Life-Logic (Part One) Preliminaries: The Cognitive Coordinates

Introduction:

 "If we do not coordinate our problems then the solution to one problem is likely to reinforce (or even create) other problems which we were not thinking about when we "solved" the original problem. Understanding this is the Beginning of Intelligence."

"Consciousness is Consciousness of Togetherness (of Coexistence)"

“An argument is not something to be won or lost but 
something to be healed”

"speech/thought cannot be more healthy than the silence it comes out of".

"Wounded Eros means wounded Logos"

--Healthy Culture Proverbs

I have been working on a post on the Logic of Healthy Culture for a very long time and have a bunch of notes on it that probably amount to a small book by now.  I can't really get it into the kind of shape I want without a lot more work but I am finding that, as I "progress"--I am not sure if that is the right word--in the culture of recovery, (as I progress as recovering Alienated-Phony), I find myself acting more and more on Life-Logical principles, and this is more and more leading to "culture shock"-type misunderstandings between myself and others that I would like to avoid as much as a can, thus I'd like to have something up about it even if its just, like what follows, a kind of  rough sketch or outline.

 Of course, in some sense such misunderstandings are unavoidable because of the nature of the topic. I mean, I am after all saying that the dominant form  of our thinking/logic, and cognition generally, is basically alienated and phony; a kind of dissociated  "Logic of Denial and Exclusion", but, in as much as it is the dominant logic, most people who read this will be using this very logic to make sense of what I am saying, including  of the "Logic of Recovery" that I will also be trying to introduce in what follows.  Therefore it seems to me that a lot of misunderstanding is almost guaranteed.  However, because Life is the way it is (and Life-Logic is the way it is), it's also clear to me that something like what I am calling "Life-logic" coexists in every person, with the default  either/or Logic of denial and death*, though in some kind of  half suppressed distorted form.

Anyway, I am thinking that to have any chance at all a nailing such a daunting summary (or really just getting it all out) I am going to have to try a kind of stream of consciousness, perhaps extremely informal and emotional way of writing. I thought of trying to write it as though I were, say 16 and had just learned the whole thing in school (in some alternate universe in which healthy culture is the norm) and was trying to explain the whole thing to my little sister as we make the 45 minute walk back home (or something like that).  I still think that is a good idea and intend to do it sometime, but adding the cute fictional narrative touches and character details would just give what is already very difficult to write and added dimension of difficulty and right now I am not up to it. So what follows will maybe be something between that juicy fictionalized version and the rather dense and dry notes that I referred to; so something somewhat loosely sketched At least this is the experiment here, just to make a start.  As certain vocabulary is introduced things are likely to seem a little complex and formal anyway but for that very reason it seems better to start as simply and informally as possible. so here goes:

(Part One) Preliminaries: "Phenomenology of Cognition": coexistence, common sense,  and "Good Intentions"

So even more basic in a way than the "Phenomenology of Logic" or discourse, that I will describe in the next post as Life-logic, is the Phenomenology of Cognition I introduce here. This is because, Life-logic or "Cointegrative Coinference" (as I will show), cannot exist without the coordinating motivation of a core or ultimate intention that is not alienated. It requires "Good Intentions": a cointegrative intention of inner/outer healing and this in turn requires an active core of common sense and conscience, an active core cognitive comprehension of coexistence and primary togetherness. When such comprehension exists, cointegrative "good intentions" follow naturally. In other words, the quality of Intention depends largely on the quality of Cognition/Comprehension and, because of generations of sick culture, everybody's cognition is pretty damaged as I will try to show in what follows. As I will also try to show, such non-alienated comprehension is latent in everyone, and Life-Logic, at the same time that it relies on such latent knowledge for its inciting spark, will also, in its turn, help cultivate and strengthen it, hopefully with the end that "common sense" in the sense of consciousness of primary coexistence becomes "common sense" in the normal sense of the word. Don't worry, you'll understand all of this better by and by. 

So now is the time to introduce as normative certain cognitive coordinates. Understanding these coordinates will help you to appreciate the sense and value of the logic that is based on them as well as the way in which the loss of such coordination through trauma contributes to the felt rightness of the dominant form crippled and damaged, alienated, "panic logic".  (Here, I have to do this as succinctly as possible to get on with the main point of this particular post; in a future post I will treat of this topic more in detail).

So to begin with, Seven cognitive coordinates are relevant to the topic of logic as I discuss it here; they are best introduced  in 3 parts, a group of 5 (which I call the Cognitive Nexus) and a group of 3 (which, together with the common center comprise the upper, lower, and middle part of what I call The Cognitive Axis) and their cointegration in the 7-fold Cognitive Matrix. In order to show its centrality vis a vis the Axis and the Nexus, the cognitive center is shown as the center of each of the diagrams.

