After
being sick for three weeks, my mind is starting to click again. (Poor you.)
Can I ask a question? What is a
“thing”? As in my saying, “Buddhism is
just a thing.” What does it mean to call
something a thing?
A
thing is something that can be separated and removed from the other elements
around it. Thus, a stone lying on the
road is a thing.
But
this opens other avenues for drawing conclusions. Something that is a totality, representing
the superset of “wholeness”, cannot be a thing.
So, the universe cannot be a thing if, by the universe, we mean the sum
total of everything. Some people might
say the same thing about God, seeing that God subsumes everything that is less
than God.
I
would say that the phenomenon known as conscious experience also qualifies as a
totality. We cannot directly “know” (or
have direct awareness of) anything that falls outside the scope of conscious
experience. Elements within consciousness
can be removed from the mix. But
consciousness itself cannot be removed (while we are conscious). Therefore, conscious experience is not a
thing.
Here
is another distinction. Some things can
be described as “physical” things. Other
things have no physicality, but are, nevertheless, things. Nonphysical things could be described as
“mental” things. They exist only in the
mental environment of a conscious mind.
Example:
I create a mathematical set that consists of the days of the week. Each member of the set is a thing since I
could remove it from the set and consider it alone. And the set is a thing. Why?
Because it is not the totality called “the set of all sets”. (It can be removed from the set of all sets
and can be examined on its own.) Yet, we
can recognize that all these are mental things and are clearly apart from
physical things.
There
is a special category of mental things: words.
A word is a constituent of the superset known as “vocabulary”. What makes words interesting is that they
have “correspondences” to other things.
Word correspondence can be representational: words stand for
things. Word correspondence can also be
associative: word things can have similarities or relationships to other word
things. This permits classification,
grouping and reminding. In other words,
word things have primary meanings as well as shades of meanings beyond the
primary.
Word
things can create confusion. When I use
a word I am using a thing, but do I mean the word thing or the meanings
associated to it?
One
area of word thing confusion might arise if the word thing refers to a
rule. “Rule X” is a thing that
references a law or regulation that requires car drivers to turn on headlamps
when continuously operating a vehicle’s windshield wipers. If I invoke “Rule X” in conversation, am I making
reference to the practical application of this rule on the part of a car
driver? Perhaps, I am in the legal or
enforcement profession. In that case “Rule
X” refers to the word-for-word law that is recorded as the official wording of
Rule X. Or, maybe my use of “Rule X” in
my speech would be a reference to the intent or the “why” behind the
rule’s creation in the first place.
Many
an argument has taken place precisely because the discussants were using the
same word thing, yet conjuring in their minds distinctly different referential
meanings. The fact is that such debates
happen and are given social importance. To
illustrate, we might step into a courtroom in which two law firms (and the
parties they “represent”) are battling out a conflict to the point that one
side’s meaning prevails over the other side’s meaning.
Here’s
another example. Suppose I use the word
thing “God”. Doing so, I might be
referencing the word itself. This is not
a trivial usage. Fundamentalist Judaism
places strict limits on how and when words for God may be used.
Or,
perhaps “God” refers to a specific religion’s understanding of a God-concept,
and, indirectly, is a reference to that religion apart from other
religions. For instance someone who says
“God” might be invoking the specific meaning “Christ”, which, of course, directly
connects to a specific group of religions known as Christianity.
Alternatively,
the word thing “God” could be indicative of a specific type of experience. For instance, a person who says “God” might
have in mind the entity to whom humans give praise and what it feels like to
give praise.
Clearly,
the experiential quality of praising is distinct and different from a specific
God-concept, and both are different from a name for God. Yet, unending arguments will burn because
each participant is contributing a different sort of kindling to the fire of
disagreement. The debate happens because
the participants can’t free themselves from the trap set by a word thing with
different referents.
What
this suggests is that we may need a new kind of language that can describe the
use of things in multiple and different ways, thus freeing us from the
confusion of “single thing, multiple correspondences”. This new language (and the thought which
accompanies it) would help us see past the confusions that arise when things
enter the mind and take on form in conscious experience.
From
such a language a new concept of things and meaning could arise, as well as a
respectful understanding of the weaknesses that come with holding things such
as words in consciousness. From this new
language:
A super-consciousness.
That
renders consciousness as a thing.
A
super-consciousness.
That
transcends.
Words.
And.
Things.
*As
I wrote this, I had in the back of my mind some of the great debates in recent
years between believers and atheists.
One notable, and brilliant scientist, Richard Dawkins, has positioned
himself to become a lightning rod for some of these debates. For example, see the debate between Dawkins
and NIH administrator Francis Collins that was arranged and published by Time
magazine in 2006, “God vs. Science”.
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