The coldest possible message is that it does not matter.
That there is no essence, being, or truth beyond the electrical experiences to be grabbed as a by-product of bouncing indivisibles--this is the inevitable paving of the road to hell. Even filled with opera, poetry, or sweaty snugglebunnies; even moved at the gallery, falling in chemical love or chuckling all night, the vanishing into nevermore of every future and past makes nothing any more real than it is believed to be. If nothing exists but your feelings, or even our feelings, then the unrepentant serial rapists, all the Saudi princes, or the morphine rider five minutes from death are the winners. Majesty, splendor, wonder, devotion, and discovery "may" please those you believe in, but if it is nothing but molecules, those things are at best a distant second to chemical mayhem, and at worst, never existed.
Does a set of all sets contain itself? Necessarily, it must, or it would not be a set of all sets, yet it would then be a different set, containing all other sets plus itself...which then must needs contain the new version of "itself," including that prior infinity, plus one. The artificial boundaries of computer- and choice-axiom-models can limit the expansion of one/universe to useful terms so that all systems do not immediately appear to crash, but the conception of endless sets, or any of the other paradoxes, breaks not only logic and mathematics, but time and philosophy.
While having fun with our inherited or invented toys, we may consider remembering that they are magnificent and wonderful, yet only, toys. Their conclusive failure is conclusive failure, and only through previously adopting a faith in the way their systems work--by believing in meets, bounds, whole integers, motion, gravity, time, origin--do we use them. Barbie and her house are only useful fun if disbelief is suspended; similarly, Jehovah or Science or Type Theory. The ability to imagine the paradox shows that, even if all this does not matter, we are not able to discern such from this vantage point. Ergo it may be something unseen.
i have, in the past, argued that "this statement is false" is a bit of nonsense--along the lines of "colorless green ideas sleep furiously".
ReplyDeletei do wonder, however, if the flaw can be accessed sequentially-- processing the words linearly. in other words, when conceiving/writing/reading, there's a temporal barrier.
when you form the idea, as of the moment "this statement", there is not actually yet a statement to reference.
it's only a casual post hoc collapsing of "this statement" to mean the statement about to be written that allows the sentence to self-refer.
Most things that we do materially are based upon those very same "casual post hoc" collapses. Of course this statement is not false, and of course it is. We understand each other only through using connections that transcend verification except to those who already understand.
Delete"Ergo it may be something unseen"
ReplyDeleteWhen folks think about the "unseen", they often think of dimensions themselves as the "unseen" entities, e.g. the dimensions that have been "rolled-up" according to string theorists, or the fourth line orthogonal to three others that drives amateurs crazy when they try to visualize a tesseract (hypercube in 4-dims.)
But if you carefully read the relevant chapters of Coxeter's Regular Polytopes, you will see that the "shadow projections" of higher-dimensional objects onto familiar objects in three space (e.g. the projection of the 4-d tesseract into the 3-d rhombic dodecahedron of the garnet crystal) are actually far more interesting than the properties of the object themselves. These projections from higher to lower dimensions are truly like "pathways" that open up new ways of thinking about the everyday world of visual, intellective, and scientifc experience. (See for example my paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8054766
Also, note that the notion of projection from higher-dimensional spaces to lower-dimensional spaces is somewhat analogous to the notion of "collapse" which you and "the pup" were dicussing in a thread following this one ...
More interesting to us here in our "right" minds, perhaps--acid aficionados might temporarily claim otherwise through virtue of their higher sight. Shadows in space and paradoxes of perspective are, like rhetorical or mathematical paradoxes, "proofs" of our unseeing, and calculations of 10 or 24 dimensions are based on our perspective of the ways we like gravity and electromagnetism to work~which isn't to say they're wrong. From a higher dimension it might no longer be appropriate to call that dimension "higher." Maybe this is Heaven after all, in the sense that you can't make an ant worry about the performance of a 401(k), but can torment a human for years with the same concept.
Delete...which isn't to say that they're right, either. There seems to be room for concluding that we're random matter arrangements, and higher dimensions are the firmament and miracles of the age. An argument that undermines the conclusive power of logic and perspective leaves possibility open to faith, just as agnosticism leaves open the possibility of ending up taking it from Satan's burning fourteen incher for all time, for failure to worship properly.
Who is crazier: the stick figure who thinks there's no way out of the square, the stick figure who's convinced someone will add some depth next year, or the one who is quietly content never leaving the square because the squiggly line nearby is so beautiful?
If this one gets the pen first, you will be drawn a castle in the clouds, dear EL. Puppy will get a yacht, and will visit you every high tide.
hello arka , ..thought of you ,came over here , was able to take a quick look in , touched on some wording , but not able to read more than that touch, work , in the .. out .. , new year , hope to come back and read more of this post and of other posts that i've mentioned coming back to , .. and hello el and and puppy , said white girl with a fro .. .
ReplyDeleteWelcome and good tidings, dear anne.
Deletethank you , my familley gets together for 'mas tommorrow ,and a little in early dec. as well each yr , and yes good tiding' of as always comma waves ,, , reading a little in those waves ag.
ReplyDelete