How does process philosophy fit with the accretive theory? Is the obvious necessity of ‘meaning as use’ equivalent in force to the notion that existence is necessarily process? Are these two in some sense the same? The notion of ‘meaning as use’ means that we can understand the meaning of a word by looking at the social situation in which it is used. That is, we should not look for an object that the word points towards, rather to the general rules in which it is possible for the word to be cogent. In this way objects which do not conform to ideal images of objects can easily be capable of having the names of such objects applied to them. The ashtray that is the empty beer can in the context of ‘pass the ashtray’ not be ‘really’ an empty beer can, it just is the ashtray. This does not mean there is always such flexibility, some words may have fairly strict rules the transgression of which means the application is simply ‘wrong’ -though wrong of course is also a use term. As noted elsewhere, the issue of the perpetuation of metaphysics is not something Wittgenstein can actually stop since it is often not possible to tell when a word has been deterritorialized to the point where it definitively lacks meaning. The phantom of meaning is indistinguishable from an originary meaning.
Nevertheless no matter how convoluted the pathways become, meaning continually emits from its usage. It is a secondary effect of language that produces the accretion, or ideality. In the strong sense of accretion as chaos magickal entity, the designated object as actually real. Magickal practices are often predicated on the ability of a word or symbol to uniquely pick out an individual or event. Designation in the strongest metaphysical sense is necessary for this to be the case. Wittgenstein would be totally correct if it were not for the appearance of magick. The use term though, generates the accretion. The current ideal version of a given kind of object sticks to the word. Thus we have two essences, the false essence of the accretion as word/object and the real essence of the primordial use relation. Not all words generate this duality but many -especially visually possible- words do.
What of the notion of process? Does this have the same status as usage? It seems there is a relation insofar as both offer a kind of ground of necessity. To deny process is to deny time. However the two issues cannot be conflated as identical, they are not. Meaning as process would still lapse into a naivety of things existing without conceptuality. Process means that being exists in flux. Usage as meaning recognizes this by allowing open the horizon for the extension of the remit of a given concept.
In this sense accretion is the enemy of process. This is basically true and yet it points to importance of a phenomenology of magick that cannot be denied. Designation and magick go together; this is the phantasy of the words reach out to touch the object -which in magick is literally true. Accretion means that there is a time resistant dimension (the pneuminous), where the accretions of pneuma (conceptuality) dwell. The accretive flickering image is not of a thing in time, it is of an ideal abstraction. Process largely happens too slow for us to perceive it directly. We necessarily see fixed accretions and can only understand flow as a necessity. This kind of claim is disputable. Goethe for instance claimed to have been able to retrain his mind to perceive process directly in certain ways (e.g. plants) and even claimed this possibility was available to all. Even so his method was predicated on being able to perceive the phenomena from start to finish in order that one might replay the segments to the mind to reveal the a temporal ideal unity (or entelechy as he called it). This though does nothing to undermine accretive theory, indeed it is largely grist to its mill. Goethe successful accreted the extracted plant image into the atemporal perception he achieved. His phenomena certainly would be attached to the vectors (the object we attach the concept plant to -see vector theory elsewhere on the site) but they are still just another form of pneuminous accretion. The Goethean entelechy recreates time and escapes it simultaneously. Goethe extracts time only make a small passage of time (the plant entelechy) abstract. His accretion is a temporal enemy in disguise.
The possibility of magick though means the picture is much more complicated. For if the use relation generateĀ accretions which exist of necessity (and let us say they do exist) then there exist feedback loops from the accretive structures to the vector field (and beyond). That is, the accretions will be feeding back into reality, not just under ritual conditions but under any conditions. That is, as the accretions are not outside of all that is but simply a part of it, process cannot be considered a pure truth that we should strive towards as process itself will be necessarly shot through a temporal accretive structures that persistently attempt staunch the flow.