inFormed, and you have an experience in relation to how you are informed. So information is the fundamental observable - the fundamental interaction that gives rise to experience, in all situations, including art. — Pop

No worries Pop. I think you're qualifiedly wrong here, wrong in spades there, but you hold the fort pretty well. Looking forward to future posts, but frankly, you'll have a very hard time winning me over to this line of thought. Consider: I vigorously defend precisely the opposite of your views. Integrated information's meaning is meaningless without value. All things have their foundational grounding in the aesthetic dimension of our existence, for as Hume said of reason, the same holds for information: in itself, it is empty. This is why Dewey had the right approach, just the wrong ideas. The aesthetic is not wrought out of pragmatic consummatory experiences; rather, the aesthetic is discovered in these.
Wittgenstein opened my eyes to this, in his Tracatus and his Lecture on Ethics. But the issues here have nothing to do with contemporary theory and its infatuation with information.

Art devoid of Truth is merely imagination without will. — PseudoB

What can this mean????????? Not that it is wrong, but it requires some explanation as to truth, will. I mean, where does will enter into it?

I was an idealist, but am now an enactivist. It is a slightly better understanding, imo.

Yes, it is a different understanding of information, compared to what generally prevails. It fits the following theories: Integrated Information Theory tells us that consciousness exists as moments of integrated information. Systems Theory tells us that interaction is information, and nothing exists outside of interaction. Enactivism tells us that we are enacted / interacted in the world informationally, and Constructivism tells us that it is a body of integrated information that becomes knowledge, in an evolving and idiosyncratic fashion and what we are is a product of this. — Pop

But the reductive direction of this for a human being is appalling. Surely you see that, even while you want to allow consciousness its breadth and depth of experience, by generalizing to information, you lean toward this term to do your explaining. Keep in mind the way behaviorists dealt with human meanings in their reductive tendencies.
Idealism? Better, phenomenology: this term makes MEANING front and center, a meaning is broad enough a term to be inclusive if information (say, dictionary or encyclopedic knowledge) as well as affective experiences.
Of course, to give this the benefit of the doubt, consider that an art object is a system of signs, and we are the interpreters. Just as I see a cup AS a cup, I see an artwork AS an artwork. This would be as close as I can imagine the idea of information being plausible. But then, the aesthetic of art, which I claim is essential, indeed, the most essential, defining, dimension of art, is subordinated to information, hence, the trouble with the direction of this reduction, and it is the same as calling food information or a sprained ankle information: such a reductive tendency leads to a foolish loss of MEANING. Meaning must be front and center, and information is just a dimension of meaning.

Yes information needs to be redefined, or perhaps better put - it's original meaning needs to be reinstated - which is to inForm - literally change the shape of, including changing the shape of mind.

Information and consciousness are related and enormous topics in information philosophy which is the way of the future, imo. I think we are near enough in our understanding. I will do more information threads in the future, so perhaps we can discuss in more detail later. This relates to your previous post. — Pop

Not my post. No matter. So you're saying the art object (not art) is reducible to a transcendental information bearing medium. This turns the object into pure potential. And information? IF information is defined as being free of information, as this definition tells us it is, for the object is divested of all observable qualities (hence, transcendental) and all that remains is dispositional "qualities" whatever that could be, then this is also true of newspapers, and everything else.....; then this would be a real stretch from the way we think of information, and you would have to be an idealist of sorts.

Well, I am an idealist of sorts. So my only gripe is that you have defined information by the limits of its meaning.

There is no correct definition of art — RussellA

The reason art cannot be given a definition is that art is affect-entangled, and entanglements are arbitrary, meaning there is nothing in affect that constrains what art can be since there is no thing that cannot be so entangled. Art is IN the fabric of experience, taken up by those with a purpose to do so. Dewey was right, but problem solving's consummatory feature seems an unlikely explanation. Affect is, as Wittgenstein said (reluctantly), mysterious, but it is THE essential feature of art.

The definition "art is a bottle of Guinness" is as correct as any other. Definitions are determined by Institutions and the majority of interested people. — RussellA

Begs the question: But then, I ask, what is it about a bottle of Guinness makes it art?

Various definitions of art

@Constance - "Art has this, I say. It is called the aesthetic"
@Constance - "The question of art lies with one question: is there anything that is both the essence of art, what makes art, art, and absolute?"

My personal definition of visual art is aesthetic form of pictographic representation
— RussellA

And, you mean that which elicits aesthetic rapture? Bell's book ART says this. There is something plausible about this, but then, visual form may elicit the aesthetic, but form as such is not some emerging quality of form, for form itself is not aesthetic. One has to go elsewhere for this.
But it is the formal properties that make or break the affect. Music as well. Literature, narratives, poetry are far too entangled for this, though. These are not "fine" arts, are they. But then poetry is closer, concentrated, if you will. Dewey was right on that account.

