6/19/12

Language Limits in Describing 'The One' God Accurately


I tend to go with the paradigm of Plotinus in The Enneads for describing 'The One'. Fundamentally it is not a paradigm that can be described well at all.

I have enjoyed reading Eco's 'Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language' lately. Signs or signals of meanings differ from symbols for meaning. A stop sign is a stop signal perhaps, while a symbol for a stop sign might be something else, somewhere else.

One has language that is comprised of a multi-dimensional field of word-meanings that have values that differ in different contexts-so that is a moving target for finding a static meaning for anything as improbable as the prospect for defining a role for God or The One as an 'other'. It is probably far too much of a temptation to avoid exploiting cosmological analogy for models for paradigm of creating an image or description of what God did or what God was employed doing before (the time exstasis is improbable) he issued a Universe, if there is such a thing as before for an eternal being.

I like physical cosmology quite a lot, yet it is a phenomenon within the experience of being provided for human cognition that is transcended by God. The language adaptations for theology aren't simple to use, and they too are evolving I suppose-if one means changing as a normal 4-dimensional egress rather than a simple Darwinian meaning. Even Biblical literalism has the problem that literal words are symbolic words too-people have trouble interpreting when the Flood occurred, where it happened and even what it was referring to. Words are symbols, and the interpretation of symbols has many variables multi-diemsnionally speaking.

Eco pointed out that originally the word 'symbol' meant to parts of a coin. One could have a half of something and if the other part was obtained the meaning could be gotten. The use of symbolism in language evolved to lose that paradigm of locating half of a meaning in its use for word and object. Etymologies became something more like permutating meanings based on prior meanings historically developed. Even the word 'symbol' was taken to be construed by many as a representation referring to a real thing for itself-even if the thing referred to is an abstract idea such as a political party (e.g. Hammer and Sickle, Swastika).

It becomes challenging to believe that one can select certain words as symbols that accurately represent God. It is simpler to find math symbols that are tools describing relations, proportions and structure of proximal strength of force that is energy or matter as a given for-itself. It is challenging though to point out to some that the abstract practice of mathematical and physical cosmology, though all one may discover through the senses is not all that can exist. Abduction of ideas from contexts may be a way to philosophically construct metaphysics that have some value-even if the meanings are better applied to teleology or eschatology than quantum mechanics.

No comments:

Imperfect Character is Universal

The question of why anything exists rather than nothing was a question that Plotinus considered in The Enneads. Why would The One order anyt...