relational inquiry regarding meaning » intelligibility
Martin Heidegger's concept of aletheia best reflects this Project's conception of intelligibility as such. See especially Thomas Sheehan's account of aletheia as "openness with regard to meaning" (75) in three ways (aletheia 1-3) on pages 71-85 of Sheehan, T. (2015) Making sense of Heidegger [Rowman & Littlefield].
See also:
• Dahlstrom, D. O. (2010) Truth as aletheia and the clearing of beyng. In B. W. Davis, ed. Martin Heidegger: Key concepts, pp. 116-127 [Acumen]
• Wrathall, M. A. (2010) Heidegger and unconcealment: Truth, language, and history [Cambridge UP]
Iain McGilchrist's work regarding how the brain's hemispheres differently attend to the world has informed this Project's conceptions of holistic vs. focused attending as addressed in the M- and P-nodes, where M corresponds with the right hemisphere while P corresponds with the left. "[T]he left hemisphere tends to deal more with pieces of information in isolation, and the right hemisphere with the entity as a whole" (4); "each hemisphere attends to the world in a different way... The right hemisphere underwrites breadth and flexibility of attention, where the left hemisphere brings to bear focussed attention. This has the related consequence that the right hemisphere sees things whole, and in their context, where the left hemisphere sees things abstracted from context, and broken into parts" (27); and so on. —from McGilchrist, I. (2009) The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world [Yale UP]
See also McGilchrist, I. (2019) Ways of attending: How our divided brain constructs the world [Routledge]—a condensed version of his account—including this excerpt from pages 21-22:
If one had to characterise the difference [between how the brain hemispheres attend to the world] overall, it is something like this. Experience is forever in motion, ramifying and unpredictable. In order for us to know anything at all, that thing must have enduring properties. If all things flow and one can never step into the same river twice—Heraclitus's phrase is, I believe, a brilliant evocation of the core reality of the right hemisphere's world—one will always be taken unawares by experience: since nothing is ever being repeated, nothing can ever be known. We have to find a way of fixing it as it flies, stepping back from the immediacy of experience, stepping outside the flow. Hence the brain has to attend to the world in two completely different ways, and in so doing to bring two different worlds into being. In the one, that of the right hemisphere, we experience the live, complex, embodied world of individual, always unique, beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. In the other, that of the left hemisphere, we "experience" our experience in a special way: a "re-presented" version of it, containing now static, separable, bounded, but essentially fragmented entities, grouped into classes on which predictions can be based. This kind of attention isolates, fixes and makes each thing explicit by bringing it under the spotlight of attention. In doing so it renders things inert, mechanical, lifeless. But it also enables us for the first time to know, and consequently to learn and to make things. This gives us power.
John Vervaeke's account of perspectival knowing likely corresponds with this Project's M-node, propositional knowing definitely corresponds with the P-node, and his procedural and participatory knowing correspond to different levels of the N-node:
Via a broad and integrative view of Cognitive Science, Dr. Vervaeke maps human knowing via the following four 'p's': 1) procedural knowing; 2) perspectival knowing; 3) propositional knowing; and 4) participatory knowing. Procedural knowing refers [to] knowing how to enact a procedure, such as tying one's shoe. Perspectival knowing is via embodied perception. It consists of seeing the world and one's place in it via a specific point of view. Propositional knowing relates to knowing via language. It includes knowledge of facts and logic and it enables reasoning and argumentation. [...] The fourth kind of knowing is participatory. This is, in some ways, the most basic and dynamic kind of knowing. It refers to the complex interplay between the agent and arena. It involves 'doing,' but not in a simple procedural sense, but rather in a creative and enacting sense. A good way to think about participatory knowledge is to think about the difference between being in a state of confusion versus a state of flow. Flow is when you are in a groove and feel a natural 'dance' between your actions and the environment. It is when this agent-arena relationship coheres such that you are able to intuit what is relevant, anticipate what is next, and realize outcomes that are desired with little or no self-doubt or hesitation. —J. Vervaeke and G. Henriques
This may be a stretch, but the three parts of stoic philosophy (physics, ethics, and logic/dialectic) may correspond with this Project's modes of knowing (M, N, and P, respectively). —see Hadot, P. (1992) Inner citadel [M. Chase, trans. Harvard UP 1998] pp. 77-82 and this quote from p. 99:
The discipline of desire [physics] essentially consists in re-placing oneself within the context of the cosmic All, and in becoming aware of human existence as being a part, one that must conform to the will of the Whole, which in this case is equivalent to universal Reason. The discipline of impulses and of actions [ethics] consists essentially in re-placing oneself within the context of human society; this entails acting in conformity with that Reason which all human beings have in common, and which is itself an integral part of universal Reason. Finally, the discipline of judgment [logic] consists in allowing oneself to be guided by the logical necessity which is imposed upon us by that Reason which is within ourselves; this Reason, too , is a part of universal Reason, since logical necessity is based upon the necessary linkage of events.
_additional texts
• Edinger, E. F. (1972) Ego and archetype: Individuation and the religious function of the psyche [Shambhala 1992]—esp. "Ego and Self" and "Search for Meaning"
• Frank, A., Gleiser, M., & Thompson, E. (2019, January 8) The blind spot [Aeon] (interdependence of observer/observed)
_symbol & metaphor
• element: water
• eye (oculus); egg (ovum)
• magick: cup (preservation)
• triquetra (trinity knot)
• vesica piscis
• Yggdrasil tree
