**ASSIGNMENT FOR FRIDAY**

Watch this show:

http://www.fancast.com/tv/Star-Trek/96413/621041885/Star-Trek%3A-The-Original-Series---Spock-s-Brain/videos

Writing:

Length: equivalent of 1-2 single-spaced typewritten pages.

Take yourself apart. Write your own Meditation from any narrative perspective you choose. You can call your subject "I" or "it" or "him" or "her" or whatever. You can situate your subject in any context you choose -- sitting by the fire, in a prison, in deep space, et cetera.

Since this assignment is limited pagewise and timewise, it is recommended that you limit your Meditation to one of the subjects Descartes addresses (the self, perception, "things," error, certainty, et cetera) or a subject of your own that relates to the discussion of the class.

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Jack

Certainty…and Buildings

(I tend to fall into exclamations and hyper-referentiality when it gets later in the night; those parts of my tone really aren't entirely reasoned or necessarily conducive to my speculations. But, hey, it's supposed to be a meditation, I don't need to restrain myself.) )

            It is some years now since I realized how many false opinions I had accepted as true from childhood onwards, and how many subsequent collapses I had witnessed, my fears quickly transformed into new joy as each flimsy edifice of incumbent morality came crashing down, the beauty of the plain briefly revealed before the rise of fresh and effortless structures. Once again I praise those vast tremors of the Earth, those moments of convulsion in which whatever I have built on such shaky foundations is revealed as a mere point in a series stretching to infinity. How high they seemed, those walls I built! And yet in the moment of their collapse I see their vanity; their total obliteration brings me the beautiful assurance that such triviality shall no longer stand; the crumbling of a decadent façade brings no regret, only relief.

            Why do we fear the destruction of these buildings? Our greatest feats of architecture shall seem mere exercises of the youthful architect, forever young and forever growing. What was the rock that fell before my feet? What was the hiss which buzzed beside my ears? Out of my mind came that disintegrating masonry. My ears made the lintel’s fall they heard. I shall not be harmed by this collapsing temple. None shall suffer save the idols whose twilight we now witness. New gods will arrive with the dawn, but they shall live their day and ever be replaced.

            Ok, that tone is too labor intensive, and I seem to be forgetting whom I’m parodying. But why seek for this metaphorical firm ground on which to build our beliefs? The ultimate reason to give up this search is a conviction that no such firm ground exists; cogito tells me nothing certain. Of course, this lack of certainty might inspire desperate searchers to continue and redouble their efforts to locate an immovable base—but what are the hypothetical benefits of such a “place” being found? One will presumably feel more comfortable with an immovable truth, an unmovable God, on one’s side. Those who seek truth by doubting everything, however, reveal a blatant acceptance of an unproven idea: that truth exists.

            Most, having built the walls of their belief, seek to shelter inside of them for as long as possible. When one tears them down and builds new ones, that is generally called revelation, an epiphany. The occasional destruction of these little boxes is admitted by many to be valid, valuable, acceptable. An unwillingness to build any houses might be considered absolute relativism, sophism, a lack of all moral principle. These non-builders are not widely admired.

            The third alternative is a perpetual building of homes. The trick is do build them as if they would stand forever, to lavish attention in every detail of their construction, to admire their beautiful aspects—but to avoid the two poles of (1) refusal to move away no matter how decrepit they become and (2) a loss of faith in the building process as house after house collapses into rubble. This is not uncommon, for a limited time and to a limited degree, among young people. There are many tales of childhood beliefs shattered, new idealism acquired…and then often a gradual jading, or acceptance of realism, depending on one’s perspective. There may often be multiple phases within this sequence, especially a vast range of childhood idealizations of the good, on which all morality is based. Also, the final step is often merely a partial regression to former (or even original) attitudes. This period of dramatic destruction and rebuilding is often cited by individuals as a positive period of overall “growth.”  

            Can I have certainty and permanence? Very doubtful.

