Introduction[]
There have been many revisions when it comes to Conceptual Manipulation and the general way it's handled on this wiki but I have a few major disagreements that I want to bring to light through this blog. There's a multitude of things I intend to cover and I'm going to separate this into different sections, mainly so I can go in-depth with each and every contention I have. Keep in mind, this blog is just merely an extension of the revision and thus should be treated as it was a revision thread (meaning that you should read through it and allow it's contents to sink in before actually responding)
So with that being said, given the immense amount of ground that I have to cover here, I'm going to just get into this blog. The last thing I will say in regards to the nature of this blog is that this will cover some complex topics and as such, it's yet another reason why you should allow your thoughts to set in before coming to an immediate conclusion of it's veracity
Problem #1: Type 2 Concepts Should Be Merged With Type 1 Concepts[]
This is one of the major contentions I have with the wiki and one thing I hope gets revised. As it stands on the Conceptual Manipulation page, Jungian Concepts are treated as distinctly different from Platonic Concepts. According to the page, the fundamental thing that separates a Jungian Concept from a Platonic Concept is that the former is influenced by human conception and cognition
| “ | Such concepts are archetypal pre-conceptions of conventional reality. These archetypes exist without their objects outside of the physical reality, but are still influenced by human perception, changing and updating as the environment does, but retaining their primal basis regardless of the changes. | „ |
| ~ Type 2: Jungian - Conceptual Manipulation page |
On paper, this sounds fairly logical but there's a major problem with this, two major problems in fact, which leads into one of the cruxes of this revision and ultimately why I think Jungian Concepts and Platonic Concepts should just be merged under the same type:
Problem #1a: Jungian Archetypes Are Essentially Platonic Forms[]
When doing a deep dive of Carl Jung and his general philosophy of life, you come to realize that his idea of "archetypes" are essentially just platonic forms but within a psycho-analytical context. Before we get into that, it's worth establishing that it's a well-known fact that Carl Jung was heavily inspired by Plato and his many ideas, many of which straight up were re-contextualized by Carl Jung from their original context, such as Eros Theory being touched on in Carl Jung's "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology". With that link established, it becomes more easier to believe that Carl Jung's idea of "archetypes" are just essentially platonic forms
That being said, I'm not going to have my entire argument be "Carl Jung explicitly followed Plato and thus Jungian Archetypes are Platonic Forms" because there's actually quite a bit of evidence that Carl Jung straight up just pulled from Plato's idea of "forms" when formulating his idea of "archetypes". For starters, the term "Archetype" derives from Philo Judaeus, a follower of Plato used the term "archetype" (specifically "archetypal ideas") to essentially refer to Platonic Forms
| “ | This doctrine, as worked out by Philo, was composed of very different elements, including Greek philosophy, Biblical conceptions, pagan and late Jewish views. The Greek elements were borrowed partly from Platonic philosophy, in so far as the divine powers were conceived as types or patterns of actual things ("archetypal ideas"), and partly from Stoic philosophy, in so far as those powers were regarded as the efficient causes that not only represent the types of things, but also produce and maintain them. | „ |
| ~ Jewish Encyclopedia - PHILO JUDÆUS |
So right off the bat, the term in itself has origins in Plato's Theory of Forms but Carl Jung has made the connection between his conception of "Archetypes" and Plato's idea of a "form" indisputable by just straight up admitting that they are essentially just Platonic Forms but in the domain of psychology. It's been put on record that Carl Jung essentially used "archetypes" as a way to put Platonic Forms (or as Jung called them, "Platonic Ideas") in the realm of empirical reality
| “ | In any case, after carefully differentiating his own "empirical and scientific" investigative approach from procedures followed by the philosophers, Jung is led only a few pages later to identify Plato's Ideas with his own psychological archetypes (Archetypes, p. 79). This comment is one of many scattered throughout Jung's works that have encouraged readers to look for continuities between the Platonic eidos or idea and the archetypes that Jung hypothesized as the constitutive forms of the unconscious dimension of the human psyche. Among these passages are his elliptical remarks that the [Jungian] archetypes "put the Platonic ideas on an empirical basis" and that the Platonic forms "are a philosophical version" of the archetypes. | „ |
| ~ PLATO'S "EIDOS" AND THE ARCHETYPES OF JUNG AND FRYE |
If that wasn't enough for you, there are various letters in which he's basically mentioned "Platonic Ideas" and essentially explained the influence they had on his idea for "Archetypes". The first linked I posted has a ton of them but there's even a huge letter where Carl Jung goes in depth with his ideas and their relation to Plato's Theory of Forms. Suffice to say, there's an undeniable connection between Plato's Theory of Forms and Carl Jung's conception of "Archetypes", with the connection being there is none because they are exactly the same thing by Carl Jung's own admission and based on the evidence
Now, with all that being said, this all takes me back to the original premise of this section and the contentions I had, which was that "Jungian Concepts" and "Platonic Concepts" should be under the same type on the basis that they were essentially the same thing. Any series that touches on Jungian Archetypes and has Conceptual Manipulation should have their Conceptual Manipulation rated appropriately as "Type 1" for reasons explained above. If this is accepted, this would also change the rest of the concepts, as Independent Concepts would be the new Type 2 and Dependent Concepts would be the new Type 3
Problem #1b: Carl Jung Didn't Believe Archetypes Were Influenced By Human Cognition[]
Another thing to tackle is how Carl Jung did not believe that "Archetypes" were necessarily influenced by human cognition. What he believed that "Archetypes" were the shapers of thought, experiences and reason, being the underlying things behind our actions. Carl Jung has clarified on how they pertain to human cognition and general way of living, which I'm going to pull from the link above:
| “ | So far as we have any information about man, we know that he has always and everywhere been under the influence of dominating ideas. Any one who alleges that he is not can immediately be suspected of having exchanged a known form of belief for a variant which is less known both to himself and to others. | „ |
| ~ C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious |
| “ | The things that come to light brutally in insanity remain hidden in the background in neurosis, but they continue to influence consciousness nonetheless. When, therefore, the analysis penetrates the background of conscious phenomena, it discovers the same archetypal figures that activate the deliriums of psychotics. Finally, there is any amount of literary and historical evidence to prove that in the case of these archetypes we are dealing with normal types of fantasy that occur practically everywhere and not with the monstrous products of insanity. The pathological element does not lie in the existence of these ideas, but in the dissociation of consciousness that can no longer control the unconscious. In all cases of dissociation it is therefore necessary to integrate the unconscious into consciousness. This is a synthetic process which I have termed the “individuation process. | „ |
| ~ C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious |
There's more quotes I could pull but the bottom line is that "Archetypes" were not really influenced by human cognition but quite the reverse. Carl Jung was a firm believer of the idea that "Archetypes" essentially are the underlying constants in which influences us in some type of way, with Jung using mythology and fairy tails and their similarities as a means to convey this influence. Suffice to say, this is yet another problem that leads me to believing that Jungian Concepts and Platonic Concepts should just be collectively Type 1, as opposed to arbitrarily separate things
Summarizing This Sections[]
- Jungian Archetypes and Platonic Forms are essentially the same thing
- Carl Jung almost explicitly conveyed that "Archetypes" weren't influenced by human cognition but rather the reverse
- For these reasons, they should be made into the same type, as there's basically nothing that differentiates them
- This would lead to Independent Concepts being Type 2 and Dependent Concepts being Type 3
- For these reasons, they should be made into the same type, as there's basically nothing that differentiates them
Problem #2: Scaling To Concepts Should Not Be Dependent on It's Type (Kinda)[]
Now we get into the true contention and what made me want to make this revision to begin with. Simply put, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a "type" of concept suddenly determines whether being qualitatively above it can be applicable for tiering. Addressing the major elephant in the room, this revision has essentially made it to where transcending the very concept of dimensionality or potentially space-time isn't considered 1-A anymore unless it's a Type 1 concept, which I fundamentally find arbitrary and insanely ridiculous
What makes this disagreeable and something that needs to be changed is given how abstracta work in relation to the things they encompass. Let's start with the fact that dimensionality in itself is just the measure of having dimensions, in other words, it's direction and volume. That second part is important given that volume, whether higher dimensional or not, is just a measure of the n-dimensional space which is occupied by a given body. This becomes relevant because a being who is beyond the very concept of dimensions would be beyond the imposition of dimensions and how many of them you could add to "reach" their level
The very concept of dimensionality (and space-time, in the instance the verse correlates the two), would logically encompass all potential additions that could fall under that concept. Treating someone who's supposedly ontologically superior to a particular concept as still being bound by that very thing is a textbook "Category Error" and essentially is as nonsensical as asking "what is the color of 1", with it being nonsensical off the basis that numbers don't fall under category of things to which color applies. I'm sure we can all agree that this makes no sense but this is relevant because under the standards of this wiki, a being who transcends the concept of dimensionality yet still being "dimensioned" would be the same premise
The bottom line is that it would be pointless to add 10, 100, 1000, etc, amount of dimensions to something or someone who possesses this trait of ontological superiority to dimensionality as a concept as their nature is fundamentally alien to "dimensions" and greater than it to begin with. Insisting otherwise would be essentially a "category error" and would be an essential admittance that you can find the "size" of yellow or figure out the "smell" of seven, both of which are premises we agree are fundamentally nonsensical by nature
I bring all of this up because a "concept type" wouldn't necessarily impact abstracta and what they encompass, which would essentially be all "instances" or any "potential instance" of something. If a "concept" has influence over reality, then we are under the implicit agreement that all things that would fall under it, would still "exist" in some metaphysical, abstract way, even if it doesn't necessarily exist physically in the verse. The only way this wouldn't be applicable is if "concepts" weren't influencing of the world around it (such as Type 4 - Dependent) concepts, hence why I put emphasis on kinda in the title of the section
In the end, if a character is explicitly stated or there's evidence that they are beyond the very concept of dimensionality or space-time (assuming that it's equitable to dimensionality in the context of the verse), then it should be straight up 1-A regardless of what concept type it is, unless it's a Type 4 concept, only because it doesn't "influence" reality in any type of way and thus we can't say that all "potential elements" that fall under it would exist, not unlike influencing concepts in which are the building blocks for reality or shape it in some meaningful way
Conclusions[]
Being beyond the concept of dimensionality would be 1-A and should be treated as such when the instance is applicable. It's just illogical to say that a character "transcends the concept of dimensions" but are still bound by it in some way, when it's fundamentally a category error and would be no differently from asserting you can "smell" the color red
On that same note, Jungian Concepts and Platonic Concepts should be considered the same type, as they are essentially the same thing, as explained and admitted by Carl Jung himself