What Is Context? ⚠️

[ExploringReality]

18 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Leo onto it for you

https://www.actualized.org/insights/recontextualizing-reality

Whoaaa!!! That's amazing 

[Adrian colby]

2 hours ago, ExploringReality said:

 Context is the fabric of existence itself.

Certainly. “Con-text” the word means:  to weave together,  so using the analogy of “fabric” would be accurate. 

It would seem everything we discuss has the same underlying structure or process and that is that it goes from one indistinct statement to endless fractalisation and iteration in all directions. Subdivisions and holons within holons.  prior to that it’s just a statement with no meaning but contains within it an infinity of potential definitions as you say ( an analogy to the way in which infinity creates reality)

Context is the creative act of weaving distinctions into relationship, like an artistry of meaning, so that forms become coherent within a larger whole. 

context within context creates narrative. Just like one word doesn’t say much but it has contained within it many possibilities if it is put into context by the other words before and after it. Further still, A sentence can clarify the meaning of a word and many sentences can create a story or deeper more nuanced meaning. 

every concept, word, context, thing can only ever point towards another thing by referencing another thing. Even language only ever references other words and never points at the thing itself. Or should I say ‘no thing’

all of it stops and collapses when it goes into direct contact with just being. It reminds me of ‘Derrida’s différance’. 

 

when discussing and contemplating all these things it becomes very hard to make distinctions because they all boil down to sounding like they are the same thing so they loose meanings. And collapse into the same indistinct mental mechanism. A conjoining from differentiated to undifferentiated. The opposite direction to creation. 

Inherent context = reflection

The universe “withs itself” simply by existing in relation. every form reflects against what is not it. This doesn’t need perception; it’s the silent mirror of being.

Apparent context = expression

When a perceiver arises, those relations are noticed, narrated, or symbolised. That’s context used for communication/transmission, expressed as story, pattern, or meaning.

 

 

 

 

[Reciprocality]

Context is the totality of material conditions that (i) render claims meaningful and falsifiable, and (ii) delimit the field of possible predicates: those already conceptualised and determinable, those conceptualised yet indeterminate with respect to a subject, and those not yet conceptualised at all.

[Reciprocality]

The dual opposite without which the above statement would be empty or meaningless:

A subject without context can only be analytically predicated—tautologically described—since, in the absence of delimiting conditions, no falsifiable claims arise, no predicates mutually exclude one another, and the subject’s “properties” collapse into purely definitional generalities whose overlapping instantiations extend everywhere.

[UnbornTao]

Context is not a thing, nor is it merely a collection or combination of content, as @Carl-Richard suggested at the start of the thread. Context, as an existential reality, is something else entirely. Mind, as context, allows for the having of thoughts. Mind is not simply the sum or domain of thoughts put together, but rather the possibility that allows for new domains of distinctions to exist or to be made. It is a creation of consciousness.

Try experiencing reality prior to the creation of language, for example. Not easy to do, since we take language for granted.

@Joshe Fair, AI might be useful for research or study, but answers are not the point when contemplating. And a definition can help us ballpark our efforts, at best. To use your analogy: God is constantly giving us the answers, yet we seem to suffer from an affliction of hearing - we aren't receiving the communication. It is not about picking the correct answer on a test, either. Essentially, your goal might be wanting to be told something convincing to believe in, or else making something up - usually in the form of an intellectually graspable formulation - because you may be lazy and are looking for shortcuts. But the truth of the matter has not been addressed, and the basic condition of ignorance is merely covered up with more "knowledge." And this knowledge still comes from the same world of assumptions in which the subject is being discussed. You cannot get around the necessity of personally generating insights - especially when it comes to topics as profound as this one.

The truth might turn out to be that we don't really know what the subject matter is, and must stay with it until we do. Thinking that our task is easily accomplished is a common trap.

On 19/8/2025 at 9:45 PM, Joshe said:

The rocks on mars exist in an objective context before you perceive or interpret them.

Where is the context in that? I'd call that simply an idea of objects existing on another planet, but I don't see what or where the "objective" context is.

Space is a context, yet space isn't an item or thing, even though it allows for the existence of objects. Context itself is not an object.

That it is prior to perception and interpretation is an intriguing possibility. Maybe we could come up with more apt examples.