How would I find them? By doubting everything, and seizing upon the remainder.  

Do I want them? Only if I believe they exist.

How can I believe that? Only by abandoning universal doubt, my only means to my goal.

How can I reconcile the means and the object? By admitting that it isn’t really the ground that I want, it’s the house. The existence of absolute certainty is no certainty; my desire for a house is certain as long as I will for it to continue. (That adds a superfluous syntactical level; I don’t will it to do anything; I simply willit.) So let the houses be built! Let their comforts be exalted! Let their excellences be maintained until their deficiencies are revealed! Then tear it down, admire the shifting plates of this our world, and rebuild! Mars is cold and unmoving; our earthquakes reveal our inner fire. Therefore let us forge in the smithies of our souls not proud Ares’ swords, which serve only to defend these doomed piles of rocks, but rather the beams which will allow this cathedral of the soul to grow to its full and finite dimensions. Then let it fall! There is a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together. In between these there is a period of rest, but do not think it will endure forever—do not wish for it to endure forever. Certainty is a chimera, a hobgoblin of little minds. 

Sara Sol :

Meditation on Consciousness

I read my origins in a history book. It defined consciousness as an evolved form of my senses, an extension of the faculties provided  to me by my sense organs, my nervous system, my spinal cord, and at some point, my brain., an extension of the bodily thing which I’ve always perceived as a part of what I call “I” . But as an extension of that bodily thing, what is it? Is it the essence of my “I” or is it just an amalgamation of sense perceptions?

I want to define what consciousness is. Sitting here I tried to feel, to absolutely only feel, or rather, sense. I attempted to parse the “consciousness” from the rest of the “I”, to experience only. I tried to see and hear and feel and smell and taste only. Well, I couldn’t. I sat and I saw, and I heard, and I felt, and I smelt, and I tasted. But I also thought. I heard the crow and thought crow. Honestly I don’t know what I thought, only that I did. I do. I think- unceasingly. I cannot seem to distinguish the sense from the thought. The thought comes along, unwanted. I see the green of the grass and imprinted in that sight are thoughts about whether or not it’s wet and why it’s so unbelievably green in comparison with yesterday, and other thoughts that aren’t word thoughts but instead are amalgamations of other senses, I feel the memory of some other time I sat on grass and had my butt get wet, I taste/see some day that had been on the same patch of grass, I keep thinking in words and sounds and other feelings, most of which are not contemporaneous but brought up from a memory, all of which compare in some way or another to the reality I am experiencing . Each thought I recall allows me to distinguish what I see from what I have seen, it allows me to define the materiality of the world around me and within me.

 The reality I am sitting in is overwhelming, it induces so many thoughts all of which I can’t delete or prevent.  Moreover, I can’t even seem to make a distinction between the different senses, and if I hadn’t been taught that there are different ones, I don’t think I would guess it. I concentrate on the taste of my orange, but the texture and the taste are so tightly wound up in the same bite that I can’t tell if the tangy sting that bites the back of my mouth is a product of the taste or of the feel, I also don’t know if the smell is just the peel or if it’s the sweetness I taste.(democratus) This conjunction of the senses is frustratingly persistent.  If I close my eyes and block out the sight I still see the sun and feel its warmth but I really don’t know if the warmth is something I feel in the sight of the sun on my closed eyelid, I know it sounds like an easy distinction to make, but the more I think about it the more I am convinced the feeling of the sun on my shoulder is the same as the feeling in my sight.

