Notes and Summary on the Second Investigation

* The bridge of comparison between symbolic or otherwise apprehended objects is the datum of qualific similarity.

* Intentionality is rational by being distinct from the arbitrary. The presumption of a rational intention is founded in the notion of a context that is not arbitrary. If a context that is not arbitrary is one of qualific similarity, escaping an experience qualified by the arbitrary is a matter of subtlety, that is, finding intention that speaks of the unknown, or the known that is not arbitrary.

* When rationality ceases to seek the relevance of one thing with another, its only reason is that it is incapable of sufficient reason. The alternative is to hold that one or more of the objects makes no rational impression, but this is the same as saying that it is not real. In fact to say that an object makes no rational impression is to admit insanity on its account. By this logic there is an inherent reasoning in the coordinated relevance of things; correlation becomes almost synonymous with mind.

The question becomes is it most rational to have a rational object (an object that confers reason), or to find reason even without reason (to possess a quality without a tangible source)? Is it reasonable to have a rational object that does not defer for relevance, or a relevance that does not defer to objects? Although brain chemistry may be implied here, what may also be implicated is a rationality to aesthetic experience.

In a certain way it is important to create an arbitrary that is arbitrary, a figure ground within which relevence is a valid term. In another sense it is important to create a relevance about relevance, that is to pursue meaning as a conscious act.

Art as a metaphor for intentioned experience is actually an arbitrary context for relevance beyond reinforcing the notion that relevance has a role. Intention may be less directly concerned with the manifest of experience than with the qualific relation of relevant objects.

For example, a person's interaction with a typing interface is not with keys on which to type, or the display of the language typed, but with the relevance of the language typed, and the relevance of the typing process with a display also qualified by language and also language equivalent to intention. To type without intention or relevance is not actually to type, it could be no more than a demonstration; not of purpose so much as function.

* The only complete tool, or complete symbol for usefulness, is a field of archetypal properties for apprehended things, that by the extent of its relevance is real. Reason transforms amongst these properties--whether they be named or unnamed--by reason. They provide a sense of place, justice, beauty, usefulness, ethics, intelligence, and identity.

* Life that finds place, justice, beauty, usefulness, ethics, intelligence, or identity thus takes shape by finding relevance within that system of relavence. Within that system individuals, defined as identities with roles, are rewarded for seeking relevance on their own terms.