The basic understanding shared in this essay  is this; … what a ‘left-brain’ stroke does is to have the stroke experient revert to a ‘bootstrapping’ mode of cognition which ‘drops out’ cognition based on notional ‘things-in-themselves’ connoted by name-labels.  This is why the stroke experient ‘forgets’ people in a name-based sense, yet does not forget them in a relational context. Understanding is conserved within relational context but cannot be easily expressed, by the stroke-experient, in terms of ‘thing-in-itself’ based rhetoric.

 

How does ‘Bootstrapping’ relate to ‘Stroke’?   (see footnote explaining ‘bootstrapping)

It is possible to understand our ‘mode of understanding’ nature’s dynamics in terms of ‘bootstrapping’.  Physicist Geoffrey Chew was a notable proponent of this mode of understanding as was John Wheeler.  Wheeler’s ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ is a ‘relational’ way of constructing portrayals of physical dynamics (‘what is going on out there’) that has no dependency on the existence of ‘things-in-themselves’.  In other words, ‘bootstrapping’ can use the temporary notions of ‘things-in-themselves’ for the purpose of describing an experience to ‘trick the mind’ into ‘understanding’ and then pulling out the apparent thing-based foundations that one used to construct the picture that served to convey the understanding.  In bootstrapping, ‘things’ are not ‘primary’ but are used to set up a web of relations to convey an understanding that, once understood, has no dependency on the ‘things’ that were used to create the web of relations (hence the notion of ‘bootstrapping’).  Wittgenstein alludes to the necessity of the ‘bootstrap’ in the final two propositions in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus.

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

My point in sharing a description of ‘how bootstrapping works’ is to illustrate why a ‘stroke-experient’ such as myself (or Jill Bolte Taylor in ‘My Stroke of Insight’) would refer to a seemingly entirely negative, mind-damaging experience like a ‘stroke’ in ‘positive’ terms.

An earthquake is destructive, too, but it can bring down the walls of a prison so that for those ‘inmates’ who have been ‘imprisoned’, the liberating aspect of the earthquake can override its destructive aspect.   That is the gist of the ‘silver lining’ in a stroke that damages ‘left brain functionality’ [the ability to ‘rationalize’ the world and its dynamics in terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what these things-in-themselves’ do].

The potential benefits of a destructive injury to cognitive faculty [akin to a prison break?] can be described in terms of Erich Jantsch’s three level model of how we conceive of reality, and how Western culture adopts the lowest level, 3, where we imagine dynamics in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what these things-in-themselves do’ as the ‘primary reality’.  This view is intellectually ‘concretized’ by noun-and-verb language-and-grammar]

What the stroke does is that it takes us back from level 3 ‘what things-in-themselves do’ based understanding of reality to the level one ‘relational’ (transformations in the flow) understanding of ‘reality’.  John Wheeler describes how the ‘thing-based’ view of the world is relationally ‘bootstrapped’ so that the ‘things’, rather than being ‘things-in-themselves’, are intellectual conceptions that ‘take on’ (in our intellect) a ‘reality of their own’ by our multiple references to them which are, at the same time, spinning a relational web, the meaning in which transcends the meaning in the rational contents.

This relational build that does not depend on ‘’things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things do’ has been described by physicist John Wheeler in terms of ‘the surprise version of the game Twenty Questions’ which is a way of describing ‘how quantum physics works’.  No-one knows the answer to the game [no object is secretly picked in the beginning] but people answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions in the manner that progressively moves towards resolving what it is, without there being ‘anything there’; i.e. the progressive resolving is purely relational [relations-first, things-last]. 

In a left-brain stroke, what ‘drops out’ is the rational understanding of things in terms of name-labelled ‘things-in-themselves’ such as our own children.  Our relational understanding is intact but the names of people or ‘things-in-themselves’ designations, do not ‘come to mind’ so that recall comes in a relational form such as ‘dances with wolves’ or ‘she who must be obeyed’ and the rational view of the world as Charles Dickens critiques in ‘Hard Times’ through the characters Bitzer and Gradgrind, ‘falls away’;

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’

 ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

In the (level 3) ‘rational reality’ of Gradgrind and Bitzer, which Dickens could see as coming to dominate the popular worldview of Western society, what ‘goes missing’ is the (level 1) relational view of a Sissy Jupe, which is not only rejected but mocked.

