[Gem]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

Agreed on all points.
Except that IMO, it's precisely BECAUSE physics is a sort of concise language that makes some sort of meaning of human experience that it's among the most important and far-reaching of the sciences.

Nonetheless...it too is ultimately limited in scope...and most physicists today will immediately agree -- even as many seek for ways in which they can free themselves of the need for material "measurement" or proof. As I see it, much of groundbreaking and theoretical physics ultimately yearns to be metaphysics, and this is purely in search of or in service to truth.

Because much of What Is and thus of truth cannot be measured materially in any sort of meaningful and substantive way. It can only be experienced, known, and apprehended.

Peace & blessings,
7L

I have philosophised much about symbolic representation of the real and considered how the function of the universe is necessarily the same as the function in perception. If we assume there is a universe which is perceived apart from the perception itself, we have assumed separation between 'the mind' and 'the universe'. I find that there is no rationale for mind to be other than the universe, and it seems to me that 'my' is the object between who perceives and what is perceived. The early psychoanalysts, particularly Lacan, wrote at great lengths about 'the other' and how it signifies the self. This contextualisation of self and other is a very deep fundamental for the symbolic. The real has no other because it quite simply is what is prior to any definition at all and the fundamental awareness of motion is not known. 'It' changes is knowable, because 'it' is other than change - 'it' is what changes, lending an artifact that endures change. 'It' is therefore other than change contextually, and context is symbolic, not real. 'It' is not realised, but actualised, which is to say, thought to be, which is why the notion is so pertinent to psychoanalysis. I don't know if I expressed this clearly, but what it implies is, what we identify as objects are 'its', and as such, are not objective in the sense that they are other than the perception of them, but manifest in the mind rather than perceived by it - i.e. 'it' is all thought.

The affect of 'it': the enduring, albeit abstract object, gives rise to the notion of the objective reality, where in fact, the perceived, identifiable object is contextualised by 'it', and the world of objects we know are not actual, but virtual. When 'it' is thought to be, there is no question of believing or not believing or willing it into existence. 'It' appears as it is thought - 'it' is not 'imagined into existence' whimsically, but thought to be in the sense that it is undoubtedly and unquestioningly believed: Simply true as the experience is validated by the experience itself.

From this, the very fact I see a chair convinces me completely that a chair is there. I know there is a chair there because I'm staring right at it. But is it 'real'? The chair is what seems like it is the substance that changes. As it does, it becomes less-chair, but this appearance of form which endures long enough to be indentified is embedded with the presumed 'it'.

"Symbolic represetation" in the sense I use it is 'meaningful' (different to an emblem, say, which is just a sort of iconography). Symbolism represents something other than itself within itself in order to contextualise itself as a complete symbol. Simple example: 'up' signifies 'down'. Up has no meaning in itself, so symbolism is never unitary, yet it is complete unto itself. Never unified, always opposed, but whole none-the-less. It emerges from the primal reality, which is ineffable, meaningless and unknowable (as knowledge). In this sense the real is embedded in the symbolic because up necessitates down. Meaning, therefore, isn't 'made up' but directly applicable to what is 'thought to be' (as I termed it). The meaning is dual, as the symbol is 'othered' within itself, but the symbol doesn't pertain to reality directly; it pertains to that more primal other 'it' - 'it', essentially is other than reality. Reality can not be symbolised, but becuase the actualised (manifest) is itself 'it' (that which changes which is other than change) the symbol up/down, for example, relates not the the reality, but the fundamental othering of it within in the immediacy of formal perception, or the actualisation itself - Or this most peculiar relationship between the ineffable real and the abstract 'it'. The latter defined against the undefinable.

Mathematics which is so effective at describing observable phenomena functions so well because it is extrapolated from not actualised forms, but from the relationships that together construct them. For example, we say "there are "2". We know one of the articles refered to isn't the other one. It doesn't matter what shape these articles are. "2" simply says, "this and that". It expresses the relationship which implies the form. Form is defined by describing the underlying context that constructs it. As I tried to explain, observable objects are 'actualised' by the contextualisation of 'it' - Math articulates context; math goes behind 'it' and talks about the abstract 'it' in context with an ineffable other. The ineffable party of this relationship is utterly unapproachable because hasn't any item to approach. 'It' is approachable because it is abstract. The context between them is a direct relation, but one which is not quantifiable. The real can not be defined by 'it' because 'it' never even existed. It seems to because 'it' is contextually real.

In this way, math isn't invented (though axioms are assumed) but involves the discovery of relationships which actually already exist in the immediacy of perception, and because the experience of things is 'thought to be' (as I put it), conceptually constructed objects are brought into being in precisely the same way, so when I say "the function of the universe is necessarily the same as the function in perception" I could equally say the function of form is the same as the function of the symbol.