Where is thingness in things ?

I was clearing some old books and came across this nursery rhyme by Dr Seuss “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” Here are few snippets….

From here to there
funny things Are everywhere…
some are sad and some are glad.
and some are very, very bad.
why are they sad and glad and bad?
I do not know, go ask your dad….
where do they come from?
I can’t say
but I bet they have come a long, long way.
we see them come, we see them go.
some are fast, and some are slow.
some are high and some are low.
not one of them Is like another
don’t ask us why.
go ask your mother.

I hope the dads and mums of the world are able to answer these simple questions and explain the subtle profundities embedded in those lines…

I just noticed that the book was first written in 60’s and I am sure it would have inspired many little and big minds alike, many would have pondered upon those strange creatures illustrated in the book, and above all these simple lines will continue to put smile on faces for generations.

But they triggered a question in my mind. The stupid question is …

What is a thing ? How do we know that a thing is a thing or not a thing?

I think in order to attempt these questions we have to find thingness in a thing.

Well a long time ago a famous greek philosopher has already answered the question in his own way. In Plato’s allegory of cave the chained prisoners in a cave watch shadows of objects projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and they assign names to those objects. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to view the real things. He then explains how a prisoner who has escaped from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not real at all, as he can perceive the reality rather than shadow of reality. He called the real objects as forms or essences of things and shadows as imperfect images of reality.

He further argued that forms are immaterial and can only be known by reason, he equated the forms to be something of divine origin, something outside this world and beyond human minds to grasp.

So in platonic sense reality consists of two realms, the physical observable world that is available to our senses and the eternal world, world that is made of forms or ideas. A kind of separation of things from thingness, thing being the shadows and forms being the thingness.

Plato’s forms are perfect templates that exist somewhere in another dimension that are ultimate reference points for all objects that we observe and interact with in this physical world. They are more real that objects in the physical world. For example the chair that I am sitting now is an imperfect copy of the form of chair that exists in another dimension, since this chair is an instantiation for the real chair, it is not real, it is just a copy. It is a manifestation of chairness that is vested in form of a chair or idea of a chair.

According to Plato, when we compare one thing with another, we assume that there is an absolute good form or an essence to which two objects can be compared. A chair is big or small, soft or hard, rocking or stable in comparison to essence of an ideal chair form. Plato’s idea of ideal state also comes from this very notion of form of goodness and forms of justice that can be instantiated to a degree of perfection in the real world. Similarly the horse in a stable is an instantiation of a universal horse. This horseness is the form, individual horses are copies of that form, much like shadows on the wall of cave. They are mere copies , imitations of the Ideas. Insofar as they resemble the Idea, they are real, insofar as they differ from it they are unreal. As per Plato the idea is eternal, unchangeable and imperishable.

Of course not everyone agreed with Plato. One of his critics said, “I see particular horses, but not ‘horseness’.” But Plato responded, “That is because you have eyes but no intelligence.”

There sure is some degree of profundity in that remark…Is he alluding to intelligence as a form or its manifestation?

Well it depends on what was on his mind, but it sure provides a glimpse into inadequacies in his theory of forms.

Well am eye must have some degree of intelligence/eyeness vested in it for it to be called an eye.

Plato’s entire philosophy is baked in this very notion, the world being a manifestation of divine thingness in things. Where he saw thingness visible in things he saw goodness, he saw perfection, he saw justice.

His idea of an ideal state is where this divine thingness is infused in things so that they become perfect copies of an ideal image. Where they follow divine laws, laws as he understood mathematically, as obeyed by motions of celestial bodies in the sky.

Does not it gives us glimpse of emerging catholic doctrine, emergence of man in the image of god, a glimpse of ‘jesusness’ in Plato ?

We will never exactly know what was his motivation behind these ideas, but Plato lived in turbulent times, he witnessed the disintegrating empires and civilization, he witnessed the imperfections of men and the ancient gods, he saw chaotic behaviour of rulers and citizens alike, in contrast he saw that universe was ordered, the heavenly bodies moved in their various orbits and their movements served as predictable markers of time, an image of eternity a manifestation of perfection.

What he did not realise it that it was his curious mind that managed to find order in the chaotic world, it was his mind that managed to find esense of objects and behaviors in an otherwise nonsensical world. He failed to attribute correctly is the cause and effect relationship. But he was not alone, this question continues to haunt us even today.

Is the order intrinsic to the world out there or is it more a property of our minds ?

Well many curious minds and eyes that ponder upon modern cognitive science tells us that what Plato called form or we call thingness is not something that belong to an external domain out there, it is property of our minds, it is how our mind conceptualises things.

When we see a round object for the first time, a bunch of neurons fire together and encode a proto circleness in synapses between them, as they are exposed to roundness in other objects, their synaptic weights are strengthened. As we know that neurons that fire together, wire together. We eventually end up training these bunch of neurons to not only conceive the concept of circle but discern properties of every new circle that they will be exposed to in future. We project this circleness on to all objects that show a degree of circleness, be it moon, be it sun, face, wheel or a perfectly drawn circle in our textbooks of geometry.

We start extracting thingness from everything we encounter ever since we set our foot on the world stage, one thingness leads to another and as a result we end up forming and enriching our thingness repertoire.

As we encounter tables, chairs, birds, dogs, animals, fathers, mothers, cars, rockets, trees we end up figuring out their respective tables, chairness, birdness, dogness, animalness, fathreness, motherness, carness, rocketness, treeness. Moreover individual thingness does not just exist in isolation, it often overlaps with other thingness or it is could be entirely composed of ness of multiple kinds, as there is always animalness in birdness and so is parentness in fatherness and motherness.

One point to note here is that these are not mere linguistic constructs, even though this is well reflected in diverse lexicons that we use to externalise our thoughts, the thingness repertoire is rather fundamental to our cognition. If it is not the case it would require a very long time to learn a new language as all repertoire had to be rebuilt from scratch.

Having said that it is not just solid tangible, touchable things that we impart thingness on, it equally applies to abstract things like happiness, justice, goodness, beauty etc. It is the marvel of our cognitive machinery that enables us to construct such a rich repertoire.

No wonder why they say beauty is in the eyes of beholder, it is the beholder that imparts beauty on things to be called beautiful.

So it is eventually the thingness repertoire that our minds use to not only render the world in all its magnificence and glory but also to reason about those things, make decisions, take action and manipulate to our advantage.

Image Credits: www.clipartpanda.com

Originally published at scriptgrandeur.wordpress.com on August 2, 2015.