[Fis] "Percepts" and self-reference and meaning

[Louis Kauffman]

Dear Eric,
Still my viewpoint is different.
We have to attend to what we do not know and to what we do not know we do not know.
Things are what can be indicated. 
No-thing is the that that is (for now) beyond indication.

It is a very Western question to ask “Why is there something rather than nothing?”. 
I am not trying to answer such questions, nor am I saying that we have to explain how “the world” arises from nothing.
But in the sense of No-thing as indicated (sic) above, 
the world of indications (the only world we know) does “arise from” or 
“occur in contrast with” 
No-Thing. 

Attend that when you keep looking at all the words and concepts and indications that you seem to have, all the 
mathematical and other structures that you have and can articulate and keep looking and looking, then eventually or immediately you arrive at the holes. All the places where there are no answers to the questions you put. All the absences.
And you arrive at them not so directly, because just like the blind spot in your vision, it is covered over so that the skip across the absence appears at first to be continuous. 

So we have to keep looking at how we indicate in order to keep exploring.
Stu Kauffman likes to talk about the alternative possible. 
I am pointing out that even in ordinary mathematics the holes are part of the building. If whenever you looked inside a set you found more sets, you would always  be involved in 
In an infinite regress, and so when you build the finite sets you have to have empty spaces at the bottom. The other recourse is circularity. A dictionary may  do this:





Low temperature means cold.
Cold mean low temperature.

So in defining, you have two choices:
1. Finiteness with undefined terms, or “holes”.
2. Circularity.

This is very important for FIS whose members would define terms like “information”. I suspect you have to rely on experience and circularity propelled into process in order to “define” information.
The same phenomenon happens when one attempts to define “distinction”. These are not static concepts. They are processes with which we can become involved.

In another email Joe Brenner said that the static nature of mathematical constructions made him suspicious. He referred to LOF which need not be interpreted statically, but the real complaint as I 
understand it is about the classical mathematics we were all trained to use. That mathematics does tend to speak about forms and structures out of time. So one can in that frame think of the natural numbers 
{1,2,3,4,…} as eternal and timeless and all the numbers are “there”. And the classical mathematician wants to know about certain subsets such as the prime numbers. Practitioners of mathematics will speak this way and also admit that they
Have limited knowledge of this eternal domain. In practice one analyzes the knowledge that one can obtain. Some of it applies in such a general way that it is useful to speak eternally and out of time. 
For example, I say there are infinitely many prime numbers. And I will tell you have to find a prime number larger than any given number n. Examine the number n! + 1. It leaves the remainder 1 when divided by 1,2,3,…,n. So n!+1 has divisors 
bigger than n. And its prime divisors are all bigger than n. If you know some arithmetic, then you know how to find the factorization of a give number (it can take a long time!). So you can find the prime factors of n!+1. They are all bigger than n.
This is what we mean when we say that there are infinitely many primes. Saying that is shorthand for saying that one can actually find prime numbers as large as we like. The statements about eternal structures are a residue of 
certain medieval philosophies that have become the shorthand of mathematical speech.

It was in realizing this situation, that many of the breakthoughs of the 20th century such as Godel and Cohen’s proofs of the independence of the Continuum Hypothesis came about. It really comes about is seeing the illusory nature of 
our concepts of the infinite. We now understand that all of notions of infinity are properties of the languages by which we speak of infinities. This does not make it any easier. For there is still a dialogue between our intuitions about the infinite
and the linguistic models that we make for indicating and speaking about the infinite.

The same is true for process. You may be as extreme as a friend of mine and want to remove all the nouns from the language since they partake of the timeless lack of process lie that is propagated by that attitude. But it just doe not work
In practice. If you have the notion of change, you need a corresponding notion of no-change. If you have the idea of understanding you need a notion of not understanding. If you have the idea of the marked, you need the idea of 
the not marked. There is something binary deep at the bottom of things before distinction vanishes.
Best,
Lou
P.S. Another complaint is that linguistic self-reference (such as F = BoxAround[F] or seeing O as referring to the distinction that O “is” ) are not at all “like” the actuality of self for any of us.
The only way they approach that is when you use them. 
So I say upon being introduced to you, “I am Lou.”. 
And even there I don’t take the words “I am Lou.” to be anything special.
It is only in holding them and speaking them that the ritual of self-introduction is connected with the self. 
Some say that the self is an illusion, and others will appreciate the ritual.
The word “I” is a talking stick. 
When “I” use it while I am talking it performs the ritual of referent to me. 
Right here, now  in this situation of the use of the word “I” 
is everything about the structure of reference,
Language, 
Things and 
No-thing.


> On Jan 19, 2025, at 12:28 PM, Eric Werner <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:
> 
> 

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