Quote

Variables and constants are things that comprise the space. Variables change, constants don't. Variables = weather, mood. Constants = gravity, location.

But these are not the context itself. Context allows for them to be recognized as such in the first place. For example, without 'mind,' there is no thought, planning, theorizing, believing, internal dialogue, and so on. It seems to me that in this case, context is being held as merely more content.

Edited August 23 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

On 8/20/2025 at 5:33 AM, ExploringReality said:

@UnbornTao 

Im willing to propose that language is not needed for communication.

What if language is actually further away from actual communication. What if language is an indirect subset of actual communication. If I show you a nectarine, obviously we both hear and say the word "nectarine" and we'll probably both have ideas and past presumptions about nectarines, how it tastes to us and if we're in the mood or hungry to eat it and what it means to us. But once you take it from my hand without speaking, and you taste it with me, now there is a shared experience that is closer to raw reality not using words or symbols. Handing you the nectarine and tasting it conveys the full sensory reality. The texture, taste and juiciness. This bypasses symbols entirely. It captures something that words can never.

How do you see language? Could you be taking it to be a particular group of symbols or some such?

Still, as infants we had to create language as a context in our own experience. Now we take it for granted as an essential part of our shared reality. But it isn't something we simply stumbled upon.

Without a language context, do we recognize that this hand shape cannot convey anything?

Language isn't found in the gestures, shapes, drawings, sounds, or squiggles made.

Yes, two individuals could perform the same action - like eating fruit - and I suspect their respective experiences (the taste of the food, etc.) would be reasonably similar. And this may well be a function of perception, of what they personally experience. However, no hearing or thinking of the term 'nectarine' could arise, nor the notion of sharing your experience with another - among the many other domains of experience that language allows.

These topics are challenging enough on their own. 

What's context?

What's language? (Perhaps better suited for a new thread.)

Edited August 22 by UnbornTao

[ExploringReality]

@UnbornTao

Yes, reality is independent of language and symbols.

A mountain exists whether or not anyone names it mountain. The sun burned for billions of years before a single human said sun. A newborn, or even a animal, perceives warmth, hunger, sound, light all without needing words for it. Language and symbols don’t create reality, they only carve it into pieces, label it, and make it communicable. Reality is immediate, self existing. Language is a layer on top, a kind of map. 

Language is a map and we take it for granted when we absorbed it as babies around us. There is raw immediate experience, then there is the map.

[UnbornTao]

3 hours ago, ExploringReality said:

@UnbornTao

Yes, reality is independent of language and symbols.

A mountain exists whether or not anyone names it mountain. The sun burned for billions of years before a single human said sun. A newborn, or even a animal, perceives warmth, hunger, sound, light all without needing words for it. Language and symbols don’t create reality, they only carve it into pieces, label it, and make it communicable. Reality is immediate, self existing. Language is a layer on top, a kind of map. 

Language is a map and we take it for granted when we absorbed it as babies around us. There is raw immediate experience, then there is the map.

Labeling and identifying may be part of it, but what allows for those acts?

We created language as context.

I suggest that the role of language is paramount in shaping our experience. It is not an extraneous activity. Without taking it for granted - as we already do - notice how much of what we consider reality to be could not exist as it does now without that invention:

• Self and other
• Communication
• Art, literature, culture
• Thinking and internal dialogue - perhaps even the mind itself
• Most forms of knowledge
• Science, philosophy, religion

If we can somehow make that shift, what would we then find reality to be?

Quote

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Martin Heidegger

Anyway, context.

[ExploringReality]

32 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Labeling and identifying may be part of it, but what allows for those acts?

We created language as context.

I suggest that the role of language is paramount in shaping our experience. It is not an extraneous activity. Without taking it for granted - as we already do - notice how much of what we consider reality to be could not exist as it does now without that invention:

• Self and other
• Communication
• Art, literature, culture
• Thinking and internal dialogue - perhaps even the mind itself
• Most forms of knowledge
• Science, philosophy, religion

If we can somehow make that shift, what would we then find reality to be?

Anyway, context.

What we consider reality to be is largely conceptual. Not merely our internal dialogue, but a collective conceptual web.