Across the board, it is affect that endures as the essence of art. Entanglement makes theory indeterminate, as with ethics; nonetheless, no affect/aesthetic, no art.

I can describe objective facts about the colour red - seen in strawberries, sunsets, etc, has a wavelength of 625 to 700nm. I can also describe objective facts about the aesthetic - unity in variety, observed in a painting by Matisse, a book by Cormac Mccarthy, a song by Sade, etc. But I can never describe the subjective experience of the colour red or the aesthetic to someone who can never experience the colour red or aesthetic. However, I can use language to communicate my subjective experience of the colour red or aesthetic to another person who has also experienced the colour red or aesthetic.

IE, language can communicate general things about subjective experiences but can never communicate the particular subjective experience. — RussellA

Something like that, or not. Too many issues in this. My take is that there is no world, only worlds. Not to say there isn't anything outside of a given world, just that whatever that is, it is not a world. But the interiority of a world, now that is where all meaning is, that Cartesian center: not just a cogito, but an affective-cogito discoverable, it is argued, through apophatic argument.

But this is particular knowledge, in that I am not able to imagine an bitter taste independent of experiencing through my senses an object in the world that gives me the subjective experience of a bitter taste. This a priori knowledge is about the possibility of being able to experience a particular subjective experience, not the subjective experience itself. The point is that this a priori knowledge of the possibility of experiencing a particular subjective experience exists in the brain prior to any observation of the world through the senses. — RussellA

Take a look here: Ours senses deliver experiences to us. Predication is not apriori, but empirically discursive, as when we say the the sky is blue, this has to be affirmed with a reference to the empirical event in which the sky appears, and is blue. Apriority is a reference to what is discovered In this experience but is not delivered through predication, but is true by virtue of the experience's givenness. Reason, thought Kant, is apriori because, while it is discovered in judgment and thought, the empirical conditions of its affirmation do not deliver this. It is rather in the form of a judgment. When you talk about the apriority of color, taste and so on, you are then saying that there is something in the delivery of color, say, AS color that is not discursive, but simply given.

Calling an eclair sweet is certainly not apriori, for one has to taste the eclair, recognize the sweetness, associate the eclair with the sweetness, then make the judgment. You are saying the taste in its givennes is not determined by experience. Givenness is not determined empirically because it is not a determination based on experience, it IS experience. It is not about the brain at all. It is a phenomenological matter, looking exclusively to the givenness, and not to extraneous discursions.
One trouble thinking like this comes from Derrida and postmodern thinking on direct apprehensions in the "immediacy" of the given. But I am not interested in that here. I follow Husserl and his epoche as it is developed in post post modern thinking (Jean luc Marion and others). And it is here I will leave off making any references to who said what, for my thinking is in a simple (certainly related, though) argument:

I think art is to grounded in the aesthetic, and the aesthetic is to be grounded in affect. Beyond this, something may HAVE an "art" to it, as in the art of winning friends or basket weaving, or the culinary "arts" but to the extent a thing is appreciated for its utility or its cognitive "properties" (definitions, predications of other things or within its own parts, say), or it "informational" properties (the OP here) it is not art. The "art of such and such" certainly does possess affect, but then, everything possesses affect, which is why "everything is art" seems to hold up. Art requires taking a thing AS art, and this AS looks to its affective dimension.

This brings the issue to Wittgenstein, and why he refused to talk about ethics and aesthetics. The Good and the Bad here are not contingent, but absolute, and he would talk about such things because they are simply givens, and discussion cannot be useful. In fact, conversation is nonsense on matters like this. He goes too far, I think, in denying that sense can be made here (in the Tractatus. Language games? Not so sure).

The reason I say a definition of art is qualifiedly possible is because art's aesthetic is given, and givens, I claim, are absolutes. I can argue this pretty well I believe, but that would be up to you and your interests.

