Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
"Eugenides" means "well bred", but this is belied by his actions: a
blatant homosexual invitation at the Cannon Street Hotel (in the City,
a terminus to the Continent), followed by a dirty weekend in Brighton,
the Metropole then a fashionable hotel. Eliot had originally written:
"And perhaps a weekend at the Metropole", implying that the invitation
forms the poet's unspoken thoughts as to what might follow the
luncheon; Pound wrote "dam per'apsez" in the margin of the manuscript,
and underlined the offending word.
- T S Eliot: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and 'The Waste
Land', by C. J. Ackerley
Friday, April 11, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
concept formation (on truth and lies)
Fred said:
"Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not
intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized
original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same
time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases -- which means,
strictly speaking, never equal -- in other words, a lot of unequal
cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cber_Wahrheit_und_L%C3%BCge_im_au%C3%9Fermoralischen_Sinn
"Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not
intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized
original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same
time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases -- which means,
strictly speaking, never equal -- in other words, a lot of unequal
cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cber_Wahrheit_und_L%C3%BCge_im_au%C3%9Fermoralischen_Sinn
disjecta membra
1. Gregory Bateson - "digital versus analogic"
Bateson describes the speech of cats (and dolphins, and others) in
terms of something called μ-functions, which are communicational moves
that describe relationship. "Mew" means "dependency"!
But more generally an analogue *depicts* relationship, does it not?
ἀναλογία : "proportion"...
And I think it's safe to say that communication *of* the relationship
is concomitant in maintaining the relationship. If the cat said, "and
don't forget to take out the trash," then we would not only be
surprised, but more than mildly offended.
For Bateson, humans are unique among animals in their digitality,
which provides the ability to refer to discrete things rather than to
take part in "voicing" the relationship.
(Are you with me so far?)
2. Georges Bataille - sacrificial economy
Bataille considers variations on the theme of "potlatch". His idea is
that that expenditure is at the root of our economic systems. This is
taken up by Jean Baudrillard who argues that the *symbolic* order
comes directly from expense and destruction. In the first place, the
"sacred" is whatever is sacrificed. But it goes further than that.
Economics in these regimes is about maintaining relationships -
between the chiefs and those they lean on, and among the chieftain
class itself. Economics achieves a certain form of analogue
communication. A potlatch demands a return potlatch. A sacrifice to
the ancestors puts one into direct relationship to the ancestors.
The "symbolic" is therefor, roughly speaking, the world of
μ-functions: and of course, within this space there are all manner of
relational things that can be communicated, e.g. "I am your senior
adult male, you puppy!" (among wolves).
This adds some depth to a statement like this one:
"'Symbol' becomes a trope for a component of social practice rather
than the hinge for a theory of meaning."
3. Terrence Deacon - emergent orders
Now, it no coincidence that expenditure and destruction is the
fundamental form in "primative" societies, because it is the
fundamental form in general. In "civilized" societies, we have simply
become more efficient at it. What might this mean?
(a) First, according to Baudrillard, we have largely destroyed, or at
least neutralized, the symbolic order. What this means is that
everything is "coded" or digital. Disjecta membra rather than relata
refero perhaps (scattered fragments, as with the limbs of a dead poet
-- versus referring to things related, if only to highlight their
strangeness). In terms of Deacon's theory, what does this mean? It
means a new higher-order constraint that insists on thingness,
indexicality, graspability, familiarity, fungibility, usability, and
intelligibility.
Virtual reality triumphs over the vision quest.
(b) And so things are accelerated. Instead of mixing sugar and water
and waiting for the sugar to dissolve, one drinks Coca Cola.^*
Nevertheless, the concern with this sort of emergence is that it will
ultimately destroy itself. The whirl-pool is the fastest way to drain
the tub. According to Deacon's theory, life is supposed to put in
*additional* higher order constraints to allow the heightened form of
entropy to be sustained. Because no one has time to wait an entire
generation for change anymore, we invent things like peeragogy.