The Cognitive Nexus

Nexus diagram (informal)

Nexus diagram (formal)

         

The Nexus, (The North, South, East, and West of cognitive orientation) is comprised of  The Indefinite ("Itness"), The Finite ("Thatness"), The Definite ("Thisness") and The Transdefinite ("Whatness". To explain briefly; Imagine a distant image, lets say the vague dot of something seen from a great distance while walking along a beach. This represents a relatively Indefinite, schematic, experience of something. One experiences whatever it is as an indefinite "it" relatively speaking, with all the possible curiosity and surmise that this implies . As you approach the thing more closely Its possible identity becomes relatively limited, relatively finite, rather than relatively indefinite. It becomes more of a "That" (a living being rather than other wise, a human living being rather than another animal etc) in proportion as one gets closer to and begins to recognize it. At some point this relatively Finite, "Thatness", phase of cognition becomes  a relatively Definite, "Thisness" phase as one reaches immanent proximity with whatever (whoever) that is. One is now confronted with not only a human person with such and such qualities but This human person sharing immanence with you in the present moment. This is the "Thisness" of ones experience of the entity in question. Now, finally, imagining that you stay with that person on the beach long enough to have  enough relatively Definite knowledge of the person, so that you feel you know them as well as you know yourself, you come up against the fact that definite experience of something does not replace mystery but rather reveals it; that there is a kind of  Transdefinite "Whatness" at the further end so to speak, of ones experience of the definite, thisness of some one, of life, of oneself: what is, another person really? For that matter what am I? what is anything?

Now the very possibility of the the above example on the beach presupposes the coexistence of the Relatively Subjective (your thoughts your experience of yourself and of the other) and the Relatively Objective (the  other, the beach etc, but also your own physical body). The Subjective and the Objective then are the correlative "Axial" poles (the up and down) of cognitive orientation.

Axis diagram (informal)

Axis diagram (formal)

Finally (so far as we need to go here) what reconciles both the subjective and objective poles of the cognitive Axis to each other as well as the reconciling the four-fold Nexus to the Axis is the Cointegrative Cognitive Comprehension at the Center, (which completes and coordinates the whole Cognitive Matrix:

Matrix diagram (informal)

Matrix Diagram (formal)

But it seems necessary to discuss this last diagram more thoroughly. Its not like the comprehension of primary Coexistence is "built up" or linear in any way, even though I had to present it that way to introduce the various aspects of it it here. Its a single 7-fold "gestalt" of orientation; the center defines the other parts which define the center, and its the same with all of the other aspects of the whole. Its like using compass which has to be correctly oriented to the vertical so that the needle and the 4 directions can be correctly oriented in the horizontal.  Moreover, the things that "move" from "Itness" to "Thatness" to "Thisness" and "Whatness" (and in the reverse direction), are not experienced or understood as purely Indefinite, or purely Finite but only corelatively so, so that each aspect of experience makes up the context of every other aspect of experience. To freeze, focus and in short Identify (as opposed to to "distinguish, sense, or intuit) a given aspect of  Coexistence as "X" is thus at the same time to freeze and Identify a given context as "Not-X"; it is to freeze, Identify, and abstract Coexistence itself. From the point of view of the gestalt of Coexistence no "it" can be identified in itself but every "it" is intrinsically Codentified with and by the context that it creates and that creates it. But such Coidentity is still on the level of the abstract and indefinite. The Coidentity or "Co-itness" of experience is just one aspect of the gestalt of coexistence:

  

Coexistance here means the coexistance of the sense/feeling of coidentity, codistinction, coentity and cotranscendence. Through a kind shared axis of Subject/Object togetherness and Ying/Yang-like mutuality.

 Coidentity (to reiterate) reflects on the mental level an understanding of the definitive mutuality of x and not-x, that in the limit of  progressively (co)distinguishing x (from a, b, c etc) one creates not-x as a necessary coidentity. In other words, instead of the primacy or the law of the excluded middle (the law of identity), of X OR Not-X, we have the primacy of the law of Coidentity or X-AND-Not-X. It seems ala Sauserre that this coidentity (I forget what he calls it) is a necessary quality of language and so it should not be surprising that it is here presented as a necessary part of the phenomenology of cognition. More about this in other posts.