The viewer experiences the art work in a Enactivist fashion, where the consciousness of the viewer and the form of the art work, interact to cause an experience. The experience is not entirely the result of the artwork, nor entirely the result of the viewer, but is an amalgam of the two - experienced by the viewer. In the best of cases, these two gel to cause a pleasant experience, rather than repel, which would be an unpleasant experience, or one that is bypassed altogether. — Pop

Enactivism? If a person wants to examine at the basic level the interface between things and their subjective counterparts, one will NEVER be able to distinguish the two. You can argue against this if you like, but analytic philosophers gave up on this impossible idea long ago. They now simply put the whole epistemic embarrassment aside and imagine Kant through Heidegger never existed.
If you are interested in, as Hegel put it, the truth, then basic level assumptions have to be dealt with, and this leads only to one place: phenomenology.
So the information bearing object has no status at all until it is received. I would call this a qualified information bearing transcendental object (hermeneutically defined AS art upon arrival. This "AS" of course, puts art back in the hands of the aesthetic and its nature. This is inherently affective); but information has to be redefined in a way that defies its essential meaning.

When information informs you, it changes your neural state such that you ultimately have an experience. — Pop

But the art object did not carry or transfer or simply "inform" about something else. Rather, when the art object is absent, and one is left with the "information" we actually find the presence of the object. What is it that is there in consciousness, the authentic locus of art, that is not the object, but rather, what the object delivered, told about, informed about? When I think of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, it is the same music I hear in the "object" of the performance. What does a Dickens tale tell that is not the tale itself?

Suggested here is the myth of the art object: There is no object that properties inhere in. All along, the consciousness itself is what inheres in the art work. for boundaries fall apart in analysis. The art work and its affect and ideas are one "object". Thus, (and this is very much Dewey) there is no separation in anything, but rather, all separations (like Kant's reason) are analytically abstracted. Information, in cognitive, truth bearing vehicles like paintings and novels, cannot be distanced at all from consciousness, for they are an intrinsic part of it.

Is information inherently aesthetic for you? There never really was any consciousness-neutral object that informed simply, for to even mention the object, to conceive it is to "make" a conscious construction. Perhaps you think the object is a transcendental medium, appearing to consciousness AS information (for this is what we do at the moment of apprehension), but in itself without any identifiable features. After all, once such features are posited, we are then IN consciousness. If the art object is a transcendental medium, then there is overcome the objection that the object and conscious apprehension of the object are the same thing, for the object now has no features at all. There is no symphonic performance out there and in here (my consciousness) the artistic event, for the performance itself is a conscious event. I actually come close to endorsing this.

But you do insist on that one big point of contention: Information???? Here I am enjoying this novel or aesthetically enraptured (Clive Bell) by a Van Gogh: Is it the case that I have been "informed" by the actual object. whatever it is? Informed by a newspaper, yes, but....One is not informed when have an aesthetic experience. This is cognitive, this being informed.

The art object is not information bearing, it is evocative, arousing, empassioning, and so forth.

Sentient life is not just an observer of the world but is a part of the world

The human observer does not lead an existence separate to the world. The human is an integral part of the world, and has been part of an evolutionary process stretching back at least 3.7 billion years - a synergy between all parts of the physical world, of matter and force, between nature and life.

IE, the human is not an outside observer of the world, but part of the world — RussellA

And Rorty would agree with you, as long as you are not stepping into metaphysics. His pragmatism, at the level of basic questions, agrees with Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Dewey (and Khun, his favorites for the 20th century). Science is unassailable in the language and pragmatic affairs that make our world work. But just don't think science has some grasp on the things foundationally: Even a LITTLE, don't think this. This is nonsense for him, for all things are, at this level, pragmatic constructions. Evolution, at this level, says nothing, and claims that it does is just bad metaphysics.

Most are not inclined to go this far.

The pragmatist holds the position that the purpose of our beliefs as expressed in language is not to understand the true nature of reality existing on the other side of our senses, but to succeed in whatever environment we happen to find ourselves. As with Kant's synthetic a priori, we make sense of the world by imposing our a priori concepts onto the world we observe

However, the human observer does not have a separate existence to the reality of any world external to their senses, but is an intrinsic part of reality. The observer is part of the world and the world is part of the observer, they are one and the same. — RussellA

But then, when you are pressed to say what world is that you are a part of, you re referred back to the self, same as Kant. The question about all this really lies with metaphysics, good or bad? Bad metaphysics extends theory beyond what can be "witnessed" (challenging here the positivists), but good metaphysics asks, what is there in what is witnessed that gives rise to metaphysics at all? Your "observer is part of the world" goes to this, for to speak of a world of which we are a part is to speak of something not witnessable, like a chair or a pen: the world is not a particular, but nor is it general concept. Life gets a little spooky, or it should, at this point. Most philosophers don't see it this way, holding a reductive view of "the world" to this or that identifiable category. Husserl to Levinas makes sense of this for me.

Anyway, keep in mind that the Tractatus Wittgenstein would throw up red flags to expressions like "part of the world" for world's opposite here cannot even be imagined. Thoughts draw limits, and no limit can be seen. (I have always thought this threshold itself was the nonsense, though. Metaphysics is In the physics, if you will.)

