Maybe. But that’s debatable. Consider a pregnant mother. Not only is she herself and carrying a baby, another seperate entity, but the baby and herself are still implicitly ONE. 1+1=2 and also 1+1=1.
That doesn’t make sense to me - if the baby and the mother are one, then there is no 1+1, only 1.
Both Zen and Kabbalah have their supreme state of awareness and origin in nothingness. But is describing nothingness the same as saying nothing?
The point you’ve made as I see it is that language is imperfect as a means to communicate thought. Isn’t the logical consequence of this that thought must be beyond language?
When we regard the mother as a unit, it is we who have distinguished her from the womb that is society. We can do the same for the child. Now consider we regard the mother as 1: does she remain 1 when she eats, or when she excretes, or when she loses a limb? Does she have a distinct, imperishable essence that is 1?
We may call the universe 1, or the galaxy, or the stellar system, or the planet, or the ecosystem, or the organism, or the organ, or the cell, or the molecule, or the quantum. It’s completely arbitrary.
I think we can only say, rationally, not empirically, that the All is 1, and that it is the only thing of its kind, so there is no 1+1. Within the All, we may define units, but we can never define identical units, so there is no 1+1 there, either.
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I think it was a good thing to introduce, and my reply a good one, if I may say so myself.
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Good one. I have to ponder on this.
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It has now become necessary to define what we mean by “thought” and “thoughts”. I have already referred to Wikipedia for this. If you think you have better definitions, please share them.
“Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking
“Thought is a mental process which allows beings to be conscious, make decisions, imagine and, in general, operate on symbols in a rational or irrational manner. It is an element/instance of thinking and is used as its synonym.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_(disambiguation)
“In philosophy, thought is also a synonym for idea”
[ibid.]
“An idea (Greek: ἰδέα) is an image existing or formed in the mind.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea
So, according to these definitions, thoughts are ideas. The Online Etymology Dictionary has the following entry for “think”:
"O.E. þencan “conceive in the mind, think, consider, intend” (past tense þohte, p.p. geþoht), probably originally “cause to appear to oneself”
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=think
“Idea” also has this sense of “appearance”:
“1430, “figure, image, symbol,” from L. idea “idea,” and in Platonic philosophy “archetype,” from Gk. idea “ideal prototype,” lit. “look, form,” from idein “to see,” from PIE *wid-es-ya-, suffixed form of base *weid- “to see” (see vision). Sense of “result of thinking” first recorded 1645.”
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=idea
So you may experience things in the mind, and we may even consider whether not all experience is in the mind, but you cannot express these things before you have separated them into distinct “things” and symbolised these by symbols. But in order to think, that is, communicate to yourself, you need to do this; before you do, what you experience in the mind are not thoughts, not ideas, but just impressions.
Not in nothingness, in no-thingness. No-thingness is the absence of “things”, of separation; nothingness is the absence of both “things” and no-thingness (Being, phusis, Becoming).
Not thought, but experience. But if thought be thought of as an experience, than it is beyond thought, too: thought about experience is beyond thought about thought about experience, etc. It is a model of a model. But if we think about direct experience as a form of thought, if we think of the world as a model, than there must be something beyond it. The question is what. As we do not know, as we do not experience that, we cannot follow this train of thought.
My question to you is: what do you mean by “thought”? Can you define it?
sauwelios,
let’s go with wikipedia, for clarity’s sake:
‘thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires.’
what you seem to be saying is that in order to think, that is, in order to engage in a mental process which allows us to model the world, we must represent the world to ourselves, if not to others, in symbols.
so:
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can you prove that babies communicate to themselves using symbols?
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thought does not have to be complex or drawn-out; it can be short and simple, right? if my boyfriend asks me where my cigarettes are, and i engage in a modelling process over the space of a second, and answer him that they are in the bedroom, i have not communicated to myself (prior to answering him) using a string of symbols that ‘the cigarettes are in the bedroom’, surely? this is a trivial example, but you get my drift.
lastly: where do you draw the line between thought and experience?
I can prove that they “talk” in themselves, and not to anyone else in particular, using baby language.
