Hi, Tim,
Thanks for your efforts to 'reduce' your
Rosenspeak to the level of my understanding. After having been educated on 3
Rosen-lists over the past ~3 years, I think I follow. From your peasantized
wording: 'entirety' may refer to 'wholeness',
I
thought 'entirety' had less preconceptions than 'wholeness' (e.g., Bohm,
etc.), but otherwise the same idea.
what, of course, we CANNOT 'perceive and
cognize'. (You have some mitigating remark on that, further down, so my
objection may be overruled.
The 'via
MRs' may be justified by that later part of your text).
Of course we cannot imply that in any MR
we end up with the totality: then we don't have a model: then we have the
'thing' itself.
As you wrote: 'all that exists in the world' .
With the restriction I may think of 'all that we can observe in the world'
but you explained that in your graphix as observed and
not.
My very starting point is that we have no way
to "observe all".
Only to the extent of the capability of the
mind, interpreting - representing whatever made an impact upon it.
Otherwise:
we would be omniscient. We are
not.
(that may come as a shock
<G>).
Agreed.
The "totality of models" in my graphic is just our accumulated knowledge to
date. Nothing omniscient.
The use of "noumenal" comes to your first
rescue: in my understanding it is compendial, without detailing, so in
grouping together 'nouns' into
'noumena', we may include otherwise outstanding features (not only within
our mind-content). So the only remaining objection I can think of is the word
"material", unless you extend that into nonmaterial-material. Like: anything
that can be called "physical" (reductionistic science-_expression_). 'As I feel'
(watch that _expression_!) the adjective 'material' in the term "reality"
makes it a limited model.
Well, I
have to admit that I have been wondering myself the last few days how to
characterize the term 'material', and whether it really ought to
properly be applied to all "reality" (as in my original statement),
or not. I have not come to any conclusion on that
yet.
I stand ignorant before the word 'posited'.
Realized? composed? understood-as? dictionary: postulated, suggested. If
we just 'postulate': it is weak, maybe so, maybe not, we would like it a way,
If we suggest: it is still weaker. But it sounds good to
me.<G>
Yes,
posited = postulated. We cannot prove there is a noumena. By postulating it,
(as you note below) it gives meaningfulness to the observables (the latter
which we must also postulate are not just from our
imagination).
Perceptible reality however asks for
imperceptible reality, maybe virtuality, we have no access to. "Our" reality
is (only) the content (in a mind-representational fom) of perceived impacts.
With my usual caveat about using the word 'reality' (cavallierly) it sounds
redundant. So far the reformulated definition.
Then again: "subjective self" calls for an
"objective" self which is an oxymoron. Maybe you aimed at "personal self?" (as
opposed to eg. nationality or race feelings etc.) Self is 1st person, singular
or plural. "I" or "we".
Interesting idea your "reality-out there". You
are still within your own (self?) mind perceiving and interpreting that "out
there" thing,
Sorry, no matter how desperately we try, in
our thinking we cannot step out from ourselves.
Then comes Descartes. I like the 'longer
variant' we could read lately:" I think I think ergo I think I am" so the
short form does not represent a strong 'affirming' to me - as
you implied.
Actually, in either the short or long version,
in the phrase "I think" there is already a tacit assumption of the validity of
'I'. Therefore, I wonder if the truly proper version is this: "'I' ergo
I am". (I don't
know if that form can be translated back to Latin or
not.)
In the definition of the MR - I apreciate the
"apparent reality".
I think that par (before getting graphical)
alleviate most of my hair-splittings. It makes complete sense even to me.
I wonder if you find it a true
translation when I put your graphical into my vocabulary (as I see
it):
[Tim]:
{noumenal
entirety} <----> {perceptible phenomena} <----> {sensory
apparatus} <==(MR)==> {knowledge of n.e. = totality of models
of n.e.}
[JohnM]:
{wholeness} <----> {observables to our
capabilities} <--->
{observation (sensory or ideational)
<==(MR)==> {(actual) cognitive inventory}
???
Yes, I
agree with your restatement of the graphic.