And finally, the whole matter collapses into triviality regarding ethics and aesthetics, if nothing can be affirmed at this level.

As the observer is part of reality, then any beliefs the observer has about the reality of logic, aesthetics, ethics, space, time, etc must also be an inherent part of reality itself. — RussellA

I agree with this. But I don't think we have the same views on it.

Rather than we make sense of a reality external to our senses by imposing our a priori concepts onto it, part of reality makes sense of itself through a priori concepts.

IE, the pragmatist holds the position that the human observer only has an indirect contact with reality through the senses, whereas in fact, the human observer's knowledge also comes from being in direct contact with reality, being an intimate part of reality. — RussellA

That is a sticky wicket you just said. There is a good reason Rorty and others deny that knowledge can in any way align with "reality" at the foundational level. The reason is that it seems impossible to remove from what we know the means of knowing itself. This is why analytic philosophers are so bad at epistemology: Affirming (believing, knowing) P, by S, never gets beyond justification. This means the "aboutness" of P is entirely lost unless you can make that essential "connection" between knower and known. All claims to some "objective" world independent of justification simply falls away. 'Objective' simply becomes part of the whole, as you say below.
But this doesn't mean there is no way to affirm the Real in an absolute sense (my sticky wicket): it is affirmed through value, the interest, caring, affect,desire, enjoying, suffering, and on and on. This is the only dimension of judgment that survives the failure of the terms of justification, because, while it is delivered in language (pragmatically construed, contingent), it has a determinacy that is not a construct of language. This is the issue for metaethics, meta aesthetics, metavalue: the noncontingent Good and the Bad. What IS music's affect?

And this "partial contact with Reality" will not hold water with the likes of Rorty, Dewey, or anyone else. Such a reality is, as with all things, a pragmatic construction, future looking in an anticipated response, the truth being the consummatory conclusion. It is a hard pill to swallow for most, but we live in pragmatic Time, events, and Being/Reality is just a vacuous construction in the matter of ontology. To call something partial implies the whole to make sense. It doesn't.

The question as to whether the aesthetic exists in the object observed the other side of the sense or within the observer disappears, as the reality on the other side of the senses is the very same reality as within the observer, in that there is only one reality. The aesthetic within the world and the aesthetic within the observer are one and the same, as any aesthetic in the sentient life is exactly the same as the aesthetic in the world from which it evolved over billions of years. IE, The word "aesthetic" only exists within human language, which only exists within humans, which exist within the world, meaning that "aesthetics" must exist in a world within which humans exist.

As I see it, the aesthetic is an abstract expression of the human ability to discover pattern in seemingly chaotic situations, to discover uniformity in variety, an invaluable trait in evolutionary survival. As Francis Hutcheson wrote in 1725: “What we call Beautiful in Objects, to speak in the Mathematical Style, seems to be in a compound Ratio of Uniformity and Variety; so that where the Uniformity of Bodys is equal, the Beauty is as the Variety; and where the Variety is equal, the Beauty is as the Uniformity”. — RussellA

The "other side" is noumenal impossibility if you're talking about what is left when all experience making faculties leave the room. But then, there is this side, the Cartesian center fomr which all meaning issues. Not observable in the usual sense, but philosophy cares nothing for the usual sense, or shouldn't. Not so much as the cogito as a transcendental locus of intuitive disclosure. Meanings emerge here.

There is no billions of years to measure things at this level of analysis. Evolution, physics, and all empirical science are out the window. This is now phenomenology. But I agree completely that "aesthetics exists in (the) world". Itis simply arbitrary to localize human affairs apart from the whole. But the question then lies with how to determine where the center is to all this. Science is dethroned, and meaning (as Heidegger said) is front and center. A new ontological hierarchy, and Rorty is on board, as am I. Evolution has always been uninformative, anyway, for it could never explain meaning, aesthetic, ethical. Dictionary meanings? Somewhat.

As to Beauty, I don't think, frankly, Hutcheson had a clue, for all that is said to account for beauty, lacks the very element of the beautiful. It is like emergent qualities theory: X emerges from Y, where Y is qualitatively absent of X. Senseless. The aesthetic is "its own presupposition". It is simple, unanalyzable. Value is this, which is why Wittgenstein would never talk about it. Nothing to say. He was wrong on that account.

For me, important visual art requires aesthetic form of pictographic representation. As expressed by Hegel, formal quality is the unity or harmony of different elements in which these elements are not just arranged in a regular, symmetrical pattern but are unified organically together with a content of freedom and richness of spirit (though for me not a content of the divine).