But apart from the question as to whether "we" (or anything) will
survive, there is another interesting question to ponder in the mean
time: is there hope in any of this for a neo-primitivist order, a new
symbolism, real relationship, etc.?
4. Martin Heidegger - whither relationship?
Mathematical things are "things, insofar as we learn them; things
insofar as we take cognizance of them as what we already know them to
be in advance, the body as the bodily, the plant-like of the plant,
the animal-like of the animal, and so on."
"And so on" means -- the human-like of the human, and the very
mathematical of the mathematical itself.
And this mathematical of the mathematical is the one thing that is
essential to the proper functioning of emergent orders. This is the
function we call "learning." And what is this? ...... Is it perhaps a
strange sort of μ function?
The way Heidegger puts it, learning is a kind of "taking where he who
takes only takes what he basically already has." It is a form of
direct seeing in the world -- a way of relating to the world as it is.
I think it would be OK to say, optimistically: a way of relating to
the world AS relationship, a way of apprehending the world itself as
an emergent order.
(One acknowledges that this is somewhat strange feature to observe in
something that went digital long before digital was cool.)
5. William Burroughs - language is a virus
In this note, I have traced the evolution of language from the cat's
meow to modern mathematics -- in a very schematic form, to be sure.
The question that remains is whether there are relationships within
the particular μ function that is mathematics, whether we can find
*within* this form further "endogenous" μ-functions. Are there
mathematical forms that voice their relationship with other
mathematical forms, to us, or to anything else?
One naive answer would be "category theory." But there is another
more interesting answer, which is that mathematics is, in effect, the
entire "DNA" of what we have learned. Except, this is not quite
right. It would be better to say that *we* are *its* RNA. We
replicate it, and expand it, and unfold it. We give voice to it in
the same way that "mew" gives voice to the relationship between cat
and human. In brief, yes, there are μ functions within mathematics:
for mathematicians, they are, quite literally, the stories of our
lives.
*: Bergson: "Though our reasoning on isolated systems may imply that
their history, past, present, and future, might be instantaneously
unfurled like a fan, this history, in point of fact, unfolds itself
gradually, as if it occupied a duration like our own. If I want to mix
a glass of sugar and water, I must, willy nilly, wait until the sugar
melts."
Bateson describes the speech of cats (and dolphins, and others) in
terms of something called μ-functions, which are communicational moves
that describe relationship. "Mew" means "dependency"!
But more generally an analogue *depicts* relationship, does it not?
ἀναλογία : "proportion"...
And I think it's safe to say that communication *of* the relationship
is concomitant in maintaining the relationship. If the cat said, "and
don't forget to take out the trash," then we would not only be
surprised, but more than mildly offended.
For Bateson, humans are unique among animals in their digitality,
which provides the ability to refer to discrete things rather than to
take part in "voicing" the relationship.
(Are you with me so far?)
2. Georges Bataille - sacrificial economy
Bataille considers variations on the theme of "potlatch". His idea is
that that expenditure is at the root of our economic systems. This is
taken up by Jean Baudrillard who argues that the *symbolic* order
comes directly from expense and destruction. In the first place, the
"sacred" is whatever is sacrificed. But it goes further than that.
Economics in these regimes is about maintaining relationships -
between the chiefs and those they lean on, and among the chieftain
class itself. Economics achieves a certain form of analogue
communication. A potlatch demands a return potlatch. A sacrifice to
the ancestors puts one into direct relationship to the ancestors.
The "symbolic" is therefor, roughly speaking, the world of
μ-functions: and of course, within this space there are all manner of
relational things that can be communicated, e.g. "I am your senior
adult male, you puppy!" (among wolves).
This adds some depth to a statement like this one:
"'Symbol' becomes a trope for a component of social practice rather
than the hinge for a theory of meaning."
