Tag Archives: intersection

03/26/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 1 of 22)

0389 The book before me published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.    The question?  What makes humans unique?  The approach is scientific.  Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin. One way to understand that difference is to observe and measure the cognitive capacities of human newborns and infants, as well as the cognitive abilities of adult great apes.

This book belongs to a decades-long arc of inquiry by the author.  During much of this time, Michael Tomasello serves as co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. I cover two decades in my examinations.  Here is the fourth book in the list.

0390 What has this semiotician found so far?

First, from the very start of his journey, the content-level of Tomasello’s vision corresponds to the situation-level of Razie Mah’s hypothesis.  The ultimate human niche consists of the potential of triadic relations.

Razie Mah’s hypothesis applies the two-level interscope for Darwin’s paradigm to human evolution.

0391 First, the general Darwinian paradigm looks like this.

0392 In The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), Razie Mah proposes that the ultimate human niche1b is the potential of triadic relations.

Tomasello’s hypothesis that joint attention2b and shared intentionality2b are behavioral and cognitive adaptations to the niche of sociogenesis1b reconfigures the situation-level of Darwin’s paradigm, resulting in what I call the “Tomasello-Mah synthesis”.

0393 Yes, fortune turns her wheel.  Tomasello does not know Mah’s hypothesis.  Tomasello’s arc of inquiry is underway in 1999.  Mah’s hypothesis first appears online in 2018.  So, Tomasello configures his insight, corresponding to the situation-level of the Darwinian paradigm, as the content-level of his vision.

Tomasello’s vision offers a way to bring a phenotype (of human ontogeny2c’) into relation with a foundational adaptation (of joint attention2a’).  But, according to Mah, phenotype and adaptation are two independent fields of evolutionary inquiry.  One does not situate or contextualize the other.  Rather, the two intersect.

Consequently, Tomasello’s vision resolves the internal contradictions of the intersection of genetics and natural history,by assigning the phenotype to the category of thirdness and the adaptation to the category of firstness, while maintaining the actuality of both.

0394 Here is a picture of Tomasello’s vision.

0395 Of course, this examination appears precisely 25 years after Tomasello’s vision is cast in 1999 AD.

His vision is maintained throughout his arc of inquiry.

Consequently, his conclusions carry an awkward emptiness.  The emptiness compares to the basement of a house.  The basement is dark, cool, foundational and ignored, until of course, one must seek refuge in a storm.

0396 The previous examinations of Tomasello’s works demonstrate that the house, the abode of his vision, is furnished with morality.

Tomasello can ignore the basement, haunted by immaterial beings called, “triadic relations”.  Yet, in that place, where a family might store potatoes, onions, smoked meat, along with luggage and Christmas ornaments, dwells something that Tomasello may safely ignore.  I call that ghost, “religion”.

03/1/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 22 of 22)

0588 The Tomasello-Mah synthesis shows the ghost in the basement of the house of Tomasello’s vision.

Indeed, as this version of Darwin’s paradigm begins to haunt the entire edifice of human evolution, then Tabaczek’s housebecomes more than a house with a basement.  If sociogenesis1b is the potential1b of triadic relations2a, then Tomasello’s arc of inquiry may be re-articulated using triadic relations.

0589 For example, Razie Mah’s Primer on Sensible and Social Construction may be used to re-label the eras of individual, joint and collective intentionality.  Individual construction associates to the category-based nested form. Sensible construction associates to the two-level interscope, containing content and situation levels.  Social construction associates to the three-level interscope, containing content, situation and perspective levels.

Here is a list of what that might look like.

0590 To continue, the re-labeled eras may be regarded in terms of the evolution of talk.

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.  Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.

0592 Next, I would like to focus attention on the era of collective intentionality.

Here is a list depicting the timeframe.

0593 Before the era of collective intentionality, hand talk is confined team activities.  Hand talk produces sensible constructions.  Each team develops its own way of hand talking.  

After the domestication of fire, team-tradition hand talk starts to be used generally, eventually producing fully linguistic hand talk.

The situation is very dynamic.  Since cooking with fire increases the number of teams, fully linguistic hand-talk is re-appropriated for specialized use in more and more teams.  Fully linguistic hand-talk influences all social circles.  In some of these circles, grammatically correct, yet apparently nonsensible statements, generate social constructions that open new cognitive spaces.  These novel cognitive spaces become sites for more sensible construction.

0594 The voice comes into play during community meetings (150), seasonal mega-band round-ups (500) and special occasion tribal pow-wows (1500).  The voice is used for synchronization.  Song brings a large gathering of hominins into synchronization.  Once this cultural habit starts, then singing joins other traits in sexual selection.  The voice comes under voluntary control.

0595 Most likely, the early speciations of late Homo erectus produced species that could sing and hand-talk.  But, they could not speak.

Speech is added to hand-talk with Homo sapiens.  Anatomically modern humans practice a dual-mode of talking, hand-speech talk, for the next two hundred-thousand years.

0596 Hand-speech talk would still be practiced by anatomically modern humans today, were it not for the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.  The hypothesis of the first singularity proposes that the Ubaid is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.

Here is a picture of the era of social construction.

0598 Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

This brings me to the limit of Tomasello’s vision.  I open the door, and step out into the realization that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  I step into the vision of Razie Mah.

0599 The arc of Tomasello’s inquiry, spanning from 1999 to 2016, opens onto three masterworks by Razie Mah.  These electronic books are available at smashwords and other e-work venues.  This examination relies primarily on The Human Niche, along with books contained in the series, A Course on The Human Niche.  A related series is titled, Buttressing the Human Niche.

Here is a list of Mah’s masterworks.

Still, there is more.

A Commentary on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) is available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  This commentary includes Mah’s blogs for January, February and March, 2024, along with an examination of Becoming Human (2019), the fifth book in a sequence of five books.

0600 My thanks to Michael Tomasello, who writes the books under examination while Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, for conducting a scientific inquiry, from which I have examined only several works.

09/29/23

Looking at Appendix 1.1 in Brian Kemple’s Book (2019) “The Intersection” (Part 1 of 18)

0028 This is the second blog in a series.

 Looking at Brian Kemple’s Book (2019) “Intersection” appears in Razie Mah’s blog from May 15 through 18, 2023.  In that brief examination (points 0001-0027), a technical category-based definition of the term, “intersection” is shown to mesh with the theme of Kemple’s book, whose full title is The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (Walter de Gruyter, Boston/Berlin).

To me, that is fascinating.

0029 In this series of blogs, I examine Kemple’s appendices.

Yes, he has more than one appendix.

Plus, there are subdivisions.

0030 Appendix 1.1 is titled, “Presentative forms and the grounding of transcendence”.  My associations will draw upon A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, as well as A Primer on Natural Signs, Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings, and Comments on Newell Sasha’s Article (2018) “The Affectiveness of Symbols”.  These primers and comments touch base with Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”, which is available, along with the other mentioned e-works, at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0031 The title of Appendix 1.1 contains two technical terms.

“Presentative forms” is a term coined by Jacques Maritain and literally means a form that is substantiated by its presentation, rather than by matter.  The hylomorphe is presentation [substantiates] form, rather than matter [substantiates] form.

“The grounding of transcendence” is a phrase used by Martin Heidegger.  It conveys what the presentative form accomplishes.  The presentative form accomplishes more than matter-substantiated form, because it leads to (grounds) another form, which is located at a higher categorical level (transcendence).

Figure 01

0032 Surely, this implies that presentative forms and the grounding of transcendence coincide in a particular way.  The “matter” of the presentative form associates to the adjacent lower category of its corresponding “form”. 

Is this is a general feature of presentative forms?

Well, the claim is a good working hypothesis.

09/5/23

Looking at Appendix 3 in Brian Kemple’s Book (2019) “The Intersection” (Part 18 of 18)

0161 What about Appendix 3, titled “Synechism and semiosis”?

0162 Well, I best look into Appendix 4, which presents a helpful list of definitions.

“Synechism” is a principle of continuity.  There are no hard and fast distinctions between possibilities, because firstness is monadic.  In the empirio-schematic judgment, the dyad, a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena, exists in the realm of possibility and obeys this principle.  There are no phenomena without their noumenon.  There is no noumenon without its phenomena.  The hazards of synechism are yet to be deeply appreciated.  For scientific inquiry, what happens when certain actors claim to be observing the phenomena of a noumenon which is not… um… obvious to other people?

“Tychism” is a corollary of synechism.  Peirce envisions chance (er… possibility) as universal.  Without possibility, there is no actuality or normal context.  If there is an actuality that appears out of nowhere, in such a fashion that it has no normal context, then we are back to phenomena of a noumenon which is not… um… subject to understanding.

“Semiosis” is the action of signs.  Signs are triadic relations.  Triadic relations constitute the human niche.

0163 For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, our ancestors adapt to an ultimate niche as well as many proximate niches.  This means that hominin evolution is both convergent, with respect to our ultimate niche, and divergent, with respect to many proximate niches.  The ultimate niche is the potential of triadic relations.  The proximate niches are regional ecologies and environments.

Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.  Hand talk relies on the semiotic qualities of icons and indexes to motivate a relation between parole (hand talk) and langue (mental processing).  As this motivated relation becomes more and more conventional (that is, habitual within hominin social circles), hand-talk gestures become more and more like signs in an arbitrary system of differences (that is, symbols).  Grammar consists of symbolic operations within a finite set of symbols.  By the time anatomically modern humans appear, hand talk is fully linguistic.

0164 Speech is added to hand talk with the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens.

Humans practice hand-speech talk for around 200,000 years, with great success.

0165 Around 7,800 years ago, the end of the previous ice age raises sea-levels, flooding shallow geological basins such as what is now the Persian Gulf.  In the process, two hand-speech talking cultures, one settled on the basin and one settled along the coast and river gorge, are forced into proximity.  A pidgin and then a creole ensues.  The creole is the Sumerian language (unrelated to the nearby Semitic languages).  But, more importantly, this creole is the first instance of speech-alone talk.

At its inception, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the only culture in the world practicing speech-alone talk.

It is no coincidence that the world’s earliest civilization arises in southern Mesopotamia.

Speech-alone talk potentiates civilization.

0166 Our current Lebenswelt is marked by speech-alone talk.  Speech-alone talk spreads from the Ubaid to the four-corners of the world, potentiating unconstrained social complexity wherever it goes.

7800 years ago, the world population may have been as many as seven million.

Today, it is seven billion.

Such is the significance of the first singularity, the transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk.

0167 Heidegger is a German philosopher who strives to restart Western philosophy after it fumbles its founding charisma.

Peirce is a precocious American post-modern who becomes fascinated with one of the crucial questions asked by scholastic philosophers, “What is the causality inherent to the sign-relation?”

0168 Both these philosophers propose ideas that address a single question, “What is the nature of our current Lebenswelt?”

Their answers apply to a single actuality.

0169 I do not know the name of this actuality, but I do appreciate the significance of Kemple’s attempt to delineate an intersection (without being aware that the term, “intersection”, might have a technical definition that supports his inquiry).

An intersection is an actuality composed of two actualities, each of which has its own nested form.

0170 For these reasons, Brian Kemple’s book, The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue, deserves interest.  While my examinations, so far, covering the term, “intersection”, and the appendices, are sparse, they are suggestive.  There is a lot at play within the pages of this book.

05/18/23

Looking at Brian Kemple’s Book (2019) “The Intersection” (Part 1 of 4)

0001 According to Neoplatonic legend, the descent of the soul starts with a small immaterial gem resting on an undefinable pillow in the presence of transcendental beauty.  Then, a trap door opens and the little source of illuminationbegins to fall.  As it descends, it accrues matter.  Matter enters form.

One may say that the matter is evil and the soul, good, and conclude that the immortal soul becomes encased in corruptible matter.  But, the story is more complicated, because the term, “matter” slyly includes the capacity to become entangled with purely relational being.  Matter holds the capacity for meaning.  Matter substantiates form.  So Christians, following the complication, witness the baby as bearing a message.  The message?  Baptize me.

0002 The book before me is Brian Kemple’s The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue, published in 2019 by Walter de Gruyter Press (Boston/Berlin).  The masterwork is dedicated to the memory of John Deely (1942-2017 AD), who served as Kemple’s professor.

0003 The book presents a complex argument.  I, a simpleton, fixate on the titular word, “intersection”.

For me, the term has a technical definition, as formulated in the chapter on message in the e-book How To Define The Word “Religion” (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).  An intersection is a single actuality composed of two actualities, each with its own category-based nested form.

Say what?

See A Primer on the Category-based Nested Form.

0004 A photon is an example of an intersection of two actualities: a wave and a particle.  The normal context of a diffraction apparatus3 brings wave properties of light2 into relation with the potential of ‘observations of wavelengths’1.  The normal context of a metal plate3 brings particle properties of light2 into relation with potential ‘observations of the photo-electric effect’1.

0005 Here is a picture.

Figure 01

0006 Here is another way to look at the photon as intersection.

Figure 02

0007 In the following blogs, I will endeavor to visualize whether Kemple’s use of the term, “intersection”, coheres with this technical definition.

In order to do so, I will locate two category-based nested forms, one for both Peirce and one for Heidegger, and see whether the two actualities meld into one. 

05/15/23

Looking at Brian Kemple’s Book (2019) “The Intersection” (Part 4 of 4)

0020 The term, Bildendwelt, sounds like the concatenation of the words, “Bilden” and “dwelt”, as in the English statement, “I dwelt in that Bilden, before it came crashing down.”

In order to appreciate my humor, consider the October 1, 2022, blog at www.raziemah.com, titled, “Fantasia in G Minor: A speech written for Gunnar Beck MEP”.

Da Bilden is coming down!

Oh, I meant to say… the Bildendwelt makes no sense at all.

0021 So much for wordplay.

The compound-word, Bildendwelt stands, waiting to be refined in the furnace of postmodern use.

0022 The third division of Kemple’s book weaves together divisions one and two, titled World and Sign, into an intersection.  In the process, Kemple focuses on two elements in the following figure: Sein1V and sign1H.

Figure 08

0023 To me, Kemple’s focus is remarkable, because Being1V and triadic relations1H are crucial for bringing our lineage from Umwelt, to Lebenswelt, and further into Bildendwelt.  Indeed, I wonder whether these compound terms should be used to label the single actuality of Peirce’s experience2H and Dasein2V.

0024 But, let me not ignore one further possibility, the single actuality is us.

Here is a list of labels for the single actuality.

Figure 09

0025 Now, I can portray our descent.

Imagine us, as purely spiritual illuminations, perched on undefinable pillows, in the presence of transcendent beauty in an era when all time is now.  A trap door opens and we descend into Being and Time.  As we fall, we accrete two actualities, coinciding with Peirce’s experience following his realization that signs are real1H and with Heidegger’s vision of Dasein1V.  These actualities are full of contradictions.

As we descend through Being and Time, we accrue World and Sign.  We pass through our primordial Umwelt, the Lebenswelt that we evolve in, the first singularity, our current Lebenswelt and now, our Bildendwelt.  Descent with modification.  Then we are born, in the present, and each one of us bears a message.  Baptize me.

0026 What does baptism do?

Baptism cleanses us of Gestell, the grammars of our world, carrying temptation, misdirections and lures that entrap us, confound us, and, in the end, convince us that the truth can never be found.

How so?

Truth is just a spoken word.  We create our own “truth”.  Spoken words are merely projections of our Innerwelt upon that which is outside ourselves.  After temptation fixes our occasions of sin, after our own projections redirect the projections of others and weave a veil of reality, and after we begin to believe in our own self-divinizing speculative grammar, we construct artifacts that validate our spoken worlds.  We build our own prison.  Heidegger calls it, Gestell.

0027 When the waters of baptism pour over an infant, the baby often cries. The baby represents all of us.

The waters of baptism disturb.  Dasein2V!  We enter a world perfused with signs.  We are welcomed into a world where the material finds meaning in the immaterial.  The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.  How all encompassing will Peirce’s experience2H be?  We stand on the threshold of a new age of understanding.

Kemple offers the reader a portrait of John Deely’s vision, in a book that lives up to its title, in more ways than one.  Bravo!

03/3/23

Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2020) “Rorty” (Part 1 of 3)

0001 This chapter appears in Michael Millerman’s Book (2020) Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida and Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political (Arktos Press).  The composition of the book sends a message.  A forty-nine page introduction is labeled as a preface, complete with Roman numerals.  The first chapter covers Heidegger and stands in the center of the book.  Then, chapters two through five covers the responses of four political philosophers to Heidegger’s academic labors (as well as his political affiliation).

Richard Rorty is discussed in the third chapter.  This chapter serves as a transition from the weighty chapters on Heidegger and Strauss to the surprising chapters on Derrida and Dugin.

0002 Rorty offers a change of style.  Rorty is an American philosopher.  This pleases me, since I write like an American, too.  I roll, roll, roll down the river of literary endeavors.  My paddles are purely relational structures, such as the category-based nested form and the Greimas square.

Consequently, Millerman refers to movies, rather than books.  And, if books must be mentioned, then novels come first.

0003 Oh, I should add, the first novel comes from the pen of Cervantes.  Don Quixote marks the start of the Age of Ideas.  In seventeenth-century Spain, two movements coincide.  On one hand, Baroque scholastics finally articulate the causality inherent in sign-relations.  On the other hand, Cervantes creates a new literary genre.

Perhaps, these two hands belong to a single entity.  The novelist represents the scholastic behind the mask of modernity.  Like the heroic character in V for Vendetta, there is no removing the mask.  The Spanish innovator spins away from truth (the scholastics were all about mind-independent being) and leaps towards happiness (the novelists are all about mind-dependent beings).

Is it any surprise that, in the next century, France produces a revolution with a similar attitude?  Then, two centuries later, today’s social democratic politics perform the same routine.

0003 Richard Rorty wrestles with a strange duality.  Politics is contextualized by two distinct masters, truth and reality.  Politics emerges from the potential of good (which goes with truth) and the potential of what can be done (which goes with reality).

Here is a picture of two nested forms.

Figure 01

0004 Of course, Rorty wants to step away from truth3 and find happiness in reality3.  But, one cannot take the mask without the face or the face without the mask.  One cannot say, “Look at the mask without thinking about the face.”

Here is where Rorty flounders.  His social democratic politics tell him that viable options are the only things that matter. But, as a philosopher, he must face the question as to which options are good.

0005 In short, politics is a single actuality that is composed of two distinct nested forms.  Neither nested form can situate the other.  So, the actualities for both nested forms fuse, creating one single contradiction-filled actuality, as described in the chapter on message in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.

I call the following diagram, “an intersection”.

Figure 02

0006 Right away, I spy that the single actuality of politics2 veils two unspoken actualities that emerge from (and situate) the vertical and horizontal potentials.  These two actualites are overshone by politics2, in the same way that Mercury and Venus appear to disappear within the Sun in astrological conjunctions.  The technical term is “combustion”.

Here is a Greek parody of politics2.

Figure 03

0007 Yes, truth3V and reality3H exhibit different orbits around politics2.

According to Millerman, Rorty is a social democrat advocating for truthlessness and hopefulness.

0008 How does that statement mesh with the above intersection?  Rorty distains Heidegger’s romance with language and says that there is no such thing as a thing itself that can be put into language.  So forget esse_ces (beings substantiating) and essences (substantiated forms).  Indeed, forget righteousness.  The question is whether the thing is useful.  Or not.

At first, it seems that Rorty is only interested in the horizontal axis.

0009 But then, Rorty writes that there are three conceptions of the aim of philosophizing in the modern era.  These three are Husserl’s scientism, Heidegger’s poetics and Dewey’s pragmatism.  The latter two respond to the former.  Husserl idealizes scientists.  Heidegger extols poets.  Pragmatists, like Rorty, Dewey and James, prefer engineers.

Now, if I associate these embodiments into the above mystery, then I replace Mercury with the engineer and Venus with the poet, resulting the the following intersection.

Figure 04

0010 Once I diagram this, the contradictions become more apparent.  The Heideggerian venusian poet2V and the pragmatist mercurial engineer2H orbit an all encompassing solar politics2.  From the point of view of an astrologer, sometimes these inner planets run ahead of the solar presence, sometimes they lag behind the solar presence, and sometimes they are in conjunction with the solar presence.  Combustion!   The Sun’s transit through the constellations, plays this celestial drama over and over again, for those who watch the heavens.  For those who watch politics, the Earth orbits the sun.

03/1/23

Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2020) “Rorty” (Part 3 of 3)

0021 Of course, Heidegger would (if he could) return the insult, by calling Rorty a liberal propagandist.

After all, Rorty is not concerned with questions of truth3V, preferring issues concerning social consequences3H.

0022 Plus, Heidegger (if he could) would have regarded the imprisonment of Rorty and other social democratic philosophers as a matter of “petty details”.

Petty details?

In Heidegger’s view, the West has exhausted its options1H.  And, proof comes later in the title of Rorty’s book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.   Are these options?  Or, are they signs of exhaustion?  Compare that title to Being and Time.

0023 The squishiness of the former title is made worse when Rorty’s dichotomy of choice, private versus public, appears to align with the potentials of good1V and options1H, respectively.  Is truth3V private?  Is reality3V public?  If so, then I ask, “Are these affirmations the poisonous fruits of the Treaty of Westphalia?”  The Treaty of Westphalia marks the start of the modern era, almost four hundred years ago.

Perhaps, Rorty inadvertently testifies to Heidegger’s proposition.  The West has exhausted its options1H.  Politics2 is the intersection of the actualities of reality3H and truth3V, arising from the potential of viable options1H and good1V.  Without a good1V, there are no options1H.  So, politics2 is dead.  But, our love (philo-) of wisdom (-sophy) endures.  So, it is only a matter of time before politics2 rises again.

Shout it from the rooftops!

Politics2 is dead.  Long live politics2.

0024 My thanks to Michael Millerman for his excellent chapter into how Rorty views Heidegger, chapter three in Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida and Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political (2020, Arktos Press, London), pages 97-134.

10/31/22

Looking at Loren Haarsma’s Book (2021) “When Did Sin Begin” (Part 1 of 21)

0001 Loren Haarsma is an old man, a physics professor and a Christian.  As a fellow of the American Science Affiliation, he has lectured on the intersection of science and faith.  He is a scholarly voice in the Biologos network.

The full title of his book is When Did Sin Begin: Human Evolution and The Doctrine of Original Sin (2021, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI).

If one goes to the resources page for the Biologos.org website, then selects the topic, “Bible”, and the subtopic, “Adam and Eve”, one will find an extensive collection of essays on the concerns in Haarsma’s title: timing, evolution and original sin.

0002 How do these concerns fit into a category-based nested form?

Timing calls forth a normal context3.  The question, “when?”, implies an event.  Here, the event is a transition.  For evolution, the transition is a topic of natural inquiry.  For original sin, the transition is a topic for theologians.

Human evolution and original sin belong to the realm of actuality2.

The only item not mentioned is potential1.  Here, the question mark applies.  For human evolution2, the potential must be adaptive change1.  For original sin2, the potential is the start of sin in our current Lebenswelt1.

0003 To me, these concerns yield two category-based nested forms.

Here is a picture, following the recipe in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.

Figure 01

0004 These two normal contexts exclude one another.

0005 The upper normal context3 associates to evolutionary science.  The focus of attention is on natural history and genetics.

Typically, an adaptive change produces speciation.  However, in human evolution, an adaptive change may be cultural.  Human evolution is both biological and cultural.  Since natural history and genetics do not adequately describe culture, they may not be enough to scientifically describe human evolution.  Indeed, no natural science convincingly addresses cultural change.

0006 The lower normal context3 associates to theological science.  The focus of attention is on special and general revelation.

Special revelation includes Genesis 1-11.  Genesis 1-11 divides into two parts.  In the Primeval History (chapter 2:4-11), Adam is brought to life as the first human, even though um… in the Creation Story (chapter 1-2.3), humans are already intended, created and blessed, in the framework of six days of creation.

