DOCSLIB.ORG

Glen T Martin

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Glen T Martin The New Moral Imperative of Holism Prof.Glen T Martin Earth Constitution Institute USA 1 The New Moral Imperative of Holism Prof.Glen T. Martin Copyright © 2020 Earth Constitution Institute First Digital Edition – All Rights Reserved 2 The New Moral Imperative of Holism There has been a fundamental paradigm shift taking place in the sciences since physicist Max Planck published his “quantum hypothesis” in 1900 and Einstein published his “special theory of relativity” in 1905. Both theories have flourished since that time with ever more corroboration and depth of insight into the nature of our cosmos. The world of the very small (quantum physics) and the vast universe as a whole (relativity physics) together reveal a world integrated at all levels as a dynamic and integrated cosmic whole. The result is that we now understand the universe to be fundamentally different from the paradigm developed by Isaac Newton and early modern science. This paradigm shift corresponds to an emergent encounter with the reality of the cosmos and our growth toward true human maturity. The astonishing coherence of the cosmos demands a corresponding coherence from us. From this encounter arises a renewed understanding of what it means to be a human being, and a new understanding of the fundamental moral (categorical) imperative that arises from our 3 common human situation. This article attempts to express, as concisely as possible, the nature and origins of this moral imperative and its implications for action in the form of ratification of the Earth Constitution. Mind and Body Traditional philosophy, going back to Plato, attempted to understand the relations between mind (capable of discerning intelligible order in the world) from the sensuous experiences of the world around us. What was the relation of mind and matter, inner consciousness and external world? Descartes in the 17th century declared that there were two kinds of finite realities— mind and matter. Mind was non-physical and matter was extended and physical. Subsequent early modern philosophy attempted to define these features of our common experience, or define one of them in terms of the other. In 20th century thought, this dualism (or reductionism of one into terms of the other) begins to disappear. The holism that emerged from 20th century sciences recognized that mind and matter are just two aspects of one emergent world of pure energy manifesting itself in intelligible patterns. By the mid-twentieth century, major scholarly books began to appear 4 challenging the dualism between consciousness (mind) and unconsciousness (matter). Physicist Amit Goswami affirms that “mental phenomena—such as self-consciousness, free will, creativity…—find simple, satisfying explanations when the mind-body problem is reformulated in an overall context of… [holistic coherence] and quantum theory” (1995, p.11). Today, such volumes have become commonplace. In the philosophical discourse of the most advanced thinkers, we have moved beyond the early modern mind-matter dilemmas to comprehensive insights into the structure and functioning of the whole of the cosmos—the emergent, evolving dynamic wholeness of all things. The early modern paradigm tended to be atomistic, mechanistic, and deterministic, looking at the universe and human experience in terms of “bodies in motion.” The contemporary paradigm has abandoned all three of these features attributed to the world. Mind is no longer a stranger that finds itself self- aware within an alien mechanistic cosmos. Mind is now an integral dimension of the cosmos itself and our human minds are emergent reflections of the cosmic phenomenon of mind. Quantum physicist Henry P. Stapp concludes: “Thus a radical shift in the physics-based conception 5 of man from that of an isolated mechanical automaton to that of an integral participant in a non-local holistic process that gives form and meaning to the evolving universe is a seismic event of potentially momentous proportions” (2011, p. 140). Just as the early modern distinction between mind and matter breaks down, so the early modern distinction between the “is” and the “ought” (emphasized by 18th century thinker David Hume and others) breaks down. Mind is teleological. Mind posits values and pursues them according to an “ought.” If mind is now inseparable from the reality of the world studied by science, then so are values. What is and what ought to be now interface as part of the same, dynamic cosmic reality. Philosopher and cosmologist Errol E. Harris declares: “So far from excluding man and his mind, so far from standing over and against and opposing humanity, as something to be subdued and exploited, nature and mind are to be seen as one—matter and mind fused into a single reality, as body and mind form one person.” (1987, p. 262). Values (moral imperatives) he concludes, emerge from this dynamic holistic reality (ibid. Chap. 14). 6 Under the quantum theory that has emerged since the early 20th century, not only is mind understood as an emergent aspect of the holistic energy matrix that is our cosmos, mind also plays a role in the “unfolding of reality” (Stapp 2011, p. 6). We are in a reciprocal relationship with the cosmic process—that is, with the evolution of the whole from the Big Bang to the present. Physicist David Bohm writes: “Consciousness and matter in general are basically the same order…. This order is what makes a relationship between the two possible” (1980, p. 264). Pioneer of consciousness-studies Jean Houston concludes that we are “stewards of the earth’s well-being and conscious participants in the cosmic epic of evolution” (in Laszlo, Houston, Dossey 2016, pp. 6-7). Human Beings Focus the Cosmos The universe changes us and we change the universe in mutual interaction and coherence. Suddenly human beings are shifted back to the center, a center from which we were seemingly shifted by the Copernican Revolution that declared us peripheral to the center and spinning on a tiny planet going around the true center, at that time thought to be the sun. But with the progress of science, we all but disappeared into an ever-expanding, unimaginably vast cosmos. 