A DIALOGUE:
THE DREAM DREAMS THAT MAYBE THERE'S A DREAMER?

Gary. C. Moore

           DIALOGUE: THE DREAM DREAMS THAT MAYBE THERE"S A DREAMER:

                                  The Dialecticians

                                                                        The Slaves

SOCRATES: Only the dreamer exists - not the dreams.

ARISTOPHANES : What is 'the dreamer'?

SOCRATES: The dreamer is he or she that dreams.

ARISTOPHANES: Are you sure it is not the dreams that exist, after all they are projected images, and the dreamer does not exist? What complete image do you have of the dreamer? Do you not have the same 'assurance' while you are actually within the dream that events are real as you do in daily life, which raises the problem if the sense of reality is the same for both, differing only in that each thinks the other state too strange? Where is the sure point of certitude for either? And how can you demonstrate, within each context, which has greater certitude and which is poorly grounded?

SOCRATES: There is no way that I can show that a recent dreaming action of an actor has truly taken place of not. The only way action is truly demonstrable is to repeat the action, in this case dreaming. It is impossible to re-dream a dream. Verbal attempts at describing past action, whether that be Agathon's wine an hour ago or a dream I dreamed last Tuesday, is doomed to failure. Try describing a recent dream to somebody else. Mental images do not exist. Only the body exists. As to the suggestion we are all dreaming, at least one must exist in order to dream. Metaphysicians can to fool some of the people into the belief that they are dreaming all of the time, and all of the people into the belief that they are dreaming some of the time, but they cannot fool all of the people into the belief that they are dreaming all of the time.

AGATHON: I don't know if this is relevant to anything, but there are a few occasions on which I have experienced 'lucid dreaming.' One particular occasion springs to mind, in which events were so outrageous that I became fully aware I was asleep and dreaming. There was no confusion about this. I knew I was dreaming. In this state one can achieve a certain degree of control over the dream itself. Though I have limited experience of this, it does convince me that there is a quantitative difference between dreaming and wakefulness, which I would loosely characterize as having to do with controlling some of the circumstances. We usually speak of a dream simply as 'having happened to us' but in normal circumstances wakefulness does not I think just happen to us. It is a state in which we interact and also make things happen as a result of clear decisions. I'm not sure one can demonstrate anything whilst dreaming. That state has to be distinguished from the momentary confusion and necessary reorientation we sometimes experience when waking, which itself belongs to wakefulness.

PRODICUS: Yes, Agathon, I agree. We seem to often have the ability to know some part of our mind is doing something "on its own" into which we can, infrequently I think, intrude. I wish I could do more intruding. That might be quite enjoyable!

HIPPIAS: This is a very old conundrum. I have to ask, Does it matter? 'Certitude' is a word I dislike with the same vigor I dislike 'perfection'. Dreams are workings no one clearly understands. If I am asked how I can know if I am dreaming this life, there is no possible way for me to prove I am or am not. Others maybe, but I can not. That in itself is a conundrum. What another says about their experience is only their personal observation. Others can see that I am sleeping, and that I seemingly am having a dream by my movements as if watching something or reaching for something or trying to walk on thin air. This is distinguishable from the way I act in my waking state. But can I possibly dream of my waking state in the same way. As Protagoras say, if we can imagine it, it is rationally consistent as an idea, and therefore possible. If, following this induction, I see a play about myself afterwards, I might claim that the entire activity is a dream. I think, in my every day life of course, that those who might believe this to be a few obols short of a drachma, that is, mad. But the mad guy will swear he is not mad . . . and believe it! So, one goes back to words like 'confusion' and 'reorientation' as used to justify knowing one is awake, and judging that there is no 'demonstration' or logic in a dream and think again what is happening here. Could 'reorientation' be a shift of prejudice of validity from one state called 'dreaming' to another state called 'wakefulness'? That this same prejudice would distort and devalue logical judgments made while dreaming so that the supposed 'wakeful' state is of superior value?