I cannot remove thought from my perceptions through the senses, and I cannot distinguish one sense from the other. But can I remove the senses from the thought? Can I just think? I close my eyes, cover my ears, try not to think about the wet grass I am sitting on, and I think. I try to think the space that “I” would be in if it wasn’t the space perceived by my senses. To think of a thought without perception I think of an empty space. Momentarily I think I found thought without sense, and then realize that to imagine an empty space I must sense emptiness.  I think of the place I am sitting, I think of how I have to think myself into a space empty of the senses. But my thoughts keep giving rise to recreations of things I have sensed, or am sensing. Is there a thing that is solely Thought? I keep thinking in senses, I think of the wet grass and the sun and the people I just saw standing up and I think of all of these things that I sensed. And when I don’t think in feeling I think in words, but those words are just extensions of the things they describe, because what is “orange” but a string of symbols when it’s not the fruit I just ate or the color I saw? It does not seem, as of yet, to be possible to think without some relation to those senses. Even this thought is an extension of the thought I thought when I read a book about my material existence.

But what is even more frustrating than this inseparability of thought and sense is that thought doesn’t seem to be simply an amalgamation of the senses. It allows me to connect one memory of a sense and another, and thus allows me to distinguish one thing from another. Is thought just a sum of all the senses? Or is it something entirely separate? It seems that either way, the senses and thought are innately related, and seem to be almost symbiotic.

Mazzin

Meditation 

     I want to begin by defining things that I know for certain. There aren’t many of them so it shouldn’t take long.  One thing I know for certain is that I exist. I know this because I am able to think, I am able to create thoughts. I possess these thoughts therefore they are mine. For example, if I want to think of a tree, or an airplane, or a boat, I can. Some thoughts come into my mind un-willingly, but once they come into my mind I now control them. For example, if I’m walking down the road and smell a barbeque, images of a grill, chicken, sun, grass, may all pop into my head but once they are in my head I can control them. I change the color of the grill; I can make the sun turn into clouds. Even these thoughts that un-willingly come into my head derive from prior thoughts that I once thought. So, if I am able to create thoughts than surely I exist, at least as a thinking entity. Have you ever thought of something that you have never seen, or hear, or touched before? Sometimes our prior thoughts combine to form what seems like a completely new thought but it is really just a combination of old thoughts. For example you may have had an image of a person in your mind before, a person you have never seen. This may appear to be an original thought, but in fact this person is a combination of body parts and shapes that you have seen in the past.

     Now I will begin to prove the existence of god, however the god that I will prove shares little with the god that is commonly thought of (perfect, all knowing, good, ect.) First I will begin with the fact that eternity exists. We can all agree that before space was created something existed, and before that was created something else existed, and before that another thing existed. This continues on until something was not created, something was just there. Or perhaps nothing was ever just there and there was always something that came before something. If this is the case which I believe it is, then god is subjective. When I use the term god the only attribute I give to it, is it being a creator. Good, perfection, all knowing, ect do not belong to my idea of god. Something caused space to form, perhaps it was the big bang (whether this is true or not does not matter) whatever cause the big bang, be it a chemical reaction or whatever was caused by a prior event. This prior event, which caused the big bang, which then caused the formation of the universe, which then caused the formation of the earth, then the formation of humans, was also caused by some event. Essentially there is an eternal chain reaction, which has no beginning. I say god is subjective because depending of your perspective god may be something else. Whichever event caused the formation of our universe, I would deem god. This event may be an explosion of atoms or combinations of atoms or whatever. But, this event I deem god because it caused my creation. Now, if you ask the atoms who god is they would say it’s the event that created atoms, we can call that event Z. If you ask Z who god is, it would be whatever event created Z. Since this chain reaction has no origin one could never pinpoint one individual event. Depending on how ambition you want to be and how far back of a reaction you want to attribute to your individual creation decides who you deem god. I’m only ambitious enough to go as far back as any scientist has gone so far. In one hundred years it may become common knowledge as to what created the reaction that caused the big bang, if that is the case then that new event would become my god. God is nothing more than reactions and causes with no origin. 

