{"id":6722,"date":"2016-02-29T10:42:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T10:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6722"},"modified":"2016-02-27T22:53:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-27T22:53:48","slug":"hinges-and-doors-of-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6722","title":{"rendered":"Hinges and doors of perception"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Wittgenstein’s self-portraits in a photo booth.<\/p><\/div>\n

” . . . \u00a0certain propositions seem to underlie all questions and all thinking<\/em> (On Certainty<\/em>,\u00a0415).” — Wittgenstein, on “hinge propositions”<\/p>\n

That’s a quote from Wittgenstein, in his last book of notes, published after his death. It intrigues me because of the notion that something pivotal\u00a0and impossible to prove underlies thinking itself–yet isn’t knowledge. He’s talking\u00a0about his notion of “hinge propositions.” For him, they\u00a0are simply a given, an unquestionable element of the world. It makes no sense to doubt them unless you doubt everything else in the world. I believe this would qualify as\u00a0a hinge proposition\u00a0from Little Orphan Annie: “The sun will come up tomorrow.” This example makes it sound as if a hinge proposition is just something so obvious no one would think to question it. Or notice it, for that matter.\u00a0I think he was exploring the idea in order to circle around something\u00a0harder to say: such as, what’s ever-present is sometimes\u00a0impossible<\/em> to single out and scrutinize. (But that isn’t it either.)<\/p>\n

Since I went back to reread On Certainty<\/em> last year, this idea\u00a0of hinge propositions has been on my mind relating to the\u00a0role painting can play\u00a0in human awareness. I have been thinking of this\u00a0term as a distant\u00a0metaphor<\/em>\u00a0of how art works–as well as the mind itself.<\/p>\n

I think all forms of art can have a particular kind of impact, of conveying a world, and painting’s (as well as music’s) distinguishing capacity is to be able to do it\u00a0in an entirely perceptual way.<\/p>\n

I don’t think Wittgenstein’s idea of hinge propositions has anything to do directly with painting, since a painting isn’t a proposition–and I don’t think a work of art can be reduced to “knowledge.” Yet this term might\u00a0work as a metaphor of a similar relationship between one’s conscious awareness of things and a larger “background” awareness of the world itself, in which what occupies consciousness\u00a0is simply the tip of an iceberg. Trying to be aware of the whole<\/em>\u00a0iceberg is, well, a bit of a challenge.<\/p>\n

In a way, if you were to try\u00a0to be aware of the world as a whole\u00a0isn’t it something like\u00a0the\u00a0reverse of\u00a0Stephen Wright’s joke: “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” The corollary here might be: “You can’t picture\u00a0the entire world. Where would you put your picture\u00a0in it?”\u00a0Being a part of the world, as it were, your awareness\u00a0can’t step back far enough to see everything–including yourself, and your act of seeing–which you would need to do, since they are a part of the world.\u00a0And yet I think\u00a0a\u00a0“background”, or subliminal, awareness of the\u00a0world\u00a0now and then shows itself. But how does one\u00a0become aware of all that, of what’s in the background?<\/p>\n

It isn’t something you can make happen. It’s a frame you can’t see (in the sense of the frame of lumber that holds up a house) which holds up\u00a0the meaning, the matrix, of what you do see and hear and feel. It’s\u00a0what makes possible the whole network of your experience, and yet–similar to the way a hinge proposition can’t be proven or doubted–you can’t call this background awareness\u00a0forth so that it\u00a0becomes\u00a0an object<\/em> of awareness or thought. You can’t know<\/em> it. It’s behind<\/em> your gaze; it grounds it. It’s\u00a0what holds up the act of believing and doubting<\/em>, in the context of the life you live. You\u00a0experience life the way you\u00a0see figures in a carpet, always aware of the individual patterns, the shapes and repetitions and color, rarely reaching\u00a0for an awareness\u00a0of the entire carpet, as a whole. But even if you do, are you confronted with\u00a0something you can objectify as “knowledge”? Maybe a better way to put it is that this particular\u00a0carpet is so large, it includes<\/em> you, so it’s impossible to step back far enough to see anything but details in the surface, the forefront, with the “background awareness” always behind both you and whatever is the object of your attention. There’s always a level of awareness prior\u00a0to whatever it is you’re attending to–so that you can never be entirely aware of being aware.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0it’s there, this background awareness, the carpet itself, and it\u00a0holds together\u00a0all the details of what you do\u00a0see and hear and touch. It makes meaning<\/em> possible, in the vague sense of that word, though not so much in the agreement between a word or symbol or picture and what it’s intended to mean. I think a person is<\/em>\u00a0this subliminal world-awareness–it’s the fiber that unifies everything you do and think and experience. And yet it’s inaccessible. Similar to the\u00a0way a hinge proposition is immune to proof. The difference is that I understand<\/em>\u00a0a hinge proposition: it’s entirely transparent and intelligible. I can get a look at it. “I had\u00a0two parents.”\u00a0It’s always true for everyone.\u00a0Nothing to prove here. No way to doubt it. Move along.<\/p>\n

