On Wed, 11 May 2005, Bj�rnMagnhild�en wrote:
Until we understand the deep ontological and epistemological issues invol- ving the analogic and discrete (digital), we will get nowhere.
Notes - there's another quite obvious approach that goes via our neuro- physiology, the foundational brain split into hemispheres and constitute a physical double-being - analogic-digital. I'm not sure if you would regard it as a metaphor - in a way the metaphor is the working of the analogic and to disregard it is to disregard the analogic - but again, it's wild and on the chaotic side, on the wave side.
I honestly don't agree here, nor do I see it as 'obvious.' Nowhere have I seen that half the brain is analogic, half digital; in fact on a neuro- physiological level, what is actually happening is completely unknown.
And I don't think to disregard this metaphor is to 'disregard the analogic' - it's simply to say that the model seems unworkable to me, on too high a level, making too much of processes that are in fact mixed, etc. Nor do I see the 'wildness' at work here -
Detailed and concrete implies neither analog nor discrete as far as I know. The 'workings' again are unknown. To be honest, I find what the brain does is irrelevant if one is looking for foundations; even in qm consciousness, the brain is to be 'described' or explained by deeper processes.Kind of parallells the workings of our hemispheres. The left tends to the digital, the right to the analogic, detailed and concrete.
I don't think the brain is a computer in the first place; I don't think any hemisphere is lesser; and I'm wary of using 'animal brain' - as well as such an absolutely division as you present; neurophysiology in fact points to the remarkable malleability and resiliancy of the brain as a whole.I agree, metaphor is on the the wave part, which is a metaphorical statement. See the dangers of one-sided research on only the left hemisphere = the history of neurology. The right hemispheres represent the excesses, the left the lack. In our physical constitution these are interweaved - foreground:background, text:context, digital:analogic. To call it a superstructure is a view from the left, as would to call it excesses, sicknesses. On their own terms they're substructures, closer to reality - meaning in concreteness and detail, richness - would we have a world without it? The digital left hemisphere, the human computer, is built on the 'lesser' right hemisphere, the animal brain.
I wish I could buy into what you're saying but 'human computer' means very little to me. I do follow Penrose in this, or Pribram earlier or for that matter Maturana etc.Efflorescence of roots seems a good expression of its working and production, the right. Confusion, nothing is achieved - you're talking from the left, the human computer - but with only the human computer also nothing is achieved, it's powerless without its roots, a simulation and model, no 'reality'.
No, it's not a metaphor here; it's a model, unless you find transitional objects metaphors (which I don't, although they're within the symbolic and the asymbolic simultaneously).The collapse of the wave equation, Penrose's U -> R, Bell's theorem, _bother_ us. Communication leaks; the mechanics transform (in Irigarayan terms) from fluid to mechanical to the uneasy gnawing of a _mix._ Think of Kristeva's abject for example, or Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel's work. Think of a kind of transitional object carrying the all-too-evident seeds of decay within it, the teddy-bear leaking stuffing.
Re-introducing the metaphor, the metaphor disturbs us?
The bothering is political; we would do anything to erase it! Purity, the sensual absence of corruption, is primary to governance, where, for example, justice is forced into equivalence with law.
But the metaphor is also the world, at the analogic root, and the digital is built upon it, the physical workd collapsed from it.
What metaphor? I didn't say the world is analog at all, nor that the digital is built upon it; within the lifeworld the digital is construct, but this has nothing to do with the foundations; the collapse of the wave equation does.
The metaphor is always an astray, an excess of the right hemisphere. Code reintroduces the right, the metaphor of the digital.
Now I've lost you, since I don't think I'm creating a metaphor here -
I don't see where this is in Godel 'in general' but I may have read the wrong Godel. Nor do I see how Sacks divides things neatly into analog digital etc. and even if he did, it's not foundational.Appendix - notes on neurology issues, from Oliver Sacks -
the fact is that the history of neurology is the history of research on the left hemisphere.
right, the lesser hemisphere. symptoms less clear. left, more refined, specialized. on the other hand - the right hemisphere controls the ability to recognize reality, while the left is developed for programs and schemata, like a computer hacked on the animal brain. and neurology was more interested in the programs than reality (or consciousness). right hemisphere has been a stranger also to science. Luria then suggests another neurology, of "personalistic" or "romantic" science - anyway, subjective, phenomenological, while the left etc.
neurological disturbances in the right subverts the classical notion that a brain damage _whatsoever_ lessens the abstracting and categorizing ability and leaves the individual to the emotional and concrete - a notion that comes from only researching the left.
lacks and excess : left and right in view of the left there are lacks, functions are missing a productive sickness? the hyper- a computer model of monster and mania? luria: the man with a shattered world vs. the mind of a mnemonist l-dopa the excesses forces a move from a neurology of functions to one of activity and life. the risk of hyper is embedded in growth and nature of life, of monstrousness, weird, deviating para-states - hyperkinesi tends to parakinesi, hypergnosi paragnosi.
the paradoxal in a sickness that can appear as fresh - a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its bad effects or workings - is one of nature's chimera and ironies. eg. art and sickness, dionysian, veneric, faustian - thomas mann how are you doing? dangerously good! -george eliot the tourette patient, -i have too much energy after treatment -i don't see stuff and things anymore, will everything be dead when i'm cured? l-dopa tree drawings dry, shrinked, winter trees without leaves into lively, arabesque, baroque. what paradox, cruelty and irony - that the inner life and fantasy lies passive, unless woken by drugs or sickness. vigor can be real even if caused by sickness. and this kind of paradoxal sickness can be of lasting gain. here we are in strange terrain where the conventional reasoning are inverted - sick is healthy, and the normal sick.
reminiscense, nostalgic incontinens, memorytracks memorytraces
retards, -if we are to use only one word, it's 'concretion', their world is lively, intensive, detailed, and still simple, because it's concrete.
if a man loses 'the abstracting-categorizing functioning' (goldstein) or the 'propositional reasoning' (hughlings jackson), what's left is subhuman, meaningless and uninteresting. that statement is backwards, awkward, since the concrete is elementary, it's what makes reality 'real', lifelike, personal and meaningful - all is lost if the concrete is lost.
exploration of the concrete, luria's 'romantic science'. the concrete is treated as trivial.
term : symbol - paradigmatic : narrative
could we have a weaved mat without a pattern? a pattern without the weave? like the chesire cat's grin.
the human calculators function iconic. -how could you count the matches so fast? -we didn't count, we saw 111 - 37, 37, 37.
kurt g�del discussed in general how numbers, especially primes, can act as 'marks' - for thoughts, people, places, whatever.
(Oliver Sacks - The man who mistook his wife for a hat - ISBN 9176087603)
More on neurology, code, phenomenology - http://noemata.net/ideareal/
- Alan
