Conclusions Series

This series of pieces began during graduate school in philosophy. The original argument that has been arbitrarily titled X6PM42 focuses on a very old concept of a thing-in-itself. As it turns out it’s quite a challenge to figure out a thing’s essence. Others might construe this idea in a different way, however, I consider a thing-in-itself as that which can’t be removed from something and have it stay the same something. The argument presented here is a funny spin on what seems like a dead-end problem in philosophy. My intuition is that something isn’t nothing as we normally think about it, and it seems reasonable that something that has no essence, non thing-in-itself, is not a thing. On a second level of humor here is the fact that no philosopher I know of would accept a sculpture as a conclusion — that is, something with truth value. And I tend to agree because sculpture isn’t a language…we can argue about that later if you think it is. Nevertheless it seems as if the only way in which to point at an answer is through a symbol system where an object can refer to an object within an object without contradiction. And it seems to me that the sculpture as conclusion expresses that this aging riddle of being a thing-in-itself is wholly the product of natural language. The thing-in-itself is both something and nothing…kind of like resolving a paradox by being both and neither.

MAYBE NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE AND IT’S JUST A COOL REPRESENTATION OF A BAG…WITH NOTHING IN IT SORT OF.