Our house is on fire. Join the resistance: Do no harm/take no shit. My idiosyncratic and confluent bricolage of progressive politics, the collaborative commons, next generation cognitive neuroscience, American pragmatism, de/reconstruction, dynamic systems, embodied realism, postmetaphysics, psychodynamics, aesthetics. It ain't much but it's not nothing.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Thoughts as elements or suobjects?

Continuing from this post, see part 2 of Michael's post and the commentary.

Balder: From
this view*, of course, states of consciousness would be endo-relations
of objects (sentient beings) -- meaning, states of consciousness would
be regarded as having ontological weight (being real) but would not be
substances or "objects" in themselves. This differs (also of course)
from mystical views, many of which tend to regard at least some states
as ontological substrata (hyper-objects?)...

* With "this view," I was referencing a bit earlier in the discussion, not your more recent post.

theurj: Consciousness is one of the aggregates. Still not clear on making
connections between the aggregates and endo-relational structure. The
aggs seem more like the usual developmental ladder:
body-perception-emotion-mind-consciousness. They are 'real' in a sense,
the Buddhist 'problem' being getting attached to or identifying with
them, not in their conditional and impermanent reality per se. All of
the aggs can be recontextualized as nested 'levels' to the actual,
smaller and substantial part-suobjects in a larger suobject. But not
their structural relations per se, which do not enter into local
manifestation as body, emotion or thought. Very sticky wicket.

And
I still question that thoughts or ideas are not substantial suobjects.
We grant substantiality to our bodies, and our thoughts per L&J are
embodied extensions of basic categories that are akin to Bryant's
translation process. Yes thoughts are more impermanent than a body, but
recall time is irrelevant for substances, whether an instant or a
millennium. I agree with Michael that a thought or idea cannot exist on
its own without a 'body' of some type, like a word or page or whatever.
But that's only saying that any suobject has both an inside and outside
in kennilingus. Which boundary is, as we've explored ad nauseum, both
open and closed.

So I'm thinking the thought or idea, per aggregates, are indeed
nested suobjects with form, perception, emotion etc. The organizational
structure endures but can and does change over time via the much more
ephemeral endo-relations between the substantial parts, which are not elements.
The elements are the endo-relations themselves? As I recall, Byrant
does say the endo-relations are structured in a particular way, which is
what makes a suobject unique. However those relations can and do change
as a suobject grows and develops within an overall structure that still
remains unique, even through those changes.