7 By the 19th century, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out that this shift called into question all previous human value systems: “Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane—now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into— what? Into nothingness? Into a penetrating sense of his nothingness?” (1969, p. 155). Today, we are back at the center. We understand that we embody the holism of the cosmos, a holism that both animates our consciousness and functions as an intelligible good for human values. In Global Democracy and Human Self- Transcendence, I wrote: Holism functions not only as the new paradigm emerging from an entire range of twentieth century scientific discoveries, creative holism also arises from our futurity as an intelligible good, functioning as an ideal of human organization and relationships. As we have seen, our capacity for self-transcendence inherent within our temporal existence allows us to discern intelligible goods and motivates us to seek their realization. Holism as an intelligible good promises the unity of our human project, a cooperative, sustainable world of peace and prosperity, the end to all wars, to hatred, needless fears, and most violence. The oneness 8 of genuine unity in diversity calls to us in the form of a transformed future. (2018, p. 233) Today, we are beginning to understand that we are co-creators within the process of cosmic evolution. We discern the intelligible good of holism. We are now responsible for that evolution on our planet. Physicist Henry P. Stapp writes: “Thus contemporary orthodox physics delegates some of the responsibilities formerly assigned to an inscrutable God, acting in the distant past, to our present knowable conscious actions” (2011, p. 9). Our conscious actions can counteract the law of entropy which says that all things run down and die. We can enhance the emergent coherence at the heart of the evolutionary process. The emergent complexity of the world reveals an anti-entropic movement at work. The anti- entropic movement of the evolutionary universe has been to actualize, at ever-higher levels of complexity and consciousness, what physicist David Bohm (1980) calls the “implicate order” of holism implicit in all existent things, what scientist-philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the emergent noösphere (mind- sphere). If this is so, then it would appear that we are called 9 upon to consciously assimilate that holism (that is also at the awakening core of our being)—act on it, enhance it, develop it, and coordinate it. Here I am using this great metaphor arising from western religions: We are called: “God’s call.” Teilhard writes: “this will open to an advance of all together, in a direction in which all together can join and find completion in a spiritual renovation of the earth” (1959, p.244). Errol E. Harris declares: “If the implications of the scientific revolution and the new paradigm it introduces are taken seriously, holism should be the dominating concept in all our thinking…. Atomism, individualism, separatism, and reductionism have become obsolete, are no longer tolerable and must be given up” (2000, p. 90). Indeed, as Bohm also points out, “fragmentation” is precisely our problem. This fragmentation (atomism, mechanism, reductionism, and causal determinism) is derived from the early modern paradigm that continues to condition our thinking and our institutions. It lies at the root of our on-going destruction of the planetary environment and our on-going potential for destroying ourselves through weapons of mass destruction possessed by so-called “sovereign” states. Albert Einstein wrote that our egoism and 10 individualism is “a kind of optical illusion,” a “kind of prison” that “restricts us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.” However, the awakening to the holism of which we are conscious expressions can allow us to “widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty” (in Kafatos and Nadau, p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Part 1 What Is Negative Entropy? from World Views
    What is Controlling Life? 21 PART 1 WHAT IS NEGATIVE ENTROPY? FROM WORLD VIEWS TO BIOENERGETICS What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive. Erwin Schrödinger: What is Life? Modern Trends in BioThermoKinetics 3 1994 BTK Ed. E. Gnaiger et al., Innsbruck Univ. Press 22 What is Controlling Life? Erwin Schrödinger around 1902 What is Controlling Life? 23 ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER'S WORLD VIEW. THE ROLE OF PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY IN HIS PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM Johann Götschela, Werner Leinfellnera,b Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Wissenschaftsforschung und Institut für Philosophie der Universität Graz, Mozartgasse 14, 8010 Graz, Austria; bDepartment of Philosophy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA PHYSICS, BIOLOGY AND PHILOSPHY Erwin Schrödinger is well-known as one of the greatest figures of theoretical physics. He became famous for his mathematical formulation of atomic dynamics, known as the Schrödinger equation, and its application to atomic structures. In 1933, he received the Nobel Prize in physics (jointly with Paul Dirac). It therefore comes as no surprise that interpreters of Schrödinger's work, dazzled by his genius and the results he obtained in quantum physics, almost forget the other Schrödinger, the biologist and philosopher. In reality, he not only revolutionized the foundations of modern physics but also made significant contributions to biology and the philosophy of science [1]. The paradigm change he initiated has had great consequences for the natural and social sciences, the humanities, and our present world-view in general [1,2].