A “hinge awareness” of the world would be\u00a0something else–though\u00a0it’s also immune to doubt, but in this case that’s because\u00a0it can’t be observed or objectified. It’s hidden in whatever it is that motivates you to reach toward it. I actually think that behind all of Wittgenstein’s strenuously\u00a0rational philosophy was this unsatisfied yearning for a way to actually point to\u00a0the entirety of life–or the mind as a whole–through\u00a0the clarity of logic. He knew it was impossible.<\/p>\n

Isn’t it what artists also want to do, also aware that its\u00a0impossible? In a much more modest way, painting is a sidelong attempt to become aware of life itself–the whole of things–or at least aim toward it without ever disclosing it in some conclusive way.<\/p>\n

Yet is it always hidden? \u00a0How\u00a0<\/em>is it when I look at Vermeer, or when I watch Stalker<\/em>, by Tarkovsky, it seems I’m actually glimpsing\u00a0both time and something timeless, not\u00a0as an idea or thought, but almost as if these abstract notions have become visible? It’s as if your heart opens its\u00a0eyes.\u00a0How does that happen? That\u00a0background somehow emerges with an intense experience of “meaning” and then, once again it withdraws. An entire world emerges from the little spot of color Proust talked about and then is gone . . . and that same effect can come from a novel or poem, but when you try to locate it in particular\u00a0words and sentences, it isn’t there; it’s something extra, in the background, but also present in every detail of the work.<\/p>\n

So I suppose a postmodernist or semiologist would say all I’m talking about is\u00a0language as “the background,” an entire structure of what I perceive and think, governed by social and economic and political forces. I’m an expression of those forces, without fully understanding them, or being able to even objectify them. I’m governed by that world I can only struggle to see clearly, a world embodied in\u00a0my language. Language<\/em>\u00a0would be the background. But I don’t see “background awareness” as conditioned by anything the way language would be for a postmodernist. It’s\u00a0something more fundamental and timeless: in October, your\u00a0awareness of autumn has nothing to do with a network of “signs” and “what’s signified” but is an encompassing world, unconditioned by thinking<\/em>.\u00a0That, for me, is what painting can attempt to make manifest: this ground of awareness that holds up\u00a0thinking, but isn’t thought. If I see a bed of brown leaves, or smell leaf smoke or that scent\u00a0of dry\u00a0leaves under a hot sun–you might\u00a0say I\u00a0“behold” autumn, though it’s a verb\u00a0no one uses anymore. It’s\u00a0more than seeing. And I don’t think<\/em> it. I see-smell-hear-and-feel elements of it, as well as the unity of\u00a0all of those perceptions,\u00a0and the word autumn signifies that whole, that unity,\u00a0<\/em>which shows itself to me through particular sensations, and is more than the sum of those sensations. It isn’t a perception or<\/em> a thought.\u00a0But it discloses itself through<\/em> perception. Not thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

” . . . \u00a0certain propositions seem to underlie all questions and all thinking (On Certainty,\u00a0415).” — Wittgenstein, on “hinge propositions” That’s a quote from Wittgenstein, in his last book of notes, published after his death. It intrigues me because of the notion that something pivotal\u00a0and impossible to prove underlies thinking itself–yet isn’t knowledge. He’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHinges and doors of perception - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6722\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hinges and doors of perception - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"” . . . \u00a0certain propositions seem to underlie all questions and all thinking (On Certainty,\u00a0415).” — Wittgenstein, on “hinge propositions” That’s a quote from Wittgenstein, in his last book of notes, published after his death. 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