Yet what the ‘damage’ associated with a left-brain stroke does, is ‘knock out’ understanding that is dependent on name-labelled things-in-themselves and what these ‘things-in-themselves do’.  What remains is ‘relational understanding’.

Now, it would be much ‘handier’ if, instead of having my level 3 node of understanding brutally ‘knocked out’, … I could voluntarily ‘demote it’ from its unnatural elevating to primacy over level 1 (relational) conceptualizing.  Nevertheless, the ‘damage’ associated with the stroke is like the damage to the walls of a prison which is holding things in place artificially [holding level 3 ‘thing-in-itself-based’ cognition in an unnatural primacy over level 1 ‘relational’ cognition], allowing level 1 cognition to re assume its natural primacy.

One might say that while ‘bootstrapping’ is a ‘level 1’ relational mode of perception, rhetoric in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’ is a level 3 expedient-reality.  This simplified expedient of a thing-based reality should not be confused with experience-based ‘relational reality’.  However, the socially dominant Western culture habit is to do just that and therefore to employ level 3 rational (‘things-in-themselves-and-what-things-in-themselves do’ based) reality as the official (government-and police backed) ‘operative reality’.  As Nietzsche notes, the popular support in Western culture for the unnatural, inverted precedence of level 3 thing-in-itself-based pseudo-reality as the popular, socially supported ‘operative reality’ derives from ‘ego’, which credits people seen as ‘independently operating thing-in-itself mechanisms’ as the jumpstart, fully causally responsible, authors of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actions and consequences.  In Nietzsche’s words;

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

My own experience informs me that Nietzsche’s critique of ‘being’ as the derivative of ego is ‘on target’.  This is of basic relevance to the proposition that my stroke has ‘knocked out’ level 3 (being-based) cognition which is purely rational and Western culture-driven rather than relational-experience-derived so that level 1 cognition (relational becoming) resurfaces from out of it’s cultural ‘eclipsing’ by the notional ‘reality’ wherein actions depend upon ‘being’ and ‘beings’ as in ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’.  (‘intellectual abstraction’ rather than relational experience based).

Level 3 ‘being-based’ abstraction cognitively mobilized in noun-and-verb language-and-grammar, serves up an ‘intellectual thing-in-itself based pseudo-reality’ [as contrasted with the relational-experience-informed reality’ of level 1 cognition].

* * *

The investigative object of this comment has been; “How does ‘Bootstrapping’ relate to ‘Stroke’?

What ‘bootstrapping’ does is to remove tangible objects aka ‘things-in-themselves’ as the purported jumpstart causal authors of actions and consequences, replacing them with networks of relational influences as implied in ‘the surprise version of the Game of 20 Questions’.

To accept ‘thing-in-itself’ based constructions ‘literally’, is to mistake the forest [relational ecosystem within the transforming relational continuum] for the trees; i.e. to allow reductive rational interpretation to hijack the relational understanding as cautioned against in the above Wittgenstein, Wheeler, Dickens and Nietzsche quotes.

SYNOPSIS OF FINDINGS from the stroke experience;

The ‘left-brain’ stroke that Jill Bolte Taylor has labelled ‘The Stroke of Insight’ undermines level 3 cognitive mode that is in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’ which is the mainstay of Western rational cognition.  For those who experience this kind of stroke, there is ‘drop out’ of cognition in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’, thus while one remembers one’s children and friends by way of the web of relational dynamics we share inclusion in, remembrance in terms of name-labelled things-in-themselves and ‘what these things-in-themselves do’ is undercut by the ‘left brain’ stroke.

It is not that the stroke experient ‘forgets’ his friends and children, but that his recall is by way of level 1 relational cognition or, one might say, ‘bootstrapped cognition’ [1].  The phrase ‘Dances with Wolves’ could be a relational reference within the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’; i.e. by bringing together a good number of relative references such as these, a cognitive ‘image’ of people and things is developed in a purely relational sense without the necessity of the existence of a ‘thing-in-itself’.

“My propositions are elucidatory in this way: He who understands me, finally recognizes [my logical propositions] as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it) . . . . then he sees the world rightly”

”Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. “ … “Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.”

– Wittgenstein

Meanwhile, our Western penchant for putting the rational into an unnatural precedence over the relational persists.