ARISTOPHANES: I think Socrates has actually struck at the root of the problem. There can be no experimental comparison because we are not dealing with present objects but memories and time. What one remembers is itself a judgment based on the values of the state one remembers within. From my experience which cannot apply to any of you, I remember different things in dreaming or the same things as in waking but from a different interpretation. A dream can only be a dream as past time. Protagoras has written that the only thoughts he knows are truly 'his' are his immediate experiences, and that in our soul the only thing we can be certain of is the succession of sensations without certainty of what they are or what they signify, much less as possessing any certain value. His memories from that place, that other-where of the presently imagined past are the memories of 'someone' and not necessarily himself. Since consciousness and its identity, his possession of 'his' immediate sensations, can only be of the immediate present, one can easily deduce that memory is not an obedient and accurate tool or servant. You are not its master, and, just as in a dream, you compare it to your present state and context which, as 'this' 'now', whether you like it or not, is arbitrarily, even involuntarily chosen. In both dream and memory, you 'feel' there is a familiar continuity giving it valid context just the same as being in the present and awake. As in lucid dreaming, you can feel you are in absolute control of the situation as if telling a story the same way as ruler or general, thinking they are awake and present, believe they have complete control over their situation. This is a terrible delusion we have experienced through the arrogance of others in our lives to our great sorrow.

But, if you are objective, you know your present state is dependent on matters, external or internal, that merely allow you to 'feel' that as if having that control. Of course the state you are in, whatever it may be, rejects all other states as unreal, or not as real, as whatever state you are in at the moment. So you are merely a crowd on a stage saying, "I'm the one that's real!" No, I'm the one that's real!"

"You're both full of it-I'm really the real one." "I'm drunk therefore I know that I am. I just don't know quite where." "Don't throw up on my shoes!" "I'm the one that's real because I've got the biggest muscles!" "Hey, muscle boy, do you have a date to the games?" "Get away from me or I'll make you into garlic paste." (POW) "Hey, I thought you weren't suppose to hurt when you were dreaming?" "You haven't the brains to know if you are dreaming." (POW) "O. k., o. k. I'm awake, don't hit me again!" etcetera. Protagoras says, "The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successfully make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away. And mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time nor identity in different times. Successive perceptions only constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or the materials of which it is composed." Of course they are all going to disagree on who is the smartest, the strongest, the most awake, the most drunk, the most sleepy, and so forth. I would say, the play is the thing to find the thread that ties it all together.

The play brings the past and future and wakefulness and dreaming together to produce a plot, get a good laugh or tear out one's eyes, and maybe run off with the appropriate maiden, or not, as you wish. Of course there would be no certitude, and every state thinks it has control of the situation involving the others, or at least is being 'objective' about it. But does it matter? Yes, but not by the way one is wholly right and others are wholly wrong. This is so because there is going to be a result from the whole situation just as there is a resolve in each state. They must concur because at any point you are making judgments of what state which experience is in. You make these judgments comparing every other state's consistency with the state you are presently in, which, for the moment, is the 'valid' one. And what is the result? Of course, the state one is not within at the time of judgment will be inconsistent with the continuity of one's present state and is therefore 'false'. What you really have, though, are several plot lines that have not come together yet. The old miser hides his gold and is suspicious of everybody. The father is desperate to get his daughter married. The warrior waking up from his drunk thinks he might have raped someone that night. A young girl feels she has had the most ecstatic experience of her life during the sacred orgy. The old miser's slave is tired of his skimpy rations and is looking for an opportunity to improve his situation. His friend, the slave next door, had to clean up after the festivities last night and is still asleep, but dreaming of the wild things his betters got away with, and the thought is slowly creeping into his dreaming mind that his friend is sly enough to find a way to blackmail these people. It will tie together with the proper writer, but how? All these viewpoints are distorted by desire, regret, ambition, and greed. Why, here I have my self then! A comic situation!

PRODICUS: Let me try to be a bit more controversial. What if I supposed for instance that not only do 'events' and 'actions' not exist, but that 'occurrences' do not occur either, including mental events, actions, and dreams whereby that which occurs is wrongfully perceived. That which we really think to occur is actually that which exists. Then that which happens, the humanly perceived actions that take place on earth and in the cosmos are either correct or incorrect apprehensions of actual things existing simply in the way they exist. In this situation, mere consistency determines what 'reality' is. If you are consistent in your present situation, you are 'real' for whatever that counts.

ALCIBIADES: "What you see is what you get." (loud belch)

SOCRATES: Therefore, for me, Protagoras got it the wrong way around. No such thing exists in the cosmos as sensations, events, actions, or occurrences. There is only that which senses. Therefore to say: 'I assume you mean the proper applications of words to sensation' is erroneous. for that is the same as saying: 'I assume you mean the proper applications of words to the speaker?' Therefore I agree. It is self-consistency that counts. Let us forget about statement of grandiose 'reality'. It is just a word.

