Sunday, April 11, 2010
It Takes Two to Cogito
On the fly, a bit drunk, and on Santa Cruz time we'll call this a prime day, even though at the moment I'm in Boulder. Incidentally, today - April 11th - is my brother's birthday, good and suicided now for over 5 years. It Takes Two to Cogito: It takes two to 'I think'. In line with my previous posts - Relation is the Smallest Unit and Two Descriptions Are Better Than One - this axiom suggests that the tools of thinking are never in one head - it takes two (and a lot more than two) to get thoughts flowing. Flying in the face of the monadism that is axiomatic in much western philosophical thought, It Takes Two to Cogito suggests paradoxically that thought itself is distributed, that dialogue - and much more, from trialogue to undecimalogue and beyond - is the very motor of logos, of thought, of language. Taken as an axiom, this gets us out of much of the solipsism and egocentrism implied by the philosophy that is alas the case. It reminds us that, to quote Rimbaud, "I is another", and that when we are thinking it is perhaps indeed another who is thinking through us. The notion of "original" ideas is another fiction of the philosophy that is alas the case: how, indeed, could any idea be "original" when it can only form as part and parcel of some other idea, as a refutation, an agreement, a conversation with the world, a world that is not original to us but that is instead a crazy and incredible composite of actions, ideas, words, critters, widgets and agents that always and ever exceed our individual efforts and effects? I personally hold to the idea that ideas themselves have their own agency, and It Takes Two to Cogito implies that "two" gives them room to move, to shuttle and jostle along an axis, to transmogrify as much as one dimension allows. As for the higher dimensions, see my next, more extensive and less drunken post (on the prime date after this next one): After Two, Things Get Interesting Real Fast.
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ReplyDeletemy dear sha, i remember when your brother died as if it was yesterday. hugs. regarding your axioms, i'm having a hard time coming up with something to say about them because i just agree with you wholeheartedly. i'm following your primes with much enthusiasm and will try to find either something that compels me to riff or something that i disagree with ...
ReplyDeletei regret to have deleted my first comment without copying certain parts to re-insert here, in my redo comment. i offer my 'silly anothers' to Sha for posting and deleting so urgently. hopefully i will be able to relay the gist again. first, the rimbaud quote is perfect, "i is another." for it not only illustrates "it takes two to cogito" but it perhaps takes the next step and suggests to have i, rely on i rather than we (for self statements, i thinks, i do, etc), it necessitates or makes impossible the i without "another." and rather than jumping the philosophical hoops explicating this, rimbaud incises, elegant yet completely dagger, and states "i is another." because i is because of its relational (?) status and because "it takes two to cogito." pushing and playing with this further, i think i really appreciate these side by side or maybe in circle, because it not only pushes into the notion of independent intellectual endeavoring, but it makes more than transparent, what is the word?, (i am thinking of a stamp pressed down to suggest the weight of this rimbaud quote) how i should always be "i?" furthermore, this also got me thinking about a couple questions/problems we might consider. 1) the super popular use of "i" statements in everything from 'couples counseling' to non-violent communication to techniques on child-rearing (and beyond). what happens to the use-value, validity, purpose of this popular engineering of communication intended for clarity of self-ness, being heard, and listening better to another (if, i is another?; it takes two to cogito) Then also, I was reminded of another Rimbaud quote, in part because Rimbaud, after nearly 2 decades since I read his work, has come up in conversation of late and I have been reminded of his import for me as a youth and as a thinker. is it i think, or is it, "it thinks me" as rimbaud suggests? if we imagine the relational/contingent i, it's perhaps more useful to make this turn on head, and say, it thinks me as (i is another) as another is another...leading me to, "i'm not"...for now.
ReplyDeletecognito...cogs need other cogs to be functional. And the cogs need to fit together well enough to create movement. Of course, we can, being organic by nature, adjust the shapes of our thought teeth to fit various other cogs. Triumph over the solids! Bio > Mech! In the meme wars flexibility is my weapon of choice. If only the first book in the bible were called morphogenesis.
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