[Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Happenstances
Pedro C. Marijuan
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
Mon Dec 3 20:57:20 CET 2018
Dear FIS Colleagues,
Thanks to Joseph and Loet for the comments. Perhaps a reference to the
time frame of behavior may contribute to explain the discrepancies
found--roughly, we could distinguish the micro, meso, and macro
time-levels. At the "micro" level, exemplifying it in a neat problem
solving task that can be performed in relative isolation, say working a
couple of hours in some professional or manual task, the behavior may
approached well by "abstract" procedures related to problem solving
techniques and also organization-engineering methodologies. Let us note
that we are naturally endowed with a "knowledge instinct" (Perlovsky) so
that elegant procedures of solution may flow from a sufficiently clever
person (irrespective of the epoch, technologies, education, etc.).
Further, at the "meso" time-level, we abandon the closed scenario and
are facing the open, simultaneous interrelation with other parties,
perhaps many of them, a full "sociotype" around us, often bringing upon
our shoulders lots of problems and requests. For instance, what happens
along a working day in some coordinating position, and also after
arriving home (which could be even worse, loaded with emotional
overtones and conflicts). This kind of daily life was under the "random"
term in a previous message; one is always interrupted by some unexpected
"happenstance". Quite many movies and novels are focusing in this daily
stuff, describing the "unbearable levity", the fatigue, lack of meaning,
etc. But let us realize that they are often attempting to provide us
with a "macro" perspective so that the reader, the spectator, can focus
on some essential aspect that has been separated, distilled, and
concentrated along a "story" or narrative. If the work is good, it
entertains us, and may bring upon us intense feelings and emotions, and
we often obtain some sort of relevant lesson for our own life.
Elias Canetti describes in his nice compilation of Marocco tales, "The
voices of Marrakesh", how the central place of the market square was
for the "storytellers", around them raptured throngs were following
their narratives for hours, with intense concentration. These
storytellers were very famous and the most appreciated parties in the
whole market. Why? They provided something, a life-wisdom, a knowledge
of the human condition, an emotional "massage", the "macro" perspective
on some important aspect of life in the energizing background of a group
audience... And that was a gift most appreciated by the people in that
basically oral culture. In our societies, an enormous industry of
entertainment works to provide us with sophisticate products, somehow
surrogate of this public storytelling, but as John Putnam eloquently put
it we have finally been left out "Bowling Alone" (2000).
Best wishes
--Pedro
El 30/11/2018 a las 10:48, Joseph Brenner escribió:
>
> Dear Pedro, Dear Loet,
>
> It would be useful, at least for this beginning student of philosophy,
> to have the equivalent of happenstance in some other languages.
> ‘Happenstance’ is English is equated to ‘random event’. If the term is
> applied to occurrences in daily life, this makes them random. I
> disagree with this ascription. Happenstances are for me events which
> are epistemologically opaque, not ontologically random. Thus /I /wish
> to explain as many of them as possible, as some indeed, perhaps the
> most significant ones in real life, deserve as rigorous an explanation
> as possible.
>
> As I struggle to understand the purport of ‘narrative’, I try to
> relate it to the deterministic /and /non-deterministic aspects of
> active consciousness. If I say that these aspects are a part of and
> even crucial to the narrative, the ‘narrative’ is changing. This is a
> good sign that a narrative may be something real. I do not, do not
> want to, and I think should not separate discovery from the, also
> changing, context of discovery. Pedro focuses, correctly, on the
> ‘messiness’ of the result; real life may consist in part of
> /explanantes /and /explananda/, but not//in the classical, I am afraid
> abstract sense.
>
> That is my ‘orientation for the troubled future’: nothing certain;
> pieces of useful method to be recovered from amidst a lot of jargon
> (/e.g./, dialectics); openness to everything that does not require
> absolute adherence to the fundamentality of abstractions.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Joseph
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Loet
> Leydesdorff
> *Sent:* vendredi, 30 novembre 2018 07:07
> *To:* Pedro C. Marijuan; fis at listas.unizar.es
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Focusing on Narratives
>
> Dear Pedro,
>
> To Loet, unfortunately real life does not allow such neat scheme
> of expectations, observations, and modifications/decisions--except
> in the abstract. Daily life is surrounded by multitude of
> behavioral cycles and happenstances from the subject himself and
> from the surrounding parties impinging on the subject. It is
> difficult to isolate mainstreams there, and it is difficult to
> know how to orient oneself for the troubled future.
>
> This is called the context of discovery. Real life is neither an
> explanans nor an explanandum. Who wishes to explain happenstances?
>
> This is strange.
>
>> There are now ambitious theoretical schemes of neural information
>> processing that could provide light on other points of the conscious,
>> the emotional, the sensorimotor, the excitation/inhibition coupling,
>> the optimization of neural entropy, etc. But they have to connect
>> with natural behavior, and also finally with narratives.
