Sunday, January 4, 2015
2-fold, 3-fold, 4-fold—onefold?
2-fold: enacting the act: Acting is done and witnessable, by others and by oneself. But immanence of self-witnessing as one goes along in activity is essentially different from another’s continuing to witness the activity. Enactivity has a potential recursiveness (responsiveness, adaptability) that belongs solely to intentionality, not observation. Yet, interaction embodies both for each actor. So, a dyad of interaction is immediately a 3-fold of what “we” both share along with our psychally-separate engagements: two selves in a shared event that is also observable by a non-participant, which is less than being a participant in the mirrorplay of interacting time.
So, a heuristic 3-fold is easily associable with the presence of two 2-fold actors. This “lateral” or horizontal 3-fold has no ontic overtones. A “vertical” one might credibly be: “a 3-fold ambiguity of ‘cognitivity’.”
Another useful 2-fold is self/world, which is a simplistic abstraction from the inestimably-complex individuation of a person that has gained facility for finding such holistic differentiations useful. Relative to this difference, two persons each bring a possibly 2-fold sense of being into interaction that is immediately 5-fold: including a sense of the world between “us”—self/world with self/world. Yet, it’s at least 7-fold (maybe 9-fold): Your world (or relevant understanding) as represented by you to me is different from your lived sense of “the” interactionally-relevant world; and my “reading” of your representation is likely different from your own sense of your representation (as interactionally relevant). And conversely: [8] and [9]. This is why understanding is interpretive, misunderstanding is common, and presumed validities may be questioned. My point is simply that conceptual mitosis may easily manifold (hoping that ‘manifold’ makes sense as a verb). Interaction is a manifold text, as if acting or speaking is a phenomenal trace of writing.
One could associate a simplistic self/world difference (emblem of that inestimably-complex individuation) with the simply simple difference between internal and external (which is commonly associable with subjective and objective).
Commonly, there is tangible and intangible, material and abstract, lower and higher. That is, things are tangible, material, or grounded, differentiable from being intangible, abstract, or higher. Lower and higher are commonly associated with lesser and greater, less and more valuable.
Internality itself is commonly associated with lower and higher: somatic vs. conceptual. Externality is commonly associated with near and distant, “here” (provincial, lower value) and horizonal (global, universal value). Both internal and external are associated with specific and general. Internal depth is a lived height. An expansiveness of understanding is an internal depth with external “height” or comprehensiveness. Focus of attention can be differentiated from expansiveness of attention, for once again a 2-fold: valuing holism and valuing focus—dwelling in/with both, thinking of both.
So, what?: We do things with distinctions that are useful. For one thing, heuristics are good for proximal thinking, drawing thought into more subtle differencing. A pragmatics of conceptuality can be ontically neutral. Conceptuality is conceptuality. “Being” is Being, being being. Though ontical questions aren’t nonsense, the pragmatic integrity of conceptuality may be neutral on the matter. Nonetheless, “What is conceptuality?” may be a highly appealing question—which I’m leaving aside, except to displace it: Conceptuality is cognitive (in a highly deep sense that’s lived and representable?).
It’s fun that Heidegger uses Hölderlin’s Grecian 4-fold to evince a sense of holism in numerous ways, sometimes not overtly stated. Internal heights (of the “Divine”), external heights (of the “Sky” or comprehensiveness), external groundedness (of the “Earth”), and internal groundedness (of “Mortals”) associates with—for example (I have 54 of these, only a few of which are Heidegger’s)—Heraclitis’ fourfold of “physis” (of Earth), “kosmos” (of Sky), “eon” (world-time/of mortality), and “logos” (channeling the Divine). Classical causality is “material cause” (of Earth), “formal cause” (of Sky/comprehensiveness of ultimacy), “efficient cause” (of proximal mortality), and “final cause” (of the Divine). What “presences” in Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology” is “nature” (of Earth), “history” (of longing for comprehensiveness of Time), “man” (mortality, intrinsically futural, destined to die), and “language” (Divine giftedness). Metaphysical positions involve “coming to presence of whatever is” (now on Earth), “coming to presence of truth” (longing for universal comprehension), “the sense of man as measure” (being in time), and “relation to Being as such” (drawn into an appeal of concealed ultimacy of The Ultimate). “Building Dwelling Thinking” leads to ennoble “saving” (appeal of the Earth), “receiving” (appeal of the Sky/comprehensiveness), “initiating their own” (appeal of mortality), and “hoping for” (appeal of the Divine).
How we are mirrored in things!: seeking effectiveness, comprehensiveness, happiness, and lastingness.
So, one may sit—build, dwell, think—and wander in it all, wonder of It All, wandering in wonder, a onefold radiant gravity of presencing.
