Iconic Logic, also called graphical logic and diagrammatic logic, expresses a geometry of logic, and thus it gives us the key to the mysterious relation of the sensible and the insensible, the soul and the mind of soul, the visible and the invisible, etc.
This key opens the path to consciousness of the all-encompassing sphere and its ubiquitous center.
This key is the bond (the one bond, eis desmos of the Epinomis, etc.) of peras and apeiron implied by the identification of peras and apeiron with, respectively, the center itself and the sphere itself. Peras itself and Apeiron itself exist differently, but let’s think about that later and think now about the significant relation between them. The finite itself can be expressed in terms of determinations, noetic limits, and regardless of the other two modes of existence, these relations (bonds–i.e., between peras and apeiron) are constitutive of our experience in a significant way. This significance is the shining of the first light in conic sections spanning center to periphery, and it expresses the iconic logic that governs the creation of space-time. There are many important implications of this connection, foremost being the famous “time is the moving image of eternity,” wherein the famous “image” is in the original Greek eikon, or icon, in a semantic matrix very similar to that of iconic logic as found in Peirce and Spencer-Brown.
The important thing is not the figure or image that the gramme makes through auto-affective interrelation, but the relation of the gramme to its constitutive breaking (κλάσις, klasis), “where” its formal relation to the beyond of being bestows the power of being according to the form. The possible figurations of form are indefinitely many (aoristos plethos), and of many kinds (orders; according to which there are many compossible likenesses or resemblances or kinds), but this breaking at the apex of the mark, is the principum individuationis of the logical mode of the actual.
The klasis of two continuities (“each in their own dimensions,” following Peter Manchester’s two-ray diagram) is the indication (the locus classicus of this definition of the point is the semeion of Iamblichus’ pseudo-Archytas: see The Syntax of Time) of an actuality, according to the form (eidos) of indication. The two of possibility and actuality are incompossible, but the form of indication (the klasis of the semeion) is constitutive of our experience in the phenomenal disclosure space.
Manchester’s phenomenology of the disclosure space saves the phenomena of our experience by situating its phenomenal spheroidics into a noetic spherics, and if you continue this soteriology, following it to its end (telos), you arrive at a theory of logical circumference: the relativity of conjectural inference breaks through reductions and deductions to the synthetic a priori necessary condition of the possibility of space, time, and causality all in one swoop: in its relation to the center of all centers (which is the One; the unparticipated One, the amethektikon, the hypostatic One, the radical unicity of unity: that which there can be only one of, and only once), the beyond of being organizes itself into an necessarily infinite sphere, in relation to the one.
This infinite sphere–the Stoic Neoplatonic “Sphere of the All,” more strictly Plotinian “Sphere of the All-One,” the cosmic sphere of Empedocles, the sphere of the formalization of ontology after Parmenides, and primarily the Pythagorean harmony of the sphere, perhaps with emphasis on the significance of mystical symmetria–both has ancient precedents and has a long heritage, but its ancient and perennial wisdom is encapsulated in itself, as its own emblem of power, or ousia-potentia, of the sphere itself.
The circle has acquired the symbolism of eternity or timelessness, but the fullness of the sphere itself unconditioned by any dimensionality (the n-dimensional sphere, or with some paradox, dimensionless sphere) is the emblem of the perfect continence or all-encompassment of an all-inclusive and transcendentally pure self-referentiality of being, or ontological closure.
This long-winded explanation of the utter simplicity of the sphere will come more clearly and concisely when we meditate on other simplicities such as the radically One essence of oneness, or the non-being of pure and radical nothingness, or the overwhelming over-flowingness of the beyond of being in the idea of the infinite. The sphere, in this context, is the reality of the relation between the center of All and the All-periphery. Such a sphere is not only formal, and not merely material.
Peter Manchester’s definition of the disclosure space gives the best formulation of such an all-inclusive sphericity: “an all-encompassing self-referential equality of an intentional kind–a disclosure space” (The Syntax of Time, 53).
