10/8/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 21 of 23)

1040 Chapter ten is titled, “Social Glue”.

Chapter nine is titled, “Stories and What They Do To Us”.

Chapter eleven is titled, “Sense Making.”

1041 If chapter ten concerns how agreeablity1a is innate and allows words to frame what is happening3a and the potential of ‘something happening’1a

…and if chapter eleven touches base on how coordination1c fosters the translation of reference2c (such as physical reality) into big-picture sensiblity2c (such awareness of social realities)…

…then chapter nine touches base with how imagination1b supports situation-level reference2b overshadowing situation-level sensibility2b.  

1042 To some Hollywood producers, all movie stories boil down to a recipe.

The story about a particular cloud standing for a coming storm and bringing an end to an excursion of deer-hunting party, 750,000 years ago, does not quite fit.

Neither does the story of the researcher who realizes that he treats rhesus monkeys like some people treat humans.  Dehumanization works on animals, too.

1043 So, I suppose that the story that needs to be told, for my examination of Enfield’s argument, is one where human agreeablity1a allows the story’s characters to imagine1b that they can do whatever they want to do1c.

Then, they talk to a serpent, who manipulates their agreeability1a, er… gullability1a and confounds their imaginations1b, leading them to coordinate1c a rebellion against the Source of Reality.

So, they fall into ruin because of their infraction, and never quite recover, generation after generation, until the Creator of Reality sends His Only Son, to make their descendants aware that Wittgenstein’s rule applies.

If that story is made into a movie, the title should be An Archaeology of the Fall.

1044 The mythic arc is found in Genesis 3.  The scientific arc is the hypothesis of the first singularity.  The stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales about the emergence of unconstrained social complexity in the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, the first culture to practice speech-alone talk.  So, the dramatic turning point, following the Greimas square re-articulation of Russell’s conjugation, looks like this.

Eve does what humans evolved to do.

1045 But now, Wittgenstein’s rule applies.

And, the story of Adam and Eve leads into a Gestalt shift, or switch, or whatever one wants to call it2c.

In the following figure, I compare the content-level nested forms for Enfield’s interscope shifting, from the foreground, into the background.

1046 If Wittgenstein’s rule is to be relevant, then it should accompany the potential of  ‘a decision’1a.

From the very start, Eve is agreeable1a.  Eve is not aware that Wittgenstein’s rule applies.

Only after the incident, as Eve is confronted with her transgression, does she admit that Wittgenstein’s rule applies.  What the serpent told her said more about the serpent than the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Indeed, what the serpent said about the fruit may be a fabrication.  But, there is an element of truth.  Eve did not die immediately upon eating the fruit.

1047 Compare the situation-level nested forms between Enfield’s interscope and the background, starting to come into the foreground.

1048 What does the serpent do?

The serpent uses spoken words, which do not picture or point to their references, to create a fictive reference1b, called “all the things that we can imagine that the fruit might mean2b“.  It is as fictitious as contemporary rhetorical terms such as “illegal combatant”, “unprovoked attack” and the list goes on.  The spoken words2a seem to apply to physical reality, but they really are framing, and priming, a reference2a.

In social reality, reference2b [overshadows] sensibility2b. There is little doubt that the empty word “it” in the question, “What does it mean to me?”, refers to the reference2bwhat the perceptive soul perceives, rather than the tangle of emotional responses2b that the reference2b overshadows.

1049 Eve’s innate sensibilities2b are overwhelmed.  The animal body has three modes: approach, avoid and safely ignore. So, when something as unhinged as all the characteristics implied by the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil stands as the referent2b, then it is easy to accept that responsibility2b might not be the first reaction to come to mind.  Eve irresponsibly approaches the tree.

I guess “responsibility” would go with “avoid”.

10/7/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 22 of 23)

1050 Do religious traditions offer disciplinary habits that train the individual to be aware of the easy way that reference overshadows sensibility?  

Remember your vows!  Remember your training!

1051 Does a religious conceptual apparatus endeavor to train the individual to be aware of our innate grounding in acceptability1a?  

I suppose so.  Do not be lured into conversation with the serpent.  What the person says may tell you more about the person speaking than any content that comes from his mouth.  The reference itself may serve as a deception.  If it is too good to be true, then it most likely not true.  Instead, the truth rests not in what is being said, but in the honesty of the one who is saying it.

1052 Indeed, the message that Enfield attempts to capture, but cannot quite get there with the disciplinary languages of linguistics and cognitive psychology, is that, what he calls, “coordination” is really “co-ordination”.

The normal context of language3c brings the actuality of “reference as a physical reality” [translating into] “sense as a social reality”2c into relation with the potential that the material and the immaterial, co-ordinate1c.  That means that language is divine.  Only the super-natural can co-ordinate matter and form.

1053 Compare the perspective-level nested forms as Enfield’s interscope fades into the background, and a new Geist constellates in the foreground.

1055 I suspect that all the ancient civilizations of the Near East believe in the divinity of spoken words.  The utterances of “language3c are physical realities that substantially change social realities.  The technical term for a change in substanceis “transubstantiation”.  “Trans” means “across”.  “Substantiation” means “to constellate substance”.

