[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index] 

Re: active/passive

John M;

I think we all share this sentiment to some degree but get trapped in our
own logic and pet ideas.

I just reviewed a paper about Maturana's ideas. Now there's a weird
perspective and perhaps the extreme anthropocentrism that you mention. He
says, so the author claimed, that "reality" is constructed on 2nd order
descriptions - i.e., human linguistic symbology. He supposedly accords
reality to 1st order descriptions, what I think RR would call
interpretations of percepts, but pre-linguistic. Nothing else is real,
according to this paper, so I don't know what he does about animals and
rocks, except that they are referred to as "fictions." Then he concludes
that constructing "reality" in this way gives the same results as according
reality to the externals. But obviously he hasn't accorded anything
external the right to think this way about us, otherwise there would be a
reality outside our 1st and 2nd order models, as RR's view would indicate.
Seems like just a play of words to me. So seems the whole consciousness
thing. We look for distinctions that may not be there. Who's to say a
single particle interacting with another isn't "aware" or "conscious" of
the interaction? Its just the arrogance you were referring to, is it not?
Also, we tend to think that the conservative view is to NOT accord any
sense of "knowing" or "experiencing" to anything else until proven. Then we
have sophisticated proofs that such a thing, even if true, could not be
proven. So we get to keep it for ourselves and nothing else. Sounds like
"guilty until proven innocent" to me, or the British club of all important
people; and the definition of important people by who is a member of the
club (no offense to the British). I prefer the opposite approach. Prove
something is not aware, or is not an observer or a modeler.

JJK


At 10:21 PM 4/19/04 -0400, you wrote: 
Judith, I am lured into a strong reply <G>
First the photograph, taken by Voyager 13 months after launch and evaluated
by a computer BEFORE ant human saw it. I hope you don't deny the
machine-conciousness working in AI? (I just do not equate it
with a human mind).
Then the hotheaded 'human' superiority. Yes it is that. WE are the big ones
because we made gadgets. So does a beaver and a bird. "human"
consciousness? because we do not understand the other animals?  When
I first became upset about "consciousness" (human that is) I started to
go 'back' in species and kinds to see where is a natural barrier? I didn't
find one. Tools, methods, targets changed according to the kind of creature
(feature?) and its circumstnaces, but no barrier in MY wording of the so
called 'consciousness', the sensitivity, acknowledgement and response to
information arriving from the world. (I/O)
I never understood the philosophy of a crocodile or a whale. Not even of a
cat.
A similar regressive trial I did on 'life' and went back to viruses, then to
those clay-organic and clay structures, back to molecules, and so on,
if the questions were asked right.
You wrote the tricky expression: ">...in a certain sense...< Not as
ubiquitously and always generally findable, but picking an exemplatory case
where a goal-oriented 'sense' justifies MY idea. (Pointed sentence).
Such are the carefully planned measurements, how the Big Bang was
'experimentally' proven. (Background radiation, linear retrogradicity  etc.)
In a "certain sense" there is (human) life, and that is enough for biology.
Just consider the 'life' of superhuman artifacts, somebody on another list
just mentioned the internet, we don't have to go to the sci-fi "Hal"
supercomputer...or Terra (AL).

We can reduce our interest to our life and the heck with a world w/o it.
Even narrower than what Dan lately quoted about the biosphere:
plants and their parasites. Only ONE, us. Blinders down and we live.

Sorry for the harsh ideas (the words are aony pointers)

John M



----- Original Message -----
From: "Judith Rosen" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: causing trouble, active/passive


> John M. wrote:
> > excellent idea, the non-human modeler. I have an example:
> > a photograph. It is a reduced model (e.g. no smell included)
> > of the visual boundaries-enclosed modeling. Momentarily I
> > am at a loss to mention another one - product of not some
> > *conscious activity* (like the camera, or say a bee-raindance
> > provided information of flowers - to say extremes). I was
> > looking for a model 'made' by a stone or a glalxy... Sorry.
> > Do you think conscious activity can only lead to models?
>
> Any organism other than a human being is a "non-human modeler" in a
certain
> sense. Complexity itself, is a model creator/generator. Any example
created
> by human beings, like your photograph, is only a model because of human
> consciousness. As such, I think it muddies the water rather than
clarifying
> things. Models don't show up in the natural world until complexity reaches
> the dimension of living systems (biology). this is why these concepts are
so
> alien to physicists. Models, functions, anticipation, life: These are all
> properties of complex systems of a certain dimension of complex
> organization.Contemporary physics deals with systems of lesser complexity
> than biology does, but the common feature is complexity.
>
> Judith