Hi Dan and All,
DAN:
"The embodied metaphor of language cannot be analyzed
further, for who is it that can step outside of language to
do the analyzing? Therefore, it would seem any hope of
uncovering a
catechism of the MOQ in this intellectual fashion is doomed
to failure."
MB:
"I think we can indeed analyze metaphor further, and can do
so 'inside of language', which was the crux of my own topic
suggestion for this month."
DAN:
"Yes we can make the attempt... but:
"...It wasn't that the question wasn't answerable. It was
answerable but the answer went on and on and you never got
done." (Lila, paperback page 159)
It would seem that this is what Niels Bohr was describing
when he talked of "word pictures which may not be analyzed
further." As soon as a catechism of quality is devised it
becomes something other than what it professes to be. The
answer keeps going on and on; formless until encountering
form then shifting into new forms, spontaneously."
MB:
"I accept this- and so in theory while one may, through
linguistic analysis, uncover metaphors' concrete origins,
the further one delves, the further one abstracts. But this
type of intellectual practice might be a suitable western
alternative to koan study. Also, I'm thinking that by
increasing one's understanding of language in this way, the
languager might be better equipped to prefer those lexical
terms which most closely represent the concrete reality
being intellectualized. ('that choice which is more
Dynamic...')"
DAN:
"This seems to be what all of us here are engaged in, yes,
but there may be a problem with your last sentence in that
there is no "concrete reality" in the MOQ; there are
patterns of value. And the more one endeavors to
intellectually uncover any such notion of a concrete
reality the further away one is taken until all that is
left are ghosts."
***
Hi Dan,
Thanks for taking the time to critique my thinking once
again. Things are beginning to clarify now. Yes, you're
right, there is no "concrete reality" in the MOQ. I clearly
was falling into the SOMist trap! In the MOQ, the static
value patterns of language are not ABSTRACTED FROM but
rather BUILT UPON lower level value patterns. Language is
then of both the social and intellectual levels. At the
social level, language was/is wholly in the service of
society as a communication tool: without the concept of
self, in the sense of an 'I' consciously projecting a
concrete reality into an imagined mind space. Then, with
the emergence of the transitional value pattern-
'subjective conscious mind', language was carried over into
the service of this more evolved level.
Regards,
Mark
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