A key enlightenment that comes with the left-brain stroke is that there is a split between the real world of relational experience and the rationalized ego-based semantic world of name-labelled ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’.  This split which leads to two very different ‘cognitive realities’ is captured in ‘The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man’ (‘Frankfort et al’) as follows;

“Heraclitus had declared ‘being’ a perpetual ‘becoming’ and had correlated the two concepts with his ‘hidden attunement.’ Now Parmenides declared the two to be mutually exclusive, and only ‘being’ to be real.”

Although the world or (or intellectual pseudo-reality of) of ‘what is’ has become the Western ‘reality of choice’, as captured in Jantsch’s ‘level 3’, the left-brain ‘stroke’ undercuts the pseudo-reality of ‘things-in-themselves’ cognitively ‘triggered’ into pseudo-being by name-labels (symbols) that evoke a notional ‘independent existence’ of the ‘thing-in-itself’ designated by the name or symbol.

What remains but is now given a backseat role is the relational world of our natural experience as associates with Jantsch’s level 1 reality, as distinguished from the ‘thing-in-itself’ based level 3 (popular Western) reality.

Physicists and philosophers such as David Bohm, Boscovich, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein have been pointing out that our Western culture has the habit of reducing the relational reality of our actual experience wherein ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus) to an intellectual/rational pseudo-reality implied by noun-and-verb language-and-grammar which constructs intellectual portrayals of reality in terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves’, notionally endowed with the powers of jumpstart authoring causal actions and results. Such things-in-themselves that are said to be able to jumpstart-source their own actions and results have been termed ‘animals’ and ‘organisms’ (plants etc.).  They are said to ‘live within’ a reality that is otherwise ‘inanimate’, having developed ‘out of inanimate material’ by the action of a bolt of lightning or some other, yet unknown, generative process.

This level 3 semantically constructed mechanistic view of the world, given a leading role in Western cultural beliefs, has been eclipsing the relational reality of our actual experience.

As noted by David Bohm, this popular ‘scientific’ (intellectual) language-and-grammar based ‘self-deception’ has been cognitively ‘trumping’ and obscuring the relational reality of our natural experience.  Meanwhile, the left-brain stroke destroys this self-deception, restoring relational (level 1) cognition to its natural primacy.  What ‘goes missing’ in this fallback to relational cognition is the dominance of notional named, thing-in-itself-based authorship of actions and developments.  Since this is a secondary way of re-presenting the reality of our actual experience, the loss is not really a ‘loss’ within a culture that dees relational reality to be the ‘primary (operative) reality’.  Indigenous aboriginal societies could be compared to a society of people with left-brain stroke (‘stroke of insight’) experience.  The difference would be that Western culture stroke experients are no longer adept in articulating the world dynamic in terms of the dynamics of ego-based ‘things-in-themselves’.  Western society therefore sees the stroke-experient as someone that is in need of repairs to his/her level 3 cognitive abilities.

This need is also evident to the stroke experient such as myself, not to repair my damaged view of reality, but for the very different reason that I am in need of ‘rehabilitation’ to restore my ability to ‘get along’ in a society that deems level 3 cognition to be the highest level of cognition. Rehabilitation of level 3 cognitive capability is thus an imperative for living in Western society ‘as it is’ rather than ‘as it could be’ were relational cognition (level 1) to be restored to its natural primacy.  That is, the left-brain stroke is an expedited (albeit roughly wrought) passage to restoring level 1 cognition to its natural primacy.

To know a thing by way of its relational inclusion in the overall relational dynamic it is situationally included in is to ‘bootstrap’ one’s knowing of it; i.e. it is level 1 cognition and level 1 cognition IS bootstrapped (relational) cognition.  To know a thing as Bitzer and Gladgrind know it, by way of its thing-in-itself components is a level 3 form of rational knowing that is abstract and NOT supported by the relational dynamics of our actual experience.

There are many popular Western beliefs that are in direct contradiction to level 1 bootstrapped (relational) cognition.  I will mention one or two so as to put the key areas of conflict (in popular thinking/belief) in context.

The common concept of ‘evolution’ as a process that ‘operates on things-in-themselves’ is a ‘level 3 based’ cognitive understanding.   ‘Evolution’ is seen as something that happens to notional ‘things-in-themselves’ within a fixed non-evolving reference frame or inert space.  This view of evolution is not compatible with the level 1 understanding of evolution ‘in terms of a transforming relational continuum where ‘everything-is-in-flux (Heraclitus).

