[Fis] _ Fwd: _ Re: _ Discussion
Dear Soren, I will respond to your letter by adding comments below. This will be my last entry in this discussion until next week. Best, Lou K. >> >> >> >> Dear Lou >> You wrote: “ I am interested in how Soren Brier will react to these, perhaps >> seen as indirect, remarks on mind and meaning. I take thought and the realm >> of discrimination as the start of epistemology and I do not regard the >> immediate apparent objects of our worlds as anything but incredibly >> decorated entities appearing after a long history of indicative shift. What >> is their original nature? It is empty. Emptiness is form and form is >> emptiness. The form we take to exist arises from framing nothing.” >> >> Answer: Can I deduce that the “we” that takes the form to exist by framing >> nothing is also something that arose by framing nothing? [If I were to be consistent and absolutist about these metaphors, then indeed the we also arises by framing nothing. That is consistent with ‘I’ as a fill-in or empty nexus. You can ask who did that? But I say it is ungrammatical to ask the question at the inception of a distinction where the distinction and the observer arise together.] >> Who did that? How do you get from your self-organizing logical thinking to >> experiential consciousness and it’s dynamics of making distinctions from >> cybernetics and without stipulating a philosophical framework with an >> epistemology an ontology? [I do not have a story to tell that shows how to get something from nothing. I only observe that it is the case. All creation stories have a gap at the beginning.] >> And an anthropology? >> >> I do see that a theory of form is essential for you as it is for Spencer >> Brown and Peirce as well. But Peirce is open enough to infer to a Cosmogony >> when he writes: >> >> … the immaterial contained in the material. … Now the meaning of a thing is >> what it conveys. Thus, when a child burns his finger at the candle, he has >> not only excited a disagreeable sensation, but has also learned a lesson in >> prudence. Now the mere matter cannot have given him this notion, since >> matter has no notions to give. Who originated it then? It must be that this >> thought was put into nature at the beginning of the world. It must have been >> meant because it was conveyed. Further, what is the necessary condition to >> matter’s conveying a notion. It is that it shall present a sensible and >> distinct form. … It must be sensible to be anything to us and it must be >> distinct or distinguished to be a form to us…. Thus it is the form of a >> thing that carries its meaning. But the same thing conveys different >> meanings to different faculties. So there are different orders of meaning in >> nature. The poet with his esthetic eye reads the secret of the sea. ... The >> man of science with the eye of reason reads the secret of Nature as a >> system. (W 1 50) >> [Well, he says “this thought was put into Nature at the beginning of the World. As I said, all creation stories have a JUMP at the beginning.] >> When I read your cybernetic arguing I wonder how man can read the secrets of >> nature? In CP 5.488 Peirce makes a crucial ontological distinction; namely >> that: “all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed >> exclusively of signs”. [I say the distinguished universe of man is perfused with signs. I find it romantic to imagine that this is all there is. I do not know if that is all there is. I doubt it. When you wash away all the signs then ….NOTHING IS EVERYTHING!] >> Only the latter idea implies Peirce’s thesis that signs are not restricted >> to the living world, in the sense that semiosis is also at work already in >> the pre-living development of the universe. This is what John Deely calls >> physiosemiosis. The idea is not pansemiotic, but that signs develop within >> cosmogony, as part of the development of the universe’s reasoning >> capability. Thus, it accepts the physical description of the processes in >> the early universe before life emerged, but it is not physicalist, as it is >> encompassed in a greater semiotic cosmogony. This is not pansemiotics since >> it only implies that the possibility of semiosis lies in physics, – but not >> that those possibilities are realized in all physical processes. >> Physiosemiosis explores the question of exactly where and how the >> possibility of semiosis lies in physics. This means that the overall view of >> evolution is the connection between man and the universe. The connection >> between outer and inner nature was driven by the universal development of >> semiotic reasoning in cosmogony (CP 1.615). [I summarize all of this by saying that every distinction is accompanied by an awareness. Every distinction is semiotic.] >> Overall, this gives Peirce the alternative view of Cosmogony expressed in “A >> Guess at the Riddle” that might be compatible for both science and religion