ALCIBIADES (looking around with unfocused eyes): Who's speaking? Is that you, Aristophanes? No, no, wait . . . It was you Socrates! You seem to have grown horns . . .

ARISTOPHANES: Ignore him. The most significant change is from "what is the state that becomes familiar with things" to "what are the states in which one gets to know things". "Familiar" is an emotional and comforting term that fits very well with "state". Related to that is the change from singular to plural means there are plural states (hexeis), different kinds of states in which 'to know'. And the "states" are 'havings' or 'graspings'. That 'what are the states in which one gets to know them" gives us a clue. We normally consider 'state of being', which is being something, a statement which can be true or false, as an 'emotional state', but here it is associated it with knowing. This is perfectly acceptable to Protagoras but sounds strange to our inherited common sense 'ear'.

AGATHON: I seem to recall, though my memory is hazy here, that 'echein' refers to a very particular kind of having. One could 'have' several shirts, but 'echein' would only apply to the shirt one was currently wearing. In relation to that kind of having, to enquire about the 'having' that 'gets to know' these principles seems to require that we know these principles by 'wearing' them or 'using' them. A skill is a 'having' again in this sense of 'echein'-- it is a 'having' that is also at the same time a 'using.' Skill is then a kind of whole 'distinction making' that does not require a 'mental imprint' in the strict sense. A skill is learned through the repetition of a form of motion that follows exactly the circumspection of an eye in examining an unfamiliar object. They are both memories of a form, one held in the mind as a pathway of action, the other held as a concept that stays the same and can be referred to. Intuited truths are seen to be true because they work. We 'know' these principles by 'wearing' them or 'using' them. And therefore simply reflecting upon them is already in some sense to be 'wearing' them, so that we cannot get at them by this means, that is, by a knowing of a knowing.

SOCRATES: Very good, Agathon! A cutting point! We only know something by doing it, getting adjusted to it, making small changes, and if that doesn't get it right, throwing it out!

  AGATHON: To complete my turn of thought and put it in context, though these capacities do not represent a 'higher' or purer form of knowledge, our capacity to recognize the truth of one situation from the truth of another and the truth of a third yet, and even more, would again be a pre-speaking capacity that is attuned to the way the world is, and the logical argument itself would depend upon that capacity. One such obvious ability, but usually ignored as a 'capacity', is the ever-present positing of perception in human reality. Not only is there 'up' from a more encompassing point of view and 'down' as a more stabilizing and meticulous point of view, as well as 'before' as seen and 'behind' as unseen, but humans have generalized and specialized aspects of 'left' and 'right'.  Perceptual scenes normally go from one side to the other, indicating a start where your attention has been attracted that then follows the consequences of that interest. Thus a kind of logic and judgment is inherent in sight, even more so when you include the inclusive 'above' viewpoint that maps out the area with the grounding viewpoint of 'below' of that which supports perception. But it gets more explicit and intense when one grasps something with the left hand and something with the right. If it is different objects, then you visually 'compare' and concepts of some sort must naturally ensue. There can be no other words for it. But if it is two sides of one object grasped, it becomes vastly more interesting because the sides are compared as being like and unlike each other at the same time. It is no wonder that some philosophers say animals can make judgments on their own because 'judgment' is naturally part of sight itself. So the capacity to make distinctions is a fundamental feature of life itself; or, to put it more precisely, anything that is alive has a capacity to make distinctions of some sort. For example, a sun-loving plant has the capacity to distinguish sunlight. The only real difference that I can see as we move to more complex life-forms is the multiplication of capacities to make more complex distinctions. But, as we have seen in the intensive training of animals, capacities sometimes latently come out when we thought they were not there. And the size of the heart or the brain as the possible organs of besoulment is meaningless if real capacity is primarily latent in sight itself and in generalized and specialized left and right 'handedness' which could just as well, latently at least, apply to paws and hooves.