Just as in the dichotomy of ‘nature or nurture’ (inside-outward asserting or outside-inward inducing source of change), there is an inside-outward asserting or outside-inward inducing ambiguity as to the source of transformation or ‘evolution’.  That is, do ‘things-in-themselves’ evolve?  Not if there are no such thing as ‘things-in-themselves’.  In Jantsch level 1 cognition, change transpires by way of the transforming relational continuum wherein ‘things-in-themselves’ are ‘appearances’ based on relational form (Schroedinger’s ‘schaumkommen’) rather than physical realities. The notion that ‘forms’ change or evolve is ‘an error of grammar’.  That is, if forms are relational features within a transforming relational continuum, ‘THEY’ do not change, … it is the transforming relational continuum that undergoes change.

As Nietzsche says in this regard; I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar,”

Postulating the existence of notional ‘things-in-themselves’ as in level 3 cognition is the problem.  Grammar is the source of ‘things-in-themselves’ and their apparent power of jumpstarting actions and results.

God is the alleged Creator of notional ‘things-in-themselves’.  There is no need to impute the existence of a Creator of ‘things-in-themselves’ if there are no ‘things-in-themselves’, as is the case with the relational world view; a view in which the world is a transforming relational continuum.  There are no ‘things-that-change’ in the world of modern physics understood as a transforming relational continuum, there is only ‘change’.

The Gaia Hypothesis takes us a step closer towards understanding of the world as a transforming relational continuum, and a step farther away from our understanding of the world as a collection of independently existing ‘things-in-themselves’ that purportedly live within an absolute Cartesian reference frame as in the level 3 cognition in the Jantsch model.

In level 1 cognition, evolution is not by way of ‘things-that-evolve’ but is only operative on an overall basis, as in the transforming relational continuum.  In level 1 relational cognition there are no ‘things-in-themselves’ to which we can impute ‘evolution’.  Forms change not in the sense that they are ‘things-in-themselves’ that undergo ‘change’, but relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  To say that ‘forms change’ is an ‘error of grammar’.  The hurricane does not change because it is not a thing-itself or something ‘that is’, but a relational form within a transforming relational continuum. The notion of ‘being’ is an ego-bred cognitive projection that we impose on relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.

 “In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

The ’theory of evolution’ is a complex and troubled theory because, rather than accepting that evolution comes by way of the transforming relational continuum, level 3 cognition would have us see ‘evolution’ by first postulating the existence of ‘things-in-themselves’ and then imputing ‘evolution’ to be a process undergone by ‘things-in-themselves’; i.e. rather than understanding the world as a transforming relational continuum replete with relational forms as Heraclitus’ worldview wherein everything is in flux.

While we can, … thanks to language-and-grammar, … confirm that we and our children are ‘things-in-ourselves’ that are born, grow up from infancy to adulthood, age and die, generation after generation… that is just an ‘error of grammar’, as Nietzsche observes, that associates with level 3 cognition.  In level 1 cognition, there is no way to extract the relational form from the transforming relational continuum.  In other words, the ‘independent existence’ of the ‘self’ is an artefact of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar (level 3 cognition).  The physical reality of our experience is that of relational forms in a transforming relational continuum, as supported by modern physics and the philosophies of Nietzsche, Bohm, Boscovich, Schroedinger et al.

 

THE LEVEL 3 INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION OF THE ORGANISM AS ‘THING-IN-ITSELF’ (E.G. ‘MAN’)

The notional ‘independent-machine-like existence’ of the human self, or in general, of the ‘organism’ (including the ‘plant’) is intellectual contrivance the artificiality of which sources logical inconsistency in the case of science’s assumption that ‘plants’, as well as ‘animals’, are organisms-in-themselves, independent of the ‘common living space’ they are included in.  In the case of humans, simple Newtonian science notionally equips the imputed ‘independent thing-in-itself’ organism with a ‘brain’ .  Rather than understanding the brain as an outside-inwardly induced development as with the organism, the level 3 ‘thing-in-itself’ model is used wherein ‘the brain’ is portrayed as the internal jumpstart instigator and manager of the organism’s body functions and actions.  In this view, the organism is understood as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’ rather than as a relational form within the transforming relational continuum.