     The next thing I will attempt to prove is true reality. By true reality I mean that objects exist in a solid form and that these objects have definite characteristics. First I’ll start with the characteristics that are not definite. The first is color, color is subjective, almost every species sees in a different color. Humans see red, blue, and green, cats see in black in white with shades of red, dogs see black and white, snakes see in heat. We would be naïve to think that the colors we humans see are the true colors. Also these colors are all based on reflection of light. For these two reasons there is no such thing as true color. The next characteristic, which is not true, is smell. Humans smell differently than dogs, dogs smell differently than snakes. Smells are based on survival, and what can kill one object may be healthy to another. For example with the case of humans, a bad smell such as the smell of feces indicates harm if eaten, it is a defense mechanism for humans to stay away from harmful items. However, for an insect such as a fly feces is healthy, and would not smell bad. Therefore there is also no true smell. What is true is shape and mass. The shape of an object will never vary depending on who touches it; the mass of an object will also never change. If you take a watermelon that weighs 4 lbs, it will weigh 4 lbs no matter who holds it. If the watermelon is put on the moon the weight will change but the mass will remain the same. Now, how do we know that these objects aren’t some elaborate illusion, similar to a dream? Well this could be the case but these illusions are so consistent that the meaning of illusion would have to come under question. Everything that I do affects something else, in a small or large way. To take an exaggerated example, if I shoot somebody with a gun the consequences of my actions will be monumental, they may be felt years to come. One can image the butterfly effect that would be caused. These actions can never be reversed. The sensations of pain and joy I feel are strong enough to make me change the course of my actions. If I touch something hot I remove my hand, if I taste something sweet I taste it again. If these are all just illusions, the illusion is so strong that for all practical purposes the illusions should be considered real. They should be considered real until the one-day that we may wake up and realize this was all just a dream.

Michael:  

Well,  I bow to the primacy of Jack, unlike these ingrates Sara and Mazzin. C'mon guys, bow to the master.

A Meditation on Induction

There are few with the luxury to step away from society for long enough to give humanity, existence, and reality the kind of in-depth analysis they deserve. I am not going to pretend to be one such, and this meditation will be brief, pragmatic, designed to give certainty to the man who lives as more than an animal.

It goes as follows:

One does not step into the same river twice, insofar as the molecules of water themselves might not be the same; one does, however, step into the same geographic river many times. We assign tags like "this single river" to things we encounter for the sake of establishing certainty, and for the most part, it works pretty well.

Simple point simply claimed, I would like to point out that the molecules _are_ largely the same. In fact, we humans today have thousands of Plato molecules in our bodies. How weird is that, Heracliteans? Put that in your mouths. Chew on it.

As we will see when we get to Hume, inductive inference doesn't work (there is no way to be certain regarding its conclusions). As we will further see when we get to Hume, inductive inference is the only kind of inference. The only 'knowledge' we can acquire is through induction. Philosophically, this is a problem. Or should I say sophomorically? Induction is all we have, so I'd like you the reader to consider this question: have you ever found any knowledge useful to you?

Looking at life experience, at prediction, at decision-making, we quickly realize that induction does us pretty well.

In my opinion, it is hypocritical to be writing a meditation down, as for posterity, to be concerned with the keys at my fingers and the millions of LEDs in front of my eyes, while at the same time presupposing that societal human existence is meaningless. Thus I see humans as wanting to live, as wanting to interact with each other, as seeking happiness (whether for a Higher Good or not is irrelevant), and lots of other things besides, but these are the important aspects.

Given these aspects, knowledge seems Useful to me. Thus we must induce, and risk flying afowl of certainty. (ohlawlz isofunneh)

And once we've lived long enough, induced enough, then we can turn back and ask ourselves, "well, that was pretty risky, huh?" Or: "damn, I knew so little!" Or: "so much unfounded conviction—where _did_ it all come from?"

To which there is only one response: functionally, we were as certain as we could be, and that that was certain enough to continue living and to preserve ourselves. Functionally, we stepped into that river time and time again. Every morning we walked out the same front door onto the same sidewalk, saw the same faces at work and at school, breathed the same air, and then returned home. As in "The Pretender," "we get up and do it again."