[UnbornTao]

On 8/21/2025 at 10:56 PM, ExploringReality said:

What we consider reality to be is largely conceptual. Not merely our internal dialogue, but a collective conceptual web.

Sure, maybe. But can we experience what it's like to be without language? Can we even imagine what life was like for us prior to its invention?

It's tricky.

Edited August 23 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

I'm picking 1xB: "It's too complicated to explain."

How_Leo_Gura_argues_bingo.png:

Edited August 22 by UnbornTao

[Joshe]

10 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Where is the context in that? I'd call that simply an idea of objects existing on another planet, but I don't see what or where the "objective" context is.

I didn't say the rocks on Mars are the context, although they could be if you were analyzing the rock's atomic structure. I said they exist in a context. Specifically, in a nested context. 

10 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Space is a context, yet space isn't an item or thing, even though it allows for the existence of objects. Context itself is not an object.

I agree. Outer space would be the "possibility space" in my definition.

10 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

That it is prior to perception and interpretation is an intriguing possibility. Maybe we could come up with more apt examples.

The rocks on Mars already exist, even though you've never perceived them. If you get in a spaceship and fly to Mars, you will find them. If you go to the forest, you will find the fallen tree. That's what I mean by they exist prior to perception (if you don't zoom all the way out). 

10 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

But these are not the context itself. Context allows for them to be recognized as such in the first place. For example, without 'mind,' there is no thought, planning, theorizing, believing, internal dialogue, and so on.

I didn't say those things were the context. I said they comprise the context. Variables and constants were just a single aspect of my definition. You have to consider my entire definition, which I gave a point-by-point breakdown of. 

When I listed things like gravity and mood, I didn't mean they are context. I meant they are examples of conditions that give the possibility space structure or could be seen as features of the space. They contribute to the context, but they are not the context itself. 

10 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

It seems to me that in this case, context is being held as merely more content.

Reread my definition. I started off by saying context is a dynamic, nested possibility space. This explicitly framed it as a field. And of course, the "possibilities" here refer to content.

So, a field of potential content that is dynamic, nested, structured by variables, constants, and constraints, and has both objective and subjective qualities to it. 

Of course, if you zoom out far enough, context is just a mental construction with an arbitrary quality to it, but so is everything, so collapsing it like this is useless IMO. 

Edited August 21 by Joshe

[ExploringReality]

 

 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

3 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Sure, maybe. Can we experience what it is like to be without language, though? Can we imagine what life was like prior to its invention?

It's tricky.

I think this is where I was going with:

Quote

 

A lizard on a hot rock.

Sun - stimulus. Rock's warmth = part of the context.

Shadow of a hawk passing - threat context overrides the basking = New context.

 

Trying to disengage language from the definition of context.

But I realise the above could be the language of symbolism.

This thread is contracting and expanding back and forth all over the place.

Hard to say if it is getting closer to 'context'  

[Carl-Richard]

One thing I've thought about context is there is this band called Meshuggah that has released two versions of the same album: one has drums played by a human, the other has drums played by a computer. Everything else was kept virtually identical (even the acoustic sound of the drums). And because Meshuggah is a very rhythm-oriented and groovy band, the difference is palpable.

But why? You have the same musical notes, the same musical ideas, the same musical "sentences", the same "text" being communicated. But the context, the more subtle surrounding conditions, is very different. And when the context is a human producing a rhythm, that's a rhythm another human can move and synchronize to more naturally, because humans more naturally do human things.

This points to the experience of music indeed being a whole holistic experience, not easily reduced to mere notes on a sheet of paper.

This also reminds me of presenting things (in school or otherwise) and reading up from a sheet of paper without having a clear understanding of what you're reading. If what you're saying is not coming from a place of full embodied understanding, if the words from your mouth were not formed and molded as a result of your understanding that exists within your mind, chances are that lack of understanding is what will be communicated, even despite the understanding that formed the words on the sheet of paper.

Because even though I have poo-pooed the common man's abilities for perceiving psychic phenomena, I think more mundane phenomena like even just understanding what somebody is saying involves tapping holistically into somebody's mind as they lay it out through their presence (be it through speech, their body, their eyes, their tone of voice). You empathically, telepathically, connect with their understanding as it exist holistically inside their mind, and if it doesn't exist and they're just reading up from a script, the chances are you will have the experience of "what the hell am I listening to?" rather than "yes this is very understandable and good well-conceived thoughts".