1056 When Adam and Eve eat from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil2c, that act2c changes their substance from a state of original justice2c, manifesting co-ordination with God1c to a state of original sin2c, manifesting estrangement from God1c.

1057 Can one regard the garden of Eden as the first sacrament, where physical reality is transubstantiated into social reality?

1058 Of course, before the first singularity, hominins cannot gesture the term, “transubstantiation”, using hand talk.

Instead, transubstantiation is built into their bodies and souls.

1059 Indeed, the question as to whether the state of original justice corresponds to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in has been asked, on January 2, 2024, in Razie Mah’s blog.

10/5/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 23 of 23)

1060 Chapter eleven completes Part III.  This chapter concerns sense making.

How am I to make sense of the inverted interscope that arrives after the story of Adam and Eve enters into Enfield’s science-inspired interscope?

1061 How do I capture the Gestalt shift in speech-alone talk?

For Enfield’s scientific frame, the perspective-level contiguity is [translates into].

For the inverted frame, the perspective-level contiguity is [transubstantiates into].

Does this suffice?

The Gestalt switches from one to the other interscope.

1062  What else?

The change of Gestalts reconfigures the title.

1063 What Enfield cannot say is this.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

In 2022, he simply is not aware of the hypothesis of the first singularity.

1064 What Enfield cannot say may be formulated in terms of science, as an evolutionarily recent cultural transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk, starting with the emergence of the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia, nominally 7824 years ago.

One day, science may present how hand and hand-speech talk potentiates constrained social complexity and speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity.

Science may investigate how hand and hand-speech talk facilitates implicit abstraction and how speech-alone talk has a unique ability to label anything, even referents that cannot be pictured or pointed to, even referents that are quite fantastic and alluring and that exist only in the realm of possibility.

1065 Perhaps, explicit abstraction is more cunning than any animal that the Lord God creates.

Like sin, it couches at our door.  It is our job to tame it.

1066  In conclusion, Enfield’s well-written book testifies to what he is not aware of.

The background Gestalt of his scientific discourse is a story, and this story steps forward in this examination of Part III, entitled “Reality Made By Language”.  But, the inversion does not manifest a full Gestalt shift, because that is precisely what Enfield wants to avoid.  He wants to remain a scientist, speaking the disciplinary languages of linguistics and cognitive psychology, as if they could warn us about the near impossibility of practicing Wittgenstein’s rule, because our kind evolves the trait of ‘agreeability’1a, so that our ‘imaginations’1b may align in the virtual normal context of ‘coordination’1c.

1067 Enfield’s interscope is beautiful to behold.

His interscope appears in the mirror of science.  I say this while casting a glance at Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Portions appear in Razie Mah’s blogs for April through June, 2024.  When a theologian looks at Enfield’s interscope, shimmering in the mirror of science, he responds with a theological question, asking, “What is this image revealing?”

The answer cries out for a Gestalt inversion.

One Gestalt hinges on the contiguity, “translates”.

The other Gestalt hinges on the contiguity, “transubstantiates”.

1068 The invert interscope is a wonder to behold.

Saint Thomas Aquinas might chuckle.  Aquinas coined the word, “transubstantiates”.

Note how a physical reality, as simple as water, poured over the head of a baby or a child or a repenting adult,transubstantiates into the social reality of washing away the stain of original sin2c.  Water is more than physical reality.  Washing the stain of original sin is more than social reality.

1069 This is what the theologian projects into the mirror of theology, standing in the jurisdiction of science, as he contemplates the implications of what Enfield has written.

1070 In the sacrament of baptism, everyone in the ritual co-ordinates, in one particular recitation, starting with an answer to the question, “Do you reject Satan?”

Lucifer is an angel of light.  Everything that Lucifer says tells more about Lucifer than the referent that Lucifer’s words conjure.  Indeed, the referent that Lucifer’s words conjure is a lie.  Just look at the seven of cups in a deck of illustrated Tarot cards and tell me that Lucifer’s words do not conjure this image in the mind of poor, unsuspecting Eve, who, after all, is only trying to be agreeable.

1071 Perhaps, this examination is an invitation for Dr. Enfield and other linguists and cognitive psychologists, to realize that their science has isolated us in rigid containers of empirio-schematic thought.  We are creatures who evolved to live as images of God, not as subjects for the psychometric sciences.

Do not let your scientific commitments get in the way of an origin story of the ancient Near East2a, rising through the observable and measurable use of spoken words2b, and blossoming into a sacrament instituted during the most amazing revelation coming from the promised land2c.

When John the Baptist pours the waters of the Jordan over the head of Jesus, the heavens rejoice.

Here is what we evolved to be, standing at the confluence of language and reality.

1072 John Deely, the author of Four Ages of Understanding (2001), offers a label for this new world view.  Welcome to the Age of Triadic Relations.

1073 My thanks to Dr. N. J. Enfield for his book, written at the cusp (yet without awareness that there is a cusp) of a new age of understanding