 

ARISTOPHANES: Well, uh . . . yes, Agathon, very good. (aside to Agathon alone:  Agathon, you're upstaging me again.) I would rather say, to make sense and therefore create motivation for making forms out of sense, therefore, since there is no one else to take charge and do things, a speaker forms in the image of the desire which may or may not be singular. Sensations are just sensations. And apprehensions are the result of purposive acts, that is, you have a desire and you want to accomplish it. Therefore you construct images as tools in the mind, primarily patterns of action, developments of skill, for which you design the static tools that endure for the moment in identity to be able to mark or measure your 'degree' of accomplishment by stating 'I have done this to this with this' thereby establishing a 'degree' of objectivity by which you can say you have accomplished thus-and-such or 'so much'. A playwright uses imagined characters that are like real people starting from the particular states they are in, first imagining the normal course of action their motivations will take them, and then putting them to work upon each other, some going together smoothly, some colliding in violent reaction. The same thing happens within a person, and each state is a reaction of some sort to each other state. This has to happen. Each state is a collection of experiences. Experiences are experiences. Each state recalls the experiences of all the other states and either accords with them or rejects them just like one does with other people. A play is no different.

  HIPPIAS: The existence of perception and sensation are like the existence of myths of existence. They tell stories that give you a fictional but functional or habitual continuity. But just as a story does not exist so perception, sensation, and existence do not exist.

  SOCRATES: Could perception be only a 'myth' or story until one created a myth of self to give coherence to it? Just as a story teller tells stories to exemplify a moral, a philosopher tells stories to exemplify ideas. But for Protagoras to suggest that words can properly be applied to 'sensation' or that we  are in some way trapped within an imagined gossamer panopticon of the senses, is,  I believe, the fatal flaw in his thinking.

  PRODICUS: What would be the 'proper' standard here? You first have sensation. There is no right or wrong because there is no judge, a mythical assumption. But there is anxiety to do something. So a judge as self is created much like God is created to account for creation. But this, again, can only be conceived as a mythical situation. You can not make judgments before a self is, and judgments can not be made before there is a self just as a story can not be told without a story teller. This is the situation we always already find ourselves in with the presuppositions we must have already made at first light.  If there is sensation, it is already a self sensing. There can no other self knowing beside the self as sensing. But then why would you need a self at all? Would it not be unnecessary if sensing could be accounted for and thought about?

SOCRATES: There is only the sensor, and the sensor is not trapped like some fly-in-amber within a prism of the senses, through which he views the world as through some distorting spectroscope, but he is there where the action is, taking part in the melee of inter-entity action as a participating observer.

  HIPPIAS: But a participating observer is defined by his context. Could not that be called the same as being caught in a web except being caught in a web is a bad experience whereas interacting as a participating observer where the action is, is considered a good experience? Could this be a difference between someone liking or not liking their situation within the web (and maybe not even considering themselves caught but the spider itself) as opposed to someone who does or does not like the action or chaos or turmoil  of being a participating observer of acting things and people. And where there is action, as Aristophanes might say, there is acting and actors. If one did not know one was in a play, if one did not know one's lines were prearranged for one (And how could you know without being a observer observing the sensor as if beside oneself?  Even if one is somehow predestined, to act at all one must feel one is free to act.), one would think the audience as the periphery of the pressing crowd where the action is with you at its center. But the press of a crowd catches you just as surely as the web of a spider, especially if someone yells 'Fire!'

  ALCIBIADES: I would say, 'In the beginning was the Sensor, and it saw all was chaos, and it said, 'Let there be I!'. And he saw that it was good. But I was dissatisfied, and said, "Let there be human!' and he saw that was good also. But still he was dissatisfied. So he said, 'Let there be woman!' Then all was chaos again, and woman had to start the process all over again and do it right for once.

  SOCRATES: Alcibiades, I believe that, though the notion of 'What you see is what you get' is a progressive one like a progressive rash raising itching welts. It doesn't go the last necessary mile and become: 'What you see is what you are.' Does someone have a mirror?

  ALCIBIADES: Ahh!!!?? . . . I was saying? . . . But my question has been, how can an imaginary being really Be? What if the statement 'I exist' has the same reality as the statement 'Meletus can think' or 'Two plus two makes three'. We all know Meletus is a moron and two plus two equals . . . four . . .right? If my existence has the same reality as his thinking, where am I?

Socrates: What we see, hear, smell, taste, touch is not the way in which what we  see, hear, smell, taste, touch exists, nor is it even the way that the prism of  our senses informs us that what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, but  the way that we exist.

  ALCIBIADES: I have nightmares about 'We'.