3. Terrence Deacon - emergent orders
Now, it no coincidence that expenditure and destruction is the
fundamental form in "primative" societies, because it is the
fundamental form in general. In "civilized" societies, we have simply
become more efficient at it. What might this mean?
(a) First, according to Baudrillard, we have largely destroyed, or at
least neutralized, the symbolic order. What this means is that
everything is "coded" or digital. Disjecta membra rather than relata
refero perhaps (scattered fragments, as with the limbs of a dead poet
-- versus referring to things related, if only to highlight their
strangeness). In terms of Deacon's theory, what does this mean? It
means a new higher-order constraint that insists on thingness,
indexicality, graspability, familiarity, fungibility, usability, and
intelligibility.
Virtual reality triumphs over the vision quest.
(b) And so things are accelerated. Instead of mixing sugar and water
and waiting for the sugar to dissolve, one drinks Coca Cola.^*
Nevertheless, the concern with this sort of emergence is that it will
ultimately destroy itself. The whirl-pool is the fastest way to drain
the tub. According to Deacon's theory, life is supposed to put in
*additional* higher order constraints to allow the heightened form of
entropy to be sustained. Because no one has time to wait an entire
generation for change anymore, we invent things like peeragogy.
But apart from the question as to whether "we" (or anything) will
survive, there is another interesting question to ponder in the mean
time: is there hope in any of this for a neo-primitivist order, a new
symbolism, real relationship, etc.?
4. Martin Heidegger - whither relationship?
Mathematical things are "things, insofar as we learn them; things
insofar as we take cognizance of them as what we already know them to
be in advance, the body as the bodily, the plant-like of the plant,
the animal-like of the animal, and so on."
"And so on" means -- the human-like of the human, and the very
mathematical of the mathematical itself.
And this mathematical of the mathematical is the one thing that is
essential to the proper functioning of emergent orders. This is the
function we call "learning." And what is this? ...... Is it perhaps a
strange sort of μ function?
The way Heidegger puts it, learning is a kind of "taking where he who
takes only takes what he basically already has." It is a form of
direct seeing in the world -- a way of relating to the world as it is.
I think it would be OK to say, optimistically: a way of relating to
the world AS relationship, a way of apprehending the world itself as
an emergent order.
(One acknowledges that this is somewhat strange feature to observe in
something that went digital long before digital was cool.)
5. William Burroughs - language is a virus
In this note, I have traced the evolution of language from the cat's
meow to modern mathematics -- in a very schematic form, to be sure.
The question that remains is whether there are relationships within
the particular μ function that is mathematics, whether we can find
*within* this form further "endogenous" μ-functions. Are there
mathematical forms that voice their relationship with other
mathematical forms, to us, or to anything else?
One naive answer would be "category theory." But there is another
more interesting answer, which is that mathematics is, in effect, the
entire "DNA" of what we have learned. Except, this is not quite
right. It would be better to say that *we* are *its* RNA. We
replicate it, and expand it, and unfold it. We give voice to it in
the same way that "mew" gives voice to the relationship between cat
and human. In brief, yes, there are μ functions within mathematics:
for mathematicians, they are, quite literally, the stories of our
lives.
*: Bergson: "Though our reasoning on isolated systems may imply that
their history, past, present, and future, might be instantaneously
unfurled like a fan, this history, in point of fact, unfolds itself
gradually, as if it occupied a duration like our own. If I want to mix
a glass of sugar and water, I must, willy nilly, wait until the sugar
melts."
just browsing
"For books that enter Google Books through the Library Project, what
you see depends on the book's copyright status. We respect copyright
law and the tremendous creative effort authors put into their work. If
the book is in the public domain and therefore out of copyright, you
can page through the entire book and even download it and read it
offline. But if the book is under copyright, and the publisher or
author is not part of the Partner Program, we only show basic
information about the book, similar to a card catalog, and, in some
cases, a few snippets -- sentences of your search terms in context. The
aim of Google Books is to help you discover books and assist you with
buying them or finding a copy at a local library. It's like going to a
bookstore and browsing -- with a Google twist."
