[Fis] "Percepts" and self-reference and meaning
Eric Werner
eric.werner at oarf.org
Sun Jan 19 19:28:36 CET 2025
Dear Lou and all,
I don't mean to trivialize the problem.
Lou and GSB (and many others) attempt to understand one of the deepest
problems of philosophy, science and our existence, namely:
Why is there anything at all?
It is a question that has bothered me since it first came to me when in
8th grade, never to have even remotely come up with a solution.
That may explain my superficial remarks on religion. A kind of self
defense and helplessness when faced with the depth of the problem.
So thank you Lou, and I am sure many of you as well, for trying to face
this dilemma of our coming to be, seemingly out of nothing.
-Eric
On 1/19/25 5:18 PM, Eric Werner wrote:
> The problem with with a religion. It’s not very practical for many use
> cases it’s meant for tho eternal.
> In the beginning, it was the word and the word was God
> Sound familiar?
> Eric
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jan 19, 2025, at 16:01, Jason Hu <jasonthegoodman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I second Joe strongly here, "*they are a possibly misleading way of
>> describing natural physical processes, including and especially
>> cognition."*
>>
>> I used to be a fan of Hofstadter's "Gedel, Escher, Bach" in my
>> younger years, but gradually started realizing that type of thoughts
>> might be an intellectual trap - an endless rabbit hole that leads to
>> just self-entertainment or self-glory but no useful actions, no tools
>> for handyman to do everyday work to benefit normal people.
>>
>> Well, *"I have just written may not be completely correct (what is?)"
>> *so I welcome any of you to prove me wrong or even change my mind, by
>> offering some solid example of how GSB thinking has
>> been beneficial to solve/resolve/dissolve the huge conflicts going on
>> in the Middle East, or the deep divide among the Americans between
>> Trump supporters and Trump haters, or the chaotic social issues in
>> the U.K. and the Europe. If no such examples exist so far, at least
>> point out to me how it could be, under what conditions?
>>
>> Best regards - Jason
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 3:29 AM <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Lou and All,
>> Just some comments to explain my resistence to GSB and much of
>> Lou's otherwise essential work: the diagrams used do not nove;
>> they are "eternal". They accurately reflect /only epistemic
>> self-reference/ and not recursion or ontic hetero-reference.
>> Therefore, they are a possibly misleading way of describing
>> natural physical processes, including and especially cognition.
>> Information applies to the content of the diagram below, but the
>> mental "movement" from figure to ground and back, and its logic,
>> is at a low level of complexity. Information more broadly.
>> however, is easily seen as a dynamic phenomenon, embodying and
>> describing /change./
>> I submit that what I have just written may not be completely
>> correct (what is?), but that it has received insufficient serious
>> attention.
>> Thank you and best wishes,
>> Joseph
>>> Le 19.01.2025 02:08 CET, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> a
>>> écrit :
>>> Dear Karl,
>>> <VasesFaces copy.png>
>>> Background.
>>> Figure and Ground.
>>> Yes.
>>> And in starting with the idea of a distinction one needs to have
>>> an unfettered notion of background.
>>> That notion is emptiness.
>>> The empty set is placed against a background of non-membership
>>> and it has no members.
>>> { }
>>> The GSB mark is a relative of the empty set and stands for a
>>> distinction and for that state obtained by crossing from emptiness
>>> (the first distinction, if you will.)
>>> <Mark.png>
>>> As soon as one fixes on a representation of a concept, that
>>> representation has more properties, more inherent and indicated
>>> distinctions, than the concept “itself”.
>>> Thus the curly brackets of the representation of the empty set,
>>> { }, are not necessary for the concept. And the right angle
>>> bracket is not necessary for the mark.
>>> We sometimes use < > for the mark as it is useful in typing, but
>>> execrable as an icon since < > is two characters representing
>>> one distinction. And so it goes.
>>> It is in fact very powerful to understand the backgrounds that
>>> are appropriate for discourse and keep them as minimal as possible.
>>> In LOF, GSB uses the notational plane as a background, not the
>>> line.
>>> This has some eplstemological advantages and some drawbacks.
>>> After studying any indication set-up it is useful to examine
>>> what kind of background is being used.
>>> Mathematical advances and scientific advances have resulted from
>>> such scrutiny.
>>> At the level of the Heart Sutra the concept of emptiness can be
>>> the basis for (everything).