The ‘theory of evolution’ that seeks to explain the emergence of various forms of organismic ‘things-in-themselves’ is a theory that is unnecessary in the level 1 understanding of the world as a transforming relational continuum.  The logical need for evolutionary theory arises once we impose the intellectual notion of ‘independent thing-in-itself being’ on relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.   Instead of understanding the different ‘forms’ as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum, language and grammar impute ‘independent being’ to these forms and the logic of Gradgrind and Bitzer ‘takes over from there’ which seeks to explain relational forms in the transforming relational continuum as ‘things-in-themselves’ that are ‘produced’ by ‘parents’ which were produced by ‘their parents’ and so on and so forth, creating the impression of an evolutionary lineage that goes all the way back to the Biblical concept of ‘original parents’ (e.g. ‘Adam and Eve’).

There is no need for a ‘theory of evolution’ where we embrace the level 1 model of cognition in which forms, rather than being understood in level 3 terms as notional things-in-themselves’, are understood as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.  While Western human ego tends to see forms in the flow (e.g. hurricanes) as ‘stirring up the flow’ and physics and mathematics are tools which can model things in this manner, philosophers might argue the flow is the source of the storm-cells rather than being stirred up by the storm-cells.  In fact, noun-and-verb language here is showing its limitations since there is no need for an ‘either/or’ decision on whether the storm-cell assertively stirs up the flow or whether the flow inductively sources the storm-cell; i.e. there are not ‘two things’ in a transforming relational continuum, but only one.

The notion of ‘two separate things’ (whorl and flow) comes from noun-and-verb language, with the help of ego, as Nietzsche points out, since Western man considers himself to be an ‘independently-existing thing-in-himself’ with his own internal sourcing of development and behaviour.  Modern physics makes no such division between ‘thing’ and ‘environment’ [cognitive level 1 sees/understands, instead, relational forms in a transforming relational continuum].

Breaking into two parts, … the relational form in the flow [form as one thing and flow as another thing], … is the source of many logical inconsistencies, as are explored in the Suzuki documentary ‘Smarty Plants’.  While the notion of the brain as the source of direction of the body seems to generate sufficient logical consistency in the case of animals that we cognitively portray as ‘things-in-themselves with their own internally sourced behaviour’, … logical inconsistencies arise in treating (brainless) plants as ‘independently-existing organisms’.  That is, the behaviour of plants appears to be ‘intelligent’ even though plants, as we model them, have nowhere to impute the existence of an internal source of directive intelligence.

The concept of ‘intelligence’ as something residing within a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ that explains complex behaviour is not a viable concept in the relational understanding of the world (modern physics).

The complex relational dynamics of relational forms in a transforming relational continuum [e.g. as can be thought of in terms of the relational dynamics of hurricanes with other hurricanes within a common flow] renders the problem of explaining the behaviour of ‘a hurricane’ (as if it were a ‘thing-in-itself’) impossible since there is no ‘hurricane thing-in-itself’ that corresponds to the name-label (e.g. Rita) we assign that personifies the relational form in the flow in the manner that ego has us personify ourselves so that we think of ourselves as independently-existing things-in-ourselves (organic machines or simply, ‘organisms’).

Meanwhile, noun-and-verb language gives us the more-than-natural ‘freedom’ (i.e. ‘intellectual freedom’) to consider the relational form in the transforming relational flow as if it were a local, independently-existing thing-in-itself’ that is the full and sole author of its own evolutionary development, actions and accomplishments.  Such level 3 models are supported by ‘ego’.

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO ‘GET THE EGO OUT OF THE WAY’?

How could we restore our ability to understand ourselves in an ‘inclusional’ sense, as ‘one with everything’?   The answer is; by way of ‘a stroke-of-insight’.

That is, it is not so easy to switch back and forth between level 3 and level 1 cognition when one is immersed within a culture where the everyday ‘reality dialogue’ is in level 3 terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves’ do.   What we might like to do, is to restore level 1 to its natural primacy.   Having a ‘left brain’ stroke works in this direction.

What happens in a stroke is that the cognitive processes associated with ‘thing-in-itself’ based (level 3) cognition are damaged, restoring, by default, the natural primacy of level 1 (relational) cognition as described by ‘bootstrapping’ (‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’).  In the wake of the stroke, the usual name-labels of people that signify their ‘thing-in-itself being and jumpstart causal agency’ (including the name-labels of our own children), no longer ‘come to mind’, not because we no longer know or recognize them, but because our mode of cognition has dropped out of level 3 (‘thing-in-itself’ based) mode into level 1 (relational) mode which is grounded in relational experience and does not deal in abstract realities built from the purported actions of notional ‘things-in-themselves’.   If we forget the name ‘John Dunbar’ or if we never knew it, we may know him in a nameless, relational (non-objectified) sense by way of how he is an included participant, along with ourselves, in a web of relational dynamics.   In our post-stroke experience, ‘things-in-themselves’ and their name-tags ‘fall away’ while level 1 relational cognition rises to the fore.

