[Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Happenstances

Tue Dec 4 10:19:28 CET 2018

The Storytellers Narrative on Jemaa el-Fnah

The storyteller does his job well and gains fame and reputation with a
living, if he guides the audience towards an inner vision, in which they
can submerge, in which they want to submerge, and the re-awakening from
that induced dreamery leaves the mind somehow cleansed, refreshed after
having gained an additional perspective. The artistic experience needs to
be nourishing; that he uses words is a medium of convenience: he could have
sung, danced or painted the story he narrated. If a story is told well, it
leaves a feeling of satisfaction, in both the narrator and the client.

To tell a story about human happiness, lust, urges, drives and the pursuit
of happiness should then be the ultimate on narration: no story should get
more applause as a well-crafted, reasonable, credible narrative about lust
as such. If we start thinking about intelligent machine, we have at first
introduce termini for the reinforcement that follows a correct decision
during the course of learning. What motivates animals and small children to
be curious, to want to learn?

Freud came up with the concept of an a-priori determination of organisms to
achieve the disbursement of a unit of reinforcement, which is independent
of the modality (hunger vs thirst, etc.) He chose *Eros, *then *Libido*.
Today, for a narration that deals with lust, we may colloquially use the
general idea of endorphins for the concept of a material substrate.

We all know lust in its various kinds, forms, shadows and intensities. We
propose to concentrate during this story on the basic version of lust,
which is whish fulfilment, the stating of the actual fact, that something
is the case which has been expected to become the case. This definition of
lust splits reality into two different sub-realities, of which one is the
expectation and prediction of the other, and importantly, the logical
assertion connecting them, that the expected state is in agreement with the
actual state. This wide definition allows for breathing to be a fundamental
supplier of lust, as the urge to breathe in does result in the action of
breathing in, and at fulfilment, the bonus of “correct prediction” is
showered on the gamblers. Now Kronos is in power, but fulfilment is the
beginning of destruction, and what had been the target state is now the
actual state, and the target state is now to be breathed out. There is no
ideally filled state of the lungs, where they could be left alone. Target
state and actual state have to chase each other, and the proposition is to
add 1 unit of congratulation to a general table of merits, if they have
successfully met. This is a low level, strictly regulated example of the
continual interaction between target state and actual state.

Processes that are less relevant to biologic survival may be regulated less
closely, and systems of target values can in many cases massively deviate
from actual values, causing much sorrow and anger.

The human brain optimises something while it functions smoothly. Let us
call this something a construct named lust. We can set 1 unit of lust to be
1 unit of fulfilment of 1 prediction 1 step far. All those basic-level
processes in the physiology of the cell produce the vast bulk of lust,
without which we would be seriously ill or could not live. The subtle
triumph of being able to say: I told you she would let him move in, can
give you food for thought, but will not nourish the body. That is the level
of peristaltic, where we see the art of predicting future states, and
slowing down or accelerating the referencing processes that interlink
expansion and constriction. It is our anthropocentric culture that
determines how we see cybernetic systems of auto-regulation, and we tend to
eulogy electric discharges while denigrating processes in fluid
environments. Thoughts are easier named and classified than feelings of
jealousy, hunger or hope. For our life, these are however, more integral.
May the scientists imagine machines of many kinds: these will remain
machines only, as long as their creators do not understand the Duet of
Life, the everlasting interaction between Target State and Actual State
(and the mysterious Third: Neither, about whom at our next story telling).
The unit of lust is one match between an actual state and a target state.

There is much more to tell, lust is an inexhaustible topic. If there was an
effort to design a machine that can think, that contraption should be built
around the motivator of lust (and its counterpart *Thanatos, *aka *Destrudo,
*Pedro’s beloved apoptosis), as feeling is before thinking, and feeling
happens in a fluid environment, which is bi-modal and tri-modal at the same
time. Go home now, my friends, and remember, fasting and feasting teaches
us, that our thought patterns are greatly dependent on what we have eaten,
and how long ago.

Summary:

Predictions are a part of life. Those predictions that come true can be
assigned a bonus. It appears that humans’ pursuit of happiness is in fact
an optimising procedure to maximise said bonus. It can be helpful to agree
on a name for the bonus. Tradition leads us to use the idea of lust. (Eros,
Libido as opposed to Thanatos, Destrudo.) The more basic a life function,
the more strictly it is regulated. The principle is that actual value and
target value change places once they match, beginning a new half-cycle. The
important implication, namely that there is a usual range of not-matching
between target and actual values, and neither the over-continuity,
over-identity and over-monotony of the graveyard, nor the over-fragmented,
over-diverse, over-unpredictable, chaotic version are supportive of life,
therefore an ideal range of “enough of, but not too much of, the same among
all, that can be the sane or different” exists, will be discussed in the
sequel.

Am Mo., 3. Dez. 2018 um 20:58 Uhr schrieb Pedro C. Marijuan <
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>:

> 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> <loet at leydesdorff.net>;
> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>
> <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of Sussex;
>
>
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>
> <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>
> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>
>
>
> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> <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
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
> 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/
>
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> --
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Pedro C. Marijuán
>
> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>
>
>
> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>
> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fis mailing listFis at listas.unizar.eshttp://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------
> Pedro C. Marijuán
> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.eshttp://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
> -------------------------------------------------
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