    [Show full text]
  • Taking Holism Seriously: a Reply to Critics
    1 Taking Holism Seriously: A Reply to Critics Published in Philosophical Books 42 (2001), 187-195 By Mark Bevir Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley Berkeley CA 94720 2 Taking Holism Seriously: A Reply to Critics I would like to thanks Professors Dodson, Gendler, and Gracia for their thoughtful responses to my work. I am particularly thankful because their critical comments have prompted me to reflect further on how I would situate the arguments of The Logic of the History of Ideas in relation to trends in both the philosophy of history and (post)analytic philosophy more generally. Indeed, I want to begin now by considering how to situate my arguments since I think doing so will enable me to move swiftly to many of the pertinent issues raised by Dodson, Gendler, and Gracia. When discussing the Logic with historical theorists, I realized that my use of philosophy, especially (post)analytic philosophy, was itself a controversial move.1 The dominant modes of historical theorizing today seem to be an emphasis on rhetoric and poetics associated with Hayden White and one on sociology and power associated with Michel Foucault. (Post)analytic philosophy in comparison occupies a relatively small space. One reason for the marginalization of (post)analytic philosophy is, I suspect, that its practitioners have almost entirely withdrawn from the field. While the concerns and arguments of analytic philosophers have changed quite noticeably over the last twenty to thirty years, these changes have occurred within an increasingly narrow disciplinary focus on questions of mind, language, and epistemology. They have had almost no impact on the philosophy of history.
    [Show full text]
  • 3 Holism, Chinese Medicine And
    3 HOLISM, CHINESE MEDICINE AND SYSTEMS IDEOLOGIES: REWRITING THE PAST TO IMAGINE THE FUTURE Volker Scheid Int roduction his chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half- Tcentury between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biol- ogy. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a defi nition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious start- ing point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technol- ogy studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthro- pologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice.1 This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s defi nition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to lib erate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’.2 If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affi rming this shared objective and respon- sibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation. With that in mind, this chapter seeks to accomplish three inter-related goals. It is fi rst an inquiry into the historical processes whereby Chinese medicine, holism and systems biology have come to be entangled with each other in the present. The term holism is not originally Chinese and was only applied to Chinese medicine from the 1950s onward.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Cognitive Holistic Theory of Language and Its Public Utility
    COGNITIVE HOLISM: UNDERSTANDING COGNITIVE HOLISTIC THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND ITS PUBLIC UTILITY Devendra Nath Tiwari Abstract: Understanding an indivisible cognition through the analytic part has its own beauty that we can call analytic skill, but that must aim at clarity and conception of the cognition which is a whole approached through individual steps. Composite forms have their own beauty, imposition of the cognition on our different allegiance has a different beauty but if one does not understand clearly the different roles the indivisible cognition plays in causing the pleasure in some and pain in others, amusing in some and an obsession in others, illuminating in some and deviating in others, one cannot enjoy wisdom and bliss. Holism talks about language as power, the potency that works differently in wise and in ignorant in causing different effects that veils and deviates from the indivisible cognition. Interpretation of the cognition needs cognitive holistic approach to realize wisdom. Consciousness, at human level, is channelized for flashings of concepts/thoughts that are determinate because language infuses them. All that consciousness flashes is a concept that serves as incentive for action including producing verbal noises and is analyzed and interpreted variously to make it understandable to beginners and ignorant. The language that infuses cognition is intelligible being and so is the thought we directly know them when they flash. In order to articulate the intelligible being of language, we use verbal noises (dhvaniyān), gestures and written marks (lipiyān) which differ from one to the other language speaking communities. Cognition is indivisible whole and language only determinates it.