You will have used lots of archaic, unconscious expressions to yourself. It is like the reasoning you use in dreams, but, as you are not sleeping, you are not conscious of that. Also, you will visualise your bedroom and the pack of cigarettes, symbolising them by images. The image in your mind is itself a symbol of the impression the actual pack of cigarettes has made on you.
In the modelling. Experience is unmodelled. Thinking is the modelling, the working with a model of, experience.
Sauwelios: I do not agree with the wikipedia’s definition of thought. I’ve thought it through in the light of my posts on kabbalah in this thread, in which I explain the basis for the model of consciousness I work with.
The key to the difference between language and thought is the division of all being, including consciousness, between force and form.
Very simply: language is form, (obviously, as it consists of symbols or gestures, which are both forms) and thought is not, or at the very least not confined to the form aspect. Thought originates as force, motion, and settles down into form, language - but then it is no longer thought.
Thought, as I experience it, (and thought is experienced, it is not separate from direct experience - thought is existence) is that which is between the forms of language. The closest to a definition of thought I have been able to get is ‘active consciousness’
Reason, and therefore language, is passive consciousness. This is evident when one thinks of an argument, an equation, a rationale allready in existence. It may when impressed on a mind activate thought by means of interpretation, but in itself it is passive, which is all too clearly indicated by the fact that all formulations can be interpreted by all people differently - and are therefore all imperfect representations of thought.
My answer to the initial question ‘is there thought beyond language?’ is that all thought is beyond language.
The intermediary state between thought and language, the equilibrium between force and form, is meditation. This is a fusion of thought and symbolism. I do not only so much wish to indicate with this word the state of transendent awareness we know from the East, but rather the state of formative consciousness in which the creative genius operates.
The Wikipedia definition of thought is clumsy, because it defines thought as a means to ‘deal with’ goals, plans, end and desires - things that should be included in the definition. It defines thought as something to deal with types of thought.
What is the difference between force and form?
Wikipedia gives an excellent clue towards the interpretation of your distinction:
“For practical purposes, Aristotle was the first to distinguish between [i]matter /i and form (morphe). To Aristotle matter is the undifferentiated primal element: it is rather that from which things develop than a thing in itself. The development of particular things from this germinal matter consists in differentiation, the acquiring of particular forms of which the knowable universe consists (cf. causation for the Aristotelian formal cause). The perfection of the form of a thing is its entelechy in virtue of which it attains its fullest realization of function (De anima, ii. 2). Thus the entelechy of the body is the soul.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form
As for the soul:
“Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because ‘cutting’ is the essence of what it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Aristotle did not consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity of cutting from the knife). As the soul, in Aristotle’s view, is an activity of the body, it cannot be immortal (when a knife is destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the “first activity” of a living body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or ‘second’, activity. “The axe has an edge for cutting” was, for Aristotle, analogous to “humans have bodies for rational activity,” and the potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human soul.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Aristotle
I think the knife and the axe are poor examples. Let us take as an example an analogy much used in Hinduism, that of the fire.
“Sauwelios defines the soul as the core essence of a being, but argues against its having a separate existence. For instance, if fire had a soul, the act of burning would be that soul, because ‘burning’ is the essence of what it is to be fire. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Sauwelios does not consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity of burning from the fire). As the soul, in Sauwelios’ view, is an activity of the body, it cannot be immortal (when a fire is extinguished, the burning stops).”
My question to you, Jakob, is: how can we know the fire from the burning?
ok…hold on…
Jakob… in an easy way 4 this humble blonde at heart to understand this thread…
what exactly do you mean by ‘all formulations are qrong’ and then u start talking about the kaabhala and how thought is more than language or vce versa and blah blah blah… 
in a simple way…what’s your point… I’m dumb 
Jakob’s contention seems to be that it is possible to think outside of language.
What is the difference between force and form?
[/quote]
Everything. For example - the nature of a photon varies between force and form (wave and particle - and no, a wave is not a form) depending on how, where and when you measure it.
All descriptions of force are metaphors (like ‘wave’) because language is form, but as a metaphor consider the wind as force and the erosion as form - the river as force and the path it creates as form.