Phenomena that can only be explained ‘relationally’ and are not satisfied by level 3 cognition in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves-do’ encourages a grounding (or re-grounding) of belief in the ‘greater reality’ of level 1 (relational) cognition over level 3 (thing-in-itself-based) cognition.  Meanwhile, the culture conditioned belief in level 3 cognition continues on in deep denial of its inadequacy within (pre-relativity) scientific circles; e.g;

“The slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a single cell without a brain, yet it can make surprisingly complicated decisions. In this animated video short, watch as a slime mold navigates through a maze and solves a civil engineering problem.” — Nova, ‘Slime Mold Smarts’

Level 1 relational cognition wherein ‘forms’ are not understood as ‘things-in-themselves’ aka ‘organism as things-in-themselves’ but as developments within a transforming relational continuum may scream out for recognition here, but pre-relativity ‘science’ that constrains its view to terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’ has an inbuilt deafness to such calls.

Even though our popular cognitive modeling in terms of ‘a thing-in-itself’ that ‘makes its own decisions’ (a level 3 cognitive modeling approach that Western culture has put into an unnatural primacy over the level 1 relational cognitive mode) overtly ‘falls flat on its face’, as in this case, it does not ‘bring the level 3 cognitive model down’.  Why not?   Because, as Nietzsche has pointed out, the level 3 model is supported by ‘ego’ which supports the notion of humans as ‘beings’ that are ‘fully and solely responsible for their own actions and results’.  The collapse of this foundational Western culture premise would collapse the Western culture belief system [in those who currently believe in it or serve as ‘fellow travellers’ by feigning belief in it].  In a society wherein there is a mix of indigenous aboriginal level 1 cognitive primacy and Western level 3 cognitive primacy, a gradual transition would be possible.

 

There is quite a bit of ‘repetition’ and ‘overlap’ in this essay, and while this may seem like ‘bad form’ in a straight-forward ‘rational’ explanation, I believe that ‘at least some of it’ is necessitated by the nature of the challenge where relational understanding that lacks discrete rational foundation, must be conveyed through ‘bootstrapping’.  This has been expressed by Wittgenstein, as follows;

“There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and an end, is a sort of contradiction [Elsewhere Wittgenstein quotes Heraclitus “everything is in flux” on this same problem of being forced to capture a complex continuing dynamic by notional ‘parts’]. One difficulty with philosophy is that we lack a synoptic view. We encounter the kind of difficulty we should have with the geography of a country for which we had no map, or else a map of isolated bits. The country we are talking about is language, and the geography its grammar. We can walk about the country quite well, but when forced to make a map, we go wrong. A map will show different roads through the same country, any one of which we can take, though not two, just as in philosophy we must take up problems one by one though in fact each problem leads to a multitude of others. We must wait until we come round to the starting point before we can proceed to another section, that is, before we can either treat of the problem we first attacked or proceed to another. In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads. So I suggest repetition as a means of surveying the connections.”  — Wittgenstein

* * *

Summary: How does ‘Bootstrapping’ relate to ‘Stroke’?

Having a ‘left brain’ stroke takes one from ‘level 3 cognition’ (in primacy) in terms of ‘things-in-themselves and ‘what things do’ to level 1 cognition (in primacy) in terms of relations.  Understanding ‘who someone is’ relationally (including one’s own children, sisters, brothers etc.) is to ‘bootstrap’ one’s understanding of oneself and others by seeing (conceiving of) them ‘in relational context’.  Ultimately, relational context is all there is in a world as understood in modern physics as a transforming relational continuum.  ‘Things-in-themselves’ are language-based abstraction rather than realities available to our natural experience.

The ‘left brain’ stroke experient does not forget his children or intimates as it may appear by his forgetting their thing-in-itself name-labels; i.e. he does not forget his ‘relational’ or ‘bootstrapping based’ cognition of them, but he may forget [or have difficulty in spontaneously recalling] the ‘thing-in-itself’ based way of knowing them as highlighted by Bitzer and Gradgrind in Dickens ‘Hard Times’.  The ‘thing-in-itself’ based way of knowing is what ‘drops out’ in the left-brain stroke.