>>> Very best,
>>> Lou
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Jan 18, 2025, at 3:55 PM, Karl Javorszky
>>>> <karl.javorszky at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Remark: this is usually called BACKGROUND.
>>>>
>>>> Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> schrieb am Sa., 18. Jän.
>>>> 2025, 22:43:
>>>>
>>>> Dear Pedro,
>>>> It depends on how you look at it.
>>>> Consider the Heart Sutra.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In Mathematics, all forms are brought forth from emptiness.
>>>> { }
>>>> {{}}
>>>> {{},{{}}}
>>>> …
>>>> Emptiness can mean “that which is not (yet) articulated or
>>>> indicated”.
>>>> At the bottom of what is indicated is what is not indicated.
>>>> What is not indicated is not marked.
>>>> Emptiness is a word for what is not marked.
>>>> Very best,
>>>> Lou
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 18, 2025, at 3:05 PM, Pedro C. Marijuán
>>>>> <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear Lou and List,
>>>>> Thanks to you (and Eric) for the thought-provoking
>>>>> exchange. Along it, I was reminded of a maverick approach
>>>>> to distinctions I read long ago. It was pointing to a set
>>>>> with N elements carrying multiple "signs" or "marks". The
>>>>> distinctions between these elements carrying heterogeneous
>>>>> signs within the set were expressed by means of
>>>>> partitions, actually multidimensional partitions. Other
>>>>> related authors tried to systematically obtain and compile
>>>>> those multidimensional partitions via a few 'logical'
>>>>> principles (economy, parsimony, symmetry) applied to the
>>>>> pruning of redundant signs, and subsequently the
>>>>> 'canonical' multid.partitions could be obtained 'almost'
>>>>> algorithmically (at least for small N)... etc. etc. At
>>>>> least, in my non-mathematical mind I could make some
>>>>> practical sense of this distinctional stuff (in which I
>>>>> was interested regarding cellular signaling systems and
>>>>> the way receptors combinations were occupied by different
>>>>> signaling molecules).
>>>>> I disagree with the closing statement (THE FORM WE TAKE TO
>>>>> EXIST ARISES FROM FRAMING NOTHING), because it situates
>>>>> itself above the conditions of any previous kind of
>>>>> existence. IMO it is a Barón of Münchhausen's type of
>>>>> statement. Maths as I pointed days ago inherit the inner
>>>>> dynamics of our sensorimotor transformations from which
>>>>> language developed. Maths, as it has often been
>>>>> recognized, is a particular form of collective language.
>>>>> It partakes of an enormous historical accumulation of
>>>>> thought-experimentation and pruning, particularly trying
>>>>> to capture the transformations of the external world. The
>>>>> implicit subject is always "us", the writer plus the
>>>>> concerned learned community of 'practitioners' of that
>>>>> particular math 'dialect'. And concerning distinctions, it
>>>>> obviously includes the possibility of entering into the
>>>>> scheme of other subjects (as Eric points) endowed with
>>>>> genuine distinctional capability--from living cells to...
>>>>> Anyhow, in spite of the disagreement, your message was a
>>>>> great reading. Thanks for those GSB quotations.
>>>>> Concerning Kate's recent emphasis on E. coli's two
>>>>> component system in charge of motion control, the
>>>>> discoveries on prokaryotic signaling during last two
>>>>> decades have left a richer panorama. For instance, E. coli
>>>>> counts with about 100 one-component-systems (1CSs), 28 of
>>>>> the 2 CSs class, and just two of the 3 CSs (actually one
>>>>> of them is the motion control). The 1CSs are more simple
>>>>> and primitive (evolutionarily), and slower, with respect
>>>>> to the faster, more specific, and more evolved 2CSs, which
>>>>> in their turn are less complex and sophisticate than 3CSs,
>>>>> which are applied to the treatment of very important
>>>>> signals than need a further layer of intervening
>>>>> processes. It always depend on the whole advancement of
>>>>> the cell cycle, or life history, which endowment the
>>>>> bacterium will contain... Anyhow, the whole signaling
>>>>> panorama of 'primitive' cells is fascinating--it is indeed
>>>>> the beginning of biological sensing & communication.
>>>>> By the way, Jason, thanks for that amazing report on the
>>>>> proton innards.
>>>>> Greetings to all,
>>>>> --Pedro
>>>>> El 17/01/2025 a las 21:57, Louis Kauffman escribió:
>>>>>> Dear Eric,
>>>>>> There is a confusion here that is quite natural.
>>>>>> LOF is a book of mathematics and philosophy. It discusses
>>>>>> the idea of a distinction.