SOCRATES: One of the penalties of dualistic notions I'm afraid.

  HIPPIAS:  Any self-consistent system will do. But how can we be self-consistent with a language inherited from other people, most of whom we neither agree with or even like . . . and are even dead? There is no question that there is only 'one' reality and that any dualism contradicts itself by proposing another reality it can in no way even possibly present. Even supposing fantastically there was another reality, this reality has already permanently closed any relation or knowledge of it. Only one reality can be known. But it can change, and it can shift, it can move to a new view, it can cease to desire what it once wanted and desire something new, it can grow old and tire. And with these all their opposites must also live. As each thing can be defined by what it is, so also it can be defined by what it is not. As anything imaginable is possible, as anything imagined must be logically self-consistent, so every thing lives imagined life to its opposite. The lame want to walk again, the old want to be young again, and still most strange to me now the young bitterly envy the knowledge and experience of the old as if it were a miser's treasure hidden away from their hungry view, that if they knew it all while they were still young they could conquer the world. Reality is a uniting of opposites that do not sit very well with each other. Turmoil is inherent. One does not need to look for the action, it looks for you. One envies what one does not have.  Or worse, one envies that which does not exist, but one refuses to believe that. Someone has stolen it from you and hidden it away! Find it then! A whole life can be wasted on that.

SOCRATES: The way we think and speak is the way in which the thinking body exists. For a particular individual the way it thinks is always different from the way in which any other thinking body thinks and uses language. For every thing  in the cosmos exists differently from every other. Complementarity and true communication is therefore impossible. It is always provisional and never precise. Communication would always have something of a puzzle within it, then.

ALCIBIADES: It would be nice to know what the word 'puzzle' means. I mean, if you don't understand what it is, how can you call it a 'puzzle'? If I don't know my I, how can I know who I am or whether I'm somebody else besides?

  AGATHON: If you've found the answer to that, Socrates, I'd certainly be interested.

  SOCRATES: 'Proaporesasi' from 'proaporeoo', that is, 'to start preliminary doubts and difficulties' as in, Can there be 'dancers' if there is no dancing? Is a dancer only a dancer 

  when he or she is in the act of dancing? If I describe Alcibiades as being a  philosopher at a moment when he is not philosophizing, but standing firm with a fierce face toward the Spartans, does that mean that he is not a philosopher but a warrior with no thought but action in his mind? Yet even as he is now, he must be something of a philosopher because on the battlefield he can out-think us all.

  ALCIBIADES: I say the dreaming dreams the dreamer dreaming the dream. Does there have to be a point especially since, in the facts of the matter, there is no resolve? No resolve ever happens? It all just goes on and on and . . . .

SOCRATES: I like it! It sounds very poetic - there is a rhythm there which is  attractively Euripedean, but meaning . . .  what? As to whether we should simply give up and stop thinking - for thinking is resolving perceived interactive problems within the polis, I say no.  The future political course of the city, whether you see it now or not, involves all thought. It is not just that men want power, but how it is they want that power. And, therefore, how they will use it. Think about Kleon and his ways. He started out with a simple-minded lust for power. But he began to be deluded by his own rhetoric, and died in a pointless battle of his own whimsical creation.  There are many things strange in this world, as Sophokles said, but the strangest of all is man. I myself would prefer to go  on and on for as long as possible for the Bird of Time has but a little way to  flutter, and the bird is on the wing! Alcibiades either has no sense of that or too much of a sense of that good for a man. And despite my distaste for politics, in this close family, the polis, politics has a taste for me. Brotherly love easily comes to show its true colors as brotherly envy and hatred, and all the remembered, and all the imagined spites of the past taken revenge upon . . . But . . . perhaps, Alcibiades, you think the human sensor is not ensorialised, but that 'sensations' are incarnate visitations willed upon some passive being by a spiteful sprite?

  ALCIBIADES: Does it have to be spiteful? Are not sprites also beautiful and luscious and soft to touch and sweet to kiss? And do they not pretend, at first at least, to love? Would that not be a worthy dream?

SOCRATES: Possibly. Possibly. If I did not know you better.

