Perspective

[Gnosis]

That’s not true.

tree stands for all that is a tree.

I think Valke2 is pointing out that the concept, word, image, idea that we label “tree” actually fails to completely grasp the phenomena that we are trying to isolate and point out for the purpose of communication.

Language and ideas, words, concepts, all these are tools that we use to break down the overwhelmingly complex world so that we can actually deal with it and carry on. We reduce by nature for the sake of functioning. The human eye, for example, reduces everything it filters in by a ratio of, I think, 10. If it didn’t we couldn’t process what we see. It’s the same way in which I enter into a lecture hall. I say I am in a lecture hall filled with people instead of saying I am in an enclosed space surrounded by cement walls, furnished with 124 seats and populated by fifty female human beings and sixty male human beings. We could break it down further. Instead, I reduce the reality of this room by simply calling it a lecture hall filled with people because its efficient. We do this with everything.

The beauty of religion is that it, at the same time, reduces the world through language, concepts and ideas while also expanding the world infinitely by orienting our lives to the transcendent, revealing the insufficient and flawed nature of human modes of communication and contemplation.

The spiritual journey is something like the idea of a horizon. We look out into the distance and label the farthest and most remote, but nevertheless, visible point and call it a “horizon”. Then we set out to reach it. What we find when we move is that the horizon expands and moves with us and that we can never actually touch it- it is hopelessly out of reach. Our pursuit of it, however, will lead us to the things that we saw contained in that horizon. As we approach the trees and the mountains that were once so distant they become more real and vivid, we experience them, but they are no longer the horizon itself.

It is the same with God, who is hopelessly beyond our reach. We look at the fartherst and most visible point in Him and we pursue it in awe and wonder and when we finally attain to it, we find that it was contained in God but that it isn’t God himself. The more we pursue him, the more he moves with us, the more we understand him, the deeper and farther he expands.It is so that the more we understand, the more we understand how little and meek that understanding actually is! Yet we should never despair on this point, for that is the essence of the faith-path, it is a journey to nowhere.

 

[Montalban]

you can state in any defintion the words “total for all that a tree is” but that doesn’t mean the definition is adequate or that it explains what the “total tree” is.

Adequacy simply depends on the fact you think the concept of ‘tree’ is more than what I think involves a ‘tree’.

When you speak of ‘tree’ to others of like mind then it should be perfectly adequate because you both share a common concept of what a tree involves.

When talking to me, with a ‘lesser’ or more restrictive definition, it may *seem *to be inadequate. But I find it perfectly describes what I think a tree is. And I have no problem discussing it with most people - and this seems to define ‘adequacy’.

 

[Gnosis]

I actually think you are misunderstanding Valke2’s point.

We can all agree on a definition for a tree, but a definition, an idea, a word- this is something less than what it represents. The word tree is not a “copy” of the tree, but a representation of it. By its nature, a definition reduces the reality of the phenomena for the purpose of communication. My previous post went into some detail on this point.

 

[Montalban]

I actually think you are misunderstanding Valke2’s point.

We can all agree on a definition for a tree, but a definition, an idea, a word- this is something less than what it represents. The word tree is not a “copy” of the tree, but a representation of it. By its nature, a definition reduces the reality of the phenomena for the purpose of communication. My previous post went into some detail on this point.

The word tree represents a tree in a person’s mind, for sure, but that concept of tree would be the full concept of tree.

I agree that you can’t plant the ‘word’ tree. However if the concept doesn’t otherwise match the thing it represents then it’s not representing it.

You call this a ‘reduction’, but it’s not really for when I think of ‘tree’ it conjours up in my mind a full representation of what a tree is. Although I can’t climb that representation, I agree.

But, that’s not what Valke2 said.

Valke2:

you can state in any defintion the words “total for all that a tree is” but that doesn’t mean the definition is adequate or that it explains what the “total tree” is.

He’s talking about the explanation of what the tree is. This is also noted in the OP

 

[Valke2]

I am not a philosophy, theology or communication expert. So I apoligize for the flaws in my ability to clearly set forth what I believe.

All definitions are incomplete, no matter how detailed. Because language is limited by what we can conceptualize. My point I guess is that everything in this universe is something greater than that which can be conceptualized, understood, and defined by words. When we experience an object, i.e., see a tree, that experience first occurs on a pre-conceptual level. We then understand that experience on a conceptual level – we put it into language or thought that we can understand. There is the tree and there is how we understand the tree. The tree itself represents or is something greater than the tree we understand.

Similarly, there is what was revealed at Sinai, and what was understood at Sinai. There was/is the experience of revelation and there is the concept – how we put the experience of revelation into words. Or if you prefer, there is the experience of communion and there is the concept/understanding of communion. Or.

There is what Jesus is. And there is what you understand Jesus to be. The difference between the two being the ineffable, the mystery, of the holy.