>>
>> I assume that your behaviour is more "natural" than mine.
>> Eventually, this may lead to narratives as bla-bla. Of course,
>> everything has to be spelled out in an explanation.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Loet
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> To Jerry's, after his four pages on perplex number system, I can only
>> say that great, terrific. It could have been an interesting
>> presentation for an ad hoc discussion session. I am tempted to twist
>> a few sentences of his text and to intercalate four pages or so on
>> signaling systems, or on the "sociotype", which is closer to the
>> current session. But that is not the scholarly way of discussion.
>>
>> To finalize, there is a provocative sentence in Bonnet's closing of
>> his book: "The one who tells the stories rules the world."
>>
>> Best wishes
>> --Pedro
>>
>>
>> El 25/11/2018 a las 5:10, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:
>>
>>> Dear Pedro, Joseph, and colleagues,
>>>
>>> Let me side with Joseph in this instance.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> memories? And, similarly, does not "potential" refer to
>>> cognitive/anticipatory capabilities that somehow detect higher
>>> fitness possibilities along some behavioral paths than others, and
>>> then conduce to the long term realization and flourishing of a life
>>> cycle? The potential belongs, say, to the "processual" not to the
>>> physical. In my view, the general challenge is to re-explain
>>> narratives, the fundamental commodity of social communication, in a
>>> more advanced conceptualization, beyond the Jungian, the Shannonian,
>>> or the corrosive fake-correctedness of our times... It can be done.
>>> The neuroscientific approach would be badly needed to recreate the
>>> terminology and the fundamental ideas.
>>>
>>> Perhaps, I miss the meaning of some of the wordings in this
>>> narrative :-), but it seems to me that there is something terribly
>>> wrong here. "The potential belongs ... to the "processual." We can
>>> consider this as "nom de gueux."
>>>
>>> One always begins with the specification of expectations. I assume
>>> that these are then "processual"? Expectations (possible states) are
>>> tested against observations and can then sometimes be rejected.
>>>
>>> For example: One can hypothesize that there are gender differences
>>> on this list. Then, one can cross-table those of us who on average
>>> publish 0, 1, or 2 postings with the gender differences (M/F). This
>>> generates a 3 times 2 table.
>>>
>>> Using the margin totals one can compute the expected values of each
>>> cell and test the observed values against the expectations. The
>>> expectations are "processual"? Indeed, they are possibilities which
>>> do not have to be realized. That is an empirical question.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, Logic-in-Reality works as a logic with only two
>>> values (T/F). This may lead to a poor design when one needs more
>>> grey shades.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Loet.
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Loet Leydesdorff
>>>
>>> Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
>>> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>>>
>>> loet at leydesdorff.net <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>;
>>> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>>> Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University
>>> of Sussex;
>>>
>>> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
>>> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
>>> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>>>
>>> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of
>>> London;
>>>
>>> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> --Pedro
>>>
>>> El 21/11/2018 a las 9:31, Joseph Brenner escribió:
>>>
>>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> Pedro’s approach, solidly anchored in biology, allows for progress
>>>> in understanding. Two comments on his ‘logic’: 1) I would not call
>>>> the ‘concoction’ within which we live imaginary. It is rather a set
>>>> of real, dynamic mental processes, with actual and potential,
>>>> effectively causal components. 2) ‘Complex life’ instantiates
>>>> potential (and kinetic) energy not only in a ‘book keeping role’.
>>>> Complex life is constituted by actual and potential energy evolving
>>>> in cycles and stages. Some myths (Epimetheus and Prometheus)
>>>> correctly express this duality and its evolution.
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, there is another myth that I believe correctly
>>>> models part of Jerry’s proposals. It is that of Procrustes, an
>>>> innkeeper who stretched or cut the legs of his guests to make them
>>>> fit the only available beds, until taken care of by Heracles. You
>>>> write: A lot more needs to be said about the intimate nature of
>>>> relations among scientific narratives before one can bind the logic
>>>> of the perplex number system to the grammars associated with
>>>> mathematically structured anticipatory systems.
>>>>
>>>> This sentence needs to be parsed, given the concatenation of terms:
>>>> in my opinion, the purpose of understanding the relations among
>>>> scientific narratives is to understand real anticipatory systems,
>>>> whether or not mathematically structured. Perplex numbers are
>>>> artificial numerological constructions with a corresponding logic
>>>> that may or may not apply to other artificial constructions, such
>>>> as abstract anticipatory systems, without dynamics. Narratives
>>>> about real science could be applied in principle to such questions,
>>>> but the implication must be avoided that such application would
>>>> tell us anything about reality.
>>>>
>>>> I cannot accept any manipulation of numbers as being more than a
>>>> posteriori. This applies also to Karl’s approach. Also, the concept
>>>> of an ‘in-formed’ number is an oxymoron, although I understand the
>>>> attempt to ascribe ‘value-by-association’, so to speak. Numbers
>>>> cannot accept ‘form’, or its meaning; they exist, eternally,
>>>> outside the world of form and change.