Heraklitus said all is force, which is in essence true, because form is only the result of force -as reason is the circumference of energy, in Blakes terms.
“[T]he true unitive and transcendental Science is that of Mathematics for the Ruach [spirit], and its crown the Holy Qabalah for the Neschamah [soul].”
[Aleister Crowley, Little Essays toward Truth; Wonder.]
Mathematics is applied logic; logic, however (from the Greek “logos”, meaning “word”), is based on the same superstition as language:
“Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitiously as fulfilled.”
[Nietzsche, in The Will to Power, section 512.]
Mathematics is indeed transcendental:
“In them [logic and mathematics] reality is not encountered at all, not even as a problem”.
[Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Reason” in Philosophy, section 3.]
The same applies to its “crown”, the “Holy” Qabalah. For this supposes (pairs of) opposites: like Jakob does, when he divides “all being, including consciousness, between force and form.”
“1 a : the shape and structure of something as distinguished from its material”
http://m-w.com/dictionary/form
Suppose we have a coin of pure gold. The gold is the material, the coin-shape is its form. These may be distinguished, because we can melt our material into a different shape. But the material, “matter” itself, is also a form: a form of energy.
“All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration.”
[Bill Hicks.]
“Energy” is, of course, often synonymous with “force”. We may compare it to water: ice is to matter as water is to energy. But my question to Jakob is: what is the difference between the quality (in the literal sense) and the quantity of energy?
Cross posting. I will reply to you later.
My intention here is not to explain such rudimentaries over and over again and be drawn into vague poetic comparisons which only diffuse the matter. If you are going to quote a greek philosopher quote Heraclitos, he’s the only one who said anything substantial about the concept of force underlying form. Plato was a form - man, Aristoteles as well. The difference between the cutting and the knife is merely anonsensical libery Aristotle takes in is interpretation of ‘the thing in itself’, makig a verb into a thing,), and has nothing whatsoever to do with the force / form principle, as little as force / form has any relation the ‘the soul’.
There is no difference between the fire and the burning as far as I can ubderstand. This does NOT go for force and form - that is a distinction -proven to be at the root of matter by quantummechanics.
All this stuff is preliminary to the theory of thought beyond language I plan to develop in this thread over the coming months.
more: Blake (energy vs reason) and Nietzsche (Force, for example, as evil, destroyng the old and bringing the new, and form as the good, the accepted, the established)
‘qrong’, I like that.
I guess the best way to find out the point of this thread would be to read it - but as I suppose you’re not in the mood for that, I’ll give a short summary:
The point is that all points are beside the point, and that the real point, not being a point but the point of the point, is the point of there not being a point.
(Sauwelios; could you please provide that Heideggerdeggerdegger quote for the lady?)
First, the material and the shape of the coin are both form aspects.
Second, It seems to consistently escape you that all formulations are form (including mathematics - especially mathematics) and that therefore a definition of force is impossible, it can only be suggested.
What follows; the concept ‘energy’ is form, as it is a conceptualization, and all descriptions and attributes of it make it less force and more form.
I’ll try to answer your question indirectly;
Say we call inspiration force and a poem form. The poem is a representation of the inspiration, of the energy.
The quality of this energy is determined by it’s form - the poets skills, the theme coming in to play, whereas the quantity is determined by it’s force, which determines the power of the poem.
Quality is determined by force - the poets skills, the theme, both are the result of the of force exerted prior to the poet writing he poem.
Force does not have a quality. All force is force, spirit, pure and simple.
[“It’s the quantity (quantum) of power that determines what one is, all else is cowardice”]
Rather that it is impossible think within language. (This for example, is not thought - it is reason)
Poetry is the forms of reason disrupted by too much force. It is the only way in which language can represent thought itself, instead of ‘that which has been thought’
Still, poetry is not thought - yet it is capable of instigating thought.
“The Mind of the Father
riding on the subtle guiders
which glitter with the inflexible tracings
of relentless fire.”
- Zoroaster
The mind of the Father is force, the subtle guiders and inflexible tracings are the forms in which the Mind of the Father makes itself known as relentless fire.