metonymy4u

What is your current relationship to the paradox of plurality? By this I mean the idea that if things exist, they must be divisible, composed of parts. But this leads to a set of (apparently) contradictory statements: either things are composed of parts of zero magnitude (which seems absurd) or things are composed of an infinite number of parts of finite magnitude, which means that things are infinite, never ending and incomprehensible (which also seems absurd).

1. Do you think this paradox is useful any longer as a topic of conversation? Why or why not?

2. If yes, what is your current relationship to it? How do you understand it? Resolve it? Re-describe it?

Here are my answers on this cool and foggy morning:

1. Yes. I think conversations about the paradox can help us become aware of the varieties of human behavior and thought, and stimulate creativity.

2. I’m not so impressed any longer with the laws of identity and non-contradiction, which seem to be at work here. There seems to be a tacit assumption that the whole is co-extensive with the sum of any arbitrary set of de-scribable parts. That to add an indescribable part would be to change the whole. And the paradox indicates to me that either this is not the case or my descriptions are not adequate to the resolution of my cognitive dissonance (anxiety). Anxiety being the dizziness of freedom, I realize that paradoxes are mired in freedom, and cooked up therein. So I’m free to deny the laws of identity and non-contradiction. For a long time I was loath to do this, until I read Basho’s poem about Kyoto. If your objection is “equivocation,” my reply is simply that dropping the laws of identity and non-contradiction is also dropping the fear of equivocation. Perhaps even embracing such.

Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto.