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Everything Exists in Relationship
Things do not exist unless they exist in relationship with something else. In fact, things do not exist at all. Relationships exist. There are no individual things. The existence of anything is always contingent upon something else. When I was an undergraduate student I studied physics, but my favorite course in four years was one called An Introduction to Metaphysics. It was one of only two philosophy courses that I had time to take, but I will never forget it.
The professor was a budgie elderly man one year from retirement. When he lectured he giggled to himself after almost every sentence and licked his glistening lower lip after about every third word. I had no background in philosophy, but the provocative questions and statements that this rather odd man inserted between giggles held my attention transfixed for an entire semester.
One of the things I learned was that absolute One and absolute Zero are both nothing. In the case of zero this seems obvious. If all you have is zero then certainly you have nothing. It is less obvious – but equally true – with one. If there was truly only one then there is in fact nothing. Nothing can exist without a second.
You might stop me here and say, “If I had one refrigerator I would still have something!” But if you have a refrigerator then you are a second to that refrigerator. And if you didn’t exist the refrigerator would still exist in a world and it would be contingent on the existence of the world. The world would provide the second that the refrigerator’s existence could adhere to. If the world disappeared the refrigerator would still have to exist in space. If there were truly only one there would be only the refrigerator. All of reality would be encompassed by the limits of that refrigerator. The entire universe would be a refrigerator. But we can’t stop there because the refrigerator could also not be composed of any parts. Because any part of the refrigerator would be a second to the refrigerator. There also could be no ideas or feelings about the refrigerator because those would also be seconds to the original refrigerator. The refrigerator could not have a history or future because then it’s previous or future state would be a second to its current state.
For those of you who follow my blog you will see that we are coming right to Charles Sander’s Peirce’s conception of ‘Firstness.” Firstness is absolute oneness and it is in fact nothing at all – the pure potential prior to existence. Peirce’s conception of “Firstness” is a piece of pure genius and well worth the time it takes contemplating it in order to come to a deep understanding of what Peirce was getting at.
But let me get back to my main point. In order for anything to exist it has to exist in relationship to something else. This is an important part of the core character of American Pragmatism. We live in a world of relationships. As I said before, things do not exist except in relationship with other things. In fact, things do not exist at all. Relationships exist. You can read any of the Pragmatists from Charles Sanders Peirce to William James, from John Dewey to George Herbert Mead and you will find this same emphasis on the primary reality of relationship.
William James was making this point in his own way when he spoke of everything occurring as content in context. That is his way of describing the minimal relationship required for existence. You cannot have pure content. You must always have content and context – foreground and background. And James was astute enough to realize that in our experience of mind mental objects can flip from being content to being context and back again. The relationship between content and context is one way to imagine the minimal relationship required in reality – Peirce’s more abstract language of the relationship between ‘firsts’ and ‘seconds’ is another way.
This makes total sense to me…. until I try to think about it 🙂 Actually it is the first time I have had an inkling of what Pierce meant by firstness.
Dear Jeff, you say how William James states that in our experience of mind mental objects can flip from being content to being context and back again. Is’t consciousness always the context underlying every experience? As it if it being the white screen untouched where all images (content, object) are projected. What does James mean with this flip of mind mental objects?
Sincerey,
Victor
I agree with Victor ‘s question.
What is consciousness with respect to the “context” ?
Coud we have a discussion about what is the “context ”?
Is the context a subjective notion or an objective one ?
Jeff maybe at some point I shall write a blog about what I understood of H.Bergson.
This would go very well after W. James.
Best, Catherine
Being a shut-in artist preoccupied with painting most of the time, I have more acquaintances but few relationships, I do blog and have those kinds of relationships, not very deep but enjoyable and interesting when they’re interesting. I accept my being such a loner, don’t feel lonely since my work keeps me so occupied. I wonder if most elders like me find it more difficult to establish deep friendships as you age?
There’s the lyrics to “People”: People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.
I may have been more longing for relationships when I was younger. Now I’m content and consider any encounters with interesting people langiappe. I have my deepest relationships with the radio, a constant and grateful listener to NPR when I’m busy painting, it’s my continuing education. I’ve always found my most rewarding relationships are with meeting of minds, those I can exchange ideas and learn from.
The first thing I thought reading this blog also was ‘ what about consciousness’ . I looked what Peirce said about it and this convinced me not to take consciousness as ‘context’ or ‘relation’ in the way Jeff talks about it: “The immediate present, could we seize it, would have no character but its Firstness. Not that I mean to say that immediate consciousness (a pure fiction, by the way), would be Firstness, but that the quality of what we are immediately conscious of, which is no fiction, is Firstness.” (Lowell Lectures, CP 1.343, 1903).