    [Show full text]
  • Hume's Problem of Induction and the Universalization Of
    In Defense of Newtonian Induction: Hume's Problem of Induction and the Universalization of Primary Qualities Ori Belkind November 1, 2018 Abstract This paper aims to advance two claims. First, it aims to show that Hume's argument against the rationality of induction is sound. However, I claim that the conclusion does not follow merely from the self-defeating attempts to justify the rule of induction, unlike traditional readings of the argument. Rather, the skeptical conclusion must also take into account Hume's argument that the secret powers that are present in bodies and give rise to sensible qualities are unknowable. The paper's second aim is to show that Newtonian induction escapes Hume's secret powers argument, given that it includes a transductive inference, from observable phenomena to the powers present in the ultimate parts of matter. Consequently Hume's argument against the rationality of induction does not demonstrate the non-rational nature of Newtonian induction. 1 Introduction This paper articulates a certain reading of Hume's argument against the rationality of induction. Unlike traditional interpretations of Hume's argument, mine takes his argument to involve two distinct sub-arguments; the first is that inductive inferences lack rational support. I term this sub-argument the No Rational Support Argument (NRSA) (Section 2). I also argue that Hume uses a second sub- argument, one I term the Secret Powers Argument, or SPA, to undermine our belief in the rationality of induction. According to the SPA (examined in Section 3), we do not have access to the secret powers of bodies.
    [Show full text]
  • 5 Holism and Animal Minds
    WML05 12/20/2006 6:36 PM Page 251 5 Holism and Animal Minds David Finkelstein 1 It’s not unusual for influential philosophers to make statements about the minds of nonlinguistic creatures that to a nonphilosopher would seem not merely implausible, but plainly and obviously false. For example, in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty (1979, 187) defends the claim “that knowledge, awareness, concepts, . all descend on the shoulders of the bright child somewhere around the age of four, without having existed in even the most primitive form hitherto.” According to Rorty, a creature without language—whether human or nonhuman—is not aware of any- thing, and, contrary to what you might imagine when he climbs into bed with you each night, your dog has never once even noticed you. In arguing for this thesis, Rorty takes himself to be following the lead of Wilfrid Sellars. He quotes approvingly a passage from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” in which Sellars (1997, 63) describes his own position as one “according to which all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all awareness of abstract entities—indeed, all awareness even of particulars—is a linguistic affair.” According to Rorty, Sellars finds an innocent way to allow that brutes may be said to enjoy a kind of awareness. As Rorty (1979, 182) reads him, Sellars distinguishes “between aware- ness-as-discriminative behavior and awareness as . being ‘in the logical space of reasons, of justifying what one says.’” He goes on: “Awareness in the first sense is manifested by rats and amoebas and computers; it is simply reliable signaling.
