Satan and the Sorceror

J. Carfax once sat upon a pile of stone which marked some lost and weary cross-roads and there the devil Ibliss found him reading some equally lost and weary tome.

Ibliss - Why Master Carfax aren't you thinking loudly.. and how are you this day?

J. Carfax - pretty darn good, you?

Ibliss - not too shabby .. I just ate a philosopher

J. Carfax - and?

Ibliss - tasty but not nourishing .. like cheap chinese food.

J. Carfax, patting his old coat in search of his flask - hmm

Ibliss - does it really boil down to total subjectivity for you little beings? and can I have some of that?

J. Carfax wipes a droplet of whiskey from his lip and then extends his flask to the devil, continuing - In my opinion it really depends on what the subject that is having the subjective experience is and I think the danger with such thoughts is that they are anthropocentric

Ibliss, choking a little on the words and whiskey barks - AGREED, I have never understod that, your not even that pretty ..

J. Carfax - anytime anyone says reality is .. I wonder what exactly they mean by reality if that makes sense, I mean, if you said that for humans reality is...

Ibliss - ...tiny, unimaginative, shallow, self-obsessed .. you reject objectivity because you lack an ontology that properly describes it. Couldn't agree more.

J. Carfax - Thats not exactly where I was going with that .. are you gonna give that back? .. simple fact is, we can't model everything accurately. There may be an objectivity but it is by definition only able to be sensed through objectivity

Ibliss, snorts laughter and says - only the object can know the object objectively .. humans are hilarious. Your whiskey is good though

J. Carfax, handing his flask back to the devil continues - not quite because an object may not be able to describe itself it gets into sticky qualities about knowledge like, if a thing cannot have total knowledge of itself, can it be said to know anything? Is there a difference between information and knowledge? Is knowledge by definition all encompassing? In which case was Socrates right in saying that the only true wisdom is knowing we know nothing?

Ibliss - Socrates was a poncey queen. I would contend there is no meaningful difference between information and knowledge, emphasis on 'meaningful'. Information is both all-encompassing and mutually exclusive of its object like your Liebniz and his monads. Information-knowledge sort of is objective then .. I suppose from that perspective not because it nessecarily describes the object in its absolute state but because the information itself is its own thing and complete in itself.

J. Carfax - depends if information is seperate from object

Ibliss - how so?

J. Carfax - Ibliss, your setting my coat on fire.

Ibliss - ha! sorry sorry, its your whisky to blame for it

J. Carfax - hmm, as I was saying, it depends if information is a descriptor or, in actuality the information is the thing. Look at any given object right? I dunno, a table and its mostly empty space and interactions of empty space with more empty space. Like interactions on a planar field. You follow?

Ibliss - Gotcha

J. Carfax - Right, so to get from a point in a field to another point you plot a course, yeah?

Ibliss - Ok

J. Carfax - that requires, say an operation that defines the starting position, the route and the destination, yeah?

Ibliss - .. Ok

J. Carfax - But what if that process was not a series of operations, but a movement? What if by the very nature of a thing it describes all that a thing is. Like throwing a spear, if I throw a spear is there something that doesn't just describe what I did but is IS what I did and anyone who percieves/integrates their field with it makes it part of themselves. Hence that person now becomes person-with-spear

Ibliss - The information which is the action remains objective regardless of how the action itself is described

J. Carfax - Each description .. description, you know what that means? To scratch an outline, to mark the boundaries of a thing, to define it yeah?

Ibliss - Ok

J. Carfax - When I say Ibliss; I'm saying a name but, all I know about you is carried in Ibliss. I can say, that's Ibliss or that's not Ibliss

Ibliss - Stop doing that. The essentially empty nature of language, Giorgio Agambens thing. You create a negative space and I fill it

J. Carfax, reaches into his battered coat and pulls out a tin box which he hands to Ibliss - From down in Camden

A wide and terrible grin spreads acrss the face of Ibliss when he cracks the tin - I'll roll us a joint. Please continue

J. Carfax slips the whiskey back into the nether reaches of his coat - Imagine you find a thing you don't have a word for? How do you convey it to me?

Ibliss' long red tngue pokes from his lips as he concentrates on the unfinished joint - A description ..

J. Carfax - And how do you describe something you've never seen before, or worse something only you have seen?

Ibliss, looking smugly proud of his joint - I would probably try to create some sort of equivalent in your imagination, how tall, what color, how I felt, the way it smelled

J. Carfax, taking the joint from Ibliss - Equivalent? No one has seen anything like this

Ibliss - I saw it and if I saw it, then it can be experienced. It follows then that have I have some recourse to description. The description I give doesn't have to be equivalent to anything else, just the thing-what-only-I-have-seen and my experience of it

J. Carfax - Ok, so you take what someone else has exsperienced and use a similie or a metaphor that they can understand, yes?

Ibliss, exhaling an enourmous cloud of smoke - Ok

J. Carfax - Well is that what you do?

Ibliss - I would try to do that sure

J. Carfax - So, you would describe it by using like or as, but it would not be the metaphor or the thing you experienced but rather some new thing, wouldn't it?

Ibliss - If I did it well .. yes

J. Carfax looks down at the last of the joint - OK, now, think of you, as the person you were telling and your senses as the you doing the show/tell

Ibliss - I would become aware of it or have knowledge

J. Carfax - Or would you not merely have a descriptor?

Ibliss - I would have both, like penetrating a koan .. the description and the object are singular insofar as my experience of it is concerned

J. Carfax - Hmm, suppose we have the idea that information does not describe, but it is the information interacting with our senses that causes description

Ibliss - Sensible, already this perspective renders the 'description' and its 'information' distinct. Everything you are describing is co-dependent

J. Carfax - Yes. That said, does that not destroy objectivity?

Ibliss, snorting - No because its .. codependent .. origination. Philosophers clutch co-dependence to their chests and just toss the other part out. Then they claim outhority on the basis of complete subjectivity. In love with the description, ignoring the information. Its dependent nature is anchored at both ends by absolutes, the heart is void. Inter-subjectivity goes nowhere, I cry bullshit. Its two relatives put together .. there is no relationship then

J. Carfax - So?

Ibliss - So by according to your perspective, information is made objective and so are you and the description is in turn its own thing, describing the path you took to it.

J. Carfax - *nods* Therefore the description is a seperate form of information that issues forth from the objective like qbl

Ibliss - Jesus man .. don't encourage those sad bastards. Its non-linear like your planar field, the description is the relationship

J. Carfax - hmmm, relationship between?

Ibliss - Our objective natures, spinozas god and you. The description arises from that, its why the devils teach there has to be an economy of belief. Even if I say that it can be described as long as its described in every way possible, thats only so many times. Even an eternity is only so many. Which means we only got so many. It is the subjective limitations of 'the description' that make its penetration possible

J. Carfax - But what of the indescribable?

Ibliss - Well that would be uniformly indescribable wouldn't it and so objective. Is it not those objectivities which we seek to penetrate the subjective to experience? The object always just there beyond us

J. Carfax - So is undescribability transcendent?

Ibliss, getting shakily back to his feet - The heart is void, there is no such thing as transcendence

J. Carfax - Meaning?

Ibliss - This is the way life is percieved, we describe only our deaths and our births with our lives. Nothing else. The buddhamind was buddha's mischevious-talk, liberation from a thing, its incorporation. You are all just Samedi in the end. A pile of bones and no bag to keep them in. What have you transcended? Is there a thing like transcendence?

J. Carfax - Fucked if I know

Ibliss - Me either *laughing* I hate that question. A wise buddhist once wrote, I'll just keep my mouth shut on that one and fuck all day

J. Carfax - Good plan

Ibliss - Sometimes you sorcerors amuse me

(co-written by J. Carfax)