HIPPIAS: I agree with discarding all these differentiations because it gives perception a hierarchy of value that does not exist. There is no 'more real' or 'less real' when 'real' can be either 'dream' or 'being at work'. One can labor just as hard in a dream. One can fear death just as much. One can be just as bitter and hateful as in waking life. We are in necessarily equally 'real' situations no matter what, and more so as to perception's being 'better' or 'worse' when, really, the only 'the facts of the matter' is 'What you  see is what you get'.

SOCRATES: I prefer, 'What you see is what you are'. What you see is how you are at the moment you see what you see. Contrary to Protagoras, it is not our 'perceptions' or our 'sensibilities' which render a false or true or partially correct 'interpretation' of 'reality' it is 'I', the thinking body. There is no dichotomy between the thinking body and 'its senses' - the thinking body is sensate.

ARISTOPHANES: Or does sensation 'mind', care about, or verbally create the body, and, under that pressure, out pops the I? But, yes, that would be another story.

SOCRATES: 'I' is just a name we apply to the first person sensate holism. The term 'I exist' is a redundancy, though a redundancy as comical as some Phoenician or Syrian or Cretan said that God's name is, 'I AM THAT I AM'. To utter the term 'I' is sufficient to make the self an entity. Common-sense says, without the 'I' predicates would be meaningless. If, upon your arrival, I stand by the door and call out 'Aristophanes! What an . . . unexpected . . . surprise!' It is enough, and more than enough in his case. There is no need for me to add 'Aristophanes... exists', as if that were necessary, or even desirable.

ALCIBIADES (after a coughing fit): But that 'I' is not much of anything, is it, by itself? To have a self, one must be a body and live that flesh to its furthest limits just to find out who and what you are. And then beyond that if you dare. And more, if there can be more.

HIPPIAS: Is he getting sober? Agathon, you are well known as a fighting man. How much can a warrior drink and still keep his sense or, for that matter, stay alive? I have never seen anyone drink like Alcibiades, and hardly any water in his wine either. Usually that drives men mad or kills them. Agathon, has he reached his limit and is coming back to this world with the rest of us?

AGATHON: I thought I was a strong drinker, but I have never seen a human still alive after drinking like that. But then I have never seen a living human being go into the Spartans like he did at Pylos and come out alive. I was grateful enough any of us survived, much less getting such a great and unexpected victory - unexpected to all but Alcibiades. Socrates, did you not save his life at Potidaea? Did he not seem rash and without judgment and the first of those in the front line of battle? And yet somehow he always survived? I think he will survive this also.

SOCRATES: Yes, I think that will happen no matter what his enemies wish.

HIPPIAS: I think you need to watch after yourself as well, Socrates. His enemies become your enemies.

SOCRATES: What happens, happens. Let's have more philosophy.

PRODICUS: I would place 'earth' and 'cosmos' on exactly the same bogus level as 'dreams' - or 'dramas'. Interesting, one does not 'perceive' a 'dream' by any real standard of accuracy by which to even be able to define it as it is 'seen' in one's imagination. It 'happens' but it is too vague to be meaningfully said to exist. And to say, 'I remember my dream last night' is actually to have 'always already' interpreted it, made it something else,and therefore wholly changed its nature into an imagined image perceived. But then the same thing happens to one's business done yesterday. A memory also is far to vague to be said to exist even though it might be said to be in the same 'state' of continuity as now.

SOCRATES: All true and well put.

ARISTOPHANES: Does a 'chair' exist? No, I 'see,' according to my present purpose a bunch  of wood made useless by being put together in an artificial unity that has to be  taken apart in order to make a fence or a cage for small animals.

SOCRATES: We share a mode of lateral thinking which is sadly absent elsewhere.

ARISTOPHANES: Does a fence exist? No, I see a mess of wood and wire that has to be taken apart to make a 'chair.' 'What I see,' though, 'is what I get.' The object perceived by itself never exists without my purpose that makes it into the kind  of object I am looking for. The purpose is real but the object is not? Hold on, I have never seen a purpose. Has language deceived us again?

SOCRATES: What you see and what you think about what you see is the way you are -  not what you 'get' - for to construe the body's mind existing in a mode of  'receiving
something' which is 'given to it' by its own 'sensibilities' is to  introduce a non-existent Protagorean duality, which though more 'progressive than the  Parmenidean poetical crudity, it is still naive. It is the same as the  notion that your hand gives you an apple when you eat it and the body 'gets'  what the hand 'gives' it. Plainly the human holism feeds itself, and the hand is  part of the holism. In the same way the tongue that tastes, the nose that  smells, the exterior mind which sees and the tymphanic membrane that vibrates  are all features of the human mental bodily holism.

