Transpositional Subjectobjectivity and Wholeness

Abstract

Mapping the field of dynamic interdependence between subject and object, “mind” and “world”, structures of consciousness and levels of reality experienced by the lived body, this phenomenological prelude seeks to semiotically explore questions of subject/objectivity and wholeness in light of synergies between the philosophical insights of semiotics, Buddhism and Merleau-Ponty. No framework of rationality will ever allow us to “drag in the facta bruta ” ( Adorno 1966/Engl. ed. 2000 ) or indeed to include the whole, as we are facing the question: “Am I apart from the universe?” or “Am I a part of the universe?” (von Foerster as qutd. in Brier 2008 ). And yet, operating in the spirit of transdisciplinarity and complexity as exemplified by Søren Brier’s cybersemiotics ( 2008 ) and Buddhist knowledge forms ( Lettner 2021a ), the challenge will be not to reify those analytic abstractions from (more) integral forms of awareness. As humans we are part of an “ordered movement of Reality” ( Cilliers & Nicolescu 2012 ): a living process of reasoning ( Brier 2017 ) that in Peirce’s terms is “diffused through the whole universe” ( CP 1.352). The psycho-ontological dynamic of “dependent arising” ( pratītyasamutpāda ) in Buddhism ( Waldron 2003 ), which constitutes a veritable “dharma of natural systems” ( Macy 1991 ), comes close to Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of nature as “dynamically changing relations of reciprocity” ( Harney 2015 ). In fact, the various approaches seem to share a “relational ontology of the Umwelt ” as embraced by biosemiotics with regard to the structural couplings of organism-environment relations ( Kull et al. 2011 ). In order to shed light on the biosemiotic thrust of Buddhist phenomenology ( Lettner 2019 ), let us remember that dharmas (as minimal and non-substantial experiential events) are understood to provide the constitutive conditions for cognition most similar to Batesonian patterns of relationship ( Waldron 2003 ; Lettner 2021b ). When tackling the challenges posed by the positionality of observation, guidance will be sought from the tradition of Indian philosophy more generally, including the insights of Indian psychology ( Cornelissen et al. 2014 ) and Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teachings (in particular his 1979 talks at Brockwood Park) on how to go beyond the emotions and attachments of the “me” by giving room to awareness in observation.