This is also why AI speaking to me through text often doesn't speak to me through clear and embodied understanding, because as far as we know about how AI works, it doesn't have that. The uncanny valley is the lack of embodied connection to something real and similar to you, which depends on the whole, and that which is often unspoken, the larger context.

Edited August 22 by Carl-Richard

[UnbornTao]

22 hours ago, ExploringReality said:

 

Philosophy recontextualized as comedy.

Edited August 22 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

On 22/8/2025 at 2:16 AM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I think this is where I was going with:

Trying to disengage language from the definition of context.

But I realise the above could be the language of symbolism.

This thread is contracting and expanding back and forth all over the place.

Hard to say if it is getting closer to 'context'  

Without language, I can't seem to think or speak of context...

Also, I don't get your examples at all, haha.

From such a shift, what would we "say" context is? How would we recognize it?

You can still perceive and make distinctions, though. For example, prior to language, objects still exist within space. Without space, there are no 'objects.' What is this recognition a function of?

Perhaps it's awareness of distinction.

You tell me 

Edited August 24 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

@Joshe

So - are you saying that space is the context? And by "objective aspect," do you mean that it may be related to or involve objects? If that's what you mean, then I agree. Otherwise, where would it be found? Could an object serve as a context for something else? Or, put differently: is there such a thing as an objective context? I'd say yes, in the conventional sense of 'context,' but not existentially. Conventionally, you can group things together, assign them a categorical label, and call that their context.

Space allows for the existence of objects. In your example, you might actually be referring to 'environment' or 'setting' - particular forms of space. These don't seem to be physical in themselves. Space isn't the distance between objects - we could say that distance is a function or parameter of space. So, as you say, describing these as 'features' of space does sound reasonable.

I think you might be mistaking the notion of a "collection of content" as forming a context. It's a bit like saying: "putting domains of thought together creates the mind," or 'Language is comprised of symbolism and every language there is."

The things don't make up - or comprise - the context. Without the context in which they're found, the things don't exist.

On 21/8/2025 at 11:28 PM, Joshe said:

The rocks on Mars already exist, even though you've never perceived them. If you get in a spaceship and fly to Mars, you will find them. If you go to the forest, you will find the fallen tree. That's what I mean by they exist prior to perception (if you don't zoom all the way out). 

I see - that seems to be the case.

Even before it was invented, 'Chinese' was already possible once Language came into being. A particular unknown language might exist even though we know nothing about it. Or a new one could be invented!

That's a possibility within the context, arising at the time of its creation.

On 21/8/2025 at 11:28 PM, Joshe said:

Reread my definition. I started off by saying context is a dynamic, nested possibility space. This explicitly framed it as a field. And of course, the "possibilities" here refer to content.

So, a field of potential content that is dynamic, nested, structured by variables, constants, and constraints, and has both objective and subjective qualities to it. 

Of course, if you zoom out far enough, context is just a mental construction with an arbitrary quality to it, but so is everything, so collapsing it like this is useless IMO. 

Hmm... could you be equating the context of 'space' with 'context' itself?

Sorry, could you briefly clarify again the objective and subjective qualities? It might be so - but is context subjective and/or objective?

"The possibility for a domain of distinctions to exist" removes the focus from the elements within that possibility. Dynamic, nested, structure, variables, and constants are distinctions or 'features' that exist once the context is created. You'd be looking at the features or manifestations of context rather than at context itself. So they may be a secondary consideration.

I think your last sentence shows that we're fundamentally looking at context differently. I'm not holding it to be a mental construction. 'Mind' is a context! Not sure about the arbitrary part, though.

It seems to be a creation of consciousness... whatever that means.

Edited August 24 by UnbornTao

[ExploringReality]

Give someone DMT and they're entire experience of language and context gets pulled and destroyed into something radically different 

[Carl-Richard]

26 minutes ago, ExploringReality said:

pulled and destroyed into something radically different 

"Stretched and torn into a new creation" - Meshuggah - Spasm, a song which someone has said is about Kundalini Kriyas, but I think it's probably just about epileptic seizures.

Edited August 23 by Carl-Richard