Summary

In summary, the pragmatists are making the mistake of not taking into account the fact that because we are in intrinsic part of the world, this world "is also discovered, as well as made". — RussellA

Yes, that part about the divine is important, though. The artwork is a mirror of the spirit, for Hegel, and the aesthetic discovered therein is metaphysical. The meta aesthetic question is the only one there is at the basic level. I think Hegel is right about this (though I won't be winning many friends on this point. People don't think this is intellectually responsible talk. But call them on this, and they can't defend it.)

Yes, it possesses information about that affair, as you put it. It is entirely information about that affair. — Pop

You mean it "informs" which is does. But you are bypassing the point: That thing out there is not nor ever was independent of what is "in here"

Anything deemed to be art is art, end of enquiry. This is because we have a long history of this being the case, and the fact that art was thought to be indefinite. — Pop

Well, if THAT i what you think art is, you are starkly begging the question: what is it that art IS, such that when you call something art you have some property in mind? No property, no predication, then no meaning. Like saying, "Snow is W*&^$&@*." (Keeping in mind that yours is a definition of art, or, the art obejct.)
We have a long history of explaining what good government is, but this by no means tells us us we are finally right because history has been around all these years. It always has to be understood that philosophers are professional thinking people, and, as Hegel said, all propositions carry their own negation. The trick, I believe I mentioned, is to find a grounding for art that is not contingent of language. That is the aesthetic. Philosophers have PUT art in disarray, just as they chase everything around until exhaustion and absurdity rule. They do this because they will not admit foundational talk, and, I have to add, rightly so, because this is the death of free thought, dogmatism; BUT, the vagaries of art's definition do not mean there is no "presence" that is there. (A very interesting issue. Wittgenstein said ethics and aesthetics make impossible claims-- absolute claims! For value is not observable. This is why it is so hard to talk about it, well, meta-art issues. But: there is no mistaking the, call it, the ontologicality of good and bad. In art, imagine music or a painting that is so compelling, so affectively stirring, and the "aesthetic" is unmistakable. Without this, the music would be nothing. The aesthetic makes music, music. The same with all else. Remove this dimension of the experience, and the is no art, just talk

Talk, language, logic and cognition, is not AS SUCH, aesthetic. This is a prima facie resaon to dismiss the statement, Art is information. But then, your argument is that the art OBJECT is information, right? There is a big difference. But I say, the art object cannot be removed fromt he inner experience because this experience is not about something else, as with information, but IS that object, just as you cannot experience inwardly Van Gogh's Boots painting without an explicit reference to the object. This is different from, say, a letter sent INFORMING of something that has nothing at all to do with the medium of information: Good news that you won the lottery has nothing to do with those words on a page.

Art IS informed, transported from one to another through an information medium, most certainly. But the art work itself IS IN that which is informed. So the art object cannot be simply information.

As I have explained a number of times now - we cannot predict what art will be in its form, or what the experiential reaction to this form will be. These things are endlessly variable and open ended, so can not form part of any definition of art.

Hopefully this answers your question - yes an art work is information, and it is information about the consciousness of the artist. It exists in some form, and this form by virtue of being something physical is aesthetic, so is always experiential. But there is nothing definite about the form, or any resultant aesthetic, or experience. We can not predict what the form of art will be in a hundred years, or the experience that will result from it, so can not define art in these terms. These terms are variable, they do not always exist in art, and it is unpredictable how they might exist in future. For a definition, we need to focus on the things that always exist in art, and the only thing that always exist in art is that art work is information about the artists consciousness - everything else is variable! That is why this is a definition - such as it is. :grin:
— Pop

There is a limit to art however, and that limit is the artists thinking - an artist cannot make art about something that they cannot think about. So art is an expression of consciousness, and no more. It is not an expression of something beyond the consciousness of the artist - cannot possibly be. So is information about the consciousness of the artist, including the subconscious. — Pop

Some things here a bit odd: "by virtue of being physical is aesthetic"? But this says the physical is what produces the aesthetic. But if anything is aesthetic, it is not the object, but the subjective response to the object. The object is supposed to be merely "information" about the goings on in consciousness. Are you saying the aesthetic lies in the evocative powers of the object? But evocative brings in a new dimension to information that don't really hold: is what "informs" that which is evocative? This latter is more causative, isn't it? To inform means to possess X and to pass it along. Evoke is to inspire, motivate, cause. If an art work is evocative of something, it is not informing me, but eliciting something else within. Information is a troubling term here throughout. N
Nothing definite about the form? Why, what do you mean by "definite"? You mean, the "what it is" is indeterminate? But all things are this if you look to explanatory affairs exclusively, for you are deep in metaphysics now and are simply denying absolutes, and this is a point of contention. I cannot SAY what being in love ism for language does not speak the world, does not say the ISness about the presences encountered, which leads to the post Heidegger world of postmodern thinking. But in aesthetic and ethics, therein lies true presence. A highly debatable issue. Postmodern thinking is right on the money in much I have read; but when value is brought before it, it falls flat.

