Michael Mitchell: Archive

A chair is a man-made object. It's the product of a volitional consciousness. The word "chair", which symbolizes (refers to) an actual chair, is also a man-made object. It's the product of a volitional consciousness. Even the concept in our minds, which the word "chair" concretizes (physically represents), is a man-made object. It's the product of a volitional consciousness. All of these -- the chair, the word, the concept -- can be the object of one's awareness, but only if one's consciousness is volitional, capable of selecting and focusing on each of them individually, i.e., capable of abstraction. This power is what makes volition possible. Without it, there would not only be no free will to choose what to focus on -- making it possible to project the future and create objects no random causal process could ever produce, such as chairs -- there would be no concepts at all, neither concepts of consciousness, such as "subjective" and "objective", nor organizational concepts, such as "furniture" or "man-made", nor ostensive, perceptual-level concepts, such as "chair" or "word", i.e., there would be no objects of a subject's awareness. No abstraction. No conceptualization. No volition. No subject. No object. No chair.

These are facts of reality almost no moderately intelligent person would deny. They're actually so obvious most people wouldn't even think to deny them. Now, apply this uncontroversial knowledge to the interpretation of the phrase: "Stick to the subject". So much for the "crisis of meaning". 🥱

I could easily write 120,000 words on this topic, solving this problem by proving it's not really a problem, just mental laziness, and sell the book for 20 bucks, but it would be no more valuable than this FB post.