Recently I was thinking of actualization and what it really means and entails. Expressing my great tributes to Kurt Goldstein and Abraham Maslow for introduction of this term into psychology and I would even say philosophy as well (the original term was self-actualization).
From conventional philosophy we know there are people who prioritize idea/mind and who prioritize matter. Or more accurately – who distinguish them as to what the reason/source is and what the result/outcome/product is or in other words what the cause is and what the effect is. Respectively they are called idealists and materialists. However there is a big trick or confusion in all this.
Idealists are mainly concerned with the idea/mind - ideas and how important they are. Materialists on the contrary are more occupied with the priority of matter or materia and how important and decisive it is in everything that exists, we do, feel, understand, etc. However the link or connection or I should call it TRANSITION between these two is virtually always ignored or skipped.
What is meant by this? The key point or question is - what kind of transition mode or method or practice (if any) is there between these two ends? One must admit that this way or another there must be some kind of linkage or communication between these two and hence they are to be connected or linked somehow as otherwise it will sound too stupid to talk about only either of them even in one single situation or case.
The clue to solving the problem is the answer to the question for each specific case – is there a clear and comprehensive urge (or inclination/propensity), on one side, and responsibility, on the other, defined, undertaken and effectively in place on part of the given individual to establish and apply interconnection between idea-centeredness and matter-centeredness. For most people we should say that there is no structured or at least objectified conceptual framework of such exercise. However, whenever it is there within an individual, we can think of this individual as an actualizist rather than idealist or materialist.
What is meant by the conceptual system or framework underlying actualizism? The person is always in search of intelligible transitions from matter to idea and vice versa. However there is in most cases temptation to construct homo-quality pseudo-transitions, i.e. to construct idea from idea and matter from matter with no cross-quality mixes or genuine transitions. The former are pseudo or false transitions as the genuine transitions can be only hetero-quality.
A comparison can be made with the dilemma of lawfulness in terms of statistics vs. in terms of “pure cases”. Lawfulness in terms of statistics is pseudo-transition of matter-to-matter nature. Lawfulness in terms of common laws of dynamics underlying pure cases is matter-to-idea genuine transition which we can also call organic transition. It is the exercise of conceptual construction of deductive rules and is, in essence, analysis. An example of exercises of idea-to-idea pseudo-transitions is most ideologies of different kinds and they are by far speculative.
The opposite exercise of synthesis of matter from idea is much more complicated and is sometimes of “productive engineering” nature and absolutely useful for management of reality.
The problem of constructing qualified hetero-quality transition is that it needs to be structured. There is no other way of attaining it. If experience of pure cases is structured it is possible, though not always, to have a hetero-quality genuine transition. At the same time surprising enough there is no way to handle this task without experiencing pure cases i.e. with just “ideas”, however many they are. The reason is the truth that IDEA AND MATTER ARE NEVER DICHOTOMIC let alone ANTAGONISTS (notwithstanding the common understanding and notion), they are just DIFFERENT by different criteria and CANNOT and ARE NOT TO BE COMPARED with each other – they are of different qualities or, as one can say, in different dimensions.
The mind of an actualizist seeks continuous expansion and extension of the two-dimensional matrix where one dimension is the breadth of understanding of each and every pure case and the second dimension is the length i.e. the number of DIFFERENT pure cases. Both dimensions are important but my guess is that the former is more important ontologically and epistemologically.
The actualizist transforms the matter into idea through the “pure case” mechanism and idea to matter through a much more complicated process of productive thinking and similar elaborations. In particular, for the actualizist the notions of bare idealism and bare materialism no longer apply.
For generalization i.e. matter-to-idea transition the actualizist generalizes the pure cases not through the mere PROPERTIES common for different cases but the common LAWS underlying these properties. So this is another good example of matter-to-idea interaction i.e. drawing common or universal ideas out of the common properties of matter.
From conventional philosophy we know there are people who prioritize idea/mind and who prioritize matter. Or more accurately – who distinguish them as to what the reason/source is and what the result/outcome/product is or in other words what the cause is and what the effect is. Respectively they are called idealists and materialists. However there is a big trick or confusion in all this.
Idealists are mainly concerned with the idea/mind - ideas and how important they are. Materialists on the contrary are more occupied with the priority of matter or materia and how important and decisive it is in everything that exists, we do, feel, understand, etc. However the link or connection or I should call it TRANSITION between these two is virtually always ignored or skipped.
What is meant by this? The key point or question is - what kind of transition mode or method or practice (if any) is there between these two ends? One must admit that this way or another there must be some kind of linkage or communication between these two and hence they are to be connected or linked somehow as otherwise it will sound too stupid to talk about only either of them even in one single situation or case.
The clue to solving the problem is the answer to the question for each specific case – is there a clear and comprehensive urge (or inclination/propensity), on one side, and responsibility, on the other, defined, undertaken and effectively in place on part of the given individual to establish and apply interconnection between idea-centeredness and matter-centeredness. For most people we should say that there is no structured or at least objectified conceptual framework of such exercise. However, whenever it is there within an individual, we can think of this individual as an actualizist rather than idealist or materialist.
What is meant by the conceptual system or framework underlying actualizism? The person is always in search of intelligible transitions from matter to idea and vice versa. However there is in most cases temptation to construct homo-quality pseudo-transitions, i.e. to construct idea from idea and matter from matter with no cross-quality mixes or genuine transitions. The former are pseudo or false transitions as the genuine transitions can be only hetero-quality.
A comparison can be made with the dilemma of lawfulness in terms of statistics vs. in terms of “pure cases”. Lawfulness in terms of statistics is pseudo-transition of matter-to-matter nature. Lawfulness in terms of common laws of dynamics underlying pure cases is matter-to-idea genuine transition which we can also call organic transition. It is the exercise of conceptual construction of deductive rules and is, in essence, analysis. An example of exercises of idea-to-idea pseudo-transitions is most ideologies of different kinds and they are by far speculative.
The opposite exercise of synthesis of matter from idea is much more complicated and is sometimes of “productive engineering” nature and absolutely useful for management of reality.
The problem of constructing qualified hetero-quality transition is that it needs to be structured. There is no other way of attaining it. If experience of pure cases is structured it is possible, though not always, to have a hetero-quality genuine transition. At the same time surprising enough there is no way to handle this task without experiencing pure cases i.e. with just “ideas”, however many they are. The reason is the truth that IDEA AND MATTER ARE NEVER DICHOTOMIC let alone ANTAGONISTS (notwithstanding the common understanding and notion), they are just DIFFERENT by different criteria and CANNOT and ARE NOT TO BE COMPARED with each other – they are of different qualities or, as one can say, in different dimensions.
The mind of an actualizist seeks continuous expansion and extension of the two-dimensional matrix where one dimension is the breadth of understanding of each and every pure case and the second dimension is the length i.e. the number of DIFFERENT pure cases. Both dimensions are important but my guess is that the former is more important ontologically and epistemologically.
The actualizist transforms the matter into idea through the “pure case” mechanism and idea to matter through a much more complicated process of productive thinking and similar elaborations. In particular, for the actualizist the notions of bare idealism and bare materialism no longer apply.
For generalization i.e. matter-to-idea transition the actualizist generalizes the pure cases not through the mere PROPERTIES common for different cases but the common LAWS underlying these properties. So this is another good example of matter-to-idea interaction i.e. drawing common or universal ideas out of the common properties of matter.
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