Codistinction describes a process where a kind a "diversimilitude" (similarity-implying-difference-implying-simlarity  in which both are considered as aspects of the same thing) is experienced. It is the process from which coidentity results  but it is also the process/experience that bounds the experience of coentity (which is essentially perceptual) on the other side. Or you could say that Codistiction is the "thatness" of Memory that mediates between non-alienated conceptual abstraction (coidentity) on the one hand and non-alienated sensation (coentity) on the other. In other words, Codistintion is like memory in that it mediates between Concept (this chair in its abstract, conceptual but not conceptually dissociated) aspect on the one hand and this chair as Percept (as a relatively concrete sensual--ideally almost wholesthetic-- experience under my butt) on the other. In itself Codistinction is the living image of the chair as experienced, conceptual in part but also with some of the "juiciness" of immanent "thisness".

Coentity is, as I have already implied, a sense of primary belonging-with the world on a physical level (for that reason, maybe a the chair in the above example was a bad choice since rarely do chairs elicit or support a sense of inner/out belonging, but I'll let it stand for now). In a healthy culture, the sense of coentity that is often shared between infant and mother would not be traumatically destroyed but rather transformed and extended to all of "Mother Nature" as the individual person matured. Thus a relatively non-alienated sense of coentity between a Shared Self (Shared Subjectivity) and a Shared Nature(Shared Objectivity) would be preserved into adulthood.

Cotranscendence is the intuition of the "beyond", of ultimate things when it can be understood and experience from a non-alienated point of view. As I have just alluded to above, in Cotranscendence, there is a sense of the primacy of a Shared Subjectivity a shared Self which is itself not separate from the shared Nature of our physical world (including our bodies. Thus what would otherwise be the an alienated and false intuition of the possibility of "individual salvation" or transcendence becomes an intuition of the necessity of Co-trancendence.

The togetherness or inclusive coordination of coidentity on the thinking level, codistinction on the feeling level, coentity on the sensing level and cotrandence on the intuitive level (to be somewhat Jungian here), amounts to a general sense of the coexistence common to each of these, only relatively differentiated, functions. In otherwords commonsense itself is the sense of the primary coexistence of these functions, and it is their shared ground.

I think this common sense is more what philosophers would call Ontological or something like that, in that these aspects of cognition has to do with Being (or in this case with co-Being; Coexistence) rather then Knowing (beyond identification) per se. Since this just occured to me I might take it back, but for now I want to say that the "knowing" ("Espistemological") part of the whole thing (which of course is not really separate from the other) is what I choose to call "Conscience". Conscience, Like common sense can be illustrated by a nexus-diagram;

Because Outer Knowing is generally linguistic it here corresponds to coidentity and coidentification, as our shared naming of things within the context of other tacitly agreed upon names and meanings. 

Rational Knowing (when is is suitably relieved of the primacy of aristotelian "allness" and "either/or"-ness is what mediates between shared outer knowledge and Inner subjective knowing. 

Inner Knowing is all the relative inchoate subjective knowing that needs to be included and expressed in outer discourse just as much as more readily articulated subjective experience. In includes an ongoing attention to whatever is being felt, sensed, thought, intuited inward the moment that might be relevant to the progressive communion of those speaking. 

Intuitive Knowing constitutes all that needs to be included in a given process of knowing-together in order to keep in alive as an experiment with the ultimate and core intention of inner and outer healing, so that for example the outer knowing doesn't get out of balance (thus becoming superficial or misleading) and the inner knowing does not similarly over dominate, making the knowing dissocated and narcissistic.

Now here I must say that the above is a very limited introduction to some of the cognitive coordinates and some aspects of healthy inclusive cognition. Its just meant to set up whats coming about Logic and all.  However even with this limited introduction it should be clear that the certain kinds of cognitive confusion/exclusion/dissociation are possible (and in our culture, actual). Cognitively speaking  Dissociation and Exclusion are already forms Disorientation and the very idea of treating one of the cognitive coordinates out of context and to the exclusion of the rest is to be "uncoordinated", disoriented, confused. This disorientation tends (as disorientation will) to lead to an ongoing feeling of Panic, (and the repression/denial of that panic). I think what we generally call the "ego" derives from this disorientation/panic ( which is the "Alienation" part of the ego) as well as its denial (which is the "Phony" part of the ego). This suggests a dynamic in which this confusion and panic (especially in response to external stress) leads inevitably to "injuries" and "scars" of various kinds which if not properly treated result in "cognitive scar tissue" that, however stronger it might be than cognitive tissue it is replacing, is nevertheless more insensitive, and as such probably deepens the disorientation/denial and the rest of it, leading to more panic more denial more injuries etc..., in an increasingly deadening, and destructive feedback loop so that the whole complex of the dissociated ego is just this collectively individually reinforced cognitive scar tissue.  This is something I will come back to and elaborate on in part two of this post.  For now it feels important to note that what we generally understand as "mathematics" (which means etymologically means something like "the art of learning"--from the base of manthanein ‘learn.’)   represents only an incomplete intrinsically Indefinite aspect of cognition which can only suffer from its dissociation from (and so lack or coordination with) the other aspects of cognition mentioned.  In fact mathematical "Infinity" would be much better called the "Mathematical "Indefinite" and Mathematics as a whole would be much better re-conceived and recreated as "Cointegrative Mathematics": a true coordinated "Art of Learning" which coordinates knowledge of the indefinite aspect of reality (currently misconceived as the whole mathematics; the whole "art of learning") with the Finite, Definite, Transdefinite, etc aspects of a full coordinated course of Learning.  