you see depends on the book's copyright status. We respect copyright
law and the tremendous creative effort authors put into their work. If
the book is in the public domain and therefore out of copyright, you
can page through the entire book and even download it and read it
offline. But if the book is under copyright, and the publisher or
author is not part of the Partner Program, we only show basic
information about the book, similar to a card catalog, and, in some
cases, a few snippets -- sentences of your search terms in context. The
aim of Google Books is to help you discover books and assist you with
buying them or finding a copy at a local library. It's like going to a
bookstore and browsing -- with a Google twist."
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
virtual argumentation (untaken notes)
Baudrillard:
«[J]ust as Mallarmé said that a throw of the dice would never abolish
chance -- which is to say that there would never be a final throw of
the die that, through its automatic perfection, would put an end to
chance -- so one can hope that virtual programming will never abolish
events.»
Hutto:
«In this model the clinic could become a virtual model of the
patient's workplace or home and the construction of such virtual
environments in a clinical setting could introduce novel (more
thoroughly embodied/enactive and environmentally informed) aspects to
the therapeutic process.» - "Embodied cognition and body
psychotherapy: the construction of new therapeutic environments"
Me:
0: (Permitted and encouraged.) Virtue, Wisdom; what the philosophers
seek to teach. (Related to the idea of a prima causa.)
1: (Permitted but discouraged.) Vice, as distinct from sin or crime.
(Do not worship false idols; or phrased positively, study cosmic principles.)
2: (Required and encouraged.) Using the common currency, speaking
the common language. (Study the liberal arts.)
3: (Required but discouraged.) Social transformation through
deviation from the norm. (There is a time for all things under the
sun.)
Hayles:
The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact of Recursivity: Virtual
Ecologies, Entertainment, and "Infinite Jest"
New Literary History
Vol. 30, No. 3, Ecocriticism (Summer, 1999), pp. 675-697
Aberdein:
«Virtue theory originates in ethics, and in particular the work of
Aristotle. In recent years, it has come to be applied to other fields
of philosophy, most conspicuously epistemology. There are two main
constituencies among virtue epistemologists, distinguished by their
different characterizations of virtue. Reliabilists understand virtues
to be reliable faculties, such as sight or logical inference. For
responsibilists virtues are acquired character traits, such as
open-mindedness or intellectual humility.» - In Defence of Virtue: The
Legitimacy of Agent-Based Argument Appraisal
Lenin (as quoted in "The Big Lebowski"): "You look for the person who
will benefit."
«[J]ust as Mallarmé said that a throw of the dice would never abolish
chance -- which is to say that there would never be a final throw of
the die that, through its automatic perfection, would put an end to
chance -- so one can hope that virtual programming will never abolish
events.»
Hutto:
«In this model the clinic could become a virtual model of the
patient's workplace or home and the construction of such virtual
environments in a clinical setting could introduce novel (more
thoroughly embodied/enactive and environmentally informed) aspects to
the therapeutic process.» - "Embodied cognition and body
psychotherapy: the construction of new therapeutic environments"
Me:
0: (Permitted and encouraged.) Virtue, Wisdom; what the philosophers
seek to teach. (Related to the idea of a prima causa.)
1: (Permitted but discouraged.) Vice, as distinct from sin or crime.
(Do not worship false idols; or phrased positively, study cosmic principles.)
2: (Required and encouraged.) Using the common currency, speaking
the common language. (Study the liberal arts.)
3: (Required but discouraged.) Social transformation through
deviation from the norm. (There is a time for all things under the
sun.)