What I have experienced is that the level 3 mode of cognition is no longer dominating and ‘covering up’ my level 1 relational mode of cognition.  Level 1 is purely relational and has no need of knowledge of ‘things-in-themselves’. [level one cognition is by ‘bootstrapping’ from purely relational experience as suggested by ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’].

The English language (and other noun-and-verb based languages) can be used in both ‘bootstrapping’ mode and in direct ‘thing-in-itself’ driven ‘rational’ mode.  Thus, when the knowledge of ‘things-in-themselves’ ‘drops out’ following the stroke, bootstrapping is not only ‘still available’, it becomes the prime (sole) option.  This is why I can’t tell you the ‘thing-in-itself’ name of the person I want to talk about, but you can find out who I am talking about by playing the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ with me, which is to essentially ‘bootstrap’ who the person is and thus recover ‘their thing-in-itself name’ as a secondary rather than primary way of knowing the person.  We could agree on who ‘Dances with Wolves’ is without ever having to recall that his ‘thing-in-itself’ name is ‘John Dunbar’.  That is, we can ‘know him’ by way of ‘all his relations’ or ‘mitakuye oyasin’ in the indigenous aboriginal usage.

In spite of the above expressed understanding of ‘my stroke’ and how it is has impacted my cognitive capabilities, the Western medical system employs the level 3 cognition of mainstream science to understand ‘what is wrong with me’ and ‘how to fix it’.  Therapy therefore aims to restore ‘normal’ cognitive faculty as understood in terms of level 3 cognition which is in terms of name-labelled things-in-themselves and ‘what these things-in-themselves do’.

There is, evidently, no direct acknowledgement in the stroke-recovery therapies of the ‘scientific community’ of the ‘uplift’ that comes with the left brain stroke, which is the restoring of level 1 cognition (in relational terms via a bootstrapping approach) to its natural primacy.   While acknowledging the ‘insight’ that comes with the stroke, I would nevertheless like to relearn how to think like I used to think as supports ‘knowing what it takes’ to participate as a ‘normal’ member of (conventional) Western society (not necessarily to resume that role but to better understand how to navigate within the level 3 field of expectations while encouraging the return of level 1 cognition to its natural primacy).  Of course, my view is also that the ego-driven level 3 mode of cognition, deriving from the literal employing/deploying of noun-and-verb (thing-in-itself based) language, is a recipe for ego driven social dysfunction.  Thus, while I want to redevelop facility with level 3 cognition for the purpose of cultivating harmonious relationships in a culture that continues to put level 3 into an unnatural primacy over level 1 cognition, I have no plans to unequivocally embrace level 3 cognition and its ego-driven conceptualizing as the primary animator of my behaviour.  As is implicit in my writing of my stroke-of-insight experience, I shall continue to share my perspective on how literal belief in, and acceptance of level 3 cognition as ‘reality’ is the source of social dysfunction.

 

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[1] FOOTNOTE: PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENT ON ‘BOOTSTRAPPING’.

One could argue that the difference between the indigenous aboriginal mode of cognition and the Western European mode of cognition (which is dominant in the world today), can be understood in the sense that;

(a) the world of our experience’ is a transforming relational continuum wherein ‘things’ are relational forms, whereas;

(b) the world of Western intellect is a world constituted by notional ‘material things-in-themselves’ and ‘what these things-in-themselves do’.

(c) the world as in (a) can be cognitively known by linguistic ‘bootstrapping’ wherein we ‘invent’ word-labelled ‘things-in-themselves’ and deploy them, linguistically, within relational complexes to ‘reproduce’ cognitive impressions of the dynamics of our experience.  Thus the world based on (b) is not to be ‘taken literally’ but understood as a crude means of implying a dynamic that is intrinsically ‘relational’ as with ‘relational forms’ in a ‘relational flow-field’ wherein ‘everything is in flux’.  Such a world (a continual relational becoming) cannot be cognitively captured in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves are doing’.  However, this purely relational world dynamic can be ‘bootstrapped’ by the expedient introduction of ‘notional things’ and ‘actions of things’;  an ‘expedient’ wherein the synthetic ‘things-in-themselves’ are merely for the purpose of cognitive conveying of the (‘beyond thing-based’) relational transformation that is the essence of the ‘dynamic real world of our natural experience’.

The views of the philosophers cited in the above essay have in common that what they articulate in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what these things-in-themselves do’ is not ‘reality’ but a ‘cognitive device’ that is merely a means of ‘bootstrapping’ the ‘real reality’ which cannot be directly captured since it is a transforming relational continuum in which we ourselves are included relational forms.