>>>>>> When one takes a mathematical approach one attempts to
>>>>>> begin with very simple structures and
>>>>>> explore outward into complexity. LOF dwells on the
>>>>>> possibility of one distinction throughout the whole book.
>>>>>> “We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of
>>>>>> indication
>>>>>> and that one cannot make an indication without drawing a
>>>>>> distinction.
>>>>>> We take therefore the form of distinction for the form.”
>>>>>> As such LOF is not concerned with where or how the
>>>>>> distinction is made.
>>>>>> In the same way, a mathematics book about number is not
>>>>>> concerned with particular representations of numbers.
>>>>>> Of course we have these concerns and we want to
>>>>>> understand more and more about numbers in general
>>>>>> and we feel that some representations will help and some
>>>>>> ways to use signs and symbols will help.
>>>>>> The same is the case with the idea of distinction.
>>>>>> GSB does have his ontology (or lack thereof!).
>>>>>> Some people are made a bit nervous by declarations that
>>>>>> the world is created from nothing.
>>>>>> But you can investigate this if you are not annoyed by it.
>>>>>> What could ’things’ be ‘made of’?
>>>>>> If you’re bothered, then you are bothered.
>>>>>> Mathematics is similarly annoying
>>>>>> as we have systematically shown
>>>>>> how to build it all from nothing
>>>>>> but the act of collecting/distinguishing
>>>>>> and the act of creating signs and indications.
>>>>>> Everyone has their niche of ideas and ways that they want
>>>>>> to continue to use.
>>>>>> In the approach of a big general idea, what we already
>>>>>> “know" looks too good be abandoned,
>>>>>> and so we keep demanding that the other talk in our
>>>>>> language.
>>>>>> GSB created new language.
>>>>>> Wittgenstein pointed out the ontological consequences of
>>>>>> the limitations of language.
>>>>>> Both are very challenging.
>>>>>> Neither are making religions.
>>>>>> These are anti-religions.
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>> Lou
>>>>>> THE FORM WE TAKE TO EXIST ARISES FROM FRAMING NOTHING.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Jan 17, 2025, at 6:19 AM, Eric Werner
>>>>>>> <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dear Lou,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> To point 4. Yes, I admit it was sarcasm. To me a
>>>>>>> distinction requires a subject. And that subject's
>>>>>>> neuro-hardware or firmware or software limits the
>>>>>>> distinctions that that subject can make. For example,
>>>>>>> the distinctions made by an ant, a frog, a cat or a
>>>>>>> human may be quite different.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I realize you are probably the world top expert on
>>>>>>> Spencer Brown so you probably have a reply. But my
>>>>>>> instinct is that GSB is claiming too much by using
>>>>>>> 'distinction' as an ONTOLOGICAL or metaphysical
>>>>>>> foundation for what requires a subjective capacity. OK,
>>>>>>> this last sentence is not fully clear, but I think GSB
>>>>>>> is confusing subject and being.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As for the sarcasm, it is a more personal emotional
>>>>>>> reaction having little to do with you. Although you may
>>>>>>> unknowingly have had a role in the matter through your
>>>>>>> publications. I have friends who study early
>>>>>>> Wittgenstein and GSB as if their texts were biblical
>>>>>>> texts. Going to the library every day to read the
>>>>>>> Tractatus and LOF like a disciple doing his or her
>>>>>>> religious studies.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At the onset of puberty and the ability to consciously
>>>>>>> reason, my mother took each of us into the kitchen and
>>>>>>> taught us to be critical of the bible, both the old and
>>>>>>> new testament. We were raised Christian but there were
>>>>>>> also Jews in my mother's ancestry. Who knows why, but I
>>>>>>> have maintained my religious skepticism and hence my
>>>>>>> perhaps inappropriate reaction when I smell religiosity.
>>>>>>> Apologies dear Lou.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In spite of my critical attitude, I do believe there is
>>>>>>> more to the universe. There may be a God or Gods and
>>>>>>> angels. There may be life after death. Life is always
>>>>>>> surprising. So, I am open to that.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -Eric
>>>>>>>
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--
/Dr. Eric Werner, FLS
Oxford Advanced Research Foundation
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://oarf.org__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!WhlhKYVcpsgfg-h5ncGjLXFfB1PP_kliq0_PIUUJgmVjQpVlTDrf5ZNxFXZv15paB6X_cr5ULAt7OwIT91RHNEw$
/
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