ARISTOPHANES: What you dream and what you dream about what you dream is the way you dream - Yes, 'receiving something' is actually quite literally wrong. There is no receiving, rather, 'You are what you get'. Receiving creates the receiver. The address on the message creates the place it goes to. This is literally how things are done. Embodying creates the brain. Take it this way - You come to a dissecting table with a number of very strange hunks of tissue. The instructor says, 'This is the brain,' and you say, 'No! No! No! No! THIS (pointing) is the pituitary gland. THIS is the . THIS is the limbic system. THIS is the cerebellum. THIS is the corpus callosum. THIS is the cerebellum, THESE are the cranial nerves. THERE is the spinal cord. THESE ARE brains, not 'brain'! You only dream a brain! It is a figment of your imagination!'

SOCRATES: The way I dream is the way I am when I am dreaming The way you 
dream is the way you are when you are dreaming. This axiom can be applied to any 
action you or I may make. We may go further and claim that what we regard as truth is really a felicitous concurrence of our perception of the way in which entities exist, with 23the way in which they exist seen through the prism of our human sensibilities.

ALCIBIADES (after spilling his drink): Are you saying 'Truth' is an accident? I like that.

SOCRATES:  I would like that too - if it were true. Truth doesn't exist, and so is neither purposeful or accidental. I qualified it when I said that 'What we regard as 'Truth.' To tighten the concept down more, we can venture to  say that only those entities which are the actual denotata of correctly signified significata are capable of eventuating and occurring and being found  to exist in the cosmos, and that designate, which loosely refers to phenomena  existing or not, that is referred to by a linguistic expression have no  place in epistome, being too vague and unworthy for serious investigation.

HIPPIAS; Or, How about 'Those denotata which are the actual significata are capable of eventuating and occurring entities that find a cosmos in existence, and that Designata -- Feminine? Masculine? Existing? Non-existing? Who can tell the difference? They all refer by a linguistic expression, and are scientifically observable because they can be put in a sentence, and nothing is unworthy of investigation because the greatest discoveries are made from other peoples' trivia?

SOCRATES: Sounds a bit like Alcibiades after a hard night out on the wine?

ALCIBIADES (waking suddenly): Ahhhh!!! Very good! But does 'epistome' exist? I have never seen 'epistome'. Or 'designata' either. You can say all you want, but what you see you should beware.

A GARLIC-BREATHED CELTIC SLAVE THAT SOCRATES STARTS TO SPEAK TO:
I don't know, I just do what I'm told. If you want an 'epistome', I'll get you an 'epistome'. Or a 'designata'. (leaves)

SOCRATES (turning back):  He's no Meno. You are perfectly correct. And it is also interesting that you can hear perfectly well while you're asleep. My use of the shortcut abstraction 'epistome' is a prime example of the reification of a fantasy.

ARISTOPHANES: Here's your science. Out of the fantasies of Anaximander and Parmenides come the funniest little fantasies like - discontinuous identities (Where have I heard of that before?), an object, light, that can be two different things at the same time and the same place (O woe is me!, moans Xenophanes from the grave), and the observer observes, that is, changes with the motion of his hand light from being a solid bar across to wall to being . . . a haze, a fog. But not at the same time or the same place since the observer is a obtuse Elean.

SOCRATES: It is refreshing to cut through the crap of obfuscation and go straight to the real object's jugular. It is something one doesn't witness here very often where the name of the game is to play Parminidean silly-baggers.

NEW UNCOUTH BOUGHT SLAVE  SMELLING OF STALE-CABBAGE WALKS IN:
Es gibt? Es gibt? Es gibt nicht. Dasein es nicht. Geschick es nicht. Nicht es nicht. Lassen Sie uns sehen. (Alcibiades throws a fruit at him and he leaves)

ALCIBIADES (laughing and drooling): Babababababababababa . . .

