A pseudo-essay informed and inspired by Condillac’s philosophy, that aims to describe a monadology of experience as a paradigm underlining autodidacticity and an autodidactic method:
I’ve been active and interested in creating what I’ve tongue-in-cheek been referring to as the monadology of experience, which I’ve used to mean, “the independent units from which we build life”. The idea of the monad as a windowless, self-determining atom is both useful and limiting. It is useful because these units are selected and operated in their own terms, i.e. cannot be justified by anything outside themselves unless that is done rhetorically (artificial dialectics). A reservation I do have, is that all that is merely a perspective and should not be taken too seriously, especially since if it got down to a serious discussion of my actual philosophy, then I would readily concede that the delineation of life into these units is crass and ultimately false. But that is theory and it need not hobble practice. This linguistic basis and overall approach does entail philosophical virtue, but incompletely, and employs justification in a practical mode (whether that is because “justification” is a practical ideology, but even if it is because it is being expressed from a practical launchpad which is prior and thus outside its scope of criticism).
Yesterday I’d focused (via a brief study of Condillac) on the idea, Sensation is a mode of being. Without elaboration this is a philosophically loaded conception; keywords – “sensation, experience, subjectivity, consciousness”. So while avoiding initiating a fascinating dialogue that would send me far off track, I return to the issue to be dealt with using these new munitions. Since personal identity is a practice – (cf. a metaphysical substance – although I suppose that it can be an assumption to say that a practice cannot be a substance) – it follows that the choices I make, such as what elements of the world I will immerse myself, are not just stones I care to accumulate, but the walls of my being’s adobe.
I’ll be repeating and overlapping ideas as part of a process of ingesting this philosophical reasoning.
(I should not, having gotten this far, become confused by the lines I draw. I am in the domain of the speakers of metaphors. I will point out that I am not the contents, nor am I the container, not even the process of accumulating or concentrating. Even every time I subsume the “I” into a less restricted perspective, I am left lingering that I am left with another false limitation and that “this” too is a lie that separates my experience of myself from myself.)
So it follows that I am becoming via the things I learn, via their learning, via the ethics that drives me to this learning, “et cetera” (i.e. I am choosing to stop elaborating because that is as far as I am ready to expand – it is enough; it is not a compromise, not least because it is being done from here and now; whatever limitations there are better described as the boundaries of my being). I am my experiences whether in a passive manner (e.g. by sensations that occur to me) or a manner we would intuitively describe more as being active (e.g. choosing and enacting autodidacticism).
(These concepts are all well and good, but another point of warning is that I am dancing at the non-existent boundary line of a liminal dimension, “Be careful not to trip and fall…” Fall into what? It is tempting, having demolished so much already, and having built such a great view already, to adapt to this reality. “I am not a monk,” correct, I have no obligations to set myself ablaze. In fact, more akin to the opposite, I would occasionally advise forgetting the non-path of a sort of existentialism, instead, flow through moments of non-critical acceptance. I am my own decisions, even this. This might be made clearer by referring back again to the transcendent “liminal dimension”, with other words, I can understand myself by means of what I’m not (negative biology, cf. negative theology). Thus I’ve come to fear labels of “Truth” because they are the cure to growth and enlightenment. Instead of being swayed by promises of truth – although I admit that I very often am, especially here in the realm of didacticism where I can reform these truths into perspectives.)
(I’m repeating myself when I say that this project occurs in a state similar to that of relenting; “If I were not Alexander I would have become Diogenes.” To conquer (or to relent conquering) the world is the same as conquering (relenting) the world. The monk must dedicate himself to the purification of self. I, on the other hand, am permitted to taste my own putrification. I am permitted on a theoretical level, because in a different context I could subsume flaws into a superior perfection; and I am permitted on a practical level, because this contributes to the holistic fact that I have chosen to live. Right now I could lean myself into the struggle to give form to the formless, describe the plane of being; by analogy with the space that is the precedent for my body, I can master my body despite Physics being evidence for humanity’s infancy. Once more: I am a pattern inseparable from its rules that rule on an array of choices. And when focused on minutiae, such tiny arbitrations, (reminding myself that laughing it off versus taking it seriously are a false dichotomy even though…) I am in a manner of seeking justification. I am asking myself, “Is this what I should do?” That is the place from which I have said, “I am my own decisions,” but this (i.e. I am my own decisions) might be a renewed evaluation of my environment, my habitat, or the place from which I say things.)
This question is part of the process itself – it both is and is not its own monad. This entire enterprise is beginning to resemble (accurately I should add) juggling. The juggler is not trying to get the balls into a statically conceived destination. Not even the pattern (or style) can be used to grasp his intention. The juggler is acting to entertain (and thus he becomes an entertainer). Now I reach a fundamental challenge, “I don’t know what I wish.” (I’ll humour myself with the following – i.e. I still know that I am pivoting the discussion on the imagery of a metaphor! That doesn’t prove it false): “Can one link a description of juggling balls with a description of the entertainer?” and “How can I describe juggling balls without referring to a description of the entertainer?” This is not a paradox, these are two perspectives that admittedly are carried out in parallel isolation. Answer number one says that, “Yes, one could, but they are monads that exist on their own accords. Short, incomplete, but sufficient – I argue; to continue: To number two, “I can’t if the juggling balls are a means for the entertainer,” to which I can add, “Stop trying to break the world into the pieces I want, and instead accept that the shape I want is within another shape.”
(Sometimes it is good to go back to the beginning of a text to re-read it. There is the idea that, “Now that I understand the message, I can use that understanding to leverage further understanding out of the same text. So too, I can re-write a text, freed from the burden of needing to say what I have already said, and with the benefit of things like having solved particular problems which I can (self-consciously) laugh off as Wisdom.)
I have been pursuing a monadology of experience as a prelude to a concerted building of experience. It is being done in a detached, cerebral (not depending on whim-trialled instinct) because I feel lost. This monadology will (first) focus on autodidacticism. Condillac gives me the tool to perceive experience from the perspective of the thing (viz. the object of thought) as well as from the perspective of being (viz. me, the subject for thought).
It is interesting, that despite dwelling in this place (abode) of thinking, I am not completely convinced.
I choose to choose. Question mark?