    [Show full text]
  • 01. Logic, Empiricism, Confirmation
    STS-UY 2004 Science, Technology, and Society Study questions for [GS] Introduction 1. What does empiricism claim? 2. Describe the view of science that empiricism subscribes to. 3. What is the relation between mathematics and science according to Galileo? 4. How can the social structure of science affect how it is done? 5. What is instrumentalism? 6. Describe the mechanical view of the world. Study questions for [GS] Chapter 2: Logic Plus Empiricism 1. What is the difference between external world skepticism and inductive skepticism? 2. Is empiricism compatible with external world skepticism? Explain. 3. How are rationalists different from empiricists? 4. What do "idealist" philosophies like Hegel's claim about the world? 5. What is the distinction between an analytic sentence and a synthetic sentence? 6. What does the verifiability theory of meaning claim? 7. What did the positivists mean by "verification". 8. What is wrong with the claim "God exists", according to the verifiability theory of meaning? 9. What is the distinction between "observation" language and "theoretical" language? 10. What is the difference between deductive logic and inductive logic, according to the positivists? 11. What is the distinction between the "context of discovery" and the "context of justification"? 12. When it comes to analyzing science, what is the status of logic compared with history and psychology, according to the positivists? 13. Describe a problem with the verifiability theory of meaning. 14. What does holism about testing (i.e., the "Duhem-Quine thesis") claim? In what sense does it argue against the verifiability theory of meaning? 15. In what sense does the Duhem-Quine thesis argue against the analytic-synthetic distinction.
    [Show full text]
  • Holism, Physical Theories and Quantum Mechanics *
    Holism, Physical Theories and Quantum Mechanics ? M.P. Seevinck a aInstitute for History and Foundations of Natural Science, P.O.Box 80.000, University of Utrecht, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands Abstract Motivated by the question what it is that makes quantum mechanics a holistic the- ory (if so), I try to define for general physical theories what we mean by `holism'. For this purpose I propose an epistemological criterion to decide whether or not a physical theory is holistic, namely: a physical theory is holistic if and only if it is impossible in principle to infer the global properties, as assigned in the theory, by local resources available to an agent. I propose that these resources include at least all local operations and classical communication. This approach is contrasted with the well-known approaches to holism in terms of supervenience. The criterion for holism proposed here involves a shift in emphasis from ontology to epistemology. I apply this epistemological criterion to classical physics and Bohmian mechanics as represented on a phase and configuration space respectively, and for quantum mechanics (in the orthodox interpretation) using the formalism of general quan- tum operations as completely positive trace non-increasing maps. Furthermore, I provide an interesting example from which one can conclude that quantum me- chanics is holistic in the above mentioned sense, although, perhaps surprisingly, no entanglement is needed. Key words: holism, supervenience, classical physics, quantum mechanics, entanglement PACS: 03.65.-w, 01.70.+w ? This paper is based on talks given at the `International Workshop on Holism in the Philosophy of Physics' held at Bonn on 4-5 July 2003 and at the `12th UK Conference on the Foundations of Physics' held at Leeds on 2-5 September 2003.
    [Show full text]
  • Comments on Nicholas Gier's “Aristotle, Confucius, and Practical
    Comments on Nicholas Gier’s “Aristotle, Confucius, and Practical Reason” I know quite a bit about Aristotle’s ethics, but only a little about Confucianism; I have read and taught enough of the latter to be familiar with concepts like yi, li, and ren. Hence the bulk of my comments will pertain to Professor Gier’s interpretation of Aristotle. Given that discussion, I will then have some suggestions about the role of yi as I understand it. Professor Gier’s main claim is that “the Confucian concept of yi performs roughly the same function as phronesis in Aristotle” (1), and more specifically that “Confucian yi, just as does Aristotelian phronesis, allows us to adapt norms to context and to choose exceptions to rules” (5). I agree with this description of phronesis. However, Professor Gier makes other claims about the nature of phronesis that I believe are mistaken or at least misleading. Perhaps by clearing up some of these misconceptions, I can offer Professor Gier an account of phronesis with which he can strengthen his case for the parallel with the Confucian yi. On the other hand, he might think I am just wrong about Aristotle, in which case I am open to being corrected. Prof. Gier begins by suggesting that we translate sophia and phronesis as theoretical and practical reason respectively. He immediately adds: “The principal disadvantage with this choice is that it obscures the fact that Aristotle believes that both are virtues and not faculties, a concept alien to the Greek mind” (1). I would respond that whether we call them faculties or not, Aristotle clearly delineates parts or elements of the soul distinguishing them by their capacities or functions.