General revelation includes Greek philosophy, among other traditions.  Greek philosophy is useful for resolving contradictions.  For example, some theologians resolve the contradiction inherent in the two parts of Genesis 1-11 by claiming that Adam (in Genesis 2.4-4) is the male and female “them” that God intended, created and blessed (in Genesis 1).

Say what?

In the Creation Story, God creates them, male and female.  So, Adam must have had some sort of divided consciousness, one operating in his mind and the other working in his ribs.

Just kidding.

0007 Greek philosophy’s usefulness is not limited to resolving contradictions, no matter how silly the resolution may be.  Greek philosophy may also be used in situations where contradictions cannot be resolved.  Such a situation occurs here. Human evolution2 and original sin2 belong to a single actuality.  They both pertain to one realness2.

Here is a picture.

Figure 02

0008 Two (apparently independent) category-based nested forms intersect in the realm of actuality2.  The two constituting actualities cannot escape the one realness, because they constitute the one realness.  Certain contradictions are accidental. Certain contradictions are essential.  Greek philosophy is useful for separating the accidental from the essential.  A set of essential contradictions is called “a mystery”.

07/22/22

Looking at Carlo Vigano’s Speech (2020) “How the Revolution of Vatican II Serves the New World Order” (Part 1 of 14)

0001 The presentation under consideration appears in a book, titled A Voice In the Wilderness: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano On the Church, America, and the World, edited by Brian M. McCall and published in 2021 by Angelico Press, in Brooklyn NY.  The article is located at the end of Part II on pages 251 through 274.  It is a transcript of a speech given to the Catholic Identity Conference on October 24, 2020.  A video can be found on Remnant TV.

0002 The presentation is of interest as a follow-up to the June 2022 blog, Looking at Peter Redpath’s Essay (2000) “The Homeschool Renaissance”.   It complements the professional path taken by Dr. Redpath, who now promotes online courses, teaching “uncommon” common sense.

0003 Indeed, Vigano’s talk can only be described as “uncommon”, in the same way that Redpath’s essay, published 20 years earlier, is uncommon.  Plus, Vigano’s talk expresses common sense in the same way that Redpath’s essay does.

0004 Here is the difficulty.

How does one portray a turn of events that makes no sense?

0005 Redpath portrays the history of Italian humanists, who jettison logic at the very start of their movement, and who end up subjugated to the deterministic (and incomplete) logic of empirio-schematics.

Perhaps, the European humanists did not see it coming.

A little mathematical and mechanical logic can overthrow no logic at all.

0006 Vigano fixes on the political stagehands behind the theatrics of Vatican II, who embed themselves in the matrix of positional authority in the traditional Church as the drama of the Novus Ordo unfolds into a lurid parody of historic Catholicism.

Perhaps, the participants of the Council of Vatican II did not see it coming.

A little political intrigue can overthrow the realm.

0007 No, it does not make sense.

0008 How can one make something that does not make sense make sense? 

Obviously, the word, “sense”, has two implications.  The first implication is that it is sensible.  The second implication is that it impacts our five senses.  That is, it is sensical.  Sensible is not the same as sensical.

Something that does not make sense is not sensible.

Something that one cannot see, hear, taste, smell and touch is not sensical.

0009 Here is the trick.

Through diagrams of triadic relations, something that is not sensible may become sensical.

0009 So, my examination transforms into a question, asking, “How can I associate features of Vigano’s argument to empty slots in purely relational triadic structures, such as the category-based nested form?”

That is my task.

0010 The following blogs rely on the three works listed below.  Each displays the synthetic process of association and implication.  Once I associate features of Vigano’s speech to elements in a category-based nested form, I consider the implications.

0011 The three works are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Search for the author, Razie Mah, along with the title.

A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form

A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction

How to Define the Word “Religion”

0012 Vigano’s presentation breaks into eleven sections.  Each is covered by a blog.  Then, a conclusion suggests other applications of Charles Peirce’s synthetic logic.