 

[Montalban]

All definitions are incomplete, no matter how detailed. Because language is limited by what we can conceptualize.

And yet it serves us adequately, because we can inter-act.

My point I guess is that everything in this universe is something greater than that which can be conceptualized, understood, and defined by words.

What about ‘everything’. That would encompass everything, even the things not understood, or even yet known.

When we experience an object, i.e., see a tree, that experience first occurs on a pre-conceptual level.

It can happen this way. However it doesn’t always. We go to school to learn about things never yet experienced such as other planets in the solar system.

We then understand that experience on a conceptual level – we put it into language or thought that we can understand.

Say then I experience a tree, and I don’t yet know what it’s called. When I learn that it is called a tree, then I apply the term ‘tree’ with that which I experienced as being a tree. I can fully appreciate that I may not have experienced all that there is about a tree, but all that I have experienced is adequately represented by the term ‘tree’. Then in biology I might learn about cell-walls, protoplasm, the water cycle, none of which I experienced. This is added to my idea of what a tree is. I agree with you that even then there may be aspects of a tree that I will not know. But as I don’t know of them it’s irrelevant as far as day to day talking of trees. The term tree will always be for me all that is that is a tree even if I don’t understand all that there is that a tree is.

There is the tree and there is how we understand the tree. The tree itself represents or is something greater than the tree we understand.

I am beginning to both understand you, and agree to a point. However if for you a tree means ‘all that there is that I have experienced as being a tree - plus things that are yet to be experienced’ then tree as a concept contains aspects of the idea of tree that covers things that are greater than what you have experienced of a tree.

Similarly, there is what was revealed at Sinai, and what was understood at Sinai. There was/is the experience of revelation and there is the concept – how we put the experience of revelation into words. Or if you prefer, there is the experience of communion and there is the concept/understanding of communion. Or.

There is what Jesus is. And there is what you understand Jesus to be. The difference between the two being the ineffable, the mystery, of the holy.

In my concept of Jesus I fully accept that there are elements of God (Jesus is God) which I will never know - however that now falls into a concept of Jesus.

It’s like we can know that there are things that are never knowable.

For instance we can say what the average breakfast is for Americans, and what it was over the past century and a bit. But, we can’t say for certain was eaten for breakfast by a particular person in 1899 (unless we have a record).

I don’t really know now what the point of this thread is?

 

[Valke2]

It’s like we can know that there are things that are never knowable.

For instance we can say what the average breakfast is for Americans, and what it was over the past century and a bit. But, we can’t say for certain was eaten for breakfast by a particular person in 1899 (unless we have a record).

I don’t really know now what the point of this thread is?

Absolutely we can know that there are things that are never knowable. But the breakfast example falls a little short, because it deals with something that we could know. Because while we can’t say for certain what was eaten by a particular person in 1899, it is knowledge that we have or could have had the ability to obtain. With the ineffable, the mystery of God, we know that there is knowledge that we can never obtain. In a way, we cannot “see His face and live” is another way of saying there are some things we can never know.

 

[Valke2]

Except for the “2 trains are approaching each other at opposite directions, one goind 55mph and the other 52 mph”, this is probably the most difficult thing I’ve tried to understand.

 

[a_priori]

“Man is driven by aspirations whose goals he cannot hope to reach, yet cannot accept as unreachable.” -J.T. Fraser

 

[Montalban]

Absolutely we can know that there are things that are never knowable. But the breakfast example falls a little short, because it deals with something that we could know.

Put it back to a pre-historic society and you couldn’t.

 

[Montalban]

Except for the “2 trains are approaching each other at opposite directions, one goind 55mph and the other 52 mph”, this is probably the most difficult thing I’ve tried to understand.

It’s not any easier using metric!

 

[Valke2]

Put it back to a pre-historic society and you couldn’t.

True. There are things we know. THere are things we know that we don’t know (I know I can’t speak French) and there are things we don’t know that we don’t know.

ANd then there are things that we know that we will never know. I don’t think you will find a scientist will honestly say that he or she believes that it is even possible that there will come a time when we know everything about the universe. Not everything is measurable.

 

[Gnosis]

I think it is true that our experience of something is also limiting and reducing. My experience of the tree is not everything that that tree is. The world is constantly being mitigated by our interaction with it!

Of course it must be so, we are finite and subjective beings. We can’t take in the world as it is. We can only take in as much as we are built to recieve. If I place a plastic cup benath a heavy waterfall it will break so instead I fill it under a tap. We human beings have filters of perception that exclude and include certain information as we process it simply so that we can function. This is one reason why there’s so much chaos and conflict in the world, because we are not neccessarily interacting with the world as it is, but as we percieve it. However small the gap might be between perception and reality, thousands of small “gaps” inevitably result in a wrong decision.

In this way we should know that the world is always so much more than what we can make of it- how much more so God!