hi ron, sorry to butt in. I was really enjoying your explanation of terms. I'm somewhat new to philosophy, the worst kind of dilettante, an english major drop out who married a professor and had babies (grin) but I got stuck understanding your explanation of chaos:
Chaos: > I have tried a zillion time to explain this here and seem to have failed. > Let's try this one from Nietzsche, > > "The overall character of the world is, for all eternity, chaos; not in the > sense that it lacks necessity, but rather in the sense that it lacks order, > articulation , form , beauty , wisdom , and whatever else our aesthetic > anthropomorphisms might say." All of those things: lacks order, > articulation, form , beauty , wisdom and not discovered in the world around > us. They are invented by us in our ceaseless "aesthetic anthropomorphism."" > > Ok what did he mean that it has necessity, and yet is chaotic? And I don't quite get what he means by "invented by us" and yet not real. Aren't our inventions, isn't all of reality in fact, experience through our inventiveness? It sounds wrong somehow. thanks, carrie > Order can emerge from the irrational processes of autopoiesis or we can > hammer it out, construct it, invent it through the processes of reason. > Order is a subset of the chaotic. But both order and disorder are > perceptual > processes that we synthesize through rational and irrational evaluations of > our experience. > For those who still don't know what I mean by chaos, listen to this or just > be quiet: http://www.radiolab.org/2009/jun/15/ > All of human existence, is an effort to establish a harmonious aesthetic > accommodation to chaos. > > Meaning: > In information theory meaning is reduction in uncertainty. It is > antientropic. Not a very satisfying definition to be sure. We know what > "meaning" means but it is hard to pin down. I would say that meaning is the > synthesis of harmony between recollection and projection in the present > moment. It arises at the intersection of what Sartre calls facticity and > transcendence. Pierce says we produce meaning from the process of abduction > or intuition. These are our primary ,fundamental modes of knowing. We get a > feeling of rightness. These intuited irrational certainties are verified by > the rational process of induction and deduction, which are the workings > back > and forth between the sense data and our habits of thought (schema). > Meaning is not completely rational or irrational. It emerges from their > combination. > For a percept to become a concept, which is to say for the irrational to > become rational, a transduction must occur. The one must be transformed > into > another. For Sartre and Husserl consciousness is this process of > meaning-giving activities. > > This process of interaction between the rational and the irrational, this > meaning giving, evolves into the technique we call language and the > technology we call writing. From the standpoint of information theory this > is just the process of encoding and decoding messages. > > But as Pirsig shows these process of transduction do not contain or enfold > meaning. They are techniques for pointing or for indication. A text is a > set > of signs; a pattern of indication. It does not contain meaning. it must be > filled with meaning. In its indication, a text assists its readers in > creating meaning. The creation of meaning is the function of man. To > reproduce a snatch of text is to reproduce a pattern of signs. Where does > the meaning lie? > > Meaning lies where Pirsig says the novel lies. The novel is not inside the > pages in a book neither is it burned into circuits or programed in flip > flops. I think Pirsig doesn't take this far enough. Meaning and novels are > not in the patterns at all. Meaning is not in the transduction or the > coding > and decoding. Meaning is the assessment of experience that allows rational > concepts to become irrational percepts and irrational percepts to become > rational concepts. Meaning is compressed in the writing and expanded in the > reading. Meaning flows in the diastole and systole of the heart; in waves > of > neural polarization; in ink flowing to the page, photons flowing through > threads of glass. > > Meaning results from patterns of ratio returning to the irrational and back > again. Meaning is compressed as symbolic patterns, then expand back into > fully blown embodied experience. That is what symbols do. They help us > create and exchange meanings, the transduction of the irrational into the > rational and back in the hermeneutic circle. Language or any system of > discrete symbols serves as a mnemonic device to facilitate this process. > Language is a technique for the reciprocal transduction of the analog and > the digital. But meaning is always idiosyncratic. > Every one of us makes meaning. We synthesis it from experience and as a > result each of us reads a different novel from the same set of symbols. > Everyone here either knows or can easily look up everything Pirsig says. > But > each of us synthesizes their own meaning from the a static pattern of > signs. > Those patterns do not contain any particular meaning. They open a pathway > for the synthesis of meaning. > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