I cannot understand this at all:
This is For a definition, we need to focus on the things that always exist in art, and the only thing that always exist in art is that art work is information about the artists consciousness - everything else is variable!

Frankly, just the opposite is the case. Information is interpretative, for all meanings are indeterminate. It is the aesthetic that remains after all talk is done. Wittgenstein held this, and he was right, only wrong about his strict line of what was allowable in meaningful speech (in the Tractatus, that is).

Finally all this remains blind to the artwork's inextricable presence in experience: the symphony is not a vehicle of aesthetic information, for the artwork IS the experience. See the above.

With postmodernism, where anything can be art, then there cannot be good art or bad art. Then the well-known artwork A mail box in a lake is equal to the most prominent postmodernist works in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (badly named, however)

But in modernism, where art has been defined (albeit in more than one way), there can be good and bad art. Then a child's crayon sketch of a dog can never be the equal of a Rembrandt or Matisse. — RussellA

Just to add: Rorty thought things could be reconciled pragmatically. I look at him like this: there are no absolutes for, in good old Hegelian fashion, all utterances contain their own contradiction, and for Rorty, this world is "made, not discovered" and the contradictions are essentially pragmatic. But it is in pragmatics that things get settled. Art may be an open concept, utterly, but it is grounded in the pragmatic authority of our times, our zeitgeist, if you will. Peirce has a "long run" view that Rorty had to dismiss, but I think Rorty believes that in the play of thought, irony, that is, some things comes out ahead of others in concepts like a successful society, a well structured social environment.
There was this essay by Simon Critchley which called him on this. Sound like Rorty wants to have his cake and eat it. too: Pragmatism holds NO favorites, and cares nothing for a well governed world.

The problem is, how can the idea that "the essence of art is as an aesthetic" be expressed but not in propositional form, if as you say that "propositions are inherently defeatable" and "words all carry their own negation" ? — RussellA

Why, RussellA, you surprise me. That IS the question. It is the issue of "presence" or the metaphysics of presence, which issues from the assumption that any given moment of experience can never be this immediate apprehension: affirmations of the world are inherently expressions of underlying complexity, "adumbrations" of what was past that, on apprehension of an object, or anything at all (eidetic or otherwise), gather to produce identity and knowledge. This general line of thought is Heidegger's contra Husserl, claiming the latter was "walking on water". This is picked up by Derrida, who coined "the metaphysics of presence". The solution lies with Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety. Kierkegaard saw that temporality subsumed the past-into-future dynamic. The real solution is this: past and future can only be In the eternal present, in and of and throughout, the unrealized present; unrealized because, and this becomes a major theme is the existentialism to come, in our everydayness we are naturally disposed ignore the present AS present, and we live in an inherited body of culture which fixates and dazzles our engagements.

Fascinating, really. I am reading Hegel now and everywhere I see Kierkegaard, and everywhere in Kierkegaard I see Sartre, Heidegger, and so on. But this doesn't advance my point.

The real issue lies in meta-aesthetics/ethics: what is the Good? Wittgenstein thought the Good was divinity, and I think this problematically right. Witt was very fond of Kierkegaard. My entrance into this issue begins with the concrete: that spear in my side and the pain it produces: this is not an interpretative construction of language, even though language brings its disclosure to "light". This pain/joy dimension of our existence is the existential essence of aesthetics. Dewey didn't talk like this, but he was right: the Real is an originary whole, cognitive, aesthetic, sensory, intuitive, that is in essence pragmatic. The understanding is pragmatic, I claim, which is why the aesthetic cannot be spoken (and Wittgenstein does not speak of it. Though, Witt was no pragmatist). It is a "presence" which is simply there.

Interesting how this works out. If you follow Heidegger, no foundation can exist, for hermenuetics resists such a thing (though he is attacked on this very idea). We take up the world "as" the interpretative meaning (and Derrida later saying these meanings are self referential in their Saussurian differences). I admit this is right, not to put too fine a point on it, but in aesthetics and ethics, there is value. Value is non cognitive; of course, as with all things, cognition "takes up" present pain or joy and the recognition of it in thought depends on this (accepting that we are agencies of thought) . The difference here is that these aesthic/ethical modes, if you will, "speak". They have a nature beyond what can be spoken, yet they speak undeniably, intuitively of what they are. This is a very different affair from say, some qualia, like Moore's color yellow.