ARISTOPHANES: However, a group or form of acts I can helpfully use to achieve my purpose  call 'methodical epistome' I can see as I act my way through the verbal cues to 

achieve the end I desire, or discover the perceptions I have put into this  process I perform with my own hands either do not go together to fit my purpose,  or I have incorrectly gone through the motions of 'scientific method'. But until I successfully DO IT there is no 'science'. I pick 'science' because, really 'methodical epistome' is really all  workable method even in literature, poetry, art, etc. You can even, with  'scientific method', make something 'work' with the absolutely general purpose  of 'Let's see what happens when we do this' - and if you survive, then you can  say 'I have demonstrated by doing thus-and-such, I made happen what I saw - and  got - although now I only have four fingers on my left hand.'

SOCRATES: To speak of an entity existing - 'in the way it exists' - may 
seem at first like a pleonastic expression, in my opinion tautology is the only and inescapable way of describing the actuality of objects.

THRASYMACHUS (after a long brooding silence, and nasty looks at Alcibiades as if he knew something the rest did not): I like pain as a determinator of existence and objectness. If it hurts, the hurt is real.

SOCRATES: There is no such thing as 'pain.' The thinking body sometimes exists in a 

modality of discomfit, but the existence of 'pain' is a myth. When people say: ' I have 'a' pain in my stomach,' what they really mean is the part of my body vestigial process that extends from the lower end of the caecum . . .

ALCIBIADES: Ahh, cecum! How often have I viewed thee!! Strewn all over the field. Guts everywhere . . .

THRASYMACHUS: And glory! One should be proud to serve the fatherland!

SOCRATES: . . .and that  resembles a small pouch which we call the stomach is aching. The doctor may then  proceed to remove his appendix but it is the fleshy vestigial process that  extends from the lower end of the caecum and that resembles a small pouch which  is removed and not the 'pain.'

ARISTOPHANES: Let us state as a hypothesis, 'All feeling, all emotion is derived from and a variation of pain.' Will this fly? Now, 'irritability' is part of the definition of life along with 'IT MOVES!' and 'It wants to rest and rest and leave aside this dreary life'. Love as an irritation of the vestigial process . . . Yes, it flies.

SOCRATES: The body ceases to experience the discomfort that  was due to the diseased organ - the pain no longer exists - because it wasn't  there to exist in the first place. When I explain these sorts of things to  people, they often say things like: 'Well what people mean when they  say a 'pain' and, not being doctors, rather than saying: 'a possible diseased  appendix' is that they don't know the probable cause of the 'pain.' To that  I respond that I am not on these lists to discuss sociology and the generally  uneducated state of the public in matters medical - I am here to differentiate  ontologically between what is and what isn't an existing entity.

THRASYMACHUS: Then one could determine the actuality of objects by the kind of hurt they cause. Is this so outlandish?

SOCRATES: Good point. But we've been doing that for thousands of years. Though the crunch is what is meant by the word 'actuality?'

HIPPIAS: What you have to deal with right at the moment, whether dreaming or awake. Dreams have their own dreadful everyday sense of consistent reality and an 'of course' sense of practical common sense, and a dreadful night to night continuity. But isn't that what everyday life is?

SOCRATES: If for example it is meant in the sense of detecting the actual presence within the body of an organ such as the appendix, because the symptoms near the

stomach down below and the general state of the holism would suggest such a fleshy

organ to be present, well a few knowledgeable prods by medical fingers would soon distinguish whether the appendix is actually present or been removed prior to the examination. On the other hand, the type of 'pain' was taken as a guide as to  the condition of an existing appendix within the body then further tests  in addition to manipulation would probably be called for, possibly 'referred pain.' What is actually being discussed is the medical equivalent of the basic difference, that is., simple presence versus existential state or modality?

THRASYMACHUS: One doesn't really know unless one goes and looks and sees, and 'One gets what one sees' or "One sees what one gets'. The only person 'pain' is real to is the person feeling it, which should be you and not me.

ARISTOPHANES: In a certain way, we already do this. Achieving one's purpose as  'If one does it, one has a purpose', even if the purpose is undefined and vague and not even clearly yours but you  hold yourself responsible and, more than likely, other vague entities will hold  you responsible for their actions . . . As Gorgias said, There is no absolute 'Good'. You have a 'feeling' of what is good and bad, you observe how it really works for you and other people, observe its deficiencies, and correct it and experiment again and again still you have something that WORKS, not something that is 'Right'. 'Doing the Right thing' all the time is making a circle to protect the young when the predator has figured out how to break the circle.

AGATHON: This saying goes along well as a corollary to 'The sincerest form of  appreciation is imitation,' but that would be a secondary, derivative  action.