Matter and Idea

A.

1   1. A major objection to materialism: matter is a narrative construction of vital experience.

Argument: the changing conception of matter through time.

Objection: But today we have the accurate description, and therefore, somehow the description represents a morphism (even isomorphism).

Answer: we could not know it, and in any case, it would be a description, i.e., a narrative, for any communicative account is narrative.

2    2. The concept of matter is conditioned by communicative action.

B.

1     1. A major objection to idealism: ideas are compositions of concepts which have as final referents vital experience. Natural numbers and other basic concepts are basic intuitions of experience (sequence, synthesis, analysis and so on).

Argument: the sense of numerosity in animals. The intuitive set theory in the epistemologies of anima mundi (totem thinking is a basic form of set theory).

Objection: But vital experience is nothing without ideas that valuate and give it a meaning.

Answer: The valuation is done in a cognitive level previous to the human conceptualization. Ideas must have relevance for survival. In fact, they are the result of an n-aryzation (or complexification) of basic emotions (as protocols for survival), which evolve in the context of communicative action.

2     2. The notion of idea is conditioned by communicative action.

C.

The concepts of matter and idea are communicative concepts, mythic actions which render vital experience (as exomorphic, final, or literal, or liminal representation) within a symbolic system, i.e., as endomorphic, or metaphorical or liminoid representations.

Continues in Matter and Idea II