representational inquiry regarding meaning » intelligibility » subjectivity
The M-node symbol combines a cone opening left (subjective) with a sphere (attending) and the color cyan (representing that toward which the subjective mode of attending is stretching—namely, the acquaintance knowledge accompanying qualitative experience).
The symbol involves the conjunction of three elements (pictured to the left): a fluid/dynamic point of view (the green cone pointing down), an expansive/receptive mode of attending (the red sphere), and one's own qualitative states as the object of attention (the blue cone pointing up). When the distance between the fluid point of view (green cone) and one's own qualitative states (blue cone) is reduced to zero—the immediacy of an identity—acquaintance knowledge occurs. This identity is achieved to the same degree that the mode of attention is broad in its openness/receptivity.
Insofar as qualitative experience occurs immediately—that is, unmediated by beliefs or conceptual distance—the distance between experiencer and experienced tends to shrink toward an identity. Since, diagrammatically, experiencer and experienced fall along the circumference of the subjectivity cone's base, separated by the base's diameter, the cone's base tends to collapse toward becoming a flattened line segment. When it does this, the cone becomes a triangle separating the experiencer/experienced identity, represented by one side of the triangle, from experiencing (in this case, the holistic mode of attending), represented by the opposite vertex. If the vertical dimension represents time/duration, we see that the subjective mode of attending tends toward the ever-flowing/fluctuating present. The cone of subjectivity tends to collapse toward the immediacy of present experience. We also see that the distance between the experiencer/experienced identity and the mode of experiencing is preserved. With reference to the torus, experiencing occurs along the torus's inner horizon (the donut hole) while the experiencer/experienced identity occurs along the torus's outer horizon (its horizontal limit) where the two horizons are at their greatest distance apart. This symbolizes the holistic nature of the attending. The experiencer/experienced identity is fully immersed in the fullness of its contextuality upon the plane of presence.
Another way to look at the M-node symbol is as follows: it combines a cone opening left with a cyan sphere, where both the cone opening left and the cyan sphere diagrammatically combine a mode of experiencing on the one hand with a relationship between experiencer and experienced on the other. In the case of the cone opening left, its apex represents the mode of experiencing (red sphere), while its base represents the relationship between experiencer (green cone) and experienced (blue cone). The colors cancel to white. In the case of the cyan sphere, it takes the shape of experiencing (sphere) and the color of the relationship between experiencer and experienced (green+blue).