He also says: Firstness is the quality or character of things. It is “redness” or “hardness” or “coldness.” And: “The first is that whose being is simply in itself, not referring to anything nor lying behind anything.” Duality only starts when meaning is added, signs and interpretations, which is Secondness.’
‘We can only know reality through signs and these signs are created through culture. As soon as I start describing a direct experience, it is not the experience itself, it is Second.’
Hi Jeff,
I am really enjoying your posts. Thank you! You manage to get across profound ideas in a short space with simplicity and clarity. Loving it!
The question is are these relationships existent as part of the subjectivity of the individual or as part of the world. William James thought that the relationships were as real as the objects in the world. I opt for the relationships to exist as cognitive impositions on experience in a somewhat Kantian paradigm.
Dear Jeff and Liesbeth, thanks so much for the blog and the cotnmems. Actually I am getting excited and thrilled every time one tries to make a bridge between Pragmatism and Idealism. I myself don’t really know where the bridge is located so I want to offer here an ongoing inquiry.What comes to me while reading the blog is that what is at play here is the belief system in its interaction with the representation system. It is not really the facts that pragmatists and idealists will disagree with, but the orientation of their beliefs.Take the example of Rudolf Steiner. Everyone would agree that he is an Idealist, he was maybe the modern voice closest to Plato. On the other hand, he is one of the spiritual teachers with the most important Pragmatic legacy. Bio dynamic agriculture, schooling, alternative medicine, architecture, dance and arts after 100 years one can say for sure that the schooling method IS working. So here we are, he got results, lots of results. Same for Albert Einstein. When he was an unknown clerk at the Patent Office, one day a friend asked him on what he working. He answered I am thinking about light, space and time . The friend thought he was totally nuts. a few years later the results were so astonishing that the whole scientific community had to reconsider its foundations. This for me defined a serious idealistic attitude. In a sense both the idealists (the serious ones) and the pragmatists will want at the end to see the results, and to form their judgement on them.But before results come, before judgement is made, the attitude is very different, and this for me has to do with the belief system. Take the case of the the idealist. To get a new Idea he will forget about matter and focus entirely on the pristine, absolute character of an idea.On the other hand, the pragmatist will have his two feet firmly really planted into the real world and will draw circles, or discuss with others, build a machine and let the ideas emerge from this.It is clear that both attitudes are very powerful and valid. I want to comment on what happens when people choose to take the idealistic attitude, since it is the one which is not very much fashionable at the beginning of the 20th century ,and which is very dear to me. Jeff you write : Assume that there is a pure idea, some initial conception in the mind. Then when a mind makes contact with this pure idea it simultaneously interprets that idea. At this point the pure idea becomes known, prior to any contact with an interpreting mind the pure idea is unknown. That’s where for me it becomes tricky. What do we mean by make contact with an idea ? We could decide to mean to come into contact with an idea means precisely to interpret it . Hence we would equate contact with interpretation. This is where the idealists differ form pragmatists.For an idealist like me, the interpretation in the form of a drawing of a circle is quite material already, quite far away in the road of making contact with the idea . Before drawing the circle, I already had a mental image of it. The mental image in like a mathematical concept, I can still infer an outside and an inside of the circle from it, although I don’t have necessarily to. But further down the road, before the mental image, I get an impression of what the circle is.This impression is very precise [ the more one goes towards the subtle road the more it gets precise= think of it : the drawing of the circe is not at all a precise image of a circle, since you can never draw a perfect circle]. But the impression is already incredibly precise, much more than the mental image or the drawing. At the stage of the impression, there is no notion at all of the inside the outside and the boundary.Beyond the impression, well I believe there are what Steiner calls real beings but I got only once this experience a few times only [ actually at the last retreat with Andrew- I saw a chiral object which was like a Being, after not having had a conscious though for or day or so… the first though that came was a chiral object, like a powerful Being]. My point here is that there is an infinity between the material representation and the pure idea itself. There is a void here, a gap. The way one accesses to the pure idea depends on our belief system. Simply because if one doesn’t believe that it is possible to deal with an idea solely through impressions for example, then one will never contact the impressions of the ideas, on will never enter this world.On the other hand, by some kind of miraculous operation, the more one believes in it, the more this enchanted world reveals itself to us.It just opens in front of us and we get terribly scared, because our intellect is now at the border, at the brink of a precipice. In front of this gap, this precipice, our intellect has to forget its representation system and rely on it belief system.this is terribly scary
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