Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) Subject: The January Statement Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 23:30:51 GMT The January Statement 1.1 There are two fundamentally existent classes of entities: individual lives (a class with many members), and the totality of all things (a class with one member). The individual life is defined in terms of the first-handedness of experience. The boundaries of the individual life correspond to the sensory limitations of the knowing subject, and as a consequence are the only natural boundaries that exist to define an entity (other than the trivial case of the boundary separating That-Which-Is from That-Which-Is-Not). All other boundaries -- for example, the boundary separating the class of entities known as "Boomerangs" from that class known as "Sticks", are arbitrary. N.B.: the individual life is not to be confused with the individual personality, which is an intensional object. 1.1.1 Life is only what you know first-hand. All else is information. For example: the validity of physics is, in nearly all cases, only an agreement. This is not a statement about the epistemological status of physical science: this is a statement about the human beings who claim to accept the validity of physics. For the overwhelming majority of "educated" people, "physics" is something they know about only at second hand. They are not familiar with the theories of physics, nor with the experiments upon which those theories are based. They depend upon others and upon the comforting promise implicit in reference materials for their confidence in the validity of physics. Only that which you could reproduce from memory, were you to be set down alone upon a desert island (with whatever resources you might need -- paper and pencils and laboratory equipment, in the case of our example) is truly yours. Everything else is only held by you at second hand and is only in the nature of an agreement with others so far as its validity goes. 1.1.2 Intensional Objects are the veil of Maya. An intensional object is something that is unconnected to any direct sensory experience that one has. For instance: the gold in Fort Knox is an intensional object. People act as if it exists and behave in certain ways because of it, but have never seen it. Its existence is only known to them at second hand. Intensional objects do not exist in your world. They exist in your language. A famous place one has never been to (Kenya, perhaps) is an intensional object. What if you and your friends were to read James Hilton's _Lost Horizon_ and not realize that it was fictional? You would think of Shangri-La in exactly the same way that you now think of Kenya. If you have never been to Kenya, Kenya is no different from Shangri-La. In fact, you cannot go to Kenya. You cannot go to a country. You cannot go to a city. A country is an intensional object, as is a city. The size of the place you can go to is limited by the range of your sight and hearing and smelling and touching and tasting. You can't go to Kenya, nor can you go to Vancouver: you can only go to fields, neighborhoods, buildings, streets, squares. Perhaps you can see the whole city all at once from some vantage point, just as you might be able to see all of Kenya from space. In that case you would be experiencing the whole, and you might call certain regions of your visual field "Vancouver" or "Kenya" but this appearance is not what is usually meant by "Vancouver" or "Kenya." An organization is an intensional object. It is a conceptual frame put around the interactions of individuals. Individuals who conceive of themselves as "belonging" to the organization place their direct experiences of office and co-workers into the conceptual frame of "the organization." Furthermore, this frame constrains their behaviors towards one another. One can think of the conceptual frame of an organization as an agreed-upon framework for interaction. The "veil of Maya" is a teaching metaphor found in Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism: Maya is the goddess of the illusion of this world, whose illusory nature must be perceived in order for enlightenment to occur. 1.1.3 The only people that exist in any person's world are the people that person knows face-to-face. All else is information. Eric Clapton is an intensional object. There is a sufficient amount of information available about him that it is possible to feel that you have gotten to know him. You might talk about Eric Clapton as if you were talking about a real person. You would not be. You would be talking about magazine articles and sound recordings and perhaps some ideas about life or feelings about the way a life ought to be lived. You would be talking about information. Eric Clapton is not your friend. Eric Clapton doesn't care if you live or die. Eric Clapton doesn't exist. You've got some nice records. That's it. 1.1.4 Nothing has any meaning except as part of someone's life. "Meaning" is a property of the experiences of a subject. It is not an independently existent object. This idea is not so much opposed by other ideas, but merely forgotten. I bring the assertion to your attention, then. How can things be otherwise? If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no-one there to hear it -- who cares? That is how the cliche should be stated. One might say: but what if one comes upon the fallen tree later? One never comes upon anything later. One can come upon things only in the present, fallen trees included. 2.1 Art is necessary. We are awake and we don't understand why or how but it is fun to play with the fact. 2.2 Art is less important than Life: Art's function is a theraputic one. Daily Life is more important than art. Daily Life is more important than anything; it's a miracle. Daily Life is the only thing that exists, just as the Present is the only time that exists. When visiting an art gallery one should not feel that one is there in order to see more beautiful things than exist in his daily life, one should feel that he is there in order to be reminded what it is to see things as beautiful -- and should consciously take that renewed sight out of the building with himself and into his ordinary routine. Summary 1.1 There are two fundamentally existent classes of entities: individual lives (a class with many members), and the totality of all things (a class with one member). 1.1.1 Life is only what you know first-hand. All else is information. 1.1.2 Intensional Objects are the veil of Maya. 1.1.3 The only people that exist in any person's world are the people that person knows face-to-face. All else is information. 1.1.4 Nothing has any meaning except as part of someone's life. 2.1 Art is necessary. 2.2 Life is more important than art: art is theraputic.