Verbal game-playing engendering a global cognitive container?

Embodying a Hypercomplex of Unhygienic Nescience (Part #8)

In a period when there is an intense global focus on competition for the FIFA World Football Cup -- despite wars and rumours of wars -- the pattern of arguments above can be seen as a dubious combination of game-playing and word-play. How indeed to engage with the paradox of using words which negate their own significance -- specifically reminiscent of the Sanskrit adage Neti Neti? As stressed, words as conventionally used no longer "work" to enable meaningful life. Poetry may well constitute a vehicle for intimations and intuitions -- but is itself readily challenged, as with any aesthetic preference.

The dilemma is how to use words so as not to imply what cannot be indicated by words, namely how to use words to talk about what cannot be meaningfully talked about. To what extent is any essential incommunicability a matter of Ludwig Wittgenstein's concluding phrase: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921)?

A process is required for handling problematic assumptions -- too readily made as a matter of convenience -- about the meaning of what is said and of saying what is meant. Crudely put, a more creative response is required to the more sophisticated possibilities of dissimulation -- lying -- as ever more evident in the processes of governance.

Science claims to use mathematics and hard evidence to circumvent the difficulty. By so doing, however, this undermines the comprehension of meaning by associating it with with essentially meaningless rigid formalism, as discussed separately (Dynamics of Symmetry Group Theorizing: comprehension of psycho-social implication, 2008). There is a strong case for considering metaphors from non-western cultures, as argued by Susantha Goonatilake (Toward a Global Science: mining civilizational knowledge, 1999) and separately discussed (Enhancing the Quality of Knowing through Integration of East-West metaphors, 2000).

Western alchemy: It is from this perspective that there is a case for exploring any modality which can specifically and systematically embody the potential misunderstanding associated with paradox. One valuable modality, variously comprehensible through its use of metaphor, is alchemy. The conventional controversy it engenders may even be helpful in demarcating its domain of significance in engaging with the experiential significance of a non-independent reality -- for which science has proven to be so ill-equipped. As noted by Lawson with respect to poetry:

Realist philosophers, and those who endorse the project to correctly describe an independent reality, have tended to regard poetry as a romantic flourish, a flowery plaything, while the true work of language takes place in the realm of the literal.

There is of course a western tradition of alchemy currently under careful review by the Newton Project -- despite long-standing deprecation by conventional science.

Eastern alchemy: A distinction is made in eastern traditions between " external alchemy" (Waidan) and "internal alchemy" (Neidan). The first corresponds to a greater degree to the "chemical" preoccupations of western alchemy in which an "internal" focus may only be implicit (Isabelle Robinet, On the Meaning of the Terms Waidan and Neidan, 1991). Neidan could be considered even more controversial and obscure -- and therefore potentially indicative of its value to the cognitively tricky engagement with experiential paradox in daily life.

The nature of the metaphorically-enhanced use of word-play in Neidan is admirably clarified in essays by Isabelle Robinet (The World Upside Down: Essays on Taoist Internal Alchemy, 2011), remarkably translated from the French by Fabrizio Pregadio:

Internal alchemy, or Neidan, is a technique of enlightenment whose earliest extant written records date from the eighth century. It appeals both to rationality, which gives order to the world, and to what transcends rationality: the unspeakable, the Totality. Its main tools are the trigrams of the Yijing (Book of Changes) and a number of key metaphors, some of which are alchemical in nature, whence the name, "internal alchemy"....

Robinet most notably indicates in one essay (The Alchemical Language, or the Effort to Say the Contradictory, 1993):

The principle consists in ordering the world by means of multiple and complex reference points built on the basis of these initial data and of a multi-layered structure. Here lies the rationality of alchemy, in the sense of providing order and intelligibility. However, being a didactic technique oriented toward mysticism, alchemy also involves the denial of its own system. This denial is achieved by several means: the reminder that silence is the foundation of the word; the continuous evocation of Unity, which merges and abolishes all reference points; the adoption of a fundamentally metaphoric language that must be surpassed; the recurrent disruptions in the continuity of discourse; the use of images that play at several levels, operating now in one direction, now in the opposite, levels that are related to one another until being unified; the ellipsis that handles two different entities as equivalent; the reciprocal encasing of all images, so that "the child generates its mother" and the contained is the container; the multiplicity of facets, times, and reference points superimposed above one another, which counteracts the fragmentation wrought by rational analysis.

The alchemists, therefore, use a highly structured language, but transgress it by introducing a negation of their own system, and by expressing, through a system of reciprocal encasing, a duality absorbed into Unity, a rationality traversed by irrationality. The language of alchemy is a language that attempts to say the contradictory.

