one of the things that WJ wrote about in his principles of psychology was about how he thought that what causes "association of ideas" is their "halo" or fringe" surrounding them. WJ was trying to explain what linked items together in consciousness and thought that some aspect on the "fringe" of the thought-data (my word not his)linked items together. this is basically an extremely embryonic account of both the effect of priming as well as the conceptions of schema. i thought it appropriate to consider this visually and so have included a rudimentary diagram that i feel sheds light upon the thought.
where this gets more interesting is in regards to a problem that WJ was having with psychology in regards to the question of how the individual's unique experience shaped the contents of their mind. in answer of this he thought that again there was something similar to the "fringe" effect going on. again ive included a diagram that i think sheds more light upon what he may have meant by this.
the reason all this stuff is interesting is because it's another account of the same problem that ive been having with philosophy of mind and the study of being. it is interesting to think of the influences experience has upon the contents of consciousness and there are contemporary examples of how this can happen (PTSD, MDD, amnesia, etc, etc, etc) but these examples don't truly capture the underlying nature of what is occuring they merely describe the surface details of how the what is occuring.
i have asserted and will assert again that in terms of experience there must be some kind of 'base entity' of experience for living organisms. my definition of being is basically this 'base entity'. the mind to being is like a tool that organizes the objects of life into our mental world and also organizes the objects of our mental world into life in a reciprocal manner. the mind can be 'put aside' temporarily (in some cases permanently) and experience can be had in a purely experiential way free of the mind's influences (ie - meditation, extreme torture, hallucinogens, physical injury). this being true its easy to see the mind as something that being experiences and not as actual being.
basically, this whole idea of the fringe effect got me thinking about how WJ's thoughts could be visually represented in order to understand them better. once i had the diagrams present in my head it wasn't a hard step to see that WJ was interested in the same thing i am although from a different perspective. he was interested in seeing how the mind affects the contents of the mental world whereas i am interested in seeing how being affects the mind in such a way as to influence the contents of the mental world. although it may not be possible to observe being in such a scientific way, it would still be a useful ontological concept regardless. if experiences and logic compel us to conceive of ourselves as being at core "experiential" rather than "minded" than my concept of being will indeed prove useful to the further study of the experience of being a body in the world.
anyways, this got me thinking more because i was thinking that maybe that whole idea of self seen in the diagram was being. however, after thinking about it and fleshing the idea out i see now that i was mistaken and that what i mistook for being is actually mind; a mistake made my many, including contemporary philosophers and psychologists. this led me to think about how being is more about the perspectivity that the mind takes upon various aspects of its mental world and not about what comprises that perspectivity. however, this new thought led me conceive of the notion of a meta-being. that is, a being that is 'outside' of its mind and is able to observe the connections as they form and what influences them. i realise that such a meta-being is an exceedingly impossible seeming thing but it may be quite possible that meta-being is really just the actualized form of meta-becoming that many people do partake in.
meta-becoming is the embryonic and primitive form of meta-being. it is not necessarily an entity unto itself but merely the forming of an entity. meta-becoming is thusly more so a state of mind that many people slip into, both consciously and unconsciously. some do it unconsciously as a matter of their experiential programming of mind. through their experiences theyve come to realize that its beneficial to explore the influences that aspects of the mind can have upon other aspects of the mind; they have thusly come to study their own such influences as the natural result of their living philosophy. others however have the brutish misfortune of what may be a choice in the matter. perhaps they come upon knowledge that enables them to realise the importance of understanding why they do the things they do or why they think the things they think; at this point they get to "choose" whether or not to pay attention and truly study themselves in this way. an example of this study (not all inclusive of what it means to understand oneself from the meta-being perspective) would be the sociological concepts of primary and secondary socialization. once people being to study themselves and their influences they have awakened their meta-becoming and started upon a journey towards meta-being.
this meta-being, or being-outside-itself, is something not realised by many or even few. i find it likely that this level of self understanding is beyond the reach of possibly every human being at this point in history. partly due to poor records kept of formative years (and even the years afterwards) and also partly due to infantile amnesia (the normal forgetting of childhood experiences before 3 or so) as well as even just plain old regular forgetfulness.
it also may be possible that understanding all of the connections and influences would create a 'second mind' in order to process the information and feed it to being for experience. if this were the case, then it would be quite impossible for a meta-being to exist because the 'second mind' would have to be understood in the same way as the first, and then a 'third mind' would have to be created to understand the second, and so on and so on. however this is not the case. no 'second mind' need be created in understanding of the first because understanding of the first would apply analogically to the further understanding and connections. in this way, meta-being avoids an untimely infinite regress.
furthermore, i should note, this concept of meta-being is merely the finalized product of being using the mind to become fully whole, realised, and actualised. meta-being is something that can only appear phylogenetically (not in the biological sense but in the onto-evolutionary sense) after being. one must exist as a being before coming upon (or not) the state of meta-becoming which can lead to meta-being. therefore, being is still the primary base entity of experience and not necessarily subservient or subsumed under meta-being. furthermore, meta-being is moreover an ontological entity of complete awareness (of the individuality and 'togetherness' of mind/body/being) than an active director such as is displayed by being. meta-being is basically an awareness of the both the systems influencing the individual parts (body/mind/being) as well as the systems influencing the togetherness (both of which are always present although we for the most part remain unaware of them).
it should also be noted that meta-being is not to be equated with meta cognition, as meta cognition is purely about the mind (and in a sense body). however, meta cognition can and often does cross into the realm of meta-becoming. sometimes this manifests as pure meta-cognition (becoming aware of thoughts and thought-influences, sometimes also as pure meta-becoming (becoming aware of the influences of mind on being and vice versa), and sometimes as a mixture between the two.
although this definition of meta-being seems cumbersome as well as ill-needed as likely no human will achieve this completeness of awareness it seems important to define the logical endpoint of self-awareness. the idea of being for us, in the gross macro world of the observable, must be preceded with some kind of becoming. we have no experiences of things just coming into being (except for tin the micro subtle worlds where electrons and quarks just "appear" and "disappear", coming and going from existence). meta-being is the ultimate endpoint of personal awareness, preceded by meta-becoming, preceded by many steps in between but starting with being. this all kind of begs the question though 'what is the 'becoming' of being?' and for this i have no answer at present. however i believe in the future the precise moment of the start of mental life will be observed by physiologists and when this happens the study of becoming can emerge.
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