Hayles:
The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact of Recursivity: Virtual
Ecologies, Entertainment, and "Infinite Jest"
New Literary History
Vol. 30, No. 3, Ecocriticism (Summer, 1999), pp. 675-697
Aberdein:
«Virtue theory originates in ethics, and in particular the work of
Aristotle. In recent years, it has come to be applied to other fields
of philosophy, most conspicuously epistemology. There are two main
constituencies among virtue epistemologists, distinguished by their
different characterizations of virtue. Reliabilists understand virtues
to be reliable faculties, such as sight or logical inference. For
responsibilists virtues are acquired character traits, such as
open-mindedness or intellectual humility.» - In Defence of Virtue: The
Legitimacy of Agent-Based Argument Appraisal
Lenin (as quoted in "The Big Lebowski"): "You look for the person who
will benefit."
Sunday, March 23, 2014
how to mutate and take over the world? (pt 2)
A survey of various control applications in physics is given: control
of chaos, controlled synchronization, control of spatiotemporal
systems, control of molecular and quantum systems. An approach for
building models of system dynamics based on control methods is
discussed. The presented methods and results are illustrated by
examples of new approaches to classical problems: Stephenson-Kapitsa
pendulum, escape from a potential well, synchronization of coupled
oscillators, control of chemical reaction with phase transition,
controlled dissociation of molecules, controlled oscillations of
complex crystalline lattices. Controlled pendulums appear in many
parts of the book since pendulum models can be thought of as the
"atoms of nonlinear physics". - Alexander L. Fradkov, "Cybernetical
Physics: From Control of Chaos to Quantum Control", preface
of chaos, controlled synchronization, control of spatiotemporal
systems, control of molecular and quantum systems. An approach for
building models of system dynamics based on control methods is
discussed. The presented methods and results are illustrated by
examples of new approaches to classical problems: Stephenson-Kapitsa
pendulum, escape from a potential well, synchronization of coupled
oscillators, control of chemical reaction with phase transition,
controlled dissociation of molecules, controlled oscillations of
complex crystalline lattices. Controlled pendulums appear in many
parts of the book since pendulum models can be thought of as the
"atoms of nonlinear physics". - Alexander L. Fradkov, "Cybernetical
Physics: From Control of Chaos to Quantum Control", preface
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Re: Open Ed Challenge
Fred said:
Possibility of Progress.--When a master of the old civilization vows to
hold no more discussion with men who believe in progress, he is quite
right. For the old civilization has its greatness and its advantages
behind it, and historic training forces one to acknowledge that it can
never again acquire vigor: only intolerable stupidity or equally
intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this fact. But men may
consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization where formerly
they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now devise
better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth
as an economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of
men and select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is
killing the other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective
animal and plant life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress
itself--progress is possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost
unreflective to assume that progress must necessarily take place: but
how can it be doubted that progress is possible? On the other hand,
progress in the sense and along the lines of the old civilization is
not even conceivable. If romantic fantasy employs the word progress
in connection with certain aims and ends identical with those of the
circumscribed primitive national civilizations, the picture presented
of progress is always borrowed from the past. The idea and the image
of progress thus formed are quite without originality.
-- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38145/38145-h/38145-h.htm
(Of First and Last Things, section 24), cf.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/scientism-1-of-5/
Possibility of Progress.--When a master of the old civilization vows to
hold no more discussion with men who believe in progress, he is quite
right. For the old civilization has its greatness and its advantages
behind it, and historic training forces one to acknowledge that it can
never again acquire vigor: only intolerable stupidity or equally
intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this fact. But men may
consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization where formerly
they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now devise
better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth
as an economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of
men and select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is
killing the other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective
animal and plant life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress
itself--progress is possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost
unreflective to assume that progress must necessarily take place: but
how can it be doubted that progress is possible? On the other hand,
progress in the sense and along the lines of the old civilization is
not even conceivable. If romantic fantasy employs the word progress
in connection with certain aims and ends identical with those of the
circumscribed primitive national civilizations, the picture presented
of progress is always borrowed from the past. The idea and the image
of progress thus formed are quite without originality.
-- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38145/38145-h/38145-h.htm
(Of First and Last Things, section 24), cf.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/scientism-1-of-5/
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