Summary Of The Exegesis Of Philip K. Dick

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Language having the capacity to signify with pure concision and competency, the reality of the external word beyond signs and words, is a tempered debate that has lasted centuries. The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick contains his own thoughts on this very complex relationship between the usage of human language and the perception of reality as understood by the human senses. Dick advocates his notion that language, as a matter fact, distances ourselves further away from the true substance or essence of reality, series of events, or whatever one would prefer to phrase it as, and that while humans will often produce narratives in order to make reality more comprehensible, it is merely a mask which distances ourselves from a less adulterated understanding…show more content…
Philip K. Dick wishes to grasp at what is behind the misguiding veil of verbal language and signification, and connect it with his own theoretical yet spiritual revelation. Dick provides a rational explanation to this massive system of language that is embedded in virtually every aspect of human functionality and modern existence, by stating in The Exegesis that “we like to be able to recognize everything” (Dick 59), and this is surely not a stretch of the imagination to agree with. Identification of objects is an extremely useful, convenient and practical practise in order to function in the world with other beings of very similar intelligence. Being able to point to a computer and say “this is a computer” is effective for establishing a connecting framework of communication among groups because it provides consistency. Now the word “computer” can be used by millions of people and they can all be reassured that they are referencing the same kind of object. “Computer” has a definition that can be easily identified and understood so that the word itself has extra meaning stacked on top of it, not just being the substitute of a mental image of a computer. The problem for Philip K. Dick is that when it comes to using language, words or signs for this kind of practice, “once we have identified everything, then…show more content…
A part of what this ultimate goal Dick is aiming for, the unchange behind the flux, relates to what Erik Davis discusses in his article “Philip K. Dick's Divine Interference.” Davis expresses Dick's view on the universe as being a hologram of information “‘we hypostasize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of information. This is the language we have lost the ability to read.' With this Adamic code scrambled, both ourselves and the world as we know it are "occluded," cut off from the brimming "Matrix" of cosmic information” (Davis par. 10). To dissect this, what it is saying is that the universe, more descriptively thought of as the entirety of events, scenarios and objects in existence, is information, things that can be processed and learned and habituated towards for the sake of absorbing it as knowledge. Verbal language is its own kind of categorical information that has semantic and syntactic value only, information that is continually validated and propagated within its own framework, and not within the reality of the universe's arrangement of information. Verbal language has made us forget how to take in and learn information in a more naturalized way, only knowing the hierarchical classifications of how to communicate objects and not understand their real essence, what they are truly capable of sharing without the guise of

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