October 23, 2008

Prelude to reclude


Example. Trust and taking-for-granted

Consider. Trust is trust-in and thus specific-to. Trust is personal and a belief or assumption bestowing on subject or object a felt-now assurance of stability. Interaction-with is without reservation.

Specimens. I trust my car to start and get me to work everyday. I place my trust in it as a means of transportation. My car historically, and for the indefinite but not unlimited future, does what I want it to. I get into it in the morning and start it the same way as always, seldom thinking about or anticipating problems.

I also trust my friend. I know how he behaves, what his values are, and so forth. When I relate to him, I know he will respond in certain ways.

Consider. Taking-for-granted. There are recurrent events such as the sun's rise, and there are . . .

Discussion. And so it goes, following in imperfect fashion the models set before us since ideal forms and essences and properties became the parlance. But what is description's end? And is beginning-to-define the step-relative of direct experience?

If to grasp the jell-o and hold it still long enough to discern what it is requires definition/description, there must be some objects of intentional view worth and not worth bothering about. Who cares really about yellow jell-o down or up or around or so fully and carefully delimited such that we can say this, and not that, is what it is?

For the phenomena (objects of intentional view) we would care about, those are worthy of delimitation to the limits possible, not all possible phenomena. The experience of inserting a stent into an artery of mine before performing the procedure would, as sense would have it, important, vital, critical. Get this phenomenon right down to the nth degree please, and don't bother me with definitions tentative.

Then it must be understanding and expertise, knowledge and perfect execution. These must be description's end. But is execution a part of the descriptions we would forge? Not exactly. It is execution in combination with knowledge, and knowledge in combination with execution, and so on round and round and up and down the hermeneutic spiral. Each builds and extends the other to the limit of need or value. Understanding then is not representation in words alone but also manifest praxis.

But is there understanding without concomitant application? Another way to ask the question is whether knowledge always has a use, or are there standalone, stable insights, what might be considered "justified true belief[s]" sufficient unto themselves?

To name one, love. At least a part of love never asks the smitten to do more than just be in the experience of the wonder. In addition, one need not fully understand in the sense of cognitive comprehension what the love-experience is.

So the horizon of explanations and understandings opens to knowledges plural--systems (e.g., biological), psychology, philosophy (e.g., epistemology), religion, and so on. It also opens to practices. And it opens to that which may or may not be important enough to describe in the senses of object-in-view and how that is for me or you or us.

Thus, partial, fleeting . . . something like sculpting, because other than what does not need dissection and display and employment, we have rudimentary tools such as language to make experience possible and meanings transferable.

Is that enough? Surely it is. Surely it suffices . . . for now, and permits proceeding. We have world enough, but not time.