    [Show full text]
  • Analyticity and Holism in Quine's Thought Peter Hylton
    Analyticity and Holism in Quine's Thought Peter Hylton This essay is based on a talk that Ifirstgave at a conference in honour of the memory of my teacher, the late Burton Dreben, who taught at Harvard from 1956-1990. I dedi- cate it to his memory. Throughout our conversations, and in his teaching moregeneral- ly, Burt always stressed the complexity of what is often called 'the analytic-synthetic debate'. In the last philosophical conversation that I had with him, he particularly emphasized the role that holism plays for Quine. This essay is based upon those two points. I attempt togive a sketch of Quine's complex views on analyticity, a sketch that will emphasize the central role that holism plays in those views. I should emphasize that my primary aim is to show how the matter appears from Quine's perspective. From other points of view, most notably Carnap's, it would no doubt seem rather different at crucial points; I note some of these points in passing, but do not discuss them. I. The Nature of the Question More than fifty years after the publication of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," more than forty years after the first appearance of "Carnap and Logical Truth," there is no sign of agreement about the lessons that we should draw from Quine's writings on analyticity.' More alarming, there isn't even agreement about what Quine's claims are. As evidence here I offer a passage from an essay of Paul Boghossian's. Boghossian is discussing a notion which he calls 'Frege-analyticity': a sentence is Frege-analytic just in case it is "transformable into a logical truth by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms."2 Commenting on what he takes to be Quine's attitude towards this idea, Boghossian says: What form does Quine's resistance take? We may agree that the result being advertised isn't anything modest, of the form: There are fewer analytic truths than we had previously thought.
    [Show full text]
  • From a Set of Parts to an Indivisible Whole. Part I: Operations in a Closed Mode
    From a set of parts to an indivisible whole. Part I: Operations in a closed mode Leonid Andreev Equicom, Inc., 10273 E Emily Dr, Tucson, AZ 85730, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] February 29, 2008 Abstract This paper provides a description of a new method for information processing based on holistic approach wherein analysis is a direct product of synthesis. The core of the method is iterative averaging of all the elements of a system according to all the parameters describing the elements. It appears that, contrary to common logic, the iterative averaging of a system's elements does not result in homogenization of the system; instead, it causes an obligatory subdivision of the system into two alternative subgroups, leaving no outliers. Within each of the formed subgroups, similarity coefficients between the elements reach the value of 1, whereas similarity coefficients between the elements of different subgroups equal a certain constant value of 0>Ω<1. When subjected to iterative averaging, any system consisting of three or more elements of which at least two elements are not completely identical undergo such a process of bifurcation that occurs non- linearly. Successive iterative averaging of each of the forming subgroups eventually provides a hierarchical system that reflects relationships between the elements of an input system under analysis. We propose and discuss a definition of a natural hierarchy that can exist only in conditions of closeness of a system and can be discovered upon providing such an effect onto a system which allows its elements interact with each other based on the principle of self- organization.
    [Show full text]
  • The Weave of Meaning: Holism and Contextuality
    The Weave of Meaning: Holism and Contextuality Jeff Malpas University of Tasmania ABSTRACT: Context and meaning are notions inseparably tied together. Yet although appeal to context would seem inevitable in any discussion of meaning and understanding, the notion seems to be resistant to any attempt to render it in precise and non-question-begging terms. Context may be ubiquitous, but it is also opaque. This paper explores the notion of context in general, arguing that an understanding of context is essential for any attempt to elucidate the structure and possibility of meaning. Moreover, while the contextual character of meaning is seen to imply a form of holism about meaning, it also requires that any such holism be understood in a way that is realised only in relation to particular settings or ‘locales’. In this respect, contextuality not only gives rise to holism, but also constrains it, thereby pre-empting certain objections that are sometimes advanced against holistic approaches to meaning. KEYWORDS: Context, Meaning, Holism, Understanding, Horizonality, Locality I. Umberto Eco, in one of the short essays that make up How to Travel with a Salmon , recounts an experience that will, in its general form, be familiar to almost everyone: A few months ago, as I was strolling in New York, I saw, at a distance, a man I knew very well heading in my direction. The trouble was that I couldn’t remember his name or where I had met him. This is one of those sensations you encounter especially in a foreign city, you run into someone you met back home, or vice versa.
    [Show full text]