Of course, these thoughts are a work in progress. Any contribution you can make would be appreciated.

Language is not part of the essence of a modernist artwork.
I don't want to give the impression that I think that linguistic descriptions are part of the fundamental essence of a modernist artwork. Descriptions and definitions (succinct descriptions) may be helpful in the viewer's understand of the artwork but any such description is external to the artwork.

Though language is important in understanding the artwork
For example, when looking at a Classical Greek sculpture such as Laocoon and his Sons, admired by Hegel for its form and content, a deeper understanding of both the artwork and artist may be gained by knowing that for Hegel formal qualities meant "a unity and harmony of different elements in which these elements are not just arranged in a regular, symmetrical pattern but are unified organically" and content meant "an expression of freedom and richness of spirit".

Language is part of the essence of a postmodernist artwork
Language in postmodernism has a different function to that of language in modernism.
In postmodernism, there has been a blurring of the lines between art and language, where language itself has become a part of the artwork and where through the text the viewer is invited to directly engage with political and social issues within contemporary life. In postmodernism, the artwork is not an end in itself, but is an instrument by which the viewer is directed to political and social concerns held by the artist.

Modernism is more profound than postmodernism
Modernism (whose essence is aesthetic form of pictographic representation) enables a profundity not present in postmodernism because the viewer's interpretation is not restricted by having to comply with any language imposed on the artwork by the artist, as would be the case within a postmodernist artwork (where the aesthetic has been deliberately excluded and whose essence is symbolic representation).

IE, modernism is democratic in allowing the viewer a free interpretation, whereas postmodernism is authoritarian in directing the viewer's interpretation by means of the language imposed by the artist. — RussellA

I don't buy any of this. The question of art lies with one question: is there anything that is both the essence of art, what makes art, art, and absolute? The reason art theory becomes so diffuse is because this question is considered a lost cause, and foundational talk "nonsense" (Wittgenstein encouraged the damage here).
But I claim art has this foundation: there is an intuitive absolute foundation to art, and that divergence in theory has entirely to do with the intellect's will to diversity. Hegel said that the object stands before the modern mind as an historical fixity with its own negation built into it, and this power of negation has no limit. In other words, anything and everything can be negated, thus, in the effort to affirm, there is instant denial. This, incidentally is also Derrida, or close. Putting aside the whole of Hegel's thought (pls!), he is right about this. Propositions are inherently defeatable. The only recourse in art (I say, though Hegel is over my shoulder) it to look for what is NOT propositional. Art has this, I say. It is called the aesthetic. And the historical movement away from this is simply word play. After all, words all carry their own begation.
Fascinating argument in this, but only if you're interested.

As per the definition, and the OP. Everything can be reduced to information, as otherwise how would you know about it? When you stand in front of a painting, it informs you - literally changes your neural state such that you become aware of it's presence.

Hopefully this establishes that art is information? — Pop

It is not that art is not information. It is about whether the art object is nothing but information, such that the thesis, "Art is information" holds up as a definition of art, as you say it does.

Everything is information, though I'm not sure you see it like this. You could say the tree standing before me is information: The observation itself is a thing of parts, the cognitive, the familiarity nd the recollection that makes it familiar, the implicit interest of looking at all. this latter is the aesthetic in everyday life. So put explicit information aside, like a newspaper: all I observe is like this; the world is information about myself (kind of what Kant was all about), the structure of thought exhibited in the form of judgment and perception (which leads to further dimensions in phenomenology). Further, the tree and everything about it, one could argue, is nothing BUT a reading of the productive source which is consciousness.
Such a surprisingly interesting issue. Here are a few thoughts, and I think, unless you can convince me otherwise, these have to be taken up to make your position tenable.

Look at what can be called an unproblematic case of information, say, stereo instructions or the daily news. These deliver information, and if there is an issue here, then the matter turns to the ambiguity of the term itself, that is, if the news isn't information, nothing is. Two things: First, it can be claimed that even when I read and am informed, the medium is not discarded as simply a vehicle for delivery. As I consider the "information" I am repeating the medium of delivery: words and their structure. But then, the point of information is to be about something else, the war overseas or the shortage in gasoline, and the words are not the news! I think this idea captures what information is. So when there is information, there is talk of something else entirely, and the medium is the vehicle for this something else.


