The Liminal
Indeed the intimation of a something more, a beyond the horizon, belongs to the very nature of consciousness...The existential structure of human life is radically, irreducibly liminal...[which means] We are never quite there, we are always and deviously on the verge of being there.
Philip Wheelwright (1968)
We are relatively very sensitive to any changes on
the horizon.
The page considers the horizon as the point of synthesis between the known and the unknown.
This is known as the 'Moon Illusion', one consequence of which is that the moon appear larger at lower elevations. Such sensitivity is for a very good reason: danger emanates from the horizon, and it is also where prey may be outwitted. Along the horizon we can detect tiny changes at great distances. Detecting changes is what the
comparator
To a page which introduces Jeffrey Gray's Comparator model of consciousness.
model of consciousness does. We have a model of our environment which allows us to compare that model with the latest information from our senses. The model is our world; this world; the only world there is. It is a model completely surrounded by ‘we know
not what
A whole page devoted to that about which we can say absolutely nothing - Kant's Noumenon.
’. Our ontological margin stands at this
boundary,
The importance of boundaries and how we turn them into chasm over which we fight.
this is the liminal to which Wheelwright refers: where the unknown waits
to become
The page on Emergence introduces the problem how do we get to know that which we do not know?.
the known.
The quote is taken from The Burning Fountain, Indiana University Press, p. 18. Wheelwright is concerned with the nature of poetry. This nature he sees as essentially being about the boundary between what we know, and that to which the poet can introduce us.
The Arctic Fox, which was featured on the ‘Other’ page, making its first appearance to me on the horizon of the Latrbjorg peninsular in north-west Iceland.
Above hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 22nd August 2020
...guide to this site