And that's how we know.

A brief disclaimer to tailgate a brief meditation: obviously, the above does not take into account what Descartes calls "madmen" or what Locke dubs "Ideots." There is also no claim that induction is infallible—clearly, it is inferior to the idea of divine intuition/insight. Induction won't take you to the top and earn you six digits. But you're not going to get there without induction, whether on your part or the part of a lot of other people constantly making choices. Society is chaotic and things happen by chance... a chance set up by a lot of perhaps unrelated decisions.

Self Cessations

Karena Ajamian

What is a corporeal being, and am I one?

When Descartes embarks on his mission, he decides that all self-evident truths may in fact be false.  He effectively says, “I am going to make my mind a blank slate,” and thus imputes to himself the status of being a thinker.  He says what he thinks may be delusional, but that he thinks cannot be called into question.  The human subject is one who thinks.  This is a metaphysical account of subjectivity.  But should that close the case?

If I think in a way that is completely closed off from the world (as Descartes retreats from the world) effectively closing my eyes, I may reconstitute a certainty of myself unlike Descartes (by his certainty of his own thinking).  Descartes gets back to the world that he would previously have called a self-evident truth.  I am not interested in that.

I am rather interested in authorship -- agency -- free will.  Where do I begin to be Karena Ajamian, and where do I end?  What happens when I can’t recognize myself?  And can’t I be apart from myself, sometimes?

How do I keep whole as the same person (between “then” and “now”) over time?  Let me begin with a constant wonder.  How am I the same Karena today as the one who once said that I would never leave home?  If my idea has changed, can I still claim the same personhood?  It seems I am always bound to bump into friends from middle school, but who was I then that keeps me as I am now?  Should I begin to pretend that I am the same person?  Is this where I “pick up where I left off”?  I have gone through so many waves of thought, it seems it is unreasonable to expect me to acknowledge a prior position as present.  As I have grown, I must have felt countless cessations of my self.

And what of reflexive reflections?  As I write about myself, I effectively step outside of myself to point to myself in reference to myself.  Aren’t I then temporarily suspended from myself?  I must not be Karena.  As we might watch a Steven Spielberg film, we might “suspend belief” (as they say) and forget that we are mentally in a different space.  Aren’t we, then, in an entirely other space when we narratively pause to acknowledge our position relative to something else?  When I stop myself to contemplate myself, my process implies that I am looking at myself as if I am some external source -- as if I am on the outside looking inside -- at me.  But I cannot ever, altogether, evaluate myself without somewhat implicating myself anyway.  At this very moment, as I write this meditation about myself, I am both myself and not myself at once.

Even as I write this, I recognize a looming detachment.  I recognize that if I return to this meditation next week, I will probably hardly recognize my thoughts as my own.  Often, I return to my writing, and think, “Is this me?  Did I really say this?  Did I really think this?”  This meditation is just an index of proof of what I was thinking in a certain moment in time.  I could not even write that without using the passive voice.  I already know.  This is just a sign.  “Karena was here.”

But how far can I sign for?  How do I keep track of which actions I consent to if I am constantly changing?  I am constantly in the process of changing my mind.  The death drive, this force of negation, is also this forgetting in order for me to be new today.  Without the death drive, there is no becoming.  My signature heading asks that question of which is me, and how I stay whole, and recognizable, with my past self.  This is why I might ask for an update with myself:  “Do I still think so?”  Am I ever whole?

I have this notion of the subject as having a flickering on and off essence -- something conjured over and over again through speech, through something external.  Subjectivity is defined from the outside-in rather than from the inside-out.  At the very moment we are confirmed in our belief that we are individuals, we are imposed by this system of which identification is external.  There is this desire to fill up the self with corporeality, but I can’t just be defined by the bounds of my body.