The problem is that, in our present sick culture the totality of a healthy coordinated and cointegrative "Art of Learning",  (an Art that would acknowledge the mutually defining--and for that reason essentially egalitarian coexistence of the cognitive coordinates) has been reduced to an unconscious dissociation and privileging the of indefinite aspect of reality and of cognition, a privileging and dissociation of the "Itness" of the world and the self. It would be like trying to dissociate the direction "north" from east west south etc (as though these could even exist without each other) and then reduce all the other directions to aspects of this supposedly  fictionally independent direction. Such effort to reduce all the directions in space to some form of "North" as basically analogous to our present state of cognitive reduction, dissociation, and general disorientation. This could happen only if the central and essential Togetherness and coexistent cointegral aspect of the cognitive coordinates--the part the allows them to Be coordinates and that allows us to be coordinated balanced beings--has itself been dissociated and lost sight of. Or to put it another way, (and to recapitulate some): the four-fold cognitive nexus of indefinite, finite, definite and transdefinite is like North, South, East and West in the horizontal cognitive compass, then subjectivity and objectivity represent the correlative vertical axis of orientation (the up and down of cognition) and the Cointegrative Coexistential coordinate would then be represented by the center, which includes and coordinates both axis and nexus. Loss of this coointegrative coexistential center means loss of common sense and is thus a General Cognitive Disorientation. Cognitive Dissociation and Cognitive Reduction .  Of course the  dissociated ego derives from this as an (essentially fear inspired) coping mechanism when this center of balanced coexistence cannot be regained, usually due, among other things, to the ongoing external and internalized stress of sick culture.

To be clear however; the in our culture the general cognitive dissociation and reduction works in many ways, not always in a way the privileges and reduces everything else to the Indefinite aggregates of "its" and systems of "its". It is just as unhealthy to dissociate and privilege the Finite, Definite, or Transdefinite aspects of experience and our culture is full of these kind of chronic dissociations as 

well.

Anyway, what coordinates all of these forms of Knowing is what I call "Conscience" (the world means "Knowing Together" etymologically after all). Here you might say we have a kind of system of mutual checks and balances in which every form of knowing qualifies, modifies enhances and coordinates the other so that a balance and inwardly and outwardly healing comprehension of a given situation becomes possible. Without such "conscientious" knowing, one will generally have dissociation and "miscomprehension" in both the ontological and epistemological aspects of coexistence.

this is something I'll get back to briefly in the second part of this post.

So enough with the preliminaries in the next post I will get to the gist of Life-Logic (version 47 or something--well I'm exaggerating...somewhat. see you there.

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postscript: Oh yeah: for those who are sticklers for "scientific evidence" and stuff, (and notwithstanding all of the paradoxes stemming from the fact that modern science itself suffers from the problems alluded to above), there is this business about the Three Brains, based on the all grey matter discovered--I believe in the pericardium--of the Heart, as well as it the Gut. Google "HeartMath" for info on the former and "The Second Brain" for info on the latter. These, together with the brain in your skull of course, could be understood to account for 3 of the for cognitive categories I am introducing. There is the book called "MBraining" that goes into some ideas about how to use or coordinate these 3 brains. My critique of the book has to do with its lack of giving due consideration to the Pineal Gland, which, even though it is also in the skull I would nominate as a Forth Brain analogus to the "Transdefinite" aspect of cognition. Because it (and possibly the the authors) lack a Cotrascendent cognitive category the book is not surprisingly a bit crass and commercial (and a bit irresponsible) in its presentation of the information and techniques, not questioning the alienated assumptions of current ontology and epistemology, and economics, not to mention ethics. Anyway, my (at the moment not very articulate) ideas about the location (or non-location) and nature ("Selfnature") of a 5th or cointegrative brain would take us too far afield to go into here though there seems to be some respected "science", physics (David Bohm) as well as neurology (Karl Pribram) to back it up as well. But don't ask me for any details; its been too long since I read any of those books. I'd have to get back to you.