I am convinced at this point that if something is to reduced to information, as you are doing, the information and its "aboutness" has to exhaust the analysis of the medium. But then the question arises: Is this possible? Can a medium of information be reduced exclusively to the terms of delivery? Words are not events in the news, but events in the news cannot be word-free affairs. Then again, two killed in a car accident is not the news about them being killed. It seems like it depends on what the information itself is. If I say what someone said earlier to inform you, then the saying the second time is the same or similar as the first, making the second information bearing utterance not merely information about the first, but essentially sharing in content. In this case, the utterance is not simply news about an event, but the event itself. And this is my current objection to your position: An art work, once exhaustively analysed as information about what is substantively an inner, consciousness affair, possesses something of that affair itself.

Respond? I mean, it's a genuinely interesting piece of philosophy you raised, but only as good as the such things as the above are given their due. (I'm not a fan of philosophy banter).

(In this is another issue: is conceptual art, really art?)

Second: What your definition lacks is an actual account of what the art IS, in the consciousness that receives it, creates it. I mean, if say X is the definition of art, and the true seat of art lies within and the object is simply that which carries it, deposits it, if you will, then a major part of your thinking should go to what it is that is there, in consciousness that the art work carries and delivers. This, I would think, is central to any definition of art.

My thinking has for while now been that to "discover" the essence of art, one has to do the phenomenological reduction of Husserl. See his Ideas I. An analysis at the level of basic questions, assumptions has to look at experience apophatically: not this, not that.

So when you say morality is beneath the level of perspective you mean you don't decide what's right and wrong. You want to identify the causal agent here, and its obviously beyond your whims?

I suppose a candidate would be Augustinean Christianity. "Love and do what you will". It's an amoral command, but it serves as a moral guide at the same time. And maybe love is unanalyzable. I'm not sure.

Anyway, you could think of it as where amorality meets it's opposite? — frank

If we were talking in a scientific context, and I wanted to give analysis to, say, a rock formation or a symptom of something else, I would be looking causal accounts, yes. But this is more descriptive: I look at a rock formation and ask, what it is. This is classificatory, and in science, of course, it gets into taxonomic terms and features that these designate. In ethics and aesthetics, I observe what is there and ask the same question. Simple analysis: what is it that lies before me that everyone is calling art, that is, what is it that makes it art? The scientist's question is, what do I observe as identifiable features, and what are my classificatory options? The options are two: on the one hand, aesthetic, which have to do with value. This object (music, novel, poem, painting and so forth) is something "cared" for, the aesthetic being that which this caring is all about. On the other, there is cognition: talk about its features, predicative affairs like, the french horn's timbre contrasting against the sharp intrusion of the percussion, and so forth. The cognitive features of the judgment are always there, structuring the judgment, but as cognition, they are not what defines the art/music. The aesthetic does (which is why I like Dewey: the two are existentially one. Cognition is bound to the aesthetic, though, to know is not, as such, aesthetic.

To know about ethics or aesthetics, one has to first identify what it is be discussed. As with regular science, this begins with observation of unproblematic cases.

Again, art is entangled with all else, hence the confusion. Analysis abstracts from the whole to find the essential properties. like Kant did with reason. The assumption here is, cognition qua cognition is not wht art is about. I question, for example, that conceptual art is truly art. It is mostly a thesis.

Any underlying definition of art is pointless in postmodernism, as anything can be art, but in modernism, definitions are an important aspect in understanding the great social, cultural and intellectual importance of modernist artworks. — RussellA

I don't buy any of this. The question of art lies with one question: is there anything that is both the essence of art, what makes art, art, and absolute? The reason art theory becomes so diffuse is because this question is considered a lost cause, and foundational talk "nonsense" (Wittgenstein encouraged the damage here).
But I claim art has this foundation: there is an intuitive absolute foundation to art, and that divergence in theory has entirely to do with the intellect's will to diversity. Hegel said that the object stands before the modern mind as an historical fixity with its own negation built into it, and this power of negation has no limit. In other words, anything and everything can be negated, thus, in the effort to affirm, there is instant denial. This, incidentally is also Derrida, or close. Putting aside the whole of Hegel's thought (pls!), he is right about this. Propositions are inherently defeatable. The only recourse in art (I say, though Hegel is over my shoulder) it to look for what is NOT propositional. Art has this, I say. It is called the aesthetic. And the historical movement away from this is simply word play. After all, words all carry their own begation.
Fascinating argument in this, but only if you're interested.

Agree, and personally I find the idea of a mailbox standing in the middle of a lake rather aesthetically appealing. — praxis

Then you think irony is art. But irony is cognitive. What can this be about?