>>>>
>>>> I thus stress the importance of Pedro’s statement: processes do
>>>> not go smoothly upwards from the quantum level. As one proceeds to
>>>> higher levels of reality, there are discontinuities and different
>>>> laws apply. One only notes the presence of some isomorphisms, such
>>>> as the failure of some macroscopic process equations to commute or
>>>> distribute. Finally, I, at least, will resist any attempts to let
>>>> in, through the back door, anti-scientific concepts of quantum
>>>> processes in mind and cognition.
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>>
>>>> Joseph
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro
>>>> C. Marijuan
>>>> Sent: mardi, 20 novembre 2018 21:15
>>>> To: fis
>>>> Cc: Jerry LR Chandler
>>>> Subject: Re: [Fis] Anticipatory Systems--"Potential"
>>>>
>>>> Dear Jerry and FIS colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> I wonder how big or how clever your Chemostat apparatus should be.
>>>> There are thousands of metabolic intermediates in an organism, and
>>>> there are another thousands of diversified signals. And we have in
>>>> the order of 30 billion cells (trillions in the US system). Plus
>>>> around 100 trillion of bacterial cells in the microbiome. "We" are
>>>> the emergence all of that molecular diversity. It does not mean
>>>> that life exactly "controls" all the details of the
>>>> mega-information of this whole system... How that control is
>>>> organized, the principles of biological information, so to speak,
>>>> become another great question, but probably very different from the
>>>> idea of mass control in a chemostat. In any case, the way you have
>>>> argued it, seemingly smoothly going upwards from the quantum level,
>>>> is beyond of what I consider feasible. Scientific overstretching of
>>>> a reasonable paradigm perhaps.
>>>>
>>>> Socially, indeed, we do not try to communicate around by following
>>>> a colossal strategy of reducing happenstances to their quantum
>>>> description; neither to the kind of meta-languages you mention. In
>>>> general, social communication revolves around narratives. They are
>>>> not free-wheeling constructions (at least referring to the "great
>>>> stories" of all epochs) but optimized tools to guide individuals in
>>>> the advancement of their lives, in the achievement of their
>>>> "potential". Looking at the historical evolution of those great
>>>> stories, they are teaching us about which were the cardinal aspects
>>>> of common life to be specifically grasped by the child, by the
>>>> adolescent, by the maiden, the artisan, the warrior, the priest...
>>>> And in this social communication endeavors, life cycles do not
>>>> appear as homogeneous linearly "timed". Human lives are
>>>> continuously looking ahead, anticipating ("Prometheus" style) but
>>>> simultaneously looking at the past and pondering on it
>>>> ("Epimetheus" style). Although "presentists", we live within an
>>>> imaginary concoction built of mosaic pasts and futures,
>>>> "multi-timed" so to speak. The way to harmonize past, present, and
>>>> future (vital information) is one of the leit motifs of those great
>>>> stories.
>>>>
>>>> And about cycles, so many of them can be found. At the scale of the
>>>> organism: cellular & tissular cycles, metabolic cycles, behavioral
>>>> cycles, ultradian cycles, circadian cycles, seasonal cycles, yearly
>>>> cycles, secular cycles, and many others related to social mores.
>>>> Some of them can be arranged in a sort of hierarchy or inclusivity,
>>>> but there is a fundamental diversity. That most of this
>>>> orchestration of cycles does not require a conscious effort does
>>>> not mean that we should ignore them concerning the roots of social
>>>> communication. The cycles and stages (and "passages") within a life
>>>> cycle have an ominous presence. As i was saying, the "potential" of
>>>> each young life in ascend requires the reception of wisdom (via
>>>> social communication narratives) to integrate the own individual
>>>> path within the social matrix of the time.
>>>>
>>>> Thinking twice about the "potential" of life, it might be something
>>>> important to consider regarding any form or manifestation of life.
>>>> Perhaps better than the Principle of Conatus from Spinoza I was
>>>> referring days ago (the effort to self-maintain and flourish).
>>>> Complex life has "potential" to advance along some multi-time,
>>>> multi-cycle developmental path in the most complex of all
>>>> environments: the social matrix. Is there some deep similarity of
>>>> this potential with the role that "potential" energy plays in our
>>>> book-keeping of energy conservation?
>>>>
>>>> Thanking the comments,
>>>> Best--Pedro
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Fis mailing list
>>>> Fis at listas.unizar.es
>>>> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>>>
>>> --
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>> Pedro C. Marijuán
>>> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>>> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>>> Libre de virus. www.avast.com
>>> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>>>
>>>
>>> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>>>
>> --
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> Pedro C. Marijuán
>> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fis mailing list
> Fis at listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
---
El software de antivirus Avast ha analizado este correo electrónico en busca de virus.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20181203/b5e37559/attachment.html>
More information about the Fis
mailing list