Re: [Fis] _ Re: _ Discussion
Hi Lou and Colleagues, On 16 Apr 2016, at 06:57, Louis H Kauffman wrote: Dear Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, I would like to make a remark on your comment below. "(4). References made to Gödel’s theorem to uphold certain theses can be definitively questioned. The claim that Gödel makes on behalf of his theorem is inaccurate. Three articles that demonstrate the inaccuracy, one from a phenomenological perspective, two others from a logical-analytical perspective, warrant clear-headed study. In brief, self-referential statements are vacuous, hence neither true nor false. Moreover the sentences expressing the statements may be used to make two quite different statements, a fact ignored by Gödel.(See Note #4: “Self- Reference and Gödel’s Theorem,” “The Liar Syndrome,” and “Doctor’s Diagnosis Sustained”)” My remark takes the form of a partially linguistic analysis of reference and it will be a bit technical/symbolic. My point is to show that reference naturally leads to self-reference in domains where there is a sufficiently rich structure of reference. OK. here an interesting happening is that such richness is cheap, as just a tiny part of arithmetic has already what is needed to have the references and self-references. Similarly, we get all this from two simple combinators relation. I also have a question for you in that you say that "The claim that Gödel makes on behalf of his theorem is inaccurate.”. Can you please articulate your view of Goedel’s claim. There are many claims about Goedel that are inaccurate, but I would not say that the inaccuracies are his! I agree. Now to get to my analysis. First let A——> B denote a reference from A to B. You can think of A as the name of B. But it can be just an ordered relationship from A to B and in that case A and B can be physical entities or symbolic entities. Usually in naming we think of A as symbolic and B as physical, but we mix them in our language. For example, if I am introduced to you then I acquire a pointer Maxine ——> SJ where I use SJ to denote the person you are. This might be the person sensed visually upon being met. Before we were introduced, there was SJ in my sight, but now I know her name. This situation shifts almost immediately. I learn to associate the name Maxine with SJ the person, and so when I see you next I see you as “SJ - Maxine” and it seems that your name comes along with you. I call this shift the Indicative Shift and denote it as follows. A ——> B shifts to #A ——> BA. #Maxine is my internally indexed name for that entity SJ-Maxine who is seen with a name associated with her. You could call #Maxine the ‘meta-name’ of SJ-Maxine. Of course in our actual language #Maxine is still pronounced and wrote as Maxine. The indicative shift occurs in all levels of our language and thought. The objects of our thought and perception are so laden with the names and symbols that have been shifted to them, that their ‘original nature’ is nearly invisible. I will not involve this to a discussion of the ding-an-sich or with meditation practice, but these are important avenues to pursue. I am imagining a human being (or another organism) as a very big entity with the perceptual and naming capabilities who is endowed with this ability to make indicative shifts. Such a being would notice its own shifting operation. The being may then engage in a naming process such as M ——> #. M would be the being’s name for its own operation (so observed) of shifting reference. It does require a certain age for this to occur. But then this naming would be shifted and we would go from M ——> # to #M ——> #M. At this point the being has attained linguistic self-reference. The being can say “I am the meta-name of my own naming process.” This nexus or fixed point of self-reference can occur naturally in a being that has sufficient ability to distinguish, name and create. In this way, I convince myself that there is nothing special about self-reference. It arises naturally in observing systems. And I convince myself that self-reference is central to an organized and reflective cognition. Even though it is empty to say that “I am the one who says I.” this emptiness becomes though language an organizing center for our explorations of our own world and the worlds of others. The beauty of “I am the one who says I.” is that it is indeed a vacuous reference. Anyone can take it on. The “I” can refer to any observing system sophisticated enough to give it meaning. My example should be expanded into a discussion of the role and creation of meaning in observing systems, but I shall stop here. I am interested in how Soren Brier will react to these, perhaps seen as indirect, remarks on mind and meaning. I take thought and the realm of discrimination as the start of epistemology and I do not regard the immediate apparent objects of our worlds as anything but
