<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Dear Pedro and list,<div><br></div><div>I wonder if narrative is the right category to concentrate on. Clearly stories are important, but it does lead to the conclusion that "everything's a story" (or worse, MERELY a story), and that leads nowhere, in my opinion. Good stories are interesting because they have coherence (if they don't, are they stories at all?). I wonder if it's "coherence" which is at the root of the issue. The deeper question is whether the coherence lies in words of the story independently from the coherence of a conversation about it - Pedro's emphasis on dialogue is important. My guess is coherence arises from a totality which is essentially dialogical, as Pedro notes. But we need to get closer to "coherence", not narrative. </div><div><br></div><div>When talking about dialogue, I'm puzzled by the emphasis on "two people": the "Dia" in dialogue means "through", so it's THROUGH "logos" (words, wisdom, etc): that can be many people, many brains. That's more than simply talking to one another. It's the full gamut of intersubjective engagement. Ultimately, that enlists an total ontology - biology, physics, consciousness, ontogeny, phylogeny, education, etc. (and yes, all of those things are indeed stories!)</div><div><br></div><div>As Loet has noted, coherence is a problem, particularly in cybernetics. It cannot be accounted for in a bottom-up process; there has to be top-down coordination. It is the latter which gives coherence to everything: the great mystery of nature is, as John Torday remarked a while ago, that everything seems to fit together. </div><div><br></div><div>My guess is that the coherence of stories, art, dialogue, etc is connected to the coherence of consciousness, which is probably connected to the coherence of biological processes, and why not physical processes too? After all, mathematics, (another product of consciousness, like a story) reveals fundamental patterns through fractals, and even our machine learning algorithms seem to obey some kind of fundamental self-symmetry in their operation, which whilst we are exploiting them, we understand very little about (this is fascinating: <a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-holographic-principle-and-deep-learning-52c2d6da8d9">https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-holographic-principle-and-deep-learning-52c2d6da8d9</a>)</div><div><br></div><div>So my question is, why narrative? Coherence is the thing!</div><div><br></div><div>Best wishes,</div><div><br></div><div>Mark</div><div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:38, Pedro C. Marijuan <<a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="m_-7775806513548641261moz-cite-prefix">Stan, List,<br>
<br>
I was thinking that those questions (below) or what, why, how,
etc. are not very useful either in order to ascertain "causality"
around communication phenomena. First, a communication is not
"monologic" as the Aristotelian scheme presupposes (at least
implicitly) but "dialogic" as it is a dialog between two parties
who have different experiences, backgrounds, preferences, valence,
"logics", etc. Thus the pieces of communication between two or
more parties cannot be explained monologically, but establishing
something else: a story, a narrative where the relevant antecedent
facts, the life stories of the protagonists, the current or
previous background, the exchanges themselves, etc. are expressed
with economy or "optimality" depending on the explanatory
purposes... So very different narratives may be needed (including
the elaboration of "data") even about a single communication or
interactive exchange. In any event, the common factor is
happenstances around life cycles or life courses. Narratives are
but complex pieces of information --causative or descriptive--
that we naturally elaborate and interpret around the social life
around. And this may dovetail with the views of Akerlof &
Shiller on narratives in "phishing for phools" economics... <br>
Does this make "informational" sense?<br>
Best--Pedro<br>
<br>
El 21/10/2018 a las 20:58, Pedro C. Marijuan escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div class="m_-7775806513548641261moz-cite-prefix"><br>
To Stan: Thanks for incorporating the four Aristotelian causes
below. But do you think they are useful or well suited for
communicational phenomena? Rather they respond better to the
single agent or designer arranging a piece of the inanimate
world to his/her plans. See the traditional metaphor of the
sculptor carving out the statue. But communication and
narratives could be different. Seemingly they respond better to
questions such as: What? (Content) To whom? (interlocutor) Why?
(reasons or purpose) How? (style, moods, manners) How long?
(duration of the engagement, transitions). I think that when
cells indulge in their molecular narratives or when we do
communicate with our stories the causal analysis becomes
different from the Aistotelian frame. It could be a good point
to search out.<br>
<br>
Best wishes to all<br>
--Pedro<br>
<br>
El 19/10/2018 a las 15:49, Stanley N Salthe escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">On the topic of information as narration:
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p1"><span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1">Information as
Narrative (would involve serial ‘statements’)</span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span style="line-height:1.5">Formal
cause (of narrative) ... the presence of available
channels (in nature and/or culture) for informative
energy flows</span><br>
<span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span style="line-height:1.5">Material
cause ... available energy gradients for required
actions generating the narrative</span><br>
<span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1" style="line-height:1.5">Efficient cause(s) ... serial
actions having sequential cumulative effects on the
result of information flow in such a channel</span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span style="line-height:1.5">Final
cause ... anticipated subsequents as effects of the
narrative</span><br>
<span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span style="line-height:1.5">
(Anticipation requires system survival over a period
of time, during which impingements were survived,
sometimes by way of internal modification -- Rosen,
1985, Anticipatory Systems) </span><br>
<span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span style="line-height:1.5">STAN</span></p>
<p class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-p2"><span class="m_-7775806513548641261gmail-s1"></span><br>
</p>
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<pre class="m_-7775806513548641261moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
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------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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<pre class="m_-7775806513548641261moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<a class="m_-7775806513548641261moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="m_-7775806513548641261moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" target="_blank">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
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