Re: Some thoughts on the Modelling Relation

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Tim,

Thanks for great ideas...a few comments:

Tim Gwinn wrote:

> > They may also be prior to a real, hard
> > split between epistemic and ontic realms.
>  
> TG: Could their even be an epistemic realm before there were living
> organisms?

Perhaps, if we consider a period after life emerged as
an ecosystemic network or community of interdependent
processes but before this/these networks/communities
generated cells and organisms. This is my view also one
HT Odum put forward in his idea of an ecological system
preceding organisms.

> > Thus they may also be
> > important as we seek to re-integrate across this problematic split. 
>
> TG: I guess I fail to see what is problematic. If epistemology arises as a
> consequence of being alive, then - to be a bit sarcastic - being dead seems
> to me the only cure for this "split".

This is a great comment. The problematic aspect I see
is that we humans are now destroying the necessary
ecological basis for our own existence by following a
mindset or paradigm or worldview (epistemic) that
is dysfunctional and self-destructive in real, material,
biophysical terms (ontic). One cure for the living is to
"heal the epistemic cut" and stop assuming we can ever
win at a game of "mind over matter". But a mystical
story from mythology and shamanism is that the only
way to communicate with, travel to, know or see other
worlds such as the spirit world (and maybe also the
unreachable plant and animal worlds) is to die. Some
humans are said to have special or divine powers to be
able to be "double runners" - die, go to, see, know other
realms but also come back to the life/human realm. This
is a way is the ultimate heroic or divine feat. I think it
may have been Joseph Campbell who said in his work
on comparative mythology and study of many hero
stories that the hero can't go on the heroic adventure
as alive, only as dead. To link back to our prior topics,
this would be akin to saying that the worlds/realms
cannot communicate by formal, symbolic means but only
by material means, unless one has super-normal powers.

> > Through eating and/or material relation may be the only way to
> > "communicate with" (or commune), or co-model for survival on
> > Earth with, the other animals and the plants, if we can't
> > communicate through language or other non-material, formal
> > channels.
>
> TG: In my view, ALL communication is via some physical interaction - there
> are no "formal channels" of communication between beings. Otherwise,
> communcation becomes an acausal process. An internal interpretation of a
> given physical interaction induced on us generates an internal
> representation we recognize as a formal entity.

One idea that your comments stimulated is that perhaps
imagination and/or empathy are akin to formal channels,
routes for knowing that do not require or utilize any
material transfer between knower and known. The Rosen
idea to ask questions of a model and learn about the system
it models may be another route. All these do pre-suppose
material structures and real models, but for the process of
"communicating" after these structure are in place, it may
not require a transfer of material. This could link in an
informal way to Einstein's quote about imagination being
more important, perhaps more universal, than knowledge.

Quantum spooky action at a distance may be another
example of communication without material/physical
transfer or contact...


Thanks again,

Dan