It is appropriate to note a degree of recognition of systemic denial in the Incompleteness Theorems of Kurt Gödel. It is also appropriate to note how schools of thought engage in mutual denial. A useful review (Neidan: the traditional meditative practice, Literati Tradition) notes that:

Taoist inner alchemists make it very clear that their ideas are different from the notions of Chan/Zen Buddhists. According to Taoist inner alchemists, Chan/Zen Buddhists only dwell on xing, or the original nature in its pristine purity, which they wish to attain in an intuitive and immediate vision. They neglect ming, or fate, life, which represent the resistance of corporality and gravity within human beings. Only when xing and ming are combined, they join in the "non-action which is the action". According the Classics of Inner Alchemy, Robinet describes, without ming, xing will forever be stuck in inactive emptiness; without xing, ming will never attain perfect non-action. (Robinet, 323)

Cognitive mapping: As might be expected, the extensive elaboration by Robinet paradoxically constitutes a new instance of the challenge of both information overload and of incomprehensibility, as noted above. Although the metaphors and symbols imply a form of cognitive map, its nature remains necessarily elusive -- especially since any such map should be dynamic and interactive in order to correspond to the nature of what is mapped (at least to some degree).

Rather than exacerbating the problem, there is a case for considering how Robinet's verbal articulation might itself engender an appropriate map through the pattern and quality of its connectivity. Text analysis and concept mapping software, whether available or emerging, could be expected to enable new possibilities of comprehension of such argumentation, visually rendered by such means (Preliminary NetMap Studies of Databases on Questions, World Problems, Global Strategies, and Values, 2006).

Exploiting a stage in the alchemical process -- self-reflexively -- could the engendering of some such map be understood as the elaboration of a requisite cognitive container? Rather than a concept map as conventionally arrayed in 2D, could it take a form -- through iteration -- indicative of its content to varying degrees? Can the dynamic pattern of an argument engender a container?

The emergence of the fractal organization of the Mandelbrot set can be considered in this light (Psycho-social Significance of the Mandelbrot Set: a sustainable boundary between chaos and order, 2005; In Quest of a Dynamic Pattern of Transformations: sensing the strange attractor of an emerging Rosetta Stone, 2012). In terms of consideration of any alchemical "vessel", visual renderings of that set are extremely suggestive.

Emergent strange attractors: The current worldwide preoccupation with the FIFA World Football Cup extends to digital encoding of each individual movement of the ball in order to detect passing patterns through match analysis. The case was separately made that this could be understood as enabling recognition of the emergence of an intangible fundamental attractor -- readily associated with reference to the "spirit of the game" (Comprehension of Numbers Challenging Global Civilization: number games people play for survival, 2014).

As an appropriate provocation that document suggested a fruitful comparison could be explored between the following images (Imaginative depiction of the cognitive challenge, 2014). The central image is an animation indicative of the emergence of a central attractor, framed by passing patterns. The argumentation regarding internal alchemy could be considered as potentially taking similar form -- effectively engendering a container for its processes.

Complementary symbolic containers?
Sacred cup	Animation of composite schematic?	FIFA World Cup

The point to be made is the need for extensive exploration of the mapping possibilities for the insights of internal alchemy -- much as there is continuing exploration of mappings of the planetary globe, in the light of consideration of the distortions introduced by 3D geographical projections into 2D, with their various advantages and disadvantages.

Xuanpin
(Mysterious-Female)

The xuanpin (Mysterious-Female), a Taoist symbol that represents
the unity of Yin and Yang. The two trigrams are Fire (Yang, above) and
Water (Yin, below), which respectively enclose True Yin and True Yang,
represented by their inner lines.

The Valley Spirit never dies

It is named the Mysterious Female.

And the doorway of the Mysterious Female

Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.

It is there within us all the while;

Draw upon it as you will; it never runs dry.
(Tao Te Ching, chap. 6, tr. Waley)

From such an experimental perspective, it is appropriate to contrast the classical symbol of internal alchemy (above) with a composite image framed by symbols of the I Ching.

Screen shot from a more complex animation
Shown halfway to completion of cycle of 64 hexagrams. This version features: explicit labelling of completed hexagrams; the correspondence between the line-coding of the central hexagram and the star may be seen; a smaller version of the current central hexagram is visible in movement; towards its final position on the circle (on the right); - an emerging central symbol (a Medicine Wheel) is faintly visible
(Dynamic Exploration of Value Configurations: Interrelating traditional cultural symbols through animation, 2008)

Yantra, Yi Jing and Star of David animation