Before Manchester’s book opened up my own philosophical development with its sphere-framework, I had always thought of the ultimate and penultimate realities–the two modes of existence referred to earlier–as pure subjectivity and pure objectivity.
While we find recognition of the contemporary emergence of paradoxes of subjectivity and self-reference in the philosophy of logical positivism (as Russell’s paradox, “this statement is false”), and in the phenomenological critiques of psychology (both in Husserl’s Crisis, and the Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception), the concrete materiality of the real external world is not seen to connect with such a strange concept as pure objectivity, conceived as the fullness of prote hyle, except perhaps in the realistic phenomenology of Conrad-Martius, and this only because of the seemingly circuitous route of the apeiron of the aether theory.
Such an alien concept as pure objectivity in its hyletic and axiological fullness could be seen in the philosophy of religion, but an ideal surplus or reservoir is usually only encountered in what Ricoeur calls “positive hermeneutics” (such as Hegel’s, or Ricoeur’s (borrowing its “surplus of meaning” from Jean Nabert’s “primary affirmation” or “originary positivity”), dealing with hope, love, and such “undeconstructibles,” as even Derrida can see), but critique (opposite conviction), reflection (opposite speculation), and the like dominate in the popularities of American Continental philosophy because of the hatred of religion, the accusation of idealism, which is not entirely misguided, but certainly endemic. This situation is clear in the contemporary refutation of mysticism as obscurantism.
My hope is that this problem in the contemporary philosophical scene is sufficiently iconic of the eclipse of noetic intuition and synthesis (the eclipse of the light of the hypercosmic sun) by the dianoetic (dialectical noesis, which can only hold one thought at a time and place) grammar (the gramme or line being paradigmatic of dianoetic or “intellectual,” single-term-processing thought). In the history of ideas, the staging is set for the return of the paradigm of the sphere through the sphere of the paradigm.
The Sphere of the All is also called by Sambursky and Pines (The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism) the “Sphere of the Paradigm,” meaning the sphere of the eternal paradigms or models of the things that appear down here as the mere images (once again, the Greek is eikon!). In the contemporary scholarship of ancient Greek philosophy, the paradigms (models or eternal realities) or forms are approached inductively, that is, through generalization, from particulars (this Poland Spring water bottle, etc.) to generalities or essentialities (wesenheit, in Hering’s theory of forms) called eternal forms or essences.
The naive charge of Platonism applies to the absurd notion of a separate (chorismos) realm (specifically, the kosmos noetos) or heaven (ouranos; but contemporary philosophers are barred from heaven-speculation and God-talk!) of universals–which seem, after all, to be idealistic abstractions, and thus absurdities, and in sharpest resolution, incompossibilities!–but if the forms in their multiplicity are arrived at deductively from an even greater simplicity, and the multiplicity (plethos) itself is accounted for arithmetically (Plato’s arithmos eide), just as the real realm of space and time derives from a more ultimate reality or more elegant conception of symmetry breaking in higher dimensions, then, the forms can be understood to be inter-coherent, inter-dependent realities, not merely ideal, but “paradigmatic” in a semantic polyfunctionality.
Such “paradigmatics” should be seen in Husserl’s “higher theory of forms” (that is also a theory of theory-forms) or “theory of pure syntaxes” (Formal and Transcendental Logic) as well as in Manchester’s The Syntax of Time, which incidentally we might take to calling “Syntax,” placing it in line with the cosmology of Ptolemy.
There is much to explain here–this whole blog enterprise is an evolving (and editable!) brainstorm for my cyclonic paradigm. Perhaps next we’ll look at a “theory of logical circumference” in terms of the Neoplatonic sphere gestalt after the Timaeus and Proclus, and Fichte’s “originary geometry.” I intend to add links to the papers I’m reading, references, etc! Check back soonish!
randolphdible.com 