Meditation on the  Mind

Stacy Perez

The Mind is a thing that controls my body. It reasons. It creates thoughts. It helps me survive. But is there a point at which my body can be separated from my mind? From the moment I was born my mind began cataloguing all my experiences. Heat can burn me. Water will quench my thirst. Falling will hurt. Facing the sun will hurt my eyes. Food that smells bad is probably rotten. I should not eat it. Yet all these experiences have happened through the body. What does the mind become when you take away the body and hence the senses? How can the mind catalogue that which it cannot perceive? I do not know what happens to this archive of knowledge after it is extracted from the body or if it even exists afterward.

The substance of the mind has not yet been determined. It is a difficult thing for something to determine what its own substance consists of. An object cannot determine its own essence. When have we seen a book that knows what it is? It would be easy to say, ‘Well, a book does not have a mind with which to think so of course it cannot possibly define its own existence.’ Well then, lets go on to living organisms. Lets choose a plant. A plant lives and dies but there is no evidence that would suggest that a plant has the capability to think. Why is that? Why is it that a plant has been able to survive without a mind to tell it what to do? Is it because a plant’s genes have been preprogrammed to repeat the same cycle that has led to its survival? The theory of adaptation claims that this plant will adapt to any new conditions in order to survive. But how does the plant know when it is time to change? How does it know what changes need to be made? A plant does not have a brain like I do to help it determine this.

All along I have assumed that the mind exists in connection to the brain but what if this were not so? Lets say that the mind does and will exists without a body. Let is say that the connection between the mind and the body is the brain. If we were to take this theory and develop it, it would be analogous to a person playing a videogame. The person would be the mind, the game console would be the brain, and the game itself would be the human body. The person controls what happens in the game but in only does so through the hardware, by pushing buttons on a controller. If we were to take the controllers away from this person, no matter how much the person wanted to control the game, it would not be possible because there would be no connection. So lets say that the mind wanted to control the body. How would this be possible without the brain? Without the brain, the body dies. We have not had a case of a person being able to live without a brain. So then the mind is left without a body to control. If the mind can still create thoughts then it exists. The question would be, in what context?

In theory the mind would retain all the memories and experiences that have already been catalogued through the senses while it was connected to the body. However, the question arises of how the mind functions when it is out of the body. What I mean is, without the senses as a medium to bring forth memories or experiences, how does the mind go about bringing forth these recollections? And if the mind cannot express its thoughts, then do they really exist? And if these thoughts do not really exist, then the mind does not really exist does it? Not if I claim that the minds inherent capability is to think.

*Sorry I took so long to post  but I was having issues with my computer. And hopfully some of it makes sense to you guys. I felt like I was just rambling on and on.

Ana Corral: My meditations

"What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?"  -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This is one of my favorite quotes because it always gets me thinking, doubting and sometimes yes, even inspires some fear in me. What guarantees do we actually have that what we are living, experiencing, seeing, hearing; is actually reality and not just some endless dream? How do we know that we are living in one reality and not in a whole other reality that we have no consciousness of? I feel like I am walking on shaky ground and that I should proceed cautiously but I feel that these are questions that must be asked.

            What if everything we think we are living experiencing, is all an illusion? What guarantees do I myself, as Ana have that what I am doing right now, i.e. typing up my meditations, is actually real, that this computer I am on is real, that this apartment I am in, this couch I am sitting on is real? How do I know that it isn’t imagined, or being controlled by some greater being?  Ok, so let’s see here…the reason I think what I am experiencing right now at this given time, in this given place is because, well first of all I can see the apartment, the keys on the computer and the couch. I can feel the keys moving beneath my fingers and I can hear the clicking noises as I type. If I close my eyes I can still feel the keys beneath my fingers, but if I were to stand up, away from the couch, if I were to walk away and be in some other place, how certain can I be that this apartment, this couch, this computer are still there? What if when I leave, everything, i.e. my apartment, my couch, my computer, leave along with me? I don’t know, since I can’t be in two places at once, however, I could always just ask someone to stay in my apartment while I am away, then have that person call me and describe what my apartment looks like while I am away.