‘Bootstrapping’ is a means of cognitive conveying of ‘relational dynamics’ wherein ‘forms’ are relational features (as in a ‘flow-field’) by inventing notional ‘things-in-themselves’ and portraying them as if engaging in relational dynamics [e.g. ‘Dances with Wolves’].  There is no limit to the amount of detail that can be purely implicitly conveyed by way of a matrix of relations in our cognitive understanding in this bootstrapping approach.  The detailed imagery is in the form of ‘induced cognition’ as in ‘Dances with Wolves’ or more generally, as in ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.  There is no solid ‘being’ at the bottom of such bootstrapped relational constructions, there are only ‘relations’.  The notional ‘things-in-themselves’ ‘created’ and ‘animated’ by noun-and-verb language and grammar, are not stand-ins for ‘physically real’ ‘things-in-themselves’ but are intellectually mobilized as an expedient means of ‘suggesting’ a dynamic that is, in physical reality, purely relational.

Philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein have ‘pointed this out’ in their writings, but Western society has developed and deeply entrenched a ‘literalist’ habit of cognitively confusing bootstrapping’s linguistic expedient of deploying ‘pseudo-things-in-themselves’ for ‘real’, absolute ‘being’ based things-in-themselves’.  The concept of absolute being as in ‘things-in-themselves’ (Jantsch level 3 cognition) is rational abstraction that the logical functionality of the ‘left brain’ accepts without question.  However, our level 1 relational cognition insists that all being-based entities are no more than expedient ‘Wittgenstein ladders’ used to ‘bootstrap’ an understanding of the intrinsically ‘relational’ phenomena of our experience.  The following comments, included above in the body of the essay, are references to the need to avoid literal interpretation of object-based language; e.g;

“My propositions are elucidatory in this way: He who understands me, finally recognizes [my logical propositions] as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it) . . . . then he sees the world rightly”

”Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. “ … “Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.”

– Wittgenstein

Since ‘science’ [the rational/abstract ‘thing-in-itself’ ‘object-based science’ of Newton and NOT the relational science of Boscovich, Nietzsche, Schroedinger] is the popular ‘cognitive authority’ in Western culture, level 3 ‘literalist cognition’ is hijacking/eclipsing the deeper ‘bootstrapped’ level 1 relational understanding that ‘hides’ beneath it’.  What Wittgenstein intends by “He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it”  is that the many references such as ‘dances with wolves’ as in the ‘surprise version of the game of 20 Questions’ serve to convey an understanding of a relational form within a transforming relational continuum.  The is the relational cognitive path to Sissy Jupe’s horse in Kickens’ ‘Hard Times’ that is quite unlike Bitzer’s “ ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’

The forms in nature are relationally induced (bootstrapped) within a transforming relational continuum rather than genetically engineered from a local ‘genetic blueprint’.  The ‘mystery’ to science of how a newt whose eye is damaged can grow a new eye is no longer a mystery when one acknowledges that forms are outside-inwardly induced developments, as with storm-cells in the flow.  While rational cognition does not object to human ego’s (level 3) personifying of the ‘organism’ as a ‘thing-in-itself’ with its own internal generative/animating mechanism, our level 1 relational understanding sees all such ‘forms’ as relational features within the transforming relational continuum (flow-field).

‘Bootstrapping’ is, in essence, a cognitive device wherein we ‘invent things-in-themselves’ as an expedient for creating an impression of a relational dynamic. The relational web forming from the multiplicity of things-in-themselves-and-what-things-in-themselves do’ serves as a linguistically shareable ‘effigy’ of the underlying thingless relational dynamics of nature; i.e. the transforming relational continuum that constitutes the reality of our physical experience.  It is not ‘things’ that are changing but the form-filled relational field whose forms we linguistically name and label (and thus cognitively/grammatically ‘reify’) that is changing.  Such reification of flow-forms gives us ‘rhetorical traction’ for sharing our observations and experiences. These expediently conceived of ‘things-in-themselves’ are invented solely for the purpose of cognitive development of a relational dynamic that does not depend on ‘things-in-themselves’.  Once the purely relational understanding is available to cognition, the level 3 propositions based on ‘things’ and ‘what things do’ can be cast aside since they are simply a device to ‘bootstrap’ level 1 relational cognition.