For the rest of your text: I am not in the
clear with measurements, (not RR, I have not read his description) I consider
it - if carried out quantitatively - a classical reductionistic process,
assigning to the model both to be measured and measuring as comparison, a
strict cut-off in ONE aspect from the rest of the world. The view of the model
to be measured is also reduced to the ONE aspect the comparison is carried out
for.
Very
close to Rosen. I'll quote it because I think it is worthwhile [LI p.
60]:
"It is
not generally appreciated, especially by experimentalists (i.e., those who
actually perform measurements) that any measurement, however comprehensive, is
an act of abstraction, an act of replacing the thing measured (e.g.,
the natural system N) by a limited set of numbers. Indeed, there can be
no greater act of abstraction than the collapsing of a phenomenon in N down to
a single number, the result of a single measurement. From this standpoint, it
is ironic indeed that a mere observer regards onself as being in direct
contact with reality and that it is "theoretical science" alone that deals
with abstractions."
A
good _expression_ is 'abstracted', meaning a total exemption of the connections
with the world. The not-quantitative (as in: "you don't measure up to your
father") is a similarity-check with a little wider cut in comparative
features.
In toto: your transformed explanation is fine.
Thanks, Tim. Don't be pissed off by my hair-splitting,
Not at
all! Your points are well-taken. :)
we
are in a poorly identified domain and the words are inadequate mostly. Give it
1000 years and the scientists will develop better meanings for
expressions.
Well,
since we are already 1000 years past the scientists of 1000
AD, then from that perspective it seems we are the
ones 1000 yrs in the future who are responsible for coming up with the
new conceptual frameworks and
expressions. <g>
Thanks again
John M
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 10:24
PM
Subject: Re: Function and functional
organization
Hi John
M,
I'll try to
give an "English-like human
language" version of my statement:
'Material reality' is
the posited noumenal entirety, which we then presume to perceive and
cognize - in other words, via modeling relations - as being all that
exists in the
world.
The "posited
noumenal entirety" is essentially a condensed version of how I read Rosen in
Life Itself, sec 3B and p. 56. It is the idea that it seems readily
obvious - but is not provable - that there is a some kind of perceptible
reality. This makes itself apparent in the distinction between the
subjective self (affirmed by "cogito ergo sum") and all else that
- from this perspective of "self vs other" - appears to us as
a reality "out there". We posit that it actually exists and is not mere
illusion. On further inspection, we seem to be able (that is,
"we presume") to perceive the phenomena of this posited reality;
but even our perceptions are mediated by our sensory
apparatus. We also seem unable to know the reality in
itself: the latter is like Kantian "noumena". Put these
statements together, and we have "posited" + "noumenal". "Entirety"
indicates that the phrase refers to all of this posited reality,
and the generality of the word "entirety" imposes less limiting
preconceptions than "universe" or other possible terms. Thus, "posited
noumenal entirety".
The process of
perceiving and cognizing the phenomena of this apparent reality means,
essentially: the modeling relation process. Insofar as "modeling is the
habitat of all epistemology" [EL p. 324], the totality of all that we can
perceive and cognize thus represents the full extent of our knowledge
of this posited noumenal entirety. The totality of this knowledge is
then our basis for what we comprehend as "being all that exists in the
world".
Graphically,
it is:
{noumenal
entirety} <----> {perceptible phenomena} <----> {sensory
apparatus} <==(MR)==> {knowledge of n.e. = totality
of models of n.e.}
This leaves us
in a position quite removed from the "reality" we posit to exist and
that we want to study. It is a humbling position to be in. I think seeing it
in graphical form makes it more obvious to me how important is Rosen's
book "Fundamentals of Measurement", since measurement and its
consequences and limitations directly intercede and impact all
efforts at understanding "reality".
It also makes
it apparent that the full range of what constitutes "effective processes" is
to be found in the posited noumenal entirety, and thus our ability to make
models that capture these processes requires
that "the notion of effectiveness has to get imported into
language via modeling relations arising in material nature". [EL p. 160]
That is, that our modeling relations implicitly inform us
about effectiveness, and it is up to us to be aware enough to notice
that when our models are inadequate to the effectiveness they intend to
model, that we strive to create classes of models that can meet or approach
that effectiveness. That is what takes us outside the realm of
computable models.
I hope
this has made the statement clearer....but I'm not sure.
:)
Regards,
Tim