            So let’s say that person calls, and they describe the apartment just the way I had left it. But how do I know for certain, without a doubt, that they are seeing my apartment the way I see it, the way I feel it, the way I experience it? How do I know that what I experience as my apartment isn’t just an illusion, that everything I experience isn’t just part of a dream, and that when I dream is actually when I am awake? I am able to think while writing these meditations, I can feel, if I want to get up I can get up, if I want to sit I can also sit. But when I am ‘dreaming’, I can also think, I can also walk around, I could even fly if I choose to in my ‘dream’. Now, I must say it is generally accepted that humans are not able to fly or change shapes for that matter, but how come in dreams we can? How sure can I be that what I experience in my dreams isn’t just as real as what I am experiencing now?

            If dreams are just a series of thoughts, emotions, and memories that pass through your mind when you are asleep, but your mind is still awake, how are they not real? If my mind is fully awake when these things are going on, but my body is asleep, and according to Descartes, my mind controls my body and can be separate from it, then wouldn’t the things that my mind experiences, i.e. ‘dreams’ actually be real? What if when I fall asleep and I ‘dream’ I am actually accessing another reality, a separate world than the one I am in when both my mind and body are awake? Granted you only have access to this separate reality on certain occasions, like when you are sleeping or passed out, but what if that is the whole point? That I myself am living my entire life in a dream and that I only have access to the true reality, to the true world, when I am ‘dreaming’ and that the reason that I don’t have full access is because I haven’t achieved the know how to be there permanently? I feel like my thoughts are getting a little ludicrous so I am going to stop here with my meditations and continue some other time because this seems to complicated for me to try to solve in one sitting and I myself seem to be confusing myself.    

P.s. Sorry, it took me so long to post; I must admit I was very intimidated by this assignment.

Meditation

KJA

    Well since there isn't any easy way to start this thing... (some would say in this day and age, it is plain impossible)... we start with the subject - but why the subject? and whence this brand new category consciousness which purports to umbrella the passion, reason, the sensibilities, performative acts, those vague unintentional inner acts, and the imagination, the will, the memory? Why not, after we have doubted all things, all points, why not focus on what's in between. can we be so inured to the concept of orientation as to be irrevocably blind to relation? If we are to consider subjectivity in any graspable sense it is with this demi-word "consciousness", an invisible agent like wind like thought. A cloistered life; where is there assurance regarding the existence of and the kind of existence of any object or language?

    All that is taught by man and by nature, a constellation, hundreds of semblances, automatically self-inhering systems. Those felicitous reconciliations of jerky hand-movements -writing, -language-- and then meaning, always there. Should we hope to gain much in the way of teaching the good life if we boil down to a single point under the heat of a Bunsen burner-like doubt all to subjectivity? Orbiting its axis; the thinking Thing.

    As you read this, do you care to know if my words be considered knowledge, that I am retranscribing, recombining, reworking, adding and subtracting, from another meditation? I give you now an excerpt of another transcript-

[... but this aids my meditative process the better to refresh itself...; am interrupted. and at my post at the ______ library. Distracted or intractable I cant tell [...] the so called senses are not abstracted, not distinct from one another; just as a triangle is not any three separate sides but inheres--]

    Abstraction, bane of Berkeley. I think it was Hesiod said "mankind is a stomach"... this meditation unworthy of the name. I is a tag function, a marker or placeholder (footnote at bottom). Is not our predicament that of a thing that does not think, does not be, but only reckons so? (A thin king and His oranges in origins juice.) Fiction may subsume philosophy, but itself be subsumed by the work- "il lavoro" -of art.
    To close, philosophy is a certain kind of statement which seeks the general in the particular and which science tests, applies, etc.; which discards the particular once it has sucked it dry of 'ideas'. Thus Platonism is a vampirism.

(Indebted to Karena's excellent post)