Mats Erdling > Recent Status Updates

"Just think: what would happen if every major medium of communication in our society gave more or less equal space to eight or ten markedly distinctive ideological points of view? _And_ the media executives and content-providers were trained in general-semantics? Yes, I know, that's impossible at this time. But why?" (p.67)

"whatever is singular, unique, nothing but itself (INDEX) is what is is only _as_ the confluence of all its contexts, past and present, (CHAIN-INDEX), and, flip: It is the confluence of all its contexts only as _itself_. We do not reduce it to "nothing but its contexts" nor do we reduce it to a self-identical self apart from all contexts." (p.63)

"The Event Is Not The Object

The sky is not blue --
we see it as blue.
The table is not solid --
at the event level it is a whirl of subatomic particles --
we feel it as solid.
If a tree falls in the forest
it makes no sound
unless an ear is present
to transform the event of air pressure waves
into sound at the object level."

(p.51)

"When you listen to someone else tell a story, you expect some embellishment and you know they are only telling you how the events seemed to transpire to them. In the same way, you know how reality seems to be unfolding, how it seems to have unfolded in the past, but you should take your own perception with a grain of salt." --ch.2

"I have known a few Deists, that is, theists who feel the need for some external purposeful intelligence to explain the cosmos. They admitted that they had no definitive evidence of this and were not dogmatic about it. Such minimal, tentative claims don't leave much, if anything, to dispute and do not conflict with a scientific attitude."

"Not one, not even the greatest 'scientist' evaluates one hundred percent extensionally all of the time. It is the nature of an intensional orientation to involve deep belief that "I've got it!" Therefore, recognizing fallability, and concurrent self-criticism and self-evaluation, seem vital to promote oneself further along the continuum toward greater extensionality."

-- (ch.16, p.235)

"... our partial explanations are not and never will /be/ what they explain -- no matter how much more we learn ..."

"Extensional languaging leads to an emphasis on present actualities rather than untestable essences; on using and evaluating what you know, not just collecting information. This change in emphasis, combined with an orientation which encourages silence and contemplation of the "un-speakable", can lead to much improvement in our daily lives."

--Bruce I. Kodish, "Dare To Inquire" (2003), ch.14 (p.201)