Modes of being in relation to a group of two or more other people are far more complex than can be described using second- or third-person categories. You might begin by asking whether you are part of the group or not, whether you are in or out? And what if you don't know, can't tell - the criteria are unclear but the distinction feels real enough. Say it is a triangle where each member has two second-person relations, then it is not just these two you need to consider, but the detail of their relation with each other, an additional third-person fact, and one which is almost entirely unknown. Then add a fourth, and the number of combinations grows astronomically. How well can you read any of these people? Even if you have a clear sense of what your present relations are with one of them you don't know how they will alter, what hidden sides they will reveal, as a result of the other interactions, some of which are in the open while others, most, are hidden. There is a tremendous amount of information being thrown about but you are aware only of a fraction of it, as well as all that you respond to without any awareness. Reading the relations is one thing while interpreting them is quite another. All of these factors in so far as they concern the others are necessarily vague so you retain them as a set of hypotheses and credences, which means that your own position which depends in part on your understanding of how you stand in relation to them is also represented as a field of possibilities. Every action, every further piece of behaviour represents a complex update of the entire network. Your internal state as well as those of the others contain not only present circumstances and the directly relevant histories, but also broader histories linked by association, by relevance to ways of understanding analogous situations that extend far beyond the persons involved. The effects of actions on these internal states are thus highly non-linear so that they cannot be interpolated from say, conversation or avowed dispositions. Everything is ambiguous, but perhaps least so where you think it most so, and vice versa.
Tuesday, 22 August 2017
Modes of being in relation to a group of two or more other people are far more complex than can be described using second- or third-person categories. You might begin by asking whether you are part of the group or not, whether you are in or out? And what if you don't know, can't tell - the criteria are unclear but the distinction feels real enough. Say it is a triangle where each member has two second-person relations, then it is not just these two you need to consider, but the detail of their relation with each other, an additional third-person fact, and one which is almost entirely unknown. Then add a fourth, and the number of combinations grows astronomically. How well can you read any of these people? Even if you have a clear sense of what your present relations are with one of them you don't know how they will alter, what hidden sides they will reveal, as a result of the other interactions, some of which are in the open while others, most, are hidden. There is a tremendous amount of information being thrown about but you are aware only of a fraction of it, as well as all that you respond to without any awareness. Reading the relations is one thing while interpreting them is quite another. All of these factors in so far as they concern the others are necessarily vague so you retain them as a set of hypotheses and credences, which means that your own position which depends in part on your understanding of how you stand in relation to them is also represented as a field of possibilities. Every action, every further piece of behaviour represents a complex update of the entire network. Your internal state as well as those of the others contain not only present circumstances and the directly relevant histories, but also broader histories linked by association, by relevance to ways of understanding analogous situations that extend far beyond the persons involved. The effects of actions on these internal states are thus highly non-linear so that they cannot be interpolated from say, conversation or avowed dispositions. Everything is ambiguous, but perhaps least so where you think it most so, and vice versa.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.