Oct 22, 2026 07:06 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 22, 2026 07:07 PM by Magical Realist.)
Whenever I'm thinking something, it seems to exist in a sort of conceptional space--a sort of semantic hypertextuality--which immediately links it to other ideational states. But not in the sense of objective things existing apart from each other in space and time.. More like how the perspective contains the latent wholeness of all views on what is being seen as the objective realness of what it is seeing. As the concurrent ontic instantiation of the thing-in-itself open to all possibilities of being seen.
With concepts we have the analogous sense that there is a perspective-taking on or freeze-framing of some cohering whole not itself present in thought but proximally present--as becoming more possibly phenomenally present just thru the thinking of that concept. This suggests a kind of holographic experience rather than an objective holograph in which concepts embody the entirety of their relations to other concepts and ideations. And it suggests that thinking is less of a deliberate attention-giving to various preexisting and discrete things and more of a going with the flow of conceivability that organically guides us and navigates our journey towards more general truth-manifesting and understanding.
"The world of ideas seems as solid as the world of seas and mountains—or more so. One can no more change its topography than one can move Samarqand closer to Bukhara, although one can discover new views or discover that one has gotten the topography wrong, or that many people have for many years. Ideas seem as embodied, in the world of ideas, with its views and obstructions and vastness, as we do in our material world. They seem tangible, with specific savors, aesthetic properties, emotional tones, curves, surfaces, insides, hidden places, structure, geometry, dark passages, shining corners, auras, force fields, and combinatorial chemistry. This is one great reason why “travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy,” as Bertrand Russell said, and why “it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored.”"--Galen Strawson
With concepts we have the analogous sense that there is a perspective-taking on or freeze-framing of some cohering whole not itself present in thought but proximally present--as becoming more possibly phenomenally present just thru the thinking of that concept. This suggests a kind of holographic experience rather than an objective holograph in which concepts embody the entirety of their relations to other concepts and ideations. And it suggests that thinking is less of a deliberate attention-giving to various preexisting and discrete things and more of a going with the flow of conceivability that organically guides us and navigates our journey towards more general truth-manifesting and understanding.
"The world of ideas seems as solid as the world of seas and mountains—or more so. One can no more change its topography than one can move Samarqand closer to Bukhara, although one can discover new views or discover that one has gotten the topography wrong, or that many people have for many years. Ideas seem as embodied, in the world of ideas, with its views and obstructions and vastness, as we do in our material world. They seem tangible, with specific savors, aesthetic properties, emotional tones, curves, surfaces, insides, hidden places, structure, geometry, dark passages, shining corners, auras, force fields, and combinatorial chemistry. This is one great reason why “travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy,” as Bertrand Russell said, and why “it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored.”"--Galen Strawson